Topics in Halakhic Thought – Lesson 3

Table of Contents

• The meaning of command and the distinction between verses of command and declarative verses
• Performing commandments because of the command, and acceptance of God in Maimonides
• Prayer, rote observance, and service out of love in Maimonides
• The midrash on the giving of the Torah, “We will do and we will hear,” and Maimonides’ view in Eight Chapters
• Rashi’s first comment on the Torah and the Torah’s main essence as Jewish law
• Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, the Volozhin yeshiva, and Nefesh HaChaim as a polemic against Hasidism
• Torah for its own sake: Jewish law, Psalms, and the difference between commandments and Torah study in the Rosh
• Attachment through learning: God’s will in Jewish law and God’s speech in aggadic literature
• Reasoning, “Why do I need a verse? It is logical,” and in cases of doubt regarding blessings, one rules leniently
• The division of authority: formal authority and substantive authority
• The limits of authority: norms versus facts, and the impossibility of commanding belief
• Authority in Jewish law: the Sanhedrin, “do not deviate,” and authority from below
• The authority of the Talmud: public acceptance and not divine inspiration
• The public, changing generations, and the ongoing force of acceptance over time
• The statement “what even a young student asks” and its non-historical meaning

Summary

General Overview

The text defines commandment and Jewish law as dependent on a binding command, not on identification with the content, usefulness, morality, love, or fear, and grounds this in Maimonides’ discussion of idolatry out of love or out of fear, as opposed to acceptance of a deity as God. It interprets “We will do and we will hear” as a formal commitment to the command, in contrast to the approach of the nations of the world, who wanted to evaluate the Torah according to values and rational judgment, and it connects this to Rashi’s first comment on the Torah, which sees command as the Torah’s main core. It uses Nefesh HaChaim to argue that Torah study for its own sake is not a means for experiential attachment, but an end in itself and a metaphysical attachment to God’s will as expressed in Jewish law, while aggadic literature and non-halakhic sections are at most God’s speech and not His will. It then distinguishes between formal authority and substantive authority and argues that formal authority is possible only in the realm of norms and not facts; therefore there is no formal authority in matters of thought and faith / belief, whereas formal halakhic authority exists in the Sanhedrin and, by virtue of public acceptance, also in the Talmud.

The meaning of command and the distinction between verses of command and declarative verses

The text states that there is a difference between verses of command, which are instructions of positive commandment and prohibition, and declarative verses, which describe facts and actions. It presents the positive commandment and prohibition as sharing an overarching category that defines the realm of Jewish law as things we were commanded to do. It argues that verses that look like commands but are not counted among the commandments, such as “You shall be holy” and “You shall do what is upright and good,” function as verses of expectation and descriptions of what is proper, not as binding legislation of halakhic obligation.

Performing commandments because of the command, and acceptance of God in Maimonides

The text argues that a commandment has to be performed out of accepting the yoke—out of accepting the yoke—and commitment to the command, and that this is the main meaning of commandments. It cites Maimonides in the laws of idolatry, according to whom one who serves idolatry out of love or out of fear is exempt, and turns idolatry into a definition of worship based on accepting the idol as a god. It distinguishes between commandments of love and commandments of fear as specific commandments, and the worship of God, which is not supposed to be based on love or fear but on acceptance of God as God, while love and fear may accompany it but are not necessary conditions for fulfilling the commandments.

Prayer, rote observance, and service out of love in Maimonides

The text connects this idea of commitment to command with implications for prayer and for the phenomenon of “commandments of men learned by rote.” It cites Maimonides at the beginning of chapter 10 of the laws of repentance, where he defines service out of love as doing the truth because it is truth, and distinguishes this from love of God in the emotional or experiential sense. It notes that in Maimonides, the meaning of the term love shifts between an emotional context and doing the truth because it is truth.

The midrash on the giving of the Torah, “We will do and we will hear,” and Maimonides’ view in Eight Chapters

The text interprets the midrash in which the nations of the world ask, “What is written in it?” before accepting the Torah, as an attitude of acceptance based on identifying with the contents, while Israel says “We will do and we will hear” without prior inspection. It connects this to the Talmud in tractate Sabbath 88, where the heretic said to Rava, “A rash people, who put your mouths before your ears,” and explains that this rashness is the acceptance of the formal authority of the command, not signing a “blank contract” in the sense of interests. It cites Maimonides in the sixth chapter of Eight Chapters, that one who performs commandments on the basis of rational decision is among the wise men of the nations of the world, but not among their pious ones, and argues that such an act is at most a good deed and not a commandment, because it lacks action done by force of the command.

Rashi’s first comment on the Torah and the Torah’s main essence as Jewish law

The text cites Rashi’s first comment in the name of Rabbi Yitzchak, who asks, “Why did the Torah not begin with ‘This month shall be for you the first of months’?” and explains that the question assumes that the Torah, in its essence, is command and Jewish law. It argues that even according to Rashi’s answer, the hierarchy remains: the main essence of the Torah is Jewish law, and the rest of the sections come to address secondary needs. It defines Torah as deriving from instruction, and as halakhic instruction, and from here presents the assumption that the non-commanding sections require justification.

Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, the Volozhin yeshiva, and Nefesh HaChaim as a polemic against Hasidism

The text presents Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin as a student of the Vilna Gaon and one of the leaders of the opponents of Hasidism, and describes the founding of the Volozhin yeshiva as a modern, non-local yeshiva established “to solve the problems of the Jewish people.” It argues that Nefesh HaChaim is to a large extent a polemical book against Hasidism, and yet in several issues there is a surprising similarity between it and the Tanya. It places the discussion in the opening of the second section on “engaging in Torah for its own sake,” in opposition to the Hasidic conception that sees learning as a means to attachment.

Torah for its own sake: Jewish law, Psalms, and the difference between commandments and Torah study in the Rosh

The text brings from Nefesh HaChaim that the accepted explanation of “for its own sake” as attachment is not “the clear truth,” and proves this from a midrash in which King David asks that “one who engages in Psalms should be considered by Him, blessed be He, as though he were engaged in the laws of skin afflictions and tents,” showing that Jewish law is loftier and more beloved than reciting Psalms. It argues that if the purpose of learning were experiential attachment, Psalms should have been the peak of learning, not the “dry” study of laws of impurity, thieves, and dialectical analysis. It cites the Rosh’s explanation in tractate Nedarim of “Do things for the sake of their Maker, and speak of them for their own sake,” according to which commandments are performed for the sake of God, whereas Torah is studied “for the sake of the Torah,” and concludes that Torah is an end in itself and not a means to experiential closeness.

Attachment through learning: God’s will in Jewish law and God’s speech in aggadic literature

The text brings from Nefesh HaChaim that learning itself is attachment, because “He, blessed be He, and His will are one,” and every law and halakhah is His will, blessed be He—“kosher or disqualified, impure and pure, forbidden and permitted, liable and exempt.” It interprets this as a metaphysical attachment that does not depend on feeling or explicit thought about God during learning. It points to the difficulty regarding aggadic literature, “which has no practical implication for any law,” and answers with Nefesh HaChaim that one who engages in aggadic literature is attached to “the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He,” because “everything came forth from His mouth, blessed be He, to Moses at Sinai,” and it notes carefully that aggadic literature is not God’s will in the sense of commands, but God’s speech. It concludes that Jewish law is both God’s will and God’s speech, whereas the non-halakhic sections are at most God’s speech, and in this way a hierarchy is preserved in which Jewish law is the focal point of Torah.

Reasoning, “Why do I need a verse? It is logical,” and in cases of doubt regarding blessings, one rules leniently

The text cites the Pnei Yehoshua’s question: why is it that in cases of doubt regarding blessings one rules leniently, if blessings over enjoyment are learned from logic? It uses this to distinguish between reasoning that interprets a command and reasoning that creates a new law. It argues that “Why do I need a verse? It is logical” means that logic serves as an interpretive tool to reveal what the verse includes, and therefore the obligation derives from the command and not from the logic itself. It states that reasoning that creates an entirely new law does not thereby become Torah-level and does not become part of Jewish law without a binding determination by the sages, and concludes that command is the foundation of the concept of Jewish law, not expectation or propriety.

The division of authority: formal authority and substantive authority

The text defines formal authority as binding authority by virtue of the status of the one who commands, like legislation by the Knesset and like acceptance of God as God, where one acts “because He said so” and not because the thing seems correct to the one fulfilling it. It defines substantive authority as the authority of an expert or of testimony, which stems from the assumption that the speaker is more likely to be right, such as a doctor or witnesses, and therefore compliance comes through persuasion and probability. It connects the nations of the world to a substantive approach that examines the Torah in terms of propriety and identification, and Israel to the formal approach of “We will do and we will hear.”

The limits of authority: norms versus facts, and the impossibility of commanding belief

The text states that formal authority is not relevant to factual claims, because even if an authorized body determines a false fact, it does not become true, and therefore formal authority has no meaning with respect to facts. It argues that it is impossible to command a person to think what he does not think, and therefore a command to accept a fact is an “oxymoron” and logically undefined, and it applies this to the question of the Messiah and to the claim, “You are obligated to believe,” by force of an authorized body. It discusses “I am the Lord your God” and argues that its wording is a declarative verse and not a command, and raises a critique of counting it as a commandment in Maimonides unless one offers a practical interpretation such as an obligation to study, clarify, or strengthen it. It distinguishes between emotions such as “do not covet” and “do not hate,” which are commandments of practical self-control, and accepting facts, and notes that even if supreme authorities were to stand behind something, there is no formal acceptance of facts without persuasion.

Authority in Jewish law: the Sanhedrin, “do not deviate,” and authority from below

The text presents “do not deviate” and “you shall do according to all that they instruct you” as the source of formal authority for the Sanhedrin alone, and rejects applying “do not deviate” to “every rabbi or rebbe.” It recognizes formal authority from below through public acceptance, such as the local halakhic authority, where the public appoints and accepts the rabbi, and therefore his ruling binds those who accepted him. It describes the substantive authority of a Torah scholar as based on expertise and persuasion, not formal obligation.

The authority of the Talmud: public acceptance and not divine inspiration

The text bases the authority of the Talmud on public acceptance by all of the Jewish people, not on ordination and not on “do not deviate,” and cites the Kesef Mishneh at the beginning of the laws of rebels, who explains that the Amoraim do not dispute the Tannaim because their authority was accepted. It rejects arguments based on “heavenly beings” and “divine inspiration” as a binding foundation, and argues that the authority of the Talmud is formal, and therefore binding even if there is a mistake in the norm, whereas a factual mistake in the Talmud is not binding because there is no formal authority over facts. It compares the Talmud to “our Knesset” in the sense of an institution that binds by virtue of public acceptance.

The public, changing generations, and the ongoing force of acceptance over time

The text compares this to Knesset laws that remain binding even after the death of the generation that legislated them, and explains that the public, as a public, continues even though the individuals are replaced. It cites Tosafot in tractate Me’ilah, “A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever,” to explain that a public offering is not considered an offering whose owners died, because the public does not die. It argues that someone who is not “in the game” of Jewish law is not relevant to determining the rules of the game, and distinguishes between one who does not accept Jewish law at all and movements that accept it only partially, where the question of persuasion and consensus then arises.

The statement “what even a young student asks” and its non-historical meaning

The text argues that the statement that “even what a young student asks his teacher” was given to Moses at Sinai is not a technical historical description, but a normative statement instructing us to relate to Torah innovations as though they were given at Sinai. It states that this does not attribute superhuman substantive authority to the sages, and that one can later discuss post-Talmudic authority with respect to the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim).

Up to now we’ve been talking about the meaning of command. I spoke about the meaning of command, and I said there’s a difference between command-verses and indicative verses. Indicative verses are descriptions of facts—for example, all the actions described in Scripture—and command-verses are verses that tell us things to do or not to do. We saw in the eighth root the relation between the positive commandment and the prohibition, the common umbrella they both share. After that I moved on to talk a bit about performing commandments out of the command itself. And the claim was that, basically, a commandment has to be done out of acceptance of the yoke, or commitment to the commandment, or to the commands. That is really the meaning of commandments. We saw this in Maimonides in the laws of idolatry, where he says that one who worships idols out of love or out of fear is exempt. And the alternative is that one has to worship idols out of acceptance of the idol, acceptance of it as a god. Meaning, once it is my god and that is the reason I worship it, that is idolatry. If I worship it because I fear it or love it, that is not idolatry. I spoke about the difference between the commandments of love and fear and serving God out of love or out of fear. The commandments of love and fear are two commandments, but the service of God should not be done out of love or out of fear, but out of acceptance of Him as God. Besides that, there can also be love and fear; in fact it’s even desirable that there also be love and fear. But it has to be that accepting Him as God is a sufficient condition for fulfilling the commandments. Everything beyond that is not necessary. I spoke a bit about prayer, about “a commandment of people by rote,” we saw various implications of these conceptions. And maybe you can see the meaning of these things from what I mentioned about that Maimonides—Maimonides at the beginning of chapter 10 in the laws of repentance—where Maimonides talks there about doing the truth because it is truth. And that he calls serving out of love. When he talks about love of God, that’s the emotional or experiential part or whatever. When he talks about serving out of love—not love of God, but serving out of love—he means doing the truth because it is truth. Which is a different statement from emotional love. He also calls that love; in some places that’s the meaning and in other places this is the meaning; it shifts around.

Maybe one more point I want to mention in this context: there is a well-known midrash that the Holy One, blessed be He, goes around among the nations and asks them whether they want to receive the Torah, and then they say, “What is written in it?” He tells them what is written in it, and then they say, “Not for us, we don’t accept it.” Then the Holy One, blessed be He, comes to the Jewish people, and the joke says, “If it’s free, give me two,” but the midrash says that the Jewish people don’t ask Him what is written in it, but instead say, “We will do and we will hear.” They do not make it conditional on checking what is written in the Torah. What exactly is the difference between the Jewish people’s approach in this midrash and the approach of the nations of the world? This is not a description of a historical event; it’s just a midrash meant to sharpen a point. What point is it meant to sharpen? It seems to me it is sharpening exactly this point.

After all, the Talmud in tractate Sabbath on page 88 tells about that heretic who saw Rava, and while Rava was busy or deeply immersed in study, he injured his hands and drew blood from them. So he said to him: “You impulsive nation, who put your mouths before your ears.” Right? You’re an impulsive people who put your mouths before your ears. The reference is to that same midrash I mentioned before: instead of first hearing what is written in the Torah and then announcing “we will do and we will hear,” you jump immediately and declare “we will do and we will hear.” You put the mouth before the ear. Before listening and saying, “Tell me what’s written there,” you’re already saying “we will do and we will hear.” So what exactly is the difference between these two approaches? Seemingly that heretic is right. Why—what’s wrong with what he says? And with what he says, and with what the nations did there, as against what Israel does. And the answer is very simple: the nations wanted to receive the Torah out of identification with its contents. Remember Maimonides in chapter 6 of Eight Chapters, I mentioned that too—they wanted to receive the Torah depending on whether it seemed proper to them. Again, not in the sense of interests, even in the value sense—but they want not to steal, or not to murder, or to honor parents because that seems to them like the proper way to act. That is what Maimonides writes: one who performs commandments out of rational determination is perhaps among the wise of the nations, not among the righteous of the nations but among their wise men. These things are not a commandment; at most they are a good deed.

A commandment has to be done not because I identify with its content, because it is useful, because it is moral or not—none of that is relevant. A commandment has to be done because of the command, because of commitment to the command. That is the expression of acceptance, acceptance of God. And therefore, those nations whom the Holy One, blessed be He, goes around to and asks if they want to receive the Torah, and they wanted to know what is written in it—even before He tells them what is written in it and they say “not for us,” that very approach is a problematic approach. Because they wanted to examine the Torah, to accept the Torah only after they examined whether it really sat right with them. And the Jewish people say, “We will do and we will hear.” Seemingly that’s foolish—why don’t you check what you’re accepting? You sign a blank contract and don’t check what you signed? The answer is no. And the reason is that in a normal contract I check what I’m signing because I’m interested in a certain service and giving something in exchange. So I check what service I’m receiving and what consideration I’m giving in return for the service. But here I am obligated to the Holy One, blessed be He, not because of some mutual contract—He’ll give me and I’ll give Him—but because He commanded. So what difference does it make what He commanded? What difference does it make whether I identify with the content of what He commanded or don’t identify with it? Why do I need to inspect the contents and see whether I identify with them? I don’t identify with them—so what? I keep it not because I identify but because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded. That is the concept of acceptance of God.

By the way, that midrash may be Maimonides’ source, because later commentators wonder where Maimonides got this idea that someone who performs commandments out of rational determination is not among the righteous of the nations. I think he got it from here: that the nations wanted to inspect. True, it’s an aggadic midrash, but that midrash reflects something casually, as if in passing—it reflects some halakhic principle saying that if you fulfill commandments out of identification, that’s not a commandment. It’s not that it is forbidden to identify—I talked about that in the previous class; on the contrary, it’s very good that we identify—but the fulfillment should not be out of identification. Something else: not that identification is forbidden, but that the reason I fulfill it has to be because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, and not because I identify, because it is proper, because it is moral, or for any other reason. And once again this is the same reflection of the same idea of the constitutive status of the command. To perform a commandment means to be obligated to the command; that is what it means to perform a commandment.

After I properly defined the concept of commandment—I remind you that in the first class I separated command-verses from indicative verses—I think I brought there in the first class, I’m not sure, I don’t remember anymore, Rashi’s very first comment on the Torah. Rashi’s first comment on the Torah: Rabbi Yitzchak said, “Why did the Torah not begin with ‘This month shall be for you the beginning of months,’” in the portion of Bo? So he asks: why do we need another whole book and a quarter before we start working? And then he answers with “He declared to His people the power of His works,” and the familiar answers. But what interests us here is the question: why should the Torah have begun with ‘This month shall be for you the beginning of months’? What is that question based on? Simply put, that question is based on the idea that Torah in its essence is command. Meaning, the main part of Torah, the purpose of Torah, is the commanding part. And what Rabbi Yitzchak asks is why we need the other parts—the indicative verses, the stories, the descriptions, the other things that are not part of command or part of Jewish law. Why do we need them?

By the way, his answer too is a pretty questionable answer. He gives a kind of answer that says, okay, I need this so that if the nations attack, I can answer them. It seems that even in his conclusion, the initial hierarchy on which he built the question remains intact: that the main thing in Torah is indeed Jewish law. The other things come to solve problems. But the Torah that was given to us—in its essence—that is Jewish law. Torah from the language of instruction, halakhic instruction.

And in this context I want to discuss, to look at certain passages from Nefesh HaChayim. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin was a student of the Vilna Gaon, founded the Volozhin yeshiva, the mother of the yeshivot. There were yeshivot before as well, but the yeshiva in its modern sense began in Volozhin. This is a yeshiva that is not local for the people of the place, but rather a kind of central academy, what they call “a mound of mouths,” yes? A place to which many mouths turn. Meaning, a place people come to from many different places because they want to study there. Yeshivot usually came to provide a solution for local people, local yeshivot. When there was a rabbi in some place and he wanted to teach the students in that place, they set up a yeshiva for him, and then he could solve the educational or Torah-related problems of that place. The Volozhin yeshiva was not founded in order to solve the problems of Volozhin. It was founded to solve the problems of the Jewish people. Meaning, basically the people who come to Volozhin come because they want it, not because it wants them. It is a completely different kind of yeshiva. In that sense, Volozhin really was the mother of the yeshivot. That is the modern sense of yeshiva; that’s how yeshivot are understood today.

In any case, Rabbi Chaim was a student of the Vilna Gaon, and as his student he was of course also one of the leaders of the opponents of Hasidism. And his book Nefesh HaChayim, to a large extent, is basically a polemical work against Hasidism. To the point that it is very—that is to say, and despite that, it is very surprising how much similarity there is between what is in this book and, for example, the book Tanya, which stands kind of on the other side of the barricade. Quite a few issues there are strikingly similar between Nefesh HaChayim and the book Tanya. Also in the sense I’m going to discuss here, you can find similar expressions in the book Tanya.

At the beginning of chapter 2, Rabbi Chaim deals with the Hasidic conception that sees study as a means and not as an end. Do you see now the file I shared? Yes, yes, we see it. Okay, so here, look at this: “The matter of engaging in Torah for its own sake.” What does it mean to study Torah for its own sake? “The clear truth is that ‘for its own sake’ does not mean cleaving, as most people in the world now think.” Right? Most of the people around him thought that studying Torah for its own sake meant studying Torah for the sake of cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He. “For our rabbis of blessed memory said in the midrash that King David, peace be upon him, requested before Him, may He be blessed—before the Holy One, blessed be He—that one who engages in Psalms should be considered before Him, may He be blessed, as though he were engaged in leprous marks and tents.” So we see that engaging in the halakhic discussions of the Talmud in depth and breadth is a matter loftier and more beloved before Him, may He be blessed, than reciting Psalms. “And if we say that ‘for its own sake’ means specifically cleaving, and that the whole main point of Torah study depends only on that, then there is no cleaving more wondrous than reciting Psalms properly all day.”

What is Nefesh HaChayim saying? If study, as in the Hasidic conception, is basically a means to arouse an experience of cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, to arouse the religious experience, the religious feeling—if that were so, then Psalms would be the pinnacle of study. Because you have no experience of cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, greater than studying Psalms. You study laws of give-and-take argumentation and presumptions and thieves and impurity and all sorts of things like that—it doesn’t arouse in you some great experiences of cleaving. Psalms does. So if the true goal of study were cleaving, then I would expect Psalms to be the pinnacle of study, and halakhic, technical, dry study to be maybe on the margins. And what we see in the midrash is exactly the opposite. King David asks the Holy One, blessed be He, that someone engaged in Psalms should be considered as though he were engaged in leprous marks and tents—that is, in Jewish law. Meaning, engagement in Jewish law is the main thing, and King David asks that Psalms too should count. Okay?

There’s an interesting note here—I see I didn’t bring it here. Later in this passage Nefesh HaChayim also writes that, besides, it is not mentioned what the Holy One, blessed be He, answered King David. A nice Lithuanian pilpul. Meaning, King David asks the Holy One, blessed be He, that Psalms be considered like engagement in Jewish law. So we see that at least the starting point is that Jewish law is the main thing and Psalms are second-rate. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin says, yes, but maybe after King David asked, the Holy One, blessed be He, consented, and now Psalms are also on the level of halakhic study. He says no, because in the midrash it doesn’t say that the Holy One, blessed be He, answered positively. It says David asked; that’s what it says. I don’t know what the Holy One, blessed be He, answered him. Fine, it’s an interesting little catch, as they say. But for our purposes, what he basically wants to say in his polemic against Hasidism is that study is not a means to create an experience of cleaving; study is a value in itself.

By the way, in that same place he brings—I brought this above. There’s the Talmud in tractate Vows that says: Rabbi Elazar son of Rabbi Tzadok says, “Do things for the sake of their Maker, and speak of them for their own sake.” About that the Rosh says in his commentary on the page—you know there’s a commentary of the Rosh printed on the page in tractate Vows. So the Rosh says: “Do things for the sake of their Maker”—for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He, who made everything for His own purpose. “And speak of them for their own sake”—let all your speech and your dealings in words of Torah be for the sake of Torah. The Rosh notices here that there is a statement saying: “Do things for the sake of their Maker, and speak of them for their own sake.” “For the sake of their Maker” means for the sake of the One who made them, for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He. “Do things” means commandments. The commandments should be done for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He. “And speak of them,” meaning study Torah, study the commandments—“for their own sake.” Not for the sake of their Maker—for their own sake. The Rosh asks: what is the difference? What is “for the sake of their Maker” and “for their own sake”? So he says it’s not phrased this way for nothing. It is phrased here to teach us that commandments are done for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He; Torah is studied for the sake of Torah, not for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He. Torah is an end in itself. It is not a means to something else, as he writes here. It is not a means to get closer to the Holy One, blessed be He. Torah is itself an end; it is not a means, not an instrumental value.

Now in chapter 3 that is what he says there. Now I’m reading this passage from chapter 3: “But the truth is that the meaning of ‘for its own sake’ is for the sake of Torah,” as we saw before in the Rosh. “But concerning a person’s conduct at the time of engaging in Torah, in the laws of the commandments and their halakhot, it says ‘and speak of them,’ meaning that speech in matters of the commandments and their halakhot should be for their own sake—that is, for the sake of the words of Torah, namely to know and understand and increase learning and analysis; as the holy Torah itself says, ‘outside she sings aloud,’ that it has the power to bequeath and give good reward to all who contemplate and engage in it out of love for it itself literally, namely to increase learning and analysis.” Again he repeats the same point—that Torah study is different from commandment observance. Torah study is an end in itself. It is not a means to something outside it.

Now he continues and says this: “And he should intend to cleave in his study through the Torah to the Holy One, blessed be He—that is, to cleave with all his powers to the word of God, this is the halakha. And by this he is actually cleaving to Him, may He be blessed, as it were, for He, may He be blessed, and His will are one, as it says in the Zohar. And every law and halakha from the holy Torah is His blessed will, for so His will decreed that the law should be thus—fit or unfit, impure or pure, forbidden or permitted, liable or exempt.” Here he says the following. Here he presents the alternative. The Hasidim claim that study is a means to create an experience of cleaving. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin claims that study is an end in itself—we saw that before. In this passage he says more than that: study itself is not a means to cleaving; it is cleaving. The Hasidim conceive of cleaving as some kind of experience, and then they say that study is only a means to produce the experience. But if so, Psalms should have been the pinnacle of study. Therefore Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin says: study is not a means to produce an experience of cleaving; study itself is a state of cleaving. What does that mean?

By the way, it says this in Tanya too. Almost in the exact same words. What does it mean? The Zohar says that the Holy One, blessed be He, and His will are one—they are one thing. Meaning the Holy One, blessed be He, and His will are one thing. Not like people, say, where they and their will are two things; with the Holy One, blessed be He, it is the exact same object. So if I study His will—“every law and halakha from the holy Torah is His blessed will,” as Nefesh HaChayim says—then when I study some law, basically I am absorbing into myself some kind of will of the Holy One, blessed be He. And since He and His will are one, this is basically a state in which I cleave to Him, because His will is within me, in my intellect. I deal with it, I study it, I understand it, and that basically means that I am connected to the Holy One, blessed be He—but not connected in the experiential sense, as the Hasidim claim, yes, not a religious experience, but metaphysically connected. Meaning, when I engage in Torah, it means that the Holy One, blessed be He, and I are one thing—we are connected—even though I have no experience whatsoever. I can be engaged in thieves and impurity and purity and blood and various legal presumptions and all kinds of things like that, without thinking at all about the Holy One, blessed be He, and not needing to think about Him at all, says Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin. Since the Torah is the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, these laws that we study are wills of the Holy One, blessed be He, and He and His will are one thing. When I engage in His wills, I am basically connected with Him. Therefore one need not aspire that study bring me to an experience, because cleaving is not an experience; cleaving is simply being metaphysically attached. And if I engage in His wills, then I am attached.

And now comes a surprising note: “And even if he engages in aggadic teachings that have no practical implication for any law, he too is cleaving to the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He, because the whole Torah, in its generalities and details and fine points, and even what a young student asks his rabbi, all of it came forth from His mouth, may He be blessed, to Moses at Sinai.” First of all, I want to deal with the first five words—six—“And even if he engages in aggadic teachings that have no practical implication for any law.” What is bothering him? What is he answering here? It’s someone claiming that the purpose of study is for the sake of doing commandments, or something as a tool that serves that. No, what is troubling him in light of the previous passage we read is that this continues the previous passage we read. We said that cleaving is only by your doing the word of God, knowing the word of God more. Here, seemingly, it’s not what you need to do; it’s not God’s will. It’s God’s will and God’s word. So what he said above is that every law and halakha reflects the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. Aggadah, ostensibly, is not God’s will. Right. Meaning, every law and every halakha is a piece of the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. He wants me to do this and not do that, right? That is the meaning of halakha. Okay? But that is halakha. Aggadah does not instruct me: do this or do not do this. Aggadah is not God’s will—not because it is lower or inferior in any categorical sense—it simply does not contain wills, as I said before. Because aggadah tells stories and halakha commands: there is command, indicative verses and command-verses in the Torah. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin—in the Talmud too, that’s how it is—there are parts of the Talmud that are of the type of halakha and parts that are of the type of aggadah. Engaging in halakha is studying God’s will, and studying God’s will is itself a state of cleaving. But engaging in aggadah—the aggadah does not reflect the wills of the Holy One, blessed be He; there is no positive commandment or prohibition there, He isn’t telling us do or don’t do, there are stories there. Indicative verses. What? Basically indicative statements. Right, indicative statements, not command statements.

So if that’s the case, then it isn’t God’s will, so engaging in aggadah would not be called cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, not like engaging in halakha. So does engagement in aggadic teachings have no value? Now before we move to the answer, notice the assumption—again, like Rabbi Yitzchak in Rashi, remember? Rabbi Yitzchak asking why—and this is also all of the Hebrew Bible, Rabbi, one second—why do indicative verses appear in the Torah? Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin asks why aggadic passages appear in the Talmud. Everything that is not halakha requires explanation—what is it doing there? It has no value; it is not cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He. Shlomo, did you want something? Shlomi? No, I wanted to say it’s like all of the Hebrew Bible too, as if—there are twenty-four books; how many of them deal with laws? Same thing. In the Bible they are generally not laws at all, yes, in the Prophets and Writings, yes. Same thing.

So what comes out of here is this: what troubles Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin is that according to the theory he himself developed, learning aggadah has no value, no significance of Torah study. Notice again, this remains in opposition to the Hasidic conception, because in the Hasidic conception the role of study is to produce an experience of cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He. In aggadah all the more so. If you were to ask what counts more as study among the Hasidim, clearly aggadah counts more than halakha. Exactly. All the more so. And Psalms is then the peak, right? But Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, who says that I do not aspire to an experience of cleaving, but study itself is cleaving because He and His will are one—that all works when I study the wills of the Holy One, blessed be He. But if I study aggadah, or the non-halakhic parts of Torah, then that is not cleaving to the will of the Holy One, blessed be He? Why not, really? If I say that learning itself is, after all, a commandment—whatever is included in that learning, if it falls under the category of aggadah. The question is what is a commandment and what is not a commandment. So no, I mean the question of when it counts as learning for its own sake. So I say: it is for its own sake, no? Because it enters under the category of Torah study—even that it enters under the category of Torah study itself requires explanation. But Rabbi Chaim’s definition of learning for its own sake is learning in which you cleave to the Holy One, blessed be He, metaphysically, not experientially. And according to his explanation, only study of the wills of the Holy One, blessed be He, does that. So what about aggadah?

Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin answers that—this is his initial assumption. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin answers it. What does he say? He says: “he too is cleaving to the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He. Because the whole Torah, in its generalities, details, and fine points, even what a young student asks his rabbi, all of it came forth from His blessed mouth to Moses at Sinai.” Now pay close attention: he is exact in his wording. When you study aggadic teachings that have no practical implication for any law, you are cleaving not to the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, but to the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is not the same thing. Because aggadah is not the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. The will of the Holy One, blessed be He, is the commands. Aggadah is the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He, because it all came from His mouth. Once He said it, then engaging in it means engaging in the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He.

A parenthetical note. Wait—is his view also that His speech and the Holy One, blessed be He, are identical, just as he thought His will and He are identical? Meaning, there isn’t a Zohar saying that, but it seems implied that at least in some sense, yes. Now, a note: even in aggadah we learn things that guide us in our practical conduct—moral principles of one kind or another, right? From there too we derive lessons about God’s will for us. So why does Rabbi Chaim claim that aggadah is only the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He, and not the will of the Holy One, blessed be He? By the way, it’s not only aggadah. It seems to me it’s also the non-halakhic parts of Torah and of the Bible, because it is not phrased in the language of command. Right. We have returned to the distinction we made before between commands and indicative statements. The will of the Holy One, blessed be He—when the Holy One, blessed be He, says to me, “Look, it would be very nice if you were a humble person”—that is not a command. That tells me that this is a good trait. Humility is a good trait. Remember, I think I brought this example: if, say, there were no law in the state forbidding going through a red light, okay? There were no law forbidding going through a red light, but of course going through a red light would still be dangerous. Okay? Would I be obligated to stop at red and go only on green? No. Obviously common sense says: don’t go through red because it’s dangerous. But there is no obligation not to go through red. That exists only by force of legislation. Right? Only the fact that the law forbids it imposes on me an obligation not to go through a red light.

If we go back to the commands in the Torah, when the Holy One, blessed be He, said “Honor your father and your mother,” some people think that the Holy One, blessed be He, was merely telling us that honoring parents is a good trait or proper conduct. That is a major mistake in understanding the commandment. When the Holy One, blessed be He, tells me “Honor your father and your mother,” the fact that it is a good trait I know even without Him. When the Holy One, blessed be He, tells me “Honor your father and your mother,” He legislates that trait as an obligation. Not going through a red light is also a good thing even without the law, and anyone with sense doesn’t do it—it’s dangerous. But as long as there is no law, you are not obligated. What did the law do? The law did not tell me stories that going through a red light is dangerous—I know that by myself. The law is not an indicative verse; the law is a command-verse. It doesn’t describe facts to me. It commands me. It tells me: it is forbidden to go through a red light. Therefore I am also punished if I do it. If there were no law, I could not be punished. I did something unreasonable, wrong, but there would be no way to punish me because I did not commit an offense; I only behaved in an unreasonable, immoral way, whatever. Same in the Torah. When the Torah commands, people think command means to reveal to us what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. No. To reveal to us what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants—that is an indicative verse. To tell me that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants me to be humble—that’s an indicative verse. When the Torah commands me, “Honor your father and your mother,” it is not telling me that the Holy One, blessed be He, expects me to honor my parents. It commands me to honor my parents. Not expects—commands.

I’ll give you an example. There is a verse, “And you shall do what is upright and good,” and “You shall be holy.” “You shall be holy”—to act beyond the letter of the law, right? Or to sanctify yourself in what is permitted to you. And likewise “And you shall do what is upright and good” is a command toward moral conduct. Okay? Enumerators of the commandments do not include that in the count of commandments. Why not? Nachmanides writes because it is beyond the letter of the law. He doesn’t explain it, but there and also in “You shall be holy” and in “And you shall do what is upright and good,” he says that these are essentially verses telling me to act beyond the letter of the law. So what? If they had counted “You shall be holy” in the count of commandments, then acting in holiness would become law, because it would be a positive commandment, so it would no longer be beyond the letter of the law. Meaning, to include it in the count of commandments is a paradox. The scoundrel, right? We said “a scoundrel with Torah’s permission”—the scoundrel is that person who acts exactly according to the letter of the law. That is what Nachmanides brings there in the portion of Kedoshim. If the Torah had put this into the system of commandments, then all the modes of conduct that the Torah expects from me when it says “You shall be holy” would become kinds of conduct that are halakhically obligatory—there is a positive commandment to do that. But that is a contradiction between going beyond the letter of the law and law. The Torah does not want this to be law, because it expects me to do it as something beyond the letter of the law, and therefore it cannot define it as a positive commandment. Maimonides calls them general commandments? Again? Maimonides calls them general commandments, doesn’t he? No, it’s not a commandment. “You shall be holy” is a general commandment in Maimonides in the fourth root, but that’s because he interprets it not like Nachmanides. He interprets “You shall be holy” as meaning: do all that I commanded. Yes, it encompasses the entire Torah. But I’m talking about Nachmanides’ interpretation. Nachmanides on “You shall be holy” says: act beyond the letter of the law. For example, what does Maimonides say about “And you shall do what is upright and good”? Why doesn’t he count that? Maimonides doesn’t count it. There is no explanation; I don’t know why. But it is quite clear to me what the explanation is. But that also goes into the general commandments—“And you shall do what is upright and good.” No, absolutely not. As far as I remember, it isn’t even an example in the fourth root. So why isn’t it included? Because if it expects me to act beyond the letter of the law, then you can’t turn it into law. That would be sawing off the branch I am trying to sit on.

So now I ask you: how do I relate to the verse “You shall be holy” and “And you shall do what is upright and good”? What are these verses? What is their linguistic function? Are they command-verses? They are phrased like command-verses, right? “And you shall do what is upright and good,” “You shall be holy”—phrased like command. Are they command-verses? No. Clearly not. If they were command-verses, they would enter the count of commandments. So what are they? It’s speech that states something, no? They are verses of expectation. Verses of expectation. These verses tell me that it is fitting to behave beyond the letter of the law and that the Holy One, blessed be He, expects me to do so. It’s an indicative verse, a descriptive verse, not a commanding verse. What does it describe? It describes the proper way to behave. A command-verse does not merely describe that this is the proper way to behave, but commands me to do so. Just like the difference with the red light before legislation and after legislation. The legislation does not add the information that it is improper to go through a red light; rather it adds the prohibition against going through a red light. The normative dimension, not the descriptive dimension.

These verses, these two verses, once they are not included in the count of commandments, are basically descriptive verses, not commanding verses. And what I basically want to claim is that outside Jewish law, both in the Talmud and in the Torah, there is the halakhic part. Every part that is not halakhic is not God’s will, because God’s will is only what He commanded to do or not to do; rather, it is God’s speech. It becomes Torah because the Holy One, blessed be He, spoke it, but it is not God’s will. And regarding that too there is no source saying that He and His speech are one. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin says true, but still… Wait, he claims that aggadah is God’s speech? Yes. The aggadot that appear in the Talmud are God’s speech? Yes. Again, what is God’s speech? It doesn’t have to mean that technically He actually said it at some stage, but it is an expression of what the Holy One, blessed be He, is basically saying to us in one way or another.

Now I’ll ask you: are the verses and passages that deal with halakha not also God’s speech? After all, when the Torah came from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, the whole Torah came out—both the narrative part and the halakhic part. Right? So if everything that came out of the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, is God’s speech, then it means that halakha is both God’s will and God’s speech. And the non-halakhic parts are only God’s speech. So now you see that even in the conclusion, not only in the initial assumption, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin remains with the hierarchy that halakha is basically the essence of Torah. The rest—yes, that too is Torah in some sense, like Rabbi Yitzchak of Rashi’s first comment, like we also saw in the previous examples. Meaning, there is some outlook here that sees Jewish law as the focal point. Jewish law is essentially the main thing of Torah. Everything else is flowers and decorations.

And here I finished the first part of this series, or this course, or whatever you want to call it, which deals with the definition of what a command is, and from that what Jewish law is. Jewish law—now I’ll summarize—is those things that we were commanded, that we are commanded to do. That is Jewish law. Maybe I’ll give you an example that perhaps we’ll come back to later as well, but just to make it concrete before we go on a break. For example, things that come from reasoning. Things that come from reasoning—the sages say in several places: “Why do I need a verse? It is reasoning.” You don’t need a verse if there is reasoning. So already several later authorities ask about this. In tractate Blessings, the Talmud brings there a logical reason why one recites a blessing before food: because it is forbidden to enjoy this world without a blessing, and anyone who enjoys this world without a blessing is as if he committed sacrilege. So the Pnei Yehoshua asks: if so, then why in cases of doubt regarding blessings do we rule leniently? Blessings should be Torah-level. Because what comes from reasoning is equivalent to what comes from a verse, since the sages say: “Why do I need a verse? It is reasoning.” Meaning, you don’t need a verse where there is reasoning. If reasoning generated only rabbinic laws, then there’d be no point saying “why do I need a verse? it is reasoning”; you need the verse to tell me that it is Torah-level. So perforce something that comes from reasoning and something that comes from a verse have the same halakhic status.

Now that is strange, because then it comes out that command does not have the same status I described before. Even something that comes from reasoning, with no command attached to it—like moral conduct, for example—seemingly has a halakhic Torah-level status, like things that do have a command attached to them, because it says “why do I need a verse? it is reasoning.” But of course all this is still in the form of the later authorities’ difficulty. How do they answer it? Because they ask: after all, we see in the Talmud that blessings over enjoyment—yes, saying “who creates the fruit of the tree” or “who brings forth bread from the earth” before I eat—are rabbinic blessings. Why? The Talmud brings a logical reason saying that one must bless, so why is it only rabbinic?

Here it has to be clear: when we say “why do I need a verse? it is reasoning,” it does not mean that something that enters halakha does not need a command. No one ever imagined such a thing. Obviously a command is needed; without a command there is no halakha. Rather, there are places where, when I come to interpret the commanding verse, I use reasoning as an interpretive tool, and then the reasoning reveals to me what the verse says. So my obligation to the product of that interpretive process is not because I am obligated to the reasoning. I am obligated to the command; the reasoning only revealed to me what the command includes. For example, where does the Talmud say “why do I need a verse? it is reasoning”? On “the burden of proof rests on the claimant,” for example, or “the same mouth that prohibited is the mouth that permitted.” Right? Now in all these places, whether “the burden of proof rests on the claimant” or “the same mouth that prohibited is the mouth that permitted,” these are laws of evidence and procedure. There is a verse saying “Judge your fellow with righteousness.” The verses tell me I have to do this justly. The reasoning explained to me what it means to judge my fellow justly. My obligation is because of the verse saying “Judge your fellow with righteousness,” not because of the reasoning. If there is reasoning that would innovate a new law—not interpret a verse that states an existing law, but innovate a new law—it would not be Torah-level. It would not be part of halakha at all, not only not Torah-level. Unless the sages establish it as an obligation. Then it’s something else; they have authority to establish rabbinic laws. We’ll deal with all of this later on; I’m only at the beginning of the road. But what I wanted to sharpen here is the fact that even “why do I need a verse? it is reasoning” does not contradict what I said here. The command is the foundation of the concept of halakha. Halakha is founded on command, not expectation—command. What the Holy One, blessed be He, expects us to do is not halakha. It is proper to do it, right to do it, but it is not halakha. Halakha is what we are commanded to do. That’s all. Okay? Good. We’ll go out to… what about the words “why do I need a verse”? Why do I need a verse at all? That is because where the reasoning is interpretive reasoning, you don’t need a verse, because the reasoning can interpret. But if there is reasoning that innovates a new law, as with blessings over enjoyment, there no one would say “why do I need a verse? it is reasoning.” If there were a verse, it would be Torah-level, and the fact that it comes from reasoning makes it only rabbinic. Because there the reasoning innovates a new law; it does not interpret a law in the verses. About that it was not said “why do I need a verse? it is reasoning.” The Tzelach writes this there, and others too.

Okay, let’s take, say, a four-minute break. Get yourselves a cup of coffee, wash your face, and in four minutes we’ll come back. Okay? Someone is on mute. What? No, no, I’m not on mute. There, now the time has come. There, now you can hear. Good, okay. One. Okay, we continue.

Just once again I’ll ask: turn on cameras. Only if someone has some special issue should he tell me, but in principle the university guidelines are that people sit in classes with cameras on. Okay? Also from my point of view it’s not just formal; I simply want to see whom I’m talking to. To keep a little eye contact, as much as Zoom allows such a thing at all. So please, whoever has no special problem, turn them on.

Okay, so now I move to the second part. We distinguished between two parts in the Torah and in the Talmud, in the Torah world generally: the halakhic part and the other part. What distinguishes them is the question of what kind of verses or statements we are dealing with. In halakha, the verses are command-verses of positive commandments and prohibitions; we saw this in the eighth class. In the other verses, they are basically indicative verses; in their linguistic essence they are indicative verses.

Now, maybe just one sentence. How should we relate, for example, to verses or passages dealing with topics in Jewish thought? To the extent that there is such a creature—I’m doubtful there is. Those are indicative statements, no? What? Indicative statements—they describe. Indicative in the clearest possible way, right? Verses of Jewish thought do not command us to do anything. They describe facts—true, not true, providence of this kind, a messiah of that kind, here, there, the unique quality of Israel, no unique quality of Israel, all kinds of such issues—but ultimately these are verses describing facts. Jewish thought, at least most of it, deals with facts, not with commands. Of course, the facts are not always facts in the simple sense that you can just look and see that they are true. There are facts like, I don’t know, the messiah will come. I have no way of checking that fact, that statement, whether it describes a true fact or not. But no matter—essentially it is a factual statement. Okay? Therefore Jewish thought in this classification belongs not to the category of halakha but to the extra-halakhic category. And therefore the verses of the Bible, the verses of the Torah that do not deal with halakha, Jewish thought, aggadah, biblical interpretation, ethics, all kinds of things of that type, everything else, Hasidism, whatever you want to put there—all of that belongs to God’s speech and not to God’s will. At most, it concerns God’s speech—we’ll still talk about that. At most God’s speech and not God’s will. That summarizes the first part.

Now I want to move to the second part, and that is the question of authority. You’ll see it’s connected to the first part, but it’s one step further. Authority in the halakhic context—or let’s put it differently. Authority can be divided into two different kinds. Let’s call them formal authority and substantive authority. Formal authority is when there is some factor that has formal authority, so if it instructs something, I have to carry it out. Legislation of the Knesset, I don’t know, something like that. What we called earlier acceptance of God in Maimonides—what is acceptance of God? It is recognition that the Holy One, blessed be He, has formal authority over me. I do it because He said so. And we said earlier, I do it because He said so and not because what He said is correct; rather, even if I think He is not correct in that particular case, it obligates me because He said it. Period. It is not connected to whether I identify with it or not; I don’t need to inspect the contents. All I need to know is that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. That’s all. That is called formal authority. An example is a Knesset law, as mentioned earlier. When the Knesset legislates something, it obligates me not because the Knesset is always right, and not because even in this particular case I think it is right, but even if I think it is not right, it obligates me because it is the Knesset. Not because it is right. That means the Knesset has formal authority.

As opposed to formal authority, there is what is called substantive authority. Substantive authority means someone’s authority because he is right. Not because he has authority. Simply because he is right. For example, the authority of an expert. I go to a doctor. He examines me, discovers that I have a certain illness, gives me a pill to take. Am I obligated to take that pill? Absolutely not. Is it sensible to take that pill? Obviously yes. Obviously yes. If he is a doctor and I am not a doctor, it is likely that he is right, at least more right than I am. There is never certainty, but it is likely that he is right. So when I take the pill—even if I do take it—I won’t take it because I am obligated. I’ll take it because it makes sense to take it, because I am convinced that this is the right way to act. Remember the nations of the world when they were asked whether they wanted the Torah? They asked, “What is written in it?” because they wanted to assess the Torah in terms of substantive authority and not in terms of formal authority. They wanted to check whether it was right in their eyes. If it was right, they were willing to do it. But if it was not right, then no. But the Jewish people—the impulsive nation, amma peziza—they say right away, “We will do and we will hear.” Why? Because from their perspective the Holy One, blessed be He, has formal authority. You don’t need to check what He said and whether He is right. Also one assumes He is right, but not because of that, not because of that. The point is that He is God; I accepted Him upon myself as God. I do it because that is what must be done. Not because I love Him, not because I fear Him, not because He—even not because He is right. Rather simply because this is what must be done, because He created me, He is my owner. “Is He not your Father, your Master? He made you and established you.” Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, made them; that is the source of His authority. Not because He is right and knows everything. Because He made them. If He made us, He has authority to instruct us what to do and what not to do. So that means this is formal authority.

Substantive authority is authority like I said, that of an expert, or someone who saw the situation, saw what happened there—witnesses come. Why does the religious court accept the testimony of the witnesses? Not because the witnesses are experts and not because they have formal authority, but because the witnesses were there and the judges were not there. So apparently if the witnesses report something, it is probably true. I accept the testimony simply because in my estimation it is true. Not because I am obligated to accept the testimony. I am not obligated to accept the testimony. Rather because in my estimation it is true. So this distinction between formal authority and substantive authority is very important. Because now every time we enter a question of authority, and ask who has authority and in what subject he has authority, we have to distinguish very carefully whether we are talking about formal authority or substantive authority.

I’ll give you a basic distinction that will tie us even more to the previous part. Does formal authority apply with respect to factual claims? No, at most that would be substantive authority—someone is an expert. Since formally he cannot tell me that the earth is square. That won’t help. If the Knesset were to determine that the earth is square, it still wouldn’t be square. It still wouldn’t be square, right? Meaning, with respect to facts, the concept of formal authority is irrelevant. It doesn’t apply. For example, if they tell me, “Look, you are obligated to believe that the messiah will come”—why exactly? Because the Sanhedrin determined it. The authorized body determined it. That is completely meaningless and completely lacking force. No one can command me to accept a fact by virtue of formal authority. What you can do is try to convince me that the fact is true. If I become convinced, then I will accept your substantive authority. But formal authority over facts is not defined at all.

When I make this claim, I’m not going to bring you any source because no source is needed. This is the result of conceptual analysis. Therefore I do not search in the books of the medieval authorities or later authorities whether there is authority in fields that are not halakhic. My answer is categorical: there is no such authority, period. There is none. Even if all the medieval authorities stood here in rows of three and shouted that there is, the answer is that there isn’t. There simply isn’t, because there is no such thing, no such creature. Logically there isn’t. Not normatively there isn’t, not halakhically there isn’t. Not that there isn’t because the Holy One, blessed be He, did not give them authority to do this. There just isn’t because it cannot be, it is impossible to define authority in that sense.

Maimonides writes in three places in his Commentary on the Mishnah that there is no halakha in matters that do not pertain to practice; there is no halakhic ruling in matters that do not pertain to practice. There is an interesting article by David Henshke from the Talmud department where he shows that in the Mishneh Torah, in those same three places, Maimonides did issue a halakhic ruling. In the Commentary on the Mishnah he writes in three places that one does not issue a halakhic ruling here because it does not pertain to practice, and in the Mishneh Torah, in those three places, he does rule. That’s just an anecdote; look there in the article for the explanation he suggests. Not important right now. But for our purposes, what is Maimonides saying here? On the plain meaning of his words, it seems that what he means is that there is no point in issuing a halakhic ruling because it does not pertain to practice. So why nail things down on this issue? Let everyone think what he wants; it does not pertain to practice.

What I want to claim here is something much stronger. Even if they wanted to issue a ruling, it would not help them. Suppose I came to the conclusion like Rabbi Hillel. Rabbi Hillel said: “Israel has no messiah, because they already consumed him in the days of Hezekiah.” Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin. The Talmud says there, “May his Master forgive Rabbi Hillel”—apparently the Holy One, blessed be He—that he denied the coming of the messiah. Okay. So the claim is that someone comes and tells me: look, the Sanhedrin determined that the messiah must come. Now suppose I’m not convinced. I think the Sanhedrin erred. Can someone tell me: okay, you think they erred, but we have formal authority and “do not deviate from all that they instruct you,” and if they say the messiah will come, you are obligated to accept that the messiah will come? Then you need to behave as if this is going to happen. But what I am claiming is not that this authority was not given to them. This is not a halakhic or meta-halakhic question. I am claiming that such authority cannot be defined. Because what exactly do they expect of me? Do they expect me, although I am unconvinced and think he will not come, to say outwardly that he will come? They expect me to think that he will come, not merely to say that he will come. But to think—I think he will not come, as long as you haven’t convinced me. So what does it help that they come in the name of formal authority and demand that I think X when I think Y? All I can do—even if I want to fulfill this command—is to say externally, “I believe with complete faith in X.” But that would be false, because inwardly I believe in Y. You cannot demand such a demand of a person.

What? Could one say that the sages have two powers? Meaning, there are sages with authority to tell you the halakha, and then there is the side of divine inspiration, the prophecy of the sages. No, no—leave divine inspiration aside. Divine inspiration takes me into areas I’m not sure you understand, and I certainly don’t understand. But I’m not talking about that question now. I’m talking about whether there is formal authority in this area. Divine inspiration is not formal authority; it is substantive authority. Someone who comes by virtue of divine inspiration is basically saying: accept this because I am right; I have higher perceptions and I am right. That is no problem. If he convinces me that he has such perceptions and that he is right, of course I will accept. What I am saying is that formal authority in such matters is impossible. Impossible—someone cannot come and tell me that by force of the command of an authority-holder I am required to accept a factual claim when I am convinced it is not true. Such a thing cannot be demanded of me. And not because it is immoral. It is impossible—that is, impossible to fulfill it even if I want to. It just is not defined at all. So the concept of formal authority with respect to facts is not defined.

Even if the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself stood here and told me that now it is day, I would not accept it because now it is night. But if He tells me, “Do not sort on the Sabbath,” then I will accept it even if I think sorting on the Sabbath is permitted. But that’s not only with the Holy One, blessed be He; also with the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin comes and says: sorting is forbidden on the Sabbath; it is one of the thirty-nine primary categories of labor. But if they say: not at all, sowing, sorting, sifting—it’s all the same, it’s not a primary category of labor, it’s something else. Fine, I don’t accept it. There is “do not deviate.” The Sanhedrin has formal authority. Now why there is the formal authority there—before the question whether they were given that authority—first of all you have to explain why authority of that kind can even be defined at all, formal authority with respect to norms, not with respect to facts. The answer is very simple, because there is no inherent problem in demanding that I refrain from sorting on the Sabbath even though I think sorting on the Sabbath is permitted. Not necessarily stringently—even leniently. It is possible to demand that I slaughter on the Sabbath even though in my opinion it is forbidden to slaughter on the Sabbath. Why? Because they are not demanding that I think something I do not think. Exactly—an action. They are demanding an action from me. Action, logically speaking, is perfectly well-defined here. I am being asked to do something even though I do not identify with its correctness. Fine, so what? Still, the system may demand that I do it even though I do not think it is right. That is the meaning of formal authority.

Of course, the fact that this is defined does not yet mean that it exists. Now we still need to check whether there is a verse that really gives the Sanhedrin formal authority. But if there is such a verse, then there is no problem, because formal authority with respect to norms is something perfectly well-defined. If there were a verse giving the Sanhedrin formal authority with respect to facts, I would not fulfill it even if there were an explicit verse like that. Because there is no such thing—you cannot fulfill it, there is no such thing, it is not defined. Like a verse saying that day is night and night is day. You cannot accept such a verse.

So what I am sharpening again—what I am claiming here—is not that there is no halakhic source for authority with respect to facts, but that it is not defined at all. It is a logical contradiction to speak of formal authority with respect to facts. “I am the Lord your God”—isn’t that a commandment? What? Michael, Rabbi Michael. Did someone ask something? “I am the Lord your God”? No, that is not a commandment. Maimonides counts it in the count of commandments, and the medieval authorities already remarked about him: what sense is there in commanding that? Usually that remark is based on a different argument. That remark is based on the claim that there is no sense in commanding belief, because if I don’t believe, then I also won’t accept the commands of the factor I don’t believe in. I’m making a stronger claim here. I’m claiming that since you are commanding me to believe a fact, such a command cannot be carried out. There is no such thing. You cannot command that. You can reveal to me that the Holy One, blessed be He, is my God. Fine—if I’m convinced, I’ll accept it. That can be an indicative statement; it cannot be a command statement.

By the way, notice also the wording of the verse. The wording of the verse is not “You shall have no other gods before Me,” “Honor your father and your mother”—that is all phrased in the imperative. Right? Command is a grammatical tense: past, present, future, imperative. “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”—that is a clear indicative statement. It is not a command statement. What is it commanding? It is telling me something; it is describing for me the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the God who took me out of Egypt. Fine, nice to meet you.

So why does Maimonides count it as a commandment? Why does Maimonides count it as a commandment? Needs investigation. One can look for all kinds of explanations, or you’ll find that they offered all kinds of explanations—they are usually forced—or you’ll find explanations or you won’t. Either way, he is mistaken. If you have no other explanation, then Maimonides is mistaken. I do not accept this. There is no such thing; logically it is not defined. It’s not that I disagree with Maimonides; it has nothing to do with disagreeing with Maimonides. A verse commanding a fact is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. A verse can reveal a fact to me. And if I have faith in the one who wrote the verse, then I will accept the fact because he knows better than I do—the Holy One, blessed be He. So I will accept it, and I will accept it because I was convinced, not because he has authority. I cannot accept facts because someone has authority—that’s nonsense. According to you, basically one cannot command what to think? Correct. Not according to me—according to everything, according to logic. Anyone who said otherwise is simply confused. But Maimonides tried to do this—after all, the thirteen principles. He tried and failed. The thirteen principles are the clearest example. Maimonides in the thirteen principles commands nothing. The thirteen principles are not commandments. The thirteen principles try to establish a framework determining who is a believing Jew and who is not. It is not a command. If I don’t believe one of the thirteen principles, then “you have no share in the world to come” or something like that? I am not commanded to believe; rather, if I do not believe, then according to Maimonides I am not considered part of the community of believing Jews. That’s all. It’s a question of classification, not a question of command.

“I am the Lord your God” is a command according to Maimonides. By the way, once I’m mentioning it I’ll tell you—I once thought, but afterward Rabbi Dror Fixler from engineering showed me this isn’t correct. I once thought that “I am the Lord your God” might have a different explanation. Maimonides in positive commandments 95 and 96 brings commandments that command nothing. For example, annulment of vows. So Maimonides says—he writes in both 95 and 96, explaining it—do not think that when you see the commandment of annulment of vows, think that this commands you something. The husband is not commanded to annul his wife’s vows, nor is he forbidden not to annul his wife’s vows. It is entirely neutral. If you want to annul your wife’s vows, you are permitted to, if you do it according to the procedure that the Torah or Jewish law established. That’s all. And if you didn’t do it, then the vow is not annulled. And Maimonides calls that a positive commandment. Same thing with the commandment right before it or right after it—sorry, that’s commandment 96—regarding impurity, where we define someone who touched a corpse as impure with corpse-impurity. Maimonides says this thing is not a commandment, it commands you nothing. You are allowed to become impure; not forbidden not to become impure; nothing, everything is fine. I’m speaking not about a priest, but an ordinary Jew. It commands me nothing. It only determines my halakhic status, that if I touched a corpse I am impure. And that has other halakhic implications: if I am a priest I may not eat terumah, I may not enter the Temple. Fine, but it is a separate commandment that an impure person may not enter the Temple. The commandment that someone who touches a corpse becomes impure commands me nothing. And Maimonides there dwells on this, and he says: know that there is another type of positive commandment. There are positive commandments that command nothing. They define halakhic status.

What does that mean, basically? I thought then that maybe the commandment “I am the Lord your God” is also basically a commandment that commands nothing. It is the title of the Book of Commandments. The title of the Book of Commandments—it is the first entry in the Book of Commandments—basically has the status of a heading. Know that all the following commandments address one who accepts this fundamental principle: “I am the Lord your God.” Maybe Maimonides’ commandment “I am the Lord your God” is likewise really a commandment that commands nothing. It is the title of the Book of Commandments. The title of the Book of Commandments is the first entry in the Book of Commandments; basically it has the status of a heading. Know that all the commandments that follow address one who accepts this foundational principle: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” This is the introduction to the Book of Commandments. Now, from Maimonides’ perspective, even a declaration, even a status determination, is a positive commandment. Because for Maimonides the Book of Commandments is basically the law book. You know that in a state law book there are clauses that are explanatory clauses, not operative clauses—for example, “a minor for this matter is anyone who has not reached the age of thirteen,” for example. Okay? Does that command me something? No, it defines what a minor is, right? But there is such a clause in the law book. “A minor,” for the purposes of this whole legal system, is one who has not reached age thirteen. How should we classify that clause—is it law or not law? Obviously it is law. It is law, but law that commands me nothing. It is a defining law or a law establishing status. In halakha, the Book of Commandments is not the book of commands but the book of laws. Within the laws there are laws that are commands and there are laws that are explanatory clauses, headings—everything that appears in the law book of the State of Israel would appear in the Book of Commandments as a commandment. Think of the law book of the State of Israel opening with the statement that the Knesset is the sovereign and whatever it legislates is determinative. The basic norm according to Kelsen. Okay? We talked about that. So that opens the law book. With Maimonides too, “I am the Lord your God” is basically the basic norm, and it opens the law book of halakha, which is the Book of Commandments.

That’s how I once thought to explain positive commandment 1, and then indeed Maimonides would not see it as a command. It appears there as a law that does not command. But, as I mentioned, Rabbi Dror Fixler showed me that Maimonides divides the commandments into commandments that apply constantly all the time and commandments that do not apply constantly. And one of the commandments that applies constantly is the commandment of faith, to believe in the Holy One, blessed be He. So that means he apparently does understand it as an actual commandment, a cognitive commandment, a commandment to believe. It’s not a declaration opening the book. Okay? So I say: if you don’t find an explanation, then Maimonides needs investigation, but clearly he is not right. That is, there is no doubt. Maybe explain it like the Sefer HaChinukh, that it refers to strengthening faith? I didn’t understand. The idea would be that a person must at all times persist in studying faith and strengthening himself. That is one of the explanations offered, as I said. Various explanations are offered for Maimonides’ commandment. Some say the commandment is only to study it, to clarify it, to work it through—that is the commandment. Which is perfectly fine, because that is a practical commandment. It requires me to do something, not to accept a fact. Okay? So I said: if you find explanations, excellent. But I’m saying, even if you do not find explanations, you won’t convince me to accept this. Because I do not accept authority with respect to facts. I said, I do not remain with “Maimonides needs investigation” because maybe there is another answer, not important. But even if Maimonides meant that there is a commandment to accept that fact, I would not accept it. Because it is an oxymoron. You cannot tell me that right is left.

What about emotions like “do not covet” or “do not hate”? That’s something else. Emotions are something else—control your emotions. In that context it should be noted that in the Mishneh Torah, after his introduction with “the foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know…” and so on, in chapter 3 he begins and says: “And the whole house of Israel is commanded concerning this great matter,” regarding all those beliefs I said, in the language of command. Same question, once again the same question. Are they commanded to clarify these beliefs and understand them and internalize them, or are they commanded to accept them? If they are commanded to accept them, then I do not accept that. Not to mention that the first four chapters of the Yad HaChazakah contain things I do not accept whether there is a commandment or not. It’s a collection of Aristotelian statements that have long since passed their sell-by date. And Maimonides proclaimed them as, I don’t know, the foundations of faith. The first four chapters of the laws of the foundations of the Torah. In those four chapters he really does try to justify these things through facts—or what were accepted as facts in his generation. I have no criticism of Maimonides. From my point of view, I do not accept it because in my eyes it is not true. But that fits what you’re saying, because basically he is not expecting you to accept it without at least the scientific proof he brings there. He describes there. Yes, but I mean the description—where does that description come from? From the facts as they were perceived—from Aristotle, yes. From the science of that generation. Yes.

Anyway, I want to claim in practice that there are two kinds of authority: formal authority and substantive authority. With respect to norms there can be formal authority, which commands me to do something even if I don’t… even if he’s not an authoritative factor? So with respect to norms one can define both kinds of authority. With respect to facts, one can only accept substantive authority. Formal authority is not relevant with respect to facts. And if I apply that to the division I made before, it basically means that in the halakhic sphere there are two kinds of authority, because that is with respect to norms. There is formal authority and substantive authority. Substantive authority is that of an expert who knows Jewish law better than I do; if he says something, I accept it because he is probably right, not because he is authorized. He is not authorized; he is not in the Sanhedrin. But if he is a halakhic expert and he said it, then he is probably right, so I’ll accept it. Okay? And there is also formal authority. If the Sanhedrin says it, then even if I think it is mistaken, I am supposed to accept it. Again, there’s the issue of “mistaken in a matter where one is commanded to heed the sages,” at the beginning of tractate Horayot; I’m not getting into that now—not every time does one need to accept what the Sanhedrin says.

With regard to other fields that are not halakha—Jewish thought, Bible, biblical interpretation, and so on—there is no place at all for formal authority. Period. None. All one can do is try to convince me. If you convince me, I will accept it. If you don’t convince me, for all I care, from Moses our teacher to Rabbi Akiva to the Chafetz Chaim can stand here in rows of three and shout at me—I won’t accept it until they convince me. If they convince me, I’ll accept it. The Talmud has an expression in tractate Chullin: “By God, even if Joshua son of Nun had said it, I would not obey him.” Even if Joshua son of Nun stood here and told me this, I wouldn’t accept it from him. Okay? Interesting why they stop with Joshua and don’t go on to Moses our teacher too. But for our purposes I’m saying: because this is a logical matter, it is not a question of whether there is authority or isn’t authority and I have this source and that source and who said they have authority. I am not even asking the question who said they have authority. The concept of authority with respect to facts is self-contradictory. It is not defined. And therefore I claim that with respect to areas like Jewish thought, like biblical interpretation and so forth, formal authority has no meaning. One can accept substantive authority if one is convinced—in the event one is convinced—that someone is really an expert in biblical interpretation; one can accept what he says, that he is probably right. Or, I don’t know, in Jewish thought, if you think there is such a thing as an expert in those fields. But formal authority cannot be there.

Therefore, for example, in a debate over areas, over theological questions, you cannot come to a person and tell him, look, if you don’t say this then you are a heretic. You can of course tell him that, but it won’t be an argument meant to convince him. They’ll tell me I’m a heretic over something I think—so okay, I’m a heretic. What do you want me to do now? That’s what I think. Why can’t one say that a person is commanded to persuade himself, like with his emotions which he brought up earlier? Persuade himself of what? Suppose I think the messiah will not come, okay? Now they tell me: you have a commandment to persuade yourself that the messiah will indeed come. Persuade myself of something I know is not true? If I knew it was true but just hadn’t internalized it, then I could say there’s a commandment on me to internalize it. But if I think it is not true, how can I persuade myself of something that is not true, bring myself to think it is true? That’s nonsense. After all, I the persuader have to be at least convinced that it is true, and then I can take along the one to be persuaded. Or if I myself think it is not true, then what does it mean to persuade myself that it is true? To persuade myself of a falsehood? To hypnotize myself into a falsehood and think of it as truth? You understand—you simply can’t say that. It’s not even a question—as I said, it’s not a question of sources and authority and so on. It is simply not defined, logically not defined.

This means there is a very sharp distinction between the realm of halakha and all the other realms—beyond the matter of importance, which I discussed in the previous section and previous classes, now I’m speaking about a distinction in some sense perhaps more technical. Who are the relevant authorities to deal with the different fields? In halakha there can be both substantive and formal authorities. In thought, at most, if at all, only substantive authority. There is no formal authority. Therefore, if I see that something is written in Maimonides in the field of thought, there is no reason in the world for me to accept it unless I am convinced—or he convinced me—that it is true, or he convinced me that he knows something I do not know and do not understand and therefore he is probably right. But in any event it has to pass through persuasion. He cannot tell me, because I am Maimonides, you are obligated to accept it. Okay? And not only Maimonides—also the Sanhedrin, and Moses our teacher. And also the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, of course I will accept, because certainly He knows—but still I accept it because of His substantive authority, not because of His formal authority. Because if I am not convinced that the Holy One, blessed be He, is telling me the truth here, then I won’t accept it even if He has one hundred thousand authorities. Irrelevant.

We’ll see later implications of this issue. I just want to continue the subject of authority and close one more point here. Where do we get the concepts of authority in halakha in the first place? The basic source for this is the verses of “do not deviate” and “you shall do according to all that they instruct you,” and “do not deviate.” These verses deal with the Sanhedrin. According to all opinions—and that is the plain sense of the verses—“You shall arise and go up…” with the elders sitting at the gate, and so on, and then “do not deviate from all that they instruct you.” Meaning, this applies only to the elders sitting in the Sanhedrin in the Chamber of Hewn Stone. There is “do not deviate” about that. About other factors there is no “do not deviate.”

Now I’m talking already about authority within the halakhic sphere. So within the halakhic sphere, the authority the Torah grants is only to the Sanhedrin. The Chinukh writes that there is a commandment regarding the sages of all generations, not only the Sanhedrin, like the Sanhedrin. But that is a strange lone opinion; it does not stand up to the sources; it is extremely odd. I don’t accept it at all. Although today it is very popular to speak of “and you shall do according to all that they instruct you” or “do not deviate” in relation to every rabbi or rebbe or whoever—there is no such thing. There is no halakhic authority in a factor that is not a Sanhedrin. Authority from above. What does exist is authority from below. What does that mean? There is authority, for example, of the local rabbi. When there is a rabbi of a community, he has authority to determine what will be done in that community. Why? Not because the Torah appointed him and gave him authority, but because we accepted his authority upon ourselves; we appointed him to be our rabbi. Meaning that the rabbi’s authority is actually formal authority, but it comes not from above, like ordination and the Sanhedrin, but from below, from the public. Okay? Any formal authority that is not in the Sanhedrin, or not of ordained sages and in the Sanhedrin, always comes from below; it does not come from above. And that authority exists only if I accepted it upon myself. Without that there is no authority. Therefore, however great a rabbi may be who comes to me today to give me instructions, I have no obligation to listen to him. Unless I accepted his authority upon myself. He has no authority in the sense of “do not deviate,” authority received from above. Of course one may say that since he is a great rabbi, even if I did not accept him upon myself, he probably knows Jewish law better than I do, so he is probably right—that is on the substantive plane. I am speaking now about authority in the formal sense. Because substantive authority is not really authority, you understand? Substantive authority—I accept it not because he is authorized but because he convinced me he is right, that’s all. Authority proper is only formal authority. But because people mix them up, I call this formal authority and that substantive authority.

Where do we see this? For example, in the authority of the Talmud. The authority of the Talmud is accepted by all halakhic decisors. Where does it come from? The sages of the Talmud were not ordained, they were in Babylonia anyway, there was no Sanhedrin, there is no “do not deviate” regarding the Talmud. Therefore the Kesef Mishneh indeed writes at the beginning of chapter 2 of the laws of rebels, where Maimonides says that every generation can disagree with a previous generation—chronological precedence does not give you authority, says Maimonides. Right, chronological precedence does not give you authority. So the Kesef Mishneh asks: then why don’t amoraim dispute tannaim? And why, when they raise a difficulty against one of the amoraim from a Mishnah or a baraita, if he doesn’t answer it then his opinion is rejected? We see that amoraim cannot dispute tannaim. The tannaim have formal authority over the amoraim—or we have over the Talmud. The Kesef Mishneh says that this authority comes from the fact that we accepted it upon ourselves. That’s all. Or in other words, this is authority that comes from below, not from above. The obligation to obey what is written in the Talmud is not because the Holy One, blessed be He, said “do not deviate”—He did not; He said that only regarding the Sanhedrin. The obligation to obey the Talmud is because the Jewish people accepted the Talmud upon themselves as a binding halakhic canon. That’s all.

And in principle, let me give you the antithesis against which I’m saying these things. Usually when people try to explain to us why one must obey the rulings of the Talmud, or why one may not dispute the Talmud, they explain that the sages of the Talmud are fiery supernal beings and had divine inspiration and revived the dead. I don’t buy any of that. It does not seem plausible to me, and I think all those sayings and explanations are intended for those who do not understand the difference between formal authority and substantive authority. They try to show people, to explain to people why you need to accept the Talmud: because it is certainly right. Because the Talmud is certainly right, after all, because they are super-sages, they have divine inspiration. So what are you compared to them? So obviously you need to accept everything they say. That is a misunderstanding. I have to accept what they say because we accepted their authority over us, not because they are always right. That is formal authority, not substantive authority. Even if the Talmud is mistaken in what it says, it is still binding. But of course in the normative sphere, not in the factual sphere. Because in the factual sphere there is no formal authority. If there is a factual error in the Talmud, it is not binding at all. Obviously. Obvious to me. It is not binding at all, because there is no formal authority with respect to facts.

By the way, anyone who grounds this in the divine inspiration of the Talmudic sages very quickly arrives at the conclusion that, of course, all the things that seem to us like factual or scientific errors in the Talmud are really our mistake. Because after all, with divine inspiration they knew everything. So what difference does it make whether we are dealing with facts or norms? They cannot err. That is a direct result of the same distorted conception that thinks the Talmud has substantive authority. But that is not correct; it has formal authority. The sages of the Talmud were human beings like me and you, in my humble opinion. They could make mistakes like me and you. And their authority does not stem from their never erring or being unable to err. Their authority stems from our having accepted it upon ourselves. They have formal authority. That’s all. Consequently, I do not need to explain that they have divine inspiration in order to obey them, because I do not need them to be incapable of error in order to obey them. The authority is not substantive; it is formal. I obey them because they said so, like Knesset laws. It’s the law, that’s it. Therefore I accept it. Exactly as I accept Knesset laws. The Knesset also did not receive its power from the Holy One, blessed be He; it received its power from the public. Once the public accepted its authority upon itself, now it has formal authority. The same with the Talmud—it is our Knesset.

Wait, sorry, I have a question. Formal authority from below, I mean—how does that continue to be accepted by future generations? For the generation that accepted it on itself, fine. I’m talking about formal authority from below; from above is clear to me. So look, for example, at a Knesset law. The Knesset legislated a law, fine? Say in 1950. Now we are in the year 2100. Does that law bind us? Yes. As long as it has not been changed, it binds, right? Why? After all, the whole generation that elected that Knesset is dead. Because I accept the Knesset upon myself to this day. What? You didn’t accept anything—you weren’t alive there when it determined that law, maybe 150 years ago. Exactly. You agree to the rules of the game now when you continue the system. Exactly. You can’t reinvent the wheel from scratch every single time. The one who accepted the Knesset’s authority upon itself was the public, not the collection of individuals who were there. And the public is the same public that exists today. So what if the people changed? As Tosafot says in tractate Me’ilah on page 9: “A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever.” What does Tosafot mean there? A communal offering whose owners died is not considered an offering whose owners died. With a private offering whose owners died there are laws—that it grazes until blemished, and all sorts of things with sin-offerings and guilt-offerings and burnt offerings. A communal offering does not have the laws of an offering whose owners died. Why? Because its owners never die. Why? If all the people who offered it died, and now we are their descendants, no matter—a generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever. That’s what Tosafot says. What does he mean? The offering belongs to the community. The community always exists; a community does not die. The individuals populating the community change. That is the reason why, just as a Knesset law binds us even after everyone died—and there everyone says amen and nobody asks questions—suddenly with the Talmud people do ask questions. Wait, why do I need to obey something from two thousand years ago? I didn’t accept it upon myself. Or 1,500 years ago. By exactly the same mechanism. The public accepted it upon itself, that’s all.

In the Knesset the public has the power to change the Knesset. That’s something else—that’s a different story, right. That is indeed a real difference. In the Knesset, our current Knesset can change the law of that Knesset. By the way, in halakha too it’s like that. If there were a Sanhedrin today, it could change whatever it wants from previous generations. Why? Why does it have to be a Sanhedrin? Why does it have to be a Sanhedrin? That’s what I’m not… Only the Sanhedrin has authority. No, that’s the formal authority of “do not deviate,” but not the authority from below. No—if there were authority from below today that established an authorized institution and it changed the Talmud, there would be no problem. It could be done.

But I have a question. Statistically we see that most of the Jewish people today do not observe halakha. Why doesn’t that… Most of the Jewish people are not… It changes nothing; they are not playing the game at all. I’m talking about those who are loyal to halakha. Why not count those who don’t… Why should we? They are not in the game. If they were playing the game, they would say: I do not accept this interpretation because in my opinion the correct interpretation is such-and-such. Fine. They do not accept any interpretation; they do not accept it at all. So they are not in the game—that seems very simple reasoning to me. So in that context, really, just as the public accepted authority upon itself, how can it cancel it? If at all. What’s the difference? Why not? Because we said the individuals change; because we said the individuals themselves can object, but that still doesn’t mean the collective, the public… Why are they better than I am? They changed too, and I change too—why are they better than I am? The public that accepted it, the public can also come and dismantle it. The same mouth that prohibited is the mouth that permitted. Meaning, if in two generations a generation arises and says we do not accept the authority of the Knesset, then the Knesset’s force is nullified? Do you have any doubt about that? Obviously. No, but the question is—I’m trying to understand the difference between individuals who belong and the public. That’s what confuses me. I didn’t understand the question. After all, what does public mean when we talk about it—like a majority of individuals? All the individuals? As a public decision—how is a public decision made? Here, I’ll give one example. You want the halakhic criterion? The halakhic criterion is the majority. Fifty percent plus epsilon. No, because that’s exactly the point that has practical significance: there are situations in which the public accepted it as a public, and situations where there is a majority but that is not a decision of the public. The line is not sharp here. Right, because for this purpose in the halakhic example we said that most of the Jewish people do not accept the authority upon themselves. But that doesn’t interest us—that’s exactly the point. No, because they are not in the game. You do not need to apply the rules of the game to a public that is not in the game. We are talking about how the rules of the game themselves are conducted. The rules of the game are conducted by those who are playing. Do you want to dismantle the game? Dismantle it. But that is not part of the description of how the game is conducted. Okay, I think I understood.

But from the point of view of halakha they are in the game, no? No, they are not in the game. You may marry them, it’s permitted… from the point of view of halakha you are in the same public. From the point of view of halakha, are they playing the game? They are not playing the game. From the point of view of halakha they are supposed to play the game. Right. So they aren’t playing—what can I do? But even if they return to repentance they don’t undergo some halakhic process to return to the game. Right, so what? So I’m saying that from the point of view of halakha they are part of the public that is supposed to accept it. They are not part of the game—what does “part of the public” mean? Regarding the part of the public that is playing the game, one can discuss this issue. Whoever is not playing this game cannot determine here. It is irrelevant, not because he is not Jewish. So what does this mean regarding different movements within Judaism that do accept it but… There, certainly there is room to discuss. Reform Jews are not in the game. And the Conservatives? What about them? Right. Sadducees, Boethusians, people… In the game? Not in the game? That’s history. But today’s Conservatives? True, all of it, yes. Whoever is in the game is in the game. Reform Jews are not playing the halakhic game. Conservatives definitely are. If they convince the public and some decision is accepted here by consensus, the matter will change. Obviously.

Okay. Rabbi, may I ask a question? What, yes. Last question. Where is the balance here between what we said today, that even the tiniest dispute or question a student asks his teacher was said to Moses at Sinai, and the statement that they were people like us? Because many times there’s this dissonance between those two things. Ah, that’s not a contradiction. An advanced student is also you. So that too was said at Sinai. “What an advanced student will someday innovate” is also said at Sinai. Well then, no one can disagree with you either? It doesn’t work like that. In general this statement that everything was said to Moses at Sinai—and there are several parallel midrashim, phrased somewhat differently—is not a historical description. It isn’t that the Holy One, blessed be He, really told Moses all the questions that would arise today in the study hall. The meaning is that this is a normative statement, not a historical one. You need to relate to all the things renewed throughout the generations as though they were given at Sinai. Good, so the force of their words does not come from some higher quality of theirs, but from the fact that they were the first ones to establish it? Yes, but that’s still not the point; in principle one can disagree with it. We’ll still talk about authority after the Talmud and so on, we’ll still discuss it—what about medieval authorities, later authorities, and so on. That’s the continuation. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much, Rabbi. Okay. See you in the meantime. Thank you very much. Thank you.