Topics in Halakhic Thought – Lecture 14

Table of Contents

• Ran’s homilies and the two legal systems
• The possible moral superiority of other legal systems and the explanation of “multiple purposes”
• The model separating Jewish law and morality, and the role of the king
• Conflict, not contradiction, and double commitment
• Jewish law and democracy: civil marriage, coercion, and public policy
• Mikvaot for single women, homosexual relationships, adoption, and religious-social taboo
• The Eyal Karim affair and the beautiful captive woman: Jewish law versus moral condemnation
• Three halakhic categories, and “You shall not murder” as a religious command
• Resolving dilemmas: two divine “expectations” and the need for a deciding system
• Moral dilemmas and halakhic dilemmas as examples of internal conflict
• Yeshayahu Leibowitz and the definition of a “value” as something that cannot be rationalized
• Two kinds of “that’s just how it is,” axioms, intuition, and skepticism
• Disagreement between intuitions, truth versus certainty, and being right or wrong about values
• Incommensurability of values and the difficulty of building a hierarchy of values
• An argument against solving things by means of a verse, and the claim that the question itself may be nonsense
• Saving life on the Sabbath in Yoma: two reasons and a decision without a hierarchy of values
• Desecrating the Sabbath to save a secular Jew or a gentile, and the limitation of the quantitative argument
• Intuition as a meta-standard, verses as a means of decision, and the distinction between what is morally “proper” and what is religiously “proper”
• Essential conflict versus accidental conflict, and the institutionalization of prostitution as an example
• A transgression for its own sake and Lot’s daughters as a decision in the direction of morality

Summary

General overview

The text presents an approach according to which Jewish law and morality are two separate normative systems, and combining them sometimes creates practical conflicts that are not logical contradictions. According to Ran’s homilies, there are two governmental-legal systems: the king’s law, which is responsible for justice, morality, and running society, and the law of Jewish law, which is responsible for implementing the Torah. Therefore, it is possible that other legal systems “hit the mark” of justice better than Jewish law, because Jewish law is also directed toward “bringing down the divine matter.” The text develops a model according to which there is no need to apologize for moral-halakhic gaps, proposes a way to live with double commitment even when the two clash, and analyzes how conflicts in general are decided through values, intuition, and at times by bypassing the problem that there is no “common measure” between values.

Ran’s homilies and the two legal systems

The text states, following the author of Ran’s homilies, that there must be a “double set of systems” in the Jewish governmental structure. The text presents one system headed by the king, who is responsible for the king’s law, described as a universal law that also exists among other nations and is charged with justice, morality, and the proper management of society. The text presents a second system of halakhic law, headed by the Sanhedrin or the president of the Sanhedrin, who is responsible for implementing Jewish law.

The possible moral superiority of other legal systems and the explanation of “multiple purposes”

The text cites a statement from Ran according to which other legal systems will sometimes involve less harm to morality and will hit justice better than the halakhic legal system. The text explains that this follows from the fact that Jewish law aims not only at moral values but also at religious values of “bringing down the divine matter,” and the more goals and constraints there are, the less likely it is that any one goal will be fully achieved. The text illustrates this with analogies such as kosher food versus tasty food, and a washing machine versus a dryer.

The model separating Jewish law and morality, and the role of the king

The text argues that Jewish law “is not at all supposed to fit moral principles,” because its purpose is not to create a more moral world but a world repaired in the religious sense. The text attributes to Ran the claim that the aspiration for a morally repaired world is entrusted to the king, and therefore the king sometimes has to intervene and depart from Jewish law where Jewish law causes too severe a blow to moral aims. The text adds that there is no room for feelings of inferiority toward other systems, because morality exists alongside Jewish law and it is “the same morality,” and in addition there is a governing authority that corrects problematic outcomes of “purely religious conduct.”

Conflict, not contradiction, and double commitment

The text distinguishes between “contradictions” and “conflicts,” illustrating this by chocolate that is both tasty and fattening. The text states that the reasoning on the side not chosen does not become false just because in practice one chooses the other side. The text formulates an innovation: the ability to live under two parallel normative systems that sometimes generate practical conflicts, without seeing this as a contradiction that cancels one’s commitment to either system.

Jewish law and democracy: civil marriage, coercion, and public policy

The text argues that one can be committed both to Jewish law and to democratic values, or to the laws of the state, even when they clash head-on. The text declares support, and even activism, for civil marriage, including a kohen marrying a divorcee and a Jew marrying a gentile woman, despite recognizing the halakhic prohibition and its severity. The text rejects a merely pragmatic argument and presents this struggle as part of a moral-democratic commitment that a proper state must allow.

The text proposes a distinction between someone who accepts the halakhic system and someone who does not believe in it, and argues that religious coercion toward someone who does not believe is meaningless because commandments done under coercion “have no value at all.” The text states that in the case of an atheist kohen who wants to marry a divorcee, there is no justification for preventing it through the state, whereas in the case of a person who accepts Jewish law but is acting out of impulse, coercion may be justified, similar to the general coercion of law in a state.

Mikvaot for single women, homosexual relationships, adoption, and religious-social taboo

The text declares support for opening mikvaot to unmarried women despite the prohibition on immersion by single women, and adds that on the halakhic level “it is worthwhile,” because one avoids a Torah-level prohibition of menstruation impurity at the cost of a rabbinic prohibition. The text presents a similar pattern with respect to same-sex marriage and adoption by homosexuals: on the democratic plane there is activism in favor of rights, while on the halakhic plane homosexual relations are prohibited, whereas adoption is not prohibited.

The text argues that the religious focus specifically on homosexuality shows that the motivations are not religious but stem from taboos and from labeling a homosexual relationship as moral depravity. The text states that there is no moral problem here because there is no harm to others, and presents the identification of Jewish law with morality as something that leads people to infer that every halakhic prohibition is also a moral defect.

The Eyal Karim affair and the beautiful captive woman: Jewish law versus moral condemnation

The text describes public criticism directed at Chief Military Rabbi Eyal Karim over statements about the beautiful captive woman and the possibility that Jewish law permits the rape of gentile female captives. The text states that his words “were not taken out of context” and that the Torah “definitely permits this according to most opinions,” and presents the uproar as the product of a failure to distinguish between the halakhic and the moral. The text argues that the act is clearly morally reprehensible, but Jewish law deals with the question of halakhic prohibition, not with the question of moral condemnation, and adds that in the commentators the problem presented is relations with a gentile woman, not the rape.

The text says that both the criticism and the apologetic responses are “a complete misunderstanding” on both sides, and emphasizes that there is no separate “Torah morality,” but one morality that binds Jews and gentiles equally. The text argues that one can say simultaneously, “there is no halakhic prohibition,” and at the same time morally forbid the act.

Three halakhic categories, and “You shall not murder” as a religious command

The text divides the laws into three categories: moral laws, anti-moral laws, and non-moral laws. The text argues that even in laws that appear moral, such as “You shall not murder,” the command is not a moral command but a statement that there is also “a religious problem” here in addition to the moral problem. The text presents “And you shall do what is right and good” as a verse dealing with morality rather than Jewish law, and notes that it is not counted among the commandments by the central enumerators of the commandments because it belongs to moral expectation rather than halakhic command.

Resolving dilemmas: two divine “expectations” and the need for a deciding system

The text states that when there is a conflict between Jewish law and morality, this is a conflict between two desires of the Holy One, blessed be He, and that “the hand of Jewish law will not always prevail.” The text argues that the decision between Jewish law and morality cannot be made from within Jewish law or from within morality, because one of the litigants cannot serve as the judge. The text asks first to examine conflicts within a single system in order to understand how such things are decided.

Moral dilemmas and halakhic dilemmas as examples of internal conflict

The text brings Sartre’s example of the student torn between joining the Free French army against the Nazis and staying to help his sick mother, and defines this as a conflict between two moral values rather than a contradiction. The text brings a parallel halakhic example of saving life on the Sabbath as a conflict between halakhic values. The text concludes that conflicts exist even for someone who holds only one system, and therefore there is no principled problem in holding two systems even if there are conflicts between them.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz and the definition of a “value” as something that cannot be rationalized

The text cites Yeshayahu Leibowitz from an article at the end of the book Faith, History, and Values about a public discussion in the United States regarding Karen and the dilemma of disconnecting life-support machines. The text attributes to Leibowitz opposition to disconnecting, on the grounds that the value of life cannot be rationalized, and that trying to justify life through convenience turns life into a means rather than a value. The text defines a value as the justification for a practical directive and asks what justifies the value itself, presenting the answer “that’s just how it is” as the basis for stopping the chain of justifications.

Two kinds of “that’s just how it is,” axioms, intuition, and skepticism

The text distinguishes between an arbitrary “that’s just how it is” and a self-evident “that’s just how it is,” illustrating this with axioms in Euclidean geometry such as a straight line between two points and parallel lines that do not meet. The text argues that an axiom is not an arbitrary adoption but something grasped as true in an immediate way, and calls this capacity “intuition.” The text argues that anyone who does not assume the existence of immediate apprehension is condemned to skepticism, in which questions receive no answers.

Disagreement between intuitions, truth versus certainty, and being right or wrong about values

The text states that different people hold different intuitions about values, and that the existence of disagreements does not prove that there is no single truth. The text argues that even in the realm of values there is such a thing as being “right or wrong,” but there is no absolute certainty about who is right, just as there is no absolute certainty in science. The text distinguishes between truth as a claim about the world and certainty as a question about a person’s degree of confidence.

Incommensurability of values and the difficulty of building a hierarchy of values

The text argues that values are the “axioms” of the moral world and therefore cannot be measured or compared by means of a common purpose, and presents the problem of the incommensurability of values as the absence of a “common measure.” The text illustrates this with questions such as, “Which is greater, the water in the ocean or the good-heartedness among human beings?” and with the example of an actor who gets a million dollars for a cigarette advertisement versus the health damage of ten cigarettes. The text argues that the conflict is not merely hard to decide, but may be impossible to resolve in the sense that the question itself is meaningless when there is no shared unit of measurement.

An argument against solving things by means of a verse, and the claim that the question itself may be nonsense

The text argues that if a question is meaningless, it has no answer even by means of a verse, because the issue is not lack of knowledge but the absence of an answer. The text states that if there were a verse establishing a quantitative ratio between water and good-heartedness, then if its meaning were clear it would be nonsense, and in practice it would be better to interpret it differently. The text mentions the statement, “Even if God had said it, had Joshua son of Nun said it, I would not obey him,” as an expression of refusing to accept something that cannot be understood coherently.

Saving life on the Sabbath in Yoma: two reasons and a decision without a hierarchy of values

The text analyzes the topic in Yoma 85a, where the Sages bring sources showing that saving life overrides the Sabbath, and argues that the Jewish law was already known in advance and the discussion is just a search for a source. The text presents the two reasons that remain at the end: “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths,” and “and live by them, and not die by them.” The text points out that these reasons seem opposite in their underlying value-structure, yet they are brought together by halakhic decisors, and interprets the reason of “desecrate one Sabbath for him” not as saying that life is merely a means, but as enabling a decision by translating the conflict into terms of Sabbath observance alone, thereby avoiding the need to determine a direct ratio between the value of life and the value of the Sabbath.

Desecrating the Sabbath to save a secular Jew or a gentile, and the limitation of the quantitative argument

The text mentions the discussion of desecrating the Sabbath to save a secular Jew who does not observe Sabbaths, citing Or HaChaim as tending to say no, while most halakhic decisors say yes. The text uses this to clarify that the decision does not depend on whether the rescued person will actually observe Sabbaths in practice, but on the fact that the system can bypass a direct ranking of values. The text raises an implication for the discussion of desecrating the Sabbath to save a gentile, and explains that this is not a claim that a gentile’s life is worth less, but that in the case of a gentile there is no additional component of Sabbath observance that allows one to bypass the direct comparison between life and the Sabbath.

Intuition as a meta-standard, verses as a means of decision, and the distinction between what is morally “proper” and what is religiously “proper”

The text accepts the comment that in practice there are intuitive decisions that place different values on a shared scale of “how much good there is in this.” The text argues that something similar exists in halakhic dilemmas in terms of “how much this is worth on the religious level” and “bringing down the divine matter.” The text points to a special difficulty in a conflict between morality and Jewish law, and proposes that there is a higher concept of what is “proper, full stop,” which measures both moral values and halakhic values, and that sometimes the Torah provides decisions through verses when the conflict does have an answer but the person cannot manage to reach it.

Essential conflict versus accidental conflict, and the institutionalization of prostitution as an example

The text distinguishes between an essential conflict, in which fulfilling the commandment always involves a moral price, and an accidental conflict, in which the clash is not inherent. The text illustrates essential conflict with the command to wipe out Amalek versus the moral prohibition on murder, and argues that in such a case the very existence of the command teaches that the religious value prevails. The text gives the institutionalization of prostitution as an example in which there are halakhic advantages to regulation that reduces prohibitions involving menstruation impurity and a married woman, but halakhic decisors oppose it because morally “it is unthinkable” to legitimize prostitution, and presents this as a case in which the moral consideration prevails when the conflict is not essential.

A transgression for its own sake and Lot’s daughters as a decision in the direction of morality

The text brings the Talmudic topic of a transgression for its own sake and presents Lot’s daughters as an example in which the Sages praise their decision despite the prohibition of forbidden sexual relations. The text argues that this does not amount to halakhic permission in the sense of a ruling in Maimonides or the Shulchan Arukh, and defines it as a meta-halakhic principle according to which saving humanity overrides a prohibition of sexual immorality out of a moral consideration in the situation as they perceived it. The text ends with this as an example of a conflict decided in the direction of morality.

Okay, last time we dealt with Jewish law and morality. Basically, the point of departure was the words of the author of the Derashot HaRan, who said that there has to be a doubling of systems, even legal systems, within the Jewish governmental structure, or the halakhic-Torah structure, I’m not sure what to call it—Torah-based, maybe. At the head of one system stands the king, who is responsible for the king’s law, and the king’s law is basically a universal law that exists among other nations too. It’s responsible for justice, morality, proper social order, and so on. And the halakhic legal system, headed by the Sanhedrin or the Nasi of the Sanhedrin, is responsible for implementing Jewish law. We talked about the historical claim in the background, and about exactly how it came to be that those powers were united and all essentially handed over to the Torah authorities. But from that I took one sentence that the Ran uses in the middle of the homily, where he says that in other legal systems you’ll often find that they are better aimed at justice and morality than the halakhic legal system. And the reason is that we aspire not only to moral values but also to religious values—“the divine element,” in his language—and therefore our ability to achieve those goals goes down, because the more goals you aim at, the less likely you are to achieve each one. You have more constraints. I talked about the mathematics of kosher food and tasty food and so on, washing machines and dryers and all the other examples—there are plenty of them.

In any case, after that I moved on to Torah / Jewish law and morality, or Jewish law and morality, and I said there are several ways to solve—or not solve, but look at—the tension that exists between some halakhot and moral principles. And in the end I proposed a different model of my own that, in my opinion, solves the problem perfectly. Meaning, there’s no need to squeeze or force anything, simply because there is no problem. Jewish law isn’t supposed to fit moral principles at all, because its goal is not to strive for a more moral world but for a world that is more religiously corrected. The aspiration to a morally improved world is entrusted to the king, as the Ran writes, and therefore sometimes the king really will have to intervene and deviate from Jewish law in a place where Jewish law harms the moral goals too severely. And that’s also why the Ran writes that we shouldn’t be alarmed by this, and we shouldn’t develop an inferiority complex from the fact that our system is less moral than other systems. First, because it isn’t supposed to be, since we have morality alongside Jewish law, and of course it is moral just like the morality of any other nation—it’s the same morality. And second, because there is someone responsible for fixing the problems that arise because of this distinction. Meaning, a purely religious or purely halakhic mode of conduct really will create a society that, to a large extent, does problematic things morally. And that is why there is a king who can provide corrections, who every so often can intervene and make sure the whole thing still preserves some human image, some proper social image.

The essence of the novelty in this picture is basically the ability to live under two parallel normative systems that can sometimes even conflict with one another, okay? Conflict—what I called conflicts rather than contradictions, because it isn’t a contradiction. There is no problem with two such systems conflicting with one another, like I said about chocolate being tasty and fattening. There’s no contradiction between someone who says it’s tasty and someone who says it’s fattening. That’s true. There is a conflict in the sense that you have to decide what to do—eat it or not eat it. And here you have to choose one of the two options. But even if we chose one option, that doesn’t mean the reasoning behind the other option is wrong. Say I chose to eat the chocolate—does that mean that, from my perspective, the person who says chocolate is fattening is mistaken? No, he’s not mistaken. I just think the pleasure is worth the risk of getting fat, okay? And vice versa. So what we have here is a conflict, not a contradiction.

In the end we got to several examples in which you can see the significance of the fact that we treat—the significance of the conception according to which we see Jewish law and morality as two independent categories to which we are obligated in parallel. I said, for example, the issues usually referred to as problems of Jewish law and democracy, Torah and democracy, or Jewish law and state, or something like that. Let’s say there is a certain halakhic principle that says X, but the state determined not-X. So now I’m in a conflict—what should I do? Obey Jewish law or obey the state? Usually religious people argue that it can’t be that you are in a conflict. If you’re religious, then obviously you have to obey Jewish law. And the state says no; that’s how we have to work with it. Okay, maybe I’ll even have permission to obey them so they don’t throw me in jail, but I’m not in a real conflict. Because they treat it as a contradiction, and you can’t live inside a contradiction. But I claim that this isn’t a contradiction; it’s a conflict. And therefore I really can be in such a conflict, and I can be obligated both to Jewish law and to democratic principles, or the laws of the state, or whatever it may be, even where they directly conflict with Jewish law. Head-on, not indirectly, and not through tricks and solutions and not “I’ll do it with my left hand” or things like that, but rather: it directly conflicts, and I’m still obligated to it. And that has no contradiction whatsoever with my commitment to Jewish law. I can be committed to two parallel systems even though they conflict with one another.

Then, for example, I think I brought an example on this issue—I don’t know, say I want to talk about civil marriage. I brought all those examples, but I want to talk about civil marriage, for instance. I claim, and I’m also willing to fight for it, that the state must allow civil marriage. Including a marriage between a kohen and a divorcée, including a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jewish woman, and all kinds of things like that. And I’ll fight for it. Even though I think that halakhically it is forbidden. Civil marriage itself is maybe a very weak prohibition, if any, but certainly a Jew and a non-Jewish woman is a significant prohibition, and a kohen and a divorcée is a clear prohibition. And still I’m committed to Jewish law, and at the same time I will fight for this because I’m also committed to democratic values. And on the democratic level, a proper state cannot allow itself not to enable couples who want it to marry. At the next stage someone else will come to power, pass by majority vote a law that religious marriage is forbidden because they think religious marriage is something dark, that gives the husband ownership over his wife, and therefore they’ll ban religious marriage by law, just like in Europe they ban ritual slaughter and things like that.

And again, even this itself can be interpreted as a pragmatic argument. If you do what you really think, it’ll come back and hit you. But what do you really think? If it were truly up to you, is that what you would really do? It’s just that from pragmatic considerations I say: our hands are not strong enough, and peaceful ways, and all the usual apologetics. So basically you say, fine, I can’t implement what I would really like to do. That’s the standard approach to these things. But those who don’t oppose civil marriage within the framework of the state generally justify it or ground it in a pragmatic consideration. I want to argue that it’s much more than that. I will fight for it—not just refrain from opposing it, I’ll fight for it. Because I think a democratic state must allow it. It must allow it, and I believe in democratic values and am committed to them. As far as I’m concerned, that is part of the moral system to which I’m committed. And that doesn’t contradict the fact that I’m committed to Jewish law, because the purpose of Jewish law is not to achieve moral goals. So I’ll fight for Jewish law in the religious context, and I’ll fight for morality in the moral context, democracy in the moral context.

A practical implication, for instance: if there’s a person—say the Sanhedrin returns and Torah rule is restored to its place; now we have full authority. What people are terrified of, deathly afraid of—my impression is that if you offered people a million dollars to agree to halakhic rule, the religious people would be the last ones to agree. And rightly so, because they don’t know what to do with such a situation. Because it’s obvious to everyone that you really have to allow people freedom of belief and opinion. On the other hand, you don’t know how that’s supposed to fit with your religious worldview. So here I’m proposing a solution. I claim that it’s possible to be committed both to this and to that. I’ll say even more than that: even in places where we would compel people to observe commandments—“we compel regarding commandments”—a person who wants not to perform a commandment or to commit a transgression, we will compel him. Okay? But a kohen who wants to marry a divorcée—I will fight for his right to marry her. How does that work? Well, it depends. If this is a kohen who doesn’t believe in the whole system, I think coercion is irrelevant in his case. Coercion is meaningless; the man is completely coerced already, and even if you force him it won’t help at all. Commandments performed under coercion have no value whatsoever. Therefore that person should be left alone to do what he thinks, and at most we can try to persuade him, bring him to repentance, convince him that he is acting wrongly. But as long as that is what he thinks, there’s nothing to do about it, and certainly there is neither a possibility nor, all the more so, an obligation to coerce him in that matter. And with respect to such a person, I will fight for the state to allow him to marry the divorcée. Such a kohen—I will fight for the state to let him marry the divorcée.

A person who does accept the halakhic system and is doing it out of impulse—there it could be that we would have to coerce him not to do it, just as we enforce laws in general; even a democratic state coerces people not to break the law. And therefore one has to distinguish here between two kinds of offenders, or two kinds of people who want to take this step. Are we talking about people regarding whom Jewish law tells me that I have to coerce them not to take this step? In that case I will probably have to swallow hard—I don’t like the idea—but I will probably have to coerce, as long as the matter is in my hands. But if there’s a person who doesn’t believe in the whole system—Jewish, a kohen to the highest standard, a full genealogy scroll all the way back to Aaron the Priest—but he doesn’t believe. Fine, just a complete atheist, believes in nothing. Someone like that, in my view, there is certainly no obligation, and not even justification, to coerce him to do anything. And since that is so, there is no reason in the world for the state to prevent him from doing what he wants to do. This is a democratic state. And therefore I don’t see any contradiction at all in such a double commitment.

I will fight to open the mikvaot to unmarried women, yes, to single women, even though there is a prohibition on immersion by unmarried women. More than that, here I think even in the halakhic sense it is worthwhile, because all in all you save a Torah-level prohibition of a menstruant and only violate some rabbinic prohibition or other that people are violating anyway. And so on—that’s the way. Yes, with homosexual marriage, certainly the possibility for homosexuals to adopt children, or things of that sort, where in the democratic context I’ll fight for them, and in the halakhic context I think it’s forbidden. Adoption isn’t forbidden, but homosexual relations are forbidden. Okay? In this whole area, by the way, there are a lot of—let’s call them—taboos in the attitude of religious people to these things. No one imagines preventing a couple that doesn’t observe the Sabbath from adopting a child. Now not observing the Sabbath is no less severe than homosexuality. Someone who denies Sabbath observance is denying the entire Torah, considered an apostate regarding the entire Torah. More than that, someone who doesn’t keep the Sabbath is just an ordinary offender. So let him keep it—what does he care, why is the price so high, why is it so painful for him? But if you demand of a homosexual person that he observe Jewish law, this is a demand that requires insane self-sacrifice. It means that a person must deny himself sexual relations his entire life against his natural inclination. It’s a crazy demand.

Now, I don’t currently have a solution. I don’t know. I don’t think I can permit it halakhically. But to say that he is such a criminal that one must fight against him? What criminal? If there is someone who is not a criminal, it is someone who commits this transgression. All the other transgressions are committed by much bigger offenders than this. But this is a person—what exactly do you want him to do? So the fact that it is specifically against this that people fight indicates that the motivations are not religious motivations. It doesn’t come from a religious place. It comes from all kinds of taboos; people got used to seeing this as something horrific, some terrible and awful depravity. And by the way, people often treat a homosexual relationship as moral depravity. I don’t see what moral depravity there is here; I don’t see any moral problem in it. There is a halakhic prohibition here. But again, those same people who identify Jewish law with morality find themselves forced to see everything that is halakhically forbidden as moral depravity too. I personally don’t see any connection between Jewish law and morality. I have no problem saying that there’s no moral problem here whatsoever; it hurts no one. On the contrary, the prohibition hurts people, not the permission. And on the other hand, it is halakhically forbidden—what can I do? On the halakhic level it is forbidden. I’m not obligated to connect Jewish law with morality.

Another example that I wrote about in a column on my website, where I explained this separation that I make between Jewish law and morality, concerned rape. The criticisms that were raised regarding the military rabbi Eyal Karim—I don’t know if he’s still the military rabbi or he was, I don’t know—Rabbi Eyal Karim, the Chief Military Rabbi, who had various remarks about the beautiful captive woman, yes, essentially that it is permitted to rape non-Jewish female captives. So someone asked him—and this was even before he became chief rabbi—someone had asked him in the past whether Jewish law really allows this, and he said absolutely yes, there is the beautiful captive woman and this is permitted according to Jewish law, and so on and so forth. So before they appointed him Chief Military Rabbi there was insane criticism over this, and demands to cancel the appointment and so on—what kind of thing is that, how can you appoint someone like that? And then of course he apologized and said his words had been taken out of context and all kinds of things of that sort.

But his words were not taken out of context, and what he said was exactly that, and what he said is also completely legitimate. The Torah definitely permits it according to most opinions. What does that have to do with anything? But what it permits, it permits halakhically. The question whether this thing is morally reprehensible—obviously it is morally reprehensible. The Torah doesn’t deal with that. The Torah addresses the question whether there is a halakhic prohibition here, not whether it is morally reprehensible. And more than that, all the problems that the commentators see in the beautiful captive woman, if you pay attention, are problems of relations with a non-Jewish woman, not rape. The whole issue is only: how can they permit him to have relations with a non-Jewish woman or marry a non-Jewish woman—a convert or not, doesn’t matter, to have relations with a non-Jewish woman, okay? That is the question everyone deals with—“the Torah spoke against the evil inclination” and all kinds of things of that sort—that is the question. Nobody is troubled one bit by the fact that this is rape of a woman who does not want it. Why not? Now, one can say: fine, that’s moral indifference. By the way, in some cases I think that’s really true, that it stems from moral indifference. And some of that moral indifference, by the way, stems from that same fusion of Jewish law and morality, because people think that if Jewish law permits it then there also cannot be a moral problem here. So that too is connected to the issue. But another part says it’s not moral indifference; it is a halakhic determination. If you ask that same person for his moral opinion about it, he could very well tell you that he strongly opposes it. The fact that we permit it halakhically says nothing at all about the moral attitude called for toward such an act. Two completely different things.

And therefore it is entirely possible that I would say to such a soldier: morally, under no circumstances may you do this. There is no halakhic prohibition. Now in that sense, am I worse than my non-Jewish or secular colleague? Why? Does he think it’s also a halakhic prohibition? No, he’s talking about the moral prohibition, not the halakhic prohibition. Jewish law doesn’t interest him in the slightest. So on the moral level, I also agree that it is forbidden. All I am claiming is that beyond the moral prohibition there is no halakhic prohibition here—at least when there is overwhelming desire—because there too the Sages say “the Torah spoke against the evil inclination,” and it’s not exactly glatt even halakhically, but halakhically they permitted it. But the whole discussion of whether they permitted it or didn’t permit it and what the problem is—that is a halakhic discussion about relations with a non-Jewish woman; it has nothing to do with rape. Rape is not a halakhic problem; it is a moral problem. And the moral problem isn’t touched in that passage. It is morally forbidden, and I prohibit it morally exactly like my secular or non-Jewish colleague. There is no difference between us on the moral plane. Therefore all this criticism is criticism born of complete misunderstanding. By the way, on the part of both the critics and the criticized, because Rabbi Karim, when he answered, showed exactly the same misunderstanding. He also understood that there was some criticism here and he had to somehow get out of it alive. And he didn’t tell them: friends, I made a halakhic statement; in the moral sense I’m entirely with you, that’s all. Instead he said: that was once, and today it’s different, and his words were taken out of context, and there were all sorts of piles upon piles of apologetics there—not only on his part but on the part of all the usual religious explainers. The standard religious apologetics are always like that.

And I say there’s no need for apologetics. On the moral level there is no Torah morality and some other morality. There is morality, period, and that morality obligates everyone. And if it is immoral to rape a woman, then it is immoral to rape a woman whether you are Jewish or non-Jewish; it makes no difference at all. There is no difference between you on the moral plane. The halakhic discussion concerns only Jews and only the halakhic aspect, “the divine element” according to the Ran. It has nothing to do with morality. So here, for example, is an entire discussion in which both sides—the critics and the criticized, both the religious and the secular—fall into the same failure, because both identify Jewish law with morality. But that identification is mistaken. It simply isn’t true. And all these problems of Jewish law and morality are the proof. So what are you telling me—that from the Torah’s perspective it is ultra-moral to rape a woman? What kind of nonsense is that? Obviously it’s immoral. The question is whether there is a halakhic prohibition here; that’s a different discussion.

I said that the Torah, also in the laws—I divided the laws into three categories, after all: moral laws, anti-moral laws, and non-moral laws. And I said that even in the moral laws—“do not murder,” “honor your father and your mother,” “love your neighbor as yourself,” and so on, all the moral, rational laws—even there, in my view, the command is not a moral command. The prohibition on murder is not the moral prohibition on murder; the moral prohibition on murder belongs to morality. The verse “do not murder” establishes that there is also a religious problem here, beyond the moral problem. So no—Jewish law does not deal with morality. “And you shall do what is upright and good” is a verse that deals with morality, and not for nothing it is not counted among the commandments by any enumerator of the commandments—at least none that I remember right now, certainly not the major ones. Okay? There you go—it isn’t included, because it is not part of Jewish law. Why? But the Torah expects us to do what is upright and good, to be moral. Right, it expects us to; it doesn’t command us. It expects it of us morally. Command belongs to Jewish law. Two different things.

Now in the end we got to deciding dilemmas. When we are under two—I now return to my own line of thought—when we are subject to two normative systems, and sometimes there are conflicts between the norms of the two systems, then we have to ask ourselves: okay, right, there is no contradiction here, it’s only a conflict—but what do I do with the conflict? How do I decide which one overrides? What do I do in practice? And as I said at the end last time, when there is a conflict between morality and Jewish law, from my point of view this is a conflict between two desires of the Holy One, blessed be He, two expectations that the Holy One, blessed be He, has of us. And since that is so, there is a conflict here—and not only is there no contradiction here, but in a conflict it’s not always the case that Jewish law wins. Sometimes morality has to win. And I said that in order to decide a conflict between Jewish law and morality, clearly I cannot do it within the framework of Jewish law, and I also cannot do it within the framework of morality. Because the dilemma is between Jewish law and morality; it cannot be that one of the litigants serves as the judge. The decision as to which prevails has to come from some system that precedes these two systems, or if you like, encompasses both of them.

But before that I want to deal with dilemmas within Jewish law, or dilemmas within morality. After all, there too there are dilemmas, conflicts. I mentioned Sartre’s student, yes, who was torn over whether to flee Paris and join the Free French army to fight the Nazis, or stay in occupied Paris—occupied, sorry—and help his elderly sick mother. Okay? A moral dilemma. It’s not a dilemma between Jewish law and morality; it’s a dilemma between two moral values. Does such a person live in a contradiction? Obviously not. These two values do not contradict one another. The value of fighting evil and the value of helping his elderly mother do not contradict one another. There is no contradiction in holding both. A situation has arisen in which these values dictate opposite practical steps. And therefore a conflict has arisen here, not a contradiction. But of course one still has to somehow decide the conflict. One has to say: okay, what do I do in such a case? What I basically need to do is build a scale of values, determine whether fighting evil stands higher on the scale than helping my elderly mother, or vice versa. Once I’ve built a scale of values, the value that stands higher prevails. Of course this is very simplistic, but broadly speaking, that seems to be what has to be done. Okay, so that’s the point.

Therefore conflicts also exist inside Jewish law, or inside—say, saving life on the Sabbath. That is a conflict within Jewish law between one halakhic value and another halakhic value. And earlier I mentioned Sartre, where it’s a conflict between one moral value and another moral value. Therefore conflicts also exist for someone who holds only one normative system. That does not spare you conflicts. So I see no principled problem in holding two normative systems even if there are conflicts between them. It is not essentially different from a conflict that exists within a single system that I hold. I still haven’t said what one does and how one decides, but in all these cases one has to look for some way of deciding. Still, there is no principled contradiction in being in a conflict; there is no problem in that.

All right, so now let’s try to understand first of all what we do within one framework before I talk about two systems. It won’t end up being very different, but let’s first talk within one framework. I’ll begin for a moment with the definition of what a value is at all. Yeshayahu Leibowitz writes in a number of places—he has, for example, an article at the end of his book Faith, History, and Values. All the books are collections of essays, right? They’re not books he wrote as books. But at the end there is an article about disconnecting from a major public controversy in the United States about a girl named Karen who had some terminal illness with a great deal of suffering, and there was a dilemma whether to disconnect her from life-support machines—leave her to die or not. A very, very big controversy, and he wrote an article about it. And his argument there was that he opposes disconnecting her from the machines because the value of life, like any value at all, cannot be rationalized. What does that mean? If you disconnect her from the machines, what are you really saying? You are basically saying that life is worth something only so long as you live it pleasantly and comfortably, without suffering. Life is a means; it is not an end. If life doesn’t give me life in comfort—comfort itself—then it isn’t worth anything. And if I am suffering, then one may belittle the value of life and disconnect this girl from the machines, send her to die. You have basically turned life into a means, and then it is no longer a value, because a value by its essence is not a means intended to serve something. Therefore life is not intended to serve comfort, okay? And therefore the claim is that in a place where there is discomfort—even extreme discomfort—you cannot say that life has no value in such a state. Because if you say that, then in your view life has no value at all. Life is a means; comfort has value, and happy life has value, happiness has value, but life itself does not. Life is a means that gives me happiness. As long as it does that, fine. If it doesn’t do that, throw it in the trash. That is not called the value of life. The value of life means that life has value, period, regardless of what it serves and whether it indeed serves what it is supposed to serve.

Okay? His claim, basically—and now I’ll expand it more—is saying the following. When I want to decide regarding some behavior, whether it should be done or not done, I bring a value-based justification. I say: murder is forbidden. Why? Because life has value, and therefore murder is forbidden. So the value is the justification for the practical instruction. Right? When I say murder is forbidden, that’s the practical instruction. The value is the justification. The value says life has value; it is forbidden to harm it. Meaning, harming it is of negative value, and because harming it has negative value, the practical instruction is that murder is forbidden. Now the question is: what justifies the value? Why is the value correct? Why does life have value? If I ask why murder is forbidden, you’ll answer me: because life has value. Now I’ll ask you: yes, but why does life have value? What do you answer? Either people answer the way those who think pragmatically do—that life has value because it gives me something, pleasure or something else, in other words another value. We’re back to reduction, right? Then in effect, when you say that life has value because it gives me X, Y, Z, what you’re actually saying is that life has no value; X, Y, Z has value. Not life. Life is a means. Right? Like holding money—it has no moral value, even though with money you can do many good things. But money is a means; it isn’t a value in itself. Then I’ll ask you, okay, life is a value in order to achieve happiness. And why is happiness a value? At some point I will have to stop. I can keep going as long as I like. You can keep going as long as you like, but you’ll find yourself very limited. At some point you’ll have to stop. And when you stop, I’ll ask you why. What will you answer me? Because. Granted, “because” is not an answer—we were taught by our parents until age two that “because” is not an answer—but “because” is a wonderful answer. “Because” is the most fundamental answer that underlies all the other answers. “Because” means this thing is true from within itself. It does not require justification based on something outside it. That’s what “because” means.

Now I want to distinguish here between two kinds of “because.” There is a “because” that is arbitrary. Why did I decide to eat this candy and not that candy? Because. I drew lots, I don’t know, I felt like it. Fine? I have no explanation; I don’t need an explanation—because. Here “because” means arbitrary. I could have done the opposite too, and in fact there is no preference for this option over the other; I chose by arbitrary lottery. That’s one kind of “because.” Another kind of “because”: for example, if I ask you who told you that between two points there passes one straight line—the axiom of Euclidean geometry, yes. How do you know that two parallel lines never meet? We checked and found no other option. You didn’t find one—that is no proof. Maybe there is one. How do you know? They taught it as an axiom. Logic. What kind of word is that? I’m asking you why. Logic. Everyone agrees that that’s how it is. Everyone agrees? If everyone agreed that I should jump off the roof, would I jump off the roof? Sorry for the childish answer. But not everyone agrees. What does “everyone agrees” mean? If everyone agrees on something false, should I agree to it? The fact that everyone agrees doesn’t prove anything. At most it might be an indication that it is true. It is not the reason that it is true. Not even an indication—if everyone agrees, then it’s probably not true. That’s my assumption until proven otherwise. But never mind; that’s another discussion.

But the point is, I have no explanation. It is true from within itself. When you ask me why, what you are really expecting is something else that will ground this claim. But about that something else too, you can ask me why. How do you know that? Then I’ll give you something else, and then you’ll ask about that as well. And about that too I’ll give you something else. In the end, in the end, you will stop. Where will we stop? We’ll stop at the place where we see “because.” But here one has to understand well: if the “because” where I stop means arbitrary “because,” then everything I built on it is arbitrary too. Look at the axioms—say I built geometry on the axioms. Now they ask me why the axiom is true. I say, because. If that “because” means arbitrariness, then it means that the theorem that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees is also arbitrary. Because it was proved on the basis of axioms that are arbitrary. So the whole business has no meaning; everything is arbitrary. But I know, after all, that the sum of the angles in a triangle really is 180 degrees. That isn’t arbitrary. It is obviously true. And I also know that between two points you will never, ever find more than one straight line. Not even one and a quarter. Platform nine and three quarters at Hogwarts—what’s it called there. The point is that when I tell you “because” in this context, that isn’t an arbitrary “because.” Rather, it is “because” since it is self-evident. Because it is clearly true. Not because it is arbitrary. Those are two different things. Certain things are self-evidently true; I have some kind of immediate clarity that they are true, and therefore I do not need other arguments in order to ground them. Because if I need other arguments, I’ll ask about them too. In the end, in the end, I’ll have to stop somewhere. I will stop at those claims, those claims whose truth is understood from within themselves. That is what is called an axiom.

As opposed to what mathematicians will tell you, that an axiom is something we adopt arbitrarily—so I, as a physicist, tell you that an axiom is something we adopt because we understand that it is true. But where does that understanding come from? That’s the question. Immediate apprehension. What do you mean, where from? When you ask me for the proof, do you understand that you’re assuming I have to supply you with a proof that itself is built on axioms? So ask yourself what “where from” means. Explain that concept to me, and I’d be happy to answer. That concept of “where from” is contentless. I’m basically asking the question of—what’s his name—Descartes. Maybe there is some demon here confusing me. Right, what do you think I’m going to answer you? Won’t you tell me maybe a demon made you think so? You’ll say that too, right? So if you’re waiting for an answer, then you’re probably assuming that in some places I won’t need to take the demon into account. Unless you’re not waiting for an answer at all. But as far as I’m concerned, if you’re not waiting for an answer, then it isn’t a question. A question is something one asks in order to receive an answer. So if you acknowledge the possibility of an answer, that means that already here, already when you asked, you accept that there can be claims whose truth is inherent. It doesn’t require justification outside themselves. They are true simply because it is self-evident that they are true. Without justification. And again—not arbitrary, but the opposite: it is obvious, therefore it is true. Not because it is arbitrary.

Very often people mix up these two meanings of “because,” and then they become skeptics—postmodernism and its various skepticisms. But that is a big mistake. There are two types of “because.” We have some faculty—at least I believe we do—I call it intuition, a faculty for grasping things, for grasping the truth of things not on the basis of prior justification but from within themselves, to see that something is true, period. “See” not necessarily with the eyes but with the mind’s eye, or call it a sixth sense or whatever you want, it doesn’t matter what you call it. So if you don’t assume that, then you are doomed to be skeptics. Your questions are not questions, because they will never receive answers. Whoever asks questions and waits for answers, and whoever gives answers, by definition has to accept that we have such a faculty called intuition that tells us about certain things that they are true, and then I can build on them as axioms.

The problem arises when different people have different intuitions. For the sake of discussion, on the question you raised: there are people who really look at life as a value, and there are people who look at life as not a value, but as a means to pleasure. Why do you think that’s a problem? Then we have a disagreement. Why is disagreement a problem? You think so, I think not. It’s a disagreement that can’t be resolved. So what? Who told you that every disagreement has to be resolved? Fine, so what? There are questions in science too that I don’t know how to solve. Fine, so what? There are questions in mathematics that are undecidable. Okay, so what? Maybe one axiom is that one day we’ll solve them? Besides the fact that I’d be very happy to solve all my problems, but there is nothing essential wrong with the fact that I can’t solve a problem or convince someone or decide a dispute. Fine.

So as I said earlier, it isn’t a contradiction and not a problem; it is a conflict. Meaning, it is something that has to somehow be managed and we have to see what to do with it, but that doesn’t mean such a state is impossible. It isn’t an argument against the existence of such a state. It’s a difficulty. Fine, one has to think how to solve it, if at all possible. Okay.

What I want to claim is that just as in geometry I build a structure that begins with axioms and on them I build the theorems—or in any other field of knowledge—the same is true in the world of morality, in the world of ethics. The structure is that kind of structure. And the axioms that stand at the base of that structure are called values. A value is something whose truth follows from itself, is self-evident. It does not require justification or rationalization. It does not serve something else, because when you justify a value, what you are really saying is that it serves something. That is the explanation for why it is important or why it is true. If you say a value does not need justification, then what you are really saying is that it serves nothing. On the contrary: everything we do is supposed to serve it. It serves nothing; it is the ultimate goal. The value is the goal. And everything I do or do not do has to be measured in terms of my scale of values. Does it fit my values or not fit my values? The values are the goal; they are not a means. Therefore Leibowitz’s definition of a value is: something that is an ethical end in itself; it is not a means to anything. That’s stage one.

Stage two: if that is really so, then we are in trouble, at least practically. Why? Let’s try to think, for example, because I said earlier that when I’m in a moral dilemma, then in order to decide it I need to build a scale of values, right? I need to determine, say, whether fighting Nazi evil stands higher on the scale than helping my elderly mother, or the reverse. We need to build a scale of values. Let’s try to think how one builds such a scale. I need to rank two values against each other. How do you rank two things against each other? You weigh each of them according to some given measure and compare their respective weights, right? Of course here this isn’t physical weight in kilograms. But I weigh the moral worth of this value, the moral worth of that value, and I see which weighs more. Then that one stands higher on the scale of values. Okay, but if a value doesn’t serve a goal outside itself, you can’t rationalize it, then you can’t weigh it. Try to think how you would build a scale of values when dealing with fighting evil versus helping one’s elderly mother. Fighting evil doesn’t serve something else—it’s a value in itself, eradicating evil. And helping one’s mother doesn’t serve something else either. It serves the mother, but the value in that service is itself a moral value; it does not serve anything else. Now explain to me how I rank those two values, how I build a scale from them, how I know which is higher than the other. There is no way to do that.

If—again—if those two values served something outside themselves, and I were able to show that fighting evil serves it better or yields me more output in terms of that result than helping my elderly mother, then I would have a natural ranking between the values. But if the value serves nothing, then by what measure do I assess it in order to compare it to the other value? They have no common measure. They have no measure at all. This is the problem known in ethics, in analytic ethics, as the incommensurability of values. “Incommensurable” in English means the lack of a common measure. Common measure. “Measure” means measure, “common” means shared. Incommensurable means lacking a shared measure. If I want to ask you which there is more of—water in the ocean, or human kindness among people—what’s the answer? You can’t measure that. Those are two different units. What’s the connection? They are not measured with the same tools, not in the same units. They don’t have a common measure. I’m not even talking about the chats, especially since they contain provocations. The unit by which we measure those two things, if there even is such a unit, is not a shared unit. I can’t check what is better—to eat an apple or to help one’s mother. One is pleasurable good and the other is moral good. What do you want me to say? They are different units of measurement. There’s no way to compare them.

Now since values are not meant to serve something else, I have no way to measure a value in terms of how much it is worth or how much it serves some goal—and certainly not a goal shared by two different values, which is what I would need in order to compare them. And since that is so, we do indeed have only a conflict and not a contradiction, but the conflict is not accidental. It isn’t that we just happen not to know what to do here; it is essential. Such a conflict cannot be resolved. It is impossible to resolve it. Now that is already a problem. Because that means, right, I have no contradiction, so on the philosophical theoretical level I’m fine, I can sleep peacefully. But practically I won’t be able to decide any problem, any moral problem. Practically, always—practically we can seemingly assess the outcome by surrounding factors, like results. For example, in the case of that person, if he knew in advance that if he went to fight the Nazis his mother would die immediately and the role he would play would have no influence on the war at all—but his mother would be saved, while the world would be saved—no, I mean, if he knew his role would be totally insignificant, almost entirely. Then no, as an example—I mean, he can’t really know that, but I’m saying supposedly he could weigh how effective he thinks he would be here versus how effective there.

First, I’ll answer you in two ways. First, that’s very hypothetical; almost never can one really do that. Second, even what you’re proposing is not really possible. Even in a place where the consequences for the war are minimal and the consequences for his mother are dramatic. Let me give you an example I once read in an article by a man named Shai Wosner, a law professor at Tel Aviv University. He once wrote an article in Hakdamot, and he brought the following example there. An actor gets an offer to appear in a cigarette commercial. He comes to his friend, who also happens to be a doctor, to ask whether he should take the offer or not. They offered him a role in the commercial and he’ll get a million dollars for it. Okay? Now it involves smoking, say, ten cigarettes. So his friend tells him: look, in my capacity as a doctor, I forbid it to you because it’s unhealthy. In my capacity as your friend, go for it, and the sooner the better. Why? Because a million dollars—forget the ten cigarettes. Now I ask you: how can one compare a million dollars to the medical damage of ten cigarettes? That’s no different from asking: what is there more of, kindness in a person or water in a single drop? Not in the whole ocean—a single drop. That’s very little, right? How much water is in one drop, compared to all the kindness among all human beings? Can one answer such a question? No. Why not? The problem is not quantitative. When you measure different qualities, what difference does it make that here the quantity is small and there the quantity is large? This is a small quantity of one quality and that is a large quantity of another quality—so how can you compare them? Right—that’s exactly what I’m saying. So also in a case where in the war it’s clear I will have a marginal, almost zero contribution, while in helping my mother I have an enormous contribution—even so, because we’re dealing with different scales or units of measurement, what help is it that there the value is tiny and here the value is huge? It’s zero water versus lots of human kindness. You still can’t answer which there is more of. Because the question is meaningless.

Let’s stop here because I see the time is moving. Five-minute break, and we’ll come back and continue. “And the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying.” Rashi asks his famous question: what does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai? Were not all the commandments said from Sinai? Rather, this teaches us that just as with the Sabbatical year, its general principles, details, and fine points were all said at Sinai, so too with all the commandments—their general principles, details, and fine points were all said at Sinai. And these words require explanation: why was specifically the commandment of the Sabbatical year chosen? Rather, there is a deep connection between the Sabbatical year and the giving of the Torah. We are now in the days of the counting of the Omer. The Torah commands us in Parashat Emor, “And you shall count for yourselves from the morrow of the Sabbath, seven complete weeks.” And in our portion, Parashat Behar, the Torah commands another counting: “And you shall count for yourself seven Sabbaths of years, seven years seven times.” There is a clear resemblance between the structure of the counting of the Omer and the structure of the Sabbatical years until the Jubilee. Seven times seven. In the counting of the Omer, we arrive at the fiftieth day, the day of the giving of the Torah; and in the Sabbatical cycle, we arrive at the fiftieth year, the Jubilee year, in which liberty is proclaimed throughout the land. The idea of the Sabbatical year is the recognition that the land belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He, “for all the land is Mine.” And the idea of the giving of the Torah is the recognition that wisdom and Torah belong to the Holy One, blessed be He. A person who ceases work in the Sabbatical year demonstrates faith and trust in God, and this is the basis for receiving the Torah. Therefore it is specifically the Sabbatical year that teaches us about all the commandments, because it is the foundation of faith without which one cannot receive Torah from Sinai. May we merit, with God’s help, to continue the counting in holiness and purity and to merit receiving the Torah with joy.

One hundred and fifty-two—now I’m again on the phone. What I did—the problem was with the original phone. The problem was that the processor in my phone died, and this is already its fifth version, and simply because of the load today we’re capped at a gig a day and that’s how it got sent onward. What? One hundred and fifty, now I deleted it. What? What happened? The problem was that the processor in my phone died, and this is already its fifth version, and simply because of the load today we have up to a gig a day and that’s how it got sent onward. Sent onward. I sent the profile and then it knocked out their whole… What? One hundred and fifty, now I deleted it. What? What happened? Five thousand three hundred users. What? Five thousand three hundred users. What? The problem was that now you can see the fingernails through the browser. You don’t understand, not kidding. Fine, we have five thousand three hundred users. This is the time to build a platform here, this is the time to pour money in, to set up dating, to set up chats, to set up a desk. Don’t wait for… come on, fingernails, in a moment they won’t care anymore, bye. You understand? This is the time to hold them on the platform. For that you need deep pockets, to pour in money, and prove to them that it’s worth staying on the platform. I’m giving you their attention now for two months. Okay? We have an app, everything’s ready. You have to understand that I need money for a development team, for a UI team, and really to build a platform. Three hundred and fifty users at once? No no, everything’s fine. Three hundred and fifty? No way. Five thousand three hundred users. What? Is there internet here? Here we have a nice number of users, it’s not negligible. It’s not negligible. Three hundred and fifty at once. It’s unbelievable. It could be that we need to move to the Herzliya airport. Okay. Back.

Rabbi, what I just wanted to say there in the previous question is that specifically this example of the drop—a drop of water and goodness in the world—is a good example of what I was actually trying to say. It’s clear to me that there’s really no answer to that, and no logical answer. But intuitively, if someone put a gun to my head and said: which is greater, a drop of water or goodness, I’d say goodness. Because concretely I know there is a lot of goodness, even though I know that’s not a correct answer. And with that I completely agree. And I think the example of the actor and the cigarettes is an excellent example. Because after all, all of us would give him exactly that advice. On the one hand, the health damage of ten cigarettes; on the other hand, a financial gain of a million dollars. How can you compare health damage to financial gain? You can’t, and still I would tell him: go for the million dollars. Which means that there probably is some universal measure that in our intuition does manage to weigh different values and set them against one another, or build a scale of values. You can’t say exactly what fighting evil contributes or what helping one’s mother contributes. But I can say, for example, how much good there is in it. That’s a question that sounds a little undefined. But the fact is—and this is the intuition you spoke about earlier—the fact that we do manage to decide such conflicts basically means that we probably do have some measuring tool that measures how much good there is in a certain thing, in a certain act, or in a certain value. And in that sense it is indeed a scale or universal measure with which one can measure all values and then rank them or build a scale of who is above and who is below. In the sense of how much good there is in it, or how much good per unit. Yes, how much water is in a drop—multiply by how many drops there are in the ocean. But it synchronizes the units of different values with one another, and we really do manage to rank them. Which is very strange.

The values themselves do not serve the good. I remain with the definition that a value does not come to serve anything. Values do not serve the good. Values are measured by how much good there is in them. That’s not the same thing. It’s not something outside the value that the value comes to serve. The good itself is not a value. It’s not that the prohibition of murder harms the achievement of the good, and the good is some external thing outside the prohibition of murder. Murder itself is bad. It doesn’t achieve a result that is bad. So when I say that values have no goal that they come to achieve, I stand by that; I still say it. And at the same time I claim that we have the ability to calibrate them or measure them in terms of how good this is.

Rabbi, but that’s per society, basically. Since you are a social creature, we are now living in a certain society that has a certain scale of values. But in another society it wouldn’t necessarily be true that it has the same scale of values, the same scale of values. The fact that in every society it won’t be the same scale of values—that is a descriptive fact. It describes the state of the world. But it says nothing about the essential question. Since if there is a scale of values that… again, you’re saying that there is a scale of values fixed in us, in all of us, but the fact that there is difference from one society to another… No, no, I didn’t say that it’s fixed in us. I said we have the ability to grasp it. I didn’t say it’s fixed in us. There is something in the world. We have the ability to grasp it. Now, different people grasp it differently. Just as in science there can be disagreements. One side is right and the other is wrong. The existence of a disagreement doesn’t mean there isn’t one truth, or at least it doesn’t necessarily mean that. There may be one truth here. I do my best to understand what that system is, to the best of my understanding. You do your best according to your understanding. And if we don’t agree, then one is right and the other is wrong; we have a disagreement. Sometimes, by the way, one can persuade the other, but sometimes not. Fine? But the fact that disagreements exist does not impress me in any field whatsoever. So there are disagreements—so what happened? One is right and the other is wrong. No, so you’re saying one can arrive at right and wrong also in matters of values? Yes. Not right and wrong with certainty. But in science too I can’t arrive at certainty. I arrive at my conclusions. Someone else may arrive at different conclusions. So now, which of us is right? To the best of my understanding I think I’m right. He thinks he’s right. So let’s argue. In the end, obviously one of us is right and the other is wrong. But you have no way to know with certainty that you are the one who is right. All you can do is try your best to arrive at the truth. That’s all. Maybe you’ll succeed, maybe you won’t. But that doesn’t mean there is no right and wrong here. And this will never be absolute truth. Right. There will always come some kind of… As such, that doesn’t make it not truth. Truth is one truth only when it is absolute? Heaven forbid. Two plus two will always be four, right—do you think that’s something we invented? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You’re identifying two things that have no connection whatsoever. The question of truth and the question of certainty are independent. They have nothing to do with each other at all. If a certain thing is true, that only means it corresponds to the state of affairs in the world. Am I certain of it? That’s a question about me. Ah, of course. No, of course. So you distinguish between certainty and truth. Truth is a claim about the world. Certainty is the question of how sure I am that this is the truth. Two completely different things. Therefore I am not certain of any truth, by the way—not in the moral context, not in the halakhic context, not in the personal context, not in any context, not even in the physical context. I’m not 100 percent certain of anything. That doesn’t mean there are no truths there. It means that I can never be certain that I hold those truths. That’s all. Because I’m a human being, and a human being cannot always be sure that he’s right. So what? I take the best I can, the best I can do—that’s what I have; I have nothing better than that.

Okay. Let’s return to our subject. Let me give you an example that sharpens this even more. The incommensurability of values, what I said earlier, basically means that these are two values with no common unit of measurement. Now suppose I found a verse, and the verse tells me that there is more kindness than there is water in the ocean. Does that solve the problem for me? No. Why not? Because it still hasn’t given me a measuring tool. Fine, so now let’s suppose I accept this as a fact. The justification is missing, but I know the answer. Okay, and I don’t know how to derive any further information from it. If I now want to… I don’t need further information. I need this information. I got this information. I claim not. Not just the justification is missing—the information too. Why? Because there is no such information. My claim is that when I ask which there is more of, water in the ocean or kindness, it’s not that it’s hard for me to reach the answer; it’s impossible in principle to reach an answer. My claim is that there is no answer. The question is meaningless. It’s not inability. It’s important to understand that. If that is really the case, then even a verse won’t help. The verse cannot reveal to me that there is more water in the ocean than kindness among people, because the sentence is meaningless. The question and the answers are meaningless. A verse can help me where I’m not smart enough to reach the answer. Then the verse tells me: know that the answer is this. The Holy One, blessed be He, knows; He is the wisest, and He tells me what the answer is. I’m not smart enough to know; the verse reveals it to me. But where there is no answer, I cannot expect to find one even in verses. There is no answer. So one has to understand that if I take seriously the incommensurability of values, then that closes all channels of answer to me. The gates of response are shut before me. Meaning, I can’t get an answer to this from a verse either—not only not from my own reason, even the Holy One, blessed be He, can’t answer it. Not that He can’t, but that there simply is no answer. The question is meaningless. So there is an essential problem here. It isn’t just a matter of “I don’t know, but the verses will solve it.”

Wait—if there were such a verse, then you’d say it’s nonsense? Yes, of course. I’d simply say it’s nonsense. I’d say there isn’t a verse like that in the Torah, so suppose there is—not that I’ve seen one. So you say that that is nonsense? If I reached a clear conclusion that this is what the verse says, then yes, then the verse is nonsense. What I would prefer to say is that the verse doesn’t say that. I probably didn’t understand it correctly. Okay. Because there is nothing to say—it’s like saying right is left and left is right. No, I’d interpret it differently. That’s what the Talmud in tractate Hullin says, after all: “Even if Joshua son of Nun said it, I would not obey him.” There are things that even if Joshua son of Nun said them, I wouldn’t accept—impossible to accept. It’s a contradiction—what do you want me to accept? Even if the Holy One, blessed be He, told me, I wouldn’t accept. Fine, that’s already another question.

So in short, the point is this. We really do have—not a contradiction but a conflict. And I say this also between two moral values, two halakhic values, or between a moral value and a halakhic value. It’s a set of conflicts, not contradictions. Everything is possible, everything is even to be expected. We find ourselves in such situations quite often; it’s not even all that rare. But of course there is a conflict here, and conflicts have to be solved. What do we do about the solution? So I’ll show you a few examples which in the end don’t give a complete answer. But they show that at least in some cases I can solve the issue.

Let’s take a first example. I’ll take the sugya in tractate Yoma about saving life on the Sabbath. There there is a conflict between two values, both of them halakhic values. Not Jewish law and morality—Jewish law and Jewish law. “And you shall live by them,” yes? The value of life is a halakhic value, and observing the Sabbath is also a halakhic value. Now I have a conflict between these two values; what am I supposed to do? A conflict, not a contradiction. What am I supposed to do? The Talmud says: the question came before the Sages who were traveling on the road there, the Talmud in Yoma 85b, and each one brought a source explaining why saving life overrides the Sabbath. By the way, they all reach the same conclusion—that saving life prevails. And it’s pretty clear that the answer was known in advance. They’re just looking for some source from which to derive it, okay? To anchor this halakha in a source. But basically the halakha was already known. And more than that, the Talmud there even rejects most of the sources on the grounds that they explain that certain saving of life overrides the Sabbath, but one cannot derive from them that doubtful danger to life overrides the Sabbath. Therefore that cannot be the source. What do you mean, therefore that can’t be the source? So apparently doubtful danger to life doesn’t override the Sabbath. What’s the question? This is the source, and only certain danger emerges from it while doubtful danger doesn’t. Fine—then in practice certain danger overrides and doubtful doesn’t. Why reject the source? Because they knew the halakha in advance. The halakha was known: certain danger to life overrides the Sabbath, and also doubtful danger to life overrides the Sabbath—that was clear. The whole question was only what the source is. If the source doesn’t also give me the doubtful case, then apparently it isn’t the right source. That’s just another indication that these are supporting interpretations and not creative interpretations. Meaning, the halakha was known and we are only looking for a source for it through interpretation.

Now in the end, after all the options raised there are rejected, two remain. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says: “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may observe many Sabbaths.” Yes, desecrate this Sabbath, but you gain a life in which he will observe many Sabbaths. Second possibility: Shmuel says, “If I had been there, I would have told them something better than all of those: ‘And you shall live by them’—and not die by them.” By the way, a structure like this appears in one or two other places as well, where there is a set of tannaitic views and then Shmuel, the amora, comes and brings a source better than all the tannaim, and we rule according to him. Interesting, because it is probably only interpretive in meaning. It isn’t a halakhic dispute. But in any case, that is the structure there.

Now notice the two arguments brought in the Talmud. In a certain sense they are opposite arguments. Why? Because “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may observe many Sabbaths” is basically a quantitative discussion, right? It is essentially saying: look, let’s compare the two options. Either I desecrate the Sabbath now and save him, or I keep this Sabbath and he dies. Let’s compare the outcomes. If you desecrate one Sabbath, then he will be saved, and you gain many Sabbaths that he will observe. Overall you gained N minus one Sabbaths. You lost one Sabbath because you desecrated it, but the rest of the Sabbaths he’ll observe, right? So you have N minus one Sabbaths observed. If you don’t desecrate the Sabbath, then you gained that one Sabbath, but that’s it; you didn’t gain any more Sabbaths, because you lost all the Sabbaths he could have observed in the future. So that’s just one. So assuming his life expectancy is more than two weeks, then it is better to desecrate the Sabbath. He has at least two Sabbaths to gain, okay? So it is better to desecrate the Sabbath than not to desecrate it.

The subtext of this argument basically says that it is not life that overrides the value of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the value. Life is not a value at all. Life is a means that enables me to keep Sabbaths. The Sabbath is the value. What overrides this Sabbath is not the value of life. It is simply the collection of Sabbaths that I will gain if I desecrate one Sabbath now. Meaning, this argument understands that life is basically a means; it is not a value. It is a means for fulfilling commandments. By the way, not only keeping Sabbaths—the Meiri, quoted in the Biur Halakha in Orach Chayim 328, writes that one desecrates the Sabbath even for brief life. Brief life—you’ll die in two hours. Desecrate the Sabbath or not in order to save those two hours? You won’t “observe many Sabbaths.” Says the Meiri: true, but you’ll pray, you’ll study Torah, there are other commandments you can perform. “Observe Sabbaths” here is only a metaphor. It means observance of Jewish law, commandments. Okay? In any case, that only strengthens what I said earlier, that this argument assumes that life is not an end but a means, a means for fulfilling commandments.

What does the argument of “And you shall live by them” say? The argument of “And you shall live by them” seems to say the exact opposite. It says that basically all you are required to keep commandments is only in a place where it doesn’t harm your life. But if it will cost life—not necessarily your own life but life in general—then certainly, then the whole Torah is set aside. “And you shall live by them”—and not die by them. If you die through them, then we don’t need all the commandments; life is the main thing. So the first argument says life is a means and the commandments are primary. The second argument says the commandments are secondary; life is the primary thing. If life is on the line, forget the commandments—the commandments don’t matter. These are arguments whose value-foundation is opposite, contradictory. Now here’s the nice thing. In the halakhic decisors—for example, the Mishnah Berurah that I mentioned earlier, that Biur Halakha that quotes the Meiri—they bring both of these arguments as practical law. Both together. Now how can both be together? These arguments are opposite in their logic; they contradict each other. You can’t rule both. You can rule the first one, or the second one, but not both. Either you rule that life is a means for commandments, or you rule that life is an end in itself, more important than the commandments. You can’t rule that both this and that are true. One contradicts the other. How can that be?

I’ll tell you how it can be. The idea I said earlier—that “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may observe many Sabbaths” means life is a means for keeping commandments—that’s not correct. For example, the question arises: what about desecrating the Sabbath to save the life of a secular Jew, an apostate in the language of Jewish law? He won’t observe many Sabbaths, won’t perform commandments. Is there justification to desecrate the Sabbath for him? The Or HaChayim on the Torah tends to say no. But almost all the decisors say yes. Ostensibly that means that “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may observe many Sabbaths” isn’t really the full argument of the matter, because the fellow I save won’t observe many Sabbaths. So what justifies saving him? But that’s not right, because my role is to make it possible for many Sabbaths to be observed. And therefore this ruling—that one saves even people who do not observe the Sabbath—is not contradictory. But let me tell you what the explanation actually is here. Why do I claim that Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s argument, “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may observe many Sabbaths,” does not mean life is a means for commandments? Because it’s not true. I claim that what the Talmud is really doing here is saying: I don’t know how to decide between the value of the Sabbath and the value of life. I don’t know; it’s incommensurable. I have no way to know how to build a scale of values and determine which is higher and which is lower. I don’t have that. But I can bypass it and decide the issue without building a scale of values. Let me simply show you how.

Suppose the value of life—let’s go back to our board, all right? Let’s say the value of life is A. Okay? And the value of observing the Sabbath is B. Sorry for the scribble. Okay, now I want to make the following comparison. If I desecrate the Sabbath—suppose that if I desecrate the Sabbath for this person, his life expectancy will be N Sabbaths. The letter N, not “there are no Sabbaths,” but N Sabbaths. Okay? So now let’s calculate expected gain in the two scenarios. If I desecrate the Sabbath—suppose I desecrate. Desecrating the Sabbath: what do I gain? I gain the value of life, right? And I lose one Sabbath but gain N Sabbaths afterwards. So I gain another N minus one Sabbaths. Of course this is a very rough calculation, because it’s one Sabbath desecration but I still keep the rest of the Sabbath; I desecrated it once. Never mind, that’s just to illustrate the idea. Okay. That is the expected gain if I desecrate the Sabbath.

Now what is the expected gain if I do not desecrate? Heaven forbid. Okay, what happens if I do not desecrate? If I do not desecrate, then I lose the value of life—zero, right? No, it’s not minus A, it’s zero. Zero. And I gain one Sabbath: B. Right? I gained one Sabbath, I kept one Sabbath. Which is greater? Assuming N is greater than two. Basically, on both scales, desecrating is preferable. We see that I do not need to rank A against B and decide which is stronger. When you compare these two, this will always be the preferable option, as long as N is greater than two, right? Without any dependence whatsoever on the question of what A is worth. Which means that I am actually able to decide this conflict without building a scale of values. So A and B are incommensurable—units of A and units of B cannot be compared. I cannot answer the question which is greater, A or B, or N minus one B versus three A. I don’t know which is greater because I don’t know how much A is worth and how much B is worth. But I don’t need to know. That is what the Talmud is saying. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is basically saying that since A and B are incommensurable, in order to decide I will translate the value of my action into terms of Sabbath observance, not into terms of the value of life. And I will decide the dilemma or conflict only in terms of Sabbath observance. I will ignore the value of life. I don’t need it. Whatever their values may be, the decision will be the same. Meaning, I manage to bypass the need to build a scale of values, and I decide the question even without that.

That is basically what it means. So “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may observe many Sabbaths” does not really assume that life is a means for keeping the Sabbath; that is not true. Rather, besides the life that you gain, you also gain Sabbath observance. Not that life is a means for Sabbath observance, but besides the fact that you gained life, obviously if you live there will also be Sabbath observance here. And for the purpose of the decision it is enough for me to look at how much B I have on each side. I don’t need to know the relation between A and B. So here, for example, is a way to decide a paradigmatic value dilemma without building a scale of values and without solving the problem of incommensurability. I have not solved the question of how I rank A against B—what is my scale of values? Is life higher or is the Sabbath higher? By the way, in passing, notice that apparently the value of life by itself does not justify desecrating the Sabbath. Right? Because otherwise it would be enough to compare A to zero, and I would ignore B. If A is infinite—the value of life is infinite—and B is something, then the matter is decided on the basis of A alone; there’s no need for B, right?

Why am I saying this? Because very often there is criticism, for example from secular people or non-Jews, asking why one does not desecrate the Sabbath to save the life of a non-Jew. Moral criticism. Again, this of course is once more a dilemma between morality and Jewish law. But here too the answer is very simple: because even for the life of a Jew one does not desecrate the Sabbath in order to save life merely because of life itself. The life of the Jew is not enough of a consideration to save his life. I desecrate the Sabbath to save his life because I gain Sabbath observance. The life of a Jew is not worth more than the life of a non-Jew. The desecration of the Sabbath to save the Jew is not because of the value of the Jew’s life but in order to gain many Sabbaths. In the case of a non-Jew I do not gain those Sabbaths. But there is no statement here at all about whether the value of a Jew’s life is greater than the value of a non-Jew’s life. Run the same equation for a non-Jew, okay? What happens? Suppose I want to desecrate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a non-Jew. Here if I don’t desecrate, then I didn’t gain life and I gained one Sabbath—my Sabbath, of course, the Jew’s. So the gain here is B. What’s the gain there? There I gained the value of a non-Jew’s life, and that’s it—zero. Right? No Sabbaths, because a non-Jew isn’t commanded in Sabbath observance. Now I need to determine what prevails, A or B. That decision already requires a scale of values, because here I need to decide whether it is worth desecrating the Sabbath for the sake of life. But that is not because the value of a non-Jew’s life is lower. Even for a Jew, B is greater than A. The A of a Jew is like the A of a non-Jew. It’s just that for a Jew one desecrates the Sabbath because of this component. Therefore one cannot infer from here that the life of a non-Jew is worth less than the life of a Jew.

Rabbi, but how can one even talk about quantity of Sabbath observance in numerical terms? In the end, as long as a person exists he is commanded to keep the Sabbath. If he doesn’t exist, he isn’t commanded to keep the Sabbath. The idea of gain here is seemingly irrelevant. You’re asking a different question. You’re asking a question that exists regardless of what I’m saying. Just a question on the Talmud. Why does the Talmud see Sabbath observance as some kind of value? If a person doesn’t exist and doesn’t keep Sabbaths, there’s no problem in that. Now just remember, this is a side question; it isn’t connected to me, it’s unrelated to what I’m saying. It’s a question on the Talmud. But I’m saying: just notice that what I didn’t write here is that if I don’t desecrate the Sabbath and the person dies, then I have minus N minus one B. Right? He didn’t desecrate the Sabbath, but clearly I didn’t gain Sabbath observance, right? It’s not desecration, but clearly I don’t have Sabbath observance here. The positive commandment wasn’t fulfilled. So if you ask how many commandments the Holy One, blessed be He, gained—sorry, how many were gained—this accounting is correct. But you need to say that to the Talmud regardless of me. I’m saying it doesn’t relate to my calculation. It’s a question on the Talmud.

More than that, the Talmud here compares desecrating the Sabbath by me with non-observance of the Sabbath if that person dies. So this isn’t B versus N minus one B. Here it’s minus—there’s something—Sabbath desecration. Sorry, here there is Sabbath desecration; you need to add desecration. It’s not N B minus B. Here there is desecration of the Sabbath—minus the value of Sabbath desecration, and I don’t know how much that is. It’s not only that I didn’t keep the Sabbath; I also desecrated it. Whereas if the person dies, he simply won’t keep the Sabbath; it’s not that he will desecrate it. There are many other comments to be made on this calculation of the Talmud. I only wanted to show you how the Talmud itself deals with the problem of how to build a scale of values when there is incommensurability. And notice: this is within a dilemma that is a dilemma inside Jewish law, between two halakhic values. It has nothing to do with Jewish law and morality. So basically the claim… Why is life a halakhic value? What—I can’t hear. Why is life a halakhic value? Is there a commandment to live? Yes—“and you shall live by them,” yes. Is that a commandment in the list of commandments? I don’t remember at the moment who counts it and whether they count it. But yes, obviously it’s a halakhic value. Why wouldn’t it be, like in the moral values of “and you shall do what is upright and good,” and then you also need to live? It also has moral value, of course it does, but it also has halakhic value. Obviously it is a halakhic value to live. What do you mean? You have to preserve life; preservation of life is a value in Jewish law. What exactly is the source? And if it comes from “and you shall live by them,” then why isn’t it counted—that’s another question. Maybe there is some conception here that says there is no need to count it because it is obvious: if you don’t live, you won’t fulfill the commandments. You need to take care that you can fulfill the commandments. If you don’t live, you won’t. One can propose explanations; it doesn’t matter right now. But the Talmud clearly presents it as a halakhic value. This is not a question of morality and Jewish law.

In any case, the point is that there are certain situations in which I can bypass the problem of incommensurability and decide the dilemma without building a scale of values and deciding which value stands above which other value. Now I have more examples of this, but I no longer have time to go into them, so I’ll just finish with what Shimon said earlier. Because yes, in some cases I can bypass the need to build a scale of values, bypass incommensurability. But there are places where I won’t succeed. If I couldn’t manage to translate life into terms of Sabbath observance, then I wouldn’t have had the option of using this trick to decide the question here. What does one do there? So as Shimon correctly noted earlier, we have some kind of—and this is what I heard earlier—we have some kind of intuitive ability to assess or determine how good one thing is relative to another and rank them. Then I build a scale of values despite the incommensurability. There is some kind of value or universal scale that measures all moral values—how good this is. And I will claim the same thing about halakhic dilemmas too, like saving life and the Sabbath. Suppose I couldn’t find tricks. Then what I would have to do is decide by reason, by intuition—activate halakhic intuition—and ask how religiously appropriate this is. I’m not using the word “good,” because “good” described the degree of morality in it. I’m now talking about the degree of “the divine element” in it, yes—how much this is worth on the religious level, in serving God. And I would need to activate that intuition and see what is more important for the service of God—life or keeping the Sabbath. There’s also the quantitative question here—how much life and how many Sabbath observances. That doesn’t matter right now; the broad question is: when there is a conflict between morality and Jewish law, what am I supposed to do there?

Because if I ask how good this is, that is only a measure of how moral it is. If I ask how appropriate it is religiously, that is a measure of how religious it is. When I ask these questions, I’ll get that this commandment is X on the religious level, and that moral principle is Y on the moral level. Well, I still can’t compare them. Apparently the fact that we do manage to decide such conflicts means that our intuition contains some even higher concept beyond the good and the appropriate taken separately. And we ask ourselves how appropriate it is, period—not morally appropriate, religiously appropriate, but appropriate. And there is probably some abstract scale—the degree of appropriateness of the thing—that can measure both moral values and halakhic values. And when they clash, then I need to activate that measure. I won’t always succeed; sometimes I’ll be in doubt. But more than that: sometimes I’ll bring verses, as they do regarding saving life on the Sabbath. I’ll bring verses. But I said: if it’s incommensurable, then even a verse won’t help. There is no answer to it; it’s not that I can’t get to the answer. So what good does it do me that there’s a verse? The fact that we decide, as with “a positive commandment overrides,” the fact that we decide such dilemmas by means of verses, means that there is some abstract, general scale that can measure anything against anything else. And even if we can’t manage to see it intuitively, the Torah tells us. Because now the question has meaning; it has an answer. I just can’t get to it. So here the verse comes and tells me: okay, this precedes that, or this overrides that.

One final sentence: where does a verse say such things? A verse says such things where the clash is an essential clash. What does that mean? For example, if they tell me—say I mentioned earlier “do not murder” and the obligation to stone Sabbath violators. That is a conflict within Jewish law, right? But let’s say for the sake of discussion that “do not murder” is moral. Or take, you know what, killing Amalek. Fine? Killing Amalek. So there is an obligation to kill Amalek, but there is a moral prohibition on murder. There is also “whoever sheds human blood,” never mind, but there is a moral prohibition on murder. Now I say this: if because of the moral prohibition I do not kill Amalek, that means that the commandment of erasing Amalek can never be fulfilled. Right? Because every time you come to kill an Amalekite, you are confronted with the moral problem. The clash is an essential clash. Every killing of an Amalekite always involves a moral problem. Not just when I’m defending myself; if I’m defending myself, that’s the law of a pursuer. I mean the case where I go and kill an Amalekite because he is an Amalekite, okay? Then there is a moral problem. If the Torah says to kill the Amalekite, then the Torah is telling us here that the religious value overrides the moral value. Because otherwise there wouldn’t be such a commandment, since we would never be supposed to fulfill it.

But, for example, saving life on the Sabbath—suppose for the sake of discussion that this is a conflict between Jewish law and morality. Suppose the value of life is moral and Sabbath observance is a religious value. Here, the fact that the Torah says to keep the Sabbath does not necessarily mean that it overrides saving life. Why not? Because it is not true that every time I care for my life it involves desecrating the Sabbath. It could be that the Torah said to keep the Sabbath only where that does not come at the cost of danger to life. That doesn’t empty the commandment of keeping the Sabbath of all content, because the clash here is accidental. There is no true contradiction between preserving life and keeping the Sabbath. If it happens that someone is sick on the Sabbath, then a conflict is created, but there is no real contradiction. But between erasing Amalek and the moral prohibition of murder there is an essential contradiction. Every time you kill an Amalekite, you violate the prohibition on murder. In a place where the contradiction is essential, if the Torah told me to kill the Amalekites, then it probably told me this overrides the moral prohibition. But in a place where the contradiction is accidental, then it is not at all clear that if there is a commandment in the Torah it overrides morality. There it may be that morality prevails. There is no necessity to say that Jewish law prevails over the moral principle.

And by the way, there are examples of this also in the words of the decisors—for example, institutionalizing prostitution. Institutionalizing prostitution—the author of the Akeidat Yitzchak discusses this, yes, and a number of other decisors. There are major halakhic advantages to institutionalizing prostitution. Because you make sure the prostitutes immerse, and then there’s no prohibition of menstruation; you make sure they aren’t married women, because there will be regulation. Everything will be organized, clean, wonderful. There are lots of advantages. Fine, the prohibition—people are violating the prohibition anyway in a more severe way; at least spare them the greater level of prohibition. So from a purely halakhic standpoint one can see many advantages to it. But all the decisors oppose it, because morally it is unthinkable that prostitution should become legitimate. Okay? Now here you see an example in which a moral principle—assuming there is no halakhic prohibition, or at least no significant one, against relations with an unmarried woman, okay?—in the halakhic calculus it is clearly preferable to institutionalize prostitution. But the moral consideration overrides the halakhic consideration. Why? Because here the clash is accidental; it is not an essential clash. The prohibition of menstruation can be observed without this too. It’s not that it always clashes. When there is a commandment that always inherently involves a moral prohibition, then when the Torah tells you to do it, it is telling you: ignore the moral issue; the commandment overrides it. But where the clash is accidental, who knows—maybe yes, maybe no. One cannot infer from the fact that the Torah stated a prohibition or a commandment that it applies even at moral cost. Maybe the Torah means only in a place where there is no moral cost. Then one must discuss each case on its merits and decide what prevails, and then we return to intuition and all the other things, or we find a verse, or we use intuition.

Okay, let’s stop here. Have a useful and pleasant break. Success on the exams, for those who have them. And whoever will be here next year, next semester—see you then. Thank you very much, Rabbi. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, goodbye. Thank you very much. Maybe the Rabbi can give another example of a place of conflict where we decide in the direction of morality? A transgression for the sake of Heaven, for example. The sugya of a transgression for the sake of Heaven deals exactly with this. The example brought immediately after the sugya—but from the context it’s clear that it comes in the same context—is Lot’s daughters. The sugya of transgression for the sake of Heaven brings a statement that is not very well known. It says that the Sages greatly praise Lot’s daughters for what they did with their father. Did you know that? The Sages heap great praise on them. Despite the curses, and despite Ammon and Moab and all those things, they heap great praise on them for that decision. Are you familiar with a permission to violate a prohibition—an incest prohibition? Father and daughter? In any context whatsoever? They consciously decided to violate a prohibition of sexual immorality. In principle one can justify it if one accepts the midrashim about what happened with Adam and Eve and their children, for the sake of discussion. I didn’t understand. Cain and Abel, all the midrashim that say they were born with sisters and that whole story. So in a reality in which there is no choice, because only that way can continuity be produced—the famous midrashim. How would you justify the midrashim? Halakhically. I’m asking halakhically. Halakhically there is no justification for violating a prohibition of incest under any circumstance. It is one of the sins for which one must die rather than transgress. There is nothing that justifies it. But if there is no choice—either that or the world is destroyed, as they thought. Let it be destroyed. “Why involve yourself in the hidden matters of the Merciful One?” Let it be destroyed. By the way, we know that wasn’t really the case. That’s the real answer, but it’s not a halakhic answer. There was a mistake there; we know it wasn’t the case. They thought the whole world had been destroyed, because that’s what they saw around them. And we know it was only Sodom and its surroundings, the cities of the plain. Other places had people. Why? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, sees to it that humanity won’t be destroyed. So one can make some sort of calculation like that. But suppose you really see the situation that way, and from your perspective all of humanity is being destroyed. Then the Sages say they made an excellent calculation. And there is no halakhic permission—you won’t find it in the Shulchan Arukh, not in Maimonides, nowhere. There is no such halakha. And that is a transgression for the sake of Heaven. The meta-halakhic, moral principle—saving humanity—overrides the prohibition of incest, on the basis of Lot’s daughters’ own judgment, who probably didn’t know how to read and write all that well, and certainly didn’t have leading halakhic decisors there telling them what to do. There are other examples too. Okay, all the best, goodbye.