Topics in Halakhic Thought – Lecture 18

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, hello friends. In the previous sessions we talked about tolerance, pluralism, halakhic truth, monism versus pluralism, and I distinguished between tolerant monism and intolerant monism. Can everyone hear me there on Zoom? Yes. Okay, good. And they can hear from there and not from the computer too.

[Speaker B] We can’t see you, but we can hear you. When you do screen share, they don’t see you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, right, that really is beyond me—how do they see both me and the screen share? What? No, and on my end too I only see the screen share, not myself.

[Speaker D] I think each viewer can set it up on his own so he sees both you and the screen.

[Speaker E] I see myself there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t see myself, only the screen share.

[Speaker D] Right, I think everyone can set that up for themselves.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, maybe I’ll do this here, I’ll put myself like this. There, now you see me in the big picture there, so that’s okay. Wait, actually that’s me seeing myself—what do you see? Do you see me or only the shared screen? You see the text, only the text. Yes.

[Speaker B] Just a second, let’s try “show active speaker.” There, now we managed to fix it. Everyone can go in and do “show active speaker,” and then they’ll see you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Show active speaker—where?

[Speaker B] In Zoom. Wherever each person has it. We see you in a small picture on the side, everything’s fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no show active speaker here. Okay, fine, over there I made it so they can see me, but how do I see both my parallels with it—this is there basically—okay, fine. So you can see me together with the text.

[Speaker B] We see you in active speaker, in show active speaker.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so whoever hasn’t done that can do it. Fine. So I’ll briefly summarize what came up last time. Last time—in the previous sessions, really—I distinguished between halakhic monism and halakhic pluralism. Halakhic monism is the view that there is one halakhic truth. Pluralism says that there are many truths, or several halakhic truths. After that I distinguished between tolerant monism and intolerant monism, and I said that tolerant monism is basically the view that there is halakhic truth, but I’m willing to contain, take into account, and not force out other views, even though I think they’re mistaken. I distinguished between tolerant monism and pluralism, because on the face of it they look similar, but they’re not. There are differences between them. And now I just want to wrap up this topic. In the first part of the class I’ll finish the topic by learning this Ritva that appears here in front of you. First of all, the Talmudic text—but maybe a methodological introduction first. I don’t remember whether I already gave it, but I think it’s worth paying attention to.

Okay, first of all, when we want to examine an issue like this—pluralism, monism, tolerance, and so on—in a Torah context, how are we supposed to do it? I want to examine for myself how I reach a conclusion on this question: is Jewish law monistic, is it pluralistic, monistic and tolerant, intolerant—how can I actually investigate that? Usually this is done by studying sources, some philosophical works or meta-halakhic works, halakhic thought of one thinker or another. One thinker or another can say that Jewish law is tolerant, Jewish law is pluralistic, or whatever. But I’m not—I talked about this once, I talked about it in a class on autonomy in halakhic ruling. There I said I don’t have much confidence in that method of inquiry. The truth is I don’t have much confidence in non-halakhic literature בכלל, but certainly not when I come to clarify questions of this kind. Because in philosophical literature, or in introductions to halakhic books, or in texts that are not really halakhic texts, people tend to write things imprecisely—ideas without defining the concepts well enough. So very often it’s hard to understand exactly what they want, and in my opinion they themselves also don’t always make it clear to themselves what they want.

I think I gave this example: the Maharshal writes in a few places, as part of his polemic against the Shulchan Arukh, that he is in favor of deciding Jewish law in disputes among Tannaim and Amoraim on the basis of proofs—not only among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), but even among Tannaim and Amoraim, which is something nobody would even dream of. Usually we rule like one Tanna or one Amora by force of rules of decision of one sort or another. We never say, wait, this Mishnah goes against Abaye, therefore the Jewish law here follows Rava, or decide logically that the Jewish law follows Rabbi Shimon and not Rabbi Yehuda. We don’t do that. On the contrary, if we find some source against Rabbi Shimon, then obviously we have to reconcile the source in order to explain why Rabbi Shimon is not contradicted by it either—or Abaye, or the Rashba, or Maimonides, or whoever it may be. That’s generally what we do in analytical classes. We reconcile all the sources according to each of the positions. We never say, wait, this source is difficult for him, therefore the Jewish law does not follow him.

The Maharshal says, no, I will decide by proofs in disputes among Tannaim and in disputes among Amoraim. Obviously this was written as part of his polemic against the Shulchan Arukh. There was the whole codification and canonization polemic and so on, and he came out against the Shulchan Arukh’s approach of writing a book based on a majority among the three pillars of decision—the Rif, the Rosh, and Maimonides—and expecting that we, too, will read his book and rule Jewish law according to what he wrote there, instead of through our own analysis of the passage and reaching conclusions. And the Maharal too took part in that argument, and the Maharal’s brother wrote a book, Vikuach Mayim Chayim, on the subject.

So on the one hand the Maharshal writes that. On the other hand, in the Maharshal’s responsa—and I already mentioned this—if you read the different responsa, you’ll see that all in all he’s pretty standard. He brings views of various medieval authorities, discusses them, explains various things, and in the end reaches a conclusion, sometimes even according to a majority of opinions or what people generally do. How does that fit with what he wrote in those other places where he made very radical declarations about autonomy in halakhic ruling? That’s what we discussed in the class on autonomy in ruling. I explained there that when you are dealing with a responsum, with actual halakhic ruling, that’s really the book that deals with halakhic ruling in the truest sense. Even a halakhic book like Yam Shel Shlomo or the Shulchan Arukh isn’t entirely halakhic ruling; it’s setting down a principled law. But when you come to a case and you have to decide right now what to do in this case—that is the clearest kind of halakhic ruling there is. And there he behaves much more cautiously than in declarations. There, in the end, he does not so quickly go against all the great medieval authorities. And for me that is an indication that if you really want to know how the Maharshal works in Jewish law, go to his responsa, not to his declarations. In declarations a person does things—again, I’m not saying he’s lying or anything—but he’s charting some path that in principle he really believes in and really tries to promote against the Rema and the Shulchan Arukh and everyone else. But in practice it doesn’t happen that way, it doesn’t work that way.

And in the context of monism and pluralism I also mentioned this with regard to Avi Sagi’s book These and Those. He brings many sources there and tries to extract from each one whether it’s monist, pluralist, or harmonist—those are the three options he presents there; he doesn’t get into tolerance there, and by the way I think that’s a major methodological mistake. What happens is that he takes sources that are only philosophical sources. Where are you going to find a halakhic source that talks about whether there is one halakhic truth or not? That will always be done through meta-halakhic or philosophical sources. A halakhic source does not deal with that question: how many halakhic truths are there? So by nature he brings philosophical or meta-halakhic sources, introductions to books—the introduction to Ketzot, the introduction to Shev Shema‘teta, those famous books, Igrot Moshe. But when you look carefully, you see that it’s not written precisely. You can’t extract a genuine position from there. Many of those sources talk about tolerant monism and not about pluralism, contrary to how he understood them. In my opinion, from none of the sources he brought—and there are dozens there—you can really extract a pluralist position. And not for nothing, because that is an incoherent position; there is no such position as halakhic pluralism. I also brought a proof of that through a kind of logical loop about how to relate pluralistically to the different interpretations of the rule “These and those are the words of the living God.” How would the pluralist relate to disagreement about pluralism? But okay, we already discussed that.

For our purposes, what I want to argue here is the same thing. When I want to test tolerance and pluralism and monism and all these approaches, I want to test it in Jewish law. Not in meta-halakhic literature, not in philosophical literature, not in introductions. I want to test it in Jewish law. The question is how. How can I find a halakhic passage or a halakhic source from whose legal conclusion I can derive the meta-halakhic conception? Because that’s where I have confidence. Meaning, if someone rules Jewish law and is prepared, I don’t know what, to desecrate the Sabbath over it—to decide what is forbidden, what is permitted, what is obligatory—that means he stands behind it. So if I derive something from that, I can take it seriously.

Now look, there are two passages, really—two obvious ones to use. And this is the issue of what we are supposed to do when I have a halakhic dispute with you. Okay, what’s your name? Or. Or. I have a halakhic dispute with Or, okay? Now the question is: Or thinks it’s forbidden to eat something, and I think it’s permitted. Am I allowed to cause Or to eat that thing, which according to his view is forbidden and according to my view is permitted? So first let’s do an a priori calculation, an initial calculation. If we assume pluralism, what will the answer be? Forbidden. So forbidden. Right? Because according to your approach it’s forbidden, and that’s what determines things for you. True, I think it’s permitted—so what? From my point of view it’s permitted, but from your point of view it’s forbidden. And when I cause you to stumble, I have to judge it according to whether for you it is forbidden, not whether for me it is forbidden. Therefore, if you assume a pluralist position, it should be forbidden. Which by the way teaches you that pluralism is not always more lenient. In this case pluralism comes out stringent.

If I assume a monist position, then it’s permitted. Why should I care that you think it’s forbidden? Truth is one. And if I think it’s permitted—or I might be mistaken, I’m not sure—but if that is my assumption and that is how I rule, then I should relate to it as something permitted. So you think it’s forbidden—so what? You’re mistaken. But that doesn’t mean I caused you to sin with something forbidden; I caused you to do something permitted, because I rule that it’s permitted. Therefore monism here goes in the lenient direction and pluralism here goes in the stringent direction. Can we find a halakhic source that deals with this question: am I allowed to cause you to stumble in something that according to your view is forbidden and according to my view is permitted? Or the reverse, by the way—the reverse too. If according to me it’s forbidden and according to you it’s permitted, then the pluralist would permit me to cause you to stumble and the monist would forbid it, right? I can find either kind of passage. As it happens, I found two. One is in tractate Sukkah; the second I may mention from Chullin. But one of them is in tractate Sukkah.

And it works like this. Can you see the page that’s projected there? Yes, yes. So I’m highlighting the relevant section. It was stated: all right? It was stated. If the decorations of a sukkah are suspended four handbreadths below it—that is, if there are ornaments hanging in the sukkah and they are four handbreadths or more away from the roofing—Rav Nachman said it is valid; Rav Chisda and Rabbah bar Rav Huna said it is invalid. Meaning, Rav Nachman says you can sit under those decorations; that is considered sitting under the shade of the roofing. And Rav Chisda and Rabbah bar Rav Huna say it is forbidden.

What happened, of course, was that Rav Chisda and Rabbah bar Rav Huna came to the house of the Exilarch. And of course, who was the chief rabbi in the house of the Exilarch? Rav Nachman, because he was basically the leading sage there. In Babylonia in his period, he was the chief rabbi of Babylonia, yes. So he was sitting in the Exilarch’s house. Rav Nachman lodged them in a sukkah whose decorations were four handbreadths below it. In other words, Rav Nachman housed them there, fed them, whatever, put them up in a sukkah whose decorations were four handbreadths away from the roofing. I remind you: according to Rav Huna and Rav Chisda’s view, this is forbidden. According to Rav Nachman’s view, it is permitted. He seated them in such a sukkah. They remained silent and said nothing to him. They said nothing, sat in the sukkah, that was it—ate, slept, I don’t know what they did there.

He said to them: Have the rabbis retracted their teaching? He asks them, tell me, rabbis, have you retracted your halakhic position? How are you sitting in such a sukkah? According to your view it’s invalid. They said to him—they kind of laughed at him—they said: We are emissaries on a commandment, and emissaries on a commandment are exempt from sukkah. You thought you got us, but no. We’re emissaries on a commandment, we don’t have to sit in a sukkah at all. We could go have a picnic on the beach. So we had a picnic in a sukkah with decorations hanging four handbreadths below; as far as we’re concerned that’s not a sukkah, so what? We aren’t obligated in sukkah. Okay? That’s the story.

The big question here, of course, is not what they answered him, but how Rav Nachman could do that to them. Was he allowed to do it? I’m marking the Ritva—do you see the Ritva I marked? Yes. Okay.

Rav Chisda and Rabbah bar Rav Huna came to the house of the Exilarch; he lodged them in a sukkah whose decorations were four handbreadths below it. Explanation: and even though Rav Nachman still did not know that they had retracted their teaching or that they were emissaries on a commandment—after all, when he seated them there initially, first, even if they had retracted their position, he still didn’t know they had retracted; he only asked afterward. And second, certainly he didn’t know that they were emissaries on a commandment and exempt from sukkah. So the question is how he was allowed from the outset to seat them there in that sukkah.

So he says: he lodged them there according to his own view, because according to him it was permitted, and he was not concerned that it was a self-imposed prohibition for them and that they were sitting in an invalid sukkah and reciting a blessing there improperly, and that this would be like placing a stumbling block before one who can see. What does that mean? He was not concerned that he was feeding them something that according to them was forbidden, that they were sitting in an invalid sukkah according to them, and reciting a blessing over the invalid sukkah—not only eating outside the sukkah, but also a blessing in vain, improperly—and that this would be like placing a stumbling block before one who can see. He was, in effect, placing a stumbling block.

Now the wording here is very interesting. We know that placing a stumbling block is written in the Torah as “Do not place a stumbling block before the blind.” Here he says, “and this would be like placing a stumbling block before one who can see.” Why does he change from the language of the Torah or the standard language? Because of what he is about to say. Some say that from here we learn—from this passage—that one who feeds his fellow something that is permitted to him according to his own view does not violate “do not place a stumbling block before the blind.” Yes, from the fact that Rav Nachman permitted himself to do such a thing, we see that one who feeds another something that according to the other person is forbidden does not violate “before the blind.” Even though he knows that for his fellow it is forbidden according to that fellow’s view—and his fellow is himself qualified to issue rulings. Meaning, Rav Nachman’s guests were competent decisors; it’s not that they were ignoramuses and Rav Nachman said, okay, this is what I think, they’re ignoramuses, I’ll rely on what I say, I’m ruling for them here, who cares that they think otherwise, they’re not in the game. No. Here they were fit to issue rulings; these were two Amoraim. Even so, Rav Nachman was permitted to rely on his own opinion, and he does not violate “before the blind”—for the one feeding was also fit to issue rulings, namely Rav Nachman, and relies on his own view to feed himself and others according to his own view. Up to here—I’ll pause.

[Speaker B] Monist. Monist, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That Rav Nachman—if I’m allowed to feed someone something that according to his own view is forbidden, what does that mean? That I’m not a pluralist, I’m a monist. If according to me it’s permitted, then it’s permitted. Why should I care that he’s mistaken and thought it was forbidden? Quite clearly, the Ritva is expressing here a monist position—not only expressing it, he proves it from the Talmud. In the Talmud… here we see that Jewish law is monistic. There, we found the source we were looking for. We have a halakhic source from which one can infer that Jewish law is monistic.

Now look at the continuation—it’s no less interesting. “And it seems to me that here specifically it is because the prohibition is recognizable to his fellow, and if he holds that it is forbidden he will not eat; but where it is not recognizable to his fellow, no.” The Ritva now seems to throw the baby out with the bathwater. He says: but it seems to me that the only case in which I’m allowed to feed you something that according to your view is forbidden is where it is recognizable to you—where you see that we’re dealing with that very item. If I give you something to eat and you don’t know what it is, I know that according to your view it’s forbidden and according to mine it’s permitted, and you don’t know what it is—then, says the Ritva, I’m forbidden to give it to you. Exactly—that’s why he said “one who can see” earlier. Just a second. But if I give you something where it is recognizable to you, where you do know that this is the thing about which we have a dispute, the thing you think is forbidden, then I have not violated “before the blind”; you can decide to do what you want, because you know what we’re talking about. Now ostensibly—well, let’s keep reading a moment: “And we say there”—that’s the passage in Chullin—“Far be it from the descendants of Abba bar Abba that they should feed him something he does not hold by,” in the chapter Kol HaBasar. “Therefore my teacher, the rabbi, may his light shine, ruled for me accordingly.” What does that mean? “My teacher, the rabbi, may his light shine” is the Ra’ah, the Ritva’s teacher. And he ruled this way in practice. The proof is from the Talmudic passage here that it is permitted, but he adds another qualification: only if it is recognizable to the other party, and he proves that from the passage in Chullin. By the way, the Ra’ah is there on the passage in Chullin; whoever wants can look in the Be’er Sheva there on that Talmudic passage in Chullin 114.

“However, where Jewish law has been decisively ruled not in accordance with him, whether for himself or for others, it is forbidden.” Of course, if the law in this dispute has already been decided, and it was decided not like you, then it is forbidden both for you yourself to act as you think and for others to act as you think; you are forbidden to let others eat on the basis of what you think, because Jewish law was decided otherwise. The Ritva says all this applies only where there is a dispute that has not yet been settled. When the dispute has not yet been settled, I am allowed to feed you something that according to my view is permitted and according to your view is forbidden—provided that you know that this is what it is. And as Or pointed out before, that is exactly why he writes in the third line, if you see it there, “and it is like placing a stumbling block before one who can see.” He’s sort of signaling in advance to draw our attention to the fact that the case here is not placing a stumbling block before the blind, but before one who can see. This is someone who knows what’s going on, not someone who is blind.

Now the question is this: from the first part of his words—where he says it is permitted to feed—we proved monism, right? But doesn’t he then throw the baby out with the bathwater and basically undermine that proof entirely? After all, he says that everything about my being allowed to feed you applies only once you know. If you know, then it’s your decision; it’s not my causing you to stumble. “Before the blind,” placing a stumbling block before the blind, that’s—

[Speaker B] Like—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t even matter to me, maybe yes maybe no, but certainly there’s no proof here in favor of monism. Okay? But that’s not correct. Why not? The passage about “before the blind” in tractate Avodah Zarah, 6b I think, deals there with one who hands a cup of wine to a Nazirite, or a limb from a living animal to a non-Jew. Okay? Let’s think about the case of handing a cup of wine to a Nazirite. We’re talking about two sides of the river—that we’re sitting on opposite banks. Because if it’s not two sides of the river, then you can take the cup yourself; you don’t need me. In that case there is no Torah prohibition of “before the blind,” at least not on the Torah level—maybe there is a rabbinic prohibition, that’s a dispute among Tosafot. But there is no Torah prohibition. We’re talking about a situation of two sides of the river. Meaning, I’m sitting on one side of the river, next to me there’s a cup of wine, and on the other side of the river sits a Nazirite. The Nazirite says to me: please pass me the cup of wine, because I want to drink wine. A Nazirite is forbidden to drink wine, okay? Am I allowed to hand him the cup of wine? The answer is no. If I hand it to him, that is “before the blind.” Is that talking about a case where the Nazirite doesn’t know it’s wine? Or that the Nazirite doesn’t know he’s a Nazirite, forgot that he’s a Nazirite? Of course not. We’re talking about someone who knows he is a Nazirite, and knows this is wine, and knows that a Nazirite is forbidden to drink wine. He asks me for the cup, I give him the cup, and now the decision is his. He can drink the cup, he can pour it out. Why do I violate “before the blind”?

The answer is that I violate “before the blind” not because I cause him to stumble on account of his blindness, but because I cause him to stumble in this sense: without me he would not have been able to commit the prohibition he wants to commit. He wants to commit a prohibition. But if without me he could not have done it because it is two sides of the river, then my assistance constitutes the transgression. Even though the final decision is his. The condition is not that I necessarily cause him to commit the transgression, but that without me he could not commit it. That is the criterion of “before the blind.” It makes no difference whether he wants to commit the transgression intentionally. That’s irrelevant. If he could not have done it without me because it is two sides of the river, and I am the one enabling him to do the transgression, then even if he does it deliberately and knowingly, I have violated “before the blind.” That’s the rule.

So if that’s true, let’s come back to our case. What is the Ritva telling us? The Ritva says that I am allowed to cause you to stumble in something that according to your view is forbidden and according to my view is permitted, as long as I reveal to you—so that it is recognizable to you—that this is the thing over which there is a dispute, the thing that you think is forbidden. Now I say: either way, if the Ritva is a monist, then this should be permitted whether I reveal it to you or not reveal it to you. What difference does it make? The truth is what I think, and from my standpoint that is the halakhic truth. So the Ritva’s distinction between whether I reveal it to you and whether I don’t is not clear.

If I’m a pluralist, then this should be forbidden whether I reveal it to you or not. What difference does it make if I reveal it to you? At most, then you are the one who chose to commit the prohibition. But even when you choose to commit the prohibition, if without me you can’t do it, then I violate “before the blind.” So what does it help that I revealed it to you? I revealed it to you and you decided to be a sinner. The fact that I enabled you to be a sinner—even if you do it knowingly—I still violate “before the blind.” So either way, whether you are a monist or a pluralist, it is unclear what room there is for the Ritva’s distinction between whether I reveal it to you and whether I do not reveal it to you. Either in both cases it is permitted or in both cases it is forbidden. But how can there be a situation in which if I reveal it to you it is permitted, and if I don’t reveal it to you it is forbidden? That fits neither monism nor pluralism.

And that is wonderful, because the only thing it does fit is tolerant monism. Let me remind you again: tolerant monism means that I think there is one halakhic truth, and therefore the conclusion I reached is, from my point of view, the halakhic truth. You think otherwise; in my opinion, you are mistaken. Okay? Again, I’m not certain of that, but that’s my position. I reached this conclusion. If it turns out I was wrong, then I was wrong. But this is what I think; from my point of view this is the halakhic truth. Okay? Except—what is the difference between tolerant monism and intolerant monism? That even though I think you are mistaken, I respect your autonomy, and I recognize—or not just recognize, I think it is proper—that you should act according to what you think, even though in my opinion that is a mistake. If you think otherwise, then that is what you are supposed to do, and I certainly am supposed to respect that. That is the basis of tolerant monism.

Intolerant monism says no: I am supposed to make sure that you do what is true. I don’t care what you think or don’t think. If the truth is that this is permitted or that this is forbidden, I won’t let you eat it—I’ll force you. That’s intolerant monism. Tolerant monism means I think I’m right and you’re wrong. Right? We talked about the fact that tolerance requires monism. But I respect your right—and indeed your duty—to be mistaken, your duty to behave according to what seems right to you, even if that is a mistake. That is exactly what the Ritva says.

What does the Ritva say? In principle I’m a monist, and therefore I am basically allowed to cause others to stumble in a prohibition that is a prohibition only according to their own view. But I am supposed to give them the possibility of deciding their own path, to respect their autonomy, even though in my view they are mistaken. Where do you see that? How can I cause them to stumble in a prohibition if according to me it’s permitted? They aren’t really violating any prohibition. So I did not cause them to stumble in a prohibition—but I did violate their autonomy. I decided for them what they would do; they did not decide what they were doing. That is a violation of autonomy, and it runs against the value of tolerance. The Ritva says I must reveal it to them. What happens when I reveal it to them? There is no violation of the value of tolerance, of the value of autonomy, because they decide what they do. “Before the blind”—or if you want, a lack of tolerance—does not apply. And that, says the Ritva, is forbidden. Why is it forbidden? Is that also called “before the blind”? He doesn’t say, I don’t know. On the face of it, it’s not “before the blind,” because I didn’t cause them to stumble in a prohibition—I’m a monist. But true, I violated their autonomy, and from the Ritva’s perspective he says it is forbidden to do that. Maybe it’s a moral prohibition, I don’t know exactly—whether it is literally “before the blind” or not.

Now look what we actually got here. This halakhic laboratory experiment is much better than I expected in advance. From the outset I thought this situation would be the halakhic practical difference that would decide whether Jewish law is monistic or pluralistic. It turns out it’s much more than that—the resolution is much finer. It’s litmus paper with three outcomes, not two. It can decide whether Jewish law is pluralistic, monistic and intolerant, or monistic and tolerant. Not only between monism and pluralism, but at a higher resolution. Why? If Jewish law is pluralistic, then it is forbidden in every case, whether you reveal it or whether you don’t reveal it. If Jewish law is monistic—if it is monistic and intolerant—then it is permitted in every case, whether you reveal it or whether you don’t reveal it. If Jewish law is monistic and tolerant, then it is permitted if you reveal it, and forbidden if you don’t reveal it. That’s really terrific.

So this case is a halakhic question—not a meta-halakhic question, not a philosophical one—a question of permitted and forbidden. And it is an exact laboratory through which one can examine whether Jewish law is pluralistic, monistic and tolerant, or monistic and intolerant. And the result, according to the Ritva in this passage, is clearly that Jewish law is monistic, first of all. From the passage in Chullin it emerges that this monism applies only if I reveal it to you and not if I do not reveal it to you. The combination of the two passages together gives us tolerant monism. That is basically the conclusion. There’s no need to go to books of thought, or philosophy, or introductions, or anything. Here we have a halakhic practical difference that decides the question.

[Speaker E] Rabbi, if we say that Jewish law is monistic and tolerant, then that means that this value of tolerance must itself be a halakhic value, no? Because we said Jewish law isn’t committed to morality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not—again, the Ritva himself doesn’t write this here. It could be that Jewish law is monistic and tolerance is a non-halakhic value. Okay? Even so, in terms of what the man of Jewish law is obligated to do, he’s supposed to behave in a monistic yet tolerant way. He needs to be monistic because that’s the halakhic outlook; he needs to be tolerant because that’s the moral outlook. But even in applying Jewish law, we’re supposed to apply moral principles, to be tolerant. That’s one possibility. Or maybe he folds all of this into “do not place a stumbling block”—I don’t know. It’s not stated clearly in the Ritva, so I don’t know. Okay? Okay. So basically this litmus test gives us the answer we were waiting for. Maybe I’ll add one more comment. You know, there’s some common saying out there. People really want—people are already fed up with all the disputes, the different approaches and customs, Sephardim and Ashkenazim and all that. Let the Messiah come, let them establish a Sanhedrin, and they’ll decide all the disputes and everything, and then we’ll all have one Jewish law and one set of what’s permitted and forbidden, right and wrong, and everything will be clear. There won’t be all the chaos going on now, where everyone behaves differently. In other words, there’s a certain feeling of distress because there are different positions and different halakhic forms of behavior. Maybe also because of the polemics and quarrels that arise from those differing positions, when sometimes we don’t treat each other with tolerance. I don’t know, maybe that’s part of it. But that’s the approach. I, by the way, think exactly the opposite. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a nightmare. A Sanhedrin gets established, the Messiah comes, they decide all the disputes, and then they force me to behave in a way I don’t think one should behave—in a way I think is forbidden. But that’s not because I’m a pluralist. It’s because I’m a tolerant monist. Because I think there’s value in autonomy: if I think one should behave in a certain way, then it’s incumbent upon me to behave that way. Regardless of whether it’s actually right or wrong. Of course I think it’s also right, but maybe I’m wrong about that. Still, my duty is to act the way I think. The Sanhedrin has no business making me behave correctly—let’s say they decide that this is what’s right, meaning that what I’m doing is not right—so what? Even if it’s not right, I’m still supposed to behave that way because that’s what I think. You may remember—I think I mentioned this example—the Talmud in Eruvin says that the Sages did not rule according to Rabbi Meir because his colleagues could not fully grasp his reasoning. The question is: if he was such an enormous genius that they couldn’t fully grasp him, that should be a reason to rule in accordance with him all the time. Maybe if you disagree with him and you don’t understand, then apparently the lack of understanding is because you’re too small—you don’t understand him. That should be a reason to rule in accordance with him, not not to rule in accordance with him. How can it be that they didn’t rule like him because they couldn’t fully grasp his reasoning? I think the answer is—well, you could force an answer and say maybe they couldn’t fully grasp him, meaning they simply didn’t understand what he was saying. You can’t act according to an approach you don’t understand. But that’s nonsense. If you’re unsure about something, ask Rabbi Meir: permitted or forbidden? That’s it. Whatever he says, do. What exactly is unclear here? I think the explanation is different. If you don’t understand what he’s saying, even though he’s a genius—if you don’t understand what he’s saying, you’re supposed to do what you understand. Even though you yourself understand that the truth is probably with him, because you also understand that he’s greater than you and there’s a better chance that he’s getting at the truth than that you are. And nevertheless, if you don’t understand why that is the truth, and in your view that’s not the Jewish law, then you’re supposed to behave the way you think. Notice: even though I myself understand there’s a good chance I’m mistaken. Because in most cases that doesn’t happen—in most cases I also think I’m right, so there’s nothing very novel in my behaving according to my own opinion. Here the claim is that even I understand that Rabbi Meir is far greater than I am, and if I disagree with him it’s probably because I missed something, didn’t understand something. And still, I’m supposed to behave the way I think. If his colleagues could not fully grasp Rabbi Meir’s reasoning, then they were supposed to act not like Rabbi Meir, but the way they thought. And I’ll go back to the Sanhedrin: it seems to me that if a Sanhedrin were ever established here, then hopefully the people sitting there would truly understand what the role of a Sanhedrin is. It seems to me that most—most of the people whom today you might see as candidates for the Sanhedrin, they’re not there. If they establish a Sanhedrin here today, I’m fleeing to Australia. But if they establish a Sanhedrin when a Sanhedrin really ought to be established, it seems to me that it will understand that its job is not to decide Jewish law in general. Its job is to ensure life—proper halakhic life. There are situations in which there needs to be a uniform position so that we can function socially, eat in one another’s homes, or things of that kind. Those are the things they’ll have to decide. On those matters they’ll decide, and once they decide, that will of course bind everyone. But regarding a large part of things, if it doesn’t interfere with the proper management of life, they won’t decide them—even though they have a position and they can vote and arrive at a conclusion as to what is correct. They won’t decide them because there is value in autonomy. They will allow each person to do what he thinks, so long as one can function properly and healthily even while doing different things. At those points where one decision must be made in order to close these matters out—there they’ll decide. Today someone asked me: his daughter is getting married, he’s Sephardi, his daughter is marrying an Ashkenazi—what should they do now with their customs? I told him: draw lots. It doesn’t matter—let them decide whatever they want, there is no halakhic ruling on the question; do whatever you want. But assuming each one does what he wants—say she’ll eat rice on Passover and he won’t eat rice on Passover. If they can live with that, then good health to them—she’ll eat rice and he won’t eat rice. If they can’t live with that, then there, the Sanhedrin so to speak—there you’ll need to make some decision that both of you can accept. But if you can live with it, then why decide? She’ll eat rice and you won’t eat rice, that’s all—what’s the problem? The same in the public context. It is not the role of the Sanhedrin to decide all Jewish law—that’s simply not correct. The Sanhedrin needs to decide in those places where a decision is required. You know, even the most pluralistic position imaginable—the one that says every citizen in a state should do what he understands and behave as he thinks—what do you do about an agreement with the Palestinians? Every citizen should do what he thinks? There a decision must be made: either there is an agreement or there isn’t. There’s no choice; a decision has to be made, a vote by the majority, a government, whatever, according to the governing procedures accepted among us. But that’s a question about which a decision must be made; you can’t leave it to each person—even if I’m a pluralist, you can’t leave it to each person to do whatever he wants: this one will make an agreement with the Palestinians and that one won’t, and each person will return territory or not—you can’t function that way. That’s obviously an extreme case, but there are less extreme cases too where a decision must be made. If there’s no need to make a decision, there is no value in halakhic uniformity. There’s no value in it; on the contrary. Let each person do what he thinks. There’s that educational slogan that the Torah should not become like two Torahs, as if making the Torah into two Torahs. There is no value in that. Only where it creates dispute, or where it’s clear that it interferes with the proper management of life. Fine—in such places, yes, decisions really do need to be made. But how many such places are there already? Not many. Say, I don’t know, in the laws of eruvin. There maybe decisions would have to be made. Because if some people are stringent about an eruv and some are lenient about an eruv, and you make one eruv around the city, you want it to enable everyone to carry. So you need to decide who’s right, or make the stricter eruv, whatever. Fine, so there are topics where a decision will be needed because you can’t function otherwise. But in most things there is no value at all in uniformity. Meaning, each person should do what he understands and conduct himself according to what he… not because there is no truth. The Sanhedrin can discuss and reach a decision as to what the truth is. But without publishing it and without forcing people to do it. Leave them alone and receive reward. But still, a person should do what he thinks. I’ll tell you more than that—I may have talked about this, I don’t remember anymore—in the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, and with this I’ll finish this topic. In the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, after all, a heavenly voice came out and said the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel. We talked about this Talmudic passage in Eruvin. There are amoraim who rule like Beit Shammai in various topics—not a few, actually. How can that be? The Talmud says that the words of Beit Shammai in place of Beit Hillel are not even Mishnah. That was already settled in the time of the tannaim. So how do amoraim allow themselves to rule like Beit Shammai on various questions? These leniencies and stringencies of Beit Shammai at the meal, or all the first mishnayot in Beitzah—there are several places where the ruling follows Beit Shammai. There are more examples. But a heavenly voice came out. There is no more unequivocal ruling than the ruling in the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel in favor of Beit Hillel. The Talmud says that one who acts according to the words of Beit Shammai and is stringent—you would deserve liability for yourself for having followed the stringency of Beit Shammai. The words of Beit Shammai in place of Beit Hillel are not even Mishnah. The point is this, and it connects to what I said about the Sanhedrin. When the heavenly voice ruled like Beit Hillel against Beit Shammai, what it said was: look, if you’re looking for a peg on which to hang your clothes—whoever wants to hang himself may hang on a great tree. If you want—if you don’t have a position of your own, and you want to know which sage to rely on—rely on Beit Hillel. But if you have a position of your own, do what you think. How does that connect to the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel? There are two tannaim who disagree. I think like one of them, so from my perspective there’s no doubt. That’s what I think, that’s what I’ll do. If I don’t have a position and I ask myself, okay, I don’t have a position of my own—on which tanna should I rely? That’s where Jewish law is ruled. They rule Jewish law—rely on this tanna or on that tanna. A halakhic ruling is understood in that sense as applying only to someone who has no position of his own and is asking himself, okay, so what do I rely on if I have no position of my own? That is halakhic ruling. If you have a position of your own, do what you think. That is not what halakhic ruling was meant for. And therefore, if a particular amora rules like Beit Shammai because that’s what he thinks, he does not need to get worked up over the fact that a heavenly voice came out and ruled like Beit Hillel. The heavenly voice merely said that whoever wants to hang on a certain tree—not someone who has a position of his own—should hang on Beit Hillel. After all, Beit Shammai continued to act according to their own view even after the ruling. And that’s what the Talmud says: they did not refrain from marrying women from one another, and so on, even though they practiced differently. Why did they practice differently? Once the heavenly voice came out, that should be it—everyone has to behave like Beit Hillel, no? No. Beit Shammai continued to behave the way they thought. The whole meaning of the ruling is only what those not involved in the dispute should do—those who have no position of their own. You’re looking for a halakhic decisor: who is the decisor you should hang on? That’s Beit Hillel. Who is the decisor to hang on. But if you have a position of your own, you’re not looking for a decisor to hang on—you do what you think. This is actually very similar to what I said about the Sanhedrin. The role of halakhic ruling is to solve problems, not to force people to behave in a way that they themselves do not think is the right way to behave. That is not the role of halakhic ruling. Okay, with this I’m finishing this topic of monism and tolerance and pluralism, and I’m moving on to the next topic. Let’s take a two- or three-minute break just to refresh ourselves; that’s what we did during the Zoom period, and we’re still almost in the Zoom period, so let’s take a few minutes’ break and come back here at, say, 4:05. Okay? One more minute and we’ll start. All right, hello everyone, we’re back. So let’s move on to our next topic. A very interesting topic. It’s connected both to the weekly Torah portion and to current issues, as they say. We’re going to talk about the issue of settling the Land of Israel. The commandment of settling the Land of Israel. There is a famous dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides as to whether settling the Land of Israel is a Torah commandment or not. Nachmanides counts it in his enumeration of the commandments, among the positive commandments. Maimonides does not count it. And there’s a lot to discuss there: why Maimonides doesn’t count it. Does he hold that it is not a commandment? Or does he hold that it is a general commandment that includes many things? Today we’ll try to see a bit from the sources and from the later authorities how they relate to this. Okay, let’s begin. Just turn on your cameras, those who turned them off, okay? Oren, Ohad, anyone else? Ben? Okay. Shilo, what’s up? Gideon, Rafael, I see there are more here. Turn them on, turn them on so we can see you. I’m teaching now.

[Speaker G] Rabbi, the second Gideon is me, I just logged in from the computer so I could see better.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, fine.

[Speaker F] I don’t know if you read my message too, my phone just shut off suddenly. It’s okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All right. Is Rafael with us? Needs analysis. Okay, fine, I want now to move to the topic of changes in Jewish law. I’ll start maybe with the well-known words of the Meiri regarding the change in attitude toward gentiles. The Meiri writes in several places in his commentary on the Talmud that the laws discussed in those passages are laws that apply to the ancient gentiles who were not bound by the norms of the nations. But in his generation, where the gentiles were already bound by the norms of the nations—that is, they conduct themselves in a reasonable, human, moral way—then the laws, some of them Torah-level laws and some rabbinic laws, no longer apply to them. That’s what the Meiri writes in dozens and dozens of places. Not one or two places—dozens of places. I’ll perhaps bring one extreme example: the Meiri in the eighth chapter of Yoma writes—as we know, according to Jewish law it is forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a gentile. That’s an explicit Talmudic passage. The Meiri says: that’s about the ancient gentiles. As for the gentiles of his time, not only is it permitted, but their status is like that of Jews in every respect. One desecrates the Sabbath in order to save them; it probably implies that this is an obligation, not merely that it is permitted. But even if it’s only permitted, that’s a huge novelty. We’re talking here about desecration of the Sabbath, a prohibition punishable by stoning. Okay? One who desecrates the Sabbath is considered an apostate with respect to the entire Torah. We’re not talking here about some marginal permission that can be granted casually or on one consideration or another. The Meiri gives a clear and unequivocal permission here. How? How does that happen? How does the Meiri suddenly decide that dozens and dozens of laws that are explicit in the Talmud, some Torah-level and some rabbinic, are null and void? Why? Because the gentiles now behave well, unlike the gentiles of the past. So in truth, this difficulty led to… as is known, the Meiri is a relatively recent work, meaning it was not available to the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and the early later authorities. It came out, I think, in the last century or something like that, so it was not before quite a few generations. And therefore the discussion of the Meiri’s words arose at a very late stage, really only in the most recent generations. And there there is something close to a consensus, I would say, among the later authorities—that the Meiri wrote his words out of fear of censorship. He did not really mean seriously this reformist approach that he describes. It was written because of fear of censorship. You know, there are books that wrote, “Everything said here applies only to the ancient gentiles who existed once, but today, with the dear emperor, may his majesty be exalted, and all of them are masters of kindness and righteous people, and of course everything said in the Torah and in the Talmud doesn’t apply to them at all.” So these are well-known apologetics that were often said out of fear because of censorship. There were all kinds of apostates who knew how to learn and did censorship on behalf of the gentiles, and there was fear of saying the truth. And the claim is that with the Meiri too, this is not a genuine position but something said only as apologetics. There are several indications that this is not true. One indication is that the Meiri does this in a very, very systematic way throughout the passages. He writes it in a detailed fashion, he elaborates on it; it’s not something he tosses off casually. Second, someone who writes this only out of fear of censorship—and in all the examples, it’s like this; I don’t know of even one example where it isn’t—in all the examples where people wrote this, it appears in the introduction of the book, on the cover, on the first page: “Know that in this book, everything said about gentiles applies only to the gentiles of old, not to the gentiles of our day.” The Meiri—I don’t see the… I don’t know what the cover of the book looked like, I don’t know whether there was a cover to the book, what the manuscripts they found looked like—but the Meiri writes this inside his commentary, in the small print, in every single passage. And by the way, in all the passages—he doesn’t skip a single one. In every passage that enters into a law of this type, he notes this comment, this distinction, not on the first page. What gentile is going to go in and read the fine print? If you want to say it in order to get the gentiles off your back, write it in big letters on the first page and that’s it. It’s pretty clear that the Meiri means it seriously. But in truth that only strengthens the question: okay, so if he means it seriously, then that’s even more of a problem. How can that be? Was the Meiri a reformist? Is there some hint to reformism in the Torah? On the face of it this is really reformism. Maybe I’ll sharpen a bit more what exactly the Meiri is saying before I enter the question of reformism, because that is really the opening for our topic, changes in Jewish law. Reformism is basically the shadow hanging over this issue, okay? What does the Meiri say? The accepted approach to the Meiri is that the Meiri argued—and he lived in a Christian environment, in Provence—that the Christians around him were not idol worshipers, and the ancient laws were said in relation to idol worshipers. Now we need to remember: of course we are talking about the Catholics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In other words, these are not new Protestant approaches that arose from the sixteenth century and onward. Okay? So there is supposedly a tremendous novelty here—that Catholics are not idol worshipers. And there is an article by Yaakov Katz, Professor Yaakov Katz, on this subject, where he is indeed astonished, because the Meiri applies his conception very consistently, but he does not apply it regarding Christian ritual objects. In the passages in tractate Avodah Zarah that deal with the prohibition on ritual objects, there the Meiri does not note that this applies only to the ritual objects of ancient Christians or ancient idol worshipers, and not to the Christians of his own time. And Yaakov Katz writes an entire article explaining this, and says that the Meiri did not dare take the conclusions he had reached too far, and he gets into this psychology and that psychology and fears and this and that. Of course, maybe before I say what I think about the matter, there is another difficulty with this view of the Meiri: usually the Meiri writes, “the great compilers wrote such-and-such,” and sometimes he disagrees with them—the “great compilers” means Maimonides, right? Sometimes he disagrees with Maimonides, but he cites him and then says, and I disagree with him, or there is another opinion. Here he doesn’t cite him, doesn’t mention anything, just says it as a simple matter. He doesn’t say there are other opinions, Maimonides says otherwise, I disagree with him. Why? These two indications at least—and I think there are more—make it quite clear that this accepted interpretation of the Meiri is not correct. The Meiri did not mean to say that the gentiles of his time were not idol worshipers. What he said was that the gentiles of his time were enlightened idol worshipers. They behave—and that’s also what he writes—he writes that they are bound by the norms of the nations. What does that mean, bound by the norms of the nations? It means they behave in a civilized, moral way, not like the gentiles of old. What does that have to do with the question whether they are idol worshipers or not? They can be idol worshipers in terms of their religious belief, their form of worship, but their human behavior is fine. He never writes anywhere the argument that they are not idol worshipers. His interpreters, those who speak about him and identify his position as one saying that the Christians of his time were not idol worshipers, make an automatic connection between behavior and being an idol worshiper. That, in my opinion, is the Meiri’s novelty. The Meiri’s novelty is that being an idol worshiper is a formal halakhic question. Is your belief correct or incorrect? Is your form of worship idolatry or not idolatry? That has nothing to do with the question whether you behave like a civilized, polite, reasonable human being or not. It’s a completely different question. A person can be an idol worshiper—the most severe sin in the Torah, or almost the most severe sin in the Torah—and still behave like a cultured person. Behave normally. Be a good person. That can happen. True, the ancient gentiles generally weren’t like that. The ancient gentiles both worshiped idols and had degraded human conduct. Part of their idolatrous worship was also low pagan worship—defecating to Peor, or sexual immorality to Baal Peor, all sorts of things of that kind. Those are acts that are also unworthy, let’s say, on the human moral level. But it is not necessary that idolatry look like that. There can be more modern idol worshipers—Christianity—as Maimonides writes about Christianity, that it is actually some kind of monotheism that came to spread Jewish monotheism, Christianity and Islam, as Maimonides famously says in Guide for the Perplexed. So the Meiri argues that this is a more refined form of idolatry. From the standpoint of prohibition, from the halakhic standpoint, it is idolatry in every respect. From the moral standpoint, these are people of culture. And I called this, in an article I wrote on the subject, I said: the Meiri does not claim that Christians are not idol worshipers; he claims that they are enlightened idol worshipers. He breaks the link between enlightenment and religious criminality. It is not the same thing. We’ll talk more about that when we discuss Jewish law and morality in one of the upcoming topics. This solves the two difficulties I raised earlier. One difficulty: why doesn’t he cite Maimonides and disagree with him? Answer: because he doesn’t disagree with him. Maimonides says they are idol worshipers; he also says they are idol worshipers. He only argues that the people around him are enlightened people. Maimonides expressed no view about whether they were enlightened or unenlightened, and he also did not live in his environment, so there is no reason for Maimonides’ words to stand against his words. He spoke about the gentiles he knew around him. That has nothing to do with what Maimonides said. On the principled question whether this is idolatry or not, he agrees with Maimonides; he does not need to cite him and disagree with him, because he agrees with him. The second difficulty, what Yaakov Katz raised, was: why doesn’t he apply this to Christian ritual objects, when he says that the prohibition on ritual objects applies only to the ancient gentiles who were idol worshipers? The answer is that the prohibition on ritual objects has nothing to do with the moral level of the people. We are dealing with idolatry. There is no need for all the structures that Yaakov Katz built on this difficulty, because the difficulty is nonexistent from the outset. The Meiri does not argue that they are not idol worshipers; he argues that they are enlightened idol worshipers, but their ritual objects are forbidden because they are objects of idolatrous worship. So first of all, that is what the Meiri says. Now the question is an interesting one, because if the Meiri had said they are not idol worshipers, it seems to me that his novelty would have been much smaller. Because then he would be saying that the prohibitions stated in the Talmud are prohibitions stated about idol worshipers, not about gentiles in general, but about gentiles who are idol worshipers. If there are gentiles who are not idol worshipers, then it simply was not said about them. That would not be a change in Jewish law; it would be the correct application of Jewish law. Because if they are not idol worshipers, then there is nothing to apply the law to—the law deals with idol worshipers… By the way, in a great many laws concerning gentiles, there are major disputes among the medieval authorities as to whether this was said about a resident alien or not, which is basically the same question. A resident alien is a gentile who accepted upon himself the seven Noahide commandments—an enlightened gentile. And regarding many things, such as “do not show them favor” and various laws relating to gentiles, there is a dispute among the medieval authorities as to whether it applies to every gentile or only to a gentile who is not enlightened, who does not keep his seven commandments. In that sense, it would not be a novelty; it would be halakhic interpretation, not change. But if I’m right—that the Meiri does not mean to say that the gentiles around him are not idol worshipers; they are idol worshipers but enlightened—and therefore all these dozens of Torah-level and rabbinic laws are nullified, and it is permitted to desecrate the Sabbath, a prohibition punishable by stoning, in order to save their lives, against an explicit uncontested Talmudic ruling—how, how does he do that? Where—where did he get this idea that it was said only about unenlightened gentiles and not about enlightened gentiles? And here we really arrive at the doctrine of changes in Jewish law. And to explain this, I’ll start with an example. An example I got from a good friend of mine, not religious at all, but we had many discussions, many hours of discussions, and in one of them, many years ago, he raised this example. Think about a group of people walking in the desert wearing swimsuits, dressed in swimsuits. And their fathers walked that way too, and their grandfathers too—that’s their tradition. Of course it’s a parable, right? That’s their tradition. At some point the desert ends for them, they approach the edge, and the weather starts getting cold. A group rises from among these people and says: okay, it’s cold, so we’re putting on coats. Enough walking around in swimsuits—we’re putting on coats. The others say to them: wait a second, but we have a tradition from our forefathers that one must walk in a swimsuit. And they’re basically rebelling against our tradition. And they say: right, we’re rebelling—we’re cold. So there’s one group that keeps walking in swimsuits, continuing to walk in swimsuits out of devotion to tradition, and another group that walks in coats because they’re cold. Obviously here the first group is the conservative group—let’s call it the conservative group—and the second group is the heretics, let’s call them. Okay? They do not accept the tradition, they do not behave according to the tradition, they are heretics. Now there is a third group. The third group comes and says: we want to wear coats because it’s cold, but we claim that in doing so we are not deviating from the tradition of our forefathers. Our forefathers walked in swimsuits because they were in a hot area, and therefore what they were really doing was wearing clothing suited to the weather. We too are wearing clothing suited to the weather, except that for us the weather is cold, so we wear a coat and not a swimsuit. We are continuing—we are not deviating from the tradition of our forefathers. How would you classify that group? Conservatives, reformists, heretics?

[Speaker E] Conservatives with an open mind.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. I think that’s a good definition. It’s actually clear that they are conservatives. Why? Because what they are basically claiming—or trying to claim, or at least in their own view—is that they are continuing the tradition, not deviating from it. So what’s the difference between them and the previous conservative group I described? The previous conservative group I call plain-sense conservatism. It preserves the thing literally. Our forefathers walked in swimsuits, so the tradition is to walk in swimsuits, and we too continue to walk in swimsuits. It doesn’t matter whether the weather is cold, hot, whatever. That’s brick-wall conservatism, right? Literal conservatism. The conservatism I described here is interpretive conservatism. What does interpretive conservatism mean? It means conservatism that says the principle we received in the tradition, and which in our view too is very important to preserve, is not the principle that one must walk in a swimsuit, but the principle that one must walk in clothing suited to the weather—which in the case of our forefathers, who were in a hot area, meant walking in a swimsuit. In our case, where the area is cold, it means walking in a coat. So both these groups are faithfully preserving the tradition of their forefathers. The dispute between them is not about whether to be conservative or not, whether to be committed to tradition or not. The dispute between them is about what the tradition says. What is it that one must preserve? These people say that the tradition says to walk in a swimsuit, and those people say that the tradition says one must wear clothing suited to the weather. That is a halakhic dispute. It is not a question of whether you are faithful to Jewish law or not faithful to Jewish law. I’m moving from the parable to the point, right? It is a dispute about what Jewish law says, not about whether to be faithful to Jewish law or not. Both are faithful to Jewish law. Okay. Now, in order to sharpen this point, let me put it this way. When someone raises an argument in favor of changing Jewish law—say, someone wants to validate women as witnesses today. So he says: look, women in the past were uneducated, they did not engage in things outside the home, they didn’t know the world, therefore they were disqualified as witnesses. Like a Torah-level law—”by the testimony of two men,” women are excluded from testimony in Shevuot. But that was then; women back then were uneducated, not involved in the life of the marketplace, in economics, they were unfamiliar—so they were disqualified as witnesses. Women today are in a different situation. And therefore they should be validated as witnesses. Is that argument a valid argument? Not whether its conclusion is correct, but whether the argument is valid and whether the conclusion follows from the premises.

[Speaker B] And the question is whether the premise is correct. No,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s say the premises are correct. The premises are correct. In the past women were uneducated and today they are educated. That’s obvious.

[Speaker E] The question is whether that’s the reason.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, exactly—that’s the question.

[Speaker B] Whether that premise is the reason. Logically he’s right, but the question is whether that premise is the reason. If that premise is the reason. He’s not right at the root.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do I mean to say? Look, there’s a fallacy in philosophy called the naturalistic fallacy, or David Hume’s distinction between ought and is. The ought is what ought to be, what is supposed to be, and the is is what exists—the actual and the normative. Okay? There is no connection between the actual and the normative; the gap between them is a gap that cannot be bridged. You cannot derive what ought to be from what is. You cannot derive values from facts. For example, I say this wall is white; conclusion: this wall is beautiful. Since when?

[Speaker B] That’s a fallacy.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t. This wall is white—that’s a fact. This wall is beautiful—that’s a judgment. You can’t derive a judgment from facts. For the argument to be valid, you need to add another premise. For example, that what is white is beautiful. Right? Now the argument is valid. This wall is white—premise A. Premise B: whatever is white is beautiful. Conclusion: this wall is beautiful. That’s already fine. In other words, if my premises are only facts, and the conclusion is a judgment or a value, then the argument is invalid. That’s the naturalistic fallacy. You can’t derive what ought to be from what is. But if I want to complete the argument, to make it valid, what am I supposed to do? Add another premise, which I call a bridge premise, a premise that connects the facts to the judgment. Like in the previous case, in the previous example: premise A, this wall is white—that’s a factual premise. The bridge premise that I added: whatever is white is beautiful. You understand why that’s a bridge? It connects being white—that’s a fact—to being beautiful, which is the judgment. There has to be some premise that moves you from the factual plane to the judgmental plane, to the evaluative plane, if you want to put it more specifically. Okay? Now you can derive the evaluative or judgmental conclusion: this wall is beautiful. From premises that are only facts—you can’t.

Let’s go back to the claim about change. I want to validate women as witnesses, to change Jewish law. What are my premises? Premise A: in the past, women were not educated and were not involved in economic and market life. That’s a factual premise. A factual premise, and it’s a true factual premise. Premise two: women today are not like that; they are like men, they are educated, they know the world. That too is a factual premise, and it too is true. But those two premises are factual premises. The conclusion is a halakhic norm, that women should be accepted as witnesses. You can’t derive a halakhic norm from factual premises. What is the bridge principle that has to be added if you want to complete the argument? The connection between the facts and the norm. In other words, that someone who is uneducated—that is the reason they are disqualified from testimony. Or in other words, to assume the premise that when women were disqualified from testimony in the past, it was because they were uneducated, and not because of, I don’t know, signs of femininity, physiological femininity. Maybe that sounds plausible to someone, that’s not the point. But you have to add that premise, because otherwise the argument is not a valid argument. Okay?

Now why is this important? Because the real debate over this premise, over this argument—sorry—you can agree with it, you can disagree with it, it doesn’t matter. The debate is not about facts. The facts are true. Women in the past were not educated, and women today are educated—that’s obvious. And that’s why this argument sounds so strong to people. Because who disagrees with the premises? So then why do you reject the conclusion? The answer is: because the factual premises are not all the premises in the argument. There’s another premise hiding here. And many times people don’t say it, because that’s the premise you can and should argue about. Sometimes they don’t say it because it seems self-evident; sometimes they don’t say it for demagogic reasons. But bottom line, one way or another, there is another premise here in the background. And that premise has to be argued about before accepting the conclusion. Was the reason women were disqualified from testimony really their lack of education, or the fact that they weren’t involved in economic life, in commerce, and so on, or was there some other reason—I don’t know what. If you add that premise, then you can argue for the conclusion that the legal status of women should be changed, and that they can be accepted as witnesses.

This is basically the mechanism you have to go through in order to argue for change in Jewish law. You have to point to a change in reality, and then argue that this change in reality is relevant to the Jewish law under discussion. The change in reality is a change in women’s education, and the claim is that women’s education is the relevant parameter that determines whether they are disqualified or qualified as witnesses. This relevance argument is basically the midrash I was talking about earlier. After all, what did I say before with the swimsuits? It’s exactly the same argument. What are they actually saying? I want to change the Jewish law. Our ancestors walked around in swimsuits; I claim we should walk around in a coat. The conservatives say to him: yes, but our ancestors walked around in swimsuits—that’s our tradition, how can you change the tradition? I offer a midrash. Our tradition was to walk around in swimsuits not because you have to walk around in swimsuits, but because you have to wear clothing that suits the weather. That’s the principle that has to be preserved. And that’s very important, because nowadays wearing clothing that suits the weather—or in our place—means wearing a coat, not a swimsuit. That’s the conservative midrash. In order to show that you’re conservative, you have to present a midrash. And you have to show that the tradition invoked against you is not the correct tradition, to make a midrash on the tradition and explain what the correct principle is that you are actually preserving.

That’s true with swimsuits, and it’s true with women. After all, women are disqualified from testimony. How can you suddenly want to accept women as witnesses? No—women are not disqualified from testimony. The uneducated are disqualified from testimony. In the past women were uneducated; today they are not uneducated. You see? It’s exactly the same logic. So what distinguishes ordinary conservatives from these conservatives is the existence of the midrash, the conservative midrash. If you present a midrash and then adapt the Jewish law through midrash, you are a midrashic conservative. If you preserve the Jewish law as is, without midrash, you are a simplistic conservative. If you do not preserve the Jewish law, then you don’t need to present a midrash; you’re simply not faithful to Jewish law, you’re not conservative at all. You’re not preserving Jewish law at all. Okay? So these are basically three groups: those who are not faithful to Jewish law, those who are faithful to Jewish law and preserve it as is, and those who are faithful to Jewish law but in an open interpretive sense—what I spoke about before—and midrash, who make some interpretive midrash and then are faithful to the result of that midrash. That is what they preserve. In practice, of course, that can lead to behavior different from that of our ancestors, but in idea the principle is preserved.

Now let’s continue this discussion for a moment. Let’s go back to this example of accepting women as witnesses. So if that’s the case, in order to discuss the proposal to accept women as witnesses, I really now need to discuss the question of why women were disqualified in the first place. Right? That’s really the question that has to be decided. If we manage to prove that they were disqualified because of lack of education, then this argument holds water. If someone shows that they were disqualified for some other reason, then the argument collapses. So really now, leave aside the whole debate—the debate is about the bridge principle. Is the bridge principle correct or not? Why were women disqualified from testimony back when they were disqualified?

Now someone may come and say: but we do not interpret the reason for the verse. This is a Torah-level disqualification; we do not interpret the reason for the verse. That’s not true. Why is it not true? For many reasons. First, the Rosh writes in several places—the Tosafot of the Rosh as well, and also the Rosh—that where the reason is clear, then yes, we do interpret the reason for the verse. Someone can come and argue that maybe there is a very clear reason here. Another reason: the disqualification of women from testimony is a midrash. It is not written in the verse. The verse says, “Then the two men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord.” Who are these “two men”? “The men who have the dispute”—that means the litigants. The verse is talking about the litigants. More than that, everywhere in the Torah, “men” means men and women. Scripture equated woman to man for all punishments in the Torah. It also says, “If a man should encounter such and such,” and that also applies to a woman. Nowhere do we interpret “man” as man and not woman. So what does “Then the two men” mean—men and not women? There are two very difficult problems with this. First, “the men” refers to the litigants in any case, and with litigants nobody says that a woman cannot be a litigant. Of course she can; matters concerning a woman can certainly be adjudicated. A woman cannot be a witness. Okay, that’s one difficulty. The second difficulty: it says “men,” but the Torah speaks in ordinary human language—meaning, “men” also includes women. Just as when it says “witness,” it can mean two witnesses or one witness. So it’s clear that even if what the Talmud says here emerges from the verse, it emerges from it in the form of a midrash. It is not really written in the verse.

Why is that important? Because regarding a midrash, there is no such rule that we do not interpret the reason for the verse. “We do not interpret the reason for the verse” applies only to laws explicitly written in the verse. And why? Because laws that emerge from a midrash always have a reason for the verse in the background. If there were no reason for the verse, how would we interpret it? The reason they said “men” and not women and disqualified women from testimony is that they had a logical reason to disqualify women from testimony. Because if there were no such logical reason, they also would not have made this midrash. There would be no reason to make this midrash. The verse does not cry out, “Interpret me.” On the contrary, the verse is interpreted according to its plain meaning: “Then the two men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord”—the litigants stand before the judges, and that’s all. There is no difficulty here that forces us to interpret. Without the reasoning, there would be no midrash. By the way, that is true of all midrashim, all of them, not only here. In all midrashim generally, it says, “You shall fear the Lord your God”—to include Torah scholars. Why not include pigeons? Because Torah scholars. The reasoning says that if I am including someone in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He, it is presumably Torah scholars and not pigeons or chairs or I don’t know what. The hermeneutic principles always tell me what, some trigger that tells me to make an interpretation, but what to interpret—that is always a matter of reasoning. In every interpretation, reasoning is involved, and therefore regarding midrashim it makes no sense to say, “We do not interpret the reason for the verse.”

So if that is so, basically what we now have to clarify is the question: why were women disqualified from testimony? There is no obstacle here of interpreting the reason for the verse. How do we clarify that question? We look for evidence in the Talmud, in verses, I don’t know exactly what; we try to look for evidence. After all, we clarify things like this in the context of other disqualifications from testimony. For example, wicked people are also disqualified from testimony, right? And there later authorities discuss this: is a wicked person disqualified from testimony because of suspicion of falsehood, because he is suspected of lying, or is a wicked person a formal disqualification? So there you have a very similar question regarding wicked people, regarding the disqualification of the wicked—why were wicked people disqualified? What is the reason they were disqualified? The same thing can be asked regarding women: why were women disqualified? Because of lack of education, because of suspicion of falsehood, because they are supposedly light-minded, I don’t know, all kinds of things like that. And you can ask that question, look for evidence, just as we look for evidence regarding the disqualification of wicked people—there is no obstacle to doing that. Once we discover the reason a woman was disqualified from testimony, it is absolutely possible to open for discussion the question of whether to accept her.

Okay, I’ll stop here. We’ll continue with this next time.

[Speaker C] Thank you very much, good evening.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You too, goodbye. Thank you very much.

[Speaker C] Goodbye, good evening.