Topics in the Philosophy of Halakha – Lecture 25

Table of Contents

• [0:06] Introduction: the role of the halakhic decisor and the question of leniency and stringency
• [1:53] Definition: stringency as something that bothers more, leniency as something that bothers less
• [3:21] The number of possibilities determines whether a ruling is lenient or stringent
• [4:24] Doubt regarding blessings: when it is lenient and when it is stringent
• [5:53] Summary: the relation between leniency and stringency according to the number of possible paths
• [6:57] The story of Rabbi Chaim: lenient in the laws of Sabbath, stringent in life-and-death danger
• [8:55] Comparison to political arguments: the logic of possibilities
• [10:55] First-order and second-order halakhic ruling: the process of investigating the sub-issues
• [13:11] An example from the Talmud: the Gomel blessing and the question of doubt
• [21:11] The role of the halakhic decisor: mapping possibilities rather than making the decision
• [22:21] Family planning: complex questions with no unequivocal answer
• [30:29] The rabbi as mentor: accompanying you in your decision-making

Summary

General overview

The speaker defines leniency and stringency not by how annoying or burdensome Jewish law feels, but by the number of legitimate halakhic options that are opened or closed before a person. He shows that both an obligation and a prohibition are forms of stringency, because both close off an option. He argues that one must always say “lenient/stringent in what respect,” and illustrates this through the rule that in cases of doubt concerning blessings one rules leniently, and through the dispute between Tosafot and Tosafot HaRosh about the blessing of Gomel. From there he presents an approach according to which the halakhic decisor does not decide for the questioner, but rather lays out a “halakhic map” of the possibilities and their costs, and the person chooses. At the same time, he adds that there are areas in which one cannot issue a ruling “from the outside” without understanding the lived reality from within, such as rulings in the ghetto or cultural-social rulings, and therefore a halakhic decisor also needs familiarity with the world and general education.

Leniency and stringency as expanding or narrowing options

The speaker rejects the understanding that stringency is whatever is more burdensome and leniency is whatever makes a person feel less burdened by Jewish law. He shows that stories like permitting a person to fast for two days on Yom Kippur or to pray the evening service after midnight look like “stringencies” only according to that mistaken understanding. He defines leniency as a ruling that leaves more legitimate halakhic paths available, and stringency as a ruling that narrows the legitimate paths, regardless of whether the additional path is easier or harder. He states that both obligation and prohibition are forms of stringency, because an obligation removes the option not to act, and a prohibition removes the option to act. So adding an obligation or adding a prohibition always means closing off an option.

Doubt concerning blessings and the need to specify “lenient in what respect”

The speaker explains that the rule “in cases of doubt concerning blessings, rule leniently” is a leniency in the laws of blessings, because it opens the possibility of not reciting the blessing. But it also creates a stringency regarding the prohibition of taking God’s name in vain, because the concern about a blessing recited unnecessarily effectively closes off the option of saying the blessing. He says that a practical conclusion can be reached only after breaking the picture down into at least two sub-issues: the laws of blessings and the laws of “Do not take [the name of the Lord your God in vain],” and then combining them into the bottom-line ruling: “it is forbidden to recite the blessing if you are in doubt.” He emphasizes that a general statement like “this is a lenient ruling” or “in cases of doubt concerning blessings, rule leniently,” without specifying in what respect it is a leniency and in what respect it is a stringency, is imprecise language that hides the structure of the ruling.

The connection to first-order and second-order halakhic ruling and the need for a full picture

The speaker connects this to an earlier method of his regarding first-order halakhic ruling, in which the decisor first lists all the relevant sub-issues—positive commandments and prohibitions, Torah-level and rabbinic, and customs—discusses each one separately, and only afterward summarizes them into a ruling. He argues that just as in first-order halakhic ruling it is not enough to address one sub-issue, so too in cases of doubt concerning blessings one cannot decide without presenting the whole halakhic “equation.” He compares this to public debates such as the disengagement in 2005 or the withdrawal from Lebanon, which he says are meaningless without a full plan for responses to different scenarios, and he parallels that to a partial halakhic ruling that does not lay out all the aspects and therefore does not allow a practical conclusion to be drawn.

The Gomel blessing: Tosafot and Tosafot HaRosh and two opposite stringencies

The speaker brings the Talmudic discussion in tractate Berakhot about the blessing of Gomel, where there remains a doubt whether one needs “ten, including two Torah scholars” or “twelve, two of whom are Torah scholars.” He describes how Tosafot rules stringently and recites the blessing already with ten including two Torah scholars, while Tosafot HaRosh rules stringently and recites it only with twelve including two Torah scholars. He cites the Tzelach’s difficulty: how can two opposite rulings both be called stringencies? He explains that according to his definition of leniency and stringency, both are indeed stringencies, because both close off an option in the case of ten: one obligates the blessing, and the other forbids the blessing. The leniency would have been to leave both paths open at ten—to bless or not to bless. He adds that Tosafot HaRosh fits with the rule of doubt concerning blessings, because he is stringent regarding the prohibition of taking God’s name in vain, whereas Tosafot is stringent in the laws of blessings. He leaves the reconciliation of Tosafot’s position for another discussion.

The role of the halakhic decisor as adviser rather than decision-maker

The speaker rejects the notion that the halakhic decisor is supposed “to decide for the questioner what to do.” He argues that the decision always belongs to the questioner, while the decisor is a halakhic expert whose role is to lay out a “halakhic map” of the legitimate possibilities and their costs—Torah-level, rabbinic, custom, pressing circumstances, agreed-upon positions, and disputed positions. He compares this to a doctor who presents medical options and estimated outcomes but does not decide in place of the patient. He says that even if a person chooses to commit a prohibition, that choice is still his own; the decisor does not “grant permission,” but explains whether Jewish law permits or forbids and what each path means.

The example of family planning and criticism of “a decisor who tailors the ruling to the person”

The speaker describes common questions about postponing pregnancy, where there is no black-and-white answer because of a whole set of considerations such as “be fruitful and multiply,” financial condition, emotional pressure, and parental capacity. Therefore, he refuses to give a simple “permitted or forbidden” and prefers to lay out the considerations and options. He argues that a decisor who makes the decision in place of the questioner in such weighty matters is betraying his role, and he criticizes stories about decisors who “tailored the ruling to the person” as a kind of halakhic falsehood and even slander. He says that “make for yourself a rabbi” means choosing a rabbi who presents a map and judgment about which options exist, and beyond that the rabbi can accompany the person as a mentor in the process of decision-making without deciding for him.

Many questions, responsa versus Shulchan Arukh, and “a sage who forbade”

The speaker admits that in the reality of a rabbi being asked ten questions an hour, it is not always possible to conduct a full process, but he presents that as a compromise rather than the ideal model. He distinguishes between a decisor answering an individual questioner and a Sanhedrin establishing Jewish law for the whole Jewish people, and parallels that to the difference between writing a Shulchan Arukh, which formulates general principles, and a book of responsa, which responds to a case. He explains that the rule “if one sage has forbidden it, his colleague may not permit it for that person” applies to a concrete ruling for a specific individual, but it does not prevent principled disagreement in halakhic literature. Therefore, it is permissible to disagree with a general determination in a book, and that does not contradict the rule.

Presenting different views and the position of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach

The speaker tells a story about a representative of Mishmeret STaM who asked Rabbi Wosner and received permission, and asked Rabbi Nissim Karelitz and was forbidden. He argues that the respondent must study and answer according to his own conclusion, or present both options to the questioner and let him choose, including guidance in the laws of doubt. He cites a responsum of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach in Minchat Shlomo, according to which in a rabbinic-level question, even if the decisor has a position, he should inform the questioner that there is another decisor who disagrees, so that the questioner will have the possibility to choose, and he is then considered “in doubt” and may rule leniently. He adds that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman limits this to rabbinic matters, while the Ketav Sofer extends it even to Torah-level matters, based on the possibility that the questioner might choose to make the other decisor his rabbi.

Must one be systematic in choosing leniencies?

In response to a question, the speaker says there is no halakhic obligation to be systematic and always follow one decisor. He interprets the phrase “the leniencies of Beit Shammai and the leniencies of Beit Hillel” as problematic mainly when it involves internal contradictions, not in the mere act of switching between sources. He distinguishes between formal halakhic permission and the question of how the Holy One, blessed be He, relates to someone who seeks only leniencies, and says that the person himself has to assess what counts for him as pressing circumstances. He jokingly mentions the idea of “the reverse responsa project,” which receives the desired answer and then searches for who wrote it.

Ruling from inside and from outside: the Kovno Ghetto and ownership of property

The speaker then argues that alongside the need not to enter into the questioner’s inner mind in order to decide for him, there are situations in which a decisor must understand the situation from the inside in order even to formulate the options, and the lack of such understanding invalidates a ruling issued “from the outside.” He cites articles about the Kovno Ghetto in Yated Ne’eman and about Rabbi Gibraltar, who argued that in the ghetto “there is no ownership of property,” and therefore there is no obligation to repay loans and no liability for damages. He describes criticism by a rabbi specializing in monetary law who wrote that this was “utter nonsense.” He says that he wrote an article in Tzohar arguing that a ruling emerging from such a situation is a kind of testimony, not an expert opinion of someone looking from the outside. He illustrates this with the analogy of a falling elevator, where in his view the ordinary categories of theft and ownership lose their meaning when everyone and the object are about to crash within half a minute.

Halakhic grounding through Rabbi Shimon Shkop and jurisprudence

The speaker grounds his position through Rabbi Shimon Shkop in Sha’arei Yosher, who presents the prohibition of “Do not steal” as depending on the act first being defined as theft, and property law as being determined in a prior legal-social system, such as recognition of commercial acquisition by common practice and guild customs. He rejects a narrow interpretation according to which that prior system is neutral and contains no prohibitions, and argues that Rabbi Shimon Shkop holds that there is also a prior legal prohibition. He brings proof for this from Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s discussions, including his question, “And what obligates us to obey the commands that the Torah did command?” He concludes that if monetary law rests on the infrastructure of an effective legal system, then in a place of total anarchy, with no law of the kingdom and no enforcement, there are in practice no defined property laws, and the entire domain of Choshen Mishpat collapses. Therefore, he understands Rabbi Gibraltar’s claim as a correct expression of the absence of ownership in the ghetto.

Philosophical examples for the difference between external knowledge and inner experience

The speaker uses the thought experiment “Mary’s room” to argue that one can know all the physics of colors and still not know “what red is” as an experience, and therefore someone looking from the outside does not grasp the inner meaning. He adds the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, is there a sound?” in order to distinguish between acoustic waves and the experience of sound, and he argues that there are no colors in the world, only representations in consciousness. From this he concludes that halakhic ruling is not merely a formal manipulation of rules, but requires understanding human experience and the meaning of actions within their context.

Cultural rulings: egalitarian prayer groups, a woman’s singing voice, and judging from the outside

The speaker argues that a rabbi who does not know a young, egalitarian community seeking an egalitarian prayer group cannot issue a ruling for them, because he does not understand their motivations or the meanings that permission or prohibition would carry for them. He warns against judging through foreign “glasses” that interpret it as mere protest. He gives the example of a rabbi who forbids a female singer’s performance on the assumption that it is all about desires and improper thoughts, and argues that someone who has not experienced and does not understand musical and artistic enjoyment cannot make such a claim. He distinguishes between a formal prohibition, which a decisor may assert even without such familiarity, and psychological-motivational reasoning, which requires understanding the lived reality from within.

Training a halakhic decisor: knowledge, reasoning, and familiarity with the world

The speaker argues that training a halakhic decisor requires not only knowledge of sources, halakhic skill, and sound reasoning that can compare one matter to another, but also familiarity with the world and understanding of general fields. He criticizes Haredi rulings during the coronavirus period that relied on Talmudic rules without understanding exponential processes, and illustrates exponential growth through the example of folding a sheet of paper forty times until its thickness would reach from the earth to the moon. He concludes by saying that there is value in a certain distance from the world in order to preserve clarity and judgment, but he argues that a pure and closed model by itself is not enough without awareness of what is happening on the ground and general education. In the current age, he says, the importance of raw information is shrinking, while the importance of reasoning, common sense, and familiarity with reality for the purpose of halakhic ruling is growing.

Okay, last time I started talking a bit—after we finished first-order and second-order halakhic ruling, I moved on to talk about the role of the halakhic decisor. And in order to present that issue, I started discussing, just a little bit—not exactly how it connects, but I started discussing—the question of what a leniency is and what a stringency is. And I brought cases or stories in which leniencies are presented where, on the face of it, it’s not entirely clear why this is even called a leniency. Right? If someone permits you to fast for two days on Yom Kippur, or to pray the evening prayer if you missed it even after midnight, or to study Torah on the eve of Tisha B’Av that falls on the Sabbath—things that are always presented as a joke about the concept of a leniency. But on the other hand, the simple interpretation reflected in that is that we basically stand opposite Jewish law, in an adversarial stance toward Jewish law, and every time Jewish law obligates us to do something, that’s a stringency, and if we manage to escape it, that’s a leniency. And therefore those leniencies I mentioned earlier don’t look like leniencies, because when you tell me that you can fast for two days on Yom Kippur, you made things easier for me with that? What exactly did you make easier? I have to fast for two days. Or to pray the evening prayer even though I could have avoided praying, or all kinds of things of that sort—it looks like a stringency, if indeed the definition of leniency and stringency is the question: I stand opposite Jewish law, Jewish law bothers me, and the question is how much it bothers me. If it bothers me more, that’s a stringency; if it bothers me less, that’s a leniency. And then I asked: what would happen with someone for whom making a blessing is a leniency and not refraining from making a blessing is a leniency? Right? In cases of doubt about blessings, we rule leniently. So if someone can’t eat without a blessing—his mind just can’t tolerate it—then for him, being lenient means making the blessing. So would the rule for him be that in a case of doubt about blessings he should make the blessing? It’s pretty clear that the answer is no. But after all, he doesn’t stand in an adversarial posture toward Jewish law; for him it’s actually the opposite—he’s with Jewish law. So truly, from his perspective, the leniency is to allow him to make the blessing and not to forbid him from making it. Therefore, I think that this adversarial interpretation is the wrong interpretation. And what I suggested instead is the interpretation that says that leniency and stringency are determined by the question of how many legitimate halakhic options you place before the person. Two halakhic decisors, one of whom places n possible paths before the person and the other places m possible paths before him—if n is greater than m, then the decisor with n is more lenient. Meaning, someone who offers more legitimate halakhic paths is lenient. Someone who offers fewer paths is stringent. What does each path say—whether it bothers me or doesn’t bother me—doesn’t play a role. It doesn’t matter. If he adds for me an option to fast five days on Yom Kippur, that’s called a leniency. Why? Because he opened up another option for me. Someone who is lenient and allows me to fast for two days—which ostensibly bothers me, because I don’t want to fast and now I have to fast for two days—the claim is that since he added another option, even though that option is burdensome in the earlier sense I described, since he added another halakhic option, then he is in fact being lenient. Therefore, every time you establish some obligation to do something, obligation means that you are forbidden not to do it—you closed off an option. Or if you said there is a prohibition against doing something, then you closed off the option of doing it. So both obligation and prohibition are stringency. When you impose another obligation or another prohibition, you are among the stringent ones. Someone who does not impose that obligation or that prohibition is among the lenient ones. Okay, so that is basically the definition. Now if we return to the principle that in cases of doubt about blessings, we rule leniently, and I said that in blessings, when I say that in cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently, what that means is that if you are in doubt, you may refrain from making the blessing. But you may also make the blessing. Since I’m telling you that you may also refrain from making the blessing, then I am being lenient because I opened another optional path for you, another possible option—so I am lenient. Except that once I say that you have a path of making the blessing and you also have a path of not making the blessing, from the perspective of the laws of blessings still, in terms of blessings—that’s already an instruction toward stringency, because it closes off for you the path of making the blessing. So in fact, when we say that in cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently, what that means is: lenient in the laws of blessings, and stringent in the laws of taking God’s name in vain. After I was lenient in the laws of blessings and said that from the perspective of the laws of blessings I may make the blessing and I may refrain from making it—there are two options, both legitimate—that is a leniency because I opened two options. But now, from the perspective of the laws of taking God’s name in vain, if I have two options, to make the blessing or not to make it, then in the laws of taking God’s name in vain I must be stringent and not make the blessing, and then that closes off the option of making the blessing, and here this really is a stringency. And so we actually learned two things from this. First, that the relation between leniency and stringency is determined not by the question of how bothersome it is, or how much it is for Jewish law or against Jewish law, but rather by the question of how many legitimate paths your ruling places before me. If it’s more than someone else, then you are lenient relative to him. If it’s less, then you are stringent relative to him. And again I say: being lenient or stringent—sorry, stringent—can mean either that you impose an obligation to do something or that you impose a prohibition against doing something. Because if you impose a prohibition against doing something, then you removed that thing from my options, and if you impose an obligation to do something, then you removed the option of not doing it from my options. Therefore both obligation and prohibition are called stringency. By the way, that’s everyone’s simple intuition—I’m only conceptualizing it or defining it—but if you examine yourselves you’ll see that it’s completely clear; everyone understands this. That is basically the definition of leniency and stringency. That’s one thing we learned. Another thing we learned is the story of Rabbi Chaim, where they asked him how he could be so lenient in the laws of the Sabbath, and he said that he was stringent in the laws of saving life. So what else we learned is that the question whether you are lenient or stringent has to be measured relative to a specific prohibition. When I say that in cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently, it’s actually not correct to say a sentence like that. In cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently from the perspective of blessings; in the laws of blessings I am lenient. But there are still the laws of taking God’s name in vain, in which I am actually stringent. So when I speak about lenient or stringent, I always have to specify: lenient in what, or stringent in what. Just as Rabbi Chaim, when he permitted a woman to travel to Petersburg and try to save her son from forced conscription into the army—he was indeed lenient in the laws of the Sabbath, that’s true, and at the same time he was stringent in the laws of saving life. So that joke where they asked him, “How can you be so lenient in the laws of the Sabbath?” and he answered, “No, I’m stringent in the laws of saving life”—so who’s right? They’re both right. He is both lenient in the laws of the Sabbath and stringent in the laws of saving life. Therefore it’s not that there’s some dispute here whether he is lenient or stringent. Using the term lenient or stringent without specifying lenient or stringent in relation to which law is simply imprecise usage. Whenever you say that you are lenient or stringent, tell me lenient in what or stringent in what. You can’t point to a particular ruling and say, “This is a lenient ruling.” That’s simply not true; it’s not relevant; you’re not showing me the full picture. Lenient in which aspect of the ruling? A ruling involves many aspects. Each aspect separately has to be checked—are you lenient with regard to it, or stringent with regard to it? Lenient or stringent is per prohibition or per commandment; it’s not lenient or stringent, period. Okay, that’s the second conclusion that comes out here. It reminds me—not really related, but the logic is similar—there were all sorts of arguments around the disengagement in 2005. The withdrawal from Lebanon, or whatever. People—everyone—was for it or against it, and all sorts of public debates, for or against. And when I thought about these things, and also talked with people, I told them that I simply can’t understand these ridiculous discussions. How can you be for or against something that is only one small part of the picture? When you talk about the question whether to carry out a disengagement, tell me what you plan to do after the disengagement in every scenario that may arise. If they do this, what will you do? If they do that, what will you do? Give me a complete plan. Then I can tell you whether I’m for it or against it. But the question whether I’m for or against the disengagement is a meaningless question. Because the results of the disengagement depend very, very much on the issue of actions and responses, the question of what might happen and how I will respond in each situation that occurs. Same thing with the withdrawal from Lebanon. They argue desperately whether you are in favor of leaving Lebanon or against leaving Lebanon. Again, it’s a meaningless argument. Leaving Lebanon—and then what? What policy will you adopt afterward? How will you respond in every situation that comes up? Once you give me a full picture, then I can tell you whether I’m for it or against it. You can’t say whether I’m for or against some specific thing when everything around it depends on what you’re going to do. It’s simply an undefined discussion. So in that spirit I want to say the same thing here. You can’t say “in cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently,” period. That’s simply not a correct rule. In cases of doubt about blessings, we rule leniently in the laws of blessings, but stringently in the laws of taking God’s name in vain. Give me the picture of what you’re talking about, and then I can tell you whether it’s a leniency or a stringency. If you give me only part of the picture, and you don’t tell me what exactly you’re talking about, I can’t answer whether you are lenient or stringent. Okay, so this is an important point. It connects somewhat to what we talked about in the previous chapter regarding first-order halakhic ruling and second-order halakhic ruling. Because if you remember, when I defined how a first-order decisor should rule, I said that at the first stage he has to list all the relevant clauses. And “relevant clauses” means Torah-level prohibitions and positive commandments, rabbinic prohibitions and positive commandments, customs, and that’s it. Okay? Those are the clauses. About each one you need to start discussing it—see whether it relates to our issue or not, and what your conclusion about it is. After you’ve done that for each of the clauses, then you need to get to the bottom line, summarize everything, and arrive at a ruling. So what I’m really saying here is the same thing. When you want to discuss what to do in a case of doubt about blessings, it’s not enough to discuss whether to be lenient in cases of doubt about blessings or not. You need to tell me, from the laws of blessings, what to do, and from the laws of taking God’s name in vain, what to do. And after I summarize that from the laws of blessings I need to be lenient, but from the laws of taking God’s name in vain I need to be stringent, then my answer is that if you are in doubt, it is forbidden to make the blessing. But if you had told me only “in cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently,” and that’s all, the intelligent listener should not have been able to infer a practical conclusion from that. In cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently—and therefore what? So should I make the blessing or not? I have no idea. I don’t know. You have to give me the whole picture. In cases of doubt about blessings, from the laws of blessings what should be done? In cases of doubt about blessings, from the laws of taking God’s name in vain what should be done? And then summarize those two together and arrive at the bottom line of what I am obligated to do when I’m in doubt. After you’ve summarized all the clauses. You can’t react to just one thing. That won’t tell me what to do. It’s like telling Rabbi Chaim, “Listen, be lenient in the laws of the Sabbath,” or “be lenient in the laws of the Sabbath.” Fine—but the question is whether one should be stringent in the laws of saving life. The decision is composed of both sides of the equation together. You can’t make a decision when you consider only one side and ignore the other side. After all, you wouldn’t have been lenient in the laws of the Sabbath if you didn’t want to be stringent in the laws of saving life, or vice versa. You’re not just lenient in the laws of the Sabbath because you feel like being lenient, but because you are stringent in the laws of saving life, therefore you chose the leniency in the laws of the Sabbath. It’s a decision that comes with both wings of the equation together. You can’t discuss each one separately. Now I want to show you a difficulty raised by some later authorities, which gets solved in the way I’m speaking about here. The Talmud in tractate Berakhot, page 54 or 52, I don’t remember exactly—something like that—the Talmud discusses the blessing of thanksgiving, and it raises two possibilities regarding in what forum one must recite the blessing of thanksgiving. Must the forum be ten people, including among them two Torah scholars, or twelve, two of whom are Torah scholars? In other words, ten plus two Torah scholars, or twelve, two of whom are Torah scholars. And the Talmud remains in doubt. There is a dispute there between Tosafot and Tosafot HaRosh. Tosafot says: since it remains in doubt, we go stringently, and he makes the blessing even when he has only ten and among them two Torah scholars. And Tosafot HaRosh says: since it remains in doubt, we go stringently, and he makes the blessing only when he has twelve and among them two Torah scholars. The Tzelach there, in his novellae, says: I don’t understand what is happening here. “In cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently” means not to make the blessing; “to be stringent” means yes, to make the blessing, right? So what does the phrase “stringently” mean here? To which ruling? Tosafot’s, or Tosafot HaRosh’s? What is called being stringent? To make the blessing with ten? Or to make the blessing only with twelve? What exactly is called being stringent here? He says: I don’t know, it requires analysis, I don’t understand what they want. One calls his own view stringency, and the other calls the opposite stringency. One of them is stringency and the other is leniency. They can’t both be stringency. And not only that: stringency in the laws of blessings—we know exactly what that is. Stringency in the laws of blessings means making the blessing. Leniency means not making the blessing. So what do you say? First of all, by the conventional definitions, which of the rulings is called—according to the definition I proposed—which of the rulings is called stringent? The ruling of not making the blessing? Not making the blessing? Is that the stringent one? Why? Look, in the case of twelve, everyone agrees that one makes the blessing, right? Yes. The question is what to do with ten. So Tosafot says make the blessing, and Tosafot HaRosh says don’t make the blessing. So who is lenient? Tosafot HaRosh, right? In cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently—that means not making the blessing. So why does Tosafot call the obligation to make the blessing a stringency—sorry. Sorry. So why does Tosafot HaRosh call not making the blessing a stringency? Tosafot is obvious: when he says stringency, what does he mean? Stringency means also with regard to taking God’s name in vain. Right. Stringency means yes, to make the blessing. That’s clear. But why does Tosafot HaRosh call it a stringency to rule that you do not make the blessing with ten, but only with twelve? According to Tosafot, do you understand that with ten it’s not merely that you’re allowed to make the blessing—you are obligated to make the blessing. So does he close off options or open them up? He closes off options. He closes them off, right? Because I would have thought that with ten you could also refrain from making the blessing, and he says no, no, you are obligated to make the blessing. So he narrowed the options. So Tosafot is right that his ruling is a stringency. What does Tosafot HaRosh say? Do not make the blessing with ten, only with twelve. What about his ruling? What do you say according to my definition? Also a stringency. Also. Because it too closes off options. Right? Because after all he says that with ten you are forbidden to make the blessing; it’s not that you may refrain from making the blessing. It is forbidden to make the blessing. The only option is not to make the blessing with ten. So he too closes off options. I already said that both a ruling that imposes a prohibition and a ruling that imposes an obligation are both stringent rulings. A ruling that imposes a prohibition removes that option; a ruling that imposes an obligation removes the other option, because there is an obligation to do it. So Tosafot HaRosh also rules stringently. Why? Because you do not have the option, with ten, to make the blessing. And with ten it is forbidden to make the blessing. So how can it be that both are stringency—two opposite rulings, and both are stringency? So what would it mean here to rule leniently? After our analysis this should already be simple. The Hafla’ah remains with “it requires analysis,” it needs explanation—not a trivial problem. And you can see that this analysis we made here has significance. What would be a lenient ruling in such a case? That you don’t forbid in one direction and you don’t forbid in the other direction. That you may make the blessing and you may refrain from making it. Yes. In the case of twelve, in any event the blessing is made; that’s not the question. The question is what the law is in the case of ten. A lenient ruling means that you may make the blessing and you may refrain from making it; both paths are open before you. Whoever says you are obligated to make the blessing closed one of them. Whoever says you are forbidden to make the blessing closed the other. Only the one who says both paths remain open is lenient. Therefore Tosafot HaRosh is right and Tosafot is also right. Like the judge’s wife. They’re both right. Both of these are stringent rulings. The difference is that Tosafot rules stringently in the laws of blessings, because you are obligated to make the blessing. Tosafot HaRosh rules stringently in the laws of taking God’s name in vain. In the laws of blessings he says you may make the blessing and you may refrain from making it, but in the laws of taking God’s name in vain, since you may also refrain from making the blessing, then you are forbidden to make it, because that follows from the laws of taking God’s name in vain. Exactly like the principle that in cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently, which we discussed earlier. Tosafot HaRosh is stringent in the laws of taking God’s name in vain, and Tosafot is stringent in the laws of blessings. But both can say that this is a stringent ruling. It is an interesting question, from the perspective of the rules governing doubt in blessings, how to explain Tosafot. Because from the perspective of the rules for ruling in cases of doubt about blessings, Tosafot HaRosh would seemingly be correct. Because in cases of doubt about blessings we go leniently in the laws of blessings and stringently with regard to taking God’s name in vain, right? In cases of doubt about blessings, we do not make the blessing. What should have come out here according to that? Leniency in the laws of blessings, meaning that with ten one may make the blessing and one may refrain from making it, and stringency in the laws of taking God’s name in vain: if one may refrain from making it, then one is forbidden to make it. In short, Tosafot HaRosh really is the ruling that fits the rules of doubt about blessings. But that’s a different question. I asked why Tosafot and Tosafot HaRosh both called their rulings stringency. How to reconcile Tosafot’s ruling with the rules of doubt about blessings—that’s a different discussion, and I won’t get into it here. Here I only entered into the terminological question: how can it be that Tosafot says his ruling is stringency, and Tosafot HaRosh also says his ruling is stringency, even though they rule oppositely. Okay? So I think that clarifies very well the significance of the definition I proposed here. Now, notice what is happening here. Let’s now try to think about what actually happens when a person comes to a halakhic decisor to ask a question. So what—the decisor—maybe I forgot to ask, just turn on your cameras, friends. The rule is that we sit with cameras on. Okay? Gidon, Rafael, are you with us? Harel? Yes, I’m here. One second, with the camera. Rafael? Gidon? Yes. Okay. Good. So let’s try for a moment to think how this works. Now I’m using this analysis of leniency and stringency to sharpen the way a decisor works, his role—at least as I understand it. When a particular questioner comes to a decisor, the accepted conception is that the decisor is supposed to decide for him what the Jewish law is, what he should do. I want to deny that conception. That is not the role of a decisor. The decision what to do is always the person’s own decision, the person who is asking. The decisor is an advisor on matters of Jewish law—today they call it a halakhic advisor. In other words, the decisor is supposed to give the person all the possible options and the price tag attached to each. Each option: this is a rabbinic prohibition, this is a Torah-level prohibition, this is permitted, this is a commandment, this is according to all opinions, this is according to some opinions, this is in pressing circumstances. Lay out the map before me with all the options. I am supposed to decide what to do. Of course I can also decide to commit a prohibition—it is forbidden, but I can decide to commit a prohibition. The choice is mine. What you need to do is not decide for me; you need to describe for me the full halakhic map, so that I can make a decision. Just as when I go to a doctor, the doctor should not make decisions for me. He should give me the medical information—what my possible courses of action are, and what the cost is, or what he estimates will come out of each such option. In the end, the decision what to do is supposed to be mine, not his. That’s the role of an expert, and the decisor is simply a halakhic expert. That’s all. So that’s what he should do. And then notice what really comes out. When a particular questioner comes and says to me, “Look, is such-and-such permitted?”—look, there are several possibilities. Let’s say a very common question, for example, regarding delaying pregnancy, what today is called family planning. Okay? There, very often a person comes to a rabbi and asks him, “Can I postpone it for a year or two, I don’t know, until I finish my studies, my work, my wife finishes something,” or something like that. And now he expects the rabbi to give him a permit or find him a permit. Right? That’s often how people come to the rabbi, using that ridiculous wording. There’s Nadav Schneider from physics, right, a friend of mine—he once wrote an article about this. I think the article was called “The Jewish Closet of Lies,” as a play on “The Jewish bookshelf.” And what he basically wanted to argue is that there is no such thing as the rabbi giving a permit. The rabbi can tell you whether it is permitted or not. He doesn’t determine the permit. He is an expert, so he’ll tell you whether Jewish law permits or does not permit. What does it mean, “Find me a permit”? You’re pressuring the rabbi to find one for you. Maybe you don’t know, because you’re not a Torah scholar. And that’s why you go to a decisor. But the role of the decisor is not to give you a permit, not to determine what the law will be, but rather to lay out before you the halakhic map. What options exist, and what the price tags are, or what degree of stringency or commandment attaches to each of these options. That is the role of the decisor. So now when someone comes, for example, with family planning, right? And he wants to ask whether he can postpone it for a year or two. But there really is no simple answer here, because there are considerations that justify family planning and considerations that do not. There is before that the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, to populate the world; whether he has children, whether he doesn’t have children; his financial condition; how pressured he is; what will happen with the child if he is born and now the parents have no time for him—it doesn’t matter, a million considerations. And all those considerations are very relevant, and there is no black-and-white answer here. What does the ordinary questioner expect the decisor to do? Decide for me. Here are the facts—tell me permitted or forbidden. So I say to him—I usually, when I’m asked this question, I lay out the map. “Yes, yes, but I’m asking you what to do now—is it permitted or forbidden?” I won’t tell you, not in a million years. Even if you come with a tractor, I won’t tell you. I won’t tell you. I can tell you which considerations are relevant, which considerations are not relevant, what is ideal, what is agreed upon by everyone, what is disputed and what is not disputed, what is a rabbinic prohibition, what is a Torah-level prohibition, what is permitted in pressing circumstances and what is forbidden in pressing circumstances. I can advise you how to make the decision and give you the information as fully as possible, the full information. From that point on, it’s your job. You have to decide whether to be lenient or stringent; I am not lenient and I am not stringent. You have to decide what you do. I am lenient or stringent only in the sense I defined earlier—whether I open more options or fewer options. But I open all the options that I think exist. So here you can call me lenient or stringent, but which of the options to follow—that is only your decision. Or yours, as a couple. Only you know how much it bothers you, how hard the financial pressure is, what your financial needs are. Every person has different financial needs. How can I make decisions for you? How important to you is fear of Heaven? How important to you is a career? How important to you is the commandment to be fruitful and multiply? It is a whole set of considerations that only you can weigh. How can I make decisions for you? I can lay out the map before you; only you can make the decision, and you need to make it too, for that reason—not me. And even when people pressure me, I don’t answer. I answer if it’s a clear case. Meaning, if all the possibilities are forbidden except for one possibility, then I can tell you: everything else is forbidden. But in questions of this sort, which are usually the heavy questions where people expect the decisor to decide, then very often—you know these stories: “Ah, he was a wonderful decisor, deep, he related to each person, he understood the person standing before him and tailored the ruling to the person”—such a decisor is a liar. A liar who is not doing his job, betraying his role. All those big superlatives people always tell about those decisors—that really is slander. A decisor cannot do such a thing. A decisor has to give you the options, all the options, and present them before every questioner. Every option that exists, in your opinion, you are obligated to present before every questioner, no matter who he is. And the questioner himself, according to his own situation, will decide which option he chooses. And what happens, say, with communal traditions? Say according to a particular tradition? I’m not getting into that question. I think communal traditions are almost meaningless. But never mind; it depends on your conception of Jewish law. So according to traditions—then present before him that, according to your tradition, these are the options. Without getting right now into the question whether tradition is really a relevant thing for halakhic ruling. I think almost not. But it doesn’t matter—take all your considerations and present the options according to your considerations. The one who has to choose which option to choose is the questioner, not you. And he has to take his own situation into account, not you. You don’t even know what his situation is. How would you know what his situation is? Do you know what he feels? Maybe objectively you can know how much money he has, but how do you know how much money he needs? How much the lack of money bothers him? How much tension it creates in the family? These are things only the person himself knows; the decisor cannot know them. So how does that fit with the saying “Make for yourself a rabbi”? As if in the end, “Make for yourself a rabbi” means someone you trust to present before you the different possibilities, his judgment. And that’s perfectly fine—but judgment in deciding what the possibilities are, not in deciding which one to choose. The role of the rabbi is two things, really one that is two: to present the full halakhic map. Not every rabbi will present the same map. There is a rabbi who will present five existing possibilities; there is a rabbi who will present only three existing possibilities, because he is more stringent. That’s fine. But among the possibilities the rabbi presented, you are the one who chooses which you are choosing. Which rabbi to choose—that’s “Make for yourself a rabbi.” And beyond ruling, beyond laying out the different possibilities, the rabbi can also accompany you in the decision-making. After all, he is more experienced, so he can tell you: look, pay attention to this point, pay attention to that point over there. In other words, see that this—don’t forget to take that thing into account, that consideration is relevant. In other words, he can accompany the decision as a mentor, not make the decision. He is not supposed to give the questioner a bottom line. A rabbi who gives the questioner a bottom line is betraying his role. Now I’ll say again: this is of course a privilege that a rabbi does not have when ten questions are asked of him in an hour. He can’t sit with every questioner and lay out the map before him and accompany his decision-making. So in such cases, there really is no choice; he makes decisions himself. But in principle, he should really tell the questioners: I don’t answer. Come to me for a meeting, or I don’t know, devote a bit more time to it, we’ll lay out the map and you’ll make your decision. I am not supposed to make decisions for you. It’s simply not right to do that, it doesn’t make sense to do that, and it is not the role of a decisor. The role of a decisor is—contrary to what people think—the role of a decisor is not to decide. A decisor does not need to decide at all. The capacity for decision simply does not belong to the decisor. The capacity for decision belongs to the person himself, not to the decisor. The decisor has to lay out the map. He can decide which option exists and which does not. Fine, that perhaps he can decide. There are disputes sometimes; one person will say this is an existing option, someone else will say this option does not exist. But he cannot decide which option to choose. That belongs only to the questioner. But there are areas, for example, where an ordinary person generally understands less—say, I don’t know, matters of appearance of bloodstains and things like that, or family purity. In matters of appearance, if the rabbi clearly identifies the color, then he can tell him: this is the color. Now with respect to this color, you have option A, B, C, D. That’s it. If there is only one option, then fine, there is only one option, and the problem is closed. But if there is not only one option—if it is a color about which one could say this or that—then he needs to present both possibilities before the questioner. I said: the rabbi has to give his expertise. His expertise is that he knows Jewish law. The decision is not his role. The decision is the role of the person himself. This, by the way, is different—what’s happening here? Usually I’m used to that coming from me. We have a dog here who occasionally makes a mess. So I just want to distinguish here between a decisor who answers a person’s question and the Sanhedrin, which determines Jewish law for all of Israel. That’s something else. The Sanhedrin, which determines Jewish law for all of Israel, needs to make a decision about what is permitted and what is forbidden. It does not lay out options before questioners. It also doesn’t answer questioners. It rules on its own initiative. It’s like the difference between writing the Shulchan Arukh and writing a book of responsa. What is the difference between those two things? A book of responsa addresses a question. What is the concrete question of a specific person, a specific situation, and the decisor has to say what the law is in this case. Here the decisor should not say what the law is, but rather lay out the possibilities. Writing a Shulchan Arukh—you are not talking about a case. You are writing the halakhic principles themselves. You are not referring to a specific case. For example, I’ll give you a case that connects this. There is a halakhic rule that says: when one sage has forbidden something, his colleague may not permit it for the person. I came to a sage with a chicken and he told me that this chicken is non-kosher. Now I go to another sage and he says, what are you talking about, that fellow is talking nonsense, this chicken is permitted. Eat and be satisfied. Eat chickens and be satisfied, not grapes. So the question is what? You’re not allowed to do that. Is it permitted to disagree with a book of Jewish law that is written? Someone wrote in a book of Jewish law, say, taking knives out from among the cutlery is selecting on the Sabbath. Am I allowed to write a book of Jewish law in which I permit that? Of course you can disagree, why not? So why doesn’t that contradict the rule that when one sage has forbidden something, his colleague may not permit it? Because that’s not a specific ruling for someone. Right. That exactly illustrates the difference between the genres. In responsa you’re speaking about… But if the Shulchan Arukh writes that this type of defect counts as rendering an animal non-kosher, it’s not talking about a specific chicken; it is establishing a general rule. Someone else can come and say: I disagree with him; in my opinion this kind of defect does not render it non-kosher. There is no problem; those are halakhic disputes, and there are such disputes at every turn. To that, the rule certainly was never said that when one sage has forbidden something, his colleague may not permit it. What is the difference? The Shulchan Arukh in a certain sense functions like a Sanhedrin. It is not answering a question; it is determining what the law will be. Now it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t have the authority of the Sanhedrin, but in terms of the mode of action or the intention of the action, it is like the Sanhedrin. It simply determines what the law will be. And there you don’t need to lay out possibilities and so on; you need to decide what the law says. If there are several possibilities, then say there are several possibilities. Sometimes the Shulchan Arukh writes “some say this” and “some say that” and “one may be lenient,” and so on. But I’m talking about a decisor to whom someone comes to ask a specific question. When someone comes to ask him a specific question, he is not determining Jewish law in general. He has to tell the person what he should do right now. A particular person in a particular situation. Here he has to lay out the different possibilities and their prices. He’ll tell him: this is Torah-level forbidden, this is rabbinically forbidden, there is a custom not to do this, about this there is a dispute whether it is Torah-level or rabbinic, about this there is a dispute whether it is permitted or forbidden, this is permitted, that one is a commandment. Give him all the possibilities, lay out before him all the cases and the prices, and the person himself has to decide which path he chooses to follow. That is his decision alone. Now there is a responsum of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman in Minchat Shlomo, where he really discusses the question: suppose someone comes to ask you a question and there is a dispute about it among the halakhic decisors. What are you supposed to do? I think I told you the story about my friend from Pardes Hanna, right? He was a representative of the scribal supervision organization in Pardes Hanna; he answered questions there on matters of Torah scrolls, phylacteries, and mezuzot. So he told me once, many years ago, that there was a certain question he had encountered several times. He went to ask Rabbi Wosner, and Rabbi Wosner permitted it, and he went to ask Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, and Rabbi Nissim Karelitz forbade it. Now another person comes before him with the same question. And he says: I know that if I go ask Rabbi Wosner, he permits it, and if I go ask Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, he forbids it. So there’s no point in traveling to Bnei Brak. The moment I decide where I’m going, I’ve already received the answer. So he asks me: what should I do? I told him: what should you do? Study the topic, come to your own conclusion, and answer what you think—not what Rabbi Nissim thinks or what Rabbi Wosner thinks. You have to answer what you think; they asked you, not them. Now what to do when I don’t have a position of my own? If I don’t have a position of my own, there are two possibilities here. Either I tell him: there are the laws governing doubt—Torah-level doubt, stringently; rabbinic doubt, leniently. Let’s say in rabbinic doubt—there too there is dispute about this. And a better possibility in my eyes is to present both options before him. Rabbi Wosner permits and Rabbi Nissim Karelitz forbids. These are the two paths standing before you. You can rely on Rabbi Wosner, and you can choose not to rely on him. Decide for yourself whether you rely on him or not. And if you are in doubt, conduct yourself according to the laws governing doubt—equip him also with the rules for what to do in cases of doubt. And you are supposed to present the options before him. He has to decide, not you. Why do I care whether you rely on Rabbi Wosner because Rabbi Wosner is your rabbi and not Rabbi Nissim? Rabbi Wosner is your rabbi, but not his rabbi. He has to make his own decisions. If there are several possibilities. If you arrive at the conclusion that there is only one possibility, then say what you think. By the way, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman writes there in the responsum that if it is a rabbinic question, then even if you personally have a lenient or stringent position, but you know there is another decisor who rules differently from you, you are obligated to present the questioner with the other decisor’s position as well. Because he can decide to go with the other decisor and not with you. Your obligation as a halakhic expert is to present before him all the opinions, including opinions with which you yourself disagree. Notice that this is a major novelty. Because I would have said that the decisor’s duty is to present the collection of paths that are legitimate in my view. If personally I have a clear view—only one path is legitimate—then I can rule for him that this path is what should be done. He asked me—that’s my opinion. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman says something more far-reaching than what I said. He argues that even if you have your own position, but you know there is another decisor who permits, you need to present that fact to him. “Know that I think this is forbidden, but know that Rabbi so-and-so says it is permitted. Now decide what you will do.” Even in the laws governing doubt, you can decide—if it is a rabbinic rule—then in the laws governing doubt you can be lenient. By the way, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman writes this only regarding rabbinic questions, because he really assumes that the questioner may proceed leniently in cases of doubt. Why? Because if I am the decisor and I have my own position, then of course I am stringent. Why do I care that my colleague is lenient? I am not in doubt, so why should I be lenient? We already talked about autonomy in halakhic ruling. But my questioner is not bound to my position. If he sees two positions before him, then from his point of view he is in a state of doubt, and therefore he has the right to be lenient. And that is what Rabbi Shlomo Zalman says: even though my own position is to be stringent, if it is a rabbinic question, then the questioner—sorry—is in doubt, and so you must present before him also the lenient positions, and he can proceed leniently under the laws governing doubt. By the way, he brings a responsum from Ketav Sofer there, and he disagrees with him on this point. He brings the Ketav Sofer, and the Ketav Sofer claims the same thing even for Torah-level issues. Even in a Torah-level question, and you have your own position, but you know there are others who are lenient, you need to present this before the questioner. And say to him: I think it is forbidden, but know that that decisor and this decisor say it is permitted. The question is what to do in such a situation. Seemingly, in Torah-level doubt, no matter what, the questioner should be stringent. But perhaps we would say that if he has a doubt of his own then it is already a double doubt, or if he decides to rely on the other decisor and not on me, then he is not in doubt—he goes with the other decisor and makes him his rabbi. Okay? Then he can follow him and be lenient. So the Ketav Sofer claims this even for Torah-level matters. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman does not accept this for Torah-level questions, but for rabbinic ones he does. The picture that emerges from here—that’s what I’m trying to show—the picture that emerges from here is that the role of the decisor is not to decide. The role of the decisor is not to replace the person and step into his shoes and into his head and try to understand what he is and what his world is and who stands against whom. That is not the role of the decisor at all. The decisor is a halakhic automaton. He has to give the relevant halakhic information, and afterward perhaps—if he has time and if the other person is willing to sit with him—he can try to guide him in the decision-making itself, to accompany him. Not to make the decision in his place, but to help him do the weighing, not to decide. And not to go along with everyone’s personal spirit and rule for him according to what suits him. To rule according to what suits him is a halakhic falsehood. It is forbidden to do that. He has to decide what suits him, not you. In this context I want to deal with one more point connected to this issue, and that is ruling from within and… you know what, let’s take a few minutes’ break and then I’ll continue. Five minutes. I have a question regarding what you said until now, what the Rabbi has said until now. When you as a layman receive from a halakhic decisor several options in the name of different rabbis, then once you can decide to accept the ruling of one rabbi, another time of a different rabbi—and are you obligated to be consistent? That’s your decision. According to the method of the Chazon Ish, you are obligated; there is no such obligation. There is no such halakhic obligation. After all, what the Talmud says about taking the leniencies of the House of Shammai and the leniencies of the House of Hillel—that such a person is wicked. But in the plain meaning there, the Talmud is not talking about halakhic prohibitions. If there is such a halakhic view, if you decided to follow it, you did not violate a halakhic prohibition. How the Holy One, blessed be He, will relate to someone who seeks only leniencies—only the Holy One, blessed be He, knows. But from the standpoint of pure Jewish law, if such a legitimate halakhic option exists, you are allowed to rely on it. Of course, you can know how pressing your situation is. Because in pressing circumstances everyone agrees that one may rely even on a non-consensus opinion. Now, what is a pressing circumstance? Each person and his own pressing circumstance. Only you can know how pressing it is for you. So there is no obligation to follow systematically the rulings of a certain rabbi? Say, of the Chazon Ish? No, there is no such halakhic obligation. There is some kind of value there—or moral obligation, or I don’t know what to call it—to show that you are not just playing games. But there are some, by the way, who interpret “the leniencies of this one and the leniencies of that one—wicked” only in a place where they contradict each other. Meaning? Where there is a contradiction between the leniency of this one and the leniency of that one. But not when you alternate. My son once said that he wanted to set up the reverse responsa project. In the responsa project you send a question and get the answer. In the reverse responsa project you send an answer and get the responsum that says it. You want someone who is lenient on such-and-such a question. You type into the reverse responsa project: okay, the responsum of the Rashba is this and this, the Pnei Yehoshua there, and you immediately get the one who is lenient. And that is exactly the project needed by someone who behaves this way. Fine, thank you. It’s like a reverse phone book. 441, is that what it was called? Right? There is such a thing. It exists. You give the phone number and it gives you the person and the address. I think in principle by law it was forbidden to do that, or maybe it still is forbidden. Privacy protection, even though there is direct access. But that—well, then the reverse responsa project is probably also forbidden by law. By that law of “the leniencies of this one and the leniencies of that one.” Fine. In any event, to our matter: I started talking a bit about the… I said I now want to sharpen another point connected to what I spoke about, and that is the question of ruling from within and from outside. In that sense there are indeed some implications to the idea that the decisor needs to understand the situation and enter into it and relate to it when he rules. And maybe I’ll bring an example where the penny first dropped for me. There was once a series of articles in the supplement of Yated Ne’eman that described what happened in the Kovno Ghetto during the Holocaust. In the Kovno Ghetto sat the author of Dvar Avraham, right? There were several very important Jews there. And the one who wrote the series of articles was called Rabbi Gibraltar, and his father—also Rabbi Gibraltar—was one of the rabbis in the Kovno Ghetto, though he was not formally a rabbi, but he was a Torah scholar and was considered there a rabbinic decisor. Later he became a rabbi in Italy—he survived in the end and became a rabbi in Italy. In any event, the son writes a bit about what his father went through in the ghetto. And among other things he said that his father had a very unique approach regarding monetary law in the ghetto. He said that in the ghetto there is no ownership of money. That was his claim. Meaning, if someone borrowed money from him, he did not need to return it, because it wasn’t his. If someone damaged his property, he did not need to pay him, and so on. People came to him in Italy after he survived in order to return money he had lent them during the Holocaust. He told them, “I do not accept it; it wasn’t my money.” In other words, “You do not have to return it to me.” And it was discussed there in great detail; the article was more historical, but woven into it was this halakhic approach regarding monetary law. Then a rabbi who deals with monetary law wrote about this after the series ended; he wrote an article there too in a later issue of Yated Ne’eman. He said: fine, he didn’t have books there, and you can understand why he made that mistake, but obviously these are nonsense statements and it isn’t true, and there is ownership of property even in a place like a ghetto. And that article really irritated me, so I wrote an article—admittedly in Tzohar; I’m apparently not one of those who publish in Yated Ne’eman. I wrote an article in Tzohar explaining why, in my opinion, he was right. And when I began the article, I opened by saying that I think a ruling of a rabbi who is inside a situation of that sort is for me a kind of testimony, not an opinion. What does that mean? It is a situation so crazy, so far from our ordinary world, that we really cannot understand what is happening there. What are the feelings of people who are in such a situation? What is the meaning of every step you take? What happens when you cannot understand, when that world is so far from the world you live in? You can’t rule about such a world. Simply not—you don’t understand the significance of things for those who live there. This is not only a formal question of permitted or forbidden. Why? Think, for example—I described, I don’t think I wrote this, but it is an example I thought about, maybe I wrote it too, I don’t remember, it was many years ago. Think of two people in the elevator of a high-rise building—thirty floors, a hundred floors, whatever. They’re in the elevator, the elevator gets stuck, the cable snaps, the elevator is falling down. Within half a minute these people will certainly be smashed to death. Okay, that’s the situation. Now they’re in an elevator racing downward. One of them says to the other: listen, give me a pen for a moment, I want to write a farewell letter to my family. The other says: absolutely not. I don’t want to. I don’t want to give it to you. So he takes the pen from him by force. Is that permitted? Forbidden? Is that robbery? It’s robbery, right? According to all the rules of Jewish law, he is forbidden to take the pen. If he doesn’t allow it, then it’s forbidden. I’m not sure that’s right. Why? Because in a situation where in half a minute both you and the pen are smashed and no trace of you remains, I don’t think one can speak in the ordinary language of monetary law, of acquisitions and ownership. “The pen is mine, and if you take it then the pen isn’t yours”—he’s a robber. There is no robbery and nothing of the sort. It is a situation in which someone living within it understands that in such a state there is no monetary law and no ownership of objects. But only someone living inside can understand that. Because someone looking at it from outside sees it in the ordinary categories of Jewish law, in your normal and sane world: where did we ever find a source in Jewish law for the idea that ownership expires in such a situation? There is no source. Fine, so apparently there is ownership. But when you live inside such a situation, you have a clear feeling that in such a place it doesn’t make sense to apply monetary law. So it doesn’t apply, and therefore there is no monetary law. But that decision can be made only by a decisor who is inside the situation and understands it from within, not by a decisor looking from outside. Later—that was the opening I wrote there. After that I tried to anchor it also in regular halakhic categories. I argued there, בעקבות Rabbi Shimon Shkop, that he explains there that the prohibition of “do not steal” is different in essence from the rest of the Torah’s prohibitions, in Sha’arei Yosher. Why? In ordinary Torah prohibitions, the prohibition of eating pork exists because the Torah forbade it. The prohibition of “do not steal”—the prohibition exists because the act is theft. Not that the act is theft because there is a prohibition. Because the act is theft, therefore there is a prohibition. And this is Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s innovation in jurisprudence: he says that there is really a system that precedes Jewish law, which determines the laws of acquisition, and on top of those laws of acquisition—which were determined legally, meta-halakhically, not by the Torah but by society, human beings, whatever—on top of that, once there are laws of acquisition, the Torah comes and says that whoever takes something that is not his property violates the prohibition of “do not steal.” But after all, he writes there that tractate Bava Batra is a tractate without verses—it’s well known in the yeshivot. A tractate without verses. A large part of it deals with acquisition, because acquisition has no source in the Torah. Here and there you can perhaps see something, but generally there is no source in the Torah for the laws of acquisition. So on what is “do not steal” based? After all, the prohibition of “do not steal” cannot be defined until you define what belongs to whom and how acquisition is created. Without acquisition being created, the prohibition of “do not steal” is undefined. So if the Torah prohibits “do not steal” without defining the laws of acquisition, Rabbi Shimon Shkop says that apparently the Torah is relying on some legal definition that precedes it, and that determines the laws of acquisition. And the Torah simply comes and places upon that the prohibition of “do not steal.” Usually this Rabbi Shimon Shkop is understood in a relatively narrow way. Stein Fischer yells at him altogether that he’s talking nonsense. But usually the interpretation of Rabbi Shimon Shkop is a narrow one. What does that mean? They explain him like this: the laws of acquisition indeed belong to jurisprudence; that is a social determination that precedes Jewish law. But at that level there is no prohibition on taking money that is not mine. The prohibition was created only by Jewish law. One needs definitions—that is only the definitions of the laws of acquisition. The definitions are made at the legal level. But after the definitions exist, there is no prohibition on taking someone’s money until the Torah comes and says that there is “do not steal.” In other words, what precedes the Torah is not prohibition and permission; it is only neutral definitions. The Torah alone can create prohibition and permission and obligation. But that is not correct. It is a mistaken interpretation of Rabbi Shimon Shkop. I’ll bring several proofs. Rabbi Shimon Shkop argues that there is also a prohibition of theft from jurisprudence, before the Torah commandment of “do not steal.” If I take my fellow’s money, then even if the Torah had not commanded “do not steal,” I would still be violating a prohibition—a legal prohibition, not a halakhic prohibition. The Torah comes to add here also a halakhic, religious prohibition, an extra layer. But there is a prohibition even without it. One of his proofs was that Rabbi Shimon Shkop argues that even according to the opinion that stealing from a gentile is permitted by Torah law—it is not by Torah law; stealing from a gentile is forbidden by Torah law. Why? Because from the very fact that that money belongs to the gentile, then obviously you are forbidden to take it from him. So you see that the belongingness of the money is not just neutral property law; there is also a prohibition on infringing your ownership in jurisprudence, before “do not steal.” According to those views, there is no Torah-level “do not steal” vis-à-vis a gentile, but there is a legal prohibition of theft. Why? Because it is a consequence that accompanies the very definition of acquisition. Once acquisition is defined, theft is also defined with respect to it. It is part of the same legal system. Another proof I had for this: Rabbi Shimon Shkop asks there a wonderful question, and I use it a lot in other contexts. He asks: and if you say, what obligates us to obey a command that the Torah did not command? And then he answers like a good Jew—he answers a question with a question: and what obligates us to obey the commands that the Torah did command? This is Rabbi Shimon Shkop right in the middle of Sha’arei Yosher, in the middle of a halakhic discussion. So he says that what obligates us is reason, intellect. So reason obligates us in this too. The same mouth that prohibited can also prohibit elsewhere. After all, reason is the basis for why I obey what is commanded in the Torah. So if reason tells me about something not written in the Torah that I also have to obey it, then certainly it must be obeyed. Why do I care that it’s not written in the Torah? Even what is written in the Torah is binding only by virtue of reason. That is an interesting answer in itself. But what interests me is his question. Yes—what did he ask? He asked: if you say, why do I need to obey something that doesn’t appear in the Torah, for which there is no command in the Torah? Now, if the interpretation of Rabbi Shimon Shkop were the narrow interpretation, there is no room for that question. After all, truly one would not need to obey. There is no prohibition on stealing someone’s money except after “do not steal.” At the legal level before the prohibition of “do not steal,” there is no prohibition; there is only a definition of what belongs to whom. Only property law is defined, but not a prohibition on taking. If Rabbi Shimon Shkop asks what obligates me to obey, it is clear that he understands there is a prohibition even before “do not steal,” not just a property definition, but also a prohibition on taking. And so on. I think I had another proof or two. Let’s come back to our matter. What does this mean? It basically means that the definition of all monetary law and “do not steal” and everything begins with what? With the laws of acquisition. Right? With the definition of what belongs to whom and how acquisition is created. On top of that, you are forbidden to damage another’s property, and if you borrowed his money you must return it to him, and if he deposited my money with someone then there are the laws of bailees, and if I damaged or stole, all those things are outcomes of the laws of acquisition. The foundation is the laws of acquisition. Okay? So now what does this basically mean? That without laws of acquisition, civil law collapses. And the laws of acquisition are determined not by the Torah but by society. The Torah only gives them its stamp, and that is why a commercial custom creates a Torah-level acquisition, and what the custom in a guild or in some place establishes creates a Torah-level acquisition. So what does this mean? That all of civil law begins first and foremost from the definition of property law, and that is a social-legal definition, not a halakhic definition. That is the foundation on which Jewish law is built. Now I ask you: in a place where everyone does what is right in his own eyes, every Ukrainian child can come in there, shoot a Jew in the head, and take all his property. Are there property laws there? No. It is a place where there is no law of the kingdom, no legal system, so there is no acquisition; the concept of acquisition is undefined, since the legal system is prior—it is the foundation on which Jewish law is built. In a place where there is no effective legal system, there is no Jewish law. There is no Jewish law in monetary matters, I mean. Pork being forbidden is something else. There is no Jewish law. And therefore, in my opinion, Rabbi Gibraltar was right when he said that because we are in a ghetto, in such a place where basically anyone can pounce on me and take my property, there is no police, no judges, nobody will do anything to him, then my ownership has no real meaning. Ownership is not defined at the legal level, because there is no legal system here at all. If ownership is not defined at the legal level, then someone who takes from me is not a robber, and someone who borrowed from me does not need to return it to me, and someone who damaged me does not need to pay me, and so on. There is nothing. Since all of civil law is built on the foundation of legal property law, and all that exists only where there is a legal system—if there is no legal system, there is no foundation, and automatically the entire religious or halakhic superstructure of civil law does not exist. And in my opinion that is the way one can explain the feeling—or the testimony, as I called it—of Rabbi Gibraltar, also within ordinary halakhic tools. But clearly, I would never have thought of such a thing on my own until I heard someone who lived there, inside, and told me from his immediate experience: obviously in such a situation there is no ownership of things, period. Someone living there knows that this is so, and someone who did not live there cannot express an opinion; he does not understand what it means. Maybe I’ll give you an example to sharpen this point a bit. There is an entry on Wikipedia about this example called Mary’s room. What is Mary’s room? Mary was a brilliant physicist, the number-one expert in optics in the world. She knew how to explain all optical phenomena, mastered all the hidden and revealed aspects of physics in the field of optics, okay? But she lived her whole life in a room that was entirely black and white—there were no colors there. So she knew what happened to an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength that meets another wave and passes through such-and-such a medium—she knew how to calculate everything. She also knows that a wave of a certain wavelength is called red, and another wavelength is called green, or blue, or whatever. So she knows what blue does, what green does when it meets blue—she knows everything perfectly. Complete mastery. Now one fine day she leaves her black-and-white room and encounters our colorful world. Did she learn something new? What do you say? She is now experiencing colors. I don’t know if that counts as learning, but it is an experience of colors—seeing color is an experience. Right, an interesting question whether such a thing counts as learning, but she understands what red is. She had no idea what red was before now. She knew that it was a wave of such-and-such a wavelength and that it behaves this way and when it meets such-and-such it does that—but what is red? She had no idea what red was. She used the word, but the connotation that accompanies that word, the experiential meaning of that word, was completely unfamiliar to her. Do you understand? Maybe I’ll sharpen it further. There is a famous riddle—some call it a joke, I don’t know—if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there, does it make a sound? Do you know that question? That’s the question—not whether it really fell. No, no, it fell. Because all that is a human experience. It just made waves in the air. The answer that everyone always gives, naturally, is: of course, if no one heard it, so what? There was a sound there, only nobody heard it. Big mistake. Obviously not. The tree that fell in the forest made no sound whatsoever. It created acoustic waves in the air. That is what it did. When those waves hit the eardrum in the ear, then inside us there is created the sensation that we call sound, or various sounds. But if there is no ear there to translate those sound waves into sounds, then there is no sound there. There is an acoustic wave, not a sound. The same, by the way, with color. In the world—know this well—there are no colors. We think there are. That is a mistake. There aren’t. The colors are all inside us, in our heads. In the head or in consciousness. In the world there are no colors. Colors are our internal representation of certain phenomena happening outside. Do you know the problem called the philosophers’ palace? The philosophers’ palace that has to be rescued from a fire, and nobody can rescue it. The question is: how can we verify that when I speak about the color red, and Sheila speaks about the color red, we are talking about the same thing? There is no way in the world to verify that. It may be that he sees what I call green, only he has always been used to calling it red. And in that way we’ve been synchronized all our lives from birth. He sees an appearance that I call green, but he is used to that being called red. I see an appearance that counts as red for me and I also call it red. We may be seeing completely different things. But we are fully synchronized in terminology. When he sees something he says he sees something red; I also say I see something red. When I see green he sees green, everything is synchronized—synchronized in words. What we actually see may be entirely different. I’ll tell you more than that: it may be that when I see something red, he hears Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He doesn’t see at all; he hears. Because for him the eyes are connected to the auditory center in the brain, not to the visual center. So an electromagnetic wave hitting his eye makes symphonies sound to him—he doesn’t see them, he hears them. “All the people saw the sounds.” What does it mean, they saw the sounds? The ear was connected to the visual center, that’s all. Every oscilloscope does that, right? On an oscilloscope we see sounds. So the point is that we have no way to synchronize our inner subjective experiences. We are synchronized in language, we are synchronized in the way we describe those experiences, but not in the experiences themselves. So if I go back to our physicist Mary, what I am basically claiming is that Mary did not know what red was. The greatest genius in optics there is, talking all the time about red and what a red wave does and what a green wave does—she has no idea what red is. Now I ask: if someone asks her, tell me, is a picture made up of green and red and yellow beautiful or not beautiful? Can she answer that? She can tell you how the waves move, but what does beautiful or not beautiful mean? To say whether it’s beautiful or not beautiful, that’s not about the waves—it’s about what kind of picture it forms for me in consciousness, what the combination of colors creates in me. That she never experienced. I compare this to halakhic ruling. A situation can be described to me. They can describe to me what happened in the ghetto, and then I understand what happened in the ghetto. But as long as I did not live it, I do not really understand what it means. I do not really understand the experience of a person living inside such a framework. In a situation where I do not understand what it means for people, I cannot rule Jewish law about such a situation. Because in order to rule Jewish law on such a situation, you have to know what it means for people. You can’t rule without that. It isn’t a formal game of computer software. You need to understand what it means. And here I’m diverging from what I said earlier. Earlier I said that the decisor is supposed to lay out all the paths and not enter into the shoes of the questioner, into the head of the questioner, into the situation of the questioner—understand him and tailor the ruling to him. There I said that was not right. The one who has to enter into the questioner’s head is only the questioner himself. But there are situations where, say, people are living in a certain situation, and they ask a decisor who is far from their world—say, people in a ghetto, and there was no Torah scholar there, and they send a question to a decisor who is far away, living a tranquil life in a normal place. In principle, he cannot answer them. He cannot answer them, even though they have no alternative, no decisor there to tell them otherwise. Because he doesn’t understand the situation, he doesn’t understand what it means. Later I expanded that article and wrote a broader article in general about rulings during the Holocaust. And I argued that many rulings in the Holocaust that major rabbis and decisors gave in the Holocaust do not stand up to the test of ordinary halakhic ruling. One can see that they contradict the rules of Jewish law. I took several examples from the responsa MiMa’amakim of Rabbi Oshry, also, by the way, from the Kovno Ghetto, I think. And I showed there, one after another, that they do not stand within the rules of Jewish law. Sometimes stringently, by the way, not only leniently. But when you have to enter into the situation in order to rule, you cannot rule with halakhic rules; it doesn’t help. I already criticized ruling by rules more than once. Now I’m approaching it from a somewhat different angle. The rules are a dry thing—the question is what they say. Even if it is correct to work with rules, you need to understand what the rules are saying, not just the rule itself. What does it mean for people? And you cannot rule if you cannot truly understand the situation and what it means for people. Now I’ll bring examples that are less extreme than the Holocaust. Think, for example, of everyday questions. Say there is a young, egalitarian community between women and men that wants to establish an egalitarian prayer quorum, and they go to a rabbi to ask him what the rules are, how to do it, what is right, what is not right. It could even be that this community has their own rabbi, a young rabbi, one of the group, and he goes to consult his own teacher from the yeshiva, who is already an older Jew and a Torah scholar and so on. He wants to consult him. Now very often, the rabbi who is distant from the situation, who does not understand the mentality and the significance of things inside such a community—forbidden for him to open his mouth. He cannot answer, because he does not understand what it means for people. He doesn’t understand where this even comes from for them, why they want it, what it will do if he forbids it or if he permits it. Very often he also judges the people, of course, according to his own glasses. These are liberal feminists who don’t care about anything. He doesn’t understand that very often there are real religious people there for whom this is a religious obligation to behave this way. Now from his perspective it sounds like nonsense—what are they babbling about? I’ve never in my life met a woman for whom it’s terribly important to receive an aliyah to the Torah. It’s a feminist protest, not a religious desire. That is of course an interpretation through his own glasses from the depths of Bnei Brak. He does not understand that often it is otherwise. But there are communities and people for whom it is otherwise; it is not like that, it comes from a sincere place. And if you are distant from that way of life, you don’t know it, you don’t understand where it comes from, you don’t understand what it means, then how can you decide whether it is permitted or forbidden? Certainly if it isn’t a clear case. Fine, if it’s a clear case, maybe. But if there are opinions this way and that, or considerations this way and that, and it’s a question of judgment, in such a situation you can’t express an opinion because you don’t understand what it means for them. How can you decide in such a situation? I’ll give you another somewhat similar example. All kinds of rabbis who forbid, say, going to a performance by a female singer. Okay? Not Holocaust questions, not such extreme things—simple, everyday matters. Okay? Or listening to a female singer on the radio or something like that. “A woman’s voice is nakedness.” Okay? Now I claim and assume that a rabbi of that sort has probably never in his life gone to a performance by a female singer, right? Because he thinks it’s forbidden. So he doesn’t really understand why people go to such a performance. In his wildly imaginative mind he is sure that people go to such a performance only because of the sexual drives associated with it. Otherwise, let them go listen to Avraham Fried, what’s the problem? Why do they need Chava Alberstein? Avraham Fried is also forbidden, of course, according to the Bnei Brak pamphlets. Musical evenings are promiscuity, as we all know. But never mind, let’s say the more sane decisors. So go listen to Avraham Fried—why are you going to Chava Alberstein? Now try explaining to him that I like listening to Chava Alberstein, not Avraham Fried. For me that is musical enjoyment, that is art that I like more. Artistic enjoyment. I’m not going there because I’m in love with her persona or because I have sexual connotations from what she does. I’m talking now not about provocative performances, but a female singer who sings songs I like to hear—she is a good singer in my opinion. Okay? No—it comes from my wanting to hear it because I like that singing. Now a decisor may forbid me; he can say that it has nothing to do with drives and nothing to do with anything—“a woman’s voice is nakedness,” a formal prohibition, forbidden. That is a legitimate statement. I don’t agree with it, but it’s legitimate. That he can say even without understanding that world from within. But if he says, “What are you talking about? This will arouse in you drives and forbidden thoughts,” and so on—that he cannot say. Because if he hasn’t experienced it himself and he doesn’t understand why people go to such a situation, then he cannot express an opinion about it. Therefore, where there is a formal prohibition regardless of anything else—say, if that is his opinion. I don’t think the prohibition is formal, but if that is his opinion, then he can say it even without experiencing it himself. But where he forbids it because of forbidden thoughts and drives and the things that accompany it—there, if you don’t know the situation, you don’t know. You cannot determine a position about it. You do not understand what it means for the person, why he is going there, what happens to him when he is there. It is not a distance like the distance between the Holocaust and our lives. We could be neighbors. But still it is distant from his world; he cannot grasp that way of life, it is distant from him. And I am not blaming him, that is fine, it is his right—but he has to be wise enough not to express a position about it. So then you can’t say anything. Maybe you can say something to the members of your own community, because there you may be able to understand where it comes from and what it does to them. You cannot say it to people who are in a different cultural world. So there are many examples of a rule according to which you do, in fact, need to step into the shoes of the questioner in order to rule—but notice, not in order to decide, but even when you are only placing before him the alternatives and their prices, even for that you need to understand the situation. Otherwise you won’t even be able to present the alternatives. This does not contradict what I said earlier, that the person himself is the one who has to decide. Because even if the decisor only has to present the alternatives and say what price is attached to each—rabbinic prohibition, Torah-level prohibition, custom, commandment, all those sorts of things—you cannot even say that if you do not really understand the world in which it is taking place. This spills over into really adjacent matters. I’ll finish this because I want to finish this topic already. There is a big question: what is a decisor’s training supposed to be? Who is a Torah scholar, in an even broader perspective? So of course a Torah scholar needs to know the sources of Jewish law. He needs to be skilled in halakhic thinking. He needs to have common sense to compare one matter to another, to analyze things correctly. And those things do not always come together; often they don’t. But besides that, he at least has to know the world. If you want to rule. A disconnected Torah scholar who lives in his own four cubits—that’s perfectly fine, legitimate—just don’t rule, because you don’t understand the world toward which your rulings are directed. And that was often the feeling with all kinds of Haredi rulings during the coronavirus period. A person who has no clue at all what he is talking about. A great Torah scholar—he has no clue at all what he is talking about—and he gives rulings that cost dozens of people their lives. Why? Because he decided that the schools had to be opened, because it says in the Talmud that a plague is only when three people out of a thousand die in one day. And he doesn’t understand that in an exponential process—he has never even heard the word—that if three people die today, tomorrow five will die, the day after ten, and the day after that fifty, and then it will already be too late to stop it. For that you need a little basic mathematical literacy, to know what an exponential process is. There is a nice example of this. Think about folding a sheet of paper. You know that one? I fold a sheet of paper in half, and then I fold it again in half. If I fold it forty times, how thick will it be? In half, and then again in half. I did that forty times. It reaches from Earth to the moon. A sheet of paper. Do the calculation and you’ll see; it’s a very easy calculation. Let’s say the thickness of a sheet of paper is a millimeter, for the sake of discussion. Fine? Now basically if you folded it once, that’s two; after folding it forty times, that’s two to the power of… two to the power of forty. Two to the power of forty millimeters is two to the power of thirty-seven meters. That is two to the power of thirty-four kilometers. Since two to the tenth is a thousand. That is a million million million kilometers. A sheet of paper folded forty times, that’s all. That’s a nice example of an exponential process. And anyone who doesn’t have an intuitive feel for what mathematics is won’t understand it. After all, it sounds inconceivable even to someone who does understand mathematics. Do you understand? So halakhic ruling requires a certain involvement in the world. That’s one side. I’ll do this briefly now because I need to finish. On the other hand, I do agree, and I definitely agree, that it also requires some kind of detachment from the world. There is something in this model of the Council of Torah Sages, right, where they sit in some closed room, people who know their room and their yeshiva, who don’t really know what is happening in the world, certainly not in the political world, and nevertheless they make the decisions, or at least chart the directions. There is something cleaner here. But it is not enough. It is an important contribution, but it cannot work alone. Because if you don’t know the field, then it may be very clean but not suitable. There is something—you need to find some kind of integrated model, between the ability to be clean and closed in your room and some kind of familiarity and acquaintance with the world, general education. To understand what things mean for people and to know different areas of knowledge in general. In my opinion that is an inseparable part of greatness in Torah today—not only knowing the edges by heart, and not even only having common sense and comparing one matter to another. There is something in general education, in familiarity with the world, that is an inseparable part of this. And that is the complement to what I said earlier, what I said here regarding halakhic ruling—ruling from within and ruling from outside. Okay? In our period, the weight of knowledge has decreased greatly in the figure of a Torah scholar and a decisor. Knowledge is less important now; there are databases and everything. What is much more important is reasoning, common sense, comparison from one matter to another, and familiarity with the field in order to be a decisor. Meaning, to know the world. You need general education, by the way. Even your halakhic judgment can be flawed if you don’t have general education. There are ways of thinking you are not exposed to. So there is still a lot more to say about this, about the implications of ruling from outside and ruling from inside—what I’m talking about I call ruling from outside and from inside, meaning ruling from within the situation or ruling from outside. Ruling from outside can be done only for situations that are close to your world. Situations that are foreign to your world—you are forbidden to rule about them from outside. It is a mistake to do that. Fine, we’ll stop here. If anyone wants to comment or ask? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Sabbath peace. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Thank you very much.