Conceptual Analysis – Lesson 12

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Intelligence, intelligence has IQ. Intelligence has IQ. So what’s the problem? We measure wisdom. In principle, again, you can measure anything. Maybe we haven’t found the scale yet, so you have to be smarter and find the scale, but at the level of principle, you can. So I think I mentioned this last time: there’s a certain feeling that quality is basically abstract quantity. Right? Meaning, if the things are abstract things, then we talk about quality. If the things are tangible things, then we talk about quantity. I think that distinction also doesn’t hold water. Because we definitely can, I think I mentioned this last time, definitely talk about the quantity of abstract things. The amount of time that has passed. How many seconds passed? Time is something abstract. But it seems to me that if I say ten seconds passed, people won’t say I was talking about quality, about measuring quality. That’s quantity. I’m measuring how many seconds passed. I have a quantity of seconds. How many ideas do I have in a book? That too is counting abstract things, but how many—not the quality of the ideas, not how beautiful or original the idea is, but how many ideas there are, or how many new ideas there are. So sometimes it’s hard to measure that, but basically it’s a quantitative question even though ideas are abstract things. And therefore the distinction between quality and quantity, I don’t think you can hang it on the question whether we’re dealing with something tangible or something abstract. So what is it then? What is the difference after all? Actually this insight clicked for me once in synagogue, when I was in Yeruham. The rabbi there gave a lecture on Jewish law. And he was talking about the prohibition against measuring things on the Sabbath. Then he brought halakhic decisors who say that it’s permitted to measure a fever on the Sabbath. It’s a dispute among the decisors, but there are decisors who say that it’s permitted to measure temperature on the Sabbath. Measuring is prohibited, let’s say because of commerce, because in the context of commerce you measure things, weigh things, count things, and so on, so they prohibited measuring things on the Sabbath, a rabbinic prohibition. So he says there are decisors who permit it, but to measure temperature. And he remained with it needing further analysis; he was puzzled by those decisors, because why should it be permitted to measure temperature? Because temperature is something abstract? But there’s also a prohibition on measuring abstract things, for example measuring time. Measuring time with a stopwatch is also prohibited on the Sabbath. At least that’s what he claimed, or he quoted those decisors as saying; you can argue about it, it’s not written in the Talmud. But that’s what he claimed, and then he said: how can it be that measuring time is prohibited, while measuring heat or temperature is permitted? So apparently there’s no difference between measuring abstract things and measuring things that aren’t abstract. So what is the difference? Why is measuring temperature permitted and measuring time prohibited? And while I was sitting there in the lecture, I thought to myself—and suddenly it kind of clicked—and my claim is the following claim. Suddenly I understood the difference between quantity and quality. My claim, bottom line, is that temperature is a quality and the number of seconds is a quantity. And on the Sabbath it’s prohibited to measure quantities; it’s permitted to measure qualities. But of course that’s not a definition, it’s only an indication. Now I’ll try to derive the definition from it. And that’s the meaning of conceptual analysis. That’s why I’m bringing this as an example of conceptual analysis. In mathematics they make a distinction between two functions of the number system. By the way, in mathematics they only do this with respect to infinite numbers, and with finite numbers the claim is that it works the same way, but I want to apply it to finite numbers. In any case, at least regarding infinite numbers they speak about cardinal and ordinal numbers. Okay? Cardinal and ordinal numbers. Now I’m giving a layman’s explanation, yes? Not a mathematical explanation. So in a layman’s explanation, basically the claim is this: when I attach a number to something, that can be done in two connotations or two contexts. I can attach a number that characterizes how many things there are—say I have five oranges, so basically I’m saying how many things there are; that’s the number five. And I can use numbers as a way to order things. This is the first, this is the second, this is the third, this is the fifth. The number five, when it serves as an ordinal number and not a cardinal number, doesn’t count how many things I have; rather it determines some order among different states, and the fifth state is the one that comes after the fourth and before the sixth. Basically it’s a number that comes to arrange the thing in relation to other things. By contrast, a cardinal number is a number that counts how many items I have in this collection that’s standing before me. Let’s maybe give examples. In physics they speak about intensive quantities and extensive quantities, which is basically the same distinction. When I talk about the temperature of a certain liquid or a certain gas, then I describe it in numbers. As I said before, temperature has numbers: Celsius, Fahrenheit, it doesn’t matter, different scales, but on every scale there is a number attached to each temperature. Is that number cardinal or ordinal? Clearly it’s ordinal, not cardinal. Meaning, you can’t—say you have a liquid at a temperature of thirty degrees. You can’t take one more degree, throw it in, and then you’ll have thirty-one degrees, right? Meaning, thirty degrees is not thirty units of degree sitting inside this pitcher. You won’t be able to point and say this is degree twenty-eight, this is degree twenty-nine, altogether I have thirty degrees here. Rather, what is the meaning of the number thirty here? The number thirty simply describes the heat-state in a hierarchy built from one to as far as you want, so this is the thirtieth in the hierarchy. The thirtieth-hottest state is called thirty degrees—let’s say that only whole-degree numbers describe different heat states, that doesn’t matter right now. So thirty degrees is basically an ordinal number. There isn’t some individual degree sitting inside this, and I have thirty of them, and therefore altogether I have thirty degrees. You won’t manage to point to anything that is degree number twenty-three. That’s irrelevant. What you have here is simply a state whose heat level is the thirtieth in the heat hierarchy. Therefore thirty here is an ordinal number, not a cardinal number. By contrast, when I measure how many seconds passed in a certain process, then I say thirty seconds passed. Here it’s clear that we’re talking about thirty units of a second. I can tell you when the first second passed, when the second, when the third, and together thirty seconds accumulated. Therefore measuring time is a cardinal measurement and not an ordinal measurement. Right? Even though time is an abstract thing and temperature is an abstract thing, the difference between them is not the question of whether it’s abstract or not; the difference between them is whether the number is ordinal or cardinal. With temperature it’s an ordinal number. With time it’s a cardinal number. It counts how many seconds I have. With temperature I’m not counting how many degrees I have. I have no way to count the degrees one two three four and get to thirty. The level of thirty degrees is an overall level. It isn’t made up of thirty little levels. It’s level number thirty in the temperature ranking, number thirty in the hierarchy of temperatures, that’s all. It’s one number, thirty; it isn’t made of thirty units, so it isn’t counting anything. When you count something, there are units and you count how many units you have. In an ordinal number there are no units. The unit as such has no meaning. In an ordinal number, thirty is simply level number thirty in the hierarchy, an ordinal number, yes. So ordinal numbers come to create order. A temperature of one degree is colder than a temperature of two; two is hotter than one. Three is hotter than two, four is hotter than three, and so on. These are ordinal numbers. They don’t come to count anything; they come to order. And now when you ask yourself what intelligence a person has, or what heat this water has, you are basically asking at what level on the scale to place them—on the intelligence scale or the temperature scale. And therefore that is an ordinal number and not a cardinal number. And my claim is that on the Sabbath it is prohibited to measure quantities, because think where the prohibition against measuring comes from. The prohibition against measuring comes from… therefore it’s clear that the prohibition against measuring is basically a prohibition against measuring quantities. It’s a prohibition against counting, counting how many quantities you have, enumerating. It’s not a prohibition against ordering things. There is no prohibition on the Sabbath against arranging things and saying you are number one, you are number two, you are number three. There’s no problem with arranging things. What is prohibited is counting things. And weighing—weighing is also counting. Counting kilograms. Therefore my claim is that even one who says it is prohibited to count or measure abstract things on the Sabbath means that only when the measuring of those abstract things is measurement of quantities, cardinal measurement, and not ordinal measurement. If it’s ordinal measurement, it’s permitted. And I think that is what stands behind the view that permits measuring temperature on the Sabbath but prohibits measuring time. I’m not claiming that those decisors made distinctions in their heads between ordinal and cardinal numbers. I don’t think some of them even knew these concepts; they didn’t think that way. But it seems to me that this was the intuition that stood at the basis of their distinction, and I think it can be formulated in this way. No, I’m not claiming that this is exactly how they thought when they reached that conclusion. If I act as some decisor, all he did was say something that intuitively seemed right to him. But when I try to explain his intuition, it seems to me that this is the explanation behind it. I’ve mentioned more than once the debate, the debate between Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner and the Seridei Eish, regarding the analytic explanations in Maimonides. Rav Chaim creates an impressive analytic structure in order to explain or reconcile some contradiction in Maimonides. Did Maimonides really think of all that? So it’s pretty clear that he didn’t. Therefore in yeshivot they often tend to laugh at that style of learning, to do it and then laugh at it in hours that are neither day nor night, and say that clearly Maimonides did not mean that. Maimonides did not think about this whole complicated intellectual structure, otherwise he would have said something. I don’t think that criticism is necessarily correct. Even if Maimonides didn’t think of it explicitly, it may still be that this structure describes the same intuition Maimonides had. The fact that I do it in my own language and with some very very complex analysis does not mean that intuitively Maimonides didn’t grasp it immediately. Even if I had asked him, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to explain it to me. Maybe. That doesn’t matter. So I know how to analyze things better than he did, but when I analyze, I am analyzing what was in his head. And therefore I think that in principle a Brisker, analytic explanation like that of Maimonides is not necessarily wrong. The fact that Maimonides didn’t think in that conceptual language and in that way does not mean that I cannot describe the intuitions Maimonides had within that language. So the same thing I’m saying here in the context of the prohibition on the Sabbath. I don’t think any of these decisors thought in the language of cardinal and ordinal numbers. But the fact that intuitively someone says that measuring temperature is permitted and measuring time is prohibited—I assume that what actually stands behind his distinction, his intuition, is this explanation. This is the reasoning behind it. And many times intuition comes before explanations. Intuition is often some kind of grasp—we talked about what intuition is—a direct grasp of the thing without your knowing how to explain to yourself why it is true. That’s called intuition. Now someone else will come along with a more developed analytic ability and explain to you, or conceptualize for you, what you yourself think, and he will show you the logic behind your intuition. And that is perfectly fine. Therefore I don’t think there is any interpretation here that misses the intent of the source. In any case, as far as I’m concerned, what I want to claim is that this is also the difference between quantity and quality. Quality is something measured by ordinal numbers. Quantity is something measured by cardinal numbers. That, in my opinion, is the definition, the correct definition, of the difference between quantity and quality. Now when you think about it, you’ll immediately see. When you count people on a religious court, how many judges are there? Two against one. Then two is more than one. I asked: in what sense is that quantity? Why is that not quality? The simple answer is because when I say there are two here against one, the two here is a cardinal number, not an ordinal number. I’m counting how many judges I have, one, two. When the number is cardinal and not ordinal, that means I’m dealing with quantities and not with qualities. When I ask myself who is the wiser judge, I’m dealing with a qualitative question. Why? Because even if I measure their intelligence and assign each one an IQ, it’s clear that when I say someone has an IQ of 110, I do not mean that he has 110 units of one IQ. You can’t identify in his wisdom where the twenty-fourth IQ is, right? That’s not relevant. It’s like temperature in that sense. Rather, I’m saying that he is on level 110 in the hierarchy of wisdom. Meaning, 110 is an ordinal number, not a cardinal number. And therefore wisdom is a quality and not a quantity. Which is an excellent definition of the difference between quantity and quality. Now, if you pay attention, you’ll see that quality is always something abstract. But it is not true that every abstract thing is a quality. That’s the mistake. When people tie the difference between quality and quantity to abstractness, they are basically saying that when you measure an abstract thing it is quality, and when you measure a tangible thing it is quantity. That’s not true. But it’s not completely baseless. There is something correct in that intuition. What is correct in that intuition? Qualities are always something abstract. That is true, that is indeed true. What is not true is that every abstract thing is by definition always a quality. That is not true. There are abstract things that are quantity, like an amount of time. But there are no qualities that are tangible things. There are none. A quality is always something abstract. Because tangible things can be counted, can be enumerated. Those will be cardinal numbers and not ordinal numbers. Okay, so that is the difference between quality and quantity. And by the way, from this come all sorts of practical implications also in Jewish law: in the counting of a zavah, and the counting of a niddah, and the counting of the Omer. And here I said I would get to the counting of the Omer, so let’s look at the counting of the Omer. All right? In the counting of the Omer, what are we… There is room to discuss whether when we count the Omer we are counting or ordering. Are we counting how many days have passed, or how many days remain until Shavuot, or are we ordering? So if you know this, Tosafot brings the Baal Halakhot Gedolot. There is a dispute between Tosafot and the Baal Halakhot Gedolot on the question of completeness, yes? Whether the commandment of counting the Omer is one continuous commandment, or whether each day has its own separate commandment to count. And the practical difference is what happens if you missed a day. You forgot to count both during the day and at night; you didn’t count. The next day arrived. According to the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, you lost the commandment. Because the commandment is one across all 49 days. According to Tosafot, each day there is a commandment to count that day. So if you missed one day, count the next day. Yes, so the practical difference is whether you can… You can continue counting even according to the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, just don’t make a blessing. Because you already missed the commandment. The question is whether there is any point in continuing to count at all; according to the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, plainly not. But because we are in doubt between the two views, we continue counting, but we do it without a blessing. We do it without a blessing because of concern for the view of the Baal Halakhot Gedolot that the blessing might be a blessing in vain. Okay? What is the dispute between the Baal Halakhot Gedolot and Tosafot? I think the dispute is over the essence of the counting of the Omer: is it cardinal counting or ordinal counting? If you say it is cardinal counting, then basically each day you count how many days have passed. Right? You ask how many days have passed until now. If you didn’t do it yesterday, why shouldn’t you do it today? What’s the problem? Yesterday you didn’t fulfill the commandment, but today you do fulfill it; you are counting how many days have passed until today. That is cardinal counting. If the counting is cardinal counting, that is the view of Tosafot. So every day you have to count the days that have passed up to that day. If you didn’t count yesterday, count it today—what difference does it make. According to the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, this is ordinal counting. Ordinal counting means that when you say that today is the fifteenth day, you are not saying fifteen days have passed until today. You are saying that this day is the day after the fourteenth and before the sixteenth. You have to place it on the scale of the days of the Omer. So you understand that this cannot be done with each day separately. If you did not place day 14 on the scale, then you cannot place day 15. The whole meaning of day 15 is that it is one after day 14. That is the meaning of an ordinal number. So if you didn’t count day… fourteen, then there’s nothing to count on the fifteenth; that’s it, you lost it. The whole idea is to order the days one after another from one to forty-nine. Therefore the conception of the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, that this is one unit, means that it is ordinal counting. And the conception of Tosafot, that there is a commandment for each day separately, means that he understood it as cardinal counting. Maybe, maybe one can also connect this to the question of what happens in the Diaspora. Let’s say you don’t know which day of the Omer count you are in—why not count today as fourteen or fifteen, depending on the doubt about the day? Right? On Passover you have two days of the festival in the Diaspora. You begin counting the day after Passover. So basically you begin counting from the first day. But what is the first day? Is it after the first day of Passover or after the second day of Passover? So in principle by law you should have had to count each day as two possible days out of doubt: today is the fifteenth or sixteenth of the Omer, depending. Today, of course, there is no longer any doubt about the day, but we do it as a remembrance of what once was. Okay, so we should have had to continue counting that way. But the decisors write that we do not count in that way. Why? Rabbi Shimon Shkop discusses this, among others. He says because counting cannot be either fifteen or sixteen. Counting means that you have to know where you are. You can’t say today is either fifteen or sixteen; that means you don’t know where you are. If you say it’s either fifteen, then you didn’t count. To count means to know where you are. It seems to me—and here I’m not one hundred percent sure, but my instinct tells me—that this is easier to say if you understand, like the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, that the counting is ordinal counting. Because in cardinal counting I can say that either fifteen days passed or sixteen—I don’t know how many passed. When you ask yourself where you are, you’re speaking about ordinal counting, and then I say, wait a second, I don’t know where I am—either on fifteen or on sixteen—so that means I don’t know. But in cardinal counting there is room to say: I counted fifteen days or sixteen days, one of the two is true. What’s the problem? It doesn’t need to order the things one after another. Therefore I can also do it in doubt as either fifteen or sixteen. Here I’m not one hundred percent sure, but there’s a sense that this too is connected to the matter. Just parenthetically I’ll say one more thing about the counting of the Omer in this context. What happens with a minor who becomes an adult in the middle of the counting of the Omer? Yes, a long discussion among the decisors; they like to engage in pilpul on this issue. A minor who becomes an adult in the middle of the counting of the Omer—the claim is that according to the Baal Halakhot Gedolot he lost it; he cannot count this counting, since he did not count until he became an adult, he did not have the commandment, so he cannot count from day twenty-two onward. That isn’t called counting. To count, you need from one to forty-nine. According to Tosafot, he should count, because according to Tosafot each day is an independent commandment and he has to count. I think that is incorrect. Even according to the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, he can continue counting. And here this is an interesting point; maybe I spoke about it once, I don’t remember anymore. It’s not directly connected to our issue of quantity and quality, but it is an implication or an additional comment on what I said before. Let’s say this minor becomes bar mitzvah on the twenty-second day of the Omer. Okay? What did he do up to day twenty-two? He counted by virtue of education. Right? He wasn’t yet obligated to count, but by virtue of rabbinic educational obligation he counted. Why do people say that he cannot count further? Because on a Torah level, the counting up to day twenty-two is not counting, only rabbinic, and in order to count you need all the days. But if I am right in what I said before, then that is not correct. Why? Because my claim is that what the Baal Halakhot Gedolot says is not that forty-nine days are one commandment. If that were the formulation, then indeed the minor could not begin counting when he becomes an adult. I claim that the definition of the Baal Halakhot Gedolot is different. The Baal Halakhot Gedolot claims something not about the commandment of counting, but about the concept of counting. He claims that the concept of counting needs to be from one to forty-nine; you cannot begin counting from twenty-two. But this minor did count from one. It’s just that until day twenty-two he counted by virtue of education, but in reality he counted. So if he continues counting on day twenty-three, can I say that he is not counting? He is counting, because his counting began with one and ends with forty-nine. I am claiming, basically, that the requirement of the Baal Halakhot Gedolot to look at this as a complete whole is not a requirement on the halakhic plane. It is not the definition of the commandment of counting the Omer as one commandment from day one to forty-nine. It is a requirement on the conceptual plane. He says: what is counting? Counting needs to be from one to forty-nine; otherwise it isn’t called counting. It isn’t counting. And I am talking about ordinal counting, not cardinal. Okay? So in that sense there is no problem, because there was counting here. True, the first twenty-two days were counting that was not a commandment, but it was still counting. And from my perspective, why can’t he continue counting? Because it isn’t counting, not because it isn’t a commandment. So if I counted up to day twenty-two, when I count day twenty-three, can it be said that I don’t know where I am? Because twenty-three needs to be placed after twenty-two—one hundred percent, I placed it after twenty-two. After all, yesterday I counted twenty-two. I know where I am. If you ask me whether I am counting, clearly I am counting.

[Speaker D] On a Torah level it’s as if he didn’t count? No, why not?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In practice, in reality, he counted. He didn’t have the commandment of counting, but he performed an act of counting. And what matters according to the Baal Halakhot Gedolot is the definition of what an act of counting is, not what the commandment of counting is. That’s exactly what I’m claiming. According to my explanation of the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, that the meaning he is talking about is ordinal numbers and not cardinal ones, then the claim does not derive from the definition of the commandment of counting the Omer, but from the concept of counting. What is the concept of counting? It has nothing to do with the commandment at all. So if he fulfills the concept of counting, then from day twenty-three onward he also has a commandment. Until day twenty-two he has no commandment because he was a minor. He did counting, but that counting was not a commandment. From day twenty-three, after all, he is doing counting, because he places twenty-three after twenty-two, so that counts as counting in terms of the action. And now he is also already an adult, so the counting of an adult is also a commandment. Meaning, I am claiming that according to the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, the commandment is a commandment for each day, like Tosafot. Each day separately there is a commandment. He just says, true, but in order to fulfill today’s commandment, you had to fulfill the previous countings up to now, because otherwise today’s counting is not counting. It’s not that the Baal Halakhot Gedolot claims this is one commandment and not forty-nine commandments. The Baal Halakhot Gedolot claims these are forty-nine commandments, like Tosafot. But the Baal Halakhot Gedolot says that on day twenty-three you cannot count if you did not count twenty-two, because that is not counting, not because it is not a commandment. But if I counted twenty-two—even a gentile who converted in the middle, he didn’t even do a commandment by virtue of education, but if he counted the days up to twenty-two, I claim that he can continue with twenty-three and onward. He did not fulfill even a rabbinic commandment by virtue of education, but he did perform an act of counting.

[Speaker E] He can count with a blessing? Yes. As a practical halakhic ruling, that’s what you think?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so. Rabbi. By the way, Rabbi, one second—even if in the view of the Baal Halakhot Gedolot I am in doubt whether this is what he intended or not, I have here a double doubt. After all, according to Tosafot he can count with a blessing; according to the Baal Halakhot Gedolot it depends on how you understand him, so let him count with a blessing—it’s a double doubt. Yes.

[Speaker F] So according to the way the Rabbi explains it, then if he missed a day according to the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, why can’t he make it up as well? Do a makeup of the counting and then continue. Why not? After all, he doesn’t need commandment-counting, he needs technical counting.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Technical counting he can make up as well? No, you count a day when you are in that day. You can’t count that day when you are not in it. You need to point to it in order to count it. It’s no longer here; that day is dead. Yesterday’s day is dead. This isn’t counting in your head, counting—you have to count things. This is day twenty-three, this is day twenty-four, and so on.

[Speaker G] Yes, but I can now say a day like this passed and a day like this passed and a day like this passed; today I’m on day twenty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying, I’m not talking about the question of which day passed. Which day passed belongs to cardinal counting. I’m talking about ordinal counting. Ordinal counting is to place each day in this row of days. And that can only be done on that very day itself.

[Speaker H] But technically, can’t a person arrange it when he remembers in the middle, arrange it, do ordinal counting?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you can’t today arrange the days of the month of Cheshvan. Let’s arrange the days of the month of Cheshvan. Today I’m in Iyar, and now I’m arranging the days of the month of Cheshvan. So I say: in the month of Cheshvan, the first of Cheshvan is before the second of Cheshvan. That’s uninteresting. The commandment to arrange the days is when you are in that day—arrange it, place it, understand where you are on this hierarchy. So that you can do only when you are in that day. This isn’t an intellectual matter of knowing where day thirty-two is. That’s no great wisdom. Day thirty-two is obviously one day after day thirty-one. That’s clear; no one needs you for that. What is needed from you is that when you are in day thirty-two, you should be aware of where you are. Think about it—it’s very interesting from the perspective of the Kabbalists, say, regarding the counting of the Omer. The counting of the Omer, on the one hand, counts how many days there are until Shavuot or how many days passed since Passover. But the Kabbalists attach sefirot to it, right? Seven sefirot times seven: Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkhut, and within each of them as well seven sefirot. That basically means that each day is some sort of additional level. Right? We are moving along the hierarchy of the sefirot. Clearly here this is not counting how many days there are, but each day is another level on the way to the giving of the Torah. And that is the essence of ordinal counting as distinct from cardinal counting. Even though in the plain sense you count the days until the giving of the Torah, which is cardinal counting and not ordinal counting. That is the dispute between the Baal Halakhot Gedolot and Tosafot. Tosafot understands this counting like the plain meaning of the Torah. Count the days until Shavuot, until the time when the Torah was given to you. That is cardinal counting. The Baal Halakhot Gedolot says no, it’s like the Kabbalists. I am actually advancing through levels toward the giving of the Torah; each day is a new level. Levels are quality, not quantity. I am checking what level of quality I am at, like temperature, like intelligence. So this is ordinal counting and not cardinal counting. Beyond what I said before, there is another example of this. Let’s say regarding Yom Kippur, there is a bit of discussion among the later authorities, although in the end they agree in practical Jewish law, but there is discussion about what happens if someone ate on Yom Kippur by mistake, or not by mistake. Is there any point in continuing to fast? Or is it lost to him, that’s it, he is no longer fasting that day, so he lost that day. The question is—this is how it is usually formulated—whether it is a commandment for every single moment, or a commandment for the day as a whole. If it is a commandment for the day as a whole and you ate, then you lost the commandment. If it is a commandment for every single moment, then eating at one moment does not mean you should not fast in the next moment. Very similar to the counting of the Omer. What happens with a minor who becomes an adult in the middle of Yom Kippur? According to the conception that it is one whole unit, then there is nothing for him to fast. A minor who produced two pubic hairs in the middle of Yom Kippur has nothing to fast for the rest of the day. But if he was fasting by virtue of education even as a minor—because from age twelve you have to fast a full day—then he fasted by virtue of education as a minor. I claim that he has to continue fasting from the moment he produced two hairs, on a Torah level. Why? Because my claim is that the commandment of affliction is not a definition of the commandment as one commandment for the whole day. It is a definition of the concept of affliction. What is affliction? Affliction does not mean not eating. Not eating is not affliction; otherwise every day I would be fasting between meals. There are moments when I don’t eat. To afflict oneself is a duration of not eating. It is to reach a state in which you suffer. That is called affliction. Not every single moment that you are not eating is called that at every single moment you are afflicting yourself. You can’t afflict yourself for a moment. Affliction is always over a stretch of time. Because it means not eating and reaching a state where you are hungry, a state where you suffer. That is called affliction. That is the difference between a prohibition on eating and an obligation of fasting. By the way, on Yom Kippur it does not say that eating is prohibited. It says there is an obligation to afflict yourselves: “and you shall afflict your souls.” Of course you have to refrain from eating in order to fast, but there is a big difference. To afflict oneself means to afflict oneself over the course of the day. Not eating means not eating at every single moment of that day. Is the commandment to afflict oneself? Then it means that you have to refrain from eating all day, but notice: this is not because the definition of the commandment applies to the day as a whole, but because that is the meaning of the concept of affliction. So if this minor fasted by virtue of education, and at eleven in the morning he produced two hairs, then he must continue fasting. Because if he continues fasting, he still afflicted himself—he did not eat all day. True, until the point when he produced the hairs this was not a Torah commandment of affliction, because he was still a minor, only by virtue of education. But he did perform an act of affliction. And the requirement is a conceptual requirement concerning the meaning of affliction; it is not the halakhic definition of the obligation to afflict oneself. And therefore, exactly as I said regarding the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, I claim here too that a minor who becomes an adult in the middle of Yom Kippur is obligated to continue afflicting himself on a Torah level, even according to the views that Yom Kippur is one single unit. Provided, of course, that he observed the laws of education and by virtue of education he fasted up to the point when he became an adult. Many times—and this is why here it brings me back to the matter of conceptual analysis—many times there is a tendency among halakhic interpreters and learners to hang everything on halakhic definitions. But that is not always so. Sometimes the halakhic definitions are based on conceptual analysis, on the meaning of the concepts. So when the Baal Halakhot Gedolot said that the counting of the Omer is one unit, he did not derive that from the verses because it seemed to him from the verses that the Torah wants us to count everything as one unit. He derives it from a conceptual analysis of the concept “to count.” The concept “to count” means to place everything in one unit through ordinal numbers. The same is true of the views that say one must afflict oneself throughout Yom Kippur and not at every single moment, and that it is not a commandment at every single moment. They did not derive this from the Torah; it is not written in the Torah. They derived it from the term “to afflict oneself.” When you do a conceptual analysis of what fasting is as distinct from what a prohibition on eating is, then you understand that the definition applies to a stretch of time and not to each unit. And therefore, many times there are halakhic outcomes that derive from conceptual analysis, not from halakhic definition. And here we saw that this has a practical implication. If you understand that it derives from a halakhic definition, the practical implication is one way, and if it derives from the conceptual definition, then the practical implication is different. And therefore basically here I came back—I went to the counting of the Omer because today we are on Lag BaOmer—I now return to our topic, which is conceptual analysis, and I want to show another aspect here: that conceptual analysis in halakhic contexts is very important, because sometimes what seems to us to be a halakhic determination is actually a conceptual determination and not a halakhic determination. And it is very important to understand whether it is this or that, because it has halakhic consequences. Whether one needs to continue counting, whether one needs to continue fasting. If it is a conceptual determination, then one needs to continue. If it is a halakhic determination, then one does not need to continue.

[Speaker I] So basically, how do you define a concept? That’s the question.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I talked about that a bit in previous lectures too. Basically, you have to contemplate the concept—how people use it, how you understand it—in some kind of observation. But it’s observation with the eyes of the intellect; it’s not observation with the eyes. You try to understand the concept by contemplating it. And in a certain sense this is like an empirical process, only it is an empirical process that is not done with the ordinary senses. Rather, the intellect has a part that is contemplative, not only a part that thinks. What Maimonides at the beginning of The Guide for the Perplexed calls the eyes of the intellect. All right? Or yes, I spoke about how Husserl calls it eidetic seeing. And Rabbi HaNazir speaks of auditory logic. All of these mean the same thing: some sort of intellectual observation. Observation, but not with the senses—with the intellect. And the novelty is that the intellect can also—the intellect does not only engage in thinking, but also in observation. But of course it engages in observation not through the senses, but in observations of concepts, observations of ideas. Okay. And I think conceptual analysis very often begins with the attempt simply to observe the concept and understand what it says, or to see how people use the concept as some kind of indication of how they see it. And then when you do conceptual analysis, you basically begin with how people look at that concept. Okay. Good. But there can be a dispute about the definition, right? Obviously.

[Speaker J] But there can also be a dispute

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Regarding a halakhic determination, there can be a dispute about anything. That’s not a threat to my thesis, the fact that there can be a dispute here. There can be a dispute whether it’s a halakhic question or a conceptual question. There can be disputes about many things. You have to argue it out, and either you agree or you don’t agree, or there are the laws of doubt. I just want, maybe in closing, since I still have a little time left—if we’ve already been talking about the Counting of the Omer and Lag BaOmer—so I’ll mention something I did a few years ago, I think in the Petah Tikva classes, yes, the Thursday evening classes. So I’ll do it here briefly. We don’t have much time, but a little in honor of Lag BaOmer. So there is a responsum of the Chatam Sofer—actually there are two different responsa of the Chatam Sofer that deal with Lag BaOmer. And he has there some interesting riddle-like passage that I want to read. In Chatam Sofer, Yoreh De’ah 233: “Indeed, I knew, for I heard that now the generation has become fit”—yes, the generation has become proper—“and from afar they come and seek God in the holy city of Tzfat on Lag BaOmer, at the celebration of Rashbi, of blessed memory. And although all their intention is for the sake of Heaven, their reward is certainly great, nevertheless for this very reason I was among those who separate themselves, like ben Dorta’i, so that I would not need to sit there and alter their custom in their presence, and so that I would not wish to join with them in this.”

And this is a very interesting responsum, because it seems from these responsa—two responsa, he repeats this in another responsum—that apparently the whole reason he didn’t go up to the Land of Israel was because of Lag BaOmer. The Chatam Sofer stayed in Hungary and did not immigrate to the Land of Israel because of Lag BaOmer. Why? Because if he had gone up to the Land of Israel, then since the people’s intentions were for the sake of Heaven when they celebrated Lag BaOmer, he would have been forced to join them even though it was forbidden. And in order to avoid that, he stayed in Hungary. A very interesting claim, but that’s what he says. What’s the problem? Why is it forbidden? So he says as follows: “For the Pri Chadash already turned over many arguments”—in Orach Chayim, siman 496, in his pamphlet on forbidden customs, section 14—“regarding places that make a Jewish holiday on a day when a miracle happened to them.” What does that mean? The Pri Chadash argues that if you establish a Jewish holiday on some day on which a miracle happened, that is adding to the Torah’s commandments. You are forbidden to add festivals beyond those established by Jewish law; that is adding to the Torah’s commandments. Like Jeroboam, who invented a festival for himself. So therefore the Pri Chadash says: I don’t understand how all kinds of communities establish holidays for themselves on their own—just an addition to what Jewish law established.

The Chatam Sofer says—and in my humble opinion, there are three points here because I’m skipping a bit—“in my humble opinion, we say from this a fortiori argument: if from slavery to freedom we say song, then from death to life all the more so.” That is a passage in tractate Megillah. The Talmud in Megillah asks why we say Hallel on Purim. Then it asks—which Hallel? After all, we don’t say Hallel on Purim. The Talmud says: “Its reading is its Hallel”—the reading of the Megillah is the Hallel of Purim. The Talmud asks: how do we know that one must say Hallel on Purim? By an a fortiori argument from Passover. If on Passover, when we went only from slavery to freedom, we say Hallel, we sing praise, then on Purim, when we were saved from death to life—which is more than from slavery to freedom—certainly we should say praise. So this a fortiori argument is basically the foundation for why we say Hallel on Purim.

The Chatam Sofer says: the basis for communities that establish for themselves a holiday on a day when some miracle happened to them, when they were saved from trouble, is this a fortiori argument of the Talmud in Megillah. And therefore it is not adding to the Torah’s commandments, because an a fortiori argument is one of the methods by which the Torah is interpreted. So I can interpret Passover by an a fortiori argument and learn from it that I make a holiday on that day. By the way, according to this it comes out that this is a Torah-level law, because I learn it through an a fortiori argument from Passover. According to Maimonides, admittedly, something learned through the interpretive methods—in the second root he says that this is rabbinic law. But in the common approach among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), something learned through interpretive methods—and an a fortiori argument is one of those methods—is a Torah-level law. Which is a very interesting novelty.

By the way, the Chatam Sofer really also says—he explains the Behag this way. The Behag counts Hanukkah and Purim in his enumeration of the commandments. And Maimonides attacks him for this: after all, these are rabbinic commandments. How can you count Hanukkah and Purim among the 613 commandments? The Chatam Sofer explains the Behag like this: he says, according to the Behag, Hanukkah and Purim are Torah-level, not rabbinic. Because they emerge from this a fortiori argument in the Talmud in Megillah, and something learned from an a fortiori argument is Torah-level. Which is a very interesting novelty. In any case, that is what the Chatam Sofer argues. I’ll keep reading: “But to establish a festival when no miracle happened on it, and it is not mentioned in the Talmud or the halakhic decisors anywhere, not even by hint or allusion, and there is only a custom of refraining from eulogy and fasting, and I myself do not know the reason for it…”

He says: Lag BaOmer, unlike all the Purims and Independence Days and all these holidays when we celebrate one rescue or another—there you have the a fortiori argument from the Talmud in Megillah: if from slavery to freedom we say praise, then from death to life all the more so. But on Lag BaOmer, what miracle happened on Lag BaOmer? Were we saved from something? Nothing. He says, “I myself do not know the reason for it.” And since there was no rescue here, then there is no such a fortiori argument from which one can derive making it a holiday on Lag BaOmer. And it is not mentioned in the Talmud or anywhere else, so basically there is a concern here of adding to the Torah’s commandments. And that is what the Chatam Sofer claims—that therefore it is actually forbidden to celebrate these Lag BaOmer celebrations. It is adding to the Torah’s commandments. That’s his argument. So what—

[Speaker K] Is that what he wrote about “their reward is certainly great”? What does he mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That they have good intentions; they’ll receive reward for the intention.

[Speaker K] In his view they’re committing a transgression, and because they intended it, their reward is certainly great?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Say, for example, according to my view, I think you shouldn’t read the Megillah in a certain place because in my opinion it is a walled city. You read on the fourteenth. Fine. So will you receive no reward if I’m right? No, you will receive reward, because you thought it was right to do that, and you did something with the intention of serving Heaven. You’ll receive reward for that. It’s just that halakhically, in my opinion, you were mistaken. You were mistaken, yes.

[Speaker J] But who is making it into a holiday? I don’t understand. Nobody makes it into a holiday; it’s just joy.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s what… not a holiday in the sense of prohibition of labor, but a holiday in the sense of positive commandments, not in the sense of prohibitions. He argues that even that is adding to the Torah’s commandments. It’s an interesting question: what does “he invented a festival for himself,” which appears in the Talmud, actually mean? What, was there also a prohibition of labor there? I don’t think so. The moment you establish some day and say there is something that has to be done on it—whether it’s the thirty-nine categories of labor, or celebrating, or rejoicing, or whatever—it’s adding to the Torah’s commandments. Again, you can argue about this. I’m not entering into the claim itself right now, but that’s what he says.

Now look at the next passage. This is why I’m bringing it. Now he brings a riddle-like text. “And in the prayer book of Mahari Yaavetz,” Rabbi Yaakov Emden, “he wrote according to the mystical teaching.” He explains—he says, I didn’t know the reason for Lag BaOmer, right? That’s how the previous passage ended. Now he says: I found in the prayer book of the Yaavetz the reason for Lag BaOmer. What is the reason? “For it is like a court in which all are liable, and yet he is acquitted—that is, hod within hod; see there. But according to this it would have been fitting to establish every good when we reach gevurot, on the ninth day in the counting of the children of Israel, except that in any case those are the days of Nisan, and eulogies are not given then.” This is a real riddle. What does he mean here? So I’ll decipher the riddle.

We know there are seven sefirot, right? The days of the Counting of the Omer are divided—forty-nine days into seven weeks. Each such week is chesed, gevurah, tiferet, netzach, hod, yesod, and malkhut—that’s seven. Within chesed there is chesed within chesed, gevurah within chesed, tiferet within chesed, and so on. There are seven within each one, okay? Now in Kabbalah they divide the sefirot into three lines. It goes like this: chesed is right, gevurah is left, tiferet is middle. Below are netzach, hod, yesod, and malkhut. The right-side sefirot are chesed; the left-side sefirot are judgment. Now among the seven sefirot that we count in the Counting of the Omer, how many sefirot are on the left side, how many are judgment? Two. There is chesed and gevurah—gevurah is judgment—tiferet is middle, netzach, hod—hod is judgment—yesod is middle, and malkhut is also middle. So there are gevurah and hod. Those are the two sefirot that are on the left side; that is the line of judgment. Okay?

Now what is a court in which all are liable? A court in which all are liable means judgment within judgment. That’s the most judgmental thing possible—a court in which all are liable. What is a court in which all are liable in the Counting of the Omer? Judgment within judgment. That is either hod within hod or gevurah within gevurah. Those are the two possibilities. There are basically two days out of all forty-nine days of the Counting of the Omer that are judgment within judgment.

[Speaker I] Also hod within gevurah or gevurah within hod?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that he excludes. I’m not getting into that right now. Basically there are four, but he talks about two. I can’t go into all the details here. So there is either hod within hod or gevurah within gevurah. Now what is hod within hod? Lag BaOmer. It is the fifth day of the fifth week. The fifth day of the fifth week is thirty-three. Twenty-eight is four weeks, plus another five days of the fifth week makes thirty-three. What is gevurah within gevurah? It’s the second day of the second week. Chesed, gevurah—gevurah is the second. Second of the second week is nine. So now let’s read it again. “And in the prayer book of Mahari Yaavetz he wrote according to the mystical teaching that it is like a court in which all are liable and yet he is acquitted, that is, hod within hod, see there. But according to this it would have been fitting to establish every good when we reach gevurot”—now I’m adding my own parentheses—“gevurah within gevurah, on the ninth day in the counting of the children of Israel.” The ninth day of the Omer is gevurah within gevurah. Why did they choose specifically hod within hod? So he says: “except that in any case those are the days of Nisan, and eulogies are not given then.” The ninth day of the Omer still falls within Nisan. There’s no point establishing a day on which one does not deliver eulogies within Nisan. What good is a candle in broad daylight? Yes, a candle at noon adds nothing for you, and in any case you don’t eulogize on that day. So only one option remains to establish a holiday for judgment within judgment, for a court in which all are liable: Lag BaOmer.

Now pay close attention: what does judgment mean in the language of the sages? “And is it not logical…” What is that? An a fortiori argument, right? Judgment means an a fortiori argument. What does “we do not punish based on judgment” mean? We do not punish on the basis of an a fortiori argument, right? The concept of judgment in the language of the sages is an a fortiori argument. All these holidays, all these holidays are days learned by an a fortiori argument—the Talmud in Megillah that he brought before, right? All these holidays are not adding to the Torah’s commandments because there is a logical derivation that grounds them. There is justification for them, a reasonable a fortiori argument; they have a rational basis. That is judgment. On Lag BaOmer there is no a fortiori argument that grounds it—that is exactly his claim from the Pri Chadash, right? Lag BaOmer does not have the a fortiori argument from Passover, so Lag BaOmer has no judgment grounding it.

The Yaavetz says: an a fortiori argument is judgment within judgment, and that is what they celebrate. There is not one judgment here, there is judgment within judgment, and that is what they celebrate—“it would have been fitting to establish every good.” So what is the celebration here? Here one could elaborate a lot. I’ll really say it briefly, because one could go on at length about this. Judgment means that the matter is reasoned; that is called judgment, right? When I borrowed from someone and I repay the debt, there is a legal reason that obligates me to repay the debt. There is a reason why I need to pay him. Charity—giving charity to someone—is kindness. Why is it kindness? Because there is no legal claim saying that I owe it to him. The moment there is no judgment grounding it, it is kindness. I do something that has no justification, no reason why I’m doing it. That is called kindness. Lag BaOmer has no judgment grounding it; there is no a fortiori argument because of which one can observe it as a holiday.

Now I want to ask you a question that is often asked in books of logic or books of philosophy: when I want to ask why a certain logical rule is true, what will the answer be? There is no answer to that. I ask—say someone tells me the following logical rule: if X entails—if X equals Y and Y equals Z, then X equals Z. So I tell someone, when someone says to me, why is this rule true? I have nothing to explain to him. It’s true because it’s true. I have no justification for that rule. Not because it isn’t true, but because it is self-evident. In other words, logical rules are rules that help me justify things; they help me ground other things. But when I come to ground them themselves, when I ask what is the justification for the rules that themselves justify, I discover that they have no justification. Therefore judgment within judgment is kindness. When you ask yourself what would be the justification for the process of justification itself, the answer is that there is no such thing. It has no justification. It is understood from itself; it is understood without justification. That is kindness.

And what the Yaavetz basically wants to say, I think, is that on Lag BaOmer there is no justification for why one should observe a holiday on Lag BaOmer, because there is no a fortiori argument. On Lag BaOmer we celebrate the lack of justification, the judgment within judgment—because in a court, if a court in which all are liable, what happens to the defendant? If the court says all are liable, if the entire court says he is liable, then he is not executed; he goes free. Because judgment within judgment is really kindness. And that is the reason they celebrate Lag BaOmer. Lag BaOmer is considered the festival of the hidden. Why is it the hidden? Because when you ask yourself what the justification is for the logical rules, the logical rules of justification, you won’t be able to answer that; there is no justification. The justification is hidden—it’s not something that is a primary intuition. Okay? And so the Yaavetz basically wants to claim that this is what is celebrated on Lag BaOmer. On Lag BaOmer we celebrate the lack of need for justification for the processes of justification themselves. It is the festival of the hidden; that is why it is the festival of the hidden.

Okay, I really did that in the briefest way possible. It needs more expansion, but that’s the time we had here, so I also continued a bit on matters of Lag BaOmer. Okay, that’s it.

[Speaker L] The fact that the plague stopped—can’t you make an a fortiori argument from that? Again? The fact that the plague of Rabbi Akiva’s students stopped on Lag BaOmer—can’t you make an a fortiori argument from that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the plague stopped, then the community of Rabbi Akiva’s students should have established it, but the fact is that the Talmud establishes nothing about it. This is a very late establishment. A very late establishment for Lag BaOmer. There are no holiday customs for Lag BaOmer in the Talmud. More than that, it seems to me that the Ari, of blessed memory, even writes that Lag BaOmer was a special date even before the period of Rabbi Akiva. They attached themselves to Lag BaOmer because of the plague, but in fact it was earlier still—like Hanukkah, by the way. Hanukkah too was actually a festival even before the Hasmoneans. There are those who connect it to pagan festivals, not important right now, but the Ari, of blessed memory, claims that it also has a source in Jewish tradition even before the events with which today we connect these holidays—Hanukkah with the Hasmoneans and Lag BaOmer with Rabbi Akiva’s students. Okay. Good, so may we have a happy anti-holiday.