The Uniqueness of Israel, Lesson 2

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so that’s fine, but I’m saying the argument is about the question… I’m saying, the argument is about what a chosen people means. Does a chosen people mean hardware, or does a chosen people mean software? Like I said last time: am I signed onto the contract because I’m a chosen people, or am I a chosen people because I’m signed onto the contract? That’s really the discussion. But on that I completely agree, except here you’ve set up the two sides. But now I’m asking: that doesn’t really save the situation, because someone who lives with the idea that chosenness is hardware lives differently. You’re now offering the alternative of someone who doesn’t live with the consciousness of chosenness and says yes, we’re chosen in the sense of a mission, not in the sense that we’re built differently. Very good, but that’s the other side. The fact is that someone who lives what you’re suggesting and someone who lives what they talk about at Har Hamor—maybe not only at Har Hamor, but that’s the extreme expression of this whole thing—lives differently. So it’s not really an alternative; you’re not offering him an alternative. You’re saying, look, maybe chosenness is a mission? Of course, that’s the other side. But he says no—chosenness is not the mission, chosenness is the hardware. And there’s a very great practical difference in how people live when they live inside those two different kinds of consciousness.

[Speaker H] And that can also change the hardware. What? The way of life. What do you mean? Take a person who eats—if he eats healthy food, his body is one way, and if he eats junk…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But then we’re back to my original discussion. That’s exactly the point. So then it’s really not an essential difference; it’s something that was created. Obviously our collective biography, our history, shaped us in certain ways. That’s obvious. If that’s what is meant by a chosen people, then there’s no argument.

[Speaker N] According to that, then a convert should also have Israel’s chosenness. What? According to that, a convert should also be chosen—he eats like a Jew, lives like a Jew.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, or at least his descendants.

[Speaker H] Because the mission also changes the…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. But I’m saying, that’s a result of the mission, not something innate. If it’s a result of the mission, fine. After all, it’s perfectly obvious that when we live in a certain way, have gone through a certain history, have certain experiences, we look different from people who haven’t gone through that. Of course. If that’s what the argument is about, then there is no argument. Who would argue about such a thing? It’s obvious. Right, and that’s why I’m saying there’s no argument about that—but with chosenness they’re trying to say something beyond that. And the question is whether there is something beyond this. Here I don’t know. And as I said before, on the one hand—with two reservations, I’d say, after all the skepticism I scattered around here earlier. One reservation is that if I were to stand in front of the phenomenon and it were really accessible to me, it could be that I would say, listen, I simply didn’t see it, I was blind. But yes, there are two things that I… If I believed that all those people who talk about this really do see something there that I don’t see—I don’t believe that, but if such a thing existed—then I would accept that possibility. It’s possible that there are things I don’t see; fine, that happens. Some people have worse eyesight than others. So that’s one reservation: it could be that this argument is not a crushing argument, it could be an argument coming from the mouth of a blind man. That’s one point. And the second point is that even if this whole business is not true and it’s all just word games, in practice there are two different conceptions here, two different ways of serving God. In other words, this issue is on the table every day, even if in conceptual analysis one might clarify that it has no meaning at all.

[Speaker E] But a person who lives Israel’s chosenness doesn’t become a different race; he becomes a better person in terms of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. I’m not talking now about the question of a better or worse person. The same person who received an education shaped by an essentialist conception of Israel’s chosenness—the one I challenged earlier—the way he lives, I’m not saying right now whether it’s better or worse, is different. No, no, no, I didn’t say it turns him into a different race—that’s not where I’m going. I’m saying the fact that this question has consequences on the level of how we think and how we behave means that the question is worth discussing. In other words, I’m saying it’s worth discussing even though at the abstract conceptual level I may reach the conclusion that in fact this discussion is just a word game—what’s the difference? I’m not claiming that because of this I turned into a different race, but that there are certain questions where practice forces us to discuss them, even though when you do the conceptual analysis you may be left with nothing in your hands. Fine.

[Speaker D] I don’t see what the problem is with saying that this is a purely verbal dispute, like many disputes. Meaning, fine, maybe there really isn’t a definition of what it is and what it isn’t, but there are people who see the difference as something more central and more essential and more significant.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I said earlier. I said the question is like with the biologist and the layman, right? We all know there are differences. You can view them as essential differences, you can view them as non-essential differences, right?

[Speaker D] Fine, and that doesn’t mean the question is meaningless, like people just invented an argument here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the meaningless question is whether this difference is essential—it depends on your definition, so what is there to argue about? Fine, you think yes, so yes; he thinks no, so no. In fact it’s not even “thinks”: if one feels yes, then yes, and if one feels no, then no. It’s not something you can really argue about. Usually when people argue, they assume there is one thing here, that there’s right and wrong, and that if someone saw what I see it would be obvious to him that he’s mistaken. It’s not just a matter of evaluating it differently—he’s simply blind to something; there’s something he doesn’t see. Do you understand? That’s at least the impression one gets when seeing this discussion, and that’s what I commented on. Okay, now the Mishnah in Avot that I opened with: “Beloved is man, for he was created in the image; an extra love was made known to him, that he was created in the image,” and immediately after that, “Beloved are Israel.” So where is the concept of Israel’s chosenness in this Mishnah? Usually the arguments are fought over the first clause: “Beloved is man, for he was created in the image.” The Tosafot Yom Tov—we already read him last time, I won’t go back to him again—explains this as referring to all human beings, not only Jews. “Beloved is man, for he was created in the image,” in the image of God, right. But he himself notes that all the commentators did not explain it that way. All the commentators—again, at least the Mishnah commentators he knew, and so on; maybe one can find other places—but the common interpretation, and there are also rabbinic sayings like this, is that it refers to a Jew: “You are called man, and they are not called man.” It’s also said about a Jew. So usually the argument over Israel’s chosenness is fought around the first clause of the Mishnah—basically, whether the first clause, which says “Beloved is man, for he was created in the image,” speaks about every human being or speaks about a Jew. But one has to notice carefully that this isn’t necessary. Because it could be that someone understands the Mishnah like the Tosafot Yom Tov—exactly what Yuval asked earlier. After all, the Tosafot Yom Tov is a student of the Maharal, and the Maharal apparently did accept the concept of Israel’s chosenness; that’s often where those people take it from, or from the Kuzari, which is earlier—but the Maharal also belongs to that camp. So did the Tosafot Yom Tov depart that radically from his teacher’s doctrine? Maybe yes—that’s legitimate. But maybe not, because the question is what the relation is between the first clause and the second clause in the Mishnah, not how to interpret the first clause. The first clause could indeed have been said about every human being, as the Tosafot Yom Tov says. Does that mean he didn’t believe in Israel’s chosenness? No, because there’s a second clause. The second clause says, “Beloved are Israel.” Now the belovedness of Israel is already a second story built on top of the belovedness of man. And as children? What? As children. Yes. And then that means that even the Tosafot Yom Tov can accept this conception of chosenness in Israel, he just claims that it is rooted in the second story and not in the first story—that’s the point. And the first story is still shared, fine? And therefore, in fact, the argument over Israel’s chosenness shouldn’t be conducted over the first clause but over the relation between the first clause and the second clause. Now this is an introduction—just a second, I only want to close the circle—and this is an introduction to what we saw on the second page, or started seeing on the second page, in Rabbi Kook, and afterward we’ll also see it in Rabbi Shlomo Fischer. They too are really talking about these two levels. There’s a first story which is perhaps—we’ll soon see—universal, but that doesn’t mean you don’t believe in Israel’s chosenness, because on the second story there is some level that is unique. There is still room to discuss whether the first story, which in that sense is seemingly universal—whether even there there is a difference. In other words: even on the seemingly universal level of the Jew, is the Jew’s body also different from a non-Jew’s body? Let’s say it very crudely: is a Jew’s body also different from a non-Jew’s body, or is what’s unique in a Jew his soul, while the basic platform is human in general, universal? Both Rabbi Kook and Rabbi Shlomo Fischer, as we’ll soon see, present the question this way. And therefore I think the introduction from the Mishnah is a very essential introduction for understanding their claims. Because Rabbi Kook has—and this is what I opened my remarks on Rabbi Kook with last time, I started from the end. Look at Rabbi Kook, section 10, at the end of the passage by Rabbi Kook, do you see it? “The difference between the Israelite soul—its essence, its inner longings, its aspiration, its character and its standing—and the soul of all the nations…” Notice: this is not a difference like that between any one nation and another nation. There is something about the Jews that differs from all other nations in a way that is not the same as the difference between Tunisians and all the other nations, right? Apparently that’s how it should be read. “At all their levels, it is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of man and the soul of beast.” Yes, straight out of the Kuzari, okay? “For between the latter there is only a quantitative difference, but between the former there reigns an essential qualitative difference.” Which is astonishing. In other words, the difference between man and beast is a quantitative difference?

[Speaker H] On the level of the soul?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, on the level of the soul. A quantitative difference? They have free will, they can think—it’s unbelievable that such a thing could be said. Now I’m saying, this points so sharply—precisely Rabbi Kook, in this statement, really sharpens my skeptical remarks from earlier. Because it basically shows you that a difference which, if I asked you, and would you ever imagine saying it was merely quantitative—Rabbi Kook in this context sees it as a quantitative difference. “Only” a difference? The difference between man and beast is quantitative? It’s incredible. If that’s a quantitative difference, I don’t know what a non-quantitative difference is.

[Speaker O] Just a small difference and…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. So I’m saying: precisely the person who advocates Israel’s chosenness does so at the price of blurring all the other differences. In a certain sense he pulls the ground out from under his own claim, because he’s really saying, look—if that’s the case, then it really is just a question of how you look at things. Because I don’t know—even if I were to accept that there’s something different about Jews, and say that it’s really different, not just the kind of difference between any two nations—to say that it is greater than the difference between a beast and a human being, I would never in my life have imagined such a thing.

[Speaker C] What about prophecy, connection to the Creator of the world?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine—but prophecy and connection to the Creator, that’s more than… Balaam too was a prophet.

[Speaker C] Okay, not only that he was

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a prophet, he was top-tier, like Moses, right? Exceptional. Fine, exceptional. So that means they have such potentialities, so in terms of type… You said it was a miracle, what?

[Speaker D] Something that doesn’t indicate the potential.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay, we’re back to these treatments. Okay.

[Speaker H] Wait, and I remembered—without generalizing—most non-Jewish spiritual thinkers are determinists. They have the approach that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure, but let’s say that’s true—so what?

[Speaker H] That they supposedly don’t have free choice, I mean—so what? Then they’re wrong. The Jews, the spiritual thinkers—when I include the religious world there—certainly most of them are…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Jews are more conservative, that’s well known,

[Speaker H] and here there is free choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But once all the non-Jews were determinists, and today they’re willing to accept changing their minds. Jews are not so willing to change their minds.

[Speaker G] What, non-Jews versus Jews? What are they? The non-Jews are more flexible.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, until a hundred years ago the non-Jews were determinists—not sure. I think so. What do you mean? They weren’t determinists? The dominance of that idea has existed… They were determinists, but the dominance of that idea is completely new, completely new. On the contrary, to this day a large part of the intellectual world is horrified by deterministic conceptions—precisely intellectuals, as opposed to scientists, are horrified by deterministic conceptions in the wider world. What do you mean?

[Speaker B] In America to this day there’s a whole battle over freedom, and we don’t have that here,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and there it’s not like here where it’s between religious and secular. There, even secular people allow themselves to be libertarians, meaning… In any case, did you want to comment, Arik? No, no, it’s just… So what I’m trying to say here is: on the one hand, Rabbi Kook, in order to sharpen the essentialist difference that he sees, blurs other differences, and in doing so he somewhat shoots himself in the foot, because it really means: okay, then it’s just the way you perceive things, not really some claim that has truth and falsehood in it, but only a matter of how you look at it. Now beyond that, if I go back to the beginning—and I think this is where we ended last time—in section 8, Rabbi Kook says something that seems the opposite. Here he says something really racist in the purest form, and in section 8 he suddenly becomes a universalist. “The form of Israel must be clarified: whether the general humanity of the content of man stands in its own character as it does among all the nations, and upon it the distinctive Israelite form was built; or whether from the outset everything is unique.” Before I continue—what is this discussion? Here suddenly… yes, exactly. So now in light of the Mishnah I’ll explain it. But I’m saying, on the face of it this looks terribly contradictory to what he says in section 10. Because what he is saying here is: look, I wonder whether the Jew is really an upgraded non-Jew, or whether he is something else. So when I read this at first glance—and I think I saw interpretations like this of Rabbi Kook’s words—the question is really whether there is an essential difference between Jew and non-Jew, or whether it is in the software and not in the hardware, as if… Wait, I’ll explain in a moment. No, no, even at the stage of his answer, he says there is no difference. We’ll soon see. It only changed after the nations did not accept the seven Noahide commandments. On the contrary, his conclusion seems to be that there isn’t a difference. But then how does that fit with what he… how does that fit with this very universalist approach at the beginning? The answer is, again, the two-story answer. Rabbi Kook is not discussing whether there is or isn’t Israel’s chosenness. Of course there is, and in the most extreme way possible, as he says at the end. His discussion in section 8 is a discussion of the nature of the first story. In other words, the second story is certainly unique, and nowhere else is there anything like it—that is something different. But the question is whether it sits on a universal platform—that here we are built like everyone else, only above that we have something additional—or whether our different character is different from beginning to end. Is even our first story different, not only our second story, or, if you want, there are no two stories? It doesn’t matter—there is no universal component in us. So that means Rabbi Kook is not doubting Israel’s chosenness here when he asks this question, because that’s what some commentators want to say. Certainly not. Rabbi Kook speaks about chosenness unequivocally in section 10 in the clearest possible way. Here he is asking how the two-story structure is built. Is this chosenness on the second story, or does chosenness already begin from the first story and there is no universal dimension within us at all? The Jew is not an upgraded non-Jew, but something else. Like the Kuzari of… or I don’t know, like the Kuzari. Actually, the Kuzari can be associated now with both formulations, by the way. Because now, again, it’s a definitional question. Does the Kuzari fit the first formulation or the second? On the face of it, both. Right, both. Since the difference between inanimate, vegetative, animal, speaking being, and Jew—the difference can be in additional levels, but in all of us there is also an inanimate dimension. That’s the first story. The second story exists only from plants and upward. That’s the second story; inanimate things don’t have it, fine? That’s biology. Okay? The third story is zoology, that’s already life. Fine? That exists from animals and upward. The fourth story is for human beings—that’s, say, free choice, thought. That fourth story exists for all human beings. The fifth story exists only for Jews. So you see it’s a layered structure despite the taxonomy it expresses. In other words, the fact that you see the Jew as something unique does not mean he doesn’t contain dimensions shared with other things. We all have mass, we’re all made of matter. No one disputes that. Therefore I don’t think it’s correct to drag the Kuzari into the question Rabbi Kook is posing here. The Kuzari can—indeed probably does, not just can—stand on both sides of Rabbi Kook’s question. And still, his question is: what is the status of the Jew’s first story? Is it a universal story or a particular one? And on this he says, “To clarify this, one must use various sources—Torah, rational, historical, mystical, experiential, poetic, and sometimes also political and economic. And it appears that originally the matter was arranged so that the form of man would be perfected in its generality, and then as an addition and advantage, the spirit of the special nation would be revealed in its glorious holy splendor.” What is he saying here? He leans toward the second conception, right? That it’s two stories. Not just two stories—that’s obvious. Yes, but that the first story is universal. In other words, our first story really is like that of the non-Jews. That’s what he says. From the outset it was arranged that there would be a universal story, and on top of it the second story would be built. “But things became corrupted, and the spirit of man sank so deeply in general that it could no longer serve as a basis for holiness unless it would be damaged. And the Egyptian exile had to come as an iron furnace that refined the human side within Israel”—the first story, right? “Beloved is man, for he was created in the image”—that is the human side—“that refined the human side within Israel until it became a new creation, and its secular form, the profane within it, was completely blurred, and a nation was brought forth at one stroke by means of the human kernel into form. Entirely Israelite from head to heel. Jacob and Israel.” It’s interesting that he sees Jacob as the original two-story form. In other words, Jacob was a human being who had a universal story, and on top of it an added chosen story, let’s call it that. And afterward his name was changed from Jacob to Israel, which basically means that even his profane, first story now already looks different. The source of this is basically the Talmud, I think I mentioned it—the Talmud in Bava Kamma that says, “He rose up and released the nations; He permitted their property”—because the nations do not observe the seven Noahide commandments, He rose and permitted their property to Israel. And somewhere a change happened here. The nations did not keep the seven Noahide commandments, and in Rabbi Kook’s translation that basically means that the profane level can no longer carry holiness on its back; either it corrupts holiness or it loses itself. And therefore something new has to be produced here. In other words, from now on there is… and what does that mean, let’s speak even in halakhic language? Even in halakhic language the Sages say, “He rose and permitted their property to Israel”—stealing from a non-Jew became permitted. That means that at the first stage, stealing from a non-Jew was forbidden at the halakhic level. Even according to the views among the halakhic decisors today that say stealing from a non-Jew is not forbidden by Torah law, once it was forbidden by Torah law. Because theft belongs to the first story, not the second story. Theft is the universal relationship between human beings—you may not harm people. Therefore theft is a halakhic indicator of the metaphysical conception we’re discussing here. Because if you really believe that the first story is universal, then on the first story there should be no difference between Jew and non-Jew regarding the prohibition against theft, which belongs to the level of the seven Noahide commandments. The seven Noahide commandments reflect the conception of what obligates a person as such, simply as a human being, regardless of chosenness; chosenness is the rest of the commandments. The seven Noahide commandments are what obligates every human being. And theft is one of them, of course. So as long as the first level was universal, then indeed stealing from a non-Jew was forbidden exactly like stealing from a Jew—what difference would there be? Now that He saw the nations were not upholding this, He rose and permitted their property to Israel.

[Speaker H] And are there those who say that if a non-Jew keeps the seven Noahide commandments, then it would be forbidden to steal from him?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that’s now a question of what to do, okay, after the law has already changed—if there is an exception, what happens? The bigger question, of course, is what happens when the exception becomes typical? That’s the question I think stands before us today. And that’s the Meiri—we’ve spoken about this before—that the Meiri really claims that today the law has already reverted. But I’m saying, this move that appears there—that’s a Talmud in Bava Kamma, I think on page 38—and that Talmud is really what stands in the background of this statement by Rabbi Kook. And if we return to the Mishnah, this is really the Mishnah. Because what happens in the Mishnah? The Tosafot Yom Tov says: I don’t understand why all the commentators interpret the first clause, “Beloved is man, for he was created in the image,” as referring only to Israel. Plainly it speaks about the whole world. The second story, “Beloved are Israel,” speaks about Israel. And maybe according to this, that’s exactly the explanation—you’re right. Basically, originally it was supposed to be all the world, all humanity. It’s only after what happened happened that some sort of shattering occurred, some kind of breaking process. And after that breaking process, a world was created whose metaphysics are different; the hardware itself became different, it’s not just software—the hardware is different. Even the first story becomes unique. And therefore now all the commentators, who already live within the new consciousness, when they read the first clause, they interpret even the first clause as referring to Israel today. There is no “man” who is not Israel; whoever is not Israel is not a human being. And from here really emerge all those conceptions we already speak about in current terms. I said this has certain expressions—that people really live these things in their consciousness, some people live with a consciousness that whoever is not Israel is not a human being. Now this is the source of that idea. It has a source, it’s not…

[Speaker O] Are we trying to get to a state where the seven Noahide commandments are observed?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, we’re not exactly demanding that. There was a big controversy around the actions of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who tried to run a kind of campaign to bring the children of Noah back… They told him, what business is that of yours? “Leave the wicked man and let him die,” and it no longer interests us; they’ve already abandoned it, this is not even a mission one should be involved with at all. So there is here a conception that really says that today the situation is different—that’s it, the hardware has changed. Some kind of change happened. So that at least softens a little the sting of what I described earlier. Because according to what I’m saying now—or what I think Rabbi Kook means to say—all of them interpreted the Mishnah like the Tosafot Yom Tov. It’s just that the interpretation they offer for the Mishnah, for the first clause of the Mishnah, “Beloved is man”—why do they say that means a Jew? “You are called man, and they are not called man.” Originally “man” meant Adam, the first man—that was before there were Jews. No one disputes that the term “man” generally refers to all human beings, not only Jews. Right. But now, after the nations failed, after they abandoned the seven Noahide commandments—exactly—so now the only ones left who are human are us. And now when you interpret the Mishnah… the Mishnah—even the belovedness of man, which is really intended for all human beings, but to whom does it address itself today? Today it addresses whoever remains human. And whoever has already lost the human image, lost his image as man, then the belovedness that was in principle also directed toward him no longer applies to him. And then the commentators on the Mishnah really say: fine, then “Beloved is man” too was said only about Israel. There is no conception here, no essential dispute with the Tosafot Yom Tov. This belovedness really was meant for all humanity; only what can you do—they didn’t earn it. In other words, it really was meant for everyone, only what can you do? They disappointed, they didn’t earn it. And therefore even the universal belovedness, the general human belovedness, which is directed to man as such, not to this special Israel—even that ultimately remains only with Israel. That’s all. You see that from every direction they’re basically saying the same model. There aren’t really any disputes here at the level of the substance. In the actual substance there is—as he says—a universal story, and the uniqueness, if it exists at all—I’m adding that—exists on the second story. Fine? But what happened is that because of this break described there in the Talmud, now even the first story has somehow contracted, and now even the first story is found only there. The universal story, what should have existed among all human beings, in practice exists only among Jews. Now the question of whether I really assess reality that way or not—that’s a good question. I don’t. But fine, that’s apparently how Rabbi Kook saw it, and that’s how many commentators see it, and I think that’s also how the interpretations that the Tosafot Yom Tov wondered about should be understood. Why—how do you interpret the Mishnah not according to its plain sense? “Beloved is man” means every human being. Why are you interpreting it only about a Jew? They interpret it only about a Jew because it is speaking about the belovedness directed to every human being—that’s “Beloved is man,” not “Beloved is Jew.” Only who is human today? The only one today entitled to the belovedness of the first story is only the Jew—that’s their claim. What?

[Speaker F] Is the demand of man very high?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it was always high. Man today is low—in other words, he doesn’t meet the demand. That’s the conception. Okay, I’m not sure I accept it, but I’m saying: right now I’m interpreting these conceptions. So on the one hand this also maybe softens the sting of the matter a little. We are not talking here about racism in its crude sense. We’re talking about an evaluative judgment—again, in my view an incorrect one—but an evaluative judgment, not a different material. We are not reaching the Chatam Sofer, who said it is forbidden to be treated by a non-Jewish doctor because it’s a different body. Rather, this is an evaluative judgment that says that someone who does not meet the basic demands required of every human being is not entitled to be treated as a human being. That’s the point. Not because he is literally built differently. I claim he can indeed be a human being. It’s not that his potential doesn’t exist—that would be different material. It does exist. But what can you do, he doesn’t make use of it. And it’s not the potential alone that earns you this treatment; this treatment has to be earned. And if you don’t earn it, you won’t receive it. Fine?

[Speaker D] But maybe because they didn’t meet it, now the hardware itself has changed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I’m saying fine, the question is how far you take that. But it’s still clear that potentially that thing is there. In other words, they can somehow repent and become human beings again, I think. Maybe they’ve already lost even that—I don’t know. Fine, all this I’m not…

[Speaker E] Can one say that the general direction is to become beloved by

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the Holy One, blessed be He?

[Speaker E] This first story—still, the non-Jews are the same as us, exactly the same. What they lack is the potential to reach the second story. Everything is the same; what they lack, what broke in them, is that they can no longer reach the second story. In their foundation they no longer have that potential. Because through the corruptions they lost that element.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But they were never supposed to reach the second story.

[Speaker E] Why not? Maybe yes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the 613 commandments were given only to us; they’re not obligated in them at all. They’re obligated only in the seven commandments. It’s not that the Torah was given to everyone and some people just don’t observe it.

[Speaker E] But when he says, “Things became corrupted and the spirit of man sank until it could no longer serve as a basis for holiness,” he’s speaking about everyone.

[Speaker Q] But maybe this is talking about the period before…

[Speaker E] What

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] it means that the profane can’t be a basis for holiness is that you can’t leave a human level in place and on top of it still have the Israelite level, the unique one, in its purity. Because the lower level can no longer carry the upper level—it became corrupted. So that means the corruption is in the lower level. They are not… “to carry holiness on its back” does not mean that they themselves become Jews, but that there be some sort of normal life within which there is a chosen people and there is the Messiah’s donkey, right? There are the surrounding people who are supposed to carry the second story on their backs. That structure doesn’t work today, because the first story is not really prepared to carry the second story on its back. But not that it itself becomes the second story. At least that’s how I understand his words. Let’s continue for a moment. “When we think about the matter of man and the other living creatures, we can draw up a whole list of comparisons in which man and all living things are equal. And nevertheless…” He is sensing here exactly the difficulty I spoke about in the whole first half of today’s class. “And nevertheless, after all the comparisons, we see that that point upon which man’s superiority over the beast depends encompasses within it the whole superiority of man, and man will not and does not desire to exchange it for any wealth, and he will lovingly endure many sufferings only in order not to lose the unique quality of man.” “The difference between the religion of Israel and the other religions—even those that came from its influence,” meaning Christianity and Islam, “is also like this. We can find many visions of similarity among them.” There are similarities between the different religions, in all sorts of dimensions. “And how could there not be similarities? Even if they had not been taken in their foundations from it”—first of all they came from us, so clearly there are similar things there. “But even if not, after all, we are all human beings, things arise, so clearly there are similarities among them. For the spirit of man has a general commonality in several respects.” You see? The hardware does indeed—there is a basic platform that is shared. “The spirit of man” is the same spirit. “Even though there is a special difference between individuals.” And here he means every person differs from another in something. You see? He senses the conceptual difficulty I spoke about at the beginning. He says: there is a difference between every two people, so why do you think—how do you group them? How do you determine levels or generalizations, this kind of generalization? “Even though there is a special difference between individuals, there is a general commonality of human form, and all the more so between national collectives. Nevertheless, the common side does not cease from exerting its effect.” Even so, despite the differences, there is still something shared. There is still something similar among all human beings, among all Jews, among all animals, despite there being many kinds of animals or human beings or Jews, and so on. “And in relation to the religions that came after the giving of the Torah and the appearance of Israel in the world, and all the more so those that were specifically drawn from the power of the Torah of Israel, many similarities must certainly exist among them. And these similarities, with all their many details, do not efface the inner point that distinguishes them. And the whole essence of the soul is folded not into the similarities but into that distinguishing point, which gives a special soul even to the details of the similar points, so that the similarity is only an external similarity. But inwardly it is utterly different. And Israel will never be able, nor will it ever desire, to lose the point of the soul for the sake of the nonconformity of the comparable details, and it will forever stand by its lot: ‘A people that dwells alone, and is not reckoned among the nations.’” Now here there is a statement that I don’t entirely understand how it fits with his first part. Because what he is really claiming here is that even though there is similarity, say, between us and animals or inanimate things—we all have mass, we are all made of matter—the point that distinguishes us, that differs between us and inanimate things or animals, colors differently even the dimensions that are similar. In other words, even our matter is no longer the same matter as, say—even biological matter is already not the same as inanimate matter; even the matter itself becomes something different. So that means that the very existence of—I don’t know whether to call it now a second story or a minus-first story—the existence of some special point radiates onto the dimensions that are similar.

[Speaker P] But that’s exactly what’s being discussed—that the higher the story, the more inward the point is.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but then I’m saying—and then, according to this view, it comes out that the very existence of level B already makes level A different from other people’s level A. Earlier he presented it as though from the outset it was arranged to be the same thing, it just got damaged, and I said that I think he’s relying on the Talmudic passage in Bava Kamma that I mentioned, where this is some kind of breakage. Here it’s described as something more essential, essentialist. Meaning, the very existence of level B says that level A cannot be the same thing. Even biological matter is not inanimate matter. Meaning, the fact that you have a soul means that your material is already different material from dead matter. So if that’s the case, then what does it mean to say that level A was originally set up to be the same thing? I don’t fully understand how this fits with what he said above, because above it’s presented as the result of a breakage, not as something essential. After the breakage, something really did happen that is now different, but before that it wasn’t something embedded in the very nature of the matter—that by virtue of having level B, your level A also looks different. Fine, but these are Rabbi Kook’s ideas. And really, if I sum up for our purposes, then he does indeed return to that same double dimension that exists in the Mishnah. He definitely believes in the unique quality of Israel; his discussion is about what happens on level A, whether level A is universal or not universal. I said that one of the expressions of this—and there are quite a few halakhic expressions of this point, by the way. There are halakhic implications to this discussion; I can understand practical implications here. Meaning, with regard to theft we saw that, but theft is only the paradigm for all seven Noahide commandments. Meaning, the question is whether my attitude, which derives from the mere fact that the other person is a human being—not the special attitude that I owe a Jew as, say, a family member, let’s put it that way, right? There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Meaning, the fact that I relate more closely to my family members than to others is only natural and reasonable, and there’s no problem with it, as long as I don’t harm others on the basic human level. So he deserves, say, anything that touches on his basic right as a human being; it cannot be that I would prefer my family members there, because that applies to every human being as such—like when I spoke about civil rights and human rights, right? Human rights belong to everyone, and civil rights the state gives to whoever is a citizen. That’s not immoral. And that’s how this whole thing is structured: a person has circles of closeness, and he treats those closer circles differently. So with a Jew too, it’s quite clear that the fact that I have a preferential attitude toward Jews is not, in itself, problematic. The question is whether that preferential attitude exists on level A or level B. Meaning, do I give the human attitude to every person, while the family-member attitude I give to whoever is my family member? About that, I don’t think anyone can come to me with complaints. Right? The question is whether I do in fact give the human attitude—meaning, whether I give human rights to everyone. Again we come back to “a human being is beloved,” and “Israel is beloved” and “a human being is beloved.” There are human rights and there are civil rights. Okay? Human rights I’m forbidden to violate with anyone, but civil rights I give only to someone who is a citizen. Okay, “all the native-born in Israel shall dwell in booths.” “Native-born” here, in biblical language, means a Jew. “Native-born” means a Jew. Even a convert is not called native-born—“like the convert, like the native-born.” Meaning, a convert is not called native-born. So I’m saying that this exact analogy—human being and citizen—is exactly the analogy here. And therefore I say that I have no moral criticism, or any other criticism, when for example I think—say, when Maimonides explains why a lost object is not returned to a gentile. That’s also there in Bava Kamma, in that same passage. So Maimonides writes in his commentary on the Mishnah that the gentiles too are not human beings; one does not return lost objects to them; they do not keep the seven Noahide commandments; the attitude toward them is like toward animals. That’s what he says. And on this point I have no problem at all. All the anti-racist outrage and so on—that’s simply nonsense. Why is it nonsense? At least in my view. Because if these really were the figures Maimonides saw—assuming that really is what he saw—then if that’s what he saw, they don’t return my lost object, so why should I return theirs? Meaning, the universal level—from whose force I’m obligated to return lost objects—is not the same thing as investing all my money in him. Wait a second: to invest all my money for a Jew is not a universal level, or for a family member. For a family member I would invest all my money to save his life—that’s perfectly fine, nobody will complain if I don’t do that for someone else. But if I don’t return a lost object to someone else—returning a lost object is considered a basic human duty, right? How can it be that one does not return a lost object to a gentile? Here we see the expression of the fact—wait, I’ll get to that in a second—I’m saying that since gentiles do not return lost objects to Jews, then lost objects are not returned to gentiles either, right, both to gentiles and to Jews, right, both to gentiles and to Jews. So that means the human level was damaged. But if the human level was damaged, why should I continue relating to it as if it exists? So that is exactly what Maimonides writes there too. But it transformed the level. Exactly, that’s an important point. Maimonides also claims that, and with that I have no problem. I have a problem with those who claim that it cannot change—with that I have a problem. Now someone might also come and say: fine, but the very outlook that sees the gentiles as different was perhaps not correct either. It may also have been fed by problematic assumptions, maybe—I don’t know. Although it’s fairly clear that there was something there. Meaning, there is something in the world that definitely seems to have improved in recent generations, and once wasn’t like that. I don’t know to what extent; I didn’t live then, so I don’t know. And the last thing is really the comments that all of you made, and rightly so: that a Jew does not lose his rank if he doesn’t behave properly, supposedly, while the gentiles, the moment they did not behave properly, we are no longer obligated to them in any way. Now here too that’s not entirely precise. Say, for example, with a Jew—no, wait, there are differences,

[Speaker Q] It’s

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that he is obligated, so the gentile is also obligated. But we, toward them—that’s the question: why are we no longer obligated toward them the moment they don’t fulfill things, while toward another Jew I am still obligated even though he too does not fulfill his obligations as a Jew? So why am I obligated toward him? The point is that toward him too, not necessarily. Why? It says: “with one who acts as your people do.” All interpersonal obligations do not exist toward someone who does not act as your people do. That is Jewish law. Jewish law. It is permitted to harm him, permitted—whatever you want. All the commandments between one person and another do not exist toward someone who does not act as your people do. That is the law. Now what counts as someone who does not act as your people do? Again, there is a major dispute here. Not everyone who does not keep commandments is someone who does not act as your people do. Rather, it may be someone who is truly corrupt in the essential sense—he understands that this is how one should act and does not do it. But someone who understands differently, who has a different worldview—there it seems to me, at least, that he does enter the category of one who acts as your people do, but what I want to say is that there is a treatment in Jewish law, even of interpersonal obligations toward him. You can puncture his tires. You can puncture his tires, right. Even a Jew’s, not only a gentile’s, if he does not act as your people do.

[Speaker I] Can you refrain from returning his lost object? You can refrain from returning his lost object, you can do anything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All interpersonal obligations do not exist toward someone who does not act as your people do. On the purely halakhic level. Yes. Fine, let’s start with what “acts as your people do” means. The complexity here in this world. No, no—“acts as your people do” means commandments. There’s no—there is a definition in Jewish law. Yes, obviously. The only question is what counts as someone who does not act as your people do: is it everyone who doesn’t keep commandments, or someone who doesn’t keep commandments out of a kind of wickedness? If he thinks differently, then he’s fine—I think he’s mistaken, but he’s coerced, what can you do? He doesn’t understand.

[Speaker R] If he does not act as your people do on the first level? Huh?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no. “Acts as your people do” means commandments. Even someone who desecrates the Sabbath is not someone who acts as your people do. It has nothing to do with the first level.

[Speaker R] But if the gentile were keeping the first level, then we would respect him. No problem.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He would get the treatment of a gentile. Not the treatment of a Jew.

[Speaker R] But if the Jew keeps the first level and only doesn’t keep commandments?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then by that logic he would get the treatment of a gentile. Right? Yes. He would get the treatment of a gentile, and not the treatment of a Jew.

[Speaker R] But the treatment of a gentile would include returning his lost object and all that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely, correct.

[Speaker E] Shalom is trying to say that when the Jew keeps the first level too, then just as with a gentile, you are obligated.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, but I would return his lost object on the basis of the seven Noahide commandments, not on the basis of the Jewish commandment of returning a lost object. Because also—and this matters a great deal—the question is whether I’m obligated as a halakhic obligation or obligated as a universal moral obligation. There are obligations—here, we spoke about this once, I’ll mention it here already because it’s also connected to the topic—Rabbi Shimon Shkop, this is really his whole innovation in Sha’arei Yosher: Rabbi Shimon Shkop says that even according to the one who says that theft from a gentile is permitted by Torah law, it is obviously forbidden by Torah law. Even according to the one who says it’s permitted. Why? Because theft in its legal, meta-halakhic sense exists toward anyone who has property. Meaning, if ownership is defined with respect to a person, ownership means that someone else is forbidden to steal it. So the legal, moral, meta-halakhic layer exists, according to all opinions, toward anyone who has ownership. Every person. The prohibition “you shall not steal” written in the Torah may, according to those views, have been said only regarding a Jew. But that really poses no problem, because the gentile’s obligation toward me is also not because of “you shall not steal” but because of the legal obligation, so it is completely egalitarian. Now, if there is a Jew who behaves like a moral gentile—by “moral gentile” I mean, yes?—then if that’s so, he deserves the treatment of a moral gentile, just as a moral gentile deserves. That’s what my simple logic tells me.

[Speaker R] So what difference does it make why you return his lost object?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, it makes a conceptual difference.

[Speaker C] The question is whether you’re not making allowances for Maimonides. You’re saying that if Maimonides had lived like the Meiri, then he would have thought like the Meiri. But Maimonides quoted—he knew Aristotle, he knew Plato. Aristotle and Plato are the exceptions. Aristotle and Plato are exceptions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides understood it as a collection of animals except for a few isolated exceptions. That’s how he understood it too. That’s how he read the reality around him. I said: I don’t know whether he read it correctly. Because I see today all kinds of people who read reality in exactly the same way, when today I think that is not the correct reading of reality. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s clear to me that they are fed by certain assumptions that I do not agree with, and they impose them on reality. Who knows whether that wasn’t true of Maimonides too—I don’t know. But assuming that was the reality he saw before him, then I’m saying his statement is not a severe statement at all; it is simply a very logical statement. And therefore one has to be careful with this political correctness. Meaning, that’s what he says, and if that really was the reality, then fine—so what’s the problem with it?

[Speaker R] Assuming that was the reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s why I’m saying that. You can accuse him, in quotation marks, of perhaps coloring reality too in shades drawn from some assumptions that are not necessarily correct. Fine. But assuming that’s how he saw it, then those are the conclusions he drew.

[Speaker H] And it seems to me—what? That Disraeli said? What? What did he say? In Parliament? Anyway, once someone remarked to him—in Parliament someone said something to him about Judaism. So he said, “At the time when your ancestors were still climbing trees, my ancestors were already administering systems of law.” That’s what he said right in front of everyone.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so that—Rabbi Shloimele, I see we’re not going to have enough time. Maybe I’ll do this quickly so we can finally finish with this topic. And the matter is as follows: behold, the opinions were divided regarding the chosenness of Israel, what its definition is. Some understood it as merely the status of the firstborn, as it is written, “Israel is My firstborn son.” That is, Israel are the firstborn among the children. And as we learned in Avot: “Beloved is the human being who was created in the image,” and the Tosafot Yom Tov explains that this refers to all the nations, yes? There it speaks about all the nations. And Israel are the chosen and firstborn among the nations. And because of this they also have responsibility for all the nations, to teach them knowledge of God, in the way that our forefather Abraham, peace be upon him, did. Up to here, what is he basically saying? Notice: “firstborn” in halakhic language—we have to be aware of halakhic language. A firstborn inherits a double portion, while a regular son inherits one portion. Now the firstborn’s two portions are not that the firstborn gets a different inheritance; the firstborn gets the same share as every child. On top of that, he gets another share. So when you look at Israel as the firstborn among the nations, the meaning is the first side of Rabbi Kook. He says this is the side that says there is a universal level, and beyond that there is an additional level. Okay? That is basically the claim. Some understood it as merely the status of the firstborn. But the Kuzari and the kabbalists disagreed with this and elevated Israel’s status beyond all comparison, saying that Israel are not of the same category as the other nations at all, but are a creation unto themselves. For just as there are four levels—inanimate, plant, animal, and speaking being—there is a fifth and higher level, and that is the level of Israel, as it is written: “Behold, a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” I won’t repeat that analysis now in light of what I said earlier. And the Kuzari can also be understood according to this view. The Kuzari says there is a level B here that is different, just as animals have matter exactly like inanimate things, and it isn’t material different from inanimate matter, but they have a second level. The fact that you make that into a different species does not mean you think level A changed. That’s why I sharpened the question earlier. The question is whether level A changed, not whether there is a level B. Of course there is a level B; that much is clear to them at least, that there is a level B. The question is whether level A looks the same or not. Now from the Kuzari I don’t know how one derives any conclusion. You can derive it this way.

[Speaker E] You can derive it from his example, because level A is all the sons, and level B is the firstborn.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. No, no—he sees the Kuzari as the opposite. The Kuzari is the antithesis. He says “firstborn” is not the Kuzari. Not precise. That’s exactly it. I’m saying the Kuzari can also go along with the firstborn model. Meaning yes—that’s exactly the point. I’m saying that the analysis we made earlier—suddenly you see that when you read Rabbi Shlomo Fischer this way, then it looks self-evident. Yes, the Kuzari is about the unique quality of Israel, so he certainly thinks this is a separate kind of being. And the firstborn conception is the conception that says there is a universal level and on top of it there is level B. Suddenly we see that this is not precise. Conceptual analysis really does do something after all. So we actually see that no, you do not necessarily have to place the Kuzari on the other side. The question of the unique quality of Israel speaks about the relation between level A and level B, not about the nature of level A. That is the point. And the truth is that both methods are correct, because Israel’s superiority over the other nations is twofold and contains two levels. The lower level is the status of the chosen and firstborn of the nations, whereas the higher level is the aspect of the Jewish people and the sefirah of kingship, that is, the indwelling of His Divine Presence among those below. And here it may be that he is saying exactly what I said earlier: that both methods are correct. Basically, the meaning is that the Kuzari is right. But the fact that the Kuzari is right does not mean that level A is not universal. It is universal, and level B is a level that… You see that basically from every direction we are arriving at almost the same model, almost the same model. And this is again a demonstration of that same point I made earlier: people can fight fierce battles—whether there is a unique quality of Israel or not, levels and so on, levels here, levels there. But when we do the conceptual analysis, it can suddenly become clear that basically everyone is talking about the same thing. The whole question is just what you chose to focus on.

[Speaker S] We can see that two people may do exactly the same act, and everything may look the same, but the inner point and intention of one of them could be 180 degrees different…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, the opposite situation can also happen.

[Speaker S] Right, there can be a situation

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the opposite of that too, where there is no inner point, but because the acts are different, it looks like two different things. It can be this way and it can be that way.