Types of Interpretation, Lecture 3

Table of Contents

• Academic study versus traditional study and the role of context
• The meaning of halakhic ruling versus contextual research
• Three kinds of challenge to academic analysis
• Second kind of challenge: accepting the correlation and offering a different interpretation
• The context of discovery and the context of justification in philosophy of science and in Jewish law
• Parallel planes of explanation and the tension between causality and explanation
• Contextual research as history rather than Torah study
• Summary: accepting the research without giving up the halakhic discussion

Summary

General overview

The text sets up a dichotomy between academic study and traditional study: academic study is seen as contextual and open to critical evaluation, whereas traditional study tends to ignore context and does not deal with critical evaluability in the same way. The author shows how a contextual explanation can erase halakhic disputes, and then proposes distinctions that make it possible to accept historical findings without giving up halakhic dispute and ruling. He goes on to present three kinds of challenge to academic analysis and develops a distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification, arguing that contextual research can be correct and still not count as Torah study in the halakhic sense. The conclusion is that there is no need to attack the validity of the research in order to distinguish between the history of Jewish law and halakhic engagement, which reaches rulings on the basis of arguments and sources.

Academic study versus traditional study and the role of context

The author defines academic study as contextual and critically evaluable, and by contrast traditional study as study that generally ignores context and is not careful about critical evaluability. He gives the example of a consistent dispute between the Tosafot and Maimonides on the subject of sanctifying God’s name: the sages of France are stringent and the sages of Spain are lenient, and Maimonides says that one who gives up his life where this is forbidden is liable for his own life. He describes a research-based explanation that attributes the stringency in France to the period of the Crusades and the need for steadfastness, and the leniency in Spain to the absence of trials of that intensity. He argues that such an explanation leads to the conclusion that there is no real dispute, only dependence on circumstances, and therefore the question “whose view does Jewish law follow?” loses its meaning within that framework.

The meaning of halakhic ruling versus contextual research

The author explains that when people ask, “whose view does Jewish law follow?” they assume a debate within one context, or with no context at all, and they determine the ruling by means of evidence from the Talmudic text, the majority of halakhic decisors, and rules of halakhic ruling. He argues that in the academic world there is no need for a ruling and no structure of bringing proofs in order to determine who is right; instead, each position is explained within the context in which it operates. He adds that when academic tools are imported into the yeshiva, context is used, but people still search for evidence and issue rulings, so the tools are planted in different soil and become part of conclusion-oriented study.

Three kinds of challenge to academic analysis

The author presents the first kind of challenge as an attack on the achievement itself: the academic argument is incorrect, either because the academic method is mistaken by definition, based on the claim that the sages were exalted beings and not influenced by their environment, or because in a specific study the local inference is not compelling. He notes that enactments and customs are by definition context-dependent, but he wants to discuss Torah-level law and interpretation, not only enactments. He gives the example that even in modern halakhic ruling one can identify context that is not geographic but rather a social milieu, and he mentions academic research on Rabbi Elyashiv’s method that analyzes trends and context.

Second kind of challenge: accepting the correlation and offering a different interpretation

The author presents a second challenge in which one agrees with the correlation identified by the researcher but disputes its interpretation. He illustrates this with a critique of Yitzhak Gilat concerning the claim that the position that “the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic” emerged after the destruction of the Temple out of economic distress under Roman rule. He argues that Gilat is not replacing Jewish law with context, but rather saying that the distress provided motivation to search for justifications, while the halakhic justifications themselves still have to hold water. He explains that in this way one can accept the findings of the research and still preserve a real halakhic dispute that requires clarification of “whose view does Jewish law follow?” on the basis of arguments, parallels, and sources.

The context of discovery and the context of justification in philosophy of science and in Jewish law

The author brings Reichenbach’s distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification: the source of inspiration for a theory can be arbitrary, but what decides the matter is its justification through empirical testing. He mentions claims about the Zeitgeist in Heinz Pagels regarding Einstein, and distinguishes between the historian of science, who is interested in the question of context, and the scientist, who is interested in testing the theory. He draws a parallel to the world of Jewish law and argues that contextual research examines the context of discovery, whereas the study of Jewish law examines the context of justification through sources and halakhic considerations.

Parallel planes of explanation and the tension between causality and explanation

The author presents examples of different planes of explanation, such as an apple falling for Newton and the distinction between a physical explanation and a theological explanation, and likewise repentance or becoming nonreligious as a philosophical-theological explanation versus a psychological explanation. He argues that in practice people choose whichever explanation is more convenient for them based on their prior position, and he criticizes educational approaches that replace substantive answers to questions with “warmth and love” as a substitute for dealing with arguments. He develops the claim that two “explanations” are not necessarily two separate sufficient conditions; rather, sometimes we are dealing with one explanation that has two components which only together create a sufficient condition, such as distress-driven motivation alongside a substantive argument that is halakhically valid.

Contextual research as history rather than Torah study

The author argues that contextual research is engagement with the history of Jewish law and not Torah study, and compares it to dealing with how a book is bound rather than with what is written in the book. As an example he cites Dov Maimon’s articles on Sufism in Egypt and its influence on Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, and argues that engaging with sources of influence and cultural parallels is not itself the service of God and in his view does not require the blessing over Torah study. He acknowledges that in practice there are combinations and that some researchers use research methods to demonstrate traditional analytic scholarship, but he is speaking about theoretical types and distinguishing between the different planes.

Summary: accepting the research without giving up the halakhic discussion

The author concludes that there is no need to argue that the research is wrong or that the sages were not influenced by their surroundings in order to distinguish between research and Torah study. He warns against a naive research-oriented approach that deterministically reduces halakhic ruling to context and erases disputes, and he prefers an approach in which context explains the motivation and discovery of arguments but does not replace their validity. He presents a picture in which the sages of France and the sages of Spain discovered different sides under different circumstances, and after the arguments were formulated, a dispute still remains, one that is decided in the context of justification through evidence and reasoning. He determines that there is no competition between historical research and analytic-halakhic engagement, because they operate on different planes, and halakhic study can continue in its own way even if the research is correct.

Last time I spoke a bit about academic study versus traditional study, and I said that, in essence, academic study is contextual and justiciable, while traditional study usually ignores context and isn’t careful about justiciability. And I brought an example to accompany us: for instance, when we see a dispute between Tosafot, say, and Maimonides—between the sages of France and the sages of Spain—regarding sanctifying God’s name. The sages of France are stricter and basically tend more to encourage people to give up their lives, while the sages of Spain do not. Maimonides, as is well known, says that someone who gives up his life where it is forbidden to do so is liable for his own life, and he has a very interesting formulation on that issue. But there is a fairly consistent, fairly coherent dispute here: the sages of France are stricter and the sages of Spain are more lenient. Now, researchers generally tend to explain this through context. Meaning, the sages of France lived during the Crusades, and somehow it was necessary to raise the walls or demand greater resilience from people, because there were terrible troubles there, it was very hard, and people there fell badly because of the severe trials they faced. Therefore, the policy that developed there among the sages of that region of Europe at that time was a stricter policy. By contrast, the sages of Spain did not face trials of that kind, and therefore they were more lenient. When you have to give up your life, you do—but when you don’t, then why in the world would you do that? The Inquisition? What? Isn’t the Inquisition something? No, the Inquisition is already the fifteenth century. We’re talking about the Crusades, the twelfth century. Fine, Spain also had troubles here and there, but it wasn’t the same intensity—as they say today, it was lower intensity. So basically, I said that once you understand the dispute that way, or explain it that way, it comes out that there is no dispute. Because what emerges is that if you live in an environment like the French one, you should rule like Tosafot, and if you live in an environment like the Spanish one, you should rule like Maimonides. In practice, each one concedes to the other: if he were under those conditions, he would act that way. Exactly. Meaning, it all depends on conditions; it’s not really a question about the sages at all. The sages simply live under different conditions, but in truth there is no real dispute here. If you live in North Africa, you eat legumes. What? Yes. If you live in Israel, you can also eat legumes. In any case, this conclusion—that there is no dispute, and that the whole traditional give-and-take loses some of its meaning—because when we now discuss whose Jewish law follows, like Tosafot or like Maimonides, when we ask whose view Jewish law follows, the assumption is that there is a dispute. In the scholarly perspective as I described it earlier, the question whose view Jewish law follows has no meaning; there is no need for a halakhic ruling at all. Nobody is arguing here. It depends on the circumstances; for every set of circumstances there are instructions for what is appropriate to those circumstances. When we ask whose view Jewish law follows, we are already implicitly assuming that they are basically sitting around one round table arguing with one another, where the context is one and the same—or there is no context. And second: how do we determine whose view Jewish law follows? We don’t determine what is more practically correct; rather, we look at proofs from the Talmudic text, who fits the Talmudic text better, or whether the law follows the majority if there is a majority of halakhic decisors against a minority, or other such rules of decision. This whole business, of course, has no meaning at all in the academic world. This whole kind of engagement just won’t exist there in academic study, because in academic study all you do is explain each one within the framework of the context in which he operates, and that’s it. There’s nothing to decide about who is right or to bring proofs; that’s simply not the kind of thing that gets done there. By the way, even when—and we’ll talk about this more—people try to import academic methods, what they call layers, into traditional learning, then obviously in the end, when you do that in a yeshiva, you still have to decide and you look for proofs. Meaning, even when you already take the academic tools, obviously you’re only picking them from there and planting them in different soil, because in the end it still has to be learning that reaches conclusions, with definitions and proofs. It’s not like in academic methods. Rather, yes, there is attention to context. So in that sense there is a use of academic tools. Now, I said that in fact one can challenge this in three ways, or there are three approaches to dealing with academic analysis. The first approach, or the first kind of attack, is one that points to flaws in the achievement. Meaning, the academic argument is simply wrong. Of course, the extreme positions say that the academic argument is wrong by definition—not because you didn’t do the work properly, but because academic thinking leads to incorrect conclusions. Why? Because our sages were exalted fiery beings and were influenced by nothing in their environment, and it’s completely out of context. Meaning, all Torah work is not done within a context at all. People live in a certain environment, there is contact there—they are in communication with the Holy One, blessed be He—their environment does not affect them. By the way, I’ve heard this quite a bit. It sounds a little bizarre, but I’ve heard it many times. This is a general attack on the academic approach that says: what do you mean? Context has no weight there; it plays no role. But the fact is, a lot of enactments are… No, enactments are something else, because enactments by definition belong to context. Even traditional study, when you study an enactment, you study it with its context, because you ask: they enacted that the markets of Jerusalem be decorated with fruits—obviously this was done when people came up on pilgrimage with first-fruits, when they brought first-fruits. But once, in a time when first-fruits are not brought, why decorate the markets of Jerusalem with fruits? So that enactment has to be revoked. Enactments are always context-dependent, because they were established out of a context. Right now I’m speaking about Torah-level laws, interpretation or exposition or interpretation of the Torah. But today, today you can see halakhic decisors sitting there disconnected, not knowing what is happening around them as an ideal. They’re all kinds of things… Not as an ideal, but I think they’re still influenced, influenced, fine—but maybe not at the level that when we think… Fine, but you can see, you can see that it does depend on context. For example, a woman engaged in Torah study—there is a difference between the Land of Israel and Babylonia because there is a difference in context. And you see that also… Right, but there again it’s screamingly obvious, but there are places where once again it’s some kind of—I don’t know whether it’s even an enactment—but it’s not a Torah-level law, it’s not interpretation of verses, it’s not… Rather, in the Land of Israel they acted this way because there were certain troubles, and in Babylonia they acted that way because there were other troubles. Fine, but those are customs. But again, customs or enactments are the kind of things that are by definition context-dependent, that’s clear. But to look for who influenced whom, what the study hall was, where this came from. You hear Elimelech’s lecture, right, here in the Mishkan, right? So Elimelech’s lecture is an academic lecture. Meaning, he says: what was the setting, what was happening there in Morocco, say, when the sages established something, what influenced them, was there judicial autonomy there or wasn’t there judicial autonomy. In the yeshiva world nobody knows what happened there or what Morocco is. Morocco is something you write with the letters M-R-O-Q-O, and they don’t even know whether some sage was from Morocco or not from Morocco. They’re all around the same table and we discuss, and there are proofs from the Talmudic text and proofs not from the Talmudic text; there is no context. Yes, what are you saying? I’ve happened to see quite a few Torah scholars who explicitly—and with no academic suspicion at all—do refer to context; you can see it. It depends in what setting. I think that generally speaking, yeshiva learning—and this is a generalization, there are always exceptions—but yeshiva learning in general is non-contextual learning. Fine, there are always exceptional people, and it also depends what exactly they’re doing, so every case has to be examined on its own merits. I’m just strengthening the point. Context usually doesn’t exist. True, there are places where it does exist, and then you have to see what it is doing. In yeshivot—just when you go to a yeshiva, I mean a classic yeshiva, a Haredi yeshiva even, just ordinary yeshivot that learn in the classic Lithuanian way. Today there are all kinds of things. Meaning today there are yeshivot that of course study research completely, all kinds of things. But in the classic yeshivot, generally speaking, it seems to me that it is out of context. And criticism of them—I mentioned Kahana’s article, and what I wrote here is basically a response to it—he really describes this matter. So a challenge of the first type is an attack on the academic method. No, you’re simply not right, that’s all. It’s not some issue; the conclusion just does not follow from the premises. Your conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises. This can come in two forms. The first form is that the academic method by definition is mistaken, as I said before, because our sages were not dependent, were not influenced by their surroundings at all. Someone here mentioned—I think you said it, Ido—that decisors today work in a disconnected way. But take Rabbi Elyashiv: when he ruled, I knew—I could guess—what he would rule on various questions. And that is context-dependent. His context is not the context out in the street around him. His context is his room, or his room and the parallel rooms, not important—the people who are his real environment. That is not the geographical environment. Wait, when you analyze five hundred years ago you look at the… so in that sense they’re right, because the context is not what was happening now politically or socially in Morocco; they weren’t like that. But again, that is political conduct. Yes, but if you say his close environment—when you analyze a ruling from long ago. No, for Rabbi Elyashiv the context is unequivocally political, only his close environment is not the politics. His political environment is not his immediate environment. His political environment is a party, it’s people devoted to Torah, kollel students, I don’t know what, in various places—not necessarily his neighbors or the residents on his street. That’s not his context. On the contrary, precisely because he is closed in a room, his context is not what is around him physically; his context is the people in that same milieu, yes, in that same milieu. Today, in our world in general, geography has already become virtual. Meaning, your context is often far more in your computer than in life. Your community is a community of people with whom you communicate by computer. With those rabbis under discussion it was also like that. That’s my opinion. He didn’t deal with a computer, but there is still communication—messengers, telephone, I don’t know exactly what. His context is not his neighbors. And this is clear. You can see where he is aiming, what his halakhic trend really is; you can see dependence on context. Scholars have written studies on Rabbi Elyashiv—Rami Reiner wrote, from what I remember reading, on Rabbi Elyashiv from Ben-Gurion University. And who else? There was another one I think I saw. They wrote academic research articles about Rabbi Elyashiv’s method, and they do speak about context and trends and what he wanted to achieve—exactly what people do with the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and any other decisor. Everyone has a context. So therefore, I’m saying, one direction is simply to deny the influence of context altogether. But one can also not deny the influence of context and only say: specifically in a certain research argument, I don’t agree with you. Meaning, I don’t think the reason the sages of France and Spain disagreed is because these had the Crusades and those did not. In this case it just comes out that way. In fact someone remarked, I think in the previous lecture, that when there are Crusades there is also room to adopt a more lenient policy rather than a stricter one. Certainly that also could have been. Then you can attack the local conclusion, not attack the research method in general. You can say: listen, locally here that’s not right, or not necessary, or something like that, and therefore not resort to these methods at all. The attack of the second type is of course an intra-research attack, because you are criticizing the way he did the research. Another researcher can also tell him: listen, you didn’t do it well, because this conclusion doesn’t follow from your premises. It isn’t necessarily an ideological dispute.

The second challenge—and I also said this last time—is in a situation where I agree with the correlation you found, but I have a different interpretation from yours. Meaning, I agree, say, that during the Crusades they became stricter, but I don’t agree with the interpretation you gave, that they wanted to raise the walls because of the Crusades; rather, I don’t know, some other interpretation. I gave an example of this: the criticism leveled against Yitzhak Gilat’s book, Chapters in the Development of Jewish Law. Why does he talk about that? I mentioned the article “From When Is the Sabbatical Year in Our Time Rabbinic?” I think that’s what I spoke about. He says that the decision to say that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic was basically born after the destruction of the Temple. The sages saw that people were in severe economic distress, exiled from the land, agriculture had been disrupted, there was no orderly national structure, they were under Roman rule, taxes were being collected—the story from the haftarah. And therefore they decided to be lenient in the laws of the Sabbatical year. The Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic—that’s what he wrote. Now, he writes—he shows, at least through the Talmudic layers, and he really shows it quite convincingly. Meaning, he shows that the appearance of this idea, that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic, is an appearance in later generations; in earlier generations there is no hint of it. Fine? Now if you connect it to the Jubilee, that’s something else. What? If you connect the Sabbatical year to the Jubilee, only that when the Sabbatical year is Torah-level… No, that’s exactly the same period. Once the Jubilee ceased, the Torah-level Sabbatical year also ceased, so it became rabbinic. Fine, there are halakhic reasons for this, and they offer contextual reasons. That is exactly what I’m saying. So in ordinary traditional thought, you say: it depends on the Jubilee, on whether the majority of her inhabitants dwell in her or not. Fine, those are the things on the surface. The scholar says: but there is context, and the context is that there were economic problems and they needed to solve them. Now I say, this can be understood in two ways. Gilat’s critics basically criticized him for exactly this point—that he attributes things to context instead of to essence, instead of to halakhic considerations. So were our rabbis not honest? Meaning, what, you need to be lenient, so suddenly you invent that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic? That argument is supposed to hold water. What do you mean? You want—I want to be lenient for an agunah, so I’ll just say she is permitted? Then why do I need to check and recheck the passages and see what proofs there are and what there aren’t, and “those who have no end,” and all kinds of things of that sort? The motivation was economic. Exactly. So I said that when you read the book inside, this is very clear. And I said that Gilat was originally a yeshiva student from Hevron; later he became a professor at Bar-Ilan, but originally he was a yeshiva student, and somehow he remained a yeshiva student in his outlook. He basically says: indeed, some researchers really do go straight to context, but Gilat in particular is very careful about this. He finds the essential, substantive reasons; he only claims that the motivation to look for reasons was the distress. And who can deny that? Clearly Jewish law works that way. When you permit an agunah, clearly the woman’s distress plays a role. It does not play a role in the permission itself—it should not play a role in the permission itself—but in the motivation to seek halakhic considerations to permit her, it certainly plays a role. Because if there is distress, I need to turn over every stone to find a solution to the distress. Someone who does not have the distress will not search, and if he does not search he will not find that exposition that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic, because he has no motivation to search. If he does not search, why would he find it? But in the end, once you found that exposition, it has to hold water. The halakhic reason is supposed to be a reason on the halakhic plane. So here the research can certainly be correct. The conclusion of the research is a conclusion that follows from its premises; meaning, the work really is good work. That’s why I call this a challenge of the second type. Fine? But the interpretation you give to these conclusions—right, the idea that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic was born after the destruction—the correlation is correct. I agree with the conclusions of your research. The question now is what interpretation you give to that fact. You say: ah, their political, economic trend was to be lenient because people were in distress, so they arranged the matter somehow. And here I say no—that is not the right interpretation. I say the distress caused them to search, but after they searched, they also found an argument that really does hold water. Okay, so with an interpretation like that you can accept the conclusions of the research and still relate to the halakhic reasons, and not see the context as a substitute for Jewish law. Do you understand why, in the end, what this leaves? Now suppose there is another amora who was not in distress, fine? In another period, or a tanna, it doesn’t matter, and he does not say that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic. The researchers will say: fine, because he was not in distress—the correlation, exactly like with Tosafot and Maimonides, right? Meaning, that one lived in such a context and therefore reached such a halakhic conclusion; that one lived in such a context and reached such a halakhic conclusion. Now, I said that if scholars look at these things through context, then it means there is no dispute between the two sides, because it depends on the context you are in. But that is not true. With the correction I just gave, it is not true. Because if Gilat’s claim, for example, is that the notion that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic was arrived at after the destruction, the claim is not that when you are in a post-destruction setting it is correct to say that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic, and if you do not have economic distress then it is not correct to say that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic. That is what I said when I spoke about the laws of sanctifying God’s name. Here that is not the claim. The claim is that being in distress helped me discover a true halakhic idea, one that is always true, true everywhere, in my view. Okay? But what led me to the idea, what gave me the motivation to search for the idea, was the distress. That is a different kind of correlation. Because now, if there is a sage who says that the Sabbatical year in our time is not rabbinic, there is definitely a dispute between them. It doesn’t matter that this dispute arose because one had motivation to search and the other perhaps did not; that can happen. But practically, in the bottom line, there is a dispute between them. And now, when I have to examine whose view Jewish law follows, or try to see proofs this way or that way, I will work like a man of Jewish law, not like a researcher. I will work like a man of Jewish law. I will see whether his proof holds water or not, I will examine parallels, I will look at the Talmudic passages, I will look at tannaim, Mishnayot, and so on. I will examine it the way we examine passages. Okay? Why? Because there really is a dispute here. True, we arrived at the dispute in a certain way, but there is in fact a dispute in the end. Therefore after Gilat’s correction, it is no longer right to say that if you think in a scholarly way then there is no dispute and all the rest of what I said before. Not true—it depends on the interpretation. In this connection it may be interesting to mention a distinction that exists in philosophy of science, where they distinguish between the context of discovery and the context of justification. I think Reichenbach was the father of this distinction. What does this mean? A scientist comes with a new theory. You ask him, how did you come up with this theory? He says: my grandmother appeared to me last night in a dream and told me that the gravitational constant is 9.8. Now, says Reichenbach, so what? That is perfectly legitimate. As long as it stands the empirical test—meaning, check it. The context of discovery of the theory is not interesting. Why should I care how you discovered the theory? What matters to me is the context of justification. Are you able to justify the theory? Does it stand up to empirical tests? Everyone’s sources of inspiration can be as wild as you like—what difference does it make what his source of inspiration was? In the end a theory is tested against reality. Therefore what matters in scientific discourse is the context of justification, not the context of discovery. The context of discovery may interest psychologists of science, philosophers of science, I don’t know exactly—people who study how science develops properly. So one person will tell you that people who listen to their grandmother at night, and another will tell you, I don’t know, a dialogue between different disciplines. Every psychologist can tell you how it is better to develop science. There can be all sorts of theories on that subject, but that is not the concern of the scientists themselves. For scientists themselves, you propose a theory, and it has to be checked against facts. But it is interesting in order to begin checking it. What? And it is interesting in order to begin checking it. Meaning, there can be things whose context of discovery is so bizarre that you say: I’m not even going to start dealing with this. Right. Again, I say, that is only practical decision-making. It is not something essential. Say if I had time, I would check everything. And you are right that in life we often do some sorting. And it also seems to me that, in light of that, it is a little naive to say: check reality, investigate, and see what the answer is. Things are not always that sharp. A theory is supposed to be open to empirical testing, to empirical refutation. Fine, but even refutation and non-refutation—say you run an experiment and now you have proved that a medicine works, or ruled out that it does not work, or whatever—even that is not, obviously, not unequivocal. It depends on what level of trials you do. It is not certainty, never certainty, but sometimes it is very far from certainty. And therefore when you exercise judgment—I now have to, I don’t know, approve the medicine. No, again, we have returned to practice. In the end we return to practice. If I could do everything, I would check everything. So my question is whether that is right—what does it mean, not practice? I have to exercise judgment as to whether I think this is right. On the principled level, no judgment is needed; I will test all the theories. Why should I care where it came from? I will test and see. Fine, but you say that in practice you can’t test all the theories, either because they are not decisive or because there are many theories, and then I do some practical sorting. That’s why I said it is practical. I do practical sorting; I say: look, there are things worth checking and things that don’t sound worth it to me. But by the way, I may make a mistake. It could be that there really are scientific theories that arose in a very bizarre way. Right, and even once you’ve gone to the next stage, even once you checked it—he showed an experiment, a study, an experiment, and now I have to decide whether I trust it, whether his experiment seems to me conclusive or not conclusive. I think that also enters into the judgment. You cannot prove. I don’t think that enters into any judgment. What do you mean? Why should I care if he discovered it in a dream last night? Why is that interesting? You have to check the data, because if the experiment is decisive in a certain way—if the experiment is eighty percent with a certain significance level—you relate to it with the significance level it has, no problem. It has nothing to do with the dream at night. Because you don’t factor in that it came from, I don’t know, aliens told you, or I ran a statistical regression and came to a conclusion. What difference does it make now? At a certain significance level, everything is tested. Why should I care where it came from? The question is whether to check it. I agree that here we do some initial sorting, but that is only a practical matter. On the principled level, things ultimately have to stand, to hold water. In the end, in Jewish law you examine things through halakhic arguments. And research, in this sense, examines the context of discovery and not the context of justification. When you check context, you are checking how it grew. Someone mentioned that there is a book by Pagels, Heinz Pagels, on Einstein and his contemporaries—not Feuer, rather Einstein and his contemporaries. Pagels, I think, is The Cosmic Code. Einstein and His Contemporaries—there he argues, he’s a man of Zeitgeist, meaning the claim that there is a spirit of the age. He describes the context in which Einstein discovered relativity; he says it was a time in which conceptual relativity was very much in the air. In general, in history, what always troubled me is that in many, many cases, two people in entirely different places, more or less at the same time, discovered the same thing. Zeitgeist—that is exactly the claim of Zeitgeist, that if he had not lived, it would have been discovered a few years later. Right, that is what Feuer basically argues. Feuer argues that if Einstein had not discovered it, someone else would have; the period brings us to that discovery, meaning it is the spirit of the age. The person who discovers it is the reporter through whom the spirit of the age works. Fine, it seems to me that is a bit exaggerated, but maybe there is something to it. Clearly the spirit of the age helps. To say deterministically that it would have been discovered with or without Einstein, I’m not sure. Talent also matters; a way of thinking also matters—it’s not for nothing… So I wouldn’t see it as something deterministic, but it is true that the spirit of the age can help discover things, meaning that at another time it is harder to notice them. So when I study the question of the spirit of the age, I am basically a philosopher or historian of science. That does not interest the scientist; in the end the scientist will test relativity against experiment. That’s all. They are not interested in how Einstein came to it. And in that sense, in the halakhic context too, when you examine the context, you are a historian of Jewish law. But when you are a man of Jewish law and you want to examine the halakhic idea itself, you have to examine it against the sources, to see whether the arguments hold water or not. In that sense it is like the empirical test. Meaning, it is the same distinction as between the context of discovery and the context of justification in philosophy of science, and it seems to me there is also such a thing in the philosophy of Jewish law, let’s call it that. And then, basically, the claim—I’ll formulate now a third argument, although it is really a continuation of the second argument—is that there are several planes of relating to any such situation. You can relate through context, and you can relate through halakhic considerations, and it may be that both are true. If the historical analysis is correct, then you can show that the context gave rise to this halakhic result. On the other hand, you can also examine the halakhic judgment and see that there is a grounded halakhic judgment that yields this halakhic result. So with halakhic glasses you see it through halakhic considerations; with historical glasses you see it through context. One master says one thing and another master says another thing, and both are right. “The Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic” is exactly such an example. What? “The Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic” is exactly such an example. Right. No, but there it is even a bit simpler, because there I am basically saying that the economic distress did not really generate the idea that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic. It only gave the motivation to search. But if I had not found it—assuming they are honest people—if I had not found it, I would not have reached the conclusion that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic. Right, and what about when you suggest that maybe both the context generated it and the halakhic consideration did? Here—okay, I’ll speak about that now; that is exactly the point, we’ll see in a moment.

So here too we very often encounter different planes of relation to the same phenomenon, parallel planes of explanation. I already spoke about this in the past, I don’t remember. Parallel planes of relation. There are several examples I always give in this context. The first example, which is really in the scientific context, is the apple that fell on Newton’s head. So Newton asks himself why apples fall on the heads of innocent people. He tells himself: fine, the law of gravity. That’s how he discovered the law of gravity. Fine, but equally he could have reached the conclusion that because he committed a sin yesterday, he deserves punishment, and therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, dropped an apple on his head as punishment for the sin he committed yesterday. The first explanation is a physical explanation, and the second explanation is a theological one. Right? Now, we can use both these explanations, and sometimes the same person will use both of these explanations simultaneously. It’s just that this explanation requires a physical conceptual system, and that explanation requires a theological conceptual system. Okay, so those are different planes of relation. Another example: a person who became religious. Some explain it this way: fine, he had philosophical-theological considerations of one kind or another, he reached the conclusion that there was a revelation at Sinai, that the Holy One, blessed be He, exists, that He gave the Torah, that one has to observe it, and so on and so on. Others will explain that he went through some psychological crisis and therefore decided to become religious. So there is a theological or philosophical explanation, and there is a psychological explanation. The same goes for someone who stops being religious. Someone who stops being religious can be described through a system of considerations by which he reached the conclusion that he no longer believes in that system, and one can also say that he went through some crisis, wanted to permit sexual prohibitions to himself, I don’t know, all kinds of things like that, and therefore he stopped being religious. Okay, now when I present this example, I often present it through the way it appears in practice. When a person becomes religious, his secular friends look for some crisis—what crisis did he go through, what caused this. And the religious people say that he finally discovered the truth. So the secular people are psychologists and the religious people are philosophers, right? But if someone stops being religious, then the religious people say that he wanted to permit sexual prohibitions to himself, right? Therefore he became religious—no, stopped being religious. The sages already say this. So they are psychologists. And the secular people say, well, finally he understood the nonsense he was living in until now and came to his senses. They are philosophers. So who is the psychologist and who is the philosopher? Are the religious people the philosophers or the psychologists? And so too the secular people. Or alternatively I can ask: who is right—the religious people or the secular people? The psychologists or the philosophers? Who is right? Sometimes these are right and sometimes those are. So I say no—I want to say more than that. Both are right. They are always right, if you do the analysis properly. There can of course be incorrect psychological analyses. If you do the psychological analysis correctly, then you are right on the psychological plane: there is a psychological explanation that explains the matter, and there is also an essential explanation that explains the matter, a philosophical-theological explanation that explains the matter. Okay, and therefore these are really two parallel explanatory planes. Of course, very often it is convenient for us to choose the plane that suits us. Because when someone takes a step against what I believe in, then it is easy for me, of course, to attribute it to psychological motives. Because on the philosophical level, obviously I am right on the essential plane. So if he leaves what I believe in and goes elsewhere—the secular person regarding someone who became religious, or the religious person regarding someone who stopped being religious—then I will of course explain it by psychological crises he went through. Okay? Because that is more convenient for me; it doesn’t force me to deal with arguments or hard questions, which are often difficult for me to confront. And that is true in both directions. Here, actually, this is not even necessarily dishonesty, by the way—just a side remark. It is not necessarily dishonesty because here it really may be, according to my own position. Principle of charity. Exactly. Meaning, if I believe, say, that it is correct to be committed to Jewish law, to the Holy One, blessed be He, and so on, to the revelation at Sinai, then from my point of view the philosophical considerations really lead to that conclusion. So if someone draws the opposite conclusion, then according to my own position I infer from this that he was probably influenced by some psychological crisis, because the philosophical considerations lead here, in my opinion. Therefore it is only logical that I interpret him on the psychological plane; it is not because I am dishonest, not necessarily because I am dishonest. Sometimes it is simply because I follow my own position. Principle of charity here—does it mean saying his evil inclination overpowered him, or saying he doesn’t understand? No, principle of charity means interpreting him in the most favorable way. That’s what I’m saying. The question is what is more favorable: that you have crises and they take over you, or that you don’t understand? What seems more favorable is the philosophical explanation. But what is more favorable to me—so it depends. What is favorable to me is this: if he went in my direction, the philosophical explanation is more favorable to me. And if he left me, then what is more favorable to me is the psychological explanation. Because then I say: I have no problem, my theory is solid. Many times, yes—when I hear this, and all this is just a parenthetical remark—when I hear all kinds of conversations among educators, and once or twice I happened to take part in this, where they try to discuss the question of how to deal with students who have questions, college students with questions, young people, something like that, and they tell you: listen, you have to leave philosophy aside and give him a good hug, warmth and love, invite him home, make him a nice tish, turn on the air conditioner so he’ll enjoy himself, or a heater in winter, make him feel at home, and all the questions will disappear. That is always how they explain to teachers, right, from the innermost chambers of the teachers, how one should deal with questions. I explode when I hear these things—just explode. Not because it doesn’t work; by the way, sometimes it does work, and that also makes me explode—that it works. Because that means the person is not serious, the questioner is not serious, and therefore it works. But it seems to me that I explode because in fact we are dealing with people who have no answers to the questions. They do not know how to deal with the questions, so what they do is try to bypass them. Give warmth and love, make the child feel he shouldn’t ask the questions, and ah, look, we are all homey here, everything is fine, that’s how you were educated, how can you cast doubt on your parents? It just doesn’t fit. Meaning, it can’t be. Ah, of course, it’s uncomfortable, and the child won’t ask the questions anymore, and everything is fine. You don’t need to look for the answers that you don’t find, because you have no answers. Usually those people who provide warmth and love are the people who have no answers. Meaning, it’s the… Not necessarily, because it is good to provide warmth and love, it is always right to give warmth and love. But when the method is warmth and love, and not that this is just an add-on—when that is the method for dealing with problems—then that means you have no answers. And it is a kind of evasion, like attributing things to psychology. When you don’t want to confront the arguments, you say, ah, he went through a psychological crisis, and that makes it easier for you to avoid dealing with the arguments.

Now of course, it seems to me that what Shmuel remarked earlier is not so simple. What I am saying here is that one can deal with the very same phenomenon in two different conceptual systems and arrive at two different explanations, and both are correct. Both are correct. Ask: why did he become religious? There will be some crisis that caused him to become religious, and there will also be considerations he sees, why it now seems logical to him to observe commandments whereas before it did not, but now he will see reasonable arguments that this is right. Many times you can see that there are psychological influences and also substantive reasons, so you can deal with it on the psychological plane and you can deal with it on the philosophical plane. The problem is that when we define an explanation, an explanation is supposed to be a sufficient condition. If I want to explain phenomenon X causally, I say it was caused by Y. Fine? Y caused X, the psychological crisis caused the return to religion, fine? So Y caused X. The meaning of “Y caused X,” when Y is the cause of X, is that Y is a sufficient condition for the occurrence of X. Meaning, if Y happened, then X necessarily happens. There cannot be a case in which Y happened and X does not happen. It may perhaps be that Y does not happen and X still happens for some other reason, but it cannot be that the cause is there and the effect is not. Could there be two sufficient conditions? What do you mean, both? The two explanations are sufficient conditions. Yes, yes, understood. An explanation is a sufficient condition by definition. To the extent that you say these are two parallel explanations and then they really are explanations—wait, I’ll get to the two parallel explanations—but there may be two different causes that produce the same result. That is not two parallel explanations but two different causes. For example, I can light fire by striking a match, and I can light fire by focusing sunlight with a magnifying glass. So what ignites fire: striking a match or a magnifying glass? Either this or that. Those are not parallel explanations. It is one of two explanations: there can be such a cause and there can also be another cause. A parallel explanation means that both causes existed simultaneously; that is not the same thing. Fine? Now here there is a problem. If I accept that the physical explanation is correct for the falling apple, okay, then this basically means that under the given physical circumstances, the apple will fall whether Newton sinned yesterday or not. An apple will fall on his head, okay? But the theological explanation—that Newton was specifically there… No, that doesn’t help at all, because Newton’s being there is also an event, a physical one, and not only a physical one. And his walking there—that is a physical event, it has a physical explanation. It’s not that the Holy One, blessed be He, led him there. If the Holy One, blessed be He, led him there, then He can also drop the apple. What’s the difference? Even human actions have physicalist explanations. A human being is also a material creature, so take the whole explanation for everything happening in the whole situation. Say, an agent of the court—they take the one who killed accidentally and he went there and there they killed him, and that was only without witnesses and they brought him there so that he would be killed accidentally. I didn’t understand. No, what the Talmudic text in Makkot says. That’s in the passage in Makkot. There? The physical explanation is that the apple would have fallen anyway. The question is why Newton got there. That is the same question as the Talmudic text in Ketubot about Newton’s head; it’s the same thing. No, the Talmudic text in Makkot. But there we are not dealing with two parallel explanations. The Holy One, blessed be He, brought him there and a hammer fell on his head; everything is planned by the Holy One, blessed be He. But I am talking about a case in which I look at it as two parallel explanations. The Talmudic text only brings the theological explanation. Now I ask: if I also believe in a physical explanation, then exactly—it will be difficult on that Talmudic text in precisely the same way I am challenging Newton, the same thing. That won’t help me, because the answer I always get is this answer: then why did Newton get there? Newton’s getting there is also an event in the physical world, and that too has a physical explanation. The brain, whatever it is, something caused him, he thought of—doesn’t matter. What does that have to do with his sin? Therefore, if the physical explanation is correct, then under those circumstances the apple would have fallen on his head whether he sinned or did not sin. Or equally, if the theological explanation is correct, then if he sinned, an apple would fall on his head whether the connection between the apple and the tree was strong enough to withstand the force of gravity or not. If he had not sinned, he would not have gotten there. Why would he not have gotten there? But a person arriving somewhere is a physical event, it has a physical explanation. So it is not that the Holy One, blessed be He, brought him there; physics brought him there. There is no difference between Newton and the apple in this matter. What’s the difference? If the Holy One, blessed be He, can override physics, then just say it about the apple. Why do you need to get to Newton? The Holy One, blessed be He, dropped the apple even though according to the laws of physics it shouldn’t have fallen, because He decided to drop the apple. Either you accept the Holy One, blessed be He, as a substitute for physics or you don’t. But if you don’t, then with Newton too it won’t help. At most Newton has free choice. But if he operates within the physical system—whether he chooses, and even when he chooses—then he chooses, not the Holy One, blessed be He. The fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, does it is no less difficult than when He does it with the apple instead of the laws of physics. What difference does it make? Therefore every explanation, or every cause, has to be a sufficient condition. But there cannot be two sufficient conditions where each one alone is an explanation. Two parallel ones, and both are needed—how can that be? It can only be in one case: if they always come together. Some strange miracle happens such that whenever Newton sins and the theological consideration is to drop an apple on his head, somehow physics also allows an apple to fall on his head. There is some wondrous correlation. That is not two parallel explanations; it is one explanation, a translation. If there is some wondrous correlation such that everything that can be described in one language can also be described in the other language and they reach the same result, then it can be that two explanations are correct. But then in principle we are talking about one explanation translated into two languages and not two explanations. So what difference does it make? You describe it in theological language or in physical language, but it is the same thing. You can say force of gravity, or “the Holy One, blessed be He, dropped the apple on his head because the Holy One, blessed be He, acts such that when the connection between the apple and the tree is not strong enough, He drops apples on people’s heads.” That is just saying the law of gravity and calling it the Holy One, blessed be He. But Rabbi, you said there is also sin here; it depends on people’s choices. That’s what I’m saying: once it depends on choice, then it seems impossible all the more, because a deterministic process cannot overlap with a process that has degrees of freedom—you can choose this way and you can choose that way. If there is correspondence between those two processes, how can one be deterministic and the other not? I don’t see how there can be correspondence between two such pictures. But there can be a deterministic process with lots of options in it—not lots of options, all of them are deterministic—but in your choosing among all the options, in the end you will get to a place where an apple falls on you. In every place where you choose badly. You start from certain circumstances, given. Now tell me what physics says will happen in such a state. That an apple will fall. An apple will fall. Now whether I sinned or not, it will fall. Right, that’s it. But if you sinned, you will always get to a place where an apple falls, because that is what heaven answered. No, only by your choice, meaning according to your choice. But why? My choice is not conditioned on my sins; my choice is my choice. I choose—I can choose this way or that way. I have freedom of choice. Right. And the matrix, the system, is built in such a way. Why determinism? The choice is yours. What is choice? Choice between two options: either to sin or not to sin. No, I am talking about the choice whether to walk there, not whether to sin. Right, clearly. Whether to sit under that tree or not. Right, in that you have no choice; your sin will always lead you to the place where an apple falls on you. But you do have a choice whether to sin or not, and that’s why. Okay, but then I have no choice. I am not the one deciding to go under the tree. So who did it—the laws of physics or the Holy One, blessed be He—that I got under the tree? The Holy One, blessed be He—doesn’t matter. No, in principle it doesn’t matter. If the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to punish him, then He won’t suddenly throw an apple out of nowhere and hit him in the head. He will make sure that he arrives under the tree at the right time and an apple falls on him. To ensure that is changing the laws of nature. How will He ensure it? No, that is not laws of nature. He can play with your choice—that is the only other option. Fine, that too is changing the laws of nature. Laws of non-nature. Fine, it’s the same thing. A bit subtler, but still His intervention instead of the ordinary mechanism. What difference does it make whether it’s laws of nature or my choice? The question is whether the ordinary mechanism operates or the Holy One, blessed be He, operates in its place. I don’t see the difference. I think that usually when we speak about parallel explanatory planes, the explanation is simply the sum of the two explanations. For example, if someone becomes religious, right, and I found a psychological explanation and a philosophical explanation, neither of them is sufficient by itself, but both together are sufficient. I think that in order for a person to become religious, what is needed is that he undergo some psychological crisis, because then he wakes up and starts to think again about his path, and of course he must be the sort of person who is persuaded by arguments of that kind—that is the philosophical condition. Okay? Only if both of these things exist together will he become religious. That is not two explanations, not parallel explanations. It is one explanation with two components. Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. No, but then you can’t use this as two parallel explanations. Fine, then don’t use it, but when people use the terms “two parallel explanations,” that is what they really mean. One explanation. Yes, they mean that the person—now true, the psychologist looks at the psychological aspect and the philosopher looks at the philosophical aspect, but neither of them really offers a theory that explains, because each one alone is not a sufficient condition. Each one alone is perhaps a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Together they are sufficient. Does that hold in every case? What? In every place where I speak of two parallel explanatory planes. For example, becoming religious, stopping being religious, whatever. I give a psychological explanation and I give an essential explanation. But that can’t be, because if an explanation has to give me a sufficient condition, how can there be two sufficient conditions? No—the sum of the two. And the apple? The same thing. The apple and the sin can each live on their own peacefully, can’t they? What do you mean? An apple fell on him because of physics, unrelated to sin or no sin. But you told me how they can live together: the apple fell because of physics, physics, and what does it matter if I had not caused the sin? In that same specific event it cannot be both this and that; it doesn’t work. No, no—I’m saying that each can happen separately. I’m asking: if I could also have chosen otherwise, would an apple still have fallen on me? I want to relax under the tree even though yesterday I did not sin. Under the same physical circumstances, will the apple fall on me or not, regardless of sin? It will fall. So that means only physics is the explanation; it is not theology. You are choosing only the physical explanation; you are not choosing two explanations. But there is also a theological explanation in other contexts, not in this one. I said: in another case where the apple is not supposed to fall and the Holy One, blessed be He, makes it fall. That is like the fire: a match can ignite it and a magnifying glass can ignite it. It can be this or that—I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a case where the very same situation receives two different explanations, each of which is a complete explanation. But that’s exactly what I’m saying: the apple and the sin are two different explanations. Not of the same situation. Why not? In this particular situation either physics did it or the sin did it, or both. If physics… Because in another situation maybe the sin would do it without the physics; I don’t know how that would happen. That can be, but that is another situation. But I am talking about when the same situation itself is explained in the two ways, each one on its own. If in this situation physics was enough, but the fact that you sinned means that if you had not sinned it would have prevented the fall, then He would be disrupting the laws of physics. Fine, then the physical explanation is not complete. Because physics does not really give me a full picture of the matter. That’s the point. So I say: physics is perhaps a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Meaning, it is not enough to know the physics in order to know what will happen. That is the point. Therefore people often think there are miracles in which the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes within nature. There are miracles that are supernatural and miracles that… There is no such thing; that’s nonsense. Every miracle is intervention outside the laws of nature. Because every intervention is outside the laws of nature; otherwise what is intervention? Intervention means that under the given circumstances, X should have happened, and the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that Y would happen. So what does that mean? That what the laws of nature say should happen did not happen. That’s what a miracle means. There can be a hidden miracle, an open miracle, fine—that it is less conspicuous. Fine, there can be a hidden miracle and an open miracle, but intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, is always outside the laws of nature. There is no intervention within the laws of nature; the concept of intervention means exactly that. Yes, exactly. Intervention means a deviation from the laws of nature—that is called intervention. Assuming that all the laws of nature are one intervention. Fine, about that we spoke in the lectures on miracles, with Nachmanides, that all our occurrences are nothing but miracles. In any case, why am I saying all this? Because the third type of argument basically says: look, you the researcher, the academic, are right. But that is not the plane of discussion on which I examine things. I do not examine things on the contextual-historical plane of discussion. I examine things on the halakhic plane—I, as a yeshiva person, as a yeshiva student. So it is not because your explanation is wrong, or because you had some mistaken inference, or because you are a heretic because you are a researcher, or something like that. No, your explanation is right on the scientific plane, and my explanation is right on the halakhic plane. But in halakhic discourse, this is a continuation of the point about the context of discovery and the context of justification—in halakhic discourse I am interested in halakhic reasoning. When I ask myself: why did that rabbi permit that agunah? What do I check as a yeshiva student, not as a researcher? The researcher will check what the weather was at the time, or what the cultural atmosphere was, how much concern there was for unfortunate people, and all sorts of things like that. And he may be right; all of that may be true. But I will check his reasoning. I want to see what Talmudic text he relied on, what presumption he had, migo, one witness—what was there? What considerations were there? But I check it against the criteria of how agunot are permitted. Now, who is right? Both of us. He is right on the historical plane and I am right on the halakhic plane. It’s just that halakhic discourse naturally focuses on the halakhic plane. After all, when we study Jewish law, we examine the halakhic dimensions, not the historical ones. It is like someone dealing with how books are bound. Is he studying Torah? He is dealing with Torah scrolls, but he is examining how books are bound. You can ask questions about the same object or the same event, but those questions are not Torah study. And when you ask what context gave rise to the approach of Sage So-and-so, it is not because you are wrong—you are right, maybe you did the research correctly, so you are right—so what? It still is not Torah study. In the university they do not study Torah. At the university, the researchers I described earlier—today there are all kinds of research, some of which is Torah study—but the contextual research as I described it earlier, where it came from, what the background was, what the approach of these sages or those sages was, and with whom that decisor studied so that I can see where he was influenced from, and all kinds of things like that—that is engaging in the history of Jewish law, not Torah study. It is like engaging in how the book is bound when you are talking about a Torah scroll. That is not Torah study; it is another, side occupation with Torah scrolls, with Torah study, with a Torah passage, whatever—but it is not Torah study. In my opinion you do not recite the blessing over Torah study on that. There is no point in reciting the blessing over Torah study on that. Academic research is not Torah study. You are learning history, you want to know what influenced what—fine, and that can be very interesting and important and correct, everything is fine—but it is not Torah. Sometimes by means of that one can understand the… Right, I said that today there really are people who combine them. For example Nashka is a very nice example of this. He uses research methods, but in the end he also tries to show the conceptual learning through that. There are very interesting combinations that he does there. Fine, that really is something else. Therefore I say that here I am speaking only about archetypes, theoretical types. In practice life is always more complicated. More complex, yes. So the claim is basically that at most we are dealing here with two planes of relation. And now you have to decide what context interests you—no, not in what sense of “context,” because that is confusing here—but on what plane of relation you are interested. If you are interested in the halakhic plane of relation, like a yeshiva, a decisor, a rabbi, whatever, then you deal with it on the halakhic plane. Someone interested in the historical plane examines the historical plane. Okay? And both are right; this really is not an argument. Now, not that there is no argument between the medieval authorities, but between the academic and the decisor there is no argument. The whole question is what you want. To issue halakhic rulings in that way is wrong, and to research history in this way is wrong. If you are researching history, do it like that; if you are researching Jewish law, do it like this. That’s all. They are parallel explanatory planes. Of course, the philosophical discussion I had earlier is still true here as well. When I ask myself, in the end, after all these are still two explanations—if each one alone is a sufficient condition, that can’t be. Clearly there is some combination here. In this case the combination is, for example, like with Gilat: the waiting and the distress. The distress led me to search, right? That is the motivation, just as the psychological crisis caused me to search for a return to religion, but still I engaged with arguments until I was persuaded, and only then did I actually decide to become religious. The same thing here: the distress caused me to search for arguments, and after I searched for the arguments I found arguments that truly hold water halakhically. So the historian will investigate what the distress did, and the man of Jewish law will investigate the arguments. Each one simply deals with a different aspect. But there is no competition between them; they are not speaking on the same… they are not on the same playing field. But on the other hand, one has to understand that according to this approach neither of them offers a full explanation. The full explanation is both together—the psychology or the distress plus the substantive explanation. Each one alone would not suffice, because if I had motivation but did not find arguments, such a ruling would not come out. If there were good arguments but I had no motivation to look for them, again such a ruling would not come out. In the end, for such a ruling to emerge, I need both the historical-psychological-distress-circumstantial-contextual dimension and the halakhic plane. Only both together are really the sufficient condition. This somewhat recalls—we spoke about this once, I think—Yuval Steinitz’s “paradox of the atnaḥ.” Yuval Steinitz discusses the question we mentioned earlier: must a cause be a necessary and sufficient condition, or is a cause only a sufficient condition, only a sufficient condition, not a necessary and sufficient one? Fine? That is a dispute among philosophers. And he has an argument in favor of the approach that says it is only a sufficient condition, not a necessary and sufficient one. Why? He says this: if a cause had to be a necessary and sufficient condition, then in fact, a necessary and sufficient condition—in logic the rule is that there is only one condition. Right? If A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B, then only A is such a condition; there is no other cause. It cannot also be that C is necessary and sufficient for B. There is no such thing. Why? Because C is A. Exactly, because C would have to be A if that were so. Why? Because if A is necessary and sufficient, then C cannot cause B, because A is necessary. Right? Without A, B does not happen, so A has to be there. But if A is there, then A is sufficient for B to happen, so C is not needed. Because if A is already there, A is enough for B to happen, so C is unnecessary. So there cannot be two necessary and sufficient conditions. Now Yuval Steinitz says something very simple. He says: suppose A is the cause of B. Fine? Let us look at a causal chain. A is the cause of B, B is the cause of C, C is the cause of D, and so on. And let us assume for the sake of argument that “cause” means necessary and sufficient condition. Okay? Now let us prove by contradiction that this cannot be. If it were a necessary and sufficient condition, then in fact, besides being unique, a necessary and sufficient condition is also symmetric. Meaning, if A is necessary and sufficient for B, then B is necessary and sufficient for A. Right, because if A is necessary for B, then B is sufficient for A, and if A is sufficient for B, then B is necessary for A. The roles of necessary and sufficient switch. So if something is both necessary and sufficient, then the other is also necessary and sufficient for it. Fine? Once you combine the two, it comes out symmetric. And then what follows? If A is necessary and sufficient for B, and B is necessary and sufficient for C, then because of the symmetry C is also necessary and sufficient for B. So it turns out that both A and C are necessary for B. That’s two. But that cannot be, because only one can be, not two. Therefore he proves by contradiction that a cause cannot be necessary and sufficient. Where is he mistaken? He is mistaken in exactly what I said earlier. The necessary and sufficient condition for B is the chain A-B-C-D, the whole chain to infinity, from minus infinity to infinity, the whole chain. That whole chain is the necessary and sufficient condition for B. Together. A by itself is not necessary and sufficient for B. A and C and what was before A and D—the whole chain together, when it is in place, B will occur. When it is not in place, B will not occur. If only A is there, then of course C will also appear; in other words it is the whole chain—A is a package deal. A cannot appear alone, because that is what “necessary and sufficient” means. That is exactly what necessary and sufficient means: if A occurs, then B will necessarily occur, C will necessarily occur, D will necessarily occur. So when A is there, C and D are also there. You simply looked at one component and thought it was supposed to be the explanation, but no—the explanation is the totality, the sum of all the components. Exactly as we said here about psychology and philosophy. Okay, so that is the third type of challenge.

In the end, it seems to me that when I talk about research in the contextual sense, that is not Torah study but history. When I speak about Torah study, one studies Torah on the halakhic plane, in the matter itself. The example where the penny first dropped for me on this issue was some articles in one of the early issues of Hekdamot. There were articles by someone named Dov Maimon. He wrote a book—he wrote an article, two articles or three articles, a series of articles, on Sufism in Egypt and its influence on Rabbi Avraham ben HaRambam. Sufism is Muslim asceticism, a kind of Muslim monasticism, the Sufis, Sufism, something like that. And he showed that there are very strong parallels, and Rabbi Avraham ben HaRambam lived in Egypt and there were Sufis in Egypt, and he showed that there was some kind of influence of Sufism in Egypt. And then I asked myself whether that article requires the blessing over Torah study. I mean, it’s a Torah article, dealing with worship of God, with ways of serving God, and so on. My answer is certainly not. When you discuss the question whether it is right to serve God this way or not, then let’s see in light of sources, reasonings, and so on. But when you discuss where it came from and whether it parallels what goes on among the Muslims or not, then you are engaged in history, not in the service of God. Fine, that can be terribly interesting and important and smart and legitimate and true, everything is fine, but it is not Torah. Then is this lecture also not Torah? The question whether defining what is Torah study and what is not Torah is itself Torah. I don’t know, interesting question. I’m not sure. The boundary is of course blurry, not always. Preparation for a commandment—you cannot study Torah without defining. Yes, but preparation for a commandment is not the commandment. Okay, so what I want to say, if I summarize, is that in principle—as with various other dichotomies I’ve spoken about more than once—in order to say that research is not Torah study, or to oppose the application of research when we engage in Torah, one does not need to say that the research is false. Nor does one need to say that the medieval authorities, the tannaim, and the amoraim were exalted fiery beings not influenced by their surroundings. That is not true. They were influenced by their surroundings, and the research may also be correct if it is done properly—and that still has nothing to do with it. Still, you say: fine, you dealt with how the book is bound; I’m asking what is written in the book. You are dealing with the context of discovery, and I am asking about the context of justification. I am asking the halakhic question. When I come to issue a halakhic ruling, I want to examine what the Rashba’s method is. Why should I care where he was influenced from? I am asking what his method is. Of course, if you understand—and here I return once more to Gilat, as I said earlier—if you understand that the question of where he was influenced from is not where he was influenced from but rather that it is deterministic, meaning that the circumstances dictated the Rashba’s ruling, not that they influenced him, then you are basically accepting only the psychology, not the Jewish law. Then all the criticism of the research method applies. Because then you are basically saying that there is no dispute among the medieval authorities, and that in fact everyone thinks the same thing and it is all a matter of circumstances. The Rashba does not think differently from Maimonides. If Maimonides had grown up in the same place and lived and operated there, he too would have reached the same conclusion, and therefore there is no dispute between them at all. But if we are somewhat more clear-headed researchers here, we say no—that is not the claim. The claim is that the circumstances caused the motivation to investigate. After I had motivation to investigate, I found one halakhic consideration or another, but now in the end those considerations are the Rashba’s method. And Maimonides, because of the other circumstances in which he operated, found other considerations. So now we need to examine: who is right? There is a dispute here. Who is right? We need to bring proofs and reasonings and so forth, because one of them is mistaken and the other is right. Why each one came to his position I can understand; each one came to his position because of the circumstances. But now there is a dispute between them. Because once he arrived at that position, it is a position that holds water; there is a halakhic argument supporting it. There are other halakhic arguments. Now I have to examine: so who is right? How do I rule Jewish law? That is a halakhic discussion. Couldn’t both be right? That is already a halakhic question: are these and those both the words of the living God? Could there be two halakhic truths or not? I think not. Is there no force, in the halakhic understanding, that you would accept because of the authority of the person himself? Meaning, his authority or whatever. That is again a question about approaches to ruling. I am not inclined to think so, and there are decisors who do. Because then it is interesting. If I understand that the decision he reached, that he thought that thing only because of all kinds of surroundings and constraints and so on, then I say: fine, in that case I won’t take his authority, his ruling, as that of someone who knows, because he was the greatest of decisors. Yes, but he was influenced in a certain way, by his time, influences. So what? He was influenced in a way that skewed him. And that is what it means to be a decisor. It is not a skewing—that is the point, exactly the point. The banal, naive researcher I described earlier maybe thinks so—well, I think not—but the naive researcher who says it is a product of circumstances, not that the circumstances caused me to search or to think in a certain way. And it is a combination, a combination. If that is really so, then there is no such thing as a great decisor and a lesser decisor. What difference does it make that he is a great decisor? The only question is where he lived. No, in the specific case—I mean from the standpoint of halakhic ruling. You say “Maimonides”; I simply rely on Maimonides, I rely on the fact that Maimonides knows what he’s doing. And I don’t know right now, I don’t know. He didn’t do anything at all—the circumstances did. No, that’s not always so. It’s not something that changes all the time. But in this case I see that the circumstances are so pronounced, so I say: in this case I won’t accept his ruling, because in this case due to… Right, but that is if from the outset you accept a ruling only because Maimonides said it. Yes. Yes, but the question is whether that too isn’t, in some sense, legitimate—an ad hominem of this sort… What does “legitimate” mean? Many decisors do this. I’m not… No, and is it necessarily irrational? Meaning, if I don’t know right now, I don’t know. If you don’t know, you don’t know. But once you begin to investigate, then you already know. Meaning, if you already know the background and the context and whether he was influenced or not, then you already know the passage. Fine, that’s again technical questions. In the end, the non-naive conception only says that the context caused this, and now there are methods—and one can even go so far as to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, the One who causes causes, inclined decisors in various contexts so that they would generate different kinds of arguments. Otherwise those arguments would not have been discovered, would not have emerged. And now, in the end, all the arguments really stand for discussion. And now one has to decide—perhaps all of them are right, or not right; that already depends on how we understand halakhic decision-making. But now one has to decide how to rule Jewish law, or who is right, or bring proofs, since all the arguments are open for discussion. It is not the context doing the work. Context only brings me to discover arguments. And then what comes out is that, say, the sages of France who lived during the Crusades discovered things that others would not have discovered—the stricter side in the laws of saving life. And the sages of Spain discovered the lenient side. And now I need to understand: okay, what is the overall picture? There is this side and there is that side—which is right, or in what proportions? Then I have to conduct my halakhic discussion, which ignores the context. I don’t care about the context now. Not because the context had no influence—it did have influence—but context is the context of discovery, not the context of justification. It caused them to discover their halakhic theory, and it caused the other one to discover his halakhic theory. And now I have two halakhic theories and I have to examine who is right. That is the context of justification. A halakhic ruling has to be made. Therefore, if I move beyond the naive conception of research, then it basically means this is perfectly fine. It is still Torah study. There is no problem with it. Fine, the researcher is right and everything is fine, and our learning can still continue as it is usually done, and there is no competition between scholarly study and conceptual-halachic study. Okay.