Types of Interpretation, Lecture 7

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Basically, last time I spoke about wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. I started with the sefirot, and I said that there are two characteristics of the difference between scientific thinking and more traditional thinking, say, the thinking of traditional learning. One difference — and this is connected to wisdom, understanding, and knowledge — one difference is the difference between wisdom and understanding. The second difference is between wisdom and understanding on the one hand and knowledge on the other. The difference between wisdom and understanding is the question of whether you deal with the thing itself, or with the things that come out of it — its properties, its implications, or the way it is perceived. And the second difference, between knowledge and wisdom and understanding, is a difference in the question of whether you tend toward a dichotomous, separating, analytic outlook, or toward a harmonistic outlook, a unifying outlook, a connecting outlook that resolves difficulties, or one that basically separates, creates contradictions, or dissolves contradictions — yes, syntheses versus analyses. Those are the two characteristics, and both of them, I think, characterize the difference between scientific thinking and traditional thinking.

To illustrate the first difference — that science deals with the way things are perceived and not with the things themselves — I brought that story about Anaximander, that theory of Anaximander. There I was basically trying to show that in a scientific outlook, you stick to the conservation laws, and if they are satisfied — that is, not violated — then there is no problem, you’re not bothered. Even though behind the scenes there is a problem that I think any person who encounters it understands there’s something here that demands an answer. How can it be — even if, yes, for example, I remarked about the Anaximandrian theory that he makes two assumptions: one assumption is that there was prime matter, and the second assumption is that from that prime matter there were splits into things and anti-things that cancel each other out, and then the conservation laws are preserved. And I said that in modern terms, the second thing is ultra-modern — meaning those cancellations, that’s what we were just talking about with Ido. But the first thing is not clear. As a physicist, when you look at it, why do you need to assume that there is prime matter? And then I said that this is exactly the limitation of a physicist who sees physics as the whole picture. Physics deals with the properties of things, with charges — what I called charges — so if there is a charge and an anti-charge they cancel out and the charge is preserved, so no charge was created, no charge was added in the process of creation. And from the standpoint of the laws of physics, that satisfies the laws of physics, meaning they are not violated. But physics is not the whole story. There is a philosophical problem here. How is something created when before there was nothing at all? It doesn’t help me that corresponding to every piece of matter there is antimatter and they cancel each other out. Something was still created here. Think about it: suppose our whole world was created, and opposite it there is some anti-world in which everything that exists here is canceled out there. So the laws of physics are preserved, everything is fine, I’m not troubled from the standpoint of the conservation laws — but does that solve the philosophical problem? This whole world was created out of nothing. Fine, all the conservation laws were preserved, but it doesn’t make sense; something like that cannot just come into being. And that’s a problem that is troubling.

[Speaker B] In that other world, for every Jew there’s one antisemite. What? In that other world, for every Jew there’s one antisemite.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s cancellation on the antisemite-versus-antisemite plane.

[Speaker B] Not as many as here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that’s cancellation on the antisemite-versus-antisemite plane. In any case, the point is that a question of this kind does not bother physics. Physics does not deal with it, and that’s not a criticism. That’s perfectly fine — physics focuses on what it found appropriate to focus on. The criticism is directed at whoever sees physics as the whole picture. Meaning, someone who thinks that the physical outlook covers all aspects, and if you are satisfied from the standpoint of the physical outlook, then everything is fine, and nothing else requires explanation. Yes, when we talked about Torah and science, I said that if people find some explanation — evolution, say, I don’t know exactly what — then everything is fine, we have a neat explanation of how this whole business came into being: evolution. Everything is fine, we understand everything. But just look at it for a moment through the eyes of a philosopher, not through the eyes of a scientist. This whole thing came into existence. We’re sitting here around the table, all of human society, animals, plants, phenomena of insane complexity — yes, every cell is an insanely complex phenomenon, not to mention clusters of cells. Everything is fine? Meaning, evolution explains everything and that’s that — we understand? Someone who looks at these matters through scientific eyes, for him if I have some explanation that obeys the recognized scientific mechanisms, then everything is fine, nothing else needs explanation. But again, that’s a kind of attachment to the scientific plane, whereas there are actually other planes that require attention. And in that sense, it’s like Anaximander. And Anaximander wasn’t a physicist — he was a philosopher. In today’s terms. Back then there was no difference, but in today’s terms he was both a philosopher and a physicist, and so both questions bothered him. So on the question of the conservation laws he answered that from the prime matter things emerge that cancel one another out. But on the question of how there is anything at all here when once there was nothing, he had no answer.

[Speaker C] So it’s a philosophical problem that something comes from nothing, but that’s also a physical problem. What, physically not physical, in the theory of physics. Not because it’s philosophical, it’s a matter — you can call it…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Physics — that’s metaphysics.

[Speaker B] That’s…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Metaphysics, and metaphysics is a field within philosophy.

[Speaker B] Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying — and I mentioned this — that I think the great progress of science in the modern era, yes, starting from the 16th century onward, stems from the fact that science narrowed itself. The art of narrowing yourself to a domain in which you can say precise things, measurable things, things that can be empirically tested, and so on — that is an enormous leap forward. Because that is what made it possible: once you’re looking for full theories, you won’t get anywhere. In what direction? What? The leap that enabled science to advance? Science to advance, yes. Okay. Science can deal with phenomena and show the common denominator among various phenomena. When you want to understand everything all the way through, every thing is different from every other thing. When you don’t give up, when you don’t compromise — the art of narrowing is an art that allows us to progress. If we don’t limit ourselves only to planes of reference on which we can truly say precise, measurable things, generalize them, test them experimentally, then we won’t get anywhere. We would be stuck where Aristotle was stuck to this very day. Because Aristotle asked why. When you talk about objects wanting to return to the place from which they were hewn, you won’t get anywhere. It won’t really give you a quantitative theory — that is, something you can actually work with. You give one conceptual explanation or another, nice little insights. On the other hand, a quantitative theory also doesn’t really give an explanation. So why does the stone fall downward? Because there is a law of gravity. Okay, but why is there a law of gravity? Because stones strive to return to the place from which they were hewn.

[Speaker E] It’s all sorts of constants, some strange number.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So you learn to ignore it. We talked here, when we were talking about definitions — if you remember — I mentioned that statement that the intersection of two convex shapes is also a convex shape, and at first I asked you: try to prove that theorem to me. And you couldn’t, just as I couldn’t. That’s no one’s fault. But once you give the definition of what a convex shape is, it takes one line to prove it. What’s the idea? And I explained there that the idea is that a definition is a way of sweeping under the rug all the dust that you don’t know how to deal with. Meaning, everything you don’t know how to handle, you pack into the definition, and from that point on everything is completely precise, logical, mathematical, provable — wonderful. The art of a mathematician — a mathematician never solves real problems. The mathematician knows how to identify, out of the mess we’re trying to deal with, what part of it can be defined and handled precisely, and he focuses only on that. Everything else he pushes into the definitions, and fine, I start from a definition — I don’t know what happens there…

[Speaker D] I don’t know what happens underneath there. How do a physicist and a mathematician open a can? The physicist says: give it enough blows and it’ll break open. The mathematician says: assume a can opener. Right, assume a can opener. And it’s like the kettle one, like with the kettle.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, there too there’s that famous joke about making tea. How do you make tea? I don’t remember exactly anymore. So you ask someone how to make tea, and he says, look, you take a kettle and heat it and put in essence and other things. In short, there’s a physicist and a mathematician — I no longer remember all the details — the mathematician says, look, you take the kettle off the fire and put it on the table, and that part we’ve already solved. So how do you make tea from a kettle on the table? So all you have left is just to add the… And that’s exactly it.

[Speaker D] Yes, assume the can opener.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everything we’ve already solved — that’s exactly what I sweep away. Meaning, I know how to focus on that part which I can handle precisely, logically, and that is a great art. It really is a great art. By the way, mathematical creativity is mainly there. From the stage of the definition onward, and so on — that’s logic. Meaning, that’s an ability, but it’s a different kind of ability, not a creative one. The creativity is in finding which definitions are most fruitful. What do I mean by which definitions are most fruitful? Definitions or assumptions. Definitions and assumptions, yes — the distinction between them is a bit artificial. But what does it mean, most fruitful? If you can sweep a lot of dust into that definition, and from there onward proceed precisely, that’s very fruitful. It’s only a question of division: which part of reality do you choose to handle? And that takes creativity. From there onward, once you’ve defined it, it’s already logic. Anyone can prove that the intersection of two convex shapes is convex. Anyone knows how to do that; that’s not the issue. The cleverness is to propose a definition that draws the whole mass inward — meaning, from which point on you can proceed precisely.

And the same thing with physics. Science too is precise in a certain sense. It’s not mathematics; science deals with more things than mathematics does, because it contains both the mathematical dimension and observation, the empirical dimension. And still, it deals with things — and that’s really our topic — it deals with things in the perceived dimension, the dimension that can be quantified, yes, that can be handled with mathematical tools. And out of the physical phenomena, the factual phenomena, it identifies that part of reality, that layer, which can be handled seriously. The moment you start asking another question about what physics says — why — you’ll get stuck. Why? There’s a metaphysical theory. Someone proposed a theory that the stone returns to the place from which it was hewn. Someone else will say there are three demons carrying the stone downward. A third person will say many other things. This is not a domain accessible to us; we cannot handle it precisely. That doesn’t mean there is no one correct answer, or there is — that’s an interesting philosophical question, whether there is one correct answer to the question of why. I tend to think there is, but that doesn’t matter — it’s not physics’ domain. Physics deals with the description of these things, how the business works, the quantification of these things, and the attempt to derive predictions from them. And this art of narrowing — that is what enabled physics to break through, or science in general to break through: by narrowing itself to these domains and not asking the big Aristotelian questions. We ask small questions, and precisely with those small questions we achieve very impressive results, because we’re not trying to understand. We’re not trying to understand in the sense — I said there are several levels of understanding — we’re not trying to understand in the sense of why. We’re trying to understand the what, like with Rabbi Chaim of Brisk.

So in the context of Anaximander as well, Anaximander said that there was prime matter, and from it things split off and there were cancellations. The prime matter probably always existed — that’s a Platonic approach — because something cannot come into being out of nothing. That is a philosophical problem that has to be solved. And after that there is the question of the conservation laws, and that really is handled through the cancellations. But of course this is a hypothesis, and that’s why it also doesn’t interest the physicist. And rightly so — the physicist is right not to care about that, because the answer that there was once prime matter and that’s why things were created this way is not an answer I can do anything with. What am I supposed to do with the fact that once there was prime matter and now there isn’t? Now it has already split apart, and every piece of matter already has a form and properties. There is no longer matter without form or without properties. It is no longer accessible to my measuring instruments. So it’s a nice metaphysical hypothesis, but physics has nothing to do with it. So the physicist is right to focus only on the part about the conservation laws, because that’s what he still works with today — that’s something one can do something with. But it is not true that this is the whole picture. This narrowing is very characteristic of a scientific outlook. By contrast, a traditional outlook is an outlook that also looks at why, that asks. Today too I may bring another example of this. And that is one aspect — the aspect of looking at the thing itself versus the way it is perceived, versus its properties.

The second aspect, I said, is the unifying outlook versus the separating outlook. Science usually separates, separates between things many times — not always, but often. The humanities even more so, by the way. In the natural sciences, in fact, large syntheses are formed. Meaning, a theory of gravity, for example, explains many kinds of phenomena that before we knew that theory, we didn’t connect to one another at all. In that sense, big theories in physics, or in science generally, connect many phenomena and create syntheses. But the mode of thought is a separating one. It says: this is gravity, it works like this; this has no mass, so it has no gravity. Meaning, everything gets put in its place. In some fields — I spoke about taxonomy, yes, about classifying species of plants or species of animals — science in ancient times was mainly a science of classification. And even today in the humanities, people classify phenomena and deal less with questions of why, because questions of why are indeed much more speculative there. Every now and then they touch on them, but those are the supposedly non-scientific, non-academic parts. Literary interpretation, as distinct from literary genres. Literary genres are classification — what genres are there. But interpretation is already more the business of a literary critic than of a literary scholar. Interpretation is already an individual matter; everyone has his own interpretation. It’s not something objective that you can prove. And because of that, basically, it is not the domain of the humanities — if you are strict about that. And that’s how I began, with Jewish thought and all those debates there at the Hebrew University.

So this second difference — separation versus synthesis, analysis versus synthesis — is connected to the first difference. Because the moment you ask about the things themselves, suddenly you discover the syntheses. If you ask about the phenomena, you’ll always separate: this one has this property and that one has another property. But when you go further inward, suddenly you see that all these things actually have an aspiration to return to the source from which they were hewn, or large syntheses emerge. So there is a connection between these two kinds of differences that I pointed to here: between relating to the things themselves and relating to how they are perceived, and between making distinctions — which is to relate to how things are perceived, each one is perceived differently and that’s how I distinguish them — and making syntheses.

Okay, so now I’ll bring another example that I think illustrates both things, this time not from the natural sciences, as with Anaximander — though that too was ancient natural science — but from the humanities. There’s a question that once bothered me. Years ago I spoke about it here; I don’t remember in what context. There was a year on the roots, wasn’t there? I think there was a year on the roots, right? So maybe there. It has to do with the relation between positive commandments and prohibitions, in Talmudic research, say, in halakhic research. So I’m now looking at it from a Talmudic-analytic point of view, the viewpoint of a traditional learner. I’m a yeshiva student, not a researcher. So from the standpoint of a yeshiva student, you ask yourself: what is the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment? There are some simple intuitions. Say, tefillin is a positive commandment. Not doing labor on the Sabbath is a prohibition. Let’s say that’s the simple view, because one tells you to do something and the other forbids you from doing something — tells you not to do. Okay, that’s the simple view. And if you ask most traditional learners, that’s more or less where they’ll stop — including Torah scholars. Now this can’t be right. It’s not right. What do you mean it can’t be right? It simply doesn’t stand up to the facts. In reality, there are many prohibitions that actually impose on me an obligation to act, and there are positive commandments that impose on me a duty to stop and not do. An example: “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” “In plowing time and harvest you shall cease” — that’s a positive commandment implied from a negative one, it’s almost on the table — but say, “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” That is a prohibition. What does that prohibition tell me?

[Speaker B] Not to be indifferent, not to settle for inaction when something needs to be done.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To save my friend if he is in trouble, right? Meaning, in essence this is a positive commandment. It’s a commandment telling me to do something. It is not a commandment telling me not to do. On the contrary, it forbids me not to act. So why is it a prohibition and not a positive commandment? “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” is a prohibition. Or “you shall do no labor” is a prohibition, right? Wait, I’ll get to that in a moment, yes, but in another moment I’ll get to it. So how do we know that really it is a prohibition? There are positive commandments that are also like that, in the opposite direction, meaning. So “you shall do no labor” is a prohibition, right? But there is a commandment to rest on the Sabbath: “you shall cease,” and “on the seventh day you shall cease” — that is a positive commandment. And that positive commandment is really not to do labor, to cease from labor. So that positive commandment imposes on me a duty to stop, not a duty to act. So why is it a positive commandment? A positive commandment is supposed to impose on me a duty to act, not a duty to refrain. Yes, that should have been a prohibition. And there is indeed also a prohibition here on the Sabbath, and also a positive commandment. “You shall eliminate leaven…”

[Speaker B] …from your houses.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “You shall eliminate leaven from your houses” — that is a positive commandment that imposes on you an obligation.

[Speaker B] What if I have nothing in the house? If you have nothing, then…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, then it doesn’t apply to you. Rabbi Chaim ties a dispute of the Tur and Maimonides to this. Rabbi Chaim, famously in the stencil editions. He claims that there is a dispute between the Tur and Maimonides on this question: is “you shall eliminate” an obligation of result — that you not have any — and then it really is a question why this is a positive commandment; or is it an obligation of action, to eliminate the leaven if you have it, and if you don’t have it, that’s it. If you want to make an effort, like with tzitzit — meaning, buy leaven just so that you’ll have it and fulfill through it the commandment of eliminating leaven — fine, that’s already other issues, that’s for Briskers.

[Speaker B] Brisker practices.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. There is a dispute there between Rabbi Yehuda and the Sages whether one eliminates it by any means or only by burning; according to Rabbi Yehuda, only by burning. Now if the commandment is just that I not have any, what sense does it make to say that it has to be only by burning? Bottom line, if I don’t have any, I don’t have any. If I did it by scattering it and crumbling it into the wind — so what? Bottom line, I don’t have any. So according to Rabbi Yehuda this is certainly a conception of an ordinary positive commandment. Regarding the Sages there are debates about it. We rule like the Sages. So we see that there are exceptions: positive commandments that impose on me a duty to stop, and prohibitions that impose on me an obligation to act. So that means that the simple, ordinary, accepted definition does not stand the test of the facts. The distinction between a prohibition and a positive commandment is not on the plane of whether it imposes a duty to do something or a duty not to do something.

Now, to notice this, it helps to be a researcher. Not entirely, but a bit — it helps. There is an article by Aharon Shemesh in Tarbiz, a Talmud scholar from Bar-Ilan, where he discusses this. He really says: something here doesn’t work when you look at the phenomena. You just classify, do orderly work — something the Talmudist usually does less of. People generally do less of the hard, long, Sisyphean work of sorting out details, orderly taxonomy, yes? They do it a bit — what I’m saying here is too sharp a generalization — but Maimonides does it. What? In the Mishneh Torah do I have an obligation of full coverage? Yes, although actually in Maimonides too there is a hint of the difference between prohibition and positive commandment; that’s really where I started from. Maybe I’ll get to that in a moment. Yes, Maimonides had a very impressive reflective ability. He was a bit of a researcher by temperament, looking at things also from a scientific perspective and not only from a Talmudic-analytic one. But he really was relatively exceptional on this matter.

And indeed, Aharon Shemesh really puts the matter on the table very sharply. I was very happy when I saw that article, because at a certain stage I had begun to think that nobody talks about this. Nobody talks about it. And I felt maybe I was missing something here, and that bothered me. Where did it bother me? It bothered me in Maimonides. I said I’d get to Maimonides. In the ninth root, Maimonides says that we do not count duplicated commandments. If there are prohibitions that appear several times, or positive commandments that appear several times — for example, the positive commandment to keep the Sabbath appears 12 times, that’s the example Maimonides himself gives — he says we count it once, not 12 commandments. Why? Because these are duplicate commandments. The same applies to repeated prohibitions. What happens in the case of a repeated prohibition and positive commandment? Like with the Sabbath that I mentioned earlier — yes, the positive commandment to rest on the Sabbath and “you shall do no labor,” which is a prohibition — but the content is the same content, these are basically duplicate commandments. Maimonides writes in the sixth root that if the duplication is between a prohibition and a positive commandment, then we count both. All right? And that raised the question for me in a much sharper way: how can there be duplication at all between a prohibition and a positive commandment? Duplication between prohibitions, or duplication between positive commandments, I understand. But how can duplication even be possible between a prohibition and a positive commandment? Surely, what is this obligation imposing on me? If it imposes action on me, then both are positive commandments. What do you mean a prohibition and a positive commandment? Then they’re both positive commandments. And if it imposes on me not to act, then both are prohibitions. How can duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment even exist, even before asking what we do with it? How can such a thing exist in Jewish law at all? That’s the question that bothered me when I read the sixth root. And it sharpened the issue for me. Suddenly I realized that there are many things — not many, but not a few — that we classify as positive commandments and they actually impose on me a duty to stop, and things that we classify as prohibitions and they actually impose on me an obligation to act. And especially there are also duplicated cases, which sharpen this even more, though not all are duplicated. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is not duplicated. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is just a positive commandment that imposes an obligation to act. On the Sabbath this is duplicated: there is both a prohibition and a positive commandment with the same content. How can such a thing be? It’s really the same question, but the duplication sharpens it more strongly.

Now, in that sense it seems to me that the responsible, careful scientific outlook, which tries to define things in a more systematic way, and is committed to all the commandments — you don’t say some clever idea about this positive commandment or that prohibition; you try to see whether it works for all the commandments — then you discover that it doesn’t. I already spoke about Rabbi Chaim, yes, who makes brilliant and very persuasive distinctions, but they don’t work in very many cases. They don’t work because locally they’re wonderful, they explain this or that dispute beautifully, but when you go to the larger topic, you see it doesn’t work. Meaning, when you try to do it more responsibly, in an orderly way, to explain the whole picture — not just some dispute, or answer some difficulty or contradiction in Maimonides, but to see whether it works in the Talmudic passages, whether it works in other passages in Maimonides — it doesn’t work. And that is the difference between this sort of clever Talmudic insight and scientific thinking. Scientific thinking, when responsible, usually doesn’t fall into that. It doesn’t fall into that because when you say something, you test it against all the commandments there are. You don’t say some nice insight about one specific commandment. That’s how a responsible academic works.

[Speaker D] The question is whether it has a practical implication.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? What do you mean, it has many practical implications. Do Rabbi Chaim’s novelties have practical implications?

[Speaker D] No, I’m asking, say with prohibition and positive commandment — where the Talmud needed it, there they sharpened it fully, and where not, then…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But they sharpened it — the question is how you define what a prohibition is and what a positive commandment is.

[Speaker D] The question is whether you need to define it. If they stop there, that’s a sign that… if there were such a situation. Fine, I’m asking.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a certain topic that didn’t come up in the Talmud. Do I have to spend all my money on it or not? That bothers me. Now for that I need to be equipped with the tools…

[Speaker D] …to decide whether it’s a prohibition or a positive commandment. The question is whether you need to examine it across the board, the way the Rabbi is suggesting here in a Talmudic way, because I’m looking for some phenomenon here, or whether really it’s something local like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But local — still, there is a definition: for prohibitions one spends all one’s money.

[Speaker D] Yes, but if, say, there had been—I imagine—these commandments were observed for a very long time, and there was a situation where someone needed to sharpen this point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You wouldn’t say there was such a situation.

[Speaker D] So then it really didn’t have any significance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact is that no such situation arose—what am I supposed to do with that?

[Speaker D] Exactly like if—Rabbi would do it when a situation arose where there’s some electrical device that now needs—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do I do with that?

[Speaker D] I don’t know, so the Rabbi will rule based on what…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s what I do.

[Speaker D] Now I’m going to check this regarding all the commandments? Right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So check what emerges from the books of the Sages, what emerges from the halakhic sources, and then arrive at the halakhic conclusion. What do you mean? I’m not inventing Jewish law.

[Speaker D] But Rabbi, in not every halakhic question do we see this across the whole spectrum.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no problem—if I don’t have it, then no. But if I do, then in principle yes. Yes. In other words, one of the important lessons from the scientific revolution in this sense, even in the humanities, is to start working in a more responsible way. And that’s something that over the generations they did less. They did less.

[Speaker D] Because apparently it had less significance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t think so. They were simply less aware that things need to stand up to some kind of systematic test. They relied more on some sort of intuition. Today we understand more that intuition can also mislead. Check it against the facts. Just think—if in science they worked with intuition, we’d still be stuck in the seventeenth century.

[Speaker D] The question is what people want to get out of… there still is a difference, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think so. That behind things there sit some general principles. Again, we talked about this when I spoke about rules and particulars. Are there really rules, or are rules just our way of looking? I do tend to think that behind things there are rules. But I’m asking what lies behind the intuition.

[Speaker B] Please. Yes. Not paying income tax—is that the neglect of a positive commandment or a prohibition?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I spoke about that back then. I spoke about that then, when we discussed it—I think—if I spoke about that, I assume I also spoke about this. Because when I dealt with this topic, I argued that in a regular legal system, not a halakhic one, there are no positive commandments; there are only prohibitions. Then of course the question arises—wait a second, what about army service? Army service is a positive commandment, not a prohibition.

[Speaker D] No, it’s a commandment not to evade the army.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And taxes—paying taxes is a positive commandment. There are laws that impose duties of action on me, not only duties of non-action. So then exactly my answer is wrong. The difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment is not exhausted by the question of whether it’s to do or not to do. And after I explain that, we’ll come back to civil law if you like, and then I’ll try to argue there too that really the law contains only prohibitions. No positive commandments. By the way, for example, the debate around the law of “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” the state law of “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” Hanan Porat’s law—yes—it reflected exactly this point. Because the opponents of this law, aside from the antisemites who didn’t want it because it’s a verse—there are such people, and that came up there. Some really didn’t want it because it’s a verse. But another group said: we identify with it completely, but it shouldn’t be a law. Because the state—

[Speaker B] —can’t demand that I help someone.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t cause him the trouble; the obligation to save him is not imposed on me. If I save him, I’ll get a presidential commendation on Independence Day. Fine. But a law that obligates me to save him?

[Speaker B] That they should punish me if I don’t…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And the translation of “law” basically means that you are punished if you don’t do it. And here’s why that makes it a prohibition. What stands behind this debate is basically that people are unwilling to put positive commandments into the law. The law is only prohibitions.

[Speaker B] Because the state can’t give heaven; it can only give hell.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, exactly. And therefore even things that look like positive commandments in law are really prohibitions; they are not positive commandments. And that brings us back again to the question—and here’s another bonus—

[Speaker E] Yes, added value: laws that require punishment and laws that require reward.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Right, but there aren’t any. The fact is there aren’t any. Not only that there aren’t any by chance, but in legal philosophy, in jurisprudence, you’ll see that intentionally there aren’t any. The state doesn’t do such things. In the conception of law there is no such thing. The law doesn’t tell you what is worthy to do; it tells you what you are forbidden to do. But that brings us back—the worthy and unworthy, that’s your business.

[Speaker D] But the heaven there comes out by itself. Meaning, even when you fulfill commandments you don’t get anything. In that same sense—you get punished if you didn’t fulfill the commandments, and if you did fulfill them, say, in a period when there is a religious court and so on—fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t get punished for neglecting a positive commandment.

[Speaker D] Why not? They compel someone regarding sukkah and all sorts of things like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, they compel. But once Sukkot has passed, you don’t get punished for it. There’s a difference from a prohibition.

[Speaker D] There is a difference, but in the state what they want to achieve—the so-called heaven—is what will result if we keep the law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but that’s not the law. I agree, but that’s the substitution. The obligation is to reach that state through the law; the law wants to reach that state, but it does it through prohibitions. It doesn’t do it through positive commandments. Clearly the law has goals, but achieving the goals is only through prohibitions. And in the Torah there are two toolboxes: prohibitions and positive commandments. Okay? And that sharpens exactly the same question I’m asking here in the Torah context, and it’s true—I spoke with people, sort of, halakhically, I went to… we wrote the book.

[Speaker D] I can write all the commandments as prohibitions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll get to that in just a moment. I went to talk with jurists, and they basically hadn’t noticed this point. Jurists, precisely because in Jewish law I have both types, I could notice more clearly what jurists took for granted, because at first they didn’t understand what I wanted. As if of course there are positive commandments in law. Then I asked them, wait, so why isn’t paying taxes a positive commandment? And then he got stuck, because in law there really aren’t supposed to be positive commandments. And I also spoke with people of philosophical orientation, with several people, and this was a very interesting novelty. By the way, also with someone from Jerusalem, a professor of law there, an interesting Jew—I spoke with him—and he really gave me some interesting insight that also helped me in our context. Maybe I’ll get to it in a moment. In any case, Shemesh basically writes the article, and in that article he maps the positive commandments and the prohibitions and the different treatments in the various passages, and he does a very systematic, taxonomic, highly orderly job that hadn’t been done in the yeshiva-learning world. And then you’re exposed in a very powerful way to the difficulty. And in that sense this is a unique contribution of systematic, academic, scientific thinking. But now the question is what does he do with it? Let’s go one step further. So this is an important contribution. What does he do with it? So the answer he proposed to this issue is that prohibition and positive commandment are defined by the linguistic expression in the Torah. If the Torah says—this is what you said before—if the Torah says “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” that’s a negative formulation with a word of negation, then it’s a prohibition. And if it’s written positively—put on tefillin, “and they shall be frontlets between your eyes”—then it’s a positive commandment. Okay? So he basically classifies things—

[Speaker E] If instead of “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” it had said “you shall surely save…”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then that would have been a positive commandment? Yes. Fine. Now, I think that in that sense this completely stands the test of the facts. This theory is scientific; it is testable. I keep returning to the points with which I opened. It is a testable theory. It can stand the test of peer review for a scientific article. And in fact the Sages themselves already established this, that “beware,” “lest,” and “do not” are formulations of prohibition. Right? There are formulations in the Torah that define whether a certain thing is a prohibition. The Sages themselves were already somewhat aware of the need for this kind of textual definition. But now I asked a yeshiva-student question: why does the Torah formulate it this way? What would have happened if the Torah had formulated it as a positive commandment? After all, the same thing would essentially have been imposed, so why did the Torah formulate it this way? I understand how you learn from the Torah when it intends a prohibition and when it intends a positive commandment, but I’m asking what the real difference between them is—not how you know.

[Speaker B] Do you need to spend your money? The Torah intended that in certain cases you have to spend your money.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not enough. That is still an answer on the scientific level. The question of “why” is not scientific—exactly the point. Shemesh didn’t ask that question, and rightly so from his perspective, because he has to describe the phenomena; he has to stick to the facts; he has to be testable. But I’m asking the Aristotelian why—why does the stone strive toward its source? In other words, the question that the academic researcher does not ask: how can it be? What is the essential difference between them? Why does the Torah actually define this as a positive commandment and that as a prohibition? After all, there is some logic behind things. Why does the Torah want me to spend all my money on this thing and isn’t satisfied with my spending only one-fifth of my assets? There is some explanation behind it. What is it—just stringency? Things that are very severe are called prohibitions and less severe things… the difference between positive commandment and prohibition—

[Speaker D] It’s not stringency.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the contrary, a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, so a positive commandment is more severe than a prohibition—that—

[Speaker B] “The Holy One wanted to grant merit to Israel; therefore He gave them abundant Torah and commandments.” The avenue of positive commandments lets you, as it were, identify with the lawgiver actively, by your own will.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So why not make all of them that way? Why choose specifically these to be positive commandments and those to be prohibitions? Why not have all of them shape you? Then why—why choose these to be positive commandments and those to be prohibitions? Let them shape me with those, and let them bring me to connect with the Holy One with these.

[Speaker E] No, but it’s even harder in the cases where there are doubles.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And in the cases where they’re doubled, then it’s certainly difficult, yes. In those cases where they’re doubled it’s certainly difficult. So here’s the question: I claim that behind the Torah’s classification—which for us is clearly by language, the indication of what the Torah intends is according to the Torah’s wording—but clearly there also has to be some essential principle behind it. Why did the Torah decide that this is a prohibition and that one a positive commandment? Meaning, there is a difference. Why here do I need to spend all my money and there not? If the Torah had written, “I do not want you to be without tefillin,” then I would have had to spend all my money in order to be with tefillin. And today, no—only up to one-fifth, because it is a positive commandment. The formulation is supposed to reflect something real. No, it doesn’t start with the formulation. The formulation is an expression of the difference, but the formulation is not the difference. Now you see the difference between how a yeshiva student asks the question and how a man of science asks the question. And there are advantages on both sides; both are correct. I’m not—this is not a debate at all. And it’s not just that they’re correct, right? Isn’t it complementary? Yes, that’s what I’m saying. And that’s what I said I want to demonstrate today—exactly. What I said I want to demonstrate today is that these are really two aspects that are even complementary, like with Anaximander. They are really two complementary aspects; there need not be any conflict between them at all. There is description in the scientific sense, and then there is description in the sense of—not of the testable phenomena, but in the sense of the why. Now, if I go straight to the why, I can’t get anywhere. “We do not derive Jewish law from the reasons of the verse.” We do not derive Jewish law from the reasons of the verse not because the reason isn’t correct, but because that’s not how Jewish law works. Jewish law works like science in this sense—relatively, yes? In the sense of like science: you stick to what is written and do the interpretations. Don’t ask why. Why is a question for biblical commentators. In the halakhic world we don’t ask why; for practical Jewish law we do not derive from the reasons of the verse. Same thing here. In other words, there are questions the scientist asks, and that is his role, and there are questions the traditional learner asks, and that is his role. And the full picture is when you ask all the questions, and often not only do you ask all the questions, but one is built on the other. After you ask the scientific question properly, you open an excellent doorway to try to understand better what is happening here. Because when you have a good taxonomy, you can then begin to ask. After Aristotle classified animals and plants, suddenly we began asking ourselves: wait, so why are these animals and those plants? What is the difference between them? Then you enter into biological phenomena. That’s how biology is born. But for biology to arise, first of all you need to place the full range of phenomena before your eyes in an orderly way, and for that you need to do orderly scientific work. After that comes someone who asks why. Okay? And therefore in this sense these are complementary perspectives, these perspectives. So let’s continue for a moment with this example. So what really is the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition?

[Speaker D] What they want from you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker D] That you shouldn’t be without… that you should participate, or that you shouldn’t interfere.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, that’s a double negative, no?

[Speaker D] I don’t know. Look, if you don’t want to participate in the class, then don’t disrupt the class.

[Speaker E] “Do not stand by—”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “your neighbor’s blood”—is that something not to do?

[Speaker D] No, “don’t interfere”—I meant in the narrower sense, as it were.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll agree, but I think it needs to be defined in a sharper way.

[Speaker D] Not to participate in the game, and not to interfere with the game. There’s a difference between them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” is participating in the game. It’s to go and save, not merely not to save.

[Speaker E] To change the game.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is—I think the point is this. First of all, the logical equivalence may not be exact. It’s not true that putting on tefillin is always the same as not not putting on tefillin. Because we’re talking here about an imperative statement, not a declarative statement. So when they tell me “put on tefillin,” that’s the statement. The negation of that statement is not “it is not true that you should put on tefillin.” What does “it is not true that you should put on tefillin” mean? There is no commandment to put on tefillin. But that is not a prohibition against being without tefillin. A prohibition against being without tefillin is already minus one; it’s not zero. Okay? In other words, it’s not the simple negation of the positive commandment. And the relation between positive commandment and prohibition is not one of simple negation—perhaps contrary negation, but not nullifying negation. Yes? We spoke about this long ago.

[Speaker E] It doesn’t sharpen “do not—”

[Speaker D] “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood”—I don’t know if, on the level of the difference from a prohibition, it depends on what level of “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” what level of help is required of you. The question is whether, if they had told me “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” I’d have to go search for every last isolated Jew and save him, or whether “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” only applies when you actually saw such a situation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Still, that too is a consequence. I want—I’ll get to that in a moment. Maybe I’ll first add something else. Look, Ido said before, for example, that the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment is the question of how much money the Torah wants you to spend on it. For a prohibition you have to spend all your money to avoid transgressing, and for a positive commandment only a fifth. Or various other differences between a prohibition and a positive commandment. But those are differences that are results, right? Meaning, there must be some essential difference between prohibition and positive commandment from which all the halakhic consequences follow. That’s what I’m asking about. Therefore that is still an answer on the scientific plane. I want to see phenomena, so the Torah says it this way. No problem—that is a testable scientific characterization, I can observe it. But that’s exactly the point: this characterization will never give me the explanation. Never. It asks what, not why. Therefore it is scientific in essence. So what is the difference after all? It seems to me the difference is the question of what the Torah wants—exactly as you formulated before. When the Torah tells me to rest on the Sabbath, then in essence the Torah doesn’t care that I perform labor on the Sabbath. What bothers it is that I am not in a state of rest on the Sabbath. Performing labor is only the means; the moment I do labor, then I’m not resting. But the labor in itself is not the problem; the problem is only that I’m not in a state of rest. The goal is not not to do labor; the goal is to rest. But you can’t rest without refraining from labor.

[Speaker E] Exactly. Refraining from labor is the means that simply—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Without that you can’t rest. But the goal is really the rest, not the non-performance of labor. That is the positive commandment to rest on the Sabbath. The prohibition regarding the Sabbath rest is to present performing labor as a negative action. In the first conception, performing labor is not a negative action; I simply wasn’t in the positive state of rest, which is a positive state. Pointing to a positive state—that is a positive commandment. Pointing to a negative state—that is a prohibition. That’s the difference. Now, the negative and positive states can be passive or active states—it doesn’t matter at all. Therefore it is incorrect to tie this to the question of whether it is an act or an omission. If the positive state is an action, then it is a positive commandment. If the positive state is rest, that too is a positive commandment, so long as the Torah points to the positive state. Therefore the difference between positive commandment and prohibition is whether the Torah points to a positive state in which it wants me to be, or whether the Torah points to a negative state in which it does not want me to be. Now it could be that this comes to identical expression in reality. Suppose there is no zero in the middle, only plus one or minus one. Fine, then it’s basically the same thing. Because in order not to be in minus one, I have to be in plus one; there is no additional state. Right—and still conceptually it is different. It is conceptually different. And this conceptual difference has halakhic consequences.

[Speaker E] So explain how that works with “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood”—the Torah has no interest in my saving my fellow; it has an interest in my not remaining indifferent. I didn’t want him. I’m forbidden to be indifferent. And that is a major practical difference, because it really could have said, no, I impose on you an obligation to save, and that would have been a positive commandment. “Love your neighbor as yourself” perhaps you would say is a positive commandment. Maybe I violate “love your neighbor as yourself” if I don’t save him. But the duty of rescue—

[Speaker D] No, therefore Rabbi Akiva also probably set it up as “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow,” in the negative.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There too.

[Speaker D] Even in “love your neighbor as yourself,” only negatively, because otherwise with “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” if it were phrased positively I’d have to go looking for every isolated person who fell into some pit.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be, could be. But I’m saying that that is exactly the point. The difference between them is not a practical difference, even if there is a situation where there is only plus one and minus one. So to say that I don’t want minus one is like saying I want plus one—what’s the difference? There is no additional state, no third state. Okay? No—there is a difference. The question of whether I want plus one or do not want minus one is not the same statement. Where will the difference appear? Now I’ll bring you the consequences. And in itself there is no direct practical difference, but now watch how all the consequences collapse back to the source. When I ask, for example, why there is punishment for a prohibition and no punishment for a positive commandment—neglecting a positive commandment—there is no punishment for neglecting a positive commandment. For a prohibition there is punishment in a religious court. Why? Because in a prohibition what happened is that you did something negative. You did something negative—you deserve punishment. In the neglect of a positive commandment, you were not in the positive state. It doesn’t matter if you brought that about through active behavior. But that active behavior is not itself invalid. The Torah only expected you to desist, not to do. And when you do, you were not in the positive state. Fine, you were not in the positive state, so you are not righteous—but you don’t deserve punishment for that. Likewise, why do I need to spend all my money for a prohibition and not need to spend all my money for a positive commandment? You need to spend all your money in order not to be wicked, but you don’t need to spend all your money in order to be righteous. At most I’ll remain average. I won’t be righteous. I mentioned my nephew—when he got to age five or six, he announced that from now on he was already average. He stopped being little; now he was average. So I’m saying there is logic in not punishing for neglecting a positive commandment, because neglecting a positive commandment is not being in a negative state; it is only not being in a positive state. And for not being in a positive state, one is not punished. Therefore it has nothing to do with action or refraining—that’s not the point. The question is whether what is required of me is to be in a state or not to be in a state, where the state can be active or passive—it doesn’t matter.

[Speaker E] And therefore there’s no problem of duplication,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] when the Torah says to rest on the Sabbath and not to perform labor on the Sabbath, it is telling me here both that minus one is undesirable and that plus one is desirable. Here both things exist. Therefore it cannot say this unless it tells me there is both a positive commandment and a prohibition, doubled. It can’t say it any other way. Okay? So this is a completely dichotomous difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. But this is some definition that sounds convincing to me, sounds logical to me. But how can I validate it against facts? It’s not really something an academic or a scientist is supposed to say in his article. In his article he presents the fact—that is testable—that there are prohibitions that do not require me to act, that do require me to act, or positive commandments that do not require me to act. Now I come and ask why. Questions of why are always one step beyond, and indeed many times that is the question—

[Speaker B] of the scientist; this is the question of the yeshiva person.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly. Therefore I’m trying to illustrate here the relationship between these two perspectives. Right, there is intuition here—strong intuition—it sounds logical. But it’s not something testable; I can’t stand behind it and say, here, I have such-and-such proof that I’m right. I simply say: look, isn’t that logical? It’s very logical, so therefore it’s true. That’s not the kind of thing that will pass objective scrutiny—in other words, it’s not testable. So you can’t do that in a scientific article. But what happens very often is that many times, after all, there is a difficulty.

[Speaker E] All the difficulties you raised—and now you have an explanation that solves the difficulties. It’s like a theory. What difficulty?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no difficulty. What difficulty?

[Speaker E] Why is there duplication?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So here, it’s written that way in the Torah—we solved the difficulty.

[Speaker E] No, but why is it there twice? Why is there both a positive commandment and a prohibition?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because the Torah wrote it—once it wrote it without “do not.”

[Speaker E] Yes, but why?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—the why of the Torah. So that’s the difficulty; that’s the why. That’s exactly the point. Now, you’re right that I’m making this too sharp, because I’m simply trying to clarify the point. In an academic article that could appear—certainly in the humanities, because they aren’t so strict about these distinctions. But it’s still not trivial that it would appear. In that sense I do stand behind this distinction.

[Speaker E] They can’t define that as why.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If an academic came and said, look, I have an explanation why one spends all one’s money for a prohibition but not for a positive commandment, why one is punished for a prohibition and not punished for a positive commandment, and then he proposed this explanation—that might be academic. But I don’t work that way; I work the opposite way. I ask the question what is the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment, not why they punish for this and not for that. What’s the difference? How can it be that there is no difference? That’s the why-question. Afterwards I can use the theory I found to explain why this one is punished and that one is not. The academic will start the opposite way: there are facts he doesn’t understand that call for explanation, and then perhaps he will arrive—

[Speaker E] He has observations, and he wants to explain them, to try to build some law that organizes them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then perhaps he too can reach what I said here. That’s why I said the distinction I made is too sharp. Many times such explanations will also be found in an academic article. But first, in some places such an article would indeed be considered speculative and would not get in—that’s true. And second, even when it is written, it will be written in the opposite direction; it won’t be written the way I do it. If I were giving this class in a yeshiva, I wouldn’t begin with why they punish here and don’t punish there; I would end with that.

[Speaker E] Also the article Newton wrote in his time, when he composed the Principia—that’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also philosophy of religion—

[Speaker E] and tides and all that—it was also speculative.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Philosophers too wouldn’t get their writings accepted into a scientific journal. Right, right. But I’m saying: rightly so. I have no criticism of that. Because these really are two disciplines that need to preserve a distinction between them. And here I return to the point with which I opened, about Jewish thought there in Jerusalem. I am in favor of distinguishing between the disciplines; this is not criticism. It’s very important. Science will not be able to progress if it does not confine itself to the testable, quantitative, precise, defensible, objective domains. If everyone just expresses an opinion, then it’s not a scientific journal, it’s journalism. Everyone says what he thinks. Therefore you really do need to stick to and confine yourself to the objective dimensions that no one can argue with. That’s how information accumulates. Shemesh’s article is an article that advanced academic knowledge about this world of prohibitions and positive commandments. My proposal is not exactly knowledge; it’s a proposal, an interesting idea. But it’s not knowledge. Someone else can come and say: I have another proposal, I disagree with you, and he too might explain various phenomena. Fine, that’s possible. About Shemesh, no one can argue. When it says “do not,” it’s a prohibition. When it doesn’t say “do not,” it isn’t a prohibition—that’s a fact.

[Speaker E] Rabbi, is this scientific? What you’re proposing is exactly this: there’s a collection of phenomena, someone plotted them—it’s like points—you have points on a graph, and you propose a theory whose function is such-and-such, and all the points sit on it. Then someone else comes and proposes another theory, another function—both are proposing scientific theories. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—so obviously, that’s why I said I’m making too sharp a distinction here. Science also asks why-questions, and we spoke about category and rationale. But this is not why in the sense of the reason for the thing; it is why in the sense of what Hempel calls the deductive-nomological explanation.

[Speaker E] Yes, but your explanation is exactly of that type.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not exactly, no, not exactly. It’s not exactly that, because I am proposing some explanatory line of reasoning, not a theory. Shemesh’s theory is perfectly fine at the scientific level; it explains everything. Anything in the Torah written with “do not” is a prohibition, and then one is punished and one spends all one’s money; whatever is not written with “do not”—it will stand every factual test, with no need for any further explanation. My theory is not more successful than his in the sense that it explains more facts. My theory simply explains the facts, whereas his only describes them. That’s the point.

[Speaker E] Then there is a difference here. It’s like the difference between someone who now takes the full set of phenomena he observed and puts them in a book and counts them one by one: there is such a phenomenon, such a phenomenon, such a phenomenon, such a phenomenon.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he’s not just putting them in a book—

[Speaker E] That makes him too small, you made him too small.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, he gathered the phenomena—that’s the taxonomy—but afterward he also proposed an explanation. Everything written in the Torah with “do not” is a prohibition—that is already an explanation. And what is not written in the Torah with “do not” is a positive commandment. And if you check, you’ll see that indeed that’s how it is. So that is an explanation. But clearly it is not an explanation in the sense that it gives the rationale of the thing. Therefore I say: it’s an explanation in the sense of definition; it is a scientific explanation, not an essential explanation, not an analytic yeshiva-style explanation. Okay, it is a scientific explanation, and it is a correct explanation. Not only is it a correct explanation—it is a necessary stage on the way to the essential explanation. You need to stand very firmly in front of the facts and distinguish them. Very often in the history of science, for example, a black body is a classic example of this—black-body radiation. There was some phenomenon we didn’t really understand, never mind. At the first stage there was a theory that proposed an explanation—what I earlier called a phenomenological theory. A theory that says how black-body radiation is distributed. In other words, I describe this radiation and show that it fits such-and-such an equation. Then Einstein comes and proposes an explanation of why it behaves that way. The first theory is a phenomenological theory; it only says how it behaves, it does not ask why it behaves that way. Einstein asked a why-question, and then he essentially discovered quantum theory, the beginning of quantum theory. Yes, that was really his discovery, but he couldn’t have done it without first being equipped with a phenomenological theory. And the phenomenological theory is the taxonomy—that is, it tells us what radiation is emitted, when and how and in what quantities; I have an equation that describes, for every wavelength, how much is emitted. Okay?

[Speaker E] He got the Nobel for that and not for relativity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. The annus mirabilis—there were three articles in that same year: one opened quantum theory, one relativity, and one statistical mechanics.

[Speaker E] One on mechanics—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] statistical mechanics. It’s simply unbelievable, a phenomenon. Special and general relativity—that’s not what he got the Nobel Prize for; for—

[Speaker E] for that he got the Nobel Prize.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So in that same year there sits this Jew in the patent office writing three articles, each one opening a new field in twentieth-century physics. All the physics we know today is essentially the result of those three articles. Each one four pages. Yes, I don’t even know—possibly. Special relativity was three pages.

[Speaker E] Yes, and another one they say no one paid attention to.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes.

[Speaker D] But evolution is an explanation of how the world came into being in exactly the same sense that the Rabbi gives an explanation for any other phenomenon that is not testable. Evolution can describe various evolutionary processes and the like, but to say that that is how the world was created, or that this is the explanation—that simply does not hold water at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In that book I devote a chapter to this: is evolution science? In this book? No, in God Plays Dice. Ah, okay. Is evolution a scientific theory? My claim is really that for precisely that reason, no. Correct. It may be true, but it is not scientific.

[Speaker D] I wrote in this book—two different things.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s mathematics, not science.

[Speaker C] But regarding the positive commandment and prohibition, the why-question that we’re not answering—the why is why the Torah made the distinction between positive commandment and prohibition?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. What is the root of this distinction? What is its significance?

[Speaker C] It could be—since I don’t know the answer—but it could be that the answer would also completely change these definitions, and then I merely defined something that is—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Certainly. But on the other hand we work in reverse. We already know the definitions; we are looking for the theory from within the definitions. The Holy One, assuming that was His theory, started from the theory and from it built the Jewish law, the halakhic facts, the halakhic instructions. But we work in reverse, after all—we learners. We know the halakhic instructions; there is the Torah, the Oral Torah, never mind—we know the halakhic instructions, and we ask ourselves what theory they emerged from. We are doing reverse work. So the facts are given; no problem.

[Speaker C] Even the given facts are not really given facts, but rather your interpretation regarding the matter of the intellect.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, why?

[Speaker C] Because the fact is you have one interpretation and another interpretation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying—in this case there is no disagreement; everyone agrees. Shemesh argues—by the way, maybe I should add this—Shemesh argues that this changed: the relation between prohibition and positive commandment. He also makes a kind of archaeological claim. That is, in earlier layers of the Talmud—yes, in earlier passages—the outlook was the natural, simple outlook. Meaning, the positive commandment is to do and the prohibition is to refrain. And with historical development, in later passages, it gradually moves toward the yeshiva-analytic outlook, not the natural one. And by the way, this is a phenomenon that exists many times in the Talmud, even in the transition from the Mishnah to the Talmud. The Mishnah thinks in a more ordinary homeowner sort of way, and the Talmud is a bit more analytic, and the medieval authorities (Rishonim) are even more analytic, and the later authorities (Acharonim) still more analytic. In other words, we move from simple, natural, everyday thinking to thinking with concepts and formalism and so on. Yes, maybe that’s part of the issue, but I’m not sure it’s the whole issue. And in that sense too he really sees some such process there: a shift from ordinary natural thinking—the kind of answer anyone would give you—to a mode of thinking that involves some abstraction and conceptualization and more abstract definitions. Now I want to conclude this point with one more aspect—maybe two points. One point is what he contributed to me—I said I’d come back to it—Alon Ariel. After I told him this distinction, he told me there is some American Jewish philosopher, Nozick, Robert Nozick—the one responsible for Newcomb’s paradox and free choice—who is also responsible for the distinction between enticement and extortion. He asks why the law forbids extortion and permits enticement. Because if I entice you to do something, I say to you: if you do something, you’ll get a thousand shekels. No problem, that’s permitted, right? I’m not doing it by force; it’s allowed. Do it and you’ll get a thousand shekels. I’m trying to entice you to do it; the law permits that. But if I say: look, if you don’t do it, I’ll take a thousand shekels from you—that’s extortion, okay? Or I’ll do something to you—that is forbidden. What’s the difference? In both cases I present you with two options between which there is a difference of a thousand shekels, right? Whether you do it or don’t do it. In both cases my goal is that you do it, so why is one forbidden and the other permitted?

[Speaker E] Because one is coercion and one isn’t.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? This too is coercion—you want the thousand shekels.

[Speaker E] No, no. When I take a thousand shekels, I am forcing you to give; you don’t want to give. When I give you a thousand shekels—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] you want to receive.

[Speaker E] Ah, and when I give you a thousand shekels, you want to receive?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, you don’t want to give—what’s the difference between not wanting to give and wanting to receive? You already see the difference between prohibition and positive commandment?

[Speaker E] No, I’m talking about coercion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is it? This is coercion and that is coercion.

[Speaker E] To take—in both—

[Speaker B] cases there’s no difference.

[Speaker E] Am I forcing him to take a thousand shekels?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m forcing him not to receive a thousand shekels. He wants a thousand shekels and I’m forcing him not to receive.

[Speaker B] In both cases—

[Speaker E] there is a gap—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] of a thousand shekels between two possible outcomes. It’s not that—no, I’m asking why not? You’re assuming it; that’s not an explanation.

[Speaker E] What, are you assuming that money that is his isn’t his?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—yes, he wants it, he wants to receive, and I’m forcing him not to receive.

[Speaker B] In both cases there is a difference of a thousand shekels between two possible outcomes.

[Speaker E] You’re not saying anything at all. I just decide now that I want you to give a thousand shekels and you don’t give. So what? Same thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, exactly—that’s the philosophical question. Everyone agrees, yes, this is coercion and that isn’t. But one can ask a philosophical question. Obviously, the intuition is clear that there is a difference—but what is the philosophical definition? Why is there a difference?

[Speaker E] The definition is that what is yours is yours—your property.

[Speaker D] That’s already the rule that the burden of proof is on the one seeking to extract from another; that’s a broader definition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is yours is yours and what is mine is mine, but that’s a particular case. The difference is this: when we draw distinctions between two states, we assume that what matters is only the relation between them; it doesn’t matter what their absolute level is, where they are located. Right? If there is a difference of a thousand shekels in favor of doing the action, then what’s the difference? Extortion and enticement are both the same thing: there is a difference of a thousand shekels in favor of doing it, so what’s the difference? The answer is that the absolute level at which the two levels are situated also has significance. That is, if I create a difference between minus a thousand and zero, that is not the same as the difference between zero and plus a thousand, even though in both cases the relative difference is a thousand shekels.

[Speaker E] That can be translated into what I said, namely that it’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Same thing—this is just a particular case of that general law. What’s the point? The point is that there is meaning here, but the general formulations are important, because now you’ll see what conclusions I’m going to derive from them. In other words, in this example—fine, an example is self-evident. That’s the whole idea that you need a general formulation, because then suddenly you see further implications. His claim, really—the claim about potentials, right—is that the difference is only between the two levels, and in the perspective familiar from physics, the perspective of potentials, the potential itself has no significance—what the potential is. The whole question is only what the difference is between it and the potential at another point. A potential difference. A function like potential is a function where its actual value doesn’t matter at all. What matters is only the gradients, only the differences between the—differences between the points, that’s what determines things. So a function like potential is a function where its actual value doesn’t matter at all. What matters is only the gradients, only the differences between the points, the differences between the points. By contrast, force, for example, is an absolute thing. Potential is the—force is the derivative of the potential, right? But force is an absolute thing. How much force I exert on you is not something relative, it’s something absolute. We—we measure that in absolute terms. The claim is that the law relates to absolute values and not to relative values, or also to the absolute dimension and not only to the relative one, and therefore the fact that you create a difference of a thousand shekels between the two actions is still not enough to determine whether the law forbids or permits it. The law also asks itself what those two levels are, and not only what the difference is between them—whether it’s zero and one thousand, or minus one thousand and zero. Where are you located? And really now I’m going back to the point Shmuel made earlier: when it’s a difference between zero and one thousand, I’m basically saying, look, you won’t rise to a higher level than where you are right now. Right now you’re at level zero. You won’t rise to a higher level. Fine—if you don’t rise, you don’t rise; it’s my right to say that I’m not going to help you rise. But to lower you to a lower level—your right is to remain at zero. You’re at zero; I can’t forcibly put you at level minus one thousand. You’re at zero. Or in other words, there is a certain level that determines your rights. Your rights are what you already have. To take rights away from you is absolutely forbidden, but to give you additional rights—I’m not obligated to do that, except in exchange for something that you do.

[Speaker B] Can I challenge that statement? A person is standing next to his house, which is going up in flames. Someone comes over and says to him, if you pay me a thousand shekels, I’ll put out your house. What’s the problem? Is that extortion?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. No. No, that’s inducement. Certainly not. I have no obligation to put it out. The house is his, the burned house is his, but he has no right that I should put it out. That’s not his right.

[Speaker E] Certainly not.

[Speaker B] His right. Certainly not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] His right. That’s exactly the point. I’m not offering him the house; I’m offering him the act of extinguishing. The act of extinguishing is not his right. The house is his—he can do with it whatever he wants. I can’t take the house away from him.

[Speaker E] But I’m saying, bring—

[Speaker D] Give me a thousand shekels and I’ll turn on your extinguisher. No, wait—is terror financing the same thing?

[Speaker E] If I—

[Speaker D] Am I encouraging you to commit offenses with money?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, on the principled level it’s the same thing—a major novelty that even that is done. In the end, “the words of the Rabbi and the words of the student—whose words do we obey?” If he’s a criminal, punish him—what does that have to do with me? So why extortion and terror and all those things? Because we know that this is a way of preventing the terror itself, so there’s no choice—but it’s a legal innovation. Attempted murder, terror financing, assistance.

[Speaker B] If it’s the firefighter who says it, then is it extortion?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, because I have a right that he should help me; that’s what he’s paid for. Obviously. If after we made the deal he doesn’t put it out—for example, with a firefighter—we made the deal, I paid him a thousand shekels, and he didn’t extinguish it, then he owes me. All right? So now what am I saying? That positive commandments and prohibitions basically differ from one another on this plane. When I asked what the difference is between a positive commandment and a prohibition, the point is this: there is a zero state in which the Torah wants me to be. That is the state of what I called the average person earlier. You can be righteous if you rise to a positive state; you can be wicked if you descend to a negative state. The descent from average to righteous—or the rise from average to righteous—or the rise from wicked to average—that’s the same rise. If you look at it only in terms of differences, you won’t see a difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition. But the absolute state does have significance. In the absolute state, it means there is a certain condition that is the minimum requirement—this is what the Torah expects of everyone, that they be here. That’s zero. If you go below that, you’re a transgressor. If you don’t rise above that, then you’re not righteous, but fine, that’s not… all right? So that is basically the meaning of the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. Now maybe I’ll say one more thing… I’ll close the circle on this example. Really, this brings us back to that intuitive notion of action and inaction. If you think about it carefully, it’s actually very similar. It’s not a mistaken notion. The notion that says a positive commandment imposes on me a duty to act, and a prohibition imposes on me a duty to refrain. Because what really is the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition? Ask a person why a prohibition is really more severe. In a prohibition I’m doing an active act that is forbidden. In neglecting a positive commandment, I’m only not—I commit an omission that is not okay. And that is more—why is that worse? It’s worse because here there is a frontal clash against the will of God. I do an action that is itself negative. Right? By contrast, when I refrain, I merely fail to do the positive action. Right? I’m not clashing frontally with the will of God. I’m not doing it—not that I’m doing something that contradicts something He doesn’t want. The state I’m in is not forbidden. It’s not against the will of God. I’m simply not in the state that the will of God says I should be in. All right? That is actually very similar to the difference between action and inaction. It’s not exactly the same thing—there are practical differences, as we saw—but the essential idea behind prohibition and positive commandment is the same idea. Because really, when I make the distinction between a positive commandment and a prohibition—why do people, if you ask people why fulfilling a positive commandment is more important than avoiding a prohibition, and violating a prohibition is more severe than neglecting a positive commandment? It’s dual, the relation between prohibition and positive commandment. Fulfillment—it’s Nachmanides in the portion of Yitro. The fulfillment of a positive commandment is greater than the avoidance of a prohibition, right? A greater thing. Greater. But violating a prohibition is more severe than neglecting a positive commandment. Right? There’s no contradiction between the two things. Why? Because here I’m talking about the side of fulfillment, and here I’m talking about the side of nullification. From the side of fulfillment, the positive commandment is greater. From the side of nullification, the prohibition is more severe. Why? Because with a prohibition I’m actually descending to a negative level, not merely failing to rise to a positive level. So of course that’s more severe than simply not being righteous. To be wicked is more severe than not being righteous. But on the other hand, to be righteous is greater than not being wicked. Right? Obviously. There’s no contradiction here; it’s simple. Okay? So now the point is that what people grasp in the simple understanding of the early discussions, right—in the simple understanding that says a positive commandment is to do and a prohibition is to refrain from doing, or that a violation of a prohibition is a violation through positive action, and a violation of a positive commandment is a violation through passive omission, right? That is, neglecting a positive commandment—they are actually grasping the same thing. They are just saying that passive omission clashes less frontally with the will of God. When you do something negative, you clash frontally with the will of God. What I basically want to claim is this—maybe let’s formulate it this way. A violation of a positive commandment—how do people usually define the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition? That a prohibition is violated through positive action, right? A prohibition—when I desecrated the Sabbath, I did an action on the Sabbath, so I violated it through positive action; I did the action that is the violation. By contrast, if I neglected a positive commandment—say I didn’t put on tefillin—then it’s a violation through passive omission.

[Speaker B] But we brought contrary examples. It doesn’t look like the same model.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, one second. Wait, wait. Those are the simple cases. I’ll get to the examples in a moment—that’s where I want to go. But the simple cases—so there, why really is this a positive commandment and that a prohibition? Because this one is violated through positive action and that one through passive omission. You understand that according to the definition I’m now proposing, including the more complicated examples, it’s the same thing. A positive commandment is always violated through passive omission. Even when I do an action, I actually violate it only through passive omission. Why? Because it’s passive omission in an essential sense, not passive omission in a physical sense. It’s passive omission in the sense that I’m not in the desired state. And that I’m in an undesired state. On the conceptual level, that’s passive omission. Why should we say that physically it was done through an act?

[Speaker E] He didn’t release the energy he invested. Exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rather, it’s the spiritual meaning of the matter. Obviously, obviously.

[Speaker E] We took a step here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m only claiming that the initial intuition is an intuition that didn’t miss by that much. It grasped the core of the matter. And the conceptual intuition simply broadens the common-sense perspective. In other words—and this is an important point—because many times I need to check myself after I’ve done the conceptual work: how does it connect to the scientific perspective, or the common-sense one, right? In this case I’m connecting science with common sense. Right? Of course it doesn’t always connect. But it has to connect somehow, because I have a certain trust that human intuition grasps something of the correct thing. Meaning, it’s not a total miss. Sometimes I’ll make a conceptual abstraction and I’ll arrive at some more complex theory, more abstract, but it has to contain within it the basic components of the simple intuitions.

[Speaker C] Just to say it for a moment in legal terms. Let’s say there’s a contract. Let’s say that the whole issue of commandment—do and do not do—is a contract between me and the Holy One, blessed be He. There is a contract. Is there a legal difference between my not fulfilling the contract and my violating it? In principle, no. In other words, in both cases they’ll come and say that I’m an offender, a civil offender.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because both of them are prohibitions. What? Both are prohibitions. Civil prohibitions.

[Speaker C] I committed myself to do something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it also has to be like income tax. Why are you going to contracts? We talked about income tax and military service. So the law basically tells me—I can’t say to you, pay income tax. I forbid you not to pay income tax. And the fact is that every law has to have a sanction attached to it. Why? Because I don’t get a prize for paying income tax; it’s an elementary obligation. Everyone has to pay income tax.

[Speaker E] The law—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Forbids—the law forbids not paying income tax or not serving in the army. In other words, even though at the physical level these obligations require an investment of energy, meaning I have to do something in order to fulfill this obligation—

[Speaker E] Because it’s payment, it’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. The zero state is active action. And still the law says: you are forbidden to be in a negative state—not that you have to be in the zero state. Do you understand? And therefore, on the conceptual level, law is always a prohibition.

[Speaker B] What the Rabbi was trying to discuss now, regarding the generalization of the common-sense definition, reminds me of the fact that relativity did not abolish Newton’s laws, but only caused them to be valid in a narrow domain, the domain of low velocities.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Therefore the question of why—the question of why always has to come afterward.

[Speaker E] And at the height of relativity, Newton’s equations remain as an approximation. Newton is the common-sense intuition that wasn’t completely nullified, but underwent a very, very broad generalization.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And not only that—the relations, the relations between force and acceleration remain exactly the same. F equals ma is also true in relativity; it’s just that a is a more complex expression. Exactly.

[Speaker E] Meaning, there is—but all of Newton’s equations are in fact approximations when you go to low velocities, approximations to the theory.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying—and that’s exactly the point here—because what happens is that phenomenological theory, first of all, the description of the facts is the first step. Only afterward do you have to ask why. Whoever asks why immediately is like Aristotle. Meaning, then he won’t get anywhere. If first of all you describe the facts—the sensible, precise, objective, scientific description—that’s excellent. But someone who stops there is like Anaximander. If you stop there, then you think science is the whole story. And that always leads to conflicts between Torah and science and all those arguments where people think there is some kind of conflict here. There is no conflict. The scientific aspect is good because it is limited, because it restricts itself to the places that are tractable, the precise places. But afterward it isn’t right to stop there—in my view it isn’t right to stop there. Be a philosopher too, not only a scientist, and ask yourself why this is true. Once the facts are before you, you can ask why much better. And after you answer the why, go back again to the phenomenological theory and see that it didn’t miss all that much. Meaning, there is good intuition there. Meaning, it can—it has to fit somehow, at least partially; that is, the idea has to be preserved. It’s not—it’s not—it’s not some leap to a completely different place. The question of why is dependent on the question of what. And therefore Rav Chaim—well, Rav Chaim, we’ll get to later—but the relation between the what and the why is an ambivalent relation. Meaning, you have to begin with the what, continue to the why, and then return again to the what and see that it really works. In the end, you need all of it. Okay, but that’s already—