Types of Interpretation, Lesson 9

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right, that’s the story—I think I also told it, but we’ll get to it in a moment. So Rabbi Krizwirt says, what do you mean? You sit in yeshiva and learn ten pages a year. Are you kidding? That’s how you’re going to know anything? In your whole life you’ll never finish a tractate. And that’s how he ended—he rebuked us and so on. What do you mean, it can’t be, this has to change, and therefore he was happy that there are frameworks that really go through material at a faster pace and so on. In any case, afterward Rabbi Michael Zilber got up. Maybe it was his son, his grandson, I don’t know. A little audacious, kind of. He says, listen, I can’t hold back after this criticism, I have to respond. And he gave a speech there—it was a pleasure to hear, I very much identified with what he said. And he said, listen, Rabbi Krizwirt, with all due respect, is completely right. You have to retain everything. Rabbi Zilber, by the way, was one of the first—the first, I think—to put out recordings on the entire Talmud. Meaning, he’s not suspect as someone who doesn’t learn broadly. Even before Sabato and all those who came after him in that style. He was the first, I think. But he said: still, that’s not the role of the yeshivot. In yeshivot you learn how to learn. When do you actually learn? Afterward—in kollel, at home, in life. Yeshiva is a preparatory stage for life. People think the yeshiva’s role is to teach you material. That’s not true. The yeshiva’s role is to teach you how to learn. After you’ve learned how to learn for a few years, now sit and learn. Now, if when you’re in kollel you don’t do that—on that point he joined the criticism. There you need to learn, retain material, know things, move on. But that’s not a criticism of the yeshivot. The yeshivot are right—they need to teach what this is. So it takes ten pages a year, but they teach you how to analyze things, how to learn. After you acquire the tools, you have your whole life—learn afterward. That’s not the yeshiva’s function.

This is the second story I remembered: when my son left Grodno—Nachman, my oldest son—left Grodno. It’s a higher yeshiva, he was in second-year shiur, and he left for Gush. And I mentioned various transitions we made in the family in general, but he was the last one who still changed direction. And there was a whole big storm around this matter there, because even though there aren’t many dropouts there either—it’s one of the better Ponevezh-style yeshivot—but when there are dropouts, that’s okay, it’s easy to deal with, because that’s the tradition, sort of fine, they don’t hold up, nobody sees that as—it’s not an alternative model. Meaning, it doesn’t threaten the yeshiva’s model. But if someone goes to a Religious Zionist yeshiva, something different, then what does that mean? He’s not some dropout, he’s not someone abandoning things, he’s simply choosing a different alternative. That’s a blow. Meaning, they hadn’t gone through something like that, and there was a big storm there, and they threw him out of the yeshiva on the spot, didn’t allow him to stay. I said to them, tell me, what about wasting Torah study time? Until he moves to Gush he’s still got another few months—what, wasting Torah study isn’t important? I mean, he wasn’t inciting the guys there to move to Gush, that wasn’t the point. Rather, they were afraid. And I think that fear is part of some kind of insecurity, because in my opinion many people have—even if not consciously—a sideways glance, some criticism of the place, some search for alternatives. I spoke with guys like that, it doesn’t matter.

In any case, when he left there, they referred him to talks with some yeshiva head from Jerusalem, Bnei Brak type, a former musarnik, who talked to him a bit and tried to convince him. He has experience speaking with all kinds of guys, including Religious Zionists and all kinds. He’s the sort of—well, he’s a yeshiva head, meaning he also knows how to learn. Usually yeshiva heads don’t deal with these things. A yeshiva head knows how to learn; if someone is wasting time they send him to bring people back to religion. But no, he was holding both ends. And at some stage, anyway, I spoke with him on the phone—we had a phone conversation, I don’t remember anymore who called whom. And we spoke a bit. He says to me, listen, I saw things by Rabbi Lichtenstein and it’s basic, he says to me, what, he doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about? Like, the yeshiva head at Gush—that’s the alternative? These are basic things, what did he invent there? Why is that the alternative? Since I myself had thought like that for many years before, I knew exactly what he was talking about—until I matured. And apparently he hadn’t matured yet. In general, Haredi thinking is a little childish, in many respects, in my opinion. Even the sharpest among them—in fact maybe especially the sharpest among them—there’s something a little childish about that thinking, excuse the generalization. And I said to him—not in these words, but this is what I said in my heart—you think like a child. Because it’s true: there are fewer sparks and flashes when you hear a shiur by Rabbi Lichtenstein. He says every kollel fellow in the Chazon Ish kollel who writes an article is a thousand times more brilliant than the things I read from Rabbi Lichtenstein. Which is true—far more flashes and so on. But what are you left with afterward? You’re left with nothing. And when you enter a shiur by Rabbi Lichtenstein—and this is the famous story about, this is all around the shiur, not a parenthesis, this is the shiur—the famous story about Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, yes? After all Rabbi Lichtenstein comes from that school.

Rabbi Chaim of Brisk and his father, the Beit HaLevi, who was a yeshiva head in Volozhin, the Beit HaLevi. And he says to Rabbi Chaim—Rabbi Chaim came to give shiurim in the Volozhin yeshiva, and also became a yeshiva head there for a certain period; Rabbi Shimon studied under him there, I think. And his father heard the shiur and said, listen, I don’t understand, what kind of shiur is this? I give a shiur—questions and answers, sparks in the air, people dancing with joy. And you—your shiur is so dry, with some distinction like this, you can say it this way, you can say it that way. There are no questions, no answers. Whoever knows Rabbi Chaim—there are no questions. There are a few; he presents them a bit as a question, but the point isn’t a question and to resolve it with an answer. He came to say something. He came to say, listen, the question is only there in order to explain, to sharpen the point. So there are no questions, no answers, where’s the didactics? Meaning, you need to… And the feeling is exactly the same.

[Speaker B] About that story—no, there’s another version told about Rabbi Chaim’s father, the Beit HaLevi, that he asked him what the difference was, and he said: I’ll tell you the difference between me and my son. When someone comes and asks me a question, I give him an answer and he’s very pleased and I’m very pleased—there was a question and there was an answer. When someone comes to my son, Rabbi Chaim, he shows him that there wasn’t any question in the first place. So he’s not pleased and I’m not pleased—there was no question and there was no answer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s another version of the same story. And that’s exactly Rabbi Lichtenstein, exactly the same thing. Lichtenstein—when you hear one of his shiurim, it’s pretty hard to follow, the shiur is complex, but overall it’s simple. Meaning, because it has a lot of details, the tree has lots of branches, so it’s a little complicated. But there are no flashes of brilliance there. None. I haven’t heard all that much, but I know a little, and I also see the books. There are no flashes of brilliance there—you won’t find any. But after you’ve heard a shiur on the topic, none of the brilliant flashes from the guys in the Ponevezh kollel and the Chazon Ish kollel are needed. The question doesn’t arise, and answers aren’t needed. Everything is clear. It’s like this and like that. Concepts. He immediately presents the two possible ways to understand the concept, so you don’t need the question and to say there are two possibilities and to resolve it with lightning and sparks. In the end the topic sits in your head neatly boxed up after you hear his shiur. You come away with the material.

Now, this very much characterizes Rabbi Lichtenstein, for those who know him. He has a very serious attitude toward learning. Serious—every yeshiva head has a serious attitude toward learning—but serious in the sense of professional. Meaning, he learns something in order to know it, to retain it, to arrange it, to know it, and move on to the next topic and know that too. In the end, the goal is to know everything in an orderly way. That is not the goal of an ordinary yeshiva head. An ordinary yeshiva head—the shiur he gives is meant to sharpen the students. Meaning, it’s meant to present some brilliant approach, to show them how to analyze things. Not necessarily in order to show off, but to show them how to analyze things—that’s the methodological lesson, that’s what matters. But a series of questions and answers and all that, all the big constructions, where in the end of course the goal is a didactic goal. As I said before, the purpose of yeshivot is to teach you how to learn. And therefore there is logic behind this yeshiva method. But on the other hand, it has problematic results. And that’s what Rabbi Kreissberg was talking about there, and Rabbi Zilber joined him as well, because it accustoms people to learn this way all their lives. People don’t grasp it as a few years of preparation and then in life I use these tools and learn like Rabbi Lichtenstein—that is, I learn in order to retain things, organize them, and learn them professionally, to cover the material. Nobody learns in yeshivot and kollelim in order to cover the material. You learn because there is a commandment of Torah study and you organize it. Fine, you go through questions and answers and you enjoy it, but it’s not professional study in the sense that you study, say, a profession somewhere that has a syllabus, you go through material, you have to know the material from here to here and that’s it. It doesn’t work that way. And in that sense, on the one hand it’s preparation for how to learn, those years in yeshiva, but on the other hand it has a very problematic effect, because it gets people used to learning this way all the time. And that’s a problem.

Like once I spoke with one of the professors at Bar-Ilan in physics, whom I befriended—we were good friends. I said to him: tell me, what are you chasing articles for? You’re already older, already close to retirement. Why are you running after these little articles? Come on, do interesting things, conceptions. You’re already old enough, you’ve got tenure, full professor, you have nowhere to advance, no one’s going to throw you out. He said to me: listen, I’m already used to it, I can’t do otherwise anymore. Really, he said, I can’t do otherwise. The first ten years you have to do it because you need to accumulate articles in order to advance, and afterward you’re already used to it, you just can’t. Those are the formative years. By the way, that’s one of the serious diseases of Israeli academia, in my opinion—the chase after articles. Everyone is terribly proud of it.

[Speaker B] Why specifically Israeli?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Mainly Israeli. Israeli—I didn’t, again, do comparisons with the whole world, but compared with a lot of places, say in American academia, it’s definitely true. In the European academia, the one with the tradition, it’s definitely true. Meaning, it’s definitely not like that there. It’s a disease. And every time you hear again some statistic about how many publications there are in Israel—the most in the world.

[Speaker B] I have a friend, really, you—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You know how many? The most in the world, per person.

[Speaker B] Not how many publications—how many citations.

[Speaker C] There’s a special Google index, they check it. There’s a special index in Google Scholar, it—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It checks—

[Speaker B] The…

[Speaker C] Who cites and how many citations.

[Speaker B] So everything revolves around this issue.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And they count it for you—when they want to promote you they count how many articles you produced, because who’s going to read the articles now and see what they’re worth? No one has the energy. Who has the energy to do that? It’s not…

[Speaker B] And after that, if it was accepted as a paper in such-and-such a journal…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but you know, it’s… and if you have a large quantity in less good journals, that’s also fine. And there too, what? You don’t know what… And if it’s your friends accepting your articles and you accept theirs? That also happens a lot, or very often even. So in short—but fine, that’s a disease, not important. I just brought that example to say that there are things we… there’s a good reason to do them at first, but the problem is that afterward we get used to them and keep doing them later too.

[Speaker E] Chocolate is like that too.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What?

[Speaker B] I just didn’t catch the chosen connection… the chosen money. I didn’t catch it. I didn’t understand? The chosen money.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, because that’s part of the symptom of the same thing. Those long rules of “chosen money”—who’s going to read them? Madness. So the claim is that yeshivot are really years of preparation toward learning. That’s their purpose, and therefore there the focus really is an analytic focus. But in the end, after those few years, you need to move to a different phase. Now what is that phase? That phase, I think, no longer needs to divide between breadth learning and analytic learning. That’s not right. In the end, when you’re skilled, then you can see the topic, and you’ll see the topic without opening the medieval authorities and later authorities, and I’ll tell you more or less what they say. What the questions will be, more or less where things will go—I can tell you without seeing them. Meaning, if you’re sufficiently skilled, you know what analytic questions arise here. What the analytic focus of the topic is. Many times it’s not something actually written in the topic, but that’s what really stands behind it. Very quickly you get to those things. You look more or less at what the major medieval authorities say, because that’s what’s important to know. The rest can help you if they come up with some brilliant answer you hadn’t thought of. But to know whose view matters is important. So it doesn’t matter to know everyone’s view. Know the Rashba, know Maimonides, know Rashi and Tosafot, the Rosh. Fine, so you know the important medieval authorities. That’s all.

So in the end, the difference between analytic learning and breadth learning is somewhat erased once you are skilled. Because once you are skilled, you already learn the analytic material much faster; you basically get close to the pace of breadth learning. I think I once told that I did an experiment once—actually twice. Once I did an experiment in Berakhot and once in Sukkah. I taught the guys in Yerucham a page a day, I think—or an amud a day, I don’t remember exactly, something like that. Analytic learning. A page a day or an amud a day, where usually the pace is an amud a week or even more. If I really go wild, it can even be two or three weeks. I told them that in the end there’s the eighty-twenty rule. Did I tell this? I don’t know, for some reason I think I did, I’m not sure. There’s the eighty-twenty rule. You invest eighty percent of the time in twenty percent of the material. It’s always like that. And in the end, eighty percent of the analytic depth in a topic I’ll do in the first twenty percent of the time. The remaining eighty percent of the time will be clarifying nuances—how that formulation differs from this formulation. I’m not belittling that. But that’s twenty percent of the topic that usually won’t stay with you anyway. You don’t remember the nuances. You can remember the principles; the nuances you’ll remember less. And therefore there is value in experiencing, at least once in a while, even though generally they learn ten pages a year, so that this habit doesn’t become entrenched for life—it’s worthwhile every now and then to have some summer term or something in yeshiva where you also really learn how to learn. That is, to do a simulation of life. Not as preparation for life, but a simulation of how this is really supposed to work. Then you see that you can go through the page, do it in one day, and tell people: look, here are the analytic points; this is what you’ll find even after you sit on it for two months. These are the analytic points. Now, it could be that you’ll find another position I missed, another nuance I didn’t notice. It’s likely that you will, fine. But for that you’re investing two months instead of one day. There is still a difference. So once you’re skilled, you can do it in a day. True, you won’t know everything and won’t cover everything, but you can do it in a day. So the difference between analytic learning and breadth learning is somewhat erased.

I mentioned—maybe I didn’t mention, again I don’t know—Rabbi Shlomo Zalman too. My maggid shiur told me that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman told his students: do you really think that when he had some question in the laws of the Sabbath and he found some Tosafot in Zevachim—I don’t know what—the initial assumption of Tosafot in Zevachim, and from that he inferred the answer he was looking for to a question in the laws of the Sabbath? And do you really think I run through all the Tosafot in the entire Talmud in my head in order to know where the answer to that question comes from? There’s no way to do that. Even if he remembers—and he did remember, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman had an excellent memory—you can’t run through in your head all the medieval authorities and later authorities and the Talmud when you’re looking, for every question you’re asked, certainly at the pace he was asked. Right? So of course not. When I learned that Tosafot, I had already made that calculation. When I got to that Tosafot in Zevachim, I already understood that in that initial assumption there is a reasoning that could answer a question of this type. Not a specific question—it came to him much later—but I had already prepared the ground; I already had a link in that Tosafot there. Now when the question came, that link I had prepared while learning the Tosafot popped up, and then I understood that from there I could resolve my question.

Now that is exactly the purpose of analytic learning—not the preparation they do in yeshiva, preparation for life, but in life itself. When you study analytically, you’re really studying in order to be able to decide questions that stand before you. Either analytic questions or halakhic questions, it doesn’t matter. When I study Talmud—and this too I learned from my maggid shiur—in the third chapter of Bava Batra, about a migo created by falsehood. Meaning, I tell a lie, I lie, and now I say to the judge: I lied, but I could have lied better, so I have a migo. I’m saying to you now that I’m telling the truth, so I created for myself a migo by means of a lie. The question is whether such a migo can or cannot work—that’s a Talmudic discussion there, doesn’t matter. In any case, the Talmud there says: look, you won’t remember all the details there, what the Talmud says, what Rava and Rav Yosef say, and Tosafot and Rashi. What you really need to remember is what this says about the foundation of migo. How the correct understanding of migo emerges from the Talmud’s initial assumption, from the conclusion, from Tosafot or from the Rashbam. It means that in Tosafot it seems that migo is the force of a claim, and in Rashbam it seems that migo is “why would he lie?” Two different understandings of what exactly the idea of migo is. So I don’t remember what he asked or what he answered; I only remember that from that Tosafot there is proof that migo is the force of a claim. That’s all. Now when I reach the stage where I need to clarify whether migo is the force of a claim or “why would he lie?” or to apply it to something, I know: there’s a Tosafot there. Then I’ll learn it, I’ll know what he asks and what he answers, but I know that that’s what comes out of it. Because if I have analytic skill, then I already know how to read out of Tosafot what the conceptions written there are—not what he says.

As I told—and I’m not sure now whether I told this— that same maggid shiur took me, Rabbi Eichenstein of course, on a tour between the benches in the yeshiva to show me what I was missing by doing breadth learning in the afternoon. I was at the university, so in the afternoon I went to the university; in the morning I was in yeshiva. So once I was there in the afternoon, and he says, come, I’ll take you on a tour to see what you’re missing. So we went to some study pair that was learning, I don’t know, something, some page they were working on, and Rabbi Eichenstein, my maggid shiur, asks them: what’s the Jewish law in such-and-such a case? They started thinking, searching, looking. After a few minutes they gave up—they didn’t know. He said to them: your finger was on the line where it’s written. Your finger was there, exactly there when I asked you—it was there. But what? They’re learning what Abaye said, what Rava said, what one answered, what the initial assumption was—they’re learning the Talmud in breadth. They’re learning what the Talmud says: question, answer, question, answer, what Rashi says, and moving on. Now to remember that linearly—you won’t remember it an hour later anyway, unless, again, you’re some mutation like Rabbi Ovadia. But if not, you won’t remember it. Okay? So why put effort into that? If you were thinking what that line means—not what Rava said and what Abaye answered and memorizing the Talmud by heart, but what stands behind it, what’s the disagreement between Abaye and Rava, why did they understand it differently, because he grasped it this way and he grasped it that way—that you’ll remember. Only that you’ll remember. That has a chance of staying with you. It also serves you later, unlike learning it by heart, because if you learn it by heart, what will you do with that afterward? You won’t be able to use it. How will you pull out what you need from the entire Talmud that you know by heart when a question comes to you? What, you’ll run through the whole Talmud by heart and now think about every line whether it gives you the answer or not? That’s the result of breadth learning in the sense that people understand it, and therefore in my opinion it’s a mistake altogether to invest time in it.

[Speaker D] But you actually saw that you didn’t miss anything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Right, that’s what he told me—that’s what I “missed,” in quotation marks. He says, come see what you’re not missing. No, he says, you are missing—if you were here you’d need to do analytic learning in the afternoon too. But I learned from him that you only learn analytically; you don’t do breadth learning. In any case, breadth learning in this sense really is—that is, it helped produce this forgetting of daf yomi, which is good for people who want to stay connected to Torah for an hour a day, which is also something of value and joins important things and is the commandment of Torah study and also beyond the everyday—there are definitely values to it that I’m not belittling.

[Speaker B] Torah for its own sake, Torah as commandment, he—

[Speaker D] Learns just in order to learn.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but you have to understand what this is not. Exactly. But learning in order to grow, in order to be serious, in order to know, in order to do something with it, in order to develop—not in order not to waste an hour of Torah study a day—that’s not this learning. There’s nothing to do. Again, only for very special people; there are special people, everyone is built differently. So there are very special people who really can hold the whole thing and it really says something to them and really accumulates for them. For most people it’s not like that, and even if they remember—I’m not talking about those who don’t remember—even if they do remember, they remember linearly: what he asked, what he answered, what he asked, what he answered—that’s what they remember. And what will that give you? What help is that? Every question that comes to you, you won’t…

[Speaker C] I’m afraid that in academia in the natural sciences they also learn textbooks that way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They don’t. In science textbooks, the textbook doesn’t teach you material, it also teaches you how to handle the material. You learn the Schrödinger equation—that’s not knowing material. That’s the equation; if you remember it, then you know the material. Now you also need to know how to solve the equation, fine. But I don’t think there, in my opinion, there isn’t breadth learning and analytic learning in the same sense as with Talmud. To learn what the book says and to learn the concepts behind it—that’s the same thing. Because the book itself says what the concepts are; it teaches the concepts, it doesn’t teach the material. I think a scientific textbook generally teaches the concepts, not the material. In the Talmud it’s not like that. The Talmud records a give-and-take, and the concepts you have to extract from those things. The Talmud doesn’t teach; the analytic shiur is not written in the Talmud. The Talmud is the Talmud; the analytic shiur is what the rabbi teaches about the Talmud. Therefore here there is a difference between breadth and analysis. In a normal textbook there isn’t. Now this has considerable power, because it allows people to see things from different angles, which in a scientific book is less possible. You can see it from different angles, it leaves you more degrees of freedom. There are many advantages in formulating it in a way where the analytic layer remains concealed. Meaning, I don’t put the concepts on the table, because everyone formulates them differently. In my world it will be formulated this way; in someone else’s world it will be formulated differently. Meaning, don’t take me captive with the concepts—there are costs to that. And therefore there’s a lot of logic in it. But on the other hand, when you study, you need to extract the concepts, at least in your own language. And that’s really what’s called analytic learning.

Now learning Jewish law means learning analytically and ending the topic with the halakhic conclusion. That is, in yeshivot they don’t end with a halakhic conclusion. Why? Because in yeshivot they’re only learning how to learn. And again, the result is that when you study afterward later in life, you also don’t learn in a conclusion-oriented way. So what happens? When you study Jewish law, you study Mishnah Berurah. And if you study analytically, you study the Talmudic analysis—say analytic study of Sabbath laws for the sake of example. You study the topic in tractate Sabbath analytically, and in order to study Jewish law you study Mishnah Berurah. But that’s a distortion beyond belief. You need to study the topic and arrive at the halakhic conclusion, and that is what it means to study Jewish law. What does it mean to study Jewish law? Jewish law is the result of analytic study—that’s the Jewish law. And Mishnah Berurah, fine, that too can be studied as part of the positions you see in the topic.

[Speaker B] He got to what he got to through analytic learning. That’s his method of authority. He studies Jewish law in order to know what to do, and Mishnah Berurah in order to know what to do, and we already talked about the issue of authority. I reached the opposite conclusion from the Mishnah Berurah. So what now—should I rely on myself? Of course. But there is an issue—why not an issue of authority? I can’t go against all the medieval authorities and later authorities, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if it’s against all the medieval authorities—you yourself need to weigh whether it really is against all the medieval authorities and later authorities. It could be that you’re not sufficiently confident—then don’t do it. If you are against the Mishnah Berurah and you checked it and that’s your view, do what you think, obviously—what do you mean?

[Speaker B] All those around the Mishnah Berurah all disagree with him. Just as an example.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s more the Shulchan Arukh; there isn’t all that much around the Mishnah Berurah.

[Speaker B] Maybe—

[Speaker C] It’s even…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that already really depends—that’s already a view of authority, we won’t get into it here. I have a different view from what is accepted in the area of halakhic authority. But I’m saying: in the end, you need to finish your analytic study with the halakhic conclusion. Those are not two different things. Okay? According to practical Jewish law means not to study the Talmud in Sabbath analytically and then study Mishnah Berurah, but to study the Talmud in Sabbath analytically until you reach your own conclusion in the topic. That’s called according to practical Jewish law. And carry out that conclusion. And if you are desecrating the Sabbath, then desecrate the Sabbath on that basis. If that is your conclusion, desecrate the Sabbath on that basis.

Therefore these distinctions—for example, the distinction between analytic learning and breadth learning—are good for the preparatory years in yeshiva. I think they get very blurred at later stages, and practical Jewish law learning too really ought to disappear. Again, in the preparatory stage in yeshivot you can learn Mishnah Berurah because you also need to know what to do, and there you don’t arrive at halakhic conclusions because you can’t, the pace doesn’t allow it. But all this is in the years of preparation. In life it’s not supposed to work this way.

[Speaker B] There’s also the issue of self-confidence. You’re not skilled enough. There are people much more skilled than you, and therefore even if you reached one conclusion—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So speak with more skilled people.

[Speaker B] There’s a good chance you’re mistaken if that person says otherwise—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So speak with skilled people, present before them the… improve yourself. I’m not saying everyone—

[Speaker B] I can’t speak with the Chafetz Chaim.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, then speak with those who exist in our time, not the Chafetz Chaim, it doesn’t matter, what difference does it make. Obviously a person needs to build himself. I don’t mean that every beginning student should now go and do something and that’s it—that would just be irresponsible. I mean that your goal should be to reach a state where when you study, the conclusion you reach is the Jewish law you learned.

[Speaker B] If you are, as you once defined it, qualified for that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Qualified for that, right. To be qualified for that. But there are also those who are qualified—that’s exactly the point. I think there are many who are qualified for that. To be qualified for that you don’t have to be Rabbi Ovadia or the Chafetz Chaim or Moses our teacher. You need to be you. But when you are built properly, you are qualified. Be built properly, test yourself, compare yourself with others, present your arguments to them, hear what they say. When people asked me—and I once wrote this in some article—when do I know that I’m qualified for that? So I say: for me, one of the good indications, in my opinion, is when you see that you are settled. Meaning, if you studied a topic and returned to it after a year, two years, three years, again—if your conclusion is basically quite similar to what it was the previous time, that means you’re settled. Because I know about myself: in the earlier stages, every time I came to a topic it came out differently. Differently. I didn’t understand at all what I had done the previous time—what is this nonsense I wrote there the previous time? Right, that was because I still wasn’t settled. Now that doesn’t mean—even now I sometimes retract, obviously. It’s not all or nothing. But I already see that I’m settled, so I can allow myself to decide according to what seems right to me, because I already know that it’s me. I don’t need to be the Chafetz Chaim; I need to be me. If I am me, then I can decide for myself. That’s the criterion, in my opinion.

[Speaker B] But Rabbi Chaim—he was clearly qualified for that. So why did he, Rabbi Chaim, who was clearly qualified, not want to deal with Jewish law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He is one of the fathers of this sick approach, this distorted approach—he is. Because Rabbi Chaim, due to his highly developed analytic ability—and this brings me to the next point—because of his highly developed analytic ability, somehow lost the ability to decide. And many times one comes at the expense of the other. Because one of the reasons that in our generation people do not decide for themselves but rely on the medieval authorities is that the medieval authorities were less sophisticated than we are. And when they thought the Jewish law was that something is permitted, they said it’s permitted. And they didn’t engage in pilpul—well, maybe it could also be prohibited if I build some opposite intellectual construction, I can support just as well the view that it’s prohibited. And now if I’m sharp enough, I can support this and support that, and both are wonderful and fit all the Talmudic passages, but now I ask myself, okay, so is it permitted or prohibited? I don’t know. I’m already too sharp; I lost the ability to decide. In a certain sense, yes, the blessed innocence that the medieval authorities had—we lost it.

[Speaker F] So you need to go back to the laws of doubt. What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Go back to the laws of doubt. Okay, so sometimes there’s no choice and you go back to the laws of doubt. I think there’s another option too. One needs not to be afraid to decide. Many times we haven’t really lost the ability to decide; we’ve lost the confidence to decide. I say, look: you did the conceptual investigation, you set up the Rashba’s position and Maimonides’ position, each one on magnificent intellectual foundations, you built a structure, you’re sharp, you have all the tools, the analytic toolbox, you established them well. Now decide—which one seems more right to you? If the Rashba seems more right to you, then that’s your conclusion, that’s all. Now you’ve exhausted the topic, now decide. People are satisfied with the fact that each one is—this is like postmodernism. Rabbi Chaim is really the herald of halakhic postmodernism. And by the way, it’s not even all that distant a period—it came together. Because what happens in the postmodern world? In the postmodern world, really everything is logic, contrary to what people think, by the way. Everything is logic in the postmodern world. If you are consistent with your premises, logically consistent, then you are just as legitimate as anyone else who says the opposite of you. That’s why postmodernism is created—because of the focus on logic, in the end what remains is only consistency. Because logic only checks consistency. I can’t check the premises, because everyone has his own premises. What I can do is only check consistency. And then what happens is that I present a consistent position, I grounded it in premises, it fits everything, I built my structure. You built another structure with the opposite conclusion. We are both equally right because we are both logically consistent. Someone who is satisfied only with logical consistency becomes a postmodernist, because that dictates a multiplicity of truths. Now what does the postmodernist ignore? That in the end consistency is a necessary but not sufficient condition. That is, an inconsistent position is of course wrong, but a consistent position is not necessarily correct. How do I know how to decide between two consistent positions? Use your common sense and decide: which premises, which are more plausible? That’s all. With premises that are not the same. No, obviously otherwise it’s just a logical contradiction. No—different foundations, different conclusions, but each one is consistent within his own method. Now, so ostensibly the view is that if that’s the case, then it’s impossible to decide. That’s Rabbi Chaim’s view. Rabbi Chaim, because of his strong analytic ability, lost the ability to decide.

After all, the well-known myth about Rabbi Chaim is that when he had difficult questions he sent them to Rabbi Isaac Elchanan and told him: answer me yes or no without reasons. Because with reasons, for every reason you bring I’ll bring you three that refute it. Tell me yes or no without reasons. What does that mean? It means that on the one hand he lost the ability to decide, but on the other hand he understood that Rabbi Isaac Elchanan has a decision and it is apparently the correct one. Meaning, true, I could reject it in a thousand ways and he wouldn’t… but what he says is still right. He had trust in Rabbi Isaac Elchanan’s decision, even though analytically of course he could refute it. Meaning, Rabbi Chaim isn’t completely a postmodernist; he is simply aware of his weaknesses. That is, he understands that he lost the ability to decide because of his analytic ability. And really, that is why not by chance this distinction was created between halakhic decisors and yeshiva heads.

Benny Lau once wrote an article, very correctly, that one of the disasters of the later generations, mainly the Haredi world but not only, is that leadership passed from community rabbis to yeshiva heads. Once the spiritual leaders of the generation were the community rabbis, and afterward it became the era of the yeshiva heads. Yes, Rabbi Shach—the yeshiva head, yes, the last one we remember as a truly unquestioned leader who was a yeshiva head. After him it was already people who are not exactly yeshiva heads, but also not exactly leaders. But this leadership of yeshiva heads—

[Speaker B] Isn’t that so? The Chazon Ish wasn’t a yeshiva head.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Right, the Chazon Ish really was a very unique phenomenon, agreed.

[Speaker B] Moshe Feinstein was a yeshiva head, but not really—that’s not what characterizes him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, right. But the Lithuanian leadership here in the Land of Israel—they’re all yeshiva heads. All the great Torah figures of the Lithuanians, most of them are yeshiva heads. Rabbi Isser Zalman, yes, every head of the Council of Torah Sages was—in any case, the problem—what is the problem with a yeshiva head? A yeshiva head teaches twenty-year-old kids. Now twenty-year-old kids don’t test what he says with common sense; they test the consistency of what he says. And anyone who has taught kids knows this. The kids don’t tell you, listen, what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. That takes an adult person; you need to be an adult to say something like that. A kid says, look, this doesn’t fit with that, I have a question on you. So you build a pilpul-style structure, answer the question, and if you’re sufficiently brilliant you work everything out. Okay? Now on the one hand that sharpens things very much, on the other hand it erases your common sense. You don’t develop common sense. When you come before ordinary householders—there’s such contempt for householders, but that contempt is often unjustified. Because many times the householders challenge the yeshiva head with challenges he doesn’t know how to deal with. They tell him: what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. It’s all consistent, everything is fine, but it doesn’t make sense to me.

[Speaker B] The eyes of the intellect. Yes, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, something isn’t—my intuition says it’s wrong. He doesn’t understand what to do with such a thing. I don’t know what to do with such a thing; I build an orderly structure, premises, conclusions, brilliant analytic ability, I answer all the questions of the brightest guys in Ponevezh. But I don’t know how to decide a single halakhic question, because I don’t know how to say who is right—the Rashba or Maimonides. Analytic ability comes at the expense of intuition. It’s always like that. By the way, many times we develop analytic ability when we lose intuition. When we lose intuition we have no way to decide who is right and who is not right, so we build analytic ability—it’s a substitute. Because then I take the Rashba and derive from him, in some sophisticated way, the conclusion—and that’s the conclusion. I don’t know, I lost the ability to say forbidden, permitted, what the Rashba himself had. The Rashba himself—his responsa—he also has longer responsa, but his responsa are fairly short, the responsa of the Geonim are a few sentences. Compare that with the elaborate structures of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, and the Tzelach, and Noda B'Yehuda.

[Speaker D] And developing intuition is harder. What can you do? Build rules for how to develop intuition? Okay, so that’s the problem.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Apprenticeship to Torah scholars is supposed to do that, in a certain sense. You need to see how—how a halakhic decisor works. Meaning, like an internship in various professions.

[Speaker D] What I’m saying is: to build systematically, to build systematically something non-systematic, it’s a little—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but there are ways.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You need to do it in a non-systematic way. Meaning, to follow someone who knows how to do it and try to understand how you develop the feel for it.

[Speaker B] And that also requires talent, like in every field. You need someone who has a talent for this thing of the mind’s eye.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. A lot of times, after the halakhic decisor says intuitively what the Jewish law is, the rosh yeshiva will come and build a wonderful structure and explain what a perfect ruling this is and how it resolves all the passages and everything. The decisor didn’t make that whole move. But you understand, sometimes he also doesn’t have the ability to do that. But he saw it, exactly. Meaning, he understands that this is right. And I think that’s also the relationship between the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and the later authorities (Acharonim). The medieval authorities (Rishonim) saw that this was the right way. They said permitted, forbidden, liable, exempt, with a few reasons, a few sentences, the Talmud says this, this. And this Talmudic passage—I can read it and explain it in ten other ways.

[Speaker E] That’s why the medieval authorities (Rishonim) could also have decided differently and you’d build the same construction for them and there’d be no problem with it. Because it’s not—because apparently it’s not true or not true one hundred percent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m not talking about one hundred percent, but there is right and wrong here.

[Speaker E] There is, but the spectrum is extremely wide.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and within what’s right, you—

[Speaker E] almost anything can—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] you can, but there’s a sense for what is right and when it isn’t. I think I told this too, I think I once mentioned it. I have a lot of stories around these things because they occupy me. So Shmuel Englard defended the idea that the court is some kind of objective professional work and it’s all simple logic, it has nothing to do with worldview.

[Speaker B] It’s technique, yes, technique exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now people were tearing their hair out in frustration. The man is either deaf, or a fool, or a child—in that sense he doesn’t understand where he lives. Now I tried to give him some credit and I said, wait a second, all the same the man probably isn’t stupid either, let’s think for a moment, maybe there really is something to what he’s saying. And then suddenly something clicked for me that, in my eyes, is very important. Because I know that when people criticize rabbis, it’s the same thing. You also just do whatever you want, rabbis. If you have a Zionist worldview then your conclusion will be like this, if you’re Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) then your conclusion—if you’re Hasidic then I know exactly what your conclusion will be. After all, for you too it’s all worldviews. It’s the same criticism. Now I, as someone who is inside this world—not the legal world, the halakhic world—I know that this criticism is not correct, or is only partially correct. Meaning, there is right and wrong in the halakhic world, with all the variety and with all the fact that there is discourse and of course there are disagreements about everything that can be disagreed about, but you can persuade, you can make arguments. There is right and wrong—not one hundred percent, no, there are degrees of freedom, but there is right and wrong. You can persuade in arguments; if people listen, they become convinced. That’s how it is. I believe—again, I’m not inside the legal world, I’m not there. At that I’m looking from the outside, I’m just trying to make an extrapolation from what I know. That’s probably what he wanted to say. Inside the legal community there is right and wrong. We know how to justify things. Now clearly, worldviews have influence; in Jewish law too they do. But it’s not true that everything is only worldview. There is right and wrong. It’s not that every consistent structure is fine—no. Sometimes your sense of smell says no, this isn’t right. It’s consistent, but it isn’t right. And that’s what postmodernism lost. Postmodernism says if it’s consistent then it’s legitimate. No. If it’s consistent, that doesn’t mean it’s right. Or really there is no right, there’s only consistency. Okay? And that’s what Brisker learning lost. And that’s exactly what you asked about Rabbi Chaim—you set me up perfectly. Because this is exactly the transition to the next stage in the lecture, as it were. Because Rabbi Chaim, Brisker learning, is really the next stage I wanted to discuss, and that’s exactly the point that connects these two things. Because Brisker learning really is a kind of learning built on analytic ability; the better your analytic ability, the better you do it. But in a certain sense it cripples or neutralizes your ability to decide. And therefore, in the yeshiva world, which was very influenced by Rabbi Chaim, this dichotomy developed between analytical learning and the study of Jewish law, halakhic ruling. In my opinion it came from there. It was never like that. In my view there was never this distinction in so sharp a form as exists in the yeshivot. There was some of it here and there, but what did people study in the sixteenth century, when you read? What did they study? They studied Tevuot Shor, they studied the books of rulings, Bekhor Shor, they studied the books of rulings. That was Torah study; that’s what they did in yeshivot. They studied the books of rulings, the laws of ritual slaughter together with the relevant Talmudic passages. It was all one kind of learning. There was no halakhah study and analytical study. There was no such thing. Now there was a little bit of it—for example, in terms of literary forms, say there was Rashba. So Rashba is an interpreter, not like Maimonides who is a decisor, right? There are different genres of composition. But I don’t think Rashba operated with a purely interpretive consciousness. In the end, Rashba wrote commentary on the Talmud, but it was part of a kind of learning that ultimately also had conclusions. You can also see there in various places that he writes ‘and the Jewish law is…’ and so on—not always; sometimes he writes it, sometimes he doesn’t. But I don’t think Rashba had two types of learning. For Rashba it was one kind of learning that had halakhic conclusions at the end of the learning—those were his conclusions. That’s all. It wasn’t split. This split is a result of the analytic ability that developed and reached its peak, as it were, in the twentieth century after Rabbi Chaim. It reached its peak, and we lost the ability to decide. And I think the way to deal with that is not to go after the Mishnah Berurah, who also actually didn’t really do that work, by the way. He collected precedents more; he’s also a precedent-based type, he doesn’t really decide so much on his own. The Chafetz Chaim is more of a compiler than a scholar in the analytic sense. But we rely on him not because he has authority; his authority was created because we aren’t willing to decide. It works the other way around. People explain: I don’t want to decide because I am too small for that. He’s lying. He doesn’t want to decide because he can’t decide. He lost the ability to decide, not because he is too insignificant. The ideology we give ourselves, that we develop for ourselves in order to rationalize it, is that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) were like angels and we are like human beings—or like donkeys. And therefore we rely on them. It’s not like that. The Rosh also writes this; he even writes very sharp things, and he knew, and he also said that the Geonim were very important and were great Torah scholars and we are smaller. Why? Because it’s not a matter of whether he is greater or not greater. He may have been greater than me, but that doesn’t matter—the obligation is on me to decide. And what has developed today, that I don’t decide but instead follow precedents, is the result of losing the ability to decide and not any ideology about the decline of the generations and all that bullshit—I don’t buy it. It’s a loss of the ability to decide.

[Speaker D] So the loss of the ability to decide is also a kind of decline. No, it’s a reasonable conclusion that if there’s a loss of the ability to decide, then you—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t know how to decide, you lose the ability. But the loss of the ability to decide is something that builds itself. If you don’t decide that you have the ability to decide, you won’t lose it. I’m optimistic. I believe that this is a loss of the will to decide. And so yes, right, both are true; it’s a little hard to separate them. Because you stop trusting your intuitions, because you can’t place those intuitions within a logical structure. This seems right to me and that doesn’t. Who says I’m right?

[Speaker B] But there were great decisors who did, the Chazon Ish, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Moshe Feinstein.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s why they were decisors and not roshei yeshiva.

[Speaker B] It’s almost true in his case.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why they were decisors and not roshei yeshiva, that’s exactly the point. This dichotomy was created. There are people who still do it today, in one measure or another, obviously, but they aren’t roshei yeshiva. It’s a different hat. I think that if you decide that you want to develop your analytic ability, but you’re not willing to give up your intuitions, and you engage in plain, commonsense halakhic ruling—which people in the yeshiva world look down on a lot, and afterward everyone follows it, of course—they look down on it and follow it. They all look down on decisors; everyone understands that decisors aren’t really scholars in the analytic sense. And there is a hidden contempt for decisors, even though they won’t tell you that, including the greatest decisors. There is a certain contempt for decisors, even the greatest among them, not only Rabbi Ovadia and so on, because they’re not scholars like we are. But when you want to know what the Jewish law is, you go to them. Why? Because you don’t know how to decide. So why do you go after them? These guys are fools, aren’t they? Who says this Jewish law is correct? Because you also understand that there is a place for intuition. So why do you look down on your own intuition?

[Speaker D] But they didn’t come from the same type of learning, the same approach to learning—the decisors you’re talking about.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A lot of them didn’t. A lot of them didn’t.

[Speaker D] And still they were accepted as decisors?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Look at Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, look at Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, look at the Chazon Ish—all the great decisors, Rabbi Ovadia, all the great decisors were not scholars in the analytic sense.

[Speaker D] Let’s move a bit forward, let’s go with—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Today, I don’t know, I’ll go—

[Speaker D] with someone who today is considered…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All the great decisors were not scholars in the analytic sense. Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky—Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, I know—he wasn’t an analytic scholar at all. There were jokes about him. Today less so because he became holy, but I still remember when I was in Bnei Brak there were jokes about him, that the man was a plank of wood. I don’t think that’s true, by the way, but again, it’s a bit like Rabbi Ovadia. Though I think I hold Rabbi Ovadia in higher regard. But there were jokes about the degree of his scholarship, and still in halakhic ruling people follow his rulings.

[Speaker D] Did he grow in those same yeshivot and with that same method of learning?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he didn’t grow in yeshivot at all. No? No, he was in Tomaschoff in Lomza, there are stories—he was in Tomaschoff in Lomza, he didn’t fit in there in… The Steipler, no?

[Speaker D] Yes, the Steipler too. So how does he grow to be accepted by them as a decisor?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All the important decisors grew outside the yeshivot.

[Speaker D] How does that happen at all? The whole process of building him up as someone they accept as a decisor if they know that he’s not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because he decides. Don’t you see—that’s exactly the point. Whoever dares to decide becomes the leading decisor of the generation. No, really, I mean it seriously, not disrespectfully. That’s it—those who dare to decide become the decisors of the generation, because they dare to decide, they have the guts.

[Speaker E] It’s the same thing in business. In business it’s exactly the same thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s something that takes hold of a certain position because you take it upon yourself. I’m not saying this disrespectfully about them. That’s how it works. It’s not that then they measured them and tested them against something. Rather, there’s a person who takes it on his shoulders to decide, and by that he becomes a decisor. That’s all. And roshei yeshiva all—when you ask them a question, they’ll send you to a decisor. I know; I was in Bnei Brak. When you ask a rosh yeshiva a question, he tells you, go to a decisor, I’m not a decisor, go to a decisor.

[Speaker D] Isn’t that also true in non-Bnei-Brak yeshivot?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In non-Bnei-Brak yeshivot it exists less, by the way. In hesder yeshivot it’s becoming more blurred; this thing is disappearing more. There are many heads of hesder yeshivot who engage in halakhic ruling. It’s a very interesting phenomenon that I noticed. Rabbi Rabinovitch, all of them, many, many, who engage in halakhic ruling, use intuition, and it’s not only analyticity—it comes together. And when they give a lecture, the Bnei Brak people will look down on them, because they’re not really roshei yeshiva, so to speak, by Bnei Brak standards. Because their way of thinking is that of a plain, practical householder, because a decisor is a plain householder. A decisor is, by definition, a plain householder.

[Speaker B] I like that definition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, by definition. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman is a plain householder. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman is a plain householder.

[Speaker B] Even what he wrote on the Shev Shema'tata—is that plain-householder style?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes—no, what he wrote. It’s plain-householder style. Read his responsa. He’s not an analytic scholar in the… His general lecture is not the kind of general lecture you’d hear in Bnei Brak, even what he wrote on the Shema'tata. Even what he wrote on the Shema'tata is not the kind of general lecture you’d hear in Bnei Brak or in the yeshivot, not necessarily in Bnei Brak—in Hebron. It isn’t. A householder. I’m not saying that as disrespect; I think very highly of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, a genius, and he has terrifyingly good common sense. So to me, householder in this sense is a positive thing. But in Bnei Brak, no. Because when you decide, there’s something in it where you’re saying something ungrounded; it’s not analytic. You can’t ground a ruling analytically. It doesn’t work, because analytically I can ground all sides. That’s exactly the point.

[Speaker B] So there’s something—you can’t replace the basic premise.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So I’m saying—and I can prove all of them too from the Talmud, and if you’re clever enough in pilpul you can prove anything from anywhere. Meaning, but there’s some kind of instinct, a kind of sense of smell, that says this isn’t reasonable.

[Speaker E] The greatest presidents have batteries of advisors, accountants, lawyers, and in the end after he hears them all he says yes, this one—and before he starts he wants to hear this and this, and it works exactly like that, and only he’s right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Okay.

[Speaker E] So in any case, we’ll see that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In short, this has brought us, basically, to Brisker learning, which I’ll talk about next time. I’ll talk about Brisk and pilpul, and we still have one more time when I’ll talk about first-order halakhic ruling and second-order halakhic ruling.