Authority and Change in Halakha, Lesson 14

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

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[Speaker B] But the mechanism of the Meiri didn’t even need freezing; he simply said that this is the interpretation of what the Sages meant.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, I haven’t gotten to the Meiri yet. We’ll get to the Meiri, but I’m only saying here regarding women’s testimony that even if we say that I’ll reach the conclusion that I have no authority, it’s still very important to hold the discussion about the change itself. That’s not right—many times people use the lack of authority in order to avoid discussing the change.

[Speaker B] In practice, a religious court today—today, basically, a religious court won’t accept women as witnesses. Meaning, in order to prove that a woman is an agunah, they’ll accept women as witnesses?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the laws of an agunah—that’s in the Talmud, it’s well known.

[Speaker B] One—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One witness is believed in matters of prohibition, so a woman is also believed—even her mother, even a relative of hers, a female relative, whatever you want.

[Speaker B] And in tort law now, a religious court won’t—

[Speaker D] Use them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In tort law, again, that’s monetary law. Again, in monetary law it’s easier.

[Speaker B] In—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In monetary law you can declare property ownerless, and then under at least certain circumstances, the community can decide that in monetary cases it accepts upon itself—”I accept this for myself”—it accepts the testimony of disqualified witnesses. The problem is in criminal law, or in places where a woman comes to testify about murder or to testify about Sabbath desecration.

[Speaker B] Right now that’s not interesting; right now it doesn’t interfere in the current practical reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] True, but on the principled level?

[Speaker B] There’s no need to use freezing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it doesn’t interfere. But if it did interfere, there would be a freezing mechanism. If we now had the ability—if we were given the authority—to run all affairs of the state, and there were no others pulling our chestnuts out of the fire, what would we do? We can’t judge capital cases, we can’t judge anything on the criminal plane. We judge monetary cases, and even that only in matters that are common and involve financial loss, which also doesn’t cover everything, and that’s about it.

[Speaker B] So basically the whole Torah legal procedure is crooked, practically speaking, because the prior warning that’s required and all the inquiries and examinations—those things aren’t…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but we spoke about the law of the king, which in the end moves over to extra-legal punishment, even in a religious court.

[Speaker B] Can the law of the king make up for the lack regarding women?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right, exactly.

[Speaker B] I mean, I’m saying, freezing in practice doesn’t really need anything. The law of the king is currently more necessary than freezing.

[Speaker D] No, what do you mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the law of the king won’t accept women’s testimony in a case being heard by a religious court. A religious court sits to judge someone who desecrated the Sabbath—then the law of the king won’t force the religious court to accept women as witnesses. That’s a law carried out within the framework of halakhic law. The law of the king, when it judges that woman for the fact that she murdered—say, for example, in a murder case—then perhaps yes, it will accept testimony, not from a woman but from a man, no matter, it will accept a woman’s testimony and execute the murderer. It can do that, that’s clear. So the claim is that in fact it’s important to have the discussion about change even if in the end we reach the conclusion that we have no authority. Therefore this is an important point, because many times people stop this discussion before it even begins: what difference does it make, we have no authority, who are we to discuss this, and it’s irrelevant. Now I want to look at the same thing from a different angle. I’ll bring a parable for this that I heard from a friend—not necessarily a religious one. We once spoke about various matters of this sort, and he said—he gave me the following parable. I assume some of you have heard it from me; Shmuel, I know you heard it in the lecture on swimsuits. I was surprised to hear from you that you hadn’t heard it here, because I was sure I’d said it many times already.

[Speaker B] My memory isn’t great.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, okay. In any case, it’s a group of people walking through the desert in swimsuits. And for generations their ancestors also walked that way, and they have a tradition in hand to walk through the desert in swimsuits. At some point they reach a cold region, and the desert starts to end for them. Forty years have passed; they’ve arrived in a snowy land.

[Speaker D] What do they do?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So here one group among these people gets up: friends, until now it was fine, from now on I’m cold. I’m putting on a parka. So—

[Speaker D] Opposing them arise—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The conservatives.

[Speaker C] The ones committed to tradition—what do you mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The tradition of our ancestors is to walk in swimsuits. And they’ll say: right, but we’re cold. So which of these two is the conservative, and which is the innovator? Here the answer is pretty simple. Here those who put on parkas are the innovators, and those who want to keep walking in swimsuits are the conservatives. But this picture isn’t so simple. Because some of those who want to switch to a parka can come and give a different answer as to why they are switching, why they want to switch—not because, not only because it’s cold, but to say that our ancestors didn’t tell us to walk in swimsuits; they told us to wear clothing appropriate to the weather. It just happened that the weather was hot, so the clothing appropriate to the weather in their time was a swimsuit. But now that it’s cold, then to wear clothing appropriate to the weather means wearing a parka. Now, when people make that claim, and in response others say, what are you talking about, we need to keep walking in swimsuits as the tradition of our ancestors—it doesn’t exactly reverse, but it changes. In other words, the question of who is the conservative here and who is the innovator, who is the reformer, yes?—it’s not clear. On the face of it, both are conservatives. The question—the dispute—is over what they are conserving. Is the principle we are conserving that one must wear a swimsuit in every situation—that’s the claim of the conservatives—or is the principle we are conserving—and again conserving with devotion, we are great conservatives—that one must wear clothing appropriate to the weather?

[Speaker C] But the very fact that they’re willing to give an interpretation to the swimsuit story—that’s all interpretation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? All of that is interpretation.

[Speaker C] No, but to come and say that this was the intention behind the swimsuits—that itself is the innovation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is that innovation?

[Speaker C] Because for years and years they’ve been walking in swimsuits and you never asked why, really.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They said you need to because it was hot.

[Speaker C] Fine, but the one who says—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s an important point. The one who says we need to keep walking in swimsuits is also giving an interpretation. Because if I’m right that the principle is that one must wear clothing appropriate to the weather, then you are a transgressor. When you keep walking in a swimsuit even though it’s cold, you are a transgressor, if I’m right. Right? So you are claiming that my interpretation is incorrect, and apparently there is another interpretation. You’re not offering it, never mind—but then in effect you too are assuming some interpretation. Every decision assumes some interpretation. This is one of the great failures in these discussions about changes in Jewish law. Some people say: you are proposing an interpretation, so the burden of proof is on you. And you’re not proposing an interpretation? The fact that you say we shouldn’t change conceals behind it an interpretation in the opposite direction. I propose a sensible interpretation; you claim maybe there is another interpretation and don’t offer it at all. So what? Is that more sensible? There’s no decision without interpretation, because you can’t interpret a rule without having—this was once Wittgenstein, I think. Wittgenstein has some passage in Philosophical Investigations where he talks about following a rule, late Wittgenstein. Following a rule. So he says, yes, those psychometric test completions: one, two, three, four, five, dot dot dot—what comes next? Six. Six, right? And someone says, what are you talking about?

[Speaker D] Negative seven to the one-third, or pi, yes, a function—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] i plus one, whatever you want, in short, all kinds of imaginary numbers. Why? Because you can always fit a function such that when n equals one it gives one, n equals two it gives two, three, four, five, and then minus pi. No problem, I can construct such functions; it’s not hard to construct them. So who said the right answer is six? That’s a question of interpretation. They give you some examples, and in order to continue that example it seems self-evident to you. But it isn’t self-evident; you are assuming a rule. Very often you don’t even know how to write the function explicitly for me. And then here’s a nice example I once saw in Saul Kripke, I think. Three, five, seven, dot dot dot. Eleven. Why?

[Speaker D] Because they’re primes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be nine, right? Nine is odd. But eleven is prime. So who’s right? Nobody is right; it’s a question of interpretation. In other words, behind it—when you want to continue some series, like walking in a swimsuit, it’s really the same idea—when you continue some series, even if you continue it in what seems to you a natural way, you’ve made an interpretation. Maybe you weren’t aware of it, but you’ve always made an interpretation. And sometimes you may not be aware of the interpretation and not know what interpretive rule you acted on, but in fact you acted. But I’m saying that assuming there is some rationale behind this, then if that rationale does not now obtain, if you keep walking in a swimsuit you are a transgressor. Because if the truth is that one must wear clothing appropriate to the weather, then whoever continues to walk in a swimsuit when it’s cold is a transgressor. By what authority does he do that? Because he is assuming some kind of interpretation. Fine—so he too is assuming an interpretation, and I too am assuming an interpretation. But true, it’s some kind of—let’s call it—naivete. But in the end there is some natural feeling for what counts as the natural continuation and what is a trick, what is something that requires some interpretation. Wittgenstein makes a whole big dish out of this, yes—he basically argues that all our rules are built in such a way that this is the natural way we continue them, and there’s no point in reasoning it out and explaining it; it’s just like that. And you can try to understand him; it doesn’t matter. In any case, the claim is that in the second dispute I described, between those who want to switch to a parka because they interpret differently the rule we received from our ancestors, and those who want to continue with a swimsuit, that is a dispute between two conservative camps. Both of them, both of them are conservative. Only one is what I’ll call a plain conservative, and one is a midrashic conservative. A plain conservative, just so we can refer to it, is a conservative who takes the plain meaning. They said to wear a swimsuit, so I continue with a swimsuit. I don’t make midrashim, no, I don’t interpret—I call it midrash, never mind—some type of interpretation of the rule we received. The midrashic conservative is also a conservative, but what is he conserving? He is conserving the rule after it has undergone some midrashic process. That is, he gives it an interpretation, and now he genuinely and sincerely conserves it, because he truly thinks this is what his ancestors did and this is what they asked of him. Again, I’m not belittling this and not claiming—there’s a certain tendency we have, a kind of criminal mindset. In other words, somehow you ended up concluding that when it’s cold you wear a parka, which is very convenient, right? So that interpretation looks biased to us. In other words, they are more straightforward; they are willing to pay a price, to walk around in a swimsuit despite the cold. You are doing what’s convenient. Leave aside the criminal mindset for a moment. On the logical level, both can be right. The question is who is right on the level of the correct interpretation. This is the instinct of “too good to be kosher,” so to speak. If it’s convenient, it can’t be right. I don’t agree with that. Something convenient can be right. I agree that one should treat with caution interpretations that produce a convenient result. Look carefully to see whether you’re doing it honestly or whether you are in fact subordinating your interpretation to what you want. I agree. But after I’ve done the checks I found it proper to do, in the end there are two interpretations here and we need to decide which of them is correct.

[Speaker C] And in the dispute between these two conservatives—and this is the thesis—what, who would actually be the liberal? What would the liberal say here?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The liberal isn’t even in the arena here. Liberalism is a worldview; it’s not a question of change. I’m talking about an attitude toward changes. A liberal doesn’t love changes; in a liberal society the liberal won’t make any change. He will want to preserve the situation as it is. Liberalism is a description of a state. I’m talking about a process, not a state. But how do I change states? I can change from liberalism to anti-liberalism or vice versa. The mechanism of change—the question is whether I am a conservative with respect to my liberalism, or a midrashic conservative with respect to my liberalism, or various things of that sort. Okay? This is a different axis of discussion.

[Speaker B] How does this connect to instituting a lamentation prayer on the Sabbath? What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How does it connect? I’ll get there, I’ll get there in just a moment. So the claim, basically, is that there is a kind of conservatism whose external conduct looks very similar to reformism or innovation, let’s call it that. Why? Because after all, both switch to a parka. But it depends very much on the question of what your reasoning is. To decide whether you are conservative or not, it’s not enough to look at what you do. I also need to see why you do what you do. If what you do is anchored in interpretation or in midrash, what I called it earlier, then you are a conservative—but a midrashic conservative and not a plain conservative. If you do it because you don’t feel like it, because you’re cold and that’s all, then you are a heretic. You’re not a plain conservative or a midrashic conservative; you don’t accept the system at all. That’s something else. So the heretic and the midrashic conservative can do exactly the same thing phenomenologically—it looks similar—but their reasons are different. The midrashic conservative is committed to the system; he interprets it because he wants to show that he is indeed keeping the laws, he is committed to the laws. The heretic is not committed. By the way, originally I used this whole parable in order to try to define who a reformer is. And my claim was that none of these three figures is a reformer. And the one who says, I continue walking in a swimsuit—that’s what we’ll call the Haredi, fine, in the accepted sociological division. The one who says, I’m putting on a parka—that’s the modern religious person, okay? Someone prepared to update the values or to interpret them. But he is still committed to the values; he will interpret the topics when he tells us—that is, he is going with new values. He won’t say, okay, these are different values, period. Someone who says, with all due respect to the Sages, but this is immoral and therefore I do not listen to them—that’s a heretic. He isn’t interpreting the Sages; he doesn’t accept the Sages or the Torah—it doesn’t matter at the moment whether it’s the Sages or the Torah—he simply doesn’t accept the system. He says: as far as I’m concerned, whatever is immoral I won’t do. I’m committed to morality, not to Jewish law.

[Speaker C] And if he says, there’s no doubt that today the Sages would have—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Done it—then that may be a kind of interpretation. It could be. It needs checking. That may already be a kind of interpretation. But I’m talking at the moment about someone who says, no, this isn’t—

[Speaker C] I don’t think the Reform say no; the Reform say if they were—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here today, they would do it. They say much more than that, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Therefore I say that in my view, in sociological language, let’s call him a heretic. He simply doesn’t accept the system. He doesn’t need to present explanations of how he aligns with the laws of the system. So for the moment we’ve defined the plain conservative, the Haredi, yes? The midrashic conservative is the modern religious person, and the heretic. Where does the reformer fit into all this? Often people map him onto the heretic, with a fair degree of justice. But let’s say the reformer as a typical figure—not the Reform people we actually meet—perhaps one more introduction. When we talk about sociological classification, you usually won’t succeed in grounding it in a logical classification. Meaning, there is no set of criteria that defines the person we sociologically call Reform. Therefore, when I classify among reformer, midrashic conservative, plain conservative, and heretic, this is a classification of arguments, not of people. I classify arguments. People—there are many Reform people who use arguments of midrashic conservatism. There are Orthodox people who use the non-arguments of heretics. There are all kinds. People are complicated. You can’t classify people—or it’s very hard to classify people. That’s a sociological classification. I’m talking about a classification of arguments, okay? So that will be clear. Usually there is, of course, some connection.

[Speaker B] Someone who uses an argument—there’s simply correlation, there’s correlation, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying: it’s more convenient, more convenient to discuss arguments, and it’s also more correct to do that. Because if a Reform person comes and raises an argument of midrashic conservatism, I can’t dismiss it because he’s Reform. So what if he’s Reform? The argument is substantive. Check whether that argument is correct, works or doesn’t work. Why should I care that he’s Reform? Very often people use this in both directions. On the one hand they mix the substantive classification with the sociological one, and on the other hand they use the sociological classification to decide substantive questions. Ah, that’s Reform. I told you about—there was someone in Bnei Brak when I started wondering about the new tekhelet. So truly, there are people there, my friends in Bnei Brak. None of them wears tekhelet, and they are strict about every little dangling string of a rabbinic stringency. And here you have a positive Torah commandment; at the very least it’s a doubt—say you’re not completely convinced, surely you didn’t even check. But if you did check, let’s say you were in doubt. Still, it’s a Torah-level doubt. And even with the opinions that are lenient in cases of doubt regarding a positive commandment—we once discussed that, never mind—it’s obvious that this is something they would be strict about in another context. So I asked several acquaintances there: what’s the explanation? They told me, go check with so-and-so, he checked with the halakhic decisors, the great rabbis of the generation—he checked. Fine. So I called the man—I knew him from before—I called the man and said to him: tell me, what’s going on with tekhelet? What do the rabbis say, the halakhic decisors? Why don’t people go with tekhelet? He said to me: it’s an invention of the Religious Zionists. That’s what he said. I said to him: okay, I agree, it’s an invention of the Religious Zionists—but substantively, are the Religious Zionists right or not? Forget whether it’s an invention of the Religious Zionists. Are they right? In their arguments. What do you say? Is this tekhelet or not tekhelet? What difference does it make who came up with the idea? The question is what you say about the idea. And what does he answer you? It’s an invention of the Religious Zionists. When you say “invention” there’s also the connotation that it has no substantive basis either, it’s not just about the source or context—but there were no good answers as to why. I tried to draw something out of him and pressed him. Some time ago someone sent to the website—someone sent—some Rabbi Shafran, some important halakhic decisor from Sadigura, I think, who once said that they don’t go with tekhelet because it is a fence against the innovators. Meaning, he said openly that in fact they should have gone with tekhelet, and they don’t do it because of other considerations. By the way, according to what I said earlier, that is outright freezing, really freezing. If you wanted an example earlier, this is a classic example of freezing. In my view, many of the halakhic decisors—those who bothered to get into the issue at all, I assume most didn’t—but those who did bother to get into the issue don’t do this except through a process of freezing. Although I don’t agree with him in this case, as I said earlier, it is a completely legitimate consideration. I don’t agree with it, but it is a completely legitimate consideration; one can do that. But afterward don’t tell me that you can’t make other changes, when you suspend a positive Torah commandment because of considerations of this kind of damage or that kind of damage—then you are absolutely doing freezing. And this when you tell me that today’s religious court has no authority to establish Holocaust Remembrance Day or Independence Day or Memorial Day, this whole business that we have no authority. And not to go with tekhelet—we do have authority for that? To establish a day you aren’t transgressing any prohibition; on the contrary, there are those who anchor it like Hanukkah and Purim, that there is a commandment to recite Hallel on a day when a miracle happened for him and so on, where you’re not even doing anything—it’s a fulfillment of a positive Torah commandment. But even if we say not, then you made another day like Frankfurt Purim, whatever—what’s the problem with that? This argument is simply ridiculous. Then to come and freeze a positive commandment from the Torah of tekhelet because of all kinds of such considerations—that’s really strange. I’m saying once again: I agree with the claim that today’s sages can freeze Jewish law because of their own considerations. I don’t agree with this consideration, but that’s the consideration they make. But it was interesting to see it. It was clear to me in advance that this was what stood behind things, but he put it on the table, meaning he said it. Okay, in any case, if we return to our matter, I continue with my classification of arguments just to complete the picture. So who is the reformer? The Reform argument, not the Reform person.

[Speaker C] By the way, in the middle there are the Conservatives.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, the Conservative in my opinion is like a midrashic conservative. The modern religious and the Conservative—there’s no difference between them in my opinion, not essentially; there are differences of degree. You can agree with this midrash and not agree with another midrash, but on the principled level you too are making midrashim—that’s what I mean. It doesn’t have to be that everyone thinks the same. The changes that are really made in the halakhic context in a systematic way—not all kinds of slapdash people who do all kinds of things like that, which exist in every group—I’m talking about the declared, distinct agenda. You can find halakhic sources there for each and every matter in the responsa of their Rabbinical Assembly or something like that. I once read it; they have collections of responsa, a volume of responsa that I once read. And they go a bit far—that is, they choose positions that appear in the Talmud even if, say, later decisors didn’t accept them or something like that—but on the principled level it’s completely within the legitimate range. That is, people aren’t accustomed to doing this, but one can; there is such an opinion in the Talmud. It wasn’t ruled that way in the Talmud; later decisors ruled differently—the Rif, Maimonides, fine, so what? They rule like Abaye and not like Rava, or like Rabbi Yose and not like Rav. When you read their responsa, the responsa are, in most cases, basically halakhic responsa. They stretch the boundaries of midrash, but they make a midrash that in my view is definitely legitimate.

[Speaker D] The Neologs in Budapest, who also turned to the Orthodox rabbis who recommended ritual slaughterers to them—they weren’t willing to take them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because the Neologs are almost entirely Orthodox. They’re not—they’re to the right of the Conservatives. In any case, the Conservatives aren’t on the map at all for me; that is midrashic conservatism. But with Reform, the feeling is still that this is something else. But it’s none of the three. So this is just a logic exercise, an interesting logic exercise. There are three types here; ostensibly that covers the whole map. What else could there be? There can be one who keeps the rule as it is, there can be one who keeps the rule according to an interpretation, there can be one who doesn’t keep the rule—what else could there be?

[Speaker E] But what is the Reform argument? Like, do they say that you can interpret however you want? Is that what—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m asking: is there room for another kind of argument? Because the feeling is that there is another kind of argument, that the Reform argument is something a bit different. They don’t do—I’ll say it again—this is not midrashic conservatism. They don’t make arguments like the Conservatives or the modern religious and so on—that wouldn’t be Reform. They also have such arguments, but they have other arguments too. There are arguments that say: look, with all due respect to the Sages, but—

[Speaker F] But that simply means there are considerations that are bigger than these considerations.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now that is the point. In other words, there are—and this is another lesson—that black-and-white thinking misleads us many times. I said there are three possibilities and I don’t see a fourth. I don’t see a fourth because it seemed obvious to me that either you obey the laws or you don’t obey the laws. What else could there be? Obey the laws through interpretation, no matter—but again, that’s not true. It may be that I obey the laws up to a certain point. There are different levels of commitment to the laws. Now the reformer—and this is the true description of the Reform figure, of the Reform argument—is indeed committed to tradition in general, except not at any price. So from the Orthodox perspective, again, that’s outside the pale. They’ll say he’s a heretic—that’s true, he really does deny the accepted Orthodox conception—but he’s not an atheist. It’s not someone who just doesn’t care. He says: listen, I would very much like to walk in a swimsuit, but this price of suffering from the cold to such a degree—for example, say moral principles for the sake of the question; it doesn’t matter, over there it’s only physical discomfort—but this price of suffering from the cold is not a price I’m willing to pay for preserving the rules. It’s not that I despise preserving the rules; I also see value in them, just not absolute value. That, I think, is the Reform figure. Okay, for our purposes, in terms of considerations of change, of course the last two figures are not important, but just in order to draw the map, it seems to me that this is the full map overall. And of course the boundaries are not sharp, as I said before, but that is more or less the full map. And perhaps one more word here about sociology, since I already mentioned it: they really are plain conservatives in that sense—this is an ethos that never existed at all. Among the Haredim, there is no such thing as a plain conservative. No such creature exists. The Haredi, in general, the typical Haredi, has built for himself some kind of ethos that he is a plain conservative. Not at all. It’s obvious that he is constantly interpreting Jewish law and keeping Jewish law according to his interpretation. I told you about my uncle who said that Abaye and Rava learned in Yiddish, because obviously they didn’t know how to learn otherwise. And he’s a Belzer Hasid, so he knows that’s not true. But he lives with the consciousness that it is, genuinely. He doesn’t really think Abaye and Rava learned in Yiddish, but it represents his ethos: that we look like Moses our teacher.

[Speaker D] Moses our teacher wore a shtreimel and tzitzit. When Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, during the last forty years of his life, was invited to the Council of Torah Sages—before there was Degel HaTorah and so on, when it was all under the control of Agudat Yisrael—they spoke there in Yiddish. And he didn’t know Yiddish, and still he was their equal in stature. And so for the meeting they came and brought Rabbi Ovadia Yosef because Rabbi Ovadia has powers of persuasion. No, they weren’t willing—Yiddish, they only spoke Yiddish.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One of the rumors is that it didn’t work regarding the question of… Anyway, that’s the remark, again, regarding sociology: there really is no plain conservatism. There are those who live in the ethos of plain conservatism, who tell themselves some story that they are living without changing a hair’s breadth from the path of their ancestors. They are changing all the time. Jewish law changes all the time, halakhic decisors change, Haredim change, everyone changes. Sometimes toward stringency, sometimes toward leniency, also toward leniency. But the basic ethos in which you live, truly—I’m not speaking about the essence—you really sometimes educate yourself and live into a situation in which you are only continuing the path of your ancestors. You don’t make interpretations and don’t get into that. You constantly do. And I brought the rule of “do not form factions,” that one may not establish two religious courts in one city. Today there is no city that has only one religious court. No one is like the Haredim in establishing a religious court for every group. Where is the stringency in “do not form factions”? I think it’s fine; I’m not saying it’s a halakhic problem. But it requires interpretation. It requires an interpretation that says that one city is not a geographic city but a city of an ethnic community—an ethnic city. In other words, just as the custom of Ashkenaz and the custom of Sepharad once were the custom of the place—and the history of this is very interesting, where it started there, the custom of the place—just as Rabbi Ovadia constantly says that this is the domain of its master, here one has to follow the Shulchan Arukh, this is the custom of the place here in the Land of Israel. So everyone has to follow the Shulchan Arukh. But no, nobody does that. Why don’t they do that? Because the custom of the place has become my ethnic custom. What does that mean? In the virtual world, a site is an internet site; it’s not a place in the world. And Jewish law anticipated that. Truly. Although it isn’t written anywhere, and it’s clear to me that this is what lies behind it. It is forbidden to establish two religious courts in one city. But if it is a religious court of Ashkenazim and a religious court of Hasidim and a religious court of Sephardim, then that isn’t one city; there are three cities here: a Sephardic city, an Ashkenazic city, and a Hasidic city. That’s all. Even in Jerusalem there was a religious court of the Perushim and a religious court of the Hasidim, yes, and a religious court of the Sephardim, and there were all kinds of religious courts in Jerusalem—I’m speaking now about the old Yishuv, before all the explosion and all those things. And it sounds as though this isn’t interpretation. It’s a super far-reaching interpretation. If you had said this to someone in the period when custom was the custom of the place, he would have stoned you for saying such a thing. And everyone does it without batting an eyelid.

[Speaker B] But even if there are two Ashkenazic synagogues one next to the other, they can say—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then you have to start discussing it. Here, once the fence has been breached, you know—then now we’re young people up to age thirty, so that’s our city. Our city is the city of young people up to age thirty. And their city is the city of Carlebach—they like Carlebach melodies, so they do it Carlebach-style. By the way, I’m not joking. I think there’s something very real here. It happens naturally; no one even wrote it, as far as I’ve seen. But it’s really true. Let each person check himself and see.

[Speaker B] Why did that change? Why is this something that wasn’t there before? Why did it change? Why wasn’t it there before?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Apparently in the past the diversity wasn’t like this. People lived in the same place all the time. There wasn’t this dynamism. The custom everyone followed was the same custom from time immemorial, what their ancestors did and what their ancestors’ ancestors did. Everyone really practiced the same way. In our village this is how it’s done. I once told about this article by Friedman, this Haredi scholar, the sociologist from Bar-Ilan, who wrote about the measurements of the Hazon Ish and the measurements of Rabbi Chaim Naeh. Why were the measurements of the Hazon Ish absorbed well in Bnei Brak but not in Jerusalem? And his claim was a very interesting one. His claim was that Bnei Brak is a city of immigrants. It was founded in the 1920s by immigrants who came from all kinds of places. Refugees. They generally came also without family; after the Holocaust there were no families left anyway. Everyone brought a different custom, if he even remembered his customs. It wasn’t that one group came with a cohesive custom. What happens in such a situation? Whoever prevails is whoever is sufficiently charismatic, whoever is considered a leadership figure in the halakhic sense. His custom takes over, and then it becomes the custom of the place. That is the Hazon Ish.

[Speaker D] Ponevezh Yeshiva is not in Ponevezh, and Mir Yeshiva isn’t in the town of Mir either, and Gur Hasidim don’t live in the town of Gur.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s true in Jerusalem as well. It’s true in Jerusalem too. But in Jerusalem it’s a veteran community. Jews have lived there for many years. It expanded—it doesn’t matter, we know that Ramot isn’t exactly Jerusalem. But old Jerusalem, the older neighborhoods of Jerusalem, are communities that are very veteran. They have the customs of their parents, and no one is going to sell them the idea that their parents didn’t fulfill their obligation on Passover when they ate the Hazon Ish measurement of matzah or when they drank the wine. Because they have a clear parental custom, and no one is going to tell them stories. And in my opinion this analysis is completely correct, and it explains exactly the difference from what existed in the past. The world today is so dynamic that in every place you find people from all backgrounds, from all places; there is no custom of the place anymore. All that remains to you is the custom that you carry with you from somewhere else. You have no other point of reference. You can’t relate to the place, because what is the place? This place is a mixed multitude of many things. So you relate to your source. You moved from the axis of space to the axis of time. You relate to your sources on the axis of time. And now “do not form factions” on the axis of time. You may not establish two religious courts over one city, where city is of course one time-axis, not one spatial place. In other words, my father and I cannot act differently. Even though in the period when there was a custom of the place, my father and I could act differently. My father lived here and I lived here, so we would act differently—and that was his local custom and this was my local custom. Even though the Talmud in “in a place where they were accustomed” says “do not forsake your mother’s Torah,” which does mean the parents’ custom—why? Because clearly in the past the place was also the parents’ custom. The parents lived in the same place and you also lived in the same place, and usually that’s how it was. The sons of Beishan there, who wanted to go out to Tyre before the Sabbath—the issue there is place. It’s the custom of a place; it’s not the custom of parents. But in a static world, usually the place was also the parents, meaning it was the same thing. Okay, I’ve digressed a bit. I’m returning to the Meiri. And the Meiri, ultimately, in short, what he argues is the following claim. I’ll perhaps read you one source as an example, one of many. There are dozens and dozens of places in the Meiri, if not more than that. “It follows that even idol worshippers who are not bound by the ways of religion—it is forbidden to rob them. If a Jew has been sold to him, it is forbidden to leave him in his hands without redemption, and likewise it is forbidden to withhold…” And not only that—even one who finds his lost object is not obligated to return it, because finding is a kind of acquisition and returning it is an act of piety. And this piety—positive commandment and prohibition from the Torah? Yes, but this is piety in the moral sense apparently, but one is not obligated to return it to them. “And we are not bound to acts of piety toward one who has no religion. And similarly regarding his error: if he erred on his own”—if a seller sold to me and made an error in the amount, one doesn’t need to return the mistake if he is a gentile—“when it did not come through one’s trickery or one’s effort, there is no obligation to return it.” By the way, it appears from the Meiri that if I caused it by trickery, then no—and that’s interesting—even with those gentiles. “And in any case, if it became known to him, one must in any event return it. And likewise even regarding a lost object, whenever withholding it would involve a desecration of God’s name, one returns it.” If there is desecration of God’s name, that’s something else. But now he says the following sentence: “However, anyone among the nations who is bound by the ways of religion and worships God in some manner, even though their faith is far from ours, they are not included in this. Rather, for these matters they are like a full Jew, both regarding a lost object and regarding an error and regarding all other matters, with no distinction whatsoever.” There are dozens of places where the Meiri repeats this statement: that gentiles who are bound by the norms of the nations—that’s his definition—there is no difference whatsoever between our treatment of them and that of a full Jew. No difference whatsoever. Now, Yaakov Katz has an article—

[Speaker C] This is a certain kind of stringency. That is, you come and say that although as a Jew you can exempt yourself from all sorts of obligations you have toward a Jew, and toward the gentile you don’t need to do that—but he comes and says no, impose on yourself also the obligations you have toward a Jew.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and it’s not only from the side of exemption from obligations; you must also show concern for them. He claims this as halakhic simplicity. Wait, I’ll get to that. One can see in many places—I don’t have time now for all of this—but the claim is as follows. Usually it is accepted to understand the Meiri—I’ll say this briefly because it would take me a very long time—usually it is accepted to understand the Meiri as claiming that Christians are not idol worshippers. Therefore—he lived in a Christian environment in Provence—therefore Christians are not idol worshippers, and therefore the prohibitions and obligations between man and his fellow do not apply to idol worshippers, but they do apply to gentiles who are not idol worshippers. First, that itself is a dispute among the medieval authorities. Second, the Meiri himself in several places says—or rather does not say, excuse me, remains silent—regarding laws that concern Christian idolatry. For example, Yaakov Katz himself, who is the one making this claim about the Meiri, asks why he does not permit their ritual objects—the Christians’ ritual objects. It is not written anywhere in the Meiri that the ritual objects of Christians are permitted. He never says that anywhere. So he gets into all kinds of explanations of context: maybe he didn’t dare go all the way with his innovation, all kinds of things of that sort.

[Speaker B] According to this Meiri, that it is forbidden to enter a church—I saw a responsum… what? I saw a responsum according to this Meiri that one may enter a church.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I claim that is incorrect. It is forbidden to enter even according to the Meiri. We’ll soon see. Another difficulty is Maimonides, because Maimonides himself explicitly says that they are idolatry. Now the Meiri, as is known, always cites Maimonides. Does he disagree with him? He cites Maimonides and says, and I disagree with him. But here, nothing. He treats it as something simple and completely ignores explicit statements Maimonides made on this issue. Also strange. It doesn’t sound reasonable. In my opinion, that is not what is written in the Meiri. What is written in the Meiri is that Christians are idol worshippers. Simple explanation. Therefore it is obvious that their ritual objects are forbidden, and entry to a church—everything remains as it was. Except what? They are enlightened idol worshippers. They are enlightened idol worshippers, and therefore the obligations between man and his fellow also apply to them. That is the Meiri’s innovation. Therefore he did not permit their ritual objects, because he does not say they are not idol worshippers. What did he say?

[Speaker D] They are bound by the norms of the nations, yes—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They are bounded by the norms of the nations—what does that mean? It means they behave in a moral way. The great novelty is that in the past, idol worshippers were also inferior on the human, moral level. Now he looks around him and says, wait a second, but around me there are good people, less good people, better people, just like among Jews, just like in any group. So if that’s the case, there is no justification for treating them differently from the way I treat Jews. Prohibitions relating to idolatry remain in place; he did not touch those. But all prohibitions in the interpersonal realm are void, or all interpersonal obligations apply with regard to them. I’ll give you an example that is a leniency and not a stringency—though you can decide whether to see it as a leniency or a stringency. Meiri argues that one must desecrate the Sabbath through a Torah-level prohibition in order to save their lives, against the Talmud. So what is he saying that is forbidden? It’s not even a stringency; he permits desecrating the Sabbath where the Talmud forbids it. Not necessarily a stringency. In other words, you see that he takes this all the way. Meiri, in the eighth chapter of Yoma. And the point is, essentially—and this is in the ways

[Speaker B] Peace of this kind?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, it seems clear that this is simply an interpretation. The statements of the Sages—or of the Torah, or of the Sages—were said only about the non-Jews of old, who were not bounded by the norms of religion. The non-Jews of our day are simply not the non-Jews of old; they are people with a relation to Judaism—that is exactly Meiri’s description. And this has various implications. I’m shortening things here because I want to finish this. What does this actually mean? It means that when you make an interpretive argument of this kind—which is really midrashic conservatism, right?—when you make an interpretive argument of this kind, you are essentially doing midrash on what the Sages said, and you continue to preserve what the Sages said, but through the interpretation that you have tilted it toward. That means that you have not really made a halakhic ruling change. You have not made a halakhic ruling change. On the contrary, the rule is that one should wear clothing suitable for the weather, not that one should walk around in a bathing suit. So all of Maimonides’ discussions about whether one needs to make a change or not make a change are irrelevant, because I am not making a change in Jewish law. On the contrary: whoever does not do what I am saying is changing Jewish law. Someone who goes around in a bathing suit where it’s cold is a transgressor, because the rule is to wear clothing suitable for the weather. Therefore the question of authority does not trouble Meiri; therefore the question of authority does not trouble Meiri. Meiri argues that if in his time the reality is different, then this is not called changing Jewish law; it is called preserving the ancient Jewish law as it is, only of course according to the correct interpretation. This is midrashic conservatism and not simplistic conservatism, but it is conservatism. Making changes is Reform. Now if you do it with authority, in the Sanhedrin, there is no problem—you are allowed to be Reform, meaning to make a change, because you have authority. To make changes without authority is problematic. But here Meiri says: I am not entering the category of changes at all; I am not making a change. I am simply preserving the law, and therefore I am telling you what the law says. And that is the essence of Torah-level change. I said that today I would deal with Torah-level change; next time with rabbinic change, because with rabbinic changes this is not enough. We saw in Maimonides that even if the reason for which they instituted the enactment has lapsed, the enactment does not lapse until another court comes and permits it. And therefore there, such a thing would be considered a change. In Torah law, such a thing would not be considered a change, because in Torah law I am not disagreeing at all with those who came before me; I am not claiming that they were wrong, and I am also not uprooting anything. I am simply saying: this is what must be done. I am carrying out their instruction; I am just carrying out their instruction. Whoever does not do this is a transgressor. If I return to lice, lice are of course an even more extreme case, because there it is a factual mistake. That is, assuming that today the Talmud says that it is permitted to kill a louse because a louse is generated from putrefaction, not from male and female, but today we understand that this is not so. A louse reproduces like other living creatures. So what does that mean? Is it permitted to kill a louse? True, here this is a stringency-change, and despite the fact that it is a stringency-change, many halakhic decisors say that it is permitted to kill a louse on the Sabbath even today, because that is what the Sages said. Some explain this on the grounds that the Sages could not err even on factual-scientific matters, and others explain it in terms of authority regarding halakhic changes. But as we have now seen, I think such a thing is not a change. It is not a change, but not exactly as in Meiri’s case. Meiri did not claim that the Sages erred; Meiri claimed that the command of the Sages is correctly applied in his time the way he says, and not the way the Sages said. Here the claim is that they made a mistake. But the point is that I am not disputing their judgment; I am simply saying that the data before them when they made the decision were incorrect data.

[Speaker B] There is no enactment that one may not kill a louse; it is permitted to kill a louse on the Sabbath. There is no enactment that it is permitted to kill a louse on the Sabbath.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, obviously. I said this is a stringency, not a leniency.

[Speaker B] No, and this too was not done in the form of an enactment; they simply wrote that it is permitted.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And now you are saying that it is forbidden. I am saying I would stone someone who kills a louse on the Sabbath, if you want a practical implication as a stringency, or define him as a Sabbath desecrator with all the consequences, even today. Okay? So there are also stringency implications to this matter. And I claim that it really is forbidden, and it is forbidden. You do not need a religious court for this, and you do not need anything. And by the way, here even in rabbinic law you do not need a court greater in wisdom and number, and you do not need a court at all. Rather, if it is clear that from the outset it was based on a mistake—and assuming that in the end this is clear to us as well—then it is like any contract, like any determination: the moment it was established on the basis of an error, it is void. Like any other exercise of judgment. And so here again, this is indeed called a halakhic ruling change, but the change is not a normative change; it is a change in the basis, in the factual infrastructure on which the normative determination was made. And if I have become convinced that factually they erred—after all, it is obvious that the Sages erred quite a bit on the factual plane; it is well known that there are scientific things that today we know, and there are many of them—then there is no need to make an issue of it at all. So if that is the case, then what is the problem? Meaning, I am not making a change, and therefore it really is possible. And on the Torah level—and this is an important point, so I am concluding—on the Torah level, if I reached the conclusion that I have a midrashic interpretation, then the question of authority does not arise at all, because I am not making a change at all. On the rabbinic level it will be different, and I will touch on that next time. All right? Goodbye.