Doubt and Probability—In Halakha, Thought, and More Generally—Lecture 14

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re in the topic of doubt and probability. We started with the Talmudic text in tractate Chullin. We saw that the Talmudic text asks where we learn the rule of majority from. “From where are these words derived, that the rabbis said, ‘go after the majority’?” Right? Where do we know that we follow the majority? The Talmudic text says: “Follow the majority.” The Talmudic text then asks: from “follow the majority” we learn a majority that is present before us, like the majority of stores or in the case of judges, but a majority of a minor boy and a minor girl, a majority that is not present before us like a minor boy and a minor girl—where do we know that from? So you see here in the Talmudic text that the discussion from here onward, the whole discussion in the passage, deals only with a majority that is not present before us. A majority that is present before us is learned from “follow the majority,” where the example brought for a majority present before us is a piece of meat in a city with ten stores, nine kosher and one non-kosher, so fundamentally you can eat that piece because we assume it belongs to the majority group. And that is called a majority present before us, and it is learned from the majority in a religious court. Meaning that the majority in a religious court is also called a majority present before us. And even though we have a source for a majority present before us, the Talmudic text says: but a majority that is not present before us—we still need to search for a source. And what is a majority not present before us? So the Talmudic text brings the case of a minor boy and a minor girl. We said that if a minor boy has to perform levirate marriage with a minor girl, then we raise them together, let them live together until they grow up, and then we check. If she turns out to be an aylonit, then in fact we separate them because there is the prohibition of a brother’s wife. And if she is not an aylonit, then they continue. How can it be that we allow them to live together when there is a possibility that she is an aylonit and won’t be able to bear children, and then what? Then in fact he married his brother’s wife, which is a forbidden sexual relationship. Meaning, if it’s not in the context of levirate marriage, then there’s a prohibition of forbidden relations here. So the answer is because we follow the majority, and most women in the world, and most men, are not ayloniyot, they are not eunuchs. Therefore we can let them live together because we follow the majority. And that is an example of a majority not present before us, which cannot be learned from the verse “follow the majority.” So first, you see that a majority not present before us is different from a majority present before us. Second, it also apparently seems to be weaker, because if it were stronger than a majority present before us, then once we follow a majority present before us, all the more so we should follow a majority not present before us—we wouldn’t need another source. If we need another source, that means that even though we know we follow a majority present before us, the question whether we follow a majority not present before us remains open. I mentioned that Rabbi Shimon Shkop says that Maimonides’ view is that a majority not present before us is specifically the stronger one. Then you have to understand how that fits with the Talmudic text, but that is Maimonides’ view.

[Speaker B] Maybe you can understand the Talmudic text as searching for a verse for a majority present before us, and going like Shimon Shkop, that a majority not present before us is more obvious, and therefore it says: I don’t need a verse, I have reasoning, I don’t need to start looking for a verse. It doesn’t say it exactly, but it’s in some kind of position where you can interpret it that their not using a verse is not because they think the verse is insufficient, but because they don’t need the verse.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So Rashi actually does write that, but in the Talmudic text itself it’s difficult. I think I brought Rashi, but in the Talmudic text itself it’s difficult, because in the end the Talmudic text just remains with the fact that we have no source, and that’s it. It doesn’t go back to the question: okay, so why should we follow a majority not present before us? In a second I’ll come back to that—I said this last time, I’m just reviewing it in summary. So we saw that there is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim): Maimonides’ position is that a majority not present before us is the stronger one, and then the question really arises: so why not learn it by an a fortiori argument from a majority present before us? Because the Talmudic text says that it needs a separate source. So I said: maybe the Talmudic conclusion is exactly that, what Ezra just suggested. Maybe that is exactly the Talmudic conclusion. Right, in the end we didn’t find a source, and then in effect we say: yes, so apparently it’s learned from “follow the majority” by an a fortiori argument or something like that. Rashi gives that as one of the possibilities he mentions. I pointed out that when the Talmudic text asks where we have the source from, it’s not asking whether we follow the majority. The Talmudic text says: “From where are these words derived, that the rabbis said…” Meaning, it is obvious that we follow the majority; we’re just looking conceptually for the source of that. Therefore, once we didn’t find a source—fine. That’s not a difficulty, because we know that we follow the majority. So Rashi says, fine, maybe it’s a halakha l’Moshe miSinai, or maybe it is learned from that same verse of “follow the majority,” and Rashi’s second explanation indeed fits Maimonides: that this too is learned from the verse “follow the majority.” Apparently a majority present before us is not stronger than a majority not present before us. Or weaker—same point—but not stronger. And therefore a majority not present before us can also be learned from the same verse. So according to the Talmudic conclusion, it may be that Maimonides works out. I’ll say again: in the Talmudic text itself this is a bit difficult, because the Talmudic text doesn’t shed any light on it. It remains with the fact that there is no source, and it doesn’t go back and say: okay, so why nevertheless do we follow a majority not present before us? And say: fine, that too is learned from “follow the majority.” No, it doesn’t say that. It just falls silent. Rashi kind of fills in the gap for us there. Fine, so that’s a general remark. After that I talked about the definition of a majority present before us and a majority not present before us. What exactly is the definition? What’s the difference between them? And then I discussed the weakness and strength of each one, in order to explain Maimonides’ position and the position of the other medieval authorities. So briefly, I would say this: a majority present before us is like the majority of stores. It’s a situation where the whole group is before us—present before us. When I said “before us,” I don’t mean that we literally see it. I mean that we have direct information about all the members of the group—in this case, all the stores. We have direct information. And because of that, when a piece of meat separated from one of the stores, we assume it came from the majority group, meaning from the kosher stores. But we have complete information about all the stores, and we know that nine are kosher and one is non-kosher. That is a majority present before us. A majority not present before us is based on generalization from a sample. For example, when we say that most women are not ayloniyot. That’s the example the Talmudic text gives for a majority not present before us. Most women are not ayloniyot—how do you know that? Do you know all the women in the world? You don’t have information about all the women in the world. You have information about some women you know, whom you met, who are in your environment. A hundred women, I don’t know how many. How can you say that among the hundred women you know, really ninety are not ayloniyot and ten are? How do you know that’s a representative sample? Meaning, how do you know that this is also the distribution among all the women in the world? You are generalizing on the basis of a sample, and of course you assume that the sample you encountered is really a representative sample. We’ll still talk quite a bit about failures that come from that assumption—that the sample is representative. But that is basically the assumption. So in fact a majority not present before us is majority when we look at the question: what is the group we are talking about? The group we are talking about is the group of all the women in the world. They are not before us—that’s why it’s “not present before us,” not because they are not physically here; the stores also aren’t physically here. I’m not seeing all the stores in front of my eyes. The difference is in the question: where do I get the information about the complete group, about the distribution in the complete group? In the case of the stores, I have direct information; I know all ten stores, I know nine of them are kosher and one is non-kosher. So my information is complete. So why is there any doubt at all? Because a piece of meat separated from one of the stores, and I don’t know which one. But all the stores from which it could have come are known to me. So I have complete information about the whole group, and I also know the distribution—that nine are kosher and one is non-kosher. That is a majority present before us. In the case of women, the direct information I have is about the hundred women I know. That is the direct information I have. But the general group I am talking about is the group of all the women in the world. About the group of all the women in the world, I have no direct information. I have no idea how many of them are ayloniyot and how many are not. Rather, what do I do? I assume that the hundred women I know are not some special case. It’s a representative sample. In the whole world too, the distribution will be ninety-ten. So in effect I’m making a generalization on the basis of a sample. I know the sample and I generalize from it, and that’s how I create information about the majority group. That’s stage one. Stage two is: fine, now that I have information about the whole group, about all the women in the world—that ninety percent are not ayloniyot and ten percent are ayloniyot—now when I ask a question about a particular woman, I say: apparently she belongs to the majority group. Why? Once I already have the information about the whole group, then it’s similar to a majority present before us. Once I have the information, fine, then that’s the information. But how do I have the information? That’s where the difference lies. In a majority present before us I have it directly; I simply know the stores. In the case of women, it’s a generalization based on a sample. It’s not direct information. That’s the difference. But from another angle, you can see the difference not only as the question of where the information about the general group comes from, but also as the relation of this particular woman, or whatever example I am discussing, to the group about which I have the information. Because in the case of the stores, it is clear that the piece of meat came from one of the ten stores. Meaning, it is part of the group about which I have full information; I just don’t know to which part of the group it belongs. But it certainly belongs to one of the parts of that group, so it belongs to the group about which, as a group, I have complete information. By contrast, in the case of women, let’s say I have now made the generalization and reached the conclusion that among all the women in the world, ninety percent are not ayloniyot and ten percent are ayloniyot. Now this little girl comes before me, the one about to undergo levirate marriage. She isn’t yet included among all the women in the world; she hasn’t even reached the age at which you can know whether she is an aylonit or not. You have to wait a few years until we can even see that. So the general information, even after it has been reached by generalization, is information about women who are already of the relevant age, so that you can say whether they are or are not an aylonit. But the woman before me, or this little girl before me, is not one of the members of the group about which I have complete information. So not only did I accumulate the complete information by generalization and not by direct knowledge, but the individual about whom I am discussing the issue is not an individual from within the complete group. And that is unlike the piece of meat, where the piece of meat is certainly part of the collection of pieces of meat in the city about which I have complete information. That—

[Speaker C] Means, Rabbi, if I see a piece of meat that didn’t come from the city, then I can’t draw any conclusion about it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. And even though—

[Speaker C] Whereas with a woman who comes from outside the city, I’d still use the rule?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because I relate a woman to all the women in the world, not to the women of the city.

[Speaker C] To the women of the world. Right, even though what I see is only the women of the city.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly, because I’m making a generalization. Now why don’t I generalize in the case of the stores? If a piece comes from outside, why don’t I make a generalization from the stores? First, in principle I would make a generalization, and in fact I would follow that generalization with regard to that piece—but then it would be a majority not present before us, not a majority present before us. Except that with stores, you generally don’t make a generalization at all. Why not? Because the stores in this city really are not a representative sample—simply for statistical reasons. Meaning, it is not true that the distribution of stores in this city represents the distribution of kashrut among all the stores in the world. If in this city there happen to be many Jews, then most of the stores here will be kosher, but that doesn’t mean that most of the world is Jewish. So there is absolutely no reason to assume that the sample before me is a representative sample. Notice, this is already a statistical consideration, and I assume that the laws of majority work in line with the principles of statistics. So if I can’t make a generalization, then there really won’t be a majority not present before us here either. But even if it were something from which I could make a generalization, then I would follow the majority with regard to a piece I found that came from outside the city. Still, it would be a majority not present before us and not a majority present before us, because it would be a majority where my knowledge about the general group is based on generalization and not on direct information, and the piece is not part of the generalization I am making.

[Speaker D] But with that girl, what is she lacking in order to be part of the sample? I’m not clear on that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand.

[Speaker D] That girl—why isn’t she part of the sample of all the women in the world?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] She’s not even a woman yet, she’s still a child, she’s not even—

[Speaker D] But is there really something we don’t know? Some pattern of looking at it? All women were once girls, and some of them became adults.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, obviously they became adults. I don’t understand—so what? But the knowledge I now have about the women of the world is knowledge about the women of the world—whether they are ayloniyot or not. About this girl, that question cannot yet be asked. She’s not yet in a condition of being either an aylonit or not an aylonit. The question is what she will be. The question is not what she is now in principle. Why not?

[Speaker D] You could say that obviously the condition of being an aylonit is already determined—it could be reasonable.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously her current biology already determines whether she will be an aylonit or not.

[Speaker D] Right, so all the women, most of whom in the sample are not ayloniyot—we know that once we decided to define it that way, they were women who from childhood were not ayloniyot, and therefore she is part of them, and there’s no reason she shouldn’t be included.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m willing to accept your formulation, and still the first distinction remains. The second distinction—that this girl is not included in the group about which I have complete information—that second distinction, you’re saying there’s a formulation that can get around it. I know about all the little girls too, let’s say, including the little ones. But the first distinction, namely that here it comes on the basis of generalization from a sample—that remains. So that is basically the difference between a majority present before us and a majority not present before us.

[Speaker F] Sorry, Rabbi, sorry, sorry for interrupting—how does it make sense to talk about a sample in a majority not present before us, since in fact we don’t have a sample? If we’re talking about the little girls, then there is no sample showing that most of them are not ayloniyot, because it’s talking about—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All the adult women were once little girls.

[Speaker F] So if you say that, that all the adults were once little girls, then that’s a majority present before us.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, of course not. I don’t know the statistics even about the adult women. Do you know that most women in the world are not ayloniyot? How do you know that? The adults—how do you know they are not ayloniyot? You make a generalization based on the women you know. Okay. So after that I said that each type of majority has an advantage and a disadvantage, and that’s the dispute between Maimonides and the other medieval authorities. The advantage of a majority present before us sounds very sensible and clear. What is it? In a majority present before us, we have direct knowledge of the whole group; we know exactly that the distribution is ninety-ten. We know that by direct information—there’s no speculation in the middle. Of course we assume that the piece before us is governed by that ninety-ten distribution, but the knowledge of the distribution itself is direct. By contrast, with a majority not present before us, we do not have direct knowledge of the distribution; there is speculation here. Who says my sample is representative? Who says the distribution in the sample is also the distribution among all the women in the world? That is a hypothesis. And that hypothesis has a speculative element. This is basically Hume’s induction problem: how do you make an induction based on the cases you know and determine a general rule about all cases? Therefore, a majority not present before us is weaker, and that is indeed the plain sense of the Talmudic text. The plain sense of the Talmudic text is that even though you have a verse telling you to follow a majority present before us, the question whether one follows a majority not present before us still remains open; it still needs a source. But Maimonides’ view is that a majority not present before us is actually stronger. And I said that maybe according to the Talmudic conclusion this works out. And I suggested the explanation involving the David Levy effect. I said that a majority not present before us—sorry—basically means that there is some kind of law of nature here, and that’s another aspect from which to look at the difference between a majority not present before us and a majority present before us. That’s the aspect people usually tell you. When you ask people what the difference is between a majority present before us and a majority not present before us, they’ll tell you that a majority not present before us is a law of nature. That is true as a difference, but what lies behind it is what I said earlier, and we’ll see later why that matters. What does it mean that it’s a law of nature? Look, if there are ten stores in the city, nine of them kosher and one non-kosher, why don’t I see that as a sample from which I can generalize? Because the distribution of kosher and non-kosher stores is not a law of nature. It depends on local circumstances, supply and demand, who lives here, who sells here, and so on. There’s no law of nature here, so there’s no reason to assume that what happens in this city happens everywhere else in the world, because it is not a law of nature; it is a contingent fact. Therefore you can’t generalize. But with a majority not present before us, I know a hundred women and I know that ninety of them are not ayloniyot, so I assume that in the whole world too ninety percent are not ayloniyot. Why? Why do I assume it’s a representative sample? Because the claim is that this trait, of not being an aylonit, is a trait in the nature of woman. It is a law of nature. A woman whose systems are generally functioning properly is not an aylonit. There are ten percent where there is some defect, the system isn’t functioning properly, and therefore she is an aylonit. So it’s simply a question of natural functioning, not an accidental clustering. It’s not reasonable to say that the women in the place where I am happen to be mostly not ayloniyot, but that this is just a non-representative sample. Why is that not reasonable? Because the claim is that this is not an environmental influence; it is a law of nature. And once the law of nature says that women are generally not ayloniyot, then it ought to be true for all the women in the world. Therefore I generalize from a sample because my assumption is that the data established in the sample are the result of laws of nature, and laws of nature do not differ from one place to another. That’s where this connects to what people usually understand—that the difference between a majority present before us and a majority not present before us is the question whether it’s a law of nature or not. Fine? We’ll see later why I insist that this is not really the difference; it’s only an indication of the difference. And then I say that maybe this explains why a majority not present before us is stronger. Why? Because think now about the case of the stores. In the case of the stores, a piece of meat comes before me. There isn’t something in the piece itself that causes it to be kosher. There isn’t some mechanism inside it—it’s not a law of nature that pieces are generally kosher and only defective pieces are not kosher. No. In this city, by happenstance, most of the stores are kosher. So when I assume this piece is kosher, it’s not because I have some positive reason in the piece itself, rooted in the piece itself, in the way it is built, that it ought to be kosher. There is no such law of nature that pieces of meat are generally kosher. Rather, there happens to be an accidental clustering here of nine kosher stores and one that is not, and I attribute this piece to the majority stores. But not that I have a real reason inside the piece to assume it is kosher. Therefore this is a weaker consideration. Why? Because if a woman comes before me, why do I assume she is not an aylonit? Not because I know all the women in the world, because I don’t know all the women in the world. Rather because I know the laws of nature. The laws of nature say that with a woman’s normal physiology, the woman is not an aylonit. So this woman before me too—I have an assumption that her physiology is probably normal physiology; that’s how women are generally built; those are the laws of nature. So there is a positive reason in this particular woman herself to assume that she is not an aylonit. It’s not like the meat. Here I have a good reason to assume she is a normal woman, because a woman as such, if there is no special defect in her, is not an aylonit. So why assume that this woman has a defect? I assume she does not.

[Speaker G] But you’re letting them live together before you’ve applied the majority-not-present-before-us. Exactly. Now what if, heaven forbid—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m applying the majority-not-present-before-us now. When? Not before I applied it. I apply it when they’re minors.

[Speaker G] Right. And what happens, heaven forbid, if they grow up and then it turns out she’s an aylonit? You let her live in—what? Right. You take that kind of risk?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly what the Talmudic text says. That’s why the Talmudic text says: here you see that we follow the majority, because in practice we don’t wait until we see whether they are ayloniyot or not, and only then determine whether they should enter levirate marriage or not.

[Speaker G] But how do you get over the fact that in the end, retroactively, it turns out they lived in sin?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We follow the majority, and if a mishap occurs, a mishap occurred.

[Speaker G] Ah, even if reality proves it, that doesn’t concern us?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—what does reality prove?

[Speaker G] Reality proves that she’s an aylonit.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, then they separate. What? Of course we separate them.

[Speaker G] Yes, but they already lived in sin, didn’t they?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, so he is liable for a guilt-offering, but it was under compulsion. They were allowed to rely on the majority, and that’s what they did. What can you do? Sometimes the majority doesn’t work; there is also a minority.

[Speaker D] And in a religious court there is a law of nature, seemingly yes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, we’ll get to the religious court in a moment. So the point is that in this case of a majority not present before us, in each and every example that comes before us, there is an internal logic within the example itself for assuming that this woman is not an aylonit. Therefore Maimonides says this is a stronger majority than a majority present before us. That is probably—or at least could be—Maimonides’ reasoning. And I said, the David Levy effect, yes—basically it says that if I have thirty percent, or forty-nine percent, of the entire Likud center from my faction, and in the other faction there are fifty-one percent—then if we vote by majority, one hundred percent of the office-holders will be chosen from the majority faction, because in every vote fifty-one will defeat forty-nine. So it will come out that the minority faction has no fair representation, even if it is a minority of forty-nine percent. One hundred percent of the positions will be given to the fifty-one percent faction. Why is that? Because for each and every position we follow the majority. Exactly like what I’m saying: with each and every woman, in a majority not present before us, the reasoning suggests that if all the women came before me—one hundred percent of them—I would declare all of them to be not ayloniyot. All of them. By contrast, with pieces of meat, if all the pieces of meat in the city came before me, I know that a tenth of them are not kosher. I can’t determine that one hundred percent are kosher. If one piece comes before me, then maybe, statistically speaking, it probably belongs to the ninety percent. But if I now need to determine the status of all the pieces of meat in the city—there, in fact, there are medieval authorities who say that you have to leave some pieces aside. Since in the end I know there are ten percent—I have direct knowledge that ten percent are not kosher. Regarding non-ayloniyot I do not have such direct knowledge. I know there are laws of nature according to which a woman is not an aylonit. So it’s like the David Levy effect: on one hundred percent of the people I will impose the status of the majority. And with a majority present before us it is less reasonable to do that. Okay, so those are the arguments in favor of a majority not present before us and against a majority present before us. I now want to go back for a moment to the Talmudic text and ask what this means in terms of the laws of majority. Does majority, in the introductions I gave, among the several kinds of rules for conduct in a situation of doubt—majority being one of them—I spoke about rules of conduct, decision, and clarification. How would you understand from this Talmudic text whether majority is clarification, or whether it is a rule of conduct? Decision, conduct, but not clarification.

[Speaker F] Conduct, not clarification. Why not? Because the situation remains doubtful; there is no certainty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Are two witnesses clarification? There are lying witnesses too. There are few, but there are. Clarification does not mean one hundred percent. Clarification means that I can assume that this is indeed reality. It’s not a scriptural decree; it’s not some rule to behave in a certain way. Rather, it is really my assessment that this is the reality. Not a certain assessment—nothing is certain.

[Speaker F] With witnesses, you can hope they are telling the truth, so that’s clarification. Yes, yes—but with majority it seems to me less so.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? I can hope that it came from the majority of the stores. What, why not? Same thing. I’m saying: the fact that I have a clarifying rule doesn’t mean I know the reality with one hundred percent certainty. A clarifying rule means it’s a rule such that any reasonable person in the world, regardless of Jewish law, would decide that this is the reality. Not with certainty, but to the best of my assessment, that’s the reality. It’s not a rule that Jewish law invented. Okay? Now here I come back to the topic. How would you understand from the passage whether following the majority is a clarifying rule or a conduct-guiding rule? So you can discuss that. On the one hand, the fact is that the Talmud looks for some source. If it were just simple reasoning, statistics, what’s the problem? Why do I need a rule to teach me to work with statistics? In every area of my life I apply statistical rules, so in Jewish law I’d apply that too even without a verse. Why do I need a source? It’s simple reasoning. Why does the Talmud look for a source?

[Speaker D] But there are opposite reasonings on the side of clarification, so the Torah says… after all, the reasoning isn’t necessarily that the majority is right. The Rabbi doesn’t really support that position.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m not talking here about a majority of people. I’m talking now about stores, for example, or infertile women.

[Speaker D] I thought the Rabbi was referring to a religious court.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’ll get to the religious court. Right, so it’s simple reasoning. So if it’s simple reasoning, why do I need a source from a verse? Why do I need a verse? It’s just reasoning.

[Speaker H] Why do I need two witnesses and not one witness?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, why?

[Speaker H] Because that too is reasoning—reasoning that he’s probably telling the truth.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There, the one witness? Yes. Good. So what are you saying—why do we need a verse?

[Speaker H] A sign that if you need a verse, that doesn’t mean it still—it’s still reasoning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not reasoning? That doesn’t mean it isn’t reasoning. Right. What do you mean? So I’ll explain it more—I completely agree. The claim is this: even if I have reasoning to use witnesses or a majority, that doesn’t mean that from the standpoint of Jewish law it’s enough clarification. Witnesses are a good example. One witness too—the simple reasoning says he speaks the truth. Why not? Certainly, say, in prohibitions and permissions they really do accept one witness. But in a dispute between litigants, here the two litigants are already arguing with each other, so when one witness comes, that’s weaker than one witness in prohibitions and permissions. Because here the one witness is basically saying that one of the litigants is a liar. Now, to accept one witness on something like that is more problematic. But suppose he’s not a litigant. In principle there’s reason to say he speaks the truth. He has no stake in the matter, he’s not a party to the case, so the reasoning indicates that he speaks the truth. But it may be that the force of the clarification given by one witness is not enough to extract money, to flog, to execute, and so on. Therefore the Torah comes and says: I want specifically two witnesses. That doesn’t mean there’s no logic behind the requirement for two witnesses. There is logic. True, one witness also has some force, but two witnesses are more. And Jewish law comes and says: what level of certainty is required in order to decide a case? So the Torah says: from two witnesses and up. One witness is not enough. In a religious court, yes; not in rulings about prohibitions and permissions, not in ritual prohibitions. So the fact that you need a verse does not contradict the existence of reasoning here. The verse only says whether the force of that reasoning is enough for halakhic decision-making. Same thing with a majority. Someone could come and say: suppose there are a majority of stores in the city that are kosher. So if you ask me whether there’s a reason to say that this piece… from the kosher stores? Yes, there’s reason to say that. But what is the force of that reasoning? Like the percentage of kosher stores. Let’s say seventy percent of the stores are kosher, fifty-one percent of the stores are kosher. Is it really obvious to me without a verse that Jewish law is satisfied with a probability of fifty-one percent? Maybe you need eighty-five percent. Or ninety-five. Seventy? I don’t know. So the Torah comes and says, “follow the majority”: any majority is enough, fifty-one percent is also fine. So the fact that there is a reasonable statistical consideration here, based on reasoning, does not make the verse unnecessary. Because even if there is reasoning, the verse has to tell me that the force of this reasoning is sufficient to decide according to Jewish law. Because this reasoning is not certain. If it were certainty, then really we wouldn’t need a verse. And this reasoning is not certain. You need a verse to tell me that even such reasoning is good enough. Certainly the verse says that even fifty-one percent is okay; you don’t need ninety-five percent. Any majority, even fifty plus epsilon. So for that you definitely need a verse. It’s not so simple that by reasoning alone we would decide that. Why? Just as I said in the introductory lessons, all the rules for deciding doubts are rules that come to be lenient. Because if there were no rule to follow the majority, I would treat this case as a doubt, and with a Torah-level doubt I would say to be stringent. Following the majority is a rule that comes to be lenient. It’s a rule that says: if there is a majority toward leniency, you can rely on it; this is not a state of doubt. Okay? So certainly—or at least there is no problem with saying that we need a verse to tell me that. So the fact that the Talmud looks for a verse does not mean there is no reasoning here. And therefore it also doesn’t necessarily—what?

[Speaker D] Majority—but in a bad case, for example, clearly we wouldn’t follow such a majority. Again? In something harmful we really wouldn’t follow such a majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not so simple. With fifty-one percent, apparently not. But with ninety-nine percent, apparently yes.

[Speaker D] Ah, okay, right, but you still need the verse from the Torah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so that’s it. The verse tells me, look, regarding prohibition, fifty-one percent is also good enough. With ninety-nine percent maybe I wouldn’t have needed a verse, I don’t know, maybe.

[Speaker C] But what happens if they really tell me after the fact that the piece I ate was non-kosher meat?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then you were coerced or acted unintentionally, what can you do?

[Speaker C] Did I commit a transgression unintentionally?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Or under coercion, depending. If there was an instruction to eat it, then it’s coercion. If there was no instruction, but you simply didn’t know and ate it, then it’s unintentional.

[Speaker C] No, it’s not that I didn’t know. I mean, I know that I followed the rule of the majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You mean there was a majority? Yes, there was a majority? If there was a majority then it seems to me this is coercion, not an unintentional act. There is a ruling here that permits you to eat. If you know nothing and ate, that’s called unintentional. Here there is a positive ruling: you may eat. Likewise, that’s in the Mishnahs in tractate Yevamot, at the end of Yevamot—what happens when the husband shows up in court? Yes, the court permitted an agunah to remarry. They said that the husband died and she could remarry. After she remarries with joy and a happy heart, the husband comes back. What happens in such a case? Fine, so that’s a question, but clearly she acted according to the court. The question is whether she is coerced or merely unintentional. There are discussions there about whether she has to bring an offering or not; that’s a separate question. In any case, returning to our issue: the fact that the Talmud needs a verse doesn’t mean there is no reasoning here. But according to the Talmud’s conclusion, in the case of a majority that is not before us, there really is no source. So either—Rashi says one of two possibilities: either it is a law given to Moses at Sinai, or they derive that too from “follow the majority,” even though at the beginning of the discussion it doesn’t seem that way. But he says that according to the conclusion of the passage, it could be that this too is learned from “follow the majority.” Now if I learn it from the verse of “follow the majority,” then it’s like a majority that is before us. It could be that it’s exactly the same thing or maybe stronger, but still you need a verse to permit it. And I can say this: a majority that is not before us and a majority that is before us are both basically statistics, and the verse comes and tells me: look, even a probabilistic consideration of fifty-one percent is enough to decide Jewish law by it. Once it says that, then what difference does it make whether the majority is before us or not before us? In practice the difference between them is only the question of how I got to the fifty-one percent—direct information or an extrapolation. And now that it’s fifty-one percent, that’s what Rashi says in the second explanation: if the verse says that in a majority that is before us we follow the majority, then why not in a majority that is not before us? Same thing. I arrived at the fact that it’s fifty-one percent, and the verse tells me that a clarification of fifty-one percent is good enough to decide Jewish law, and therefore even in a majority that is not before us you can follow it. If it is a law given to Moses at Sinai, then that’s already a somewhat different question, because that means the verse taught me only about a majority that is before us. But from there I still don’t know about a majority that is not before us. Why don’t I know? Not because you can’t follow statistics, because apparently both are statistics, but because the extrapolation that brought me to the distribution is some kind of speculation—the problem of Hume’s induction. And therefore a law given to Moses at Sinai was needed to tell me that I don’t need to worry about Hume’s objections. That’s basically what the law given to Moses at Sinai says. It says that Hume’s objections do not trouble us. You can create extrapolations on the basis of a sample. In any case, it comes out that from the Talmud itself you cannot clearly derive whether a majority is a clarifying rule or not a clarifying rule. So where can we decide whether it is a clarifying rule or not? From logic. And what does logic say? Logic says there is statistics here. There is a calculation of sixty, seventy, eighty percent against the minority, and therefore if I need to decide what reality is, it is very plausible that reality goes in the direction of the majority and not in the direction of the minority. That is straightforward reasoning. It’s a determination of reality, because there are statistics here.

[Speaker D] But none of that is true at all in a religious court.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait a second. I said I’d get to the religious court. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget. I’ll get there. So the claim is that once I have this reasoning of statistics, then it may be that I need the verse to tell me I can rely on it, but after the verse has told me I can rely on it, plainly it is a clarifying rule. That is the simple conception of majority—that majority is a clarifying rule. It doesn’t clarify with certainty, of course, but it clarifies. Why? Because statistics are reasoning. Everyone understands that we make statistical considerations in every context, not only in Jewish law. On the contrary, the novelty is that in Jewish law too you can make the same consideration that, all the more so, you make everywhere else. One could have said that Jewish law is stricter, but it says no: make the same considerations you make elsewhere—maybe it’s even more lenient, because fifty-one percent, yes. Certainly with poison I assume I wouldn’t rely on that, but from the standpoint of Jewish law you can. In any case, with a significant minority there may nevertheless be a rabbinic rule not to rely on the majority; there are disputes among the halakhic decisors about that. In any event, for our purposes, on the face of it I would say that this is a rule—a clarifying rule. Still, I want to challenge that a bit, or explain a bit more the meaning of statistics and of the question whether it is a clarifying rule or not, and to see whether it really is so simple that statistics are a clarifying rule, and whether it is really so simple that these two kinds of majority are statistics. And what it means that they are statistics or not. So for that I want to go for a moment into majority in a religious court. I said I would get to it; here I am getting to it now. To the fact that we follow the majority in a religious court. So here you have the Sefer HaChinukh on commandment 78, the commandment of inclining after the majority. To incline after the majority when a dispute falls among the sages regarding a law from the whole Torah. We saw this Sefer HaChinukh when I spoke about democratic majority. And likewise in a private legal case, meaning a case between Reuven and Shimon, for example, where the dispute is among the judges of their city, some judging to obligate and some to exempt, always to incline after the majority, as it says: “follow the majority.” And in explanation, our sages of blessed memory said: majority is from the Torah. Okay? So from here they learn the law of majority, and in particular the majority of judges. And I remind you that in the Talmud we saw—in tractate Hullin—that a majority of judges is a majority that is before us. And choosing the majority is, says the Sefer HaChinukh, according to what seems likely—so it seems to me, says the Sefer HaChinukh—when the two camps that disagree are equal in knowledge of Torah wisdom, because you cannot say that a small camp of sages should determine a large camp of ignoramuses, even if they were as many as those who left Egypt. Yes, if there are a few sages and a majority of fools in court, then the Sefer HaChinukh says the law of following the majority does not apply. Only where their Torah level, their halakhic level, is more or less equal, more or less, then the law is to follow the majority. But if the minority are very wise judges and the majority are judges of a much lower level, then we do not follow the majority. A majority of feet won’t help us in any way get to better Jewish law. We talked about the wisdom of crowds in this context. But when the wisdom is equal, or approximately equal, the Torah informs us that a multiplicity of opinions will always agree with the truth more than the minority. What is he saying? If they are roughly on the same Torah level and there is a dispute between majority and minority, there is a reasonable chance the majority is right. Again—not certain. Sometimes the minority is right. But if they are equal in wisdom, more or less, and there is a majority in one direction, if I have to bet which of the two decisions is more correct, I would bet on the decision favored by the majority, if they are equal in Torah wisdom, okay? And after that he adds: whether they agree with the truth or do not agree, in the opinion of the listener, the law dictates that we should not depart from the way of the majority. And don’t think that if you think the majority is mistaken then we don’t follow the majority. No. It doesn’t depend on you. There is a majority against a minority here; even if you do not think the majority is right, the law is still to follow the majority. But when? In a place where it is only you who thinks the majority is not right, but overall the judges are on more or less the same level of wisdom. But if the minority are very wise judges and the majority are judges on a much lower level, then we do not follow the majority. And this dispute continues among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) all the way to the halakhic decisors. The accepted ruling is that we go after the majority of people and not after the majority of wisdom, but there is a dispute among the decisors; not everyone agrees with that. Now the question arises: on what exactly does the Sefer HaChinukh base this rule that we follow the majority of judges? He basically says: because usually the majority of judges have a higher probability of hitting the truth than the minority, okay? So that too we’ll still discuss—how exactly you make that calculation, and to what extent it really holds water. Yossi, you sent me some article by Nadav about this, so we’ll get to that later. In any case, I want to consider a different question. What type of majority is this? So we know from the Talmud that the majority among judges, majority in a religious court, is a majority that is before us. Now if you ask yourself, according to the definitions, why exactly is a majority of judges, a majority in court, classified as a majority that is before us and not a majority that is not before us? So you say: because I have complete information about the entire group. The group is the three judges; I have complete information. I have two judges who obligate Reuven and one judge who exempts him, okay? So I have complete information. And now I say: once I have complete information about the group, I’m not making an extrapolation from a sample here, so it’s a majority that is before us, yes. Okay? But when we go into the Sefer HaChinukh’s explanation, the picture gets more complicated. Because the Sefer HaChinukh says: what is this whole matter built on, that I follow the majority of judges? On the reasoning that says that usually the majority is right. Or in other words, the group within which there is a split into majority and minority is not the group of the three judges before me. Who is the complete group according to the Sefer HaChinukh’s description? The group of all panels of judges that ever existed and ever will exist, where there was a dispute of two against one in all court cases in which there was a two-against-one dispute. If we count in how many of those cases the majority was right, apparently that will be most of the cases. Meaning, the majority has a higher probability of being right. Now this specific court comes along, where there are two judges against one, and they say: well, if in most cases the majority is right, then here too I’ll assume that the majority is right. Notice: the majority I’m talking about is not the majority of judges on this panel. It’s not that the group is these three judges of this panel, and then I have complete knowledge of the group, direct knowledge of the group, and I’m judging something that separated from them. No. The group I’m talking about is the group of all litigations that ended with a majority against a minority among the judges.

[Speaker F] So according to what you’re explaining, judges are a majority that is not before us.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly, and that’s where I’m heading. According to the Sefer HaChinukh’s description, the majority among judges is a majority that is not before us, not a majority that is before us.

[Speaker C] Why? But if these are judges who already existed in the past and we already know them and we know that after the fact the majority of the time they weren’t wrong…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not what it’s talking about. They weren’t in the past.

[Speaker C] Then what is it talking about?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This law of “follow the majority” wasn’t said only about judges for whom we already have organized statistics.

[Speaker C] Then about whom?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About any judge there will be, any religious court there will be. These three judges sit for judgment for the first time and there is a dispute, two against one—we follow the majority.

[Speaker C] No, okay, but we follow the majority even if it’s the first time they’re judging, because we rely on judges who existed in the past.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good, so you see? That’s a majority that is not before us.

[Speaker C] Why is that not before us if it’s statistics I know?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t know the statistics, because the past group… because the judges before you are not part of the statistics that you know. It’s like the infertile woman. It’s not…

[Speaker C] No, but with the infertile woman I’m extrapolating about all the women in the world whom I don’t know and also won’t know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here too I’m extrapolating about all judicial panels that existed in the world. Yes, but you knew them.

[Speaker C] I knew them. You knew them? I didn’t understand.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Did I know them, or did I know them?

[Speaker C] You knew…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, do you know all the judges in the world who ever existed and ever will exist?

[Speaker C] No, I’m not talking about the future, I’m talking

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] about the past, not those who will exist, only those who existed. Even about the past—who knows all the judges who existed until today in all the cases they judged? Nobody.

[Speaker C] I’m not talking about all the cases. They say that in most cases they’re right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How do you know?

[Speaker C] So that’s an extrapolation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re making an extrapolation.

[Speaker C] You don’t know. So where was this extrapolation born from, from what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll get to that. That’s an interesting question that will probably soon be part of the answer. But first of all I’m posing the question. On the face of it, according to the Sefer HaChinukh’s explanation, majority among judges is a majority that is not before us, not one that is before us.

[Speaker C] Because with women I make an extrapolation because I have a group in front of me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here with judges—say I know twenty cases, these litigations, and I say: then probably in most cases it is also…

[Speaker C] No, but the Rabbi said it also works if it’s the first time they are judging.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t care. With the infertile woman too, it’s the first time I’m judging about her. I judge her based on all the women in the world. So with these judges too, I judge based on all the judges in the world. That’s exactly…

[Speaker D] And how does the Rabbi know that among all the judges in the world the majority were right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As I said, I’ll get to that. That’s the question I’m going to address as part of the answer. But first of all I’m posing the question. In fact Rabbi Shimon Shkop asks this question—that according to the Sefer HaChinukh’s explanation, the majority among judges is a majority that is not before us. Now it’s important to me that you understand the question, because it sharpens very well for us the difference between a majority that is before us and a majority that is not before us. I’m doing this whole discussion to sharpen that difference. Because people generally understand why the majority among judges is a majority that is before us—the Talmud in Hullin says it’s a majority that is before us—because the three judges are before us. We have complete information about what each judge says out of the three judges. But that’s nonsense, of course. Why is it nonsense? Because last time I spoke about the concept of separation. In a majority that is before us, the notion of separation is built in. The piece of meat separated from one of the stores. I have complete information about all the stores. A piece of meat separated; I don’t know from which store, and therefore a doubt arises. The separation is what creates the doubt. Now in a religious court, what separated from what group? What separation is there here? I’m asking what the correct ruling is. If a judge had gone out of the court, and I know that two judges obligated Reuven and one acquitted him, and I ask whether that judge is one of the judges who obligated or one of those who acquitted, that would be a majority that is before us. And I would say he is probably from the acquitting judges, because there are two acquitting judges and only one obligating judge. That would be a majority that is before us. But the question of what the correct ruling is, the correct halakhic ruling, has nothing to do with separation at all. Nothing separated here. So what does the group of judges have to do at all with being the group that defines the statistical distribution for me? Why is that relevant? What am I discussing here—some judge who separated out of that group? I’m asking: this one says this, that one says that, and that one says that; now I ask: what is the truth? The question what is the truth has no connection at all to separation from some known group. What does that have to do with anything? And therefore the Sefer HaChinukh really explains it differently. The Sefer HaChinukh argues that there really was no separation here. Rather, what is there? There is an assessment that in a case where the majority of judges disagree with a minority, in most such cases the majority was right. Notice: the majority I’m talking about is the majority of cases, not the majority of judges. The majority of judges is only the description of the case. The group is the group of all litigations that ever happened and ended in a two-to-one split. That is the group. Now I say: in most of those cases, the majority was right. The word “majority” appears here twice, but the majority in the sense of “follow the majority” is the first time I used the word, not the second—not the majority of judges, but the majority of cases. That’s the majority I’m talking about here. The majority of judges is irrelevant. Is what I’m saying clear? So according to the simple definitions, the majority of judges is a majority that is not before us, not one that is before us. No, but you do have to use “majority” twice. Because you can’t say that in most cases the minority was right—otherwise it doesn’t work.

[Speaker C] That’s not true, not because you can’t say it. Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but I’m saying the second use of “majority” only describes the case. The case is that there is a majority against a minority. The rule of following the majority does not speak about following the majority of judges, but about following the majority of cases in which the majority was right. The majority being spoken about is the majority of cases, not the majority of judges. So this is a majority that is not before us. I’m making some extrapolation about all cases of litigation, and I’m applying it to a case that comes before me, which is not part of the direct knowledge I have about the group. So this is really a majority that is not before us according to all the definitions. And that is indeed what Rabbi Shimon Shkop says in Sha’arei Yosher, gate 3. Let’s read him for a moment. And in my humble opinion, it seems possible to explain this matter as follows: indeed, in the case of nine stores selling slaughtered meat and one selling carcass meat, which we derive from the verse “follow the majority,” if we say that it is because of clarification and that it determines the factual reality of the matter, it is very hard to understand what similarity there is between the matter of nine stores and the majority of judges. You want to tell me that a majority that is before us is clarification? Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s position is that a majority that is before us is not clarification. Now he says: if it were clarification, then I don’t understand the connection between stores and judges. Why is the majority of stores learned from the majority of judges? That’s what the Talmud in Hullin says, that a majority that is before us is learned from judges. What connection is there between them? So he says this: because with judges, indeed, there is reason to say that a majority of judges who align in one opinion are more likely to have hit the law than the minority that disagrees, as was written in Sefer HaChinukh commandment 78; see there. What we just saw—that usually the majority of judges are right; in most cases the majority of judges are right. But with nine stores, if we say according to our own reasoning that it is more likely in reality that the meat found is from the nine slaughtered stores because the majority are more commonly found such that this case occurred among them—this clarification is not true. For with respect to each store among these ten stores we can decide that it did not separate from it, because there are nine others against it, and in any event it separated from only one of them. And in the reality of the separation there is no difference between slaughtered and carcass meat. And consequently all the whole notion of clarification falls away. And since there is no clarification of the reality in the case of the separation of the meat, automatically there is no clarification whatsoever about the kosher status of the meat. What is he saying? He’s saying this. Basically his assumption, his subtext, is that a majority that is not before us contains reasoning, while a majority that is before us has no reasoning—it’s not clarification, it’s a scriptural decree. And then he says this, and he brings a few proofs. First, he says: if this were clarification, then what connection is there between stores and judges? With judges there is simple reasoning. Yes, with judges we know that in most cases the majority of judges are right and not the minority. With stores there is no parallel reasoning. At least not the same reasoning—it’s not the same thing. And especially because we know that with stores this is a majority that is before us, while with judges, according to the Sefer HaChinukh’s explanation, it is really a majority that is not before us, where there really is logic. And of course this assumes Maimonides, who says that in a majority that is not before us there is logic for assuming that we follow the majority, as opposed to a majority that is before us which, in his view, is a scriptural decree, not clarification. After that he also explains why. Because if we think about the case of the stores—and here of course he is completely mistaken—but he says: if we think about the stores, this is of course the classic question from people who haven’t studied statistics. That is, he says: if we think about the stores, then with regard to each store, if I ask whether it separated from, say, there are stores A through J. I ask if it separated from store A. Clearly not, right? Because there is only one store, and it is more likely that it separated from the other nine stores. If I ask about store B, also no; C, also no; D. So even about the kosher stores this consideration will say that it did not separate from them, not only about the invalid, non-kosher store. Therefore he claims that a majority that is before us is not a clarifying majority at all; there is no reasoning at all to follow this majority. Because from the standpoint of considerations of clarification, it did not separate from any store. Because against every store there are nine other stores.

[Speaker F] And he’s completely ignoring the statistics here, something here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? What would a statistician tell us, basically? He’s not ignoring it, he simply doesn’t understand statistics. What would a statistician tell us? The question we are asking is not whether the piece separated from this particular store. What do I care whether it separated from this one or that one? The question we are asking is whether it separated from a kosher store or from a non-kosher store. And here there is indeed a majority. Because there are nine kosher stores. So if I ask whether it separated from one of the kosher stores, the answer is yes, because there is a ninety percent chance that it separated from them. Therefore his second argument is simply wrong. But the first argument really is a question. Because the majority among judges looks like a majority that is not before us, while the majority among stores is a different kind of majority. How can you compare one to the other at all? Stores and judges are both “before us” according to the Talmud. And then he says this: maybe I’ll first explain what I want to explain, and then we’ll move on to what he said. Let’s think—now I’m coming to the question some of you already asked earlier. Let’s go back to judges. How do I know—the question was: why aren’t judges a majority that is not before us? Right? Because after all, you’re really talking about the majority of panels that had divided opinions, and you assume that among those panels, in most cases the majority was right. In most cases the majority was right. Now I ask: where does your information come from that in most cases in the general group the majority really was right? Suppose I have a thousand cases in which the distribution of opinions in the court was two against one, and I say that probably in most of those cases—say seventy percent of those cases—the two were right and not the one. How do you know?

[Speaker C] Yes, because unlike women, that’s not a law of nature.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] More than that—no,

[Speaker C] It is a law of nature.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A law of nature that a wise judge will arrive at the truth?

[Speaker C] Is that called a law of nature?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. A law of nature about human beings, never mind. Human beings too—this is rational behavior. A wise judge means one who hits the truth more often than a less wise judge. That’s the meaning. But notice what happens with the majority regarding infertile women. What happens there? I have a sample of a hundred women for whom I know directly that ninety of them are not infertile and ten are. How do I know? Because I see that these gave birth and I see that those did not. I simply see it. So I have direct knowledge of the sample, and now I make an extrapolation to all the women in the world. That is how a majority that is not before us is built. Can you make the same move with judges? Is this really a majority that is not before us?

[Speaker I] No, each time it’s only three, and the two outvote the three.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, we’re not talking about two versus one. We’re talking about most cases of divided opinions. There are a thousand cases where the opinions were divided, and I claim that in, say, seventy percent of them, the two were right and not the one. Nice. So now I ask: where do we know that from? Usually, if this were a majority that is not before us, as Rabbi Shimon Shkop objects, I would expect it to be a law of nature that I learn by extrapolating from a sample, right? Let’s see whether that really works that way. I take a sample. Let’s say I encountered twenty litigations in court, twenty cases, yes, in which it was two against one. And I found—yes, that’s how it should have been—and I found that in fourteen of them, say seventy percent, the two were right and not the one. So I assume that in all litigations it is like that: in seventy percent of cases the two are right and not the one. But how did I find that in fourteen cases the two were right? How do I know when the two were right and when not?

[Speaker J] You don’t know. You only know the majority that the two

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] prevailed over the one.

[Speaker J] You know nothing! You know nothing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have reasoning. The reasoning says that a wise judge is usually more correct. Good reasoning. Do I have an empirical datum here that I can observe and know directly? No. No. Meaning, I have no sample here at all; this isn’t an extrapolation from a sample at all. It’s not that there are twenty cases that I knew in which the majority was right, and then I extrapolate to all cases. Even about cases I know, I don’t know. This is just a priori reasoning. It has nothing to do with observations at all. This isn’t science. Science makes observations on the sample group, and after it finds a certain phenomenon in the sample it extrapolates and says that this is a general phenomenon in all nature, okay? Here, even on the sample group itself I have no way to observe and know what the situation is in the sample group. The problem is not the transition by extrapolation from the sample group to the general group. The problem is how to know what is happening in the sample group itself. I have no way to know that. How can I determine in a specific case that the two were right and not the one? Do I have some access to the truth, immediate access to the truth, so that I can check whether the two were right and not the one? All I have are the various proofs and the arguments of the two and the arguments of the one. I cannot be better than the judges themselves who sat in judgment. I have no independent way to check the position of the two and the position of the one. So how do I know that the majority is more likely to be right? Where does that idea come from? Just a priori reasoning. It is not the result of observations. It is reasoning.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, why are we even looking to know whether the majority is right? At the end of the day it’s not important. The majority decides; whether it’s right or not doesn’t matter—we have to go by the majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but why do we go after the majority? The reason for the verse. Why do we follow the majority? Because it’s right. As opposed to democratic majority—that’s why we spoke about this Sefer HaChinukh there. In democratic majority, we go after the majority because we want to do what most of the public wants, what the public wants. It doesn’t matter whether they’re right or not.

[Speaker C] Ah, because here we are aiming at the truth, basically.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But here in a religious court it’s not a question of the rights of the judges. I want to know what the law really says. Right. So here there has to be some criterion that tells me how I can best hit the truth. So what? I have reasoning that says that if the judges are more or less equal in wisdom, then there is a greater chance that the majority is right than that the minority is right. But that is only reasoning. It does not arise from observation of a sample, and certainly not from extrapolation as a result of a sample. There is no extrapolation here and no observation and nothing—just a priori reasoning. And even that reasoning hangs by a thread.

[Speaker D] What? Even that reasoning hangs by a thread.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so you can argue about the reasoning too, but that’s what the reasoning says. Now the question is how I should relate to a majority formed in this way. Is it a majority that is before us or not before us? So let’s go back—not before us, it isn’t, right? It doesn’t resemble that. But let’s see whether it resembles a majority that is before us. It doesn’t resemble that either. Because in a majority that is before us, I have direct information about the group, about ten stores. Here I don’t. I have nothing. I am operating in complete darkness. I have my reasonings, that’s all. But that’s not precise. Why? Let’s think for a moment about the majority with the stores. This is an interesting point, notice. How do you actually decide that the piece of meat that separated came from the majority stores? Do you have a way to test that thesis? Test it empirically. Without extrapolation from a sample. Test it directly. Is there a way to do that? Let’s design an experiment that would test this thesis, okay? Or refute it. Put it to a falsification test. What’s the experiment? We would need to mark all the pieces with an invisible marking, right? Cause people to lose a great many pieces, and then they wouldn’t know what they lost and where they got it from. And now I need to take those pieces and check which stores they came from, and see whether in fact most of them came from the majority of stores. No one ever did such an experiment. There is also great doubt whether you can even do such an experiment. Because what people lose pieces of meat? It almost never happens. You wouldn’t be able to learn anything. And in order to lose them, they’d have to lose them unintentionally, right? They’d have to lose them by mistake. How could we create an experiment where we assign people the task of accidentally losing a piece of meat they bought? You can’t do such an experiment. Again, but

[Speaker C] Why do we need an experiment again, Rabbi? Why do we need an experiment?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to know whether in fact, when I find a piece of meat in the market, it is true that in ninety percent of cases it came from the kosher stores. Who says so? Can you do an experiment that checks that? No, you can’t. So how do I assume it’s so? I have reasoning. What does the reasoning say? My assumption is that there is no difference between losing a piece from one kind of store and losing a piece from another kind of store, right?

[Speaker J] The chance of losing one piece, the chance of losing…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The chance of losing a piece of meat does not depend on which store you bought it from, assuming everyone’s bags are of the same strength and so on, more or less. So I have no reason to assume there is some preference for one store over another. But this is not something about which I have positive knowledge. I measured nothing and nothing at all. It is a priori reasoning. The reasoning says there is no reason to assume that I lose a piece bought from a non-kosher store with a different probability than a piece lost from a kosher store. Reasoning! And since that is so, I assume that the piece before me has a ninety percent chance of coming from the kosher stores. Do you understand that this is completely like the judges? In both cases this is simply reasoning. Meaning, there is an interesting point here: a majority that is before us has another interesting feature, namely that you cannot measure my determination, cannot put it to an empirical test. You cannot. In a majority that is not before us, everything is built on empirical testing. We perform an empirical test on the sample and extrapolate to the full group, and afterwards we can even check our hypothesis in the full group. It is falsifiable; it is a scientific thesis, okay? In a majority that is before us, we have no way either to check the result or to carry out the experiment on any sample group. There is nothing. It has nothing to do with observation at all. A majority that is before us is so unscientific that it is all a priori reasoning. That’s all. Suddenly we discover that even according to the Sefer HaChinukh’s explanation about majority in court, this really is a majority that is before us and not one that is not before us. Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s question is not correct.

[Speaker D] But this is a statistical law. What? But this is a statistical law. What do you mean it cannot be proven?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Are you listening? Again?

[Speaker D] It’s a statistical law—cannot be proven?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is a statistical majority?

[Speaker D] That it’s clear it came from—the probability is ninety percent that it came from nine kosher stores.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that—you can’t test that.

[Speaker D] Statistics isn’t a law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, statistics isn’t a law? How do you know the statistics? How do you know that the distribution of the pieces on the ground is like the distribution of the stores?

[Speaker D] If the similarity among all of them is complete, there is no difference between them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s reasoning. There is reasoning here.

[Speaker D] Statistics—but it’s a statistical law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not statistics. Statistics only begins after you’ve posited that assumption. That assumption is not based on statistics; on the contrary, the statistics are based on the assumption. After you assume that the chance of losing something from each store is the same chance, now you have a ninety-ten distribution, and now you apply statistics. But you got to that ninety-ten distribution on the basis of reasoning. Statistics begins after you make that assumption, exactly like with judges. With judges too, my reasoning says that the majority is right because the sages are usually more correct. Once my reasoning says that, then I can say that in seventy percent of cases the majority opinion will be the correct one. So now I have statistics, but it all starts from the reasoning. With a barren woman, it starts from measurement, not from reasoning. I check how many women are barren and how many are not. I’m just making a generalization based on the sample I measured. I didn’t measure the whole world, but I measured a representative sample.

[Speaker F] But you’re assuming that one of the things that defines a majority that is not present before us is that you can measure the result after the fact, and therefore with judges it’s not like he says

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Shimon Shkop says, that this is a majority that is not present before us here. No, I’m not sure that has to be the case, but yes, that’s usually the situation. This is basically a scientific process. A majority that is not present before us is a scientific process. The law of gravity is a majority that is not present before us.

[Speaker F] And therefore Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s difficulty is not correct, to classify the court as a majority that is not present before us here. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’d even say more than that. Rabbi Shimon Shkop proposes a different explanation from the Sefer HaChinukh’s explanation in order to explain why the majority of judges is a majority that is present before us and not one that is not. And I claim he’s mistaken. According to the Sefer HaChinukh’s explanation, it too is a majority that is present before us. You don’t need to look for another explanation. According to the Sefer HaChinukh’s explanation, it is a majority that is present before us. I told you that even the sharp later authorities, meaning people with analytical thinking like Rabbi Shimon Shkop, miss the distinction here between a majority present before us and a majority not present before us. Because there’s a lack of understanding there of how science works and how statistics work. And it’s extremely common; lots of later authorities fall into this, lots.

[Speaker F] And do you think the Sages thought about this at all? What? And do you think the Sages thought about this?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think they had an intuition that it was similar. I don’t know if, had I asked them, they would have known how to explain it to me in words the way I did here. But yes, apparently there was an understanding.

[Speaker D] Can you explain again the… I didn’t manage to understand the answer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Explain what?

[Speaker D] The answer the Rabbi just gave.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying that with the majority among judges, suppose I adopt the Sefer HaChinukh’s explanation and don’t look for another explanation, that the majority that… I rely on the majority in the case of judges because in most cases the majority is right. So my claim is this: how can I know that in most cases the majority is right? True, it’s a law of nature, it’s not something random. But it’s a law of nature that I don’t arrive at on the basis of generalization from a sample. It’s not a scientific law. A scientific law starts from observation of a sample, and then they generalize from that sample to the case, to all cases. Here I have no way even to observe a sample, because I have no way in any case to know whether the majority was right or not. So in any event, I can’t make a generalization, because I don’t have a sample whose truth I know. So what do I do? I don’t do sample and generalization. I say in general about the whole group, by reasoning, that usually the majority is right. That is an a priori reasoning. My claim is that in the case of the stores the same thing happens. Because what happens with the stores? With the stores too, I have no way to measure that indeed most of the pieces that fall on the ground come from the kosher stores. I have no way to run an experiment that checks this. Rather, my reasoning says there’s no difference between the stores, just as my reasoning says the sages are more often right. That reasoning builds the statistics. Now it’s ninety-ten, and now I apply that statistical rule to the piece of meat. Exactly like with judges. Therefore it’s a majority that is present before us. A majority that is not present before us is when I have a sample about which I have direct knowledge from observations, empirical knowledge, and then I generalize regarding all cases. That is a majority that is not present before us. It’s basically a scientific law. A majority that is not present before us is how scientific laws are discovered. The generalization is a majority that is not present before us. Therefore I said that David Hume’s problems attack the majority that is not present before us. Someone who says that a majority not present before us is questionable says that because he’s Humean. Meaning, he claims that this generalization is a dubious generalization. But in my humble opinion, I completely agree with Maimonides. A majority that is not present before us is much stronger.

[Speaker D] The reasoning in the case of stores is so weak. What? The reasoning that is created in the case of stores is very minimal. What is the reasoning?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I agree with that reasoning, don’t misunderstand me. I think it’s correct reasoning. But it is still reasoning. It is not the result of observation of a sample and not of generalization. It is reasoning. A majority that comes from reasoning is a majority that is present before us. A generalization from a sample is a majority that is not present before us.

[Speaker D] What’s the reasoning? That all the stores are equal, or that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that the chance of separation, the chance of losing a piece of meat, doesn’t vary between the stores. Now here, notice, I told you that later on we’ll see why it was important for me earlier to say that the difference is not that a majority not present before us is a law of nature and a majority present before us is something random. Because with judges, if that were the distinction, how would you classify judges, where the majority is right among judges? That’s a law of nature; it’s not random. Right? Smart people are usually more correct. That’s a law of nature. It’s not something random like, by chance, there happen to be nine kosher stores in this city. So if the distinction is law of nature versus not law of nature, then the majority of judges is a majority that is not present before us. And I argued that law of nature or not law of nature is only an indication; it’s not the definition itself. Usually, a law of nature is simply reached through generalization from a sample. That’s how science works. So therefore it’s a law of nature. But that’s not really the point. Here, with judges, it’s a law of nature, but it’s a law of nature that is not scientific. I have no way to confirm it scientifically or refute it scientifically. So it is indeed a law of nature; it’s not something random. But since it is not a generalization from a sample, it is a majority that is present before us. And that’s why I went to all the trouble in the whole introduction and said that the difference between a majority present before us and one not present before us is the question whether there is a generalization from a sample here, not the question whether this is a scientific law or not a scientific law. Even though usually those go together. Meaning, something that is a scientific law is a generalization from a sample. For example, the principle of causality is like the judges. That is a majority that is present before us. I assume that everything has a cause. Something that happened here, that occurred here, I assume has a cause. Why does it have a cause? Because usually things have a cause. How do I know that usually things have a cause? So David Hume tells us: we have no way of knowing that observationally. It is an assumption of reason, an a priori assumption. Meaning, to draw the conclusion that in every case there was a cause. But most women are not barren—that is a majority that is not present before us. Sorry, yes, most women are not barren, that is a majority that is not present before us. Fine? Okay, let’s stop here. At least I closed the…

[Speaker D] Wait, Rabbi, what about the court itself?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said, I explained. What about the court?

[Speaker D] No, but then why is the reasoning, why is the reasoning correct at all?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That the majority is right?

[Speaker D] Yes, because my logic says the majority is not right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With expert judges? Why assume that the majority is not right? I’m not talking about ordinary ignoramuses and crowd wisdom. I’m talking about expert judges, three expert judges sitting there, more or less at the same level of wisdom. Okay? Two say that Reuven is liable and one says that Reuven is exempt. Most likely the two are right, no? Later on I’ll even present a calculation that shows this. But for now I’m leaving it as reasoning.

[Speaker D] All the things that turned out to be true always started as a minority, not… most true things started with a minority, and many times the majority disagreed with them. You can easily find opposite arguments.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t find opposite arguments. You can find situations where the majority doesn’t work. Fine, it’s a majority, not an absolute. But the claim that usually that will be the case, I don’t think you’ll find opposite examples to that. That usually the majority will be wrong? No. A majority of experts at the same level of expertise.

[Speaker D] I would ask the Rabbi for a reasoning that would claim that the minority is right and not the majority. The Rabbi wouldn’t be able to think of such a reasoning? Here, with us, the majority doesn’t need to exert itself; it’s very easy to join the majority, everybody sees and… No, each person forms his own position. Fine, no, what does “forms”? He heard, it’s not as if he doesn’t know about the others. He knows, he lives among his people, he sees, we’re all a flock of sheep following the herd. Someone comes and starts walking against the flow of traffic, you have to think wow, he took risks on himself, he had to activate forces. Simple reasoning, strong reasoning, and very weak.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why weak? Expert judges who sit in judgment—one of the basic principles is that each one must express his own position and not go after someone else. So not only are you suspecting him of following someone else, but you’re claiming that therefore the minority also…

[Speaker D] Not consciously, not consciously, he’s copy-paste.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let me just ask you something. Three judges are sitting. So judge A says Reuven is liable, judge B says Reuven is exempt, now judge C is deliberating whom to join. Right now it’s one against one. What does it mean to “join the majority”? When he joins, the majority will be created.

[Speaker E] This whole thing is a correct case, but if it were not, even in this…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Don’t talk about this case. It’s simple; I don’t think there’s any need here to get tangled up. It’s simple. It’s not certain, of course; the minority can be right. But if I ask what happens in most cases, in most cases the majority is right. Okay, any more questions or comments?

[Speaker C] Can I ask a question off the recording that’s not related to the class?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Turn off the recording?

[Speaker C] It’s just not related to the class.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter, I record the questions too for anyone who’s interested.

[Speaker C] So I’d be glad to know what the Rabbi’s opinion is about what the Haredi parties are doing now on the political map.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, what… are you setting me up perfectly or what? You know what my opinion is.

[Speaker C] I said maybe it would be better to turn off the recording, not for nothing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? You know what my opinion is, so what? It’s not because I’m now going to start cursing if I turn off the recording. You know what my opinion is—what do I have to add?

[Speaker F] No, but now they’re making their situation even worse now. What? They’re making their situation even worse now.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker F] No, it’s even worse than it was before.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They’re taking more extreme steps in the direction that was mistaken from the outset. Their direction is mistaken. The more extreme steps you take, the more wicked you are, fine, okay.

[Speaker C] But they base their argument on the sages of the… like the great Torah authorities or the Torah sages. I think there’s an enormous desecration of God’s name here. Enormous.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. I think so too. You assume, I suppose, that you know—I write this, I say this, it’s no secret.

[Speaker C] Okay.

[Speaker D] Since we’re already asking about other things, I listened to the Rabbi’s conversation, I think on “All the Cards on the Table,” with what’s-his-name, Lior Dayan, on the subject, and the Rabbi said there that what that interviewee claimed was not correct. Meaning, Smotrich and all those people, all those who oppose hostage deals, the hostage deal—they’re not doing it because of messianism or ideology; they have security considerations, the Rabbi said, and that has to be taken seriously. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it could be that there’s a messianic dimension—it’s not all or nothing. Right, but everything that motivates them, in my opinion, is a security outlook.

[Speaker D] So I’m saying, if

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that fits exactly with our picture. Smotrich himself I don’t know, but his voters I know; I talk to them.

[Speaker D] Right, so strangely enough, for some reason every voter, all the people of Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit and their supporters and followers and all that, what matters to them are the security considerations, and they weigh the security consideration that a hostage deal is dangerous. Whereas an overwhelming majority of secular people, an overwhelming majority of security people, including chiefs of staff and air force commanders, commanders, heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet, who are not—the Rabbi says they make considerations.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They’re not making security considerations? They’re conducting negotiations? This reminds me of a common question that comes up on the site too and many times: how can it be that everyone born in a religious home turns out religious, and everyone born in a secular home turns out secular? A sign that it’s all social constructs. Only for some reason people always raise that claim against the religious, and I don’t understand why they don’t raise that claim against the secular to the same extent. Just as you say that I don’t form a position seriously because I was born in a religious home, you also don’t form a position because you were born in a secular home. There’s no advantage for the secular person over the religious one here. What am I trying to claim? I’m trying to claim that when there is a situation like this, where there is a correlation between two groups and a certain position, which doesn’t necessarily follow from their basic worldviews, the bias can run in both directions. Meaning, it could be that the ones who are biased are the religious people, because they have a hidden messianism that causes them to hold certain security positions, which is basically what you’re claiming. And it could be that specifically those who oppose, because they oppose messianists and messianism, that causes them to adopt opposite security positions. Now the question is: who here is biased? Of course, each of us will judge according to his own view, and whoever doesn’t agree with me is apparently the biased one, but that won’t get you anywhere. I mean, it’s not…

[Speaker B] But you can see how the security considerations become flexible from minute to minute, and things that were “let yourself be killed rather than transgress,” like all kinds of corridors, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Starting with Netzarim and ending with Philadelphi, suddenly

[Speaker B] you can be flexible about them, and they go back to plans they were already talking about five months ago.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re making life too easy for yourself.

[Speaker B] No, no, I think there is a very serious ignoring here; there is a disingenuousness here in thinking that this man really cares about security matters.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll tell you more than that: I’m convinced—not just that I think so, I’m convinced—that what moves him is primarily security considerations. Primarily.

[Speaker B] So there is

[Speaker D] here, but I still didn’t understand my question: how can it be that the security considerations accumulated among the voters of Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How can it be that the anti-security considerations accumulated precisely among the voters of the other parties? That’s the question. You decide in advance—it’s like asking why the religious people, who are born in religious homes, always turn out religious; a sign that religion isn’t good, they don’t really form positions.

[Speaker D] Seemingly there is no logical and rational connection between religiosity, messianism, and security considerations.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I say: but there is also no connection between anti-messianism and security considerations—if anything. So why do anti-messianists reach opposite security conclusions?

[Speaker D] No, okay, so here it would be worth judging according to professionalism or whatever, why…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So I’m saying that in the professional considerations I’m convinced Smotrich is right,

[Speaker D] and all those security experts are all biased.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I think.

[Speaker D] But the Rabbi said that Smotrich acts not out of messianic considerations but out of security considerations. Correct. So how can—again I’m trying to understand—how can it be that these security considerations accumulated specifically on the right side of the map and in the half-crazy part of it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You explain that those who oppose him also act from substantive security considerations, and I’m asking you: how can it be that those considerations accumulated among those who are anti-messianic? What’s the difference? Explain to me why you decide that here it’s a difficulty and there it isn’t.

[Speaker D] Okay, that’s legitimate. The Rabbi would say exactly what the Rabbi just said. No, I said that there too, what I said there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly the same thing I said there.

[Speaker D] The Rabbi knows my position on emotions in this matter. Clearly, all of us are driven by what we believe in and not by… fine, we won’t return to that argument. There’s no point in returning to it. No, obviously not. But according to this, it comes out that now we really understand: most of the right supports these security considerations because it is driven by messianic considerations, and most of the others support different security considerations because they are driven by humanistic considerations.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And now I ask: but who is right?

[Speaker D] No, that each one will decide for himself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s very important.

[Speaker D] But I ask the

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] question itself—the Rabbi said about those people that the considerations

[Speaker D] of theirs are pure security considerations of the wholeness of the land.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the considerations, the considerations are security considerations. Why? Because the moment I decide that Smotrich’s considerations are correct in my opinion at the security level, because I don’t think I’m messianic, so then—and in my opinion he’s right security-wise, Smotrich as an example, yes? He’s right security-wise—then in my eyes he really is not biased, and his opponents are biased.

[Speaker D] Ah, that’s already—that’s already not scientific, that’s already not scientific. Why not? I wasn’t talking about science. Until now the Rabbi said that all of them, that these are driven by their faith considerations and those by their faith considerations. And according to that they weigh the security considerations. That I completely accept. But the Rabbi assumed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I didn’t claim that, I’m not claiming that. I claim that Smotrich is driven by security considerations, and the opponents are driven by anti-messianic considerations.

[Speaker D] Well then, what scientific logic is there in that? What reasoning is there in that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Simple, obvious. The same logic by which I say once I arrive at—same question regarding secular and religious. I claim that the religious act from substantive considerations and the secular from non-substantive considerations. That’s my claim. Why? What’s the logic behind that? Because if you—the difficulty as such exists on both sides. It’s a fact: this correlation that whoever is born in a certain home comes out correlated, like the home raised him. So now you can assume that both are wrong, and you can assume that only one side is wrong. Now I—Occam’s razor—why assume that both are wrong? Only one side is wrong. Couldn’t it be that both are wrong? Only one is wrong.

[Speaker D] So now I ask myself who is wrong?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And which position is more correct? In my view the religious position is more correct, so apparently the secular are the biased ones, not the religious.

[Speaker D] No, but there’s a difference between being right or wrong and what motivates him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t… What motivates him? That’s another question, but that’s speculation that nobody knows. I know what…

[Speaker D] But that was what the Rabbi’s conversation with the host was about. The Rabbi said no, what motivates them—not whether they’re right or wrong. That wasn’t the argument there. What motivates them? Their messianism motivates them, and they weigh…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, that depends on the other; that depends on the other. The moment I say he is right security-wise, and he himself tells me that his considerations are security considerations, then why assume—wait—then why assume that what leads him to these security considerations is actually something non-substantive, messianic? Why? If it has seeds, if it’s green outside, red inside, and has watermelon seeds, then it’s probably a watermelon.

[Speaker D] And why do those others make, and those others make non-security considerations?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In my opinion the conclusions they’re drawing are absurd, and once they are absurd I ask myself: so why do intelligent people arrive at this? Because they have anti-Bibi and anti-messianic motivation. That’s the explanation I give, or maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my position. I didn’t say it was a scientific position, but that is my position. The argument there was not scientific.

[Speaker D] But you always said, you always said that the Rabbi knows how to dismiss the consideration of what motivates them, a bit not… not

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. He raised the consideration of what motivates them, not me. He said that what motivates them is messianism. How does he know? Why do you ask only me and not him? Right, he raised motives. I didn’t raise motives. I merely tell him what they say without getting into the question of what motivates them in the subconscious. He talked about the subconscious; I didn’t talk about the subconscious.

[Speaker D] Fine, but he asked the Rabbi about the subconscious.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, and I answered that there is no reason at all to assume there is something else in the subconscious unless he has some sort of evidence for it. He doesn’t. If he also says what he says, and it makes sense, why assume that what he says is actually a double mistake—that there’s some messianic thing here, and the messianic considerations should lead in a different direction, and he was wrong twice so he ended up at the correct conclusion?

[Speaker D] But how can it be that by chance it lines up with the ideology?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not by chance, it’s not by chance. Because he doesn’t have the anti-messianic bias, he makes substantive considerations.

[Speaker D] But he does have a pro-messianic bias too, which also pushes him to think this because…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They don’t have a bias,

[Speaker D] they don’t have a bias

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] anti-messianic.

[Speaker D] No, but he does have a yes-messianic bias.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he doesn’t. A messianic bias is not a bias; it leads to correct considerations. Always? No, in this case. No, but how does that… In another case I’m not convinced.

[Speaker D] How does a messianic bias generate a balanced and serious security consideration?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, because what happens is—look, assuming that the logical considerations, let’s say the logical considerations lead to the situation, what Smotrich says, okay? Then obviously, in order to err you need to be biased by anti-messianic considerations. Because someone biased by messianic considerations still arrives at the correct answer. Therefore, if there is bias here, it is bias on the other side. I really think this, by the way. It’s not some pilpul or after-the-fact defense. I’m convinced that all these security experts, whose word isn’t worth a penny, are all biased, all of them are biased. What they say isn’t worth a penny.

[Speaker D] Not if they don’t—they do put the cards on the table. They say the security considerations are not decisive here. They’re actually being open. I claim, and I claim, that they’re wrong presumably. They say they’re wrong because the considerations are decisive here. Fine, you always taught us that they openly say it’s not security. First of all there are human lives. Never mind, we won’t get into the interpretation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean human lives? They say it’s an ideological consideration. There are human lives here on all sides.

[Speaker D] No, an ideological consideration meaning with…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there are human lives here on all sides.

[Speaker D] No, but human lives of

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] today versus human lives—it will be more human lives.

[Speaker D] It’s obvious—they claim that the dignity of the state, the success of the state, that we should show

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] them that we are a state…

[Speaker D] Not the dignity of the state, he didn’t speak about the dignity of the state, I’m

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] talking about security.

[Speaker D] Right. So they say that the security consideration in this principle does not stand at the top of the priorities.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true, they don’t say that.

[Speaker D] Of course they say that. That’s delusional. Someone doesn’t… Are they disputing the statistics that releasing five thousand terrorists or fifteen thousand terrorists will have statistical implications, increased risk? They don’t dispute that there will be…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Apparently there will be more casualties. No, I didn’t understand, I lost you.

[Speaker D] Who are “they”? Most people, from the experts to ordinary people, who support the deal. They’re not idiots who don’t make the simple mathematical calculation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They are idiots. They are idiots not in IQ. They are idiots because they are biased. They are biased. It’s simple that they’re wrong. It’s just a simple mistake. It’s not even something I’m torn about.

[Speaker B] You always taught us there are two types of authority: formal authority and expert authority. So why don’t you follow the authority of the experts?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When the experts are biased, then I don’t believe them. Why?

[Speaker B] Why do you decide they’re biased? Why not give them the credit that they’re objective? You’ll also go to a doctor and he’ll tell you something you don’t like and you’ll say he’s biased?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The expert doctor whom you chose?

[Speaker B] Absolutely. Absolutely.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the doctor tells me something and I discover he has an interest connected to a pharmaceutical company, then I’ll say he’s biased, yes.

[Speaker B] The thesis is that the authority of the experts goes down the drain.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An expert has no formal authority. An expert has substantive authority, not formal authority. Therefore you need to weigh whether you accept his words or not. It’s not automatic.

[Speaker B] But the part where so easily you dismiss an expert

[Speaker D] opinion of a security expert… where is the next expert, one expert on the other side, who says that releasing fifteen thousand terrorists has no highly significant chance of increasing the total number of deaths?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everyone says there is a significant chance that it will increase.

[Speaker D] That’s not what this is about. Not that. They say that’s true. But that’s not what this is about.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The release of terrorists is not the issue at all.

[Speaker D] Fine, also the issue of what shall we call it, the destruction of Hamas down to the last Hamas member.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, that’s what I’m talking about.

[Speaker D] What, are they not aware that there are risks in that and implications in that and all kinds of problems?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course they’re aware. They’re supposed to be aware of it, and they crudely ignore it.

[Speaker D] Therefore I say they’re biased. Why? They don’t ignore it; they say there is a more important value. Why are we maintaining this state at all?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If this whole state…

[Speaker D] Like in the wedding sermon, they say contradictory things.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? If their security assessment is that it is problematic security-wise, but value-wise they think the hostages must be returned, then how are they using the cloak of security expertise? In values are they experts too?

[Speaker D] No, they’re showing you that we, as security people who devoted our lives—dozens, forty, fifty years—we devoted our lives to the value of security, are capable of saying there is a value greater than it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Excellent, that

[Speaker D] isn’t important and worthy of appreciation?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] isn’t worth a penny. Because you spoke before, you changed your tone now. Earlier you said I need to accept their view as expert authority, and now you’re telling me that as experts they agree with me but value-wise they say something else. But in values they aren’t experts.

[Speaker D] No, I claim that both sides are ideologically biased. So we need to put the cards on the table.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Leave me out of expertise, then why are you bringing expertise into this?

[Speaker B] He’s going in the wrong direction. I still think the important thing here is the expertise, and I don’t think that neither I nor you can attribute to ourselves such great expertise, also because we don’t have the real data, and the second thing: the ease with which you dismiss the opinion of a security expert is an ease that is very hard to accept.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ezra, you dismiss with the same ease, and even greater ease, opposite opinions.

[Speaker B] Also

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] yes, you’re not even aware that they exist.

[Speaker B] What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re not even aware that they exist.

[Speaker B] I’m completely aware; I can give you the two names of the people who say the opposite, and I heard their arguments, and it’s not an argument.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Besides, anyone who thinks this discussion is a purely professional discussion is living in la-la land. It has no connection to professionalism. Listen to all these experts, all the assessments they give under every green tree, under every news broadcast that are disproved the next day, and you’ll see what their expertise is worth.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, an example of what the Rabbi said.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Rabbi said earlier: still, the greatest security expert here is Bibi, I have to say. What he’s done in the recent period no security expert knows how to do.

[Speaker B] Where did the Almog corridor go? Where did the Netzarim corridor go? Where did all these corridors go that people were supposed to die for? Where are they? Where are they?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What kind of argument is that?

[Speaker B] Suddenly you can give them up?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Negotiation, Ezra, negotiation. Have you heard that word? Have you heard it?

[Speaker B] No, no, no. This man neutralized all the negotiations for an entire year because he had two corridors that were the holy of holies. So where did they suddenly disappear to?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ezra, first of all, what you’re saying now is simply not factually correct. Not correct, that’s all. Not correct for two reasons. One reason: you have no information. For some reason you tell me I have no information—do you have information? You’re speaking very decisively here. You have no information. You don’t know what he gave up, you don’t know what he agreed to. All those who say we now have an option to make one comprehensive deal on everything are talking nonsense; they have no idea what they’re talking about. Nobody knows whether there’s even a possibility of making a full deal or not—maybe yes, maybe no, I don’t know, and nobody else knows either. And everyone here is speaking with absolute decisiveness while the other side is always accused of not having facts. I’m not accusing the other side of not having facts. They don’t have facts just as I don’t have facts. And therefore decisions need to be made based on assessment, and my assessment is that these people are dead. And when you make a deal and begin to give up all the corridors you spoke

[Speaker B] about earlier,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] then that means you don’t know how to manage a negotiation. The issue

[Speaker B] of the stubborn insistence that it’s forbidden to leave neither the Netzarim corridor nor the Philadelphi corridor and afterward not the Almog corridor—those are things he spoke about publicly. Publicly he said that because of that he wasn’t willing to continue. Where did that suddenly disappear? Because you are biased.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Something said publicly—what is said publicly does not represent the actual situation. You don’t know what there was on the other side when Hamas…

[Speaker B] Rabbi, you can’t go with an argument like that. You just can’t, really. Otherwise it tells me that this man, whom I already think is a liar, is also lying when he speaks publicly. So I can’t accept that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think he’s a liar too. Fine.

[Speaker B] Unfortunately,

[Speaker D] the establishment of the concentration camp for a million Palestinians in Rafah that we’ll take care of and pray for—why only a million? Then our children and grandchildren will continue to take care of… what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I just don’t want them to put only a million in there but two million.

[Speaker D] And then we’ll take care of all their needs and all…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the world will ostracize us because it’s a concentration camp, and rightly so. We’ll take care of them as much as possible, and if it’s impossible then they’ll die.

[Speaker D] The whole world will ostracize us because it’s a concentration camp, and morally rightly so.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What difference does it make whether the world ostracizes us or not? The world is biased too, what can you do? There’s a moral component here before anything else.

[Speaker D] A person with many

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] moral considerations and tactical considerations—you are biased.

[Speaker D] In relations with the world there are many moral considerations and tactical considerations—you are biased. So this is a crazy bad model, this is something new, Rabbi. To say that from now on, if I want to weigh security considerations, reality-based considerations, then I’m not allowed to weigh moral considerations because now I’m biased?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re allowed to, but when you move from a moral argument when it suits you to a tactical argument, it means you’re basically harnessing all the horses in favor of the direction you want. That’s all. Discuss separately. If you argue that it’s a concentration camp, then that’s a moral problem. Leave me alone with what the world will say.

[Speaker D] Not a concentration camp—paradise, named after Netanyahu, the city of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. A city of a million and a half residents, children, babies, elderly, sick people, with no infrastructure, everything destroyed. We’ll build the sewage, we’ll build the infrastructure, take care of education, move around there, do the policing, take care of… what’s the claim? And this is the madness the Rabbi supports, this madness that will cost us trillions and kill endless numbers of our people? Utilitarianly it’s paradise for them, it’ll be paradise, they won’t have to work, they’ll keep getting the food from us delivered to their homes. Do you support this or not? That’s what I asked.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m answering. I’m saying two things. There’s the moral discussion, which is where you started, and now suddenly you ignore it.

[Speaker D] The Rabbi asked me to remove that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait. And there’s the tactical discussion. The tactical discussion is the question whether this is worthwhile for us, whether it will help us, whether the world will ostracize us.

[Speaker D] Okay, so now I neutralized it,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I turned it into paradise. I imagine… As for the moral question, I answer: I would put all two million there, and as far as I’m concerned, if there’s no other option, let them all die. If there is a way to take care of them, then they should be taken care of, they should be helped, whatever can be done should be done. If there is no way to do that, let them die. That’s on the moral level. You ask me what to do with the world? Right, we need to take the world into account.

[Speaker D] Practically, what, we’ll hold them there and every week they’ll kill ten soldiers for us? At best, in the ideal scenario.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yoel, neither you nor I know the plans being discussed on this issue. So there’s no point discussing it. I don’t know who will be killed and what they plan to do and for how long this will happen and who will provide the supplies and how. What is there to discuss?

[Speaker D] You asked me morally—morally I have no problem. No, because obviously…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the chief of staff thinks, if the chief of staff thought it was such a huge disaster like they portray in Haaretz, then he should refuse and resign. On that too I agree. Good—so why doesn’t he do that?

[Speaker D] It could be that he will do that, it could be he will.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’ll tell you another option: because he doesn’t think that way. Why doesn’t he come out with a statement?

[Speaker D] Why doesn’t he come out? If I were in his place, I’d issue one. Fine, now he gets a salary—please inform the public that what was written in Haaretz is mistaken, incorrect, I support it, it’s a great idea, we’re doing practical experiments.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t engage in public arguments and doesn’t issue spokespeople against Haaretz. The chief of staff deals with the government and with the plans, that’s all.

[Speaker D] This could drag things into writing things that have no basis.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shmuel, this is a pointless argument. In short, everyone chooses what to believe and what not to believe. I’m really not impressed by all the experts and all the leaks; that’s not an indication.

[Speaker D] Let’s put it differently: in light of the data we do know, does the Rabbi support a million percent the establishment of such a city, such a paradise?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Definitely, completely.

[Speaker B] Okay, I’m leaving. Sabbath peace from my side to everyone, and I hope there will be elections and the majority will still decide.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It seems to me you’re in for surprises in the elections, Ezra. Not that in the elections I’ll probably be on your side, but it seems to me we’re in for surprises in the elections.

[Speaker D] Unfortunately, yes, wow, that’s…

[Speaker B] Could be, unless we all mobilize. I’m willing to travel with you to Ofakim and Sderot and persuade people.

[Speaker D] But you’re against the majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Okay, friends, we’re done. Sabbath peace, thank you.

[Speaker C] Great,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] See you, good night.