Uncertainty and Probability—In Halakha, Jewish Thought, and in General—Lesson 39—Rabbi Michael Abraham

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said that comments in this spirit were already heard last time too. I’m just trying to do it in an orderly way. So I think—here I’m really getting to the more fundamental point. This is, I think, the correct explanation. Think about a situation where Shimon pushes Reuven out of the boat because Reuven’s name begins with the letter R and Shimon’s name begins with the letter S. And Shimon’s claim is that there was a lottery between them, and he got the name that begins with the higher letter, which has a higher numerical value, and therefore this is a fully legitimate lottery, and therefore he pushes Reuven into the sea. He says: what difference does it make whether we drew lots with dice or whether we drew lots because the parents chose names randomly, without thinking about the meanings, and it came out that I’m with S and you’re with R? Now of course, we could just as well have chosen the opposite lottery. Reuven could have pushed Shimon into the sea on the claim that the letter beginning Shimon’s name is S, which is higher than the letter R, and therefore the letter R should survive, not the letter S. That’s not a worse argument than Shimon’s argument, right? So really, why is Shimon pushing Reuven? Shimon pushes Reuven simply because he’s stronger. The claims that it’s because his name begins with R and his begins with S are ad hoc claims, but in fact what decided things here was power, not the lottery. Because from the standpoint of the lottery argument, Reuven has an argument no less good than Shimon’s. What difference does it make whether my letter is smaller or greater? You can decide that the smaller letter survives or that the greater letter survives. And the fact that Shimon is the one who pushed Reuven does not stem from the fact that his name begins with S, but simply from the fact that he is stronger, or that he happened to be in the middle of the ship, as we said earlier. Now here the claim is that this lottery, in the final analysis, despite all the arguments about the first letter of the name and so on, is ultimately a lottery about power. Meaning, in the end this is actually a lottery carried out by means of force. Or in other words, before I get to force, maybe I’ll formulate it this way: it’s an ad hoc lottery. Meaning, you choose ad hoc the parameter that will keep you alive and send the other person to his death, and you declare that this is the parameter being drawn. But just as well there could be an opposite parameter. Why did you decide that this parameter is the decisive one? Because you decided; because you have more power, therefore you decided. Meaning, this is not a fair lottery. If we roll a die, then even if I have more power and you have less power, the die allows each of us to win equally. Now true, even if you lost, you could still throw me into the sea by force because you’re stronger than me. That would certainly be an illegitimate act. But the lottery by die was a completely legitimate lottery, because both sides had an equal chance to win. Let’s formulate this again using the first letter of the name. True, both sides had a chance to win. If you choose the larger letter, then Shimon would win; if you choose the smaller letter, then Reuven would win. But the lottery between the option of going with the larger letter or the smaller letter was never held. What was fixed was the name itself. But the decision about which parameter to draw on—whether the larger letter or the smaller letter—that decision was made through force, not through lottery. Meaning, the name itself was fixed by lot, but the name does not determine whether I survive or not. Rather, the criterion that says the name with the larger letter is the one that survives—that’s what determines it. And we did not draw lots over the criterion; you decided the criterion by force. And in fact there is an equally good criterion that would have kept me alive and sent you to your death. So why did you decide specifically on this criterion? If you had drawn lots over that—if we had held a lottery saying that whoever has the larger first letter or whoever has the smaller first letter will go to his death—that would have been a completely fair lottery. But the decision whether it would be the larger letter or the smaller letter, that decision you made coercively, ad hoc. So the fact that we freely drew the name itself is irrelevant, because the criterion that determines which name survives and which doesn’t is what matters; the name didn’t determine it. Meaning, it wasn’t the fact that I’m Shimon that kept me alive, but the fact that I’m Shimon and I’m also more of a bully. That’s what kept me alive. It reminds me of Kishon’s suggestion once for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without bloodshed. Each side should choose a representative. Let them play chess against each other, and whoever wins has won the war. Why kill each other? Let’s play chess. Okay? Or Sammy Vaknin’s suggestion—yes, he was quite a colorful figure. We have a mutual friend who was killed, unfortunately, many years ago already, but he was a brilliant guy—when he was in, I don’t know, seventh or eighth grade, something like that, he decided to learn English, and within a day or two he memorized the dictionary and knew English. A kind of crazy genius from Kiryat Yam. At some point in his life he got into trouble, went to prison, doesn’t matter, various things. In any case, I once heard him in a radio interview—this goes back to childhood, through that mutual friend I had heard about him already as a child; he’s my age. But later on he entered the business world—I said, prison and all sorts of things like that—and once there was an interview with him on the radio, and he suggested a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What was the suggestion? Like dividing cake between two children. Do you know how you divide a cake equally between two children? You let one child cut the cake into two halves, and the other child gets first choice of which half he wants. That guarantees that the division will be exactly equal. Okay? Because the first child, who divides the cake, will of course be careful that the two parts are completely identical, because if one is even a little bigger, he knows his friend will choose the larger half. So Vaknin says: same thing—let’s solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this way. One side will divide the interests equally into two halves, and the other side will choose the half of the interests that it wants. Now, this doesn’t work for many reasons, and Kishon’s chess idea also doesn’t work for many reasons. Among them there is also one shared reason. There are also distinct reasons, but there is one shared reason, and that shared reason is: who is going to force me afterward to uphold what we agreed on? Let’s say we played chess and the Palestinian representative won, okay? And now I send the IDF to smash all the Palestinians and throw them all into the sea. Okay? Who forced me to uphold the result of the lottery? Okay? It won’t work. Therefore in the final analysis it always comes down to force. Meaning, you can agree to all kinds of agreements, but in the end, why should I agree that you’ll throw me into the sea? After all, if I have the power to resist, then obviously I won’t let you throw me into the sea, even if you won the chess game. And therefore in the end what determines things is power. And in that sense I think the same thing happens with the lottery between Reuven and Shimon. If they had drawn lots over whether the larger letter survives or the smaller letter survives, excellent. But since Shimon didn’t wait for the outcome of the lottery and instead threw Reuven into the sea, that means that there really wasn’t a lottery here—rather, he used force. And even if they had held a lottery beforehand and then afterward he used force to advance his position, it would come to the same result. Therefore the lottery here was not really carried out. Okay? That’s basically the claim that says that such a thing is not a lottery, because what we really have here is an ad hoc lottery. An ad hoc lottery is a lottery that basically says that I choose ad hoc the criterion that will keep me alive and send you to your death—which of course I chose; we didn’t draw lots over it. Or if we go back to the genome, then I say: true, I drew by lot the ability to be stronger, say—even if we set aside personal identity and everything I said earlier—suppose this really is a lottery, and what fell to my lot was greater strength. But how was the rule determined that whoever was allotted greater strength is the one who stays alive? Over that rule itself we should have drawn lots. And over that there was no lottery at all. Meaning, even if I drew the genome by lot, the rule according to which power plays a role—that was not determined by lottery. So how was it determined? It was determined because I’m stronger. Which means that this is really an ad hoc lottery—it’s not a lottery.

[Speaker G] Yes, but there’s no reason not to accept this lottery. Like, if right now I decide, fine, whoever is born strongest will survive, then why would you say yes, why would you say no—what reason do you have to object?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s fine, but by exactly the same token, if I decide that whoever is born weakest is the one who survives. Fine, okay—so now I’m proposing this lottery and you’re proposing that one. How do we decide?

[Speaker G] No, now it’s not clever, because now you’re strong and I’m weak.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if we had done it before that, before the children were born. Before that. But you didn’t do it before that—you’re doing it now. That’s why I call it an ad hoc lottery, because you’re doing it now, not beforehand. Okay, so it’s not a lottery, as I explained when I offered the explanation. The first explanation—that the timing of the lottery matters—I told you was certainly not correct, but it is connected to the real explanation. And now you’ve put exactly that thing on the table. Because really part of the ad hoc nature here is that it comes after the fact. You take something that happened long ago, but only now do you determine that it will be the relevant factor, that it will be the decisive factor. In that sense it is connected to timing. But as I said before, if they had held a fair lottery at the harbor before getting onto the ship, the fact that it happened before the event would change nothing. It would have been a fair lottery and everything would have been fine. Therefore timing in itself is not the point. The point is the ad hoc character. But the ad hoc character is connected to timing. Not everything that happens earlier is ad hoc, but ad hocness is connected to timing. It’s connected to timing because when you decide on the criterion of the lottery after you already know the event happened and you know what outcome you want.

[Speaker D] There’s also another missing element in this whole issue of ad hocness: there wasn’t any agreement to the lottery at all. There has to be some sort of procedure in which everyone agrees that we are now setting these as the lottery criteria, and that didn’t happen.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I agree. I’m now getting exactly to that point about agreement.

[Speaker G] But before the ship—before they got onto the ship—what’s the problem there? If we had now determined that if some dangerous event happens, I’ll throw out the strong one and the weak one will survive—like, is the issue that the strong one will basically have a greater chance of getting the benefit? So then that too is basically not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understood the question.

[Speaker G] I’m saying the rabbi also said that before the ship, in terms of timing—that is, even if it happened before the disastrous event occurred, before we got onto the ship, we decided that the strong survives and the weak…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, if we decided by agreement, there’s no problem.

[Speaker G] No, we didn’t decide by agreement, but say it’s a criterion that supposedly isn’t tainted by the matter itself. Meaning, I determined it now. So what changed because it happened earlier?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My birth happened earlier in any case, that’s obvious. There was no agreement—so what happened earlier? Between what two situations are you comparing here?

[Speaker G] Okay, okay, I got it. So basically the point of the die is that supposedly there isn’t there the… like, it belongs to no one.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is agreement. No—the point really is a point of agreement. That’s important. But the point is that if there is an agreed criterion—meaning, first of all, of course, if I agree that they should throw me into the sea and that the stronger one survives, there’s no problem—but there’s no problem not because it’s a fair lottery.

[Speaker G] Because he waives his life.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, because I waive it. I’m simply volunteering to die for the motherland. Okay? I’m talking about agreement to the manner in which the lottery is carried out, not agreement to die.

[Speaker G] But agreement not in practice—I mean agreement in the sense that you don’t really have a claim against this lottery. It’s not really that you have to actually agree in practice. If I now determine something and someone doesn’t want it…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, you’re getting ahead of me—I’m coming to that too in a moment. But step by step. What I want to say is that a fair lottery is one that all the parties basically agree to in advance. Then you carry out the lottery. If we had agreed in advance that whoever is stronger is the one who survives, and now we still don’t know who is stronger and who is weaker, and now we check who is stronger—they’ll lift weights, and whoever is strongest will survive—there is no problem at all; that is a fair lottery. That’s perfectly fine. Like a die. Yes, like a die. Why? Because we agreed on the criterion of strength. The agreement here is essential. The agreement reflects the fact that both sides have a chance to win. It’s not something happening ad hoc; it’s not something I determine when I already know in advance that the result will be in my favor and against you. Therefore the agreement here is essential. But as was noted earlier, let’s think about a situation where we’re sitting on a ship and want to carry out a fair lottery, yes, with dice, and one of the people sitting on the ship says: no, I don’t agree to hold a lottery. I don’t agree at all—even with dice. I don’t agree to hold any lottery whatsoever. I think it’s obvious that you can force him to participate in a lottery. So where did the agreement go? The claim is that there has to be a situation in which every reasonable person would agree—not that actual agreement is required, but that this is a situation in which agreement is a sign, not a cause. It is a sign that the lottery is fair. Meaning, the lottery has to be fair and not ad hoc, and only then can it be carried out. Now the agreement—the fact that everyone agrees—is evidence that the lottery is fair. But if somebody just refuses because of a whim, while the lottery is in fact fair—that is, his rights are protected, his rights are not being violated, he has an equal right like everyone else—but he objects just because he doesn’t feel like it, wants to mess everyone over, wants to commit suicide—let me die with the Philistines. Fine? In that case I think he can be forced to participate in the lottery. Meaning, the requirement is not that there actually be agreement. Agreement is a sign that the lottery is fair, and the real requirement is that the lottery be fair.

[Speaker D] But what happens when there’s an indication of that? What happens when one of the people says: it’s not just that I don’t want a lottery, I don’t want this element in the lottery, I want a different element?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning? What element?

[Speaker D] One person says we’ll go by the letters of the alphabet in the names. The other says no, I don’t want that, I want to go by the parents, by the parents’ names. But we’ll hold a fair lottery over the names and the parents and all that? Yes, but what is the component that will decide? One wants to roll a die and the other wants to flip a coin. Exactly. No problem—that’s perfectly fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If they don’t reach agreement, then it is entirely legitimate for the one with power to compel everyone to use one of the two options, as long as the chosen option is fair.

[Speaker D] Okay. To roll a die or flip a coin? Yes, that too could be, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Same thing—it doesn’t matter. But they can disagree about that too. Meaning, what I really want to claim is that agreement is not truly required here. Agreement is a sign that the lottery is fair. What is required is a fair lottery. Therefore even if in practice there was no agreement, but the lottery we are conducting is fair, everything is fine. Think about the Siamese twins—we talked about this in the previous class, yes, the Siamese twins. We want to hold a lottery in order to send one to his death and save the other. Now suppose they are already grown, twenty years old, of sound mind, and we ask them, and one of them does not want to hold a lottery. He refuses to hold a lottery.

[Speaker F] I think you can force him to hold a lottery.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even though when they were small I relied on the idea of implicit agreement—that if they were grown and we asked them, then obviously they would agree, because it gives them a fifty percent chance to live, whereas otherwise both of them go to their deaths. But now, here they are, grown in practice—not “if they were grown,” they are grown. And now I ask them and one of them does not agree. I claim that he can be forced. How does that fit with the fact that when they were small I gave legitimacy to the lottery because I said that if we had asked them they would surely have agreed? Here, now, there is someone who does not agree. The claim is: no. If we had asked them, it surely would have been proper for them to agree. I don’t care whether they actually agree. What I mean is that it is fair. That’s the point. This is a lottery—it is a reasonable decision because it gives you a fifty percent chance of surviving. And if we don’t do it, you are one hundred percent dead. Okay? So in that sense there too I do not mean actual agreement, but rather a fair situation that would win the agreement of every reasonable person. If there is some unreasonable person who simply decided to be stubborn, that doesn’t matter to me, so long as the situation is fair. The requirement is a requirement of fairness, not of agreement. Agreement is only a sign that we are dealing with…

[Speaker C] Rabbi, he’s not unreasonable if he’s just stubborn. What? It’s not reasonable to say that he’s just stubborn about dying.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter whether it’s reasonable—suppose there is someone who is simply stubborn.

[Speaker C] It could be that he doesn’t want this result, that they kill him by…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t want it, too bad. I’m not willing to die because he doesn’t want it.

[Speaker B] Rabbi, the rabbi is presenting fairness as a value that stands on its own, and that isn’t necessarily correct, because our basic intuition may simply be against “might makes right.” This reality in which power wins—which is all of nature, the whole of nature is power winning, right? In every sense, on every level of life—that’s something that outrages us. Once the element of power winning is removed, I don’t think the point is fairness and equality. For example, suppose both sides…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, a lottery that isn’t forceful but isn’t fair either—

[Speaker B] do you think it’s fine to do that? Suppose that in Vayikra Rabbah it weren’t about who survives, but the opposite—each one wants the other to survive. Something silly, I don’t know, some sort of altruism…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In Vayikra Rabbah, yes, with the…

[Speaker B] each one wants to give the treasure to the other, and so they’re fighting in order that the other should survive. Here our feeling that the whole argument is about equality or lack of equality—that doesn’t separate us.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that would be connected. Let them do whatever they want; it doesn’t interest me. I’m not looking for a fair way out because there’s no problem.

[Speaker B] Ah, so I’m saying, because the problem in Vayikra

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbah is not

[Speaker B] lack of fairness, but the root of the problem is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. Where there is a problem, you need fairness. If each one wants to kill himself for his friend, then there is no problem.

[Speaker B] Why? Why is there no problem? There’s a dispute between them; each one wants the other to survive.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem—good health to them, let them both kill themselves. That’s not the question. When there is a problem and we need to hold a lottery, the lottery has to be fair.

[Speaker B] No, but afterward the second one sues him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He was the stronger one; he forced

[Speaker B] the other to survive and jumped into the water.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean “sues him”? I said—I started to say—in Vayikra Rabbah there is a midrash that Alexander of Macedon—Alexander the Great—came to Africa, and there he heard that the king was very wise, and he wanted—the king invited him to see how he judged the people. And two people came before him. One person had sold his fellow a house or a courtyard, something like that. And the buyer found a treasure in the courtyard that he had bought. Okay? Now he comes to the court and says, listen, this treasure isn’t mine, it belongs to the seller. The seller says, what are you talking about? I sold him the courtyard with everything in it. And if he found a treasure there, the treasure is his. These are two righteous men, each one wanting to give the treasure to the other. Okay? So the king said: do you have a son? Do you have a daughter? Let them marry each other, and the couple will get the treasure, and all the pious will rejoice in song. But the Lithuanians, of course, ask—yes—who pays the damages? Meaning, the Lithuanians with the spirit of Yonatan ben Uzziel. The Litvak asks: wait, leave aside the son and daughter—suppose he has no son and no daughter. What is the law? What is the correct answer to that question? Leave me alone with the gimmick of a son and daughter. And the answer is, of course, that there is no correct answer to that question because there is no question. When you come to court, you come to court so that it will protect your rights that were violated. The role of the court is to protect someone whose rights were violated. But where you have no rights being asserted—you want to give the other person his rights and he doesn’t want to receive them, and he wants to give you your rights and you don’t want to receive them—then good for you, fight it out among yourselves, go to the sea, do whatever you want with your son and daughter or without them, and leave me alone. You don’t come to court with something like that. You come to court when your rights were violated, not when you want to give gifts and the other person doesn’t want to take them. That’s not a question for a court. Same thing here. If each of you wants to commit suicide, then all of you commit suicide together. What do you want from me? When each of you wants one person to remain alive—each one wants to remain alive but wants to be fair—then you need to hold a lottery. And then the lottery must be fair. But that is the situation in which there is a problem. When there is a problem, you need to hold a lottery, and then the lottery is fair. If each one wants to volunteer, then there is no problem, and the whole question never comes up.

[Speaker B] Exactly—you’re formulating best what I’m saying: that the problem is not unfairness but forcefulness and “first come, first served”…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no—I’m not claiming that. I’m claiming that the problem is a problem of unfairness. Except that fairness is needed in a place where there is a problem to solve. So when there is a problem to solve, the solution must be fair. You’re talking about a situation where there simply is no problem to solve, so there you need neither fairness nor unfairness, because no solution is needed. I’m talking about the character of the solution. The solution must be fair.

[Speaker B] The dispute was real. There is a real dispute. I believe in it all my life.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, argue among yourselves, do whatever you want, leave me in peace. What do you want from me?

[Speaker B] No, no—but we came to you to resolve it, and you don’t want to resolve it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m not coming to resolve anything. When there is no question, there is nothing to resolve.

[Speaker B] But there is—we have an important ideological dispute. I don’t want to do an injustice, and you…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you don’t want to, then don’t do it.

[Speaker B] But he’s forcing me; he’s leaving the money with me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Work it out between yourselves. No—your rights were not violated.

[Speaker B] But why? Your role as a judge is to judge between us.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, my role as a judge is to protect violated rights. Your rights were not violated.

[Speaker B] What rights? Where did rights come from? This whole expression “rights” is a fiction with no basis. Where do rights come from?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that again brings us to a different argument that we won’t get into here. Okay, I once spoke about that too—duties and rights and Choshen Mishpat and so on. In any case, for our purposes what I want to say is this: the requirement for a lottery is that the lottery be fair. And a fair lottery means that force may be what enforces it, but not that force itself be the parameter over which we are conducting the lottery. Okay? Because in the end, whether I say it’s the first letter of the name, the second letter of the name, this sort of strength, that sort of strength—in the end, what determined that I die and you live was force, not the first letter of the name. Your force gave you the privilege of determining which letter of the name survives and which letter of the name does not survive. Okay? Therefore in the end you used force and not a lottery. They’ll say, yes, but I myself received that force by lot, because my genome is such that I have strength and your genome is such that it doesn’t… You received the force itself by lot. No—that is an ad hoc lottery. You decided that force would be the determining factor. Over that we held no lottery. An ad hoc lottery. Therefore I think the real problem with the claim of that defendant there on the boat—yes?—the problem is that the lottery he is talking about is an ad hoc lottery, and an ad hoc lottery is not a fair lottery. Okay, that’s regarding this matter of the Liverpool ship. Let me just add one more comment. I wrote this in one of the columns I devoted to this issue. It somehow reminded me of the discussion of justice and charity—yes? Social justice and charity. People are always discussing justice and not charity, yes? Justice and not charity—that’s a communist slogan. Meaning, it’s a slogan that says we want the means of production, the money, to be distributed equally among people, and not that the rich should give charity to the poor. Even though in both cases the problem of the poor is solved, still we want to solve it by a mechanism of justice and not by a mechanism of charity. There is some assumption here—this is the socialist, communist outlook. In contrast, capitalism says that if you’re poor, I’ll give you charity, but you are not entitled—speaking of rights, we’ve come back again to rights—you are not entitled to half of my money. Rather, I have an obligation to give you charity so that you don’t die. In other words, I have an obligation to give; you do not have a right to receive. You don’t have a right; the money is not yours; you have no right to receive it. I once spoke about the protests of the disabled, yes? They demonstrated over their rights. That’s absurd—they have no rights. Meaning, they can’t demonstrate over their rights because they don’t have rights. What they can demonstrate is that they want us to act charitably toward them. Fine, legitimate. And I think not only legitimate, but that there really is an obligation to act charitably toward them. But that is charity. It’s not that as disabled people they are entitled to part of the money of healthy people. No, they are not entitled. On what basis would they be entitled? Now here, this argument between socialism and capitalism, or between equality and freedom if you like, is also in some sense connected to the previous issue. Why? Because what the socialists are really saying is that someone who earns a lot of money and becomes rich does so because he has greater abilities, better starting conditions, he was born into a wealthier home, received greater talent, whatever, greater power, greater economic power of one kind or another, and therefore this is really an unfair lottery, because it is a lottery over power. You got the money by lottery, yes? The capitalist says: what do you want from me? I earned the money because of my talents, because of my attributes, because of my parents or something like that. Fine—I earned the money. And the socialist is essentially saying: this is a lottery over power, and as we’ve just seen, power is not a lottery. Meaning, you drew greater power by lot—that is not a fair lottery. And in a certain sense one can say that the dispute or disagreement between socialism or communism and capitalism is, in some sense, the question whether a lottery over power is a legitimate lottery or not. The fact that you have more power does not mean that the money is yours. So what? Who decided that precisely the one with more power deserves more money? Why not the one with less power? Or less talent? Or poorer parents? All these factors. And when I speak here of power, of course I don’t mean specifically physical power, but economic power or economic starting conditions. So really this dispute maps onto the question that power is not a lottery. Now, if that is really so, then the conclusion we have reached so far is that the socialists are right. Because the capitalists are basically saying: look, I drew power by lot, and I used it and earned more money. What do you want from me? It’s a lottery, a natural lottery. And the poor person says: not at all—this is an ad hoc lottery; power is not a lottery. But that is not correct. I think it is not correct. Why is it not correct? Because when we are on the boat, then the resource we want—I spoke about this in the previous class—when do we hold a lottery? We hold a lottery when the resources cannot be divided equally. Right? Like a courtyard that is too small to divide under Jewish law, a small courtyard, and we need to divide it between two brothers or two partners, so we need to hold a lottery over who gets the courtyard. Because instead of dividing the courtyard, we divide the chances of winning the courtyard. Since we cannot divide the courtyard—you getting a millimeter of courtyard helps nothing. So we divide the chances of receiving the courtyard. Okay? Instead of dividing the courtyard itself. In other words, we divide the chances of getting this resource that belongs to both of us. We want to divide it; there is no way to divide it; there’s no choice, we hold a lottery. But here, when we are on the boat, for example, the resource is life, or really the boat that will save our lives. And that boat does not belong to you any more than it belongs to me. And we also have no way to divide the boat between us—a half-boat will not save us—so we hold a lottery, we divide the chance to receive this resource, to win the boat, not the boat itself. But all this is only because the boat, a priori, does not belong to either of us more than to the other.

[Speaker G] Yes, but if I look at the person’s strength—wait, wait, just a second.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But regarding money, when we speak about the social, economic-social dispute, money is the question. Do the money or the resources belong equally to everyone, and it is only the one who uses power who wins those resources, and this is an unfair lottery as the communist says? Or not. I created those resources. Through my talent I created these products, this money, or something like that. It’s not money just lying there that belongs to all of us and we need to hold a fair lottery to divide it between us. No. This money, or these means, these goods, whatever—they were created by me through my talent. So that means that the resource that you, the communist, demand to divide is not really a resource that exists here and we want to divide between us. It is a resource that I created. If I created the boat because I had strength, then I am right in wanting to be saved by it and not the weak person, even though that strength was given to me and is arbitrary—it’s not a fair lottery. True. But the boat does not belong equally to both of us. I created the boat. It’s like two people walking in the desert and one of them has a canteen of water. Then yes, Rabbi Akiva says: no, we do not divide it—your life takes precedence over the life of your fellow. But in a place where the canteen is jointly owned by the two of us—it doesn’t belong to either of us, it belongs to both of us—or we found an ownerless canteen, or whatever it may be. In such a situation, apparently it should be divided. But if we divide it, both of us die, so what we should do is hold a lottery. A fair lottery. Why? Because the canteen does not belong to you any more than to me. And here there is a justified demand that even if you have more power—so what if you have more power? The fair solution is still to hold a lottery over the canteen. But if the canteen belongs to you, I cannot demand that you hold a lottery. Why? It belongs to you—you have power because it’s yours. So what, power is not a lottery? No. Because the canteen is mine, the asset I want to divide does not belong equally to both of us. So there is no point discussing the fairness of the division. There is no division problem here at all. I don’t need to divide it—it’s mine. The same thing in the capitalist context, yes? The capitalist basically—you can argue about it—but the capitalist basically claims: true, the lottery is not fair, but the resource that you want to divide by a fair lottery is not a resource that belongs to all of us; it is a resource that belongs to me. Therefore the fairness of the lottery is irrelevant, because I do not need to divide it with you. So you have no grounds for complaining about fairness. Okay. Someone wanted to comment on something earlier?

[Speaker B] Even so, the means of production—the land, the resources—in the end they really do belong to everyone.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right. And for example there are minerals in them or natural resources that they give to companies, yes—there are always protests when they give companies resources like gas, or the salt in the Dead Sea, or things like that. That is a claim I am willing to accept even as a capitalist. The resources belong to the whole country. There is no reason in the world to give them free of charge to someone. True, since there is someone who has the talent to turn those resources into money, while the average person in the country does not have that talent, I still don’t think the others have the right to stop him and say: wait, that’s ours, don’t do anything with it. But it is true that they deserve payment out of the profits he will make from it. That is true. Talent has weight, but I do not reject the claim that the resources belong to everyone and that the division must be fair. This really is a case that combines the two considerations. Talent matters, but there still has to be a fair distribution. Both things have to be present here.

[Speaker H] In connection with what you said about Pharaoh, on Friday Rabbi Fritz gives a class—he’s a psychologist, a couples therapist, a psychologist—and he argues that the issue there is known: you have to remove anxieties before beginning treatment. Moses’ demand to remove part of the labor force from Egypt sent Pharaoh into anxiety.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then what? I didn’t understand—what is the claim?

[Speaker H] And then you have to remove the anxious situation before beginning the treatment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And hardening the heart is…

[Speaker H] Is that removing anxiety?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hardening the heart increases the anxiety, doesn’t it?

[Speaker H] That’s what he says, but he argues that this situation is familiar from the world of psychological treatment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What kind of psychological treatment? But if I harden his heart, then he wants even less to let them go.

[Speaker H] He went into anxiety, you put him into anxiety, and therefore he argues that the reaction was: I’m not doing this not because I’m afraid of God or the like; I’m not doing it because I’m anxious about this movement of my labor force.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand—but I didn’t understand how this connects to hardening the heart, I’m not…

[Speaker H] That’s his claim.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand it, okay. Rabbi?

[Speaker B] Yes. Can I ask about something else? What is the rabbi’s position on the controversy that came up this week between Rabbi Cherlow and Rabbi Zarbiv, Rabbi Shmuel?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I only saw some headline. I don’t know the details there, what exactly happened—I don’t know.

[Speaker B] In any case, he was invited, as I understood it—Rabbi Zarbiv was invited to lecture in Tel Aviv, where apparently something was said that implied…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was some headline there—something like “to screw Gaza” or something like that—there was some headline like that.

[Speaker B] Yes, yes, two hundred kilometers, I would have

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] canceled the class,

[Speaker B] all the voices came out there, there was some…

[Speaker F] It was a lecture at Yeshivat Orot Shaul, and Rabbi Zarbiv was at Yeshivat Orot Shaul, gave a class there, and they were photographed together smiling and so on and so on—“love truth and peace.” That’s what I saw in some notice, with a picture and text, in one of the WhatsApp groups.

[Speaker B] No, but I’m mainly asking about Rabbi Cherlow’s apology. Rabbi Cherlow supposedly at first came out against him, distanced himself, and said—and apparently, I don’t know exactly, something against Zarbiv’s position, which I also think is so—and afterwards he apologized for having come out against him, saying he never wants to come out…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what

[Speaker B] he said, and so I don’t know. Did he apologize? He apologized. Because this approach of avoiding controversies is so strange.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not one of those who avoid controversies. Right, that’s why I’m asking the rabbi. If the controversy is justified, then certainly, certainly it is right to engage in polemics. I don’t see any principled problem with controversies. You have to examine what the sides were and what the arguments were; I don’t know.

[Speaker B] Right, agreed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, well, friends, have a peaceful Sabbath.

[Speaker B] Thank you very much, peaceful Sabbath.