Doubt and Statistics – Lecture 34

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anyone who goes to ask the rabbi of Brisk should know whom he’s asking. Meaning, everyone appoints a rabbi for himself. Everyone chooses his own rabbi. If you go ask the rabbi of Brisk, you’re not buying a pig in a poke; you know what kind of cat you bought. There are different halakhic decisors, and everyone chooses whom to ask. The claim that really there’s no genuine difference between clinical and non-clinical OCD except whether it simply bothers you—that’s all—that was very disappointing to me, because… yes, every so often I look at the comments that come up; I don’t always manage to understand them while I’m speaking. But that was a bit frustrating, because if that’s really so, then really—what exactly am I appreciating in the rabbi of Brisk? That he isn’t bothered by his OCD? So he has a mental illness or psychological disorder like many other people, only he doesn’t go to a psychologist, he lives with it in peace, and others don’t live with it in peace. So for that he deserves more appreciation? Then his worrying about every view of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) is just a psychological disorder. So what is there for me to appreciate in him, if that really were the answer? I think that’s not the answer. I haven’t clarified it with Ofanog; I need to get back to him, I’m no longer in Petah Tikva. But I don’t think that’s the answer. The answer is—and all this is in parentheses, of course—but the answer is that the question is whether, when you are stringent about every tiny possibility, you do it because you decided that as an ideology or because of psychology. In other words, are you stringent about every smallest possibility because you really are God-fearing? That’s a decision that doesn’t come from your stomach hurting if you eat that thing because maybe there’s some opinion saying it’s forbidden. If that’s what it is, that’s OCD. That is not worthy of appreciation. But if you do it because you truly want to fulfill every possible view, to be clean before God and man, yes, to be thoroughly righteous—that is worthy of appreciation; that is fear of Heaven. Now, true, the result is that for the first type it will also bother him that he does this, while for the second type it won’t bother him. Why won’t it bother him? Because it’s an ideological decision he makes coolly. It’s not that he can’t live differently—he can live differently—but since he is so God-fearing, he makes that decision coolly and conducts himself that way. Meaning, the distinction he described to me is a correct distinction, but it isn’t the root of the matter; it’s only a symptom. The root of the matter is whether your desire to be stringent comes from the gut or from the head. Is it an ideological decision, or is it the result of a disorder. Okay? That’s really the point. And if it’s the result of a disorder, then even if it doesn’t bother you, it isn’t fear of Heaven; it’s still OCD, only it doesn’t bother you that you have OCD. But obviously, usually if it’s the result of a disorder it will also bother you, because ideologically you don’t think you need to act this way, but you act this way because it keeps gnawing at you in the pit of your stomach, so usually it will also bother you psychologically. That’s why the two really come together. In other words, if it comes from the psychological plane, then it also bothers you. If it comes from the ideological plane, then maybe it won’t bother you. It doesn’t have to be that way, but many times it is. Okay? Therefore, in principle I accept his distinction, but not for his reasons—or I see it as a symptom and not as the root of the matter. Fine, but that’s just a side comment; let’s get back to our topic. So Rabbi Shimon Shkop says that if you have a doubt whether to be in doubt, then don’t be in doubt. OCD. Yes, that’s fine, then you don’t need to be in doubt. Fine, you can arrive at things that are—I don’t know—I have some doubt, doubt, doubt, a double doubt, one possibility out of thirty-two or sixty-four; always powers of two, of course. So fine, a normal person doesn’t doubt in that case, so don’t be OCD. Now of course, don’t be OCD not in the psychological sense, but you don’t need to be OCD in the ideological sense. Okay, that’s obvious. Therefore I use the term OCD, but I use it inaccurately in this context. Because here Jewish law is telling you: you do not need to be stringent. This is not a psychologist treating your mental disorders. This is an ideological or normative instruction about how one ought to behave. So I use the term OCD only to say: listen, a normal person doesn’t worry about one possibility out of thirty-two. If you do worry, that’s OCD, not fear of Heaven. Fine—and if for someone it nevertheless is fear of Heaven? Fine, then maybe he’ll be stringent. But no, I’m saying: for a normal person who doesn’t worry, Jewish law gives that its stamp of approval—you are completely fine, you are not obligated to worry. So that is the second possibility raised by Rabbi Shimon Shkop for why in a double doubt we are lenient. If you have a doubt whether to be in doubt, don’t be in doubt. This reminds me of another point connected to the laws of doubt and the worlds of doubt. I remember once seeing a booklet—actually a nice booklet—by a Jew named Ohad Ezrachi. He once taught in Yeruham before I got there. He was a ba’al teshuva who gave classes in various yeshivot about Hasidism and philosophy and so on, and at some point he somehow slipped entirely into Buddhist directions and so on, opened some ashram; I don’t know exactly what’s with him today, interesting, I haven’t heard in many years. In any case, he once published a booklet, a very nice booklet, I read it, called The Worlds of Doubt. And there he really talks about the value of being in doubt, about the ideology of doubt. That is of course a modern or postmodern ideology, if you like, but also in the context of serving God and Jewish law and so on. This value, in a certain sense, is expressed in Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s statement: if you have a doubt whether to be in doubt, then don’t be in doubt. If you are in doubt, that’s perfectly fine, but don’t manufacture doubts by force. If you have a doubt whether to be in doubt, then don’t be in doubt. There is value in being in doubt; you are not supposed to deny a situation in which you are in doubt, but don’t create it artificially. It reminds me of an article I once wrote about autonomy in halakhic ruling. In Jewish law they distinguish between an ordinary doubt and a doubt due to disagreement among the authorities. Yes, there are several kinds of doubts. There is doubt in the facts: doubt whether this piece is pork or not pork. There is doubt in the law, a second type of doubt. Yes, say there is some piece of meat here and I don’t know whether it is from domesticated cattle—meaning, I know from which animal it came. A koy, a kvi, I don’t know how you pronounce it, yes, the question is whether that animal is kosher or not kosher. Yes, whether it is a wild animal or domesticated animal, no matter, whether it requires ritual slaughter or not, regarding it—I have a halakhic doubt, not a factual doubt. And then there is a doubt that is a doubt due to disagreement among the authorities, which is a certain kind of halakhic doubt, namely a doubt arising from a dispute among the halakhic decisors. The Rosh says one thing, Maimonides says another, and therefore this is supposedly a doubt. So there is doubt in the facts, there is legal doubt, which is doubt in Jewish law, and there is doubt due to disagreement among the authorities. Our rabbis are in doubt because two of our rabbis disagreed with each other, so that is a state of doubt. I wrote an article opposing this notion of doubt due to disagreement among the authorities. I don’t recognize it. Why? Because… yes, I brought there in the introduction the story about Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz. I already said it: all the good stories are about Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz, so this is one of them. And the story says that a priest came to him and said: why don’t you go after us—why don’t you become Christians? The Torah says, “Follow the majority”; the Christians are the majority. Yes, there are several possible answers to this, but Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz told him: following the majority is when I am in a state of doubt. But if I am not in a state of doubt, then there is no reason at all to follow the majority. I have no doubt, therefore I do not follow the majority. What does it mean, “I have no doubt”? Is it one hundred percent certain that the Christians are wrong and the Jews are right? I don’t think so. Nothing is one hundred percent. But if it is clear enough to me, or my concern is small enough—because if I have a doubt whether to be in doubt, then I’m not in doubt. It’s a small doubt. In a small doubt I am not in doubt, okay? Therefore I won’t follow the majority, since I am not in a state of doubt. And this is usually told as a joke, but it isn’t a joke; it is an entirely serious story. And a completely serious story that says: if I am not in a state of doubt, then there is no reason to follow the majority. Just like if I find a piece of meat in the marketplace, and that piece is sealed with a kosher stamp. In the marketplace there are nine non-kosher butcher shops and one kosher shop in that city, okay? Do I need to be stringent? Seemingly I should follow the majority; most shops sell non-kosher meat. The answer is no. Why? Because I am not in a state of doubt; this piece has a kosher seal. If there is a piece and I don’t know what it is, then I am in a state of doubt, and therefore I need to follow the majority. But if I am not in a state of doubt, then even if there is a majority here, I don’t need to follow it, because I am not in a state of doubt. Okay? Yes, like what was brought up here with the Talmud in tractate Shabbat 30, what Rav Kook discusses in Ein Ayah, about someone who came to Rabbi and said: “Your mother is my wife and you are my son.” Meaning: a mamzer—from your mother with me and not from your father. So he says to him: “Would you like to drink a cup of wine?” Something—we already talked about this. “Would you like to drink a cup of wine?” Drink and burst. He brushed him off. Okay? Why did he brush him off? There is doubt here, a Torah-level doubt requiring stringency; maybe he is a mamzer. Yes, but I’m not—if I were doubtful, then maybe I would worry about what you are saying. You need a reason to be in doubt. Here this is not following the majority, of course, but following one witness. If I am not in a state of doubt, then one witness does not trouble me, okay? So, if I return to Rabbi Shimon Shkop, this is really the claim: if I have a doubt whether to be in doubt, then I do not need to be in doubt. The same I argue regarding doubt due to disagreement among the authorities. I say essentially: let’s say there is a dispute between Rashba and Maimonides on some point, no matter, some halakhic matter. Does that automatically mean that I am in a state of doubt? The fact that Rashba thinks this and Maimonides thinks that is perfectly fine; each of them had a clear position. Does that necessarily mean that I am in a state of doubt? It depends. If my position is like Rashba, then I am not in doubt; I think like Rashba. If I’m like Maimonides, then again I am not in doubt; I think like Maimonides. And if I don’t know which of them is right, then I am in doubt—not because there is a dispute between Rashba and Maimonides, but because I myself have no position. So then it’s just ordinary legal doubt; it is not doubt due to disagreement among the authorities. Because if I have a position, then I don’t care that Rashba and Maimonides disagree; I will go with my position. So true, I may in such a situation be doubtful, but I am doubtful not because there is a dispute between Rashba and Maimonides, but because I myself have no position. So therefore this is really a dispute which is really legal doubt, not doubt due to disagreement among the authorities. I object to this concept which assumes that if there are two opinions among the halakhic decisors, then I am in a state of doubt. If I have a position of my own, then I am not—don’t tell me to be in a state of doubt. I decide whether I am in a state of doubt. If I am in a state of doubt, then there are rules of doubt: a Torah-level doubt requires stringency. But if I am not in a state of doubt, then why impose Torah-level doubt requiring stringency when I am not in doubt? Because Rashba and Maimonides disagree, therefore I must be stringent? Why? I’m not doubtful. If I were doubtful, I’d be stringent. And if I’m not doubtful, then why be stringent? And you can’t tell me: be in doubt. Therefore this connects to what I said about Rabbi Shimon Shkop. If I am in doubt, then I am in doubt. But you cannot instruct me to be in a state of doubt. In doubt due to disagreement among the authorities, it is really a kind of instruction to be in a state of doubt even though I am not doubtful. Since Rashba and Maimonides disagree, then even if you have a position of your own, this is called doubt due to disagreement among the authorities—and that is the accepted view among all the halakhic decisors. And I do not accept that. I do not accept it on the grounds that if I am not in a state of doubt, then I am not in doubt. The fact that Rashba and Maimonides disagree—does that mean I have to be doubtful? As Rabbi Shimon Shkop says, if I have a doubt whether to be in doubt, I am not in doubt. I have a doubt—maybe I’m wrong, I have a position like Rashba, but Maimonides was no lightweight either. Maybe he’s right? Fine, but bottom line: I have a position like Rashba. So if I have a doubt whether to be in doubt, I do not need to be in doubt. Okay? That’s what you might call non-ultra-obsessive.

[Speaker F] So if I understand both positions, Rabbi, then as it were this is considered… the Rabbi says this is not considered doubt due to disagreement among the authorities but legal doubt—if I understand the two opinions of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and I don’t know how to decide between them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I am in legal doubt, then I am in legal doubt. But I can also not be in legal doubt. If I have no doubt—if I have a position of my own—then even if Rashba and Maimonides disagree, I’m not in doubt at all. Not that I’m in legal doubt and not in doubt due to disagreement among the authorities. I am not in doubt. If I… if I myself am uncertain, then yes, I really do have a doubt, but it is legal doubt and not doubt due to disagreement among the authorities. That’s the claim. But it could also be that I am not in doubt at all, and then it’s neither legal doubt nor doubt due to disagreement among the authorities; rather I simply have a position and I will follow it. All right? So now the question is why in fact we need to deliberate here at all. Seemingly Rashba, who says that a double doubt works by the law of majority, is very plausible. There really is a majority here: three against one, or seventy-five percent against twenty-five percent. So why do we need to look for other explanations? Why can anyone disagree—and by the way almost everyone does disagree; this is a rare view that understands a double doubt through the law of majority. But why at all—why at all look for other explanations? There really is a majority here. Let me remind you again of the diagram, yes? Here we have a majority. There is seventy-five percent that she is permitted, twenty-five percent, twenty-five and twenty-five and twenty-five, and twenty-five percent that she is forbidden. So we follow the majority and therefore she is permitted. What’s the problem? Why, why, why do we need other explanations? What is the novelty in a double doubt if I already have the law of majority? One could phrase it differently: why call it a double doubt? Call it a majority. And maybe the answer—the answer to this matter—is connected to the question asked here earlier. Look, when we talk about a double doubt, if really every… let’s say I toss two coins. One coin—fifty… both coins are fair, yes? I checked them and I know they are fair. So each has a fifty percent chance of heads or tails. And let’s say if it comes up tails twice, then I pay you one hundred shekels, okay? And for any other outcome you pay me one hundred shekels. What is the chance that you win? Twenty-five percent, right? You need tails twice. The chance of getting tails twice is fifty percent times fifty percent for the second coin—twenty-five percent. There is a seventy-five percent chance that I win. Now true, I did the calculation of twenty-five percent against seventy-five percent by multiplying two fifty-fifty doubts, but what difference does it make how I got there? Now I have seventy-five versus twenty-five, so we follow the majority. It’s only a question of how I calculated the probability. But once the probability is seventy-five versus twenty-five, the law of majority applies here. Okay? But what happens in the case of the double doubt I described before? Doubt whether she had relations under him, doubt whether not under him; doubt whether by coercion, doubt whether willingly. What is the probability of under him versus not under him? Fifty percent? I have no idea. No idea—I don’t know. I don’t know how to calculate such a probability. There are two possibilities here, but I have no idea whether they are equal. Is it fifty-fifty in terms of the probability of each option? Right? I don’t know. Since I don’t know, then as far as I’m concerned there are two possibilities and I can’t say which is weightier. But that is different from a coin. Why? Because with a coin I can say that there is a fifty percent chance it landed heads and fifty percent it landed tails, because I know the coin is fair. So I know the distribution. And once I know the distribution, I say it’s fifty-fifty. But in this case I do not know the distribution. Someone here asked why not go by the number of years. So I think we talked about that, and the claim… we didn’t talk about it, I once wrote a column about it, I no longer remember whether we discussed it. I think it makes no sense to go by the number of years because… yes, the intention is, say from the age she is fit for intercourse—which is age three—until… say now she is twenty-two and we’ve been married… no matter, actually age three is irrelevant. Say we’ve been married for one year, and the question is whether she had relations in the first twenty-one years or in the last year. Then seemingly we have a majority of twenty-one to one, and one could assume she had relations before marriage, before betrothal, and she is not forbidden to me. Not true. Why not? Because who said the number of years… who said it is linear? Who said the number of years determines the probability? For example, it is much more reasonable that she had relations when she was unmarried rather than when she was under me. When she is unmarried, the prohibition is much smaller. If she is under me, it is a serious prohibition; she will be more careful, maybe the man she had relations with will also be more careful, he too is concerned about prohibition. We have no way of making probabilistic calculations here. But what? Since I have two possibilities and no way to decide which of them weighs more, I methodologically assume it is fifty-fifty. If you remember, we once discussed this: say I don’t know whether the coin is fair or not. I have no information whatsoever about the coin. Now I toss the coin, and I need to bet whether it will land heads or tails. How would I bet? I have to bet; I can’t avoid betting. Okay? They force me to bet. How would I bet? Fifty-fifty. Right? Because I have no information. That is not the same as a coin I know is fair, where calmly I would bet on fifty-fifty because I know the distribution. I know the data. I don’t know what will come up on the next toss, but I know the chances of it. But with a coin where I don’t know whether it is fair or not, there too I treat it as fifty-fifty, but only for methodological reasons. I do not really have information that it is fifty-fifty. So let’s call this now—I spoke about this—let’s call it positive doubt and negative doubt. With a coin I know is fair, that is positive doubt. Okay? Positive doubt means: I know the distribution is fifty-fifty. I don’t know what will happen on the next toss, but I know the distribution. With a coin where I don’t know whether it is fair or not, there too I assume it is fifty-fifty, but that is negative doubt. Since I know nothing, I assume that it is a doubt, that it is fifty-fifty. Although it is entirely possible that there is a majority here—the coin is not fair—there is a majority and it is not really a doubt. I assume it is a doubt, but that is a methodological assumption, not an assumption based on knowledge. Therefore I call it negative doubt. It is doubt from lack of information. With a coin I know is fair, it is doubt arising from the information I have. That is positive doubt. Okay? Now, if I toss the two coins, I claim—say I swore that on condition that it comes up tails twice, I am forbidden to eat something. Okay? So now it is already a question of prohibition and permission. So is this a double doubt? If I get tails twice, I am forbidden to eat. So this is a double doubt; I can eat out of doubt because I need two doubts in order to get tails twice. So it depends on the question of double doubt. I claim not. Why? Because here I have a probability of seventy-five against twenty-five, and it is permitted to follow the majority. So here what determines the issue is the law of majority, not the law of double doubt. Because true, this majority is calculated by multiplying two doubts; that’s why I got twenty-five percent, a quarter, because it’s half times half. Okay? But that’s only the way of calculating. At the end of the day I have twenty-five percent that it comes out this way and seventy-five percent that it comes out that way. So in Jewish law I am permitted to follow the majority. So this has nothing to do with the law of double doubt. When are we talking about double doubt? It seems to me—so far as I remember there is no other case. And if there is another case, it isn’t in the Talmud; I would say the halakhic decisor simply made a mistake if he did that. Anyone who talks about double doubt where there is—where this is positive doubt—is mistaken. Double doubt is always in negative doubt. And why? Because in negative doubt you really have no way to determine the probabilities of each possibility. Let’s return here. This double doubt of whether under me or not under me, whether by coercion or willingly—Rashba says the double doubt here works by the law of majority because there is twenty-five percent that she becomes forbidden to him and seventy-five percent that she is permitted, and therefore, therefore, it works by the law of majority. But that’s not right. Not right—what do I mean not right? At least not necessary. Because if you ask me in terms of percentages, it is not true that there is twenty-five percent that she is forbidden and seventy-five percent that she is permitted. Because if the distribution here—under me or not under me—is, I don’t know, eighty percent in favor of this branch and twenty percent in favor of that branch, and here the probability is seventy percent-thirty percent—or the opposite, seventy percent and thirty percent—then this seventy multiplied by this eighty-five percent here gives us fifty-six percent that she is forbidden to me. And then one would have to be stringent—that is more than a doubt. Therefore, not every time I have a binary tree of this sort in front of me, not every time when I translate it into a probability calculation will the result be twenty-five percent. If every doubt… then I can translate the possibilities into percentages. Then I can say that I have twenty-five percent that she is forbidden to me and seventy-five percent that she is permitted to me, permitted to me, and then I can say that by the law of majority I may have relations with her. Because I have seventy-five percent, so there is a majority here. And we follow the majority; there is such a law. But if I cannot translate this into probabilities, and these are only possibilities or “sides,” in the language of Jewish law, then perhaps I could not derive it from the law of majority. Who says the law of majority applies to something like this? And therefore I need the innovation of the law of double doubt, which tells me: if you have a doubt whether to be in doubt, then you do not need to be in doubt. But from the law of majority I perhaps could not have derived it. And maybe that is the reasoning of those who disagree with Rashba and argue that a double doubt does not work by the law of majority. Since double doubt really—and factually I think this is correct—double doubt always arises in situations where the distribution is unknown, in situations where each of the two doubts is negative doubt and not positive doubt. Because if it is positive doubt, I will simply do the calculation and reach a conclusion about the probabilities, and then I will follow the majority; there is no need to get into the laws of doubt or double doubt. Just as with ordinary doubt: if the distribution of the two sides is eighty-twenty, yes, I took an egg out of a mixture of eggs, one of which has blood in it and all the rest do not. I took the egg—am I permitted to eat it? Yes? Why am I permitted to eat it? Because we follow the majority and most eggs are not like that. Okay, so here too I still have a doubt: either this egg has blood or it does not. So on the basis of negative doubt I should have been stringent: a Torah-level doubt requires stringency. Why do we follow the majority? We follow the majority because this doubt is a negative doubt; it is not a positive doubt. There are two sides here, but they are not fifty-fifty; they are one against ninety-nine, say if there are a hundred eggs. In such a situation this is not a matter of doubt; one simply does the probability calculation and follows the majority. My claim is that in double doubt as well this is so. Also in double doubt, if I can do the probability calculation, then I will do the probability calculation, and that is what will determine the matter. The whole law of doubt and double doubt was said only where I do not have a probability calculation, where there is negative doubt and not positive doubt. In such a place I go by sides. And when I go by sides, then who says that if I have one side against three, who says one can go leniently? Statistically it may be that this side is seventy percent; I don’t know the probabilities here, it’s negative. Then the law of double doubt comes and says: you may be lenient. And why? Because the whole law of doubt is that if you do not know, then you remain in doubt between the two sides, but it is a doubt because you do not know. And if you do not know whether to be in doubt, then here you are not obligated to be in doubt—that is what Rabbi Shimon Shkop says. Okay, so that is the law of double doubt, but it could not have been based on the law of majority. We needed the innovation of the law of double doubt in order to say that I may be lenient. That is really the claim.

[Speaker H] Even though you can do a kind of walking along the tree—meaning, compose the doubts—for example, you go to the first junction and say: if it’s Torah-level, I’ll be stringent, and then you’re stringent; then you go to the second junction and say: it’s Torah-level, I’ll be stringent there too, and then supposedly you have a kind of determinism.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You are assuming an order for the decision-making. You’re asking the opposite question. Earlier I asked why not everyone agrees with Rashba that a double doubt is by the law of majority. I answered: because the probability calculation doesn’t exist, so you can’t go by the law of majority. You’re asking the opposite question: why doesn’t everyone agree with Maimonides that really one should split the doubts, and since the first doubt—in this case it’s not exactly like Maimonides, but this is Maimonides’ style of thinking—the first doubt goes stringently, because according to Maimonides one goes leniently—goes stringently—and therefore the second doubt is a Torah-level doubt, and one should go stringently. And to that I would answer that you are assuming that the order of dealing with such a problem is first to confront the first doubt and then apply the second doubt to the result. But he says: what do you mean? For me, before I come and take out a halakhic tool to tell me what to do, first of all I look at the situation, and the situation is a double doubt. The decision is made only after both doubts stand before me. I do not decide the first doubt by the rule that a Torah-level doubt requires stringency and then suddenly there is a second doubt, so it is again a Torah-level doubt. No. I only begin deciding after I have drawn the whole tree. The decision is made at the bottom part of the tree; in the middle I am not yet deciding, because I haven’t finished the practical analysis. The decision comes only after I have finished the practical analysis. Therefore, in a double doubt I am lenient. Right?

[Speaker C] Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, in the later authorities (Acharonim) you can often find this kind of consideration, where they say: the question is what the order is—what is the order of deciding doubts. For example, if I have two possibilities—doubt due to disagreement among the authorities, which I don’t accept, but never mind—two halakhic possibilities: to forbid or to permit. Then in principle I need to be stringent, but in pressing circumstances I can be lenient. Rabbi Shimon is worthy to be relied upon in pressing circumstances. Okay? So in pressing circumstances I can be lenient. By the way, there can be a case of a rabbinic-level doubt for someone who is not a Torah scholar, who does not know how to decide. Then he says: fine, there is Rashba, there is Maimonides, I want to go after the great halakhic decisors, but the great halakhic decisors disagree. What should I do? So in such a case, one might define it as a rabbinic-level doubt for him, though not for someone competent to make a halakhic decision. In any case, I now have a dispute between Rashba and Maimonides, but I am in severe pressing circumstances. Truly, if I am stringent I will lose a lot of money, say, or something like that, or I will be endangered, I don’t know, something like that. Then one may be lenient. In pressing circumstances one may rely even on a lone opinion, okay? Even on a minority. Now the question is why. If a Torah-level doubt requires stringency, then there is a Torah-level law to be stringent. So what, in pressing circumstances I permit Torah prohibitions? What difference does it make—it’s a doubt. Even with a doubt it is a Torah prohibition. The same question as yours, right? Really the same question: how can one say Rabbi Shimon is worthy to be relied upon in pressing circumstances? You have a Torah-level doubt. In principle you do not rule like Rabbi Shimon. In principle you rule like the other view. Only in pressing circumstances do you go against it. What does that mean? But to rule like the other view is a Torah-level law. A Torah-level doubt requiring stringency is from the Torah. So in pressing circumstances we permit a Torah prohibition? Where have we heard such a thing? Just permit the prohibition itself in pressing circumstances; why do you need to reach the point that there is doubt between the authorities? I do not simply permit Torah prohibitions because it is pressing circumstances. So the answer here too is the same answer. Basically, the rule that a Torah-level doubt requires stringency comes into operation after I have exhausted all the other decision rules. That is the assumption here. Then I say: if it is pressing circumstances, then I am not in doubt, so I go with Rashba. Once I am not in doubt, then the rule of Torah-level doubt requiring stringency no longer applies. True, Maimonides thinks otherwise, but if I am in pressing circumstances, I have the right to adopt Rashba’s position. Although I myself don’t know for certain that he is right, still in pressing circumstances I am allowed to adopt the position that is more lenient. Consequently I am not in a state of doubt, because I have decided on account of the pressing circumstances, and consequently the rule that a Torah-level doubt requires stringency does not apply to me. In other words, many times the question is how the order of activating the decision rules works. Do I first activate the matter of pressing circumstances and afterward Torah-level doubt requiring stringency, or first Torah-level doubt requiring stringency and afterward pressing circumstances? If I first activated Torah-level doubt requiring stringency, I would have to go with Maimonides by Torah law. And now, in pressing circumstances—so what? In pressing circumstances I do not permit Torah prohibitions. This is not commutative, not interchangeable—the order of activating the decision rules. If I activate pressing circumstances first, then I can be lenient. If I activate Torah-level doubt requiring stringency first, then I cannot be lenient, even if it is pressing circumstances.

[Speaker G] So here too it’s the same thing. As if it’s not… because it’s impossible…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You assumed that Torah-level doubt requiring stringency is applied immediately to the first doubt, and only afterward do we move on to discuss what to do with the second doubt. We said no: first of all, I place the whole binary tree before me. And now I ask: okay, what do we do? Here it is already a double doubt; it is no longer a single doubt. And in a double doubt one does not need to be stringent. Because, as I said earlier, the rule that a Torah-level doubt requires stringency is the last rule you activate, after I have exhausted all the other possibilities. I mapped the terrain—am I still in a state of doubt? Then a Torah-level doubt requires stringency. But here, after I mapped the terrain, I have a doubt whether to be in doubt. And Rabbi Shimon tells me: if you have a doubt whether to be in doubt, then you are not in a state of doubt. So the rule that a Torah-level doubt requires stringency does not apply to you. Okay?

[Speaker J] If it were a doubt… what? A Torah-level doubt and then a Torah-level doubt—then it would be stringent?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. The case of “under him” and “not under him,” and compulsion and consent—that’s a case of two doubts that are both Torah-level. Okay, I understand. There’s a question I once wondered about: what happens if I have a doubt about a certain law—whether it is Torah-level or a rabbinic law? Even on the lenient side it is forbidden. Not only on the stringent side is it forbidden. It’s just that on the lenient side it’s forbidden only rabbinically. And there it’s obvious that I can’t be lenient. Because on both sides it’s forbidden, in a Torah-level doubt versus a rabbinic-level doubt. But regarding the question whether it is Torah-level, there I actually can be lenient if there are some practical ramifications. Okay? Good. So basically what I want to do here is make a distinction between—and this is a very important point that I think people are not aware of—that there is a difference between positive doubt and negative doubt, and the whole distinction between a doubt and a double doubt applies only in a place of unknown distribution, where the doubt is negative. Then what do I do? I count sides, not probabilities, not percentages—I count sides. And in the case of a double doubt I have four sides, one of them stringent, three lenient. Now here too the Rashba can come and say: it could be that even with sides I can go according to the majority, and this is still a law of majority. It’s not a probabilistic majority, it’s a majority of sides. But now I can also understand someone who disagrees with the Rashba; it’s no longer necessary. He’ll say: no, a majority of sides is not a majority. You need the rule of double doubt in order to be lenient in such a case, because from the law of majority alone I would not know to be lenient.

Support for the Rashba’s position I can bring you from everything we saw regarding a majority that is before us—you remember the whole discussion we had about a majority that is before us? That’s the case of the majority of stores, a piece of meat where most stores in the city are kosher, and I said there that Rabbi Shimon Shkop himself said there: why do we actually follow the majority? I showed that this is not a probabilistic majority at all, because one store can have a huge amount of meat. In terms of probability, it may not be a one-in-ten chance that the meat came from that store, but maybe even ninety percent, because most of the meat is in that store—it’s a superstore. Okay? And nevertheless, according to most halakhic decisors, we go by the number of stores. Why? Because, as Rabbi Shimon Shkop says, I count sides. I don’t count probabilities. Just like a majority in a religious court—that was the motivation for saying this—just like with a majority in a religious court, if I have three judges, two said I’m exempt and one said I’m liable, then there too this is not probabilities but a majority of sides. I have two sides saying I’m exempt and one side saying I’m liable, so we follow the majority of sides. So this is a majority that is not probabilistic; it’s a majority that counts sides and not percentages. It’s a majority defined for negative doubts.

The Rashba says: with double doubt it’s the same. True, there isn’t a probabilistic majority here, but even when you count sides, you follow the majority; a majority of sides is also a law of majority. Therefore, says the Rashba, double doubt operates by the law of majority. That is possible. I’m just saying that here too it could be—I asked how one could disagree with him, after all there’s seventy-five percent here and in Jewish law we follow the majority. We said no: there is no seventy-five percent here; there is a majority of sides, not a majority of probabilities. And someone can come and say: who said a majority of sides belongs to the laws of majority? You need the novelty of double doubt to tell me that even with a majority of sides one may be lenient. But from the laws of majority themselves I could not have learned that. Therefore you need the novelty of double doubt, and it is a separate novelty—it does not operate through the laws of majority. By the way, after it has been innovated, it may be that it also operates through the laws of majority—that the novelty is that a majority of sides is also a majority. You can also say that; it doesn’t matter. But you still need that novelty. It’s not something I would know unless the law of double doubt had been introduced to me.

Now there is another rule in the laws of double doubt, and that is the question of a reversible double doubt. Several medieval authorities (Rishonim), and the Shakh in the rules of double doubt, bring this: they say that the rule that a double doubt is treated leniently applies only where the double doubt is reversible, but if it is not reversible, then not. What does reversible mean? It means when there is no fixed order to the doubts. That is, I have a doubt whether it was under him or not under him, and a doubt whether it was by compulsion or by consent. I can first have the doubt whether it was under him or not under him, as I diagrammed here, right? First whether it was under him or not under him, and after that I wonder whether it was by compulsion or by consent. Could I reverse it? First ask whether it was by compulsion or by consent, and on the side that it was by compulsion the question is whether it was under him or not under him, and on the side that it was by consent the question is whether it was under him or not under him. The answer is yes. Right? I could have drawn the tree—or put the labels on this graph—in a different way, defining here compulsion and here under him. Okay? No problem at all. The graph would have been well defined and I would reach the same results. That is called a reversible double doubt. And when the double doubt is reversible, then we go leniently.

It very much resembles the concept of independence. When the two doubts are independent, I can multiply the probabilities, and that is the correct answer. If there is dependence between the events, then I cannot multiply the probabilities in order to know the probability of both events occurring. We talked about this when we discussed conditional probability—about appointment and sprinkling done by an agent, right, and various things like that.

What is a non-reversible double doubt? A non-reversible double doubt is when, say, I slaughtered an animal, and after the slaughter I see that the knife was nicked—a blemished knife. Now I have a doubt whether the knife became nicked during the slaughter or before it. If it was before it, then it’s not—then it’s not—then the slaughter is invalid. But if the slaughter itself nicked the knife, then not. But even if it was nicked during the slaughter itself, the question is at what stage. Had I already slaughtered most of the simanim, and then in principle the slaughter is valid and it became nicked only at the end of the slaughter? Or did it become nicked already at the beginning of the slaughter? That’s a double doubt, but here the double doubt is not reversible. Why is it not reversible? Because if it became nicked before the slaughter, then there is nothing to discuss regarding the doubt whether most of the slaughter had already been done when it became nicked or not. Because it became nicked before. There is no room for the second doubt. The second doubt can arise only after I have exhausted the first. First of all I wonder whether it happened before the slaughter or during the slaughter, and if it happened during the slaughter, then the question is when during the slaughter—at the beginning or at the end. But I cannot first wonder whether it happened during the slaughter at the beginning or at the end, and only after that wonder whether it was during the slaughter at all or before it. There is an order to activating the doubts. Therefore in such a situation this is called a non-reversible double doubt. And with a non-reversible double doubt, there are medieval authorities and later halakhic authorities who say that here we go stringently, not leniently. There is no leniency of double doubt in such situations. Only if it is reversible do we go leniently.

Why not? So the simplest explanation—even though it is not precise, but I’m not going to get into those nuances now—the simplest explanation is as follows. The term “reversible double doubt” is a term of the medieval and later commentators. It does not appear in the Talmud. But there is a term that does appear in the Talmud itself, and that is: “it has a single name of doubt.” What does that mean, “it has a single name of doubt”? Regarding the knife, you need to understand: I could have wondered whether maybe this is a doubt-doubt-doubt-doubt-doubt. Why? A doubt whether it was blemished before the slaughter, a doubt whether it happened in the first second, and if not then maybe in the second second, and if not then maybe in the third second, and so on until the hundredth second—I don’t know how long it took me to slaughter. So then it’s doubt after doubt after doubt. Why do we call it—why do we ignore all those possibilities? Because in the end, what matters is whether it was blemished when I slaughtered the first majority of the simanim, or whether it became nicked only afterward. If it was blemished earlier, then whether it was before the slaughter or during the slaughter is irrelevant. Bottom line: if it was blemished before I finished the majority of the simanim, the slaughter is invalidated.

Now this could happen in many ways. Either it was blemished from the outset, or it became nicked in the first second, the second, the third, the fourth—it doesn’t matter. In terms of the sides that are here, either it happened before I slaughtered the majority of the simanim or after. And the fact that there are many ways it could have happened before slaughtering the majority of the simanim—so what? In the end I have only two possibilities. And therefore it has a single name of doubt. That is, when I say the knife was blemished before the slaughter, or when I say it became nicked in the first second of the slaughter, in both cases I am really saying that the knife was blemished at the time of slaughter and therefore the slaughter was invalidated. I am saying the same thing for different factual reasons. The legal invalidation is the same invalidation. It is the invalidation of a blemished knife with which I slaughtered. In reality it could have happened at many different moments—so what? Bottom line, what sides do I have? Either it was blemished at the first majority of the slaughter or it was not blemished at the first majority of the slaughter. That’s it. So I have a doubt with two sides, not more.

You notice that here I am counting sides, exactly what I said before. Because I don’t know the probability that it happened at each moment; I don’t have a distribution here. This is negative doubt. Negative doubt, and therefore this is what is called: it has a single name of doubt. The meaning is that in the end I have only one doubt and not two doubts. I can always say, for example: was she raped or did she have relations willingly? Even if she was raped, maybe she was raped by Reuven, maybe by Shimon, maybe by Levi. So I have many doubts, right? No, I do not have many doubts, because why should I care by whom she was raped? As long as she was raped, she is permitted to me. So that is a case of a single name of doubt. The same thing here. True, there are many possibilities for when the knife became nicked, but as long as the knife was blemished before I slaughtered the majority of the simanim, then the slaughter was invalidated. Why should I care at what moment it was nicked? That is what is called “it has a single name of doubt.” And usually they connect the law of double doubt to the law of “it has a single name of doubt.” Basically, the law of a reversible double doubt—if the double doubt is not reversible, that basically means that the name of the doubt is one. In essence, you are doubting only one thing: when the knife became nicked, that’s all. And with a doubt that is reversible—there, the doubt whether it was under him or not under him, the doubt whether by compulsion or by consent—that really is two different doubts. It is not a single name of doubt. Two different doubts, and therefore in such a place it is not a single name of doubt, and therefore it is a double doubt and we go leniently.

It’s hard for me to read the messages while speaking, so maybe afterward in the questions we can talk about it. So they connect—commonly one connects—the law of a reversible double doubt to “it has a single name of doubt.”

Now the truth is that it is very hard to connect them that way, at least for some of the methods, because according to some methods there is no requirement of reversibility. Even with a non-reversible double doubt, we still go leniently. This is a dispute among the medieval authorities and the halakhic decisors. But “it has a single name of doubt” is a rule that appears in the Talmud, and on that they do not disagree. So according to the methods that say a double doubt does not require reversibility, obviously they need to distinguish between reversible and non-reversible double doubt on the one hand, and “it has a single name of doubt” on the other. Because regarding “it has a single name of doubt” they will admit that it is not a double doubt, but regarding a non-reversible double doubt they say that it is a double doubt. So then the identification I made earlier between those two principles must collapse. Now how that works is a very delicate story. There’s an article by Rabbi Shlomo Levy from Gush; if anyone wants, I can send you a link. But I’m not going into that here. That’s already a nuance beyond our topic.

Now I want to go back to the subject of the coins that I’m tossing. You remember I gave an example: suppose I toss two fair coins. I know that both are fair for the sake of the discussion, fifty-fifty, and if both are tails then something happens—I don’t know, I took an oath, so there is some prohibition, okay? But the prohibition exists only if the first is heads and the second is tails. Not if both are tails. Only if the first is heads and the second is tails—only then does the prohibition exist. Now here, look: if the coins have colors on them, say the first is red and the second is green, the coin. And I say: if the first is heads and the second is tails, that’s no good—not “with red and green.” The wording here is very subtle; in statistics wording is very important. If the first comes up heads and the second comes up tails, then there is a prohibition, where the first is always the red one and the second is the green one. Fine? Now if the first comes up tails, then there is nothing to wonder about regarding the green one, right? Because only if the first came up heads—then if the second came up tails there is a prohibition. But if the first came up tails, there is nothing to wonder about. You understand that here there is no binary tree. The binary tree is built from two branches, but the next two are found only under one of them, not under the other. That is a non-reversible double doubt. Let’s say if I define first and second and they have different colors.

Okay, so therefore even in the world of probability there can be a situation of a non-reversible double doubt. By the way, in such a situation the probabilities are really not twenty-five—even if I say the coin is fair, the probabilities are not twenty-five percent and seventy-five percent, because on the side that heads came up—that’s fifty percent—but on the side that tails came up, then it splits. So below there are only three endpoints, not four endpoints. Suppose that if the final result is tails, then I win the lottery. If the result is heads, then I do not win the lottery. What is my chance of winning the lottery? One-third, not one-quarter. Because on the side that tails came up at first, I toss again—that’s not yet the final result. And only if tails comes up again, only then is the result tails. So I basically have three possibilities: tails, heads, and heads. Okay? So there can be such structures both where the doubt is negative and where the doubt is positive.

The reversibility of the doubt, basically—in other words—is a way of talking about the structure of the tree. The structure of the tree has to be like I described to you earlier, where every branch splits into two regardless of the order. If the order makes a difference, then at least according to some methods, we do not apply the rule that double doubt is treated leniently. Because this is really not a double doubt; in the essential sense it is one doubt.

Now again, if there really is positive doubt here, then even if it is one-third versus two-thirds, I still follow the majority. Because that has nothing to do with the laws of double doubt versus one doubt; rather, I do the probabilistic calculation and follow the majority. But if it is negative doubt, then I have three possibilities of which only one works for me and two do not, so the chance is one-third—no, sorry, then there is no chance of one-third, but there is one possibility versus two others, and there is a majority of sides against me. Here I go with the laws of doubts and not with the laws of probabilities, not with the laws of majority. This will depend on whether the doubt is positive doubt or negative doubt.

The reversibility in the laws of double doubt is something parallel to independence in probability. Except that probability speaks about positive doubts: I know the chance of this event, I know the chance of that event, and if they are independent I multiply the probabilities. If they are dependent I cannot multiply the probabilities; there is conditional probability, okay? In doubt and double doubt we are speaking about negative doubts, not positive doubts. Once these are negative doubts, there is no point in multiplying probabilities, but there the parallel principle is reversibility. If the double doubt is reversible, then that is like multiplying probabilities. So that means there is independence between the two doubts. So it is like multiplying probabilities even though I don’t really have probabilities here; it is like multiplying probabilities, as though it comes out to a quarter and I can rely on it. If the double doubt is not reversible, I cannot multiply probabilities, and therefore I really cannot rely on it. Once I am not multiplying probabilities, then who says it comes out to a quarter? Maybe it comes out to sixty percent or fifty-six percent, as we saw earlier. Therefore I cannot rely on it. Reversibility is the parallel to independence in probability. Reversibility in doubts is the parallel to independence in probability. And with that I’ll finish this series. That’s it. If there are questions or comments, then please.

[Speaker K] Even though with negative doubt, since there really aren’t probabilities, then the consideration shifts to the issue of the sides?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. But also with sides: just as with independence I multiply probabilities—say I have fifty-fifty compulsion or consent, fifty-fifty under him or not under him. And suppose these were positive probabilities, okay? Then basically I multiply the probabilities and I have a twenty-five percent chance that she is forbidden, so I am permitted to continue living with her, because it is only twenty-five percent, okay? But all that is only if there is independence between under him or not under him and compulsion or consent. If there were dependence, then I could not know that it was twenty-five percent. Now let’s move to a situation of negative doubt. If it is negative doubt, there is no point in multiplying probabilities because I don’t have probabilities; I don’t know what the probabilities are. But there I use the rule of whether it is reversible. If it is reversible, then it is like multiplying probabilities, and then I can follow the majority of sides. If it is not reversible, then I am not multiplying the probabilities of sides—not the real probabilities—so I cannot treat it as a minority of sides, and therefore the law of double doubt does not apply. Meaning, it is parallel to multiplying probabilities in the case of positive doubts. Yes.

[Speaker B] Rabbi, I asked in the chat what happens regarding the idea of “it has a single name of doubt,” if we have two doubts on the same side but both are significant, for example a woman who was taken captive twice, and then you could say maybe she had relations there and maybe she had relations there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is not a single name of doubt, because the prohibition of the captive woman—the first captivity is a different prohibition from the second captivity. It is true that it is the same prohibition, but it is the same category of prohibition while still being a different prohibition. With the knife, the fact that it is blemished invalidates the slaughter no matter why it became blemished. It invalidates the slaughter for the same reason.

[Speaker B] Wait, if I move for a second to the case of the knife—suppose the knife fell, and it became known—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —to her earlier that it became nicked during the slaughter. The prohibition on the animal, in the end, is because it was slaughtered with a blemished knife. Why should I care why the knife became nicked? Those are not different reasons for the prohibition. They are different reasons for the knife being blemished, but the fact is that the knife was blemished, this knife was blemished, and therefore it is forbidden. In captivity, these are two different reasons for the prohibition, even though it is the same category of prohibition. Either in the first captivity she was raped—or not raped; raped for a priest, or had willing relations, it doesn’t matter—or in the second captivity she was raped. Those are two different reasons for the prohibition. The name of the prohibition is the same prohibition, but these are two different reasons for the prohibition. If I have two different pieces of pork in the mixture, is that called a double doubt? Because this piece of pork is a different category of prohibition than that piece of pork? It’s the same category of prohibition as that one. No, there are two different pieces of pork here, and for each one I need to be concerned separately. It does not matter that in both cases it is the prohibition of pork.

[Speaker B] Yes, no, I think maybe I should have thought of an example involving something permitted and not something forbidden. Fine, I’ll think about it. And I just wanted to comment—I wrote earlier in the chat but it got sent in the middle—regarding intrusive thoughts, that our rabbi told us in yeshiva about a student of his who suffered from this, and once he showed us a question the student asked him: he prayed the verse “for all is Yours, and from Your hand we have given to You,” and he was worried that he had consecrated all his possessions to Heaven. And he turned to the rabbi in frustration and didn’t know what to do about it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A classic case of obsession, yes. Or a case of fear of Heaven if this had been the rabbi of Brisk—but that’s if it didn’t come to him from the gut but from the head.

[Speaker B] So the rabbi told us that from knowing him, he told him basically that it was okay, and he gave it specifically as an example of obsessive fearfulness of this kind. I also know many people who have this with the Shema—whether they had intention on the first verse or not—and they repeat and repeat and repeat.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And again I say once more: do they repeat and repeat and repeat because they have a genuine concern, or because it comes from the gut or from the head? If they repeat and repeat and repeat, it can still be fear of Heaven. That’s why I say: the behavior in itself does not necessarily indicate obsessiveness. One of the indications is whether they live with it peacefully. Whether it comes from the gut or from the head—that is a huge difference, but in my opinion there is a difference.

[Speaker B] Yes, you have to be alert to that, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anyone else?

[Speaker I] Rabbi, the fact that according to Maimonides a Torah-level doubt means—the doubt is Torah-level and I have to act also according to the doubt—is that from logic or from some other source?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, where do we know that a Torah-level doubt is treated stringently from?

[Speaker I] Yes, that a Torah-level doubt is treated stringently, that the Torah obligated me even in a case of doubt.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s from logic; there is no source for it. If there were a source for it, then Maimonides would not say that it is a rabbinic law.

[Speaker I] Okay, thank you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so goodbye. I’ll send a message about the next series—what the topic will be—on WhatsApp.

[Speaker G] Thank you very much,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good evening, Sabbath peace.

[Speaker G] Good night,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] May there be good news.