Studies on Repentance, Lecture 4

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the point is that in metaphorical Switzerland—leave me alone with concrete, real Switzerland. In metaphorical Switzerland, it’s a place without problems, and in a place without problems, what difference does it make to me whether Yankele is prime minister or Berel is prime minister? Whatever you do has no cost, so it isn’t important, it doesn’t matter. So freedom exists there. The person who chooses chooses in a completely free way, and he also has several alternatives, unlike in Syria. And it has no significance whatsoever. Why does it have no significance? Because you could just as well draw lots. Right? What difference does it make if the results are equal in value, if they’re equivalent to one another? True, you’re choosing between several options, but all the options are the same. Because in essence there’s no price to pay. If, say, you were in a place where there’s infinite money, would it matter whether you were capitalist or socialist? What difference would it make? Everybody would do just fine, right? The difference between capitalism and socialism arises only in a place where there are constraints. Then the question is how you deal with them. There are costs to every path, and you have to decide: do you choose this way or that way? Only in a place where there are some constraints, where there are problems that dictate costs, or bad outcomes or good outcomes to the different choices, does a choice have meaning. Now in Switzerland there is freedom, there are several options—unlike in Syria, there are several options—but in the end the options don’t change anything; you could have drawn lots. Therefore in Switzerland, basically, I would say: if Syria is determinism, Switzerland is indeterminism. Just a lottery, do whatever you want. That still isn’t the concept of choice, or of democratic elections. A third model—I said I don’t need it, but just because I can’t resist—is the situation here. What happens here? You go into the voting booth freely, you choose one of several slips that are there, lots of slips. Whoever gets the majority of votes, let’s say for the sake of discussion, becomes the prime minister, or supposedly the whole government. And there are problems, right? Here we have problems; it’s not like Switzerland. But in the end, whoever gets elected does the same thing, so what difference does it make? In other words, there’s no connection between what you declare and what you do; the circumstances in the end dictate what the person will do. I’m not saying this as—by the way, I don’t think they’re usually liars. It’s simply that the circumstances are so strong, the problems are so strong, that all the declarations from the opposition benches don’t materialize when you actually get there. Things you see from there you don’t see from here. And in the end the circumstances dictate what the person does. It makes no difference what declarations he came with and what he promised and what he didn’t promise; it changes nothing, almost nothing. At the margins. There’s a story this reminds me of: once someone I know told me about a friend of his who went backpacking in Burma. He got to one of those places—they have jungles there—and he arrived at some small village and wanted to send a letter, this was before the cellphone era, he wanted to send a letter home to Israel. He gets there and sees on the wall in this little post-office hut a lot of mailboxes sorted by countries and continents. He was stunned. Some little shack in a village in the middle of the jungle, and there on the wall it was all carefully sorted, as though millions of people passed through there and each one needed to send letters and they had to streamline the sorting. The whole thing was bizarre. Anyway, it was there on the wall, and next to it was a window where you went to pay and send the letter. Now when he got to the window, he saw the other side of all those mailboxes: there was one big sack there that all the letters went into. That’s more or less our elections. In any case, that’s the third model. The fourth model is of course the model that has none of the previous three shortcomings. Okay? It’s a place where there are several options, you choose freely, the options differ from one another, there are costs, yes? Meaning, costs that don’t depend on you, don’t depend on the choices you make. The way of dealing with the different costs does depend on the choices you make—if you choose this government or that government, what its policy is, that depends on you—but the constraints, what each policy will bring about, that is dictated by the circumstances; we don’t dictate it, at least in a large part of the matter. And every representative will also do what he promises, yes? That too exists in that utopian state. In such a case, that really is democracy in the full sense, democracy with value. What does this really mean? What it means is that the value of democracy in the context of the election example, or of a person’s choice—the democracy here is only a parable for the choice of a person standing at a crossroads who has to choose among several possibilities. Same thing. It has meaning not only where there are—it isn’t enough, for something to have meaning it isn’t enough that there are several options and that I choose among them freely. That isn’t enough. That also exists for Ari Elon. Ari Elon says there are several options and you choose among them freely, you legislate for yourself either this path or that path or that path, all that exists there. What’s missing? What’s missing is the system of constraints around it—in other words, the problems. What he describes is Switzerland: there’s no cost. No external measures that determine the price of each choice. You are the one who determines whether the choice is good or not. There’s nothing external here that dictates outcomes or costs for each path. In such a situation this thing has no meaning whatsoever. In another context I once spoke about this and said that this is the difference between freedom and liberty. Do you know what the difference is between freedom and liberty? Freedom—not Isaiah Berlin, something else, a bit related but not exactly the same thing. Freedom, in literal translation, is simply the absence of constraints. The fewer constraints there are on you, the freer you are. “No one is free except one who is completely alone,” as they say. Meaning, there is no person who is completely free, with no constraints. We can’t fly, we can’t do lots of things, obviously. But the degree of freedom is in inverse proportion to the amount of constraints; their product is constant, okay? That’s freedom. What is liberty? Liberty is autonomous action within a given system of constraints. When you act as a free person—where does your being a free person come to expression? There is a system of constraints within which you exist, and you can’t do anything about it; it’s dictated to you, it comes from outside. The question is what you do given the constraints. The question is whether you decide your own path or whether you let the constraints carry you along. You let go of the reins, as we discussed in previous sessions. That is called being a free person. Now in our world there’s a common mistake, as though freedom is a value. That’s complete nonsense. Freedom is not a value. Not because I’m arguing with them—they’re simply confused; there is no such position at all. Freedom is not a value. What confuses people when they see freedom as a value? That when you take freedom from someone, you do something wrong, right? To put someone in prison, to lock a door on him, for example—that’s something wrong, right? Why? Because he has a right to be free. Why are you restricting him if he doesn’t deserve it? I’m not talking about someone who was legally sentenced to prison. Just randomly, you lock someone up for no reason, you lock him inside a house—that’s wrong. Does that mean freedom is a value? No. Taking money from someone is also wrong. Does that mean owning money is a value? No. Owning money is an asset. It’s an asset that belongs to me, it’s my right, you can’t take my asset from me unlawfully. If you do that, you’re in the wrong. But the fact that if you do it you’re in the wrong doesn’t mean that owning that asset has value in the moral sense, right? Violating it is a negative value, but possessing it is not a positive value. It’s just a right. I have a right; I’m allowed to possess it, and you’re forbidden to take it from me. Freedom is the same thing. People get confused and think that because taking someone’s freedom is wrong, then apparently being free is something of value. Not true. It’s something pleasant, it’s something I’m entitled to insofar as I can be free. You can’t take my freedom without justification, and therefore you’re in the wrong if you take my freedom, but that doesn’t mean that being free is a value. Being free is an asset. The amount of freedom I have is a certain quantity of assets that I possess. Okay? And you’re not allowed to take that from me without justification, that’s true. What happens with liberty? The value people usually talk about is liberty, not freedom. Liberty really is a value: that a person acts autonomously, chooses his path. But it isn’t enough just to choose your path. You have to choose in a place where there are constraints around you, because if you choose in a vacuum, what value does that have? That’s Switzerland. You choose this route or that route, you choose to do this, you choose to do that, when the two things carry equal weight, there are no costs to either path—then it has no value whatsoever. Liberty is a value only where a person is not free. Liberty is defined only where there is no freedom. In a certain sense, absolute freedom is something that does not allow you to be a person of value. A person of value can be defined only where freedom is not complete. It’s not that I’m supposed to give up freedom that is rightly mine, of course, but I’m only saying that the definitions of freedom and liberty are, in a certain sense, not only not parallel—they’re opposite. A free person cannot be a free person in the deeper sense. A person is a free person only to the extent that he is not free, because freedom is defined on the basis of the constraints, which are dictates—they don’t depend on me, they’re dictated to me, they’re the framework within which I act. My liberty depends on me, and therefore it truly is a value. The value on which I am judged is only according to things that depend on me, that I decided. I can’t be judged based on how many constraints I’m under. How many constraints I’m under are just data. What does that have to do with me? Why judge me based on the question of how many constraints I’m subject to? If I decide to subject myself to constraints, that’s something else. But whether there are or aren’t constraints—what does that have to do with how to judge me, how it is proper to judge me? Okay? Therefore, if I go back to this issue of Switzerland and not-Switzerland, Switzerland expresses a world of freedom. Real democracy is a world of liberty, not of freedom. I once thought—this is a kind of linguistic midrash that I don’t like—that there’s no parallel adjective to “free” in the context of liberty. “Libertied,” “liberated,” I don’t know how to say it—there’s no parallel form. Instead there’s “a free person,” right? That’s how we say it. What is “a free person”? Do you know what “a free person” is? Why don’t we say “libertied”? What is “a free person”? Like “one destined for the World to Come.” Is that someone who is dead or someone who is alive? “One destined for the World to Come” is only someone alive. Right? Someone dead is in the World to Come; he isn’t “one destined for the World to Come.” “One destined for the World to Come” is someone who belongs to the World to Come while he’s not yet there. In other words, he belongs to it even though he isn’t there, right? That’s called “one destined for the World to Come.” Therefore, with liberty you can’t be “libertied.” What would that even mean? You can be a free person. You can belong. There are always constraints inside life, and you can choose. You aspire to be a free person. You are not in a state of “libertiedness,” it’s not—liberty is not a state. Liberty is a mode of action. So liberty is an aspiration toward something; it isn’t a state. Freedom is a state. Liberty is a mode of conduct; it isn’t a state. Okay? So I think maybe that’s why we say “a free person” and not “libertied.” You know, it’s like—yes, in this context I’m always reminded—what’s the difference between a gentile and a complete gentile? You know that expression? A complete gentile is only a Jew. Have you ever heard of a gentile described as “a complete gentile”? When you say someone is “a complete gentile,” it’s only about a Jew. “That Jew is a complete gentile.” In other words, it’s exactly the same point. Someone who is in the World to Come is not “one destined for the World to Come”; he is in the World to Come. Someone who is “one destined for the World to Come” is someone not in the World to Come, but he belongs there; he is “one destined for the World to Come.” A Jew who behaves like a gentile is then a complete gentile; he belongs to gentileness, in that context. A gentile is just a gentile; what can you do, that’s a factual description. “A complete gentile” is not a factual description; it’s a judgment. Okay, so back to our topic: what I’m saying—going back to Ari Elon—is that the claim I want to make is that he leaves out of his picture the system of constraints. And without a system of constraints, the mere fact that you choose among several options is devoid of any value-laden significance. To be a sovereign person in the sense he defines it is elections in Switzerland. It has no value-laden meaning at all. That is a free person. To be a sovereign person in a sense worthy of appreciation is to be a free person in the deeper sense, not to be free. It’s in a place where there is a dictated system of constraints, good and evil, and you decide to conduct yourself in the best way you can. You choose your path, and then you are worthy of appreciation. You behave like a free person—and what does that mean? First, that you choose your path, and second, that you choose the good. How do you choose—not just choose arbitrarily, choose to be wicked—but rather choose a path that is a good path. Okay? Only then can you really speak… In that sense I don’t think it’s correct to identify a secular person with a sovereign person, and it’s not correct to identify a religious person with the figure he describes as a rabbinic person. If anything, the opposite is true. A secular person really cannot be sovereign. Cannot be sovereign. Because in his world there is no external factor that can dictate to him what is good and what is bad. At most there is social convention, and then that just means he is subject to social convention—that’s only a reason not to admire him. What else besides that? What, a stand? Chairs? Stones? What would be the source that gives values their validity? There has to be some external source that doesn’t depend on my decisions, that determines what is good and what is bad. Therefore sovereignty cannot exist in a world without—let’s call it now God, but it doesn’t matter, some factor that gives validity to moral values, call it whatever you want. Sovereignty cannot exist in such a place. In such a place you can only be rabbinic, not sovereign. Rabbinic in the sense that you are swept along either by your urges or by social pressures. And even someone who behaves according to values—and so many people I asked this told me, yes, it’s social convention—so you conduct yourselves just according to social convention? Then you’re just nobodies. Whatever society says, you go after it. Is that a reason to glorify a person, to judge him favorably? He’s just a nobody. In other words, he’s swept along by society. Even in a positive direction, by the way—I talked about this. Being swept along in a positive direction is also not a reason to appreciate a person, going after the good inclination—we talked about this in the previous class. Going after an inclination—what difference does it make whether it’s a good inclination or an evil inclination? So what? You are still going after an inclination; you’re not deciding what you do. That’s no reason to appreciate you. The reason to appreciate you is that you decide to do the good, not that you’re dragged along by an inclination that happens to be a good inclination. By contrast, in a person whose world contains an external source that determines good and evil, there can be a rabbinic person and there can be a sovereign person—I mean by his definitions. The rabbinic person can be rabbinic and can be sovereign by his definitions; there can be a person who decides his path and there can be a person who acts by rote habit, “a commandment of men learned by rote.” The tendency there is people who do commandments. I’m not talking about those who don’t; I’m talking about those who do commandments, but they do them because that’s what the crowd does, because that’s what society dictates. They don’t really choose either their path or the very observance of the commandments, nor how to do them and what to do and how to decide in dilemmas.

[Speaker E] But if he follows the good inclination, then he already has something opposing the evil inclination, so he follows the good inclination—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then he has choice—he chooses. So if he chooses to follow the good inclination, then he chose. I’m talking about someone who is dragged after the good inclination, and his good inclination is very strong—and that’s very bad, because he’s dragged along, not choosing. A person has to choose. That’s why I say: even doing something good doesn’t mean you’re a good person. But we talked about that in the previous class, so I won’t go back to it now. So let’s continue for a moment. So the claim, in the end, is this: for example, people often ask why the Holy One, blessed be He, commands in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, with all the curses and blessings and everything—where is our choice? The Holy One, blessed be He, dictates such prices to us that He leaves us no ability to decide freely. Apparently we still somehow manage. But ostensibly there’s a claim here that the Holy One, blessed be He, is preventing us from having choice. That’s nonsense; it’s simply a misunderstanding. The fact that there are costs is what gives meaning to the fact that we have choice. If there were no costs, if there were no costs to what we do, then what would be the meaning of the fact that we choose? The fact that we choose freely gets its meaning from the fact that there are constraints. Not only does that not contradict the fact that it has meaning—it would have no meaning if there were no constraints around it. Constraints in the sense that this is good and that is bad, and also prices for one who does good and one who does evil. Only then does your choice have meaning. And the fact is that there are still people who choose the good and people who choose the evil, and each one of us sometimes chooses this and sometimes that. Meaning, this system of constraints not only does not contradict our being free persons and our possibility of being free persons—that is, of acting properly and choosing—but on the contrary, that is what constructs this ability, or at least gives meaning to this ability. Without it, it has no meaning—to choose the good in a vacuum. It’s also like, in this context, I once saw—this is a bit of a digression—but where did the penny drop for me on this issue? There was once a lecture series, when we lived in Yeruham, called “Closed In for a Week in the Desert.” Every Thursday evening someone would come and speak on the weekly Torah portion, once a month I think, something like that, and people came from all around—the kibbutzim and Be’er Sheva and Dimona—everybody came from various places to hear a different speaker each time. So once Amos Oz was supposed to come speak there and he canceled, and they asked me to substitute for him. It was a little after I had read an article of his called “The Full Wagon and the Empty Wagon.” And I used the stage there to answer him—he wasn’t there, but to answer the arguments he raises. And among other things he talked there about this issue in various aspects of freedom versus liberty—he didn’t call it that, but I formulated it there that way. But one of the metaphors he used, which I think illustrates this very well, was the following: he says that at Mount Sinai there was a big bang, some kind of spiritual, religious, Jewish space was created. And ever since, we have been filling this room with furniture and not taking anything out. We are obligated to everything the previous generations determined, we don’t deviate from it, and little by little the room fills up with furniture, fills up with furniture, and we can’t move. And we’ve entered rigidity, complete stagnation. And then there is no creativity, no free thought, no sovereignty in Ari Elon’s sense, and so on. That was basically his argument. Now there is something to it, and I share it—I’ve even written this more than once—but it seems to me that in the basic logic he misses something very important that relates to what I said earlier. The fact that you do not allow yourself to remove furniture not only does not contradict the fact that you are a free person in the deeper sense—without that, you are not such a person; you are just free. Someone like Amos Oz, who is not committed at all to the previous generations—only if he decides that something appeals to him, but in his world there is no obligation—then he is not a free person in the deeper sense, he is just free, doing whatever he wants. Here’s an example. Think about a room whose floor is tiled with sixty-four tiles, eight by eight, like a chessboard. Okay? Now there are… we have pieces of furniture in the room, chairs for the sake of discussion, and each chair occupies one square. Now there is one chair we want to place in the room. How many ways are there to arrange the room? Sixty-four. You can place it in any one of the squares, right? If there are two chairs, how many possibilities? Sixty-four times sixty-three. If they’re identical, then divide by two, never mind. But sixty-four times sixty-three—far more than when there is one chair. If there are three chairs, multiply again by sixty-two, right? Even more. The greater the number of chairs, the greater the number of possibilities you have for arranging them. Meaning, in a room with many chairs there are many more degrees of freedom to choose among options. In a world where there are no chairs, or you are not committed to any chair, then there’s nothing at all—so what do you want to do? You’ll do whatever you want, and it has no meaning. The number of possibilities to choose among grows as the number of constraints grows; it does not shrink. What?

[Speaker F] If they’re different, same thing. No, even if they’re identical. If they’re identical and there are sixty-four chairs, then you have—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, only up to thirty-two. From thirty-three on, count the holes and not the chairs. Up to thirty-two it grows. Fine, we’re talking from one to thirty-two. So the point is that the number of constraints—and this is also obvious—the number of constraints… I think there are many more kinds of religious people than kinds of secular people. There are different kinds of secular people, okay, they wear different clothes, but in terms of spiritual outlooks and values, in my opinion there are many fewer. Why? Not because it’s their fault or because they’re less talented or less creative. Because they have fewer chairs to arrange in the room. Everybody just does what he wants, and fine, good for them. The number of constraints on you greatly increases the number of possibilities among which you can choose. Lots of conflicts, lots of ways to maneuver, lots of prices. If you do this, then that; you violate this positive commandment, you nullify that positive commandment, you violate that prohibition, you have to maneuver—what to do, how to do it. Everyone chooses a different path, everyone interprets differently, everyone… many more possibilities, in my opinion. Contrary to the image… this whole business goes against common sense, but it is completely true, it is almost mathematical. Even though somehow the natural intuition is not like that. Therefore, not only in the context of spiritual and value-laden choices, but also in the context of creativity. People think that in the context of creativity, in a world where there are no genre rules, you can be more creative. There is no greater mistake than that. Creativity is defined only in a place where there are genre rules. If there are no genre rules, there is no creativity. Sometimes there are undefined genre rules. You don’t put them on the table, and therefore you can still talk about creativity, because you understand that there are rules for how to do this correctly and how not to do it correctly. Even though no one dictates them and no one imposes them, everyone understands what is being discussed. If that weren’t so, there would be no creativity. Meaning, you need some genre rules so that the creator, if he is truly creative, then suddenly you’ll see that he maneuvered in some way that no one had thought possible within that system of rules. He created a tragedy in a brilliant way, because he obeyed all the rules of tragedy in some way that no one had imagined until now. But in a place where there are no rules and no distinction at all between tragedy and comedy, in what sense are you creative? There’s no meaning to it. You’ll make something and it won’t speak to anyone. Everyone lives in his own world; there is no communication, no way to evaluate things, to judge things.

[Speaker D] That also isn’t supposed to bother the model the Rabbi brought earlier, that in a less value-laden system, as the Rabbi…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say it’s supposed to bother him. I didn’t judge.

[Speaker D] No, he doesn’t think that it’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, I didn’t say he ought to—I didn’t say he has to take constraints upon himself in order to succeed in being a free person; that’s nonsense. A person can’t… just as a person should not give up freedom, he also does not have to act to increase freedom. The degree of freedom is some kind of given; it’s not a value issue. But I’m saying: you can’t talk about value dimensions as a result of simply being in a freer state; that’s irrelevant. You’re not to blame for it, but… creativity? Certainly, the judgment between rabbinic and sovereign is a value judgment. That’s why I said: it’s not descriptive. It’s very hard not to… not to understand the connotation that what we have here is ranking—what is better and what is worse. And therefore I said: I am not demanding of any person that he accept belief in God in order to succeed in being moral. If he doesn’t believe in God, he doesn’t believe in Him—what can you do? But the fact is that if you don’t believe in God, then don’t tell me you are moral; you cannot be moral. You can behave nicely, but that isn’t morality.

[Speaker G] Why does there have to be an external source? Why isn’t it enough to have a very strong confidence in…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That very strong confidence is an epistemic question. How do you know? I’m asking what there is to know. What is there to know? There’s nothing out there that I’m supposed to know; I can have very great confidence that there are three fairies here. But there aren’t. The question is: who said there are fairies? Not: how do I know they exist. Do you understand?

[Speaker G] No, okay, but if we’re talking about some moral vision, then it should be enough that I feel very strongly that this is it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You feel? I feel a very strong urge to speak malicious gossip, so what does that have to do with anything? The question is why it’s right, not why you feel it. Why you feel it is a fact. But why it’s right is a normative claim; it’s not a fact. And the question is: where can norms get validity from if all that exists here is just a collection of molecules?

[Speaker G] According to what the Rabbi is saying, if in the Torah or in some development from it, suppose it had said, instead of “Do not murder, do not commit adultery,” “Murder, steal,” and so on and so on—then we would have been very moral people?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not necessarily. It depends on the Euthyphro dilemma. Meaning, the question is whether such a thing could be written in the Torah. You understand? It may be that it cannot be, because that is the good.

[Speaker G] We—

[Speaker D] are capable of imagining it very simply.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re capable of imagining it, but I’m also capable of imagining fairies. That doesn’t mean there are fairies. In other words, the question is whether such a thing could really be. Is the Holy One, blessed be He, subject to the good, or is the good subject to the Holy One, blessed be He? Yes, that’s the Euthyphro dilemma. I also have something to say about it, but I don’t think it’s worth getting into that here. The question is whether the good is good because God commanded it, or God commanded it because it is good. In the Platonic formulation it’s about the idols—it doesn’t matter, about the gods.

[Speaker E] And that is idolatry—something explains it. What? In Sodom, for example, that was policy, and it was a kind of conception that god was society.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Society can certainly legislate wicked laws. We know examples that are even closer to us. But the question is whether God can legislate wicked laws. That was the question here. About that, I’m not sure. Yes.

[Speaker A] But the question is whether the laws are framework laws that you can play within, and then that gives many more options, or whether it’s binding?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so I was speaking about a legal system in a very general way. We can start arguing now whether you have the possibility of arranging it differently, perhaps the hierarchy of values can depend on you. Maybe. That’s already a question of interpretation, but it isn’t important to me for the logic itself. The logic itself is that there is some framework that is a dictate. How dictated it is and how much one can play with it—that is part of human creativity and liberty. Maybe he will manage to show that you can also play with things, that not everything is dictated. Fine? Okay. In any case, then why does freedom necessarily mean that there is no binding system of norms?

[Speaker D] Again? Does freedom necessarily mean not?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. We see that it doesn’t. A secular world is not a world that necessarily functions less well than a religious world. I didn’t say that. What I said is that if it functions well, that isn’t consistent. It is not moral in the same way the religious world is moral. Because it does the good not by force of the moral command, yes, in the Kantian sense, but it does the good because—I don’t know—because that’s how it feels, because it has some commitment to social determination. Whatever it may be. Not for reasons that in my eyes are moral reasons. I did not say that such a society cannot function properly. That isn’t true. In other words, there can be a completely atheistic society that is a proper society and functions well—good people, everything is fine. By the way, as a result of that I think it is a believing society, only not aware that it believes. But that is already another discussion.

[Speaker E] A large part of the Ten Commandments is—much of it is social.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so what? So that’s…

[Speaker E] Yes, you have the squares—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but it is by force of command. Everything is by force of command. So what? What difference does it make? Everything is by force of command. Without command there is nothing.

[Speaker E] But that’s not freedom, that’s not freedom.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said it’s freedom?

[Speaker E] It’s liberty. Within the framework of the things—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We are talking within the framework. There really is liberty there and not freedom. Correct, that’s also what I’m saying. What? The claim in the end, then, is that command and the a priori determination by an external factor of principles of good and evil, of values, and of costs for doing good and doing evil—that is a condition for my choice to be meaningful. Not only does it not contradict it; it is a condition for my choice to be meaningful. Meaning, without it, it cannot have meaning. And what this actually… yes.

[Speaker F] So, for example, if someone is drowning, and if I want to save him because it’s good, that’s less moral than if I wanted to save him because I was commanded to save him?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what “good” means, what do you mean? If I was commanded, then it’s good. If you do it because you feel like it, that’s less good. Because you feel like it—fine, that’s how you’re built. You’re going after your good inclination.

[Speaker F] But if it’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] my reasoning, so it’s my reasoning? What do you mean, what is “your reasoning”? My reasoning leads me to the conclusion that it is good. Why? Because I understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants it. And if someone secular—

[Speaker F] who doesn’t understand that the Holy One, blessed be He—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If he doesn’t believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, then he isn’t consistent. No, then he isn’t consistent. I don’t know what to say about something inconsistent. About something inconsistent you can say whatever you want. That’s a rule in logic.

[Speaker E] But he can still save him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He has an inconsistent doctrine. What do you want me to say? You’re asking me what follows from that doctrine. If there is a contradiction within it, then anything at all follows from that doctrine. That is a theorem in logic. A system that contains a contradiction entails any conclusion you want and its opposite. Okay? Therefore don’t ask me how to judge such a system. You can’t judge such a system. Yes.

[Speaker G] I don’t understand what the Rabbi means when he says moral principles. Does the Rabbi define moral principles according to some all-powerful being and so on that established them? Because if we really don’t have some internal compass as human beings, right—if we don’t have some internal compass by which to measure what is good and what is bad—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We do. We have an internal compass, but that internal compass recognizes what is good and what is bad; it does not determine what is good and what is bad. It is an epistemic compass. Do you understand? In other words, the compass—what we call conscience—is my way of knowing what is good and what is bad, not of constituting the good and the bad. The one who constitutes them is the Holy One, blessed be He. But how do I know what is good and what is bad? He didn’t always tell me. So here I have my inner conscience, which I believe He implanted within me, and through it I can know that.

[Speaker G] And in other cases not; I mean, there are many cases in which a person struggles or gets lost.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, this tool is not unequivocal. We also have arguments, there are also disputes and disagreements, obviously. This tool is very far from unequivocal, but still, in my view it is an epistemic tool. There are people who will conclude that since it is not unequivocal and there are disputes, then there is no such tool, it’s an invention, everyone constitutes his own value for himself—that’s Ari Elon. And I claim: no. It is a cognitive tool. True, it is not unequivocal, and therefore there are disputes, and perhaps there is even a plurality of truths—not just that one is wrong and the other is right. There are situations where perhaps indeed two decisions can both be moral. But that does not mean everything is moral. I do not accept that kind of anarchy. I am not arguing for moral determinism, meaning that in every situation there is one answer and no other, and if someone disagrees then he is certainly wrong. I do claim that in some disputes, some of the sides are mistaken. How many of them, I don’t know. Fine? This point leads me onward. Actually the result—or it’s not a result; it was actually my assumption—is a Kantian assumption, which says that the value of a good act is not determined by what the act is, not only by what act you perform. Now I’m going to the other side, where Ari Elon is right. It is not determined only by the question whether the act you do is good or not good. Because both the rabbinic person and the sovereign person do good. After all, that’s the distinction he makes: one chooses it and for the other it is dictated, right? He doesn’t claim that the rabbinic person necessarily does evil. He says that what the rabbinic person does is dictated to him; he doesn’t decide it himself. In that sense I agree that he is right. He did grasp half the picture. Meaning, if someone does the good, completely lands on what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants, everything the Holy One, blessed be He, wants—but not out of his own decision—then there is really nothing to appreciate in him. In other words, you need both things in order to receive credit as a moral person in the moral context, or a religious person in the religious context. The commandments you have to do in response to the command, and moral acts in response to the command of morality, the commands of morality. Okay? Because without that, you are not doing things out of your own decision, and you deserve no credit for that; on the contrary, you deserve anti-credit for having dropped the reins. Even though sometimes you will do the good thing, because people have a natural tendency to do good—we talked about this in the previous class. But you don’t deserve credit for that, because you need to decide what you do, whether for good or for bad. And therefore, in this context, when people ask—yes, there is an article by Yaakov Yehoshua Ross, Tamar Ross’s husband, he’s a professor at Tel Aviv University, philosophy—he has an article, “Why Keep Commandments.” It appears in Avi Sagi’s collection on religion and morality. There he follows Wittgenstein somewhat and modifies things a bit, but his basic claim is this: why do commandments? Just because. What does “just because” mean? Here one has to be careful; there are two possible interpretations of the concept “just because.” But before the two interpretations, he rejects all the other possibilities: gratitude, because it’s the best thing to do, because it’s the most useful, because our lives will be the most proper, or things of that sort. He rejects all those possibilities because that basically means that in all those possibilities you do the commandments as a means to something else that you decided upon. If you understand the commandments as service of God in a Leibowitzian sense, then basically you need to do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, said so. Just because.

[Speaker G] What? If you don’t understand them like Leibowitz?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then you are not serving God, that’s the claim—

[Speaker G] according to Leibowitz.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is whether he is right or not right—what do I care who said it?

[Speaker G] It’s just that he has difficulty understanding the concept of service of God, and through that difficulty he says—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t have difficulty; in my opinion at least, he understands it very well. Service of God means serving God, and nothing else.

[Speaker G] What does that—

[Speaker D] mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It means doing things because the Holy One, blessed be He, said so, and not because of other reasons. In a moment I’ll go into this a bit more. And the claim is basically this: this is the essence of what I said earlier about responding to norms or values established by an external factor. In other words, religious or moral value, in any context—if you are examining a moral value or a religious value—is determined, first, by the question whether you conform to the moral or religious norms. Second, by the question whether you decided to do it in response to the command of morality or to the command of Jewish law in the halakhic context. I’ll perhaps bring a few sources for this to sharpen the points a little more. They’ll hand out these pages to you; do one per table again because I’m not sure everyone has one.

[Speaker E] Again, does that mean that the norms of the sages are on a par with God? Again? Meaning that when we follow the sages, it’s like the regulations of Bibi and people like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But why should I listen to those regulations? Why should one listen to those regulations? They made regulations; I can also make regulations for you—will you obey them?

[Speaker E] Meaning, you’re placing them in the status of God?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t see them that way. I don’t know—if someone does see them that way, then that’s idolatry.

[Speaker E] But you went and said that there has to be an external entity that governs all the systems.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say it governs all the systems. There has to be an entity such that it is enough that it says something in order to give it validity. Because without that, things have no validity. It’s almost a tautology, there’s no—

[Speaker E] But an entity that we feel, sense, is taking over our lives?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, once you say it takes over life, you’ve already added a lot of other things here. I said something very minimal, almost tautological. I said that the moment values have validity, that means there is some factor that established them, and for our purposes it is enough that it established them in order to give them validity. That seems to me trivial. Identifying it—did it also give other things, did it create the world? I don’t know. Let everyone decide for himself what the nature of that entity is in his eyes.

[Speaker E] There are internal things within us where we identify with such an entity, that we judge ourselves against it. Okay. But when you talk about some prime minister, say, some personality sitting in a room—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whoever thinks the prime minister is God is engaging in idol worship.

[Speaker E] But that entity doesn’t see us, doesn’t see us at all, it has no control over us the way—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, so what? What’s the question?

[Speaker E] Meaning, in order to examine our moral values, that we say this way, act that way, after all we’ll always say we can get away with it and nobody sees us.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then don’t get away with it. I’m not coming to… get away with it, do whatever you want. I’m asking without getting away with it. The question is how you judge someone who isn’t getting away with anything.

[Speaker E] If someone examines someone else, then my moral values, all the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s why I say you need to be obligated toward someone in order for it to be possible to judge you. I completely agree.

[Speaker E] It has to be an external entity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An external entity. That’s what I said, so what’s the question?

[Speaker E] An external entity outside our world, one that rules the world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay. Rules our world—you’ve already added something else. There has to be an entity such that it is enough that it says something in order to give it validity. That’s all. Everything beyond that is your responsibility. Okay?

[Speaker D] So how do you know there is this general something, like you said earlier?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what this general good is. What is it? In our world there are molecules, there’s… what is there besides that? What you said earlier. So you have to posit it. So that general good is the entity. So it is the other entity. But there has to be, there needs to be something else. That’s why I say, I’m not entering into the question of who that something is. That’s a different discussion. Okay? Look, take a look at the pages.

[Speaker E] There is “And you shall do what is right and good,” and Nachmanides says here that “what is right and good” means also in matters where He did not command you—use your judgment to do what is good and right. Because clearly, because He determined that this is right and good.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He didn’t command you.

[Speaker E] “What is right and good”—when you know that it is self-evident? Right. Not that there is some clear legal system here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but then you’re just repeating what I’m saying. He doesn’t have to command you. The principles of morality were not commanded to you. The principles of morality are outside Jewish law. But you do it because you know that the Holy One, blessed be He, determined that it is moral. He did not command you; it isn’t Jewish law. But it still does have to come from Him. That’s the point. And here, by the way, I disagree with Leibowitz in this context. Leibowitz claims that morality is an atheistic category. In my view that is a kind of dualism. Both dualism and inconsistency. I don’t know what that category is… so where does it come from? Why obey it? Anyway, let’s get back to our topic. Look at your second source. To my mind it is more significant. Rabbi Ovadia, of blessed memory? You know what, let’s start with the first one. “Anyone who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to observe them is one of the pious of the nations of the world and has a share in the World to Come.” Right, that’s at the end of chapter 8 of Kings. “And that is when he accepts them and performs them because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher that the descendants of Noah had previously been commanded concerning them. But if he performed them because of rational conviction, he is not a resident alien and is not one of the pious of the nations of the world, but one of their wise men.” Right, the “not” and the “but” are two versions; the more correct version is “but one of their wise men.” Okay? What is Maimonides saying here? Maimonides is saying that when you do the commandments because they seem good to you, beneficial, I don’t know exactly what, then you are not serving God. You may be a good person, you may be doing the right thing, but you are not serving God. He is not among their pious, right? Rather what? When can you be among the pious of the nations of the world? When you do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it in the Torah. Only then does the commandment have—let me put it in my own language—only then does the commandment have religious value. You can perform these commandments and maybe you will do the right things, and regarding some of the commandments I don’t even know whether these really are the right things detached from their being commandments. But you may be among the wise of the nations of the world, doing the right things, yet you won’t be among their pious—that is, it will not have religious value. It may have value, but not religious value. Something has religious value only if you do it by force of the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. Okay? That is basically what is written here in Maimonides. That is why, for example, this whole way of looking at the pioneers who drained swamps as fulfilling the commandment of settling the Land of Israel—that’s nonsense. I mean atheist pioneers, of course, not pioneers who truly did it because of the commandment.

[Speaker E] But how do you connect this will of yours to the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, said it? How do you—like he says, if someone is drowning, you save him. So how do you connect that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, said it? How do you connect it? I don’t understand the question. The Holy One, blessed be He, said, “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” Because the Holy One, blessed be He, said, “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” What’s the problem? I didn’t understand. The Holy One, blessed be He, said, “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” Not in your imagination or mine—the Holy One, blessed be He, said, “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” When I save him, I am fulfilling that prohibition; I am refraining from violating that prohibition.

[Speaker E] It’s the question of whether commandments require intention, I’m not getting into—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now into the question of whether commandments require intention. Commandments require faith, not intention. Whether commandments require intention is another question—how conscious this is supposed to be. So here the question is whether just incidentally or for its own sake, all kinds of other discussions. I’m talking about the question of someone for whom the Holy One, blessed be He, and the command don’t exist in his world at all. He does it because he is a good person. He has not fulfilled a commandment בכך. You cannot fulfill commandments absentmindedly in that sense. Commandments require faith according to all opinions. Even according to the view that commandments do not require intention, commandments do require faith. The question is whether you need to be conscious of it at the time of performing the commandment—that is the question of whether commandments require intention. That’s another discussion, okay? It is part of the question of whether commandments require intention, not the whole thing. What?

[Speaker H] There are things that are among what is widely accepted, that don’t require some command, things that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, widely accepted things, where yes, everyone knows it is right because the Holy One, blessed be He, wants it. Fine. But that is not a command. I said earlier: morality and command are two different things.

[Speaker I] Who said that this is also true for Jews?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I say so. The reasoning. The same reasoning that applies to gentiles applies to Jews; what’s the difference? If you want it written in square letters, then look in the Frankel index volume; you’ll see there several later authorities on this law—except, there is one who doesn’t. Several later authorities on this law, I no longer remember, Sho’el U-Meshiv and, I think, Oneg Yom Tov, who extend this also to Jews. But it’s obvious, it’s not… this appears regarding a resident alien, regarding descendants of Noah, simply because the commandments of a resident alien, as Maimonides says, are commandments toward which reason inclines. That’s what he says in Laws of Kings in that same chapter. So really, where can there even be someone who does a commandment because of rational conviction and not because the Holy One, blessed be He, said so? Have you ever heard of someone redeeming a firstborn donkey because of rational conviction? No. Where would this—

[Speaker D] Come up? No, but he might not steal. That’s it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, where does this come up? In those commandments toward which reason inclines. There can be someone who does it not because of the command but because of morality or for whatever reason. We know plenty of such cases. About that Maimonides says it may have moral value, and make him one of the wise of the nations of the world, but not religious value. Not one of their pious. But he says it here not because it is only about the seven Noahide commandments, but because among the seven Noahide commandments these are the commandments it is possible to do also because of rational conviction. That’s all. But it is also true for a Jew; it is the same reasoning, simple reasoning.

[Speaker C] But is it true only for commandments that involve rational conviction?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It only appears there. If someone were to redeem a firstborn donkey because of rational conviction, then say the same thing about him—it just won’t happen. No one will do that there, that’s all. The Torah speaks of the usual case, and it simply won’t happen. Fine, so what Maimonides is basically saying here is that the value of a commandment begins with your being commanded. And you do it as someone responding to a command. If you do it—we are always told there are lots of good people, they’re not religious, they give charity, they really are good people—but they are not doing commandments. They have never fulfilled a single commandment. Such a person who put on tefillin with the Chabad guys on the street or something, as a secular person who believes in nothing, just because he wanted them to leave him alone or because, I don’t know, he had some ordinary sentimental feeling for his grandfather—so he put on tefillin. Afterward, if he repents that afternoon, he has to put on tefillin again. He has not fulfilled his obligation. He did not do a commandment. There is no commandment here at all; it’s just a monkey-like act, nothing more. So that’s one statement. Now look at the second Maimonides, chapter 3 of Laws of Idol Worship, law 6. And this really is a fascinating Maimonides. My friend Nadav Shnerb from physics pointed this out to me; he explained this Maimonides to me once many years ago. He has an article about it too. This Maimonides starts from a dispute in the Sanhedrin between Abaye and Rava over the question of what happens with someone who worships idols out of love or fear. Is he liable or exempt? Okay? Maimonides rules that he is exempt. Someone who worships idols out of love or fear is exempt. What does it mean to worship idols out of love or fear? The accepted understanding among the commentators, the medieval authorities (Rishonim), already Rashi there, the Rivash, the Raavad here, almost all of them except Maimonides—everyone who discusses it understands love and fear as love and fear of a person. Meaning, if you worship idols in order to please someone, not because you really want to worship the idol, but in order to please someone—you love him, you fear him—then that is not idol worship in the fullest sense. Here this is Laws of Idol Worship in the positive sense of the term: how to do idol worship properly. That’s called Laws of Idol Worship. So Maimonides says, if you want to worship idols, you must do it not—Maimonides doesn’t say this, the Talmud says—you have to do it not because you have some desire to please some person, because you love him or fear him or for any other side reason, but you have to do it for its own sake, worship idol worship for its own sake. That’s what you have to do. But say, if you love the idol, if you worship the idol because you fear or love the idol itself and not another person, then most commentators say that is certainly idol worship. What you do toward the Holy One, blessed be He, you are now directing toward the idol. What greater idol worship could there be than that? Now let’s read Maimonides. Maimonides does not say that.

[Speaker E] What? Those who came and brought out a woman and in the end did idol worship—the Midianites? So basically they didn’t really do idol worship according to this definition?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, it depends whether they wanted to worship.

[Speaker E] Maybe they wanted to get to the woman—that’s the question.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe in the end they really did arrive at worship directed toward the idol. The question is how you got there; if it was by way of sexual immorality, that’s a question of how you got there. The question is what happens at the moment of worship. But leave it, we won’t get into that now, because there is a lot to expand on in this Maimonides; it is very far from simple when compared to the sources. In Nadav Shnerb’s article in the introductions there is some discussion of several problematic sources in light of Maimonides. So Maimonides says this: “One who worships stars out of love, for example, because he desired this image due to its craftsmanship, which was exceptionally beautiful, or who worshiped it out of fear of it, lest it harm him, as its worshipers imagine that it can benefit or harm—if he accepted it upon himself as a god, he is liable to stoning. But if he worshiped it in its normal manner or by one of the four forms of worship, out of love or fear, he is exempt.” He does not say love and fear of a person; he says love and fear of the image, of the idol. And the Raavad senses this and says as follows: “Avraham said”—excuse me, I’m skipping a bit further—“out of love and out of fear, and we explain this as out of love of a person and out of fear of a person, not out of love of the idol and not out of fear of it.” Because if it is love and fear of the idol, that is idol worship in the fullest sense. That is what we do toward the Holy One, blessed be He, and if we direct it toward an idol, that is idol worship—what else could it be? But he understood that Maimonides does not explain it that way, right? He disputes him here. What did Maimonides think? Maimonides claimed that if we worship idols out of love or fear of the idol, that is not idol worship—just as if we worship the Holy One, blessed be He, out of love or fear toward Him, that is not worship of God. There is a commandment to love and fear the Holy One, blessed be He. Wait, there is a commandment to love and fear the Holy One, blessed be He, but that is a commandment. The reason why we worship God is not love and fear of the Holy One, blessed be He. First of all, logically this is simple. Why? Because if worship of God were built on love and fear of Him, then why would He need to command us to love and fear Him? If we do not love and fear Him, we would not fulfill that commandment either. And that is a condition for fulfilling the commandments. That is why we do them. Therefore the existence of these commandments not only does not contradict what I’m saying—it confirms what I’m saying. But beyond that, there is also the logic. What Maimonides is basically saying is this: if you do it out of love or fear of the Holy One, blessed be He, those are foreign motives. When you worship God, you need to worship because He said so. Just like that. You do it because He said so. There is an obligation to do what He said. Up to this point—and here this is against Leibowitz—up to this point it is Leibowitz. Where is Leibowitz wrong? As usual, he takes a correct principle one step too far. Usually his principles are correct; his mistake is when he takes them too far. And he claims there is no value at all in worship out of love or fear. That is not true. Meaning, the worship itself should not be based on love and fear but on obligation, on the fact that He commanded; that is worship for its own sake. But on top of that, if you also love and fear and so on—there are such commandments, there are additional levels of course—there is value in loving and fearing the Holy One, blessed be He, but that is not the reason. If that is the reason you worship, then this is not worship of God for its own sake. It is incomplete worship of God. Let me give you an example. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev—today I’m a Hasid, to my misfortune. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, yes, there is the famous story that he saw a person with tallit and tefillin going out to fix the wagon. So he says to the Holy One, blessed be He—always arguing in favor of the Jewish people—he says: Look, Holy One, blessed be He, what a nation of righteous people You have. They pray in the synagogue, they pray outside the synagogue, when they fix the wagon they pray, they are always praying, look what righteous people. Those Hasidic jokes always amuse me. I don’t know whom they are for—maybe wagon drivers can relate to them—but it sounds completely silly. In this specific case it is not silly. Why really is he fixing the wagon with tefillin and tallit? Forget all these games and just fix the wagon quietly. What are you wasting time for? You won’t get prayer out of this. What for? Why are you going to the synagogue at all? Stay home, fix the wagon, and go about your business. Why does he do it? Because first of all he goes to pray. There is an obligation to pray. Fine, we have impulses and constraints and we do various things, but at root he goes to pray because there is an obligation to pray. That is why he is there. So that is prayer on the highest level there is. The highest there is, on the most fundamental level there is. On top of that prayer, which is done מתוך a sense of obligation—not because I need it, not because I love God, not because I fear Him, not because I want to discharge my duty, none of that—rather because there is an obligation. First and foremost. Prayer has to come from there. After that there are additional levels. I love God, I fear Him, I reach all kinds of levels of connection and kavanot of the Ari and whatever you want. Those are additions. The foundation is this foundation. When people are rebuked for not loving and dancing in prayer, but instead coming out of a sense of obligation, which is called rote observance—yes, the rebukes of the spiritual supervisors—that rote observance is prayer on the highest level there is. A person goes to pray because there is an obligation to pray, not because he loves the Holy One, blessed be He, and not because he wants to dance before Him and connect with Him and I don’t know what. His gut is not at the center. What is at the center is the sense of obligation. One must pray because there is a commandment to pray, period. Again, where Leibowitz is wrong is that there is only that. Not true—that is the foundation. That is why one should come to pray. On top of that, if I manage to charge it with an additional charge of love and fear and connection and intentions—for your health. Those are floors A, B, C through Z. But floor A is the sense of obligation. And anyone who thinks the other floors are a substitute for obligation, rather than an additional floor built upon it, lowers prayer rather than elevating it. Prayer is first and foremost a commandment, and commandments require intention, and intention means to discharge one’s obligation, not the mystical kavanot of the Ari. First of all. After that there are all the levels in prayer; there are other intentions too—the famous Rabbi Chaim.

[Speaker E] Meaning, someone who comes to pray when he doesn’t feel like it by even a millimeter—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nothing at all—that is the highest prayer there is.

[Speaker E] The highest prayer there is in the world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The person comes to pray because it is clear to him that there is an obligation to pray. He doesn’t need livelihood, he doesn’t think the prayer will give him livelihood, he doesn’t love God and doesn’t fear Him and has no energy for God at all. Right now he is in his business, with his wagon and yoke. But he goes to pray because there is an obligation to pray, that’s all.

[Speaker C] Does that happen to everyone?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it doesn’t happen to everyone. Some of us come perhaps because of social pressure, some of us come for all kinds of reasons, but if someone comes because of this, then he is truly praying, he is a true servant of God. And this is the worship of God that Maimonides is talking about here. And even love and fear—even those are foreign reasons. That is Maimonides’ novelty, against the Raavad and Rashi and the Rivash and all the other medieval authorities (Rishonim). Think about a situation—just some discussion with Nadav, that’s how it came up—say, what is called idol worship? If idol worship means obeying someone because I fear him, then slowing down the car when I see a police officer or a radar, is that idol worship? I do what the law says because I fear. Why is that not idol worship? Not because it isn’t false. Is idol worship only because it is false? No. Idol worship is responding to a source of authority that is not the Holy One, blessed be He. That is idol worship, whether it is true or false.

[Speaker J] So what, if we obey a police officer then what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So is that idol worship? I didn’t understand.

[Speaker J] Is obeying a police officer idol worship?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m asking—is it idol worship or not? Why not? I worship idols out of fear. The answer is that to worship out of fear means to do it because you want to get something or avoid something else. That is not religious worship. Religious worship is doing something because the idol or God said so. Not because I fear, not because I’m afraid, not because I will get a benefit—nothing. Even love and fear are side reasons. That is what Maimonides says. Therefore, worship out of a sense of obligation to the command—that is the peak of religious worship. In that sense Leibowitz is completely right, in my humble opinion. And the same, by the way, in the moral context, which is simply Kant’s translation into the moral context: that a moral act done only because your heart is full of compassion for the poor man and therefore you give him charity—that is a moral act on a much lower level than giving him charity when you are not interested in the poor man at all, but you know that this is the right thing to do. Of course this does not mean you should empty your heart of compassion, but the reason you give has to be because that is what is right. If on top of that you also load in a feeling of compassion and empathy, excellent—level B, floor B, C, D. But what is the foundation of why you do it? If you do it because of a feeling of compassion, that is worship of yourself. You are not caring for the poor man, you are caring for your own gut. I once spoke about this, mentioned it—I no longer remember if it was at Sde Boker when I was there. There at the environmental high school, so a friend—yes, I mentioned it there, right? That’s it. So it is exactly the same there too. You have to do it because that is what is right. That is what gives it value, in the moral sense or the religious sense. And again, that does not mean you should not feel. It does not mean you have to become, I don’t know, Asperger’s or autistic or I don’t know what to call it—devoid of feeling, disconnected from your emotional dimension. But it does mean that the emotional dimension is not what should be the motivation for action. You should do things because that is what is right. Not because your feelings say this or say that. Because then you are doing it to feed your feelings, not in order to do what is right in the normative sense, yes? In the objective sense—what that external factor determined is right. Yes.

[Speaker F] So if you obey the law because that’s what the law says—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then you are worshiping idols. Yes. The Haredim are right in that sense. You are worshiping idols. Meaning, if you obey the law because that is right, because you think it is moral to respond to what the public you are part of has determined, and that moral principle is a principle that the Holy One, blessed be He, expects you to act by—then that is perfectly fine. But many times there are people who say: what do you mean? Because it’s the law. Why obey the law? Because it’s the law. What kind of answer is “because it’s the law”? So what? It’s the law. If I make another law for you now, will you obey that too? That is idol worship. It is idol worship in that sense. The idol here is an abstract idol. It is not a concrete idol, not some specific wood and stone. But still, you perceive that there is some other source of validity that is not the Holy One, blessed be He, that has value in and of itself and not as a benefit. If you do it because there is a benefit, no problem. That is not religious worship at all. Neither idol worship nor worship of God. But if you do it because the law said so—not because of benefit, not because of some moral obligation, but simply because, because the law—then that is idol worship.

[Speaker D] Like “commandments learned by rote,” no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, when I ask the person why are you doing this, I shake him out of his rote habit. And now I tell him: give me a real account of why you are doing it. So now he will say one of two things: you know what, it really was rote until now, so from now on I’ll do it because of X. Or alternatively, from now on I won’t do it at all. No problem—he is not worshiping idols, because until now he was only doing it without thinking. But if I now corner him and ask him the question and he answers me: because that’s what the law says—what do you mean—

[Speaker E] Meaning? Then he is worshiping idols. It’s like when I pay income tax, I know why.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it depends why you pay income tax.

[Speaker E] Why? Because it said so.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? I’m asking why you pay income tax. If you pay income tax… what does it mean, because you’re obligated? Why are you obligated?

[Speaker E] Because if I don’t pay income tax—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then you’re afraid, you’re afraid of prison, so you are not worshiping idols, you are doing it out of fear. Idol worship out of fear is exempt. That is exactly the point. If you do it because of a sense of unconditional obligation, that should be directed only toward the Holy One, blessed be He. A sense of unconditional obligation toward another factor is idol worship. Very often we have a sense of obligation that is conditional—because of love, fear, whatever, it doesn’t matter, I have some interest. And that is not religious worship—no problem, do whatever you like with your interests. If you take medicine in order to recover, is that idol worship? It’s not idol worship; I take the medicine because that is what heals me. But if I take medicine because the doctor said so, then it is idol worship. So what if he said it? He said it, so he said it. I can’t do things… religious worship means doing something in a way that is unconditional on anything. Not because it gives me something, not because it feeds something in my gut, but because that is the obligation. That is what is called religious worship. And religious worship is directed only toward the Holy One, blessed be He.

[Speaker G] Is the Rabbi looking for something he can learn from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)? Because I think the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is full of cases of idol worship that the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) itself clearly defines as idol worship, and there is not the slightest shadow of a doubt that there is no acceptance of the idol there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s an interesting question. Let’s try to look at passages, we can try to examine episodes, maybe you’re right. Worth checking, worth checking.

[Speaker K] Are you talking here only about idol worship or also worship of God?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everything. I said, this corresponds to that.

[Speaker K] But if he says that someone who worships because of fear and all that is an ignoramus—right. He doesn’t say that he is not worshiping Him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he is not worshiping Him properly, right. I said, this is worship not for its own sake. Obviously.

[Speaker K] But is it still considered worship?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That it’s not worship? Fine, right, it is worship not for its own sake. Floor A is missing; there is floor B and C, but floor A is missing. Worship hanging in the air. The point that emerges from here, yes—there is in tractate Chullin, in the commentary to the Mishnah, he says similar things, although there it is… let’s leave it, it is something a bit different, never mind, that’s just a parenthetical remark. He says similar things there in the commentary to the Mishnah, you can read it there, but it is not the same thing when you think about it. For our purposes, the claim, basically—if I go back—I want to connect this to what was before and then finish with Rosh Hashanah, which is exactly the right time. This response to the command, which I tried to sharpen here as the foundation for worship of God or religious worship in general, including idol worship, is basically the Switzerland or not-Switzerland—rather, the negation of Switzerland in the example I gave earlier. Meaning, at the end of the day, when you do an action, it may only then have religious or moral value. Okay? And this is exactly parallel to, or the mirror image of, the distinction I made in the earlier part of the class—Switzerland versus yes, versus real democracy. Because in Switzerland too, you choose freely among several options available to you, unlike in Syria. But there is no external factor determining that there are costs to every choice—good, bad, there is good and evil, these costs and those costs. That is not something of value. The thing receives its value, first, when around it there is some factor dictating a normative framework of good and bad, and second, when you act by force of the obligation to respond to that factor. Only then does your action have normative significance—in the moral context, morality; in the halakhic context, commandment or worship of God. What is all this leading to? I said it connects to Rosh Hashanah. Because basically Rosh Hashanah is a day on which one is not supposed to repent. In what sense does it belong to the Ten Days of Repentance? Right? Rosh Hashanah is the coronation of the Holy One, blessed be He. Kingship, remembrance, shofar blasts—there is no repentance. We do not say confession, right? On Rosh Hashanah one does not repent. Why not? What, how does it fit into the structure of the Ten Days of Repentance? After that begins the work of repentance; the Ten Days of Repentance and Yom Kippur are atonement. But on Rosh Hashanah, no. Why? What is there on Rosh Hashanah? I said there, what is repentance—the conclusion from the previous classes—the conclusion is that repentance means returning to being one who chooses. Right? That is the conclusion about repentance. That is why Maimonides places his discussion of free choice in Laws of Repentance. Today I tried to explain what it means to return to being one who chooses. To return to being one who chooses means taking the reins into your own hands and deciding to do what is right. Or in other words, what is right? What the external factor that determines what is right, or what is good and bad, determined. Right? That is basically the meaning of returning to being one who chooses. Returning to being one who chooses means placing before my eyes the good and the bad that were determined by an external factor, and deciding to do the good. That is what it means to repent, in a more detailed translation. Right?

[Speaker E] If I explain what you’re saying, then basically on Rosh Hashanah you build the framework.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. That is why Rosh Hashanah opens the Ten Days of Repentance, I think. Rosh Hashanah is the coronation of the Holy One, blessed be He. What is coronation? What is a king? Someone you obey. “There is no king without a people,” the Sages say. What is a king? Even though in Adon Olam it says, “Master of the universe who reigned before any creature was created.” Meaning, He was king before there were created beings, and on the other hand there is no king without a people. Yes, so that is a very interesting point. Never mind—He created us because that truly was a necessity of reality in order to be king. But the claim is that a king is someone whose word is done because he said it. Today we don’t understand this. There are no kings in our world. We make jokes about rulers, “your faithful servant” and the first one who does such things. But in a world in which there are kings, this is the clearest and sharpest illustration of the concept of an entity whose word obligates by the very fact that it said it. Not because it is right, not because he will punish me. True, he will also punish me, but the atmosphere that prevails in a real, deep monarchical world is a world in which the king is the master of the house. “The law of the kingdom is law,” according to the Sages, stems from the fact that he owns the land. The king is the master here; what he says is what gets done. And the Holy One, blessed be He, is basically the paradigm of a king. What does it mean to be king? That what He says, I do because He said it—not because it is right, not because it is beneficial, not because… it is also right and beneficial, but that is floor B and C. First of all I do it because He said it. And that is the meaning of coronating the Holy One, blessed be He. Coronating the Holy One, blessed be He, means recognizing that around me there is a framework set by a king who says what is right and what is not right, and that obligates by the very fact that he determined it. Whether I identify with it or not is irrelevant; what he determined obligates by the very fact that he determined it. That means the Holy One, blessed be He, is king. That is what one does on Rosh Hashanah. After that you can repent. After that you can return to being one who chooses. What does it mean to be one who chooses? To understand that this framework exists, and within this framework I take the reins into my own hands and decide to steer the horses in the positive direction according to what the framework says, and not step outside the framework, not go in the negative direction. And then there are the Ten Days of Repentance. Meaning, Rosh Hashanah is basically the foundation for repentance; it is impossible to repent before you have done Rosh Hashanah. Not that it is forbidden to repent—it is impossible to repent. The work first has to be in establishing the framework, contrary to Ari Elon—there has to be some framework before you become a sovereign person. To repent is to return to being a sovereign person, but you can be a sovereign person only after you recognize that there is a framework that determines what is good and bad, what is right and not right, what one is obligated and not obligated to do, and what is forbidden. Only then can you begin the work of repentance. That is why on Rosh Hashanah there really is this matter of coronation, and that is why there is no point in doing repentance there. It’s not a prohibition; someone who repents on Rosh Hashanah has not violated a prohibition. I have never heard anyone say that it is prohibited to repent on Rosh Hashanah. It is not a prohibition; it is simply not the right category, not the right order of the work. It does belong, because you know that the Holy One, blessed be He, is king even earlier, but the order of the work is first to establish the coronation and only then to begin acting within the framework. A good year.

[Speaker F] Doesn’t this contradict the issue of free thought a bit?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Free thought does not determine what is good and bad; it tries to understand what is good and bad, not determine what is good and bad.

[Speaker F] But do we have to understand, if everything is already—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because you do not always know; it is not so simple to know it. Do you need to understand physics? Everything is foreknown; the Holy One, blessed be He, determined physics, what the laws are.

[Speaker F] He did not give us the instruction book for physics.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And here too, we don’t have the instruction book. You have to think, interpret, think, work. It’s not simple, it’s not just to look and see what it is.

[Speaker L] What is the Torah source there, the coronation there, what are you talking about?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About the Mishnah in Chullin, that Mishnah. Mishnah in Chullin? Yes, you can take it if you want.

[Speaker F] And does this include all the commandments that are Torah-level, and also all the commandments that are rabbinic?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? Everything we are obligated to do. There is “do not deviate,” it doesn’t matter. What the rabbis said, we do because the Holy One, blessed be He, expects us to do it, not because the rabbis said so. Yes. A good year. A good year, a good year, may the decree be sealed—

[Speaker D] For a good final sealing. Yes.