Ein Ayah – Berakhot 120

Table of Contents

• The Talmud on “May the words of my mouth be acceptable” and the Amidah
• Ein Ayah, section 120: the perfection of the individual and the perfection of the collective
• Psalms chapter 1 and chapter 2 in light of Rabbi Kook
• Chapter 3 and a homiletic suggestion about the clash between the individual and the many
• Eighteen and nineteen, and the connection to “And for informers let there be no hope”
• The structure of Rabbi Kook’s argument: three layers
• Fascism versus individualism, and a synthesis between the poles
• The Mitla example and the line between risk and self-sacrifice
• “Do not be intimidated by any man” and the danger faced by a threatened judge
• The value of public efficiency and the expansion of the concept of saving life in the public sphere
• Maimonides, Laws of Repentance: the judgment of the individual, the state, and the world
• Targeted killing: the law of a pursuer versus “be killed rather than transgress” as a conceptual dispute
• Stalin, the people of Shechem, and responsibility without guilt
• A question about perception versus morality, and the concluding answer

Summary

General Overview

The text opens with the Talmudic discussion of the placement of the verse “May the words of my mouth be acceptable” in relation to the eighteen blessings, and explains the Talmud’s solution that “Happy is the man” and “Why do the nations rage” are “one section,” so the count remains eighteen. From there it brings section 120 in Rabbi Kook’s Ein Ayah, which presents a model in which a person’s individual perfection and the perfection of the collective depend on one another and cannot be separated. The discussion then presents Psalms 1–3 in light of Rabbi Kook’s remarks, and afterward unfolds into a broader philosophical and practical discussion of the individual and the collective in contrast to fascist and individualist conceptions, with examples from the IDF, from Jewish law (a threatened judge), from Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance, and from dilemmas of war and state such as targeted killing, Stalin, and public responsibility. It concludes with a question about the relationship between cognitive perception and moral dilemma, and an answer according to which sometimes the dispute is not moral but factual-conceptual, even though it has moral consequences.

The Talmud on “May the words of my mouth be acceptable” and the Amidah

The Talmud states that “May the words of my mouth be acceptable” implies both the end and the beginning, and asks why the rabbis instituted saying it after the eighteen blessings rather than at the beginning. Rabbi Yehudah the son of Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi explains that David said it only after eighteen sections, and therefore the rabbis instituted it after eighteen blessings. The Talmud raises a numerical difficulty, because the verse appears at the end of Psalm 19, which comes after nineteen sections, and answers that “Happy is the man” and “Why do the nations rage” are one section, and are therefore counted as a single section.

Ein Ayah, section 120: the perfection of the individual and the perfection of the collective

Rabbi Kook writes that a person’s perfection is that he should strive for his own individual perfection as much as possible, but at the same time keep before his eyes that his private perfection is only completed through the perfection of the entire collective and through the national success of Israel, from which the success of humanity as a whole will arise. Rabbi Kook warns that one’s yearning to perfect the collective should not lead him to diminish his own perfection in good deeds and good character traits, because it is impossible to advance the collective unless each of its individual members is complete and successful. Rabbi Kook adds that a person should not imagine that he can rise to the level of his own perfection while not being wholeheartedly woven into the general perfection and success. Only by joining together his diligence in private perfection with his concern for the perfection and success of the collective will he attain his true happiness. Rabbi Kook explains that “Therefore, happy is the man” deals with individual perfection, while “Why do the nations rage” deals with the concerns of the collective, and “it is one section”; and when beginning and end are joined together, the result is “happy.”

Psalms chapter 1 and chapter 2 in light of Rabbi Kook

The reading of Psalm 1 presents a focus on a single individual and guidance toward his perfection, as in “Happy is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked” and “but his desire is in the Torah of the Lord.” The reading of Psalm 2 presents a collective focus on nations and peoples and kings of the earth, as in “Why do the nations rage and the peoples mutter emptiness” and “Ask of Me and I will give nations as your inheritance.” From the comparison emerges the claim that the first psalm describes an individual perspective and the second a public one, and when the Talmud determines that “it is one section,” the meaning is that a person does not focus on one without the other.

Chapter 3 and a homiletic suggestion about the clash between the individual and the many

Psalm 3, “A psalm of David when he fled from Absalom his son,” is seen as having a less clear-cut character, but one can still detect in it the feeling of an individual facing “many rising against me” and “myriads of people.” A homiletic possibility is suggested: that Psalm 3 presents a clash between the individual and the many, perhaps against the background of not internalizing the idea that the first two psalms are “one section.” It is also emphasized that David as king is not an ordinary “individual,” because the king is called “one of the people” and symbolizes public and governmental function; therefore in Psalm 3 the concepts of individual and public become blurred.

Eighteen and nineteen, and the connection to “And for informers let there be no hope”

The lecture notes that today it is well known that the Amidah in practice has nineteen blessings, because the blessing “And for informers let there be no hope,” instituted by Shmuel HaKatan, was added later. A thought is suggested that “the informers” are those who unravel the social fabric, breaking apart the collective and sowing conflict, and therefore informing is seen in the tradition as one of the gravest offenses. A passage from tractate Bava Kamma is cited according to which “it is permitted to kill an informer” under certain circumstances, with the clarification that this is not talking about someone who files a police complaint because someone harmed him, but about a different context that depends on interpretation. The claim is made that when “there will be no informers and there will be no need for that blessing,” we return to the state of eighteen, parallel to the idea that “Happy is the man” and “Why do the nations rage” are one section in which the individual and the collective complement one another harmoniously.

The structure of Rabbi Kook’s argument: three layers

A distinction is drawn between a first layer in which there are two tasks—perfecting the individual and perfecting the collective—and neither one can be neglected. Then a second layer is presented, in which it is argued that the perfection of the collective includes the perfection of the individuals, and the perfection of the individual includes the perfection of the collective, so these are not two disconnected goals. Then a third layer is presented, in which the claim remains that there are two goals with importance in their own right, but the path to each of them requires progress along both tracks together, so that individual perfection cannot be achieved without the collective and collective perfection cannot be achieved without the individuals.

Fascism versus individualism, and a synthesis between the poles

The fascist view is described as one that sees the individual as “oil on the wheels of the revolution,” while the collective is seen as an organism in which the individual is an organ subordinated to the aims of the whole. The extreme individualist view is described as one that sees the collective as a “fiction,” while the real entities are individual human beings, and social organization is a tool for maximizing the benefit of individuals. It is said that both views may technically make use of the “second channel,” but still preserve only one goal, whereas Rabbi Kook offers a model in which both the private being and the collective being are present with independent standing, and neither is nullified before the other.

The Mitla example and the line between risk and self-sacrifice

An example is brought from Memorial Day about Mitla, where Raful looked for a volunteer to drive a jeep in order to expose the source of Egyptian gunfire, and Yehudah Kandror volunteered, was mortally wounded, and died later on. The claim is made that in IDF ethics one cannot issue an order for a suicide mission, only ask for a volunteer, even though war involves risk. The difference is explained between demanding risk for the sake of the collective and demanding certain surrender of one’s life, and this is described as the boundary at which one may no longer “crush” the individual hat in the name of the collective interest.

“Do not be intimidated by any man” and the danger faced by a threatened judge

It is brought that the verse “Do not be intimidated by any man” is interpreted in the Talmud as an obligation on a judge not to yield to threats, even when violent litigants threaten him. A dispute is presented among medieval authorities (Rishonim) and halakhic decisors over whether a judge is also obligated to enter even a possible danger to life for the sake of issuing a ruling, even in monetary law, so that the legal system not collapse. It is emphasized that many distinguish between risk and certain danger to life, and the argument is presented that this testifies to the halakhic boundary according to which the public may demand risk for the sake of maintaining the system but may not demand certain suicide, because the judge also has a personal status that is not nullified.

The value of public efficiency and the expansion of the concept of saving life in the public sphere

The claim is made that in Jewish law, “public needs” are treated as a value of public existence, to the point that it may be possible to use charity funds even for needs such as paving roads, because a public that does not function “simply dies.” The conception is presented according to which a person has personal boundaries that cannot be invaded, and at the same time he is also an organ in a collective that sometimes requires risk and sacrifice, while preserving a balance in which neither hat is erased.

Maimonides, Laws of Repentance: the judgment of the individual, the state, and the world

Maimonides is cited from Laws of Repentance, chapter 3, halakhah 1, where he says that every person is judged according to merits and sins, and so too “the state,” and so too “the whole world.” Halakhah 2 is cited, where it says, “A person whose sins are more numerous than his merits immediately dies in his wickedness,” and so too “a state” and “the whole world,” along with mention of the Raavad’s gloss on the phrase “immediately dies in his wickedness.” A difficulty raised by later authorities is presented: why is there any need for judgment of a city or a state after all the individuals have already been judged? A suggested explanation is that a person “wears several hats” and is judged in several distinct circles, so that one can be righteous on the personal plane and wicked on the plane of public contribution, or the reverse, and collective judgment is not exhausted by private judgment.

Targeted killing: the law of a pursuer versus “be killed rather than transgress” as a conceptual dispute

An example is brought of killing a terrorist when uninvolved people will also be harmed, and the dilemma is formulated between the law of a pursuer, which permits killing a pursuer to save the pursued, and “be killed rather than transgress,” which forbids saving oneself at the cost of another person’s life. It is suggested that the permissive side rests on a collectivist conception that sees a struggle between peoples, and therefore even those accompanying him are viewed as part of the collective “pursuer,” whereas an individualist conception sees only the terrorist as the pursuer and the others as a “third-party factor.” It is argued that the empirical division between left and right stems from the fact that the liberal left tends toward individualism and the right tends toward collectivism, and therefore the dispute that appears moral actually stems from the metaphysical question of who is standing opposite you: a collective or a set of individuals.

Stalin, the people of Shechem, and responsibility without guilt

A reading from a biography of Stalin is mentioned, together with amazement at how “one man” holds a “superpower” of many people by means of mechanisms of fear that prevent a coalition against him. The question arises whether it is permissible to harm “pitiful” civilians living under a dictator, and the discussion of the people of Shechem is brought through Maimonides and Nachmanides around the question of in what sense the public is responsible for the deeds of its leadership and for establishing a legal system, the commandment of laws. A distinction is proposed between guilt and responsibility, with examples such as “a person is always liable, whether awake or asleep, whether inadvertent or intentional, whether under duress,” and likewise “a mentally incompetent pursuer,” cases in which there is no guilt but there is responsibility for the consequences. This becomes possible when one sees the person as part of a threatening entity and not merely as an isolated individual.

A question about perception versus morality, and the concluding answer

A question is asked whether the difference between guilt and responsibility, and between individual and collective, is a matter of cognitive “perception,” while the dilemma itself is moral. The answer is that it is not correct to say that everything is only cognitive, but sometimes the dispute is not on the moral plane at all but on the factual-conceptual plane to which moral norms are then applied. The conclusion is that factual questions have moral implications, and therefore it is possible for a disagreement over “who is standing opposite me” to generate a practical disagreement that looks moral even though the moral principles themselves are agreed upon.

Okay, we’re at section 120 in Ein Ayah. I just want to remind us again of the Talmudic passage first, because it’s going to come back a bit today. That’s Maimonides; this is something else. Okay, so I’m just reminding you of the Talmudic text at this stage. The Talmud says: “Now then, this ‘May the words of my mouth be acceptable’ implies the end, and it also implies the beginning. What was the reason the rabbis instituted it after the eighteen blessings? Let them say it at the beginning. Rabbi Yehudah, son of Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi, said: Since David said it only after eighteen sections, therefore the rabbis instituted it after the eighteen blessings. But are those eighteen? They are nineteen.” ‘May the words of my mouth be acceptable’ appears at the end of Psalm 19, which is really after nineteen sections. So the Talmud says: “Are those eighteen? They are nineteen? ‘Happy is the man’ and ‘Why do the nations rage’ are one section,” as Rabbi Yehudah son of Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi said, and then they bring another proof that these two psalms are really one section. I’m leaving that and now moving to Rabbi Kook. Okay? So that’s the Talmudic passage he’s discussing; in the previous segment he also spoke about this Talmudic passage, and in this segment too. We’re reading section 120: “‘Happy is the man’ and ‘Why do the nations rage’ are one section.” Yes, that’s this passage.

“A person’s perfection is that he should strive for his own individual perfection as much as possible. But along with that, it should stand before his eyes that his individual perfection is not completed except through the perfection of the whole collective, and his success through the national success of Israel, and from this one rises to human success as a whole. And one must beware lest his desire,” meaning, his desire should not divert him, “for the perfection of the collective, from diminishing his own perfection in good deeds and good character traits.” In other words, your desire to do, to perfect specifically the collective, to act on behalf of the collective—that sounds a little strange. Maybe with Rabbi Kook it sounds natural. Usually the desire is the opposite. So he says: even if you have some desire to perfect, yes, to make the collective more whole, don’t let that fill the whole screen, yes, “to diminish his own perfection in good deeds and good character traits.” You also have a task regarding yourself, not only regarding the collective; don’t devote yourself only to perfecting the collective. “For it is impossible for the collective to succeed except when each one of its individual members is whole and successful.” He’s basically saying why not? He doesn’t explain, “because you matter too,” but rather because the perfection of the collective includes within it the perfection of the individuals that make up the collective.

“And on the other hand, he should not imagine that he can rise to the level of his own perfection while not wholeheartedly weaving himself into the general perfection and success.” Meaning, don’t think you’ll rise to your own perfection if you focus only on yourself, on perfecting yourself. I’m not talking about interests, but about spiritual and moral work on yourself—you still won’t be whole. You also need to care about the perfection of the collective. “Only when his zeal for individual perfection is gathered together with” his concern for the perfection and success of the collective, then he will attain his true happiness. Here he suddenly moves from perfection to happiness. So apparently those two things are identified: if I become whole, then I’m probably also happier.

Therefore, “Happy is the man”—that’s the first psalm in Psalms. I remind you that in the Talmud, “Happy is the man” and “Why do the nations rage” are the first two psalms in Psalms, which the Talmud says are one section. So he says: therefore “Happy is the man,” which speaks entirely about personal individual perfection, and “Why do the nations rage,” which speaks entirely about the concerns of the collective as a whole, are one section. And by joining them together, its beginning and end are both happiness. Yes, so that is complete happiness, full perfection, only when we perfect both of these things.

Okay, I want for a moment to go back to Psalms. Let’s take a quick look at these psalms, because it really is interesting to see them against the background of what Rabbi Kook is writing here. Here. Okay, so in Psalms, in the first chapter, the first psalm, it says: “Happy is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of scoffers.” You can see that the whole focus is on a single person, a private individual, and he’s being guided on how to perfect himself, how to make himself more whole. “But his delight is in the Torah of the Lord, and in His Torah he meditates day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and whose leaf does not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper. Not so the wicked, but they are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.” Here it already starts hinting in the direction of the congregation, of the collective that includes this man. “For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish.” So that’s the first psalm. Again, I’m not going into its details; just see, get the impression that it really is about the wholeness and deficiency of a single individual, of the solitary man.

Psalm 2 is “Why do the nations rage”—that’s what the Talmud is talking about. Right from the beginning: “Why do the nations rage, and the peoples mutter emptiness?” Again, the focus is really on dealing with the public, with nations. “The kings of the earth take their stand, and rulers gather together.” Everything here is collective action. The leadership takes the whole nation, the whole people, along with it. “They gather together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying: Let us break their bonds asunder and cast away their cords from us,” and so on. In any case, the point is, yes: “Ask of Me, and I will give the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” The whole reference is basically a collective reference.

So this really is a very interesting point, that these two psalms—the first is a reference to the individual person, and the second is a reference to the collective, yes, to the nations, to the group to which that individual belongs. And what Rabbi Kook is basically claiming is that when the Talmud says that “Happy is the man” and “Why do the nations rage” are one section, the Talmud really means to say that the individual perspective that appears in the first psalm, “Happy is the man,” and the collective perspective, yes, toward the public, “Why do the nations rage and the peoples mutter emptiness,” are one section. Meaning, you can’t focus on one without the other, nor on the other without the first; it is really one section.

By the way, what’s interesting is that the pursuit here—well, never mind for now. Okay, I’ll say something anyway. Here in Psalm 3, it’s interesting—just since we’ve seen Psalms 1 and 2, let’s also look at 3. “A psalm of David when he fled from Absalom his son. Lord, how many are my foes; many rise up against me. Many say of my soul: there is no salvation for him in God, selah. But You, Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the One who lifts my head.” Verse 7: “I will not fear tens of thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about. Arise, Lord; save me, my God, for You have struck all my enemies on the cheek; You have broken the teeth of the wicked.” Here again—it’s already a bit more, a bit less clear-cut than the first two psalms—but here somehow it seems there is some kind of confrontation between David as a private individual and all the many enemies, the collective, I don’t know if collective exactly, but many. The feeling is of a lone individual who sees before him some kind of mass assault from every direction.

And here, if I continue Rabbi Kook’s line of thought, then the first psalm deals with the lone individual, the second deals with the collective, and in the third we see some kind of confrontation between the lone individual and the collective. And that confrontation perhaps comes from the fact that we don’t internalize the point that the first two psalms are one section, one unit—that there is really no contradiction between the individualist perspective and the collectivist perspective.

And I think this is interesting against the background of the comment I made last time, because the Talmud says that the first eighteen psalms of Psalms correspond to the eighteen blessings of the Amidah. Then the Talmud asks, wait a second, but “Happy is the man” appears at the end of Psalm 19—nineteen, not after eighteen but after nineteen. Then it answers that Psalms 1 and 2 are all one section, and therefore it’s really eighteen. But it’s hard to escape the connotation that today we know that in the Shemoneh Esrei prayer there are nineteen blessings, not eighteen. There is the blessing against the heretics, “And for the informers let there be no hope,” which Shmuel HaKatan instituted; it was added later. That’s the nineteenth blessing.

And perhaps if we continue Rabbi Kook’s mode of thought, then maybe “the informers” are those who break apart the social fabric and basically dismantle the collective into individuals. That is, they do not allow the collective to function harmoniously, fully, but rather cast conflicts between its different parts. Informers are always some kind of disintegrators of the public, and therefore in Jewish tradition informing is seen as one of the gravest offenses there is. There is a very surprising Talmudic passage in tractate Bava Kamma. The Talmud says there that one may kill a moser, someone who informs to the gentile authorities, even about property. One may kill him without a court ruling, without a court of twenty-three, without ordained judges—when there are no longer even capital cases and no courts at all. Even for monetary matters there really isn’t a court that can judge according to the strict law, but informers may be killed.

And again, of course, one has to understand what exactly informers are, and how and under what circumstances. We’re not talking about someone who complains to the police when someone harmed him; that’s a different matter. And of course that becomes a matter of interpretation. Some take it that way to this very day, so be it. In Haredi society, very often the feeling is that the approach is that anyone who goes to the police is a moser, or anyone who goes to civil court is some kind of moser; you’re not allowed to do such a thing. I think that takes things very far. But it is true that in Jewish tradition, informing—informers—is indeed seen as a kind of public disintegrator, someone who breaks up the public.

And in that sense it’s interesting that the nineteenth blessing, added by Shmuel HaKatan, is precisely the blessing “And for the informers let there be no hope.” When that blessing is fulfilled—that is, when there are no informers and we no longer need that blessing—then we basically return to a state of eighteen blessings. And that is the state of “Happy is the man” and “Why do the nations rage” as one section, because then we understand that the collective and the public are not in opposition to one another, but rather harmoniously complement one another.

One more point about Psalms before I move on to the substance itself. The individual who appears here in chapter 3, before you, that individual is really David. But David is the king of Israel, so he’s not exactly an individual in the plain sense. If I had to choose a person to symbolize the individual, the lone human being, I would not choose the king. The king in Scripture is called “one of the people”: “lest one of the people lie with your wife”—“one of the people” means a king. Why? Because he makes the people into one. That is, someone who has some kind of central rule functions as the public, as the collective. So the public, the collection of individuals, becomes one thing. And that happens through the king—the king as symbol, of course, the king as a symbol of public functioning, of government, of regime, of governing institutions.

And it’s interesting that in Psalm 3, if I’m right—it’s a bit homiletical, I’m not sure how far one can really go with this; the first part was also a bit homiletical in Rabbi Kook, so I don’t know—but it is interesting that here they chose David the king specifically as the individual. He, who is the king. Maybe there’s some sort of ironic reversal here. They’re telling you: look, you are the leader, you are the individual vis-à-vis the public. But even the individual here is not really an individual, and the public is not exactly a public either—it’s not nations and peoples, but “tens of thousands of people,” many people, not necessarily a public. In other words, the concepts get a bit blurred in this chapter.

Okay, so that’s enough of the homiletics. In any case, the point Rabbi Kook sharpens here—I’m leaving Psalms for now—the point Rabbi Kook sharpens is this issue: a person should not think he can focus only on his personal perfection and ignore the perfection of the public, or vice versa. It’s supposed to be together. His reasoning, as I noted briefly at the beginning—look again—his reasoning is very interesting, because at first he doesn’t explain it by saying simply that it’s very important that both the public be whole and the private individual be whole. That’s what I would have expected him to explain. Rabbi Kook doesn’t say that. He says something more complex.

He claims, yes: don’t focus only on the collective, and don’t neglect your own perfection as well. So what’s the reason? “For it is impossible for the collective to succeed except when each one of its individual members is whole and successful.” All right? And afterward it’s the same thing—therefore don’t focus only on the collective but also on individuals. And on the other hand, that’s the next sentence, don’t focus only on the individual; you also need the perfection of the collective. Why? Again, look at the reasoning: “Only when his zeal for individual perfection is gathered together with his concern for the perfection and success of the collective, then he will attain true happiness.” Meaning, notice that this reasoning leaves the individual person at the center. They tell him: look, don’t focus on yourself; also on the collective. Why? Not because the collective is important, but because the perfection of the collective is a condition for your own personal happiness. In other words, you’re not supposed to care about the collective for the collective’s sake; you’re supposed to care about the collective because your private happiness depends not only on your personal perfection but also on public perfection. So public perfection, in a certain sense, is instrumental; it is a means for me to reach my full perfection or happiness.

And the same thing with the first rationale, what I marked for you at the beginning. The first rationale goes in the opposite direction: don’t think to focus only on perfecting the collective and not on perfecting yourself—not because individual perfection is also important, but because the perfection of the collective itself includes the perfection of the individuals that compose it. In other words, the goal really is only the perfection of the collective, but the perfection of the collective itself requires that the individuals also be whole.

So there are two rationales in the two directions, through which Rabbi Kook is really trying to convey something more complex than just saying, listen, it’s important that the public be more whole and that the individual be more whole. He’s saying something much more complex. He wants to claim that not only do you need these two goals, but that they are not really two separate goals. His claim is that the perfection of the collective includes the perfection of the individuals, and the perfection of the individual includes the perfection of the collective. So that means that even if you focus only on perfecting the collective, you still have to care about perfecting the individual—not because the individual’s perfection also matters, but because the perfection of the collective will not be complete unless the individual is also whole, and vice versa.

But notice, there is also a third layer here. First, as I said, the first layer is that Rabbi Kook says the perfection of the collective is important and the perfection of the individual is also important; you can’t focus only on one of them. But I said that’s the simple layer. Then he says more than that: the perfection of the collective itself includes the perfection of the individual, and the perfection of the individual includes the perfection of the collective. That’s the second layer. But there is also a third layer. Because ostensibly, after the second layer, it should have been enough to do only half the work. That is, work on perfecting the individual and work on perfecting the collective because ultimately the whole business is one. The perfection comes from the two together. So why do you need these two passages? You tell me that the perfection of the collective will not be complete without perfecting the individuals, and that the perfection of the individual won’t be complete without perfecting the collective—because in the end, there really are still two goals. The goal is both the perfection of the collective and the perfection of the individual, and that is not the same thing. These are two different goals, except that in order to achieve the goal of perfecting the collective, you also need to perfect the individuals, and in order to achieve the goal of perfecting the individuals, you also need the collective to be whole. That is already a third layer.

This layer basically says: first, we begin with the idea that there are apparently two different and independent goals—the perfection of the collective and the perfection of the individual. The second layer says: they’re not independent; it’s really the same thing, because the perfection of the individual is part of the perfection of the collective, and the perfection of the collective is part of the perfection of the individual. But that also isn’t the whole picture. At the third stage—it’s like thesis, antithesis, and synthesis—at the third stage Rabbi Kook is basically telling us: no, no, these are indeed two goals, and perhaps they are even independent. Independent in the evaluative sense; that is, one must attain the perfection of the collective, and one must attain the perfection of the individual. But the way to achieve those perfections is not independent. The two goals are independent: there must be a perfection of the collective, there must be a perfection of the individual. But how do you reach those goals? To reach the perfection of the collective, you also have to perfect the individuals; and to reach the perfection of the individual, you also have to perfect the collective. But that is only a synthesis in the sense of how you do the work, how you reach the goals. In the final analysis, we have two different goals that both need to be realized.

It’s quite a complex picture. I think you could stop at any one of these three stages and think that Rabbi Kook is really saying just that. But no—he is not saying only the first, nor only the second; he is saying all three. And really this comes to exclude other approaches. There are approaches that say the collective and the individual are two independent things. True, you need to care about the collective, and you need to care about yourself, so you have to do both jobs. First of all, of course, there is the approach that says you don’t need to care about the collective at all, only about yourself. Or the absolute collectivists—not universalists but absolute collectivists—who say you only need to care about the collective, and the individual is oil in the wheels of the revolution. What matters is only the collective; the individual person isn’t really important. Yes, that’s a communist expression.

Against that, this is obvious—that’s not even yet Rabbi Kook’s first stage—that’s certainly not right. What is needed is both things. But there are still approaches that say: okay, you need both things, and they’re two different independent things; you need to work on the perfection of the collective, you need to work on the perfection of the individual, and everything is fine. Then Rabbi Kook comes and says: no, it’s not only that layer. There is also the layer that the perfection of the collective is made up also of the perfection of the individuals; it’s not independent, it depends. At the third stage he says: one might stop there and say okay, it’s all one thing really—the collective and the individual, perfect everything. And Rabbi Kook says: no, no, that’s not right either. Two things have to be done here. There is meaning to the individual and meaning to the collective, and don’t mix them. Neither one is nullified in relation to the other. Both have independent importance, both the individual and the collective. This is not a collectivist approach; that needs to be understood—absolutely not. In a moment I’ll sharpen that more.

Both goals have importance in themselves. The way to achieve these two goals is not independent; that is, progress toward the perfection of the individual and also toward the perfection of the collective requires progress in both channels together. You can’t progress in one, because then you won’t attain even that one; and not in the other, because then you also won’t attain that other one. You have to progress in both in order to attain both goals—but they are two goals, not one.

Why is this important? Because basically one might think—or let’s formulate it differently—in philosophical conceptions of the relation between individual and collective, there are two opposing poles. One pole is the fascist pole. The fascist pole basically sees the individual, as I said earlier, as oil in the wheels of the revolution, even though the phrase is of course borrowed from communism, which ostensibly is almost the opposite of fascism—though in my view not really. But the idea that the individual has no importance, that the individual is totally subordinated to the achievement of the collective’s goals. The individualist view, in contrast to fascism, says the opposite: what do you mean? What is the collective at all? There is no such creature as a collective. It’s a fiction. There are human beings. There are individual people, there are many individual people, and that’s what there is; that’s what you need to work for, that’s the goal, that’s the real thing. Now, for various reasons, it’s useful for us to organize into groups, or even define legally nations and corporations and all kinds of associations and entities, but it’s all fictions. These are fictions intended for the welfare of the individual. That is, the individual cannot function properly unless we allow several individuals to unite so that together each one can attain his goal. To maximize personal benefit, one must enlist others.

So you see, there is a certain dimension here of Rabbi Kook’s third stage, but only half of it. It says that my goal is the maximization of my own benefit. Except that I’m a sober person; I understand that to achieve the greatest benefit for myself, it’s better to work in a coalition, to organize. Not because there is importance to organizing, not because I see the collective as an end in itself, but because it maximizes the gain of each of the individuals. So let’s join together, form a coalition, and thus each person will attain maximum output, maximum benefit.

So in that sense, this is what Rabbi Kook is saying here: you won’t attain the individual goal without the public; you won’t attain the public goal without the individual. Each half like that we also find in the conceptions I described until now. Yes, the collectivist conception also says: of course, every individual needs to be an excellent fighter in order for the collective to win the war. So you need to train the individual, not only do battalion drills but also individual drills. But that’s only so that the battalion wins in the end, or the army wins in the end. So there are technical considerations that say you won’t achieve the collective goal without also treating the individual, or you won’t achieve the individual goal without also treating or using the collective. But it’s all instrumental. There is no goal—each one grasps only half the picture and uses the other half technically. Rabbi Kook says no, the picture is double. The picture is double, meaning he does not accept what we may call the fascist metaphysics.

The fascist metaphysics basically says—let’s formulate it in metaphysical language—that what really exists in the world is collectives, and the individual person is merely an organ in the collective. The collective is perceived in the fascist conception as some kind of organism. Yes, the romanticism of Hegel and others—the romantic period really sees nations as if they have some sort of national soul. There is really a kind of conduct there, like the ant colony I described earlier, some kind of very large entity split into many organs, each one of which is a human being. But in the large picture, what exists here really are peoples, entities, collectives, collective entities. And the individuals are just the organs. Just as when we look at a human being, we don’t say that he has many cells. He does have many cells, but there is a human being here, and not the collection of cells as the thing whose existence we are really referring to—that is the level of resolution at which we speak when we talk about interests, about spiritual perfection. We speak about a person, not about the spiritual perfection of cells or the interest of cells.

So each of the two extreme views, fascism and extreme individualism, can use the other channel, but in terms of the goal they have only one goal: either the collective goal or the individual goal. And from a metaphysical perspective, as I said earlier, it may be that in at least some cases collectivism is really metaphysical collectivism, not only ideological. One can see the ideology as saying that the nation is what matters most and the individual is subordinate or secondary to the nation, but there are philosophical systems that translate this into ontology, into a theory of being, yes, into metaphysics. It means that what exists in the world is only the collective—not only that it is what matters, it is the object that really exists. Because after all, people are transient—they die, they are replaced. In the end what remains eternal? What always exists? What should one really work for? For the nation. For the public. From a kind of eternal perspective. Yes, that is the fascist conception.

And the individualist conception says: what are you talking about? What really exists—yes, I think this is the liberal conception today, more or less generally speaking—is that what really exists, what matters, and also what exists, is the person. Collectives are legal or social or cultural fictions, but they don’t really exist. We are committed to them only insofar as that benefits each of us. That’s all. There is no commitment to the collective. Even when people speak in a language like “I owe the state,” “I owe the nation,” in the end if you ask people who are sensitive to philosophical nuances, they’ll tell you: no, no, that’s just metaphorical language. We don’t really owe the state. We need to contribute to society because if everyone contributes to society, then all of us—each one of us—will live better. Yes, that’s the liberal individualist view.

Okay? Fine. That’s only very rough and schematic, but those are the two poles, yes—the thesis and the antithesis. And what Rabbi Kook is basically proposing here is a synthesis. A synthesis in quite a complex sense. That is, he basically wants to say: both goals exist, and one must strive for both. If I descend to metaphysics, the claim is that both kinds of beings exist and are present in the world: both the collective being and the individual beings. The individual beings are not merely organs of the collective, and the collective is not merely a fiction intended to serve the individuals. Rather, each of them has some sort of independent existence. And of course, on the technical level—or even beyond the technical—in order to perfect the collective you also need to perfect the individuals, and in order to perfect the individuals you also need to perfect the collective. But in the end there are two goals here; one cannot subordinate either one to the other.

And this is a very interesting conception. I’ll give one example that I once wrote about and explained in this way. Just recently, around Memorial Day apparently, my children saw or reminded me about the Mitla Pass incident—what was his name, Yehuda Ken-Dror, who later received the Medal of Distinguished Service, I think. The story is well known. They parachuted in at Mitla—Rafael Eitan and the whole group there, Dovidi—they parachuted in at Mitla, and there was an Egyptian ambush there that they didn’t know about, and they got into a very difficult situation. They couldn’t locate exactly where the fire was coming from; the Egyptians were prepared, dug in, camouflaged. There was no choice. Rafael Eitan looked for a volunteer who would drive in a jeep so that the Egyptians would fire at him, thereby revealing their location, and then it would be possible to try to deal with them. It was a suicide mission. Yehuda Ken-Dror really volunteered for this. He drove the jeep. Yesterday I learned that apparently there was a driver with him as well; there was another vehicle behind him with five guys, and they even all stayed alive, which is pretty amazing. But Yehuda Ken-Dror was mortally wounded; it’s a wonder he got out alive at all, but he was mortally wounded, and after two or three months, I think, he died. But it was a suicide mission.

Now according to accepted IDF ethics, you cannot order a soldier to go on a suicide mission. That is an illegal order. The soldier is not obligated to obey it. Even though, of course, every going out to war involves risk. That is, a soldier can’t say, listen, war is dangerous, I refuse—that is obviously not acceptable. But a suicide mission is different. And why? When you go to war, you are basically taking a risk, but there’s no choice. If none of the individuals takes a risk, then all of us die. Therefore there is no choice; in a certain sense we do demand of the individual that he sacrifice himself for the collective—a certain kind of fascism, yes.

Now of course the question is to what extent. If you’re really a fascist, then you don’t care much when to go to war and when not to, because for you the fact that some individuals will be lost doesn’t really matter. But even in a liberal conception—so long as it’s sober—an individualist conception so long as it is sober, there is no choice. We need to demand of people that they risk themselves, because otherwise we all die, all of us as a collection of individualists. Like Monty Python, yes, in their famous scene in Life of Brian, where they all shout in one uniform chorus, “We are all individuals,” I think, or “I’m an individual,” something like that. They all shout it in a unified chorus, and then someone there says, “I’m not.” As if, actually no, I’m conformist, I’m not exceptional. Yes, that’s roughly the point.

So even in the liberal individual world there is no choice but to demand that a person risk himself—but not that he surrender himself, not that he give himself over. To take a risk, yes; to give oneself over, no. Why not? What’s the difference? I think the root of the difference is in the picture I described here. In a fascist conception, one would of course also be required to give oneself over. Yes, an ant in the ant colony is supposed to give itself over for the sake of the collective interest. In the individual picture, one shouldn’t even risk oneself—what are you talking about? Unless, of course, again, unless we all die, in which case I’m not risking myself for the public; we are all risking ourselves in the hope that we remain alive. That maximizes our personal benefit.

But in a place where there is a kind of combination, where one says a person wears two hats: under one hat he is an organ of the collective, under the other hat he is an individual. I do not subordinate either hat to the other; they are two independent hats. Then I say: I can ask you, or demand from you, to take a risk because the collective is in danger, and you are in it too, of course; so it is also justified to address you. But I cannot demand that you surrender yourself with certainty, yes, in order that the collective remain alive. You also have a private hat. One cannot demand of a private individual to subordinate himself totally, to nullify himself before the collective. There is no such thing. One cannot make such a demand of a person even if the fate of the battle depends on him. Even where the fate of the battle depends on it, you cannot give such an order; you can ask for a volunteer.

You cannot give such an order because a command means that I come to you with a demand by force of the authority that the collective gave me—I am your commander, yes. So I receive my authority from the power of rule, from the representatives of the public. So the collective gives you an order and you are subordinate to it. No—you are not subordinate to it all the way. There is a limit to how much one may crush the individual for the sake of the collective interest. I think that’s the point.

This also has an interesting halakhic expression. In the Torah and the Talmud, the verse says, “Do not be intimidated by any man,” and the Talmud derives from this—“for the judgment belongs to God”—and the Talmud derives from this that from here comes a command to the judge not to yield to threats. Meaning, if there are violent litigants and you are a judge who is afraid to rule against one of the litigants—you need to remember that in the time of the Talmud, and of course in later generations too, there was no central government. Once there is a central government, it may be relatively easier—I don’t know—the police or the public is supposed to protect judges and officers because they are doing their job for us. But in a place where we’re basically just talking about institutions of the community or something like that, and there’s no coercive umbrella that can protect the judge, it’s not so simple to demand that a judge take risks, be exposed to threats from a violent person, just in order to issue a just legal ruling, to do justice.

And nevertheless the Torah says, “Do not be intimidated by any man,” and the Talmud says, “Do not be intimidated by any man”—you are forbidden to recoil from the threats of a violent litigant. And on this there is a major dispute among the halakhic authorities and the medieval authorities. Quite a number of them say that the judge must even enter into mortal danger for this. Notice, we are speaking also about monetary cases. Reuven sues Shimon: you borrowed 1,000 shekels from me and didn’t return them. We’re not speaking about world-shaking matters. And Shimon is a violent man and threatens the judge: if you rule against me, I’ll kill you. So we’re talking about 1,000 shekels. What, I need to die for 1,000 shekels? And not even my 1,000 shekels, but Reuven’s 1,000 shekels? The answer is yes. The answer is yes because it’s not about these 1,000 shekels. In a place where there is no effective legal system, society collapses. Society collapses. It’s a public life-and-death matter. It’s not that this particular trial is what’s on the scales, but the judicial system and its effectiveness in general. A society cannot function without an effective legal system.

But what’s interesting is that almost no one—I once saw Yeshuot Yaakov, I don’t remember—there is one place where maybe one could understand that we’re talking about certain mortal danger, meaning that the judge must really give himself over even where it is clear they will kill him. Most decisors, including those who say that possible danger to life does not exempt him—in other words, that he does have to take a risk—say: yes, but only a risk, not certain mortal danger.

Now that requires explanation, because in Jewish law usually something that justifies entering danger either does justify danger or it doesn’t; there is generally no distinction between possible danger and certain danger. For example, saving a life overrides the Sabbath—not only certain danger to life but even possible danger to life overrides the Sabbath. And the Talmud understands this through logic, not from a textual source—quite the opposite. Most of the sources brought in tractate Yoma, from which one learns that saving life overrides the Sabbath, are sources that say only certain danger to life overrides the Sabbath, not doubtful danger. And the Talmud says therefore those are not good sources. Those cannot be the source, because it is obvious that even possible danger to life overrides the Sabbath. In other words, it was obvious to the Talmud, not from textual sources but from logic, that there is no difference between doubtful danger to life and certain danger to life. If one may endanger life, then one may also give it over; if one may not give life over, then one also may not endanger it. There is no difference between doubt and certainty.

But here we find such a distinction. I don’t remember if there is another place in Jewish law where such a distinction exists. In the case of the judge, the judge has to take a risk, but he does not have to give up his life entirely. And the answer to that, it seems to me, is what I said earlier about military ethics, yes, about Mitla. The judge is really receiving an order from Jewish law in the name of the public: you are serving as a judge, and you must also take risks, there is no choice; the legal system must not fear anyone. But if we demand that he enter into certainty—that is, that he commit suicide, that someone will definitely kill you—that means we are basically subordinating the judge, who is also a private individual besides being a judge in a public role, we are subordinating his private hat completely to public utility. That we do not do. That we do not do.

That is, you cannot completely cancel a person’s individual dimension because of the collective perspective. But to commit suicide, to take certain danger—not doubtful danger to life but certain danger to life—that we cannot demand of you. And if you do it, I don’t know, maybe you’ll earn a medal. But we cannot demand it of you. And why? Because there is a limit to the degree of subordination we are willing to impose on the individual for the sake of the interests of the collective. The individual has an independent standing too. We cannot crush him entirely; we do not see a person as oil in the wheels of the revolution.

And in that sense there really is some kind of intermediate picture or synthesis between the fascist picture and the individualist picture. There are many people, depending on their worldview usually, who take the halakhic or Jewish world—I don’t know—in a fascist direction. In the direction that really all there is is the collective, and the whole business, all the individuals, are basically just oil in the wheels of the revolution. And I think that especially in the more modern conception there is some tendency to interpret the opposite: what are you talking about? It’s the perfection of the private individual, and the collective exists only to help complete that, and this is humanism and liberalism and all kinds of modern isms of that sort.

I think neither of those two conceptions really stands up to the test of the sources. It seems to me that in quite a few places one can see very clearly some sort of balance between these two things. Both of these hats play a role, and neither one is nullified before the other. The person has a standing that we respect and that one cannot invade, one cannot crush. On the other hand, he is indeed also an organ in the collective, and one must know that sometimes we take risks, sometimes we sacrifice for the public interest, for the good or perfection of the public—and also the public interest itself is part of the perfection of the public.

Unlike a private individual, in the case of the public, in many places in Jewish law, even its ordinary daily life, the efficiency of its daily life, is itself a value. Therefore, for example, from charity funds one may allocate money for paving roads or for public needs even though this is not direct support for the poor. Public needs. Why? Because public needs are viewed as a kind of life-and-death matter. A public that does not function properly simply dies. It is not a public. In a certain sense this is like a life-and-death issue.

So this intermediate conception, it seems to me, is seen very clearly here in Rabbi Kook. He takes the collective side all the way, and even the rationale for why the individual needs to perfect himself he formulates in terms of the contribution to collective perfection. Then he takes individualism all the way and says that even the perfection of the collective is really only a means so that the perfection of the individual may be complete. And ostensibly these are really two completely opposed conceptions—and he places both of them there. Because both are true. Each serves the other and also constitutes an independent goal in its own right. And in that sense there really is here a combination of these two poles, the individual and the collective.

I’ll perhaps bring an example from Maimonides. Maimonides writes in Laws of Repentance, chapter 3, halakhah 1: “Every single human being has merits and sins. One whose merits exceed his sins is righteous, and one whose sins exceed his merits is wicked; one who is half and half is intermediate. And so too a country: if the merits of all its inhabitants are greater than their sins, then it is righteous; and if their sins are greater, then it is wicked. And so too the whole world.” In other words, we are built in circles, and these circles are judged each one separately. A private individual can be intermediate, righteous, or wicked depending on how he behaves. So too his community, his city, his country, and the whole world. Each of these circles is judged and found to be intermediate, righteous, or wicked.

Then in halakhah 2 Maimonides writes as follows: “A person whose sins are more than his merits immediately dies in his wickedness, as it says, ‘because of the greatness of your iniquity.’ And so too a country whose sins are many immediately perishes, as it says, ‘The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah.’ And so too the whole world: if their sins are more than their merits, they are immediately destroyed, as it says, ‘And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great.’” Then he says that this calculation is complex, not everyone knows how to make it, and so on.

What matters for us here is not the phrase “immediately dies in his wickedness”—the Raavad already objects to that, saying he does not immediately die in his wickedness; we see many wicked people who live a long time. That’s not the point here. He interprets it differently. But for my purposes that’s not what matters. What matters is what many later authorities ask about Maimonides: what is the meaning of this idea that I judge each person, and then I judge the community, and the city, and the country, and the whole world? After all, once you have judged each person individually, then the fate of the community and the city and the whole world has already been sealed. What is left? Let’s say I went through all human beings and each one received his verdict: you’re righteous, you’re wicked, you’re intermediate; you will die, you will live, you will be rich, you will be poor, whatever, all sorts of things like that. What remains now to be done on the collective plane? After all, the city is just the collection of its residents. What—the houses will be destroyed? The earth will shake? We are talking about what will happen to the people of the city. Right, those have already been judged. So if each of them has already been judged individually, what is left to judge? And if all the cities have been judged, what about the country? And if all the countries have been judged, what about the whole world? This strange duplication isn’t understood. What significance does it have?

It seems to me there are all kinds of sharp pilpul-style answers that aren’t convincing in my view. I think the simple explanation of this is exactly the picture we saw earlier. Every person wears several hats, not just two. A person is first of all an individual. Then he is also a member of his community, and perhaps of his building, and of his country, and of the whole world. And in all these circles he has a role. Of course his influence decreases as the circle gets bigger, but still the whole world looks the way it does because of all of us. It’s not that there is some abstract someone who is guilty for the state of the world and I am exempt—I’m just one individual, what can I do, I have no influence. It doesn’t work that way. Each individual has responsibility for every circle of which he is a member, however broad it may be. One can even extend this to animate life and inanimate nature—what today is called eco-ethics. We have responsibility also for the world in which we live, not only for human society.

And what does this really mean? That when I am judged—for example, on Rosh Hashanah Maimonides says that I am judged—it may be that I come out righteous on the personal plane, but wicked on the plane of my contribution to the whole world, and intermediate on the plane of my contribution to the state. And those are three different judgments, or ten different judgments in every such circle—family, country, building, whatever you want. Each of those is judged separately. And by the way, this really is independent. There can be a society composed of good people that functions in a very problematic way, and the reverse can also happen. There are societies composed of problematic people, but there are legal or cultural mechanisms there that somehow make their collective functioning reasonable. Somehow they manage to channel the impulses of the private individuals in their private lives so that on the collective level things run properly. There is what is called a properly functioning state. It can be composed of a collection of wicked individuals, yet the state is a proper state—there are laws, there are rules, and somehow things are run reasonably.

And therefore it is entirely possible that in my personal judgment I come out wicked as a private person, intermediate as a citizen of the city, and righteous as a citizen of the world—or the other way around, it doesn’t matter. Therefore there is no contradiction at all between what Maimonides writes, that the person is judged, and the fact that afterward the city and the country and the whole world are judged. These are different judgments, and they are a very nice expression of that same complex picture I sketched earlier. The picture that says each of us really functions under several hats.

On this matter one can expand into all sorts of implications. For example, take a dispute—I also once talked about this in classes in Petah Tikva, I think, and actually also in Ra’anana. There is a dispute, for example, over targeted killings. Let’s say one needs to eliminate some terrorist who poses a concrete threat. Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that eliminating him is justified. But harming him would require harming several uninvolved people. The question is whether one may do such a thing. So there is a dispute. Some people say yes. Again, of course there are limits; the question is how many uninvolved people—we’re not going into the details now; I just want to describe the scheme.

So there is a dispute. What’s interesting is that somehow this dispute is conducted between right and left. And you ask yourself, what’s the connection? Why does the left generally oppose such things—again, there are exceptions, but generally speaking—and the right generally support such things? What’s the connection? The fact that I am in favor of a Greater Land of Israel, or that I think, I don’t know, that a peace agreement has no chance, or however you define it—I’m not even speaking about economic right and left—but why should this moral question depend on the dispute between right and left? Like everything in our lives here, where everything turns into a right-left argument.

I argued that in this particular case it’s actually justified. It isn’t a spurious correlation. In contrast to perhaps other disputes where there really is some division between right and left and it’s not at all clear why that division should exist, with respect to this question it does seem to me connected. And why is it connected? Because the dilemma arises from a question that can be formulated both halakhically and morally—it’s the same thing in this context. There are two different laws relevant to such a situation. There is the law of a pursuer. If Reuven is pursuing Shimon, I may—and indeed I must, not only may—kill Reuven so that he will not kill Shimon, in order to save Shimon. That is the law of a pursuer. There is also the law of “be killed rather than transgress.” If someone points a gun at me and says, kill so-and-so or else I kill you, then it is “be killed rather than transgress.” “Who says your blood is redder?” Your blood is no redder than his; you may not kill him so that they won’t kill you.

Now I return to the issue of targeted killing. A terrorist is traveling in a car, and in that car there are three or four other people who are uninvolved. Now I have no other way of eliminating him. If I had another way, of course it would be forbidden to do this. But suppose I have no other way—that’s the only opportunity, the only time he came out of his tunnel. Now I fire a missile at him, and that will kill everyone in the vehicle, including the uninvolved. The question is whether such a thing is justified or not.

My claim is that it depends on which of the two laws I described earlier I assign this situation to. Ostensibly this is really saving oneself by taking another’s life—“be killed rather than transgress.” How can I kill those people who are not guilty, who are not terrorists, in order to save myself or my citizens or to save someone else? Is your blood redder than theirs? Ostensibly, according to Jewish law, this should be forbidden. On the other hand, ostensibly there is the law of a pursuer. That is, if I am threatened, I may kill the one threatening me in order to save myself. People say, okay, but these people are not threatening you. The one threatening you is that guy. Him, certainly, you may kill under the law of a pursuer. But how on earth are you allowed to kill them? So ostensibly the leftists are right. Ostensibly you really may not send that missile, because you are harming innocent people, and you may not kill one person in order to save another.

And I am ignoring right now the distinction between Jew and non-Jew. In my opinion there is no such difference in this context, and it is a mistake to think there is. But right now I’m speaking about the example itself. I think the main way to look at this situation and justify what I earlier called the right-wing approach is to see all the passengers in the car as pursuers. And why? Because my conception is that what stands before me is not a private individual holding a weapon, this terrorist, some wicked individual who wants to kill people. Rather, there is here a struggle between collectives. And this terrorist is some kind of army acting in a certain sense on behalf of a people—or not under their direct control, or whatever, but they are responsible for what he is doing.

If that is really the case, then their being responsible still doesn’t mean it is permitted to kill them. The one threatening me I may kill; if the driver is uninvolved, I don’t know exactly what permits me to kill him. My claim is: true, but once I perceive them as part of the object that is pursuing me, part of the entity that is pursuing me and threatening me—because what threatens me is the whole collective, not only the one holding the weapon—then the way is opened to see the whole group as a pursuer. Therefore I may kill them, because this is not saving oneself by taking another’s life; here the law of a pursuer applies.

Of course that is only where, first, I cannot kill the terrorist without killing the others. Because even if there is the law of a pursuer, if I do not have to kill the pursuer in order to save the pursued, then I am forbidden to kill him. “If he can be saved by injuring one of his limbs,” as it is called in Jewish law—so only where I must kill him is it permitted. The same is true here. Second, for example, if the one sitting with him in the car is Swedish, not Palestinian—then in such a case it would indeed be forbidden. If this is the rationale, then it would be forbidden, because he is not part of the collective that is pursuing me. Here I would be killing someone in order to save myself, and according to Jewish law that is forbidden.

Again, one can argue about all of this a lot. I’m bringing it here only as an illustration of what I claimed earlier, because what is behind it—and now I’ll explain why this is a dispute between left and right—is that the left, at least in our day, the liberal left so-called, is by its essence individualistic. And once this is an individualistic conception, then they see each person as standing on his own. If each person stands on his own, then the one threatening me is the terrorist. Why are you hitting others? They are other individuals. By contrast, the right has a conception that tends more toward collectivism. In a certain sense that may even be the root of the concept of “right,” though that can be debated. In any case, this is a collectivist conception—that is empirically obvious, without debating whether it is tied to the concept of “right” or not.

So in a collectivist conception, what I really see standing opposite me is the Palestinians. The one directly threatening me is the person holding the weapon. But it is clear that this is a war between two peoples; it is not a struggle against a criminal offender. Therefore in such a situation the right-wing person will see before him a collective pursuer. And the left-wing person will see before him an individual pursuer, while the others are a third party whom it is forbidden to kill, forbidden to harm, in order to save myself.

And that basically means that the moral dispute here is not really a moral dispute at all. It is a metaphysical dispute. It is a dispute over the question of how I see the one standing before me. Do I see this as a collection of individuals, or do I see it as a collective? And that’s interesting, because ostensibly this is a philosophical dispute—what does it have to do with morality? The question of who stands opposite me—just look and see who you think is standing there. So I look and I see a collective; he looks and sees a collection of individuals. It’s a philosophical dispute, but it has an implication that looks like a moral dispute. And very often that’s how it is.

You know, for example, there are those who want to argue that the commitment to morality—why behave morally, why care about other people—is really collective egoism. Altruism is collective egoism. That is, concern for the other is nothing but egoism, except that the ego I’m caring for is a collective ego. That is, it’s all of us, because I see myself as an organ within a collective. Then one’s relation to one’s surroundings, one’s contribution to the collective, is basically an expansion of the concept of egoism. So once again, two conceptions that seem like conceptions divided on the moral plane are actually divided on the metaphysical plane. Morality is the consequence. There is no moral dispute. Everyone agrees that a pursuer may be killed; everyone agrees that an unrelated third party may not be killed. Everyone agrees. The dispute is only over the question of who is the party standing opposite me and who is the third party. And that is a metaphysical dispute, not a moral one. It has moral implications, practical moral consequences.

Therefore this perspective on the collective versus the individual, and this synthesis done in terms of hats, in the combination of the two hats—the separation and the combination, yes, some sort of mixed model—has implications in many places in life.

Maybe one more example, and with that I’ll finish. There are many things one can bring here. I return to something I said earlier. I once read some biography of Stalin. It was written by some director, Dzerzhinsky I think his name was or something like that, this huge biography, and it really was fascinating. Throughout the reading this thing was killing me inside: how it is that a superpower of I don’t know how many—maybe 150 million inhabitants then, I don’t know, something like that—where everyone, or at least everyone involved, wants to kill Stalin. And Stalin, the one individual—David, yes, remember in Psalm 3 of King David, “many rise up against me”—the king is the individual standing before the many who rise against him. Everyone wants to kill Stalin, and Stalin the individual holds in his throat a superpower of 150 million people with the craziest weapons in existence, and dies peacefully in bed. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories about how Stalin died, but I think the accepted view is that he died peacefully in bed. In any case, he held up nicely; he ruled for some forty years, I think—well, a bit less actually, thirty-something.

So how does that happen? It happens, of course, because Stalin uses all sorts of mechanisms of terror so that people cannot form a coalition against him. Each one is afraid to turn to the next because the next will inform on him, since otherwise he fears for himself. And somehow Stalin keeps everyone divided and disconnected. Because the moment they can form coalitions, his career is over. That is the meaning of Stalin’s paranoia, that he killed everyone around him because he constantly feared they were plotting to kill him. But I want to speak about something else.

Suppose I now have to deal with the threat of the Soviet Union. Am I allowed to kill the poor civilians who are held by the throat by Stalin, unable to do anything, sick with fear? In what sense are they responsible for what is happening there? This question really came up in the Maharal regarding the people of Shechem—or in Gur Aryeh—regarding the people of Shechem, where Shimon and Levi came against the people of Shechem. There you have Maimonides and Nachmanides. I’m not going into all the sources there right now. But there too, according to certain interpretations at least, the claim is that they killed the people of Shechem because Shechem, their prince, took Dinah by force, abducted Dinah by force, and they did not stop him. There was no effective judicial system there, they did not fulfill the command of laws, which is one of the seven Noahide commandments, to establish a legal system. It is not a place that is conducted properly, and therefore everyone is responsible for what he did. That is what Maimonides writes.

So Nachmanides and everyone ask him: what do you want from the private citizen? It’s not even a democracy; it’s apparently a dictatorship. So what exactly do you want the private citizen to do? In what sense is he responsible for what his king did? What can he do? The king doesn’t establish a proper legal system—so what is he supposed to do? The answer, I think, is that indeed the private individual—and if I were in his place, I assume I also wouldn’t do more than he did—but on the other hand the collection of private individuals are ultimately the ones responsible for what happens there. In the end, even if you don’t have guilt, you have responsibility. The responsibility is that your state poses a threat to its surroundings. If I return to Stalin, or to Shechem and the people of Shechem, it’s the same thing. And it doesn’t matter that it’s all because of one tyrant who holds everyone by the throat. In practice, you now, as some kind of large bloc, pose a threat to me.

So you say: fine, but I’m under compulsion. And I’m not under compulsion? I need to die because you’re not guilty? Am I guilty? Who will bear the responsibility? The one who bears responsibility is the one who cooperates, even if against his will. He isn’t guilty, but he is responsible. He cooperates with Stalin and he is Stalin’s soldier; in the end he will shoot at me. He isn’t guilty, he can’t do anything, but in the end he will shoot. So what, I can’t harm him because of that? There is some kind of responsibility, not guilt exactly, but responsibility of a public for what they do as a collective, even if they have no guilt but they do have responsibility.

And that is exactly the difference. You can say that only if you relate to them as a collective, because if you relate to them as a collection of individuals, how can you impose responsibility on one individual for what another individual does? All you can impose on him is guilt. And if he helps him, then he is guilty; and if he is guilty, then he bears responsibility. But how can you impose responsibility without guilt? Responsibility without guilt can be imposed only if you see the person as someone who himself is threatening you. That is, you see him as part of the collective that poses a threat to you. Then even if he is not guilty, there is responsibility. Just as the Talmud says, “A person is always forewarned,” whether awake or asleep, whether unwitting or intentional, whether under compulsion or not. In other words, a person who causes damage, even if he is under compulsion, is responsible for the damage. He isn’t guilty because he was under compulsion, but he still must pay. He must pay because the responsibility is his. You caused damage. I’m not guilty either. You damaged me, and I’m not guilty either. So what? Why should I bear the consequences? You caused the damage, you bear the consequences.

Or take an insane pursuer. A madman takes a weapon and starts shooting at people. I ask: is it allowed to harm him? He is not responsible for his actions—what do you want from him? He is guilty of nothing. The answer is: true, he is not guilty, but he is responsible because he creates the problem. It’s not punishment that I harm him; but if he created the problem, then I am allowed to harm him in order to solve the problem. There is a difference between responsibility and guilt. But of course responsibility can be imposed only on one who himself does the thing, even if not culpably, but he himself does it. So I say, okay, maybe you aren’t guilty but you are responsible. But if I see you as someone who isn’t doing it at all, then if you aren’t guilty there is nothing to do with you; only the concept of guilt can apply to such a person, not the concept of responsibility.

And here is yet another implication of viewing a public as a collective and not merely as private individuals. And again, there are gradations here, because every person in the public is also a private person, not only an organ in the collective, and it is more subtle than I’m presenting here. But here I brought these things only as an example to illustrate the consequences of this complex model that we saw there in Rabbi Kook.

Okay, I’m opening the microphones, and anyone who wants to comment or ask is welcome. Okay, that’s it, I opened them. So if I understood correctly, basically the difference between guilt and responsibility and between the individual and the collective is connected, ostensibly—this is how it sounded from what the Rabbi said—that it’s a matter of what’s called perception, okay? But in the end the dilemma is a moral dilemma; it can’t be a matter of something cognitive, of some perception—at least that’s how it seems to me. Not true. Not true, absolutely not. Here, I showed you how it can be. In the end the decision has moral implications, but what do you mean—for example, when you look at the one standing before you, is he a human being or an ape? Then you will have a different moral relation to him depending on whether he is a human being or an ape, right? But whether he is a human being or an ape is a factual question. Very often there are situations—really it’s always like this—in which factual questions have moral implications. And when we have an argument regarding a moral implication, not always—and that’s exactly what I’m claiming—not always is the dispute located on the moral plane. Sometimes we agree completely about the moral principles, and we disagree about the perception of reality, about the facts to which I apply the moral norms. Yes, anyone else? Fine, so let’s stop here. Good night, goodbye. Thank you.