A Symposium Launching Rabbi Yehuda Youngster’s Trilogy

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’d appreciate it if I could speak without amplification.

[Speaker B] I’m sure they’ll hear me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have here, here. You can hand out the pages. It’s not all that critical, but it’s worthwhile. One for each table? Good. Hello everyone, can you hear me? Let’s begin. First of all, I really do want to thank Rabbi Miki. We used to call him Miki; over time it became Mikhi—I don’t know what’s actually correct. Miki. Okay. I studied two major physics courses with him, really central and demanding ones in the degree. And since then our paths have crossed from time to time and we’ve met. And I’d like, just as all the speakers until now have spoken about the second book, I too, the least among them, will speak about the second book. I think that’s not accidental. The first book—we’d all be happy to have as many proofs as possible for the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, so every believing person, all the more so, why not? The third book—I didn’t get into it; I assume that there too I’d have comments, but I tend to think that once a person chooses a method that, this is how we know halakhic authorities think, then you can argue whether it’s right or not right, but in principle there’s no disagreement between us, except maybe there would be local disagreements; maybe there would be a disagreement in principle too, I didn’t get into it, I don’t know, I’m not addressing it. The middle book definitely draws fire. I’d like, since those before me didn’t fully do this, with Rabbi Miki’s permission and the audience’s permission, to give a summary of the points that come up in this book. Not all of them, but the central ones—ones where I won’t deal with questions like the definition of Torah study, which Chayot touched on a bit—but with the heavyweight points, one of which Rabbi Moshe touched on just now regarding providence. But I’ll give the general overview because it will help me also in responding to the points.

All right, but before I review it, maybe I’ll say what I agree with. Rabbi Altshuler—Rabbi Itai—already opened with this, and Chayot also mentioned it, about the freedom of human thought, as is evident from the title, “No man rules over the spirit.” Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, if I remember correctly, compared it to digestion. What we would today call an autonomous process. Thought is an autonomous thing; we have no control over what we think. Leibowitz, I think, liked to say: a person cannot fail to know what he knows. Yes, you can’t deny what you know; nothing will help. And on this there’s no doubt—I have no argument; on the contrary, this is a guiding light for me too. A second point I can agree with, and it follows from the first point, is that there really isn’t much room for authority in matters that are basically questions of fact. It seems to me that when the Sages said, “These and those are the words of the living God,” they were speaking, not for nothing, about the world of Jewish law. In the world of Jewish law, since things are given over to reasoning, and since you can argue one way and argue the other way, and laws—especially laws that come to solve new problems that have arisen—the field is open, it’s not plowed into one fixed plot. My late father, who was an architect, used to say: if we give a thousand architects the task of designing a building with certain specifications on this plot, we’ll get a thousand different plans. That’s more or less what happens in the world of Jewish law: as long as everyone follows the rules and produces a creation that fits the rules, everything is fine. But intellectual questions—is there a God, is there not a God, does He providentially oversee things or not, what will happen, will there be resurrection of the dead, won’t there be resurrection of the dead, and if so how will it be—all these are questions that relate to facts. And when it comes to facts, how can you possibly say everyone is right? It’s literally a thing and its opposite. And from that it also follows that I can’t say I accept something just because of the authority of the one who said it. That too I’m willing to agree to and go along with.

But here already, at this point, so that heaven forbid it shouldn’t sound like I agree more than I do—so maybe at this stage I’ll say: but humility is needed. A lot of humility is needed, as Rabbi Moshe already pointed out. When great people say certain things, that obligates further thought, even if at first glance it seems to me completely absurd. Maybe there is nevertheless something in what they say, and I’ll expand on that later. Likewise I also want to accept the expression that there’s no such thing as “what a Jew ought to think,” but only whether a thought is correct or incorrect. Maybe I’m also prepared to buy the statement that there is no such thing as Jewish thought, only thought that is either correct or incorrect. That too I’m willing to accept. Judaism contributed many correct ideas to the world, just as Jewish thinkers may also have drawn correct ideas from others and in that sense converted them—not because they are the ones saying it now, but because it is a correct thought. So Judaism, Jewish thought, and correct thought are synonymous terms.

That’s the point of agreement. And now I’ll move to a description, a summary of the points. In the book itself there are several places where Rabbi Miki summarizes in bullet points, or Hillel summarizes and Rabbi Miki says, “You summarized it well.” I’ll do that too. At the beginning of the book there is a review of Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith, divided into three groups. In the first group are the first four principles, namely: the existence of God, His uniqueness, one and not one—I’m not saying what “one” means, because that itself is under discussion in the book—His being non-corporeal, and His eternity. The first four principles. About the first four principles Rabbi Miki says: these are just speculations; if you want, accept them; if you don’t want, don’t accept them. It’s a waste to invest effort and time trying to understand them. Let’s move on. And certainly, certainly, someone who does not accept Maimonides’ principles—it is impossible to say that he has excluded himself from the Jewish framework, because Maimonides had his reasoning, and the contemporary thinker today has his own reasoning, and therefore we won’t throw him out just because his reasoning differs from Maimonides’.

After that we come to the middle five principles: the prohibition of idolatry, prophecy, the prophecy of Moses, Torah from Heaven, and the eternity of the Torah. These are five principles about which Rabbi Miki says: these indeed are tradition, and we accept them by virtue of tradition from Sinai, from the mouth of divine authority. And the last four, namely providence, recompense, reward and punishment, Messiah, and resurrection of the dead—here it’s not clear whether this is tradition or not tradition. Since that’s the case, then one can make adjustments here, and I can also reject these things if they don’t seem reasonable; then apparently it’s not tradition. I hope I’ve summarized correctly up to this point.

From this conception he reaches the following conclusions. First: the passive providence of the Holy One, blessed be He, exists—that is, He is aware of and knows everything that happens. Active providence, as Rabbi Moshe described in his lecture, existed in the past and ceased, and for generations now “the Lord has abandoned the land.” The judgment of Rosh Hashanah—there’s no such thing; we all see with our own eyes that there’s no such thing, and I’ll address that more fully later. Miracles—that is, deviation from the course of nature—are possible; they do not occur and we do not see them, but they are definitely possible. And this is in light of the claim that the concept of a miracle, by definition, must be supernatural. To speak of a natural miracle is an oxymoron. Why? And I’ll state the argument—I hope I’m stating it precisely. If it is a miracle, that means that were it not for divine intervention, the natural course would have led somewhere else. And since the natural course did not lead somewhere else, that is a sign that the course was not natural. Therefore a miracle means a supernatural event by definition.

That’s the summary of Rabbi Miki’s approach in the book. Sorry—no, no, there are still additional points I want to mention. That’s it as far as the principles of faith. Now I want to talk about what he writes in the book under two additional headings. The next heading is knowledge of God and what follows from our knowledge, our ability to know God. First: God is subject to logic. Another point—and this is probably the basis of Rabbi Miki’s entire approach—is the notion of the full free choice of the human being. As a result of these two prior ideas—namely, that God is subject to logic and, second, that a person has full free choice—God cannot know what a person will choose in the future. God can know only what follows from natural law, because He truly knows all the initial conditions, knows all the equations, and knows how to calculate everything that will happen in the future. But to know something dependent on choice—since choice is free—He cannot know it, because otherwise it would contradict free choice.

On the basis of this view Rabbi Miki argues that most discussions in the field usually called Jewish thought are unnecessary discussions. Usually the questions are vague, meaningless. One example, which I’ll expand on later, is Maimonides’ doctrine of negative attributes, about which Rabbi Miki writes very sharply. If nevertheless we do find a meaningful question that isn’t vague, then these are still just conjectures and nothing more; they have nothing to rest on, and in any case there’s no practical consequence. So what do I care? And therefore there’s no point in dealing with it. One example we might mention just so we understand the material: does the world have a purpose? That’s an excellent question. Does the world have a purpose? What is that purpose? Rabbi Miki says in the end that there is some line of reasoning, a tendency to say yes, but it’s a waste of time to invest in this question. We have no tools at all to decide it, and therefore we should move on to the main thing, which is the world of Jewish law. That is the second part of Rabbi Miki’s approach.

And the third part I want to describe here is things under the heading of methodology and starting assumptions. One assumption is that even claims that are accepted in a sweeping way do not necessarily indicate that there is a tradition, and therefore there is no problem denying them. As I said at the beginning, there is no authority in matters of fact. Another point: the ancients—the Sages and the medieval authorities (Rishonim)—did not have the tools we have, namely the tools of science and scientific knowledge that are in our hands, and therefore we shouldn’t assume they know something we do not know. Those are the methodological assumptions.

And after describing the approach in the book, I’d like perhaps to add one more sentence that, in my eyes, is maybe the central motivation of the book. Why was this book written? This book was written—as I don’t know, I can’t get into Rabbi Miki’s head, but as this is the impression I get as a reader—this book was written in order to redeem the tormented person, or in today’s language I would say, to bring him out of the closet. That person who deep down does not really accept very large chunks of what is called accepted Jewish thought and the principles of faith, and who doesn’t dare say even to himself that he doesn’t accept those things because he thinks that by doing so he would remove himself from the legitimate domain within Judaism—this book comes to redeem him from that narrow place, to bring him out of the closet, to enable him to come out and say: I am a Jew, with everything I believe and everything I don’t believe, and no one can tell me whether I am Jewish or not Jewish, or a good Jew or not a good Jew. It seems to me that this is the spirit of the book; this is perhaps the main call that is there in the book.

Because that is the central call, Rabbi Miki does not try to maintain delicate language. He uses language that I would call, to a large extent, journalistic rather than philosophical, as we’ll see later. I’d like to divide my critique into three points.

The first point: the decision of what is tradition—what things are based on a tradition from Sinai and what things are not based on a tradition from Sinai—is an arbitrary decision. I cannot find the tool by which Rabbi Miki draws the line and knows how to decide what is called tradition and what is not called tradition. I’ll expand on each thing later. Second point: intellectual contempt toward the great figures. Now, so that I won’t sound exactly as this phrase sounds, I want to explain a bit what I mean. The great figures do not need my defense. Rabbi Asher Weiss, in his Jewish law lectures, when he comes to reconcile some puzzling passage in the Ketzot, says—I’ve heard this from him several times—that the Ketzot doesn’t need me. That’s what he says. The Ketzot manages just fine without me. I do not need to fight the Ketzot’s battles in order to defend him from the difficulties. But I want to learn, so I want to understand. When I say contempt for the great figures, it seems to me that there is, to a considerable degree, a loss to the one who is contemptuous. The contempt causes too-rapid a rejection of arguments and statements of the Sages and the medieval authorities (Rishonim), whereas with a little less contempt one could delve back into their words and find the deep idea that is there. So in fact the one showing contempt is the loser, not the gainer. He jumps to conclusions too quickly. Later I want to show what errors arise from this contempt.

The third point I want to make—and this is really where I’m heading—is the claim that the thin theology Rabbi Miki offers us does not replace a fat theory; it replaces a deep theology, and that is a very big difference. Together with the diet—I’d call it a crash diet, in less academic language—that Rabbi Miki imposes on Jewish theology, he has in large measure stripped away all of its depth and left a theology that, in my eyes, is rather shallow, as I’ll try to show. And now I’d like to spell these things out. How much time do I have? Fifteen minutes. Okay. Fine. I’ll skip a bit. Maybe I’ll begin with—I’ll skip the issue of the boundary between tradition, how I know what is tradition and what is not tradition. I’ll skip that. I’ll go to the point of contempt that I spoke about earlier.

I’d like you to look, on the page I handed out, at the first source. Rabbi Miki is dealing here—and this is a photograph from the book—with Maimonides’ doctrine of negative attributes. He presents the discussion of negative attributes as an example of a puzzling discussion—that’s what he calls it; in a moment we’ll read it inside. And in order for us to understand the degree of puzzlement in this discussion, Rabbi Miki compares Maimonides’ discussion to another discussion, which we’ll read here in a moment, about which he says even sharper things. But learn from one to the other and from the place itself.

Maybe we should say two words about the doctrine of negative attributes for anyone not entirely familiar with it. I don’t know if there are people here like that, but maybe still. The doctrine of negative attributes occupies a very broad section in the first part of the Guide for the Perplexed, from chapter 51 onward in the first part of the Guide, where Maimonides argues that we cannot describe God with any positive description whatsoever. We cannot say of Him that He is merciful, that He knows, or that He possesses powers. In a moment I’ll touch on the question of why. And he expands on this through many chapters. Everything we can say—certainly, certainly, that He is not cruel, that’s obvious, because even cruelty, to ascribe that to Him, is a positive attribute, so of course I deny that of Him in exactly the same way. Not because cruelty is a negative thing and mercy is a positive thing, but because in principle I cannot make any positive claim at all about God. That is the doctrine of negative attributes, which Maimonides, as I said, really expands on and sees as something highly fundamental.

Maybe fine, we’ll skip that. I now want to read the passage in the book No Man Rules Over the Spirit on this issue. “I’m quite surprised,” Hillel asks, “by your categorical rejection, especially in light of the fact that you mentioned that so much has been said and written about the doctrine of negative attributes.” But Hillel answers him—Rabbi Miki says: “This is exactly what I’m trying to explain to you here. This discussion is an example of many bizarre discussions that take place in the world of Jewish thought. Another typical example of such a bizarre discussion can be found in several writings of religious Jewish and Christian feminists.” And in fact Rabbi Miki testifies about himself within the book that he himself is actually a feminist, but he’s not talking about the feminists; he’s talking about their discussions—this particular discussion—which proposes a theology in which divinity is presented in feminine metaphors. Now pay attention: “This is a fascinating combination of nonsense—that is, a collection of meaningless words characteristic of writings in the field of gender—with nonsense characteristic of engagement in metaphysical theology. What is the meaning at all…” and so on and so on. Learn from it and from its context: the discussion of negative attributes is, in effect, nonsense.

Well, when speaking about Maimonides, it is very, very, very difficult to accuse him of not understanding logic. You can accuse him of the science he knew being totally anachronistic, incorrect, distorted; you can accuse him that all the proofs he builds from the physics and astronomy of his time for the existence of God are therefore invalid because that physics is not correct. But to accuse Maimonides of problems in logic seems to me a little difficult. And in a moment I want to show where Rabbi Miki really does accuse Maimonides of serious logical problems. As a result of this contempt, I want to argue, mistakes follow. One mistake I’ll mention briefly is regarding the doctrine of negative attributes.

Rabbi Miki writes almost in passing, in response to the question of the questioner, Hillel there, why it was so important to Maimonides to speak about negative attributes. So he writes: of course, since we cannot grasp God, if we cannot grasp God then we cannot grasp Him on the basis of comparison to anything else, and therefore we cannot describe Him in positive attributes. And so he also complains: what’s the problem with saying that everything He does in this world testifies to His mercy? Why is it so hard to speak in positive attributes? And I’ll note just in passing that Maimonides agrees that of course this kind of positive attribute can be said. These are called attributes of action—to describe Him in terms of His actions is certainly possible, even with a positive attribute; Maimonides says this explicitly.

But what I want to point out is that this is not the central reason Maimonides builds his doctrine of negative attributes. Maimonides builds the doctrine of negative attributes following what Rabbi Miki earlier called an empty discussion about the question: what is unity, what is the unity of God? When Maimonides speaks about God’s unity and explains to us, and delves into the point, and explains that this unity means unity from every aspect and every angle from which I can examine the problem, then from that angle the very concept of an attribute creates duality. That is the central reason for which Maimonides develops the entire doctrine of negative attributes—not what Rabbi Miki writes, which may be true as an additional clause, adding one thing on top of another, but it’s not the central point. This is a mistake which admittedly is not critical to the book’s arguments, but it points to the fact that sometimes assumptions are made and then one moves on, perhaps out of what I earlier called contempt. I don’t know whether the word contempt is entirely fitting, but there is something of that.

And now I’d like to get to the central example of what I call contempt for Maimonides’ logic. In chapter 3 on the page before you, in chapter 3 of the laws of repentance, laws 1–2, appear, in my opinion, the two hardest laws in all of the Mishneh Torah. Extremely difficult. I’ll read the words, and Rabbi Miki does a good job of describing the difficulty in the book. “Every single human being has merits and sins.” I think these words are clear and familiar to everyone. “One whose merits exceed his sins is righteous; one whose sins exceed his merits is wicked; one half and one half is intermediate.” And similarly the state—I’m skipping—and similarly the whole world, and similarly the state: if the merits of all its inhabitants exceed their sins, then it is righteous; and if their sins exceed, then it is wicked. And similarly the whole world. The individual, the state, and the whole world. And now comes the central point: “A person whose sins exceed his merits immediately dies in his wickedness. And similarly a state”—I’m skipping—“whose sins exceed immediately perishes. And similarly the whole world, if their sins exceed their merits, they are immediately destroyed, as it says, ‘And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great…’” A great wonder.

Now I jump to read Rabbi Miki’s comment on Maimonides. He writes as follows. I’m starting from the second line of source three on the page here: “It seems to me that an empirical check would show that the number of deaths or collapses of people, cities, and states around Rosh Hashanah is not statistically higher than on other days of the year.” Now, in other words, with our own eyes we see that this is not true. On Rosh Hashanah judgment is carried out. If judgment is carried out, then at least a whole group of people should be found wicked. So why don’t they die? Why don’t we see an increase in the graph of deaths the day after Rosh Hashanah? Excellent question. Rabbi Miki adds later: there are those who hang their answer on the fact that later in that same law Maimonides writes that no one can know the calculations of the Holy One, blessed be He, and how He weighs sins and merits. I’m not going to read it inside; anyone can read it above in the quotation from Maimonides. And here Hillel asks him: so that really is a good answer, no? And Rabbi Miki says to him: but this is a very strange explanation.

In general the use of the term “very strange” and “speculative” is common throughout this book, and therefore I called it a journalistic book. A journalistic book is meant to persuade the reader not only by logical means but also by emotional means. The use of words like “strange” indicates a kind of emotional usage that, in my opinion, has no place in a work of philosophy; it has a place in journalistic writing. But why is it so strange? Whatever the calculation may be—fine, I won’t read it, I’ll say it orally because our time is short—the point is: what difference does it make what the calculation is? Let it be the strangest calculation in the world, but there is a formula. That formula in the end should produce more wicked people on Rosh Hashanah, so why don’t they die immediately? That’s the question. And it’s an excellent question. That’s why I said this is one of the hardest passages in Maimonides in all the Mishneh Torah.

But I’m used to the fact that when there are difficulties in Maimonides, people usually try to answer them, and not say, “Come on, tell me, is this serious?” and then move on. And I want to say a little more, because in my view this law is a clear example. Why? When Maimonides speaks about other issues in thought, when Maimonides speaks about resurrection of the dead, and we know that Maimonides was accused of not believing in resurrection of the dead—he kind of seemed to push it in there at the end of the Thirteen Principles just so no one would say anything about him—and Maimonides rose up and wrote a whole epistle to justify himself and say: don’t say that about me, because I do believe it. But if someone were to say that Maimonides really, truly did not believe in resurrection of the dead, I understand what forced him to write something he didn’t believe. Why? Because in the words of the Sages it’s obvious that there is resurrection of the dead. He had no choice. It is there in the Sages, so he had no choice but to write it. I think he really did believe it, but that’s not the point.

What I do not understand is this: nowhere in the words of the Sages, nowhere, there is not a single source in the Sages or any early source that says the wicked person immediately dies in his wickedness. It says they are immediately inscribed for life or for death, but it does not say that he immediately dies. It does not say that anywhere. There is no such thing. Did Maimonides have more explicit versions, and if that didn’t please copyists they tried not to write them down? Who gave you permission to write this? Every person living in Maimonides’ time who read this saw that there was a problem there. The question Rabbi Miki asks—you don’t need to study modern physics for it, not even Aristotelian logic, not even Aristotelian logic. It’s simple. Any sensible person has to ask this question. It cannot be that Maimonides wrote such a thing without compulsion, and that is the main point I want to emphasize. There was no compulsion forcing Maimonides to write this, and he wrote it. I am sure that with any other difficulty in Maimonides, in other places, elsewhere in his writings, elsewhere in the books of the Mishneh Torah, Rabbi Miki would invest much greater effort—and he does this—in reconciling puzzling passages in Maimonides. This is a difficult Maimonides that needs to be reconciled. I have something to say about Maimonides, but this is not the place.

I’ll finish, since my time is up. I just want to end by asking a question and leaving it open. The feeling I had from reading the book was that I couldn’t understand why Rabbi Miki doesn’t go the extra last mile and also say that what is written in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is not true, there is no providence—not today and not ever—there is no point in keeping commandments. After all, God is not interested at all in whether we do them or not. Reward and punishment we won’t receive anyway. The World to Come—that’s a conjecture, maybe even a good conjecture, but just a conjecture. So what are we exerting ourselves for? Or at least say we don’t need to pray. Why engage in sophistries that suit precisely those closet religious people Rabbi Miki is trying to rescue from that closet, and against whom he argues that they spin apologetic arguments just to justify the fact that they believe contradictory beliefs? It would be much simpler—instead of wrangling over the question of why all of a sudden God decided to stop exercising providence—just say there is no providence, end of story. Instead of wrangling over the question of why I pray, because that I really couldn’t understand—in practice, what Rabbi Miki writes, why do people pray? He gives two answers: first, good question. Second answer: maybe after all some miracle will happen once, so it’s worth trying. Well then—go one more little mile, that final mile, and the story is over. That’s all. Thank you very much.