Majority in Halakhah and in General, Lesson 2

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[0:00] The difference between a democratic majority and a majority in a religious court
[1:16] The verse “follow the majority” and following a democratic majority
[3:19] Maimonides’ difficulty regarding the sin of the first man
[5:23] Punishment as a grant of perfection and intellect
[7:26] Maimonides on poems and textual writing
[9:37] Good and evil as conventional concepts
[11:40] The history of the earth’s shape — Copernicus and Columbus
[21:28] Aesthetic values versus moral values
[25:53] The moral responsibility of a convinced criminal
[28:01] Maimonides on good and evil as a moral concept
[29:59] Translating the terms in the Bible and in Maimonides’ writings

Summary

General Overview

The text distinguishes between a majority in a religious court and a democratic majority, and argues that each has a different role: in a religious court, the majority is an indication of getting closer to a truth that does not depend on the voters, whereas in democracy the majority constitutes the will of the public and therefore serves as the very source of validity. From this distinction, the text brings the words of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) on “follow the majority” and the need for an additional rationale in applying majority rule to communal decisions. It then discusses Maimonides’ words in Guide for the Perplexed on the sin of the first man as a distinction between truth and falsehood versus good and evil as socially accepted notions. Later it brings Rabbi Kook’s interpretation of ten versus three as a key to understanding the difference between a public and a mere plurality, and from there proposes an “intermediate category” of morality (and also Jewish law) in which public opinion is not a pure convention, but still serves as a meaningful means of uncovering moral truth through a cumulative historical process.

Democratic Majority versus Majority in a Religious Court

The text states that a majority in a religious court serves as an indication for arriving at truth, while a democratic majority aims to reflect the will of the public regardless of what is more correct or more true. It argues that when the medieval authorities (Rishonim) explain why one follows the majority in democratic-communal contexts, they cite the verse “follow the majority,” but add a rationale of “there is no other way to make decisions,” because the verse alone is not seen as grounding a democratic majority. The text notes that Rabbeinu Tam does not accept majority rule in a democratic context at all and requires a unanimous decision, whereas the Rosh, Rashba, and others do cite the verse together with an additional rationale. The text formulates the basic difference as follows: in a democratic majority, the majority is not a sign of truth but a “cause,” in the sense that the desired result is the public’s will itself as expressed by the majority.

Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed on the Sin of the First Man: Truth and Falsehood versus Good and Evil

The text presents Maimonides’ difficulty in Guide for the Perplexed: from the plain sense of the text it appears that before the sin, man did not distinguish between good and evil, and after eating from the tree of knowledge he attained the perfection of discernment — which is puzzling as a punishment. Maimonides answers that the intellect, which is man’s ultimate perfection, was given to man before his rebellion, and about this it says “in the image of God and in His likeness,” and by virtue of it he could be commanded, for “beasts are not commanded, nor one who has no intellect.” Maimonides defines intellect as distinguishing between truth and falsehood, whereas “good and evil belong to what is socially accepted, not to what is intellectually apprehended.” He illustrates this by saying one does not say “the heavens are spherical is good and the earth is flat is bad,” but rather true and false; whereas regarding “the pleasant and the disgraceful,” one says good and evil. Maimonides describes the first man before the sin as not dealing with socially accepted notions at all, so even exposing nakedness was not bad in his eyes, while after the sin he “acquired awareness of socially accepted notions” and became immersed in distinguishing evil and good, as it says, “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”

The Difficulty of Convention and Aesthetic Values

The text raises the question of how socially accepted notions can have meaning as a convention “when there are only two people in the world,” and suggests the possibility of additional figures or a broader framework, but stresses that the question remains compelling. It formulates the deficiency not as following accepted manners when they exist, but as the very existence of a conventional world. It adds that once such a condition already exists, “you have to work with it,” and it is not right to ignore those feelings. The text distinguishes between moral values and “aesthetic values” such as disgust and a sense of “that’s just not fitting,” and brings examples (in the name of a psychologist called Haidt) of acts that do not harm another person but still arouse strong revulsion. It suggests that the double meaning of “and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil” can be understood to mean that an additional set of values enters the post-sin world, even if its very appearance reflects a decline.

An Internal Tension in Maimonides: Is Morality Part of Social Convention?

The text argues that it is hard to interpret Maimonides as including morality within socially accepted notions, because for Maimonides moral judgment is intellectual, not conventional, and in several places he counts moral commandments among the “rational commandments.” It suggests that in Guide for the Perplexed Maimonides really means the dimension of disgraceful and pleasant, manners and social conduct, which is why the central example is nakedness and not murder or theft. The text notes that Rabbi Kapach comments on a translation in which “good and evil” was replaced by “the disgraceful and the pleasant,” and claims this is inaccurate — but the text itself emphasizes that the terminology “good and evil” creates a conceptual problem if only convention is meant.

Rabbi Kook in Ein Ayah: Ten versus Three, Public versus Many

The text brings the Talmud in Berakhot about the Divine Presence being with ten people praying and with three who sit in judgment, and the answer: “With ten, the Divine Presence comes before they arrive; with three, only once they sit.” Rabbi Kook explains that there are matters in which “many” means three and matters in which “many” means ten, and defines two kinds of conduct: “matters of intellect, whose concern is truth and falsehood” versus “matters that are socially accepted, whose concern is good and evil or pleasant and disgraceful.” Rabbi Kook says that in truth and falsehood a person cannot “draw a boundary around what is true,” and therefore one follows “the majority” even without certainty, and accordingly three, as in a balanced religious court, suffice for decision. He further says that in socially accepted matters, “their whole essence is the general agreement,” and therefore “many are no fewer than ten,” because ten are the basis of a public with regard to public agreement, and whatever the public agrees is proper is truly proper, and whatever it agrees is disgraceful is truly disgraceful.

“Follow the Majority”: A Novel Principle in a Religious Court, Not in Democracy

The text argues that the verse “follow the majority” is needed דווקא in a context where there is a truth independent of majority opinion, because the novelty is that legally one follows the majority even though the minority may in fact be right. It argues that in a democratic context the verse is of no help against Rabbeinu Tam, because there the question is not “who got the truth right” but “what does the public want,” and that can be grounded simply by logic, as a straightforward mechanism for measuring the public’s will. The text explains that with three, the Divine Presence comes only “once they sit,” because only after the decision can one say, in legal terms, that this is the truth; whereas with ten, “the Divine Presence comes before,” because by virtue of their being a public, there is already validity to whatever agreement will emerge.

One Who Errs Thinking It Is a Commandment to Listen to the Sages, and Exceptional Cases of Authority

The text notes that in Horayot it appears that someone who thinks he must obey the religious court even when it errs is “mistaken regarding the commandment to obey the words of the sages,” and formulates a principle according to which there is no commandment to obey when one knows the court is mistaken. It distinguishes this from the story of Rabbi Yehoshua regarding the calendar, where it says, “you — even if mistaken; you — even if deliberate,” and interprets this as an exceptional case of constitutive authority, more similar to socially accepted convention. The text emphasizes that the ability of an individual to assume he “knows” the majority is mistaken is itself a complicated question with disputes surrounding it.

Morality and Jewish Law as an Intermediate Category, and a Third Role for Majority

The text proposes that morality (and also Jewish law in the sense of normative decision-making) lies between the two extremes of intellectual truths and social conventions. Therefore, the terminology “good and evil” in Maimonides and Rabbi Kook remains confusing, but reflects a real complexity. It argues that historical shifts in values such as slavery, democracy, homosexuality, abortion, freedom, and equality do not prove that morality is convention, but rather point to an epistemic difficulty in “moral observation,” and to the fact that the faculty that knows here is blurrier than sensory observation. The text claims that humanity is “overall progressing,” and that encounters between Western society and non-Western society usually produce influence “from the West outward,” not only because of dominance but also because scientific and technological achievements serve as indications of a more correct social and value structure. It compares the moral process to a communal scientific process in which multiple perspectives and cross-checking make progress possible; accordingly, the opinion of the many in morality is a meaningful indication of truth, even though it does not constitute truth the way convention does.

Opposition to Conformity and Listening to the Majority

The text states that one must not infer from the power of the public that the majority is always right, and stresses the importance of argument and of an individual’s persistence when he believes he is right, because conformity undermines the value of “majority” as an indication. It brings the example from Jewish law that “a student and his rabbi are not counted as two votes” in a religious court when influence cancels the independence of viewpoint. It distinguishes between taking the majority seriously in a moral context and dismissing it as politically correct, and argues that political correctness is “a corruption of this process” when it demands obedience merely for the sake of political correctness. The text concludes that majority has three roles: an indication of truth in intellectually apprehended matters, the establishment of validity in socially accepted matters, and a public, cumulative indication for uncovering truth in morality and norms. Thus good and evil seem “almost like convention,” but are not convention.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time we talked about the difference between a democratic majority and a majority in a religious court, and we saw it through the question of rule by philosophers. And the basic claim was that in these two cases, majority serves different functions. A majority in a religious court is an indication for getting to the truth, whereas the democratic majority is meant to reflect the will of the public. That, regardless of the question of what is more correct or what is more true, this is the will of the public. And so, as we saw there, among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), when they try to explain why we follow the majority in democratic, communal contexts and so on, they cite the verse “follow the majority,” from which we learn the matter of majority in a religious court, but they always add some reasoning that says, besides that, there’s simply no other way to make decisions. Meaning, Rabbeinu Tam doesn’t accept this at all — he says you don’t follow the majority in democracy; you need a unanimous decision. But even those who disagree with him — the Rosh, the Rashba, and others — cite the verse “follow the majority” and always add another rationale. Meaning, they feel that the verse by itself is not enough to establish following the majority in the democratic context. And the reason for this is that in the democratic context the majority constitutes the truth — not points toward that truth or tries to aim at the truth, but the majority opinion itself is the truth. Meaning, it’s not a sign; the majority is a cause. Could it be that this is truth? What? It doesn’t constitute—

[Speaker B] The truth — it constitutes the will of the public.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but—

[Speaker B] To call that truth—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it’s—

[Speaker B] What we’re looking for, regardless of absolute truth.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, what we’re looking for is: what is the will of the public? So the truth that this is the public’s will is what the majority says — that’s what we’re looking for, in that sense.

[Speaker B] I’m talking about truth.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. What I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter — it’s terminology. The principle is clear. Meaning, it doesn’t point to something outside itself; it itself is the thing we’re looking for. And really, in this basic distinction, it somehow looks like we have two kinds of searching, and in each one majority plays a different role. In one case it’s an indication that there is truth — though of course not a necessary indication, the majority can also be wrong — but if we need to establish some sweeping rule, then logic says to set the rule that we follow the majority. And in the democratic context we’re looking for the will of the public, and the majority expresses the will of the public — it’s an indication of the public’s will — to the point that I said there are a few different ways to measure or determine what the public wants, but majority is the simplest mechanism. Today I posted something on the site, and somehow I suddenly realized that it fits exactly into this niche. It had nothing to do with our lessons here at all, but I want to touch on it a little before we move on. I’ll start, maybe, with Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed, in his very well-known remarks on last week’s Torah portion, Bereshit, about the sin of the first man. “A learned man raised before me years ago a marvelous question, worthy of reflection, and so is our answer in resolving it. And before I mention the question and its resolution, I will say—” well, these are preliminaries, not important for our purposes. “The questioner said: From the plain meaning of Scripture it appears that man’s original intention was to be like the other animals, without intellect and without understanding, and not to distinguish between good and evil. And when he rebelled and committed the sin, his rebellion brought him the immense perfection unique to man, namely…” In other words, from the verses it seems that before the sin, man did not have the ability to distinguish between good and evil, and then after they ate from the tree of knowledge — “which is the noblest of all the things found in us, and by which we are what we are.” Meaning, man received as a result of the sin an additional level, perhaps the most important faculty, the ability to distinguish between good and evil. “And this is astonishing: that his punishment for his rebellion should be to grant him a perfection he did not have, namely intellect.” How can it be that the punishment for a transgression is to give him an additional intellectual level?

[Speaker C] What punishment? The punishment is that he was expelled from the Garden of Eden. He wasn’t allowed to eat, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He wasn’t allowed to eat. It could be that he wasn’t allowed to eat—

[Speaker C] So that he wouldn’t know good and evil.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning that this thing is actually a deficiency; the Holy One, blessed be He, tried to prevent us from having it. You’re right that it’s not exactly a punishment, but that doesn’t change the principle. In the end they’re trying to prevent us from having this thing, and the sin was that we received an additional level of distinguishing between good and evil. “And this is like someone saying, by way of parable, that one of humankind rebelled and sinned greatly, and then was taken and made into a star in the heavens.” And as punishment for his sin, they made him a star in the heavens. Not that I’d want to be a star in the heavens, but for Maimonides apparently that’s some kind of perk. Okay, after all Maimonides held that stars and spheres are living things, so maybe that’s the background for understanding this sentence. “This was the intent of the question and its content, though it was not phrased in these exact words. And now incline your ear to the content of our answer.” Yes, so that’s the difficulty: how can punishment for sin — or a consequence, as you said before, one that should have been avoided — actually be an elevation? “We said: You who look at the beginning of his thought and reflection, and imagine that you can understand a book that required the preparation of the earliest and latest thinkers by glancing through it in some spare moments between drinking and sex, the way one skims one of the books of chronicles or one of the poems — pay attention and reflect, for the matter is not as you thought on first day.” When one reads the Torah, or words of wisdom, you’re not supposed to read them like literature — yes, a cheap romance or airport reading, as maybe they call it today. He calls it “one of the poems,” by the way. For Maimonides, poems are low-grade texts, and he writes that in a number of places. And on the enumeration of the commandments Maimonides writes, well, these were poets, they understand nothing — meaning poetry is some kind of inferior text. “Rather, as will become clear after reflection on these matters.” Meaning, you need to reflect more, and then suddenly you see a different picture. “The intellect that God bestowed upon man, which is his ultimate perfection, was given to man before his rebellion.” Before the sin man had intellect — that is his ultimate perfection — he was in some complete state before the sin. “And concerning this it is said of him that he was in the image of God and in His likeness.” It cannot be that intellect was given after the sin. Intellect is the image of God within us. By the way, we spoke about this in the year when we dealt with Rabbi Kook’s Perplexed of the Generation. I tried to show the adaptations he makes relative to Guide for the Perplexed. Perplexed of the Generation is basically a Guide for the Perplexed for his generation. And Maimonides sees man’s image, the image of God, in the intellect, while Rabbi Kook sees it in the will. You can see it there — very systematically, really — that he comes to make certain corrections to Guide for the Perplexed so they fit his generation.

[Speaker C] There’s also an indication here that he was given a command before the sin, meaning it doesn’t make sense to command someone who has no free will.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but here Maimonides is talking about intellect, not will. For—

[Speaker C] For Rabbi Kook it’s will.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “And because of it he was addressed and commanded, as it says, ‘And the Lord God commanded,’ for beasts are not commanded, nor one who has no intellect.” Meaning, for Maimonides there is no point commanding someone who has no intellect, not only someone who has no will.

[Speaker D] Yes, that’s the point of the image of God. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “For by means of intellect he distinguishes between truth and falsehood, and this was found in him in his perfection and completeness.” “Innocence” here means wholeness, in this context. Meaning, this existed in the first man before the sin: the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood, and intellect. “But good and evil belong to socially accepted notions, not to intellectually apprehended ones.” This is very interesting. I didn’t see this in the Bar-Ilan Responsa Project, but here in Rabbi Kapach’s note I see that he brings someone else who translated this as “the disgraceful and the pleasant.” “The first translator” — is that Ibn Tibbon? I don’t know — “the disgraceful and the pleasant,” instead of “good and evil,” “and he was not precise.” Meaning, one must translate here as “good and evil,” not “the disgraceful and the pleasant.” In a moment we’ll see that apparently that’s really not right.

[Speaker D] Why? “Good and evil” because that’s what appears in the verses. What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but in terms of the explanation he gives, it’s not right. He says, “But good and evil belong to socially accepted notions, not to intellectually apprehended ones.” He’s making a distinction here between socially accepted notions and intellectually apprehended ones. Socially accepted notions means conventions. Meaning, things that are agreed upon and draw their validity from public or social agreement. Okay? So good and evil belong to convention, not to intellectual apprehension. It doesn’t belong to intellect; it’s a matter of convention. “For one does not say: the heavens are spherical is good, and the earth is flat is bad.” Right? We do not judge factual claims in terms of good and evil; we judge them in terms of truth and falsehood. And just now as I’m looking at this — interesting. The claim that the earth is flat is false, according to Maimonides. I once saw someone bring several places in Maimonides showing that he held that the earth is not flat.

[Speaker D] What? In Foundations of the Torah there’s the radius of the earth. What? In Foundations of the Torah there’s a calculation of the earth’s radius; there you see it’s round. The novelty wasn’t that it’s round. The novelty was that the earth revolves around the sun — that’s Copernicus.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Columbus — his novelty was that the globe is round. What?

[Speaker D] Not Columbus—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But what did Columbus discover there? I mean, I don’t know, I’d have to check the historical aspects. It’s not connected to the sun around the earth — that’s Copernicus, not Columbus. The novelty in the world— but Columbus’ surprise is usually understood as the fact that he suddenly got to America, meaning he basically made a circuit. What? He wanted to get to India.

[Speaker D] He wanted to get to India.

[Speaker E] He thought he was getting to India, and then the world is round? The world is round because he got to India?

[Speaker D] How can you get to India—

[Speaker E] I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I need to check that again. I have it differently in my head, but I don’t know — need to check history.

[Speaker D] I think he set out on the voyage in order to reach India because he assumed the world was round, but at the time I heard from one of the lecturers in Jewish studies at Bar-Ilan that he wanted to show a little that one shouldn’t look down on the Greeks. He said that already then they knew the diameter of the earth.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think among the Greeks, again, it may have depended on the period. Among the Greeks there were disputes. They bring sources from the Greeks that the earth is round, but there were all kinds of disagreements about it. The claim was — and also in the Talmud, after all, the assumption is that it’s flat — and among the Greeks too the simple assumption was that it was flat. There are sources, because there were many Greek philosophers; some also argued that it’s round. As far as I remember, this was settled with Columbus — but maybe I’m mistaken, I need to look into it.

[Speaker D] Yes, okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] People — not scientifically. Meaning, there were opinions like this and opinions like that, but it wasn’t some agreed-upon knowledge, not even among scientific people. Again, I need to check, I’m not sure. It just caught my eye now, so I remembered it. Because with Maimonides they often quote — I saw someone quote — that Maimonides, even before everyone talked about it, already writes that the earth is round, although elsewhere it seems not so.

[Speaker B] I’ll read to you from Wikipedia. Okay. “The shape of the earth as a sphere appeared in ancient Greek philosophy in the sixth or fifth century BCE. At that period this conception was only a matter of philosophical conjecture, until the third century BCE, when Hellenistic astronomy established the spherical shape of the earth as a proven physical fact.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the third century BCE that was already established? Interesting. Fine, then I didn’t remember correctly.

[Speaker D] And it’s mentioned in the Kuzari too.

[Speaker B] “This Greek paradigm was gradually absorbed from antiquity until the late Middle Ages, and was confirmed as correct in modern science.” Meaning, it wasn’t just a matter of agreement.

[Speaker D] The Church.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the Church — that was the question of who revolves around whom. That’s a different question. The claim was that we are in the center, so everything has to revolve around us — not whether it’s a sphere or not. That’s what it seems to me, again, as far as I— Anyway, okay, I’m closing the parentheses. It just reminded me of something. “Thus in our language we say of what is correct and what is equalized: truth and falsehood; and of what is pleasant and disgraceful: good and evil.” Okay? These are two axes of judgment: truth and falsehood; good and evil. “And by the intellect man knows truth from falsehood, and so it is in all intellectually apprehended matters.” In contrast, socially accepted notions — that’s the intellectually apprehended realm — socially accepted notions are a matter of good and evil, the disgraceful and the pleasant, or something like that. And the disgraceful and the pleasant, or good and evil, are conventional matters. Okay, that’s basically what he says there. “And since he was in the perfection of his state and his completeness, and with his qualities and his intellects, on account of which it is said, ‘You made him but little lower than God’ — concerning the first man — he had no faculty at all concerned with socially accepted notions, and did not apprehend them.” He did not deal with convention at all; there was no such category before the sin. There were only intellectually apprehended truths, no socially accepted notions. So much so that even “the most generally recognized disgrace in morals, namely exposure of nakedness” — meaning, going around naked — “was not bad in his eyes, and he did not feel its shame.” That’s why they were walking around naked there and it didn’t bother them until the sin. And when— yes.

[Speaker D] If socially accepted notions are convention, then what meaning does this statement have — that before he had socially accepted notions, just because… Meaning, we have to assume that there wasn’t—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He had no understanding of socially accepted notions, and because even the most— agreed upon by whom? In a second I’ll comment on that, one moment. Yes, even the matter of walking around naked, which is the most disgraceful in terms of disgraceful and pleasant — for them it was transparent, meaning it wasn’t even an issue. “And when he sinned and inclined toward his imaginary desires and the pleasures of his bodily senses, as it says, ‘for the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes’” — meaning the impulse, or the imaginative desire, pulled him — “he was punished by being deprived of that intellectual apprehension.” Of course that doesn’t mean he was deprived of intellect altogether, but there was some kind of decline, or loss of the dominance of intellect, and the conventional dimension entered in — the dimension of agreements, of manners, of good and evil or the disgraceful and the pleasant — at the expense of truth and falsehood. Meaning, before the sin he lived only in a world of truth and falsehood. After the sin he lived in a world of socially accepted notions — meaning that now a world of socially accepted notions entered him as well, and not only the intellectual aspect — and suddenly he became sensitive to all sorts of things that are basically conventional human manners. Before that, what interested him was only truth and falsehood, meaning only intellect. “And therefore he transgressed the commandment with which he had been charged by virtue of his intellect, and he acquired awareness of socially accepted notions and became immersed in distinguishing evil and good. Then he knew the measure of what he had lost and what he had been stripped of, and what state he was in. Therefore it says, ‘And you shall be like God, knowing good and evil,’ and it does not say ‘knowing falsehood and truth’ or ‘apprehending falsehood and truth.’ For in necessary matters there is no good and evil at all, only falsehood and truth.” Logical, intellectual matters are truth and falsehood, not good and evil. “And note the verse” — look at what it says in the verse — “‘and the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked,’ and it does not say, ‘and the eyes of both of them were opened, and they saw,’ for what they saw at first they saw at the end.” Meaning, they had eyes before too; they saw that they were naked. But “they knew that they were naked” means they were aware of the problem of nakedness. That wasn’t there before. “Nor was there any blindness in sight that was then removed,” meaning he saw before too what he sees now, “but rather another quality came upon him by which he apprehends the shame of what he had not previously apprehended as shameful.” Of course, the question Arik raised here earlier is an obvious one: what does convention mean when there are only two people in the world? Meaning, before the sin they didn’t deal with conventions — what does it mean they didn’t deal with conventions? Meaning, was there such a convention and they just ignored it? If so, among whom was this convention? Who agreed to this convention? Adam and Eve — who else was there? Fine, you can raise all sorts of possibilities. “The sons of God saw the daughters of men” — there are those who argue there were other figures there. Certainly someone who works with evolution and says the first man is only some stage, but in fact there were many other creatures around, then that could also fit this. Okay, I don’t think they didn’t—

[Speaker D] They related to all the monkeys around them? Before that they didn’t take into account—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not monkeys — they were people like them, just at a certain developmental stage.

[Speaker C] The verse says, “and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil,” implying that this is the more important trait. If you say it’s only socially accepted notions, then why give it such a special status?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, I’m about to comment on that in a moment.

[Speaker D] Those are the serpent’s words?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, listen — the serpent’s description is still a description. He tells them, “Listen, this is a good thing, because you’ll be like God, knowing good and evil.” It doesn’t matter that the serpent says it. I’ll get to that in a moment too — the point that in the verses it seems like an advantage. Let’s formulate the convention like this: once there is a convention, there is value in obeying it. It’s not a deficiency to go according to the accepted norms of behavior in society. The deficiency is that such social norms exist at all. But before the sin there were no conventions at all; there was only right and wrong, true and false, and that’s what governed life. After the sin, suddenly dimensions entered that have nothing to do with truth and falsehood. Now, once this already exists, then yes, you should go according to what is accepted — meaning according to what his natural feelings tell him. It’s not that now you shouldn’t obey it because it’s not truth and falsehood and therefore irrelevant. If it already exists, then you need to deal with it. But the fact that it exists is not in itself something of value. Meaning, if it didn’t exist, that would be better. If all of us were entirely indifferent to the matter of manners, and how to walk and how not to walk, it would be better. Once we’re no longer indifferent and this is already something present within us, then you have to work with it. Meaning, it’s not right to ignore it. So there is still a double meaning here. On the one hand, we descended into this deficiency that our world now also contains conventions. On the other hand, once they already exist, there is still some kind of positive dimension here. I once spoke about this too, in one of the columns on my site, about aesthetic values as distinct from moral values. There are certain values where your feeling says: this just isn’t fitting. It doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s not because it harms someone; these are not moral values in the ordinary sense. Like walking naked in the street, for example. Whom does that hurt? Does it hurt anyone? But it’s beastly — the feeling is that it’s not appropriate. You could call these values of some kind, but not really morality in the ordinary sense, because morality is usually connected, at least, to harming another or helping another — there are those two sides. I called them there aesthetic values, and I brought various examples from a psychologist named Haidt who wrote a book, and there he brings all kinds of examples. The neighbors’ dog gets run over in an accident, and I go, take it, cook its organs, and eat them with appetite. Is there something wrong with that? On the face of it, nothing. What’s the problem? And still people relate to something like that as disgusting. The question is why. What’s the difference between that and a cow? But still, there it is. Or he says there that someone buys a frozen chicken at the supermarket, defrosts it, has sex with it, and afterward eats it. What’s the problem? Is there some problem with that? It’s revolting, but did it hurt anyone? What’s the issue? He only increased the amount of pleasure in the world — what possible problem is there in that? Somehow the feeling is that these are degraded acts, beastly, low, I don’t know exactly what. But not because they harm anyone. I don’t think it’s right to call that morality in the usual sense. So I called them aesthetic values there. What?

[Speaker C] Like eating in the market with your hands?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. Things like that, “do not make yourselves disgusting” kinds of things. Meaning, in this context too — if we had been indifferent to this issue, then maybe indeed none of the acts I described before would have been problematic. Meaning, if we’re indifferent and it really doesn’t express any deficiency, then okay. Say autistic people, right? Let’s suppose they have only truth and falsehood; none of the conventions interest them. There are no conventions — not that they’re uninterested in them. No, in our world there is only truth and falsehood, no problem, everything is fine. The problem arises only when we descend in level because of the sin; then the conventional world is created. But in such a situation additional values are added — aesthetic values. Meaning, we do have to work with these feelings, and it is not right to ignore them. Many times there’s a situation that is a bedi’avad reality — an after-the-fact state — but given that this is the reality, one must take it into account. You can’t ignore it, even if it’s a less-than-ideal condition. So maybe that is the meaning of “and you shall be like God,” in the sense that there is also some value-dimension here. I don’t know — that’s a comment I don’t really have a very good answer to.

[Speaker C] But if it’s an autistic person, as far as he himself is concerned he doesn’t understand that it’s a problem, and he does it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s an outcome-level deficiency. You can’t judge him. It’s like moral judgment too. If a person doesn’t think what he’s doing is wrong — he’s a convinced Nazi, meaning he understands that Jews should be killed, he truly and sincerely thinks that that is the right action — then I will condemn the action in terms of its results, but I can’t blame the person. That’s what he thinks. We talked about Ehud Barak, who said that if he had been a Palestinian then he too would have been a suicide bomber. He once said that, and everyone shouted and protested and all that. In principle he was right. If that’s what you think is correct, I can’t blame you if that’s what you think. But I don’t agree with you that the act is a good act. Still, if that’s what you think, then you are compelled by your own mind.

[Speaker C] If you say this is morality because of convention—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But once the convention exists, there’s value in going along with the conventions. That’s already a value.

[Speaker C] But that’s someone who isn’t aware of the convention.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so I’m saying then he’s not guilty.

[Speaker C] It’s more than a value. So you’re saying that if some objective reality is created here because of the convention, that it’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I think so. Meaning, he still behaves like an animal by accepted norms. He’s not guilty of that, fine.

[Speaker B] What do you mean not guilty? A person who goes and kills someone because he’s convinced that that person deserves death, that he did evil and must be killed, and he kills him — he’s not guilty? No. You can’t blame him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, you can’t blame him?

[Speaker B] A person is judged.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says he should be judged? They’ll examine him to determine that this is indeed the situation. If that’s the case, I don’t judge him. I put him in hospitalization, I put him in prison in order to protect society, but I don’t judge him in any way.

[Speaker B] Come on. If a person is convinced he thinks that’s the right thing—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To do — then he is compelled by his own mind, certainly. First of all, yes. What do you mean? He is compelled by his own mind, certainly. As for religious transgressions too, it’s like that. We’ve already spoken more than once about the Radbaz.

[Speaker B] Have you ever heard in court an argument of that kind?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ve never listened in court to that argument, but if you haven’t heard it, then now you are hearing it — here, I’m telling you.

[Speaker B] But he, she did — his wife, I don’t know, this— he reached the conclusion that she needs to be killed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He is convinced—

[Speaker B] That that is the right thing, to do the good thing. If that’s the right thing to do… Have you ever heard such an argument in court?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I ever listened—

[Speaker B] I was with a lawyer who brought such an argument — they’d laugh at him. They’d laugh at him. So what if they laugh at him?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then I’ll laugh at them, I’ll laugh at them. Why? I’m saying: you can punish him as a deterrent punishment, or as punishment whose purpose is to protect society from him, or to treat him so that he understands this thing is wrong — but not punishment in the sense of a sanction. I do not blame him in any way. In no way do I blame him. That is what he thought was good.

[Speaker D] That’s still punishment in the sense of a sanction in order to deter?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, mainly. For deterrence, and to protect society, certainly, certainly. What do you mean? If they justify— Shmuel, someone who does not know how to distinguish between good and evil is exempt; he has no criminal responsibility. Someone who has an impulse that cannot be controlled has no criminal responsibility. What’s the difference? An impulse—

[Speaker B] No. What’s the difference?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing. Okay, that’s a different discussion. In any case, for our purposes, it could be that this is the meaning of “and you shall be like God,” so there really is some sort of value here, in that after we’re on the lower level, another set of values is created, and that’s something positive. Yes, the Holy One, blessed be He—so to speak—puts on tefillin. He too observes the commandments that we observe, even though in His world it isn’t relevant, but that’s the new convention. Meaning, from our perspective, that’s the… yes, I just gave a homiletic interpretation now, a homily on the homily of the Sages. In any case, I want to pay a bit of attention to what Maimonides is talking about. When Maimonides speaks here about good and evil, apparently he’s talking about good and evil and disgraceful and proper, right? Both things. He mentions it explicitly. And Rabbi Kapach notes that the correct translation is good and evil, not disgraceful and proper, and afterward he also brings disgraceful and proper—both things. And both belong to accepted conventions. It almost looks as though these concepts are interchangeable. Both belong to accepted conventions. That’s very puzzling. After all, moral judgment in Maimonides, without a doubt, is intellect. It’s not a convention at all. “Do not murder.” In several places, even in chapter six, Maimonides talks there about rational commandments and revelational commandments. Under rational commandments he includes moral commandments. In many other places too. For Maimonides, moral transgressions are intellect, not convention. Maimonides believes in morality as an intellectual category. By the way, in many places Maimonides refers to a moral person as a wise person. That’s his expression. Wisdom includes morality as part of it. And therefore it’s very hard to accept this interpretation in Maimonides, that good and evil and disgraceful and proper are both accepted conventions. In my view, what Maimonides is talking about here is only disgraceful and proper. It’s just that in our language we often use the term good and evil for this context as well, of disgraceful and proper, and I think he means only that. And really, look—the example he gives is walking naked in the street. He’s not talking about murder or theft or things like that. Walking naked in the street is manners and conduct. That really does relate to disgraceful and proper. That’s accepted convention; that’s the antithesis of intelligibles. Murder, theft, and things like that aren’t mentioned here anywhere. I don’t think he means that. He means actual conventions. Did he really also translate it as disgraceful and proper? Yes. He translated even the good and evil that appears in Maimonides—he translated everything as disgraceful and proper; good and evil doesn’t appear there. Rabbi Kapach corrects that. Again, I haven’t checked the Arabic, I don’t know Arabic, I don’t know which of them was right in the translation, but there’s a terminological problem here in Maimonides. A serious problem. By the way, there are some who really did understand this Maimonides—I’ve already seen in the past—that according to him even morality is a convention. That’s not true. You can see in several places in Maimonides that this is not his view. There’s… how did I get to this Maimonides? Simply because last Sabbath we learned—I teach some class before prayer on Sabbath, on Ein Ayah. So there we saw a passage by Rabbi Kook on the Talmud in tractate Berakhot 6a. The Talmud there says as follows: “From where do we know that if ten pray, the Divine Presence is with them? As it is said: ‘God stands in the congregation of God.’ And from where do we know that if three sit in judgment, the Divine Presence is with them? As it is said: ‘In the midst of judges He judges.’” And then for two and one, not important now. Then the Talmud asks: “Since even with three—do we need ten?” If the Divine Presence rests on three, why say it rests on ten? If two hundred includes one hundred, isn’t one hundred already included? “With ten, the Divine Presence comes before; with three, only once they sit.” Meaning: with ten, the Divine Presence rests immediately when they gather, even before they begin to pray. With three, the Divine Presence rests only when they are already engaged in judgment. Here’s what it says: “As it is written, ‘He judges’—at the time of judgment.” Meaning only when the court proceeding is actually taking place, only then does the Holy One, blessed be He, dwell among them. And Rabbi Kook explains the difference between the three and the ten. So he says like this: “With ten, the Divine Presence comes before; with three, only once they sit.” There are matters for which many means three. There are things in Jewish law where many are required, and many means three, not ten. Like legal matters, a religious court, Grace after Meals, a zimun is with three, and so on. And there are matters where ten are considered many, and they complete the number, and nothing less. And the root of the difference appears to be this: there are two kinds of conduct in which a person must walk on the good and upright path, which is the way of God, ‘glorious to the one who does it and honored by others.’ That is, in rational matters whose category is truth and falsehood, and in accepted matters whose category is good and evil, or proper and disgraceful.” Notice—this is really based on the Maimonides we just read, and he too repeats that it is good and evil and proper and disgraceful. Both are on one side of the equation, the side of accepted conventions. Truth and falsehood are the other side, which is intelligibles. And then he says—the difference, says Rabbi Kook, is that with truth and falsehood, since a person cannot decisively define the boundary of truth, therefore in every doubtful judgment he must follow the majority. Therefore regarding rational and judicial matters—halakhic legal matters—three are a majority with decisive force, because they are an evenly constituted court. But regarding accepted matters, their whole essence is general agreement. And for that purpose, many are no fewer than ten, because ten are the basis of the many for public consensus. What is he saying? Why do you need three for a religious court, but for a congregation you need ten? He says this: a court deals with intelligibles. It seeks truth and falsehood, and that connects to what we discussed earlier. It seeks halakhic truth and falsehood, and therefore you don’t need ten there. Three are enough. Why? Because if there is disagreement in the court, you need an odd number, but once you have an odd number, you will always reach a decision. At worst it will be two against one. If it’s two against one, chances are the two are right and have hit upon the truth. “The law follows the majority against the individual” means arriving at the truth. Okay? So you don’t need ten. Even two against one already makes it likely they hit on the truth. Of course, if it were nine against one the probability would be higher. But two against one is already an indication as well. That too is enough to decide that this is the truth. In contrast, with conventions, with accepted matters, truth is not something you’re trying to hit upon here—I’m returning to my opening point. Right? Truth is what they say. Because that is the convention. What they agree upon is the convention. True, we spoke on the democratic level. In that situation, he says, you need the force of a public. Only a public has the power that if it says something, it becomes fixed as binding. If you are looking for a truth that exists regardless of the judges, then even when it’s two against one, the two are probably more right than the one, so that’s the truth. True, with nine against one, where there are ten, it’s stronger—but two against one is also fine. There’s no reason to demand more than three. Three is also fine. It also gives some indication of the truth. It isn’t necessary; the minority could be right. But if you have to determine a rule, you follow the majority. Okay? But if you’re talking about conventions, conventions only have force when a public determines them. Only the public can determine them. And therefore…

[Speaker B] The one who determines it is the one to whom the convention applies. What? That’s…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but that’s only with ten. If three determine a convention, that won’t even bind the one of them. If one opposes and two want to establish a convention, he isn’t bound.

[Speaker B] So is the issue whether it has to be unanimous or not?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—not because of unanimity.

[Speaker B] But because three…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With ten too it wouldn’t have to be unanimous—it would still be established, because ten are a public.

[Speaker B] Why not three?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because three are not a public.

[Speaker B] If there’s a house committee and there are three tenants in the building,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and they represent the whole building, that’s different…

[Speaker B] No, there are only three tenants.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then from the standpoint of Jewish law, that is not a public.

[Speaker B] The minimum for a public is ten.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “A congregation is never fewer than ten”—“God stands in the congregation of God”; the Talmud brings this everywhere. So the claim is that a public is ten. What does that mean? A public isn’t just a lot of people. A public is some other sort of entity. This entity has some kind of organic existence. It’s made up of ten individuals—at least ten individuals—but it has some kind of existence of its own. The implication here is that if these ten decide on some convention, it binds even the one who disagrees or those who disagree, because the public has the power to determine values, or determine norms, even though they do not correspond to some truth. It’s a convention; it’s accepted matters. It’s not intelligibles. But for that, there has to be a public. Not every two or three people who decide something can bind the one. It has to be a public. All right? So if we are looking for truth, three are enough, so long as there is a majority—two against one. If we are looking for a conventional determination, accepted matters, we need ten.

[Speaker C] And what if it’s in a building with up to ten tenants? Then can they…

[Speaker F] More

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I don’t know whether I can derive from here some halakhic statement. But yes, the medieval authorities (Rishonim) would tell you: fine, there’s no choice, otherwise you won’t be able to make decisions at all, so the logic of “no choice” exists there as well beforehand.

[Speaker B] There are twelve tenants. They hold elections. Three didn’t vote.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that doesn’t matter.

[Speaker B] Three didn’t vote and only nine… why doesn’t that matter?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s fine, because those three… whoever was elected is the representative of all twelve. If they didn’t vote, that’s their problem. They had the right to vote, just like in a state.

[Speaker B] I

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] didn’t vote, so the representatives are mine too, and their decisions bind me too. But that’s not the whole state.

[Speaker B] Only forty percent of the residents voted. Right, and it still binds; the majority didn’t vote.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? It binds. If the majority were to declare, “I no longer recognize the state,” that would be a different matter—that’s already the dilemma of how a state is dismantled. But as long as you’re inside the game, if you didn’t go vote, that’s your problem—you had the right to come.

[Speaker B] It’s as if he voted that whatever the majority decides…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I accept what the others decided. But still, they are his representatives too.

[Speaker F] Why, with a public of ten for Kaddish, for example, do ten need to answer?

[Speaker B] To Kaddish, according to this

[Speaker F] by the definition of a public, apparently it should be enough that there were… seemingly even if they don’t answer amen to Kaddish or something…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Actually, the question is whether the answering is specifically what defines the public, or whether it’s simply a law that each person should answer—I don’t know. It could be that it doesn’t stem from defining this group specifically as a public. I don’t know, we’d have to think about it. By the way, I’m not sure this is entirely agreed upon; we’d have to look in the halakhic decisors. I’m not sure it’s agreed that everyone has to answer. That’s the accepted custom, that’s what is practiced, but… So Rabbi Kook is basically saying that there is a difference between places where many means three and places where many means ten. I would call that many versus public. If you need several people in order to make decisions, three are enough. If you need a public, it’s at least ten. Now, for intelligibles, many are enough; for accepted matters, you need a public. Okay? And then what does that have to do with us? He says like this: regarding this, that ten are the basis of the many, this is according to the measure of publicity. And behold, as for people who walk in the upright path, regarding accepted matters, there is no doubt that what they agree is proper is indeed proper, and what they agree is disgraceful is indeed disgraceful. Why? Because what they say is itself the proper and the disgraceful; it is not an indication, rather it is the convention. Those are the accepted matters. Therefore an individual may not separate himself from the public under any circumstances—precisely because there is no truth here. Precisely in a place where there is no truth, the individual may not separate himself from the public, because what the public says is itself the truth. There isn’t some other thing that you’re trying to hit upon. But the difference between truth and falsehood is that one cannot say that the minority can never hit the truth. After all, sometimes the minority is right; the majority is not always right. Right? So regarding truth and falsehood… who says the majority is right and not the minority? Right, because once the majority has been decided in one direction, there is an obligation for the minority to set aside its view. That is what the verse says: “incline after the majority”—that even though the minority can say, listen, I’m right, not the majority, still there’s nothing to be done: incline after the majority. So the truth for our purposes—the legal truth at least—is like the majority. There is a novelty here: in following truth, despite the fact that the minority may be right, we follow the majority. With ten, this is not a novelty. You don’t need the verse “incline after the majority” in the case of ten, as we discussed with Rabbenu Tam and the halakhic decisors who disagree with him, because when you are seeking the opinion of the public, you do not need the verse “incline after the majority.” Reason says that the majority reflects the opinion of the public. And “incline after the majority” is a great novelty, because the novelty tells you that if the majority goes against the minority, then that is the truth. And who says so? I am the minority, and I’m telling you that truth is not with the majority. There is no guarantee that the majority is right. The verse says: true, there is no guarantee, but that is what you must assume legally. That is a novelty; for that you need a verse. But to determine what the public says, you can derive that from reason—that what the majority says is, from my perspective, the will of the public. Therefore the verse “incline after the majority” not only was said only about a majority seeking truth, but only there is it needed. The novelty in the verse is that even though in fact it may not be the truth, the novelty says: fine, but you should treat it as the truth. Regarding a democratic majority, not only was the verse not said about it—it simply isn’t needed. It’s all reason. When you seek what the public wants, you say: the majority—that’s what the public wants. The simplest mechanism.

[Speaker D] So that’s also Rabbi Kook’s novelty—he speaks also about public truth, why the majority is what the public wants. Say, one could also ask on Rabbenu Tam’s question, it’s not that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, Rabbenu Tam can ask that, but you won’t be able to bring “incline after the majority” against him. That verse won’t help you. The verse “incline after the majority” says: look, there is a truth, there is a dispute about it, and if there is a truth and you are seeking who is closest to it—the majority. That’s what the verse says. But with the majority of the public, there is no truth. What the public wants is what it wants. And Rabbenu Tam says that the majority does not reflect the view of the public, and there’s nothing you can say to him. Nothing—except perhaps the practical point that you can’t conduct life that way. Fine. But the verse won’t help you here at all. Why?

[Speaker F] The verse helps manage the practical side, doesn’t it? The verse doesn’t define truth for me,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Legally, it says that this is the truth.

[Speaker F] Legally, assume that the majority is right; legally, because in the end you have to come down to practice. And then in practice, really…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe yes, maybe no. What the verse says is that the majority is legally right, even though factually it’s obviously not necessarily so, because sometimes the minority can be right. Then the verse comes and says: incline after the majority. Okay, fine, there is a dispute. I want to learn from that that there is legal truth here. I don’t learn from the verse that there is legal truth; I assume there is legal truth, and then I say: if so, then what the verse says is that legal truth follows the majority. Even though there is a chance that this is not so, still that is the legal rule in our hands.

[Speaker F] In contrast, with a democratic majority we’re not talking about truth—that’s an assumption, it’s not from the verse. I assume that in the legal context I am seeking truth, and in the democratic context I am seeking what the public wants.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And once I’ve assumed that, then the verse “incline after the majority” speaks only about the first case and not the second.

[Speaker F] What Judge Landau said—“truth and stability; stability is preferable.” I’m not looking for truth at all. Rather, who said that? Zamora? I’m looking for stability. And if I’m looking for stability, then I go after the majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that’s not the context. First, it’s not in the halakhic context, and also in the legal context it’s not precise. As I said, that’s a different issue. It has to be discussed separately. I once wrote about it; I don’t remember exactly where.

[Speaker C] Fine, truth and stability.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I brought those citations at the beginning—truth and stability, right. When people say that, this is what they mean. Wait, now I’m getting to that. So then what Rabbi Kook concludes from what he says here is that regarding three, it is only “once they sit”: the Divine Presence does not rest among the three except while they are clarifying and arriving at legal conclusions. Because only then can I say that what they say is the truth. Until then, it may be that the minority is right. Truth is actual truth; it has nothing to do with what they say. True, the rule says that once they have counted and concluded that two against one say such-and-such, then—incline after the majority. Now the Divine Presence comes. Now the Divine Presence comes and rests upon those three and says: now you have reached the truth. But with ten, you don’t need to wait until they decide something. By virtue of their being ten, the Divine Presence already rests upon them, because the truth is what they will say. They do not need to hit upon something else. Therefore there the Divine Presence comes before. “The Divine Presence comes.” The Divine Presence does not need to wait for them to start praying; rather, as soon as there are ten, the Divine Presence is there. Because in essence they have validity, let’s call it that; the Divine Presence here reflects validity. And the ten have validity simply by being what they are. The three have no validity of truth except once they have reached a conclusion. Once they reached a conclusion—by force of the verse, again. There’s really also the Talmud in tractate Horayot, which talks about one who errs in the commandment to heed the words of the Sages. In a place where you know that the majority erred and the minority is right, there is no obligation to listen to the court.

[Speaker D] Yes, if you know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now, who can allow himself to assume that he knows? That’s a different discussion, very complicated, with many disputes among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim), a very complicated topic / passage. But in principle, the Talmud says that one who thinks you must listen to the court even when it errs is mistaken about the commandment to heed the words of the Sages. Meaning, in principle that is not correct. There is no commandment to heed the words of the Sages when they are mistaken and you know they are mistaken.

[Speaker B] But the story with Rabbi Yehoshua, with Rabbi Yehoshua—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not so simple, because there it’s the calendar. The calendar is mandatory authority given to the Nasi of the Sanhedrin. “Whether even if you err, whether even if you act intentionally”—everything. What was fixed is what was fixed.

[Speaker B] It’s like accepted matters.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s an exception. Yes, it’s like accepted matters. Even though there was a similar story with Rabbi Hanina.

[Speaker C] There, outside the Land of Israel, there was proof that you need a special verse to say: even if you err, even if you act intentionally.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case, Rabbi Kook’s claim is therefore that the Divine Presence comes before, because the ten have standing by virtue of being ten. The three have no standing; only what they do in the end has standing. That is, there are two against one, you have reached a decision, now the Divine Presence comes and gives it its seal of approval. Now it is truth. Okay, that is Rabbi Kook’s claim; it’s just an explanation of the Talmud. But for our purposes, let’s now really think about Tzvi’s question, right? Tzvi’s question. Where does Rabbi Kook place halakhic discussion in a court? Legal-halakhic discussion. Is it accepted matters or intelligibles? Intelligibles? Intelligibles, obviously. Therefore it requires three. Accepted matters require ten. Right. And intelligibles—but these are not facts. Jewish law, for me, is like morality. That is, it’s good and evil for our purposes. Okay? In terms of its logical category, it’s like good and evil. It’s not facts, but it’s also not proper and disgraceful in the sense of following the majority or manners and customs.

[Speaker B] You could also ask—was this about the Sanhedrin or about a religious court? A religious court.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter. The Sanhedrin determines the law.

[Speaker B] Also a religious court.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t bind others, but it binds its litigants.

[Speaker B] No, it binds, but it doesn’t determine the law, it doesn’t legislate.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but the truth is still with it—the truth for the case, not the truth binding upon all the Jewish people. The truth for the case is like this. We once talked about the difference between responsa and a halakhic book: responsa deal with a case, and a halakhic book determines a principle.

[Speaker B] Yes, but you can’t treat this as facts. It has to say what the halakhic truth is. That’s facts.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you’re saying that halakhic truth is a fact—that’s what I’m saying, right? That’s what Rabbi Kook says. So I agree; that’s what I’m saying. That Jewish law, from his standpoint, is connected to truth and falsehood. That’s how it seems, right? Therefore it requires three and not ten. Even though Jewish law is basically in the same standing as morality. That is, as distinct from, say, if on both sides I have…

[Speaker B] Jewish law is like morality, but what the religious court does is not good and evil; rather it reveals what that system of good and evil is.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, within that system—

[Speaker B] that system of good and evil.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand. But I’m saying: in the dilemma I find myself in, I also don’t determine what is good and what is evil. I only ask what good and evil say about this case—what I need to do. So I function as a judge. That brings us back to the point that every moral decision is also truth and falsehood. So actually what comes out of this is that Rabbi Kook too—the explanation I gave earlier in the Guide for the Perplexed is correct, and in Rabbi Kook you see it explicitly—that when Maimonides speaks about good and evil he means proper and disgraceful, not good and evil. Good and evil—whether halakhic or non-halakhic, legal or non-legal—belong to the branch of truth and falsehood, not to the branch of disgraceful and proper. But the terminology still raises a problem, especially if Rabbi Kapach is right, and with Rabbi Kook it’s clear—he wrote it in Hebrew. So why do you use good and evil? Use proper and disgraceful as against truth and falsehood. Why use good and evil? Good and evil is the least successful term you could have used. Because good and evil usually connects to moral judgment, and if you say moral judgment belongs to truth and falsehood, why are you writing to me that good and evil and proper and disgraceful belong to accepted matters? Good and evil belongs to intelligibles in the simple sense. Here you are using good and evil in an extended sense, when you already have expressions that serve this—proper and disgraceful. What’s wrong with those expressions? Why add good and evil? There is something here, some kind of intuition that many people have, that there is something about morality that still is not entirely truth and falsehood in the same way as facts. Even someone who accepts moral truth, that morality isn’t just arbitrary—the great problem around which many discussions about morality revolve is really what the status of moral systems or moral norms is. Is there right and wrong here? I say that murder is forbidden, he says murder is permitted—is there a person who is right and a person who is mistaken? Can you prove to him that murder is forbidden? Why say that he has simply gone wrong? There are those who say: this is just how you are built, and that is how he is built. It’s only a question of how you’re built; there is no question here of any objective truth. Others escape in the direction of agreements, conventions. Morality is basically legislation of society, a convention of society, but it has no objectively valid standing. As I said before, Maimonides—and in my view Rabbi Kook as well—do not see it that way. For them it is clear that morality belongs to the branch of truth and falsehood. But I think it’s not for nothing that people use—or interpret—morality as a social convention. There is something here connected to society, even though it is not a convention. That is my claim. Basically, if in the previous lecture I spoke about…

[Speaker B] What is that something?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I’ll try to define it now. But first of all I’m just giving an indication; afterward I’ll try to define it. Last time I spoke about whether the majority determines the truth, constitutes the truth, or only tries to hit upon it. Okay? In essence, the question is what the role of public discussion or public determination is. Does it determine what is correct? That is proper and disgraceful, conventions, accepted matters. Or is it only a means for hitting upon the correct thing, and then in essence it’s truth and falsehood that you’re trying through public discussion to get closer to. Here I’m claiming that there is an intermediate category. Morality—or Jewish law as well—is some sort of intermediate category. And in what sense is it an intermediate category? What I suggested there in the post I uploaded today—my claim there—is that in fact norms, including moral norms, certainly in the sense of proper and disgraceful, change between different societies and different times, but even good and evil change between different societies, and even within the same society there are changes over the years. There are many examples: slavery, democracy, homosexuality, abortion, freedom, equality, all kinds of values that seem obvious to us today were very far from obvious not very long ago, at least in many societies, in a large part of them. Meaning, things do change from place to place and also in the same place over time. And indeed there are those who see in this an indication that values are conventions. Here they agree one way, there they agree another way, the state changes me.

[Speaker H] Women’s voting rights in Switzerland.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those are changes—

[Speaker C] Only in one direction. If these are changes over time, it’s like evolution.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One of the indications I bring there—the claim I want to make—is that this does not necessarily indicate that we are dealing here with something that is a convention, a consensus, some kind of politically correct fashion. Whatever is politically correct is called moral. “Politically correct” is a derogatory term for me. So my claim is different. In order to assume—I’ll make a short introduction, we’ve already spoken about this—in order to assume that there is truth and falsehood in moral contexts, one has to assume that some comparison is being made here. Factual truth and falsehood are determinations based on comparison. When I say that it is dark outside now, how do I determine whether that sentence is true or false? I look at what is happening outside and compare the sentence to what is happening, to the state of affairs in the world. If there is correspondence, it is true; if there is no correspondence, it is false. Okay? If I want to say that moral propositions or moral norms can also be judged—that you can say, you are wicked and you are righteous, that there is truth and falsehood or right and wrong also in the moral context—there must be some objective standard here against which I compare things. Because if it is just how I am built and how you are built differently, what do you want from me? How can you judge him? You’re built this way—so what? Who appointed you Secretary-General of the United Nations? You’re built this way and he’s built differently. Fine, then it isn’t judgment; it’s just instinct.

[Speaker C] And there are color-blind people, so for them this bottle is red—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And therefore I say the same thing: the question is whether you relate to someone who thinks morally differently from you as color-blind, or whether you say, no, there are no colors at all, colors are our invention. That is exactly the argument. Now, my claim is: the Idea of the Good—or whatever you want to call this thing—which in some sense exists, or some objective standard that is, I think, the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, because it is hard to understand what this thing even is, what its status is, how it was created at all—the proof from morality that we bring, as you know. But I perform some comparison operation, and that operation is a kind of observation. By the way, in these very chapters of the Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides talks about this—observation, in “and their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Here he explains it, and afterward he continues in chapter 3, chapter 4, that there is observation with the eyes of the intellect, not observation with the eyes. Meaning, our conscience or our ability to distinguish between good and evil is some kind of moral observation. There is some Idea of the Good that we observe, and by means of it we examine what is good and what is evil. And therefore one who is mistaken is mistaken. It’s not that he thinks differently and is right just as I am right; rather, he is mistaken. He has some sort of blindness, or wickedness, or whatever the source is—but it is a mistake. Now, this observation is of course not observation as unequivocal as what we are used to from observation with the eyes. And that is the meaning of the differences between societies and between periods with respect to moral values. There are differences, but the differences do not stem from the absence of truth; rather they are epistemic, not ontic. The differences are a result of the ambiguity of the knowing instrument, not of reality itself. That is, the instrument that apprehends morality is not all that unequivocal.

[Speaker B] And therefore—what you’re saying is that we are progressing. Or—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now—

[Speaker B] the next step: what is today moral truth, and wasn’t so two hundred years ago—they were mistaken.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I haven’t said that yet; I’ll say it in a moment. I really do think—since you already said it, I’ll continue here—that not only is there truth and falsehood, but I think humanity is, on the whole, progressing. At least—again, people can commit atrocities today too, and atrocities are committed today too—but the norms… people make excuses for themselves when they commit atrocities. They have to justify themselves somehow. And I don’t buy that this is only for show. Even like the story with the Nazis, who had to drink wine before they did what they did there and shot masses of people into the pit. There are even stories about Himmler, in a pit like Babi Yar, when he came to visit there—he had to drink a lot of wine before seeing that horrifying spectacle. People really are advancing toward more correct values. I see this process not as fluctuations of fashion or political correctness, but as a process of progress. Broadly speaking. Of course there are mistakes and deviations and one can argue; I am not claiming that society is always right. But I am saying that there is some process of progress. One of the indications—I’ve written this several times, and here too I wrote it in that post—is that when there is contact between a Western society and a non-Western society, usually the influence goes outward from the West. The postmodernists explain this as coercion and dominance by means of, I don’t know, various influences, schemes, and power politics.

[Speaker D] But that’s simply too sophisticated. There is a difference—at least there was a few decades ago—an enormous gap in power, high-tech, technology, and science.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There still is today, but that itself is one of the means of persuasion. You see that this society reaches better achievements; that means it is built more correctly. I don’t buy that it’s only power. There is something here that people understand. A Western person who encounters a tribe of cannibals does not become a cannibal. Cannibals stop eating people. That’s the process. And the process has a direction. There are deviations, and of course this is simplistic, and there are mistakes and exceptions, but the process has a direction.

[Speaker B] And what you’re describing here is some parallel process, like in science.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. I made an analogy there to science. There are disputes, all true, and in the end you arrive at certain conclusions. Now the further claim I want to make is that, just as in science—and there too I made an analogy—so too here this is a public process. Meaning, it’s not only that a person suddenly discovers more and more things; it is a process the entire public undergoes. And I think this is what leads many people to think that morality is a convention. It is not. It is not a convention. But in order to understand what is right and what is not right, you need to work on a broad front. Meaning, suddenly everyone understands that slavery is an atrocity. Once they did not understand that—were they stupid? No. Rather, there is something that within the public framework you suddenly see—things that become clear to you that this just doesn’t work, that it cannot be. It becomes clear to you that democracy is the least bad option and monarchy is not a good system. Even though once people did not see it that way; on the contrary, it seemed to them the natural and obvious thing. But I think that here, many times, following the public spirit is accused of some sort of conformity or interests or foreign influences or all sorts of things like that. I don’t think that’s the whole story. Those things are there too, but they are not the whole picture. There is something to it that, just as with public discovery—Thomas Kuhn, when he talks about the philosophy or sociology of science, he too speaks of processes of paradigm shift. And he describes it as a kind of change of fashion. And I think he is mistaken. In the scientific community, work is done within the community. And why is that? Because in places where the problem is complex and requires judgment, both in the scientific context—not simple seeing but something more complex—and certainly in the moral context, you need some indications and cross-checks. If you see that many people see as you do, that strengthens you, and you understand that you really are seeing something correct, that it isn’t just some whim of yours. Therefore this process is a process that takes place publicly. And you need certain cross-checks. In the end, the fact that individuals also determine what the public will think, but the public also comes back and draws the other individuals after it—I don’t see that as a defect. This is not like proper and disgraceful; this is good and evil. But the public here is a means for uncovering the truth. Like the majority in a religious court.

[Speaker B] And here too, of course, there are mistakes, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying this while describing the process in a very simplistic way, but I’m saying the direction is that direction. It’s the majority in a religious court. The majority in a religious court is an indication that this is the truth. I’m saying that in morality too, that’s how it is.

[Speaker G] But if morality is like science, then in science—science usually isn’t seen as a convention. What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Science—because science deals with facts—so it’s obvious to everyone that facts are not a convention. Meaning, there everyone understands that the majority, the multiplicity of perspectives, helps us, but it’s obvious to everyone that these are facts. In morality, people don’t perceive it as fact. You have to be a philosopher to perceive it as fact. But I do think that once you understand it that way, it’s the same process. And then what this basically means is that morality and also Jewish law are some kind of intermediate state between accepted conventions and rational truths. And therefore “good” and “evil” is a confusing expression. I mean in terms of the terminology. I don’t know why Maimonides and Rabbi Kook brought it in here, I have no idea. But why is this expression really used in both senses? Because it really is in the middle. Good and evil is something that is nevertheless influenced by what the public says about it. It works with the public, it’s not… Now, “disgraceful” and “pleasant,” the public determines that—not only… that’s obvious. But truth and falsehood, no. It’s clear to all of us that even if the public says something, so what? It’s an indication, but like the famous story, “and truth was cast to the ground,” right, the argument whether to create the human being or not. Truth and peace said not to create him, and justice said yes, create him. So the Holy One, blessed be He, cast truth to the ground so that it would be two against two. So He cast truth to the ground, and by a democratic majority of two against one it was decided to create the human being. So the Kotzker asks: why did He cast down truth and not peace? That also would have created a majority of two against one. But if He had cast down peace and truth had remained above, it would have been two against one where the one was truth. Against truth there is no majority. Meaning, why? Because if the minority is right, then it is right; right and mistaken, and commanded to heed the words of the sages. But usually, if you don’t know and you’re looking for some kind of rule, then you say the majority is an indication of the truth. Therefore there are some implications. What I’m saying now is not that the majority is always right or that the public is always right. Certainly a person should fight for his position. But listen carefully to what the majority says. Very often it’s not absurd. Meaning, listen carefully and examine it. These struggles are important struggles. It is not right to be conformist; that’s very bad. It also harms the process. Because someone who becomes conformist—then the majority’s decision is worth nothing, because everyone is just being dragged along by one person, so it’s not a majority at all. By the way, in Jewish law it’s also like that. In Jewish law they don’t count students and a rabbi as two voices. In a religious court, it’s each one individually. Because if he influenced them, then they are not counted as another point of view. The same thing here too. Therefore there is importance to the argument, that you insist you are right even against the majority. But listen carefully to what they are saying and see—maybe you’ll be persuaded and maybe not. Notice that there is weight to the fact that very many people are saying something else. After all the arguments and quarrels and everything, in the end see whether you can reach some persuasion, some agreement. If you insist and say it’s clear to me that I’m right, then you are mistaken and commanded to heed the words of the sages. And you need the help of the public; it does nevertheless help one reach some kind of conclusion, some agreed bottom line. And suddenly you understand how things change. Therefore it’s not only conformism, and not only inferiority, and not only going after fashions and political correctness. Political correctness is the corruption of this process. Political correctness basically demands that you do something only because it is politically correct. I’m saying: if many people think this way, I’m willing to consider it seriously, because I give significance to what many people say, at least in the moral context. If many people say something about the theory of relativity, that’s not interesting. But many people saying something in a moral context—I say, they have moral intuitions, and that has some weight. Okay? That does not automatically mean they are right. I’ll argue with them if I think they’re wrong. But I will listen carefully to what they say. Because there is some value in this progress toward good and evil. And therefore the processes I described earlier, of the changing of values, do not necessarily reflect some fashionable spirit or one convention or another. There is something true here that is revealed through the public, and therefore this is basically somewhere between accepted conventions and rational truths. Because rational truths really do not depend at all on truth, and majority and minority, and the public. Truth is truth regardless of what the public says. There is a novelty in Jewish law: if you need to make one decision in a religious court and there is a majority against a minority, you follow the majority—”incline after the many.” That does not change the truth itself, but Jewish law says, fine, but for legal purposes go after the majority. And it is clear that in terms of truth and falsehood this changes nothing. Truth is truth, and it does not matter who says it or how many say otherwise. Okay? In the context of disgraceful and pleasant, there the majority constitutes the truth. Those are the two extremes. In the context of good and evil, the majority is a good indication of the truth, and that is exactly “incline after the many.” After all, “incline after the many” does not speak about facts. It speaks about a discussion in a religious court, or a moral discussion in our context, it doesn’t matter—it’s the same principle. There, indeed, the majority is an indication of the truth. If you are not sure, follow the majority. If you are sure, oppose it; you may be mistaken, while commanded to heed the words of the sages. Of course, if the religious court rules, then there’s nothing to do—you follow the majority. A religious court is such a rule, that the majority determines, and that is what binds the litigants, and the litigants must obey the majority of the judges. But in principle, in a general halakhic dispute—not in a ruling given to two litigants—there one is not obligated to follow the majority in a situation where you are sure that the majority erred. And therefore I think that morality is somewhere in the middle between accepted conventions and rational truths. And if I return to our line of thought, there is a third role for the majority. There is a role for the majority in the context of truth and falsehood, there is a role for the majority in the context of disgraceful and pleasant, and there is a role for the majority in the moral context, in the context of good and evil. In the context of good and evil it is almost a convention, and therefore people get terribly confused and see it as a convention—but it isn’t. It’s just—notice that if there is agreement on this issue, examine it carefully, because there may be something in it, there is something in it. Okay.

Majority in Halakhah and in General, Lesson 2

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

Democratic Majority versus Majority in a Religious Court

Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed on the Sin of the First Man: Truth and Falsehood versus Good and Evil

The Difficulty of Convention and Aesthetic Values

An Internal Tension in Maimonides: Is Morality Part of Social Convention?

Rabbi Kook in Ein Ayah: Ten versus Three, Public versus Many

“Follow the Majority”: A Novel Principle in a Religious Court, Not in Democracy

One Who Errs Thinking It Is a Commandment to Listen to the Sages, and Exceptional Cases of Authority

Morality and Jewish Law as an Intermediate Category, and a Third Role for Majority

Opposition to Conformity and Listening to the Majority

Full Transcript

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Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

Democratic Majority versus Majority in a Religious Court

Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed on the Sin of the First Man: Truth and Falsehood versus Good and Evil

The Difficulty of Convention and Aesthetic Values

An Internal Tension in Maimonides: Is Morality Part of Social Convention?

Rabbi Kook in Ein Ayah: Ten versus Three, Public versus Many

“Follow the Majority”: A Novel Principle in a Religious Court, Not in Democracy

One Who Errs Thinking It Is a Commandment to Listen to the Sages, and Exceptional Cases of Authority

Morality and Jewish Law as an Intermediate Category, and a Third Role for Majority

Opposition to Conformity and Listening to the Majority

Full Transcript

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