Changes in Jewish Law, Lesson 4

Table of Contents

• The eternity of the Torah and historical change in Jewish law
• The four-category model: literal conservative, midrashic conservative, heretic, reformist
• The law of the excluded middle, the sorites paradox, and fuzzy logic
• Talmudic measures, practical vagueness, and “the hand recoils”
• Deciding between values, morality and Jewish law, and the continuity of commitment
• Conversion, acceptance of commandments, faith, and thresholds of commitment
• Arguments versus sociological identities, and the example of “sane halakha”
• A rough association with ethoses: Haredi, Modern Orthodox, Sadducees, and Pharisees
• The Meiri as a midrashic conservative and the question of the legitimacy of change
• The example of women’s fitness for testimony and the distinction between a reformist claim and a midrashic claim
• Midrash as a combination of changed circumstances and a meta-halakhic claim, and the doubt in the Meiri

Summary

General Overview

The text lays out the tension between the eternity of the Torah, as Maimonides formulated it very forcefully, and the fact that Jewish law in practice is renewed and changes throughout history. It tries to distinguish between legitimate change and illegitimate change. It offers a conceptual map of different kinds of commitment to tradition through the example of “a swimsuit in a cold region,” and distinguishes between literal conservatism, midrashic conservatism, heresy, and reform as a fourth category of partial commitment. To explain how change can be Orthodox rather than reformist, it uses the idea of fuzzy, continuous logic rather than binary logic, and applies that to commitment and to value-based decisions. Finally, it returns to the Meiri as a test case for change in attitude toward non-Jews, classifies his argument as midrashic conservatism, and sharpens the point that the midrash needed for change includes both a factual component of changed circumstances and a meta-halakhic component that explains why the change in circumstances is relevant to the law. It then asks what one does when the meta-halakhic component is not proven and remains in doubt.

The eternity of the Torah and historical change in Jewish law

The text states that Maimonides speaks forcefully about the eternity of the Torah, but from his words it is not entirely clear exactly what it is that “must be preserved.” It argues that halakhic history is full of things that are renewed and changed despite the assumption that eternity is required. It brings the Meiri as an example of a changed attitude toward non-Jews due to changed circumstances, based on the common assumption that this is not an illegitimate change. From there it argues that we need a distinction between legitimate change and illegitimate change.

The four-category model: literal conservative, midrashic conservative, heretic, reformist

The text formulates an example of moving with a “swimsuit” to a cold region in order to illustrate one’s relationship to an accepted custom or instruction. It defines a “midrashic conservative” as someone who changes in practice but argues that this is actually how he preserves the principle that our ancestors wore clothing suited to the weather, and therefore he needs a “midrash” to show that he is conservative. It defines a “literal conservative” as someone who sticks to the visible form of the practice because that is what his ancestors did, and therefore his conservatism is evident without any need for midrash. It presents the “heretic” as someone who changes out of indifference and denial, and defines the “reformist” as someone who is committed to what our ancestors did “but not completely,” and so is unwilling to pay certain prices and therefore sometimes changes.

The law of the excluded middle, the sorites paradox, and fuzzy logic

The text argues that it is hard to find room for the “reformist” within a black-and-white picture because of the “law of the excluded middle,” and suggests the possibility that “X is somewhat true.” It uses the sorites paradox to show that many concepts are not binary but continuous, and that every addition “changes the status a little,” even if there is no sharp threshold point. It rejects the claim that the problem is only one of linguistic convention or subjectivity, and argues that when someone says something is a heap, he stands behind a claim and is not merely stipulating a private definition. It cites Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) in order to argue that the demand that every meaningful concept must have a precise definition, otherwise it is meaningless, is a form of “mistaken positivism,” and that there can be meaning even without a sharp definition.

Talmudic measures, practical vagueness, and “the hand recoils”

The text argues that Jewish law is not always binary, and that even in the Talmud and in Jewish law there are vague measures that were not measured according to modern standards. It brings the olive-bulk and the cubit as concepts around which there are disputes (Rabbi Chaim Naeh and the Chazon Ish), and emphasizes that the Sages did not measure in centimeters but in terms of “more or less” — a reasonable olive and a reasonable person’s cubit. It brings the concept of “the hand recoils,” and the experiment cited at the beginning of Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchatah in the name of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, where a lower threshold of around 40–45 degrees is obtained as the point of concern, and presents this as a gap between practice and a rigid definition. It also refers to “17,280 parts” and argues that even there the measurement is practical, and that an hour is an hour with respect to the calendrical calculation of intercalation, which is not based on proportional hours.

Deciding between values, morality and Jewish law, and the continuity of commitment

The text argues that systems such as natural morality and Jewish law can conflict, and that in practice people decide between them. That decision points to a continuous ranking of commitments rather than absolute binary categories. It distinguishes between “deciding what to do” and “deciding between” in the sense of determining what is overridden by what, and argues that a tie or a photo finish is an avoidance of decision. It gives the example of wanting health versus tasty food in order to show that “not at any price” reflects a continuity of commitment.

Conversion, acceptance of commandments, faith, and thresholds of commitment

The text connects the question of continuity to the question of accepting commandments in conversion, and brings as an example Rabbi Amsalem’s books on conversion in order to ask what level of commitment is required in order to be called a convert. It argues that it is difficult to speak of an absolute commitment of “one,” and that “somewhere you have to cross a threshold,” even though there is no sharp definition. It compares this to questions of faith and Mount Sinai, and argues that a religious court is still required to decide, just as one decides what counts as a heap, while rejecting the explanation that this is merely linguistic synchronization.

Arguments versus sociological identities, and the example of “sane halakha”

The text distinguishes between a logical mapping of types of arguments and a sociological identification of groups such as Orthodox and Reform, and argues that there is no complete overlap between them. It argues that you can find a reformist who advances Orthodox arguments and an Orthodox person who advances reformist arguments, and therefore what matters is “the type of argument, not who makes it.” It cites the book Sane Halakha by Moshe Zemer and argues that some of its arguments are examples of midrashic conservatism, in the sense of applying the words of the Sages to a new reality, rather than a reformist argument of the “today it doesn’t fit” type.

A rough association with ethoses: Haredi, Modern Orthodox, Sadducees, and Pharisees

The text suggests an association of ethos in which “literal conservatism” is identified with Haredi culture as a cultural declaration, even though in practice Haredim change a great deal. It argues that the Haredim are “the farthest away” from the Judaism that existed a thousand or three thousand years ago, but their ethos is preserving a form like a “shtreimel” regardless of place. It identifies “midrashic conservatism” with Modern Orthodoxy and defines it as halakhic elasticity through midrashim that justify change in the name of truly preserving tradition. It argues that the ancient dispute between Sadducees and Pharisees already revolved around this distinction, and gives examples such as “an eye for an eye means monetary compensation” and lighting before dark as opposed to sitting in the dark. It also cites Rabbi Blumentzweig’s statement that a custom is “the fixation of the exception.”

The Meiri as a midrashic conservative and the question of the legitimacy of change

The text returns to the Meiri and asks where he stands on the map. It suggests that the possibilities are either midrashic conservative or reformist, but leans toward seeing him as a midrashic conservative because he makes an effort to justify the change through the description of non-Jews “who were not bounded by the norms of the nations.” It states that a reformist argument says, “True, that is the Jewish law, but today it doesn’t fit,” because of the costs involved, whereas the midrashic conservative argues that the true Jewish law today is a different application of the words of the Sages. It argues that the instinct to identify every change as reformist is a logical and substantive mistake, because midrashic conservatism can actually require change, and avoiding change can even become “negligence” if that is the correct Jewish law for the present reality.

The example of women’s fitness for testimony and the distinction between a reformist claim and a midrashic claim

The text brings up the disqualification of women from testimony and cites the Sages’ exposition, “Then the two men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord,” as the basis for “men and not women.” It notes that the verse is speaking about litigants rather than witnesses, so the exposition appears “far-fetched” and on its face a “rigged game.” It distinguishes between a reformist claim, based on “today it no longer applies” and considerations of image or difficulty, and a midrashic claim that tries to link the law to historical circumstances such as women’s lack of education and social involvement in the past. It argues that in this case, “as far as I know, you won’t succeed” in proving such a midrash, even though “many have tried and failed,” and points to the question of what one does when no midrash can be found.

Midrash as a combination of changed circumstances and a meta-halakhic claim, and the doubt in the Meiri

The text argues that the existence of a midrash is what distinguishes Orthodox change from reformist change, but that the midrash itself is made up of two components: a factual component of changed circumstances, and a meta-halakhic component that explains why the change in circumstances is relevant to the law and what the basis of the Jewish law was in the first place. It states that the hard part in arguments for change is proving the meta-halakhic component, not merely recognizing the factual change in reality. It argues that in the Meiri there is an indication of changed circumstances, but one does not find in him a midrash proving that the Sages related to non-Jews this way “because they behaved like uncivilized people.” Therefore two opposite possibilities arise: either this was obvious to him, or he thought it was unnecessary — in which case the position comes closer to reform. It concludes that the central question is what one does when there is doubt with respect to the midrash, and on that, “we’ll talk next time.”

A topic of changes in Jewish law versus the eternity of the Torah. We talked a bit about the sources in Maimonides regarding eternity, where he speaks quite forcefully, but somehow from what he says it seems that what exactly must be preserved is not entirely clear, because after all, many things are renewed over the course of history, they change, they are renewed despite the need to change. And in order to try to explain this more, I brought the example of the Meiri, where the Meiri talks about changing the attitude toward gentiles in light of changing circumstances, while the accepted assumption, at least, is that the Meiri did not make an illegitimate change. So then we need to explain: what does a legitimate change mean? What is legitimate about the Meiri’s change? And what other changes are not legitimate? And for that, last time I talked about this example of swimwear, right, with the different ways of relating to the accepted custom or the accepted ruling. Right? Do I change my swimsuit to warm clothes when I arrive in a cold region? If it’s because I don’t care, then I’m a heretic. If it’s because I think that’s the right way to preserve the custom that existed until now, that our ancestors wore clothing suited to the weather, then I too wear clothing suited to the weather—only now the weather is cold, so the clothing one should wear is warm. Then I’m a conservative; we called that interpretive conservatism. And if someone continues walking around in a swimsuit and refuses to change because our ancestors wore swimsuits, then he is a literal conservative. The difference between interpretive conservatism and literal conservatism is that with interpretive conservatism you need interpretation in order to show that you are conservative. With literal conservatism, people can see that you are conservative; that is, you walk the way your ancestors walked. With interpretive conservatism, you need interpretation to show that this is the correct way to preserve, that this is really the thing that should be preserved—that our ancestors wore clothes suited to the weather, not that they wore swimsuits. In this case it happened to be a swimsuit at that time, but really—so this thing is called interpretation. Therefore that conservatism is based on interpretation, so I called it interpretive conservatism. And in the end we arrived at the point that the Reform person is supposed to be a fourth category. And the Reform person is basically someone committed to what our ancestors did—but not entirely. He is committed and it matters to him, but not at any price. That is, there are prices he is unwilling to pay, whether value-based prices or factual prices, it doesn’t matter. And therefore he sometimes changes, or does not act the way our ancestors did. And here I really rushed through this at the end of the lesson, so I want to sharpen it a bit more.

Usually we are used to seeing things in black and white, meaning either yes or no, and so intentionally I kind of let you search a bit—what is the model, what niche is still left here in order to include what “Reform” means. We defined literal conservative, interpretive conservative, and heretic. Where is there another model, a model for reform, that does not map onto one of those three? And it was hard to find, until in the end I told you what I think the fourth model is. And why was it hard? It was hard because we are used to seeing things in black and white. And if you are committed to what our ancestors did, then you are a literal conservative or an interpretive conservative. If you are not committed, then you are a heretic. So what is left? Either you are committed or you are not committed. What else could there be? This is what is called the law of the excluded middle. Right—either X is true or not-X is true. What else could there be? But yes, there could be. It could be that X is somewhat true. It is somewhat true and somewhat not true. An example of this is the heap paradox, which I already mentioned—a whole series of paradoxes whose basis is really the vagueness of concepts. I say that one pebble is not a heap. If there is a pile of pebbles that is not a heap, adding one stone does not change its status. One stone here, one stone there, won’t change it from heap to not-heap or vice versa. But the third assumption is that a million pebbles are a heap. Now those three assumptions together obviously cannot fit with one another, right? One stone is not a heap, adding one stone does not change the status, but a million is a heap. So how did that happen? One stone—we added another stone, it didn’t change the status, so now it’s two. Added another stone, didn’t change the status. So at what point on the way to a million did it change from not-a-heap to a heap? Meaning, those three assumptions do not fit together. So what do we give up? Which assumption is not true? We have to give up something if they don’t fit together. The false assumption is that adding one pebble does not change the status. It does change the status—but only slightly. That is, true, no single added stone will turn you from non-heap to heap, but adding a stone turns you from a little less heap-like to a little more heap-like. So if it was 0.4 heap, now it is 0.41 heap, or it has become a bit more heap-ish. And that is really the point. And in the end, a million pebbles is already a heap.

What is the definition of a heap? What? What is the definition? Two, three, five, ten? So that’s what I’m saying—there is no definition. There is no definition, because this is not a binary-logic concept. If there were a binary definition, you would say that up to one hundred pebbles it is not a heap, and from one hundred on it is, but that doesn’t stand the test of reality. We do not define a heap that way. But on the other hand we do use the expression. In fact we call one thing “not a heap” and a million things “a heap.” So we still need to give some meaning to the way we use that term. And the meaning is a non-binary meaning. Okay? The term “heap” is a non-binary term. There are degrees of heapness from zero to one, and not just “heap” or “not heap.”

This is not such a good example, because now you are talking about how people in language relate to things. And it may be that one person says yes and another says no—it is not a matter of truth, whether it is true or false. It is a matter of how a person defines in his language what a heap is. So one person might say yes and the other no; it is not a matter of truth and falsehood. It is personal. I disagree on two levels. First, I do not think this is only a matter of human definition. When I say that something is a heap, I mean to make a claim that I stand behind. It could be that you disagree and we have an argument. Fine. So how would you define a heap if it is not what a person defines? I don’t define it. I say: this is what we understand as a heap; in my opinion it meets the criterion. You think not, so we have an argument. “We” meaning human beings generally—but it is not subjective. It is at least intersubjective or objective. The fact that there are disagreements does not prove otherwise. It only says—there’s a book by Pirsig, you know it? It’s called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Robert Pirsig. It used to be a cult book. So in that book there is a rhetoric lecturer called Phaedrus—that’s what he calls him—and throughout the book he is kind of on a race, riding a motorcycle, constantly chasing the definition of quality. He teaches rhetoric, so he grades student essays, and he tries to define for himself when an essay is good and when it is less good—how do I grade an essay. And he cannot define it, until in the end he has an illumination—an illumination with an “a,” yes—he suddenly understands, the penny drops. What is the insight? The insight is that the Greeks messed up our minds with the idea that every concept we use has to have a definition. And if there is no definition, that means the concept has no meaning. And he says that’s wrong. A definition is an attempt to fit the meaning into some pattern that can be expressed, something that can be passed from one person to another. Maybe that cannot always be done, but that does not mean that if there is no definition then the thing has no meaning. When you stand before an essay, he says to himself, you know whether that essay is high quality or not high quality. So I don’t know how to define it—fine. And maybe it’s dangerous that I can’t define it, because then everyone can bring in his own personal impressions. נכון, everything is correct, it is dangerous, it is problematic, all true—but that does not mean it has no meaning. The concept of quality has meaning even though we do not know how to define it. Same thing here with the concept of quantity, right? A heap is basically some quantity. I say it has meaning even though I cannot define it. And this identification—that every concept must be definable, otherwise it has no meaning—is mistaken. It is a false positivism.

Yes, but Jewish law is binary. All the measurements are something—an olive-bulk, here, a bit less than that. First of all, Jewish law depends on what you’re talking about—Jewish law today, Jewish law according to the Talmud. The classic example is the chick within fifty cubits. No, that is Rabbi Yirmiyah, and they threw him out of the study hall over that. That’s a classic example against your claim—that they threw him out of the study hall over that. No, no, they sent him out and said there is a definition in there, yes. Fine, they told him, leave it alone, because fifty cubits is more or less what you understand—that’s what they told him. Why are you driving everyone crazy with mathematics? That’s what they were telling him. But there it’s a leap in a second, you’re not— No, what is an olive-bulk? What is an olive? Where in the Talmud did they define what an olive is? They tell you the measure is an olive-bulk. What is an olive? There are disputes—Rabbi Chaim Naeh, the Chazon Ish. What is a cubit? So there is a definition—what is a cubit? From here to here. But from here to here of whom? Of what kind of person? A large person? A small person? What is a known cubit? Hm? No, they did not know—no, that’s a mistake, they did not know. Exactly as you don’t know, they didn’t know either; it just didn’t bother them, and it bothers you. Because you are a mathematician. No, really! It didn’t bother them. They said fine, a cubit—I place the cubit more or less, it is the cubit of an average person, so that’s what we are talking about. That is a measure. That is exactly the point. The measures of the Sages were not measured in centimeters. There was no meter in Paris that establishes the standard and relative to it everything is measured, or a second that everyone uses to measure what a second is. No. It simply didn’t matter to them that a second was defined by some atomic process. What is a second? They weren’t interested. Roughly speaking, you know, you place a cubit, or a reasonable olive—you know what an olive looks like, more or less. What is yad soledet? You know at the beginning of Shemirat Shabbat Kehilkhatah, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman there tries to calculate what yad soledet is, and he does some experiment with a duck’s backside or something—I don’t know exactly what—and gets some lower bound that yad soledet is not less than 45 degrees or 40 degrees, something like that. Obviously yad soledet is more than that, just intuitively, but never mind—he couldn’t prove more than that. That was the lower bound. Therefore from that point on we are concerned that 40 or 45 degrees is yad soledet. Fine? But that’s very implausible.

They said 1080 parts. What? They said 1080 parts—you are right. That is a measure that seems objective, although okay, one has to check—they still didn’t have a standard. What is 1080 parts? How did they measure? They didn’t have a standard of what a second is. So even there, in the measurement, something practical remains. More or less, 1080 parts is about half an hour. What? It’s the hour itself; they are parts of an hour that changes. What? They are parts of an hour that changes. Yes, depending on the hour. In any case, I’m saying: those 1080 parts in that calculation are not a changing hour. You are talking about the global hour, not the proportional hour, an hour of day and an hour of night. These are not proportional hours. When you intercalate the year or sanctify the month, it cannot be proportional hours. Hours of what time? After all, you need to calculate over the whole month, the average—an hour is always an hour. Only in the day it can be shorter and at night it can be longer, but when you talk about the whole 24-hour cycle, an hour is always an hour.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that the concepts we use in everyday life—and by the way this is true for all everyday concepts—yes, for example, when my children were small they would ask me: from when is it afternoon, when it is permitted to go out to the yard? Between two and four you’re not allowed to go out to the yard. From when is it afternoon? Every time: wait, Dad, is it already afternoon? What stands behind that, of course, is the heap paradox. Because what are they saying? At twelve it is not afternoon, right? One second will not change it from noon to afternoon. So when does afternoon arrive? Then afternoon never arrives. So how at four or five is it already afternoon? Or from when is a person bald? That is called the bald man paradox. All these paradoxes use that structure—they are all the same, of course, the accepted name is the heap paradox. From when is a person bald? A person who has one hair is bald. Add one hair to a bald head and it does not change the situation. A person with a million hairs is not bald—I don’t know how many there are, lots of hairs—he’s not bald. Right. So when does it change? Again, all everyday concepts—every last one of them, by the way—all of them, including the concept “bird,” the concept “table,” whatever you want. Take one of Escher’s metamorphoses between fish and bird—you know those metamorphoses? So from when does it begin to be fish or stop being bird? I don’t know. It is somewhat fish and somewhat bird. It is 0.2 fish, 0.8 bird. 0.3 fish, 0.7 bird. Little by little you do—yes, it is just a different interpolation. In a computer, how do you do this? Very simply. You put an image of a fish and an image of a bird, and you weight the pixels. You take a pixel from here, multiply by 0.3, take a pixel from there, multiply by 0.7, and you draw the sum on the corresponding pixel. And if you change it to 0.2, 0.8 or 0.4, 0.6, then you will get more fish or less fish. Now what does that actually mean? It means that even concepts like fish or bird are not concepts like afternoon or heap or bald or something like that. Every everyday concept is really something that should not be judged in terms of binary logic of yes or no, but rather every everyday concept is judged by fuzzy logic, by continuous logic, all the values between zero and one. Vague logic.

The question also depends on what sensor you use to test. What? The question also depends on what sensor you use to test. Fine, that is to know what percentage you have, but I am saying: beyond that, I want to know from what percentage onward it is a heap. After that comes the question how I measure what percentage there is, or hairs. If you look at the picture, it won’t change between fish and bird. What? If you look at the picture, it won’t change between fish and bird. Because you don’t see it with your eyes. Fine, that is the sensor. But we make this into an ideology about every object or thing that one says: this belongs to fish, this belongs to that, this is a subspecies. Nonsense. Nonsense. There is a continuum. Of course there is, of course there is, of course there is. There are certainly amoebas, there are all kinds of intermediate creatures that are between living and inanimate, not only between fish and bird. Of course there are. Now even if in reality there are not, I can define one conceptually. On the intellectual level I can define one. That, by the way, is the dispute between creationists and neo-Darwinians. Are there intermediate stages? What are those leaps, how do those leaps occur? Creationists say this proves evolution cannot explain things because there are no intermediate stages, and neo-Darwinians say nonsense, there are many intermediate stages. And we find intermediate stages. Fine, there is not a full continuum because of how many creatures we actually have, but yes, there are intermediate stages. And on the level of definition you can certainly define an intermediate stage. Something in between—0.5 of this plus 0.5 of that. That would be half fish and half bird, or half cloud and half scream—the scream of some little child in pain. I can take any two things, half of this and half of that, and sum them and create a creature, at least intellectually, a new creature, and that creature is half-half, or 0.2 and 0.8.

So what is the meaning of saying you cannot define it, just like that? What is the meaning? So I’m saying that in everyday language—it’s not just everyday language, not just the language in which we speak, but what we speak also expresses a real idea. First of all one needs caution, and second one needs to know that when we cut, when we set a standard, we are always doing something artificial. Because it really is not like that. There really isn’t a standard of seventeen stones or four. Maybe it is defined by its practical consequences. Exactly, exactly. When you want practical legal consequences, for example juridically—if on the legal level there is some law that applies only to heaps, then the law has to define what a heap is, otherwise what will we do? A law has to be defined. So what happens? The law makes some definition, but that definition is artificial. The concept “heap” is a continuous concept, not a binary concept. Okay? Definitions are always artificial and context-dependent. So the law defines it one way, Jewish law defines it another way, and therefore also—if I return to our example—then commitment to tradition or to Jewish law in the swimsuit example is also a concept that has a continuum of levels. You can be not committed at all, you can be fully committed, and you can be committed at 0.4, or 0.7, or I don’t know. You think this can be defined in Torah? Meaning, definitions—idolatry, for example. Yes, of course. Idolatry is according to what— What? I wrote a book about it. I see. In the series on Talmudic logic, we have a Talmudic logic series that we’re writing, and one of them is a discussion of fuzzy logic in Jewish law. Yes.

In any case, that is not the only reason. I said there may be several systems, like systems of natural morality and also a system of Jewish law. In both of them there may be systems that you believe in, and sometimes there may be clashes between them, and now you choose one or the other—not because you are not fully committed to Jewish law and also fully committed to morality. No, I understand, but you won’t be able to decide if that is really the case. We talked about that when we discussed morality. You won’t be able to. So when there is a clash, how do you decide? I don’t know, but you have to decide. “I don’t know” hides your answer behind it. “I don’t know” means that one of them I am more committed to than the other. No, in a specific case—fine, so it depends on the case, I don’t care, so it depends on the case. I don’t need to determine that generally for the whole system. In this case, this principle is more binding for me than that principle. Fine, so that already means I rank the level of commitment continuously and not in binary fashion. If it were binary, that is what we called the incommensurability of values in the series on morality—that they are incommensurable, you cannot compare them. But the fact is that in the end we do decide. We decide because there is a continuum behind the things. I very much want to be healthy, but when something tastes good, I eat it even though it’s unhealthy. Why? Because I want to be healthy—but not that much. I want to be healthy at 0.8, not at 1, okay? Not at any price.

Why does the very existence of decision require that there be measurement and comparison of the weight of all the considerations? Why? What do you mean? I didn’t understand. I decide in a clash of two values or whatever. You say that if each one were absolute, if it were not a continuum, then I could not decide at all. But a person could decide based on considerations that are not a weighing of weights, not a balancing of weights. There are tons of ways of deciding that are not rational. No, irrational is something else. I am talking about rational. There’s even a Nobel Prize for this. No, the Nobel Prize is for mistakes. The Nobel Prize is not for the fact that people— No, a Nobel Prize for how people make decisions. Kahneman—but that is a Nobel Prize for mistakes. That’s the whole idea; he makes a living from people’s mistakes. In other words, in the end I’m talking about people who are not mistaken. Obviously there are many people who make mistakes—that proves nothing. I am asking: how do we really think one can decide, not where we make mistakes. We make mistakes, we make mistakes, all of us make mistakes. A person can decide with heads or tails when he has a conflict. That says nothing about the market of weight. Does he decide? Does he decide? No, he does not decide; he determines what to do, but he does not decide in the deeper sense. So I don’t understand what it means to determine instead of decide. To decide is when you do not use heads or tails—when you determine what is correct to do here and what is not, what gives way before what. Saving a life versus Sabbath—there, in 2009, we talked about this. I said that there are ways of deciding between values by quantitative considerations if you manage to map one onto the other. For example, desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths—but these are all techniques that really bypass the notion of decision. And in the end we were left with the fact that there are also real decisions. And those decisions imply that there is something continuous here and not something that is one or zero. Always. Unless I use workarounds. On the contrary, heads or tails is always either passive omission is preferable, or heads or tails, or something like that—it is always a case in which I avoid deciding. I only determine what to do without deciding. But I am talking about when I really do decide.

So what I am really saying is that commitment to tradition is also a concept that should be discussed using fuzzy logic. Meaning, there are levels, a continuum of levels. There are those who are committed at 1, there are those who are committed at 0.8, and there are those who are committed at 0.3. There are different levels of commitment. Now one can discuss, for example on the level of Jewish law—just now I saw, I glanced at Rabbi Amsalem’s book upstairs, about conversion, about acceptance of commandments in conversion. He has two books there, I just saw them, I haven’t really gotten into them. So indeed the question is: how much commitment must you accept in order to be called a convert? That is exactly our question. And the question is whether commitment has to be 1, or perhaps commitment at 0.3—he is traditional. Meaning, yes, he thinks it is nice to keep commandments, worthwhile to keep commandments, good, proper to keep commandments—but 0.3, not 0.8, meaning not 1. What about that? Is that okay? Is that not okay? Where does the threshold come from? After all, it is hard to speak about someone for whom it is 1. What is 1? None of us can really be absolute about anything. Somewhere you have to cross a threshold. Where is the threshold? There is no concept in the world, no situation in the world, from which you can emerge with a sharp definition. There isn’t. Our lives are always conventions.

Isn’t there weight? There is weight to all this. You say there is a proper continuum of all the commandments, but there is weight to things. No, no. I am not talking about the weight of all the commandments, about how many commandments he will keep. I am asking how committed he is to keeping the commandment. Not how many of the commandments he undertakes to keep, but how committed he must be in order to keep the commandments. Fully committed at 1? Committed at 0.8? Committed above half? I don’t know. What is the level of commitment? I am not talking about which commandments he chooses to keep. This is a global question. How could we even introduce calculation here? Once you spoke about faith and what it means to believe. And you said, okay, the major rule for a believer is someone who says he believes in the revelation at Sinai. That is some sort of threshold. It is a threshold, and the question is: how much does he believe in the revelation at Sinai? 20 percent? It is like an olive-bulk. An olive-bulk is not a measure, because first tell me how much an olive is. So fine, he believes in Sinai—but what does he mean by the concept of believing? To believe means to know at 20 percent, at 70 percent, at 100 percent—I don’t know. I have no idea. I do not know how to define such a thing. What does Jewish law say? I don’t know. Jewish law doesn’t say. You look at a person and say: is he a believer or not? That is exactly like quality; I have no definition. But the religious court has to decide whether such a person is called a believer or not called a believer. It is your perspective, how you look. What is called a heap and what is not called a heap. And that is exactly the point. Now many times people translate this the way you suggested earlier, and I do not agree with that translation. They say: well, if that is so, then it is a convention, a linguistic convention. It does not really express real content. Rather, okay, you call it a heap and he calls it a heap; we just need to synchronize the language. I say that is wrong. There is a concept of heap, and when we speak to one another we understand what we are talking about. We have different evaluations of the threshold above which it is right to describe something with the concept of heap. But it begins with the question of how we see reality itself. I do not agree with the subjective translation of these disagreements.

Well, Ibn Ezra and Sefer Hasidim say no. For example, there are parts of the Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not write, and Moses our Teacher did not write either. What does “until this very day” mean in what is written there? Right. Amnon Bazak published a book, and then another book came out, probably more far-reaching—what was it called, something about additions? Yes, Genzel’s, exactly, a collection of articles—I forgot the name. At the Edges or something. Fine.

Just a second—there are things that supposedly you cannot define. What about “round”? We are going to define mathematically exactly what round is. We are going to define symmetry. Now, round is something you can show people. Mathematical concepts are something else; I wasn’t talking about those. A point is a defined concept. But round is much more a matter of whether you can define it or not. It is a matter of— No, but in practice. Still, round we can define exactly, precisely. The round of life is not the mathematical round. No. The round of life is the non-mathematical round. That is exactly the point. And that you will not be able to define. But that is the concept “round.” Because in life it is the Mandelbrot fractals, you know—there are no circles in life. There really is no perfect circle in the world. I don’t think so. I am saying there is something mathematically round, and still you can see various pictures that are not precisely round and I can say, “Yes, it is close enough to count as round”—exactly—and then I’ll speak of it that way. No, no, you are translating it subjectively. I do not agree. We can argue, but I do not agree. I claim that there is a concept of round that is an everyday concept, not a mathematical concept. And if I crossed that threshold, I can call it round, and if not, then not. Now what is that threshold? I have no threshold. That is exactly the point; there is no such thing. 0.8 round—for me that is round enough. I say it is round. True, in mathematics, since it deals with concepts not from our world—therefore I was careful to say that concepts from our world are always fuzzy. Mathematical concepts are something else; there you have pure definitions.

And because of that I learned at Tadiran, where I worked for one year—enough for a lifetime. I’m a theoretician, not for those things. There I discovered the technological uncertainty principle. Meaning, the product of the amount of mathematics in a component times the probability that it will work is a constant. In other words, if there is a lot of mathematics in the component, the chance it will work is negligible. That’s the logic. And once I learned that, I went to study physics and finished with that whole business. I understood that in engineering I was not going to be magnificent. I was there doing diagonalizations of orthogonal polynomials in order to build some component, some filter for a satellite, which in the end was canceled—to my good fortune, because it definitely would not have worked. And there I saw how technicians work. A technician—if something doesn’t work, boom, he stomps on it, gives it a little hit, replaces the capacitor with the transistor, and in the end it works. He is more right than I am. He doesn’t know what he is doing, he understands nothing, but he has experience in his fingers, he knows how this thing will work and how it won’t work. And then I understood that I should not be there. I had no business there. At least I reached that conclusion in time. Empiricism. Yes, exactly. I arrived at my rationalism empirically—that’s how it is.

Anyway, yes, so that is regarding the Reform person. Right. The Reform person is committed—fairly committed. It’s not yes committed or no committed; it’s someone in the middle. That is basically the fourth niche. 0.8. Yes, exactly. Now the concept “committed” is itself a concept—committed itself is also problematic. Why? Let us speak about the concept of commitment itself. What is commitment? Fuzzy logic. There is fuzziness. There is 0.8 obligation, 0.6 obligation, 0.2 obligation. To something specific? Yes. But the very concept of obligation is also subject to fuzzy logic. I am talking about the concept of obligation. But what is obligation? Someone says, “I am 100 percent committed,” he is 100 percent committed—but that is not the same 100 percent. And it is not the same concept. So how do you even— So why is it fuzzy logic? Then maybe they simply are not talking about the same concept. What—for example, you are talking about commitment to commandments. But can you apply the same thing to commitment to belief? Why not? What— It is commitment in another context, but I would make the same analysis there too. Commitment to belief can also be at eighty, at sixty. Because with commitment to commandments, sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t. But with belief, what does it mean? Half the day you believe like this? No, you are giving it the wrong quantitative translation. I am talking about someone who keeps commandments meticulously from morning till night without deviating right or left. But still he does it because he thinks there is a sixty percent chance that one should keep the commandments. I am not translating this quantitatively into how much of the day he keeps commandments or how many commandments he keeps. Maybe it can also be translated that way, but it does not have to. We should not become captive to that translation. Rather, it is the intensity of commitment. There is a commitment of 0.8—meticulous, down to the least and greatest commandment, to keep all the commandments scrupulously. That does not mean he keeps only some of them or does not keep them fully. It means that his commitment to them—say if it comes into conflict with something else—then maybe that is where it will show itself. Yes, I understand.

Also in the realm of belief—what do you mean? Who can know anything with certainty? Can I know with certainty that there is a Holy One, blessed be He? That there was a revelation at Sinai? I do not understand how anyone can know anything with certainty. We are all human beings, and human beings can err. Faith is not knowledge. Faith is knowledge. Fine, perhaps we have not discussed that yet, so we may have to discuss that too. But the question is—no, in my eyes faith is knowledge; it’s the same thing. Fine, synonyms, yes. And according to that, almost everyone is Reform. Even if it is ninety-nine percent, it is still not one hundred percent. Right. The threshold between Reform and Orthodox, or conservative, is itself a fuzzy threshold. Yes, right. It could be that among the Reform there is some issue. I do not think they even got to the level of this idea. I don’t think that to this day they believe—this is really something ad hoc, a few words here and there at most—but to this day they don’t talk— No, they don’t believe in Torah from Heaven at all. Who? Reform. Right, and all the more so they don’t believe in the Oral Torah. So how can you place them here? No, the point is—they also don’t believe in the Oral Torah as from Heaven. Conservatives perhaps more so. But even among Reform, there are some who are committed to the principles of Jewish law for reasons I have never managed to understand, and I had several interesting conversations with people like that. I couldn’t understand them, but yes, the fact is that they are committed at some level. But they are willing to change, or if there are prices to pay then they back down. But they are committed—they are committed without a reason of Torah from Heaven. So their level of halakhic commitment is 0.3, not because of Torah from Heaven. They do not believe in Torah from Heaven—not even at 0.8 in Torah from Heaven. Fine. But in their halakhic commitment it is 0.3. I am of course doing a bit of demonization here.

Okay, in any case, that is the map. Let me just finish this map—it took me too long. I’ll finish this map with the identifications that always stand behind the picture. The identifications behind the picture are contemporary identifications. I was speaking about types of arguments, but in the end when we identify Orthodox, heretic, Reform, Conservative, it is a sociological identification. And the sociological identification does not necessarily go together with the logical identification I proposed just now. There is of course a connection, but it is not an identity, not completely synonymous. Therefore, I was really characterizing arguments, not people. If I had to characterize people, I would say—and again, this is crude—you can see a Reform person making Orthodox arguments and an Orthodox person making Reform arguments, and for me what matters is the type of argument, not who is making it. When you say people, do you mean ideologies? Yes, which group they identify themselves with, yes. So that is more of a sociological characterization than an essential one. And here I would say there is some connection—it’s not that there is no connection—but there is no identity. One has to be careful about this. Every person identified with one group can raise arguments of all the different types.

Every party, every movement, has its platform, where they explain exactly what they believe. And I relate to them—I pay taxes or dues or whatever to that movement—I relate to that platform, and that is correct. No, but what do you mean? Not every Reform person thinks the same thing, even about the principles of Reform Judaism, and not every Orthodox person either. For me it is the platform—if I am a Republican, there is the platform. Fine, but even that platform is itself a matter of disputes—what the platform says. That platform is not written anywhere in iron, on rock; it is written on ice. There are many disputes around the issue. But it doesn’t matter to me. Again I say: if a person says he is Reform, you still cannot be sure with regard to each and every argument what kind of argument it will be.

I told you that there is a book by one Moshe Zemer called Reasonable Jewish Law. He was the head of the Reform movement in Israel—the movement for Progressive Judaism, I think they call themselves—and he wrote a critical book about all kinds of laws that need to be changed, and so on. And when I read the book, it was very interesting, because some of the arguments were completely Orthodox arguments. They were arguments of interpretive conservatism. Arguments saying: look, reality has changed; if we want to apply the words of the Sages to the new reality, we have to apply them differently. That is an Orthodox argument par excellence. You can accept it or not accept it, but it is an Orthodox argument; it has nothing to do with Reform. Reform is an argument that says: look, true, that is the Jewish law, but today it doesn’t fit. Could it be that he raised the argument because that argument convinced him? Possibly. Fine, I am not dealing with the person, I don’t care, I am not dealing with the person, I am dealing with the argument itself. So on the level of the argument, here is a person—even if you are Orthodox—listen to what he says and see; either agree or disagree, but you have to examine the argument itself and not the one making it. I don’t need to, I’ve heard enough. Right, I agree.

So the identifications, roughly speaking, seem to me to be as follows: the literal conservative is the Haredi. Haredi, whether it is Haredi-Zionist or non-Zionist Haredi—it is the same thing. In this respect it is the same thing. Maybe there is a difference about reciting Hallel on Independence Day, aside from that there is no difference. And this basically means in ethos, of course. They are not really like that. But their ethos is literal conservatism. We preserve things without going into the reason of the verse, without making interpretations and saying that today this applies and today this should be implemented differently. That is an ethos which itself does not hold water—they do it all the time. It’s like my uncle said that Abaye and Rava certainly studied in Yiddish, because they knew how to learn—meaning, it couldn’t be that they didn’t study in Yiddish in yeshiva, right? So that is the conception, that is the ethos. He too knows it isn’t true; he’s not an idiot. I’m telling you he’s not an idiot—I know him. But his ethos is that they studied in Yiddish. And that is the ethos of literal conservatism. It does not really hold water. The Haredim have changed many things, maybe more than others. I’m not sure who is closer to Judaism as it was a thousand years ago or three thousand years ago. I have almost no doubt that the Haredim are the farthest away. The shade most distant from the Judaism of back then is the Haredim. But never mind—their ethos is the ethos that we preserve the shtreimel whether we’re in Poland or Bnei Brak. And that is literal conservatism.

Interpretive conservatism is Modern Orthodoxy. It has nothing to do with Zionism, by the way. Here in Israel it is associated with Zionism. But Modern Orthodox means that you are Orthodox, but an elastic Orthodox person, flexible. What does that mean? I am not saying this disparagingly; I define myself that way. Maybe I’m disparaging myself, I don’t know. But the claim I am making is that I make changes by means of interpretation. I make interpretations that create change, and I still think that this is the right way to preserve the tradition. Meaning, I come from the position that I am fully committed to preserving the tradition, only I claim that preserving the tradition means this is the right way to do it. I claim that the Haredi is mistaken—not that the Haredi goes too far, that he is stringent and therefore I am not that stringent. He is mistaken. Because what needs to be done is: now you should do it this way, and if he does that—if he keeps walking around in a swimsuit—he is simply mistaken. The tradition of our ancestors is now to wear a coat, not a swimsuit. Okay? That is the interpretive conservative.

I don’t entirely agree. If you look at major Haredi halakhic authorities, whenever there is a question of whether something changed—can I take a shower on a Jewish holiday, once it was— I said: their ethos is literal conservatism. Nobody actually does that in practice, I said. No, by “does it in practice” I mean also not in the responsa, not only in behavior. Not only in behavior; also in the halakhic responsa it does not happen. I completely agree; that is what I meant. I did not mean behavior. Also in halakhic thought it is not true. What do you mean? The true literal conservatives are the Sadducees. And the Pharisees who opposed them—this is exactly what the Sadducees criticized them for. What are all the disputes between Sadducees and Pharisees in Jewish law? These disputes. The Pharisees were Modern Orthodox and the Sadducees were literal conservatives. Right? The Pharisees say “an eye for an eye” means money, and the Sadducees say nonsense. “You shall kindle no fire in all your dwellings,” so they sit in the dark. And the Pharisees say no, we light it beforehand. Fine? So the dispute was already there. Now our ethos became fixed. Rabbi Blumenzweig once said, in Yerucham, the head of the hesder yeshiva in Yerucham, he once said that custom is the solidification of the exception. Meaning, a custom always begins as a deviation from Jewish law, and once it begins it becomes forbidden to deviate from it. Because “do not forsake your mother’s teaching.” Meaning, you must act according to the custom—but it begins as something that is itself a deviation. And after you deviate, you solidify it. That is what happened with the Pharisees too. The Pharisees really made some deviation; they did interpretive conservatism, and now we are literal conservatives with respect to Pharisaic thought.

Many times after there is some great revolutionary, his students become insane conservatives. Right? I think we spoke about this once. I said this about the Briskers. What? Until another revolutionary comes along. Yes. I spoke about the Briskers and the students of Rabbi Kook and all those who explain to us that they are preserving the tradition from Sinai until their own day and that nothing has changed. Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Rabbi Chaim of Brisk—that is the tradition of the Briskers. And Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to the Rav—that is the tradition of the Mercaz people, of those particular students of Rabbi Kook. And they don’t notice that they made a crazy change compared to what existed before them. They are sure they are preserving the tradition from time immemorial, and anyone who does otherwise is simply deviating from the tradition. And someone who constantly talks about deviation from the tradition is usually someone who has no connection to the tradition at all. Meaning, if you check practically, someone who keeps saying all the time, “yes, tradition, tradition, the tradition of our rabbis, you are deviating from the tradition,” and so on—that is usually a person holding a view that has absolutely nothing to do with tradition. Check it.

Anyway, those are the identifications. Those are the current identifications, more or less, if you want, in terms of those types. Now I return to the Meiri. So what is the Meiri? Where does the Meiri stand on this map? After all, that is why we drew the map—to see how the Meiri’s argument is located here. Reform? What do you say? Interpretive conservative? Either interpretive conservative or Reform, right? Those are the possibilities. Now one can say he is Reform. I have no proofs, I have no proofs, but it seems to me that in his wording one can understand that he intends interpretive conservatism. Why? Because he basically says that those things were practiced regarding those gentiles who were not bound by the norms of nations, and so on. Meaning, he is trying to make an interpretive move to ground why he is changing the Jewish law. He is not saying today it is not suitable because of how they will look at us. But he also doesn’t say that what the Sages—he invented the interpretation; he himself is making the interpretation. Yes, we’ll talk about that. No, no—interpretation not in the sense of a midrashic text, Midrash Rabbah or Sifrei, but when you make an interpretive argument in order to show why you are conservative, then you are an interpretive conservative. You make the interpretation. Okay? So basically the Meiri takes the trouble to make an interpretive move in order to explain why he supports changing the Jewish law, and therefore I said he is an interpretive conservative. Because the Reform argument—again, I don’t care what Reform Jews do in practice—the Reform argument will not make an interpretive move. The Reform argument will say: leave it alone, not at any price; there are prices I will not pay. And is there commitment to Jewish law there? Yes, exactly. There is commitment to Jewish law here, he just claims that what Jewish law obligates today is this, and not what you read in the Talmud. That is really plain interpretive conservatism, right? This distinction is very important in order to understand the pattern of the Meiri’s argument.

And what does this really teach us? It teaches us that many times, when all kinds of proposals come for changes in Jewish law, there is often some conservative instinct that says, no no, this is Reform. Nobody takes the trouble to examine the logical infrastructure of the law, of the proposal, sorry. Does this proposal say, look, once they did כך but today it doesn’t fit, or it’s hard for me, or it doesn’t suit me, or all kinds of such reasons—that is Reform. Because it basically means: I would like to do it, but not at any price. He is not interested in changes; he simply doesn’t do it. So the Reform person is someone who says: I propose a change because today it isn’t so relevant and it is less suitable and there are heavy prices, it doesn’t matter, the community won’t stand for it, all kinds of things like that. But if you propose it on the basis of interpretation, then you are an interpretive conservative, not Reform.

For example, if someone comes and proposes to validate women as witnesses today, okay? In the Talmud it says, in tractate Shevuot, that women are disqualified from testimony: “And the two men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord”—men and not women. A completely far-fetched derivation, by the way, on its face, because “and the two men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord” refers to the litigants, not to the witnesses at all. Fine, so the Sages interpret it regarding the witnesses. In any case, men and not women. And that is also a problem because usually the Talmud says that everywhere in the Torah Scripture equates woman and man for all punishments in the Torah. Anything written as men means both men and women, and here suddenly “and the two men shall stand before the Lord” is interpreted as men and not women. This whole derivation, it seems to me at least, cries out for interpretation, because I say that this derivation was basically a rigged game. They wanted to disqualify women and they found this verse on which to peg the disqualification.

Now what happens? You can come and say: look, today this no longer applies; women are intelligent, you cannot say such a thing to them, what a bad name Judaism will get if you disqualify women from testimony, and so on. That is a Reform argument. And rightly so—that kind of argument cannot be accepted in the straightforward way. Maybe you can defend it a little more with “its ways are ways of pleasantness,” weave in a few verses, and then it sounds better. But basically that is a Reform argument. But if you say: look, the disqualification of women in the time of the Sages stemmed from the reality that women were uneducated, not involved in social life—but today women are something else. And therefore, just as the Meiri said regarding gentiles, therefore the correct application today even of the rabbinic Jewish law is to validate women as witnesses. Now you can accept that and you can reject that. You can try—but as far as I know, you won’t succeed. You cannot really show such a thing there. And many have tried and failed. In this specific case. In the specific case of women’s testimony. They searched. Many people searched for a way to do it. In a moment I will come to what one does when one cannot find an interpretation. But I am saying it is very hard to know, because derivations like these are derivations that were created over the course of history. We spoke about how Maimonides says maybe three or four are supporting derivations; most of them are creative derivations. A creative derivation means that the derivations created new laws throughout history. So perhaps this too is a creative derivation, and the question is whether I today might not make a different creative derivation because it is a function of the circumstances. Then I am conservative, not Reform. It is not a Reform argument.

Therefore this automatic rejection of every proposal for change in Jewish law as though it were Reform—a kind of anti-Reform hysteria—is a very problematic rejection, first on the logical level, but beyond that also on the substantive level. Does the Holy One, blessed be He, really want us today to validate women as witnesses? Then we are criminals if we do not validate them as witnesses. People think that being conservative comes without a price. Let’s be conservative—that’s the safe path. Exactly, extra safety. Innovation—who knows, maybe yes maybe no—extra safety. I cannot know. Indeed one cannot know. One cannot know whether this interpretation is right or not right. I am not familiar— Wasn’t that the approach of the Sages when they said “make a fence for the Torah”? Make a fence for the Torah where one needs to make a fence. The fence was so that not everyone would misunderstand the subtleties and therefore— And on the other hand there is the danger that someone will rob you and no one will get your money back for you because the testimony against him is from two women. So what then? That is also a danger. Now I am not saying which danger is more important—decide for yourself—but there are dangers in both directions. If the Holy One, blessed be He, says that women are fit for testimony today, then that is what He would expect us to rule, because after all today one should wear a coat, not a swimsuit. That is the true Jewish law. That is what the Holy One, blessed be He, truly expects of us. Someone who walks around in a swimsuit is a criminal. That is the interpretive conservative. So he says that one who does not validate women as witnesses today is a criminal, not someone who is merely stringent. He is a criminal. Because he is not issuing the correct ruling. He has two valid witnesses and he is leaving the money of the oppressed in the hand of his oppressor. He is not taking the money away from the robber. He does not accept valid testimony, so he is a transgressor. This is not the safe path. There is no safe path here. Conservatism can be criminal conservatism. It is not that innovation is necessarily criminal until proven otherwise and the conservative is necessarily righteous until proven otherwise. No. There is a price to this and a price to that. A decision must be made.

Reality says that the role of the rabbi, say, or the halakhic decisor, is to see whether the circumstances have changed, all the time, all the time. Right. Not only to look at what the Jewish law or the ruling is, but also whether the circumstances have changed or not. Yes. And that is the dispute, right? According to what you are saying. Right. I am now going to sharpen that further; that is the next stage. Who does that today? I don’t know. Well, there are some who do it, but the ethos does not put it on the table. They do it with a wink. And did they do it in the past? Historically, for example? All the time. All the time they looked at Jewish law that way. And the Meiri was the only one I found who openly put on the table the radical change he made. And there are so many changes that were made casually, as if incidentally, without putting it on the table. That is what I am saying. The ethos is not like that, but in practice of course they did it.

I know that once you spoke about Jewish law as a code of the Sages, say. Hm? Say that again? I know that once you spoke about Jewish law as the presumptions of the Sages, say, presumptions like “better to dwell as two,” and all that. Here you are looking at actual Talmud study that supposedly— I am getting to that, I am already getting to that. How can one say—this I don’t understand—that something was received at Sinai, the Oral Torah say as a transmission from generation to generation, and as learning, and this is the learning of— No, to that I already said in previous lessons that I do not agree. Moses our Teacher did not receive the Oral Torah at Sinai; that is nonsense. What he received were a few initial foundation stones, perhaps basic ways of looking at the interpretive principles, again without defining them precisely. A few explanations of words—perhaps that “the fruit of a beautiful tree” is the etrog; Maimonides claims that is a law given to Moses at Sinai, and there is a hint to it also in the Talmud. That’s it. And most of the laws given to Moses at Sinai that we have are laws that were renewed over the generations. And what you said was not a law given to Moses at Sinai—for example, the testimony issue—is that not a law given to Moses at Sinai? I don’t know. That is the question. But if someone comes and says: look, this is a derivation of the Sages, because in the Talmud it appears as a derivation—“and the two men,” men and not women—it does not say that it is a law given to Moses at Sinai. Now the question is whether it is a supporting derivation or a creative derivation—I don’t know. So now you have to check: if it is a creative derivation, maybe it can be changed today, or not? In a moment I will talk about a situation of doubt—what happens when I do not know, what do I do when I do not know.

But I am saying that on the principled level, proposals for change are really proposals—those proposals that are accompanied by an interpretation are not Reform proposals, they are proposals of interpretive conservatism. And this paralysis that we impose on ourselves, whereby every proposal for change is Reform and therefore must be clamped down on and not accepted and not agreed to—the Reform succeeded in a certain sense. They killed us. Meaning, I do not think they intended that, but in the end we helped them, and that is a mistake. And the way to address this is to do the conceptual analysis we have done here, because as long as you do not do this conceptual analysis, you have no way of deciding. Then indeed everything looks like a Reform proposal. So how do you defend against Reform? There’s a slippery slope; tomorrow morning we’ll change everything. There is no slippery slope—let’s define what is yes and what is no. Once there is a definition, there is no need to fear a slippery slope. So now we can discuss each thing on its own merits.

Now, that still does not solve the problem completely—in a moment I will talk about that—but true, one can take almost every Sabbath law and say, “that was in the time of the Sages,” and so forth, “and it should be changed,” and so on. That is what I meant when I said I still haven’t solved the problems. I’ll get to that in a moment. So the principal claim is that there are demands for change that are Orthodox demands—interpretive conservatism, not literal conservatism but interpretive conservatism—and they are not Reform, and they should be discussed. Now the question is what to do with them. Even after I say they are Orthodox demands, only now can we begin discussing what to do with them.

Once you taught us that in interpretive reading, before you get into the details, there is an inherent danger in assuming a hidden premise—that this was the argument standing behind the original determination. The Meiri’s argument, for example, from what you managed to teach us, I was not impressed that he brought any proof. That is where I am going, that is where I am going—a good question. Look, basically what distinguishes literal conservatism from interpretive conservatism, and Reform from interpretive conservatism, is the existence of the interpretive move. If the proposal for change is accompanied by a rationale that is interpretive, then the proposal is Orthodox. Now you can accept it or not accept it—that does not mean automatically that it is correct—but it is a proposal that it is legitimate to discuss within halakhic commitment. Okay? Now one has to discuss it.

Now I want perhaps to define this a bit more—or before I define it, maybe I’m not even sure I’ll get to that definition. No, certainly I won’t get to it. So I’ll just do one small thing in order to finish this stage. I’ll answer your question, your question. Look, the Meiri, on the one hand, it is clear that he intends interpretive conservatism, but on the other hand he does not really make the interpretation. Or perhaps I’ll connect it to your question. About anything you can say: fine, that was then, today reality changed, and therefore it’s not relevant. That has no meaning; you can always present things that way. Don’t you have some obligation to prove it? To show from the Sages’ interpretation, to show that this form of expression in the Torah is interpreted this way? There is an extra “et” here, so I interpret it; “et” comes to include, or some verbal analogy, it doesn’t matter. There are interpretive tools you can use. Seemingly, you cannot just say, “So it was then, today it is different, therefore I am changing it.” To prove what the basis of this law was. Yes. In other words, in the end, the claim is that when you want to change Jewish law regarding women’s fitness as witnesses, it is not enough to say that reality has changed. That is really what I am saying. Reality has changed means that women today are more educated, engaged in economics and the marketplace and the whole world, they are active in the world, they know everything, all fine. But who says that their disqualification from testimony was due to lack of familiarity? There it explicitly says, “because they are light-minded.” Hm? No, that is not written anywhere. “Women are light-minded” is not written anywhere? No, it is not written that it is because they are light-minded. It says “women are light-minded”; many things are said about women. It also says “extra understanding was given to woman.” That also is written. You can derive whatever you want. But the disqualification of women from testimony was never linked to the idea that women are light-minded. Except for some conservatives trying to show that this hasn’t changed and— Women’s Torah study. What? “Whoever teaches his daughter Torah is as though he taught her frivolity”—there too it does not say, except “as though he taught her frivolity.”

In any case, the point is: when I come to validate women as witnesses, it is not enough for me to say that reality changed—that once women were at home, didn’t know the world, and today they do. Because I still need to add another claim: that when the Sages disqualified women from testimony, it was because of that. Because if it was not because of that, then what do I care that reality changed? Now that claim is basically a meta-halakhic claim. Change in reality is a factual claim; you can examine it—what was then, what is now, more or less we can reach a conclusion. But there is always something else in the background, and that something is always the hard part in arguments for change. Because you need to show that at the base of the Jewish law there is the interpretation I was talking about. The interpretation I was talking about is not the interpretation that once women were uneducated and today they are educated—that is change in reality, not interpretation. Go and see; even the greatest conservatives would agree to that, if they have their eyes even a little open. They just do not agree that the disqualification of women from testimony is because of lack of education. So the dispute is not over whether reality changed or not. The core of the argument for change is not the pointing to change in reality, but rather the meta-halakhic interpretation that says that if women were disqualified from testimony, they were disqualified because of lack of education or involvement in society. Now I can come and say: fine, but today they are educated, therefore today they should be validated. And that is very hard to prove, very hard to prove.

Why does that need to be proven? Wait—on that I’m going, on that I’m going. Not today, but I’ll talk about that, because here the conservatives really raise a claim that has to be confronted. Prove it. And that is really your point: about anything in the world I can say, look, selecting on Sabbath once meant some very significant action, but today selecting is nothing because we do incredibly sophisticated actions. So today selecting is nothing; today it is not forbidden on the Sabbath. That’s it. Now who said that selecting was forbidden only because it was a very, very significant action? I have to prove that in order to make such a claim. Otherwise there really is no difference between a Reform person and an interpretive conservative. What is the difference? I said that the existence of an interpretation is the distinction—but what is the interpretation? And here I distinguish between two things. The interpretation is made up of two aspects: one factual aspect and one meta-halakhic aspect. The factual aspect says that the circumstances changed, and the meta-halakhic aspect says that the change in circumstances is relevant to the Jewish law under discussion, and that the disqualification of women from testimony is because of lack of education or involvement in society. That is already a question of halakhic analysis, a question of why women were disqualified from testimony. So that is a meta-halakhic question, not a factual question. And when I speak of interpretation, it has to contain both things.

Now in the Meiri there is the first part, the pointing to a change in circumstances. The second part is not there. Nowhere in the Meiri have I found the interpretation that shows or proves that what the Sages said about behaving a certain way toward gentiles was because they behaved as uncivilized people. What do you learn from that? There are two opposite possible conclusions here: either it was so obvious to him that everyone understood it, or he claimed that it is not needed. In that case he is Reform—that’s Reform. Either he is Reform or he is an interpretive conservative, I don’t know. But if he is an interpretive conservative, as I tend to think or want to think—I don’t know, I have no proof—if he is an interpretive conservative, then the only possibility is to say that apparently it was self-evident in his eyes, or at least it was a case of doubt. I don’t know whether it is one way or the other. And now the big question is: what do we do when I have doubt regarding the interpretation? If my interpretation is something I cannot prove, but I have doubt about it, what do we do then? So that we will discuss next time.