Processes and States in the Context of the Response, Lesson 2
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- [0:00] Dynamic concepts and repentance
- [3:06] Velocity as potential for change
- [5:53] Rabbi Kook on perfection and perfecting
- [13:55] The contraction of the Holy One, blessed be He, and creation
- [22:00] The line of contraction and the sefirot in Kabbalah
- [23:46] Anaximander and describing the universe’s potential
- [25:11] The ventilation of the vacuum and prime matter
Summary
General overview
The text presents a view of dynamic concepts as having intrinsic value, and explains that the Sages say a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person only if repentance is understood as a process and not as a means of reaching a static state of perfection. It uses Zeno’s arrow paradox to sharpen the distinction between a static description and a dynamic one, and argues that velocity is a potential for change of place that can exist even at a single instant. It then brings Rabbi Kook in Orot HaKodesh on perfection and becoming perfected, connects this to the Ari, to the idea of a supernal need, and to a midrash brought by the Leshem about Adam’s sin, and suggests that the structure of creation includes deficiency in order to allow growth and repair. It broadens the discussion to philosophical questions about potentiality and actualization, to discussions of Kabbalah, modern physics, quantum theory, and the uncertainty principle, and to halakhic / of Jewish law expressions of confusion between a dynamic process and endpoint states, and concludes with an anecdote about midnight and the moment of death as concepts of transition.
Repentance as a process, and the penitent versus the completely righteous person
The Sages say that a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person, and that statement makes sense only if repentance is viewed as a process with intrinsic value and not merely as a means of reaching the state of a completely righteous person. If the goal of repentance were only to reach a static state, then at most a fully accomplished penitent would be equal to a completely righteous person, not better. The preference for the penitent indicates that change and progress themselves are an added virtue beyond the final state.
Zeno’s arrow paradox and velocity as potential
Zeno argues that when you look at an arrow in flight, at every moment you see it in a different place, and then the question arises: when is it moving? The text answers that the arrow is not “standing still” at every moment, but rather “is located” at every moment in a different place. “Standing still” means that the body is in a place and its velocity is zero, so that in the next moment it will still be there, whereas “is located” describes only the coordinate at a given moment. It argues that the confusion comes from the assumption that dynamic concepts like velocity exist only over a span of time, whereas velocity can be understood as a concept that exists even at a single instant.
Operational definition versus the essence of the concept, and measuring velocity
The text distinguishes between the operational definition of velocity as change in place divided by change in time and the question of what velocity is as a concept. It gives the example of radar and the Doppler effect to illustrate that one can seemingly measure velocity at a point without relying on differences, even if the example is not exact. It argues that the calculation indeed uses a small time interval around the point, but the result is a velocity defined at every point in time.
Collision with a wall and the distinction between velocity and change of place
The text presents a case in which a body is moving and strikes a wall, and at the moment of contact the wall prevents it from continuing, so that the velocity is not expressed as change of place. It argues that in such cases the velocity exists as a potential for change of place, but the potential is not actualized because of an external constraint, and so it may instead be expressed as heat or in some other way depending on the nature of the collision. This distinction is used to sharpen the point that velocity is not change of place itself but the power from which change of place proceeds.
Rabbi Kook: perfection and becoming perfected, supernal need, and the addition of smallness
Rabbi Kook in Orot HaKodesh (part two, volume two) describes the tendency of existence as a great presentation of elevation and eternal addition, and argues that without a reality of smallness and deficiency there is no growth, only greatness and fullness. He says that even though there is no end to the exaltation of complete perfection, included within it is also a sublime power of constant ascent, and it is considered as though absolute perfection becomes perfected through the becoming-perfected that comes through the addition of smallness coming into greatness, and “this service is a supernal need.” The text explains this to mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, is perfect and therefore cannot become more perfect, but “the capacity to become perfected” is itself understood as a perfection, and therefore the appearance of deficient creatures who can become perfected allows the perfection of becoming-perfected to appear.
The question of the connection between human becoming-perfected and the perfection of the Holy One, blessed be He, and criticism of pantheism
The text raises a difficulty: if a human being becomes perfected, in what sense does that “complete” the Holy One, blessed be He, and what connection is there between the becoming-perfected of other creatures and His perfection? It rejects the need to arrive at pantheism and presents the language of the Hasidim, such as “the contraction not in its plain sense,” as an area connected to the matter of repair. It suggests that the key is the distinction between potential for change and actual change, so that the Holy One, blessed be He, has the potential for becoming perfected, which does not come into actualization because of His perfection, and creation makes possible the appearance of actualization from potentiality.
The Ari, Etz Chaim, contraction, and bringing His perfections from potential to actual
At the beginning of Etz Chaim, the Ari writes that the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to bring His perfections into actuality, and therefore contracted Himself and created the world. The text explains this through the model of velocity as potential: the potential exists, but actualization of actual change cannot be attributed to the Holy One, blessed be He, in the sense of moving from imperfection to perfection. It distinguishes between the static perfection of “being more complete” and the dynamic perfection of “becoming perfected,” and argues that the potential for becoming perfected is itself a perfection.
Meshekh Chokhmah: non-sin is not repentance, and the value of spiritual dynamics
The text mentions Meshekh Chokhmah and argues that being in a state of non-sin has no special virtue beyond the fact that the Torah forbids sinning, and therefore this is not the process of repentance. The act of repentance is the dynamic part of the process, the progress and the change, not merely arriving at the “normal” state of commandment observance. A penitent who reaches the level of a completely righteous person possesses both the static virtue of that state and the dynamic virtue of the process he underwent.
Supernal need, “there is no king without a people,” and the value of unrealized potential
The text says it has no answer as to why the Holy One, blessed be He, had an interest in turning the potential for actualization into actuality, and connects this to the expression “there is no king without a people.” It raises the question of to what extent a potential that cannot be actualized is a “real” potential, and suggests that with respect to the Holy One, blessed be He, the very fact that He has the potential for becoming perfected is the perfection, not the actual realization.
A metaphysical consideration: whatever appears in the world must exist in the Holy One, blessed be He, in potential
The text suggests a philosophical argument that does not depend on preferring dynamism or stasis: if there is in the world an ability to change, its root must be in something that exists in the Holy One, blessed be He, because from Him we received that ability. It explains that the potential for change must exist in Him even if it is not actualized, because otherwise it could not appear in the world. It connects this to kabbalistic discussions of the chainlike unfolding of the worlds as the gradual realization of a potential for concreteness.
The Leshem: the line, contraction, above and below, and the sefirot hidden within the Infinite Light
The text describes the kabbalistic model of the Infinite Light, a circular empty space created by contraction, and a line of light entering the space and not touching the lower part in order to create the concepts of above and below. The Leshem explains that this asymmetry allows hierarchies of “more and less,” and on that basis the sefirot are positioned along the line. The Leshem asks how these concepts could arise ex nihilo, and concludes that within the Infinite Light there were “hidden sefirot,” meaning a potential for above and below, because everything that is revealed in a lower world must exist in potential in the world above it.
Anaximander, “vacuum” in physics, conservation laws, and the potential of properties
The text compares this to Anaximander, who speaks of prime matter from which opposites separate, and explains that the creation of particle–antiparticle pairs out of “vacuum” in physics is not a complete explanation because the “vacuum” is not really nothing. It argues that physics deals with properties and not with the entity that bears properties, and therefore even if conservation laws of properties are preserved, the philosophical question of a “law of conservation of being” still remains. It concludes that the state called vacuum includes the potential for concepts like electric charge, because without the potential existence of such concepts they could not appear in actuality.
Nachmanides and Maimonides: creation ex nihilo, prime matter, and the midrash of “the snow beneath His throne of glory”
The text says that Nachmanides, in his commentary on Song of Songs, accepts that the world was not created ex nihilo but from prime matter, and connects this to Plato’s view. It quotes a midrash in Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer: “From what were the heavens created? From the snow beneath His throne of glory,” and notes that Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed treats this midrash as puzzling, while also relating that Maimonides believes in creation ex nihilo but discusses other positions as well. The text uses this to reinforce the principle that prior potential is needed in order to understand actualization from potentiality.
The question of the value of becoming-perfected and viewing process as meaningful
The text says it is hard to explain why a process of improvement has value without getting stuck in an endless chain of “what’s the value in that,” and suggests that this is an intuition according to which when a person improves, something positive happens not only because of the final state. It gives a conceptual example from systems management, according to which dynamism itself and movement between states are an advantage of the system and not only a result that brings it to a better state. It strengthens the claim in the spiritual realm that merely being in a process of becoming perfected is an intrinsic virtue.
Two mistakes in Rabbi Kook: only dynamism or only stasis
Rabbi Kook writes that there is “darkness” in failure to recognize “the teleological tendency” of divine perfection that keeps elevating itself through all creation, and on the other hand that there is a “rejected gloom” in the view that thinks there is only the perfection of ascent and no absolute perfection to which no addition is relevant. The text explains this as the claim that both dimensions are essential: both a static state of perfection and dynamic progress, and that any view that erases one of them is darkness. It illustrates this in education, where it is wrong to suffice only with a demand for progress without a goal, and wrong to suffice only with a goal without value for the process.
Einstein and Bergson: static time versus flowing time and the world-line
The text presents the well-known “debate” between Einstein and Bergson about the nature of time, and describes how in relativity the world-line describes motion as a whole in space-time, so that time is perceived statically as part of a complete structure. It cites Einstein’s condolence letter to the Besso family, in which he presents death as a fact that was already “there” in space-time before we experienced it. It presents Bergson as emphasizing an asymmetry between static space and dynamic time, and argues that Einstein’s error parallels the “second mistake” in Rabbi Kook, in which stasis is treated as primary and dynamism as fiction.
Quantum theory: the uncertainty principle as a limit on grasping place and velocity together
The text argues that the uncertainty principle stems from the impossibility of seeing the two dimensions, place and velocity, simultaneously, because when you “put on dynamic glasses” there is no place, and when you “put on static glasses” there is no velocity. It stresses that the limitation is cognitive/methodological in relation to the mode of perception and measurement, not a proof that only one of the dimensions exists. It concludes that processes and people should be evaluated by both parameters together: both “where they are” and “the derivative,” meaning whether they are improving.
Choice, potential for evil, and the question of evil in the world
The text says that the ability to change is an absolute good because the Holy One, blessed be He, wants there to be a possibility of completion, but choice requires the possibility of choosing evil and not only good. It argues that this is how evil comes into the world: not as evil descending from above but as a product of human use of free choice, while the very granting of choice is good. It connects this to the idea that without the potential for evil there would be no meaning to doing good.
“In the place where penitents stand”: accumulating dynamic virtue on top of static virtue
The text says that the penitent, when he reaches the level of a completely righteous person, holds two virtues: the static virtue of being a completely righteous person and the dynamic virtue of the process he has undergone. It explains that the completely righteous person, in the theoretical example, can be viewed as someone who was “born” in his state without a process, and therefore lacks that dynamic virtue in this sense. It presents this as an application of the need for both dimensions and not as a ruling that only dynamism alone is preferable.
Halakhic / of Jewish law examples: freeing a slave, “do not show them favor,” acquisition, and agency in a process of status change
In Kovetz Shiurim on Gittin, section 22, a claim is brought in the name of Nachmanides that the prohibition against freeing a slave is connected to lo techanem, and the text comments that Nachmanides is speaking about similarity in legal categories and not identity in law. Rabbi Elchanan asks how lo techanem applies here if after the emancipation the slave becomes Jewish, and so the “recipient” is not a gentile, and the text answers that the giving here is a dynamic process that produces a transition of status and is not defined only by the “before” or the “after” state.
In Ketubot 11, Tosafot ask how one may immerse a minor convert on the authorization of a religious court under the rule of acquisition on another’s behalf, if such acquisition operates by agency and there is no agency for a minor and no agency for a gentile. They answer: “Alternatively, since through this acquisition he becomes Jewish, he is considered like a full Jew with respect to acquisition.” Kovetz Shiurim explains that there is no acquisition on behalf of a gentile only when even after the legal effect of the acquisition he is still a gentile, and reconnects this to the difficulty about freeing a slave if it were to stem from lo techanem. The text explains that the complication comes from trying to pin a dynamic law onto one endpoint state, and suggests a distinction: sometimes in the laws of agency what determines things is the sender’s status “before,” whereas in the laws of gifts what determines things is the recipient’s status “after,” and the two types of law relate differently to the transition itself.
Midnight and the moment of death: transition between states and the question of the instant in time
The text brings an anecdote about Balaam, who knew how to aim at the moment when the Holy One, blessed be He, is angry, and about the Talmudic text regarding David who awoke at midnight, alongside the question of how Moses said “about midnight.” Rabbi Shimon Moshe Diskin, author of Ohel Yehoshua, remarks that there is no “time” of midnight as an independent reality, but only a transition between before midnight and after midnight, and therefore it is hard to understand how something happens “at midnight.” He resolves this through an analogy to death: “the hour of death” is also not an existing time but a transition between the state of being alive and the state of being dead, and therefore one can describe the event on the seamline between the two states. The text leaves open the question whether there is such a thing as a point in time or whether the continuum is made only of intervals, and presents this as a direct continuation of the discussion of dynamism versus stasis.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We talked about dynamic concepts. I started from the fact that the Sages say that a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person, and I said that it seems this statement can be understood only if you grasp the value of repentance as a process and not as a means of reaching a better state. Meaning, if the goal of repentance were to get to a state, to reach the state of a completely righteous person, then at most a fully accomplished penitent could be like a completely righteous person. But if I understand that it says a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person, that means the process itself has value, and it is not merely a means for reaching the complete state that follows from it. And then I brought an example of this from Zeno’s paradox of the flying arrow, where the claim was that Zeno argued that since the arrow, when you look at an arrow flying, at every moment you see it standing in a different place, then the question is: when is it moving? Meaning, when does it pass from place to place? And I argued that the arrow is not standing in a different place at every moment, but is located in a different place at every moment. Meaning, standing and being located are not the same thing. When I say that the arrow is located in a certain place, that means that’s its place, that’s its coordinate. When I say it is standing in that place, the meaning is that it is there and its velocity is zero. Meaning, it is standing, that is, in the next moment it will still be there. And what is more correct to say when describing an arrow is that at every moment the arrow is located in a different place, not standing in a different place. When is it moving? At that same moment in which it is located, it is also moving. Really, what lies behind this confusion is the conception of velocity, and dynamic concepts in general—or the concept of repentance, which is what I started from—as concepts that can exist only over a stretch of time. Meaning, a body can have velocity only if I look at it over a span, very short if you want, but it still has to be a span of time and not a point in time. And then of course this paradox of Zeno arises. But if I understand that velocity can exist even at a point in time, then there is no problem: at that same point at which it is in a certain place, it also has velocity. I said that velocity is a potential for change of place; it is not the change of place itself. Change of place is a result of the fact of velocity, and therefore there is no obstacle to saying that a body is in a certain place and has velocity. Meaning, velocity is a potential. It is not correct to say that it is in a certain place and also changing place. You can’t change place at a point in time, but you can be at a certain point and possess velocity, and that velocity will come into actual expression as change of place if we wait. Meaning, wait one more moment and we’ll see that the place changes. I talked about the fact that this mistake comes from our defining velocity in terms of differences, a difference in place divided by a difference in time, and then of course that has to be over an interval and not at a point. But it seems to me that this definition of velocity is an operational definition, meaning a definition of how you calculate it. But the question what velocity is—that is, the definition of the concept of velocity itself, not how you calculate it—does not require a span of time. I gave the example of radar, right, the Doppler effect, that seemingly you can measure the velocity of a body at a point; you don’t have to do it through differences. But that was just to illustrate—it’s not an exact example—but it was meant to illustrate the fact that a body’s velocity is defined at a single point in time. Meaning, after we differentiate the position function or calculate velocity from knowledge of where it is at every moment, the result is a velocity at every point in time. Meaning, at every point the body has a velocity. So mathematicians or physicists usually treat this as some kind of fiction. A body doesn’t have velocity at a point in time; it’s just a description of the fact that in the very small interval around that point in time the body has velocity. And I claim that that’s not right. Rather, it has velocity at a point in time, and that is a potential for change of place. Calculating the velocity requires us to go to a small interval around that point, but the body has velocity at a single point. An example I gave for this was a body moving toward a certain wall. It hits the wall; it has some velocity with which it hits the wall. The moment it touches the wall, the wall doesn’t let it keep moving forward, meaning that it has—yet it does have velocity, and there is something preventing it from bringing that from potential into actuality. It won’t manage to express itself in the form of change of place, so it will come out as heat, or deformation, or depending on the nature of the collision, but there are sometimes situations in which a body has a potential for change of place, it has velocity, but the change of place itself will not appear. There is something that prevents it from appearing. And that is the meaning of the distinction I am making between velocity and change of place, when I say that velocity is not change of place, but rather the potential from which, or because of which, change of place emerges. That means that sometimes a body can have the potential to change its place, but that potential cannot come from potential into actuality. I don’t remember if I mentioned this—I think I did, but I’m not sure—about the perfection and becoming-perfected of the Holy One, blessed be He. Did we talk about that? Rabbi Kook in Orot HaKodesh, part two, volume two, talks about perfection and becoming-perfected. So he says: “The tendency of all existence, from the side of the hidden infinite will, as it is revealed to us, is a great presentation of eternal ascent and addition.” To keep ascending all the time—that is the tendency of existence. “For if there is no reality of smallness and deficiency,” meaning if there were no deficiency in existence, “there could be greatness and fullness, but not growth.” If there is no deficiency in existence, then it cannot improve. It can be complete; it can be in a state of completeness, but it cannot improve. “And continual stepping toward added blessing,” but not growth and continual stepping toward added blessing. “Even though there is no end to the elevation of complete perfection, which has no elevation from the side of its infinity, nevertheless this sublime power of constant ascent is also included in it. And this is considered as though absolute perfection becomes perfected through the becoming-perfected that comes through the addition of smallness coming into greatness. And this service is a supernal need.” It sounds a bit like a riddle. He goes on afterward and explains it a bit more, but here he really says it in concise form. He says like this. Let’s say we’re talking about the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, is perfect. Now if He is perfect, then He cannot become more perfect. He is completely perfect. So He cannot become more perfect. The problem is that one of the perfections, one of the things we define as perfection, is the ability to become perfected—becoming-perfected. So becoming-perfected is a perfection of a kind that cannot appear in the Holy One, blessed be He. Since He cannot become more perfect—He is already perfect. So he says, “when absolute perfection becomes perfected through the becoming-perfected that comes through the appearance of smallness coming into greatness.” Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, created us as deficient creatures—or the world—because we can become perfected, and then through that He Himself, as it were, manages to attain that perfection that by Himself He could not attain. And that is what he means by “this service is a supernal need.” Service as a supernal need is a known expression among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), called the secret of service as a supernal need. What we do, basically, the Holy One, blessed be He, needs us—He cannot do without us. Usually, yes, Jewish philosophers are not willing to say such things. That the Holy One, blessed be He, certainly needs nothing—meaning He is perfect, He doesn’t need us, we need Him. But there is what’s called—Rashba also writes this somewhere in a responsum—the secret of service as a supernal need. Meaning, that’s not true. In fact, the Holy One, blessed be He, does need us, and Rabbi Kook argues that at least one of the aspects in which He needs us is this. Because He cannot become perfected—He is already perfect. So how can He nevertheless acquire that perfection too? He creates deficient creatures, places upon them the task of becoming perfected, and through that He Himself, as it were, becomes perfected. That’s what he says later: “In the Infinite Light there is no place for addition and ascent from its own side”—from its own side. “But truly it is impossible that the advantage of eternal ascent be lacking from absolute perfection.” He cannot have becoming-perfected, yet on the other hand it cannot be lacking in Him. Meaning, if one of the perfections is lacking, then He is not perfect. And maybe that is the idea of “He created for Himself a dwelling”
[Speaker D] in the lower realms, as if—like creating
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a deficiency for the question of why we exist, not the question of why He dwells here. “This is the teaching of existence: manifestations of lights of existential life by means of an impression of descent to such a degree that there will always be the possibility of addition and ascent, which in its very essence is the removal of all descent and lowness.” Meaning, the ascent is itself perfection. Not because I reach the perfect state, but the fact that I ascend is itself the perfection—as if that is how the Holy One, blessed be He, becomes perfected. That’s how Rabbi Kook explains it. Basically, what this means still requires explanation. Meaning, what he writes here still needs explaining. Because in the end—what does that mean? In what sense does our becoming-perfected complete the Holy One, blessed be He? He Himself is perfect, so He created other creatures who perfect themselves—what does that have to do with Him? So why does that complete Him? So other creatures become perfected—what, is there some identity here, some sort of pantheism that identifies the Holy One, blessed be He, with us or with the world? It seems to me that there is no need to get to that, because it’s nonsense; there’s no reason to go there.
[Speaker B] Pantheism is just the whole matter of the complete sphere being the Holy One, blessed be He, and us.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but—
[Speaker B] so then you see it in this way, that when a person rises, yes, then he more—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] basically identifies the human being with the Holy One, blessed be He. But I’m saying, that’s pantheism. I think these things really cannot be said. Meaning, they’re just words; they don’t say anything. Hasidim speak in that kind of language, like “the contraction not in its plain sense,” “the contraction not in its plain sense,” and all kinds of matters of that sort, but that really is already totally in the area of repair that we talked about earlier. Right, so that’s what he’s talking about here. This repair is basically as though completing the Holy One, blessed be He. Why did He create us deficient? There’s an interesting midrash that the Leshem brings. The midrash says that after Adam sinned and the Holy One, blessed be He, decreed death upon him, Adam said to the Holy One, blessed be He, “You are framing me. You’re setting me up.” Why? A parable: a man whose wife spoiled his dish, so he took a bill of divorce out of his pocket—
[Speaker D] and gave her the bill of divorce.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So she says to him, “You are framing me. You already had a bill of divorce signed by two witnesses in your pocket before you even tasted the dish.” So you had already prepared this bill of divorce; you didn’t go write it after tasting the dish. It was ready in advance, so you’re just using the matter of the dish as a pretext to divorce me. Adam says the same thing to the Holy One, blessed be He. It says in the Torah, “When a person dies in a tent,” and the Torah preceded the world, meaning death was planned in advance. So why are You telling me that You are sentencing me to death after I sinned? The point is that really this whole business was what the Leshem calls “the governance of the awesome Plotter.” Meaning, that really, this was not a sin that just happened by chance and therefore death was decreed. Rather, the plan from the start was that the human being would fall and would need to repair. Meaning, the deficiency was a deficiency built into creation, not the result of a chance choice by Adam. And the reason for that may be what Rabbi Kook writes here. Meaning, because the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world in order for it to be deficient and able to undergo repair. But I want just to sharpen the point—why this is connected to what I was saying before—because it seems to me that without the distinction we made in previous sessions, it’s very hard to understand this. Meaning, my next claim is this: the Holy One, blessed be He, also has the perfection of becoming-perfected. He Himself—not in us. Because otherwise, the fact that it exists in us doesn’t help at all. Rather what? He has the potential to become perfected, the velocity. But that potential cannot come from potential into actuality because He is perfect. So how does that work? The Ari writes at the beginning of Etz Chaim that the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to bring His perfections into actuality, and therefore He contracted Himself and created the world. That is literally at the beginning of the book, where it speaks about contraction. What does that mean? The potential of becoming-perfected, the velocity—He has that. The change, the actual change that comes into actuality from that potential—He cannot have that because He is perfect, like the ball that meets a wall and cannot actualize its velocity in the form of change of place. But that ball does have velocity; it just cannot come into actuality. Now, the perfection of becoming-perfected is not that I change state, that I was less complete and became more complete. That is static perfection, a perfection that says that now I have become more complete. Dynamic perfection is that I am becoming perfected, not that I am becoming more complete. That He Himself does have. Meaning, He has the potential to become perfected. But He had an interest in that potential also coming from potential into actuality, and that is why He created us. Meaning, He created us so that the potential of His becoming-perfected could also come to expression in the form of something that was deficient and became more complete. That is something the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do. But that is not a deficiency in Him, because the actualization from potential into actuality is not itself the perfection. Really the perfection is that you have the capacity to become perfected or to become more complete. Just as we spoke about the penitent: the value of repentance is not only that I become in a better spiritual state, but the very fact that I am in a process of becoming perfected. The potential for progress is really the essence of the process of repentance. To be in a state where I do not sin—that’s the Meshekh Chokhmah I mentioned—to be in a state where I do not sin, there is no special virtue in that beyond the fact that the Torah says it is forbidden to sin. Meaning, that is not the process of repentance. Meaning, the fact that I do not desecrate the Sabbath—the Torah says it is forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath—that does not mean I have repented. It just means I am keeping what the Torah says. The act of repentance is the dynamic part of the matter. Meaning, that I am undergoing a process, not that I am not sinning. The fact that I’m not sinning—fine, that’s the normal state.
[Speaker E] If there’s also a completely righteous person, maybe he too has the potential.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, which cannot come from potential into actuality. Among the Hasidim too you can find expressions like this, that for this the righteous person needs the Hasidim. Since he is more perfect than they are, then through them he influences them for good and elevates them, and through that he too can, as it were, become perfected.
[Speaker B] But why did the Holy One, blessed be He, have an interest in turning the potential— I don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no idea. But I think the perfection is basically your being one who has the potential for becoming-perfected, not that you actually become perfected, because otherwise I don’t think he solved the problem by saying this. And He had the potential. Only there is—I think this is like the Sages say, there is no king without a people. A potential that cannot come from potential into actuality—the question is to what extent that potential
[Speaker D] is really potential.
[Speaker F] Maybe—I don’t know, at this point I really… So if that’s the case, then the Holy One, blessed be He, would be deficient? No, that’s before that. This assumption, that with respect to the Holy One, blessed be He—not with respect to a penitent—if He cannot become perfected then that is a deficiency. There’s an assumption here that he makes and then answers, but why assume it at all?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As if the Holy One—
[Speaker F] blessed be He is perfect and therefore He is perfect, He doesn’t need…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He argues that in our world there are two perfections.
[Speaker F] In our world there is nothing perfect like—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that “because” is exactly your hidden assumption. Because what you are really saying is that everything in our world that needs becoming-perfected is only because we are not complete. And he says the opposite. He says becoming-perfected has value in itself; it is not only a means of becoming more complete.
[Speaker F] Where does that assumption come from, that becoming-perfected has value?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where does his assumption come from? That’s what he thinks. What do you mean?
[Speaker F] No, that’s what he thinks.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can assume it; you don’t have to.
[Speaker F] But if you take the parable of the penitent, you—
[Speaker D] say that since the change is more important than the absolute place,
[Speaker F] then it really is more important.
[Speaker D] Then someone could come and say no, the absolute place is more important. Right. But when the Sages say that a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person, it seems to me—they don’t say preferable, they say “in the place where…” No, no, preferable, preferable. There’s a dispute among the Amoraim as to who is preferable, the penitent or the completely righteous person.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And when they say that a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person, what underlies their words is that there is value to the process. You can say: I don’t accept that, I assume otherwise. Fine. We are only explaining what stands behind these statements, or what stands behind Rabbi Kook’s assumption. Where did he get it from? Fine—each person according to what he thinks. So that is regarding the implication of this distinction between potential for change and actual change.
[Speaker D] The very assumption that the world is changing, as we see that it changes, starts from the assumption that perfection does not exist within it.
[Speaker F] The very assumption that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not change is the assumption that change does not apply to the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Speaker D] Correct. No, that change doesn’t apply to Him—that’s obvious.
[Speaker F] He doesn’t change, but the Holy One, blessed be He, does not change.
[Speaker D] Right, clearly change does not apply to Him. But if He has the attribute of becoming-perfected despite the fact that He does not change—why is that better? If there is an existing perfect attribute, why should that attribute be important?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are philosophical considerations here that can work even apart from these assumptions about what is better. If He did not have the potential for change, it probably could not appear in the world either. Because things that do not exist in Him—how could they exist in the world? Our ability to do dynamic things, meaning to change things, like everything that happens here in the world, really has its root in something that exists in the Holy One, blessed be He, because from Him we received the ability to do it—after all, He created this world. So there is a philosophical consideration, apart from the question of what is more complete, for saying that in the Holy One, blessed be He, there is—and this is like those questions of whether He can create a stone He cannot lift. No, why? You’re trying, as it were, to attribute to Him something that implies deficiency. No, why deficiency? There’s no deficiency. I’m not attributing any deficiency to Him. I’m claiming that the capacity, the potential to change, has to—so here it’s a consideration without assuming what is more complete, but simply the metaphysical assumption that everything that happens here has its root in Him. That means there is in Him a potential for change. True, it cannot come from potential into actuality, but the potential, the dynamic concept, the dynamic concepts exist in Him too. Otherwise they could not appear here.
[Speaker D] Physical manifestations too, in Him? Again? Physical manifestations that exist in our world—those too are there?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In potential, in potential. These things—all that Kabbalah says about the chainlike unfolding of the worlds—basically says that we see the upper worlds as some kind of potential of our world. And going from potential into actuality is basically becoming more material, more tangible. Yes, but in a potential way it is there. The Leshem writes in Sefer HaKlalim and in Or… Usually Kabbalah is described as a system of worlds one above the other. So there is the Infinite Light, and after that there is a world of line and contraction. Meaning, some circular empty space is formed in the middle of the Infinite Light, and into it enters a line of light. And then inside that space the world is formed. Now, this line that enters the empty space does not touch the lower part. Parenthetically: it does not touch the lower part. It comes, penetrates the empty space, and stops a bit before the bottom. So the Leshem explains—this is what the Ari writes—because otherwise the world would return to being Infinite Light. If it touched the bottom, it would go back. So the Leshem explains that it does not touch the bottom in order to create the concepts of above and below. Meaning, if the line touched the bottom, then there would be no above and no below; it would be touching both sides. In order to create hierarchies, we have to create some asymmetry, so that above the line touches the surrounding light, and below it reaches but remains short. And then along this line the sefirot are formed. Now the sefirot—Keter, Chokhmah, Binah, Da’at, Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkhut—are basically positioned one beneath the other along this line. The degree of abstractness, purity, spirituality is determined by the question of how much higher you are. Because once there is above and below, then it becomes possible to define concepts of more and less, in various senses—more and less. Okay, but without there first being a basic above and below, it would not have been possible to speak about concepts of more and less. And usually in the kabbalistic world it is accepted to think that these concepts were indeed created with the formation of the line. But the Leshem asks—and now I remembered this whole matter—the Leshem asks: how can that be created out of nothing? After all, everything that is created in one world has to exist in potential in the world above it. So in potential, it comes from potential into actuality through the world below. So where were the sefirot in the Infinite Light? Before it withdrew, before this line was formed here, when it filled the whole space? So the Leshem says that in the Infinite Light there were hidden sefirot. Meaning, it had a potential for above and below, because without a potential for above and below, the concepts of above and below, that could not have been created in actuality either. We once talked about this when I discussed Anaximander’s cosmological theory. I think I talked about that once.
[Speaker B] If you talked about it, I didn’t understand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, these aren’t overly complicated things. Potential. Anaximander tries to explain why the world—how the world was created—and he says that the world was created through a split between opposites. In a sense he was very far ahead of his time, like the way we think today: that basically out of a perfect vacuum, in order to preserve the conservation laws, out of a perfect vacuum you can produce a particle and an antiparticle. That doesn’t violate any conservation law, because all the charges are preserved overall. The particle and the antiparticle have opposite charges. Opposite mass, opposite electric charge, and all the charges are opposite, so overall the conservation laws are preserved. Meaning, there was zero and it remained zero, so you can create a world without violating the conservation laws. In a certain sense these are modern conceptions, yes, from quantum field theory; that’s usually how things are understood there. But Anaximander adds one more point. Anaximander says there was prime matter, and out of this prime matter opposites separated off—heat and cold, yes, light and darkness and things like that—and that’s how the world came into being. So I once saw someone wondering why you need prime matter at all; like in modern physics, just produce it. To his credit I say this, not against him. Meaning, physicists don’t understand that physics is only part of the story. Meaning, in order to give a complete picture, you also have to think about philosophical difficulties, not only physical ones. And the formation of pairs out of a vacuum is not really an explanation. If there is such a vacuum from which pairs can emerge that cancel one another out, then it isn’t a vacuum. There is something abstract within it that enables the formation of those pairs. If it were simply a vacuum with nothing at all in it, nothing would arise there. Which means that what physicists call a vacuum is not a vacuum. It’s what Anaximander calls prime matter. It’s basically matter without properties, and now you can color that matter in opposite colors and then it will cancel out. But if there weren’t something there to color, then how would it come into being? Meaning, the conservation laws in physics describe properties.
[Speaker D] The vacuum is potential. Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, it describes the properties. And the total set of properties has to be preserved—but properties of what? Meaning, after, say, the world was created, and say everything happened through opposites, and overall the total charge in the world is zero and the mass in the world is zero and everything is fine—all the conservation laws were preserved—so now everything is fine? Does that mean it’s clear why the world was created? It doesn’t contradict anything, it’s very logical, everything is fine. What do you mean? All this craziness that came into being here out of nothing—is that explained just because the conservation laws were maintained? Obviously not. Rather, what? There is some conservation law here that certainly was broken. Before there was nothing, and now there is something. So true, that something has zero charge and zero mass and all the charge, everything is zero. No problem, no conservation law was broken from a physical point of view. But something was broken. The conservation law of being, let’s call it that. Before there was nothing and now there is something. So that’s a philosophical conservation law, not a physical one. Because philosophy deals with things, and physics deals with the properties of things. Okay? So I’m saying here too: what physicists call a vacuum is not really a vacuum. That’s the philosophical consideration I mentioned to you earlier. That consideration basically says that what a physicist calls a vacuum comes from looking only at part of the picture. They look only at the properties. So in terms of the properties, there was a vacuum here. But there was something here that bears the properties; electric potential existed even before this was created. Because if that concept didn’t exist, then how would electric charges suddenly come into being just like that? Fine, they cancel one another out, overall the charge is zero. But before that there was no electric charge at all, and now there are electric charges. How did that happen? It means that the concepts—the potential for the existence of electric charge—already existed even in the vacuum state, because otherwise it couldn’t have arisen. So that’s the line of thought here.
[Speaker F] Didn’t the Holy One, blessed be He, create the world ex nihilo?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Nachmanides writes this in his commentary on Song of Songs.
[Speaker F] Maimonides said it wasn’t necessary. What? Maimonides says that even if someone proved that the world was not created, that it was eternal, it would be okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s Maimonides, in Guide for the Perplexed, yes. But Nachmanides—Nachmanides, in his commentary on Song of Songs, brings a midrash there from Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer where it says there: “From what was heaven created? From the snow beneath His throne of glory. From what was the earth created?” from—I don’t remember exactly what. And Maimonides writes in the Guide that in all his life he had never seen such a baffling and strange midrash, as if to say that the world was not created ex nihilo. And Nachmanides, in his commentary on Song of Songs, says: correct, the world was not created ex nihilo; it was created from prime matter. Plato’s view.
[Speaker F] That there is prime matter that may have preceded it, eternally.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, you can say that perhaps it is somehow in the Holy One, blessed be He, in some potential sense, it doesn’t matter. But there is something in potentia before the thing comes from potential into actuality, because otherwise it has no way to emerge. So that is the philosophical claim here. Nachmanides? Nachmanides. In Guide for the Perplexed, chapter 26, search for “From what was heaven created?” in a web search, something like that.
[Speaker F] And Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed says that he believes it is ex nihilo. Yes, that’s something else. That if they had proved to him that it was eternal—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That—
[Speaker F] it wouldn’t have made a difference.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But he gives a creative interpretation of the verses. Yes.
[Speaker C] I wanted you to talk about consistency, this whole idea of improvement and repentance, some sort of ideas. You explained how it works, as it were, at some level of potential, but it’s so important.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What value is there in it? It’s hard for me to answer that, because if I tell you what value there is in it—say, because it contributes to X—then you’ll ask me, and what value is there in X? In the end you’re always left with something that is somehow supposed to be self-evidently valuable. Now, I don’t know how to ground it in something prior. I think—I don’t know—I have this kind of intuition, and each person has to decide, that when a person improves, something positive happens not only because he reaches a more complete state. I thought of trying to bring examples from what people say, say, in the management of factories or systems. There are those who claim that the fact that systems undergo change is good for them. But not because the change brought them to a better state, because then it’s trivial. Obviously improving improves—that’s obvious. Rather, the point is that their very dynamism, the very fact that they move from state to state, is itself somehow an advantage of the system; it somehow improves the system. Now that basically means that the process has some significance not only in the sense that it leads me to a more complete state, but the fact that I am in a process itself does something. So I’m saying in the spiritual world too, the fact that I am in a state of improvement is itself some kind of advantage, not only that it brings me to a more complete state. I don’t know how to explain it better than that.
[Speaker C] Maybe there’s an idea that we are partners with the Holy One, blessed be He, in sanctification. Right, right. Rabbi Kook says that. So because of that it’s like this thing—it’s not quantitative, it’s qualitative. Meaning, I am a stronger partner with the Holy One, blessed be He, in bringing the world to perfection if I came from a lower place.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but you can also explain that—
[Speaker C] that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] by saying that if I participate with the Holy One, blessed be He, in bringing the world to a more complete state, then it still remains consequentialist—
[Speaker C] that the world—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] is more complete, only I and the Holy One, blessed be He, each of us has some share in that complete state. I want to claim more than that.
[Speaker C] But—
[Speaker B] The Holy One, blessed be He, is all being, okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to claim that the very movement in the direction is itself an advantage, not that I have shares in the complete state.
[Speaker B] But if you look at the world, then the state of perfection has to change. Because perfection in a world that keeps developing and growing is not static.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Entropy increases—that makes it less complete. Entropy decreases—that’s a more complete state.
[Speaker B] Yes, but then if entropy increases, then perfection becomes imperfect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but you’re already assuming laws of nature.
[Speaker B] I’m asking why they’re like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The second law. Okay. Rabbi Kook mentions in the course of his discussion here: “And just as the great darkness is the consciousness that does not know this supreme secret of the teleological tendency, of the divine perfection that keeps rising through all creation without end or limit, so even more than this, banished gloom is the opinion that thinks there is here only this perfection of ascent, and no absolute perfection, to which and from whose side no addition or ascent applies, because everything is already exalted and complete.” A very interesting remark. “This is the gloom that dwells in the approach of the darkening modern philosophers.” He is speaking about Bergson. What is he basically saying? He says there can be two mistakes. There is one mistake made by those who do not recognize that becoming perfected is itself perfection, and therefore they think that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not perfect. Because wait, something is missing. And the opposite: that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not have becoming-perfected, because becoming-perfected is not one of the perfections. But he says that no less dark is the conception that says there is no absolute perfection, rather perfection is only progress. And both things are a mistake. Meaning, what is needed is basically a conception in which both dynamism and statics have value. Both dynamic measures and static measures.
[Speaker F] Or both vector and…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Both motion and height. Both motion and place.
[Speaker F] Not direction—vector.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, or actually the place to which I arrive—not the direction of the vector, but where I get to, yes. So this dispute—this remark reminds me of something, and I’ll devote a few sentences to it. There is a well-known dispute that never actually took place, but in the world it is well known as if there was a dispute between Einstein and Bergson. Einstein in the theory of relativity presents time as something static. Because the basic concept in special relativity is a world-line. So you draw x as a function of t—say a certain body is moving. Let’s say at constant velocity. In special relativity it’s only constant velocities. So you have x as a function of t, and you have a straight line of the body’s progression. x rises linearly with time. Okay, that straight line is constant velocity. Now Einstein looked at that line not as composed of points in which at each point in time I’m in a different place, but rather there is a reality of space and time together; for him space and time were one whole, and that entire complete line is basically the fundamental entity. I’ll just give you one example of the conscious significance of this. He had a close friend named Besso. And Besso—this Besso died, so he sent a letter of condolence to his family. Einstein sent a letter of condolence to Besso’s family, and he says, look, really nothing happened now. Meaning, there’s nothing to be sorry about, because we physicists know there is nothing to be sorry about, because the fact that Besso died in 1951, say, was already true in 1920 that Besso would die in ’51; we just hadn’t experienced it yet. So what? But it was already there. Meaning, 1951 with Besso’s death was already there; we are just passing from here and arriving there, we travel across spacetime, but space and time are there all the time. Meaning, this is a kind of static picture. And Bergson presents—in his book Creative Evolution and other books as well—a conception in which time is not static, unlike space. Meaning, that there is a difference between—yes, we have this kind of feeling, right?—that time is constantly advancing and space is static. We can move in space, but space itself is something static, and time somehow flows; time is something dynamic. So Bergson develops this asymmetry between space and time a great deal, and it took a major blow when relativity was created. And therefore it was basically perceived as a kind of dispute between Einstein and Bergson, and Einstein obviously won big, because Bergson didn’t have the mathematical tools to deal with it—but of course Bergson is the one who is right in the dispute he lost. Because Einstein is basically making Rabbi Kook’s second mistake. Meaning, he thinks statics is everything and dynamism is a fiction. Essentially that is what lies behind the question of the arrow in flight. You look at the arrow and say: basically velocity is nothing, it is only our way of describing some change of place. There is only change of place; velocity is a fiction. And then you fall into these paradoxes of the arrow in flight and all these problems, and you don’t understand why the dynamic answer comes, from my side, completely—and all the things we talked about. And Rabbi Kook says: this trouble is no less great than the opposite darkness, which sees everything in progress and doesn’t care about the state you are in. Because one could get to a point where I want only progress. Sometimes people say about students, I don’t set goals for them, I only want them to progress. That’s also not right. Meaning, you need to ask them to progress, but I also want there to be a goal. We’re not just playing games, moving in circles. Our goal is indeed to arrive somewhere. So the evaluation is a complex evaluation. I assess him both by where he has arrived, and by the fact that he is in a process. Meaning, both of these things—meaning, to grasp each one separately and not recognize the existence of the other—these are conceptions that Rabbi Kook calls darkness. And indeed the full picture is some kind of double conception, which I think one is the potential of the other. And that’s why I said that in quantum theory the uncertainty principle is a result of the fact that we cannot see these two things at the same time: velocity and place. There’s the uncertainty principle. Why? Because when I put on the dynamic glasses, there is no place; when I put on the static glasses, there is no velocity, like when I look at the arrow. You can’t wear both pairs of glasses at once, so there is an uncertainty principle between velocity and place. But that doesn’t mean they are not there. They are there; we just have no way of working with them or grasping them together. Meaning, I have to choose either to look this way or to look that way. But it’s not correct to say that only this exists or only that exists. One has to understand that both together exist. And if I come back to our issue, basically the claim is that you are supposed to evaluate a person, or processes, or states, by both parameters: both by the parameter of where they are, how complete their state is, and by the derivative—meaning, also by the question whether they are improving, whether the whole thing is progressing.
[Speaker B] And here there’s the potential and the end. The Torah is constantly talking about both. No, right, that’s another part of the beauty. That’s why I have the potential to be wicked.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that I can change something is one thing. The ability to change for the good or for the bad depends on my choice. But the fact that I was given the ability to change is itself absolute good, because the Holy One, blessed be He, wants there to be the possibility of becoming complete. He gave us choice; otherwise our progress would have no value. And choice means that I can also choose to do evil. Because if every time I couldn’t do evil but only good, then there would be no choice. And choice by definition has to place us before two options, both of which I can do. Therefore, yes, this touches on the question of evil in the world: how evil came into being if the Holy One, blessed be He, is all good. And again I return to the questions of the mystics. The claim that evil was not created by the Holy One, blessed be He. What was created by the Holy One, blessed be He, is our choice. And choice means that you can do good and you can do evil. But the fact that He gave us choice is entirely good. What we do with that choice—that we decide. And that is where evil is created. Meaning, no evil comes down from above, as the Sages say. Evil is created here. Or choice. And that we received from above, but it is good. Because if there were no potential for evil, then doing good would have no meaning either.
[Speaker F] And why—if you talked about the two pairs of glasses—why then are those glasses preferable, the dynamic and the static, as you said?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, nobody says that.
[Speaker F] According to the Sages, the dynamic is preferable to the static.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not preferable. Rather, cumulative. When the penitent reaches the level of the completely righteous person, he has two virtues: first, he is completely righteous, and second, he is also… yes, first is the static state.
[Speaker F] No, but “In the place where penitents stand, the completely righteous cannot stand.” I don’t know the exact saying—“In the place where penitents stand, the completely righteous cannot stand”—that when they reach the same level—
[Speaker D] It’s the same process. The penitent also reaches the level of the completely righteous person, and he also underwent the process.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the process is very good. The process is important too, not only—that’s what Rabbi Kook says—but also the static state. Meaning, you need both things.
[Speaker F] Does he also say anything there about relativity, quantum theory?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Evolution—later on, he talks about evolution.
[Speaker F] But I don’t think relativity.
[Speaker D] Evolution, that’s chapter five—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or six.
[Speaker C] So it’s interesting specifically that there’s value here not only in the actual but also in the—meaning, if I look at someone who is also in some process and is also progressing, then he has both virtues while he is progressing now. We’re talking about the completely righteous person. The penitent already arrived, and now he also has the value that he went through the process, not only that he…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And that is why the penitent is preferable to the completely righteous person, because he also has the advantage that he moved, not only where he stands.
[Speaker C] But is he still moving now? Not now—he was moving. Wait a second: if I’m in the process and I’m moving, that’s best of all. Now I’m no longer moving, I’m already there. Right, but I moved. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why—
[Speaker B] didn’t the completely righteous person go through a process? What? The completely righteous person too, when he arrived…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On a theoretical level, it could be that he was born completely righteous, just for the sake of the discussion. If he arrived there, then fine—then he’s a penitent.
[Speaker C] There’s a division—we have to get to Rosh Hashanah—and there’s a division into the completely righteous—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, okay. I’ll finish this. This dilemma of dynamic process versus static process also appears in Jewish law. And the confusion that arises around these two planes has several very interesting expressions. I’ll give examples. In Kovetz Shiurim on Gittin, section 22, he writes as follows: Rashba in the chapter HaSholeach brings in the name of Nachmanides that the prohibition against emancipating a slave is because of “do not show them favor.” It is forbidden to emancipate a Canaanite slave, “you shall work them forever.” So Nachmanides says that this is because of “do not show them favor.” Now that’s not correct—he doesn’t say it is because of “do not show them favor.” He says it is similar to the framework of “do not show them favor”; it is because of “you shall work them forever”—there is a different verse about it. I don’t know why Kovetz Shiurim says it is because of “do not show them favor.” In any case he says: this is difficult for me. Surely “do not show them favor” applies only to a gentile and a slave, but not to a convert and not to a freed slave. Meaning, “do not show them favor” applies to a slave or to a gentile, but when I free the slave, he becomes a Jew, right? A Canaanite slave who is emancipated becomes a Jew. So to whom did I give this free gift, the one forbidden by “do not show them favor”? Because “you shall not give them a free gift.” To whom did I give this gift? To a Jew who came into being after the emancipation. So what’s the problem with that? Why would that be “do not show them favor”? I gave a gift to a Jew. Do you understand? He basically started out as a gentile; in this process I emancipated him and he became a Jew, and Rabbi Elchanan assumes that the one who received the gift was a Jew, not a gentile. So he says: then what is the problem with giving the gift? He was a gentile and became a Jew. So when I give him the gift, it turns him from a gentile into a Jew. Now the question is: who received the gift? The gentile or the Jew? The answer is: neither, of course. Giving the gift is the dynamic process that created the transition from the state of a gentile to the state of a Jew. And it is incorrect to look at it as: did a gentile receive the gift or did a Jew receive the gift? Neither one received it. There is simply a dynamic process that created a transition between states. The gift speaks about the dynamics, not about the static states.
[Speaker F] “By the goodness of his hand”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be that this is also a possible explanation of “by the goodness of his hand” in that context. Yes. And from this itself: if he gives a gift to a gentile to acquire after he converts—yes, a gentile who is going to convert, and I give him a gift that he will acquire after he converts—what’s the problem with that? So what if he is a gentile now? And he says that a writ of emancipation is exactly the same thing: he gives him a gift that he acquires when he converts. And then there really should be no problem; that’s his objection to Nachmanides. In Ketubot 11a, the Talmud discusses there a minor convert. A minor convert is immersed on the authority of the religious court. How do you convert a small child, a gentile child? You immerse him on the authority of the religious court, and the Talmud explains there that this is by the law of acting for a person in his absence. One may act for a person in his absence, right? The religious court is a kind of his agents, something like that—although it isn’t clear that this is the usual law of acting on someone’s behalf—but that is the straightforward meaning of the Talmud there. Tosafot there says: this is difficult, because this acting on his behalf is based on agency. This is a dispute among the medieval authorities, but Tosafot assumes that acquisition on behalf of someone else works through agency. So “one may act for a person in his absence”: I am essentially acting as his agent. Okay, now the question is how can you be his agent? First of all, he’s a minor, and a minor has no agency. And second, he’s a gentile, and a gentile has no agency, yes? “You too”—to include your agents—“just as you are members of the covenant, so too must your agents be members of the covenant.” So how—so he says, yes, how can one act on behalf of a minor? For a minor has no agency, as we say in “Which is Usury.” And furthermore, at this point he is still a gentile, and we say there that a minor eventually comes into the category of agency. Do you see the similarity? Right? Because what does this agency do—this law of acting on his behalf? It turns him from a gentile into a Jew. Why does it bother Tosafot that I become the agent of a gentile? I am not becoming the agent of a gentile; I am becoming the agent of a Jew. The proof is that when I act on his behalf, I look behind me and I see a Jew standing there. Not a gentile. Right? Meaning, this very act itself turns him from a gentile into a Jew. So Tosafot itself says: alternatively, since through this acquisition on his behalf he becomes a Jew, he is considered a full Jew for purposes of acting on his behalf. On this Kovetz Shiurim comments in Ketubot—the other one was in Gittin—so Kovetz Shiurim comments in Ketubot: and as for what Tosafot wrote, that his acquisition on his behalf is effective in such a case, it seems that what he means is that the rule that there is no acquisition on behalf of a gentile applies only where even after the acquisition takes effect he is still a gentile. Only if after he acquires it he remains a gentile is there no acquisition on behalf of a gentile. But if he becomes a Jew, then yes. And on that he says: and the Ran, in the chapter HaSholeach, wrote in the name of Nachmanides that “you shall work them forever” is because of “do not show them favor,” for it is forbidden to give him a free gift; when you emancipate him, there is no greater gift than that. And according to the above, this requires consideration: since after the gift takes effect he is emancipated, it turns out that the freed man received the gift and not the slave. And if so, necessarily the prohibition is not because of “do not show them favor,” but rather a separate commandment of “you shall work them forever.” Again, Nachmanides also says that, so it isn’t really an objection; Nachmanides also says “you shall work them forever.” But what does it mean that it is within the framework of “do not show them favor”? Nachmanides there is speaking about a case where a person emancipated his slave in order to complete a quorum of ten. So he says: how can that be? There is a prohibition of “you shall work them forever.” So Nachmanides says: this is within the framework of “do not show them favor.” What does that mean? You are forbidden to give them a free gift. But here I emancipated the slave for my own sake, not for his. I needed him in order to complete a quorum for me; that is not giving him a free gift, that is using him. That was the use I made of the slave—I wanted him to complete my quorum—that is permitted. All that is forbidden is to give him a free gift. That doesn’t mean that the prohibition against freeing a slave is under the law of “do not show them favor,” that it is from the law of “do not show them favor”; it is from the law of “you shall work them forever.” But Nachmanides says it is like “do not show them favor.” Meaning, if you free him for nothing, that is the prohibition; but if you don’t free him for nothing, but in order to use him, to make use of him, then it’s fine. So basically this way of looking at things expresses this confusion that exists when I look at a dynamic process and try to understand which side of the—which stage of the process the statement refers to. The stage before, or the stage after? It refers neither to the before nor to the after, but to the transition between them, like Zeno’s arrow in flight. Why really is there a contradiction between them? First of all, because this is Tosafot and that is Nachmanides, so why do we have to reconcile them? There could be a dispute between them. That’s not such a strong question. But in general one has to know that in fact we are analyzing these things with static thinking even though they are dynamic things. And what we say—and what we really need to say—is this: it may be that the law of acting on someone’s behalf, meaning what is forbidden to me, what I cannot do as the agent of a gentile, is where the gentile is the one who sends me. Right? I cannot be his agent when the gentile is the one who sends me. Who sent me? The one who sent me is who he was before. Right? Before, when he was in his earlier state, he sent me, I did the action, and then I turned him into a Jew. The problem in agency is that I cannot be the emissary of a gentile. Therefore there, the determining time is indeed the time before. And that is what Tosafot asks: after all, my sender was a gentile. By contrast, in a free gift the problem is: who is the recipient? I give the gift to a gentile. Now it is forbidden to give a gift to a gentile, we said: look at to whom you gave it. When you gave the gift, the one who received it was a Jew. So there the determining stage is the stage after and not the stage before. But Tosafot in Ketubot says in its answer: then why is agency to a gentile nevertheless—yes, this is really the novelty Tosafot reaches because of the question. So Tosafot basically says that once he will become a Jew, then if he appoints me in advance in order to become a Jew, then even though when he appointed me he was a gentile, that’s okay. Agency of that type is okay. That is a novelty; that is why Tosafot raises the question, and from the force of that question it innovates this point. But on the principled level it is still true that when I discuss the laws of agency, I need to look at the prior state. And when I discuss the laws of gifts—free gifts—I need to look at who receives it, at the later state. Therefore there is no essential contradiction between these two passages, but this entanglement stems from the fact that when I look at something dynamic and try to analyze it through the state before and the state after, I will always run into problems, because it really doesn’t refer to states; it refers to the transition between them, like the speed of the fly and the elephant, what we once talked about regarding giving a bill of divorce with the Kehillot Yaakov. I mentioned it in the context of lomdus, when I spoke about yeshiva-style analysis, so we talked—
[Speaker C] Before Passover, I think.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, yes? Okay. And there too, in giving a bill of divorce, the attempts to characterize giving a bill of divorce get tangled up because we are trying to characterize a dynamic process through endpoint states—what was before and what will be after—whereas what we really want here is some sort of dynamism and not statics. One more remark, if you’ll allow me. There is just an interesting anecdote; one could expand on it too. It relates to the question whether there is such a thing as a point in time, everything we’ve discussed here. Is time made up of segments, or is there also a point? It’s a question about continuity in general, not only about time, but regarding time it comes up in several places. There is an interesting anecdote. There is a very interesting question. It is written that Balaam knew how to pinpoint the moment when the Holy One, blessed be He, gets angry, and then the Holy One, blessed be He, says to the people of Israel: see what kindness I did for you, that I did not get angry during those days of Balaam. And then the Talmud also says about David that he would wake up at midnight, a harp would begin, the wind would blow on the harp, and he would know it was midnight. And the Talmud asks: how can that be? Even Moses our teacher did not know how to pinpoint exactly when midnight was, because it says “about midnight” and not “at midnight,” approximately midnight, because he could not pinpoint midnight. So the Talmud discusses it there. Now there is a Jew named Rabbi Shimon Moshe Diskin, the author of Ohel Yehoshua, and he notes there: it should be observed that this time of midnight cannot really be found at all. He doesn’t understand the Talmud in the first place. What does the Talmud want? What does it mean to pinpoint the time of midnight? There is no such moment as midnight. Before midnight it is evening, after midnight it is morning; midnight itself doesn’t really exist, it is only the seam. So what is there to pinpoint about midnight? How can something occur at midnight? Midnight is not an existing reality; midnight is the transition from the previous day to the day—the transition is what is called midnight. Can something occur in a transition? How can it be that the Holy One, blessed be He, killed the firstborn at midnight, as Moses our teacher said—at midnight? Nothing can happen at midnight. Midnight is only a transition, not a time in its own right. So what answer did he give? Look how lovely—a sharp-minded Jew. He says: and it seems simple, for one may similarly ask that death too is not a matter of time. Beforehand he is alive and now he is dead. It follows that there is no time of death at all, because as long as he has not yet died he is alive, and when he ceases living he is dead. It follows that there is no time of death at all. Death is not an event; death too is a transition. You were alive, at a certain moment you are dead. What does it mean that you are dead? You are not “dying”; rather, you become in a state of being dead. The transition from the state of the living to the state of the dead is called the moment of death. So he says: then what’s the problem? If so, then yes, it really can happen at midnight. He will be alive the whole time up to midnight, and after midnight he will be dead, right? So he says that the death occurred at midnight. But it didn’t really occur at midnight, because neither death occurs nor midnight occurs; both are just the transition between two states, and therefore they can coincide. It’s an interesting question, by the way—whether there is such a thing as a point of time or there is no such thing as a point of time. But we’ll leave that for another time.