Torah and Torah Study, Lesson 7

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An attempt to define Torah study, Torah, and Torah study. Last time I spoke about studying the Hebrew Bible, aggadah, and the claim was that according to the definition I presented at the beginning, it’s doubtful to what extent this really counts as Torah study. Because in the end there are two main things here, maybe even three. First of all, the non-univocal tools of interpretation. Now of course, in Jewish law too there are lots of arguments and things are not univocal, and any two people learning a Talmudic passage argue with each other. But the feeling is that in the world of aggadah and the Hebrew Bible the freedom is so great that it’s hard to stand seriously behind the statement: this is what it says here—that is, this is the meaning of what is written here. What is written, fine, the wording is there, but this is the meaning of what is written here. And therefore, in the end, the claim that what I learned really exists inside the text that I studied is a problematic claim. That’s where I started, with the definition of study as extracting information or insights that are inside the text being studied, as opposed to treating it as some kind of inspirational source. I can, I don’t know, read a poem and it can arouse all kinds of insights in me. I don’t call that study, because those insights—the poem was only the trigger that aroused them, but it’s not some information that exists in the poem and that when I studied the poem I extracted from it. If we define that as study, then there’s almost no action in the world that it would not be correct to regard as study. In other words, everything we do in the end arouses in us all kinds of—it can arouse in us all kinds of insights. You look at a bird flying, and that can remind me by one association or another of all sorts of things and arouse all kinds of insights in me. And that doesn’t mean that the bird’s flight really contains those insights. It was a trigger that aroused certain insights in me. Mostly, that is, usually those are also insights that are already in me, and it only sharpened them for me or exposed them before me, and didn’t really bring me some insights from outside. So because of interpretive freedom, it’s doubtful how far one can stand behind the statement: this and this is the meaning of the text. Okay? That’s the first point. The second point, which is connected to the first, is that the conclusion I usually reach from studying the Hebrew Bible or aggadah is a conclusion I thought beforehand. Meaning, it won’t be a conclusion—I don’t know an example, or I can almost not think of an example, of an aggadic passage or a chapter in the Bible, a section in the Bible, from which I derive some lesson that I don’t agree with. But okay, that’s what it says there, so it’s binding, the Torah said such-and-such, so what can I do? Suppose I find a passage from which it implies that Moses our teacher was arrogant. Okay? Will I learn from that that one should be arrogant? No. I’ll remain with a difficulty on the passage: how can it be that Moses our teacher was arrogant? Why? If it says Moses our teacher was arrogant, and surely he was the perfect person and we all need to aspire to be like him, then we should be arrogant—what’s the problem? Why not assume that? Because I already know in advance that one should be humble—that humility is really the correct value, not arrogance. So now I will never derive from the Torah some lesson that contradicts what I think. I always compare this to Jewish law, because Jewish law is the ultimate form of study. When it says in Jewish law that it’s forbidden to eat pork, I can love pork and protest against it and do whatever I want—that’s what is written, so that’s it, it binds me. This thing that we are so used to in Jewish law—and again, there too there is room for interpretation and I can fit it more to what I think, but it’s within some kind of framework of discussion—in the world of aggadah and the Hebrew Bible this almost doesn’t exist. That is, the lesson is always what I basically agreed with.

[Speaker B] A personal opinion—opinions—for any person? What? Seemingly there’s no kind of—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Opinion—no deliberate change of views? Right. Deliberate change of views. That’s the difference. That’s why I say. It could be that suddenly I become convinced that something else is not right, but that happened because I became convinced that something else is right, not because of what I had thought. No, it can happen under the influence of a text, but not by force of the authority of the text. Meaning, it’s not—I’m saying—a lot of things can trigger change in me. I see the bird flying again, I look at it, and I say, wow, you know what? Some coin just dropped for me—you need to be humble, not arrogant. It can happen. People do change their views from time to time, okay? But it doesn’t happen because I understood that the bird is humble and therefore I am obligated to be humble. It was simply the trigger that aroused some new thought in me. But when I’m talking about study, I’m talking about deliberate change. Deliberate meaning: I studied the passage, I reached the conclusion that the Torah says one should be arrogant, and therefore now I will stop believing in humility and start championing arrogance, because that’s what the Torah said. Okay? That doesn’t happen. Meaning, I come with a certain set of values that is clearly, to me, the correct one, and whatever differs from it is wrong. And in the end, one of two things: either the Torah will say that—and again, the interpretive freedom I talked about earlier obviously helps a lot, because you organize the interpretation so that it fits what I think, that’s why I said it’s connected to the first point—and even if not, then okay, I’ll have a difficulty. How did Jacob our forefather marry two sisters? Or how did Jacob our forefather lie? Right, when he said to his father—yes. So what’s the problem? Jacob lied? That means it’s permitted to lie. What’s the problem? Why is that a difficulty? The difficulty is that it’s obvious to me that one must not lie, and no matter what I find in the Torah, at most it will be a difficulty. But not that I understood from the Torah, and therefore clearly it’s permitted to lie. No—lying is forbidden because it’s immoral to lie. And now Jacob lied, so I have a difficulty: how could it be that Jacob lied? So we look for excuses, explanations, sometimes even criticize him for it, doesn’t matter—but at the principled level, I learn from the Torah what I already think in advance.

[Speaker B] Values and morality—is that something I was born with? Is it in my genes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, not necessarily. It can come from the environment, it can be—

[Speaker B] So the Hebrew Bible and aggadah are part of the environment that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ve come back to the same point I talked about before. But it’s not deliberate. I’m not doing it because it’s written in the Bible. The Bible influences me the way the bird flying influences me. Lots of things influence me. I don’t know what shapes my values, but that is not what is called study. Study means not simply being acted upon by things, because otherwise there’s nothing I do in the world that isn’t study. Everything in some way changes me, influences me, forms insights in me. That’s obvious. That’s why I began with the definition of study as the deliberate extraction of information that is in the text. That’s not what happens. Okay?

[Speaker C] If I hear an idea in a lecture many times, or even once, often over time it affects my views. It causes me to think more in that direction, whether because it’s true, or just because it affects many things and—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, there’s a difference. Those are two different things.

[Speaker C] No, I’m saying it’s different, but I’m trying—I’m saying in general, it doesn’t seem similar to me to say I saw the bird and then it woke me up to think differently.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s why I say you have to distinguish between the two things you said, between A and B. That is, if I do it because that’s what I learned from the text—it convinced me, let’s say, made arguments and convinced me—then fine, then I learned. Okay? But if it affected me somehow, like reading a poem or looking at a bird and things like that, I don’t call that study. Regarding Torah, I said something else too: beyond the requirement that it be study, there is a requirement that it be Torah. Now Torah, as distinct from ordinary study, is something by which I am supposed to be affected not because I am convinced—or not necessarily because I am convinced—but because that’s what is written. Meaning, in Torah this is a source of authority, as opposed to a source of inspiration. That’s really already my third point. So until now I’ve dealt with the definition of what study is. Study is extracting information from something where it exists inside it. But there is also the question: what is Torah? And on the question what Torah is, what I quoted then as the definition is: a source that is authoritative for me. Meaning that if I find something in it, I regard it as binding. Meaning, then it is true, then it binds me. Okay?

[Speaker D] And the relation to the Hebrew Bible—that’s this part, not the part where it’s not study. Both and. Why the part where it’s not study? If I study the Bible I’m certainly learning history.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, regarding history we’ll talk later. Right now I’m talking about values, not history.

[Speaker B] Interpretation—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll talk about history in a moment.

[Speaker B] Also, say, accepting the whole story of the revelation at Mount Sinai—it’s not just the story, it also yields the source of authority itself. Right, fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also the creation of the world. Okay, fine, also the creation of the world. I’m talking about studying the Hebrew Bible, not about the fact that we learned that we study the Bible. I already know there was a revelation at Mount Sinai and I know the world was created. I’m talking about more nuanced things, about particular passages, particular lessons—not about the three principles we’ve already known for a long time, and that’s not why people study the Bible today. At least at the level of today. Today people don’t approach the Bible—I don’t approach it—in order to know that God created the—

[Speaker B] world, but rather to—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] know a situation—

[Speaker B] so it could be that one text would count as Torah study and another text wouldn’t. Right, fine, true, the basic things.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For me today that isn’t relevant, because for the basic things I’m not going to the Bible in order to learn them. I know them. When I ask myself today whether when I sit down to study the Bible, that is Torah study—then I’m talking about what I will do today. What I will do today, I think, is not.

[Speaker E] If in Yeshivat Ma’ale Adumim I don’t eat meat, they think it’s kind of contradictory, like it’s some secular act. I bring them the aggadah about the rabbi who saw the calf being led to slaughter, and such-and-such happened and suffering was imposed on him, and then they say, “Ah, okay.” So you can learn from it, or at least bring it as proof. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, actually even there, in my opinion, it’s because basically they understand that you’re right anyway. They’re only saying, “Wait, but the Torah says otherwise.” The Torah doesn’t say otherwise. But if you were trying to convince them of something that they themselves strongly resisted, they wouldn’t understand the logic of it at all, and they understand that you’re right. So they’re weak, I don’t know, they have explanations like that.

[Speaker E] It’s an act they identify with secularity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be, but they understand that the secular people are right here on the moral level. It’s just that you shouldn’t get ahead of yourself—Rabbi Kook’s vegetarianism and peace, or things of that sort. There’s some basic identification there. That’s clearly where it starts. I once told you that I was in a march in Tel Aviv against live animal shipments? They travel for months at sea, in filth, disease, epidemics there, suffering terribly. So there was some demonstration like that in Tel Aviv, and I was standing there. One of the organizers came over to me and said: “Are you with us?” I said to her: “Yes, can’t you see?” “No, because it doesn’t seem to fit.” I asked: “Why? What?” “Well, your appearance—it’s not usually the kind of people who are here.” And of course that’s true; I was just joking, but I understood what lies behind the stereotype—there’s a real fact behind it. Stereotypes are always irritating, but stereotypes are almost always rational. Anyway, so the third point really is the question how far this is a source of authority. A source of authority means—and I’m saying everything is connected to everything—because if there were a clear-cut lesson, it could be that it would also be more of a source of authority. What’s written—fine—that’s what’s written in the Torah, so there’s nothing to do. Since there is interpretive freedom, and since—well, all these things join together. In the end it’s hard to see this as a source of authority. But I’ll say more than that: even where there is—one of the arguments I had about this issue, and I’ve had many, one of the arguments on this was with a woman who deals with aggadah—Hayuta—and she brought me some example of a passage where you can see that, I don’t remember, one of the Amoraim was chauvinistic. And she’s kind of a feminist. He was chauvinistic. Look, you see? I also extract from Torah things I don’t agree with. I said to her: “Okay, and now have you repented and become chauvinistic?” No, of course not—why would I do that? So what then? Did you learn Torah? In the sense of the definition of what study is—you did learn; you extracted from the Talmud something that’s there, let’s say for the sake of argument that’s true. But what you learned is not Torah. Because the fact is that what you extracted you do not regard as binding on you. In Jewish law, if my conclusion is that this thing is forbidden to do, then I don’t do it. I can’t say, “Okay, the Torah said it’s forbidden to do, okay—but what does that have to do with me?” So these two parameters join together here: both the question of what study is and the question of what Torah is. And Torah, at its core, is a source of authority. And therefore what I’m arguing is that because of all these characteristics, it’s very hard to see the study of the Hebrew Bible and the study of aggadah as Torah study. Either because it isn’t study, or because it isn’t Torah. It’s one of the two.

[Speaker B] And someone who studies the Bible and invests in it—so what exactly is he doing? There’s no commandment in it? It’s not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said I would qualify this later; for now I’m only summarizing. I will qualify it a bit. At least for now. I have a subtle remark.

[Speaker C] I think something for me is a little—I’ve hardly studied aggadah or the Bible systematically, usually less the Bible, but at least from there, from the little I have studied, I do—maybe one of the things—I think there really aren’t so many things in such an extreme form. Like you see and learn one thing and then change your worldview 180 degrees because now you saw that this is what the Torah has. But I think on the level of nuances it does happen. Meaning, for example like what he mentioned before, in another direction—I do think I encountered things where I saw something and said, okay, before I thought that was nonsense. Now I see it has a source, so maybe it should be treated as something legitimate.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I said—that’s why I’m trying to formulate myself relatively carefully. I said I can hardly think of such a case. I’ll say again: there can be nuances, there can be a certain passage where you really do show me that this is true. In general, I’m saying these are rare cases. In general these are rare cases, and therefore I say that overall most of the things I encounter don’t meet this criterion.

[Speaker C] And the second thing is, following what they said before about education, about the educational and influential side of study. But I think it’s not just like I read some book and maybe it affects me. To the degree that I value it more, then it also affects me more, even if it isn’t authority, even if I don’t study it as authority in the full sense.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I’m telling you the same answer; I’ll answer you in the same way. In the end, go and see—look at what people do in Bible classes and in articles on the Bible and in aggadah, and you’ll see. Nothing comes out of there that I wouldn’t say without it. The innovations are interpretive innovations, not substantive innovations. I gave the example last time of the Book of Ruth, the class on the Book of Ruth. It was a very nice class; I really enjoyed it. But in the end when I summarized it for myself—and I had come with that kind of mindset, not that—but in the end when I summarized it for myself, I saw that I hadn’t learned anything new there. I learned the plain meaning of the Book of Ruth. Meaning, the interpretive insight was a beautiful one; I wouldn’t have looked at the Book of Ruth that way. But when I ask, okay, and what did that teach me? What do I take with me? Did I learn something new from it? The answer is: nothing. Meaning, just that I hadn’t thought that’s what the scroll was saying. Let’s say the whole scroll came to teach the value of, I don’t know, humility—I’m just throwing something out. Okay, so it could be a surprising insight; I wouldn’t have thought that was the message of the scroll, and he shows you through this or that precision that this really is the motif or central theme that appears in the scroll. Fine. But in the end, from my point of view, when I ask what lesson did I learn? To try to be humble? I knew that already. In that sense I’m saying: I almost don’t find innovations in the Bible and in aggadah. There are innovations, sometimes very beautiful ones, on the interpretive level—I wouldn’t have thought this aggadah was even talking about that, and then they tell you: pay attention, there are keywords here, hints, points, comparisons to parallels, and they show you that you can see things. And nowadays, in recent years, as I said, somewhat more systematic tools are developing in this area. Up until a generation or two ago, the study of aggadah was simply a collection of total nonsense. It was just cheap little homiletical lines, worthless. Now, mainly in academia, they’re developing somewhat more systematic tools. They try to understand how this business works. They study aggadah, see parallels, and then you start becoming more convinced that there is something to the interpretation they derive from that aggadah—by the way with the Bible too it’s fairly similar. In aggadah it used to be worse. But still, in the end, the lesson you come away with is the same lesson. Meaning, it’s not something new to you, something you don’t agree with, something you didn’t know before. In the vast majority of cases—I’ll say again, beyond nuances and exceptional cases, maybe there are some. But in general that’s what usually happens. The claim—maybe I’ll continue that same point regarding facts here, facts and two other kinds of lessons one might think of. I spoke about lessons in the sense of moral lessons. Moral lessons, as I said, in the end always fit morality as I understand it. There almost won’t be a new moral lesson that I learned from aggadah or a chapter in the Bible or whatever. I said: it says, “And you shall do what is right and good”; the Torah doesn’t spell out what “the right and the good” is. Someone told me—I don’t remember exactly—the Torah doesn’t spell out what “the right and the good” is. So where do I know what to do? “And you shall do what is right and good.” Okay, what is right and good? They don’t say. Why not? Because the assumption is that I know what is right and good. Meaning, whatever you understand to be right and good is what is expected of you to do. And in that sense it is completely universal; there is no Jewish morality. This thing called Jewish morality is nonsense. There is morality; there is Jewish law; Jewish law is Jewish. Morality, by definition, is universal—what people understand to be moral. Obviously there are arguments; there can be arguments about morality and there are arguments about morality. Fine. One is right and one is wrong, but there is no Jewish morality and non-Jewish morality. There is no such thing. Morality, by definition, is universal. Therefore, as I said before, when I see a passage in the Torah where something immoral seems to emerge, then for me it doesn’t change my morality; I’m left with a difficulty, and now we have to resolve why nevertheless this is moral. Okay, suppose, or something like that. The killing of Amalek and Jacob’s lie and other things, whatever. But the starting point is that what I think is morality, and nothing will change that. “The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious,” and so on, the thirteen attributes—we are supposed to walk in His ways. To emulate the traits of the Holy One, blessed be He, right? And what about jealous and avenging? Should we learn from those traits too? That’s also written.

[Speaker B] Isn’t it written, “You shall not take revenge”?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It says, “You shall not take revenge and you shall not bear a grudge.” Right. But if it didn’t say “you shall not take revenge,” would we have adhered to that too?

[Speaker B] Among Arabs, yes, there are such people, but I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying we would not have adhered to it. Why not? Because it’s clear to us that that is not morally correct behavior. And it says to emulate the traits of the Holy One, blessed be He—jealous and avenging. We emulate His traits only as long as those traits are clearly moral to us. We determine what the traits of the Holy One, blessed be He, are. It’s not that He tells us what to do; we determine what He is going to tell us to do. And that’s like the king in The Little Prince, if you remember, who gives orders to the stars: you go here, you go there—and they do what they were going to do anyway. And he says: you see? I am the absolute ruler; all the stars obey my commands. So it’s exactly the same thing. The Holy One, blessed be He, gives us exactly the orders that we decided He gives us. And that’s in the area of morality. So therefore I think we really do not learn a moral lesson either from aggadah or from the Bible, because then in general. At most, one second, at most sometimes it sharpens something for us so that after we read it we understand that it really is correct—maybe we had missed it before. But that can also happen from a book I read, or just from a situation, or from a discussion I have with someone. I can be persuaded. But when I talk about Torah, I see it as a source of authority, not as something that persuades me so that now I think differently. Fine, that can happen. It can happen from all kinds of things, as I said before. I’m talking about a situation where I reached the conclusion that this is what the Torah says—I wasn’t convinced, but this is what the Torah says, and what can I do, Torah is Torah.

[Speaker F] And in terms of morality and proper conduct, does a person really not need to devote time to that in life? Wherever he was born, and the morality he got—what’s right, what’s not right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he can devote time to it, no problem at all. But when he studies Torah it won’t contribute to that issue. That’s all. Devote time, read Kant, I don’t know, read books in moral philosophy, think about situations, discuss with people—it is certainly worthwhile to devote time to that. I’m not claiming that as I was born I was born perfect. But I am claiming that the conclusion I reach is what, for me, is morality—not what’s written in the Torah. Now, of course what I reach today is influenced, among other things, by the Torah. The Torah creates a certain influence over many generations that has continued, and it has some contribution to the fact that the world today believes in the values it believes in. But I’m talking about myself today, when I sit down to study: can the moral value give value to the study I’m doing? I think not. Go and see, and be amazed—you don’t learn anything moral. No, show me an example. Nothing moral from the Bible or from aggadah. You don’t learn it from there.

[Speaker E] You said that “and you shall do what is right and good” is not counted, but “and you shall walk in His ways” is counted. And “and you shall walk in His ways” is also supposedly a moral commandment, when you say that we go by our own morality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there is also “You shall not murder,” there is also “You shall not steal.” There are normative commandments that are certainly clearly moral. The reason they are counted is because my claim is that those commandments are really not moral commandments. They come to say that in the prohibition of murder, beyond the moral aspect involved in it—which exists even before “You shall not murder”—after all, the Holy One, blessed be He, comes with a claim against Cain: “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground,” long before “You shall not murder” is written, and before “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” So what does He want from Cain? What’s the problem? It was obvious to him that it was forbidden; it should have been obvious to him that murder is forbidden even without that. The moral prohibition is understood earlier. What the Torah says is that it is also a halakhic, religious prohibition, let’s call it that.

[Speaker E] So why is “and you shall do what is right and good” also not counted?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because in “and you shall do what is right and good” you really don’t see that it wants to say there is a religious value in morality. Morality is—the commandment there is to tell you that the Torah expects you to be moral; it lowers it into being a commandment. “And you shall walk in His ways” says that there is also a religious commandment here. To be moral? Not to be moral—to walk in His ways: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger—which is—

[Speaker B] exactly morality, isn’t it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know whether all moral rules fit in there. Would you take the categorical imperative out of there too? I’m not sure. I think not. So there are certain things that the Torah, that Jewish law, wants to tell us, and those prohibitions or commandments also have a religious dimension, not just a moral aspect. “And you shall do what is right and good” — at least that’s how the commentators understand it — is seen as something that is not a command, but an expectation of the Torah that we behave morally. It wants to tell us that morality too is part of what the Holy One, blessed be He, expects from us. But that doesn’t enter into Jewish law, and that’s why it also teaches us nothing in that regard. By the way, even with “You shall not murder,” for example, there are limiting distinctions and indirect causation and all kinds of things like that where sometimes you’re exempt. Why? What difference does it make whether I killed him this way or killed him directly that way — what’s the practical difference? Morally there’s no difference at all. So clearly we’re dealing here with some kind of aspect, a religious aspect. The religious aspect exists only if you do a standard action; if you do it in indirect ways, then not. In the moral sense, you’re a murderer in every respect either way. Because in truth this doesn’t belong to morality; morally you’re an offender either way. The religious aspect you haven’t violated — not fully, at least — if you didn’t do it in the way the Torah defines. So that’s regarding morality. The second thing is Jewish thought. Conceptual principles, philosophical principles of one kind or another. There too, in my opinion, there’s no such creature, just like there’s no Jewish morality. First of all, on the factual level. I don’t think you can derive conceptual principles from studying either aggadic literature or Scripture. When we encounter something that doesn’t seem right to us on the conceptual level, we interpret it accordingly so that it will fit. There too I don’t find that kind of submission I was looking for earlier — meaning, it says here that the Holy One, blessed be He, is such-and-such, so then I throw up my hands and say apparently that’s what He is. That happens maybe a little more, but really only at the margins. In most cases it doesn’t happen. In most cases conceptual principles are thought out; they are not derived either from Scripture or from the aggadot of the Sages. They do it from philosophical considerations, cultural influences, environmental influences, intellectual influences of one kind or another. And a good example of that is Maimonides. He devotes the first four chapters of his book, the laws of the foundations of the Torah, to teaching us Aristotelian physics. He derives from the Torah the spheres and angels and separate intellects and all that nonsense there. Where did that come from? It came from Aristotle. From his point of view, this is the laws of the foundations of the Torah. Now of course he also explains the Torah in that way — why? Because there too, exactly like in morality, he imposes his philosophical conception, and in this case also his physical conception, onto the Torah. Because that’s what he thinks — that’s the truth. So when you read the Torah, like we do today by the way: since that is the truth, then if that’s what the Torah says — if the Torah says something — apparently that is what the Torah says. Why do we today explain the first chapter of Genesis through the lens of evolution? Because we have been convinced factually, scientifically, that evolution is correct, so I read Scripture that way too. I didn’t learn it from Scripture. Usually the confrontation is the other way around. I need to explain why Scripture does not contradict the things I know to be true, not that I learn from Scripture what is true. Exactly as with morality — notice, it’s the same idea. Therefore I think that Jewish thought too ultimately belongs to that same category. The Kuzari, Guide for the Perplexed — in my view it’s exactly like this, no more and no less. Exactly the same thing. If it taught me something and convinced me, excellent; and if not, then not. It is not a source of authority and there is no dimension to it different from what I find in another philosophy book. Nothing.

[Speaker D] Maimonides in the Guide, when he talks about the idea that if he had a proof contradicting eternity, then he would change it, he would explain the verses differently — that I understand. But precisely there, he does claim that if there are things I have no objection to, then I’ll accept them in their plain sense.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, on the assumption that they really emerge clearly from the verses. That whole assumption I spoke about earlier — the interpretive flexibility here — that too is problematic here.

[Speaker D] Yes, but if creation of the world had explicitly been written there for him, then they would derive creation of the world from there if there weren’t a contradiction. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said, in a place where you are open — I talked about this last time — in a place where you’re open, there are several possibilities.

[Speaker D] And that’s not relevant?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it can be relevant in morality too. It could be that there is some issue about which you don’t know whether this is correct or that is correct. You study an aggadic topic or a passage in Scripture and it says such-and-such, and let’s say you were convinced that this really is what it says — because interpretive freedom should always arouse doubt whether that’s really what it says there — but let’s say yes. Very well, there I would accept it. That’s why I said there are places where I might indeed be willing to accept, but it’s very rare. Very rare. Usually it doesn’t happen. And I’m saying: when I see the different intellectual systems of the Sages throughout the generations — the Maharal, Rabbi Kook, Maimonides, the Kuzari, Saadia Gaon, it doesn’t matter, any of these — do you really think the difference between them stems from how they interpret verses or aggadot of the Sages? Not in the slightest. Each one built for himself some kind of thought-system as a result of what seemed logical to him and from philosophical influences — and you can also see each person’s philosophical influences through the places where he studied, the books he read, the sources that feed him, okay? Not only Torah sources, but in general. And in the end the thought-system dictates how he reads the sources. The sources do not shape the thought-system. That is very clear; you see it on the conscious level, but not only on the conscious level. Let’s say when you study Jewish law, then the discussion of a halakhic topic is a far more committed discussion. There’s an objection, you need to resolve it. What does this one say? Wait, how do you deal with that baraita? And how does this work? And what was the initial assumption here? But when you study aggadah or when you study a biblical passage, it’s not at the same level of commitment. Meaning, okay, one person learns it this way, another learns it that way — you don’t do the same work at the same level of commitment as you do there. There aren’t objections like, “Wait, but it says such-and-such, so we need to arrange the conceptual principle in a way that fits what is written there, that works out”; let’s make an interpretive narrowing, and I’ll reconcile it, and then I’ll build the conceptual principle out of the source. It just isn’t done that way. They tell you something that seems logical as a conceptual principle — providence is like this or providence is like that, it doesn’t matter, everyone according to how he understands the concepts — and then they explain it to you. What do they explain to you? They bring midrashim of one kind or another or verses from the Torah. Usually that’s more illustration than source. They don’t really formulate it out of clarifying the sources, comparing them, resolving difficulties, and then arriving at a conclusion from the answer. In Jewish law that is how it works. And again, I’m the last one who would deny that in Jewish law too there is an influence of worldview and an influence of the assumptions you come in with, and still there is a very committed framework for the discussion. And in thought and morality and those areas — Scripture and aggadah and all those things — it simply doesn’t exist. And you can also see how this develops over the generations. There is a halakhic tradition, right? Even though there are innovations in the halakhic tradition — Ketzot did not learn like those before him, and Rabbi Chaim did not learn like those before him. There are innovations in the halakhic tradition, and there is a tradition. Meaning, each generation relates to what was done in previous generations, in its own language, with its own mode of thought — all that is true. In the end you are trying to decipher what Maimonides said, even if that’s through the tools of Rabbi Chaim, as we discussed, or Rabbi Asher Weiss and Seridei Eish, right? And you can argue whether you’re right or not, but it’s clear that Rabbi Chaim tried to understand what Maimonides was saying. But Maimonides did not try to understand what Rav Ashi said. I’m not talking about Jewish law — in Jewish law yes; in thought. In thought, Maimonides said what seemed true to him. And when the Maharal wrote, he did not relate to Maimonides and interpret Maimonides. He created his own thought-system. And so on, all the thinkers of all kinds, Hasidism, it doesn’t matter, all of them. There’s no tradition here that is built brick upon brick, where each one interprets the previous stages. And again, in interpretation there are of course dimensions that I bring with me in my own reasoning — all true, it’s obvious, and that exists in Jewish law too. But in thought there is only that; there is nothing besides that. There is no intellectual tradition, no such creature. That’s something they invented in the last generation, when they started studying thought in yeshivot too, at least in the more modern yeshivot, hesder yeshivot and such, so they started inventing an intellectual tradition. There is no such thing, and it’s not convincing in any way. Meaning, everyone simply said what he thought. Now you can do here what a friend of mine calls a zoo — meaning, put everyone in cages. Maimonides said this, the Kuzari said that, the Maharal said this; here’s the Siberian tiger, here’s the— meaning, you put them in different cages and you can also say what the difference is between them. But they themselves, almost always, did not really relate to one another. It’s not something built one on top of the other, with objections and resolutions and reconciliations, and sources of authority, and in the end I build some conceptual framework or conceptual picture that I arrive at. It just isn’t done that way.

[Speaker C] Wait, is the question only about relating to them as sources of authority, or about relating to them at all? I mean, Nachmanides, for example, in his commentaries is constantly citing the views of Maimonides, the views of Rashi.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He brings them only in order to disagree with them. He does not — the fact that he brings it in order to disagree with it — no, he also agreed. I didn’t say he didn’t know Maimonides. I’m saying the discussion is not the kind of discussion done in a halakhic topic. He doesn’t ask: there is such a Maimonides, but it contradicts what is written in the Talmud here, so let’s make an interpretive narrowing and reconcile it, and there’s a dispute here and it follows his broader approach. That’s not how it works in thought. It just doesn’t work that way. He can bring the fact that Maimonides said otherwise and say I disagree with him. Okay, fine, true — like a zoo. Fine, so there’s a zoo: he thinks this way and I think that way. Fine. But in Jewish law it doesn’t work that way. You say this, I disagree with you — I need to bring arguments, I need to tell you: look, there’s a Maimonides against you, there’s a Mishnah against you, how do you explain the initial assumption of the Talmud here? Let’s make an interpretive narrowing and see — and you need to answer me. In this field, I bring an aggadah in my favor and you’ll bring another aggadah in your favor and everything will be fine. And over that aggadah itself we’ll argue about its interpretation, and nobody will say, “So what was the initial assumption according to your exact interpretation in aggadot?” That has only happened in the last generation, as I said — the committed study of aggadic topics. Fine, you say one nice idea or another nice idea.

[Speaker B] But there’s a large population that can’t reach that same focused area which you see as Torah study, with interpretive narrowings and all the contradictions and so on, and that group wants to study Torah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So in some sense — what did you say they want to study? Torah. They want to study Torah in the sense of belonging, but they can’t understand it — what can you do? They can’t, what can you do? Let them, I don’t know, pray all day, do other commandments.

[Speaker B] So this is basically a certain type of elitism?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Everything is elitism the moment you… the moment you define something, you’re elitist, because whoever doesn’t meet the definition isn’t there. The least elitist thing is simply not to define and to say everything is fine and everything goes. Okay, but that’s not true, what can you do?

[Speaker D] But even in Talmud and in the words — what was the initial assumption of the Talmud?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course there are different levels of study, of course there are. And there are forms of study that aren’t built at all on that kind of perspective; I’m not talking about them. There are people to whom Talmud doesn’t speak, fine. And they deal with the Hebrew Bible, with thought, or all kinds of other things. In most hesder yeshivot and places like that there are more such people, there’s more legitimacy for it. I’m guessing there are also more such people in Haredi yeshivot, it’s just less legitimate there to do that. So my claim is that they aren’t really studying Torah. They’re not to blame, I have no complaints against them, fine, but they are not studying Torah, what can you do? I said, I’ll qualify that a bit in a moment.

[Speaker C] Maybe regarding the issue of sources, but right now as we’re talking I’m running through things I’ve encountered. I don’t know if on the basis of… I don’t know if I can say that, say, the names mentioned — say Nachmanides and the Maharal. I’ve never studied their systems comprehensively, but I’ve touched on them here and there. And in the little I did touch, I saw there are also source-based discussions with Nachmanides.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. The Maharal is full of Talmudic passages and aggadot. Now look how committed he really is to what is written there, and you’ll see that they’re barely illustrations.

[Speaker C] In many cases it seems significant.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In your eyes. In my eyes, no — absolutely not. He takes them out of their plain sense or forces them; he decides what is correct and then recruits the whole world and his wife to show that what he says is correct. That’s illustrative usage; it’s not really the source from which the ideas come.

[Speaker C] Not all the things discussed there are things where it seems likely someone would have such a strong independent intuition…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true. There are things, very abstract things, at the level of providence. Is there providence over individuals or over groups, animals? Maimonides says there is providence only over the species, not over the individual. Where did that come from? There is no verse that says that, no Talmud that says that. Rather, his own reasoning says there’s no significance to a separate cow. It doesn’t matter to the Holy One, blessed be He, whether it’s this cow or that cow that got switched. Who cares? That’s not the point. That is a philosophical conception. Someone else will say — a kabbalist will say — what do you mean? A cow has a soul and spirit and all kinds of such things, so the cow has significance, and therefore providence applies to each and every individual. Your worldview dictates your concept of providence. It’s complex, I don’t know exactly how such things are created, but it doesn’t come from sources.

[Speaker C] About that I don’t know, but for example I know discussions about whether prophets other than Moses receive their prophecy through an angel or whether they receive their prophecy from the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. Okay. So Maimonides writes that they receive it — I don’t know what his sources are — on the basis that he accepts…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, “through a clear lens,” he draws it from the Sages, by way of an angel.

[Speaker C] And Nachmanides disagrees with him and brings sources, tells him: look, in such-and-such Talmudic passage…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but you’re talking about very particular things that really aren’t accessible to us at all, and maybe there is some way to extract some statement about them from sources — and even there one has to discuss how meaningful that way really is. I said, there are such things on the margins, on the margins, completely on the margins. Let’s go back to the generalizations.

[Speaker E] There was some family event, and someone traditional there, one of those people who studies Guide for the Perplexed, and he’s constantly struggling with the contents of that book. So I asked him what was bothering him. He answered, listen, the issue of creation and evolution and all that. So I tried to explain to him that there’s no contradiction. He listened, and said, okay, but the rabbis don’t think that way. Then I said to him, look, Rabbi Kook also wrote something like that here. So he said, ah, Rabbi Kook wrote that? So suddenly he said, wait, so you can think that way. So I’m kind of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He couldn’t think that way to begin with — meaning what? When he attacks the religious worldview, he said the religious worldview doesn’t say that. You say, not true, the religious worldview does say that. Ah, then fine, so it’s not difficult. It’s not that he adopts it because Rabbi Kook said it, but rather he thought all religious conceptions were like that, and you told him they’re not, that such a religious position exists. Right?

[Speaker E] But someone who is inside the religious system — if there won’t be people who are…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, my claim is not a claim about what happens on the ground today. There are people who treat Maimonides or Rabbi Kook as independent sources of authority. I’m not denying that. I’m claiming that it has no basis. But of course there are many such people — most people, I think one could say. Also in the realm of thought. I think it has no basis. Fine, we’ll talk about that. One last point, one last aspect, is the aspect of facts. We talked earlier first of all about facts. There are all kinds of facts in the Torah. There’s the Exodus from Egypt, Abraham, Isaac, all kinds of things. That, yes. Here I think you can see that the Torah contains facts. You take a text, read something in it, understand what is written, and now you know something the text conveyed to you. In that sense it’s true. The question is whether facts have the significance of Torah. That’s not such a simple question. Holy facts. In virtue of what?

[Speaker D] Because of the binding nature of the fact?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no. The question is whether facts can be holy. Suppose I learn that same fact, the same fact, from some ancient manuscript that tells me Abraham our forefather went and — I don’t know — bound Isaac. Fine? I found some hieroglyph describing that passage. Did I study Torah? Those are just facts. Let’s talk about psychological facts, fine? Psychological facts. There are foundational facts, there are psychological facts. So in the Torah — not Torah, Talmud, the Sages — it says: there is a presumption that a person does not pay his debt before it is due. Okay? We learned some psychological lesson here. I once said that it’s not true, but we learned some psychological lesson here. Now if I go to the psychology department and they tell me, from research: look, a person doesn’t return money before he is obligated to — did I study Torah? No. But why isn’t that Torah? It’s the same fact. Why is it Torah here because you learn it from the Talmud, and not Torah there because you learn it from a psychology book? And therefore that indicates, in my opinion, that it’s hard to treat facts as something sacred. At most you can tell me that these facts convey some value lesson, conceptual lesson, one kind or another — that if Abraham did such-and-such, that means this is how one should act or should not act, and people derive from it all kinds of value-based and conceptual insights. But the bare fact in itself — I don’t know. This isn’t a full argument; I don’t have very clear reasons on this matter. It’s hard for me to treat such a thing as Torah. Facts, on the conceptual level, I could have learned from other sources too — would I call that Torah there as well? I’m learning the same thing, the same fact, only from another book, by a non-Jew, from who knows what, from some ordinary documentation from that period.

[Speaker E] And it can strengthen your trust in the tradition. I’ll give you an example: yesterday I read something on Wikipedia that the amygdala, a part of the brain in girls, reaches full development a year and a half earlier than in males. Bat mitzvah. Right, so I said, look, that fits with the tradition that tells us women become obligated in commandments before men.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but everyone knows that even without knowing brain research. Everyone knows women mature earlier than men.

[Speaker E] The question is whether that’s something you sort of received culturally because in the tradition we were taught that women reach

[Speaker B] commandment age at twelve, and then they told us things about the brain that develops a year and a half earlier, so that’s why with your daughters it’s at bat mitzvah before the boys.

[Speaker E] No, but still it gives stronger support for the tradition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, I’m saying many things can give you support. The question is whether that turns it into Torah study. Again, Torah study and study of something valuable are not the same thing. There are many studies that have value, but the question whether this thing is called Torah study is something else. Someone might say that studying history is also very valuable — why not? The question is whether that means it is also Torah study. Two different things. There are preparations for a commandment. If I study mathematics, it will help me in the laws of ritual impurity. We talked once about this, I once told this, that there’s a Mishnah in tractate Mikvaot — the Mishnah discusses there a cubit-wide water channel flowing into a pit, a flowing water channel into a pit. There is a pit of drawn water, forty se’ah of drawn water, which is the quantity for a ritual bath. And there is a water channel flowing into the pit and out of it. Meaning, the pit lies on the path of some water channel. Now the water channel is water valid for a ritual bath, not drawn water. Okay? And in a ritual bath drawn water is invalid. Now the question is: after how much time can you assume that in the pit there is enough non-drawn water, meaning that you can already immerse in it? After all, the water is changing. Some of the drawn water leaves and the valid water enters. After a certain time, most of the drawn water will already have gone out, less than three logs remain, and then you can immerse in that pit. Now after how much time does that happen? So the Mishnah talks about that there, and the medieval authorities explain and make all sorts of calculations there, depending of course on the rate of flow and on the size of the pit, and in the end they reach a conclusion about how long it takes. And when you write a very, very simple differential equation, you discover there are errors there of thousands of percent. The equation, of course — even a differential equation is only an approximate model of the matter; the real model is much more complicated. But it’s certainly closer than the arithmetic the medieval authorities did. Okay? So anyway, I made some differential equation, solved the issue in a general way — give me the rate of flow and the size of the pit and I’ll tell you after how long, after how long you can immerse. Okay? And I showed this page to my study partner, who had also studied at the Technion, so he knows that language too. It’s a differential equation, all with — there isn’t a single word there, just formulas. Okay? Now I asked him whether this page needs to be placed in genizah? There’s nothing there, really just x equals y, derivative equals x squared, you solve it with initial conditions, you substitute this and that, all with numbers, all of it. Now this is the Mishnah in Mikvaot entirely, just in a language that’s not English but mathematical. So what difference does it make? But this… this is the Mishnah in Mikvaot. Why shouldn’t it need genizah? So seemingly here there really would be room to place it in genizah. You can study Torah in another language.

[Speaker B] Wait, when you made the equations, were you studying Torah? What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you did… He’s asking it another way. If it needs genizah, that’s like asking whether when I wrote it I was studying Torah. So the point is — I think regarding genizah one can discuss it, by the way. It’s an interesting question because the question really is whether what is there is… it’s the Mishnah in mathematical language. I think not. Because that mathematical problem describes many things, not only the problem of that water in the ritual bath. Therefore what I solved there was a mathematical problem. True, it has an application to the Mishnah there, just as it has an application to a million other problems with the same differential equation. The equation itself doesn’t have the content of the Mishnah. When you translate the Mishnah into English, whoever reads it in English will understand exactly what the Mishnah says. What is written there is a piece of Torah, a chunk of Torah. It’s obvious that it has merely been translated into English. But when it is translated into mathematics, even someone who knows mathematics does not read the Mishnah there. He reads some mathematical law that is universal, always true. It has an application in explaining this Mishnah. I think that is not.

[Speaker B] So it doesn’t need genizah, but were you still studying Torah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Now I’m getting to that point. That was regarding genizah. But regarding Torah study, here there is room to discuss. I think that at that stage I was studying Torah. But what about when I studied the mathematics needed to solve that differential equation at the university? Was I studying Torah there? Obviously it contributed to my understanding of the topic. That’s obvious. I claim that this is preparation for a commandment. But it is not the commandment of Torah study; it is preparation for a commandment. And it is preparation for a commandment in the sense that this is the preparation toward fulfilling the commandment. But that doesn’t turn it into Torah. This is an example of study that can be valuable — and not only valuable, it contributes to understanding the Torah itself — and still, in my opinion, it is not correct to see it as Torah study. It is preparation for a commandment. It’s like building a sukkah. If you haven’t built it, you can’t sit in a sukkah. So clearly building a sukkah is something valuable, to the point that maybe it even exempts from exile, because there is a Rashi in Makkot 8, that someone who chops wood for a sukkah might be exempt from exile, because this is woodcutting for a commandment, for which one is not exiled; that’s what the Talmud says there. So the Talmud says that for chopping wood one is exiled — it’s not considered a commandment. Rashi says, unlike building a sukkah, where building a sukkah really is exempt. If you accidentally kill someone while building a sukkah. So building a sukkah is also not the commandment. Sitting in the sukkah is the commandment. Building the sukkah is preparation for a commandment. Fine? And in the Jerusalem Talmud there is a view — though even in the Jerusalem Talmud it isn’t written that way — that building is also the commandment. So clearly preparation for a commandment is an act of value. The fact that according to Rashi it exempts from exile says that this counts as being engaged in a commandment, but it does not mean that you are fulfilling the commandment of sukkah. And the same is true in Torah study. Studying mathematics can help you understand various topics. Therefore it is certainly a study of value, and of Torah value, not just value in general. But still that does not mean that everything valuable is Torah study.

[Speaker B] Right. When you study mathematics you study it generally; you’re not now studying it specifically so that you’ll be able to solve a problem with it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but even if I study it so that I’ll be able to solve a Mishnah in Mikvaot — well, there the line already gets thin. Even there one could still say it’s only preparation for a commandment.

[Speaker B] Because

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so I’m learning tools that will help me later in study. When I apply this to the Mishnah, then I’ll be studying Torah. By the way, one can discuss judges in the same way. When a judge sits and has to decide — two people come before him and he has to decide the law — he has to clarify many things that have nothing to do with Torah. Meaning, what happened there? Do you have witnesses? Is this witness lying or not lying? Is the judge studying Torah at that stage? When he rules the law, that is of course Torah study. Okay? When he rules what the law is with regard to the case before us. But in order to rule, you need to understand what the facts are. You need the laws of evidence? You need… not the laws of evidence, but the evidence itself. The laws of evidence are certainly Torah. But the evidence itself, the engagement with what happened in reality — did he see you? Did he not see you? Was this witness such-and-such, another kind of witness? Is that Torah study? I don’t think so.

[Speaker B] Every law found in the Talmud, when you analyze it, you have to check

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the facts, and you also distinguish between the facts and the law. Wait — a law in the Talmud doesn’t require checking any facts. A law in the Talmud is completely detached from facts. When I apply it to a case, I need to check what the facts are in order to know which law to apply to this case. I need to understand what the facts are. That’s what a judge does. He has to understand the facts. But in the Talmud, no. In issuing a legal ruling, yes, absolutely; not in the Talmud. In the Talmud it says that if there are two witnesses, money is extracted. You don’t need to clarify any factual matter. That is the law.

[Speaker B] If there are two witnesses, money is extracted. Now someone comes before me and brings two witnesses.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I ask: are there two witnesses here or not? And then I start checking reality. Are these related witnesses? Are they such witnesses? Witnesses from what… Did such-and-such happen? That is law. I’m talking about studying Talmud. When you study the Talmud, you’re not clarifying any facts. You’re clarifying only the law. When you apply it to a case, then you need to clarify what the facts are there in order to know which law to apply to that case. But that factual clarification, although it is necessary and without it you can’t issue a ruling, I think is only preparation for a commandment, not Torah study. It is preparation for a commandment. And without it you can’t issue the ruling, but that doesn’t turn the inquiry into whether this one is a liar or that one is a liar into Torah study.

[Speaker B] I have a somewhat heretical question: why is this so important to you?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, a concept, right? “To magnify Torah and glorify it.” I want to know what Torah study is. Right — no, you’re right that it doesn’t have many implications. Let’s put it this way: I would not recite the blessing over Torah study for that. If a religious court knows that on that day it will only be clarifying the facts and won’t reach the halakhic discussion, then it is forbidden to recite the blessing over Torah study for that.

[Speaker D] There’s a Tosafot here that says that if he only states the law and doesn’t state the reasons, then for that too he doesn’t recite the blessing over Torah study.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a question in the laws of the blessing over Torah study — the question is what one recites the blessing over. There is a dispute in the Talmud about this — over what? Not over Torah study, but over Torah itself: over a legal ruling, over midrash. That is a dispute in the Talmud itself about what one recites the blessing over. But in Jewish law, one recites the blessing over everything. And still I say, wait — is that a dispute over what is called Torah study? There? I don’t think so. Or at least that’s not the simple answer. There, on what one recites the blessing over, the dispute is over what the blessing over Torah is, not over what Torah is. I don’t see anyone there disputing that midrash is Torah.

[Speaker D] Midrash is Torah; the claim is that one doesn’t recite a blessing over it for one reason or another.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Was there an Amora who argued that midrash isn’t Torah? No? What? Was there an Amora who argued? No — halakhic midrash. It’s not aggadic midrash. Everything there in Jewish law is except… no, there is Hebrew Bible. Ah, yes. So I’m saying there are things that I can say are valuable study, but people immediately jump. Moral work. Studying morality, in my view, is not Torah study — studying morality. Although it’s important, it can be important, certainly it’s important, but it can be important. It’s not that because it’s unimportant it isn’t Torah. It can be very important; without it you can’t refine your character. Does that mean it’s Torah study? So what, studying psychology is also important, and it also helps refine character. So because of that is it Torah study? It’s preparation for a commandment. And here we’re not talking about preparation for Torah study, but preparation for character refinement. As I spoke about earlier, there it was preparation for Torah study.

[Speaker C] What if it’s the commandment itself? I mean, the intention in studying morality is that the study itself affects you and it’s not just something you learn?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that you study in order to know how to serve, or things like that, something along those lines. So I’ll return again to the facts. Historical facts — this is more of a smell, I can’t give definitive reasons. It’s hard for me to accept that the knowledge that Abraham went from here to there is Torah. Not the verse. The verse is an object of Torah — we’ll talk about that. But that piece of knowledge that I acquired, that Abraham went from here to there — so what? I could have seen that in a hieroglyph too. I think that in the end, the lesson I derive from this thing — if Abraham went, apparently it expresses an idea, expresses a thought, expresses a moral principle — that I understand could be Torah, subject to everything I’ve said until now. But the fact itself — what are holy facts? Meaning, I just find it hard to accept this concept of holy facts.

[Speaker C] Isn’t it because — what is a fact in itself? A fact receives sanctity by virtue of the verse.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m asking what “by virtue of the verse” means. That itself is exactly what I’m asking: does it receive it or not? You’re assuming the conclusion.

[Speaker C] I’m asking whether, if I learned about it and didn’t know the verse, then apparently I wouldn’t define it as Torah study.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But because I learn it from the verse, what difference does it make where the information came from? If that information is Torah, then it is Torah.

[Speaker C] Because it’s a verse — what did I learn?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I counted the letters in the verse, and found that there are three words there: one word has five letters, the second has two, and the third has three, then I learned that five plus two plus three is ten. Did I study Torah? No. But I learned it from the verse. There are things learned from the verse where they tell you: this is technical, this is not the real lesson. Rashi writes — the very first Rashi on the Torah — he brings, yes, “Rabbi Yitzchak said: Why did the Torah begin with ‘In the beginning’ and not with ‘This month shall be for you’?” A fascinating question, yes? Why should it begin with “This month shall be for you”? In order to teach?

[Speaker D] Because Torah means Jewish law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Torah means Jewish law. And anything that isn’t Torah needs an explanation of why it is there at all. Otherwise it’s not — it’s not Torah. So he has explanations there; they too seem a bit dubious, but he brings them there. But the assumption behind the question is interesting. And this is Rashi’s first comment on the Torah. It’s no accident that he chose to open the Torah with that. I think he is coming to tell us what Torah is. He opens the Torah with that.

[Speaker E] He uses all his agricultural knowledge and explains that it doesn’t undergo processes of leavening and brings nice proofs there. But isn’t that using science in order to clarify Jewish law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that relates to what I said earlier. When he originally learned the agronomy, that is at most preparation for a commandment. Even if he learned it in order to make that calculation, it is preparation for a commandment. When he applies it to the case there, I assume that is indeed Torah study. That’s why I said that when I made the differential equation specifically in order to solve the problem of a system of two equations, that was certainly Torah study. But when I studied the mathematics required in order to do that, that was preparation for a commandment.

[Speaker D] The Talmud tells about Rav who went to observe some animal for twelve months, three—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thirteen, yes, thirteen years with a cattle herder.

[Speaker C] Thirteen years? Yes, not eighteen, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think it’s there in tractate Sanhedrin: “he may rule, he may rule; judge, judge; but he may not permit firstborn animals.” I think it’s at the beginning of Sanhedrin, if I’m not mistaken. So I’m saying: that was neglect of Torah study, basically? What?

[Speaker C] So what, that was neglect of Torah study? No, it was preparation for a commandment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That was preparation for a commandment, because without it you can’t permit firstborn animals. Fine, that’s what has to be done—you have to study. Just like when a religious court acts, that isn’t neglect of Torah study. There are things that need to be done. Building a sukkah also isn’t neglect of Torah study. You need to, because without that you won’t be able to sit in the sukkah. But it’s true that if you can skip it, then skip it. If you don’t need it, there’s no point in doing it. And if someone could put all that information into your brain by IV without your having to invest all that time, no problem—better. Why waste time? Okay, so maybe one more point in this context of facts in Jewish thought in general: there’s something about facts that keeps them from being considered Torah, even in light of the definition I spoke about earlier, of Torah as a source of authority. With regard to facts, there is no authority. Authority isn’t defined at all with regard to facts. You can’t attribute authority with regard to facts. I think we talked about this once—I made a distinction in one of the previous lectures, I don’t remember anymore in what context, between formal authority and substantive authority. Formal authority is authority entrusted to a person or institution by virtue of its role. The Knesset, for example. What the Knesset legislates is binding not because the Knesset is right or because the people there are the wisest possible, but because it is the Knesset. That’s our system—in other words, this institution is the authorized institution, and what it determines is binding. That’s what I call formal authority. Substantive authority is like the authority of a doctor. A doctor prescribes medicine for someone. I’m not obligated to take the medicine. If I don’t take it, I haven’t violated any law or rule or anything. I don’t have to. But logic says that if a doctor prescribed it for you, take it. You don’t understand it; he does. Take it. So that’s what I call substantive authority. It’s not even really correct to call it authority at all—it’s simply because he knows better, because he’s right. The authority of the Knesset has nothing to do with whether it’s right. Even if it isn’t right, it has formal authority by virtue of being the Knesset. The authority of the doctor is because he knows. Okay? Now, the authority of Torah, and mainly of Jewish law, and of Torah in general, is formal authority in the sense that I observe it because I think I should—because obviously one should do what the Torah says—not because it is necessarily always right. Let me put it differently: with the Torah itself it’s more complicated, because if the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote it, then it’s probably also right. But let’s talk about the Talmud, okay? The authority of the Talmud. The authority of the Talmud is not because it is always right. The authority of the Talmud is because we accepted upon ourselves that the Talmud has authority. We accepted such authority upon ourselves; that’s what the Kesef Mishneh says at the beginning of the laws of rebels, and elsewhere. It’s pretty clear. So obviously there can be mistakes in the Talmud, and I have no doubt that there are. Just as there are certainly scientific mistakes there, why assume there are no halakhic mistakes there? Human beings are human beings; human beings can make mistakes. But the authority of the Talmud is not conditional on it not making mistakes. It is not substantive authority; it is formal authority. In other words, we accepted upon ourselves that the Talmud is the binding source in the world of Jewish law, and therefore it has authority—formal authority. That is the definition of formal authority and substantive authority. Now when I talk about norms, like Jewish law for example—suppose it says in the Talmud that you have to do something, I don’t know, that sorting is forbidden on the Sabbath. Okay? And suppose I reached the conclusion that this is not the Torah’s intent. The Torah did not mean, in “do not do any labor,” to forbid sorting. The labor of sorting is not one of the labors the Torah forbids. But since the Talmud says that sorting is forbidden, and the Talmud has formal authority, then sorting is forbidden on the Sabbath. Even though I think the Talmud is mistaken on this matter. And again, not that I have to think the Talmud is right. I can think it’s wrong, but there is formal authority, and even if it is wrong—like the Knesset—that is the meaning of the fact that the authority is formal and not substantive. So the authority of the Talmud is not because it is the greatest expert; this is not professional authority, but formal authority. After the Talmud there are no longer any authorities. I talked about this once—we discussed authority. After the Talmud there are no authorities anymore, but there are substantive authorities. Someone who knows more—there’s logic in listening to him because he hits the truth, not because you have to. There is no “do not deviate” after the Talmud. When there is no Sanhedrin, when there is no Talmud, there is no “do not deviate.” No one has formal authority after the Talmud. But if there is someone who is a recognized Torah scholar or a well-known halakhic decisor, and you are not at that level, then it makes sense to listen to him because he is right, like with a doctor. And that is substantive authority, not formal authority. It is not by force of “do not deviate”; it is simply by force of logic. It is not a halakhic rule. There is no halakhic rule that you have to obey a decisor. Rather, the rule is a logical one. In other words, if he knows—like a doctor—if he knows, then what he says is probably the Jewish law. Okay? Now, that is with respect to laws. When there is a law that the Talmud states, you can say that you think it’s not correct, but the Talmud has formal authority and therefore you are obligated to do it. What happens with regard to a fact? The Talmud says that the earth is not round but square, a box. Okay, it says this in several places in the Talmud. It has thickness, twilight and all that—that is the time it takes the sun to pass along the side of the box. Okay? So that claim is a factual claim. Now today, I today, think that it is not correct; we know it is not correct. Okay? Can one say that the Talmud has formal authority, so even though it is not correct I am obligated to accept it? First of all, no, because there is no reason to say that. But even if, say, there were an explicit verse giving the Talmud formal authority with regard to facts—even then I would not accept it. Not because there is no source for such authority, but because such authority cannot be defined. Because what does formal authority mean? Formal authority means that you have to accept it even though you think it is not correct, as we said regarding Jewish law. With regard to law, you can do that. One can demand of me that I behave in a way that in my opinion is not correct. But one cannot demand of me that I think something that I think is not correct. Because if I think it is not correct, then I do not think it. You can persuade me that I am mistaken—no problem—and then you have persuaded me. But to require me by force of authority to think otherwise—that is a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing. It is impossible to define such a thing. Even if the Holy One, blessed be He Himself, were standing here and instructing me to do that, I would tell Him: negative, I do not accept it. It cannot be done. Even if I wanted to, I could not fulfill that. Because either way: if I was persuaded that it is correct, then I was persuaded, so I accept it because I was persuaded that it is correct. But if I still stand by my position—I think the earth is round. They’ll tell me, yes, but there is formal authority that obligates you to think it is square. It obligates me, but I think it is round—what can I do? That is what I think. At most, you can persuade me that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows so much better that all the scientists are mistaken and in fact it is square, not round. If I was persuaded, then fine, I was persuaded. But then that is substantive authority, not formal. Substantive authority means by virtue of the fact that you know better than I do. Formal authority means: accept it even though you think it is a mistake. You cannot do such a thing with regard to facts. You can demand such a thing with regard to laws, not with regard to facts.

[Speaker B] Why, actually, with regard to Jewish law can you demand that? You sit, analyze the matter, and reach the conclusion that the law is not as they say there. Right. You checked it with all your tools, and you don’t think that way. Exactly the same as with a fact.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, you don’t think that way, and therefore I will continue not to think that way—but in practice, I will act that way. Even leniently.

[Speaker B] I’m saying no—again, with facts there isn’t something you have to do. That’s basically the difference.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. They’re telling you not to think what you think, but that is what I think—what am I supposed to do? I’m saying it’s impossible; it isn’t definable. It’s not just that I’m saying this—even with regard to formal halakhic authority you can argue and say there is no formal authority—but formal authority can be defined. In the legal context we do this all the time. When I think the judge made a mistake—it happens often—but I still have to obey him. What does that have to do with anything? And again, “I have to obey him” does not mean that I have to think he was right. I do not have to think he was right; I have to do what he says. Why? Because he has formal authority. But when the judge tells me, think that it is now day and not night, then all the legislators in the world cannot do that. It is impossible to define, because I really think it is night now. What can I do? If they persuade me that I am mistaken and the truth is that it is now day, no problem—but then that is substantive authority; they persuaded me that I am mistaken. But formal authority means doing something even though you think it is wrong. Doing—you can. Thinking—you can’t.

[Speaker B] And what about that case there with Yom Kippur and Rabban Gamliel?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again—that is doing, not thinking. It’s about when to fast. And that is exactly the point. He cannot persuade Rabbi Yehoshua. When I defined the concept of Torah, that’s another argument for why facts cannot be Torah. Suppose I reach the conclusion that the facts written in the Torah are not correct, on the basis of one archaeological finding or another. Fine—but the Torah says such-and-such, so what exactly am I supposed to do now? If you persuade me that I simply erred in interpreting the archaeology, and in fact what is written in the Torah is correct, then you’ve persuaded me. Fine, then I’ll accept it. But to demand submission by force of formal authority is basically to say: even though you think this is not correct, because it is written in the Torah, accept it. I think it is not correct—what does it mean to accept it? Facts, again—not how to behave,

[Speaker B] but what the facts are.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Such a demand has no meaning. So if one really accepts my definition of Torah as a source of authority—and again, authority in the formal sense, not the substantive one, because substantively that isn’t authority—then a physics book also has substantive authority, because what it says is probably correct. They tested it, the person who wrote the book is an expert, so I accept what is written in the book because it is written in the book. But I accept it not because the author has authority, but because I trust that he knows better than I do. And therefore substantive authority is not called authority for our purposes. When I speak about the uniqueness of Torah as a source of authority, I mean formal authority, not substantive authority.

[Speaker E] Is this formal authority also lenient? Meaning, if I think there is a law where one should be stringent, but the Sages said it is lenient—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In principle yes. We have an established court; that is what is binding. If you want to be stringent with yourself, be stringent. But there’s no problem—you can follow the lenient ruling in the sense that it is permitted. Aside from the matter of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel—you know, someone who wants to be stringent in accordance with Beit Shammai has done nothing at all—there,

[Speaker B] he said, I will recite and not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He recited the Shema and leaned, and they said to him, “You deserved to be liable for yourself, because you acted in accordance with the words of Beit Shammai.” There he was being stringent—what’s the problem? Because according to Beit Hillel as well, it is permitted to lean; you’re not required to.

[Speaker B] They didn’t rule like that tanna even though it is written in the Talmud.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: regarding Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel it is also stated not to be lenient like Beit Shammai and not to be stringent like Beit Shammai. There there was some need to determine the final law, but that was not said about every dispute. In a place where a certain law is ruled and I see room to be stringent, I am allowed to be stringent.

[Speaker E] But killing a louse on the Sabbath—where you think it’s permitted even though you think it’s forbidden—that yes…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Killing a louse on the Sabbath is a separate issue entirely, and we talked about it a bit before we spoke about the concept of authority. Because there, since the ruling is a ruling in light of a factual assumption that today becomes clear to me is not correct, then from the outset the ruling was not correct.

[Speaker E] And if it isn’t a factual assumption, then you say it really is possible?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And then my claim is basically another argument for this—that there is no such thing as holy facts, because facts cannot be Torah if the definition of Torah is a source of authority. There is no authority with regard to facts.

[Speaker B] Is the event of the giving of the Torah a fact? Right. So that’s not a source of authority?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say that.

[Speaker F] Did it

[Speaker B] happen? Meaning, did it—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] whether it happened or not—you cannot demand that I submit to the fact that it happened by force of formal authority. You can persuade me that it happened; you cannot demand that I believe it happened by force of formal authority.

[Speaker B] Clear? Meaning, belief in the event of the giving of the Torah is because you were persuaded that it is true? I was persuaded that it is true.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I wasn’t persuaded, nothing would help. There is no formal authority over that—that’s obvious. But what I want to argue is that all thought is like that. Another argument for why thought is not Torah in the full sense, because thought, for the most part—not all of it, but the vast majority of it—deals with facts. Things that are facts accessible to our observation: what the Holy One, blessed be He, supervises, what will be in the end of days, how the Messiah will come, and what happens in the World to Come—all of that is facts. I have no idea how to verify them or refute them, but they are facts. With regard to facts, authority is irrelevant. If I become convinced that the fact is not correct, you cannot by force of authority tell me that I have to accept that it is correct. You can persuade me that I am mistaken. It may be that I trust the Torah that if the Holy One, blessed be He, said it, then certainly it is true—no problem. But that again is authority in the substantive sense, not the formal sense. And that is another reason why all those factual things in Jewish thought—which for the most part deals with facts and not with other things—are another reason why it cannot be seen as Torah in the purest sense of the word. And I said I’d end with this, but I still haven’t gotten to the end.