A Third Look — “Da’at Torah”? On Autonomy and Authority in Halakha and Beyond

Table of Contents

• The framework of the series and the methodological stance
• Internal discussion, challenging authoritarianism, and speaking the truth despite concerns
• Conceptual distinction: formal authority and substantive authority
• Authority in Jewish law: “do not deviate,” the Sanhedrin, and the Talmud
• Critique of glorifying the Sages and the Talmudic sages, and of expanding authority
• Aggadah, remedies, and facts in the Talmud versus halakhic binding force
• Authority after the Talmud: the Rosh, the Rema, and the figure of the expert
• Da’at Torah in non-halakhic fields and listening to rabbis as a function of wisdom
• Greatness in Torah in our time: knowledge, common sense, and general education
• Critique of the “great man of the generation” and of public-political selection mechanisms
• The duty of autonomy: “a judge has only what his eyes can see”
• Doubts, customs, and rules of decision as a response to doubt, not as the creation of doubt
• Questions from the audience: custom, local authority, redeeming captives, and the Shulchan Arukh
• Scientific facts versus Jewish law: absorption, “as it absorbs so it expels,” and the nullification of a factual foundation
• Autonomy versus actual obedience: a personal story about Rabbi Shach

Summary

General overview

The speaker opens a series that aims to present a “third path” with a range of voices, without full coordination and without commitment to agreement on every detail, in the hope that different people within the religious and Haredi public will find their place in it. He presents an approach that prefers conceptual and logical analysis over excessive reliance on sources, and argues that presenting authority in an expansive and absolute way is no less dangerous than undermining it. He wants to clarify, from within a world committed to Jewish law, the concepts of rabbinic authority and Da’at Torah, their scope and their limits, while emphasizing telling the truth and balancing that against “concerns.” He develops distinctions between formal and substantive authority, applies them to Torah and Jewish law, and adds a central value of autonomy that obligates a person to act according to his own conclusion after careful examination.

The framework of the series and the methodological stance

The speaker presents the series as an attempt to present different directions suited to the third path, with different voices within the same framework. He says there is no prior coordination among the speakers and no expectation that everything said will be agreed upon by everyone, but the general direction is supposed to convey a shared message alongside internal diversity. He asks to minimize the use of sources because, in his opinion, conceptual and logical analysis sometimes makes recourse to them unnecessary, and he argues that the absence of sources is part of the message against a conception that identifies seriousness with “five books with Rashi script and gold bindings.” He argues that sources sometimes serve as a substitute for analysis, and that sources themselves can also be disputed, so he treats logical analysis with no less seriousness than a textual source.

Internal discussion, challenging authoritarianism, and speaking the truth despite concerns

The speaker defines the discussion as an internal argument within the religious world committed to Jewish law, not as a defense against criticisms from outside. He declares that his goal is to undermine authoritarian conceptions and move the discourse “leftward” in the sense of dismantling assumptions of authority, because within the serious religious public that, in his view, is the important emphasis. He acknowledges concerns about undermining authority, but argues that truth is more important than those concerns and that one must first clarify what is correct and only afterward consider tactical considerations. He adds that the broad authoritarian stance is dangerous because when people discover that it is baseless, they may throw out the very concept of authority altogether. He compares this to the midrash Rashi brings about Eve and the serpent, where expanding the front leads to collapse. He argues that nowadays it is hard to hide the truth because everything is exposed, and that a policy of concealment will cause a loss of trust; therefore the default is to tell the truth, and whoever wants to raise concerns should present arguments.

Conceptual distinction: formal authority and substantive authority

The speaker distinguishes between formal authority, which is granted to a person or institution “by virtue of what it is,” like the Knesset or the court, and substantive authority, which stems from expertise or correctness, like a doctor or a professional. He explains that formal authority binds even when the institution is mistaken, whereas substantive authority is not an obligation but rather a rational reason to listen to an expert because he is likely to be right. He argues that in factual matters there is no meaning at all to formal authority, because you cannot require a person to accept a factual determination merely by force of authority; you can only persuade him. He uses this to argue that the concept of “dogmatics” regarding principles of faith is absurd, because it demands acceptance of factual claims by force of assertion. As part of the example, he even includes the claim that not even a divine statement is factually binding if the person has not been persuaded. He states that formal authority can apply only to normative fields such as law and justice, whereas substantive authority can exist both in facts and in norms, but it is not “authority” in the sense of obligation.

Authority in Jewish law: “do not deviate,” the Sanhedrin, and the Talmud

The speaker applies the distinction to Jewish law and argues that the source for formal authority in the Torah is the verses “do not deviate from all that they instruct you, right or left,” with both a positive commandment and a prohibition, and he mentions the dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides about the scope of this. He says that these verses deal with formal authority and not substantive authority, and that in their plain sense they are limited to Jewish law and to certain bodies, mainly a Sanhedrin composed of ordained sages. He argues that once there is no Sanhedrin, there is no formal authority, and he presents Sefer HaChinukh as wanting to expand this to the sages of all generations, but describes that as an esoteric view that can be ignored. He makes an exception for the Talmud, which, he says, is generally accepted as having formal authority “like the Sanhedrin,” and he cites Rabbi Shlomo Fisher in Beit Yishai, who explains this as acceptance by the nation. He adds that he himself accepts the authority of the Talmud, but “that’s it.” He states that from the closing of the Talmud onward there are no more formal authorities, and all that remains is the substantive authority of expertise, which contains no obligation, only a probabilistic consideration to listen to an expert, with one possible exception of the local halakhic authority by virtue of communal acceptance.

Critique of glorifying the Sages and the Talmudic sages, and of expanding authority

The speaker explains that the need to go on and on about the near-supernatural greatness of the Talmudic sages stems from a view that without that, people will not accept the authority of the Talmud. But in his view this is unnecessary, because the authority of the Talmud is formal and does not depend on its sages “always being right.” He argues that educating people on legends about divine inspiration and all-encompassing knowledge is dangerous, because when scientific errors in the Talmud or assumptions that belong to another era are discovered, people may reject the halakhic authority as well. He describes the Talmudic sages as people who drew on the scientific knowledge of their time, including the possibility of error, and gives the example that Rav went to cattle shepherds to learn blemishes in animals in order to permit firstborn animals. He argues that even statements like “even if they tell you that right is left” are, in his reading, an instruction to obey formal authority and not proof of divine knowledge, and he notes a dispute between the Sifrei and the Jerusalem Talmud over the wording.

Aggadah, remedies, and facts in the Talmud versus halakhic binding force

The speaker states that there is no reason to relate to remedies in the Talmud or to Talmudic science, and not even a reason to study them, because they depend on the knowledge of their time. He argues that even if someone thinks there is a message in aggadah, you cannot put it under formal authority, because formal authority was given only in the realm of Jewish law and not in moral or philosophical fields. He adds that in factual determinations there is no formal authority at all, so it is impossible to obligate acceptance of facts by force of the Talmud. As an example he cites “it is better to dwell as two than to dwell as a widow” as a factual claim about what women want, something that could be checked by survey and could also change from one generation to another. He says there is a passage in Maimonides that fits with this, but insists that the argument is conceptual and does not depend on a source, and he presents the recourse to sources as a symptom of mistakes in the area of authority.

Authority after the Talmud: the Rosh, the Rema, and the figure of the expert

The speaker presents the Rosh and the Rema in Choshen Mishpat, siman 25, as formulating the view that after the Talmud there is no formal authority. He mentions the Rosh’s discussion of one who errs in an explicit Mishnah ruling and one who errs in judgment, and the point that after the Talmud there is no “error in an explicit Mishnah ruling” in certain senses. He defines the situation of later generations as a world of substantive authority alone, similar to a doctor: you listen to an expert when he seems to be right, but there is no obligation to listen when you have reached a different conclusion. He adds that in fields outside Jewish law, a rabbi does not even have substantive authority, and he rejects ideas of heavenly assistance as a mechanism that grants empirical superiority in factual or political questions.

Da’at Torah in non-halakhic fields and listening to rabbis as a function of wisdom

The speaker opposes consulting rabbis, rebbes, kabbalists, or “magicians” on everyday matters as though this were a binding ruling, and agrees that one may listen to rabbis as wise people, just as one would to any other wise person. He cites Rabbi Lichtenstein, who says that sages have no authority in the political sphere, though it is fitting to listen to them as wise men, and he adopts the principle without assigning it binding authority. He demands empirical examination for claims that Torah scholars have superior judgment in non-Torah areas, and argues that there are no indications of this.

Greatness in Torah in our time: knowledge, common sense, and general education

The speaker argues that today the weight of Torah knowledge as a storehouse has declined because of access to books and databases. He cites the Rema, who says there is no longer a “primary rabbi” because everything appears in books, and Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, who is lenient regarding one who forgets his learning because the information is written and accessible. He adds that today one can reach information quickly, even using tools like ChatGPT, though he warns not to rely on it too much. In place of that, he sets out two central components of greatness: common sense and the ability to be conversant with additional fields of knowledge, together with curiosity and openness that enable a person to know whom to consult and about what. He gives the example of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky during the coronavirus period and argues that decisions made without understanding an exponential process and without turning to experts were “irresponsible.” He says there is “blood on his hands,” and also on the hands of the public that handed him the steering wheel.

Critique of the “great man of the generation” and of public-political selection mechanisms

The speaker rejects the idea that newspaper systems or “the whole public” determine who is the great man of the generation, and attributes public recognition to brainwashing by politicians and activists. He says there is no need to choose a great man of the generation because there is no such concept with binding force, and he describes the rhetorical use of the term as circular and ridiculous, where whoever disagrees is simply “defined” as not being the great man of the generation. He presents a view in which a person chooses whom to consult by force of “make for yourself a rabbi” and according to his own personal evaluation, without mysticism and without institutional status.

The duty of autonomy: “a judge has only what his eyes can see”

The speaker adds to considerations of expertise the value of autonomy, and argues that a person has an obligation to act according to what he himself thinks, even if, “to an unbiased eye,” the probability is high that those greater than him are correct. He uses the statement “a judge has only what his eyes can see” as describing a commitment to act according to one’s own conclusion when one has not been persuaded otherwise. He cites from Eruvin the reason they did not rule like Rabbi Meir: “because his colleagues could not get to the end of his reasoning,” and interprets this to mean that the issue is not that Rabbi Meir is wrong, but that the obligation is to rule according to the decisor’s own understanding, even if someone greater has not convinced him. He mentions the Maharal in Netivot Olam, Netiv HaTorah chapter 15, as part of a polemic against the Shulchan Arukh and the Rema, along with his brother in the pamphlet Be’er Mayim Chayim and the Maharshal as representing an autonomist approach against precedent-based decision-making. He defines “to bring the discussion to a halakhic conclusion” as an obligation to move from analysis to one’s own personal halakhic conclusion, and not to learn analytical Talmud and then check “what people do” in an external book. He sees that dichotomy as a deviation from the Talmud’s own guidance.

Doubts, customs, and rules of decision as a response to doubt, not as the creation of doubt

The speaker argues that rules of doubt such as “a Torah-level doubt is ruled stringently” and “a rabbinic-level doubt is ruled leniently” are meant for situations in which the person himself is in doubt, not as rules instructing a person to remain in doubt when he has a view. He cites the story of Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz before the priest regarding “follow the majority,” and interprets it to mean that one follows the majority when there is doubt, not when there is no doubt. He uses the example of a piece of meat in the marketplace versus a “kosher seal” to show that following the majority operates only when the situation is uncertain. He distinguishes between a private individual and a religious court, and argues that a religious court has a consideration of “legal certainty,” and therefore may stick to the accepted mainstream approach even if a particular judge has a different view.

Questions from the audience: custom, local authority, redeeming captives, and the Shulchan Arukh

A woman in the audience raises the phrase “a custom in Israel has the force of law,” and the speaker responds that according to the Jerusalem Talmud, custom is mainly relevant in cases of doubt: “if the Jewish law is weak in your hand, follow the custom.” But if one has a halakhic position, custom has no binding significance for a private individual, aside from social considerations such as harmony in the synagogue. A question is asked about formal authority for a halakhic institution today, and he responds that since the closing of the Talmud there has been no formal authority except for a community’s acceptance of a rabbi or local religious court, and he defines this as authority that comes from public acceptance, with the community defining its boundaries. A debate develops with a questioner who presents a conception that formal authority “comes from below” and mentions Maimonides’ position, but the speaker insists that formal authority in Jewish law is defined as coming from above, through ordination, “ordained by one ordained by another all the way back to Moses our teacher.” He distinguishes between acceptance of decrees, which depends on the public’s ability to abide by them, and the interpretive-halakhic authority of the Sanhedrin. A question is asked about a hostage deal, and he argues that the question “purely halakhic” is not well defined, because Jewish law depends on assessments of reality. He presents “captives are not redeemed for more than their value” as a rule whose content depends on estimating “what is reasonable to pay,” and says that in the reality of a state and an army, the historical contexts of redemption for money are very different. A question is asked about the difference between the Talmud and the Shulchan Arukh, and he responds that the Talmud is seen as a binding text with formal authority, whereas the Shulchan Arukh did not receive such a status, and in practice people do disagree with it. A question is asked whether the Sanhedrin would bring in experts, and he responds that obviously they would, and once again cites Rav learning from cattle shepherds.

Scientific facts versus Jewish law: absorption, “as it absorbs so it expels,” and the nullification of a factual foundation

A question is asked whether one can uphold a halakhic ruling that is based on a scientific mistake, and the speaker answers that what turns out to be a factual error is “void from the outset,” so he nullifies what is not true. A confrontation develops in which it is claimed that such an approach “destroys the regime of Jewish law,” and he responds that expanding authority in a way that denies mistakes is more dangerous, because a collapse at one point will cause people to throw out everything. Therefore it is better to translate and correct in light of the knowledge of our time. In a question about meat and milk and absorption, he emphasizes that the authority of the Sages remains binding so long as it has not been shown that the factual foundation is mistaken, but when it has become clear that the factual foundation is incorrect, the matter is nullified. He adds the reservation that the practical conclusion also depends on interpretation—what counts as “absorption” and what the halakhic measures mean. In principle he agrees with the aspiration to examine factual foundations in places where Jewish law relies on them, and clarifies that the problem is not the examination itself but the gap between his position and what accepted halakhic decisors do. He says that what others say does not bind his conclusion.

Autonomy versus actual obedience: a personal story about Rabbi Shach

The speaker recounts that when Degel HaTorah was established, he was called in Rabbi Shach’s name, but he did not go, because he knew that if he heard him, he would give in. In the end he voted for Degel HaTorah out of the expectation that this is what Rabbi Shach would have instructed. He says that he asked his maggid shiur whether “Rabbi Shach said so” is a defense in the heavenly court, and got the answer that it is not a defense, but at most means that there is “a high probability” that Rabbi Shach was right. He uses this to argue that even if the probability is high that a great authority is correct, there is still a demand for autonomy and for acting according to one’s own position when one has not been persuaded otherwise. He connects this as well to the principle that in a religious court they begin with the junior judges, in order to prevent the smaller judge’s opinion from being captured by the greater one.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hello everyone, I’m happy to open this series. In this series we’ll try, through different speakers, to present directions that fit the third path, where within that framework of a third path there are of course different voices. We’re not coordinating in advance what each person says, and not everything that someone says is supposed to be agreed upon by everyone, but I think the general direction is meant to convey the shared message, even if in the details there can be differences and disagreements. And our goal really is to present both the shared direction and also the diversity that can appear within it, and we hope that within this diversity different people, women and men, will each be able to find their place. We believe that a great many people from the religious and Haredi public can find their place there. Today I want to talk about the issue of rabbinic authority, or da’at Torah, and of course it touches on many other topics that I won’t address. I won’t address changes in Jewish law, I won’t address all kinds of sensitive topics that are on the table, because you can’t address everything, although of course the overlap exists. I want to touch on the concepts: how are we supposed to relate to sages, which can be connected to da’at Torah. That’s on the general level. A few more introductions. I’m going to touch on a lot of points, and therefore this won’t be a standard lesson that starts from sources, discusses them, analyzes them, raises difficulties, tries to resolve them, and presents some overall picture. My goal is to gather several points related to this broad topic and present them in a relatively telegraphic way, so that the resulting picture will be as complete as possible, and therefore I won’t go too deeply into sources or into details. Regarding going into sources, I have another remark that already really touches the body of the lecture. I won’t go into sources not only because of lack of space, but because in my opinion going into sources is often unnecessary. And that itself is part of the message I want to convey. There’s a certain feeling that if you want to say well-founded things, if you want to appear serious, then you have to rely on sources, because if you don’t have five books in front of you with Rashi script and gold bindings, then it’s not serious. I want to dispute that conception, or weaken it, as part of the message of this lecture itself. Meaning, I want to argue—and in various places of course I’ve expanded on this—that very often conceptual and logical analysis makes recourse to sources unnecessary. Meaning I can do conceptual analysis and draw conclusions from it that make recourse to sources unnecessary. If I bring sources that support it, that’s unnecessary; if I bring sources that oppose it, then they’re simply mistaken. So there’s no point in relying too much on sources. Therefore the absence of sources is itself part of the message. It’s not only a result of limited space, though it is also that. I’m not saying sources are unnecessary. I’m only saying that the reliance on sources is often exaggerated, and I think that in many cases sources serve as a substitute for analysis. And once you bring a source, you’re supposedly exempt from analysis, and the assumption is that if you brought a source then it’s probably something you can’t argue with. And I claim that you can argue even with sources. I treat logical analysis no less seriously than a source. That’s a second point. A third point: my goal is of course not to defend concepts of authority against outside criticism. My assumption is that we’re engaged here in an internal discussion within the religious world, committed to Jewish law in its various forms, whatever exactly. We’re trying among ourselves to clarify these concepts of authority, their limits, their scope, and so on. Therefore I won’t deal too much with defending authoritarian conceptions; on the contrary, I’ll try דווקא to undermine authoritarian conceptions a bit, because I’m speaking to people who are inside the matter, and my goal is to move things leftward rather than rightward. And of course left and right here have nothing to do with the usual political sense, but that’s the connotation. So don’t panic. Don’t panic because I’m placing the emphasis here specifically on the deconstructive sides and not on the constructive sides, because in my view, within the religious public, much more important is to place the emphasis—within the committed public, within the serious public inside the committed public—I think the important emphasis is specifically in this direction, and therefore that’s where my focus is. There is of course something to say on the other side as well, but that isn’t my goal here. Of course one final remark before I begin: the fears. There are always fears raised against positions like these that undermine concepts of authority—so what will happen? Everyone will do whatever they want? People basically won’t accept halakhic statements anymore, and so on? So I want to make two comments about those fears. I don’t dismiss them. I hear them often. I myself used to fear those fears until I began acting a bit against them, or giving them less weight, and the reason for that is twofold: first, truth is no less important than fears. With all due respect to fears, first of all the question is: what is correct? Afterward one has to think whether to say what is correct or not, but a person first has to clarify for himself what is correct. That’s first. Second, yes—if you’re not going to say what is true, you need good reasons for that. But first clarify what is true. If there are good reasons, maybe I won’t say it. That’s the first thing. The second thing: the fears from the opposite position are no less powerful, and many people are not aware of that. The authoritarian position, the position that sees authority in a very broad, comprehensive, absolute way, is no less dangerous. It’s dangerous because once people are exposed to the fact that this position is not really grounded—certainly not agreed upon, but in fact not grounded at all—they will undermine the entire concept of authority. So once you present what lawyers call an expanded front—once you present an overly authoritarian position, once someone understands that this position is wrong, he throws out the whole concept of authority. It’s somewhat similar to what the midrash that Rashi brings says about Eve and the serpent: when Eve told him that the Holy One said not to touch the tree, whereas the Holy One had said not to eat and had not said not to touch, then the serpent pushes her, she touches the tree, and he says to her: there, you see, nothing happened. What happened after that? She also ate. Meaning, once she expanded the front—she said not only that it’s forbidden to eat but also forbidden to touch—he showed her that touching causes nothing, and then she also ate. And I think that’s a paradigm for many fearful people who make fears a central motif, who conduct themselves based on fears. And my feeling is that there’s an excessive emphasis on the issue of fears. Too much of our lives is conducted based on fears, and we neglect substantive considerations and rush very quickly to the issue of fears. When someone discusses the status of women, or the synagogue, how to run a synagogue in terms of women and men—I’ve encountered this more than once—people immediately say: wait, wait, wait, this is a slippery slope, what’s going to happen here? You’re dismantling the whole framework, and so on. And they don’t allow a substantive discussion to take place at all because the fears overshadow everything. So I say: fears should be discussed separately; that’s a discussion that indeed has to be conducted. But I think that first of all we need to conduct the discussion of what is right. Afterward we can think whether we go with the truth, or whether we limit ourselves because there may be one fear or another. The attempt to conceal the truth, I think, in our time is a very problematic attempt and policy. Because nowadays everything is exposed. Overall, the opinions are public, the sources are public, and therefore I think that even if once there may have been room for concealment, for esotericism as it’s called, for hiding the truth, I think today there is really no room for that. On the contrary: once they discover that you’re hiding the truth, they won’t accept anything from you anymore. Exactly like Eve and the serpent. And therefore, in my view, the fear of expansive conceptions today is greater than the fear of undermining conceptions. Both fears have their place and should be discussed, but one has to notice that there’s a fear from both extremes. And therefore I say that in my view the default is first of all to tell the truth. Someone who wants to argue that the truth should not be said, or that it should be said but still qualified—saying okay, but this is only theoretical truth and we shouldn’t act on it—needs good evidence for that. Meaning, you need arguments in order to raise fears; you don’t need arguments in order not to take fears into account. Meaning, the person who wants to fear is the one who has to present his arguments. And today the feeling is often that this is not the form of discourse. Okay, those are the introductions. Now I want to enter into the substance of the matter. I’ll begin perhaps with an initial conceptual analysis, some of these things. Whoever has heard me in the past has probably heard at least some of them in one form or another, but I’m trying to give an overall picture, so I’m presenting them anyway. The first point I want to dwell on here is a distinction between two kinds of authority. There is substantive authority, and what I call formal authority. The names are mine, but never mind, let’s go with them. Formal authority is authority given to a person or institution by virtue of its being what it is. An example would be the Knesset or a court. Their authority stems from the fact that they are the court or they are the Knesset; they have a certain authority in our system. The Knesset sets the laws. It sets the laws, and what it set is binding. That’s what’s called formal authority. What happens if I think the Knesset is wrong? I have a problem. Why? Because it decides, even if it’s wrong. Meaning, the authority of the Knesset does not stem from the fact that it is right; it does not stem from the fact that the people sitting there are the greatest sages imaginable. I assume there are one or two there who don’t exactly meet that criterion. But the authority of the Knesset stems from the fact that it is the Knesset, or that the court is the court. In other words, this is institutional authority. By contrast, there is authority that is substantive authority. Substantive authority is authority given to someone because he is right or because he is an expert. The authority of a doctor, for example, or the authority of a professional in any other field, comes not from the fact that he is somebody—it’s not an authority given to him at the institutional level—but rather authority given to him because he is a professional. He understands that field better than others, and if he says something, then he is probably right. That’s why, for example, we distinguish between a psychiatrist and a district psychiatrist, or between a law professor and a judge. What’s the difference between them? The difference is not at the level of expertise. A judge is not necessarily a better jurist than a law professor, and a district psychiatrist is not necessarily a better professional than another psychiatrist. The difference is that the judge and the district psychiatrist received formal authority from the government, from the authorized authorities. Therefore they have institutional authority, formal authority, which does not derive from their expertise. They may be mistaken, but despite that—even if they say that right is left—in the end they are the authorized agents, and the formal authority is entrusted to them. A law professor or a psychiatrist who was not appointed to a state office has no formal authority; they have substantive authority. They have substantive authority because in those fields they understand better than I do. So if they say something, they are probably right, or at least there is a greater probability that they are right than that I am right. So one has to distinguish between formal authority and substantive authority. One of the important consequences of this distinction is that when we apply concepts of authority, we can apply them in factual domains and we can apply them in normative or judicial domains. In factual domains one cannot speak of institutional authority at all—categorically. That’s a claim that follows from conceptual analysis, and therefore I don’t bother bringing sources for it. You cannot require a person to accept a factual claim just because someone said it. You cannot require him to accept such a claim. You can say, look, if the one who said it is an expert, then he is probably right, and therefore it is reasonable that you accept it from him. But you cannot require him to accept it by virtue of authority. Why? Because if he comes to the conclusion that this fact is not true—he may be mistaken, but if that is his conclusion—then when I require him to accept this fact because I said it and I have institutional authority in this domain, what exactly am I expecting him to do? That he should say that now he thinks it is day outside, and I as the authoritative legislator in the Knesset determine that now it is night? And he is convinced that now it is day. Now I say to him: you must accept my determination because I am the institutional authority, I have formal authority. Let’s say even that the Knesset had been given formal authority regarding facts. It doesn’t have that, but let’s say it had. Even if it had, that wouldn’t help, because formal authority with respect to facts is not conceptually defined. The Knesset cannot require someone who thinks it is now day to think it is now night, because factually he thinks it is now day. He may be mistaken, he may not be mistaken, but if that is what he thinks, you cannot require him to think what he does not think. At most you can tell him: listen, say with your lips that now it is night even though inside you think it is day—but to require you to think otherwise is absurd. One can try to persuade you to think otherwise, but you cannot require someone who thinks X to think Y. There is no such thing. Therefore—I now have a series I’m dealing with, on dogmatics, principles of faith, and the like—and I say that the concept of dogmatics is a concept that is internally absurd. I’m not even getting into the question of which dogmatics, about what, whether this principle is true or not true. The concept of dogmatics as such is absurd. It is absurd because it demands that human beings accept factual claims only by force of the fact that someone said them. It doesn’t matter who it is—Moses our teacher, the Holy One, whoever it may be. It’s irrelevant. Not because the Holy One is not right, but because I do not accept things merely because someone said them. One can persuade me and say to me: the Holy One said it, and He knows everything, so obviously it’s true. If you’ve persuaded me, then I’ll indeed be persuaded and say it’s true. But if you haven’t persuaded me, then you cannot require me to accept it because the Holy One said so. It’s simply not conceptually defined. Therefore I use the Holy One as an extreme example, and all the more so when you move to flesh-and-blood sages. Therefore regarding facts, formal authority, institutional authority, cannot be applied at all—there is no such thing. Regarding norms, yes. Regarding norms—for example, laws—the Knesset has formal authority because it enacts a law, and that is what is binding on the normative level. That does not mean that this law is just, and it does not mean that I need to think like the legislator on this matter. It does mean that I need to do what the law says. Because that is the meaning of formal authority. The same goes for a court. What the court decides is not necessarily correct, but it is what the court decided. And if the court decided it, then it binds me. Meaning, formal authority can be given to normative determinations—Jewish law, civil law, and so on—but cannot be given to facts. That’s the first datum. What about substantive authority? Substantive authority can exist in both domains. There can be experts in law, and there can be experts in physics. These are experts in facts, and those are experts in norms. Therefore substantive authority, meaning the authority of an expert, can be applied both in factual domains and in normative domains. Now of course the concept of authority with respect to substantive authority is used differently than the concept of authority with respect to formal authority. I use the term authority for both in order to contrast one with the other, but the truth is that the concept of authority appears in different meanings when I apply it to formal authority and to substantive authority. In formal authority, the concept of authority appears in its literal sense: you have to accept what the authoritative institution decided—the Knesset, the court, and so on. That is in the context of formal authority. In the context of substantive authority, it isn’t really correct to use the concept of authority at all. When a doctor tells me something to do—I’m not a doctor, I don’t understand it—and the doctor tells me, take this medication, that’s what will cure you. Am I obligated to obey him? Of course not. It’s simply sensible to listen to him because he is probably right. He understands this and I do not. Therefore it is hard even to speak here in terms of authority. The doctor doesn’t really have authority. I call it substantive authority to distinguish it from formal authority, but the doctor has no authority. With the doctor it is merely sensible to listen because he understands it, that’s all. The concept of authority is the opposite concept. Even if he does not understand and even if he is not right, I still have to listen—not because it is sensible to listen to him, but because one must listen to him because it is the Knesset. Therefore these concepts, in certain respects, are actually opposites. I’m using formal authority and substantive authority here only in order to contrast these two concepts, but in truth it’s not really correct to use the term authority when I’m dealing with substantive authority. Now, that’s the conceptual analysis. Now I move to the realm of Jewish law and Torah, da’at Torah, and the like. Let’s try to apply what we’ve seen to this. What is the source for formal authority in Jewish law, in Torah? The source, simply, is the verses: “You shall not turn aside from all that they instruct you, right or left,” the positive and negative commandment. I’m not getting into sources, as I said, but there are sources for this in the Torah. There is a dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides, as is known, about exactly what this applies to—whether only Torah-level laws and expositions and the like, or also rabbinic laws. It doesn’t matter. According to Maimonides maybe there is some reasoning also with regard to rabbinic laws. But there is some agreed-upon source that gives sages formal authority, say through the verses of “you shall not turn aside” if we adopt Maimonides’ position. Through the verses of “you shall not turn aside,” the positive and negative commandment—that is the source for formal authority. What does that mean? It means that Jewish law recognizes concepts of formal authority. That’s a novelty. It could have been the case that there is no formal authority at all in Jewish law; there is halakhic expertise. If someone is an expert, I don’t need a verse to give him his status. His status simply comes from the fact that he understands it, exactly like the status of a doctor. You don’t need verses in order to give—when I take the medication the doctor prescribed me. I take it because I believe he knows what he’s doing. Exactly the same with the halakhic expert. The halakhic expert, if I’m talking about his substantive authority, meaning his expertise, no verses are needed for that. The verses are not dealing with substantive authority. They deal with formal authority. Formal authority has its basis in the verses because without verses it cannot exist. Because formal authority is given to you by virtue of who you are—the person or the institution—and not because of your wisdom or because you never make mistakes, and so on. Therefore some source is needed, some basis. So the basis is the verses in the Torah. Now of course we need to ask ourselves: what and to whom are those verses speaking? Quite simply, when we read the verses in the Torah, and I think this also emerges from almost all the commentators, those verses, first of all, deal only with Jewish law. Therefore when we apply concepts of authority to extra-halakhic domains, outside Jewish law, we simply step outside the domains in which formal authority is defined. Formal authority comes from the verses, and the verses give it to sages in normative domains, in halakhic determinations. Incidentally, a court also has authority to determine what the facts are, because only on the basis of the facts can it eventually also make the normative determination. But it determines the facts—the facts that have to be accepted for the sake of that ruling. It cannot determine for me that I must believe the facts it determined; rather, those will be the facts for the purpose of the legal determination. Therefore essentially that determination is a legal determination, not a factual determination. Jurists often speak of legal truth and factual truth, because a court cannot determine factual truth. If I think the court erred, I will not retract even if the court decided otherwise. But it is true that for purposes of the legal determination, the relevant facts are the facts determined by the court. That is true. So for our purposes I want to say that the source in the Torah, which deals only with formal authority and not with substantive authority, as I said earlier, obviously speaks only about norms and not about facts—only about Jewish law. Therefore, for example, one cannot require me to believe in the coming of the messiah if I’ve reached the conclusion that the messiah will not come, based on some consideration or another, I don’t know. There is no such thing as telling me: you must believe in the coming of the messiah because of whatever, because someone said so or because it is written in the Torah. That is irrelevant. You can tell me: look, if that is what is written in the Torah, if the Holy One said it, and He knows, then apparently the messiah will come—and then you can try to persuade me. If you persuade me, excellent. But you cannot say to me: look, true, you weren’t persuaded, but you still must accept it. Conceptually that simply isn’t defined. Meaning, someone who says such a thing is confused on the categorical level. This is not at all a question of sources or things like that. It’s a conceptual question. You simply cannot come with a claim of formal authority regarding facts. Therefore the verses themselves cannot grant formal authority regarding facts; they can grant formal authority regarding norms, regarding Jewish laws. Even within the halakhic realm, these verses give authority only to very specific bodies. Quite simply—as the overwhelming majority of commentators say, and as the plain meaning of the Torah indicates—it is only to the Sanhedrin. Ordained sages sitting in the Sanhedrin; only to them is formal authority entrusted. Once there is no Sanhedrin, there is no formal authority. A person may be as great as can be—we know that there has been no Sanhedrin for 1,500 or 1,800 years in the ordinary sense. Probably even longer than that. From then on there is no formal authority. None. Because “you shall not turn aside” applies only to the Sanhedrin. The Sefer HaChinukh wants to argue that it applies to the sages of all generations, but that is not the plain meaning of the Torah; almost none of the commentators agree with that. It’s an esoteric opinion that I think one can comfortably ignore. This claim—that it was really given only to the Sanhedrin—means that once there was no Sanhedrin, the world of authority consists only of substantive authorities, not formal authorities. What are substantive authorities? If someone is an expert in Jewish law, then he is an expert in Jewish law. That’s true today, it was true 500 years ago, and it was also true 2,000 years ago. It is always true. For that you don’t need verses and you don’t need anything. If someone is an expert, then he is probably right. That claim is a matter of reason; it does not come out of verses. Therefore it is not limited to specific institutions, specific periods—that is irrelevant. Whoever is an expert is an expert, that’s all. But as I said earlier, there is no obligation to listen to an expert. It is sensible to listen to an expert because he is probably right. But obligation in the sense of formal authority—there is none. That is the meaning of substantive authority. There is one exception to the picture I’m describing here, and that is the Babylonian Talmud—or perhaps the Talmud in general, we might say, mainly the Babylonian Talmud but the Talmud in general. The Talmud too is accepted—at least generally—as having formal authority. And again, formal authority means that if something is written in the Talmud, it is binding not because the Talmud is right—maybe it is right too, but not because of that—but because it has formal authority. What does formal authority mean? As I said, it is institutional. Meaning, if it appears in the Talmud, it binds because it appeared in the Talmud, not because it is true. The Talmud has a status like the Sanhedrin. Why? Excellent question. Rabbi Shlomo Fisher has some essay about this, in Beit Yishai, and he wants to argue that it is because of the acceptance of the nation. Just as at Sinai we accepted the Torah upon ourselves and that is binding, so too we accepted the Talmud upon ourselves. De facto there was no event of accepting the Talmud, but de facto history said its piece. All the sages of Israel, indeed all the Jewish people, and especially all the sages of Israel, accepted the Talmud as a binding text. Okay. To the extent that one can derive any clear conclusion from it, but never mind—the whole huge mess called Talmud is a binding text. And therefore the Talmud is today perceived as having formal authority. One can argue with that; almost nobody does. Even I, relatively revolutionary as I am, do not tend to argue with it. I do accept the authority of the Talmud, but that’s it. Up to there. Meaning, from the Talmud onward there are no more formal authorities. All that remains is only substantive authority. And as I said earlier, substantive authority belongs to whoever is expert in Jewish law. If he is an expert in Jewish law, then he has substantive authority, meaning: if he says something, he is an expert, so he is probably also right, and therefore it makes sense to listen to him—not that one must listen to him. Therefore the meaning is that from the sealing of the Talmud onward, there is in fact no obligation to listen to anyone. There are halakhic experts, but there is no obligation to listen to anyone. Perhaps a local rabbi, because the community accepted him upon itself, but I’m speaking generally: there are no more concepts of formal authority. One implication, for example: many times—I’m sure you’ve also encountered this—I think this is a very common educational message in religious society, they explain to us that the sages of the Talmud knew how to revive the dead and had divine inspiration, and everyone who appears in the Talmud—I don’t know what—rides cherubs and eats cauliflower. The question is why there is any need to get to that, even before asking whether it is true or not. I tend to think it’s not. Why is it so important to people to emphasize the greatness of the sages of the Talmud? Because they feel that without it, the authority of the Talmud will not be accepted. And in order to ground the authority of the Talmud, they need to extol and glorify the power and spiritual stature of the sages of the Talmud. What I said earlier is that the authority of the Talmud is formal authority. Once it is formal authority, you are supposed to accept it not because the sages of the Talmud were such great sages, and not because the sages of the Talmud are always right, but because they are the sages of the Talmud. Exactly as, in order to ground the authority of the Knesset, none of us would buy stories about the spiritual greatness of Knesset members. On the one hand. On the other hand, what they say is binding because that is our system, and in our system the Knesset is the supreme institution, the legislative institution, and therefore we accept its authority. Meaning, adults don’t need to accept Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves stories in order to be committed to the Talmud. You can be committed to the Talmud because it is the constitution, the text that was accepted as binding, even if I don’t think Rav Yosef knew how to revive the dead. You don’t need to assume that in order to accept the authority of the Talmud, and therefore I also allow myself not to assume it, because I also don’t think it’s true. But beyond the fact that it isn’t true, I want to say: it’s also unnecessary. And that’s the important point—it’s unnecessary because of that conceptual analysis I made above. Once I understand that this is formal authority and not substantive authority, there is no need to resort to all sorts of legends in order to accept it. And again I’ll say what I said in the introduction: people say yes, but it will still help us educationally. If we educate children and people that the sages of the Talmud were exalted heavenly beings, riders of cherubs as I said earlier, then they’ll listen to them more—it strengthens us. On the other hand, though, there is also the opposite fear. Once you educate people that the sages of the Talmud were like that, they will suddenly discover all sorts of errors. Various errors that appear in the Talmud, all sorts of things that cannot be correct—and boom, you shattered the whole picture for them. Now they will no longer accept the authority of the Talmud even in halakhic domains. Why? Because you educated them on these folk tales that place everything beyond doubt and beyond criticism, that it’s divine inspiration and everything there must be correct, and suddenly they discover it isn’t true. The earth isn’t exactly round, and hot springs are hot because the sun passes underneath them and cooks them, and all sorts of bizarre things of that kind that appear in the Talmud, because that’s what people thought in their time. I do not disparage the Talmud because of this—on the contrary, I simply say: they drew on the scientific knowledge of their time, exactly as the Torah sages of our time, at best, draw on the scientific knowledge available in our time. They do not have some special spiritual charisma that gives them other divine sources of knowledge. I think back then too that was exactly the situation. Rav, after all, went for thirteen years to cattle herders in order to learn about blemishes in animals. He didn’t learn it from letter skips in the Torah, nor from a halakhah given to Moses at Sinai. Meaning, they learned it from the knowledge that existed in their time, and they could make mistakes, just as in our time they made mistakes in the same kinds of things. Sometimes they erred even in things that were already known in their time. Even in that they could have erred. Meaning, they did not necessarily even have all the knowledge of their time. Now, when a person discovers this, after having been educated that it was all divine inspiration and that they knew everything and so on, and that the sages of the Talmud didn’t build airplanes only because they didn’t feel like it, because they had some mystical considerations—yes, airplanes; I once saw some pamphlet explaining why the sages of the Talmud didn’t build airplanes, because after all they knew everything, so they had some reason or another. It was probably neglect of Torah study. So once a person sees that they could not exactly build airplanes because they lacked basic knowledge, everything collapses for him. He no longer accepts the authority of the Talmud even in halakhic contexts. So once again, expansive approaches in the realm of authority are no less dangerous than restrictive approaches. Therefore I prefer to go with the truth. If both the truth is dangerous and the lie is dangerous, then why not go with the truth? Therefore expansive approaches may perhaps once have had a place; I think that today one has to be very careful with them tactically as well. Beyond the fact that they aren’t true, I think that tactically too they are very dangerous. Now when people tell us, for example, yes—even if they tell you that right is left and left is right; yes, we know there is a dispute about this between the Sifrei and the Jerusalem Talmud, but even when they quote it, they tell you: if they tell you that left is right and right is left—what exactly did they mean to say? Usually people interpret that as meaning that the sages of the Talmud had such divine wisdom, divine inspiration, and so on, that even something that seems absurd to you—the error is probably yours and not theirs. According to how I’m presenting it now, that is incorrect. Even if you accept this formula, that even if they tell you that right is left and left is right, you have to act according to that instruction—but that does not necessarily mean it is correct. Rather, they have authority, and once they have authority you are supposed to accept it. But that doesn’t mean they are also right, because the authority is formal authority. Therefore, statements of that kind—even if I accept them, and I don’t—but even if I accepted them, I would not see them as statements about the wisdom of the sages of the Talmud. Rather, they are statements about their formal authority. The Talmud is what binds, and therefore even if it says something that seems to you like right is left, you still have to do it because that is its formal authority. Okay? So even in those sayings I say there is an implication of what I’ve said here. Notice another implication. How should I relate to the aggadic passages within the Talmud? I’m not even talking now about the medical remedies in the Talmud—how should I relate to that? The more far-reaching commentators say, well, nature changed. Once it worked, today it doesn’t work. Those who are less afraid of the truth will tell you that probably even then it didn’t work. It’s just that what people thought then was healing—those grandmother’s remedies—they thought those cured, so therefore they wrote it in the Talmud too. Just as today halakhic or Torah sages will adopt what the doctors of their time think. It may later turn out not to be correct, even harmful. Science develops, and therefore back then as well I see no reason to assume that something happened different from what happens today. And because of that, with respect to Talmudic remedies, to Talmudic science, I of course see absolutely no reason in the world to relate to it. I don’t even see any reason in the world to study it. Meaning, not only to relate to it—just plain neglect of Torah. What about the aggadic sections within the Talmud? As for the aggadot in the Talmud, I have my own thesis and I won’t go into it here—that’s not our topic. I want to say just one thing. Even if you think there is some message in those aggadot that can really be derived—from my perspective there isn’t, but whoever thinks there is—still, you cannot place that under the category of formal authority. Formal authority was given to the sages in the area of Jewish law. In every area that is not halakhic, there is no formal authority. Therefore you cannot say that I am supposed to accept some moral or philosophical lesson because it is written in the Talmud. So what if it is written in the Talmud? The formal authority given to the Talmud applies only to halakhic domains. And certainly I’m not going to ask Abaye and Rava whether to open a kiosk—speaking of da’at Torah in our time. But let’s even talk about moral ideas, philosophical ideas, and the like. You can study what the Talmud says, you can choose not to study it—I tend not to study it very much—but never mind. I do not think the thing is binding. That is the important point. Now it is not binding for two reasons. One reason is that the authority was from the outset given to the Talmud and to the Sanhedrins of the various generations only in the domain of Jewish law, not in domains outside Jewish law. That’s the first point. The second point is that many of those determinations are factual determinations. And with factual determinations one cannot give formal authority. I’ll give you an example: there are halakhic determinations based on factual assumptions. I’m not even talking about lice—that you’re allowed to kill a louse on the Sabbath because the louse does not reproduce sexually, and so on—which according to the knowledge we have today is not true. I’m speaking even about subtler things, less unequivocal. For example, an estimation of women’s thinking: “Better to dwell as two than to dwell as a widow.” Meaning, a woman prefers to have a partner no matter what his flaws are. Therefore there is no mistaken transaction; whatever flaw is discovered later, we do not annul the marriage on a claim of mistaken transaction, marriage entered in error, because “better to dwell as two.” That’s what the Talmud says. Okay? So I say: even within the Talmud itself one can argue about this matter. But even if it had been written in the Talmud, and even if it had been written as a total principle, I do not think this principle is binding. Because its factual infrastructure is factual infrastructure. The question of what women want or don’t want is a factual question. Do a survey and check what women want or do not want. I have often suggested to women’s organizations that I sometimes advise—on annulments of marriages and the like—I told them: do one organized survey, once and for all. Menachem Lazar is sitting here, a challenge. Do a proper survey and find out what women today in our time really look for in a partner. Break it down by different populations—it probably varies too, never mind—and bring me data. Why do I need to go by the women who lived in Iraq in the fourth century, in the Babylonian Talmud, or the women in Ashkenaz in the twelfth century, or precedents in Poland in the eighteenth century? Women today think differently on many issues. So if we are talking about facts, I am not willing to accept factual determinations that appear in the Talmud as binding. And again, not because there is some Maimonides who says we don’t have to. Incidentally there is such a Maimonides. But not because there is such a Maimonides. Even if there were no such Maimonides, I would write this. Why? Because there is no formal authority with respect to facts. Period. One cannot require me to obey formal authority in factual domains. Therefore I am not prepared to accept factual determinations from the Talmud as binding. I’ll check: if it’s true, excellent. If in my view it’s not true, then no. Then it isn’t true and it isn’t binding. And again, not because there are sources. Because it isn’t true. You don’t need sources for that; it simply isn’t true. So again, that’s an example of why the use of sources is unnecessary. I can bring sources also for these things, but it’s not relevant; the sources aren’t needed. Where did the sources themselves learn this from? They learned it from reasoning. So I too say it from reasoning. If you want, I’ll write it—I did write it in a book—so now you also have sources. You can quote me; there are already sources. This dependence on sources is the mirror image of the mistakes in the realm of authority—formal authority, yes. Okay, now we come to the topic of substantive authority. Substantive authority is the only authority that exists after the sealing of the Talmud. Incidentally, the Rosh already writes these things. It appears in practical Jewish law in the Rema, in Choshen Mishpat, section 25. So even the Shulchan Arukh—yes, which is a classic precedent-based work, its authority is well known—in the introduction he writes that he follows the majority among Rif, Rosh, and Maimonides. Even there you can find the statement of the Rosh saying that after the Talmud there is no real formal authority. There is substantive authority. There are people who are great experts in Jewish law, fine—so it’s worth listening to them because they understand it. But not because I am obligated to listen to them. Suppose a doctor tells me something. I was completely persuaded, I investigated as much as I could, and I reached the conclusion that on this point he is mistaken. And maybe I am mistaken, but that is my conclusion. I won’t listen to him. I won’t listen to him, and I am also not obligated to. I’ll listen to him where I estimate he is right, and in most cases I will estimate he is right. But if there is something where I think he is not right, then I will not listen to him, because there is no obligation to listen. This is unlike the Sanhedrin or the Knesset or a court, where even if I conclude they are not right I have to listen to them, because that is formal authority. So this claim, that after the Talmud there is no more formal authority—there is only substantive authority—is a claim that is also grounded in the medieval authorities and later authorities. There is a well-known responsum of the Rosh in chapter 4 of tractate Sanhedrin, siman 6 I think, where he elaborates on this and brings different views: error in an explicit mishnah, error in judgment, and in the end he says that after the Talmud there is no such thing as error in an explicit mishnah. There is no authority, unless perhaps all the sages of the generation agreed, or something like that. There are certain qualifications. But in principle there is no such thing as error in an explicit mishnah; there is no formal authority after the sealing of the Talmud. Now, what does that mean? Now we need to understand: okay, then who has substantive authority, and in what subject? And another question: assuming he has substantive authority, what does that mean? So perhaps I’ll first speak about the first two points. First of all, we need to discuss who has substantive authority and in what domains. And here I say, first of all, substantive authority is mainly in the halakhic domain. A rabbi has no authority, not even substantive authority—not only formal authority—in domains that are not Jewish law. He does not understand them better than I do. Why should he have substantive authority there more than I do? And the mystical ideas about heavenly assistance and faith in sages and all sorts of things of that sort—I do not think they have any real basis, certainly not empirical. If you try to check, I do not think you will discover that the chance that a Torah sage is right in a factual issue is higher than that of a person with the same intelligence who is not a great Torah scholar. I don’t think you’ll find a difference, but by all means, if someone brings me different data, I’m willing to reconsider. So in that sense, first of all, we’re talking about Jewish law. And all these crazes today—consulting the rabbi or the rebbe or I don’t know whom, the kabbalist and the magician, I don’t know—with them one should not consult about anything. But I say: even with those whom it is worthwhile to consult in matters of Jewish law, say a halakhic decisor or Torah scholar and so on, that is in the halakhic domain. In other fields he may be a wise person and it may be worth hearing his opinion, so consult—but you are not receiving a ruling, not receiving something that binds you even on the substantive level, not only on the formal level. You’re just hearing another opinion, as you hear the opinions of other wise people. Why not? Once, with my wife, before our wedding, we went to Rabbi Lichtenstein. We talked with him a bit; we came from Bnei Brak, from the Bnei Brak period. We spoke with him a little about rabbinic authority. So he said, look, I don’t think sages have authority in the political sphere. But then he kind of poured out his bitterness there about the National Religious Party of that time, that they don’t even come to hear what the rabbis have to say. They have no authority, fine, but at the end of the day these are wise people, so why not listen to what they have to say as well? Are they worse than every other wise person you consult? In that sense I agree. That I agree with completely. Like any other wise person—without getting into mysticism and without getting into heavenly assistance and all sorts of things of that sort. All these legends—I would want empirical evidence before adopting them. If you show me that he makes better decisions than someone else in non-Torah fields, okay, I’m prepared to accept that claim. I do not think there are currently indications of that, and therefore I do not recommend relying on that consideration. As for the question of who is a great Torah scholar, even in halakhic domains or broad leadership domains—I wrote a column not long ago about this, and I assume at least some of you read it—and I want to argue that certainly in our time greatness in Torah should already be different from what it once was, or at least in its proportions. The weight of knowledge itself is of course much smaller than it used to be. There are databases; today you have access, you can ask whoever you want about every bit of information you lack. Knowledge still has weight, of course—it also gives you perspective, and also you won’t always arrive at information you don’t know, so it’s always good to know—but the weight of knowledge has decreased. And these things, incidentally, already appear in the Shulchan Arukh, in the Rema, who says that there is no primary teacher today because everything appears in books; and Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin says that today it is no longer true that one who forgets something of his learning is liable for death, because today you can forget—everything is written down and you can access the information even if you forgot it. And he’s not even talking about our day, when we have computerized databases. There you still had to understand where in the book to look. Today you don’t even need to know that. In the last year or two you even have ChatGPT—you don’t even need Google anymore, meaning the responsa databases; you can just ask it and it will find it for you. Of course you still need to check it and be careful not to rely on it too much, but if you know how, you’ll get to the sources of information. So the weight of knowledge has decreased. On the other hand, the weight of other things has thereby increased. This was always true, but I think today it rises even more. And mainly two things. One is common sense. And unfortunately there are quite a few examples of a person who is a great Torah scholar in the sense that he holds enormous Torah knowledge, but whose thinking is not all that sound. There are not a few examples of that. And I think common sense today is no less important, and maybe more important, than the amount of information you hold. The second thing is that it is very important that one be engaged with other areas of knowledge. Again, I’m speaking very generally; nobody can be an expert in everything and know everything about everything. But you do need to know what is going on in the world. You need to understand what kinds of things are out there, what to look for, what to consult about. And today that’s not so simple. You need to be curious, to read various things, to be open to different ideas, to study different fields, to get acquainted and understand, in order to know what is even going on in the world—what types of experts there are, what kinds of knowledge there are, whom it’s worth consulting about what. That’s no longer such a simple question today, until ChatGPT eliminates all the experts. So this question is not so simple, and I think greatness in Torah requires, in addition to common sense and Torah knowledge, also general education. General education today is a very important parameter of greatness in Torah. I gave there the example—what? I gave there the example, yes, of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky during COVID. During COVID he made decisions about whether to open educational institutions there during COVID or not. I assumed—I don’t know, I don’t know his considerations—but I assumed he followed the Talmud in Taanit, which defines when a plague is a plague, how many dead have to come out of a city before the thing is called a plague. Now I assume Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky had never heard of the concept of an exponential process. Okay? And not only had he not heard of it, he also didn’t understand it, because even those who’ve heard of it don’t always understand what it means. And once you don’t know what that means, and you don’t even understand that it is worth consulting a mathematician or a scientist who knows these matters in one way or another, you will make decisions that are simply foolish. Really, for two days not a single sick person may leave the city. But if you identify that we are dealing with an exponential process, within a week you may find yourself with an entire city full of dead people. And all the indicators in the Talmud of whether this thing is a plague or not a plague are not worth the paper they’re written on. But Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, I assume, at least drew on there—that’s what he knew, that’s what he had. And to make decisions on that basis is irresponsible. Now that does not mean Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky was not a great Torah scholar—he was. And it does not mean he was not a Torah scholar, and that it is not worthwhile to consult him and talk with him and hear what he says. It is worthwhile. But in certain domains it is very worth hearing him with limited trust, and certainly not to hand him the valve for making decisions for the public in such domains, where these are matters of life and death. That man has blood on his hands because of the decisions he made there. And the blood is also on the hands of the public that gave him the wheel to make those decisions. And here again, he does not need to be a mathematician or a physicist, but he does need to know that there are people you need to consult in order to understand how far the criteria you know are really relevant criteria. An exponential process is a process that surprises even experts. Even experts don’t always understand how crazy such a process can be. And all the more so people who are unfamiliar with that mode of thought and have never heard of it. So that’s just one example—of course there are many examples—but I’m saying there is common sense, there is openness, general education, and today that becomes much more important, or at least more important than it once was, relative to the amount of knowledge you carry. And the concept of greatness in Torah itself—even if I am already going to consult someone, and maybe even willing to hand over the decision for me, which I’ll touch on in a moment too—the question is: to whom do I go? Do I go to someone who sits cloistered within his four cubits with many, many brown, dusty, crumbling books? No, I don’t go to someone like that. I’d be happy to hear him too, but I certainly wouldn’t let him decide. Because I want someone who also knows how to consult people who know the material, who know what they are talking about. And mystical heavenly assistance does not provide cover or backing for blunders that stem from a lack of common sense or general education. Therefore general education, incidentally, also contributes to learning, not only to the decisions a person makes in life, where that is obvious. Even one’s conceptual learning, I think, looks different if someone is more open-minded and less closed-minded. But about that one can still argue. Another point I want to speak about here is of course: who tests who is a great Torah scholar? Who decides who is a great Torah scholar? It is not the editorial staff of Yated Ne’eman and not the editorial staff of HaModia. And this legend that if the whole public recognizes him then he is probably the leader of the generation—I don’t buy that legend either. If the whole public recognizes him, the whole public accepts him because politicians or functionaries have messed with their heads, and I don’t buy the great heavenly assistance of the public that always picks the right person. It seems to me—at least in my assessment, unfortunately—that in the last few times it hasn’t exactly picked the right person. And again, without disparaging the people themselves, who may have been great Torah scholars. But it isn’t true that they should have been making decisions for the public. Therefore I do not accept these points. So who chooses the leader of the generation? No one has to choose, because there is no such thing as the leader of the generation. No one has to choose. If you want to consult someone, choose whom you want to consult. Whoever seems to you worth consulting, consult him. The whole concept of the leader of the generation and the question who chooses him assumes that there is such a concept at all, that what he says has force. But no—in my opinion what he says has no force, and therefore in the past there was perhaps more of it, but it was the agreement of sages and probably depended less on politics, though there was always politics; I’m not idealizing the past. But I think today it is much cruder, and therefore I think today there is no point speaking at all about the leader of the generation. It is irrelevant. We see how people make use of it. Yes, but all the great leaders of the generation say such-and-such. And then you tell him: yes, but so-and-so says otherwise. Fine, if they say otherwise that means they are not great leaders of the generation, and therefore all the great leaders of the generation say such-and-such—it’s simply by definition. And you decided who the leaders of the generation are: whoever says such-and-such is the leader of the generation, and therefore all the leaders of the generation say such-and-such, and it is forbidden to disagree. The way these concepts are used is of course contemptible and laughable, but where does it come from? It comes from the fact that the concept itself is empty of content. There really is no such concept, and therefore everyone can do with it whatever they want. Among Vizhnitz Hasidim, the Vizhnitz Rebbe is the leader of the generation. I don’t know whether he knows how to read and write, but for them he is the leader of the generation. I don’t know—I don’t know him; maybe he is a great Torah scholar, I have no idea. But for them he is the leader of the generation, or the Rebbe of Gur or Sadigura or Belz, I don’t know, whichever you want. Or among the Lithuanians, same thing. Meaning, in the end I think a person has to decide whom he is going to consult. There is no importance and no meaning to some mystical or political or other selection of the leader of the generation. Nobody was appointed to be the leader of the generation, and there is no status of a person called the leader of the generation. And if you want to consult—and it is good to consult—then choose whom you want to consult. As the saying goes, make for yourself a rabbi. The important point after everything I’ve said is the point of autonomy. Up to now I’ve assumed that the substantive authority given to sages is because they are experts, and if they are experts like a doctor, then what they say is probably right. Not certainly right, and there is no obligation to accept it; if I reached the conclusion that they are not right, then I won’t accept it. But the assumption is that if they say something, as long as I have no clear indication otherwise, it is worthwhile to accept it because they are probably right. Now here I want to add another layer, and I want to argue that even if it were true that they are the Torah scholars and what they say is probably right, there is a value of autonomy, and that is a value—the value of autonomy. And the value of autonomy means that a person is required to do what he himself thinks, even when there are people greater than he is who say otherwise, and from an impartial perspective the odds are that they are right and not he. Therefore people often say: how can you disagree with, I don’t know, the Mishnah Berurah, Rabbi Akiva Eiger, or Maimonides? Or with Rabbi Ovadia, it doesn’t matter who—how can you disagree with him? Are you as great as he is? So the answer is no, I’m not as great as he is, but this is what I think, and a judge has only what his own eyes see. And now I want to argue that even if you are right that Rabbi Ovadia is right, and that all of them, what they say is probably more correct than what I say, still there is a duty of autonomy. And the duty of autonomy says that if I reach a certain conclusion, I am supposed to do what I think, even if I myself tell you that Rabbi Ovadia is a greater Torah scholar than I am, and if he says otherwise then the odds are he’s right. But if he did not persuade me and did not explain to me why I am mistaken, and I still hold the position I hold, then I will do what I think. An illustration of this—perhaps a proof, perhaps an illustration, you decide—the Talmud in Eruvin brings that the sages did not rule like Rabbi Meir because his colleagues could not get to the depth of his reasoning. Now usually, when I say that his colleagues could not get to the depth of his reasoning, that means he was such a great genius. That would be a reason to rule like him everywhere. If he said something and I disagree, then apparently I didn’t understand him. So that is precisely a reason to rule like him. If I disagree with him and do not understand him, then it is quite clear that I’m mistaken; that’s why I disagree with him. So why is that a reason not to rule like him? And the answer I suggest here—you decide whether it seems plausible to you—the answer I suggest is that we do not rule like him not because he isn’t right, but because if I think otherwise and he did not persuade me, then I have an obligation to act as I think. Even if I am mistaken. The Maharal discusses this at length in Netivot Olam, Netiv HaTorah, chapter 15; whoever wants can read it there. For those in the know, I’ll say that this chapter was written as part of his polemic against the Shulchan Arukh and the Rema. There was a polemic there against the precedent-based approach of the Shulchan Arukh and the Rema, and the Maharal was among the chief fighters against them. His brother wrote an entire treatise on this, Be’er Mayim Chaim, and the Maharshal was also on their side. They fought against the Rema and the Shulchan Arukh, and they basically championed an autonomist approach, an approach that says you do not follow a book even if the greatest of the greats in Jewish law wrote it. You have to clarify the sugya and go according to the conclusion that emerges for you from the clarification of the sugya. And that is the duty of autonomy. Notice: that is a duty of autonomy. It is not merely that you are permitted to disagree with them and do what you think. You are required to do what you think, and not to do what they say. If you do what they say, you are doing something improper. And that is the meaning of “to derive the discussion in accordance with practical Jewish law.” “To derive the discussion in accordance with practical Jewish law” does not mean to learn conceptual Talmud in the morning and say all the wild ideas that come into your head, and afterward learn the Mishnah Berurah in order to know what to do in practice. That is not called deriving the discussion in accordance with practical Jewish law; that is deriving the discussion and afterward deriving the law. “To derive the discussion in accordance with practical Jewish law” means to learn the analysis in such a way that its conclusion will be my practical halakhic conclusion. That is called deriving the discussion in accordance with practical Jewish law. Therefore this whole method of granting absolute authority to books in halakhic domains, and the absolute freedom given in the domain of analytical study, is a dichotomy that simply does not accord even with the sages’ instructions in the Talmud, not only with my values and reasoning. So this basically means that beyond the value of truth, when you come to decide what to do, you also need to take into account the value of autonomy. And that means that if people come to you with claims—look, but all the great leaders of the generation say otherwise—and let’s say that’s true, still that is not a crushing argument, not a decisive argument. It’s an argument that says to me, okay, it’s worth rechecking, because if all the great leaders of the generation say otherwise, then it’s not nonsense, so examine yourself; maybe you missed something. I checked, and I am still convinced that they are wrong and I am right. Then I am required to do what I think, and not what they say. Not because I am greater than them, and not because I am arrogant, and not because I disparage them, but because there is a duty of autonomy. How do I know there is a duty of autonomy? Beyond the example I brought from Rabbi Meir and so on, I can also bring a source for it. I won’t go into it now, but I can also bring it from sources. Briefly, I say that in a place where, say, there is a dispute in a certain halakhic matter, okay? My claim basically says that when I stand before a decision in a matter of that sort, and I know there is a dispute among the sages on this issue, the accepted approach in Jewish law says: fine, then we go here by the laws of doubt, because there is a dispute. I say: what do you mean? I need to decide what I think. If I think like one opinion, I’ll go that way. If I think like the other opinion, I’ll go that way. If I think unlike both of them, I’ll go as I think unlike both of them. When are there laws of doubt? When I myself am in doubt. Yes? Like the well-known story about Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz, when a priest came to him and said: why don’t you go after us? After all, we are the majority. It says in the Torah, “incline after the majority.” So he said to him: I follow the majority when I’m in doubt. If I’m not in doubt, I don’t follow the majority. And the rule of following the majority, or following the other rules of doubt—Torah-level doubt stringently, rabbinic-level doubt leniently, all the rules of doubt that exist in Jewish law—are rules stated regarding a person standing in a state of doubt. But they are not rules instructing you to be in doubt. They do not instruct you to be in doubt. If you are in doubt, you have rules of doubt. If you are not in doubt, do what you think. Therefore the duty of autonomy also has implications in places where all the greatest sages in the world have spoken. There are disputes like that—the Rema and the Shulchan Arukh. Ashkenazim should follow the Rema and Sephardim the Shulchan Arukh? Nonsense. Ashkenazim and Sephardim should follow what each of them thinks. If you do not have a clear position, then there are the rules of custom, which are part of the rules of doubt: “If you do not know, O fairest among women, go forth in the footsteps of the flock and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ dwellings.” If you don’t know, then you go by the custom of your community or something of that sort. That too is a rule for what to do in situations of doubt. But in order to go by that rule, you first have to decide that you are in a state of doubt. You have to be in doubt in order to be in a state of doubt. If you have no doubt, if you have a position of your own, do what you think. Of course I’m speaking about someone who is qualified, and that is an important reservation. Not every child who has just begun learning can now form an opinion of his own and ignore what all the great leaders of the generation say. It has to be someone who has already reached the point of issuing rulings. Someone who already knows how discussions proceed, how halakhic conclusions are drawn from a sugya, someone who doesn’t miss basic lines of reasoning and basic sources. But after that, even if he is not Rabbi Ovadia or the Chafetz Chaim or Maimonides, he has to do what he himself thinks—like the well-known Hasidic story about Rabbi Zusha, who said that when he gets to Heaven they will not ask him why he wasn’t Moses our teacher; they will ask him why he wasn’t Zusha. And by way of paraphrase, I want to say that the way you decide whether you have reached the point of authority in this sense, that you can already make autonomous decisions, is not whether you are greater than the Chafetz Chaim and then you can disagree with the Mishnah Berurah. No. Rather, whether you are already yourself. Meaning, if you are formed, if your tools are already formed, if you’ve reached the capacities that are yours. And once you’ve reached the capacities that are yours, then you are already supposed to act as you think. How do you know that? There are no clear rules. You can assess. But one indication, for example, is that after you’ve formed a position, many times when you encounter other Torah scholars who hold a different position, they don’t persuade you. They don’t bring you a source you missed, or an argument you missed, or something like that. Sometimes yes, but that happens even to great sages. But if you say: generally that doesn’t happen. This is my position; they think differently, that’s their position—but I did not discover something I hadn’t thought about beforehand. If I did not discover something I hadn’t thought about beforehand, that means I’m formed. It doesn’t mean I’m like the Chafetz Chaim. But it means I am already Mickey Abraham. Once I am already Mickey Abraham, then I can no longer merely do what I think—I am also required to do what I think. And then I stop getting excited by the fact that all the great leaders of the generation say otherwise than I do—not because I’m greater than them, not because I’m more correct than them, but because this is my position. Here is an example. When you see a piece of meat lying in the market, in the street, then the rule in Jewish law is—let’s say we’re in a city—the rule is that in principle we follow the majority of stores in the city. There is the issue of meat left out of sight, but in principle we go after the majority of stores in the city. If there are nine kosher stores and one non-kosher, the assumption is that the piece is kosher. Okay? Now if there are nine non-kosher and one kosher, the assumption is that the piece is non-kosher. What if I found a piece with a top-level kosher seal on it, and there are nine non-kosher stores in the city and one kosher one? Will I follow the majority and say the piece is non-kosher? Of course not. Why not? Because it has a seal. So what if it has a seal? We follow the majority. There is a rule in Jewish law that we follow the majority. Most stores here are non-kosher. The answer is that the rule of following the majority was said regarding states of doubt. If I am not in doubt, then the obligation to follow the majority does not apply to me. And if I am not in doubt—there is a top-level kosher seal here—then this piece is not doubtful. If it isn’t doubtful, why should I follow the majority? Exactly like Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz. So this is a very important point in the doctrine of autonomy: I do not rely on the opinions of people greater than me not because they are not great, and not because they are not right, and not because they do not have formal or substantive authority or whatever else, but because there is also a value of autonomy. And if I have a position, I am required to act by it. Required—not merely permitted. That is what I need to do. That is called deriving the discussion in accordance with practical Jewish law. Perhaps I’ll finish with an incident that happened to me personally. When Degel HaTorah was founded, I was in yeshivah in Bnei Brak, Yeshivat Netivot Olam, and Rabbi Shach kind of chased after every voter, because they were afraid there of the electoral threshold and so on. And I of course announced that I was going to vote for the National Religious Party or something, that I was not going to vote Degel HaTorah. So I received—a messenger came to me. Rabbi Shach knew us a little because his daughter, who incidentally passed away not long ago, Rebbetzin Bergman, was in touch with us. So he heard about it, and a messenger came to me at the yeshivah, one of the yeshivah rabbis, and said to me: Rabbi Shach is calling for you. I already understood what this was about, and I didn’t go. I didn’t go because I knew what he would say to me, and if he had said it to me then I would have obeyed. So I didn’t go. Of course I didn’t go, and in the end I voted Degel HaTorah because I knew that was what he would say to me—the first and last time I ever made that mistake. But that’s what happened. Afterward I went to my shiur teacher, one of the rabbis in the yeshivah, and I asked him: tell me, what will happen if I arrive before the heavenly court and they say to me: tell us, why did you vote Degel HaTorah? The truth is that you should have voted National Religious Party. So I say to them: well, Rabbi Shach said so. Is that a defense? Is that a good defense? That’s what I asked my teacher. Is that a good defense? He said no, that’s not a good defense. If you were mistaken, then you were mistaken; nothing will help. It’s just that the odds are you weren’t mistaken, because the odds are Rabbi Shach was right. He has da’at Torah. Okay? So first, I doubt whether he has da’at Torah, because on this matter I’m not at all sure he understands it better than I do, in the area of voting for the Knesset and so on, especially since it involves matters that are not only Torah matters but all kinds of other matters. But beyond that, now I add another layer and say: even if it’s true that the odds are Rabbi Shach was right, there is still a demand to act autonomously. And the demand to act autonomously says that even if the odds are he is right, if you have another position and he did not persuade you, then you are supposed to do what you think. That’s why, for example, in a court they begin with the lesser judge and not with the greater one, so that the greater one will not take the lesser one captive, but rather the lesser one will state his view truly, authentically, and not be biased—after the greater one has spoken, the lesser one will no longer dare disagree. Meaning, there is a demand of every person to say what he thinks and act according to what he thinks, even in the halakhic domain. I’m not even talking about domains that are not halakhic—philosophical, and certainly ordinary mundane matters. In those there is nothing to talk about at all. Good. Actually I’ll stop here. This really was a very, very general picture. I didn’t go too deeply into the points, but I hope I managed to present the overall picture. If anyone wants to comment, ask, disagree, I don’t know, say whatever they want—gladly.