Rabbi Dr. Michael Avraham: God, Morality, the Jewish People, and What Lies Between Them — Raz Zauber Podcast #73
This transcript was generated automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The existence of God, philosophy, and tradition
- The meaning of tradition and the lack of validity of ethnic belonging
- Judaism as a halakhic worldview and the rejection of value-based “secular Judaism”
- Universal morality, rejection of “Jewish morality,” and social correlations
- Halakhic rationality versus secular emotionalism, and decision-making in conflict situations
- The dangers of the extremes: disconnected Haredi life versus emotional secularism, and integrating morality and Jewish law
- State, nation, family, and circles of belonging as needs rather than values
- The importance of faith: commandments and morality, without coercion
- Morality without God: dangerous flexibility, alternative religions, and conservative restraints
- A framework for discourse, pluralism, and the boundaries of meaning
- God as a universal anchor point and a philosophical “gap-closer”
- God is not a “cop”: normative validity, not fear of punishment
- Criticism of experiential traditionalism, Uman, and “pagan” folklore
- Traditionalism versus atheism, intention in a commandment, and instrumental Judaism
Summary
General Overview
Rabbi Michael Abraham states that he believes in the existence of a Creator God based on a combination of philosophical arguments and the testimony of tradition about revelation, and argues that the connection between them creates a stronger picture than either component on its own. He says that, for him, Judaism is first and foremost a commitment to Jewish law, while morality is universal and not a distinctively “Jewish morality,” and that ethnicity, Jewish lineage, or social belonging do not confer validity on truth, but at most explain psychological influences. He presents a view according to which halakhic thinking trains a person in rationality and cool-headed weighing of decisions against emotional impulses, and he identifies in secular society an emotional tendency that weakens restraints and leads to moral distortions; at the same time, he also warns against a Haredi detachment from common sense and moral feeling. He distinguishes between state and nation as facts and needs rather than values, and concludes by arguing that morality has no philosophical validity without God, alongside sharp criticism of experiential and instrumental traditionalism that replaces commitment to commandment with folklore.
The existence of God, philosophy, and tradition
Rabbi Michael Abraham says that he believes in the existence of a Creator God for complex reasons, and briefly presents strong arguments for the existence of a transcendent factor that created the world. He argues that the tradition of revelation confirms the philosophical conclusion, and that combining the elements of the picture is like a puzzle in which the parts reinforce one another and create more than the sum of their parts. He explains that after reaching a philosophical conclusion about a Creator, testimony about revelation and practical demands are no longer far-fetched, whereas without the philosophical basis such claims would be much more questionable.
The meaning of tradition and the lack of validity of ethnic belonging
Rabbi Michael Abraham defines tradition primarily as that which is passed down from generation to generation, and accepts external corroboration if it exists, but does not make that the main thing. He rejects “tradition because it’s tradition” and says that being born in a certain place has no philosophical significance, even if it has psychological significance. He says that arguments like “you’re Jewish, so you’re obligated” are not acceptable to him, and that the identity of Jewish lineage or the House of Israel plays no role for him in the validity of belief. He even emphasizes that a convert, who chooses the path, highlights the dimension of decision more strongly. He adds that after he has concluded that he is committed to the system, Jewish law itself imposes obligations on him that stem from belonging to the Jewish ethnos, but that obligation comes from faith, not the other way around.
Judaism as a halakhic worldview and the rejection of value-based “secular Judaism”
Rabbi Michael Abraham states that, for him, Judaism is Jewish law, and there is nothing binding beyond that. He rejects defining Judaism through “repairing the world” or historical excellence, and argues that actions of Jews throughout the generations do not obligate him, and that many non-Jews also worked to improve the world, so that cannot define Judaism. He refuses to see broad biblical values as a uniquely Jewish characteristic, because they also nourish other religions, especially Christianity. He says there is no such thing as “secular Judaism” in the value-based sense, because in the absence of Jewish law no unique value commitment remains, whereas in the ethnic-national sense there certainly are collective characteristics, as with other peoples.
Universal morality, rejection of “Jewish morality,” and social correlations
Rabbi Michael Abraham says that morality is universal, and therefore “Jewish morality” is an oxymoron, and he distinguishes between describing the average tendencies of groups and questions of normativity and essence. He argues that there is no moral rule that obligates a Jew but not a non-Jew, and that if something is moral, then it obligates all human beings at every level, including the national one. He accepts that there is a factual correlation between religious belief and certain moral-political positions, such as a tendency toward the right or opposition to a hostage deal, but insists that these are descriptive explanations rather than a sweeping religious obligation, and that the disagreement here is a moral disagreement, not a claim that Judaism imposes a position.
Halakhic rationality versus secular emotionalism, and decision-making in conflict situations
Rabbi Michael Abraham explains that a religious world, especially mainstream halakhic Judaism, cultivates a habit of acting based on examination and judgment rather than from the gut, because Jewish law requires intellectual accounting before action. He argues that in secular culture morality is more closely tied to emotion, contrary to the common view that associates religion with emotion and secularity with rationality. He presents two dimensions that shape tough positions, such as on the hostages: preferring intellect over emotion, and broad weighing of long-term and systemic considerations beyond the immediate. He illustrates the gap through stories about secular reactions to painful halakhic demands, such as a priestly wife who was raped having to separate from her husband, and through a culture that sanctifies “the heart” as the bottom line. He suggests that the real disagreement is over what leads the decision: whether reason serves emotion or emotion is harnessed to reason.
The dangers of the extremes: disconnected Haredi life versus emotional secularism, and integrating morality and Jewish law
Rabbi Michael Abraham says that Jewish law makes it possible to stand against a historical process in which the center of gravity moves from the head to the heart, and even to interests and urges, and he brings a joke in the name of Dov Sadan about Jewish revolutions as symbolizing that process. He warns against the other side of the coin in the Haredi world, where cold halakhic considerations may become detached from common sense and moral feeling and produce absurd arguments. He presents a position according to which he is able to stand against emotion and intuition, but not ignore them, and that there are real conflicts between the halakhic side and the moral side in which he is committed to both, and therefore a delicate weighing is required. He argues that on the secular side emotion leads, and on the Haredi side intellect alone takes over, and that both situations are mistakes.
State, nation, family, and circles of belonging as needs rather than values
Rabbi Michael Abraham declares that he is a Zionist and identifies with the desire for a state, but does not see the state as a value, rather as a need and a basic human interest to live within a political framework of one’s own. He says that the struggle for the state’s existence has value significance because it provides a real need, much like feeding a hungry person is a value-laden act even though the food itself is a need. He explains that identification with the citizens of the state and with Jews is psychological and rooted in belonging, and that preferring to help one’s own circles of belonging does not make a person more righteous than others who do the same for their own people. He adds that family and love, too, are not values in themselves, but facts and needs of belonging, while the value lies in the contribution and responsibility that sustain the circle.
The importance of faith: commandments and morality, without coercion
Rabbi Michael Abraham says that he does want to persuade people of the existence of God and that the Torah was given and is binding, מתוך a desire that every Jew should observe the commandments and his obligations, but he rejects religious coercion and argues that it has no value in terms of commandment. He clarifies that belief in God is a necessary but not sufficient condition for commitment to Jewish law, and therefore he sees a need to move from faith to clarification of Torah and commandments. He argues that morality has no philosophical validity without God in the background, and explains that the claim is not that secular people are not moral in practice, but that the theoretical and normative basis of the moral imperative is undermined without an external binding source.
Morality without God: dangerous flexibility, alternative religions, and conservative restraints
Rabbi Michael Abraham explains that morality without God rests on psychological internalization, evolution, and altruism, and may be unstable in a period of rapid cultural change. He describes the flexibility of Western morality through the rapid change of norms, and argues that the absence of restraints can lead to further expansions even in areas that currently provoke shock. He says that communism functions as a religion by providing an external source that dictates right and wrong, but estimates that religions without God do not endure over time because they are imposed by force and lack a real foundation. He emphasizes that the Jewish religion survived without force and under conditions of persecution, and sees in that a reinforcement of the strength of its transcendent basis.
A framework for discourse, pluralism, and the boundaries of meaning
Rabbi Michael Abraham argues that internal heterogeneity is possible and healthy only within a shared framework that gives meaning to discussion and decision, similar to halakhic and Talmudic disputes that take place within rules. He warns that pluralism without a framework is an “outrage” that leads to a collection of narratives that do not speak to one another and to postmodern paralysis. He demonstrates the need for a framework through genres in art, where partial breaking of boundaries can be meaningful, but total breaking abolishes any possibility of evaluation and comparison. He explains that in dialogue with an atheist the common ground is logic, philosophy, and science, but when it comes to values he argues that a truly binding foundation requires God.
God as a universal anchor point and a philosophical “gap-closer”
Rabbi Michael Abraham describes God as the anchor point one reaches when asking “why” again and again in every field until one stops at first assumptions that cannot be justified by something prior. He argues that without God the foundational principles appear arbitrary, and if they are arbitrary then the whole structure built on top of them is arbitrary and lacks validity. He distinguishes between “arbitrary” and “impossible to justify,” and gives the example of the value of human life, which cannot be justified internally but receives validity from the fact that God determined that He made man in the image of God. He presents God as the basis for morality, epistemology, philosophy, religion, and faith, and argues that without Him everything is “hanging in the air,” resting on emotion or on personal decisions that are not binding.
God is not a “cop”: normative validity, not fear of punishment
Rabbi Michael Abraham rejects the idea that God serves mainly as a policeman holding a whip of punishment in order to produce obedience, and emphasizes that people can behave morally even without fear of punishment. He distinguishes between the psychological question “what will cause me to be moral” and the philosophical question “why is it right to be moral,” and argues that God is required for the validity of the moral command, not for a mechanism of fear. He adds that if a person acts only out of fear of punishment, the act is not truly moral, and relates this to a Kantian idea that places motivation as part of the evaluation of the deed.
Criticism of experiential traditionalism, Uman, and “pagan” folklore
Rabbi Michael Abraham says that he despises phenomena of experiential Israeli Judaism such as trips to Uman and challah-separating carnivals, and sees them as pagan worship wrapped in a Jewish aroma rather than halakhic Judaism. He argues that this is an emotional religion whose source is secular culture, and that it is secularity wrapped in a religious cloak. He says that he takes an oppositional stance toward these phenomena and tries to write and speak against them, while accepting that in a democracy he does not force people how to behave.
Traditionalism versus atheism, intention in a commandment, and instrumental Judaism
Rabbi Michael Abraham argues that a type of traditionalism in which a person accepts Jewish law in principle but observes only what is convenient for him is worse than an atheist outlook, because the atheist does what he thinks is right, whereas the traditionalist “thinks like me and acts differently.” He calls Sabbath desecrators who understand the prohibition “halakhic offenders,” not moral offenders, and distinguishes between human failure due to impulse and difficulty and a conscious decision of “it doesn’t suit me.” He says that a commandment is fulfilled only when the act is done because the Torah or the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it, and not for instrumental reasons such as livelihood, health, or image, and that even a good act such as charity is not a commandment without the intention of command. He cites Maimonides in Laws of Kings at the end of chapter 8, on a non-Jew who keeps the seven Noahide commandments out of rational conviction, who is not among the pious of the nations of the world but among their wise, and applies the principle to Jews as well. He argues that Ahad Ha’am, even if he had observed the Sabbath meticulously for reasons of culture and identity, would not have been fulfilling commandments but making instrumental use of them, and concludes that the proper balance requires not sealing off the heart, but also not letting emotion decide in place of reason.
Full Transcript
[Speaker A] Hello to all the viewers, hello to all the listeners, thank you for being with us. Hello to my guest, Rabbi, Dr. Michael Abraham, doctor of theoretical physics, thinker, founder of the Third Path. I’m sure I missed a few more things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter, it’s all fine.
[Speaker A] But I think that’s enough to understand who I’m talking to, so thank you for being here. How are you? Thank God—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank God, fine. Under the circumstances… personally fine. Under the circumstances.
[Speaker A] So you mention the circumstances—a difficult period, obviously. Let’s at least solve this minor issue for the Jewish people. Does God exist?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, naturally, I think so.
[Speaker A] I don’t know—even Hanoch Daum wears a kippah, and if you ask him you’ll get… not necessarily anymore?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I think so, for reasons that are a bit complex, but briefly: there are very good arguments in favor of the existence of a Creator God. And that connects in some way to the tradition that came down to us regarding revelation and so on, and when you put those two planes together, a certain picture emerges that, for me, is enough to convince me. Now, that’s very rough and very general, and there are many, many details inside it, but broadly speaking, that seems to me to be the move.
[Speaker A] Is revelation part of your explanation for why He exists?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It corroborates it. Meaning, the basic thesis is that when you examine each aspect separately, of course you can argue about it. But when you combine all the aspects together, it’s like a puzzle. In a certain sense, they strengthen one another—it’s more than the sum of the parts. So the philosophical belief strengthens my trust in tradition, and the tradition strengthens the philosophical belief. Right? You know, once I reach a philosophical conclusion that there is some transcendent factor that created the world, then when some testimony comes to me and says He revealed Himself and said this or that, I don’t know, He wants certain things from you—that’s no longer something absurd. Meaning, if I hadn’t gone through or gotten past the philosophical part, and I had no indication at all regarding whether anything like that exists, and then someone comes and says, ‘Look, something called God revealed itself to me, and it’s such-and-such, and it told me do this and don’t do that’—that would be much more questionable. So I think that when you look at the big picture, I think it’s enough to convince me. Any aspect on its own, of course, can be debated in a thousand ways.
[Speaker A] So you’re saying: there’s some religious foundation, and alongside it I find logic—or logic, and alongside it I find some kind of religious scheme.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I wouldn’t call it logic versus religion, because in my view those are not two opposite words, but rather philosophy versus tradition. Okay? Meaning, for me tradition can also be a source of philosophical truths, if I trust it.
[Speaker A] Tradition in the sense of transmission—something passed down from generation to generation—or are you also saying from the standpoint of, you know, there are also confirmations in biblical criticism for various things that happened. So is that also something that pushes you toward belief?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there are confirmations, all the better. When I speak about tradition, I’m speaking basically about what is passed down from generation to generation.
[Speaker A] But my question is whether the fact that it’s passed down from generation to generation makes you see it as historical truth. Because in the end we’re talking about an event—for example, the revelation at Mount Sinai. Does that make you see it as something historical that happened and was simply transmitted? Or are you saying tradition because it’s tradition?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, definitely not the second. There’s no such thing as tradition because it’s tradition. There is no significance to the fact that I was born in a certain place or raised in a certain society. I’m not saying that has no psychological significance—each of us is shaped by the landscape of his birthplace. But on the philosophical level it has no significance whatsoever. I give it no significance. Arguments of the sort, ‘Listen, you’re Jewish, so you have to…’ whatever—it’s totally unacceptable to me.
[Speaker A] There’s no such thing. So does this also connect to the whole issue of Jewish lineage or the House of Israel—being part of that whole thing? Does that also play no role for you?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nothing. Not one millimeter.
[Speaker A] Meaning, someone who converted, from your standpoint…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course—on the contrary, even more so. Because he actually chose that path by decision, unlike someone who was born into it, where whether he chose it or not—we know that most of us don’t really choose. We continue from the place we got to, the place we came from.
[Speaker A] So all this idea of Judaism as an ethno-religious group—that doesn’t play a role for you?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t play a role in the sense of validity. Meaning, the fact that I belong to a certain place says nothing. If it weren’t true, it wouldn’t interest me—if it weren’t true in my opinion.
[Speaker A] You’re taking me here a little…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But after I reached the conclusion that I’m committed to the system, the system itself says that I have obligations that stem from the fact that I belong to the Jewish ethnos. Fine, and then of course I also have obligations toward others who belong to that ethnos, but that comes from the faith; the faith does not come from that. If someone was born into a pagan home, so what, do you think he therefore has to be pagan because that’s where he was born? That’s his tradition. To me that has no… it’s an absurd argument. I don’t accept that kind of argument.
[Speaker A] And what is the obligation, in your view?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What creates the obligation?
[Speaker A] No—what is the obligation for someone who… you said, someone born into the Jewish ethnos? To observe Jewish law?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Judaism, for me, is Jewish law. There’s nothing else. Repairing the world? Repairing the world is…
[Speaker A] We could also say, you know, Jews in the past—and in the present—have kept pushing humanity forward all the time. Fine, so in every ideology, you know, you have Milton Friedman, you have Marx, you have Maimonides, and you have Adam Sandler, for that matter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but that doesn’t come from their Jewish obligation; it comes from Jewish character, or Jewish background if you like, apparently. That doesn’t interest me. Meaning, the fact that I or you or all of us have certain character traits—fine, that’s a fact, I’m not denying facts. It’s something that requires explanation.
[Speaker A] This excellence, this prominence.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. In my view it’s definitely true that it requires explanation, but that in itself obligates me to nothing. So Jews dealt with repairing the world throughout the generations—so what? Plenty of non-Jews also worked to improve the world. That doesn’t define Judaism in any way. Not in that way. No—many non-Jews also did a lot of very good things, and of course there are many today as well. No, obviously, absolutely. So to me it points more to Jewish character than to Jewish obligation. Meaning, the fact that many Jews did something does not obligate me in any way. So what if they did? Why should that interest me?
[Speaker A] It’s the landscape of our homeland in some sense—it makes you compare yourself to others and want to also…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Psychologically, yes; not in terms of value. Meaning, psychologically we all, as I said…
[Speaker A] You think that doesn’t come from some Jewish value-place? Repairing the world, the “go forth from your land”—there’s something there too, of setting out on a journey.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a value-place, but it’s not Jewish. There’s no such thing as some uniquely Jewish thing here. Many people in the world—even from the Hebrew Bible itself, which after all influenced other religions, especially Christianity of course—were influenced by it and also draw those same values from there. I refuse to see these values as a Jewish characteristic. That’s why all the definitions proposed, for example, for secular Judaism seem ridiculous to me. There is no such thing as secular Judaism, in my view, in the value sense. Again, in the ethnic-national sense, obviously there is—every people has such and such characteristics; it’s hard to define it sharply, but…
[Speaker A] Right, because in the end it’s a dual definition, because the French too have—I don’t know if French is a good example—but there are states that are supposedly peoples, where there’s some ethnos.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are collective characteristics, they have things in common, all that is true. Obviously Jews have that too. But when I look for a definition of Judaism, I’m looking for something on the value plane. Something that says that if you’re Jewish, then you’re obligated to do such-and-such. If I’m Jewish, I’m obligated to nothing except Jewish law. Repairing the world obligates every person as such, not specifically a Jew. The fact that Jews perhaps do it more—fine, that’s a fact of life, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a Jewish value.
[Speaker A] So the value dimension is drawn from Jewish law? Drawn from Jewish law?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is Jewish law—that is the value dimension. Let me explain. Morality is a universal thing, for example. Morality—there is no such thing as Jewish morality. Jewish morality is an oxymoron, in my view. Morality, by definition, is universal. Meaning, if there is something that in my view is moral, then it obligates you and Muhammad and whoever you want, Richard, everyone in the world.
[Speaker A] Even though for them it’s the Noahide commandments and for us it’s…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—not commandments. It’s not commandments at all. A moral obligation has nothing to do with commandments, excuse me. A moral obligation binds everyone in the world. Of course there are arguments about morality, but I don’t argue for a moral position because I’m Jewish and therefore I think morality says this; I argue for it because I think morality says this. Another Jew may think morality says something else, and then we’ll have a disagreement.
[Speaker A] You talk a lot about Christianity—they took this place of morality. You don’t want to use the term Jewish morality, but the morality that was recognized then—the discourse of Jesus was supposedly ‘an eye for an eye,’ and it became ‘turn the other cheek.’ Okay. So they did have some basis to hold onto. Meaning, there was some existing basis of what Jewish morality was.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not arguing—again, these discussions always mix two planes. There is the descriptive plane. Meaning, you can say that on average Jews tend to think X in the moral context, and Christians perhaps tend to think Y. It may be true, you can test it; I’m not sure, but maybe. That’s description. I’m talking about essence, about normativity, not about facts. And in the normative sense I see no moral thing that obligates me as a Jew that would not obligate me as a non-Jew. If I think it’s moral, then that’s what I’m supposed to do; whether I’m Jewish or non-Jewish makes absolutely no difference.
[Speaker A] Even on the national level? At every level. Because today, you know, there’s this question coming from the fact that in public discourse there’s some desire to return to Jewish morality, especially around the war.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let them first explain to me what Jewish morality is. I don’t accept it. I definitely do see a correlation between, say, religious belief—not specifically Judaism, but religious belief—and a moral attitude. There is such a correlation. But it’s a factual correlation. Meaning, it’s not for nothing that religious people tend more to the right. Not all of them, but there is a correlation. Religious people also tend more to oppose a hostage deal, for example, or agreements with Hamas, or things of that sort. I even think I have pretty good explanations for those things. But that doesn’t mean I have claims against someone if he’s a religious Jew and thinks otherwise. For me, it’s a moral argument.
[Speaker A] So how do you explain that tendency, really? I think it comes more from the national place and less from the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Partly, but I think it’s even broader than the national. Meaning, there is a form of relating that doesn’t focus only on the here and now. The relationship between the individual and the nation is one dimension of broadening. But there’s also broadening in terms of time spans, and broadening in terms of additional aspects as well. My feeling is—I have a very firm position on the hostage issue and so on—in that respect I’m completely to the right. And what today is called right-wing, I don’t know if it’s specifically related to the right. But in my view this is connected mainly to two planes. One plane is intellect versus emotion. In my view, the prevalent conception today in the street—I haven’t done statistics—is a conception rooted in emotion, excessive emotion in my view, and an inability to sublimate the very powerful feelings that we all have about this situation and the hostages wasting away there in the tunnels and all the things we hear all the time, and rightly so—those are the facts, obviously. No one denies that. The question is whether that is supposed to dictate what we do. And here I think that in a religious world, a person grows up much more rational and rationalistic than in a secular world, contrary to what people usually think. Meaning, in the secular world morality is much more connected to emotion than in the religious world. And again, this is a description. Meaning, if some religious person comes and says that for him morality is connected to emotion, or some secular person says that morality… I have no problem with that; it’s not a contradiction. That’s why I say, I’m referring now to descriptions, not normative statements. It’s not that every religious Jew must think like me. But factually, it is true. Meaning, generally speaking—just look at the media—those who oppose a deal are almost all kippah-wearers. Almost all of them.
[Speaker A] Yes, no, there’s no doubt that it stands out.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. So I’m saying: explanations. One explanation is the emotional versus the intellectual. Explain that. I say: secular thought is very emotional thought. Very emotional. Very often you feel it’s the opposite. Meaning, religion is always associated with something emotional, experiential, things like that, and secularity is something terribly rational. A 180-degree mistake, in my view. Meaning, a secular outlook is a very emotional outlook; its view of morality is very emotional. A religious outlook is a very cold and rational one. And that is morality from the Jewish standpoint. People think that a religious Jew who relates in such a way is simply not committed to morality—he’s committed to, I don’t know, his messianism, all kinds of slogans people throw around today—but that he ignores morality. No. Morality for him is here and not here. Meaning, morality is tied to the mind, not to emotion. And many people don’t understand this focal point of the argument, which is one of the strongest focal points of the argument we have today. That’s one plane. And the second plane is, as I said earlier, the range. The fact that right now there are twenty living hostages. Mixing together the living and the dead is absurd in my view. But obviously it’s worth bringing everyone back. But talking about fifty hostages all in one package seems absurd to me. There are twenty living hostages, and they are the first concern, obviously. It’s also desirable, as much as possible, to care about the fallen. But with all due respect to the twenty living hostages, there are broader systemic considerations, long-term considerations, with a wider scope, that also have to be taken into account.
[Speaker A] But let’s step away from current events for a moment. You said here that religious thought is more rational. That’s a statement. More rationalistic. More rationalistic. That’s a statement. Right. How do you explain it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, I can explain it through habits. In my view it even borders on ideology, but first of all, explanations of how it developed. It developed out of the habit of acting according to Jewish law. Meaning, the habit of acting according to Jewish law basically says: when I do something, I need to check whether it’s right or wrong. Meaning, to give myself some kind of accounting—to myself, to the Holy One, blessed be He, whatever—but I make an intellectual, logical reckoning, some kind of calculation before I act. I don’t act from the gut. That is the habit of halakhic Judaism. Now today there are already many other shades within Judaism that emerged a bit from Hasidism, from mysticism, from those circles that really already look somewhat different. But I’m talking about halakhic Judaism at its source, at the core. It’s a complex phenomenon. I’m talking about the mainstream, okay? Obviously there are other shades too. The mainstream was accustomed to examining everything in the crucible of Jewish law. Now here I’m not talking about a halakhic question; this is a moral question, and I said morality is universal. But when I approach morality, I come with the habits of halakhic thinking. And when I analyze the hostage issue, I try to suppress all the gut feelings I have—to suppress them, because in my view their influence is destructive. It leads to very problematic results morally, not only tactically and utilitarianly, but morality itself gets distorted. And therefore I think that in this sense, the halakhic habit is a blessing. And I think that this habit, which we acquired not intentionally but simply because of involvement in Jewish law, turns out to be a highly valuable habit even in areas that are not Jewish law, such as morality. And I think that in a secular world this habit doesn’t exist. You don’t have a system of rules that you place before yourself, give some account of, and make some calculation as to what is right for you to do. And so much more easily your gut takes you, and your feelings and emotions take you, to your conclusions and your conduct.
[Speaker A] But is that something of only recent years? Because if I compare, for instance, to the generations that founded the state—the Mapai people—for them it was from the Palmach to the Hebrew Bible. They also continued some kind of tradition here, not religious but national.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but as you said, from the Hebrew Bible to the Palmach there are a few thousand years in between.
[Speaker A] Yes, that phrase is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, and the point is important, because those thousands of years are the Jewish law I’m talking about. In the Hebrew Bible there is no Jewish law.
[Speaker A] But that’s exactly why they deliberately removed that part.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying—so you see that what you said, that this is only a phenomenon of recent years, is not right. On the contrary, estrangement from Jewish law—beyond the fact that if you don’t believe, then I understand why you won’t observe, that’s obvious—but I’m saying it has consequences. It has consequences because Jewish law, beyond obligating you and giving you rules of what you should and shouldn’t do, also brings you into a certain pattern of thought. The Jews lost that pattern along with their abandonment of Jewish law. They also lost the habit of working in a rational way.
[Speaker A] No, so what I’m saying is that in recent years, from the political upheaval onward, for example, you don’t have that either. We moved to a liberal model—this was a global phenomenon with the fall of the Soviet Union, people thought it was the end of history, an individualistic model, everyone for himself. But before that—before that, at the founding of the state—there was something that wasn’t momentary and individualistic. They felt they were part of a chain of generations. Granted, they removed some parts, the parts of Jewish law, and I think they did that deliberately because they wanted to build here something that would be—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s possible. First of all, they didn’t believe in it, so obviously.
[Speaker A] Yes, and they also wanted to build here a national story, really, a kind of structure of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but here you’re switching between two planes of discussion. I said there are two planes that distinguish the thinking in the argument we were talking about earlier. One is emotion versus intellect, and the second is the range, the breadth of the picture. Now you’re right regarding the breadth of the picture. Meaning, individualism is something new. Emotionalism is less so, you understand? Those are two different planes. The fact that there was a connection to the collective and collective missions and so on—obviously, that’s a different era, the era of the founding of the state or the Zionist period before the state and the like. On the plane of abandoning Jewish law, that doesn’t necessarily affect that. When I spoke about abandoning Jewish law, I was speaking about the relation between emotion and intellect. That didn’t necessarily change.
[Speaker A] You think it was like that back then too?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I think that a halakhic approach…
[Speaker A] So maybe I don’t understand the halakhic context.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A halakhic approach is a colder approach. Look, I’ll give you an example. There was once a rather provocative chemist named Shahak in Jerusalem, Professor Shahak, who used to write all sorts of provocations in the newspapers against religious people. Now some of them were genuine provocations, by the way. For example, he once wrote that he had seen religious people walking past, I don’t know, a non-Jew who was in mortal danger and not desecrating the Sabbath in order to save him. And then in the end it turned out to be fake, meaning he hadn’t really seen it. And all the religious people breathed a sigh of relief. But the truth is, that really is what Jewish law says, so why do I care whether it happened or not? Okay. Now, when he spoke… A priestly wife who was raped—according to Jewish law she has to separate from her husband. Now she’s guilty of nothing; she was raped. They put her through a second trauma after the first trauma, and they love each other and want to be together and everything, and Jewish law tells them to separate. And in arguments of that sort that I’ve had many times with people, mainly secular people, those people say: don’t you have a heart? Don’t you have a heart? So I said, listen, I have a heart just like you. My heart hurts exactly like yours. The difference between us is that for me the heart is not the bottom line. The heart is some kind of input. I take it into account, but in the end, in the end, I make decisions here. And after the great pain in my heart, I will tell the woman to separate from her husband—with the great pain in my heart. Now the difference between us is not that someone has a heart and I don’t, but that I’m committed to Jewish law and you’re not. But there’s another interesting difference in this context: since you’re not committed to Jewish law, you can’t even understand that for me, beyond the feelings of the heart, there is also some place for logical and intellectual consideration. Meaning, leave aside the fact that you don’t accept Jewish law—that’s legitimate, we have a disagreement. You don’t accept Jewish law and I do. You’re not even able to understand that there is something else, besides the feelings of the heart, that takes part in the process of forming a decision. So at least understand that within my own approach. Meaning, I am committed to Jewish law. You need to understand that it’s simply not true that I have no heart. The fact that I reach a different decision is because I have additional parameters besides what the heart says, and they also determine—maybe they determine primarily. Now the fact that he can’t even understand this means there’s another difference between us: not only that he works with the heart and I work with something else, but that he can’t even understand that there is something else besides the heart. Because, you know, there’s a nice little anecdote. Once we were watching TV with the kids—some of my older kids—some current affairs music program, I don’t remember which one, A Star Is Born or something, Shlomi Shabat was one of the judges, I don’t remember. The Voice. Maybe The Voice, could be, the one where they turn around in the chair. Yes. I think it was that. So someone sang there, and then Shlomi Shabat says, wow, he has this comment and that comment, but the heart, the heart, the heart—and he stops there. Everyone bursts into applause and so on. So I ask the kids—kids, meaning older already—okay, and what did you decide? Meaning, you said the head says this and the heart says that. Now for the audience, no further word was needed. It was clear to everyone that if the heart says this, then I go with the heart—what do I care what the head says? Right. And nobody even imagined saying, okay, so you have a dilemma, I understand: the heart said this and the head that, but why is it so obvious that you should go with the heart and not with the head? Because in our world, the world we live in, which is a secular world—it doesn’t matter that there are also kippah-wearers in that world, yes, there are also kippah-wearers who watch The Voice, we do too—but you see that this culture is a culture of emotion, an emotional culture.
[Speaker A] In the context of the hostages, and without going back into that, I think there were a lot of explanations—by the way, also from people on the right, like Tzvi Yehezkeli—who said that if you really want to win in Gaza and subdue Hamas, you can’t do that when you have hostages inside and you’re genuinely trying not to harm them. And from there the assumption is—or the decision that needs to follow—is that first of all you need to get them out of there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I could argue with you about that, but I don’t want to, because I don’t accept that at all.
[Speaker A] No, I’m just presenting a point here, not—I don’t want to go back to it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I just want to comment on that point, apart from the hostages, that there are always arguments everywhere. There are arguments. Nobody here is stupid; after all, everyone is intelligent. On all sides there are intelligent people, that’s obvious. On all sides there are arguments. The important question is: what is leading? Meaning, many times you recruit the arguments in favor of what your feelings are telling you, and then yes, there are arguments, you can always find arguments. The question is whether you start from the heart and emotion and the mind serves the heart, or whether you start from the mind and the emotion is recruited to what the mind says. And I think that here there is a difference. There are arguments on all sides, that’s obvious, nobody is an idiot. But I feel this difference very strongly. There’s a very nice joke I heard in the name of Dov Sadan, who was a literature lecturer at the Hebrew University, a very wise man. He once said that the next person to make a revolution in the world will be a Jewish orthopedist. Why? Why Jewish? Because usually it’s a Jew who makes a revolution in the world. Why an orthopedist?
[Speaker A] That follows what we talked about at the beginning.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Ah yes. Why an orthopedist? Because the first Jew who made a revolution in the world was Abraham our Patriarch, or Moses our Teacher—they used the head. The second Jew who made a revolution in the world was Jesus—everything was in the heart. The third Jew who made a revolution in the world was Marx—everything was in the belly, in Capital, in the stomach. The fourth Jew who made a revolution in the world was Freud—everything was below the belt. So the next Jew to make a revolution in the world will probably be an orthopedist. Now, that joke reflects something beyond the joke. It reflects something that really is a correct description, a correct description of a process. The center of gravity of our decision-making has gone down through history—from the head to the heart, and maybe even further down to interests, to drives, and so on. And that’s true, it’s a process. It’s an accurate description; it’s not just a joke. And I think that one of the possibilities, one of the things Jewish law enables us to do very powerfully, is to stand against that process. Because it’s a very strong process. The heart is much stronger than the mind. The heart takes you to heights very quickly. And that halakhic commitment enables you to stand against that process and not let it pull you downward. And by the way, there’s a flip side to this that’s problematic. The problematic flip side is that there’s a habit in the world—look at the Haredi world. You hear arguments there and your hair stands on end—not your ears, your hair stands on end. Arguments that are completely absurd. What does “absurd” mean? They’re completely detached from common sense, from logic, from moral feeling. Completely detached. And that is the other side of the coin, that’s the danger in the cold halakhic outlook, where you completely ignore your intuitions, your moral feelings, because you’re committed to the intellectual calculation. And the intellectual calculation can be completely distant, completely detached from common sense. You hear arguments there and you just die.
[Speaker A] But how is that different from your own attitude toward Jewish law?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In that I say that I—I can stand against my emotion and my intuition, and emotion and intuition are not the same thing but I won’t get into that here—I can stand against my emotions and my intuitions and not let them dictate what I do, but I don’t ignore them. I don’t steamroll them.
[Speaker A] They also have weight. Meaning that when you see that non-Jew, for example, on the Sabbath, your mind should be lamenting, should be telling you that Jewish law says you’re forbidden to help, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The heart, morality—
[Speaker A] The heart should take you above that and still cause you to help.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe yes, maybe no. There will be a dilemma here. What I’ll do with the dilemma is another question, but first of all there will be a dilemma. There is a halakhic side and a moral side, and they don’t always broadcast on the same wavelength. On the contrary, in my view they’re completely separate. And therefore of course there can be conflicts between them. The point is that I am committed to both sides of the conflict. And like in any conflict—and every person is in conflicts—you have to make decisions, and making decisions in conflicts is a complicated story. Fine. And here too you can discuss what the decision is that I think should be made, but for me the important point is not what the decision is, but that you do not ignore either side of the conflict. Now on the secular side there is only emotion—well, mainly emotion—that leads. On the Haredi side there is only the intellect. And I think that’s a mistake. Meaning, it has to be some kind of combination, not letting either of these guys make the decision exclusively, take over the decision. There’s this input, there’s that input, and in the end it’s some much more complex and subtle weighing process. It’s a very delicate dance between these two things, and I think it’s a balance you can deviate from in both directions, as I said before.
[Speaker A] If the Jew’s role in the world really boils down to following Jewish law and doing what it says there, where does the matter of a state, of nationhood, enter here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A state and nationhood, in my eyes, are facts and instruments. They are not values. I do not see the state as a value. I’m completely Zionist, of course I identify with it completely, but I identify with it because I want a state. Just as every person wants to live in a state among his own people, I also want a state. That’s all. I don’t turn the state into a value; I’m not a fascist. And I have the right to have a state, and if someone threatens that then I’ll fight for there to be a state here, but not because the state is a value.
[Speaker A] If you’re a Zionist, the state is not a value?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. No. The state is not a value. The state is an interest of all of us, and once it is an interest of all of us, we need to make sure it exists, exists properly, exists securely, exists prosperously, everything is fine. So people need to contribute.
[Speaker A] Today, in the general public—not the state—but if they tell you that going and enlisting and doing meaningful service is a value—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. I also think that’s a value. Again, don’t mix things up. Look, eating breakfast is not a value, right? It’s a need. But if you don’t have breakfast, then if I provide you with breakfast, that’s a value, right? I want a state, you want a state, we all want a state. Someone who contributes to that process so that we have a state is doing something of value, because he is helping us provide a very basic need that all of us have. The need itself is a need, not a value, but meeting people’s needs—if they really do have such a need—someone who contributes to that is doing something with ethical significance. That’s completely clear. Two different things. And this is not a fascist outlook. A fascist outlook sees the state as the value, and me as the means. No—I am the goal. The state is my need. But in order for there to be a state here, and in order for it to function properly, each person has to do his part, and that has value.
[Speaker A] The question is really where—you know—where you draw the line, because even when you feel a sense of affection, for example, toward Israel’s national team, that comes from that place. You know the players, you—I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I totally feel that.
[Speaker A] Maybe you’re not even into sports, but now you see Deni Avdija and you’re for him because he’s Israeli. Right? So that comes from the fact that the context is purely that he belongs to the same state.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but that’s psychology, not value. I identify with my people, with the citizens of my state even, not just with my people—with my people too, with Jews. But also with the citizens of my state who are not Jews, I identify with them because they are citizens of the state. I want them to succeed. I’ll help them before I help non-Jews somewhere else, and I’ll help Jews too before I help non-Jews, because all these are circles to which I belong. But that doesn’t mean I’m more righteous than a Belgian who helps Belgians, and the Belgian who helps Belgians is doing exactly what I’m doing when I help Israelis or Jews, and that’s perfectly fine. So everyone takes care of his circles of belonging, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean the state is a value—not Belgium and not Israel. Meaning, it is a need.
[Speaker A] So you said circles of belonging. In the Greek conception, they say family—they explain how it began—family, tribe, city-state, and then state. Here it’s something that’s more—it’s more than a need in this conception. It’s something that grew naturally, you know? If it grows out of family, that’s also the conservative position today—that if it’s something that grows that way, that’s why they say people are supposedly trying to undermine family values. Because if it’s something that grows from that place of family, then what is more than family?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, family is not a value in my eyes either. Taking care of family—yes. Again, because it’s my circle of belonging. I’ll take care of my family before I take care of others, that’s obvious. And you too—I expect you to take care of your family, not mine, before you take care of others. But that doesn’t mean family is a value. Family is a need. Meaning, they are part of me, I love them, but what does that have to do with value? Love too—people often treat it as some kind of value. Love is not a value; love is a given. Meaning, if I love someone and she is my partner, fine, we love each other, that doesn’t make it a value. If I don’t love her, then I don’t love her. But that’s not—the value is that once I belong to that circle of belonging, I contribute my part to sustain it. That is a contribution to the collective. But the existence of the collective itself is an interest. Meaning, it is an interest of all of us, all of us—
[Speaker A] want that collective to exist. It could be that this is also a matter of semantics. We started here with the issue of the Creator, of God, and there’s no doubt that you defend the idea—you may even be the face of it. Do you think it has importance beyond the fact that you’re conveying the message? Is it really important that people know there is a Creator, that there is some practical consequence to that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In my eyes there’s a double practical consequence. Meaning, I don’t know, I need to think, but right now two aspects come to mind. First of all, one aspect: I think every Jew should observe the commandments, should fulfill his obligations. Now I’m not in favor of coercion at all, and I also don’t think it has value. If I force someone to observe commandments, then what? He didn’t perform a commandment. It has no value at all. But I still would want him to fulfill his obligations, and I think he is obligated. And since that is so, I have an interest in presenting to him that there is a God and that He gave the Torah and that we are obligated to keep it. So first of all in the most basic sense of leading people to repentance. Today that sounds like a dirty word—no, it’s not a dirty word. I want to persuade. I have no problem with that, and anyone who wants to persuade me is welcome too, of course. No problem. The marketplace of ideas is free.
[Speaker A] You’re saying that if there is a God, then the implication for someone who understands that is basically that he should follow Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the first step. No, that’s not enough. You can believe there is a God and remain completely uncommitted to Jewish law.
[Speaker A] No, I asked what your incentive is in explaining the idea.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I said: belief in God is the first step. After that I’ll also want to explain that He gave the Torah and so on. Because belief in God in itself is just the second aspect—not that aspect—it’s only the first step on the way to it. It’s a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Okay. The second aspect is that, in my opinion, morality has no validity at all if there is no God in the background. Now people are often very offended by such a statement, as if a secular person cannot be moral, and they also say that this is simply factually untrue. Obviously there are many secular people who are moral. I don’t know whether there is a difference between a religious group and a secular group in terms of morality. That too is a statement people get very angry at me for saying.
[Speaker A] Secular people today are secular after two or three thousand years of religious civilization. Right, so it’s not as if we just emerged now—there is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Influence, there is influence in the psychological sense. That’s exactly the point.
[Speaker A] We’re all cannibals of rabbis in the end.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. No, so I’m saying that’s exactly the point. So my claim is not that a secular person is necessarily less moral, or that a secular group is necessarily less moral, not even on average. Not necessarily—I don’t know, I haven’t checked. But it is true on the philosophical level that without belief in God there is no validity to morality. Ask me, then, how do people who don’t believe in God nevertheless behave morally? Like you said before: influences, internalization, evolution, altruism. It also has survival value, of course. There are all kinds of explanations for it, and very often people are also inconsistent. That can happen too. Meaning, a person may be committed to morality because he actually does believe in God deep down. He’s not aware of it, or doesn’t notice that in some sense there is within him—not necessarily a God who wants him to put on tefillin—but a God who expects you to be moral, or commands you to be moral. I think many secular people who define themselves as atheists do believe in God in that sense, even if they are not aware of it. That’s what I think. Hard to know, because—but that’s at least my assessment. Now, in that sense, there’s a problem, because morality when it isn’t grounded in God is a morality that basically stems from primitive things—evolutionary, psychological things—that were instilled in us, as you said before. That is not stable. It is not stable, because changes—certainly in our era of changes happening at light speed, cultural changes too—there are memes in evolution, not only genes. So these things can change easily.
[Speaker A] Again, what you’re saying is again the intellect and the level below it, the heart.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right. And I’m a great believer in the intellect. And therefore I think that when there is a morality that is not philosophically coherent, even if the person behaves wonderfully on the moral level, I have some concern that it can become distorted, can go wrong. And I think there are places where you can see those distortions.
[Speaker A] Mainly in the West.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and that brings us back to our previous discussion, of emotion versus intellect, now from a slightly different angle. In my opinion that’s part of the matter. Meaning, the fact that you recruit morality to emotion—which in my eyes leads to moral mistakes, to moral distortions—part of that stems from this. Meaning, part of it stems from the fact that you don’t have some God in the background. What you have is what your conscience tells you, and conscience is not something I disparage at all.
[Speaker A] And even a level below that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and even a level below that. Dov Sadan, all the way down, to the orthopedist. And such a morality is a very flexible morality. And flexible morality is very dangerous. Meaning—look, there are certain places—look at LGBT issues, for example. In my eyes there is no moral problem whatsoever with LGBT people. But look how quickly the social norm changed.
[Speaker A] It escalates, you’re saying.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. That is dangerous. Because there are no brakes. Now, this is always the conservatives’ argument, and I’m not a conservative. But there is something to the conservatives’ argument. There is something to stability that really is important, even though sometimes excessive stability is terribly problematic. It leads to conservatism. But conservatism as some kind of brake that says, wait, let’s think for a second and see whether this is right or not—I don’t know what will happen in another year with incest, for example.
[Speaker A] It’s like you have—I’ll strengthen your argument—there’s this phrase, “we’re in the year 2025,” as if that’s some linear line, so what will happen in 2040?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. Right, that’s a good expression of this issue. Yes, meaning, today there’s this—ask someone what the problem is with incest. Between adults—not children, of course. Two adults, a brother and sister, want to live together as husband and wife. What’s the problem? There was once such a case in Germany, I read about something like that. These things pop up here and there. People are horrified by it. It’s just psychological revulsion. If we get over that, it will pass. It will pass. It will pass the way LGBT passed, okay? Now, you can say: very well, let it pass indeed. What’s wrong with a brother and sister, if they’re both adults and decide to live together? I really don’t see anything wrong with it. There are problems—what will happen with their children? Those are health problems, yes, mental health problems or even physical health problems. Fine, so they’ll invent a pill that solves those problems. That’s not the point. But you see that basically there is no conservative brake in a world where there is no anchor called God. Meaning, He is basically the source, and such an anchor—the conservatives say it’s an anchor you can’t touch. Not true—you can touch it.
[Speaker A] In your opinion there is no other brake?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think so, no. If there is no God, then each person has what he thinks, and that’s it. What else is there?
[Speaker A] Yes, I actually think in—we look a lot at the West, but if we zoom in on various societies in the East, say communist China for example—they are completely atheistic. There, if I take the LGBT issue as kind of a threshold issue, I think it’s much less so there than in the West. Okay. So there’s something here—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because part of the problem, part of the matter, is that communism in its extreme form, like in China or the former Soviet Union—it is a religion. Exactly. It’s a kind of religion.
[Speaker A] It plays the role of a religion. So the issue here isn’t God, it’s religion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s an objective source outside of you that dictates right and wrong. That’s called—except that, in my opinion, there is no such valid source other than God. The fact that people invent religions without God—
[Speaker A] So communism will pass, in your opinion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It has already passed in the West, and in China too, I suppose—again, I don’t know, I’m too small to predict—but I suppose such a thing cannot endure over time. It has no real foundation. It’s a religion people made up for themselves out of nothing. Of course, there are people who will say the Jewish religion is also like that. Fine, I think not. In the meantime it has lasted for many years. I find it hard to believe that an invented religion like that, which after all enforces itself by brute force—where it fails by brute force, it does not endure. The Jewish religion does not use brute force. It survived for two thousand years. There were social institutions, of course some pressures, but it was not the brute force that existed in China or the Soviet Union. And it survived despite persecutions, despite everything. There is something very powerful in that transcendent foundation, God, and I don’t think there is anything else that can do the same job. But again, that’s on the theoretical level. I claim that on the normative level too there really is nothing else that can give validity to things, not only on the psychological level that it won’t endure. That’s a theoretical question.
[Speaker A] In the Jewish religion there was always that flirtation between, you know, different levels of people who keep Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, there still is today too, of course.
[Speaker A] I mean, even from the Hebrew Bible, it was always like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. No, but the point—
[Speaker A] And that’s part of the—and the people survived. That’s what I came to say.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because God was in the background, and the Torah was in the background, and within it there are many interpretations and desires and we are all human beings and various commitments. All that is true, and there is some framework within which one can talk about right and wrong. Meaning, when I speak to you and tell you, look, what you’re doing is wrong—you can argue, you’ll argue with me and say it is right—but there is something to argue about. There is some framework within which the discussion takes place.
[Speaker A] And the heterogeneity of Israeli society is healthy. That’s what you’re saying, basically.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a healthy side to it.
[Speaker A] You are of course arguing more in the direction of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are two things. There is the framework within which the whole business operates, and there are the differences that arise within the framework. When there is no framework outside, those differences lose their meaning. They cannot talk to each other. That’s the postmodern. Framework or basis—it’s the same thing. For our purposes it’s the same thing.
[Speaker A] Because I think there are people who are completely outside the framework, but there is still the basis.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean by basis, but—
[Speaker A] God, religion, Judaism—that’s all the basis, as it were. There are people who are outside that framework.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so if they’re outside that framework, then they’re also outside the basis. I don’t see the difference between those two concepts. I’m saying: if we have some shared discourse, some place for conversation—you know, there is no Jewish law anywhere without disputes about it among halakhic decisors, among people.
[Speaker A] Exactly. In discourse there’s no boundary. That’s what I’m trying to say. Within a framework there is a boundary.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And I argue: there is discourse within a framework. Meaning, all the Talmudic, halakhic, ideological controversies and everything are conducted within some framework, where I can raise one argument to you, and you raise a different argument against me. In the end we won’t agree, or maybe we will agree, but we can conduct a conversation. In the postmodern world, that narrativity is created because we lost the framework. Because diversity always existed. People who think differently always existed. Here we lost the ability to speak, because what can you say? I think this, you think otherwise—okay, the conversation is over. What do you want us to do now? You understand? Without an external framework that gives meaning to the conversation, there is also no meaning to the pluralism within it. People think pluralism is a blessed thing. Pluralism is a scandal. Pluralism within a framework is a blessed thing, but pluralism in the absence of a framework is just monadology devoid of any meaning, a collection of narratives that do not speak to each other, and simply lead nowhere.
[Speaker A] Again, the question is what a framework is. Because a framework is something limiting.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. It has to limit, obviously, by definition. There has to be something—you know, I’ll give you an example from elsewhere, from genres in art. As a teenager, I never understood why you need genres in art. Let each person paint however he wants, construct a play however he wants. Why do you need to decide that a tragedy must have three acts, and the gun must appear at the end of the first act? Just saying, yes? Why? And if I want no guns, but a bow and arrow? Or at the end of the second act? Or with seventeen and a third acts? Okay. Why not? The point, I think, behind this—and again, today people break many of the boundaries of genre, but not completely. Because if they break it completely, no meaning will remain. Meaning, if a person makes a tragedy not with three acts but with three and a quarter—ah, that’s interesting, I see, he picked up on a point I wouldn’t have thought of. But if he does it with seventeen acts and the next one after him does it with eighty-eight, then there will be no basis for evaluating them, for arguing, for saying this is right, that is not right, this is more successful, that is less successful, because we have lost the framework, which is what is called genre—the framework within which the discussion takes place.
[Speaker A] But today you can also debate with a Jew who eats creeping things and eats pork. Right? Because I address him. So apart from his ethnicity, he’s not inside a framework, but he has a basis.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, what is basis? Again, I don’t understand the concept of basis.
[Speaker A] I’m insisting—it’s a matter—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] of semantics, but when I debate with him, I’ll debate with him on the basis we share. And what is the basis we share? If he is an atheist and doesn’t believe in God, then the basis we share is philosophy and logic and science, right? Which is indeed shared by most human beings. If someone is religious, then he also has the shared religious basis.
[Speaker A] Look, Zionism created another basis.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay, but if there is a shared basis, then you can have a conversation. The basis doesn’t have to be specifically religious belief; it depends what kind of conversation it is. With respect to values, I think a real basis necessarily involves God. Meaning, without God there is no possibility of such a real basis.
[Speaker A] Your conception of God—is that some concrete thing you can explain? Does it come from the religious world? Does it come from physics? How do you describe it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] God is, I would say, almost the ultimate or universal gap-filler. Meaning, in every field where you begin to advance and ask, wait, and why this, and why this, and why this—in the end you simply get stuck. You search for some anchor point. And there is no other way out for that anchor point except God. The anchor of morality, the anchor of Jewish law, the anchor of I don’t know what—whatever you want—science, our ability to grasp reality, to trust what we perceive in reality, various philosophical problems—in the end every such field gets stuck in some kind of hole it doesn’t know how to fill. You’ll have to stop with: why is this true? Because it is. And why that? Because. And why this? In the end there are foundational principles there that you will not be able to justify, okay? And I think the only justification for not seeing those foundational principles as arbitrary, accidental things—which is often the way people choose out: “fine, so my assumptions are arbitrary, and that’s it”—if they are arbitrary, then everything built on them is arbitrary too, so forget it, then there’s nothing to talk about. Therefore I don’t think that when people speak about arbitrariness they really mean it. For example, Leibowitz. Leibowitz tended to relate to almost everything—morality, religion, religious faith, and so on—as something arbitrary, an arbitrary decision of the human being. He himself, in my opinion, did not really mean something arbitrary in the sense we mean. He meant something that cannot be reasoned out. That is not the same thing as arbitrary. Something that cannot be reasoned out means: I know it is true, I just don’t know how to present you with an argument built on premises and derivation from them that reaches that conclusion, because it is a foundational premise. But a foundational premise is not necessarily arbitrary. The foundational premise that one ought to be moral. Why? Because human life has value. Why is murder forbidden? Because human life has value. Why does human life have value? Can you explain that to me? Can anyone explain it to me? No one can explain it. So what will someone else tell you? “Because that’s what I think.” And if someone thinks otherwise, do you have any claim against him? He thinks otherwise; he is built differently. I do have a claim against him. Because I argue that human life has value because it is true, because God said that He made the human being in the image of God. Therefore human life has value, and if you don’t think so, you are mistaken. Maybe mistaken inadvertently, it doesn’t matter, but you are mistaken. I have criticism of you. But if there is no God in the background, if you say, “Fine, because that’s how I feel—that human life has value,” then he doesn’t feel that way. So everyone has his own feelings. What, do you have a monopoly on feelings? Therefore, in no field can you arrive at a solid foundation if you do not accept that God sits at its base. And therefore God serves in quite a few roles in my philosophical outlook. He is the basis for morality, He is the basis for epistemology, He is the basis for philosophy, He is of course the basis for religion and religious faith, He is the basis for every field on earth, because without Him everything stands in midair. Everything stands in midair, standing on arbitrary feeling or just in the air.
[Speaker A] The question is whether that means it stands in midair as a source of awe, fear and power and authority, or whether—or whether without Him these things would stand in midair not in a passive way. Do you understand what I’m asking? No. If a person’s morality stems from the fact that God exists, is it because he maybe even fears punishment or fears some consequences for his behavior, implications of his behavior? So the question is whether that’s why you say there is no other basis for morality.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t mean that. There is a well-known saying among the masters of ethics in the Jewish world based on what Abraham our Patriarch says: “Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.” Meaning, in a place where there is no God, they’ll murder me. People usually infer from this that in a place where there is no belief in God, society is not moral. As I said earlier, I don’t agree with that, I don’t accept it. In my eyes God is not the policeman with the whip. Meaning, it’s not that people behave morally only because of a whip. They don’t need a whip to behave morally. A whip helps, but it is not a necessary condition.
[Speaker A] But there are people who wouldn’t fast on Yom Kippur if they knew there was no God.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about morality, not about not fasting on Yom Kippur. Why should they fast if there is no God? There is no reason to fast. I’m talking about moral obligation.
[Speaker A] No, sorry, if they weren’t afraid that there are consequences to that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying—that’s exactly what I’m saying. So the question of the whip is one question, but first of all you don’t need it. Meaning, people who don’t believe in the whip—many people still behave morally even without the whip. More than that, as a philosopher I think the whip plays a role on the psychological plane, not on the philosophical plane. I’m asking: why is it right to be moral? Not what will cause me to be moral, but why is it right? Why is it binding? The command of morality. And I argue that unless God stands in the background and says, this is My command, the command is not valid. Not because there is someone there with a whip who will make me obey it, but forget the whip—even without the whip, I am supposed to obey it because it is right.
[Speaker A] You’re saying here validity. Validity, because it is right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, exactly. It’s not the whip. God gives validity to the moral command; it’s not that He is the whip saying if you don’t behave—on the contrary, if He only serves as a whip, then I do it and it’s not a moral act at all. I do it simply because I’m afraid they’ll punish me.
[Speaker A] A moral act is an act that one should do. But if you do it only because you know these things have validity?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then that is the meaning of moral behavior, right there.
[Speaker A] No, but what does that say about the truth of God?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker A] If this whole construction was created so that He would give validity to things?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not so that—not for that purpose. I didn’t say for that purpose. I said that God is the only thing that can give validity to morality. That doesn’t mean I invented God so that there would be validity to morality. I think He is true.
[Speaker A] But it feels like something circumstantial.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is circumstantial? I think it’s true.
[Speaker A] You’re saying that without God we’d be Sodom and Gomorrah here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said, factually, no. I can see that even in societies that don’t believe in God, it’s not Sodom and Gomorrah. Yes, societies get by more or less. There are more moral people, less moral people, but—
[Speaker A] Do you think historically, before there was—before Abraham our Patriarch?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe not, maybe not, but today that’s how it is. Maybe there is influence, as you said before, because for thousands of years we did—exactly. But let’s talk about today. So today, from my point of view, I don’t need Him as a whip. Not only do I not need Him: if someone does it only because of God’s whip, then he really is not acting morally. He’s not doing it because that’s what is right. That’s what Kant teaches, after all. The moral act is an act done out of your motivation to be a good person, to be a moral person. If you do it because you’re afraid of punishment, that’s not a moral person, you’re simply—
[Speaker A] Do you ever look a bit at this traditional Israeli Judaism, these various phenomena we see in popular Israeli culture? You know, all sorts of trips to Uman?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At a basic level I despise those phenomena. Now—
[Speaker A] Because I think it ties in exactly with the issue—that people don’t understand things deeply and they do them either out of fear—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know if it’s out of fear, but rather out of some sort of emotional connection, some kind of existentialism. It’s not fear. I don’t think people travel to Uman because of fear. People travel to Uman because it gives them some huge experience, I don’t know exactly what. That’s all. These are people who follow the experience. That is exactly not the halakhic Judaism I was talking about earlier, the halakhic Jewish mainstream. It’s all kinds of phenomena like separating dough, carnivals of separating dough and all that nonsense, which is all pagan worship. Meaning—again, if people have a need, let them deal with their need, but don’t turn it into religion. It has nothing to do with religion.
[Speaker A] Meaning, in your eyes that isn’t Judaism?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. It’s pagan folklore with a Jewish flavor or under Jewish influence.
[Speaker A] Is that something that needs to be addressed?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean by addressed? I can’t force people not to separate dough. Let them do it. What am I going to do?
[Speaker A] No, but the question is whether one should give it some other intellectual framing, tell them: listen, what you’re doing now is not the thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I write and speak about it, I try. But obviously in a democratic state—
[Speaker A] You’re not confrontational toward it, though.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I am confrontational.
[Speaker A] Toward Uman and toward bringing people to repentance with a shofar covered in diamonds and glitter, yes?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, completely confrontational. Because in my eyes, just as with Kant regarding morality, I also have a Kantian conception regarding halakhic obligation. Meaning, if you do things out of ulterior motives, that is not a moral act. Meaning, if you do it in order to avoid punishment, or so people will say, look what a moral person he is—that is not really a moral act, even though the act you did is a good one. Because the motivation is an inseparable part of judging the act, of evaluating the act. That is what Kant teaches us regarding morality. The same applies to a halakhic act. Meaning, a religious act that is done only because you want to have some kind of religious experience is not an act with religious value.
[Speaker A] That’s also a bit of the gap—the thing you talked about, the head and the heart—it’s also a bit the gap between religiosity and traditionalism.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Traditionalism to some degree—again, there are all kinds of shades. That’s a European conception. There are all kinds of shades of traditionalism, so this is a generalization. But yes, many traditional people are basically people who are Jewish in their hearts, and I’m very antagonistic to that phenomenon. Meaning, in my eyes, for example, a traditional person is much worse than an atheist. What does “worse” mean? I don’t judge people, but the traditionalist conception is much worse than the atheist conception. The atheist conception is: a person really does what he thinks. I disagree with what he thinks, fine. The traditionalist conception is: the person thinks like me and acts differently. Meaning, meaning, someone who—
[Speaker A] So a woman who separates dough but doesn’t observe modesty, in your eyes that’s worse?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If she thinks that one should observe modesty and separate dough, and she does only this and not that—
[Speaker A] The answer is: I’ve taken this thing upon myself now.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said, what do you mean you’ve taken it upon yourself? But do you have to observe all 613 commandments or not? What do you think? She thinks yes. We all have desires. None of us keeps everything, that’s obvious. We all have desires. But if a person understands at a basic level that this thing obligates him—and there is such a type of traditional person, I think there are quite a few traditional people—who at a basic level accept all of Jewish law. It just doesn’t suit them at the moment. They go to synagogue and afterward drive to a soccer game on the Sabbath.
[Speaker A] So what’s your position on such people?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In my eyes, these people are offenders. Halakhic offenders, not moral offenders. It’s a religious command, not a moral command. They are offenders because they understand that it is forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath, and they desecrate it. The atheist who drives to a soccer game is not an offender. That’s what he thinks. He does what he thinks, and I respect that completely.
[Speaker A] Meaning, this genre of Jewish Israelis, okay, who are under—intentionally I say Israelis because they are supposedly under Orthodoxy among themselves—and they take on certain things that are convenient for them, observing menstrual purity, separating dough, certain things, but they are of course not halakhic Jews in the full sense of the term—so that’s something that doesn’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a complex phenomenon. Maybe I’ll say it in a bit more detail, because everybody does this.
[Speaker A] This thing is super mainstream in Israeli society.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. It’s becoming more and more mainstream, and in my view this is a deterioration of religion in the direction of secular emotionality. It’s simply the religion of secular people. That’s what it looks like, because it’s basically secularism wrapped in a religious cloak. Emotionality is entering the religious sphere, and it comes from the secular place—that emotionality. And that’s what people don’t understand: people tie emotionality to the religious world, but that’s not true; it’s the opposite. But here, in relation to what you asked: if you think everything is binding on you, that’s your basic outlook, then the question is why you don’t do everything. Because nobody does everything. If you don’t do everything because it’s hard for you—you failed, impulses, desires—I have no criticism at all. We’re all human; nobody fulfills everything. It’s hard. Fine. But if you make a decision not because it’s hard for you, but because it just doesn’t suit you right now—right now playing soccer suits you better—that I don’t respect. And more than that, if you decide specifically to do hafrashat challah and not other things—why? Because hafrashat challah will bring you a good livelihood, or health, or I don’t know exactly what.
[Speaker A] Or because it creates Instagram posts.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Then even your hafrashat challah is worth nothing—not just your religious faith in general—because it’s empty. So it’s worth nothing. If you do hafrashat challah because you truly think you’re obligated to do it, and you do it because it’s a commandment, and all the other things are hard for you—you have an impulse that doesn’t let you do them—fine.
[Speaker A] And if you do things that have a more concrete practical effect, like tithing, for example—you can’t say nothing comes out of it if you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say nothing comes out of it, but the question is why you’re doing it. If you do it—for example, the tithe of money, you’re talking about charity; there’s also tithing of produce—but if it’s a monetary tithe, and you give it to a poor person, then you did a good deed because you gave money to a poor person, that’s obvious. The question is whether you performed a commandment. That’s not the same thing. You did a good deed, but a commandment exists only if the act was done because of the command of the Torah or of the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Speaker A] Meaning, if you did it because it’s a good deed and not because it’s a commandment?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then it’s not a commandment; it’s a good deed. Maimonides, by the way, writes this in Laws of Kings at the end of chapter 8.
[Speaker A] Maimonides—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He writes it regarding the Noahides, who are obligated in the seven Noahide commandments—non-Jews who are obligated in the seven Noahide commandments. And he says that if there is a non-Jew who does these things because his own reasoning leads him to think that this is the proper way to behave—these seven commandments—then he is not among the pious of the nations of the world, but among their wise people. Meaning: he is a wise person, moral, behaves properly, but he is not among the pious of the nations of the world. What does that mean? It means commandment—no. “Pious” means someone who performs commandments, someone who serves God.
[Speaker A] So how would you define it for Jewish guys who do this, if you had to conceptualize it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The same thing. He writes it about the Noahides, but it’s true for Jews in exactly the same way. There’s no need for a separate definition; I’m saying the same thing about Jews. Ahad Ha’am, for example, who said that more than the Jews kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath kept the Jews—let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Ahad Ha’am observed the Sabbath in all its details and fine points. It’s not true, but let’s say for the sake of discussion: every last tiny detail. He never observed the Sabbath in his life. Even if he did all that, he did not fulfill the commandment of Sabbath observance, because he did it as part of his culture, his connection to his people, whatever it may be. He was using it; it was instrumental. He didn’t do it because of obligation to the commandment.
[Speaker A] I literally just wrote in a post, “instrumental Judaism,” to bring that up with you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so there we are. If you do it for instrumental reasons, it’s not a commandment. Meaning, if you do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it, then it’s a commandment. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to despise the poor person and do it as if possessed by a demon, just because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. There does need to be a state in which, even if you don’t feel like helping this poor person and he doesn’t seem worthy in your eyes, you’ll still give to him because it’s a commandment. And then, even if you love him and feel compassion for him and all that, that’s perfectly fine. It’s not that there’s some value in hardening your heart just in order to be a righteous person who performs commandments. But you do have to be careful that the heart does not determine what you do.
[Speaker A] Again, that takes us back to head versus heart, reason versus emotion. That’s the whole thing. Rabbi Michael Abraham, this was packed and fascinating. Thank you.