Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham – A Shift in the Watershed of Religious Society Today – Kohelet Policy Forum
This transcription was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The sticker about Rabin and the mandate to return the Golan
- The conversion controversy, the invalidation of Rabbi Druckman’s conversions, and “two instead of 2^15”
- Putting the cart before the horse, the absence of “diagonal groups,” and unconscious bias
- An ideological basket of answers and the slide into a Haredi versus Religious Zionist confrontation
- The anecdote about the protest against military enlistment and group coercion
- An argument with the audience about pragmatism, truth, and identity in voting
- The need for a political watershed line and the criticism of camp-based dictates
- The claim that the Religious Zionist versus Haredi line is anachronistic and irrelevant
- The example of the elections for the Chief Rabbinate: Rabbi Stav versus Rabbi Lau and Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef
- The Jewish Home, Tkuma, the Hardalim, and voting in the Knesset “like the Haredim”
- The failure of representation, primaries, and the example of “thirty percent conservatives turning into fifty-one”
- Military service, modern versus liberal, and the connection to questions of religion and state
- Criticism of voting as a symbol of identity versus a binding conception of civic responsibility
- False consciousness, the lack of rabbinic legitimacy, and the perpetuation of the dividing lines
- The ethos of “who looks like a rabbi” and its effect on choosing religious leadership
- The conclusion: dismantling the dichotomy, reexamining the watershed line, and proposing an alternative axis
Summary
General Overview
The speaker argues that in religious society there is a systematic tendency to reduce complex disputes to only two camps, even though in practice most public questions are made up of many sub-questions that are independent of one another. He explains that people harness all the considerations in advance toward the same conclusion in order to get a clear-cut position, and afterward identify themselves through a “basket of answers” dictated by labels like Religious Zionism and Haredi society. He believes that the watershed line of Religious Zionism versus Haredi society is anachronistic and misleading, and suggests that a more relevant dividing line today is modernity/liberalism versus conservatism, because public and parliamentary decisions mainly concern religion and state and the character of the public sphere. He concludes by arguing that the current reality is perpetuated because there is no orderly religious-rabbinic legitimacy for positions that depart from the existing camps, and therefore political and social representation is also distorted.
The sticker about Rabin and the mandate to return the Golan
The speaker describes a sticker from the Rabin government period, “Rabin has no mandate to return the Golan,” and concludes that you cannot infer the political views of the car owner from it. He distinguishes between a moral question about political mandate and the need to return to the voters when changing one’s agenda, and the practical question of whether it is right to make an agreement with the Syrians, and he states that the two questions are independent. He says he would expect “four groups” in the population, but claims that in practice you get only “two,” because people connect the two questions in the same direction in order to avoid complex conclusions.
The conversion controversy, the invalidation of Rabbi Druckman’s conversions, and “two instead of 2^15”
The speaker describes a response piece he wrote for Makor Rishon around the rulings of the rabbinical judge from Ashdod and Rabbi Sherman, who broadly invalidated Rabbi Druckman’s conversions and the state conversion system. He presents the claim that there are about 15 different questions that need to be answered in order to build a coherent position on conversion, and most of them are independent of each other, so in theory there are “two to the fifteenth power” possible positions. He argues that in practice public discourse is reduced to only two groups, in which people answer “yes to everything” or “no to everything,” and he asks, “why is that?” He attributes it to the tendency to decide the bottom line in advance and then harness all the sub-questions to it.
Putting the cart before the horse, the absence of “diagonal groups,” and unconscious bias
The speaker argues that the “diagonal groups,” in which a person gives mixed answers to independent questions, hardly exist, because people prefer a simple, unambiguous position that leads to one conclusion. He emphasizes that it is possible to reach a bottom line through complex weighing, but people find it hard to assign weights and tend to gather all considerations into the same conclusion. He adds that in most cases this is not conscious deception, but a human bias in which political opposition or support also drags along a corresponding moral judgment.
An ideological basket of answers and the slide into a Haredi versus Religious Zionist confrontation
The speaker describes worldviews as mechanisms that create a “basket” of dictated answers to many questions, so that belonging to a category like Haredi or Religious Zionist creates an expectation that one answer “the right way” in every area. He argues that the conversion controversy “slid” very quickly into a confrontation between Haredim and Religious Zionists, even though most of the questions are not directly related to that axis. He presents his personal view that Rabbi Druckman’s conversions are “a scandal,” but that they should not be invalidated retroactively across the board without evidence regarding a specific individual, and he describes how that very position was immediately attributed to him as “Haredi,” even though, in his words, it is a halakhic position that does not depend on camp affiliation.
The anecdote about the protest against military enlistment and group coercion
The speaker tells about Haredim from Haifa who asked whether to go to a protest against military enlistment, and he told them that anyone who goes is “an idiot,” but they went anyway because “the Haredi world is under attack” and they felt they “had to enlist” in the protest. He uses the expression “What did he think originally, and what does he think now?” to emphasize the gap between their doubts and their actual behavior. He generalizes this as a broad tendency in which people feel a group obligation that overrides their substantive judgment.
An argument with the audience about pragmatism, truth, and identity in voting
The speaker clashes with claims from the audience that people “choose” opinions pragmatically in order to gain the benefits of belonging and identity, and from his point of view this is not an answer to the description of the phenomenon among those who do not declare themselves pragmatists. He insists that he is asking what people’s real positions are when a question is detached from the larger framework, and argues that then more complex answers emerge than the black-and-white of public debate. He distinguishes between “how people form positions” and “how they express positions,” and says that the pragmatic and psychological plane is not the core of the inquiry he is trying to pursue.
The need for a political watershed line and the criticism of camp-based dictates
The speaker accepts the practical necessity of organizing into camps and into two religious parties for the sake of action, but argues that the watershed line should not dictate answers to every question. He says that even if a person chooses to belong to Religious Zionism or to the Haredi world, “that doesn’t mean he has to answer the entire set of questions” according to a ready-made template. He defines the subordination of positions to a camp label as a “distorted” state of affairs that prevents people from thinking and expressing their genuine thoughts, even if it sometimes has pragmatic explanations.
The claim that the Religious Zionist versus Haredi line is anachronistic and irrelevant
The speaker argues that the central watershed line in the religious public is perceived today as Zionism versus Haredi society, but that it is “an irrelevant line,” “an anachronism,” and practically uninteresting. He says that the questions on the table today in the Knesset and in society are not related to the establishment of the state or to debates about Zionism, but rather to questions of religion and state such as kashrut, marriage, conversion, attitudes toward homosexuals, the Western Wall compromise, and surrogacy. He argues that continued attachment to the old axis perpetuates both the production of dictated positions and a mistaken reading of reality and political strategy.
The example of the elections for the Chief Rabbinate: Rabbi Stav versus Rabbi Lau and Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef
The speaker cites the elections for the Chief Rabbinate as an example showing that the analysis “the Haredim defeated Religious Zionism” is “complete nonsense.” He presents Rabbi Stav as a candidate who, in his eyes, represents the modern-liberal camp, and argues that all the other candidates were “Haredi” in the sense of their attitude toward conservatism and modernity, even if they are not anti-Zionist. He concludes that Rabbi Stav lost because he was “in the minority,” and that even Hardal Religious Zionists worked vigorously against him, so the claim that “we failed to unite” around Zionism is meaningless when the real dispute is about religion and state and about conservative versus modern conceptions.
The Jewish Home, Tkuma, the Hardalim, and voting in the Knesset “like the Haredim”
The speaker argues that the connection between The Jewish Home and Tkuma looks natural only because it rests on the Religious Zionist axis, but in practice it creates a “Haredi” party in the sense of its voting pattern in the Knesset on religion-and-state issues. He says that Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked are not personally Haredi, but because they are dependent on Hardal rabbinic leadership and, in his words, because they are “ignorant in Torah matters,” they accept the rabbis’ positions as binding “Judaism” and vote accordingly. He argues that the Knesset does not vote on the establishment of the state, but on religion-and-state arrangements, and on that axis The Jewish Home usually votes with the Haredim, so it is not “the representative” of those seeking a more liberal policy.
The failure of representation, primaries, and the example of “thirty percent conservatives turning into fifty-one”
The speaker argues that a structure of primaries in one party versus closed committees in another party creates a distortion of representation in which an organized minority group can control the makeup of the elected representatives. He gives an arithmetic example in which a conservative public constituting about 30% effectively gets about 51% influence over the party’s composition because of its ability to register and influence the other side’s primaries. He compares this to phenomena like Feiglin in Likud and the “New Likudniks,” and describes a situation in which people vote at the ballot box for one party but shape the list of another party, so that “Meretz got a twofold upgrade” as an image for the influence of inserting representatives.
Military service, modern versus liberal, and the connection to questions of religion and state
The audience suggests that the watershed line in Israel is military service, and the speaker replies that the politically relevant question is not what people actually do, but what their representatives vote on in the Knesset, including with regard to exemption from military service. He argues that there is an attempt to blur the distinction between “modern” and “liberal,” and he says that he uses both terms together because in his view there is a high correlation between them in practice, even if logically they are different ideas. He insists that the meaningful axis in today’s decisions is the character of the state in the public sphere, more than historical-Zionist questions.
Criticism of voting as a symbol of identity versus a binding conception of civic responsibility
The speaker rejects the claim that voting is “just a matter of identity” because of the lack of influence of a single vote, and presents a view according to which a person votes because it is proper to vote as a general obligation. He invokes “Kant’s categorical imperative” as a model in which a person acts according to a principle he would want to become a general law. He explains that he is not seeking only to describe behavior, but “to open people’s eyes” so that they define their political identity more precisely and vote for whoever truly represents their values.
False consciousness, the lack of rabbinic legitimacy, and the perpetuation of the dividing lines
The speaker argues that the existing distribution on the ground is partly a product of a system that subjects positions to existing lines rather than reflecting genuine individual positions. He says that in the Haredi world there are many who are identified as “blue shirts” but lack leadership and therefore feel “second-class,” and in Religious Zionism he identifies a similar mechanism that labels alternatives like Meimad as “lightweight” or even “heresy” in the eyes of rabbinic leadership. He argues that the rabbinic leadership has an interest in preserving the existing line, because under a new division their public influence would shrink significantly.
The ethos of “who looks like a rabbi” and its effect on choosing religious leadership
The speaker argues that both secular and religious people find it hard to see figures like Rabbi Stav as a “rabbi,” because the image of a rabbi is perceived as someone who resembles a Haredi person in dress and style and who “is always saying something is forbidden.” He explains that this ethos is directly shaped by the Religious Zionist-versus-Haredi divide and creates inertia that prevents a religious-liberal alternative from being accepted as legitimate. He connects this to the fact that even in elections for the Chief Rabbinate, secular people tend to support the conservative camp and then complain about religious coercion, because their image of religious authority is filtered through that same ethos.
The conclusion: dismantling the dichotomy, reexamining the watershed line, and proposing an alternative axis
The speaker summarizes two central claims: first, that every issue contains many independent sub-questions and they should not be subordinated to one dictated answer; second, that we must reexamine whether the accepted watershed line is in fact relevant to the questions being decided today. He argues that the axis of modernity/liberalism versus conservatism is better suited to public and parliamentary discussions, and that the old axis perpetuates a mistaken reading of reality and distorted political representation. He adds that the current appearance of the field is to a large extent a “false consciousness” resulting from the absence of leadership and legitimate infrastructure for cross-camp positions, and that changing the framing and building a coherent alternative could reveal a genuinely different public distribution.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hello everyone. Where’s my little booth here? Okay. The title I chose for this matter is some kind of new watershed line, or one that should be new, in religious society. My perspective in what I’m saying is inward-facing, toward religious society itself. Maybe I’ll start with a more general distinction, and then we’ll get into the topic. Today is Rabin’s yahrzeit, and that’s a good opportunity to begin with an example connected to him. Once I was riding on a bus, and a car stopped next to me with a sticker on it. This was during the Rabin government period, I don’t know which one, and it said: “Rabin has no mandate to return the Golan.” So I started thinking: what can I learn from that about the views of the car owner, male or female? Is he in favor of an agreement with the Syrians, against agreements with the Syrians? And my answer was that I can’t learn anything. Meaning, I have no way of knowing from that what the political views of the car owner are. And why?
[Speaker B] Someone here is trying to photograph you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Better that you photograph them.
[Speaker C] Sorry, when did you people make up?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes? My conclusion was that you can’t learn anything from that sticker about the political views of the car owner, and the reason is that the issue of a mandate to return the Golan, or not having a mandate to return it, the debate over whether he does or doesn’t have a mandate to return the Golan, can relate to two levels of discussion. One level is the moral level. Meaning: if you were elected on the basis of a certain platform, a certain agenda, and things seen from there aren’t seen from here, as someone else said later on, then the question is whether, morally speaking, you are supposed to go back to the voter, when we’re talking about substantial matters, not side issues, go back to the voter and say: “Friends, I changed my mind. I’m asking for renewed trust, or renewed lack of trust.” Meaning, give me permission to do something different from what I promised before the election. That’s a moral question: do you need to go back to the voter, or once you’re prime minister can you act as you see fit? By the way, that question has two pretty decent sides. I don’t think it has a simple answer. It has two pretty decent sides, and it depends of course on the kind of issue, how hard it is to go back, how significant it is, and all kinds of things like that. But it’s not important for this discussion. It has two decent sides. That’s the moral question, political morality. The second question is of course the question on the merits: do you think it is right to make an agreement with the Syrians, or not right to make an agreement with the Syrians? Is it good or bad in security terms, politically, ideologically, religiously, whatever, from a thousand different aspects, everyone according to his favorite aspects. That’s a different question. These two questions are independent. One question—apparently even after I lost weight that’s still funny—one question is the question of political morality. I can say that what you promised before the election you need to keep, or go back to the voter, whether I’m in favor of an agreement with the Syrians or against it. That’s a moral question, right? It has nothing to do with my views about the agreement with the Syrians. And vice versa: whatever my views are on the moral question, I can hold either position on the agreement with the Syrians, for or against, and again from any of the aspects I described before. These are two independent questions. Fine, this is simple combinatorics—even Moshe can know it. Two independent questions with two possible answers to each, so how many groups should there be in the population? Four. Four, right, two squared. I didn’t understand the “even” in that sentence. A mathematician can’t—it’s that simple. So that’s two squared. Meaning, it’s an exercise that even mathematicians know how to do, and therefore I would expect there to be four groups in the population. How many actually were there? Two, right? Second example: once I wrote a response for Makor Rishon about the conversion controversy after that court ruling by the rabbinical judge from Ashdod and Rabbi Sherman, who invalidated Rabbi Druckman’s conversions sweepingly, the conversions of the state conversion system, and there was a whole uproar. The controversy flared up in full force, and I wrote there that even without thinking too much, I could think of—I think I counted there—about twelve, thirteen, fifteen questions that a person needs to answer in order to express some orderly position on this issue of conversion. Some of them are halakhic, some policy-related, some about the connection between religion and state, and a million other things. Almost all of these questions, maybe all of them—I don’t remember anymore because it was a long time ago—are independent. Now we can move on to a harder question. If there are fifteen independent questions, how many groups are there in the population? Two to the fifteenth, right? That’s something like thirty-five thousand, something like that. Thirty-two K. So that’s the number of groups in the population, not the number of people. The number of types of positions that could exist on such a question. How many were there in practice? Two. Right? Two. One group—meaning there were those who answered yes to all the questions, and those who answered no to all the questions, and those were the two groups. And then I asked the sixteenth question: why is that? Why do you have to give a pre-dictated answer to all fifteen questions? They’re independent. Meaning, I can answer yes to question A, yes also to question B, no to C, yes to D, no to E, and so on. There are thirty-five thousand possibilities. So why do I find only two? The answer is like the answer in the Rabin case, although there maybe it could be a more successful case. Two instead of four is not so terrible, but two instead of thirty-five thousand already sounds a little more suspicious. And it seems to me that the answer is that we put the cart before the horse. Meaning, we decide what our answer to the question ought to be—and I’m going to keep turning around because this isn’t under control—we decide what our answer ought to be, and then we harness all the questions in the direction we want in principle. Meaning, if we want there not to be Oslo Accords, then we say that Rabin has no moral mandate to do it because before the election he promised not to do it. And besides, it’s also wrong to do it. And if we’re in favor of the Oslo Accords, then Rabin does have a moral mandate to do it, and of course we also support his doing it. But you almost won’t find—or at least in the unscientific survey I conducted then, I didn’t find—the populations, the ones who aren’t on the diagonal. Meaning, those who say yes to one question and no to the second question. And with fifteen, include that too. Meaning, they don’t exist. The diagonal groups don’t exist. There are only those who harness all the questions in the same direction, in order ultimately to get a clear, unambiguous, non-complex answer. Either we’re in favor of this move by Rabin or we’re against it; either we’re in favor of the conversion or we’re against the conversion. Now, obviously, even if I give a complex answer, in the end I can still reach a bottom line. Meaning, I can say: morally I think what he’s doing is illegitimate, but I actually support the Oslo Accords. I’d be very happy if someone did it, even though morally it’s not proper. Okay? So what does that mean? That if someone asks me for the bottom line—Rabin did it, would you shoot him or not shoot him? Fine, I have to think which question is more important. Okay? They told me I’m not being recorded offline. No, they told me the recording won’t incriminate me, otherwise I wouldn’t have approved it. So I have to decide which question is more important, right? In the end I can reach a bottom line. But that bottom line will be a complex synthesis of my answers to all the questions, the basic questions. But people don’t like that, because it’s hard to produce complex syntheses. How are you supposed to know what’s more important and what’s less important, what weight to assign to which question? So it’s much easier to go in the direction where all the considerations lead to the same conclusion. Then everything is clear, and we have a very simple position. By the way, I’m not sure this is done consciously. On the contrary, I usually think it isn’t done consciously. It’s some kind of bias we have as human beings. I don’t think people are deceiving me here. They don’t really think it’s immoral because they want Rabin not to do it. I don’t think it works like that. It happens somehow inside us. Meaning, once we’re against the agreement at the political, religious, ideological level, then somehow we also see it as something immoral to do. We are not careful to separate these questions, even though usually there really isn’t much connection between them. There is room to separate them. What this really means is that when we encounter some worldview, a party, or even a person, then very often that worldview creates some kind of basket of answers—that is, a whole set of questions such that if you’re under this heading, then you have to answer all the questions in a certain way. If you’re under that heading, you have to answer all the questions in some other way. Right? Like Haredi and Religious Zionist. There too there’s some specific set of questions that supposedly you’re meant to answer all in the same way. In the context of conversions, for example, very quickly—it didn’t start out that way at first—but it very quickly became the argument between Haredim and Religious Zionists. Now I don’t see almost any connection to questions of Religious Zionism and Haredi society. There is some connection, but it’s weak, to a small part of the fifteen questions I listed there. And therefore in my letter there I really presented a position that says: I, for example, think Rabbi Druckman’s conversions are a scandal, I as someone who is not Haredi in the classic sense, but I don’t think you can invalidate them sweepingly after the fact. Meaning, once such a thing was done, in order to invalidate a conversion when there sat there a religious court that in my eyes is not wicked, that this isn’t a court at all as they wrote there—right? Since that’s the case, then you need some evidence regarding a specific person in order to say his conversion isn’t valid. You can’t do some sweeping, total annulment. A Religious Zionist could also say that position. I don’t see why you have to be Haredi for that, because immediately afterward they called me Haredi. But why do you have to be Haredi to say such a thing? What’s the problem? I have a halakhic position, a policy of Jewish law position, a halakhic one, yes? And that’s my conclusion; it really is my conclusion. And it has nothing to do with whether I’m Religious Zionist or Haredi. But somehow it quickly slides into some argument between Religious Zionists and Haredim, because in the end Rabbi Sherman’s ruling and that other one from Ashdod—I simply don’t remember his name—sweepingly invalidated the entire conversion system including Rabbi Druckman, saying they are wicked and that this isn’t a religious court at all, and therefore in essence all the conversions are invalid, because you need a religious court for a conversion to be valid. So immediately that of course puts all the supporters of Rabbi Druckman and the system, the Religious Zionists let’s say, on the defensive, and it turned into a clash between Haredim and Religious Zionists. But it isn’t like that; it shouldn’t be like that. Even if at the bottom line we do get there—and maybe we will get there—but…
[Speaker G] Sorry, I’m just a bit technophobic,
[Speaker G] I don’t understand what to do with these things. Fine, I think I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m an engineer after all, but I can’t deal with things like this. In any case, ideological bias often causes us to answer a great many questions in some way that is dictated to us in advance. And therefore, if I get closer to our topic, say Religious Zionism versus Haredi society, that too is really just some heading for a basket of questions, where it’s commonly thought that you’re basically supposed to answer them all in line with your party or ideological affiliation. And there too I don’t find myself completely in either of those two drawers. Meaning, there are questions on which I identify with these people, and questions on which I identify with those people. I don’t see why I need to belong to this drawer—that’s one issue. But beyond that, I don’t see why there need to be only these two drawers at all. Meaning, what, if they exist then they exist, I have no problem. Meaning, if people are positioned such that those are their views, then obviously there are two such groups and two such drawers and there’s a watershed line between them, and that’s all fine. But my feeling is that very often the situation on the ground, if I try to clarify it at higher resolution and ask someone, tell me what do you say about this question, and this question, and this question, in a way that tries to detach us from the general context, the general ideology, I’ll get more complex answers. But people very often feel that as someone who belongs to a certain group or under a certain heading, they somehow have to answer all these questions A, B, C, D. A funny anecdote: there were some Haredi Jews from Haifa, two or three, with whom I was in contact, and there were all kinds of hesitations about different matters. So they asked me whether to go, for example, to the Haredi protest against the draft. There was a protest here—I don’t remember how many years ago—a big protest against enlistment, and they asked me whether to go. I told them that anyone who goes is an idiot. Fine. Then after an hour or something, two hours, I don’t know how long the trip takes, they call me: we’re at the protest, but we really feel that we’re idiots; the question is whether to drive back. So I said, then why did you go? “What did he think originally, and what does he think now?” So what were you thinking? We couldn’t—meaning, we’re affiliated, Haredi society is under attack. So they’re Haredi, they have doubts, but they’re Haredi, meaning. So Haredi society is under attack, so we have to mobilize, there’s no other way. At some point they were apparently honest enough to understand the foolishness of the matter, but I’m bringing it as an example of that, and of course it exists in all of us. I don’t mean that in that case there just happened to be three idiots in Haifa. All of us, inside almost every one of us—I know, at least inside me, and I assume even some of those sitting here as well—there’s some little idiot like that, who every time causes us to answer questions in a way that isn’t substantive.
[Speaker H] Why is that idiotic? I didn’t understand. I understood the tendency, but I didn’t understand why it’s idiotic. Why isn’t it something that advances me in life to do such a thing? Like, I belong, so I gain belonging to a group. You mean about the protest? No, in general. Sorry, I interrupted, is that okay? No, no, please. First, as a theory of knowledge, the idea that I need truth in order to arrive at some sort of positivist truth is one position, just as Adam Smith supposedly thought from the outset that the whole point of knowledge was to arrive at some kind of conception that I—I’m someone from the yeshiva world, I have an elegant ready-made answer. It’s not so important which one.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. If Adam Smith said that, then I’d apply the previous title to him too.
[Speaker H] Okay, no, but that’s a theory, that’s his epistemology, it’s his—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, what do you mean his epistemology? I’m saying, if that’s really what he thinks, fine, I have no problem with it.
[Speaker H] But that’s his conduct of truth, his definition of truth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not at all. I deny that. That isn’t truth. I can think—to go back to the example I gave—I can think that morally Rabin may retract what he promised before the election, together with thinking either that I’m in favor of such an agreement or that I’m against such an agreement.
[Speaker H] The question is how I choose from all the boxes. I’ll choose the box that’s most—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “most” mean? The box you’re actually in. Why are you choosing a box?
[Speaker H] Well, most comfortable, most available.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Your assumption is that you choose a box. Why choose a box? Look at which box you’re in. I’m talking about those who choose a box—that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t want you to choose a box; tell me which box you’re in.
[Speaker B] It sounds like a philosophical question, but Arrow the economist solves under first principles of any economy. Yes, I’m talking about the—You, as you are, think like a physicist. There’s some objective truth and it’s very, very important that everyone believe in the truth and so on and so forth. Arrow doesn’t. No, excuse me, my opinions—I choose opinions because it’s good for me to choose those opinions. That’s what he said earlier, that’s how I understood it. That’s pragmatism, that’s epistemology.
[Speaker H] It’s a way of defining a person who needs to define truth. What is truth? What I arrive at through the scientific method—that’s one way of defining truth,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s data-truth because it’s data.
[Speaker H] No, not the scientific method.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My decision whether Rabin has a moral mandate to retract or not—that’s not the scientific method. It’s unrelated. It’s about how moral decisions are made. Fine, let everyone make his moral decision however he wants. But in the end, if you ask people in a way—without getting into a philosophical argument about pragmatism—whether truth can be defined not in terms of where it leads me, but by discussing it for its own sake.
[Speaker H] That’s not the heart of your question. No, that is the heart of the question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not the heart of the question. What I’m trying to explain now. Because if you ask people in a way that detaches the specific question you’re asking from the general context, you do get complex answers. But when they’re in public debate, suddenly you see black and white. So that means that maybe—with all due respect to pragmatism, and I don’t have much—but with all due respect to this pragmatism, pragmatists really do think that everything is harnessed to goals. But the people I’m talking about aren’t there, on the one hand. And on the other hand, they behave as if they are.
[Speaker H] But why is that unimportant? Why isn’t this a matter of collective identity? Why is that an unimportant thing? Why can’t they go to a Haredi protest? That thing identifies them as Haredi, helps their public, and gives them good standing in the public they value.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: you can go to a Haredi protest because you think they’re right and you want to identify with them—everything’s fine. But if you think it’s idiotic to go to a Haredi protest, then I’m saying one of two things. Either don’t go, or go and understand that you’re being idiotic. Fine, but you’re doing it for pragmatic reasons.
[Speaker B] Or you have some additional consideration above that one. You think that in a certain sense—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s pragmatism, and that’s perfectly fine. What I said just now wasn’t judgmental. What I’m saying now is descriptive. No, it’s completely descriptive. I’m saying, when I—I’m saying there are people who have different positions on different questions. If you ask the questions in isolation…
[Speaker H] It sounds odd to say that a person doesn’t choose an opinion. People adopt religions, right? A person wants to be Catholic, so you have a catechism. You need to believe certain things. It’s worthwhile for me—why did he say it’s worthwhile for me to believe these things?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem, I understand the view.
[Speaker H] Why can’t a person choose his words?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He can choose whatever he wants. I didn’t say he can’t. I’m talking right now about a purely descriptive question, not judgmental at all. Understood. Assuming there are people divided into two to the fifteenth groups, okay? There are such people. Why doesn’t that appear in public debate? That’s my question. Whether it’s good or bad—someone can come and tell me: look, I belong to that group, but I deliberately hide my position because I want to identify with those people. Fine. I won’t argue with him either, because he’s not expressing his real positions, but fine, I’m not judging him. I’m only asking why this happens if a person isn’t like that. I’ll answer you why it happens. It’s unconscious. That’s the most logical thing here.
[Speaker I] Maybe I can add something? I think the example here distorts what you want to say. Because for example, it has pragmatic consequences. But based on what you said earlier, we’re saying that a person actually thinks, but he neutralizes his thinking in order to reach a certain conclusion. So really the question is: why, under certain circumstances, does a person not think? He can basically support two positions. On the one hand I’m in favor of not coming down from the Golan, on the other hand I’m against—and then really he’s more…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end he can oppose it because his consideration ended up being against it.
[Speaker I] Okay, I see there’s some—
[Speaker H] issue here that’s erupting.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. So my naive assumption is that people have answers to questions and they aren’t just inventing them in order to reach some goal. If they’re different, if they’re pragmatists, fine. If they’re pragmatists, then I have nothing to talk about. Meaning, then they’re not expressing positions, they’re just formulating positions so that it will help them do something. I don’t argue with such people; they aren’t claiming anything. Yes.
[Speaker G] There’s another point here that’s somewhat connected to the agenda. But the questions you’re discussing shape an agenda, and sometimes they come up autonomously. And let’s say there’s a set of fifteen questions and they’re all intertwined with one another. Okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not connected. Sorry? Not connected, not dependent.
[Speaker G] No, no, no, no. Why are they intertwined? Why are they intertwined? Why do you have this set? Where did they come from?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because they’re all—
[Speaker G] important for determining the position. On each and every question you develop it autonomously. But why did those fifteen questions appear in your letter on issue X?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because they’re all important for determining a position regarding conversion.
[Speaker G] Because issue X gathered all those questions together for you. Okay? It’s not just that the questions—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. There’s no dependence between the questions, but there is a connection because the questions are about the same issue.
[Speaker G] Okay. So there’s the main question that comes onto the agenda, and because it comes onto the agenda in a way you can discuss, it also summons up your group of questions, those fifteen questions, and also dictates the position regarding them. If I asked a question in which—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you’re saying they are dependent? I didn’t understand the claim.
[Speaker G] They aren’t dependent, they’re related.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then tell me what the dependence is between the moral question in Rabin’s case and the question of the political position.
[Speaker G] What will happen with the Golan? Someone raised the moral question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A person who promised before the election—can he retract after the election? A moral question. Another question: should the Golan be returned and peace made with the Syrians? Two questions.
[Speaker J] He’s saying the thought process is the reverse. That the independent questions arise only after the topic has been raised publicly, and therefore it makes sense that first you form your position around the topic, and from that there follows—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There follows from that? I don’t agree. Form your position—that’s fine.
[Speaker G] Before that, there is such enormous force in the whole issue of framing in setting the agenda. And through framing in setting the agenda I can cause people…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, don’t take me to the plane of how people are influenced and to psychological planes—I don’t deal with that. If you tell me that it pays for me to do this because it will persuade people more, you may be right; I’m not sure. You may be right, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m asking what that person’s position actually is, not whether it’s worthwhile for him to do it or not. So I’m not discussing judgmentalism right now. I’m not discussing judgmentalism. I’m not dealing with the question of whether it’s worthwhile for you to do this or not, whether it’s good to do this or not. I’m asking what that person’s position is, that’s all. I’m saying: what would you say about someone answering a halakhic responsum, okay? In a halakhic responsum we’re used to reading halakhic responsa. What would you say about someone answering a very complex question, taking all the aspects, and saying forbidden, forbidden, forbidden, forbidden, because I want to end up with the conclusion that it’s forbidden. Now, I know many have already written that this is how halakhic respondents work too. But they don’t write that way. They don’t write that way, and if they’re honest then they shouldn’t think that way either. That’s how I innocently see it. Now whoever will be here… all the questions that are basically independent of each one of the meticulous assumptions, to all of them I’ll answer in…
[Speaker H] But that isn’t a desire
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a singular desire to permit a woman; I want to be committed to halakhic truth.
[Speaker B] Okay, let him develop it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We got the reasoning, we understood it, what for. Okay. Now since on political questions, or on public and ideological questions, we already agreed that there are really very many sub-questions, and a large part of them at least may not be dependent on one another, and yet political organization somehow requires gathering into camps, then there has to be some watershed line. And the watershed line in this context is supposed to tell me which questions are important. Meaning, when we want, say, to divide the religious public into two parties for the sake of discussion, okay? Now we have many questions we can answer in this context, and it’s certainly possible that if there are, say, a hundred questions, then there are two to the hundred answers—parties, right? But we don’t have room for so many fragments of parties; we’re talking about two religious parties. So we’re looking for some watershed line. The watershed line says: what is the important question? Meaning, among these hundred questions, which are the important ones? There are a few questions that are more fundamental than the others. Say, in the context I’m talking about here, there’s a feeling among people—even though again, on the private level if you ask them you’ll get different answers—but on the public level there’s a kind of answer among people that the watershed line is Zionism. If you’re Religious Zionist, then you’re on this side, and if you’re Haredi, then you’re on that side. Now, true, there are many shades here and many shades there, and lately there are even middle shades, but broadly speaking this is accepted as a central watershed line within the religious public. Right? Right, there are Religious Zionist parties and there are Haredi parties. That’s the accepted division. There are many questions about which you could ask, and it’s not certain that the answers would divide neatly between these two groups, but there is still logic—and I’m not denying that logic—that in practice you somehow have to organize in order to act together and establish some watershed line around which we see the meaningful division, even though in reality there should have been a much more diverse division. Okay. The question is: what is the relevant watershed line? And the relevant watershed line—again, not the relevant one, the watershed line that still exists—is Zionism and Haredism, Religious Zionism and Haredism. Overall, the basic identity of religious people is divided more or less between these two definitions, and under that there is of course everything: attitude to modernity and to the sciences and who knows, Torah and science, drafting yeshiva students, this kind of lifestyle or that kind of lifestyle, whether to be in kollel or not to be in kollel, and many other things, how much to listen to rabbis or not to listen to rabbis. A huge number of questions can be placed under this issue, and it’s not at all clear—or it’s fairly clear that no—the answers won’t be in complete correlation with the groups in which you define yourself as Religious Zionist or Haredi. But still, the feeling is that this is the watershed line. And a person—and that’s why I know from myself, I mentioned this earlier—every now and then I write something, and immediately they say to me: “You’re Zionist,” “You’re Haredi.” Then you write something else, they say to me: “You’re Reform.” A third thing, who knows, “heretic.” Fine. Because it really is true that what I write belongs to the group of heretics or those or these, but I don’t feel that I’m fully inside any one group, meaning with all their answers to all the questions. And here too I think there is… I’m not denying the necessity of a watershed line existing, but I have two comments about it. One comment is the same comment as before: even if we establish the watershed line, we shouldn’t let it dictate the answers to every question. Exactly as I said before. Meaning, if someone likes belonging to one of these two groups or ideologies, good health to him. To each his own hobby. But if he belongs to one of these groups, that doesn’t mean he has to answer this whole set of questions in some pre-dictated way, and conversely on the other side. That’s the previous comment I had.
[Speaker D] It doesn’t mean that analytically.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes. And the moment he does that, in my view it’s distorted. It’s distorted because he doesn’t really think, he doesn’t really express his true thoughts on the issue.
[Speaker D] So they’ll accept his kid into school.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I say, okay, pragmatic considerations—I said there are many pragmatic considerations. But on the principled level I think making decisions in that way is a mistake. It’s a mistake because even if in the end you decide to belong to the Haredi wing, you can belong to the Haredi wing and answer quite a few questions in several ways. It’s just that in the bottom line you ask: who am I going to vote for, Agudat Yisrael? Or act pragmatically—I have no problem with that. I’m not talking on the pragmatic plane and not on the psychological plane. I’m talking about the question of how people really form positions, not how they express positions. Fine, those are two different things. So that’s the first comment, and the first comment is why not to subordinate positions on particular questions to the heading I chose to shelter under. The second comment, the one I want to focus on more, is: who really is the relevant watershed line? Is this really the relevant watershed line? Meaning, if we continue of course to subordinate our answers to questions to the heading, then it will always remain relevant. Since whoever belongs here will answer all the questions accordingly, and whoever belongs there will answer all the questions accordingly, that will also build the relevance of the watershed line, because in fact that really is the line that cuts through the public, right? After all, if people adopted my first recommendation and said: no, let’s discuss each question separately, and afterwards we’ll make decisions whether and where to belong. But first of all I want to formulate my positions on each question separately. Then I might suddenly discover that actually I’m not sure that I want to belong either here or there. I think the watershed line would suddenly turn out to be an irrelevant line. And now—and this is my second claim—I want now to argue that this watershed line of Religious Zionism versus Haredism is an irrelevant line. It is not relevant, it’s an anachronism, and it’s uninteresting, and this is not a theoretical statement with theoretical importance only. This is a statement with very, very practical importance. Because precisely because of the first comment. The first comment, after all, says that people formulate positions on many questions according to the heading of which side of the watershed line they are on. So if we change the line, it may be that we’ll also get different answers to the small questions, right? The particular, specific questions, okay? Therefore this also has a great deal of practical importance. It may be that we need to organize altogether differently. Meaning, the two-to-the-hundred groups there are in relation to the hundred questions, say, actually need to be organized differently. We need to collect a different subgroup from among them and put them here, and a different subgroup put there, and give different headings. The whole political organization is built on the assumption that this is the relevant watershed line. Now I’ll perhaps bring an example that illustrates the point, where this hit me and sharpened the issue for me. It was in the elections for the Chief Rabbinate, for chief rabbi, right? And there there was Rabbi Stav and Rabbi Lau and Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and all the sons of—who competed there. And there was, yes, I assume you know the processes that were going on there in the background. I also don’t know it up close, but broadly speaking in the end, after Rabbi Lau and Rabbi Yosef were elected—the younger ones, I mean, the current ones—there began a campaign of crying and lamenting in the Religious Zionist press, in Makor Rishon and on websites and so on: how did the Haredim once again win the elections for the Chief Rabbinate? We failed to unite, and basically we split the vote and therefore they won. Now in my view that is complete nonsense, and it stems from the mistaken conception of the watershed line. And I think it’s a very sharp expression of this issue. Because if I look at the watershed line that I think is relevant, the watershed line that for me is relevant is the question of modernity and liberalism versus conservatism. Not Zionism versus Haredism. Haredism in the sense of anti-Zionism, that’s what I mean. There is a correlation between the things, but a correlation is certainly not airtight. And I think that once you define the… or maybe before that—why is that really the relevant watershed line? Because the questions before us today are closer to that axis than to the axis of Zionism and Haredism. The questions on which we need to make decisions today in the Knesset or in society or whatever—what among these is connected to Zionism and Haredism? Nothing, in my opinion. I can’t think of one relevant question. Whether to establish the state? It’s already here, if someone hasn’t noticed. Meaning, so what are we arguing about? The argument is whether to rejoice on Independence Day, whether to say a blessing over Hallel or not to say one? Well, that blessing—on my head. Say one blessing in vain, or don’t say it even though you should. I wouldn’t build an entire ideology and political map around that and subordinate all my answers to other questions to it. Yes.
[Speaker F] For you maybe religion—or because there are many secular people who say it’s religion and so on—so for me Judaism or statehood is somewhere there’s a conflict, like, I didn’t find…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, religion and state is an excellent question, but it’s not necessarily connected to Religious Zionism and Haredism as you can see. Religion and state—you can see that Haredim definitely care about the general Jewish character of the state according to their approach, even though ostensibly they shouldn’t have done that; they should have said, give us our little parcel of God and do whatever you want. But no. Meaning, it’s already not cut according to that axis. The watershed line is no longer that. That’s a good question. The question of religion and state is one of the questions, one of the many questions, to which we have to give thought today. Attitudes toward homosexuals, kashrut, the kashrut system that has now come up, marriage, conversions, all kinds of things of that sort. All those are questions not connected to Haredism and Religious Zionism. I don’t see the connection.
[Speaker K] There’s some very emotional conception about what constitutes people’s identity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s why I’m saying—I’m not… if I were saying that this is what constitutes identity, then that would be an empirical claim. I’m not making an empirical claim that this is what constitutes identity. If anything, I’m making the opposite empirical claim—that unfortunately this is not what constitutes identity. You expect—exactly, I expect. So that’s something else, because I really do expect people to act in accordance with their values. That seems to me a reasonable expectation. Do you understand? I’m not claiming they do that—on the contrary, I lament the fact that they don’t do that. But I’m saying that I would expect, or I would want, them to do that: that people who think in a certain way would act optimally in order to achieve what they think. And I think they don’t do that.
[Speaker M] What I’m trying to say is: what is the meaning—what is identity, basically, what is your definition of identity, and what does it provide for ordinary citizens?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Identity is a complicated question; I wouldn’t want to get into that question. I want to get into the question of which party I’m going to vote for. To strip away identity—identity is complicated. I’m asking what party to establish. I have two parties—say now we’re setting up two parties to serve the entire religious public. Which two parties should we establish? Identity is complicated, I don’t know. So I wouldn’t maintain two parties, one Religious Zionist and one Haredi. I would establish a conservative party and a liberal-modern party or something like that. Right? It’s simpler to formulate it that way. Because identity is complicated, I don’t know.
[Speaker N] Do you think that from the perspective of the Haredi public, enlistment in the IDF is something it cannot absorb within itself and remain in the same social structure in which it currently exists? Meaning, this is something very, very basic to its identity, and resistance through not enlisting in the IDF, thereby preserving a learning society and the society in the form it exists now—that’s very, very basic to its identity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure you’re right, because already today there is a significant erosion on this issue, but give me another second and I’ll continue a bit, and I think we’ll come back to this. Basically my claim is that there—
[Speaker O] What I want to say is, I lived several years in America, and my conclusion was similar to yours with regard to American Jewry, and it connects to what he just said: in my opinion the watershed line in the Israeli context is military service.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’ll get to that in a moment, I’ll get to it. Fine. So let me return for a moment to the example of the elections to the Chief Rabbinate. What happened there? After all, in the end the feeling was that several Religious Zionist candidates were competing against several Haredi candidates—which is true. There were several candidates who said Hallel on Independence Day and several candidates who did not. By the way, it seems to me that the two Haredim who were elected do say Hallel on Independence Day, if I understand correctly. I’m not sure, but I think so. I think both Rabbi Lau and Rabbi Ovadia said they did, I think.
[Speaker H] Rabbi Lau said that it’s permitted to say it without a blessing, there’s no problem with that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not with a blessing—Hallel without a blessing.
[Speaker H] No, it’s Psalms, he says it’s Psalms, but it’s Psalms, not Hallel, that’s what he says.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I also say Psalms; Psalms are good. So in short, never mind, that’s just an anecdote. What I want to say is that there was basically a mistake in the analysis of what happened there. It’s an excellent indication. Because there was one candidate who belongs to the party, to the divide I’m talking about, the modern-liberal party, let’s call it, relatively speaking—Rabbi Stav. In my opinion he’s still not enough there, but he is there, relatively speaking. All the others were Haredi. Haredi not necessarily in the anti-Zionist sense, but Haredi in the sense of attitude toward modernity and liberalism. Again, these are all very sweeping generalizations, but that’s what you do when you talk about watershed lines. And then what? Then by nature Rabbi Stav lost. Well, of course—he was in a glorious minority. So why is everyone so astonished? Everyone was terribly astonished because how could this be? If we had all united, all of Religious Zionism, it would have been wonderful. Now more than that—it also made no sense to unite all of Religious Zionism, because after all, what questions is the chief rabbi supposed to deal with? Only questions that have nothing at all to do with Zionism. Only questions that concern kashrut and conversion and all kinds of things like that. Meaning, what does that have to do with Zionism? After all, on all these questions the position of the Hardalim and the Haredim is almost—maybe on all the questions, maybe on almost all of them—the same. And Rabbi Stav’s position is in a somewhat different place on all those questions. So that is really the natural divide. Meaning, whoever looks at this through the old lenses of Religious Zionism versus Haredism is simply reading reality incorrectly, and afterward he formulates an incorrect strategy. And he bewails his bitter fate incorrectly, and he reads reality incorrectly. He simply does not understand that he is in the minority and therefore he lost—it’s the most natural thing in the world. Whoever is in the minority loses. The leadership and public of the National-Haredi camp—yes, the Hardal camp—which is Religious Zionist in the fullest sense, yes, says Hallel on Independence Day, in that sense. So it acted against Rabbi Stav with the greatest vigor, much more than the Haredim. So how can you say: we failed to unite—unite with whom? They are his greatest opponents. So what does it mean to unite? We also don’t succeed in uniting with Hamas. Okay, we don’t succeed—what can you do? It doesn’t work, there’s no one to talk to. So this is just a very blunt expression, I think, of the distortion in this anachronistic view of Religious Zionism versus Haredism. We look at everything this way, we analyze everything this way, we read reality incorrectly. The watershed lines run somewhere else. They run between modern liberalism and conservatism. Again, this is coarse and obviously there are shades—everything is true, that’s always true—but that seems to me the relevant watershed line for the questions being discussed today. When you ask yourself which chief rabbi you want to vote for—I would vote for the empty set, the Chief Rabbinate should be shut down—but if such a thing exists, then the question is who you vote for. So you don’t ask yourself whether you’re voting for a Religious Zionist or a Haredi; rather you ask yourself whether you’re voting for a liberal rabbi or a conservative rabbi, modern or conservative, I don’t know, I keep switching between them because they’re not the same thing.
[Speaker E] What would you call it? MO?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Modern Orthodox, yes, something like that exactly. Now Modern Orthodox has become a synonym for Religious Zionist, but it isn’t; they’re different groups. A Religious Zionist can be entirely Haredi, meaning almost entirely—except maybe for Hallel on Independence Day, he’s entirely Haredi in terms of liberalism versus conservatism. So why is this division relevant at all? It’s an irrelevant division. Yes.
[Speaker P] First of all, it seems to me that Rabbi Stav has already noticed this, and he always said to vote for Gimel, meaning—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He said Shas several times too, now—
[Speaker P] But yes, precisely because he identified that the watershed line doesn’t pass there, and he already moved to the second party. Fair enough. I’m just saying he’s right, but we too—and the one who ultimately profits from this misunderstanding is the liberal public, because the liberal public gets representation as if it were more significant. In religion? Much less so. I think that when you look at the Jewish Home party, you see this and that Knesset members who are supposedly liberal, and it seems to me that there are more of them than their percentage in the religious public.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here it seems to me that I disagree with you by a full 180 degrees, and that’s the next stage—we’ll get to that in a moment. The meaning of these things is basically that if I want to ask myself who will act for me, who I should vote for, or around what to unite, I ask who is liberal and modern and who isn’t. That is basically the more relevant axis question, the one that ought to be more central. Now what happens as a result of this—here I’ll show you a consequence of not asking that question, another consequence. I spoke about the union of Jewish Home, the National Religious Party, with Tkuma, okay? Why did they unite? Because both are Religious Zionist, right? The most natural union in the world. To everyone it looks like a completely natural union, and of course there are differences, but it’s a very natural union. In my eyes Jewish Home is a Haredi party in every sense, completely—just put on a frock coat, aside from that nothing—not even Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett. Why? Because what happens is that they unite around the Religious Zionist axis with Tkuma, the irrelevant axis of Zionism, because both are Religious Zionist against the Haredim. But the Tkuma component within Jewish Home, after all, on all—or almost all—questions of religion and state votes with the Haredim, thinks like the Haredim. Its rabbinic leadership, what are today called “the rabbis of Religious Zionism,” for reasons I have never fully understood, appointed themselves and since then that’s what they’re called—this is a collection of Hardal rabbis who are Haredi in every respect, they are completely Haredi. They just say Hallel and support the sale permit, at least after the fact. It seems to me that more or less that’s what defines them; besides that, nothing. Meaning, their attitude to almost everything else is more or less like the Haredim. Maybe I’m missing something, but broadly that’s more or less what they are. Right? So why are you joining with the National Religious Party? Because we are Religious Zionist and they too are Religious Zionist. They still live in the watershed line of Religious Zionism versus Haredism. Now what happens as a result? Look what happens—two interesting things.
[Speaker D] Their students are elsewhere on the modernity-liberalism axis.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, before the students. One thing that happens is that when Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett want to make a decision—how to vote in the Knesset on a certain question—they understand that they are a religious party. A religious party cannot ignore the position, say, on questions adjacent to Jewish law or actually dealing with Jewish law; yes, they cannot ignore the position of the religious leadership of the camp they are leading. And since both of them are ignoramuses, they have no way to really critique what the black-clothed, Hallel-saying, or Hardal people tell them. So from their perspective, that is the binding religious position, the true one. And since that is so, on votes relating to questions of religion and state, on questions of, as I said before, liberalism and non-liberalism, usually Jewish Home votes like Haredim. Not because Naftali Bennett is there, and Ayelet Shaked certainly isn’t there, but because they understand that they are representatives of the religious public, the Religious Zionist public, and the rabbis of Religious Zionism, after all, say that this and this is what Jewish law says, or Judaism says, or whatever. And in the end, on questions of enlistment, on questions of yeshivot, on questions of homosexuals, on questions of almost anything you want—again, I didn’t do a precise survey, but on almost everything—they vote like Haredim. They are a Haredi party not in the sense of what they wear and not in the sense of whether they do or do not say Hallel. They are a Haredi party in the sense of when they raise their finger in the Knesset. And for me that is what is relevant. What do I care what he does at home? I’m not voting for Naftali Bennett because he was in Sayeret Matkal, and not because he wears a knitted kippah and short pants. What do I care? If he raises his finger in a place I don’t want, then he is not my representative. Now, this is a result of the same failure that existed in the elections for the Rabbinate. Since people understand that coalitions are built around whether we are Religious Zionist or not, and not around the question of what I say about religion-state relations or what I say about updates of Jewish law, adaptation to reality, and all kinds of things of that sort. And because of that, the whole business goes wrong. Jewish Home essentially becomes a Haredi party, Haredi in my sense—oops—it becomes a Haredi party in my sense, meaning in the sense of religion-state relations, in the sense of liberalism. Why? Because it has to be Religious Zionist in their sense. Do you understand the absurdity happening here? Meaning, because of the division according to the watershed line of Religious Zionism versus Haredism, then we, after all, are Religious Zionists, we join with Tkuma, we listen to the Hardal rabbis, and so on. Because of that, we vote. Now what do they vote on in the Knesset? Not on establishing the state—that already happened. What do they vote on in the Knesset? They vote in the Knesset on questions that have nothing to do with Zionism or non-Zionism; they’re related to the question of how I want to see society here, the public sphere here. And on those questions they vote like Haredim.
[Speaker E] That’s all very good for the current Knesset. In the previous Knesset it was the opposite, so apparently there are somewhat more complex political considerations here. No, understand: the fact that by chance they’re voting now like Haredim—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say my whole thesis is meant to dismantle Jewish Home. What I said is that the phenomenon of Jewish Home is an indication of the problem I’m talking about. In the previous term maybe the indication wasn’t there, fine, but now I have it, so I want to focus on it.
[Speaker Q] It’s not related, it’s an attitude—
[Speaker C] less so—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even Dov Lipman votes with the Haredim.
[Speaker Q] The watershed line here is actually the attitude to Greater Land of Israel, which is what—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but Greater Land of Israel, in my opinion, is also not on the agenda right now. It’s not on the agenda; those are not the questions that are really being voted on in the Knesset today. It’s not relevant. Today they hardly deal with it.
[Speaker P] They talk about it a lot, but the people of Israel are divided according to—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, of course. I have criticism of that too, and many before me have already criticized that. But I’m focusing more on Religious Zionism, where everything goes according to policy and security and not less according to society and economics and the like—that’s already out in the open. I’m speaking more in the religious context, but obviously it’s connected to the more general phenomenon. I’ll perhaps give an example to explain why I told you I disagree with you before. Let’s return to this example of Jewish Home. In the Tkuma party, as is known, they have no primaries, okay? They’re chosen by some small committee of rabbis, and there’s some sort of central body there too, so apparently I understood that more or less what the rabbinic committee decides is in the end what happens in practice. But even if not, in any case some small forum determines everything. Now what happens as a result on the ground? What happens as a result on the ground is that many people register with Jewish Home, with the National Religious Party, who actually have the worldview of Tkuma. And why? Because there there are primaries, you can vote, whereas in Tkuma you have no significance at all. And then what happens—let’s assume for the sake of discussion that the religious public is one million people, okay? And let’s say that within it 30 percent are Tkuma and 70 percent are National Religious Party. And now I’m talking on my axis: liberalism versus conservatism or something like that, okay? Let’s assume for the sake of discussion. Now what happens? The 30 percent of Tkuma are determined by the rabbis, and they will express the conservative positions because the rabbis choose the Knesset members. What will happen in the other 70 percent of Jewish Home? Thirty percent of it will be Knesset members representing Tkuma positions, right? Because if 30 percent of the registrants actually hold Tkuma positions, and 70 percent within that 70 percent will be the liberal public. Meaning, if you were to do a kind of game here like in the United States—say the Democrats had a two-party system, right? If the Democrats had primaries and the Republicans didn’t have primaries, right? Then obviously the Republicans would win. It’s enough that they have 30 percent support. Thirty percent support means 51 percent of the ballots in the box. Right? Simple arithmetic. If 30 percent are Republicans, and 30 percent out of the 70 percent also effectively goes again to the Republicans, because the representatives within those 70 percent are 30 percent Republican. In total, 30 percent of 70 percent is 21. Thirty plus 21 is 51 percent. Okay, so with 30 percent you win the election. Meaning that in fact if in Jewish Home, say, the distribution of opinions was 30-70, the distribution of raised fingers is 51-49. And why does this happen? It happens because the watershed line is not being read correctly. Because people make coalitions around the question of Zionism and not around the question of liberalism. So in the way Jewish Home and the National Religious Party and Tkuma are one party, 30 percent of it hold conservative positions, and 30 percent of the other 70 percent also hold conservative positions; therefore 51 percent of the party hold conservative positions. I’m of course taking numbers at random; I don’t know the exact numbers, but I’m trying to show that there is some kind of representational failure here. In fact, the fingers in the Knesset, or the Knesset members, do not represent the distribution of opinions in the public. And this stems both from the fact that one party has no primaries and another does, and also from the fact that we aren’t reading the map correctly. Okay? Meaning, because we think they are basically ours, they can register with us because they too are Religious Zionist—what’s the problem? But if we had defined ourselves as conservative, then no one could stop someone who is not conservative from joining a conservative party, or vice versa, but at least it would be defined. At least it would be visible. These phenomena happen, by the way, in other places. Feiglin in Likud, or the New Likudniks, a phenomenon that was publicized not long ago—that’s the same phenomenon. Exactly the same phenomenon. Some of the New Likudniks. Meaning, these are people who actually register with Likud even though their positions are different, in order to influence Likud. Ostensibly it seems perfectly legitimate; you’re allowed to influence from within, everything’s fine. But it isn’t like that. Why not? Because in the ballot box they will vote for Meretz, and in the Likud primaries they will vote for Likud Knesset members who are close to Meretz, so Likud will bring in 10 percent of its Knesset members who hold Meretz positions, and in addition there are the Meretz members themselves—Meretz got upgraded twofold. Okay? So that’s the problem in these phenomena, and this problem exists, by the way, regardless of what I’m saying, but it is intensified in light of what was said. It exists from the mere fact that there are parties that do not hold primaries and parties that do. That’s all. They also don’t need, by the way, to unite like Jewish Home. Even two separate parties that are not united—it’s the same problem. You register with that party, vote in the ballot box for this party, and bring in Knesset members from both sides. And those Knesset members will be brought in for you by others—you just place them there; others will bring them into the Knesset. Yes.
[Speaker R] By and large I accept your description, but I think you neglected something you described as a negligible line of division, and it’s not all that negligible yet—cooperation with secular people and actual involvement in a modern economy and of course in the army. So it’s not all that negligible.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What you just said, I don’t understand where it touches the questions that come up when we want to debate something.
[Speaker R] No, because the Hardalim—even if they distance themselves from academia—they still haven’t given it a final divorce.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think they gave it an even worse divorce than the Haredim did.
[Speaker R] No, in practice they didn’t—the Hardal ideology—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The ideology, but—
[Speaker R] In practice they are still part of the economy.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In practice there are also Haredim in academia and in the modern world, in academia—
[Speaker R] With the Haredim…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In practice today everything happens, today the world is complex; in practice there are Haredim in academia today too, in practice there’s everything.
[Speaker R] No, but the mass—you want to capture the mass. The mass—you can’t speak only in principles, you want to capture the mass. The Hardal mass is still in the army. It still works, and so on, so they’re more inside. Let me explain. And you described that as negligible.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it’s not entirely negligible. Why isn’t it entirely negligible? Because along with the fact that they are in the army, the rabbis of the Hardalim—or some of the rabbis of the Hardalim—were at the Haredi demonstration against the enlistment of Haredim.
[Speaker R] So maybe that’s just folklore. Right now it’s just folklore. What do you mean, the rabbis of? But if 95 percent of the Hardal people still go to the army, work, and so on. Let me explain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re talking about the question of what is relevant when we act on the public plane. After all, I’m asking what actually comes out of my being Haredi. The question is what its representatives and leaders act for. No, but in the Knesset—they still argue in the Knesset about the army, also about the labor market. They don’t argue only about public transportation on the Sabbath.
[Speaker R] In the Knesset they argue about the army against you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? How? Certainly—they oppose the drafting of yeshiva students exactly like the Haredim. And on every question that comes up in the Knesset you’ll find them with the Haredim. That’s exactly the point. The students—some of them can enlist; all that is true, obviously. A public is complex, it has many shades. But that’s why I’m speaking specifically about the representatives, about the leadership—what does it act for? Because when I try to define—
[Speaker R] Listen, it’s strange, as if 90 percent of the discourse in the Knesset is public transportation on the Sabbath. That’s not true. It’s not 90 percent of the issues.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fraction of Knesset questions that concern religion and state is fairly small.
[Speaker R] In general—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In general, regardless now of whether it’s a question of Zionism versus non-Zionism or a question of liberalism versus non-liberalism. Of the questions concerning religion and state, on almost all the questions there is no identity at all between the two parts of Jewish Home. And that’s why they are there. On the question of capitalism versus non-capitalism, it’s not relevant—they weren’t voted in for that. So it doesn’t matter; there are differing opinions, but that’s not related; there’s no correlation with the religious worldview, or at least no necessary correlation. On voting questions, when I ask what it means, what are you acting for—I’m not asking who enlists and who doesn’t. I’m asking whether you think one ought to enlist, whether you think people should be exempt from enlistment. That is the important question, not the question of what you do in practice. Because in the Knesset, when you raise your finger, you raise your finger on the first question, not the second. You don’t—whoever has to raise his finger so that your student will enlist—he’ll enlist because they enlist; what’s the problem? You don’t need the Knesset for that. The question is what they act for. What agenda are they leading?
[Speaker R] But wait, the two parts of Jewish Home—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] are—
[Speaker R] are quite clearly distinguished, even very well distinguished, from the Haredim, say, on questions of Judea and Samaria. So obviously that will serve here as a measure, and they are well distinguished from the Haredim, for whom it’s much more utilitarian. So why is it suddenly so negligible? It’s at the heart of the discourse.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying this: first of all, questions of Judea and Samaria in the Knesset are almost irrelevant to the Knesset.
[Speaker R] So then the whole sector doesn’t matter, so there was no need for Jewish Home.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also decrees—there are hardly any decrees either because it’s not on the agenda. That’s exactly the point. And second, whether you’re liberal or not liberal, you can support Judea and Samaria even on this axis, on this interpretive axis. It won’t stop you from voting that way in the Knesset. I’m asking what you act for in your daily life. What defines you? What defines your daily life? You can always find counterexamples; obviously there are such questions and such questions.
[Speaker R] But are the counterexamples dominant?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying no—that was my claim. No, check and you’ll see. What decisions does the Knesset make regarding Judea and Samaria? No decisions. The decisions are on public transportation? The question is whether to allow surrogacy for homosexuals, to allow them to have children or not to allow them to have children. The question is the draft outline, the question is the Western Wall outline—those are the questions that come up.
[Speaker S] Within the liberal religious world—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] those are exactly all the relevant discussions. There are no discussions about Zionism in the Knesset.
[Speaker S] But there is one more basic discussion, and that is the national Jewish religious Zionist discussion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying—
[Speaker S] that’s what matters to them. All the rest—they’re all the same. That’s why they united.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. But I claim that uniting around that issue—uniting around that issue—ultimately, when that issue itself almost never comes up today, to the sorrow of some and the joy of others, doesn’t come up for a vote—
[Speaker P] Not in the cabinet—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] not automatically, not anywhere. It isn’t relevant. These are almost irrelevant questions in day-to-day life. How many such questions are even relevant that the Knesset has decided regarding Judea and Samaria?
[Speaker B] Excuse me, excuse me, but your assumption is naive regarding how people vote and why they vote. After all, every one of us knows that his vote will not determine the result in the slightest. Therefore the very act of voting is only a matter of identity. I come in order to identify with a certain group; it’s not because I know exactly what the Knesset will vote on in the next four years and what my opinion is and what their opinion is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m going back to his comment. I don’t agree with him.
[Speaker B] No, it’s not the same comment, it’s another comment. He commented generally about identity; now I commented specifically about voting for the Knesset.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s the question? What are you actually answering?
[Speaker B] That we do this for identity and not for practical activity? You’re relating to social phenomena as if it’s physics, and it simply isn’t.
[Speaker L] But people have to choose, because in the end you choose what thing is most important to you. So let’s say for the sake of argument that I, as a secular woman, vote for Jewish Home, because for me it’s the only right-wing party in the Knesset. And I’ll swallow all kinds of frogs too that don’t suit me so well.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if there were a right-wing party that was liberal, would you vote for it? If there were. Exactly. So I’m suggesting we make one like that.
[Speaker L] So I’m suggesting we make one like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It can be right-wing. What’s the problem?
[Speaker S] But then you’re taking a risk. A risk of what? That the conservative party, which it isn’t—that’s exactly what happened
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] with Bennett, and then suddenly there will arise…
[Speaker S] I’m saying, you risk ending up with a conservative party. Of course one will arise. But one that doesn’t have very extreme views on everything connected to religion and state. And then most of the people who today vote for that party don’t actually come out benefiting from it, because what matters most to them is that there be a party.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think—I have to answer Moishe too, and that will answer you as well. Look, I’m not talking about the question of what’s advisable. First of all I’m talking about the question of what’s right. No, but—
[Speaker R] You’re—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] talking here about—
[Speaker R] some kind of politics. Politics is reality. Obviously. I’m not sure you’re being precise here, because you’ve neglected something very substantial in the political constellation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? No, I’m not neglecting it. I understand there are questions like that, but I am claiming that those questions are minor relative to the questions of the right.
[Speaker H] The state-religious people suddenly founded things in Judea and Samaria, because all the religious liberalism is among the state-religious people, and they’re not exactly not right-wing, they’re not—like, fine, with all due respect to the whole picture.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, fine, I got it. There is right-wing and there is not right-wing, I said that.
[Speaker H] He can be right-wing and they aren’t right-wing. There was such a Bennett, there was such a party, it was conservative, fine, that’s allowed for him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it won’t be conservative, that’s not true. It will be religiously liberal; among them there’ll be something like a free vote on matters of left and right, that doesn’t matter. I think the question here is of course a factual question. The question is: what portion of the activity in the Knesset, or the votes in the Knesset—the whole activity, not just the votes—touches on questions that in every tradition are Zionism or anti-Zionism, and what portion touches on other questions. In my view, the first part is negligible. But fine, you can argue about that. What I do still want to answer is what you noted earlier. I’m not claiming what people do. You keep going back to the fact that people follow identity. Let them. I’m only trying, in my view, to open their eyes. Define your identity more precisely; vote for whoever really expresses what you want. I know there are people who do this, and that’s why I’m speaking. I’m speaking in order to try to prevent them from doing it. Because I think they’re acting incorrectly. And it would have been possible to take care of those same interests in a way that doesn’t give up all the other interests that people are giving up. And in my opinion that’s a heavy price, because in the end, in day-to-day life in the Knesset, we pay the price every day. For the possibility that maybe one day there will be some peace agreement and someone will make sure that he…
[Speaker B] I’m not paying any price for my vote. I enjoyed that vote and I didn’t affect anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so that’s your second argument, which I heard, and I don’t agree with that either. It’s an old argument I have with my son. I claim that when you vote—it’s true that each person by himself affects nothing; the chance that he affects anything is one divided by the number of votes needed for a mandate, meaning one in thirty or forty thousand, I don’t know exactly, something like that. So I assume there hasn’t been, since the founding of the state, even one voter who made the difference. But—but—but that’s not true in the sense that there’s Kant’s categorical imperative. I don’t think this is identity; rather, I go to vote because I think a person ought to vote. In the end that also creates the map in the Knesset. By myself I affect nothing. But that’s exactly what Kant’s categorical imperative says: that I do things I would want to become a universal law, even though—not because if I don’t do it, it won’t become a universal law. That’s not the practical question; rather, it’s the criterion for what is right to do. What is right to do is what I would want to become a universal law.
[Speaker S] So again, I think here you’re in much more of a dispute, let’s say, about whether one should act according to the categorical imperative.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s why I said—this is the answer in parentheses to Moshe—I don’t want to get into the categorical imperative here. I once wrote in Tzohar; whoever wants can read there about the categorical imperative in Jewish law.
[Speaker T] I think it would help to make a distinction between liberal and modern. Because liberal, for our purposes, is someone who would vote in favor of recognition of homosexuals and public transportation on the Sabbath and so on. And modern is someone who would support not only Zionism but also the army, the labor market, and things like that. Now, if we go by your definitions, which are purely ideological, we’d divide between Religious Zionism and the Haredim according to the modern question, not the liberal question. And therefore the Jewish Home party would split between moderns and liberals, while really everyone is within the modern camp.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I disagree with the distinction between modern and liberal, and I already commented on it earlier. I use both those terms because in my opinion, in the end, in practice, the correlation is very high. Meaning, you won’t find—you won’t find a very big difference between the modern group and the liberal group. As I agree, these are two different ideas. There is a connection between them, but they are different ideas, נכון. But if I need to define two parties, I said—a watershed line has to cut in two. If you want, cut it into three if you think differently from me about the division of the groups. But I don’t think it needs to be cut into three, because a party that is modern and liberal basically won’t lose much from this division. These are basically similar groups. Fine, so that’s the practical side.
[Speaker B] In my opinion, even according to your own view, you’re wrong. I don’t know what the hot issues will be in the next four years, and I also don’t know in practice how people will vote on those things even if I know how they voted in the past. The only thing I know is: there’s someone who looks roughly like me and someone who doesn’t. So I vote for the one who looks roughly like me. It’s simple—there’s very great uncertainty under these circumstances. I’m optimistic.
[Speaker E] Who do you mean in Likud, Moishi? Who do you mean in Likud, Moishi? So that’s it, I’m optimistic—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m more optimistic than you, and I’ll also tell you why. I’m more optimistic than you because I think part of your pessimism stems from exactly this problem I’m talking about. Because people who don’t vote according to what you think they should vote according to do so because they’re subject to some framework. I would expect Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked to represent my positions, but they don’t represent them. So I’m disappointed. Why? Because the whole watershed line is wrong, and that’s connected to what I’m talking about here. If they had a party in which they could really do what they think, without being subordinate, then I think there’s a pretty decent chance they would do more or less what I expect them to do. Not always, of course—I don’t live in the clouds—but still, it would happen. What you’re saying is part of that same phenomenon in my opinion. People are subordinate to the frameworks they entered, and to political and coalition constraints; all true, fine. But build the coalitions correctly, and there will be fewer constraints. The greater the distance between what you think and what your surroundings think, the less likely you are to vote for what you really think. It’s simple.
[Speaker N] Yes, I think the question of what people vote on in the Knesset can force things a bit. There are lots of matters of government policy—foreign policy and security, where support is given, what is done in some operation or another in Gaza when it comes—and these are very important issues for people. There are apparently things where there’s even a difference between the parties; I’m not sure, but I think there is some difference. On Jewish identity there is a difference on these issues, and maybe that determines not everything, but clearly for people there’s a critical consolidation around that. It seems to me that for most people that’s more important than the social questions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not entirely sure, and that’s a point I want to make now because it came up with several of you. It seems to me, again—it’s a claim you can of course agree or disagree with—but it seems to me that many of us, even on questions of what is important and what is not important, are a bit biased by the existing division. Meaning, when you ask—I talk to a great many people, because my impression on these issues, my impression is that even within Haredi society and certainly within Religious Zionist society there is already very great differentiation. Meaning, there are all kinds of different groups, and my feeling is that in fact a great many of the Religious Zionist camp and a great many of the Haredi camp belong to the same party I’m talking about, and a great many from both sides belong to the second party I’m talking about. Meaning, the division ought to be orthogonal: instead of the line going like this, it should go like this. Okay? But many times when you talk with people they won’t admit it. They won’t admit it because they are captive to the conception—that’s how I interpret it, of course; maybe they don’t admit it because they don’t think it’s true, fine. But in many cases I see that my impression is that they don’t admit it because they understand that a religious person has to be right-wing. If you’re not right-wing, then you’re not seriously religious. After all, all the great rabbis of Religious Zionism said that it’s forbidden to give up anything, and after all they determine what Religious Zionism is and what Jewish law says and so on. The moment there is no branding of another group that is also a legitimate religious alternative, one that has rabbinic leadership, has an ideology—not rabbinic leadership, but does have rabbinic backing—I think it should have rabbinic leadership, but it has rabbinic backing, it has a well-anchored outlook, and it’s recognized as legitimate religiosity, not lightweight and all the labels attached to this matter, I think we’ll discover more and more people who are there. In the Haredi world there’s no doubt that’s the case. Much more clearly than in the Religious Zionist world. In the Haredi world, all the blue shirts and those who are trying to crystallize and don’t quite manage to rise—they don’t manage to rise because they have no leadership. There are a great many such people, but it’s clear to them that they’re second class, because Rabbi Steinman doesn’t say what I say and Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach doesn’t say what I say. So who does say what I say? No one. Since they have no religious leadership, they understand that they’re not okay, even though that’s not what they really think. But they understand they’re not okay. But if someone puts that outlook on the table as a legitimate alternative, I think we’d be surprised to discover how many people stand behind it on both sides. And then suddenly we’ll also see that on the ground, the division I’m talking about does exist. Today what’s happening is that the field is divided—and this is also a matter of interests, of course. The rabbis of Religious Zionism have an interest, and the Religious Zionist leadership, mainly the rabbinic leadership, has an interest in keeping the division as it is today. Again, this isn’t necessarily conscious—I’m not talking about conspiracies—but they have a very strong motivation to keep it as it is today. Why? Because if it isn’t as it is today, then suddenly they’ll discover that nobody is behind them. Behind them there are maybe a hundred Merkaz people and a few surrounding communities, and that’s all. But today they lead all of Religious Zionism, all of religious society. And if someone says, friends, meaning, from now on we’re divided differently—you’ll lead Zionist Haredism. Zionist, whatever you want to call it, Hardal, right? They’d be swallowed up entirely in the Council of Torah Sages of Agudat Yisrael maybe, and the Mizrachi people in the familiar background, in the empty place. Then nothing would remain; nothing would be left of them. Their public influence would drop to zero—not zero, but very small. Rather, what happens today—I once spoke with several people and said to them: look, when we see Rabbi Stav, before the elections for the chief rabbinate, when we see Rabbi Stav, we see some Jew with a knitted kippah and sandals, that’s my Bnei Akiva counselor, not a rabbi. A rabbi is someone with a long coat and a hat. That’s everybody’s intuitive feeling—even secular people’s, by the way. In my view, for example, the fact that secular people always cooperate with the conservative wing in elections for the Chief Rabbinate, and afterward howl about religious coercion and fossilization, that’s not only because of coalition deals and political intrigue. I don’t buy that. There’s something deeper there. The secular person doesn’t see Rabbi Stav as a rabbi. A rabbi is someone who dresses like my grandfather, actually, or my great-grandfather, with a long coat, a hat like that, and always says ‘forbidden.’ That’s a rabbi. Someone who served with me in the army and was my son’s counselor in Bnei Akiva is not a rabbi. Fine, maybe he knows a little learning here and there—not much either—but that’s how it seems, right? So that’s not a rabbi. The ethos—the point is this: the religious ethos is influenced by the division we make between Religious Zionism and Haredism, who is a rabbi and who isn’t. Lines of thought have a certain inertia; they perpetuate themselves. And there are people who need to identify their religious ideology: are you here or there? After all, you can’t be Religious Zionist and oppose… or support the exemption of yeshiva students from military service. Or the opposite: to be religious but support the option of surrogacy for homosexuals. Why not? Because after all all the great rabbis say it’s forbidden. And how can you say yes? Therefore I think I’m not entirely impressed by the division that exists in practice. Because the division that exists in practice is often the result of the system as it is defined today. That’s why I say that if… maybe it’s a somewhat subversive move, but if you put on the table another ideological alternative, another map, a completely different sense—you can be fully kosher Religious Zionist and think this way here and that way there in other areas—then suddenly you’ll discover there are many more such people. And the division is no longer really… we think that in practice the division today is like this; I think that’s only on the surface. And that’s because people don’t conduct this supposedly hypothetical discussion, supposedly disconnected from the field and only about abstract definitions. That’s not true. I claim it’s there within the field, and if it doesn’t get expression, it will be perpetuated. Yes.
[Speaker H] I think the question of surrogacy for same-sex couples is a core issue on the value map…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I brought it as an example—
[Speaker H] You’ve spoken about it several times as though that’s what would be done differently if the division were different, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That question is not a core question; it’s an expression of a core question. Which one? It’s an expression of the question: how do I want to see the state? Do I want to see this state as a state as close as possible to Jewish law, Jewish and democratic, right? Or not? That’s the question. Now, once you look at it—for example, I personally, as someone committed to—
[Speaker H] Jewish law, don’t want the state to be close to Jewish law. I don’t want that—not that I’m giving anything up. I personally… it’s an interesting question, because I don’t know what I think about that question because I haven’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] thought about it, because I didn’t think it was important. Does it affect anything? I think it’s very important because these are the questions we’re discussing today. Take all the questions—in the end they’re all some expression of that.
[Speaker C] You’re making the same dichotomy you came out against at the very beginning. After all, even regarding that very specific question, take the left, the extreme left, let’s say those eight percent—even there there’d be a very large disagreement about surrogacy for homosexuals. So to take that as some sort of—or not that, but something similar to it—as a watershed line?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here we can argue. I think this axis of religion and state, or of the democratic character of the state versus the halakhic character of the state, or one close to Jewish law, is in my eyes a much more fundamental question; it’s a collection of many questions.
[Speaker H] When you were a child in the United States there was no connection at all between religion and state; there is no religion and state there in the United States. But morality isn’t necessarily for children. Why is that a watershed line? Why is that issue something religious? It’s something social.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Open a newspaper and see how the distribution of opinions goes.
[Speaker H] Not religion and state, look. Exactly. Not because of that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not because of that, but because you’ve established some template that a person needs to formulate a position on this according to his basic identity: religious, non-religious, Zionist, Haredi.
[Speaker H] I didn’t say it doesn’t sit on a very important question—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It does, I just said that this question in and of itself isn’t.
[Speaker B] You’ve mixed together conservatism and liberalism just now with religion-state relations, which are two completely orthogonal things, and without even noticing you— not orthogonal.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They’re not orthogonal because, again, I’m saying these are two questions on which of course you can formulate different positions. There is logical independence between them. But if I’m asking what people’s position is and I need to define a party—a party that will act on both of these—that’s fine, right?
[Speaker B] But you’re speaking in the name of a group that doesn’t exist except for you and two other people. So I don’t agree.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, okay. I’m saying it doesn’t exist, among other reasons, because of the perpetuation of the existing pattern. It doesn’t exist in expressed form on the ground. I talk to people, I’m telling you. Again, it’s not a scientific survey, of course. I talk to people and I discover more and more people who say: look, actually it seems to me this is right, but I don’t know, all the rabbis and Religious Zionism—I can’t, I’m a religious person, I can’t… Wait, as a religious person you can think this way or that way.
[Speaker B] I’ll give you an exercise you can do, okay? Take twenty questions or fifty questions that in your opinion are cardinal questions, that okay, in these matters we determine who we are and our political views and so on. Ask—conduct a survey among five thousand people, and then simply run a clustering algorithm, okay? Just see each person as a point in space, run a clustering algorithm, and see whether you get something closer to reality or closer to your ideal.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I’m claiming I’d get what I’m saying.
[Speaker B] You agree with yourself—that’s the bottom line. The algorithm exists; it just needs the data collected.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not that simple. The question is how you extract a person’s position. You need to detach him from the context. Because otherwise he feels he needs to formulate a position according to the existing pattern.
[Speaker B] Miki, if we’ve gotten to false consciousness, you’ve lost.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He hasn’t lost either—postmodernism. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you, you know. Yes.
[Speaker U] Let me illustrate for a moment. Basically, if I understand your argument correctly, you’re coming and saying that a person like Rabbi Rabinovitch and Moshe Halbertal, or at least Aviad Hacohen, ought to sit in one party, and that this is a more natural connection than Rabbi Rabinovitch and Bezalel Smotrich.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be, yes.
[Speaker U] Now, so here I return to the arguments heard earlier; I’ve just reached them by way of illustration. In the political agenda that exists in the State of Israel, which is very much an agenda of national questions, of foreign affairs and security questions, in all the… questions of a national agenda in education or the attitude toward the judicial system—in all these things, which are what stir up the political system…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But on those questions I can also tell you that even today’s division doesn’t hold. Because on those questions there is much more common ground between all the rabbis of Religious Zionism and the Haredim than between Rabbi Rabinovitch and them. So the current division also isn’t right. The attitude toward the judicial system, the attitude toward everything you said, all the examples you gave. So the current division does fit that breakdown? Absolutely not.
[Speaker U] The current division is political; it’s imposed from among things that maybe it’s a mistake that they’re perceived as logical or…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The examples you brought don’t hold there either. It won’t help. Those examples don’t hold there. The current division doesn’t reflect that either. Fine, what you’re saying is that there are two to the hundred groups and not two. I agree with that too. I’m only asking about the clustering. I’m only asking: fine, but around what is it more correct to form the cluster? Understand, of course you’ll find exceptions, and one issue here and one issue there—that’s always how it is. We’ll never cover it entirely. But I’m asking: which binary question, one that you answer yes or no, creates the most sensible cluster, the one that includes the greatest number of people?
[Speaker H] And isn’t that basically Meimad? What? Isn’t that basically Meimad?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I… it’s close to Meimad. It’s not exactly Meimad, but yes. And I’m saying that Meimad is part of the same issue. The branding of Meimad is such that they can’t really consolidate because they’re perceived as lightweight. Because the religious leadership, the Religious Zionist leadership, the great rabbis of Religious Zionism, are all of course anti-Meimad. And a religious person who says: wait, I’m with the rabbis, I don’t know, Religious Zionist rabbis, they’re not Haredi, and they tell me that Meimad is heresy, so I won’t vote for them. I’m saying, it’s clear to me that the situation is like that in the declarative sense—so accuse me of false consciousness, I agree. Nothing to do; sometimes even I need to resort to that loathsome discourse. Yes.
[Speaker S] I heard two arguments here. One argument is a failure of rationality on the part of the various individuals, who say: okay, I automatically go and formulate my position according to, let’s say, my reference group. It seems to me there’s pretty sweeping agreement that okay, there is some failure here. But from there to jump and say: okay, there is some problem in our political system, such that if everyone were rational then people, whatever, within the religious public would be different—here I’m much less sure. Okay. Because it seems to me you’re trying to paint Zionism as the watershed line, whereas most people would automatically say: no, it’s connected to settlements, peace, return of territories.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying: settlements, peace… peace and return of territories, I agree. That really cuts across everything. By the way, once it cuts across, then it’s also true that the left wing of Religious Zionism won’t be able to vote for Jewish Home, because there too, of course, you’ll lose some of the people. But I’m saying, those questions in my view—and this was an earlier dispute here—in my view they’re not important in the day-to-day, or they’re less, much less important. That’s what people talk about. They do think it’s important. Obviously. Obviously. But I’m explaining why. Because people have an interest in perpetuating the current situation. People want that. When I wrote this in Makor Rishon, people answered me: wait, what do you mean, but Religious Zionism is such an important idea, and therefore we all need to rally around it, and so on. That’s the way they perpetuate the existing situation without dealing with these questions.
[Speaker S] Fine, but I said something else. I wasn’t talking about perpetuating the existing situation. I said there is a very, very specific interest that is very important to most people who vote for Jewish Home, and it has nothing to do with perpetuating the existing situation. They say: if we don’t all unite around this point, we lose it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’ll be return of territories and that’s it. So I—I tell you that I don’t think you’re right, for two reasons. First, because these things don’t really come up almost at all.
[Speaker H] Because they know someone’s breathing down their neck all the time… What? They know someone’s breathing down their neck all the time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Breathing down their neck? That’s not—there’s no progress today, what? Is there some agreement with someone on the table today? That’s first. And second, leave it—make my division, okay? Into liberals and non-liberals. What do you have there? Bennett, let’s say, in terms of today’s figures—Bennett and Ayelet Shaked would represent the more modern-liberal camp, whatever, and Tkuma and the Hardalim would be on the Hardal side. Now there’ll be a vote about settlements. What will happen? Those in favor of the settlements will vote in favor, and those against will be against; they’ll all be there. Why does that bother you? You don’t lose anything from it. What do you mean? That’s why they haven’t entered until now. So both the liberals and, according to your argument that everyone is right-wing—if the liberals are also right-wing. Then there’s no problem. Then both the liberals and the non-liberals—
[Speaker B] will be on the right. What you said is simply not true. You’re saying that even if people vote on the basis of issues like these, then on completely orthogonal issues too the distribution will be exactly the same distribution?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying: if you say that the assessment of reality is what people here said, that basically people are interested in the right-wing interest, whether liberal or not, and even the liberals are a minority that doesn’t want—the liberals are also right-wing, a large part of them, meaning the religious ones, yes? And so are the conservatives. Assuming that’s the situation, then again there is no contradiction with what I’m saying. Because then what will happen? Tkuma will be part of Agudat Yisrael, say, as I propose, and Jewish Home will represent the more liberal modern people, and when a vote on peace comes up, then everyone who is against will vote against, and whoever is in favor will be in favor. What difference does it make? Unless you’re telling me there is a huge left within the religious world. But that’s not what people said here. I’m saying, assuming that doesn’t really exist as a force, then what difference does it make? I only wanted to create this coalition.
[Speaker N] Because the coalition too will be formed according to those same lines. There’ll be a left-wing coalition, and on these religion-state issues Bennett will vote with the left on religion-state issues.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Take the coalition that exists today. Take the coalition that exists today—
[Speaker B] What you’re saying is true only under very specific assumptions about the distribution on issue Y when the vote—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] is on issue X.
[Speaker B] Fine, but there are other issues where it’s not true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, look, wrap it up because we need to finish. Yes. I just want to—fine. So I’ll summarize. My first claim, basically, was that in every question we discuss there are many sub-questions, a large portion of them independent. We have some tendency to gather them all in the same direction. First criticism: in my opinion that’s not right. It’s worth discussing each thing separately, and in the end making a bottom-line decision. A second claim—it isn’t dependent, but it is dependent, but it isn’t identical—says that because there are all kinds of questions of this sort, we need to reexamine whether the watershed line really is the right watershed line. Does it represent what is happening in the public? Should it represent what is happening in the public? So I argued no. First, because—and this is of course already a question one can argue about—I claimed that the more relevant questions, those that actually come up for discussion, are more questions of modernity and liberalism, and again forgive the slogans, and not questions of security and nationalism, even though all the elections revolve around that and all the discourse revolves around that. None of that changes anything. Whoever is there, anyone who is there will do more or less the same thing in my opinion. But in any case it doesn’t really come up, so I think it’s a mistake to go after those things and lose everything we’re losing because we’re going after those things. And an additional claim I made was that although on the ground it often seems that there is indeed consolidation around the current watershed line, an actual distribution of opinions, in my view that’s false consciousness. I’ll use Moshe’s slur. In my opinion that’s false consciousness because in fact, when you ask the people, they aren’t really there. They’re there because of the current situation, which perpetuates itself. It perpetuates the conception that if you want to be there, you have to answer yes to all the questions. If you want to be here, you have to answer no to all the questions. And people don’t allow themselves to formulate positions that deviate from that, because often they don’t understand these things. There is no rabbinic leadership that gives this legitimacy, like Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett, for whom Judaism is what Rabbi Ariel and Rabbi Lior say. Because they don’t understand anything; they’re ignoramuses. So what Rabbi Ariel and Rabbi Lior say is, for them, Judaism. Now, they’re a party that is supposed to promote Judaism—they can’t. So their reflexes are like that too. But if someone tells them no, there is also another kind of Judaism, and it gets proper backing, it seems to me that the field too would look different. Thank you very much. That’s it.