A Revolution in Religious Thought! Can Science and Faith Be Reconciled? Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham – Haredi Meduberet
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Haredi service of God versus Religious Zionism
- Generational change in questions of faith and people leaving religion
- Opposition to apologetics and making room for questions
- Rational faith, Jewish law as the focus, and morality versus Jewish law
- Asking a rabbi, authority, and the limits of “do not deviate”
- “Stop Here, We Think” and the need for guidance
- The Council of Torah Sages and politics
- Biography: Arachim, Bnei Brak, and “hashkafah”
- The third path and the debate over the state
Summary
General Overview
The interviewee presents belief in God as an intellectual and rational position, and says that someone who does not believe is not rational, rejecting the claim that faith is “above reason.” He describes a generational shift in which young people have moved from philosophical-intellectual discussion to an existential-experiential language, and suggests addressing questions of faith and Jewish law directly, without apologetics and without analyzing psychological motives. He argues that there is no such thing as “Jewish morality,” only universal morality, and that morality and Jewish law are completely independent categories; therefore one should not twist morality to fit Jewish law, or Jewish law to fit morality. He rejects formal halakhic authority in the absence of a Sanhedrin and ordination, describes “asking a rabbi” as a tool for consultation rather than binding obedience, and weaves in a biography of life in Bnei Brak together with criticism of the culture of “hashkafah” and obedience, alongside love for the city’s atmosphere of Torah. He presents “the third path” as an alternative that seeks to replace the Haredi–Religious Zionist argument over the state, which in his view has become anachronistic and empty in a world where the state is a fact and everyone wants it to succeed.
Haredi service of God versus Religious Zionism
The interviewer recalls a memory of a principal at a prestigious Religious Zionist girls’ school who said, “Your service of God is different from our service of God,” as an excuse for not accepting her daughter, a graduate of a Haredi Beit Yaakov school, until after a legal struggle and intervention from above the decision was changed. She points to clear differences between the Haredi world and Religious Zionism regarding the state, Zionism, the army, work, and core curriculum studies, and asks where God is in all these gaps and whether there are essential theological differences. Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham says there are different conceptions of service of God even within each camp, and he does not reject out of hand the claim that there can be difficulty integrating between different approaches, even though he sees using that as a reason to reject a child as improper. He adds that theology, culture, and sociology cannot really be separated, and that many things become fixed as religious even though their source is cultural and customary, such as a haircut ceremony at age three, which he says is “all nonsense” but still part of the culture.
Generational change in questions of faith and people leaving religion
Rabbi Abraham brings an anecdote he heard from Rabbi Hagai Luber about a change in attitude toward the question of God’s existence: in the past, young people saw it as a fateful decision that would lead either to total commitment or immediate abandonment, whereas today they respond with “sounds reasonable” both to the existence of God and to the giving of the Torah, but in practice they are not “with it.” He interprets this as a shift from the intellectual plane to an existential-emotional-experiential one, and as a decline in trust in reason as part of broader processes, including postmodern influences, that enter religious society and later the Haredi world. He stresses that people are not “more stupid,” but rather rely less on reason as a source of authority for behavior, and notes that in any case the people who come to him are mostly those looking for an intellectual language, not those seeking experiences.
Opposition to apologetics and making room for questions
Rabbi Abraham says he is not looking for “answers” for the questioner, but wants to clarify “what is true,” and if a good question convinces him, then there is no need for a preemptively defensive answer. He opposes the apologetics industry and the common approach among rabbis and educators that “these questions aren’t questions, they’re answers,” while acknowledging that sometimes people really are seeking justifications for an emotional move. Even so, he says there is still reason to answer the questions, because the questioner is seeking intellectual backing before making a change. He argues that all human beings act from both psychological motives and intellectual motives, and gives the example of how people interpret leaving religion versus becoming religious: religious people tend to explain it psychologically and secular people philosophically, with the roles reversing when someone becomes religious. He says “everyone is right,” because both levels are operating together. He concludes that there is no point centering the discussion on psychological motives, because the person answering is also driven by them, and therefore one should address the question itself on its merits.
Rational faith, Jewish law as the focus, and morality versus Jewish law
Rabbi Abraham presents three central points in “telegraphic” form: belief in God is an intellectual-rational position, and someone who does not believe is not rational; there is no such thing as faith “above reason”; and someone who says “I feel there is a God” is, in his view, an atheist with religious feelings, and he cites Einstein as an example. He says the focus of Judaism is Jewish law “and there is nothing besides it,” and emphasizes the importance of analytical Talmudic tools and halakhic skill, while warning not to turn that into technocracy. He argues that God is moral and that “there is no other morality,” and even says that for him “morality is in the head, not in the heart,” adding that he has a problem with “what He did in the Holocaust” out of moral demand, not emotion. He states that “there is no such thing as Jewish morality,” only “morality,” and that morality and Jewish law are completely independent categories. Therefore, it is not correct to judge Jewish law in moral categories, nor to twist morality so that it fits Jewish law. He illustrates this with the example of chocolate: both sides are right about the properties of chocolate, and the decision comes down to value preference. So too when there is a Jewish law that is “obviously immoral,” like “killing Amalekite babies” or “not saving the lives of non-Jews on the Sabbath” as examples for discussion—then one should not look for some hidden moral justification, but recognize a conflict of values.
Asking a rabbi, authority, and the limits of “do not deviate”
Rabbi Abraham says there is no “obligation to ask” a rabbi, and that asking a rabbi is a means, like turning to a doctor when one lacks expertise, and that the halakhic expert is “exactly like a doctor” in the area of Jewish law. He presents consultation as help in forming an independent position, not as “receiving a ruling,” and says this is also how he responds to questioners who come to him. He says that a binding authority model in Jewish law has not existed since there is no Sanhedrin and no ordination, and that “do not deviate” was said only about the Sanhedrin, rejecting the interpretation in Sefer HaChinukh as “a strange lone opinion.” He interprets “make for yourself a rabbi” as choosing a guide for growth, not creating an “Oracle of Delphi,” and says the ideal is that the person himself should eventually become capable of deciding. He criticizes a situation in which, in the Haredi world, in the halakhic realm “they rely only on someone else,” while in non-halakhic areas “they study on their own,” and he describes the result as “a herd of zombies” on the one hand and “wild men” on the other, because a teacher and a study partner are needed to prevent “wild growth.”
“Stop Here, We Think” and the need for guidance
Rabbi Abraham describes “Stop Here, We Think” as an online forum founded by Haredim, later joined by non-Haredim as well, which dealt with halakhic and philosophical questions and was considered threatening in Haredi society, to the point that it was called “the forum whose name must not be mentioned.” He says there was a lot of “wild growth” there because each person was developing without interaction or guidance, which shows the need for a study partner and a teacher in the world of thought just as in the world of Torah. He emphasizes that the goal of guidance is not obedience to the teacher’s opinion, but helping a person formulate his own view.
The Council of Torah Sages and politics
Rabbi Abraham says he is “very much in favor of a model of a Council of Torah Sages,” but not as a body made up only of rabbis and not as one with authority to decide, but rather as a board that lays out the various sides. The interviewer describes the leakage of rabbinic authority into politics, to the point of binding instructions on whom to vote for as a “holy obligation” and a “commandment,” and he responds with an anecdote from the period when Rabbi Shach founded Degel HaTorah and tried to recruit support out of fear of not crossing the electoral threshold. Within that, he places his criticism of turning consultation into binding instruction and of extending rabbinic authority beyond its field of expertise.
Biography: Arachim, Bnei Brak, and “hashkafah”
Rabbi Abraham says that at age twenty-five he went to an “Arachim seminar” out of sociological interest, met his future wife there, who was newly religious, and describes an experience in which he saw both “cutting corners” and “crooked arguments” alongside good arguments, as well as a crowd returning to religion en masse out of inability to cope. He speaks about years in Bnei Brak, about children in Haredi schools, and about being asked to replace a knitted kippah with a black one to avoid parents’ reactions, while saying that the black kippah “says nothing.” He says he loved Bnei Brak because of its “atmosphere of Torah, seriousness,” even though he agrees with “nothing that goes on there,” and describes the city’s social conduct as “shocking.” He describes a difference between learning, where “you can do anything,” and “hashkafah,” where “you don’t ask questions,” and portrays a scene in which supervisors give talks at a very low level and everyone stays silent “as if this were Mount Sinai,” which he attributes to a culture in which facial hair alone is enough to be treated as a “rebbe.”
The third path and the debate over the state
Rabbi Abraham presents himself as one of the founders and thinkers behind “the Third Path movement, Torah with Derekh Eretz,” and explains that a manifesto distributed in synagogues served as the basis for the start of the move. He argues that the dispute between Religious Zionism and Haredi society is anachronistic because it rests on attitudes toward the state, whereas the state exists as a fact and any sane person, including a Haredi, wants it to succeed for reasons of security and economics. He dismisses the relevance of discourse such as “the beginning of redemption” versus “the footsteps of the Messiah,” and describes “generations of theology” around this as “theology empty of content,” which in his view is no longer relevant today either. He says that in practice there is no real possible difference in attitude toward the state between a Haredi and a Religious Zionist, because everyone has to live with reality and wants the state to succeed.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think belief in God is an intellectual, rational position. Someone who doesn’t believe in God, in my eyes, is not rational. There is no such thing as Jewish morality. There is Jewish law, and Jewish law and morality are two completely independent categories. I’m not the lite version of the Haredim, and I’m also not the lite version of Religious Zionism, of the Hardalim. I’m not. I’m something third, a third alternative.
[Speaker B] Your service of God is different from our service of God. That’s a sentence I find hard to forget. I heard it a few years ago from the principal of a well-regarded Religious Zionist girls’ school. Your service of God is different from our service of God. That was his excuse for not accepting my daughter, a graduate of the Haredi Beit Yaakov school system, into his school. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. After a legal struggle and intervention from above—maybe from God too, but not only—the decision changed. But I was left with the memory of that sentence. It’s no secret that the ideological and practical approaches of the Haredi world and the Religious Zionist world are clearly very different. Their attitude to the state, to Zionism, to the army, to work, to core curriculum studies is completely different. But where is God in this story? Does He exist at all? To talk about the triangle of Haredim, Religious Zionism, and God, I have the honor of hosting on Haredit Meduberet Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham. Rabbi Michael, who holds a doctorate in theoretical physics and is a senior lecturer at the Advanced Institute for Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan University, deals with philosophy, science, and Jewish thought, and has written dozens of books on these topics. In addition, Rabbi Abraham is one of the founders and thinkers behind the Third Path movement, Torah with Derekh Eretz. Hello, Rabbi Michael. Hello, hello. It’s an honor to host you here, and thank you for coming. Look, you deal a lot with big questions: Is there a God, and can one seek or find proofs for His existence? But before we get to that issue, I’m trying to understand whether the young Haredi man or woman—or the religious young people of 2024—are even interested in these questions at all, or whether the conflicts today between religion and the individual, especially for young religious people, are mainly sociological.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, that’s an excellent question. Maybe I’ll start with an anecdote I once heard from Rabbi Hagai Luber—recently he’s been in the headlines a bit. He did some one-man show—he’s also an actor. He did a one-man show, and after the performance he spoke with the audience a little about the phenomenon of people leaving religion. And he said that when he used to be a counselor at Midreshet Ofra, seven years earlier they would sit around the campfire and there was tension in the air—you could cut it with a knife. Either he would prove to them that there is a God and that He gave the Torah and whatever else, and then they would all enter into service of God and do nothing but that, and if not, then the next morning they’d all go to the beach on the Sabbath and that would be the end of the story. He says: seven years passed—that’s not five generations; in our generation maybe it already is, but seven years passed—and we’re sitting around the campfire, same story, same audience, same demographic, same age. I tell them there’s a God. They say, yes, sounds reasonable. Then I say, and He also gave the Torah at Mount Sinai. They say, yes, right. And everyone is obligated to do this. Of course. Then he gets stuck, because he says: so what now? Where are we stuck? Because they weren’t really with him in this at all. It just doesn’t suit us.
[Speaker B] So you’re saying we really do see some kind of generational change in relation to religion? Meaning people…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not in relation to religion. In relation to thinking, in relation to philosophy, in relation to what we might call intellectual things. The generation is going through some kind of shift from the intellectual plane to a more existential, emotional, experiential plane. And today you have to speak more in that language—that’s what people expect. You know, I once heard a joke by Dov Sadan. He was a literature scholar at the Hebrew University, a very interesting Jew. He said that the next Jew, the next person, who will make a revolution in the world will be a Jewish orthopedist. Now why Jewish? Because Jews are always the ones who make the revolutions. But why an orthopedist? He said, because the first Jew who made a revolution in the world was Abraham our forefather, who said, “Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?” Use your head. Moses. Then the next Jew came and made a revolution in the world and said everything is in the heart. Jesus, right? The next Jew who made a revolution in the world said everything is in the stomach—that’s Marx. The next was Freud: everything is below the belt. The next one will probably be an orthopedist. In other words, this description is a description of decline precisely from the cognitive, intellectual plane. But that doesn’t mean people are becoming more stupid. That’s a superficial view. People aren’t more stupid. They just have less trust in reason. Part of postmodernism—it’s an extreme expression, but it’s also true of people who don’t define themselves that way. Okay, postmodern.
[Speaker B] So in other words, for many people, it doesn’t really matter whether God exists or not in terms of how I behave. And you think this split is also common in religious society and in Haredi society? I think so.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Processes in the world also enter religious society at a certain stage, and after that Haredi society—everything with certain phase differences. But it exists in all these societies. I meet these young people, and not only young people, and I see this phenomenon myself. Of course, people who are looking for experiences, existential issues, emotions, usually won’t come to me, and if they do come they won’t come a second time. I don’t deal with those things.
[Speaker B] So then how—basically, is Haredi society a religion? Is it a level of religiosity? Is it sociology? Because even within that, I think there’s a very broad spectrum, and I also think within Religious Zionism, if I can call it that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Look, I’ll approach it from a slightly different angle. I was once at some conference of rabbis who were debating how to answer young people’s questions. By the way, in general I don’t like these things, because I’m not looking for answers for someone who comes asking questions. I’m trying to see what’s true. If his question is right, then I don’t need an answer—then he’s right, and he should change.
[Speaker B] What does that mean, what makes a question right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That there is no answer—that the question is a good question. So looking for answers is a method that, to my mind, is apologetics. It’s that position that classroom rabbis, rabbis in general, always feel they’re in.
[Speaker B] There’s a whole industry of apologetics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And I’m against it. Part of the change in my worldview came from the fact that I’m not in that oppositional position. As far as I’m concerned, let’s hear what you have to say. Either you’ll convince me, or I’ll have other suggestions for you. You’ll decide for yourself, I’ll decide for myself. My changes in outlook came, among other things, through meetings I had with all kinds of such people. But there, for example, the discussion was about searching for answers or how to find an answer. And some of the people there said something very common: these questions are not questions, they’re answers. Meaning, the person is really ending with a question mark, but he’s looking for excuses to permit himself forbidden relations, as they say.
[Speaker B] Right, that’s something Haredi yeshiva heads also say, by the way, and seminary directors. Like, the question itself is non-kosher, basically.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And Religious Zionists too. No, not necessarily that the question is non-kosher.
[Speaker B] No, but as if you already came with the answer and you’re only putting…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. The question isn’t genuine. The issue isn’t whether it’s non-kosher or not, whether one is allowed to ask questions. The issue is that the question isn’t genuine, so there’s no need to deal with him on the intellectual plane of whether to answer him. And I try to tell those people that sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re not. By the way, the questions directed at secular people, and the questions of religious people too, are also answers and not questions. We’re all human. But beyond that, I say: if a person comes to you with a question, that probably means he won’t take this step unless he has intellectual backing. It could be he’s driven by emotion, by the gut, by feelings, by experiences—all true—but he’s asking questions. And if he’s asking questions, he’s looking for answers. And apparently if he doesn’t have answers, that will help him do what he wanted to do anyway—even if he really did want to do it anyway. So there is reason to answer such questions even if you think they don’t begin on the intellectual plane but on the emotional plane. We’re all human.
[Speaker B] And therefore yes, back to the question of Haredi identity as sociology or as religion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s the answer. The answer is that we’re all human beings; we’re all driven both by the emotional-experiential aspect and by the intellectual aspect. Most of us won’t be satisfied with only one of them. We may focus more on one—the proportions differ—and therefore it doesn’t matter right now where a person comes from or what defines him; you need to deal with things on the intellectual plane. Maybe I’ll give you another example that I like. Think of someone who leaves religion, okay? Usually religious people, when they see someone leaving religion, say, “Well, he wanted to permit himself forbidden relations,” meaning they look for psychological explanations. What do the secular people, his new friends, say? “Well, finally he understood all the nonsense.” They’re philosophers. So religious people are psychologists, secular people are philosophers. What happens with someone who becomes religious? The roles reverse, of course. The secular people become psychologists, because really he got fed up, he was looking for some firmer basis or something like that, he has psychological problems, he broke up with his girlfriend, whatever, something like that. And the religious people explain that he discovered the supreme light of truth, in the language of the Chazon Ish. So who’s right? Everyone’s right. In other words, we all operate both on the psychological plane and on the intellectual-philosophical plane, let’s call it that. But I think it’s wrong to focus the discussion on the psychological plane—not because it doesn’t exist or because it isn’t true, but because it’s not your business. You too are driven by psychological reasons. In the end, someone asks you a question—address it on its merits. Do you have an answer or not? Do you agree with him or not? Talk to him about that. What difference does it make where he comes from and what motivates him? We’re all motivated by all kinds of reasons. So these questions of where Haredi identity comes from and what Haredi identity is—what difference does it make? In the end, clearly there are Haredi conceptions, there are such things. The question is where they come from and whether it’s emotional or experiential or sociological—clearly it’s all there.
[Speaker B] Look, a principal, as I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, tells me: your service of God is different from our service of God. Now, in my view that’s nonsense—I mean, I know the truth—but still, he felt comfortable enough to come and say that as some kind of excuse. And I started thinking: wait a minute, is there a Haredi God and a non-Haredi God, a Religious Zionist God or whatever? Because after all everyone is supposedly, or really wants, to serve God or do God’s will. But look, we shouldn’t play innocent.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, clearly there are different conceptions of service of God. It’s the same Holy One, blessed be He, all true, but there are different conceptions—even apart from Religious Zionism and Haredi society. Within Haredi society and within Religious Zionism there are different conceptions, and sometimes very different conceptions. So I don’t dismiss such an argument out of hand. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have accepted the girl, but I don’t dismiss such an argument out of hand. There are different conceptions, and sometimes there will be difficulties of integration when someone comes from one conception into a setting of people who live by another conception. And that can happen. So an educator can tell you what he thinks: listen, there are going to be difficulties of integration here, even though you’re no less good than us and no better than us; these are different ways, different sociology, a different experience.
[Speaker B] But again, you’re talking about sociology; you’re not talking about something more theological or intellectual or something at the base of actual thought.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think you can separate them. In general, in my trilogy—I wrote a trilogy on Judaism—the second book is devoted to the point that there’s no such creature as Jewish thought. It’s all inventions. In the end, there is correct thought and incorrect thought. Every claim should be examined on its own merits, not according to the mother of the author. Whether he’s Jewish or non-Jewish—what difference does it make? So in the end, most of these differences—not all, but most—are differences you can’t separate from sociology. Once I spoke with some Druze or Arab—I don’t remember exactly what he was—and I asked him about so-called honor killings. He said to me: leave it, it has nothing to do with Islam at all, it has no source in the Quran, it’s nothing. So I thought he was some kind of apologist, like we have. No, what do you mean—there’s no such thing as a religious thief; the thief is not religious.
[Speaker B] As if religion is beautiful and only people spoil it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then later I thought to myself that maybe this isn’t just apologetics—maybe he’s right. A lot of things that are cultural, customs from the Arabian deserts, enter a traditional society and become fixed as part of their religious culture. And now they no longer really separate what is sociology and what is religion. And we also have many things like that. Just yesterday I was at my grandson’s haircut ceremony. Not in the sense of Meron or anything like that, but still they do some kind of ceremony at age three. Where does that come from? What does it mean? It’s all nonsense. Okay, but it’s become part of the culture. That’s fine. It became part of it. Yes.
[Speaker B] Look, we’ve talked a bit about Haredim and about Religious Zionism, and I want for a moment to touch the apex of the whole thing—God. Your conception of divinity, as far as I know and am familiar with it, is very unique, and it challenges both Orthodoxy on the right and atheism on the left. So give it to me as concisely as possible so we can understand what we’re talking about.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, so really, in very broad brushstrokes, telegraphically: first, I think belief in God is an intellectual, rational position. Someone who doesn’t believe in God is, in my eyes, not rational. I don’t believe all these statements that faith is above reason. There’s no such thing as above reason. That’s nonsense from people who don’t know how to justify things. Second, I think the focus of Judaism is Jewish law, and there is nothing besides it. Usually, people who lean in liberal directions—the kind of directions I’m somehow associated with—usually circulate in other areas of thought, and vice versa: ideas and thought and philosophy and all that, and less in matters of Jewish law and Talmudic analysis. Not even practice—analysis. It’s pretty rare to find someone who is strong on the intellectual-thought plane but is also a serious learner in the yeshiva sense, at a good level.
[Speaker B] Don’t you sometimes think that this falls into a kind of technocracy of commandments?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, and that’s why you have to be careful not to become a technocrat. But skill in those technical tools is, to me, very important, and I don’t give it up in life. To me it’s an essential part of it.
[Speaker B] Why do you think that the conception of God is an intellectual one and not really something like people tend to think in the realm of faith, in the realm of emotion, in the realm of “I feel it’s this way”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because if someone tells me, look, I feel there is a God, then he’s an atheist. He’s an atheist with religious feelings. There were many such people—Einstein was one of them.
[Speaker B] Which by the way means that if God isn’t present in the Holocaust, that can also threaten that kind of faith when it’s emotional.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, fine, the Holocaust is a question… No, I think God is supposed to be moral even if I don’t relate to Him on the emotional and experiential plane, and therefore I also have a problem with what He did in the Holocaust. I don’t think it needs to come from the emotional direction. For me, morality is in the head, not in the heart.
[Speaker B] And do you think God is moral?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I have no doubt about that. Meaning, I think He is—
[Speaker B] A morality you can understand intellectually, as someone who thinks?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Completely. There simply is no other morality. Second telegram: there is no such thing as Jewish morality. There is no such creature. There is morality; there is no Jewish morality. There can be disputes within morality, but there is no such thing as Jewish morality. There is… Jewish law.
[Speaker B] So how do you actually deal with that? How do you reconcile it? Because there are so many issues and questions, especially modern ones, that basically challenge natural human morality and that arise out of Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I’ve written and spoken about this a great deal. Again, I have to do this very briefly, so I’ll put it like this: the chocolate example that I keep returning to. A dispute between two people over whether it’s worth eating chocolate or not. One says chocolate is tasty, so it’s worth eating. The other says chocolate is fattening, so it’s not worth eating. Who’s right? They’re both right. It’s both tasty and fattening. Now you just have to decide—you have a conflict between pleasure and health, say, and you have to decide what matters more to you. In my view, Jewish law and morality are the same kind of thing. Suppose there is a Jewish law that is blatantly immoral—killing Amalekite babies, not saving non-Jewish lives on the Sabbath, and all kinds of… by the way, a Jewish law I think is incorrect, but just for the sake of discussion—what do you do with that? People look for apologetics. They always look to understand why the deeper morality nevertheless says that thing. And I say: you’re looking for the thing under the streetlamp. It doesn’t exist.
[Speaker B] And in your view, is every individual sovereign to make those decisions? Because, you know, in the Haredi world, for example, there’s the concept of asking a rabbi, of going to ask a rabbi and consult with him on various issues—not necessarily moral ones, but I assume those too. So where do you see the individual here? How does he actually make moral decisions? Should he ask people greater than himself? Can he actually rely on his natural moral feelings in order to make decisions?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Need? He doesn’t need anything. There’s no such thing as need. A person should make decisions as best he can—that’s what should happen. There are no obligations in the halakhic sense or whatever.
[Speaker B] But then if there are no obligations in the halakhic sense—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So why do it? If it’s not… No, not that there are no halakhic obligations. There’s no obligation to ask. There is no halakhic obligation to ask. There is a halakhic obligation to do the right thing. Now, if you think you can’t know the right thing unless you ask someone, then ask him. But there’s no obligation to ask. It’s a means, like asking a doctor whether to take a medication. There’s no obligation to go to a doctor—I just don’t understand medicine, so I go to a doctor. As far as I’m concerned, the halakhic expert is exactly like a doctor; he’s simply an expert in Jewish law, that’s all. If someone has a question, he can ask him. In my view, that question is consultation, not receiving a ruling. What he tells you—say to him in advance: I’m coming to ask you for consultation, help me think and formulate my own position. That’s how I relate to questioners who come to me. So this whole discussion about the authority of the halakhic decisor, or whether one is obligated—there’s nothing to it. If you have a doubt and you have a question, excellent, go ask a wise person. In the halakhic context, go to a halakhic expert. In non-halakhic contexts, why would you go to a rabbi? He doesn’t understand it any better than you do—unless he just happens to be a wise person, then fine, ask him. Everything’s okay.
[Speaker B] How do you view this Haredi culture—which by the way seems to me like something relatively new—of really going and receiving… where basically the great sages of Israel decide almost everything, and “you shall do according to what they instruct you,” and that’s also in the political sphere and so on. I also feel like this is seeping a bit into the Religious Zionist world, but I’m interested in what you think about it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, of course it’s baseless and has no foundation at the real level. Quite apart from my opinion—those are the facts. The halakhic facts. There’s nothing to it. “Do not deviate” was said only about the Sanhedrin. Once there was no Sanhedrin, there was no “do not deviate.” Period. There are the words of Sefer HaChinukh, which wants to say something else—a strange lone opinion. There’s no point dealing with it. It’s inventions from beginning to end, of course. I’m speaking now in the field of Jewish law. I’m not talking at all about political questions or how to live or how to make a living or how to—
[Speaker B] Oh, so even within Jewish law, even if it’s a halakhic question—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No one has any authority whatsoever in the field of Jewish law. Since there has been no Sanhedrin and no ordination, formal authority in Jewish law has ceased. That’s a fact. Anyone who argues with that is a liar.
[Speaker B] And what about “make for yourself a rabbi”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that mean? “Make for yourself a rabbi” means, as I said before, choose someone who will guide you, who will help you. But “make for yourself a rabbi” does not mean take someone who will be your Oracle of Delphi. I mean, where is there such a thing? In the end, take someone who will help you grow, who will help you make decisions, but in the end the model should be—or the aspiration should be—that you reach a point where you make the decisions. And it is definitely important to have someone who helps you. A person needs to learn, and you don’t learn alone. Someone who learns alone—by the way, that’s one of the problems in the Haredi world in areas that are not halakhic. In the halakhic areas they rely only on someone else, and in the non-halakhic areas they’re no longer used to the fact that there are other ways too, and then what they do is study by themselves. Yes, we talked earlier about “Stop Here, We Think”—there was a lot of wild growth there. There was a lot of wild—
[Speaker B] Tell us a little about that for listeners who don’t know it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A Haredi forum—sorry—founded by Haredim. Later non-Haredim participated in it too. It dealt with all kinds of different questions, both halakhic and philosophical.
[Speaker B] An internet forum, an online forum.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An internet forum. Yes, it was considered very threatening from the perspective of Haredi society—the forum whose name must not be mentioned, as it was called in some places. And there… in some cases I was very impressed by people who had acquired a great deal of knowledge independently, Haredim kind of under the table, so that no one knew—there was tremendous fear of being exposed.
[Speaker B] Everyone had fake identities.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, all kinds of nicknames. But on the other hand, there really was wild growth. There was wild growth because each person grows in his own little plot. He has no interaction with anyone else. You need a study partner.
[Speaker B] Because he can’t exchange views.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. You need a study partner, you need a teacher, you need someone who will give you direction. Exactly what I think is true in the Torah world is also true in the philosophical world, the intellectual world, any world whatsoever. People need guidance. In the end, the goal is not that they should do what I think, but to help them formulate what they think. But they need help. And once they don’t get that help, then on the one hand, in the halakhic realm Haredi society functions like a herd of zombies, and in the non-halakhic realm it’s wild men. In the realms of thought, everyone just fabricates ideas for himself, some of them completely absurd, and there’s no one to set them straight.
[Speaker B] It seems almost unnecessary to ask you about the political sphere—meaning how decisions are made under rabbinic authority in politics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so in the political sphere I’ll say the same thing I said before. I’m actually very much in favor of a model of a Council of Torah Sages, very much in favor. But on the Council of Torah Sages there shouldn’t sit only rabbis—that’s the first thing. Second, there shouldn’t be authority to decide. It should be a board that sits and deliberates, raises the various sides, and in the end—
[Speaker B] No, but I mean not just decision-makers, but instructing people whom to vote for. Meaning there is a holy obligation, there is a commandment, to go and vote for this party or that party. It has already gone beyond the realm of a board and consultation and a council.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The anecdote I’ve also told a few times: I was at Netivot Olam—it’s a yeshiva for newly religious men in Bnei Brak—and then…
[Speaker B] What do you mean you were there? You studied there?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I studied there. And then the Degel HaTorah party was established. Rabbi Shach founded it, and he gathered people because he was afraid they wouldn’t pass the electoral threshold, even though it was lower than it is today, but he was very worried. Now we were on good terms with his daughter, Rabbi Shach’s daughter. My wife worked with her, and we also had contact through visits.
[Speaker B] Wait, you had a Haredi period?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I was in Bnei Brak for nine years.
[Speaker B] Meaning you were really Haredi, you lived that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, more or less. I was never really flesh of the flesh of Haredi society, but we were completely there. The children were in Haredi schools; Lior and Noam too were in Haredi schools.
[Speaker B] Can you say what brought you there? A graduate of Religious Zionist yeshivot?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t study in yeshivot. I’m not a graduate of Religious Zionist yeshivot. I was in them, but I didn’t study there, yes. I didn’t study there, and I left everything, and in the end—not that I left everything, I mean I didn’t—
[Speaker B] Take off the kippah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you’re basically an autodidact, sort of—isn’t that— No, no, not an autodidact, not a didact at all. I didn’t learn anything, I knew nothing at age twenty-five. At age twenty-five I went to an Arachim seminar—an intellectual experience, a sociological one, not an intellectual one, an amusing one. A friend of mine recommended it, I went there, I met my future wife there—we got married later—she was newly religious from a secular home.
[Speaker B] But you were a religious guy.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I came from a religious home. I went there out of sociological interest. I wasn’t very convinced there. What did you discover there? What did you discover there? It’s really interesting. I discovered a lot of things there that I didn’t much like. Some cutting corners and some crooked arguments and various things like that. Some of them were good arguments, yes, and a great many people sitting there were helpless. They couldn’t cope with the lecturers’ arguments, and they became religious in droves. And those who didn’t become religious—it was only because they didn’t have the courage to take the step. It’s unbelievable what was going on there.
[Speaker B] Well, that was also a wave of people becoming religious—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and the late 1980s—
[Speaker B] When is this happening?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, I got there in ’84, I think, something like that. And at some point I was there at Netivot Olam yeshiva, I got there, we got married there, everything, we lived in Bnei Brak, we were in Bnei Brak for nine years. Seven years or nine years, I don’t remember anymore. Seven, I think. And the kids were in Haredi elementary schools, and the principal of the school said, listen, you with a knitted kippah—I was wearing a knitted kippah; at first I even came in with shorts and sandals, but the knitted kippah stayed, and also without Haredi dress and without anything—and I was there for years. And the principal of the school said, listen, we can’t accept your son. He knew me, he had no problem with us, but we can’t—what will the parents say? The kid comes, his father is a Religious Zionist, and so on, all in terms of the color of the kippah. So I switched to a black kippah. What do I care whether it’s a black kippah or a knitted kippah? And since then the black kippah says nothing, it said nothing then and it says nothing today. That’s all. After that they asked me, we see you’re getting closer and so on—I didn’t know what I was getting closer to, yes. Getting closer, yes, becoming more observant, exactly. So fine, that’s where the black kippah came from and everything is fine. I felt at home, I really loved Bnei Brak. I felt at home there, I’m crazy about that city. I don’t agree at all with what goes on there—that city is run in a shocking way socially, not only in the municipal sense. But I love that city, it’s an atmosphere of Torah, Torah scholars.
[Speaker B] What do you mean, why—what do you mean by social conduct?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How society is run. How the standards are determined, what’s forbidden and what’s permitted, what you’re allowed to think about and what you’re not. I was in what they call a married scholars’ prayer quorum. A wonderful place, people who are Torah scholars, you can talk to them. A bit rigid. Yes, but I loved it. Now of course I was always kind of an outsider, the kibbutznik. I’m not a kibbutznik, but “kibbutznik” is this kind of label. Now I was there, sitting there on Friday evening. You had real high-level scholars there, a genuine pleasure to talk with them. On Friday evenings all kinds of spiritual supervisors or rabbis would come and give talks, and you just died. I mean, at the level of a kindergarten I would be embarrassed to give a talk like that. Everyone sits there silently as if this were Sinai. Every now and then I ask the people, tell me, guys, you’re intelligent people—I mean, when I talk to you in learning, it’s a completely different world. Why don’t you ask this idiot what he’s basing himself on, what this even means?
[Speaker B] Maybe it’s that place of respect for elders or for rabbis?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not respect for elders, it’s that in matters of thought you don’t ask questions, in worldview. In learning you can do anything. “Hashkafa”—with them they say “hashkofa.” In worldview. In learning you can do anything, but in worldview it’s the giving of the Torah. Every fool who became a spiritual supervisor in a yeshiva because he didn’t learn, he becomes the giver of Torah from Sinai and everybody keeps quiet. I mean, really like sheep to the slaughter.
[Speaker B] I always say that as soon as facial hair starts growing, he already gets that stamp of “rabbi,” as if it doesn’t matter who he is or what his religious level is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, I think this touches on some terribly fundamental maladies of Haredi society, which maybe are also worth talking about.
[Speaker B] Yes, that actually takes me to the next question: you basically founded a movement called The Third Path, which offers some kind of religious, identity-based, political alternative within this division of Haredim and Religious Zionists. And now I also understand the biographical piece that connects you to the Haredi world. So what exactly is this movement trying to offer, and why specifically now?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, very telegraphically—I wrote about this three years ago or something, a very long manifesto that was distributed at events around the Knesset across the country, and that was basically the foundation from which this whole story began. My claim is this: the argument today between Religious Zionism and Haredi Judaism is an anachronistic argument. It’s an argument whose basis is the attitude toward the state. Now the state exists, nobody denies that it exists. Any sane person, aside from a few lunatics, also wants it to succeed. A Haredi person also wants it to succeed—where will the money come from otherwise? I mean, you need it to succeed, you need security here. Everything—a sane Haredi person wants all of this too. So what do I care now whether this is the beginning of redemption or the footsteps of the Messiah, and whether the angels are fluttering their wings in this direction or that direction?
[Speaker B] Generations of theology have been written about those concepts, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Theology empty of content, by the way. But back then it was at least, let’s say, relevant if it had content. Today it has no content and it’s also not relevant. Who cares? In the end there isn’t really any real difference in the attitude a Haredi or a Religious Zionist can have toward the state. Even if you see the demons behind the state as positive demons or negative demons, at the end of the day it’s a fact we have to live with, and we want it to succeed.
[Speaker B] And do you think that thought is shared by Haredim too? Or maybe you’re an odd bird who was in Bnei Brak and made his rounds through various places and sees things this way? How many Haredim think these things can be connected?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Depends where you stop after the word “think.” Meaning, the question is how many Haredim think.
[Speaker B] I also want to know whether you have this criticism toward Religious Zionism as well.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I also have criticism of Religious Zionism, but not this criticism—other criticisms. But what I want to say is, it’s not that Haredim are stupid, obviously not, and they also think in certain areas. That’s why I got here from the spiritual supervisors I was… In the scholarly world and so on, within certain boundaries there is thought, there is creativity, there are magnificent analytical abilities. Everything is fine. But it stops at the Ketzot HaChoshen. Meaning, it stops in the realm of learning, and in the realm of thought they don’t really invest; they recite.
[Speaker B] There’s no—especially among boys—Jewish thought and all the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but Jewish thought is learning texts. It’s like a friend of mine says: you don’t need to study Jewish thought, you need to think. That’s what needs to be done, and that’s not done anywhere.
[Speaker B] But you need to think around some books and texts.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Think. You can use texts, you can do it critically, but not study the books because that’s “Jewish thought.” That’s a tool, that’s crutches. Now the point is that I think a great many Haredim inwardly think exactly what I described earlier—inwardly. Except that it’s inwardly. They haven’t formulated it for themselves, they haven’t conceptualized it for themselves at the articulated level, in awareness, in their conscious consciousness. They live those same slogans we’ve been raised on for a hundred years, and they don’t—sometimes maybe they don’t even notice.
[Speaker B] What slogans do you think they’re still living on?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anti-Zionism, the great rabbis of the generation, and all the standards.
[Speaker B] But you know, on the other hand there is a very interesting process in the Haredi world of nationalization. Meaning, suddenly they discover—and I actually understood this through that process, and I think it’s specifically with some process of openness to the world—suddenly they discover the taste of nationalism and this and the army and the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right, and I also see various things. And therefore—but it still remains without external expression. That’s how we get to The Third Path. Meaning, a lot of people have this inside, and society of course fights against it because it threatens it—the Haredi society—but also the people themselves. They see themselves as the margins of Haredi society. We’re the lite version. True, that’s what we are. Someone who is honest with himself doesn’t deny it, but he still sees himself as some kind of lite version, while the real model is the great rabbis of the generation, and I’m not there; I’m lite, I don’t quite fit there.
[Speaker B] That’s a lot of working Haredim, what people call all the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The modern ones, working, today there are already all kinds of shades, definitions, and so on. But in general, when you ask how many Haredim think like this, in my opinion a lot. How many Haredim would say to themselves—not to you, to themselves—that they think like this? Much fewer.
[Speaker B] And suppose they do think that way—what does that mean in practical terms? After all, when people talk about alternative Haredi educational frameworks, they talk about state-Haredi schools, which in my opinion, by the way, are completely unnecessary; it’s just investing more resources, they should have unified this whole thing. But still, what do you say to working Haredim? What solutions do they find in The Third Path, or how can The Third Path actually advance their needs, which are schools, education, work, employment—because many of them, especially the men, don’t have the tools for how to begin life?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. So here you need to speak on two levels, or two time ranges. In the long term, you’re completely right. This whole distinction between Haredi Judaism and Religious Zionism, in my view, doesn’t hold water; it has no meaning whatsoever except the length of the coat. Nothing, not really. There can be all kinds of people in every society.
[Speaker B] No, but the attitude—even if there is some national feeling—the attitude in the Religious Zionist world, say, toward the army is an attitude of holiness. Haredim don’t know those concepts.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’ll get there too, it’ll get there too, it’ll take time. But that’s the long term. In the short term, you set up state-Haredi schools. They won’t go to state-religious schools—why? Because right now they’re Haredi. Sociologically they’re Haredi. Now it doesn’t matter—when you try to dig a bit and understand how you’re different from me, after all your and my attitude toward the state is the same. Leave aside theology and when the Messiah will come, but in the practical question of how one behaves right now, loyalty to the state, the desire that it succeed—I think most normal people are entirely in favor. So in what sense are you different from me? In no sense. But still, with your coats, with your background, with your family, with your standards, you still need to be framed within a Haredi framework. That’s what the state-Haredi school is for. In the end it provides a solution for people who are like me, but sociologically they’re still there. And therefore I think it’s a good solution for an intermediate stage. At a later stage, if we succeed—if we succeed, not me, if we succeed—then indeed these state-Haredi schools will disappear; there will be education in a Torah-oriented direction, neither Haredi nor Hardal, and all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds will be able to send their children there, because it won’t really matter. What difference does it make if you’re from this background or that background, if the background is only a cultural matter and not really the essential thing? The educational values are shared. We won’t educate toward different values because the people are similar.
[Speaker B] By the way, do you notice that the connection between the Haredi world and the Religious Zionist world is happening from the right? Right, right. Meaning, both from the movement of the Hardal world into Haredi Judaism, and also what I’m talking about, Haredi nationalization, which is moving in that direction. So it’s already happening, but it’s happening in regions that maybe you, and maybe I too, don’t like so much.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I wrote about this not long ago—a response, I think, to an article by Tehila Gedo, I think, exactly—or I don’t remember if it was her article, no, not Tehila Gedo, sorry, it was an article by someone else, I already don’t remember her name, that was published in Tzarich Iyun, and it was very enthusiastic about this rapprochement. And I said I was less enthusiastic about this rapprochement, a rapprochement from the right, let’s call it that, and I’m looking for the rapprochement from the left. Now this brings me to the central point: under the heading “Haredi Judaism” there are actually two different insights or two conceptions taking shelter. One conception is opposition to the state, to Zionism, to the new Jewish nationalism. And the second conception is opposition to modernity. Now in principle there is no connection between them. There is a certain affinity, but it’s definitely not necessary; there is no real connection between them. Right. So therefore I would expect the non-Haredi groups to be divided into two. There would be those for whom modernity is the main thing in their model, and those for whom Zionism and nationalism and so on are the main thing—which of course doesn’t contradict, you can be both—but in principle there are two non-Haredi subgroups. There aren’t two, there’s only one. And that’s the major distortion in the map we see today, that the seam line remains Zionism. If you’re not Zionist, you’re Haredi; if you are Zionist, then you’re Religious Zionist. What about someone modern who can be Haredi, can be Religious Zionist in the sense of his theological attitude toward the state, but he’s completely modern?
[Speaker B] He lives a totally Western life.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So what—and that’s how he also wants to live, he thinks that’s the right way to live. What about that? He has no name today. Now there are quite a few such people, and it rises and falls all the time and so on. In my opinion one of the problems—I’m a philosopher—so in my opinion one of the problems is that there is no conceptualization and no definition, no branding, of this thing. And I think The Third Path is trying to do that. It says: come, I’ll give you a brand so you can say I belong there. I’m not the lite version of the Haredim, and I’m not the lite version of Religious Zionism, of Hardal. I’m not that. I’m something third, a third alternative, neither this nor that. As long as it doesn’t exist, then everyone who isn’t in the Religious Zionist mainstream—Hardal—or the Haredi mainstream, is by definition lite. And therefore it’s very easy for them, and of course they pump this message because they have an interest in doing so, to pump the message that we’re all basically lite, anyone who’s not with them is lite. And now we repeat it about ourselves, that we’re lite. Now I’m not lite in any sense, and anyone else in my surroundings—I don’t think it’s right to define him as lite. There are people who are lite, I’m not denying the phenomenon.
[Speaker B] Just explain to us how people join The Third Path, so our listeners and viewers will know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We have a website, you can search Google for “The Third Path,” there’s a link there to join via WhatsApp, and there you can find the details. These things also circulate in various WhatsApp groups, so you can definitely join there.
[Speaker B] With your permission, I want to address one of the issues—we talked about morality versus religion—one of the issues that in my view, and we saw this in recent months and also a year ago, the sixth of October, so to speak, is the attitude toward women and gender separation. These are topics we’ve discussed here on the podcast, and my feeling is that they’ve become, from being a religious issue—modesty and all those things—they’ve become a marker of religiousness. Yes, and when I say religiousness, I mean both the religiousness of Haredim and the religiousness within Religious Zionism. How do you resolve that tension? You say that in the end, in moral issues, human morality should decide. But women who basically do not find themselves within the Jewish bookshelf, and within the halakhic world, and generally also in the religious public sphere—they don’t exist there. And women today look at what religion has to offer them—very religious women—and ask questions. What do you answer them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, I’ve had a few conversations with Haredi women, because among Haredi women it’s less by choice; in Religious Zionism it’s more by choice, there are similar conceptions there but those who…
[Speaker B] What do you mean by choice? What choice does a woman have?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hardal women—a Hardal woman chose to be that way because in most cases she had other options. A Haredi woman less so. Meaning, someone who finds herself not identifying with it doesn’t really have a real channel; she didn’t choose this. So when I had conversations with Haredi women, I told them: look, usually with my radical views, the population it’s easiest for me to talk to is male Torah scholars. Anyone who isn’t a male Torah scholar—for him, everything came down from Sinai, there’s nothing to discuss. He doesn’t understand that when I raise arguments, fine—but if it doesn’t fit with what he was educated on, then there’s nothing to talk about. Women all belong to that population, and women are super religious; it’s hard to talk with them—Haredi women.
[Speaker B] You feel that they…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes. Again, it could be that it’s a somewhat different generation, but I very much feel that. And the reason for it is that they never learned Talmud, they don’t understand how this whole thing really works.
[Speaker B] And they’ve also gotten used to receiving the formula, the final product, as it were—they don’t know the path.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And it’s not “and also,” it is exactly that. In the end it’s a collection of bottom lines, and from the standpoint of the average woman—like me too, if I hadn’t studied—it would be obvious that it all came down to Moses from Sinai, or through Rabbi Dov Lando, but it came down from Sinai. And if that’s what the Torah says—true, I don’t identify, so I’m lite—but that’s what the Torah says, there’s nothing to discuss. Now I try to say: look, but it didn’t come down from Sinai. There are such conceptions and other conceptions, there is one Talmudic text like this and another Talmudic text like that.
[Speaker B] And with Haredi men you can have that kind of conversation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Completely, completely. Only with Haredi men the problem is a different one. What’s the problem? The problem is the problem of duality. What does that mean? He can agree that I’m right, but in practice he won’t do anything. Why?
[Speaker B] Because he’s afraid, or because there’s some much deeper psychological element?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. Sometimes it’s fear, but it’s not only fear. It’s a mistake to attribute it to fear. It’s—an example I like to use—is how they learn in yeshiva. In yeshiva, when they study the topic, all the possibilities come up: creativity, scholarship, everything wonderful. In the end, when you want to know what to do, you open the Mishnah Berurah. That’s called deriving the practical Jewish law from the discussion—that is, learning Torah in order to know what to do. But that’s not true. You study Torah, and to know what to do you study the Mishnah Berurah; you could also have studied it without seeing the whole discussion. So why are you studying the discussion? That’s Torah study for its own sake. It has nothing to do with what you do. But the Sages tell us to derive the practical Jewish law from the discussion. You need to study the topic in order to draw conclusions and know what you need to do.
[Speaker B] So you think women need to study Torah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Without any doubt. In my opinion they are obligated—not only is it permitted, they are obligated.
[Speaker B] Do you think that when women study Torah and enter into this thing, the family structure and hierarchies that this world creates can still continue to exist? After all, that’s the great fear of men, I’ll put it that way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. By the way, it probably can continue to exist, although I’m not a great sociologist. This thing has much greater resilience than all our expectations that Haredi society will collapse from here and collapse from there and this will dismantle it and that will dismantle it. It doesn’t fall apart so quickly. Meaning, these patterns are stronger than the currents that we can…
[Speaker B] Now you’re talking about the patterns…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Haredi ones, the social ones, the patriarchal ones, all those mechanisms. Even though the woman can be very educated, can even be a Torah scholar.
[Speaker B] It’s possible that some woman decides to join The Third Path and her husband tells her, sorry, this doesn’t suit us.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And it’s possible that she’ll join The Third Path and still at home educate the children the way the husband says—that’s also possible. Meaning, sociological patterns don’t follow our beliefs. They have a life of their own. And that’s the duality I spoke about earlier, because it’s not only in the world of study and halakhic ruling, but Haredim who know the sources—men now—who know the sources, and I tell them, look, I have arguments, I present this here, present it there—there is someone to talk to. They understand that there is substance here; they can agree, of course they can disagree, but they understand that this is within discourse, that it is an option. They will never consider it in practice. They won’t consider it in practice because everybody tells jokes about Rabbi Elyashiv and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky and the activists who manipulate them.
[Speaker B] That’s the part where they also know how to take things humorously.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Completely cynically. And afterward they’ll do exactly what Rabbi Elyashiv said, together with all the jokes about everything. There is some kind of duality there that I can’t crack.
[Speaker B] Could it be that in the Religious Zionist world this doesn’t exist? Meaning, there is much more seriousness, as it were, about these things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Much less. Even among the Hardalim, unlike the Haredim, the Hardalim are a very ideological group. Every one of them checks very carefully how one ought to behave, what one ought to do—too much, it becomes really mind-numbing—but that’s how it goes. Among Haredim this is a very non-ideological society. A practical society. Meaning, we do what we’re used to.
[Speaker B] So it could be that there are also a lot of people there who don’t believe
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the path at all.
[Speaker B] And they simply live like that and everything is fine?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not telling you anything new. You know this better than I do.
[Speaker B] I know, but you know—I know that a lot of people come to you and consult and ask. Masses.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yeshiva teachers have come to me and said, listen, I don’t believe in anything. Long coat, hat, everything.
[Speaker B] And is that lack of faith an intellectual lack of faith, or sociological, or are these people who really investigated deeply?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Intellectual. He believes in nothing, he lost his faith, but he’s there. He’s trapped with his family, with his livelihood, with his social status, he has no other world. What, at age 40, 50, I don’t know how old he is—he’ll leave everything? And what will he do, go to the beach? What will he engage in? He can’t, even on the technical level.
[Speaker B] And in the other world?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There there is much less of a phenomenon of the coerced, meaning someone who doesn’t agree leaves. It’s the same family. Meaning, even if someone is Hardal, today it’s already more defined familially, but usually it’s one person and there are other branches in the same family that are in a different place. It’s much easier to leave that; the social chains are much weaker. By the way, that’s also why they’re more ideological, because there the ideology keeps you, the social framework doesn’t keep you there. There the ideology will keep you. Meaning, to deal with Hardalim you need to deal with their ideology; to deal with Haredim you need to deal with their duality. You can convince them that you’re right—it won’t help, it won’t do anything.
[Speaker B] It doesn’t matter what’s true or what…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. And part of the issue is to try—I’m always trying to talk with people—so how do you make the revolution? What happens? What will you do to save us? And so on. A lot of people talk about it. Rabbi Tamir Granot said that one of the leading rabbis of the generation, who is considered in the Lithuanian-Haredi world, told him, listen, we’re a population of children and I don’t dare say it—you need to save us from ourselves. That’s how he quoted someone, without saying who it was.
[Speaker B] But that’s really—60 percent, I think, of Haredi society is under age 15, so physically it’s also true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. But I mean, in the end there is some kind of very strong duality there, because it manages to solidify the sociology despite all the deep intellectual and ideological currents. How did that happen, in your opinion?
[Speaker B] How did it become that way? Because this is supposedly the society most committed to the word of God—the Haredim devoted to the word of God. How did it happen that there really is this duality there that you’re talking about?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They somehow managed to convince themselves—it’s a kind of false consciousness, I think—that the word of God is specifically found in the second part of the duality. What the great rabbis of the generation say, and the patterns and everything—even though I know, and I’m convinced, and from the sources, and everything is fine—so I’m lite, but the word of God is really there. I’m just not there, so on the side I’ll do what I…
[Speaker B] Because I also see a lot of people who are considered modern Haredim for whom it’s very, very important that their children, say, study in the conservative yeshivot.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the figures they admire are the great Haredi rabbis. Right. And they don’t identify with it inwardly, but obviously they have no other model. That’s the model they have, so he sees himself as the tail to foxes—or the tail to lions, sorry. Meaning, I’m lite, but that’s the real model. I want my son to be like that.
[Speaker B] And in the end it’s also very easy every few years to go put a slip in the ballot box, and with that you buy the World to Come, so with that…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but he also educates the children that way. Meaning, there is something here that is not only about putting a slip in the box. And I’m trying to free them from that. Meaning, to tell them: listen, if you think this isn’t real, then maybe it really isn’t real. You don’t have to surrender to this duality, you don’t need to view it as “study it and get rewarded.” The ideas I raise are “study it and get rewarded.” The truth is the Mishnah Berurah, or Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, or Rabbi Dov Lando. That’s the truth. No, that’s not the truth.
[Speaker B] The question is whether Haredim can really connect to your religious-theological view, which sounds a bit Leibowitzian to me—meaning, there is Jewish law and you somewhat separate it
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From
[Speaker B] these things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I actually think Haredim can connect to that more easily than Religious Zionists.
[Speaker B] Precisely because of the duality?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because they really do build their world less on experience… For them it’s really very much a matter of formal patterns and so on. I say okay, patterns—so let’s see, the patterns are Jewish law, let’s examine what Jewish law says. In that sense it’s easier to talk with Haredi people than with Religious Zionists, who also have thought and this and morality and Hebrew Bible. Among Haredim all that doesn’t exist. Meaning, show them that it’s consistent, and in principle that ought to convince them—except that the sociology is very strong.
[Speaker B] Do you think that the rabbinic layer too, I mean even
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The great ones,
[Speaker B] are in the same mindset, the same?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No question. Look, Rabbi Shach—or there are rabbis I know directly, firsthand, who are bound because they can no longer say. Bound not out of fear in the low sense—there may be some like that too, but I’m not talking about that. They’re afraid that the moment they come out with something that is true in their opinion, if they come out with it, it will dismantle Haredi society. You can’t pay that price. You’re the one responsible for the matter. So even if you think like me, you won’t say it because you know it will dismantle everything. So he can’t say what he himself thinks.
[Speaker B] Maybe it really is dangerous if everything falls apart?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be. But I think the alternative is no less dangerous. The alternative is—look, with the Haskalah movement, for example, which people always bring as an example of disintegration as a result of openness—in my opinion it was disintegration as a result of closure. Meaning, if they had joined the Enlightenment but in a controlled way, showing what yes and what no, going in together with the youth, with the young people who had absolutely no guidance because the rabbis boycotted it—going into this whole thing, thinking together, seeing what yes and what no, adopting these things—it could have had completely different results. The fact that you boycotted it and were unwilling to deal with it left the young person with the choice: be wise or be wicked? Those are the two options. So he decided to be wise—or stupid? So he decided to be wise. Wicked or stupid, sorry. Wicked meaning to be wise, to do what is really right and what you understand is right, or to remain stupid but righteous. And that’s an impossible dilemma, and we are repeating it today. Today too, people are being faced with the same thing, and in my opinion that breaks things apart much more than openness. Haredi society owes a great deal to forums like Let’s Stop Thinking Here.
[Speaker B] And the average Haredi person will tell you: look what is happening in Religious Zionism, the thinning out there, the high percentages.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, that’s a common argument and an incorrect one. First of all, you can’t see the thinning out in the Haredi world because in many cases it’s done in secret, although already today there are thousands doing it openly. It’s just not on the table.
[Speaker B] The question is what matters: preserving the sociology, the external facade?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. So I say, that’s first of all. Second, look around you—where did all the secularization among the Jewish people come from? It came from Haredi Judaism, not from Religious Zionism.
[Speaker B] In the historical sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All secularism basically came out of the Haredi world, out of the Haredi approach.
[Speaker B] But then there really wasn’t a Religious Zionist world; everyone was Orthodox.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was Enlightenment versus Orthodox closure, and the choice of the Orthodox leadership to close itself off and not join the Enlightenment in a controlled way—we see its consequences to this day. And now today we’re in the exact same situation.
[Speaker B] In which basically most of the people left religion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And that’s the result of Haredi education. That’s the result of Haredi education. People don’t understand this in a historical view. And I’m telling you that in the historical view of another twenty years, today we’re at the same junction. And Haredi education will discover the intensity of the problems it creates, which is a thousand times greater than Religious Zionist education. In the end, this openness has short-term costs. In the long term I’m a capitalist. In the long term the invisible hand does the best work. Meaning, in the end you need to put everything on the table and try to cope, but if you hide it, in the end it will come out. And when it comes out and you have no tools to deal with it, it will break the whole thing apart. And I’m telling you that the Haredi world owes so much to those heretics it boycotts, including me but also many others, because we are the ones saving it. All the people there who have questions come to me; they don’t go to their rabbi. Or not only to me, I assume there are others too.
[Speaker B] And do you think you’re helping them stabilize themselves and still remain within the system?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I know I am. In the end they need to decide where they remain within the system. A lot of them—you know, I really love to quote this—once someone sent me from Facebook, someone I don’t know at all sent me on Facebook, someone who said, “Miki Abraham took the kippah off my head,” I think—or… sorry, “kept the kippah on my head.” “Kept the kippah on my head.” There are some who also said I took it off. Someone else told him, “Miki Abraham kept my head under the kippah.” And I think that phrasing is so beautiful, because I think it’s really true. I know a great many people. I also know people who left because of… I don’t know if because of me, but because of questions; they were exposed to questions and discussions and among other things with me, and they also left. And at the beginning I had a very great hesitation whether to put everything on the table, and I decided yes. Why? Because there are very many people whom this saves, and I know it—they tell me.
[Speaker B] No, there is also power in truth, meaning the truth cannot be hidden.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, in the end it comes out and you have no way to deal with it, and that breaks everything apart.
[Speaker B] And do you think—when you say another twenty years—do you think it will fall apart, or can things like this… empires can hold on a long time?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It can hold on. But again, the question is how much of it will be facade and how much of it will be a real thing. And the question is also whether the core will remain and the periphery may go to ruin. So I don’t know what it means to say it remains. Something will probably remain. But the question is—in the Haredi world back then too, something remained. Only most of the public became secular. Meaning, something remained. Now one can say that if we had shown openness, nothing would have remained. But that’s hypothetical, nobody can know. Maybe yes, maybe no. I tend to think not. Today it’s exactly the same dilemma. We haven’t learned anything. Exactly the same dilemma. The question is whether closing is the way to prevent secularization, or opening is the way to prevent secularization. I very much believe in the second way.
[Speaker B] I have to ask you—October 7. I feel that something happened on the religious level within the State of Israel. As if, on the one hand, despite the great break and despite the whole question of where God was on October 7, there is some trend of drawing closer. Suddenly there are lots of celebrities declaring, and that gives it a lot of media volume, that they started keeping Sabbath or doing all kinds of things. How do you see those trends? To what extent can they really generate some change, and religiously how do you relate to them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure to what extent October 7 did that, or the reality created in its wake. When people—I know people I know personally, but also you read about it in the media—people who were flesh of the flesh of the new progressivism, the enlightened global left, and so on, suddenly see the face being revealed within that world—the antisemitic face, the terror-supporting face.
[Speaker B] Do you think the opposite side of that is basically religion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So for some of them, for some of them, they suddenly discover that they are Jews and they can’t escape that. And for some of them that brings them to some kind of connection, in one way or another, to tradition. Today the world is much more flexible, so there are different shades. It’s not necessarily repentance in the classic sense, but yes, some renewed attachment to Jewish roots—you do find that among many. That doesn’t mean, by the way, that they connect to Smotrich and Goldknopf. On the contrary, sometimes the antagonism will be even much greater. Because the way they deal with October 7 really does not appeal specifically to those who were hurt by October 7. And so a drawing closer to religion, or to tradition, or to connection—I don’t know what to call it—a national-traditional connection to Judaism, probably exists here. But it won’t really change the map, the political map of religious, secular, Haredi. I don’t think so. Meaning, it will create a different kind of secular Judaism, less alienated.
[Speaker B] Maybe more room for traditionalism.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly. Meaning, less alienated from what was. By the way, this whole story doesn’t speak to me at all because it’s a matter of experience and emotion—it doesn’t interest me.
[Speaker B] And you don’t think Judaism also needs the experiential side?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe it does, but what can I do about it? I deal with the question of what is right.
[Speaker B] That’s a bit of a Lithuanian approach.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, I’m completely a Litvak. I’m a pure Litvak. And therefore it doesn’t interest me. But yes, for many people it is meaningful. Not only does it not interest me, I also object to the importance attributed to it.
[Speaker B] So do you also object to Hasidism?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Completely. I think Hasidism is modern Christianity. But that’s a different discussion. These phenomena exist—you know, nobody can predict where this will lead. Many people place hopes in it; I’m not so sure. But clearly it will have some kind of connection to Judaism. People have long felt that their Judaism was stolen from them. In my opinion, not justly, because they didn’t have a Judaism to steal. But today they somehow feel that they do have something to say in that field, and they want to say it. Will this ultimately lead them to some real clarification and to seeing, actually, in what am I Jewish? In the fact that my mother was Jewish? In the fact that I’m persecuted? Or does Judaism also say something? If Judaism tells me to be moral, that’s not Judaism; a gentile is also supposed to be moral. And they’re trying to search and not succeeding. I just put out a booklet on this issue. They really aren’t succeeding in finding an alternative Jewish identity. And that crisis—that’s the second wave of the crisis. The first wave is to search for Jewish identity, but the search itself isn’t enough. The question is what he will find, and he can’t find it. There is no such thing as a Jewish identity that is not connected to the Jewish religion. There is no such creature. That’s an invention they won’t be able to produce, in my opinion. And they are trying to produce it—there are study halls working on this—and it’s all nonsense, a bunch of gibberish. So what?
[Speaker B] What do they need to find?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end, they need to find a connection to Judaism in its classic religious sense, and understand that either it’s that or you’re a gentile. A gentile born to a Jewish mother, fine—a gentile in the cultural sense—but born to a Jewish mother, you’re fully Jewish in the halakhic sense.
[Speaker B] But here in this country, people who live in Israel don’t really need to. They feel they don’t have to keep all sorts of practices in order to feel…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now this has become a bit destabilized. That’s exactly the point. What existed abroad for a long time was a clear reality: either you’re a Jew or you’re a gentile. You’re ethnically Jewish, yes, my parents are Jewish, fine, nobody denies the facts—but abroad you don’t propose an alternative Judaism unless it also has a religious dimension. Reform too, no matter, or Conservative—they have a religious dimension. There’s no such thing as a non-religious Jewish identity abroad. In Israel there was. And that is being destabilized today. The question is where this will lead us: will everyone decide to be gentiles, or will everyone decide to be more Jewish in the sense that I understand Judaism—that is, with a connection to Jewish law and religious faith / belief. I don’t know; that’s a prophecy that wasn’t given to me.
[Speaker B] Interesting. I asked you to bring some passage that interests you, or inspires you, or something
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that guides
[Speaker B] you along the way, so we’d be happy to hear it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. You really did ask, and I’m generally not so inclined to quote things, but I’ll bring something.
[Speaker B] You can also quote yourself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m not, that’s not—I always used to say, you know those types. So there’s a quote from Rabbi Kook—not my cup of tea, I have to say. A person I appreciate, but not really—no, in my view he was a bit detached from reality. And that’s the Hasidism of Religious Zionism. Right, and I think his successors brought into actual expression things that were already there in him; these aren’t their deviations. Still, he was a great man, an enormous Torah scholar, an original thinker, courageous, all true—not my cup of tea. But he does have quotations—he has quotations going in every direction, after all, and that’s part of the problem: you can find in him whatever you want. I found what I want. So his quote goes like this: “The greatest deficiency that exists in the quality of fear of Heaven, when it is not properly connected to the light of Torah”—meaning, there is a fear of Heaven that is not connected to Torah, a bit strange—“is that instead of fear of sin, it is replaced by fear of thought. Instead of fearing sin, you fear thinking. And once a person begins to be afraid to think, he goes on and sinks into the mud of ignorance, which takes away the light of his soul, trips up his strength, and darkens his spirit.” You can be a huge religious fanatic, with tremendous faith / belief and fear of Heaven—but what do you believe in? You haven’t clarified anything, you’re not really following what you think, so what value is there in what you believe?
[Speaker B] I’ll ask you one last question. Do you think this kind of clarification is suited to everyone? Maybe it’s only for some handful of intellectuals, these educational elites and so on? Everyone in his own way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not everyone has to be a philosopher, but everyone in his own way. A person has to formulate for himself what he thinks—who will formulate it for him in his place? Now, one person wants to do it philosophically, someone else will do it another way—that’s all fine. I don’t have a monopoly on the methods. But you know, an anecdote we can maybe end with. I have a good friend who is today the head of the Yeruham yeshiva. We taught together in Yeruham. And once I came to him with some Bnei Brak joke. I came from Bnei Brak to Yeruham. I said to him: listen, in Bnei Brak they joke that at Merkaz HaRav there is fear of Heaven truly worthy of admiration—only it’s not clear which heaven they fear there. So he said to me: you don’t know what you’re talking about. The source of that joke is Rabbi Kook. Rabbi Kook came to the Land of Israel and saw the old yishuv in Jerusalem, and he writes that there is a lot of fear of Heaven there, but the heaven they fear there is so gloomy, dark, and constricted—so what is all that fear of Heaven worth?
[Speaker B] Yes, that’s true. Thank you very much, Rabbi Michael. We’ll conclude, as is our custom, with a prayer for the return of our hostages. “Our brothers, the whole house of Israel, who are in distress and captivity, whether on sea or on land—may the Omnipresent have mercy on them and bring them out from distress to relief, from darkness to light, and from bondage to redemption, now speedily and soon, and let us say: Amen.” Amen. This was a fascinating conversation. I think there are so many more things I’d like to ask you, but really, I think anyone who’s interested, anyone who asks questions, will know how to reach your materials, your blog, also the website of The Third Path, and maybe find there answers—or the beginning of questions that can be asked. Thank you very much for coming here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank you.