The Story of 70 – Rabbi Michael Abraham – The Story of 70 Full Interviews

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

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🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[0:06] Personal background and education
[1:18] Religious identity and external definitions
[2:18] Science and its relation to faith
[3:42] Stereotypes and definitions in the religious world
[4:53] Work at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies
[5:57] The connection between religious thought and science
[8:53] Position toward Reform Judaism
[11:54] Family life and the paths the children chose
[15:24] Life in Lod and the diverse community
[17:42] The attraction to religion and rationality
[22:21] Pride in creation and in developing logic
[27:53] A real rabbi and the religious ethos
[29:28] Politics and votes in elections
[32:26] Criticism of the rabbinate and removing the monopoly
[36:04] The problem of marriage registration and bigamy
[37:04] A change in marriage law for privacy
[39:47] The story of his son and the move to a hesder yeshiva
[41:44] Criticism of Haredi education and spiritual supervisors
[42:52] Vegetarianism and ethics in modern life
[48:49] Philosophical influences: Kant and Maimonides
[50:35] The Nachshon Wachsman event and theological implications

Summary

General overview

Michael “Miki” Abraham presents a varied life path through yeshivot, the army, academia, and teaching, and describes how each stage shaped him without his being buried inside any one identity. He rejects stereotypes and religious labels, emphasizes a deep fit between religious thinking and scientific-logical thinking, and adopts a sober position in which science is the main source for facts, though without absolute trust in any system. He supports sharp debate and a tolerance that is not pluralism, favors separation of religion and state and opening institutions like marriage and kashrut to a free and transparent market, while sharply criticizing the rabbinate and also the responsibility of the public and secular politics for the current situation. He describes a family and children who chose different paths, his work in philosophical and logical writing, a complex stance toward prayer following the Nachshon Wachsman event, and full civic liberalism even on issues he sees as halakhically forbidden.

Biography and stages of identity

Michael “Miki” Abraham was born in Haifa and studied at the Midrasha yeshiva high school in Pardes Hanna, then in a hesder yeshiva, served in the army, studied in a yeshiva in Bnei Brak for returnees to religion, continued to university for engineering and a doctorate in physics, did a postdoc at the Weizmann Institute, returned to Bar-Ilan, moved to teach at the hesder yeshiva in Yeruham for nine years, and for the last 12 years has been at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan. He says a person is shaped by the landscape of his birthplace, and that each stage contributed to him, even though today he is not in any of those places. He describes how sometimes people accuse him of being Haredi and other times of being Reform, and he sees that as a sign that he is probably on the right track. He is happy with the biography he has lived and judges himself, not others.

Military service and the choice of a hesder yeshiva

Michael says enlistment was obvious in the Religious Zionist environment in which he grew up, where everyone enlists. He says he considered going to Haredi yeshivot, as was a certain phenomenon at the time, but chose a hesder yeshiva as the mainstream option. He describes leaving the hesder yeshiva and moving to regular army service as a bit unusual, but still within reasonable bounds.

Religion, science, and rationality

Michael argues there is no dissonance between religious-spiritual education and the exact sciences; on the contrary, there is an excellent fit between them, and a large part of his writing is devoted to that. He says the first sentence he learned from his father was “the divergence of D equals rho,” from Maxwell’s equations, and presents this as a natural connection between home and the scientific world. He says religious thinking is more rational, cold, and scientific than people usually think, and that this is precisely what causes people to feel alienated from it, because it does not connect to their natural feelings.

Religious definitions, stereotypes, and his attitude toward labeling

Michael defines labels in the religious world as a serious ill that does not fit a complex and varied reality. He says a stereotype places a person into a pre-scripted “basket of answers,” and therefore it is not productive. He states that he answers every question according to what he thinks, and is not troubled by which basket people try to place him in.

Professional work: teaching, writing, research, and website

Michael teaches at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies mainly Talmud, and also meta-halakhah and ways of looking at Jewish law and the Talmud, coming from a philosophical and reflective temperament. He is heavily involved in writing and research on philosophy of faith, faith and science, logic, and also general philosophy and logic unrelated to Judaism. He describes a new website that occupies much of his time and where questions and discussions arise, and says that overall he is involved in quite a few fields.

Science versus tradition, contradictions, and uncertainty

Michael says the source for knowing facts is science and observation, not faith, and therefore if science contradicts something he was educated to believe, his basic assumption is that usually the scientific claim is correct. He stresses that he does not have absolute trust in science, and that one must think about what to do with tradition—sometimes correcting mistakes or changing interpretation, since much of it is human handiwork. He states that he places absolute trust in nothing, and that nothing is certainly true; he describes an approach of deciding according to the best understanding he can reach when there is a contradiction.

Attitude toward Reform Judaism and public discourse

Michael says there are voices that reject Reform Jews and voices that reject Orthodox Jews, and reality is a multiplicity of voices in every direction. He supports debates, even sharp ones, and criticizes excessive politeness that interferes with freedom of discussion. He says he does not judge groups in a categorical way but judges arguments: if a Reform argument seems right to him, he accepts it; if not, he disagrees. He says there is no point in judging people, only in clarifying what is true. He states that there is truth and many people are mistaken, and that he supports dialogue in order to learn; he recounts telling his students that the argument from which we learn is the one we lost.

Personal life, family, and the children’s paths

Michael is married with six children; two are married and he has granddaughters. He lives in Lod with his wife, who is a lawyer. He says each child went in a different direction and no two are alike, and he accepts their choices even if he thinks some of them are mistaken. He says the children initially received a Haredi education as a compromise that seemed better at the time, and later both the children and he and his wife came to the conclusion that it was not right, so they let each child choose. Today, he says, he has two secular children, one religious liberal-modern child, two more daughters in a similar direction, and one more mainstream religious child, a graduate of Mercaz HaRav. He sees the children’s independent choice as a success, even when it creates arguments at home.

Lod as a mixed city and the experience of diversity

Michael says part of the reason for moving to Lod was the desire for diversity, after Petah Tikva seemed to him uniform and dull, and he describes his love for Yeruham as a diverse place. He says he was disappointed because even in Lod his own community is uniform and he does not really connect to it, and he found that the populations in the city are transparent to one another, with no real interaction despite living in the same building. He says he would have liked more interaction, but does not have the energy to create it, and it is not important enough compared to other things he is busy with.

What draws him to religion and his criticism of atheism

Michael says religion does not necessarily “draw” him, and he does not seek religious experiences or religiose feelings; he is there because he thinks it is true, not because it satisfies a need. He argues that today one cannot be a rational person outside a religious framework, and presents skepticism and postmodernism as an unfortunate outgrowth of worldviews that prevent serious grounding in anything. He describes explicit atheism as an irrational and fanatical sect filled with baseless dogmas, and contrasts that with the religious possibility of building a coherent, logical, and rational worldview on the basis of first assumptions. He notes that religious thought also has a problem of not checking its basic assumptions, but says that he does examine them and nevertheless accepts many of them.

Professional pride: a rational conception, struggle against postmodernism, and the logic of “soft thinking”

Michael says he is proud of the attempt to present an orderly rational conception of religious faith and to use it to build a rational attitude toward reality, and he is about to publish three books that present a full picture. He describes a struggle against postmodern winds of skepticism, relativism, and narrativity. He describes an attempt to develop formal logic for soft thinking such as analogies and generalizations, as part of an effort to make everything rational, and presents this as an achievement he is proud of.

Religious influence in the state and blaming the secular public

Michael argues that there is hysteria against “religionization” that does not match reality, and that sometimes what people call religionization is really an expectation of secularization, whereas presenting religious ideas without coercion is simply part of open education. He says Israeli society does have a real problem of excessive religious involvement in state governance, and he opposes that, but he blames the secular public for allowing power to the rabbinate and to religious legislation and then “whining” about it. He argues that secular people in practice choose conservative rabbis through politics and coalition arrangements, and that there is a “Haredi religious ethos” embedded even in the secular public, which sees a Haredi man as a “real rabbi.” He says the solution is changing the public religious ethos and shutting down the Chief Rabbinate, and quotes a friend from Yeruham who said that many secular people are “Orthodox secularists” in that they identify only with Orthodox institutions even if they do not observe commandments.

Separation of religion and state, private marriage, and the rabbinate

Michael says he has supported separation of religion and state for many years, and that this has already reached the press and the courts and “will soon reach the High Court as well.” He supports opening the marriage market and stresses the need for legal regulation of registration even if marriages are conducted outside the rabbinate, in order to prevent pathologies such as bigamy, inheritance disputes, and confusion of status. He describes the rabbinate as an anachronistic, corrupt, ossified, and harmful institution whose purpose is livelihood and a coercive monopoly of power. He argues that regulation in kashrut should be transparency, not coercion, to the point of saying that everyone should choose for themselves—even if someone declares “kosher certification for pork”—as long as it is transparent. He says he officiated at a wedding outside the rabbinate, using conditional betrothal in order to prevent a woman from becoming chained to a marriage, and that after an amendment to section seven of the Marriage Ordinance it became possible to demand registration after a private marriage, but the rabbinate refused, and the process is moving through the courts toward the High Court.

A theology of prayer and the Nachshon Wachsman event

Michael describes the kidnapping of Nachshon Wachsman, the Sayeret Matkal rescue attempt, and the deaths of Nir Poraz and Nachshon Wachsman as a theologically formative moment for him. He describes the mass prayer of religious and secular people, and when the prayer was not answered, he came to the conclusion that “usually prayers are not answered,” and says he writes about the need to put that on the table. He argues that many people, even religious ones, do not truly believe that “everything depends on Him,” and that in the end what happens happens because of what we do. He speaks of “standing before a God who turns away.” He presents the need to build a sober, “thinner” theology with fewer dogmas, in order to allow honest people to remain within a framework of faith without the dissonance that leads to leaving.

Civic liberalism versus halakhic prohibitions: gay marriage and democracy

Michael says he is “completely liberal” on the civic level and supports the state allowing gay marriage and any other pairing choice, even though from his halakhic perspective it is a severe Torah-level prohibition and he is not calling for halakhic recognition of it. He argues that there is no contradiction between religious opposition and a democratic struggle for a civil right, and compares it to saying that chocolate is both tasty and fattening. He insists that the state should remove its hands from these matters and let people make their own decisions, while free discourse is meant for mutual persuasion and not coercion.

Pluralism, tolerance, and legitimacy

Michael says he would not sign declarations granting mutual legitimacy between religious and secular people because in his view there is no legitimacy to being secular—he sees it as a mistake—but he is willing to sit around a round table for a discussion in which people truly try to persuade one another. He attacks ceremonial discourse of politeness and “checking the box” in which no one is persuaded. He defines pluralism as the claim that everyone is right, and rejects it “with a capital no,” while defining tolerance as the stance that “I am right and you are wrong,” yet we still listen to and respect the other person’s conclusion, with readiness to recognize the possibility of being mistaken. He says tolerance requires responsibility and the formation of a serious position, and he does not respect a stance that comes from ignorance or from not examining the issue, whether religious or secular.

Vegetarianism, veganism, and attitudes toward animals

Michael says vegetarianism and concern for animals entered the home under the influence of his youngest daughter, a strong ideological activist in Anonymous who set up a local cell in Lod-Ramla. He says the family is vegetarian for now, not vegan, tries free-range and organic eggs, and that he even took part in a demonstration against live animal shipments in Tel Aviv. He says there are almost no religious people there, and that part of the religious difficulty comes from the idea that these are “secular values” and from the difficulty of admitting that secular people may have something new to contribute, as well as from an ideological difficulty with commandments connected to meat and the need for interpretive creativity. He agrees there is a danger of blurring the hierarchy between the value of human beings and the value of animals, but argues that this does not justify abuse, and rejects moral avoidance because of “slippery slope” concerns, preferring to deal with the problem if and when it appears.

Influential figures

Michael says he was influenced by many sources but is wary of admiration and does not follow any one person. He mentions Kant, Maimonides, and the Talmud as an exemplary text from which he draws his logic, and within which both his secular life and his philosophical and logical life are conducted, even when his articles are published in general logic journals.

The story with his eldest son and criticism of Haredi education

Michael says his eldest son studied in a respected advanced Haredi yeshiva and asked to move to a hesder yeshiva in Gush Etzion, which created an uproar because it was seen as an ideological threat rather than as “falling to the margins.” He says they tried to persuade the son through conversations with rabbis, and when that failed they threw him out of the yeshiva. He wrote a letter to the spiritual supervisor criticizing the contradiction between all the talk about the value of every minute of Torah study and expelling a student, and included sharp criticism of educational problems, including a case in which they asked that the boy’s father not come study with him in the yeshiva out of fear of influence. He explains this as a lack of confidence in the Haredi world, where decisiveness covers over fear, and presents ease in hearing other opinions as a sign of wholeness and confidence. He stresses that he is at peace with the fact that he is not certain about everything.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, my name is Michael “Miki” Abraham. I was born in Haifa. After that I studied at the Midrasha yeshiva high school in Pardes Hanna, then a hesder yeshiva, army service, a yeshiva in Bnei Brak for returnees to religion, university, engineering, a doctorate in physics, Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan, a postdoc at the Weizmann Institute. After that I came back to Bar-Ilan, moved to the hesder yeshiva in Yeruham, taught there for nine years, something like that, and now for the last 12 years I’ve been here at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan. What is the significance of one’s environment in relation to the later stages? That’s always a hard question. You study psychology, so you probably know. A person is shaped by the landscape of his birthplace. Meaning, you carry with you everything you’ve gone through. I don’t deny, and can’t deny, any stage, and I also feel completely identified with all the stages I went through, even though there are many, many differences between them, and today I’m not in any one of them. Meaning, I’m in some place that is different from all of them, but I received something from every stage. And so to this day people sometimes accuse me of being Haredi, sometimes of being Reform, sometimes of being—you know—they accuse me of everything, and that means I’m probably heading in the right direction. So I’m very happy with the biography I’ve had. I think every such thing contributed a lot to me, and without it I would have been someone else. I don’t know how to judge someone else; I judge myself.

[Speaker B] From your perspective, was military service something that was obvious in the environment you grew up in, or is it something you see as a somewhat different choice, maybe a little unusual? How did you get to…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it was something obvious. I grew up in a yeshiva high school, in a Religious Zionist home; everyone enlists. On the contrary, there were those who didn’t enlist—for example, they went to Haredi yeshivot. You know, there was such a phenomenon. I also considered it. In the end I decided to go to a hesder yeshiva. That was more or less mainstream; there wasn’t anything especially unusual there. After that I left the hesder yeshiva—that was a little unusual—and I went into regular army service, but not beyond reasonable boundaries.

[Speaker B] And how did you get to the more, let’s say, realistic world of engineering and physics from a world that was maybe a bit more spiritual—growing up with faith and religion…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think there’s any dissonance between those things at all. Meaning—sorry that I’m stopping you—

[Speaker B] You can just say, “I don’t think there’s any dissonance between…”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. I don’t think there’s any dissonance between being born into or educated in a religious-spiritual world, as you called it, and the exact sciences. In my view there’s an excellent fit between them. A large part of my writing is also devoted to that issue. On the contrary, in some of the books I wrote I even mention that the first word or sentence I learned from my father was “the divergence of D equals rho,” which is from Maxwell’s equations in electromagnetism. So I think that in that sense too, I didn’t stray from the place from which I emerged into the world.

[Speaker B] You really mentioned earlier that people sometimes relate to you as Haredi and sometimes as Reform. There are all kinds of labels like that. How do you feel about how people define you, and how would you define—or not define—yourself in the religious world, and more generally in the spiritual world?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, labels in the religious world are one of the great ills—not only in the religious world, but in the religious world I think it’s much sharper. It’s a real ill in my view. First, because it doesn’t fit reality. Reality in recent years is much more complex than it used to be. It’s very hard to characterize people with one sharp and clear stereotype. The world is much more diverse; in my eyes that’s a blessed phenomenon. And second, beyond the question of matching reality, it’s not productive. When you put a person into a stereotype, it means that on a list of a hundred questions, he has a hundred predetermined answers. Meaning, on this question he has to answer yes, on that question he has to answer no; he has some set, some basket of answers that has been prescribed in advance. I never liked that. On every question I answer what I think. If someone thinks that fits some basket, let him put me there—I’m not troubled by that. Usually it probably doesn’t fully fit any basket, and that’s perfectly fine.

[Speaker B] Could you tell us a bit about what you’ve been doing in recent years—for example here at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies? What is your day-to-day work these days?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, in recent years, since I finished teaching at the hesder yeshiva in Yeruham, we moved to this area. The center of things—I teach here at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies. The ongoing study is mainly Talmud, a bit of meta-halakhah, or ways of looking at Jewish law and the Talmud. That’s also a matter of personal inclination; I have more of a philosophical temperament. So I look at the things I do, I have a reflective stance toward the things I do, and so I teach that way too. Beyond that, I do a lot of writing and research—writing—and that’s more in areas like philosophy of faith, philosophy, faith and science, logic, but also general philosophy and logic that are unrelated to Judaism. It seems to me one could say that I deal with those things even more than with traditional study, regular Talmud study. There’s a new website that also occupies me a great deal—many hours, sorry—and all kinds of questions and discussions come up there too, so overall it seems to me that nowadays I’m involved in quite a few fields. The relation between the world—again we’re returning to the question of the relation between the religious-spiritual world and the thinking of the natural sciences—at the level of mode of thought, I find a great fit. Meaning, I think that a significant part of the non-religious world’s misunderstanding of religious thinking stems from the fact that religious thinking is much more rational, cold, and scientific than is commonly assumed. Much more, not much less, and that’s one of the reasons people don’t understand it. Sometimes they feel it’s something alienating, some kind of empty logic that doesn’t connect with the question of what I really think and what I really feel, and because of that people say it doesn’t speak to them, it doesn’t seem logical to them. But it doesn’t seem logical to them not because it isn’t logical, but because it doesn’t connect to their natural feelings. On the contrary—precisely because it is so cold, detached, logical, you can make decisions according to certain principles of thought and be very, very consistent with them. But people aren’t interested in the fact that you’re consistent; something there just doesn’t sit right with them. So in that sense I think that actually the broader non-religious world is more alienated from the thinking of the natural sciences than the religious world is—from logical thinking or scientific thinking. Regarding specific details—like how long ago the world was created and those old questions—sometimes that bothers people more, sometimes less. Overall, by now I’ve reached a certain harmony between those things, though harmony doesn’t mean I’ve solved all the problems. Harmony just means I’m not very troubled by them, because in the end I think there are solutions. Some of them I’ve found; some still need more thought. And bottom line, for me the source for knowing facts is science and observation, not faith. And therefore, if science contradicts something I was educated to believe, something faith says, my assumption is that usually the scientific claim is the correct one. Not always—I don’t have absolute trust in science—but that’s my basic assumption. Then you have to understand what to do with tradition. Sometimes it’s a mistake and can be corrected; there too, not everything—much of it is human handiwork. There are mistakes; sometimes it’s a matter of interpretation. So I’m much less troubled by it because I don’t cling either to the scientific-logical side or to the Torah side in any absolute sense. I don’t place absolute trust in anything. That is one of the things I’ve arrived at: nothing is certainly true. Maybe except for that sentence itself—namely that nothing is certainly true—that is certainly true. But aside from that, I have no full trust in anything. I have a lot of trust in many things, but not full trust. And since that’s so, if there’s a contradiction, fine—one of them is probably mistaken, and we need to think about which one, and reach the best conclusion to the best of my understanding, and that’s all.

[Speaker B] You spoke a little about how sometimes you’re labeled as Reform. I’m coming back to that because today there are, let’s say, a lot of voices heard in public discourse, in the Knesset, from all kinds of people, against Reform Judaism, somewhat rejecting it. In your view, what do you think about that? What do you think about the fact that this is the attitude toward a certain stream within Judaism? What is perhaps your personal opinion about that stream in Judaism?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, first of all there are voices in all directions. There are voices that reject Reform Judaism; there are voices that reject Orthodox Judaism. Today people reject everything, support everything. I don’t think the whole thing is moving in only one direction, and that’s perfectly fine. I’m in favor of arguments, even sharp ones. I have no problem, for my part, even mocking people—you know, within the bounds of good taste. A person who’s angry, a person who wants to express a position, should express it. Excessive politeness, in my view, is a bit problematic; it interferes with the freedom of discourse. That’s one thing. As for my personal opinion—my personal opinion is that I don’t judge a group of people sweepingly or categorically. I judge arguments. Now, if there’s a Reform argument that seems right to me, I accept it. If there’s a Reform argument that doesn’t seem right to me, I disagree with it. There’s no reason in the world to judge a person. Why is that interesting? He makes his decisions, I make mine. What interests me is which of his arguments is right or not right, because the question is what I can learn from him or not learn from him. But I don’t think there’s any point in judging people. And again, this is not because of some idea of pluralism or that everyone is right—I’m very far from that. I’ve written very sharp things about this. I think there is truth, and many people are mistaken, because anyone who says otherwise is mistaken if there is truth. Those are simple logical rules that have gotten a bit muddled for us. I just don’t see any point in judging someone. If I have an argument with him, fine—one of us is right and one is wrong. I think I’m right and he’s wrong—so what? Okay, let’s argue. Maybe he’ll persuade me and then I’ll learn something new. I once told my students in the yeshiva in Yeruham that the argument from which we learn something is the argument we lost. Because the argument I won is the argument from which I leave with what I came in with. Meaning, the position I arrived with turned out to be correct, so I didn’t learn anything. I knew that already, and I leave with that. The argument I lost is one in which I learned something, because I used to think one thing and now it turns out I was mistaken. So it’s worthwhile to lose arguments—or at least to listen and try to lose. We don’t always succeed, but we should try. Therefore I’m in favor of this dialogue not because everyone is right, but because you can learn from people. But yes, I do it because I’m striving toward some truth, because I want to learn, I want to formulate a position, I want to reach a conclusion about what is right and what is not right, and after I reach a conclusion I write and say very clearly to everyone what I think of him and of his positions. Fine. But I listen to him, and I also understand that even after I’ve spoken, he can think differently, and it may even be that he’s right. That’s my position.

[Speaker B] If you can just say—I’ll ask and you answer fully. Are you married? Do you have children? Where do you live today?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m married with six children, two of them already married; we even have granddaughters from the last year and a bit. I live in Lod with my wife, who is a lawyer, and that’s it. The children—each one is studying, working. The youngest already finished high school, so we’re past the education stage. The children also went in all sorts of directions; each one did something else. Sometimes they complain that it came from home, sometimes they’re happy it came from home, but it’s probably connected to the home. People went in completely different directions from one another—there’s no connection at all. I don’t think there are two children among our six who resemble each other, and that’s completely fine by me. I think some of them are mistaken, okay, but they made their decisions.

[Speaker B] Can you maybe tell a little about some of the directions your children took?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Look, my children initially went through Haredi education. Even though we ourselves were never fully Haredi; we were always somewhat outsiders. But we started with Haredi education, and actually the children gradually understood that they didn’t want it, that it didn’t suit them for various reasons. We also understood that it was a kind of compromise, but we thought it was a better compromise than the compromise in the other direction—that it’s easier to correct the distortions of Haredi education than the distortions of, say, Religious Zionist education or non-Haredi religious education. Today I’m no longer sure that’s true. And at some point my wife and I—yes, not just me—we came to the conclusion that we don’t think it’s right. But each child was at a different stage. The oldest child by that point was already in an advanced yeshiva, an 18-year-old young man, so you don’t make decisions for him in a simple way anymore. And we told them that each one should make his own decisions, and we respect the decisions they make. So as of now, you could say I have two secular children. I have one child who you could say is religious, liberal, modern; maybe two more daughters are also in that direction. And one more who is more mainstream religious, yes, a graduate of Mercaz HaRav. So there are all kinds of types, and even among those I described as being in the same subgroup—two who are in the same subgroup—those too are completely different worlds. Totally different. Not just in the usual sense that every child is different, which is true, but also in worldview. You wouldn’t see the connection to the source from which they came. Sometimes there are difficult moments in this, because I do believe in my own path and I do think that anyone who doesn’t follow it is mistaken, and I’m sorry that my children are mistaken. But on the other hand, I also think there’s a kind of success in it. Because if a child chooses his own path, even if it’s not what I think, that itself is a success. Now I can argue with him about whether he chose correctly or not, try to influence him, but the fact that he chose is, to me, a success. There are many people who continue in the path of the home they grew up in because they didn’t choose, not because they also think it’s right for them. In my eyes there’s something nice about that, but it’s also a kind of failure. To my satisfaction, none of my children are like that. Not even one. Each one chose his own path; no one is in exactly my direction or my wife’s. In that sense, it’s a success. In other senses, I argue with them. Fine.

[Speaker B] And what is it like living in Lod, since Lod is a mixed city?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Actually, part of the reason we came to Lod was because of the diversity.

[Speaker B] You can start writing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Actually, we came to Lod partly because of the diversity. Petah Tikva somehow seemed to us a bit dull—apologies to all the old moshavot—some kind of gray city where overall, at least in our surroundings, everything looked pretty uniform. We didn’t like that. We came from Yeruham. Yeruham is a very diverse place—I don’t know how many people know it, but it’s a wonderful place. We loved it very, very much; to this day we still love it very much. And we were looking for a place that was a bit more diverse. We got to Lod, and actually we were a little disappointed, because there too the community we’re in somehow is terribly uniform, and so we don’t really connect to it. And as for, say, the Arab populations or other populations there, we discovered—not to our surprise, but to our disappointment—that the populations are transparent to one another. Meaning, each one passes through the other and I pass through him, and there’s no interaction. You can shop with people here and there, exchange a word, but there’s no real interaction at all, which is pretty amazing. It’s a mixed city, and people live in the same building—it’s not only separate neighborhoods, though there are some more distinct neighborhoods—but overall people live in the same building, all sorts of different people, and at most they can say hello politely; there’s no real interaction. We would have liked there to be, but I don’t know—I don’t have enough energy to create that. Apparently it’s not important enough to me. It’s nice, but it’s not… there are other things I’m occupied with.

[Speaker B] A question a bit more connected to Judaism itself. As someone who really chose a path in which religion has accompanied you throughout life, where do you see the uniqueness of religion for you? What is the thing that drew you to religion, drew you to keep studying and teaching, and what is the uniqueness of religion in itself, and maybe, I don’t know, in comparison with other religions or beliefs? Something special that draws you to religion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What draws me to religion—that’s a hard question. I’m not even sure it draws me, by the way. I don’t always feel good about it. Meaning, at least usually, it doesn’t answer some need of mine. That’s why I also don’t look for experiences; I don’t talk about religious experiences; I don’t have religiose feelings, contrary to all the religious stereotypes. I simply think it’s true. So it doesn’t give me some kind of answer in that sense. I don’t find there any special satisfaction or something I wouldn’t find elsewhere. I’m not there because I feel good there, even though it’s perfectly fine. I don’t know whether elsewhere I’d feel better. But that’s not why I’m there. I’m there because I think it’s true. And in a certain respect, yes, there is something there—and again this goes against the stereotype and common prejudices—I think that today it’s impossible to be a rational person outside a religious framework. In my opinion that’s a condition for rationality. I’ve written that quite a bit already. And precisely as someone to whom rationality is very important, I don’t think any other framework allows you to be rational. People who are not within a framework of religious faith get stuck on the most basic questions. Their most basic beliefs turn out to stand on very shaky legs, and we see that overall in skepticism, in postmodernism, in all the new garments of what used to be called skepticism. And in my view that is an unfortunate product of that worldview, one that really does not allow you to hold seriously to anything. People speak in the name of rationality—secular people or atheists; “secular” is a somewhat broad term with many shades under it, so let’s talk about clear atheists. They speak in the name of rationality. That is the most irrational sect I know. Truly religious fanaticism—the atheist sect. It’s unbelievable. The level of listening I discover there is much worse than the religious level of listening, which also is not exactly outstanding—but much worse. It’s a kind of belief in utterly baseless dogmas, utterly baseless, and fanatical belief. A way of looking at things in which anyone else is simply a heretic, let’s call it that, deliberately. I think that in the religious world—and it’s not always so, but at least there is a possibility—you can build a coherent, logical, completely rational worldview. There are always axioms, of course, but you can make decisions about your steps, about your worldview, rationally in light of those assumptions, use logic, and build something that to me is convincing. And in that respect too there is something attractive for me. Not the religious experience, but the possibility of being rational. Meaning, making decisions in a way where I know I’m consistent. When I discuss questions like targeted killing—I give lectures to students on various topics: philosophy, ethics, all kinds of things of that sort, logic—and I try to show them that the religious worldview, which supposedly ought to be some mystical, irrational thing, is the only place where you can deal in an orderly, fundamental way, and close to common sense—not far from common sense—with these complex questions of targeted killings, of harming innocent people, questions that trouble all of us. And my feeling is that in secular discourse, usually in the common discourse—I call it secular, it’s not only secular, but usually in the discourse—people speak from the gut. It’s proportionate, it’s not proportionate; I’m on the left so I have to oppose it; I’m on the right so I have to support it. You don’t hear a built argument, an orderly argument. In a religious-halakhic worldview, you get used to building orderly arguments. You know what your assumptions are, you know where you’re arriving, and maybe that’s also one of the troubles of religious thought, because you’re bound to some system of assumptions and the religious tendency is not to examine them. Meaning, you work within it—it’s very consistent, very logical—but there’s a tendency not to touch the assumptions themselves, as though you mustn’t touch them. I don’t suffer from that tendency. I do examine my assumptions too. But yes, overall I do accept a large part of the religious assumptions, and in that sense I think it gives me something as well. I said at the beginning that I’m not there because it gives me something. It doesn’t give me something in the experiential sense, but it does give me something in the sense that rationality is important to me. And I think the only place where one can truly be rational is within a world of faith. Interesting.

[Speaker B] Of all the many things you’ve done over the course of your life, what are you most proud of so far? Something specific that you’re very proud of?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’d say maybe two… if you’re asking what the main thing is, maybe, that I see as something I’m proud of, or the thing that matters most to me that I’ve done, I’d say two things. One thing is really trying to present an orderly rational conception, not only of religious faith, but one that also uses religious faith in order to build a rational conception, or a rational way of relating to reality. And I tried to do that in a very systematic way, from the foundation to the top. Right now, very soon, I’m about to publish three books that try to present the full picture, really in its entirety, after all the shots in every direction. That’s one thing. And as part of that same issue, or part of it, there’s the struggle against postmodern winds, winds of skepticism, of relativism, of narrativism. And as part of that same issue, it’s trying to show that this is supposedly the other side of the coin, but it isn’t, as I try to show in several of my essays, that there is a logic behind softer thinking. The non-logical thinking in the traditional sense, but analogies, generalizations, all kinds of things that today people tend to treat as something subjective that has no real validity. I’m trying to build a logic, even on the formal level. Meaning, I wrote books and articles that try to develop a logic—not just me, with others, meaning as a group—we’re trying to develop an orderly logic of soft thinking, because my goal is to make everything rational, like I said earlier. So I think we’ve made pretty good progress there, and in that too I think I’m fairly proud. There’s still more to do, of course. Well, the issue of religionization in the education system and in society generally is a painful issue, and I don’t think we can exhaust it here. I’ll just say briefly, in a nutshell, there are problems here in both directions. There is absolute hysteria against this religionization, very far removed from reality. Very far removed from reality because basically there is an expectation among people for secularization, and the moment that gets disrupted they call it religionization. In my view, not teaching people religious conceptions—that is secularization. As long as I’m not forcing people, I’m not exploiting my position as a teacher, certainly not in the classroom, to preach something or persuade people, but rather to present the conceptions to them. In my opinion, I would expect someone who gives open education, pluralistic education, to want to present all positions. Now once you really try to present some position, you bring an example from a religious source, people immediately rise up against it. And in my view that’s insane hysteria. I think that in most cases it is completely unjustified. There are places where it is justified, of course, generalizations are always problematic, but in most cases it isn’t justified. As for what is happening in Israeli society generally, I do think there is a real problem. I think religion is too involved in running the state. I’m very opposed to that; I’ve written that in several places. Except that in my view, the ones to blame for it are of course the secular people, not the religious people. They do it, yes, and then they whine afterward. That’s the point. When there are elections for the Chief Rabbinate and there are candidates there who are more conservative—I don’t like this Haredi and non-Haredi labeling because it’s nonsense. It doesn’t matter at all who is Haredi and who isn’t. The question is what the mentality is. Is he conservative or open, more modern, and that does not necessarily overlap with Zionist versus Haredi. Zionist versus Haredi has to do with how you relate to the state, not necessarily how you relate to modernity. And it turns out that time after time, the more conservative rabbis are specifically the ones who get elected. Now the majority in the electing body is under the control of politics—secular control and Religious Zionist control. So the ones who elect the Haredi rabbis are the secular people. The ones who give power to the Chief Rabbinate are the secular people. The ones who make coalitions with Haredim and pass all these awful laws—awful in my opinion—are secular people. But what happens? The secular public enjoys whining. Meaning, it creates the whole situation for itself and then complains that the religious are forcing it, what they’re doing, and this and that. You’re doing it yourself, you’re the majority here. You’re the majority here, so abolish the Chief Rabbinate, shut it down—God willing they would have done it yesterday—shut down the Chief Rabbinate, stop the religious legislation, and open things up. But no, you make all kinds of coalitions and then you whine. Religionization and its destruction. I don’t have complaints against religious people—I do, but that’s an inter-religious or intra-religious discussion—that they think they have some kind of mission to spread religion, to influence people. I also have such a mission, by the way, but I don’t think they’re doing it correctly in this way. But that’s their agenda. The one who enables them to do it shouldn’t whine. That’s the issue in my view. The demand should be directed at secular politicians. Now I’ll tell you: people think secular politicians do this because of coalition considerations. In my opinion, that’s a mistake. It’s not because of that. There is something flawed in our religious ethos, all of ours, religious and secular alike. If a rabbi with a knitted kippah and sandals walks into the room here, people will relate to him like the guy who was with me in the paratroopers. I was in the army, this isn’t a real rabbi, this is a toy rabbi. Who is a real rabbi? A real rabbi is someone in a long coat who looks like my grandfather, or great-grandfather, looked. Right? Like the Jews of old. And the religious ethos that the secular public too carries behind its consciousness is a Haredi ethos. So if you want Judaism in the state, you’ll put a Haredi there. And afterward you’ll cry and whine and fight against him and say religionization, what do you mean, what is he doing to us, and where are the Reform people and where is the Western Wall and the gays and I don’t know what, and all kinds of things like that—after you put him there. You put him there because you’re not willing to change your religious ethos, even though you’re secular. But it’s like a good friend of mine says—he’s the head of the Yeruham local council today. He says, in Yeruham they tried to establish a Conservative synagogue. He says the people in Yeruham are Orthodox secularists. Meaning, they’re secular, but they would never in their lives go pray in a Conservative synagogue, only in an Orthodox one. The synagogue they don’t go to pray in has to be an Orthodox synagogue. They won’t not go pray in a Conservative synagogue. And in my opinion, that is the problem in this country. The moment they change the religious ethos—meaning, even if you’re not religious, the question is what your ethos is, what you see as authentic religion. If you’re willing to see as authentic religion also someone who is religiously liberal or religiously modern, then the religious world will also change, the religious world in our public sphere. But people today don’t change the internal ethos, and then they whine. So I’m not with them emotionally. I don’t pity them. I pity ordinary people, but those ordinary people need to express it at the ballot box. And if a person votes for a party like Likud or the Labor alignment, what they call today the Zionist Camp—they do exactly the same thing, there is no difference between them. If they’re in the coalition they’ll do exactly what Likud does. Everyone in the opposition cries, and whoever is in the coalition does exactly the same thing. The moment they know they won’t get votes if they do this, then they probably won’t do it. But if it isn’t important enough to the public, because the public keeps voting for all kinds of nonsense and not for the things that really matter, then it will continue. It will continue, and we will eat the porridge we cooked. My heart is not with them. Well, regarding the separation of religion and state, opening the marriage market, and so on—about that I’ve been speaking for many years, my view is already well known. Also in the press, there were interviews, it reached the courts, and it will reach the High Court very soon. I’ve been in favor of separation of religion and state for many years. I think, again, that the ones not allowing it to happen are the secular people, and my problem is with them and not with the religious people who don’t want to do it, because the secular people, again, are not allowing it to happen and then they cry about the fact that it’s not happening. I think, by the way, that what I want through this—and I think there is some healthy secular intuition in their not allowing it to happen—is that one could say in a certain sense it would be the end of secularity, separation of religion and state. Because then people would be standing in front of the hard mirror they don’t face today: in what sense am I Jewish if I’m completely secular? I speak Hebrew, I read Amos Oz, okay, a Druze person can do that too. I know a Druze man who wrote his doctorate on Uri Zvi Greenberg. He doesn’t define himself as Jewish, and rightly so—he isn’t Jewish—but what is the difference between him and his friend who did the doctorate with him? What’s the difference? That his mother is Jewish? A racist criterion, pure and simple. So in what sense are you Jewish? Now people are not willing to deal with this, and they get offended when they’re told they’ve forgotten they’re Jewish, because of all these famous statements. But they’re offended unjustifiably; they’re offended in a place where they have no real answers. And in my view, part of my desire to separate religion and state is not only because I don’t like coercion and I am strongly opposed to coercion, but also because I think it is very important to place people in front of a real mirror, not let them fool themselves, and let them examine their religiosity honestly. If they discover that they are with me or not with me, that’s their decision, but they’ll have to decide. And today I am some kind of fig leaf for them—I mean the religious public, yes?—some kind of fig leaf for them. We symbolize Judaism for them. They throw catapults at their Judaism, but still it fills some need for them, and because of that too they don’t let this separation happen. Therefore again, it’s not coalition considerations; there is something deeper here, exactly as I said in the previous answer as well. Regarding marriage, as part of the same matter, I myself married a couple outside the Rabbinate. As I said before, I’ve been calling for shutting down the Rabbinate for years; the Rabbinate is an anachronistic, corrupt, ossified, harmful institution, with almost no benefit whatsoever. But the secular people won’t let it be done—what can I do? The secular people and the Haredim in an unholy coalition, Haredim and national-Haredim, won’t let it happen, and afterward they whine as usual. So I conducted a wedding for a couple outside the Rabbinate, and today there are thousands of couples, including religious ones—a phenomenon people are less familiar with; there was a report about it on television too, where they interviewed me on the matter—many religious couples do not marry through the Rabbinate, because the religious public too is sick of them. It’s a corrupt body. It’s a body that mainly takes care of providing livelihoods for our own people. It’s a body where if something is discovered there they almost never deal with it, they deal with nothing. It’s a harmful body, one that contributes nothing to Torah and to real things. There are a few benefits here and there; it provides certain kosher certification services, and even there it tries in a forceful way to acquire a monopoly for itself and thereby does harm. It should be some kind of regulator over the field of kashrut, and that’s fine. Every field needs some regulation. But regulation is not supposed to dictate what is permitted and what is forbidden, only to ensure transparency. If you provide a certain kind of kosher certification, I want you really to provide what you declare. Someone else wants to provide a different certification? Fine, let everyone decide what kosher standard they want to eat by. As far as I’m concerned, let someone give kosher certification to pork, as long as I know there’s pork there and I can choose whether to eat it or not. In that sense I am a democrat with every one of my 248 limbs. Meaning, I truly and sincerely believe that a person should choose, and I oppose coercion in every sense, even though I would very much like everyone to eat kosher and marry according to Jewish law. As long as the Rabbinate continues, that will obviously happen less and less, so it doesn’t even contribute to that either. Even if it did contribute, I would oppose it, but it also doesn’t contribute. There is no reason for it except livelihoods for a few black-coated men, really. I’m simply angry about this issue, you can hear it. Yes, but that’s the truth.

[Speaker B] Maybe you could tell us the story of your marrying a couple outside the Rabbinate? How did you get to that? How did they ask you? What happened?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The truth is that a lot of couples ask me to marry them outside the Rabbinate, ever since that report on Channel 2, where they interviewed me. And afterward too there were videos, and all kinds of things, online and in the press, where my view on the matter became known. I don’t deal with it that much. I don’t deal with it that much because even within the Rabbinate I didn’t deal with it; I never cooperated with the Rabbinate, it doesn’t interest me, and I also don’t have time for it. Every wedding like that takes an evening; an evening is gone, I don’t have time for it. I’m very much in favor of it, and there are people who do it, and when people approach me, I refer them to those who do it. One couple were simply friends of my son, so they asked me to do it, and I did it there, and I married them with conditional betrothal, on the condition that this helps prevent the woman from becoming chained to the marriage if problems are discovered, giving the woman a way to be released if the husband is unwilling to do so—of course the Rabbinate [wouldn’t help]. But I told them that as a basic position, as I also wrote in the post where I published my orderly, detailed view, I also wrote that in my opinion one of the serious problems resulting from the pathological situation prevailing today is that people marry privately and do not register. And in my opinion it is very bad not to register. There is no legal system in the world that recognizes a married couple if they are not registered. Before a judge, in city hall—a person can be married to five women, a woman can be married to five husbands, children don’t know who is their brother and who is their sister, who inherits and who doesn’t inherit—it’s crazy. Meaning, legal regulation, regardless of Judaism and regardless of Jewish law, there has to be legal regulation of the institution of marriage. And what happens today, because there is religious coercion on this issue—with the help of the secular people, as mentioned—so what happens? People effectively recognize common-law partners. And then bigamy is created, of course. A person is married to two women. To one of them he is legally married and registered, and with the second he lives and she gets de facto legal recognition with all the rights. Then the arguments begin: so who inherits and who is the real spouse and who is not the real spouse, and the wife doesn’t always know about the existence of the partner or vice versa. And it creates insane pathologies. We’re trying to solve problems and we’re creating them. And really they should have opened this whole issue up, and if a person doesn’t want to, then doesn’t want to, let him live with whomever he wants, but why force him to live with two women? Or a woman with two husbands? Therefore I think this also solves halakhic and legal problems. But at the bottom line, today that is not the situation. There is coercion, and therefore one must create bypass mechanisms, work from below, fight against the system, try to smash it from below. So people need to be married privately. And as I showed, I think that on the legal level it can be shown that after the last amendment, which the Haredim and the Rabbinate were so happy about, it was a shot in the foot—they don’t even understand. In the end, the amendment to Section Seven, what is called the Marriage Ordinance, actually allows every couple to marry privately and then demand to be registered legally in the Rabbinate after they have married privately. Which in effect completely neutralizes the Rabbinate’s monopoly. That’s what I told the couple to try, and what I proposed to the couple I married to try to do. They are now trying to register. The Rabbinate of course rejected them; an appeal to the High Rabbinical Court also rejected them, of course, in a completely unreasoned way. These institutions have no connection to proper administration or working by any criteria whatsoever. In the end it will reach the High Court. The question is whether the High Court will be brave enough to come out frontally against this issue or not, I don’t know. Many times the High Court does not do that, despite the accusations made against it of excessive dominance. I hope it will, but I don’t know. My position is also complex on this issue. I am in favor of private marriage, but I think people should register afterward. They should register because there needs to be legal regulation regardless of my halakhic interest. And in that sense I think it is a serious social ill that thousands of couples marry every year—thousands of couples marry privately, I’m not talking about those who simply live together without marrying—they marry privately, not through the Rabbinate. Many of them marry according to the religion of Moses and Israel, they marry according to Jewish law, not through the Rabbinate, and they are not registered. And they are not registered, and in my opinion that is a very serious social problem. It creates children of forbidden status, it creates many things. We are completely losing control because of the desire to force all of us to marry through the Rabbinate and register in order to prevent these problems. Meaning, that desire creates the problems, as always.

[Speaker B] Actually, I’d be happy to hear some personal story, kind of your point of view in a more emotional sense, let’s say, or a story of how events unfolded—for example about the couple you married, really how they came to ask you, how the whole process actually went, or even a story about something connected to your children, about how each one of them spoke with you and got to a certain point, for example the secular one, how he got there, how it unfolded as a story from the standpoint of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If we’re talking about a story in the personal sense, maybe a little…

[Speaker B] Specific, but…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If we’re talking about a personal story, I’ll tell you perhaps about one of my sons. One of my sons, the oldest son. He actually studied in a Haredi yeshiva. I said that naturally he was the oldest, so he was already at the most advanced age among the children when we began making our changes, our change of direction. Now he was already in a well-regarded Haredi post-high-school yeshiva, meaning a good yeshiva. And at a certain point he told them that he was considering moving to a hesder yeshiva in Gush Etzion. Now they had a very hard time with that, because there are people who, as they call it there, deteriorate, yes. The Haredi equivalent of troubled youth, somewhat less common in the good yeshivot but there are such people—this is easier to deal with, because it doesn’t present a real alternative to the regular path. These are weak people, they won’t hold on, they’re on the margins, so it’s easy to label them, and they don’t pose a threat to the system. But when someone comes and says, I’m going to a hesder yeshiva, that poses a threat to the system. What, our yeshiva is surely much more correct, better, more just, on a higher level. How can it be that someone is looking for a yeshiva of a different type? Not a different yeshiva—a different type of yeshiva. And an uproar started there. They tried to persuade him and work on him, and they sent him to talks with rabbis, and how can this be, and so on. And at a certain stage they saw they weren’t convincing him, so they threw him out of the yeshiva. So I wrote a letter that eventually also reached the internet and became somewhat known. I wrote a letter to the spiritual supervisor. I told them, look, look at what you’re doing—where are all the beautiful exalted statements about how every minute of Torah study is important and every boy needs to be cared for? You’re sending someone home who threatens you ideologically, instead of letting him study Torah? Let him have the few months he still has to study Torah, and when he decides to leave, then he’ll leave, and study Torah somewhere else. Suddenly you no longer care about Torah study and every minute of Torah study? And in the course of that I also included a lot of educational problems that I see in the educational approach of the yeshiva, and that’s why it was published and many people asked my permission to post it on some website, after removing the names and the identifying specifics. And there I criticized Haredi education very sharply and the problems there. Among other things, for example, I used to come study with my son from Yeruham—that yeshiva was in Be’er Yaakov—I used to come study with him in the yeshiva once a week. At a certain point the spiritual supervisor approached him and asked him that his father not come study with him, which is actually one of the things that should make them happiest—that a father comes to study with his son in the yeshiva; people do that. Why? Because again they were afraid of the bad influences I would have there. There is a very great lack of confidence in the Haredi world. Very often dogmatism covers over some lack of confidence, whereas calmness and willingness to hear other opinions indicate that I am at peace with what I think. Meaning, I have some kind of confidence in the things. That’s one of the reasons why I felt I was no longer at peace with the Haredi direction. I was never entirely part of it, but we decided that we could no longer be there. There is a kind of lack of confidence there, and I don’t find myself there. I am completely at ease with what I think—not that I’m sure of everything I say, but with that itself I am at peace: that I’m not sure about the things I say.

[Speaker B] Personally, I’m very interested in this—I read that you spoke a bit about vegetarianism and things connected to that area. I’m a vegetarian, so it’s a bit close to my heart. I wanted to know what your opinion is on this subject, and really how it also fits with religion, since in a certain sense many people bring the argument of the superiority of human beings over animals, and supposedly use that against vegetarian or vegan ideology and so on.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, the truth is that this is the blessed influence of my youngest daughter, because vegetarianism and issues of vegetarianism and veganism and the treatment of animals is a topic that has become very present in our home in recent years, mainly under the influence of my youngest daughter, who is a very strong ideological activist in Anonymous. She even established one of their chapters in Lod-Ramla, and she’s active—it’s really in her soul. She rebukes us for not being enough, of course, on the right path. We’re weak, we admit that she’s right, but we’re not always strong enough like she is to do what really ought to be done. But we’re somewhat on the way, so for now we’re vegetarians, not vegans, but trying—free-range eggs, organic, not “free-range,” because “free-range” is almost the same thing. I even once found myself at a demonstration in Tel Aviv against live animal shipments. One of the activists there approached me and said, “Are you with us? Like, are you marching here?” I said to her, “Can’t you see?” She was sure I had simply passed by there by chance, because my appearance somehow didn’t seem to her to fit the scenery. So I told her, “Yes, I’m completely with you.” And the point is that really there were no religious people there, meaning that stereotype isn’t disconnected from reality. And the question is why. I think part of it is that this gets portrayed as some sort of alternative secular value system, and we are, after all, supposed to think that secular people have no values. How can it be that there are things in which they are right? That they can teach us something new? That they are better than us? It’s hard for a religious person to admit such a thing. Beyond that there is also a difficult ideological conception—it’s psychology, but there’s also a difficult ideological problem, because in the Torah there are commandments to eat meat on a festival day. That really does require some willingness for a certain interpretive creativity, not terribly far-reaching. There are subjects in which I’m a much bigger heretic, but yes, that’s why people really have a bit of difficulty with this issue. And they have difficulty with the fact that, for example, in this sense I actually identify with this concern about the superiority of human beings over animals. I really think there is a certain danger in losing the hierarchy between the value of a human being and the value of animals. I agree. But on the other hand that doesn’t mean that because of that I abuse animals. Meaning, those are two different things. So if people raised them in an appropriate way and not in the insane ways that happen today—which is unbelievable; people can only eat this because they don’t know what goes on there—then if we really come to a blurring between animals and human beings, that truly is a serious danger. But on the other hand, once David Enoch, I think, from the Hebrew University wrote that there is a slippery slope in using slippery-slope arguments. Meaning, a great many of our positions are fed by fears of slippery slopes, and out of too many fears we don’t do what is truly right because perhaps in the future there will be some distortion. We mortgage the present for some imagined future that may happen and then there will be problems. There may be problems; we’ll have to deal with them. But I’m not willing to mortgage the present for that. And if animals are being abused now, one should oppose it and one should try that it not happen, and at the same time one should know that there is a difference between human beings and animals and I don’t think it is right to blur it. And as long as it is not blurred, then yes, it is very important not to abuse animals. And if it is blurred, then we should oppose that. Like, to distinguish, people said after Rabin’s assassination—when Yigal Amir murdered Rabin, people said, you see where religious faith leads. There was such a voice in the public. What, do you expect me now not to believe in God because someone murdered Rabin? I believe in God—that’s a fact, it has nothing to do with whether this leads to murder or not. Does it create problems? Fine, then we need to try to deal with the problems, okay. But I don’t think consequentialist arguments, teleological arguments as they are called, are supposed to dictate what is right. What is right is right, and afterward one has to think about what to do with it. So if it is right not to abuse animals, then we do not abuse animals. And if that can create some problem of blurring the distinction between the value of human life and the value of the life of an animal, then one has to deal with that so it doesn’t happen.

[Speaker B] It’s encouraging for me personally to hear voices like that. I wanted to know who maybe certain figures are—perhaps people you met personally in your life, maybe, I don’t know, famous writers, famous philosophers, famous rabbis—who influenced you, perhaps, and in what way?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So many influenced me. I read an enormous amount in all the… you’re asking who, what figures of rabbis or philosophers or whatever, people influenced me? That’s a hard question because I draw, consciously, on many sources of influence. I read very, very much—literature, philosophy, and of course Torah literature of all kinds, living people and dead people—so many have influenced me. On the other hand, I’m very wary of idolizing human beings of any kind or stripe, and therefore I don’t see anyone as somebody I “follow,” so to speak; there is no such thing. But influences—if I have to identify dominant figures, Kant influenced me greatly, Maimonides influenced me greatly, the Talmud—which was created by many people but edited by perhaps somewhat fewer—is in my opinion a masterpiece of a text, truly a masterpiece of a text. People don’t understand how much, how amazing this text is. It influenced me very, very much. I live in it; my life is conducted within it. My secular life too is conducted within it, my philosophical and logical life too is conducted within the Talmud. I derive my logic from the Talmud, even though afterward there are implications in general logical worlds; the articles are published in logic journals that have nothing to do with the Talmud and nothing at all, but the ideas often come from there. I’d say those are more or less my sources of influence. All the rest—there are many influences here and there, you know, but central figures, I don’t know, that’s more or less it.

[Speaker B] Could you maybe share with us some harder moment, or sad, or I don’t know, frightening, or some kind of negative emotion, something dominant that you remember from the course of your life?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Actually, a personal matter—but not personal, almost personal. It became personal. Meaning, you’re asking whether there was some moment in my life that I remember as a moment that deeply affected me. Looking back—actually now that you ask, I’m thinking about it, it’s not something that… It was when Nachshon Wachsman was kidnapped and Sayeret Matkal broke in and Nir Poraz was killed there, and in the end Nachshon Wachsman too was not saved. That was a difficult moment for me. A difficult moment for everyone because people were killed there and the operation didn’t succeed. But for me it was a formative theological moment, one that influences me to this day in my writing, in many things. Because at a certain point I came to the conclusion—whoever remembers those days, there was a phenomenon there that I stood before in great astonishment. There was some kind of mass prayer by everyone: religious people, secular people, on the radio, at the Western Wall. Today maybe it’s more accepted or less surprising that people pray in various ways, but then, some years ago, it was more surprising. And it was fairly amazing, this thing; it didn’t usually happen. At that time the press was still more anti-religious than today; today it’s already more… it was very surprising. And when that prayer was not answered, something clicked for me that said: prayers are not answered. And the truth is I understood that even before, but suddenly it made it present before my eyes. And since then I’ve been writing—not since then exactly, but in recent years I’ve been writing quite a bit about this. It’s part of the reason I get all kinds of titles like heretic and Reform and all kinds of things of that sort, because I really claim that we have to put the cards on the table. Usually prayers are not answered. It’s convenient for us; people say there are no atheists in foxholes, yes? When you’re in a foxhole and they’re shooting at you, you always pray. But afterward when you get out of the war, in most cases you don’t become religious. The question is what you see as the authentic thing and what you see as weakness. So for religious people it’s convenient to see the prayer in the foxholes as the authentic thing, and the fact that afterward you got out and life was stronger than you, yes, that’s the weakness. I’m not sure that’s right. Meaning, I think the weakness is in the foxhole, when you pray and you don’t really believe, but there’s nothing else, so you try—if it doesn’t help, it won’t hurt. And that is also true for religious people. Religious people who turn to the Holy One, blessed be He, and say that everything depends on Him and everything comes from God—they don’t really believe that. I don’t believe in their sincerity. Meaning, most of them at least don’t really believe that, and rightly so, because it isn’t true. In the end, what happens happens because of what we do, not because of the Holy One, blessed be He. And of course this has implications—you can discuss the Holocaust and all kinds of other things, all kinds of accusations that people direct against the Holy One, blessed be He, undeservedly in my opinion. It has implications this way and that, but somehow I reached the conclusion, following that event—you asked about a specific event—following the event of Nachshon Wachsman, I remember that as a point that sharpened for me something that had already been forming before and formed much more afterward, and now I write about it and take flak for it, that we have to face reality. Meaning, one has to stand honestly before the facts. And now one has to formulate anew some kind of theology, some kind of stance before a God who turns away. Meaning, who doesn’t really answer prayers—maybe every now and then, I don’t know, you can never know, maybe every now and then it happens—but generally, in the ordinary course of things, it doesn’t happen. It’s an unpopular position and one that doesn’t fit the accepted religious tradition, but I think most of us are there. By us I mean most religious people; I’m not talking about secular people. Most of us are there, and if we don’t acknowledge it, it will only bring down more and more casualties, because people at a certain point come to understand that there is some dissonance in their worldview and they leave. They leave because they understand that they’re not there, and after all, a religious person is supposed to be there. And if you tell them a religious person doesn’t have to be there, a religious person can also be sober-eyed and has to understand what that means for his religious worldview, that opens an option for many, many people who feel—and in my opinion they are honest people—to remain within the religious worldview but in a sober way. People are terribly afraid of this because they fear it will break everything, but on the other hand that fear, as I said earlier too, in the end is what breaks things, or very often is what breaks things. And therefore in recent years I’ve been writing about this a lot too, and trying to build some sort of theology that will deal with this issue and still allow a religious framework of faith—I don’t know if accepted, but a framework of faith and religion that is more sober and thinner, in quotation marks, meaning with fewer dogmas that we were educated on and that I no longer really believe in. That’s it.

[Speaker B] Okay, I just want to go back to one thing from earlier that we talked about. Really the separation of religion and state and civil marriage and that whole issue—something that especially interested me to ask and somehow I missed it. In this place where you stand, of believing that religion and state should be separated and that there should be civil marriage—though people should register—but still some kind of marriages outside the Rabbinate, where do you stand on the issue of gay marriage and everything connected to many things we’ve been hearing recently—surrogacy, the conversion of a child—this is a bit of a…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, look, I have no boundary here. I’m completely liberal. Meaning, if someone wants to marry a telephone pole, as far as I’m concerned, that doesn’t bother me. Not that I’m claiming that marriage between gay people is like a telephone pole—I’m taking it to an extreme—but if they want to, then good for them. That comes from my liberal worldview. In other words, I’m a real liberal, genuinely, together with my religious worldview. From my perspective, I would very much prefer that this not happen, but on the other hand, if that’s what they think, then that’s what they should do. It will never be religious marriage or recognized by the world of Jewish law, because it isn’t. I don’t know about ever, but in the halakhic / of Jewish law world as we know it today, it’s impossible to recognize this, and I’m not calling to recognize it either. But precisely because of that, I think religion and state should be separated, and the state must allow it. A democratic state has to allow it, has to allow whatever people want. What business is it of yours who marries whom? If that’s what they decided, then that’s whom they should marry. And if it doesn’t seem right to me, at most I can try to persuade them not to do it, or they can persuade me not to do what I do. Fine. Free discourse is a good thing. Under no circumstances should the state interfere in things like that, and I think we should fight for that, even though I oppose gay marriage. Meaning, I think it is a prohibition, a severe Torah-level / of biblical origin prohibition. Fine—that’s in my religious hat. In my democratic-liberal hat, I will fight for their right to do it, and I don’t think there is any contradiction. There is no contradiction not because I’m against logic—I’m very much in favor of logic—but because people are mistaken when they think a statement like that is a logical contradiction. I can say that I like chocolate, I think you should eat chocolate because it’s tasty, and that it’s not right to eat chocolate because it makes you fat. There’s no contradiction. It’s both tasty and fattening. Now the question is what I prefer over what, but both sides are true. Now, I’m also liberal and I also believe in the religious worldview, so my arsenal of values is broader. I also believe in liberal democratic values—I really believe in them. Meaning, I think the Holy One, blessed be He, expects me to behave this way—and I also believe in religious values. And when there is a conflict between them, then the conflict has to be resolved, just as there is conflict within the religious world: saving a life and the Sabbath. Both are religious values, and conflicts can still arise in which I have to decide whether saving a life overrides Sabbath desecration or not. So for me this too is an internal value conflict—that is, a conflict between two values that both belong to my value-world. And therefore I think a person has to make his own decisions; the state has nothing to say about this matter. The state should remove its hands from these issues, whether it does so in favor of things I believe in or against them—and not only for the practical, consequential reasons, that if it does it for me today then tomorrow morning it will do it against me. Even if it would never do it against me, I still oppose it. I don’t want the state interfering in this. People need to make their own decisions. Look, there was once a group discussing the Kinneret Covenant. It was a covenant between religious and secular people. And they came to Yeruham—we lived in Yeruham then—and asked me to tell them what I thought about the matter. I told them: look, I would never sign such a covenant in my life. A covenant of dialogue between, or of granting mutual legitimacy between, religious and secular people. In my opinion, there is no legitimacy whatsoever to being secular; it’s a complete mistake. But if you want to study together, listen to one another, to the other side’s arguments, and in the end each person forms his own position, I’ll sit around the round table. Everyone can present his arguments; whoever is persuaded will be persuaded, and whoever isn’t, won’t. After that I’ll sign any covenant you want. I’m prepared to respect whatever decision you come to—whoever needs my respect; I’m not running the state. But if you want my legitimacy, you’ll get it. But if you want permission to remain an ignoramus, you’ll never get it. Meaning, if you want recognition for your path without having examined it seriously and reached that conclusion, I do not grant that legitimacy. Do whatever you want; it’s a democratic state. You don’t need my legitimacy. But legitimacy—I will not give. And my feeling is that very often this kind of dialogue between different shades in the population is dialogue done just to check a box. We’ll all shake each other’s hands, behave nicely and politely, listen courteously, no one will be convinced, and everything will be wonderful. Everyone will put out his wares, his interpretation, and everything will be fine, yes—some kind of Rabin Day in the square. It’s nonsense. I don’t take part in things like that. I don’t take part in things like that because I’m willing to participate in a place where we sit, listen to each other, try to persuade, and either succeed or don’t. It’s also possible not to succeed. Otherwise it’s just an exchange of opinions for the sake of the intellectual interest, which is nice, you can enjoy it, but I don’t see great value in it. And in this sense it’s a fine line, and I think it’s very important to convey it—precisely because I conveyed some real message here, not for the sake of some message of openness and respect and inclusion and liberalism and all that. I respect any position different from mine if it was formed responsibly and seriously, and you came to the conclusion that you disagree with me—I’m completely with you. Or you came to the conclusion that you disagree with me—I’m completely with you. But legitimacy for a position that comes out of ignorance, that comes out of not examining—whether religious or secular—I say this to both sides. There are also people who never seriously considered secularism and remained religious; I respect that to exactly the same extent—or disrespect it to exactly the same extent. It is not worthy of respect. I do not accept this kind of discourse. This is pluralistic discourse. I’m in favor of tolerant discourse, not pluralistic discourse. I once wrote an article about this, about the great difference between these two supposedly overlapping concepts. Pluralism means everyone is right. There’s no point in that kind of discourse. So everyone is right—why should I care? Tolerance means that I’m right and you’re wrong, but let’s hear what you have to say. Maybe you’ll convince me and I’ll be persuaded that I’m wrong. And even if not, I’ll persuade you, you’ll persuade me, we won’t succeed—fine. Then I’ll be tolerant toward you not because you’re right—you’re wrong—but I’ll respect your mistake because that is your conclusion. And I also know that I’m not necessarily right, yes? Meaning, clearly that’s in the background, because I’ve been wrong more than once in the past and there’s no reason to assume I’m not wrong now. But that I’m willing to respect, and that is the difference between tolerance and pluralism. I’m against pluralism, against it with a capital N. And I’m completely in favor of tolerance—but tolerance has a price; you have to earn it. Someone who worked to formulate his position will receive full respect, even if his position is completely different from mine. But someone who didn’t—I don’t respect that at all. That’s it, that’s the message to the nation. Excellent.

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מהתשובה שהרב הביא עולה שאין לנו סיבה לחשוב שההכרה שלנו לא מת...
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The Story of 70 – Rabbi Michael Abraham – The Story of 70 Full Interviews

Table of Contents

Summary

General overview

Biography and stages of identity

Military service and the choice of a hesder yeshiva

Religion, science, and rationality

Religious definitions, stereotypes, and his attitude toward labeling

Professional work: teaching, writing, research, and website

Science versus tradition, contradictions, and uncertainty

Attitude toward Reform Judaism and public discourse

Personal life, family, and the children’s paths

Lod as a mixed city and the experience of diversity

What draws him to religion and his criticism of atheism

Professional pride: a rational conception, struggle against postmodernism, and the logic of “soft thinking”

Religious influence in the state and blaming the secular public

Separation of religion and state, private marriage, and the rabbinate

A theology of prayer and the Nachshon Wachsman event

Civic liberalism versus halakhic prohibitions: gay marriage and democracy

Pluralism, tolerance, and legitimacy

Vegetarianism, veganism, and attitudes toward animals

Influential figures

The story with his eldest son and criticism of Haredi education

Full Transcript

השאר תגובהלבטל

Table of Contents

Summary

General overview

Biography and stages of identity

Military service and the choice of a hesder yeshiva

Religion, science, and rationality

Religious definitions, stereotypes, and his attitude toward labeling

Professional work: teaching, writing, research, and website

Science versus tradition, contradictions, and uncertainty

Attitude toward Reform Judaism and public discourse

Personal life, family, and the children’s paths

Lod as a mixed city and the experience of diversity

What draws him to religion and his criticism of atheism

Professional pride: a rational conception, struggle against postmodernism, and the logic of “soft thinking”

Religious influence in the state and blaming the secular public

Separation of religion and state, private marriage, and the rabbinate

A theology of prayer and the Nachshon Wachsman event

Civic liberalism versus halakhic prohibitions: gay marriage and democracy

Pluralism, tolerance, and legitimacy

Vegetarianism, veganism, and attitudes toward animals

Influential figures

The story with his eldest son and criticism of Haredi education

Full Transcript

שתף

השאר תגובהלבטל