Session 82: Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham – On Free Thinking and Religious Commitment: A Look at Authority in Halakha and Faith – Café Da’at – Free Public University

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So let’s move on. Basically, in the end, my initial claim is that not only is there no contradiction, but there is a very deep harmony between free thought and commitment in general, and religious commitment is just one example of that. I’ll maybe bring an example that I use in other contexts, because I think it sharpens the point nicely. There are several places, several articles written by a Jew named Ari Elon, the son of the late Supreme Court justice Menachem Elon, and there he makes—he himself is some kind of type, he became non-religious, some kind of, I don’t know what to call it, a secular rabbi or something like that—and in several places he speaks, he contrasts the rabbinic person with the sovereign person. The sovereign person is someone who legislates his own values for himself, and the rabbinic person is someone whose values are legislated for him by someone else or something else. And of course the subtext is judgmental. It’s not just a descriptive distinction, but rather the sovereign person is worthy of admiration, while the rabbinic person is not a model figure. I always wonder, when I think about that distinction, whether this criterion alone—that you legislate your own values—is enough to define you as a model figure. Right? So one example you can bring here is a person who legislates for himself as the highest value: to kill every third person on the street. Okay? He really is devoted to that value in an admirable way, he is willing to pay prices for its realization, and ostensibly, by Ari Elon’s criteria, this is a sovereign person in the fullest sense of the word. I assume Ari Elon too would not agree to present such a person as a model figure, because something is missing here. In other words, that person’s commitment to the values he legislates is indeed real, but the values themselves that he legislates are bad values. Sovereign commitment to bad values—I think that’s not something we would hold in especially high regard, and I believe Ari Elon wouldn’t either, if he knows him—but that’s my assumption. Why not? After all, the person legislates his own values and sticks to them, he is willing to pay prices to realize them, so why not? What’s missing here? Simply put, what’s missing is that these values are bad. Now I ask myself: what does it mean that they are bad? It means there is some criterion that does not depend on what I legislate or what I choose, some external criterion, let’s call it objective, that determines this is good and this is bad. Because if the criterion were what I myself determine, then every person who legislates a value for himself, by definition that value would be a good value, because it’s the value I legislated for myself. If we claim—or criticize—a person who legislates for himself a bad value, that means we are implicitly accepting, at least, some criterion or some measure that does not depend on that person’s legislation, and which determines what is good and what is bad. Now the question is: where does that criterion come from? What is its meaning? Where does it come from? What is the secret of its validity? In other words, what gives it validity? Why is that person obligated to conduct himself according to some criterion that he himself did not determine? The answer is—someone mentioned this earlier, I think—think, for example, in the factual context. Right, someone spoke earlier about the fact that we find ourselves compelled by facts, maybe it was in the chat, I no longer remember exactly where it was written in the chat, that we are compelled by facts, and those facts are imposed upon us. Okay, in that context I don’t think I would praise a person who ignores facts in the name of freedom. I am free, therefore I do not recognize the existence of facts or the validity of facts. That’s ostrich policy. If those are the facts, then those are the facts; you have to acknowledge them and see what to do with them. Also in the moral context, if I accept the assumption that there is some external, independent source of validity that distinguishes between good and evil, that determines what is good and what is evil, then ignoring it is a kind of ostrich policy. In other words, I am of course completely free to choose my own values, but I cannot determine which values are good and which are bad—that is given. In other words, murder is bad, helping others is good. That does not depend on what I decide. What does depend on me? What depends on me is the question of which of the values I choose to let guide me, or to which values I choose to be committed. That is a different question. Here I am a free person. In other words, there are two planes here that are fairly easy to miss, even though once you say it, I think it’s pretty simple. One plane is the question, or the very distinction, between good and evil. What defines good and evil? Who is the source of validity that can determine that certain things are good and certain things are evil? The second question is: who decides for me to which values I am committed, or according to which values I will act? On the second question, which is what Ari Elon deals with, I am completely with him. The only entity that can determine for me what I am committed to is me myself. That’s completely clear. A person who does not determine his own commitments is simply not a human being. In other words, it’s not just that I wouldn’t call him a committed person—he is not a committed person. He is obligated in the passive sense, obligated by someone else, not committed in the autonomous sense, in the active sense. Okay? A committed person, to my mind, is a person who decided upon commitment. But deciding upon commitment—and this is where Ari Elon is mistaken—does not mean that I am also the one who determines what is good and what is evil. What is good and what is evil is given. I can determine to which of them I will be committed, to good or to evil. That is a completely different kind of determination. And when you look at it this way, you see that this comparison, this linguistic-semantic sleight of hand between… between the rabbinic person and the sovereign person, is a distinction with no basis whatsoever. In other words, there are rabbinic and sovereign people, in Ari Elon’s sense, both in the religious world and in the secular world. Also in the religious world there are autonomous people who decide on their own to commit themselves to the religious system, and there are people who are driven into it by how they were raised in it, they are comfortable there, right, Marx’s opium of the masses. There are such people and such people. Also in the secular world there are such people and such people. There are people who decided that this is the path that seems right to them, and therefore they walk in it, and there are people who were simply born there and are comfortable there and that’s all, and therefore they are there. So I do not think one can make this parallel, this overlap, that he makes between rabbinic and non-rabbinic on the one hand, and sovereign and non-sovereign on the other. There is a rabbinic and sovereign person, a rabbinic and non-sovereign person, a non-rabbinic and sovereign person, and a non-rabbinic and non-sovereign person. There are four types of people, and all the types exist on every side of the map. So these comparisons are mistaken comparisons, but you have to pay close attention that these are in fact the comparisons underlying that feeling contained in the title of my lecture. That feeling that says religious commitment and free thought are mutually contradictory. And I say: not at all. Free thought—or free will, if you like; thought and will, at the moment I’m not distinguishing between them—these are my capacities, or my ability, to decide my own path. But that does not mean that I am the one who decides what is a right path and what is not a right path. That is something entirely different. Just as in the moral world I don’t think people would agree that a person can decide for himself whether murder is good or not. Murder is not good. A person can decide whether to murder or not, but he cannot decide that murder is good, because murder is evil. Okay? Exactly the same thing as in the secular moral world, if you like, also in the religious world—it’s the same thing. A person cannot decide that observing the Sabbath is good and not observing the Sabbath is bad; that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, decides. A person can decide whether he is committed to that system or not. Exactly as in the moral context. And therefore, just as we do not see moral commitment as opposed to free thought, so too I think it is incorrect to see religious commitment as something opposed to free thought; on the contrary. Free thought is the basis that can give meaning to religious commitment just as it gives meaning to moral commitment. Someone who arrives at these things not through free thought but because someone forces him, or because, I don’t know what, someone programmed him—however you want to put it, coercing him from within or coercing him from without—he is not committed, neither religiously nor morally; he simply is not behaving as a human being. A committed person is a person who decided to be committed. Someone who does not decide—then there is nothing to discuss in terms of this commitment or that commitment. And so it seems to me that first of all I want to clear off the table this feeling that accompanies many of us, I think, that free thought and religious commitment are mutually contradictory. That is really not true. And now let’s try to translate that a bit, to break it down a bit more into smaller change. Where does this idea come from? If it’s so incorrect, so mistaken, why is it so widespread? Where does it come from? It seems to me that it comes from a certain phenomenon that really does exist, mainly—though not only, but mainly—in the religious world, and that is the phenomenon of authority. I said this is my subtitle, that this is a look at authority. In the religious world we are used to the fact that there are concepts of authority. In other words, there is a halakhic decisor, there is a religious court, there is of course the supreme religious court, which has a very foundational role in the halakhic context, and therefore a picture emerges that a religious person is someone under the sway of certain authorities, external authorities, that determine for him what to do and what not to do. In the moral context, for example, the feeling is that there are no authorities there determining what is right and what is not right. A person has to decide for himself—and again, not determine. A person cannot determine what is moral and what is not, but a person does have to reach a conclusion—and that is not the same thing as determining—reach a conclusion, reach a conclusion as to what is the moral thing, and of course decide whether he is faithful to that direction or that value or not. And in that sense it is rare to think of a situation in which some moral expert would come and tell you what is moral to do and what is not—although you do hear that too, not infrequently. Every so often they interview some professor or another of ethics and treat him as though he were some kind of moral authority, the oracle of Delphi in the field of morality, which always amuses me. There are no authorities in the moral sphere. A person, of course—it’s worthwhile to listen to every wise person, it’s worthwhile to hear arguments this way and that—but that is in the sense of consultation, not in the sense of authority. A person cannot determine what the moral thing is and what it is not. He can enrich me with arguments this way, arguments that way, open my eyes to this implication and that implication. It is worth hearing every wise person when thinking about one moral issue or another. But authority is not that. Authority means that I am obligated to do something by virtue of the fact that you say that this is what should be done. That is the concept of authority. The concept of authority does not mean that I come and consult with you, you enlighten me, persuade me, and okay, then I understand that this is indeed the moral thing and therefore I will do it. That is not authority. On the contrary, that is an informed decision. Consulting wise people is always good, and in the end you have to make decisions. Authority is something that imposes itself upon you in some sense, and from here comes the feeling that in the religious world there is some special concept of authority that in some sense contradicts freedom, free thought, and my freedom to choose. From here, I think, comes that intuition with which I am trying to grapple here. So here I want to make a few comments about the issue of authority. First of all, I want to draw our attention to the fact that the concept of authority indeed exists in the religious world, and perhaps does not exist in the moral world, but it does not exist only in the religious world. The concept of authority also exists in the legal world. In the legal world too, the Knesset has authority to legislate, the court has authority to judge, the police has authority to arrest, I don’t know, to impose one sanction or another. In other words, the concept of authority is not foreign to a world that is not religious. It is not unique to the religious world alone. Therefore, first of all, if someone wants to say that religious commitment contradicts free thought, that is roughly like saying that civic commitment contradicts free thought. I am committed to the laws of the state; does that mean I am not a person who thinks freely, that my thought is not free? Not at all. I freely arrived at the conclusion that I am committed to the laws of the state, for my own reasons, from one consideration or another. I think it is good to obey, or proper, fitting to obey the laws of the state, and therefore I am committed to the laws of the state. But I arrived at that conclusion itself through free thought. Because if I had arrived there without free thought, only because of the sticks of the… yes, of the police, the policeman’s stick, or of the court, then that would not mean that I am truly committed; it would mean that I am being compelled, not that I am truly committed. When I speak about being committed to the law, it means that I myself recognize that the law is valid for me. I understand that when the policeman punishes me or the judge punishes me, he is justified. You know, I once saw in a book by Haim Cohen called The Law, he writes there—these are well-known things overall—he writes there that in Israeli law there is no prohibition against stealing. In the Israeli law books, what is written there is: the thief shall be punished thus and thus. It does not say that it is forbidden to steal. In a liberal conception there are those who explain this through the claim that a legal system cannot force upon us what is permitted to us or forbidden to us to do. I am a sovereign person, a free person, and I can decide for myself what is permitted and what is forbidden. The legal system can tell those who work for it what they should or should not do, namely: police, judges, and the like. It cannot tell the citizen what to do. To my mind this is a disingenuous interpretation, of course, because if the system can put me in jail, then I don’t see why it can’t say that I’m forbidden to do something. In other words, in the end the system still dictates certain aspects of my life. But still I want to draw attention to the distinction itself. The distinction itself says that there is a difference between saying that the thief shall be punished thus and thus, and saying that I am committed to the prohibition “Do not steal.” Those are two completely different things. To say that I am committed to the prohibition “Do not steal” means that I decided that I will not steal, even if there is no punishment, even if it is in deepest secrecy and nobody catches me and nobody puts me in jail, because I am committed to this value of protecting another’s property; I am not willing to steal. The claim that if I steal I will be punished—that does not mean that I am committed to the value against stealing; it means that the value is being enforced upon me, which is something entirely different. Now, it’s true that in a common meta-legal conception—common, maybe someone here will comment that there is such an instruction in the law, I’m not a jurist, but that was the situation then. It may have changed. In any case, what matters to me is the distinction itself. So I just want to say that the fact that someone forces me not to steal or punishes me for stealing does not mean that I am committed to the anti-stealing value. Right? Let’s take the opposite example. Suppose no law had been passed forbidding going through a red light. Okay? But still everybody would be careful to stop at a red light and go on green. In other words, factually, going through a red light would be dangerous. But there would be no law forbidding it. In that case, clearly it would still be unreasonable to go through a red light. In ordinary circumstances, right? A person should not take risks or endanger others or endanger himself. But there would be no prohibition here. And there would be no punishment here either. In that case, it would be pure commitment. Now, the legislator, like many other systems, does indeed think that one should help me a little with the issue of commitment. In other words, to impose sanctions on me if I do not stand within the realm of commitment. But in accepted legal thought, sanctions are not imposed unless there is some justification for the law. There has to be some justification. It cannot be that they would impose punishment for theft without thinking that theft is a wrongful act. And the fact that theft is a wrongful act is the justification for why the legislator allows himself to impose punishments on someone who steals. So long as the system is seen in my eyes as a worthy legal system, then I am committed to it in an essential way. But then I think many of us would not be willing to accept its authority. Again, it may be that by force he managed to impose it upon us, but we would not see ourselves as committed to his system. Okay? Commitment, even if it comes with a sanction, even if it comes with some enforcement system that helps us, let’s call it, to be committed, at its basis begins with my understanding that this is indeed how one ought to act. Because if it were not so, I would not be committed. I would be playing tag. He would try to catch me, I would try to run away, and if he succeeded then I’d be in trouble. But that’s not called commitment. Commitment means that I myself reach the conclusion that this system binds me, that it is proper to obey it. Okay? And again, I’m not saying that every law has a justification. There are laws I may disagree with, but there may be a general justification for the legal system. And the moment the system as a whole loses its justification, then indeed I think a reasonable person should stop being committed to it. Right? The Nuremberg trials—and we won’t get into Godwin’s law and Nazis and all kinds of examples of that sort, but I think here in this context it’s called for. Okay. So now let’s go one step further. I want to distinguish here between two kinds of authority in order to sharpen a bit more the gap that exists between religious commitment, and even authority, and freedom of thought. I’ll define substantive authority and formal authority. Formal authority is what I have described until now. Formal authority is authority granted to an institution or to a person by virtue of the fact that they are who they are. For example, the Knesset has formal authority. By virtue of the fact that it is the legislative institution, what it determines binds the citizens. Okay? So it has formal authority. Again, I can choose whether to obey or not to obey, but it has authority. The matter, in legal thought, is something one ought to obey. It is something binding. Right? That doesn’t mean I have no choice whether to obey or not. Every person has the choice whether to obey or not. Formal authority is authority granted to an institution or a person by virtue of his being such, regardless of the question of what the content of the command is. And the content of the command takes no part in the decision whether I accept it or don’t accept it. I decide to accept it simply because the Knesset legislated it. The Knesset legislated it; to my mind, it is valid. It is a valid norm. Okay? That is called formal authority. Substantive authority is authority determined through judgment. Therefore it’s hard to call it authority. Take, for example, the case of a doctor. A doctor recommends to me some medical procedure or some medicine. Okay? Am I obligated to obey him? Obviously not. I can choose not to take the medicine; nobody can force me to take the medicine. Whether that is proper or not proper can be discussed, but clearly I can choose otherwise; I am not obligated; there is nothing in the law or in any other system that obligates me to obey the doctor. On the other hand, my reason at least tells me that if I am not a doctor and I don’t understand these things, and he presumably does understand them, if he prescribed me this medicine, it would be advisable to obey him. In other words, it is advisable to take the medicine or undergo the procedure he recommends. Okay? With limitations, of course, not always, but generally. What—how should we relate to this concept? Is that also authority? So you can call it authority, but I would call it substantive authority. Substantive authority means authority that derives from the substance of the command, not from the commanding source. In other words, I need to be persuaded that this command is correct in order to obey it. I will not always be persuaded through understanding; sometimes I’ll be persuaded through the fact that the command comes from a doctor, and I have trust that this doctor understands what he is talking about. I’m not sure I need to understand exactly how the thing works in order to be persuaded. Most people who are not doctors do not understand a large portion of medicines or medical procedures, certainly not fully. But they will be persuaded that the person standing before them knows what he’s talking about and wants their good, and therefore they say, fine, reason says to listen to him even though I do not understand why this is correct. But notice: still, we are not talking here in terms of formal authority in the same sense I spoke about earlier. Because it is true that I obey him only by virtue of his being a doctor, but I am not obligated to obey him by virtue of his being a doctor. I obey him by virtue of his being a doctor because I trust that as a doctor he knows better than I do, so in the end I obey because I was persuaded that it is correct. Sometimes I am persuaded that it is correct by entering into the issue, studying it, and reaching the conclusion that it is correct. Sometimes I am persuaded that it is correct because the person standing before me inspires trust, and if he says so then it is probably correct. In both of those cases I obey the instruction, or the norm, or whatever you want, the rule, because I was persuaded that it is correct. And I contrast both of those cases with a law of the Knesset. The law of the Knesset I do not obey because I think it is correct. Although again, if it is extremely incorrect then there is conscientious objection and an illegal order, and I’m not getting into that right now. But so long as we are not at those extremes, I obey the law of the Knesset by virtue of the fact that it was legislated by the Knesset. Not because I have some indication that the members of Knesset are very wise and if they said it then they are probably right. If that were the basis, then it seems to me the default would be not to obey, unless proven otherwise. But the basis of commitment to the laws of the Knesset is by virtue of the fact that I recognize the Knesset as the valid institution, yes, it stands at the basis of the law, it has the right, the authority, to legislate laws, and this binds the citizens. So understand, this is a little similar to the doctor in the sense that in both cases I am not getting into the substance of the matter, but there is a very big difference here. Because with the doctor I am not entering the substance of the matter, but in the end I am still persuaded that what he says is correct, and only because of that do I do it. If I had some other source of information, another doctor, or I myself entered the issue and reached the conclusion that the doctor here is mistaken, it would never occur to me to obey him. He has no authority by virtue of being a doctor. Rather, his being a doctor is itself a consideration for me to be persuaded that what he says is probably correct. So in the final analysis, why do I do it? Because I was persuaded that it is correct. True, not through examining the thing itself but through the source who gave it to me, yet still I was persuaded that it is correct. That is substantive authority. In contrast, formal authority is authority where I do not check at all what it says. I fulfill what it says by virtue of the fact that it is the one that said it. There is a nice midrash in tractate Shabbat about the Holy One, blessed be He, before the giving of the Torah, that He went around to all the nations and asked them whether they wanted the Torah. There are also all kinds of well-known jokes about this. So He asks these and they ask Him what is written in it. He said, “Do not steal.” Not suitable for us. He came to others—what is written in it? “Do not murder,” “do not commit adultery.” Each found something else that did not suit him. And then He arrived at the people of Israel and they said, “We will do and we will hear.” So that heretic says to Rava: “A rash people, who put your mouths before your ears”—you put your mouths before your ears. First listen to what it’s about, and afterwards sign the contract. What is this blank check of “we will do and we will hear”? There are two conceptions here of accepting a normative system. Again, it’s all a midrash, of course, but what is the midrash trying to say? That when the Holy One, blessed be He, came to the nations, the nations, when they examined whether they were willing to accept the Torah, examined the contents themselves. They examined whether it makes sense: am I willing to be committed to this value system of do not steal, do not murder? It doesn’t suit me, so I’m not committed. The people of Israel accepted the system as a blank check. Why? That’s not stupidity, it’s not a rash people. Seemingly one could say that this is like my accepting the medicine from the doctor. But even that is not precise. There is something stronger than that here. In other words, the people of Israel accepted this system because they had some trust—indeed complete trust, as someone wrote here—in the Giver of the Torah. In other words, I fulfill the system even if I do not reach the conclusion that it is just in itself, by virtue of my commitment to the one who legislated it or to the one who commanded me in this matter. And that is formal authority. This parallels, say, the Knesset and not the doctor or the physicist or the professional expert or just persuasion of one sort or another. And in that sense it is formal authority. Formal authority is transferred from the Holy One, blessed be He, also to human beings. And there is, for example, the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin has formal authority. And therefore this is derived from the verse, “Do not deviate from all that they instruct you,” meaning there is a positive commandment and a prohibition, “according to all that they instruct you.” So there is formal authority here for the Sanhedrin. That authority is delegated to the Sanhedrin from the Torah. In other words, the basic assumption is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is of course a valid source of authority. Now He can delegate that authority to additional agents, like the Sanhedrin, for example. But that authority is given only to those agents to whom it was delegated. In other words, the conclusion that from here on every rabbi or whoever it may be who says something binds me—that is a very far-reaching conclusion. It has no halakhic basis whatsoever. Because in the end “do not deviate” deals only with the Sanhedrin. Why doesn’t that limit freedom of thought? As I said before. Exactly like the laws of the Knesset. In other words, there is some legislative institution, and I have the freedom to choose whether to obey it or not. Of course I’ll get hit for it if I don’t obey, as with the Knesset, as with civil or criminal law, yes, I get hit if I don’t obey. That does not mean the decision whether to obey or not obey is not mine. It does mean that under certain circumstances the system thinks it is worthwhile to help you obey by means of enforcement, sanctions, and so on. But that does not mean I do not have free thought in this context, even in this context of formal authority where apparently there is no discretion. I do have discretion as to whether to obey, whether I accept the system upon myself. Once I accept the system upon myself, I don’t see why it would be problematic to obey what it says even without understanding. I made the informed acceptance of the system when I dealt with the system as a whole. Afterwards, after I decided that what the Holy One, blessed be He, says is indeed worthy of obedience, now I do not have to assume what benefit laying tefillin has for me as a condition of being committed to it. I see no reason in the world why that should be the case. In other words, in the end it is completely rational to accept this system through trust in the Holy One, blessed be He, and consequently I can now do things even if I do not examine them on their own merits, like the “we will do and we will hear” of the people of Israel in that midrash, as opposed to the substantive examination that the nations tried to make of that same system before they agreed to accept it upon themselves. But beyond that, where can things still come into play more strongly—freedom of thought? First, in the question of how willing I am to accept, or how far I extend, formal authority. There is a tendency in recent generations all the more so to extend it in an exaggerated way. In other words, “according to all that they instruct you” has become a rather cheap coin. Every community and every group and every—I don’t know who—declare some so-and-so to be the leading sage of the generation, and “according to all that they instruct you” and “do not deviate” and so on and so forth, and they create some absolute obligation to obey his instructions as though this were some giving of the Torah at Sinai. As I said earlier, there really is room for formal commitment even to things not given at Sinai. But that commitment itself is based on a command given at Sinai, “do not deviate.” And that command, according to almost all the medieval authorities (Rishonim), except for Sefer HaChinukh, who says astonishing things, but all the other views—it deals only with the Sanhedrin. It does not deal with any other agent. Therefore, to transfer formal authority to agents that are not the Sanhedrin is, in my view, to lose by your own hands your autonomy and your free thought. That really is something one should not do. And therefore here I do in a certain sense join that feeling that there is supposedly a contradiction between free thought and religious commitment. I said it is not an essential contradiction. But someone who has free thought, I assume, will tend to reduce formal commitment as much as possible. And it does exist. I am not claiming that one should throw it away altogether because there is free thought. No, on the contrary. My free thought tells me that there is religious commitment and formal authorities. But I think: you have only the novelty where it applies. Where it exists, it exists; beyond that, it remains my decision. If I decide to accept a rabbi upon myself, that is perfectly fine. If I think I am not competent to make decisions, I go and consult a rabbi, or maybe even accept what the rabbi says because I do not have enough trust in my own ability to make halakhic decisions. But still, the decision is my decision. In the end, if the rabbi tells me to do something and I do it, I made the decision to rely on him. If he made a mistake—one of my teachers once said this to me in an interesting situation. I was in Bnei Brak in a yeshiva for people becoming religious, a young guy, I suppose age 25 or 26, something like that. And it seems to me that around then they founded the Degel HaTorah party, and Rabbi Shach was shouting there, vote, vote, so they would pass the electoral threshold. There was a very great concern there. And of course I announced that I was voting for the National Religious Party—which I don’t think I ever actually did—but I announced it there because I’m always the one who takes the opposite side. So I got—immediately, the next day, a messenger came from Rabbi Shach: Rabbi Shach is calling you. We had some connection with the family, never mind. He heard there was some hooligan who was going to waste his vote, so he called me. So I didn’t go, because I knew that if I came to him and he told me to vote, I would do it, so I didn’t go. In the end, of course, I voted as he said because I knew that’s what he would have told me. Today I think I wouldn’t do that. But afterwards—the story for our purposes—I went afterwards to the teacher there in the yeshiva and I said to him, tell me, what happens if I arrive in Heaven at the heavenly court, and then they say to me, tell me, why did you vote for Degel HaTorah? You should have voted for the National Religious Party—that was the correct vote. I asked this, yes, my rabbi was a Ponovezh type, so I asked him—just imagine the situation, right? I asked him, in the heavenly court they will say to me, what do you mean Degel HaTorah? The National Religious Party was the correct vote, and the question is whether now you will be held accountable for doing this foolish thing. So I asked him, tell me, if I say that Rabbi Shach told me to, is that okay? Am I covered? In other words, will they settle accounts with him, not with me? He said, what do you mean? They won’t settle accounts with him. That was surprising for me to hear, but what do you mean? You will be held accountable for it, because you chose the wrong rabbi. In other words, in the end the decision is your decision. Even if you decide to rely on an expert—you went to a doctor? The blame is yours, you chose a doctor unsuccessfully. Okay? In other words, in the end, to a certain extent—of course it’s not black and white—but to a certain extent responsibility is always placed on you. Even if you chose someone as your rabbi or as someone who gives you instructions, you chose him to be such a person, and that itself imposes some kind of responsibility on you. Therefore the first aspect in which I now qualify what I said at the beginning—notice the turn—at the beginning I qualified this matter and said that there is no contradiction between religious commitment or substantive authority—now I’ll call it, sorry, formal authority—and free thought. Now I want to say, fine, but there is tension. There is tension, and therefore one has to see how far to go with it, where exactly the boundary passes. I say: where there is authority delegated by the Torah, “do not deviate,” I say, very good, my free thought too reaches the conclusion that this is right. But where this does not exist, I will not be willing to accept formal authorities of agents who do not really have such a justification, who really have no source that gives them this authority. That I will not be willing to accept. Here free thought does come in, and I think that in a certain sense Ari Elon’s criticism of the rabbinic person as opposed to the sovereign person does have justification in those groups or regions where the concept of authority is extended beyond what is necessary. That really is some kind of removing the burden from one’s shoulders and an attempt to throw the responsibility and authority onto someone else in order to relax. Yes, Marx’s opium of the masses. In a certain sense religion is opium for the masses because you can be calm—someone else makes the decisions for you and you’re always right. Well, no. Human beings make the decisions, and human beings can make mistakes and can be correct, and in the end the responsibility also rests on you. Obviously there is contributing fault, and also if the rabbi did not do what he needed to do then he too bears blame, and if you chose properly then you are okay, all true, I’m not getting into the details. But broadly, in the end there is no such thing as responsibility coming off you. You chose something; the responsibility is on you. Think of extreme cases, when we think about, I don’t know, ISIS people like that, who do all kinds of insane acts. How does a normal person do such things? And I don’t think that all the tens and hundreds of thousands who were there were abnormal. So the way I understand it, they probably really do believe in it. What does that mean? Does that remove responsibility from them? Ostensibly yes—they believe in Islam, and Islam in its ISIS version tells them that this is what God demands of them. So then what do you want from them? The claim is that responsibility remains on the person even if he accepts an authoritarian system upon himself, because in the end he decided to accept that system upon himself. Responsibility never leaves you, including all substantive authorities and formal authorities and whatever you want. In the end, you are the one who decides that some agent or institution or person has authority over you, especially when these are human beings, because after all there is no divine command that any of us heard with our own ears. Neither the ISIS people, I assume, nor those sitting here—I certainly did not. What I heard was things that reached me through human mediation, with human interpretation, including me myself as listener. And human beings can always make mistakes. Therefore this absoluteness that always accompanies religious thought is indeed problematic, because that absoluteness basically assumes that responsibility has come off me. I’m not responsible, this is absolute truth, the Holy One, blessed be He, is responsible. Who told you He exists? Who told you that this is what He wants you to do? In the end, both of those are your decisions, not His, and the responsibility for them is on you. Therefore where you make an incorrect decision, the fact that you did it in religious circumstances does not remove all responsibility from you. Maybe it reduces responsibility, depending on the circumstances, depending on what—not important, I’m not entering again into gray areas, I’m focusing on black and white only to sharpen the point. That’s one aspect. The second aspect is extending formal authority beyond its valid boundaries, beyond the places where Jewish law itself—let’s return to Jewish law—beyond the regions where Jewish law itself gives some agent formal authority, and that means outside the Sanhedrin. Outside the Sanhedrin there is no formal authority. That doesn’t mean there are no authorities at all. After the Sanhedrin ended, and if you like also the Talmud—we won’t now get into the source of the Talmud’s authority, that is a problem in itself; there there was no semikhah and there was no Sanhedrin—but what then? Where do later authorities come from? The later authorities are substantive authorities and not formal ones. This is a very important point. Every local rabbi, every halakhic decisor, whatever you want, as great as he may be, there is no formal authority after the Sanhedrin, period, there is no such authority. What there is is substantive authority. He functions as an expert. Just as the doctor is an expert in his field, so you can ask the halakhic decisor what the Jewish law is in such-and-such a case, and if you trust him and he is an expert in this matter, then what he says is probably the Jewish law, just as what the doctor prescribes you is probably the medicine. So this too is some concept that perhaps can be called authority, but it is substantive authority and not formal authority. In other words, I accept it because I was persuaded that it is correct, not because he said it. No, I do not accept it because he said it; I accept it because I decided that it is correct. Sometimes I decided because I studied the issue on its own merits, and sometimes I decided because I rely on a halakhic decisor who seems to me skilled and knows the work and is God-fearing, and therefore what he says is fine, it seems correct to me. Still, that is my decision. Unlike the Sanhedrin, where I have to obey regardless of my decision. Okay? So there is a difference between formal authority and substantive authority. The authorities that exist after the end of the era of the Sanhedrin and semikhah are only substantive authorities; there are no formal authorities in Jewish law. And anyone who creates formal authority in Jewish law after the Sanhedrin, in my view, harms free thought or human autonomy. Free thought—again, slightly different definitions—but the person’s autonomous decision. A religious person should be autonomous no less than any other person, and maybe more. And your autonomy is expressed in the fact that you decide where and what to do. Even if you accept an authority upon yourself, you make the decision who that authority will be and to what extent to accept it, and to exercise some controls so you don’t end up becoming some ISIS person or something like that. In the end, the responsibility is on you. You can share it with someone else, but you cannot take it off your shoulder. Another point where there is also some tension and one has to pay close attention—this isn’t just some tension; here I’ll say something even categorical. In the context of religious belief one can—not only in religious belief, but also there—divide between two kinds of determinations, two categories. Here I’m saying something categorical. In the context of religious belief, one can—not only there, but also there—divide between two kinds of determinations, two categories of determinations: normative determinations and factual determinations. Normative determinations are Jewish laws. It is forbidden to sort on the Sabbath, one must honor parents, it is forbidden to eat pork, and things like that. Those are normative determinations. There are factual determinations. Factual determinations are, I don’t know, for example: there is a presumption that a person does not repay a debt before its due date. That is, the assessment that a person who owes you money will not repay you before the due date arrives. A person does not part with money just like that. If he can keep it with him a bit longer, he will keep it with him. Okay? Or the presumption that it is better to dwell as two than to dwell as a widow—that is, that a woman prefers to have a partner even if he has not insignificant flaws, because she prefers partnership to being alone. Okay? That is a reality-assessment that appears in the Talmud, but it is an assessment of reality. It is a factual statement. It is not a normative statement. Okay? And so on. There are many other factual statements. By the way, also, for example, if—I don’t know—the belief that the Messiah will come. That too is a factual claim. There is a factual claim: the Messiah will come someday. A factual claim. The claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, providentially oversees the world—is that norm or fact? That is fact. A fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, oversees. A fact that may be true or may not be true, but the claim is a factual claim. Categorically, it is not a normative claim, it is a factual claim. What I want to say is that claims in the religious context are divided into two categories: normative categories and factual categories. Formal authority can be defined only and exclusively with regard to normative claims. You cannot define normative authority—formal authority—over factual claims. What does that mean? For example, if the Sanhedrin tells me—let’s say it has formal authority—that it is forbidden on the Sabbath to separate waste from food. Okay? And I claim, what are you talking about? Separating food from waste is forbidden; separating waste from food is permitted. I have an interpretive disagreement with them. This disagreement is a normative disagreement, a disagreement over what is permitted and forbidden. In such a disagreement one can demand that I obey even if I am not persuaded that they are correct. Why? Because they are the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin has formal authority. We said formal authority is authority that binds me even if I am not persuaded that the content is correct. It binds me, or at least can bind me. That doesn’t mean that in normative contexts anyone who tells me something I have to obey; rather, in normative contexts one can define formal authority. For example, the Sanhedrin—the Torah defines formal authority in the normative context. But in the factual context, even if the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, stood here and shouted together that in the factual context there is formal authority, I would not accept it. Why? Because it is simply not conceptually defined. It’s not that the Torah did not give it—you know, in Maimonides, in three places in his Commentary on the Mishnah, Maimonides says that there is no halakhic ruling in matters not relevant to practice, in matters of thought, in matters of interpretation, never mind, in one such area or another. There is no halakhic ruling. People generally understand Maimonides to mean that Jewish law or the Torah did not grant authority in those areas, and therefore there is no authority. I think that is not correct. There cannot be authority in those areas; it is not that by chance the Torah did not grant it. Even if it had granted authority, I would not accept it. There is no such thing as formal authority in the factual context. Why? I’ll explain why. Understand, this is a conceptual claim, not a factual one. You can’t argue about it; that’s what I want to say. It is simply the result of conceptual analysis. Let’s try to think. Suppose I reached the conclusion that the Messiah will not come. Right? I’m in good company. Rabbi Hillel in tractate Sanhedrin said, Rabbi Hillel said: “Israel has no Messiah, for they already consumed him in the days of Hezekiah.” And then the Talmud says: may his Master forgive Rabbi Hillel. In other words, may his Master—the Holy One, blessed be He—pardon him for the mistaken conclusion he reached, and still he is Rabbi Hillel. He still gets called Rabbi. Nonetheless, he denied the coming of the Messiah. Fine? He said in the days of Hezekiah he was supposed to come, they missed him, and that was it, he’s gone, no Messiah will come. Now suppose I reached Rabbi Hillel’s conclusion. I reached the conclusion that it is not true—the Messiah will not come, all kinds of things. Now can people come and tell me that the Sanhedrin determined that the Messiah will indeed come, and therefore you have to believe in the coming of the Messiah? I claim not. Why? Because what does it mean, you have to believe? If you persuaded me—because I reached the conclusion that the Sanhedrin are terribly wise, or because the arguments themselves persuaded me, it doesn’t matter, in either of the two forms of persuasion I spoke about earlier—either through the authority of the Sanhedrin, that I reached the conclusion that they are terribly wise and understand Messiah matters better than I do, they are experts in Messiah affairs, or because I was persuaded by their arguments—they simply put arguments before me and I was persuaded. So then I was persuaded. Then that is not formal authority; I was simply persuaded that it is true, and therefore now I believe in the coming of the Messiah. But suppose they did not manage to persuade me. Neither the arguments nor the authority, the intellectual and spiritual charisma of the Sanhedrin. Fine? They did not persuade me. I still think that the Messiah will not come. So what is the meaning of this demand to believe that the Messiah will come because the Sanhedrin said so? What do you expect me to do—say with my mouth that the Messiah will indeed come although I think he will not? Do you expect me to think what I do not think? There is no meaning to such a demand. Did I reach a conclusion? Then that is my conclusion, that is what I think. What? You cannot demand that I think something that I do not think. You can demand that I say something that I do not think. I don’t think there is much point in such a demand, but at least conceptually I can understand that. You can demand that I move my lips. Fine. You cannot demand that I think something I know is not true. I cannot do such a thing. I will not think it, even if I tell you that I think it. After all, the fact is that I do not think it. And this is my claim: that in matters of fact it is impossible to define formal authority. There is no such thing. In matters of fact, along comes—the Talmud says in tractate Chullin, one amora in an argument with another says: by God, if Joshua son of Nun himself had said it, I would not obey him. Even if Joshua son of Nun were to arrive here, right? The foremost prophet after Moses our teacher, and he arrived here and said such-and-such is the Jewish law, he says: I would not accept it. Why? Because I am certain he is mistaken. In other words, in places where I have reached a certain factual conclusion, it is impossible to accept substantive authority—and there is no obligation to believe in the thirteen principles, someone commented here—not true. There is no such obligation, and there cannot be such an obligation. There is no obligation to believe. An obligation to believe is an oxymoron. What is an obligation to believe? If you persuade me, then I believe. Again, you do not have to persuade me of the content that the Messiah will come through arguments showing how the Messiah will come. You can persuade me that the Torah was given and that the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote this in the Torah and He, after all, knows. Very good. Even ad hominem arguments, about the person, I am prepared to accept as persuasive arguments. But in the end you will have to persuade me. If you do not persuade me, then what does it mean there is an obligation to believe? What is called an obligation to believe? Either I believe or I do not believe. This phrase, obligation to believe, is an oxymoron. There is no such creature. Here, for example, there is a very strong clash between free thought and religious commitment. Here I do not even qualify it. In the normative sphere I qualified it and said, on the contrary, free thought is at the foundation of religious commitment. True, one can qualify it and say… but do not extend formal authority beyond the boundaries that the Torah defines for it. That is all in the normative sphere. In the factual sphere there is no such creature as authority. There is none. You can say that this man, Maimonides, was so wise that if he said the Messiah will come then surely the Messiah will come. Fine. If that is what you think, then you were persuaded that the Messiah will come. You were persuaded through Maimonides’ authority and wisdom, whatever, legitimate. Just as I am persuaded that if the doctor prescribes me a medicine then it will probably work, or at least with a higher probability than if I do what I think. Okay? Fine? Completely legitimate. But that means you were persuaded. It does not mean Maimonides has authority over you. That is substantive authority, not formal authority. It is authority like a doctor, not like a legislator. Not like the Knesset or the Sanhedrin. Therefore in this context, when people determine positions in factual matters according to criteria of authority, here it really does contradict free thought. This criticism I accept in matters of fact. I think there is no room for such a thing whatsoever. A person must form a position in an entirely free way. Not “must”—that is what he does anyway. He can deceive himself. It isn’t even a matter of must. That is what it means to form a position. To form a position means to reach a conclusion. That is called forming a position. Now what does it mean to reach a conclusion? If I was not persuaded, then my conclusion is not X, if I was not persuaded that X, right? So what does it mean you have to form the position that X? What does “have to” mean? Persuade me and I will form a position. If you do not persuade me, I will not form a position. Therefore, for example, this has fairly far-reaching implications, one has to understand. That is, it has far-reaching implications for my acceptance of this tension. I do accept the tension that exists between religious commitment and free thought, at least in the factual context. In that I fully accept it. In other words, if, for example, there is a prohibition “do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes,” right? Then the Sages and later in Maimonides it is ruled, yes, by all the decisors—and in Maimonides it is certainly written—that it is forbidden to read even books of idolatry and heresy lest we be persuaded by mistaken thoughts. I do not accept this prohibition. Such a prohibition cannot exist. Even if the Holy One, blessed be He, stood here and told me this, I would not accept it. Simply because the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot tell me that a triangle is round. A triangle is a triangle; it is not round. There is no such thing. Therefore I am also certain that the Holy One, blessed be He, will not appear and tell me this here, because it cannot be; it is a logical contradiction. But on the principled level I am not willing to accept this from anyone, from any authority, from anywhere—not from the Written Torah, not from the Oral Torah, not from the Holy One, blessed be He, and not from anything. It cannot be that there is a system obligating me to accept it without examining the system itself. It is simply an oxymoron. In a place where I need to weigh considerations and hear arguments in order to reach a conclusion as to which system I hand over my commitment to, then clearly all the possibilities have to remain open. I need to examine it. It cannot be that a system comes to me with demands by virtue of commitment when the commitment has not yet been created. It is like the question asked about Maimonides: in positive commandment number one, Maimonides says there is a positive commandment to believe. So the medieval and later authorities already wondered about this matter. What does it mean, a positive commandment to believe? If you do not believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, then who commanded you this commandment? After all, so long as you do not believe in Him, then for you there is as yet no commandment, so how can the concept of commandment exist in the absence of a commander? The concept of commander precedes the concept of commandment. So how can there be a commandment to believe? But I am making a much more far-reaching claim. I am claiming not only that a commandment to believe in the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, is impossible; no commandment to believe in anything factual is possible. There cannot be a command that commands me to adopt a fact. There is no such thing; it cannot be. There can be revelation. The Holy One, blessed be He, can reveal to me that the Messiah will come. Fine, He can reveal it to me. And if I am persuaded that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows and that this is indeed what He said, then I will be persuaded that the Messiah will come. He cannot command me to believe that the Messiah will come. It is simply ridiculous. So therefore in the factual context at least, I absolutely accept this tension between free thought and authority. So if I sum up, because we are already approaching the end of the frontal part, I want to say this: I distinguished between the normative sphere and the factual sphere. In the normative sphere, in principle, one can define both formal authority and substantive authority. Like with the Knesset: it determines what the law is; it does not determine for me that today is night—it cannot determine that today is night. What it can do is determine that this is the law. This is what I need to do, not what I need to think. The Knesset cannot—even the Knesset cannot force me to think that its law is correct. Even that it cannot force me to do. What it can force me to do is obey the law. And yes, the same with the Sanhedrin. That is called formal authority. Formal authority is defined only over norms. And even there I still have responsibility. I accepted this formal authority upon myself in this particular interpretation through this institution or this particular person, and therefore responsibility was not removed from me completely. That is in the formal context. In the factual context, it is not that I accept it with reservations—I do not accept it at all. There is no such thing as free thought with religious commitment in the sphere of facts. There is no such creature. There is no such thing as religious commitment in the sphere of facts. What can exist is substantive commitment, not formal. But if I reach the conclusion that the Holy One, blessed be He, was revealed at Sinai and that He is all-knowing and all-powerful, and that what He told me is indeed this thing, and not some invention of one interpreter or another, but rather that this is apparently what He said, okay? Then I can be persuaded that it is true. No worse than a doctor who prescribes me medicine and I think he knows better than I do. But that is substantive authority, which in the end is based on the fact that I was persuaded. But formal authority—even the Holy One, blessed be He, does not have that. Not because He lacks something, but because there is no such thing as formal authority over facts. There simply is no such thing. The Holy One, blessed be He, also cannot create a wall that stops all shells and a shell that penetrates all walls at the same time, right? He cannot. Why? Because there is no such thing. If there is a wall that stops all shells, then there is no shell that penetrates all walls. Just as there is no round triangle. In the same way, there is no obligation to accept a fact. An obligation to accept a fact is like a round triangle. It is the same thing. There is no such thing. Either I was persuaded, or I did not accept the fact. What does it mean that I am obligated to accept the fact although I was not persuaded? I can be obligated not to sort on the Sabbath even though I think cognitively that it is permitted to sort on the Sabbath, because the Sanhedrin said so and they obligate me to refrain from sorting or to do something. But one cannot obligate me to think what I do not think. Here, not even with reservation; here I think categorically I do not accept any connection or harmony between religious commitment and free thought. Okay, we’ll stop here, and maybe open it up for discussion.

[Speaker A] Thank you very much to Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham, fascinating. I said it, I promised. And your invitation to join us. So anyone who wants to ask a question, just raise a hand and give me some sign that you want to ask. Gideon, want to start? Don’t be shy.

[Speaker D] I’m still thinking about what was said. The lecture is fascinating; it really requires a bit of thought.

[Speaker A] All right, Rabbi Michael, you can also respond to questions in the chat if you want.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, it’s just hard for me, so I suggest that whoever wrote something in the chat just bring it up here in audio, because otherwise I’ll miss it.

[Speaker A] Shira, briefly, a question. Shira Pintzer, a brief question please.

[Speaker E] Yes, Pintzer. Hello Rabbi, thank you. This really is a big topic. It seems to me you didn’t address the place I’m asking about, namely where the side of the Jewish laws is that are basically time-bound—well, actually, I’ll start with what I asked in the chat. First of all, if something is a fact, then there isn’t much choice in it, so I didn’t really understand that distinction either—what counts as formal, what as normative, and what as essential, and the differences between them. And also, basically, I have a question about things considered social norms—are they just general statements, or are there practical Jewish-law implications that derive from them when there really are social changes, changes in norms, Jewish laws

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that derive

[Speaker E] from social norms that can change?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll answer briefly. As for facts, maybe there’s no choice in the usual sense, because choice is between values, but there is judgment. For example, regarding the coming of the Messiah, there are those who accept it, say, and those who don’t. Even though that’s a fact—either the Messiah will come or he won’t—and that’s a future fact, but it’s still a fact, okay? So there is definitely some room here for judgment, where someone might come and say: fine, but whoever doesn’t accept this is a heretic, and therefore everyone has to accept it. I claim that this is not—that’s an inconsistent statement. You can’t demand that someone think something specific. Even though this isn’t about choice but more about judgment, there is a similarity between choosing values and exercising judgment about facts. Regarding changes of circumstance and social norms, I’ll ask an even harder question: why go to those minefields? There are much bigger minefields. What happens with clear factual determinations that turned out to be wrong? Forget social norms—like women used to be such-and-such and today women are different, or non-Jews used to be such-and-such and today non-Jews are different; those are discussions one can perhaps debate. But leave that aside: it says in the Talmud that one may kill a louse on the Sabbath. Right? Why? Because a louse is not born from male and female. That’s what the Talmud says. Now today we know that a louse is born from male and female. As far as current biological knowledge goes—at least as far as I know, this isn’t my field, but that’s what it seems to me, at least from what I understand. So what do I do with something like that? I claim that this Jewish law is null and void. That Jewish law is based on a mistake; you don’t even need a Sanhedrin to nullify it—it’s simply null. Now that Jewish law is, of course, relatively easy to nullify, although even there almost no one is willing to nullify it in the history of Jewish law, and there have already been discussions about this matter, but it’s relatively easy because this is a stringency. After all, what I’m now claiming is that one must prohibit killing a louse on the Sabbath; the Talmud permits it. So I’m allowed to prohibit something the Talmud permits—fine, not terrible, I won’t be entering into Sabbath desecration even according to those who uphold the Talmud’s ruling. But I claim that the same would apply in the lenient direction too; it doesn’t matter. Meaning, once a ruling is based on a halakhic statement—on a factual statement—that is clearly wrong, it’s like a mistaken transaction; it wasn’t decided with that understanding in mind. They were simply mistaken, that’s all. It’s not the same thing—why did I say this is even stronger than changed circumstances? For two reasons. Because with changed circumstances, say the status of women, since these questions come up a lot nowadays, there are two things there. First, there’s a dispute whether things really changed and whether what changed is relevant to the Jewish law in question—that can be debated. Second, even someone who says that it changed still agrees that at the time the Sages established it, that was the reality; only today the reality is different. So here I can no longer say that the ruling was originally based on a mistake and is therefore void. Because, for example, with the louse, what I’m claiming is that already then, when they made that ruling, it was based on a scientific error. They didn’t know it, fine, nobody knew it then, but today we do know it. So from my perspective, a ruling that was never based on something true is simply a mistake. But a ruling based on circumstances that really did prevail at the time, only today the circumstances have changed—even if we assume the circumstances really did change, let’s leave that dispute aside—that’s what is called: when the reason lapses, the enactment does not lapse. Here there is a major problem of changing Jewish law, and it’s a question of authority. There are rules in Jewish law for how Torah-level and rabbinic laws are changed, even where the basis for those laws has clearly changed. Still, that doesn’t mean—you can’t just get up and do it; the Great Court has to convene and declare that this Jewish law has changed. Now, in my book, in my trilogy, in the third volume, I deal quite a bit with changes in Jewish law, and there I talk somewhat about mechanisms that we have even today, even without the Great Court, for doing such things. But there it’s already a non-trivial question; it requires a discussion of its own.

[Speaker A] Yaakov, I saw your hand, but first Mrs. Yael David, please.

[Speaker G] Hi, and thank you, thank you very much, it was fascinating.

[Speaker A] Yael, your question, Yael.

[Speaker G] Yes, I hear a lot in what you’re saying; I connected very much to the topic of the oven of Akhnai, and then I understand that a heavenly voice does not decide, and the walls of the study hall do not decide, and the water channel does not decide. Meaning, a person is convinced, but in the end “follow the majority”—that’s your conclusion? That is, from the standpoint of Jewish law, no matter what my opinion and conviction are, in the end my obligation is—or the Jewish law follows Hillel, or the Jewish law follows Rav—in the end I still have to go by that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll say this: the connection to the oven of Akhnai is actually fairly tenuous to what I’ve said so far. Because in the oven of Akhnai, this is an internal halakhic dispute, a dispute among Sages who are counted and vote, and in the end follow the majority. And there the dispute was which majority one follows and what, whether a majority has significance against tradition—Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua and so on. But in the cases I’m talking about, in the factual context there’s nothing to discuss at all; the majority carries no weight whatsoever in a factual context. From my standpoint, the assumption is that if the majority says something, it’s probably wrong unless proven otherwise. Meaning, if anything, I would use the criterion that usually the minority is right on factual questions—but that’s half a joke. But in any case, the oven of Akhnai definitely does not touch factual questions. The oven of Akhnai is a dispute within the methods of halakhic decision-making. And there are methods of halakhic decision-making. In the Sanhedrin they vote; there is majority versus minority; so the rule is “follow the majority,” and that’s what obligates. And I’ll add that even there—even after the decision is made, and there it’s formal authority—once the Sanhedrin ruled, it is binding. A halakhic ruling is like the Knesset, okay? The Knesset also votes, and the majority decides.

[Speaker G] But once you have a rule that guides you—for example, that the Jewish law follows Hillel, or

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the majority,

[Speaker G] the Jewish law follows Rav—then you can think whatever you want, but in the end—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not precise. The question is where that rule comes from. Who said I agree with that rule? The question is how that rule is interpreted. I can bring many rules and show you that there are different interpretations; the medieval authorities themselves go against clear rules of decision-making. The Jewish law follows Abaye against Rava in six cases, and in all other passages the Jewish law follows Rava. Maimonides rules in several additional laws like Abaye.

[Speaker G] But doesn’t that create the danger of sects? I didn’t understand. Doesn’t that create the danger of sects?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Danger—yes, there are dangers. What can you do? That’s life. And today there’s no danger of sects? When there is no Sanhedrin and there are a hundred opinions and no one can decide for anyone else—so what do you do? I think one of the greatest characteristics of the Babylonian Talmud is that even when they decided to create a canon, yes, some sort of corpus that receives canonization, they didn’t do it in the form of a Shulchan Arukh, some collection of legal rulings of what to do in every situation; rather they did it in the form of give-and-take. And you see that throughout the generations Sages disagreed and acted differently, and everything was fine. Fine, sometimes people fight, and that’s good—without fighting, life is dry. But there is a framework within which we argue. Because our canon is a canon of give-and-take, not a canon of bottom-line conclusions. And I think that reflects far-sightedness on the part of the redactors of the Babylonian Talmud, those who sealed the Babylonian Talmud as the framework for discussion. Therefore even if you bring me a hundred rules, for every rule I’ll offer you ten interpretations and circumstances in which one can depart from it; and this illusion that one can proceed by rules is just an illusion. Anyone who knows a bit about how Jewish law works knows it doesn’t work by rules, and even someone who presents his rulings as based on rules—it’s not—

[Speaker A] really.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One second, just one more sentence. Beyond that, one only has to know: the Talmud at the beginning of tractate Horayot speaks about someone who errs regarding the commandment to heed the words of the Sages. Meaning, even where the Sanhedrin ruled, if there is an elderly Torah scholar qualified to issue rulings, and he is certain that the Sanhedrin is mistaken—there is a dispute among the medieval authorities about how and when, I’m not going into all the details now—there are circumstances in which he need not obey them, even the Sanhedrin, since it is clear to him that they are mistaken. Now, he cannot teach this to others, fine, there are all sorts of limitations.

[Speaker G] Is Akavya ben Mahalalel an example of that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sorry, I didn’t hear again?

[Speaker G] Is Akavya ben Mahalalel an example?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Definitely a possible example of that.

[Speaker A] Yaakov from Iceland, your question please.

[Speaker H] Okay, honorable Rabbi, I wanted to ask whether one should relate to a decisional ruling in an absolute way when it concerns the leading sage of the generation, the leading sage of the generation, and whether there is such a thing as the leading sage of the generation in a world without a Sanhedrin.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, you should have started with the second question, because to the second question my answer is no, so in any case I have nothing to answer about the first. Understood. So in a place where there is the Great Court of the generation, recognized by all the Sages of Israel, that does carry halakhic weight. For example, it appears at the beginning of Choshen Mishpat that the Great Court of the generation can impose corporal punishment. And there were medieval authorities who did this. The Rif and Rabbenu Tam were among those who, for example, had a nose cut off for an adulterous woman. But that right is reserved only for the Great Court of the generation, and the Great Court of the generation has to be someone accepted by everyone. Because then, in effect, that is some kind of Sanhedrin. It’s somewhat similar to Maimonides’ renewal of ordination—that through agreement you can restore the authority of the Sanhedrin. So yes, there is such an idea, but that’s law for the messianic era; it doesn’t exist today. And the fact that people proclaim various individuals as the leading sage of the generation gives them no status whatsoever.

[Speaker A] Last question—who wants to ask?

[Speaker F] May I ask?

[Speaker A] Yes, Dafna Adro.

[Speaker F] Someone who is a member of ISIS and thinks that murder is not an absolute value, certainly not stronger than, say, converting everyone to Islam—why is he obligated? Why isn’t that also a kind of factual matter? He has become convinced that murder is not an absolute value.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say that. I said that the responsibility is on him. It could be that if he reaches that conclusion—I can’t judge what’s in his heart; the Holy One, blessed be He, will judge what’s in his heart. If the Holy One, blessed be He, reaches the conclusion—I assume, yes, I’m not His spokesman—but if He reaches the conclusion that in his heart he was truly sincere, meaning that he genuinely arrived at the true conclusion that this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, expects from him, then I assume he would be exempt.

[Speaker F] So what is the difference between fact and value in the sense of—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said: in principle there is no difference; in my view a value is also a fact. A norm is something else, because a norm is behavior. One can demand that I behave in a way that I think is incorrect, ethically incorrect. That is a consistent demand.

[Speaker A] Well, I see that we’ll need to invite Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham once again. We truly enjoyed it tremendously. Next week Attorney Simcha Rothman will be the guest lecturer on his book The Bagatz Party. Rabbi Uziel will continue with responsibility through the philosopher Hans Jonas, and I personally with my biblical historiosophy. We’ll meet again—I can tell you only thank you very much. All the lectures are on the Cafe Da’at YouTube channel. There’s also a Facebook page; we’re growing and being blessed with registrants, followers, and subscribers. So thank you very much to all of you. Rabbi Michael, I really, really, really enjoyed it. Besides the books we have here, which require a great deal of labor—two thousand pages—but they’re here, and I really suggest everyone invest in the books. A lecture is always good; it just opens the appetite. After that you need to eat, and it’s all there. Thank you very much to all of you, goodbye, goodbye, and have a good week.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Goodbye, goodbye, and see you.