Halachic Rulings During the Holocaust

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no Jewish law book that doesn’t do this, right? Obviously. Why? What’s the difference? Because a Jewish law book isn’t talking about a case. A Jewish law book talks about a halakhic idea, a halakhic theory. I’m allowed to hold a different theory from someone else. There’s no prohibition against disagreeing with one another in principle about halakhic principles. Even if we’re talking about a very specific case, and he rules this way and I rule the opposite, there’s no problem with that. Two different people who come before one sage and another sage with exactly the same question—there’s no problem with the second sage ruling differently from the first sage, permitting what the first sage prohibited. The principle applies only to the case. Meaning: if on this case a ruling came out that it is prohibited, another sage may not say it is permitted. But that’s about the case; it’s not about the principle. Therefore, in its essence, this Jewish law belongs to responsa literature. And if the first one said permitted and the second said prohibited, then there are arguments. So I’m only bringing this in order to sharpen the difference between a responsa book and a Jewish law book. Basically, you could say that a Jewish law book contains, or is supposed to contain, the halakhic theory, whereas a responsa book is supposed to speak about a specific case—not a type of case, but a specific case. Specific in place and time, with a specific person: what is the law in this case? Therefore, you have to be very careful when we come to learn Jewish law from a responsa book, on the one hand. On the other hand, you also have to be very careful when you come to apply Jewish law from a ruling book. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the early commentators on the Shulchan Arukh wrote that it is forbidden to issue halakhic rulings from the Shulchan Arukh. The Bach, the Maharsha, and a few other important halakhic decisors and commentators of that period wrote that one may not rule from the Shulchan Arukh. Then from what? Analysis of the Talmudic passages and deciding from the Talmud—yes; from the Talmud, from the medieval authorities and later authorities, analyze, arrive at a conclusion, and rule. Now, part of this is not relevant to our topic; part of it is relevant to the status of a codex of Jewish law. There was a major dispute over whether it is even proper to write a book of the type of the Shulchan Arukh and of Maimonides. There were major polemics around Maimonides and also around the Shulchan Arukh. Elon, in his book, talks about the polemics of codification—that is, many sages did not look favorably on this kind of writing. You don’t understand your sources, your considerations, and you write as if you were the Holy One, blessed be He: this is forbidden and this is permitted—who are you? Say: there is such-and-such a Talmudic passage, and medieval authorities here, and there’s a difficulty from there; reconcile it, explain it, justify it—we’ll decide. We’ll read and decide whether we agree or disagree. But a book like the Shulchan Arukh or like Maimonides is a book that basically ought not to be written; it’s forbidden to write it. I once brought, I think, the book Shoneh Halakhot by Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky. At the beginning, it’s a book written like a Kitzur Shulchan Arukh, halakhic rulings, and at the start it says: one should not issue halakhic rulings from this book. It’s a consolidation of the practical bottom line from both the Shulchan Arukh and the Mishnah Berurah, including all the commentators there. Okay—but it’s still bottom lines. But still, bottom lines are bottom lines. Yes, they roll through all the give-and-take, all the balances, and then at the beginning he writes: one should not issue halakhic rulings from this book. Now if not to issue halakhic rulings from this book, then why did he write it? There’s nothing else to do with this book, after all. You can’t learn from it, because it doesn’t bring reasons, it doesn’t present the topic, it presents nothing; it just tells you the bottom line. So if it’s not for issuing halakhic rulings, I don’t understand why he printed the book. It has no other use besides that. Fine, these are broader problems, it seems to me. Lots of people do this. Some say it’s out of humility; some say it’s from not wanting to take responsibility, because he knows everyone rules from this book—but it’s some kind of, I don’t know, offloading responsibility maybe, I’m not exactly sure. It’s very strange. In any case, there’s another aspect here in this prohibition against ruling from the Shulchan Arukh. By the way, in the end they permitted it because around the Shulchan Arukh there are commentators. Only because of that. When the commentators disagree with it, bring the sources, discuss the matter, then from that you can also understand what the background to the ruling was, what this ruling means, where to apply it and where not to apply it. You don’t just see some bottom line and have no idea what it was said about. Maybe it was said about a case that doesn’t resemble your case at all. You don’t understand the context; you don’t know what this thing means. When you have the commentators, then you’ve already got the full picture. By the way, everyone disagrees with the Shulchan Arukh quite a bit. But since they discuss his words and bring sources from the Talmud and the medieval authorities, and so on, then yes, you can issue rulings from the Shulchan Arukh. But there’s another aspect here, which is the aspect of ruling from a book of rulings, and this is actually the depth of the reservation about this type of composition—that it is not right to issue halakhic rulings from books of rulings. The Maharal talks about this in Netivot Olam, chapter 15. It’s known that this is part of his polemic, together with his brother, against the Rema and the Shulchan Arukh. Basically, the Maharshal and the Maharal, and the Maharal’s brother, who wrote a book Be’er Mayim Chayim on this issue, went to war against the Rema—who was somehow also a relative, by the way—and against the Rema and against the Shulchan Arukh, who were basically the halakhic codifiers, yes, who wrote books of halakhic rulings. They were against the genre, not against those particular people. Why on earth write such a book? The Maharal cries out: they’ve started issuing halakhic rulings. If you need a halakhic ruling, go to a rabbi; he will analyze the Talmudic passages and the sources and decide as he decides. Why are you writing me some kind of bottom line? The Maharal writes that this is like a sorcerer, a magician, some kind of hocus-pocus and out comes a halakhic ruling. Bring reasons, show your path, and then we’ll talk. Put your words to the test of the public, to the test of other opinions, of critics. The Beit Yosef? The Beit Yosef did do that—but not in the Shulchan Arukh. No, because someone who sees the Beit Yosef and the Shulchan Arukh and rules from that, I assume that would be fine, at least for many of those involved in the polemic there. But there are people who take the Shulchan Arukh. Peninei Halakha is also a bit better. Peninei Halakha does bring the sources and the development and all that. I actually like that book very much, by the way. I think he’s a very impressive Jew in my eyes, Rabbi Melamed. Even though he’s not my direction at all—but really, truly special. You can’t predict what he’ll say many times, we may have talked about this here, I don’t remember, and I really like that about him. Every matter on its own terms. Meaning, you can be very surprised by what he writes. Very straight thinking. I actually appreciate those books a lot. The column in Yated and BeSheva—is that the book? That book is a collection of all those columns, his books. Could be, I don’t know, I’m not familiar. I know the books, but… In any case, the depth of the reservation against ruling Jewish law from the Shulchan Arukh is because the Shulchan Arukh is a book of halakhic rulings. And that is not how one issues halakhic rulings. Halakhic rulings are issued through analysis of the topic, of the medieval authorities, of the later authorities, to discuss, clarify, and reach a conclusion—and not because someone tells you this is the law here and that is the law there. That’s one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that you also cannot issue halakhic rulings from a responsa book. Because a responsa book speaks about a specific case, a specific place and time, a specific person standing before the halakhic decisor—or not always standing before him, sometimes it reaches him through an emissary—but it’s a specific case. And in such a setting, you don’t know what additional considerations were there around it, what the circumstances were, what the context was, maybe there were other things. But the decisor writes the responsum; he writes all his considerations. Even if he writes all his considerations, you still need to be very careful in drawing conclusions from there. I’ll clarify that more later. But basically, it seems to me it’s more correct perhaps to say that a responsa book is not superfluous—otherwise, once the answer was given, you could throw it in the trash. Why publish the book? The book was published because apparently people saw that there are indeed uses one can make of it. What use? The use is more what I call a use, right? It’s a use, not learning. Meaning, you basically accompany the decisor along the path he takes until he reaches the halakhic ruling. And in that sense, the lesson from a responsa book is a methodological lesson. Not the information, not the bottom line that the responsa book reaches—that is not important, because his case will always differ from your case. But the methodology—how he organized the issues, how he discussed them, how he analyzed them—that methodology teaches other decisors or other people how to issue halakhic rulings. Therefore, the lesson is a methodological lesson. I’ll perhaps bring one example I’ve spoken about before in another context. Let’s say, just as an example—of course you could bring this in any topic—but for some reason what’s in my head is the rule that a person does not repay before the due date. There is a presumption that a person does not repay before the due date. We talked about this once. The Talmud in Bava Batra says this: someone claims money from me that he lent me. Let’s say he lent it two weeks ago, and he comes and claims the money. I say: I paid. We come to religious court, and the court says: he is not believed. He has to pay again. Why? An ordinary loan is for thirty days. The loan is supposed to be repaid after thirty days unless we set a different date. And if I claim I repaid within the time, I’m not believed. A person does not repay within the time. He has another two weeks to hold the money; he doesn’t just give it back early for no reason. And because of that there is a presumption that a person does not repay before the due date. Now, in our day this is not true. Or not necessarily true. There’s a heter iska, there’s this and that, and many times when people already have money, they want to get rid of the loan early. The moment a paycheck comes in, it immediately offsets it for me; I immediately make sure it gets to the bank so it will offset the… yes, exactly. So you want to get rid of the loan if you already have money, right? Meaning today we don’t have that presumption. So now what do you do? From the Talmud itself, then, if a case comes before me and someone says, “I paid before the due date,” I’ll say: no, there’s a Talmudic passage; we don’t argue with the Talmud; the Talmud says a person does not repay before the due date—it’s a presumption. That’s nonsense. The Talmud does not mean for you to apply this principle in a place where it isn’t true. That’s nonsense. The other side of the coin: fine, then what do we do with this Talmudic passage? Frame the page and throw it in the trash? Is this topic no longer relevant? Do we have nothing to do with it? Also not true. We do have what to do with it. The lesson from this topic is not that a person does not repay before the due date—that’s a fact. Go to the psychology department and ask them what the situation is, what people’s psychology is, whether people repay before the due date or not. That’s not the lesson of the topic. The lesson of the topic is that if there is a certain presumption in a given place, then on its basis money can be extracted. In the end he says: it wasn’t paid, there is a presumption against him because a person does not repay before the due date, so we extract money from him. So what about this presumption? Now—what is the presumption? Why does that matter? That’s a factual question. In every place there are different presumptions depending on what the creature is, what the circumstances are, how people are used to functioning—it depends on lots of things. But one very important thing comes out of the Talmud here: where there is a presumption, you can extract money based on the presumption. One might have said that only on the basis of two witnesses—“by the mouth of two witnesses a matter shall stand”—no, a presumption also suffices to extract money or to reverse possession; it doesn’t matter, there are various halakhic definitions of how it works. But on the principled level, a presumption can extract money—that’s the lesson of the topic. So basically, the lesson of the topic is not its bottom line, but the way we arrived at the bottom line. How did we arrive at the fact that the person is not believed when he says “I paid before the due date”? Because we understood that there is a presumption against him, and a presumption extracts money, and therefore here there is such-and-such a presumption, and so he is not believed. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that he is not believed is not interesting; that is not the lesson of the topic. That’s the bottom line. That is what would be written in the Jewish law book. But here we are talking about responsa, not a Jewish law book in the conceptual sense, yes? They show me how they got to this result, and how they got to this result is very important. That will remain even in circumstances in which reality is completely the opposite. I’ll give a more extreme example. The first four chapters of Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah in Maimonides—a Jewish law book in every sense, a book of halakhic rulings, right? The first four chapters of Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah deal with spheres, intellects, and all kinds of Aristotelian delusions. Sorry—four chapters. What are we supposed to do with these chapters? It really is a collection of nonsense. What are we supposed to do with all this? So you could say, fine, but not that Maimonides was a fool—obviously not. In his day they thought that this was physics or philosophy, whatever, but today we know it isn’t. So no. So what should we do now? Does that mean you have to throw those four chapters in the trash? I don’t think so—not because I have some principled objection; sometimes maybe yes, you should throw it in the trash, so what if it’s written in gold letters with that brown binding? Maybe it just isn’t relevant. But here, in this case, I think it is relevant—a very important relevance. It turns from a ruling book into responsa—responsa in the conceptual sense, yes? It’s not literally responsa, but the lesson is a methodological lesson. Maimonides encountered physics or philosophy that he thought was correct—that was what was accepted in his time, okay? Now he needs to see what to do with that, how to digest it within Jewish thought and Jewish law; some of these things also have halakhic implications. Okay? And Maimonides did a certain kind of work and showed us how to do it. Now today we are dealing with completely different physics, completely different worldviews—everything is entirely different. But the methodological lesson of how to do this can be very important, even in those chapters. How Maimonides relates to the knowledge of his time, regardless of the fact that that knowledge is no longer relevant today. So what? That is still a very important lesson. Essentially, that is the main lesson of a responsa book. The main lesson of a responsa book is the methodological lesson. I’ve already spoken more than once about this issue of first-order ruling and second-order ruling. I think this is one of the ugly habits of people who have not read enough responsa—and I, in my sins, have not read enough responsa; I sit and cry. But there are people who ignore the need to read responsa and they look for summary books, books of rulings. Here it’s forbidden, and he says it’s permitted, and this one and that one, and they make it three against two or something like that, and therefore it is permitted—without getting into the thick of it and conducting the give-and-take and laying out the aspects involved in this problem. It seems to me that the first time I coined this concept was in an article in Makor Rishon about a daughter’s Kaddish. There was a responsum by Beit Hillel—they published, the rabbis and women rabbis of Beit Hillel published a responsum on a daughter’s Kaddish. This one said it’s permitted, and that one wrote that in our place people did practice it and did not practice it, and that one criticized it and said it’s forbidden, and so all in all one can rely on this and that and therefore it can be said. That responsum was absurd. I also said this to some of my good friends who are there. That responsum is completely absurd. A halakhic responsum is supposed to begin with a list of the aspects. What aspects are on the table here? What prohibitions, commandments, I don’t know what, problems are involved—could be involved in this matter—have arisen in halakhic literature, or something like that, that could be connected to this issue? A woman’s singing voice as nakedness, I don’t know what, mixed seating, modesty, whatever you want, I don’t know. State all the problems. After that, pile up names if you want. After that, you take one aspect and discuss it. Medieval authorities, sources, reasoning, difficulties, Talmudic passages. Discuss what the definition is, what its relevance is, especially in our context, and reach a conclusion. Move on to the second aspect, the third aspect, the fourth aspect, and in the end clarify the matter and write a bottom line. That’s, simply speaking, how a halakhic responsum works. Okay, there it didn’t happen that way. Until the end of the article, until the end of this ruling, I don’t know what to call it, it isn’t clear what the aspects on the table are. What’s the problem? Whoever forbids should have some category, I don’t know, a Torah-level prohibition, a rabbinic one, an enactment, a custom—what are we talking about? There is no problem at all. A new type. Yes, exactly. Yes. There is really no problem at all. And the truth is, in my opinion, there really is no problem at all. Meaning, I wrote there at the end that as far as I’m concerned, I would have written the responsum: I see no problem at all, therefore it is permitted. Why do you need to write that the questioner in the responsum Tzintzenet HaMan pointed out that in his place there was some woman who said Kaddish? Why do I care? And if there wasn’t, then because of that it’s forbidden? You happened to find some responsum where in that place there happened to be some woman who said it. Fine. And if not? Then there wasn’t, and now there will be. After there will be, I’ll know how to write something, and then future generations will also have it written that in our place there was some woman who said it. There is here—I’m bringing this as an example of the fact that you cannot derive a halakhic conclusion directly from responsa literature, but it is very important for learning how one issues halakhic rulings. You need to understand how to analyze a topic. It’s really a very foundational methodology. Responsa literature is tremendously important—much more important, in my opinion, than books of rulings, because halakhic information you can get very quickly today. Methodology is harder to acquire. Methodology requires work, reading, understanding how the whole business works. Information—you can get to it. Today Rabbi Google gets you in no time to whatever information you want. Or Rabbi Bar-Ilan Responsa Project, or any other rabbi. SMS responsa. Einstein responsa, as they say. In any case, you need double caution here: both issuing halakhic rulings from a book of rulings, and issuing halakhic rulings from a responsa book. On the other hand, it seems to me that at least the responsa book—in fact the responsa book, ironically—is indispensable in halakhic ruling. A book of rulings is less important, in my opinion. It is indispensable not because from it I will extract the bottom line, what the law is, but because there I will learn how to do it, and then I will be able to do it. All right? Now I’ll perhaps bring another illustration. There is a book by Chaim Soloveitchik, the son of Rabbi Soloveitchik, the historian, a professor from the Hebrew University. Brother-in-law of Rabbi Lichtenstein. Yes. So he is a very interesting person, yes, a history professor, a Brisker kind of fellow. Meaning, he deals with the history of Jewish law. A really interesting Jew, truly. He writes beautiful things, interesting things, and Brisker things—sometimes too Brisker—but it’s a fascinating combination. In any case, he has a book called Halakha, Kalkala VeDimuy Atzmi, dealing with the laws of interest in the Middle Ages, in Ashkenaz and in Spain. And in that book he shows, very convincingly, that the medieval authorities issued rulings in the laws of interest that are head-on against the Talmud, head-on against the law. They simply permitted things that are forbidden at the Torah level, at the rabbinic level, without batting an eyelid. On the other hand, he writes something no less interesting: none of that literature entered the Shulchan Arukh. The Shulchan Arukh gathers also from responsa, also from the medieval authorities, the Tosafists of course, the Rema, yes? It gathers from the literature of the medieval authorities, from responsa—these are also halakhic sources that feed into the Shulchan Arukh. None of those rulings entered the Shulchan Arukh. And that is very interesting. Why? Because those rulings did not come from the sources of Jewish law, but apparently from distress, difficulty, I don’t know what, special circumstances—there are all sorts of contexts. But on the other hand they also do not radiate back into halakhic literature. They do not join the halakhic canon, because this is not Jewish law. It is a responsum for its place and its time; there is no reason to put it into the Shulchan Arukh. It simply is not correct. Someone who does that simply does not understand. It also is not supposed to enter the Shulchan Arukh. This is not some ban that the Shulchan Arukh imposed on those responsa. It just isn’t right. He understood what those responsa mean. This is not Jewish law, and it should not enter Jewish law—and that does not mean it was not correct for its own time. For their time, perhaps that was what needed to be done. But it is a responsum which in its essence is only responsa. Meaning, you cannot even take its conclusions and write them into a Jewish law book. There is something—and now we get a bit more into the thick of it—there is something about halakhic ruling. Usually the simplistic model of halakhic ruling says: there is halakhic theory, and then I come, say, equipped with all the theoretical information, yes, the halakhic principles, the Jewish law books, and now I come to reality, analyze it, and apply the theory accordingly. Like in the scientific world. I know the laws of physics; I go to a certain situation and analyze according to the laws of physics what will happen here. Okay? So according to the laws of Jewish law, I analyze the situation and say what should be done or what is forbidden to do in this and that case. The circumstances also determine the theory. The theory looks different in every kind of circumstance. I’ll maybe give you an example. Think of a person who doesn’t know modern life, a halakhic decisor. He lives, I don’t know, on the moon. Now they tell him: look, there’s such a thing as a car, and people drive cars there on earth. Hundreds of people are killed every year, and thousands are injured seriously and lightly, tens of thousands, I don’t know exactly the statistics—frightening numbers, a lot. Obviously he’ll say unequivocally: forbidden. It is forbidden to travel in a car. What do you mean? Preservation of life. It is forbidden to travel in a car. Or yes, there are also halakhic statements of that kind about smoking. Now why is he not right? What he has basically done is take the simplistic model of halakhic ruling and apply it. There is a principle in halakhic theory that one has an obligation to guard one’s life. Okay? Now we come to the facts. The facts are that it is dangerous to travel in a car. They describe the facts to him; he doesn’t know this. Now he takes the facts and says: fine, what is dangerous is forbidden; this is dangerous; therefore this is forbidden; QED. Right? Simple deduction. Okay? The problematic point here is that he does not understand what “dangerous” means. Because the word “dangerous,” which appears in the theoretical principle of Jewish law—one must not do dangerous things—is a function of circumstances. If he does not understand what role a car plays in our lives, in our daily lives, he cannot issue a halakhic ruling about it. You can describe it to him until tomorrow; it won’t help. You do not understand the context, you do not understand what it means, you do not understand what it means to live in modern society without using cars. It’s irrelevant. It’s like fleeing to the desert. Okay? Now someone who doesn’t understand what this thing means, he knows all the facts and he knows all the theories, but he still won’t be able to fit the theory onto the facts. Because the theoretical concepts, the concepts that appear in the theory, take on different meanings depending on the circumstances. It’s not just different applications. The theory itself takes on different colors depending on the circumstances. The circumstances radiate back onto the meaning of the concepts. If in our world this is part of life, then it cannot be what is called dangerous. It is not what is called dangerous. Now, in order to live that, it is not enough to receive the statistics about how dangerous cars are. There can be things, by the way, in our world for some reason people are more afraid of terrorist attacks than of traffic accidents. Even though traffic accidents are much more dangerous statistically, more common, there are more cases, it happens in many more places—in every respect traffic accidents are more dangerous than terrorist attacks, and still we know the volume in the news—never mind, there are various reasons—people are afraid of terrorist attacks. But no one would dream of going on a trip without an armed escort. If it’s, say, a youth movement trip or a school trip, today that would be unthinkable. Anyone who did that would be blown out of the water. Meaning, it would be unthinkable to do such a thing. I don’t think they exercise the corresponding degree of caution with respect to traffic accidents, the same degree of caution with respect to traffic accidents, because that frightens people less. The reason is completely subjective; it isn’t statistics. Statistically, it shows it’s the same thing or that traffic accidents are more dangerous, but this frightens people more. And Jewish law accepts that. Jewish law relates to the way people relate as a criterion. And that is what I mentioned with respect to smoking—“the Lord protects the simple”—everyone uses his own formulation for it: what in the world people are accustomed to seeing as a normative act, as an ordinary act, from the standpoint of Jewish law that is an act that Jewish law will not prohibit. Even though the level of risk in that action is the same as the level of risk in another action that Jewish law will prohibit. Because there, people are careful about it and it is perceived as something dangerous, and this is not perceived as something dangerous. People understand that there is a certain level of risk here, but they take that risk; it is normative to take that risk. Now what does this mean? A person may know all the facts and the theory, and still he will not be able to issue a halakhic ruling, because these circumstances also dictate what the theory is, not just provide the factual substrate on which one can apply the theory. They change the theory. The theory changes. What is called dangerous and what is not called dangerous depends on context. Or a place where people are careful about smoking or not careful about smoking—that depends on periods and places and people; it’s not so simple to prohibit it on the one hand. On the other hand, it is dangerous, so why not prohibit it? So this basically means that the interplay between circumstances and theory is much more complex than people think. And if I return to the inability to learn—the decisor there in the responsa book will state all his considerations. He’ll say this is not necessary and this is, we developed for you the concept that it is permitted to travel in such-and-such a car, forbidden to travel in another car. But if you don’t understand what the car did in that time and place, you can’t learn much from this. You can try to step into his shoes and understand, try to guess what exactly was going on there, what the feelings about cars were, what role this played in people’s lives there, and then maybe you can try to infer some conclusion. But from the description in the responsum, it will be very hard to do that. You have to live the reality. There’s a Wikipedia entry called Mary’s room. Mary’s room is an adaptation of John Searle’s Chinese room. She’s a brilliant physicist named Mary; she knows all of optics backwards and forwards by heart. Every wavelength, what it does when it hits this medium and that medium—all of optics is locked in for her by heart. She knows how to solve all the equations and knows everything. But she lives in a black-and-white room. And she also knows—and she also knows—the physiology of the eye. Yes, she knows everything, of course, everything. But she lives in a black-and-white room; she has never seen the color green or red or any color. She lives inside a black-and-white screen. Yes, inside a black-and-white screen. But she knows that green is such-and-such a wavelength, yellow is such-and-such a wavelength, when this hits here and this happens like that and so on. She can tell you, she’ll talk to you, she’ll communicate with you, everything will be fine—you won’t see anything. “Everything” meaning, you won’t realize that she doesn’t experience what you are experiencing now at all. Okay? Does she know what the color green is? Obviously not. If I ask her, “Tell me, would it be good to put green here in this picture in the museum or I don’t know where, or paint my house orange?”—there is no point asking her, right? She does not understand what the color green is. She’s a brilliant physicist, but she does not understand what the color green is because she does not understand what it means, what it does. She knows all its properties, she knows all the technical facts that I can convey to her—she knows them. And she can even know—and recommend—that chip-processing machines, look and learn, are green; operating rooms are also greenish for the same reason. Meaning, from knowing human physiology and all that, she may also reach the correct conclusions regarding color choices in synagogues and in rooms. Yes, and that’s assuming you know what conclusions to look for. You can make this into some very wild and very hypothetical expansion, but he knows everything, he also took a special course. Hard problem, hard problem to be his patient. Hard problem to be his patient. Not sure. I would be very careful about going to him. Not because he won’t fix my teeth, but because he won’t listen to me when I say, listen, it hurts, don’t do that; there are times I don’t want treatment because it hurts terribly. Not worth it. He does not understand what pain is. He has heard that people say it hurts; he does not know what that is. You… I would be very careful about going to someone like that. Exactly, that’s an excellent example. A psychologist who never had cancer. Fine, maybe there the experience is not so important, because pain is an experience. He knows what pain is, he knows what it is to be sick, and he knows what it is to die. So it doesn’t matter that he didn’t experience cancer, but those kinds of things he has experienced; he knows what that is. Scales of pain. Fine, no, I don’t think any of us has probably experienced exactly what another experiences. Fine. But as long as the differences are bridgeable—meaning I can understand what you’re going through and what the significance of the things is for you—then I can treat you or express positions regarding issues that trouble you and so on. But in places where your world is utterly foreign to me, where I do not understand what the things mean, you can describe to me all the technical facts; that is not the point. But I do not understand what it means, what it means in that place. I cannot issue a halakhic ruling—I’m getting to the analogy now—I cannot issue a halakhic ruling for such a situation. Whoever issues a halakhic ruling for such a situation makes a grave mistake, even if someone came and described all the facts accurately and no fact was missing. It’s not that facts are missing; connotations are missing. And the connotations change the theory. Yes, that’s also an example that, if I remember correctly, I mentioned—say, rulings on women singing. Okay, so you can say this is a formal prohibition: a woman sings, it is forbidden to hear, period, there’s nothing to know and no need for anything, just forbidden, period. But if for the sake of discussion—and this is how I tend to think—this is not a formal prohibition. “A woman’s voice is nakedness” appears in the Talmud, but it does not say there singing, nothing. Today it is accepted that this is specifically about singing and not this—not today, of course it’s already been accepted for a long time—but I do not think it is a formal prohibition. Rather what? Rather, it is something that arouses certain forbidden thoughts, sexual feelings, I don’t know, things—or can arouse them. Fine, and therefore it was prohibited. Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that this is the correct conception of that law; it doesn’t matter to me, it’s just an example. Okay, now rabbis come and forbid hearing women sing—going to hear a female singer perform, or hearing one on the radio. Okay. They cannot do that. They cannot do that because they do not understand—and I believe they have never been there in their lives if they think this is forbidden, right? So they have never heard this. Since they have never heard this, they do not know what this does to the public that comes to hear it, and they are certain, they live in this blue-headed mentality, they are certain that people come there only because of the sexual thoughts that arise in a person who hears it. Every prohibition ruling has to be experienced? I have to go back to what I said earlier: it depends how far you are from the situation. I’ll sharpen that in a moment. But people who are far enough from the situation that they do not understand the connotations, they do not understand what this thing means—it won’t help to describe the facts to them. What you can try to describe to them is what it does for people, but many times that will meet with disbelief. When I say to someone like that, listen, I hear Chava Alberstein singing wonderfully, I really love her songs, I have no sexual connotations from this matter, at least at my advanced age, and I don’t remember that even at a younger age it was perceived against a sexual background. It’s simply a woman singing beautifully. That’s all. So I go to hear her because I really love her songs. That’s it. Now when you describe that to someone who lives in the halakhic world and has never experienced this, he’ll tell you that you’re lying. Or that you’re lying to yourself, not to him. Meaning, clearly you come there for the sexual fantasy, for sinful thoughts, something like that. And from his point of view, truly, sincerely. Meaning, I’m not blaming him. He is sure that that is the reality. He doesn’t know it, he has never experienced it. So since that’s the case, how can he decide for me whether this is permitted or forbidden? It’s irrelevant; he doesn’t know this reality. Okay? Now if such a situation arises and I go ask some rabbi who sits in his four cubits of halakhic space, never went out, never heard women singing, nothing, and I ask him, tell me, permitted or forbidden—what is he supposed to do with that? It seems to me that what he is supposed to do with that is go through the topic with me, go through the different aspects with me, give me guidelines. Look, if it arouses thoughts, then this; if not, then not; at such-and-such a level of thought, doesn’t matter—all the principles, what prohibitions there are in this, what prohibitions there are not in this, and now send me on my way so that I will make the decisions. That I will make the decisions. That’s what he can do. He cannot make the decision for me. And by the way, this is true to some extent—and here I return to your question, Yossi—it’s not obligatory, but it seems to me that it is right to do this in every halakhic ruling. Not only regarding distant situations. If I have time—and usually there isn’t always time—people ask you, and I’m not yet someone they ask all that much. There are decisors whom, I don’t know, thousands of people ask. They can’t sit with each person, teach him the topic, clarify the issues with him, and send him to decide alone, so they answer; there’s no choice, those are constraints. But on the principled level, what should happen is that if someone asks a question, you tell him: look, there is this aspect, there is that aspect—even if the bottom line is clear, it doesn’t matter. You need to describe the situation to him so that he will make his own decisions. I’ve had this more than once, not just once—it’s very common there in the context of what is called family planning. How many children to have, whether you can delay, whether you can’t delay. That’s a question that doesn’t have a simple answer. Contrary to what the post-Holocaust hysteria caused halakhic decisors to say—and there are really hysterical decisors on this issue. Meaning, suddenly there’s no freedom at all and it’s forbidden to do anything and everything is forbidden, certainly in the general discourse. When asked personally, sometimes they give different answers. I think this is mainly a result of the Holocaust, this hysteria around this issue, because we need to restore the six million who were murdered there, and therefore of course everyone has to bear or father as many children as they can. But when you look at the law, no, that’s not true. There are degrees of freedom, and it depends when you can think that it’s more right and when less right. It’s not far-fetched at all. It depends on the level of constraints, and on many things. And when people come to me—and it’s happened several times already—they come to me, and afterward I even wrote something like this at a rabbis’ conference we had on this issue, and I showed that there are different considerations and you can take it this way or that way and it’s complex. And it’s true that there is the value of “be fruitful and multiply” and “He created it to be inhabited” even after one has a son and a daughter, and all sorts of things like that. But on the other hand there are various Talmudic passages and medieval authorities and so on, and you can see that there are considerations this way and that. Fine. So they tell me, listen, what’s the bottom line? I tell them: I’ve opened the picture for you; now you decide. You know how important this is to you, you know how significant this constraint is for you. You are now in the middle of a very difficult degree program at the university, and you know that you won’t be able to hold up if a baby is born now. Another baby, say—that’s your assessment. So you know that; I don’t know that. I didn’t study there at the university, I don’t know what you’re experiencing, how hard it is for you, to what extent a baby can interfere with you. Only you know that reality. What I can do is describe for you the theoretical framework. The circumstances—only you know. And therefore the application, or the decision, is one that you have to make. You. “The heart knows the bitterness of its soul”—you must make your decisions. If you make wrong decisions, you’ll answer for them. But I can’t make decisions about a situation I haven’t experienced, I don’t know what it means. It’s like a blind person wanting to express an opinion about colors. It’s the same thing. You don’t know what it means for the person. Very often people press: no, no, no, I need you to tell me the bottom line—permitted or forbidden. People are afraid of decisions, don’t know how to make them, or don’t want to make them, whatever. And very often, if I have the energy and if I have the time, I refuse. I don’t agree. I don’t agree. Why should I make the decision? You make it. Only you can make that decision. I laid out all the situations for you; now you know as much as I do. Why should I make decisions? You know as much as I do—now decide. I think that is really what a halakhic decisor is supposed to do. But here you really need the intuition of a decisor, of a prophet. The one who comes to ask you the question hasn’t experienced it either. נכון, there’s something to that; I agree. I agree with that remark, and still I think, at least in a place where there is something very subjective in the situation that you really can’t understand, or it is very far from your world, still—even though you may have better intuition and be more skilled—you still need to leave the decision to him. Especially in other places, more or less, I don’t know. Right, it’s a very large gap; intuition can’t bridge the gap. Yes, right. I’m saying at least when the gap is significant. I’m saying—I may have brought this example before too—about the Binding of Isaac. There is a very well-known academic hobby of collecting the sources that criticize Abraham our father for what he did at the Binding. Some have gone so far as to explain that Abraham actually failed the test of the Binding. Failed, because the Holy One, blessed be He, expected from him a conscientious refusal, a conscientious refusal or a logical refusal. And basically Abraham, when the Holy One, blessed be He, told him to bind his son, should have made the calculation: wait, logically this is a contradiction. He said, “through Isaac your offspring shall be called.” If I kill him, how will offspring be called to me? He promised me that through Isaac my offspring would be called. It cannot be that the Holy One, blessed be He, is telling me to do such a thing. And of course the moral and psychological aspects and whatever else you want, and therefore this is probably some kind of delusion or something, I don’t know, or it can’t be right; it is forbidden to obey this voice. Therefore Abraham, in obeying the Holy One, blessed be He, failed the test of the Binding. Now this obviously doesn’t hold water interpretively; it’s nonsense. But the question is a good question. And Kierkegaard presents it beautifully in Fear and Trembling, very literarily, very beautifully, in his way. Why wasn’t Abraham worried that maybe this was some kind of hallucination or something, I don’t know, something unclear, and therefore he could not kill on the basis of such a thing? Who knows—maybe some spirit latched onto you here, I don’t know what, some demon, daydreams—I don’t know exactly what. How are you not concerned about such a thing in such a dramatic act? So the critics say: right, Abraham failed in that he was not willing to stand his ground. That’s one type of solution. Kierkegaard’s kind of solution—the solution of Kierkegaard is also not accepted by me. Kierkegaard’s solution says: right, and nevertheless Abraham did it, because one must live in paradox. The knight of faith is one who is willing to bind himself and his reason and his morality before the divine command. One must live in paradox to be a believer. And the more paradoxical life is, the more believing you are. As Tertullian, one of the Church Fathers, said: I believe because it is absurd. Not despite the fact that it is absurd, but because it is absurd. After all, if it is not absurd, then it is not faith; it’s just ordinary life. Faith means doing something absurd. That is a Christian conception, and I don’t agree with that either. I think the answer to this question is a third answer. The answer to this question is that if I were to experience a situation in which the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself to me and gives me instructions, then I could raise the possibility—maybe a person could think that maybe this is a hallucination, maybe it’s not certain, who knows, some concern about it. I have never experienced it in my life, I have no idea. It may be that someone who experiences this understands with certainty that here the Holy One, blessed be He, is speaking to you. I’ve never been a prophet; I don’t know. It’s like I’m describing to some blind person that there’s a window here with a brown metal frame. He has some considerations, whatever they are, and he says: that can’t be; your eyes are probably deceiving you. Now he is blind, he hasn’t seen, blind from birth. He doesn’t know what seeing is, doesn’t understand what sight is, knows nothing. I can try to explain to him, but look, I see—I don’t know how you explain to a blind person what it means to see, but suppose you can even explain that. But how can you convey to him the sense of certainty that accompanies our seeing? The sense of certainty that says that if I see, then clearly it is true. Forget your considerations—I’m telling you there is a window here; I see it. Now the blind person won’t be convinced, and rightly so from his standpoint. He has never experienced sight; he doesn’t know what it is. So even if I can describe to him what sight is, he will say, fine, but maybe it deceives you. Good question. Maybe it really does deceive me, right? But none of us takes seriously the fact that maybe there is no window here, the claim that maybe there is no window here. Why? Because along with seeing comes that immediate experience. And someone who has not experienced it cannot make decisions about the status of sight. Is sight good enough to rely on? “Hearing shall not be greater than seeing,” all sorts of things of that kind. The same with Abraham. Fine, Abraham—I’ve never been a prophet and I’ve never experienced divine revelation. Therefore, to ask why Abraham didn’t think that maybe this was deceiving him, maybe it was a hallucination—that’s not a serious question. Because for someone who experiences such a thing, it may well be that he understands this is something completely certain; it’s like sight for a blind person. So there is no option of thinking maybe it’s not true. You have nothing clearer than this, and that’s it. Maybe not—I don’t know, I’ve never been a prophet. But if Abraham did it, then apparently it was certain for him, I assume; otherwise he also knows that one could worry there are hallucinations here. Okay? And therefore, as criticism, I do not accept that criticism. What does that mean? It means that the situation in which Abraham stood is a situation very far from anything I have ever experienced. It is unfamiliar to me; you cannot convey that to me; and therefore I cannot make decisions about it. I cannot criticize him, I cannot ask—it is not relevant. I cannot do it, because I lack the context, the connotations of the thing. You can describe all the facts to me: the Holy One, blessed be He, appeared, and He told me this and that, and He told me this before, and morality says that—all the facts are known, except for that one experience: what does it feel like when the Holy One, blessed be He, appears and tells you something? How clear is it, how self-evident is it, how impossible is it to doubt it? I do not know. Maybe it can be doubted. But as long as I haven’t experienced it, I cannot raise the possibility that maybe not. Fine—so the one who was there tells you yes, and that’s that. Now that, for me, is a parable for the importance of circumstances in halakhic ruling and the essential problem with issuing halakhic rulings from books of rulings and from responsa books. Because the circumstances in which I live are different from the circumstances in which that responsum was written. It may be that the weightings become different, the contexts are different, the meanings of things become different, and I cannot learn Jewish law from a responsa book even though perhaps the question is very similar to the one I’m grappling with. And the answer can be completely different—a genuinely different answer—not because I’m being lenient for a poor fellow because it’s an emergency, or all kinds of things like that that already enter explicitly into halakhic discourse. No. The real Jewish law, without bypassing it or crumpling it because there are hardships, can be different. It is simply different Jewish law because the connotations are different. Now all this is only an introduction to halakhic ruling in the Holocaust. The Holocaust—or situations common in the Holocaust—are situations that are very, very far, thank God, from our daily experience. Therefore it is very difficult to decide halakhically, to criticize, to issue rulings regarding such situations. If someone from there were to call me and ask me what to do in such-and-such a case, I would have to very much refrain from issuing him a halakhic ruling. It’s not relevant. It is so far from my world of experience and from the world that I can understand and grasp and draw analogies from. Everyone is far; everyone’s subjective experiences are not like mine, but there is still something called empathy. Empathy not in the simple sense, but empathy in the sense of the ability to live the other, for better and for worse. It’s an emotional ability. I’m not talking about empathy in the moral sense of showing empathy, but the ability to show empathy, the ability to live the other. There are situations that our ability just does not reach. It’s an inability; it’s not that we aren’t moral enough or kindhearted enough. We can’t. You can’t inhabit a world that is very, very far from you. You simply can’t. Our imagination and our felt capacities don’t reach there; we don’t have the right neurons. We cannot grasp the situation. In such a situation one cannot issue a halakhic ruling. Only people who lived inside it? Only people who lived inside it, yes, exactly. Only people who lived inside it; there’s no other way. Now sometimes there’s no choice—I don’t know—reality says, listen, I know nothing, you have no way to learn it, and you are still far from the situation. And he isn’t competent, he can’t issue a halakhic ruling, nothing. Fine, I don’t know, so maybe if there’s no choice you’ll have to do something and know there’s a decent chance you got it wrong. But there’s no choice. In principle, you’re not supposed to do it. That is how I often feel about questions concerning egalitarian prayer quorums and all kinds of Shira Hadasha kinds of things and things of that sort. Suppose there is a young rabbi of a modern, young community, and he goes to ask his rabbi, his older rosh yeshiva who lives in another world, another society, about a difficult halakhic question. I want to consult him, ask him what he thinks. The elderly rabbi needs to be very careful about making decisions. He should still accompany him, say to him: look, pay attention to this aspect and that aspect. He is a greater Torah scholar than his student, so he can accompany him, guide him, show him: look, there are such-and-such aspects, explain to him how it is worthwhile to analyze it. But in the end, you have to make the decision, because this situation is very far from the rabbi’s world; he does not understand what it means. He does not understand where it comes from, especially with questions of this type, where there is much more halakhic policy than actual laws. In such questions, it is certainly very important to understand the context, very important to understand what these things mean to people, why they want it, what will happen if you tell them it is forbidden, what that will do to them. All that, you cannot describe to him; he doesn’t understand it. At least it is very hard for him to understand, perhaps it’s possible, but very hard, and the farther it is from his world. So some elderly Haredi rabbi like that will say, what, they’re all just Reform, forget it, don’t relate to it at all. You tell him: look, but they really think this is the truer service of God, and without it they’ll be frustrated, they’ll leave the synagogue, they won’t… So let them leave the synagogue, because they’re Reform, they’re heretics, they’re whatever. Those are answers you can easily get from a real halakhic decisor; that really is how he sees the situation. He’s not guilty; that’s the world of experiences he has gathered. That’s how he understands this situation, and therefore he cannot issue a ruling about it. He cannot. He is forbidden to issue a ruling about it. What he has to do is provide all this, and the young rabbi, who is much less of a Torah scholar than he is, but who is there in that place, is the one who has to make the decisions. And I think that, in a certain sense, that is also what the attitude to Holocaust rulings is supposed to be. I once wrote an article—now the penny just dropped for me—there was a series of articles in the Yated Ne’eman supplement, back when I still sinned by reading that tabloid. Well no, actually it was already a bit after that; someone brought it to me. I was already in Yeruham, so this was already after the Yated Ne’eman period. But someone brought me a series of supplements there, which was a collection of articles by Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Gibraltar, in which he spoke about his father, Rabbi Shraga Feivel Gibraltar, who was in the Kovno ghetto. And there too the author of Devar Avraham was in the Kovno ghetto; he was basically the chief rabbi there. I think that maybe it was perhaps the most vibrant ghetto in many respects. Meaning, truly impressive things were done there in the Torah sense, in the cultural sense, in every possible sense. Really impressive things happened there. And the rabbi who presided over the whole matter was the author of Devar Avraham. You know, he was in the United States on a fundraising trip, I think, or something like that, and he returned to the ghetto because he was unwilling to leave his community and remain in the United States. He went back to the ghetto when it was already a ghetto. And of course he did not give up his beard and so on; he was a very, very impressive man. In the end he died there—not murdered, but from illness, I think, from some disease in the ghetto; he passed away in the ghetto. In any case, he was the chief rabbi there, but under him there were a number of very important Torah scholars who all of course recognized his authority, and there are also responsa and halakhic discussions by them. One of them is Rabbi Oshry, who is known because of the responsa MiMa’amakim. It appears before you, responsum סימן ה in MiMa’amakim, part 1. Wasn’t he in the ghetto? He was in the ghetto, yes, certainly. Rabbi Oshry was in the ghetto. He was in the ghetto, and in the introduction to the book he describes—you can also see it on HebrewBooks, there are about five volumes that came out; he published them after the Holocaust—he says that he only inserted a few references and expanded a little, but these are basically responsa that he already wrote in the ghetto. And all these responsa are truly horrifying. Anyone who wants to experience Holocaust Remembrance Day in a meaningful way that also includes Torah study should simply study MiMa’amakim. I think it’s amazing, because when you study it you also learn the history of what happened there, because every such question is a piece of history. What happened there, and what the Germans said, and what the dilemmas were, and how one tackles it halakhically—really hair-raising things. And he describes there that the author of Devar Avraham assigned him to rule on various matters; he distributed the work there. But I didn’t start with that; I started with Rabbi Gibraltar, and he had a very special approach, and there was a dispute among the rabbis of the ghetto on this matter. He had a very special approach, his father did—the son writes this about his father. His father survived; afterward he was a rabbi in Italy. Doesn’t matter. But he had already passed away, and his son writes it. And the article is not a halakhic article; it’s a historical article about the history of the ghetto, what happened there in the ghetto, and so on. But within it there are also bits of halakhic statements, mainly on this issue. And his approach was that there is no private property at all in the ghetto. No such thing as owning property. Again, the article is not halakhic, so it’s very hard to understand what the reasoning was, why he thought that, what exactly the basis of this claim was. For example, when they came to Rabbi Gibraltar to repay him a loan after the Holocaust, he was unwilling to accept it. The money wasn’t his. What do you mean, a loan? You didn’t borrow from me; it wasn’t my money. During the Holocaust there was no ownership, so the money wasn’t mine, and therefore there’s nothing to repay on that loan. Say, for instance, dead people who left coats behind. Do the heirs inherit their parents’ property? He said no: the heirs have no prior claim, because there are no monetary laws. It didn’t belong to their parents. On the other hand, he wrote there that if you take a coat from someone who is wearing it, that is forbidden. Not because of theft—because of murder. And this is really parallel to what the Chazon Ish writes about two people walking in the desert and one of them has a flask of water. The Chazon Ish discusses there why it is forbidden—yes, according to the law we rule like Rabbi Akiva that he should drink it himself and live, “your life takes precedence.” The question is why is the second person forbidden to steal? In a situation of preservation of life, after all, the prohibition of theft is overridden by preservation of life, so let him steal the water from him. So the Chazon Ish says something that seems a bit like a clever dodge. The Chazon Ish says: this is not theft; it is murder. What do you mean murder? Fine, otherwise I’ll die too. True, he will die afterward, but what I am doing is theft, not murder. If I don’t steal, I’ll die; if I do steal, he’ll die. Fine, that’s the result, but the prohibition I violated is theft, not murder. No—it’s murder. But it’s murder not because I can bring you discussions in the laws of indirect causation showing that such indirect causation is considered direct murder. Not because of that—I can bring you those discussions. But anyone who lives in that situation will understand that when you look at a flask of water in your hand, and that is what is keeping you alive, obviously that water is part of your body. That is what anyone who is probably in such a situation understands. Therefore if you take that water, it’s like taking someone’s heart because you need a heart transplant. It’s the same thing: you are murdering him. Taking the water is not theft because the water is not his—it is murder. But to say that, you have to live the situation and experience it personally, understand that this is really how people relate to a flask of water in such a situation. If you live the situation, you can say such a thing. If you don’t live the situation, it sounds like a clever dodge. I believe that if he lived inside the situation, then that is really how he perceived the laws of property. That is how he understood it. This is exactly like Mary’s room: when you understand what green is, then you know—it’s simply like that. You won’t be able to convey it to someone who looks at this from an academic perspective, yes, through halakhic theory. You won’t be able to convey it to him. But that’s the simple feeling. Anyone who lives in that context—like the example of cars and the Binding of Isaac and everything I’ve been bringing all along—it’s exactly an example of that. So he knows: this is the meaning of private property in that specific situation. Therefore, for me, what Rabbi Gibraltar says is not a halakhic opinion; it’s a kind of testimony. I’m not saying this as part of the pathos of Holocaust Remembrance Day, because I don’t like that pathos. But truly—it’s simply a classification of things. For me, this does not stand open to my criticism. It’s testimony. He gives me testimony about something he experienced and I did not, and he tells me: listen, in that situation, I lived there, and I’m telling you—in that situation there is no ownership of private property. Period. After that series of articles was published, someone who deals with monetary law wrote a response—a rabbi expert in monetary law wrote a response—and of course accused him and so on. But this does not fit the categories of Jewish law, it isn’t right, obviously there was ownership of money there. He brought his proofs from various places. And that reaction really infuriated me. Again—not because of the sanctity of the Holocaust. I very much object to this notion that one cannot speak about the Holocaust and one cannot, and so on and so forth, with all the craziness going on now, insane hysteria. Never mind. But the claim that I cannot understand that situation is basically what it means. It means I do not look at Rabbi Gibraltar’s statement as a halakhic opinion. Now I discuss according to the halakhic rules and see whether he’s right or wrong. Since I do not understand the situation, I did not live it, therefore for me this is the law. I start from the assumption that this is the law. Now I can try to understand how, in halakhic terms, one can analyze, process, and justify this thing. That is the status I can have in a topic of this sort. And that is what I did in the article. I wrote an article in Tzohar—obviously not in Yated Ne’eman—in which I try to show why halakhically this is indeed correct. But obviously I said this only after I had accepted, even before the analysis, that if Rabbi Gibraltar said this, and he lived there, and he was a Torah scholar, then he is probably right first of all, because he lived the situation and I didn’t. And now I can try to understand why, what it means, what the context is, what halakhic principles were renewed there. He actually added something for me in the end—so basically he was doing responsa, yes? He said something that was true for his time and place, not a halakhic principle, and therefore I cannot learn from it Jewish law for other situations that are different. But what I can do, if I now take what he told me as testimony, not as a halakhic position—as for me this is the law, it’s a fact, I don’t argue with him at all—what I can do is understand why, what the meaning is, how he analyzed it, how he reached that conclusion. Then I can generate from it another piece of theory. Because now, if I succeed in analyzing it and understanding it in halakhic terms, now I can perhaps add a clause to the Shulchan Arukh, which would already be a general clause: if you are in such-and-such a situation in which it is clear to you experientially that private property has no meaning, then there is no private property. Now this has become part of halakhic theory. But it became so only after someone distilled it out of the situation that he experienced. Then I did—or not me, whoever—a theoretician did some halakhic processing, analyzed it, conceptualized it, defined it. Now perhaps one can also make a clause in the Shulchan Arukh out of it. Usually, by the way, they won’t do that, because very exceptional situations are not put into Jewish law books as a rule, because they don’t want to. From one exceptional situation you cannot learn another, even if both are exceptional. There is no point in writing a Jewish law book about exceptional situations. To write a Jewish law book about exceptional situations is a methodological mistake. What you can write is responsa about exceptional situations, because then the person learns how one handles it; he doesn’t learn a bottom line, he learns how one handles it. So I think the last step usually will not be taken, but in principle perhaps one could also do it—write a halakhic clause that comes out of this analysis. All right? So that is the difference between responsa and a Jewish law book. What he did there, Rabbi Gibraltar, for me was responsa. He gave me testimony about what—now understand, I know all the halakhic concepts. I’m returning to the whole introduction I gave. I know all the halakhic concepts: what ownership is, the principles of when there is ownership and when there isn’t, acts of acquisition, theft, inheritance. I know all the halakhic theory. The facts are a problem—you can describe them to me. The facts are that it was terribly cold there and there was no food and it was very dangerous and people were shot—all the facts can be brought to my knowledge. What cannot be brought to my knowledge is the context, the connotation, how people perceive the facts. What is the color green? I know its wavelength, I know everything. I don’t know what it is; I’ve never experienced it. I cannot issue a ruling about it. I have the theory, I have the facts—it doesn’t stick. Because the theory is colored by the color of the facts. The facts determine what is called dangerous, what ownership is, when there is ownership and when there isn’t. The facts determine that, not the theory. What is ownership? Now, it may be that there were also disputes in the ghetto—there were, surely there were, I know, he said there were. But I think—again, this is my analysis too—and I think part of it was that some of the people in the ghetto, although they experienced what Rabbi Gibraltar experienced, nevertheless their halakhic theory was the standard theory. They were not prepared to allow their immediate experience to overcome halakhic principles, because they understood Jewish law differently. They experienced the same thing as Rabbi Gibraltar, perhaps—I am suggesting a possibility—perhaps they experienced the same thing, but they did not agree to rule like him because they thought in terms of codified Jewish law. Meaning, this had to stand up to halakhic tests. They were not prepared to let the circumstances color the theoretical concepts in another shade. Okay? So the disagreement, ultimately, is a disagreement in halakhic theory, perhaps. I don’t know. It’s a suggestion. Okay? In any case, this is an example of the lesson one can derive from this sort of responsum: that there are situations in which the only way to handle things is through responsa, not through Jewish law books. Whoever lived in the situation and understands what it means should decide what to do there. But that is a decision for its place and its time. One cannot learn from it—at least not in a simple way—for any other situation, however critical and exceptional. What you can do is try to trace what he did and derive the outline—in other words, the methodological lesson—just as one does from responsa books in general. Now here, in this responsum, I won’t even have time to get into it. In fact I chose a responsum that is seemingly completely prosaic and in a certain sense even bizarre. Because I’ll read the question. “These things I remember and pour out my soul within me, for in the days of the accursed villains we had no respite, and every single day more than a thousand people were taken out of the ghetto to be worked to the breaking point at the airport near Kovno”—there are many stories about the airport, and apparently there are many responsa about it in this book—“and to kill them through their suffering. And behold, my student Mr. Yaakov, may God avenge his blood, came before me with his question”—yes, he writes this after the Holocaust, so he added “may God avenge his blood”—“with his question: since he has the possibility of entering work in the kitchen, at the place where the black soup was cooked, made from beans, which the Germans distributed to the Jews together with a hundred grams of bread per day, however there is one obstacle: there he will be compelled and forced to work at cooking also on the Sabbath. However, since by doing so he will be saved from the hard forced labor in the airport that drains the soul and breaks the body, perhaps this is a matter of preservation of life? Since, by being saved from the hard and exhausting labor, he will be able to eat and satisfy his hungry soul with the black soup to his heart’s content. And his body will thereby become more resilient, and he will be able to endure so that the general hunger prevailing in the ghetto will not destroy him. And he further asks: is it permitted for him himself to eat on the Sabbath from the black soup that he cooks on the Sabbath?” That’s benefit from Sabbath labor. Now this is a completely prosaic question: benefit from Sabbath labor, a standard discussion. But precisely because of the prosaic nature, it’s bizarre. What would I say? Preservation of life, obviously. Do whatever you want. Anything that helps you survive a ghetto is insane. Obviously. There’s nothing to discuss. Now look and see: he discusses there like every other responsum. Benefit from Sabbath labor, he brings the tannaim and the amoraim, and he has innovations in the laws of labor not needed for its own sake, fascinating innovations by the way, which I’m not sure I agree with, but very interesting innovations. All these things are bizarre. Now he himself writes in the end: but in any case this is all preservation of life, so of course it is permitted. What’s the problem? So then why did you conduct the whole discussion? Here I have two answers, and both are connected to what I’ve said until now. One answer is—that the two are connected. One answer is that he refused to give up a halakhic life. Basically, once you switch into a mode where everything is permitted because it’s preservation of life, what’s the problem, then there are no questions and no answers and Jewish law becomes irrelevant. And it seemed important enough to him to instill in people that we are still people of Jewish law, still committed to Jewish law, still discussing things, even though in the end the answer will be that this is all preservation of life. What? That’s an argument outside the world of Jewish law. Yes, right, right. But everything halakhic here basically has a meta-halakhic purpose, because he himself writes that. Because in the end he writes: it’s all preservation of life. So why are you discussing whether it’s rabbinic or Torah-level? What does that matter? It’s obvious. But I’m saying more than that. Look, there is another point here, and it too is connected to what I said earlier. They lived there in the ghetto for years. For us, when we see such a person in a ghetto, he’s inside a fire. It’s preservation of life, obviously. They lived in such a state for years. It’s not preservation of life—that was their life. Now obviously, in life there people were killed, tens of percent of the people were killed, very few survived, doesn’t matter—that was life. That’s how one lived, day to day, year to year, for years. Okay? Now that is life, not preservation of life. Who says it’s preservation of life? Relative to our reality today, such a thing is preservation of life. Who would think twice about Sabbath labor in such a situation? Okay? But someone who lives it has lived dozens and hundreds of such Sabbaths, for years upon years he lived this way. That was his life. All the time, and that’s it. I heard just today from someone that there were rules in the youth movement with uniforms and all that, and if someone came without a uniform they were strict there in the ghetto—all kinds of things. Why? Because that was their life. We see it as catastrophe; they did not see it as catastrophe. They experienced a very hard life, but that was life. They did not perceive themselves as now being in a state of preservation of life that uproots all of Jewish law. There is no point in discussing? What are you talking about? This is life, and within it we discuss. Fine, in the end you may also reach the conclusion that it is enough of a preservation-of-life situation and it justifies it, especially if it is rabbinic and so on. But it is worth discussion. This is not something where you say there is no discussion. Now this too is an expression of what I said earlier. Because when I see such a thing I say, what are you talking about? This is bizarre; it’s preservation of life. And he says, what are you talking about? I live there. This is life. This is a very dangerous life, fine, this is life. What can you do—that is the world we are in. And one has to make decisions, and all of Jewish law is completely relevant to this situation too. So viewing this crazy situation from the outside can lead to two kinds of mistakes. One mistake is to see it as too little—not to understand the depth of the catastrophe. That is the earlier mistake I spoke about. The second mistake is to treat it too much as catastrophe, because someone who lives it says: fine, this is our life. It is terribly dangerous and problematic and hard and all that, but what can you do, we were sentenced to live here like this for years. It’s not that we are dying every day, every moment. We are in danger, true, fine, but this is life. In the end, each one of us will die; we too are in danger, yes, in the end everyone dies. Okay? So they die sooner, after a year, after two years, after three. Fine. But still, from their point of view, this was life. And someone looking from the outside cannot understand that either. Sometimes you may overweigh it, sometimes underweigh it. And both of those mistakes stem from the same distance that exists between the halakhic decisor and the situation.