Free Discussion and Intuition
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Hell, Heaven, and the survival of the soul
- Reward and punishment, the logic of repair, and closeness to the Holy One, blessed be He
- Testimonies, books, and doubt about the reliability of the descriptions
- The problem of evil: human evil and natural evil, the Holocaust and tsunamis
- Job, the inability to understand, and the possibility of cutting off relations with the Creator
- Tradition, contradictions, and the claim that “God is good”
- Intuition as a basis for decision, science and experiment, and the lack of falsifiability tests
- Yom Kippur in Jerusalem, Ein Prat, mixed prayer, and halakhic tension
- Customs, the Rema, head covering, and touching a Torah scroll
- Women, Torah, Torah publication, and coalitions
- Study groups on Yom Kippur, Amnon of Mainz, and Unetaneh Tokef
- Faith as a factual claim and commandments as a normative obligation
- A captive infant as absence of obligation and not absence of knowledge
- Rationality, the chain of justifications, axioms, and intuition
- Moral claims, truth and falsehood, and intuition in norms
Summary
General overview
The speaker is looking for a one-time class and gets drawn into a broad discussion about hell, reward and punishment, the problem of evil, faith and obligation to the commandments, and from there to the question of rationality and intuition. He expresses major skepticism toward the vivid descriptions of hell and their basis, argues that punishment “up there” as it is sometimes described makes no sense, and proposes alternatives such as closeness to or distance from the Holy One, blessed be He, and repair through reincarnation. Later he presents possible answers to human evil and natural evil, including the possibility that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not “have the ability” to create a better world within a system of fixed laws of nature, and he also recognizes the possibility of severing “diplomatic relations” with the Creator as a legitimate conclusion. Finally, he formulates a distinction between faith as a factual claim and obligation to the commandments as a normative claim, and argues that the discussion of rationality inevitably leads to a starting point that is not proven but rests on intuition, both in science and in ethics.
Hell, Heaven, and the survival of the soul
The speaker says that the whole business of hell is highly dubious, even if it has sources in Pirkei Avot and in the words of the Sages, and he questions what their sources were and where it came from, and does not know whether it was borrowed from Christians and says historians should be asked. He interprets “the pit of destruction” in Psalms as a figure of speech meaning that things will go badly for them, not necessarily as a description of a place. He accepts as a reasonable argument the idea that there is something non-material in a person that separates from the body at death, but says he has no idea what happens afterward and is not sure that descriptions like the slingshot of souls, heat and cold, and so on should be taken seriously; in his words, they are “jokes.”
Reward and punishment, the logic of repair, and closeness to the Holy One, blessed be He
The speaker argues that there is no logic in assuming there is punishment above in the sense of punishment that brings no repair, because no one knows about it and no lesson is learned from it, so there is no point in giving it. He says there is logic in telling us that there is punishment above in order to achieve results in this world, but the actual carrying out of the punishment seems pointless to him. A participant suggests that reward and punishment are relative and are expressed as closeness to or distance from the Holy One, blessed be He, and that someone who did not advance comes back again in order to advance, and the punishment is shame or being in a less good state, not a bad state of “burning in hell.” The speaker notes that the question of why it is designed this way is not answered in the Torah, and it is added that Maimonides says there is good there, but the question arises: who told him, and who reported it?
Testimonies, books, and doubt about the reliability of the descriptions
It is said that there are books that say things about the World to Come, but the speaker is not sure that these things are grounded in anything rather than imagination. A female participant says there are those who came back and reported, and recommends reading the book by Eben Alexander, and the speaker says he read something and did not like it. The speaker mentions Descartes as someone who gave a good basis for the direction of proving the survival of the soul, but stresses that the problem begins with the details of “what exactly happens there.”
The problem of evil: human evil and natural evil, the Holocaust and tsunamis
The speaker distinguishes between human evil and natural evil such as plagues, diseases, and tsunamis, and says that with human evil one can in principle understand why the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene in order to preserve the meaning of choice, though he admits he has no answer for extreme cases like the Holocaust and where the line is drawn. Regarding natural evil, he says the only answer he can think of is that the Holy One, blessed be He, “cannot” do better within the assumption that He acts according to a system of fixed laws, and that, in his terms, contradictory things simply cannot be done. He presents the claim that fixed laws of nature are required so that we can orient ourselves in the world, and that canceling a specific event like a tsunami would mean undermining the consistency of the lawful order, thereby creating a world in which one cannot function. On the other hand, a view is voiced that the real world is the one after death and that here evil is a window of opportunity to increase the good and help others, but then the question is asked: why not have it be good both here and there, and why do millions suffer?
Job, the inability to understand, and the possibility of cutting off relations with the Creator
An answer is brought that the Holy One, blessed be He, answered Job, “Where were you when I founded the earth,” as a claim that it is impossible to understand fully. A view is voiced that the attempt to presume to understand His ways is problematic, and that one who criticizes the world may conclude that he does not want any “dealings” with the Creator. The speaker brings a story about a friend who said that maybe He exists, but “I don’t want diplomatic relations with Him,” and he defines this as a completely legitimate conclusion in his eyes. It is also said that there is no cheap answer to these claims and that someone who finds no dialogue can “cut off diplomatic relations with Him.”
Tradition, contradictions, and the claim that “God is good”
A participant argues that one must try to understand, because tradition says that the Holy One, blessed be He, is perfectly good, and the meaning of “good” is something we understand, so when a tsunami does not fit with that, a contradiction arises that must be dealt with. The speaker argues that a contradiction cannot really stand; either one finds a solution in which either the tsunami is good, or the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make a law-governed world without evil, or one severs relations, or something in the framework of the assumptions is wrong. He says one cannot remain indifferent in the face of a direct contradiction, and that one has to think about what to do with it rather than close one’s eyes.
Intuition as a basis for decision, science and experiment, and the lack of falsifiability tests
It is said that preference between approaches ultimately rests on intuition, and the speaker says that in science too everything begins with intuitions of hypotheses and of preferring a simple theory, and that alternative theories can always be built. The speaker raises the example of “Test Me now in this” regarding tithes and argues that it is supposed to be an empirical test, but in practice it does not stand up as a falsifiable test, because after failure ad hoc excuses appear, along with the prohibition against “testing the Holy One, blessed be He,” and so the system protects itself from practical consequences. He notes that the Torah gives an empirical test for a prophet, and a statement of Tosafot is brought that “a prophet does not prophesy about what will be, but about what ought to be,” which is interpreted as high-probability forecasting rather than certainty.
Yom Kippur in Jerusalem, Ein Prat, mixed prayer, and halakhic tension
The speaker tells that he was on Yom Kippur at the Youth Village in Jerusalem at an event of the Ein Prat yeshiva led by Micah Goodman, with hundreds of participants from across the spectrum, and he describes a reality in which it is hard to classify people as religious or secular. He describes a structure of a men’s section, a women’s section, and an Israel section, and calls it a format that also allows mixed seating in the back, and emphasizes that this has drawing power for people who otherwise would not come to a synagogue. He mentions letters of Rabbi Soloveitchik, who sharply opposed mixed seating and even instructed people to pray alone, and he argues that there is no source prohibiting mixed seating in itself; rather, the halakhic problem is saying sacred words in the presence of nakedness. He claims that Orthodoxy suffers from post-trauma because of Reform Judaism, and that this is also a tactical mistake that drives people away and creates irrelevance.
Customs, the Rema, head covering, and touching a Torah scroll
The speaker gives an example from a place where they were asked whether it is permissible to bring a Torah scroll to the women’s section on Simchat Torah, and he argues that the objection rests on “made-up ideas” such as a custom cited by the Rema about a menstruating woman touching a Torah scroll, which he says was just a report of the custom in Krakow and not a binding prohibition. He argues that there is no source for a prohibition against men going bareheaded and that at most it is an act of piety, and says that at the Jerusalem event there were also people who prayed without a kippah and he sees no reason to block them, though he says he would not count them for a minyan if they do not believe and are not really praying. Regarding head covering for women, he says that the source is learned from “and he shall uncover the woman’s head,” and argues that there is no organized opinion that permits it entirely. He mentions a responsum of Rabbi Mashash, which he regards as baseless, and also mentions the Shevut Yaakov, who suggests that gathering the hair is enough.
Women, Torah, Torah publication, and coalitions
The speaker notes that according to the Mishnah women may be called up among the seven on the Sabbath, and adds in the name of the Beit Yosef, who brings a case that in a city inhabited entirely by priests women complete the count, and he uses this to show public disregard for sources. He criticizes a situation in which Torah journals are unwilling to publish a halakhic article by a woman, and recounts that they asked to turn a female co-author into an “acknowledgment note” or to add a husband, and he describes this as outrageous. He says that when the journal Asif asked to move his female co-author down below so as not to lose “Haredi wings” in the coalition, he withdrew another article of his as well and decided never to publish there again. He argues that coalitions line up according to the lowest common denominator, and that this is connected to feelings of inferiority.
Study groups on Yom Kippur, Amnon of Mainz, and Unetaneh Tokef
The speaker describes that alongside the prayers there were many study groups on different topics, and he preferred to give a study session for four or five hours instead of what he calls the “annual nagging” of the repetition of the Musaf Amidah. He says he left himself “a chance” with Unetaneh Tokef, and recounts that he learned that Unetaneh Tokef appears in the Cairo Geniza and is attributed to an ancient Land of Israel liturgical poet such as Yannai or Kalir, not to Amnon of Mainz, and he argues that it is strange to go on printing in holiday prayer books a historical story that in his opinion is clearly untrue. He defines the descriptions of the angels in Unetaneh Tokef as metaphors and argues that nobody knows what happens “among the angels.”
Faith as a factual claim and commandments as a normative obligation
The speaker states that faith in God is a factual claim about the world, not a report about a religious feeling, and criticizes an approach that replaces faith with experience. He distinguishes between the factual claim “there is a God” and the normative claim of obligation to keep the commandments, and says that even if the fact that “He commanded” is true, a further normative step is still needed, one that decides that it is proper to obey the command and therefore that it is binding.
A captive infant as absence of obligation and not absence of knowledge
The speaker argues that a captive infant is not a matter of lack of knowledge but of not understanding that it is binding, and therefore even someone who knows the Talmud and the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) can be considered a captive infant if he relates to Torah as a culture of study that does not obligate him. He explains that the category of captive infant is a claim of coercion, and that someone who truly is unable to see the obligation as binding upon him is just as coerced as someone who was never exposed, and is therefore exempt. He rejects the literal reading that “captive” must mean physical captivity, and argues that the main point is that one cannot expect him to do otherwise.
Rationality, the chain of justifications, axioms, and intuition
The speaker defines rationality as a property of the way one arrives at a conclusion and not of the result, and emphasizes that one can arrive by non-rational means at a true claim or by rational means at a false claim. He describes a chain of justifications in which every argument rests on a prior claim, so that there is a “chain of turtles all the way down,” and therefore there must be a starting point of axioms that are not proven. He argues that one cannot judge axioms as rational by means of an earlier argument, and that in the end adopting a starting point rests on intuition; therefore, without intuition, discussions of truth, justification, and rationality are emptied of content.
Moral claims, truth and falsehood, and intuition in norms
The speaker asks what it means to say about a moral sentence like “it is forbidden to murder” that it is true or false, and against what fact in the world one compares it, and argues that it is doubtful whether the terms true and false can even be applied to norms in the same way they are applied to facts. He suggests that if there is an “Idea of the Good” or some normative reality outside the human being that can be apprehended “with the eyes of the intellect,” then intuition can serve as a basis for normative claims just as it serves as a basis for factual claims. He concludes that everything rests on intuition, including science, philosophy, ethics, and obligations, and ends with a suggestion to turn the discussion into a more orderly series later on.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We now have this one meeting before, after we’ve finished the matters of Torah study, and after the holidays we’ll start something else, so I thought of dealing with… one session, meaning to do a class, a standalone class. I was a bit undecided about what to talk about. If any of you wants to raise a topic, that’s also possible.
[Speaker B] The topic of hell?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The topic of hell? The truth is I don’t have much to say about that. The class I have to give on it is about three minutes long.
[Speaker B] Is there anything to the idea that it came from the Christians?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Meaning, you’d have to ask historians. What I can say, at least from how I understand it, is that this whole business is highly dubious.
[Speaker B] There are sources for it in Pirkei Avot and…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes. There are sources for it, of course, and there are sources for it in the words of the Sages. But the question is: what were their sources? Where did it come from? I have serious doubts about how grounded these things really are. Whether it was taken from the Christians or not, I don’t know. That’s something historians should be asked.
[Speaker D] In Psalms it says “the pit of destruction,” which is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, “the pit of destruction” means things will go badly for them. You know, what is “the pit of destruction”? It doesn’t have to be some description of a place. In general, all these figures of speech that accompany heaven, hell, and all those things—it may very well be that they’re simply the result of some line of reasoning that says that there is, after all, something in us that is not material. If so, then apparently at the moment of death that something—I don’t know—something is supposed to happen to it. So it separates from the body. I don’t know exactly what. Up to that point it sounds reasonable to me, even if it isn’t a tradition; it still sounds like a reasonable argument.
[Speaker E] And what happens next to that thing that remains?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning?
[Speaker E] What’s written about that thing that remains? Okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying, what happens next is—I don’t know. Meaning, maybe what happens next can be suggested based on all kinds of lines of reasoning, one way or another, and I have no idea how seriously any of it can really be taken. All those vivid descriptions of, I don’t know, the slingshot of souls and heat and cold and all those things—they’re jokes in my eyes. There’s no point treating that seriously.
[Speaker E] Why do you think they’re jokes? He has… Moti isn’t embarrassed by almost anything, and even he is embarrassed to say it. Why are you embarrassed?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m sure the rabbi won’t be able to do it.
[Speaker F] In anything in life.
[Speaker E] Now you’ve made us curious.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now you can’t stop, Moti. What? Enough. Fine then, okay, not a must. Anyway, I don’t know. I really don’t have much to say about it. Meaning, beyond what I’ve said up to now, I don’t know how to say anything. And anyone who does have something to say, in my opinion, also doesn’t have anything to say. Nobody knows anything about it. How do you know anything? There are all kinds of books that say things about it. You can say all kinds of things written in books. I’m just not sure how much what is written in those books is grounded in anything, as opposed to each person’s, I don’t know, wild imagination.
[Speaker H] Descartes said something—maybe he didn’t prove the survival of the soul, but he gave it a good basis for… he started the… he gave a good basis for proving that there is…
[Speaker E] Survival.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so that’s why I’m saying, up to…
[Speaker E] The stage…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of the survival of the soul, it seems to me there are fairly reasonable arguments, even if there isn’t a tradition about it—at least in my opinion, I don’t know. But what exactly happens there? And what departments are there? We talked about this once, I think—that there really is no logic in making heaven and hell, right? That’s obvious. There is no logic in actually doing such a thing. Because take hell, for the moment—heaven may be a bit different. Why punish there? After all, none of us sees it or knows it’s happening, except that they tell us there are such things up above, right? So what’s the point of doing it?
[Speaker E] From our standpoint, it’s exactly us who are there, so it’s with us. What? What do you mean, none of us?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The “us” is us.
[Speaker E] But you…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Will you draw a lesson after you’re there? Whom will it fix? What’s the point? And the soul there—what, will it go back to keeping commandments? What lesson will it learn? What lesson will you learn after you’ve been in hell? Or your surroundings? Or I don’t know who?
[Speaker J] Nobody, after all—nobody knows anything. It’s like sending a prisoner to jail for his treatment afterward.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m asking—I understand. But I assume, at least I assume, that from the standpoint of the Holy One, blessed be He, if this thing brings about no repair at all, then what’s the logic? So why do it? What’s the logic of giving punishment? Just revenge?
[Speaker J] So those who didn’t behave… who got what was coming to them should suffer?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the whole story of reward and punishment. So I’m saying, I’m talking about the story of reward and punishment.
[Speaker J] The story of reward and punishment up there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m saying.
[Speaker F] I’m saying there’s no logic in assuming there is punishment above. Because there’s no point in giving it. There is a lot of logic in saying that there is punishment…
[Speaker E] Up above,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] because when they tell us there is punishment above, that can maybe achieve results.
[Speaker F] But actually carrying out the punishment—what for? It seems totally unnecessary to me. So are they fooling us? I don’t know, I have no idea. I’m saying that this whole business… reward and punishment. No, no: “The ways of the Lord are upright; the righteous walk in them and transgressors stumble in them.”
[Speaker E] But I have a question—before the question, wait, just to say something. To the extent that here we advance more, then there we’re closer to the Holy One, blessed be He. That’s reward and punishment in my view. Meaning, not that you… in my opinion, if you haven’t advanced enough here, you’re farther away, and that’s why you come back again, again, in order to advance higher. The more you do here, the closer you are to the Holy One, blessed be He. That’s reward and punishment; it’s all relative. It’s not that you go to hell and burn. You say that you’re ashamed that you’re far away. Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The punishment is that you’re less… you’re in a less good state, not that you’re in a bad state. Exactly.
[Speaker E] You’re in a less good state.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but…
[Speaker K] The question is why it’s like that.
[Speaker E] In what sense, why?
[Speaker H] Why is it designed that way? And in general, why do you have choice and have to do all this, instead of just throwing everything on you from the start?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because the Torah didn’t tell us. And there’s another question, which is: who told you? Okay…
[Speaker E] So that’s Maimonides, for example.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine—who told him?
[Speaker E] Right, no, but that there is good there—who told him that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay, okay. I’m saying, people can raise lines of reasoning; everyone will say his own reasoning.
[Speaker E] But not only reasoning. There are those who came back and said. Do you remember? No, unfortunately I don’t remember. But people who were there told me. They said so. And I recommend reading that book by Eben Alexander.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I read something. A student of mine gave it to me to read. No, no—I didn’t like it.
[Speaker E] What’s that? Yes, yes.
[Speaker J] I have…
[Speaker F] A different question: why didn’t God create a better world?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a good question, and I think we spoke about it a bit once.
[Speaker F] Constraint? Right, constraints.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Constraints.
[Speaker C] No, He couldn’t.
[Speaker F] Because they say the Jews will repair the world and spread light and so on and so forth. But there are things that have nothing to do with Jews at all. Earthquakes and tsunamis and this, and so much suffering is caused to hundreds of thousands of people. The question is: if God is good and true, why didn’t He create a better world…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So we did talk about that once, yes—in the first year, I don’t remember anymore. No, but there was here… no no, it may have been also, but I think yes, not so long ago. There are two kinds of evil. There’s human evil and what we’ll call natural evil—plagues, diseases, tsunamis, and things like that. Evil whose source is human beings—well, human beings create it, so that isn’t connected to the Holy One, blessed be He. You can ask why He doesn’t intervene to stop it. Fine, but if we take that to the extreme, so that He intervenes every time something happens that isn’t good, then when something good happens, it also loses its meaning, because then in fact we don’t have the option not to do it. The whole meaning of good and evil is when it comes from our choice. So He really doesn’t have the option of intervening every single time and not letting us do evil. Now obviously in colossal evil, insane evil—the Holocaust, yes, or something like that—I don’t know, He didn’t intervene there either. That I don’t know. But the principle of why He doesn’t intervene, I think one can understand it on the level of human evil. On the level of natural evil, the only answer I can think of is that He cannot do better.
[Speaker F] Are you allowed to say about God that He cannot?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course. We’ve talked about that more than once. Not only are you allowed—that’s the truth. So is it forbidden to say the truth? How could that be?
[Speaker F] But it’s so easy to make a better world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s really not easy. No, it’s really not easy.
[Speaker F] Instead of saying, let there be a mosquito, you say, let there not be a mosquito.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if there isn’t a mosquito, that has lots of other consequences that you don’t want.
[Speaker F] Everything has a role.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not exactly like that. It’s not simple. There is… assuming, assuming that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to operate in the world according to a system of fixed laws. And that is an assumption. Because if not, then really you can do whatever you want, no problem. So then why?
[Speaker H] That’s His omnipotence.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That I don’t know, but…
[Speaker H] It’s like a child running into the road right now. Do something to stop him.
[Speaker E] But the truth is, that’s exactly what is terrible—that he runs into the road. The idea is that really the real world is the world after death, of souls without the body, and there everything is good.
[Speaker H] So you’re saying there is no evil at all?
[Speaker E] So that lets everything off the hook? I’m not saying there’s no evil at all. I’m saying we suffer some suffering here, but it’s… but the truth… like suffering in a dream relative to waking up.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So why shouldn’t it be good both here and there?
[Speaker H] What’s wrong with that?
[Speaker K] Just straight there—let’s just go straight there. The evil here is a window of opportunity for us to increase the good. He has to give opportunities to do…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but millions are killed for the sake of that window of opportunity, and suffer terrible agony.
[Speaker K] Like the Holocaust. That’s an extreme case. No, fine. Fine, take that extreme case. Why is it hotter today than yesterday?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, okay. You’re saying it’s to bring more out of us?
[Speaker K] An opportunity to give a cup of water.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And what about the tsunami?
[Speaker K] Just like the Holocaust. Fine.
[Speaker E] The tsunami too is more of an opportunity to help whoever…
[Speaker F] Suffered.
[Speaker K] Whoever survived, people help him. No, there is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The point is…
[Speaker F] That when there’s famine, plagues, other things…
[Speaker K] About the intensity, the intensity of the suffering, I have no answer, because it’s like the Holocaust. About the principle itself, the very…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no.
[Speaker F] In the Holocaust—the Holocaust is human beings.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the Holocaust, when it’s evil from human beings, I can understand why He doesn’t intervene.
[Speaker K] I don’t know, say—where is the line drawn?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying, I don’t… but where is the line drawn? If one person is murdered—not six million—then He doesn’t need to intervene? That’s not enough? The one person who was killed doesn’t care that there are another five million around him who also… why shouldn’t He intervene?
[Speaker I] Maybe He did intervene a little, in that the Germans lost the war, and then…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So He intervened a little. Doesn’t matter, then He didn’t intervene enough. A lot more.
[Speaker I] So…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He didn’t intervene in order to prevent what happened. Still. Still. So where’s the line between twenty… yes, all the same. That’s why I say, there I don’t think it’s all that hard. But with a tsunami it’s harder. Meaning, everything depends on Him; it doesn’t depend on human beings. What’s the problem? Just stop it. Why kill millions of people? And cause them suffering? I think the reason is simply that if you want to organize a set of laws according to which the world will operate—and apparently that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, decided, meaning that there should be fixed laws. By the way, part of that can maybe even be explained by the fact that for us too, in order for us to orient ourselves in the world, there need to be fixed laws. Meaning, if something different happens every time, you won’t know what to do here. It works out fine without the tsunami. No, no, no—not without a tsunami.
[Speaker K] If…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you cancel the tsunami, you cancel the laws of nature.
[Speaker K] Momentarily?
[Speaker H] No, not momentarily.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not momentarily. That’s why I’m saying, if you assume that the world has to operate according to laws of nature—that’s the assumption.
[Speaker H] But that’s not a good explanation. Why? What for? Make laws of nature, except when I want to change them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but again, what do you mean, except when you want to change them? But then you don’t enable a person to orient himself here, to function here. If there are no laws of nature, you can get on a plane and you don’t know whether the Holy One, blessed be He, won’t cancel the law of gravity in another moment because something isn’t working out for Him with the tsunami in Japan.
[Speaker K] Most of the time it will be there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Most of the time it will be there, but sometimes it won’t be. But in order to orient yourself, you need it to be there always. Otherwise you won’t even know that it’s a law of nature if it isn’t always there. If you test it in a lab and sometimes it works for you and sometimes it doesn’t, then there is no law of nature. Yes, but it doesn’t have to be all the time.
[Speaker H] It won’t work when lots of people are supposed to die—what’s the problem?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, no, that is a problem. Because you don’t know that lots of people were supposed to die. You suddenly see that there is no gravity there. A research delegation of physicists will suddenly get there and ask itself, wait, what’s going on here? Why is there no…
[Speaker J] Some prophet will say, there was a miracle here. Okay, and we’ve solved the problem again. No, not really. But the Holy One, blessed be He, answered Job on this when he asked.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What did He answer him?
[Speaker K] “Where were you when I founded the earth?”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, נכון, that’s exactly what we’re trying to understand. We’re trying to understand as best we can. And He tells him: you can’t. Fine, maybe we won’t succeed in understanding all the way, but we can try to make progress.
[Speaker F] With what?
[Speaker K] All human progress is because of the evil in the world. In order to… antibiotics were invented to deal with plagues. Democracy was invented to deal with tyranny. Yes, but you know, if there hadn’t been plagues…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] then there would have been no need for antibiotics. This progress of creating antibiotics is because there are plagues. If there were no plagues, why would I need the progress of antibiotics? Meaning, maybe the theory underlying antibiotics—that understanding…
[Speaker K] And in that sense we’re partners in the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now, I’m saying that I think overall there simply was no choice, and that’s why He does it this way, that’s all. He has no possibility of doing better. A particular system of laws that brings the world to the place the Holy One, blessed be He, wants the world to reach apparently cannot do it in a better way. And within that system of laws there are some side effects like these that there is no possibility of… yes. It can always be that we don’t understand…
[Speaker K] The matter with the wheat and the poor and all that. If the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted there to be no poor people, He could make bread grow for them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, He wants us to support them.
[Speaker K] That’s exactly the point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And even that, you know, is a somewhat problematic answer—meaning, to hit one person in order to improve another? I don’t know, it’s a bit… if I were to do that, say, between two of my children—cause one to suffer so that the other would help him—I think people would condemn me for that.
[Speaker E] But maybe He knows that perhaps that person needed to suffer because of a previous reincarnation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so if we’re talking on those levels, then maybe everything goes together.
[Speaker E] If we don’t talk about just one part, then there’s almost no difficulty.
[Speaker J] Look, I don’t understand the very attempt to presume to understand His ways. Meaning, if you want to say, to criticize the world, you can actually take that conclusion quite far and come and say: if He made such an ugly world, maybe I don’t want any part of this whole business.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand that last sentence now—how it connects to the first. In the first one you said that we shouldn’t presume to understand His ways.
[Speaker J] On exactly the same level on which we’re speaking and saying why the Creator didn’t do this and didn’t do that, the way you raised the questions. So first of all, I don’t understand at all how one can come and try to understand His ways. Okay, that’s a presumption that you can’t even talk about. And secondly, if you do want to talk, and your point of criticism or judgment toward the Creator is why He doesn’t do good things, and you think that’s how it should be, then maybe you say, wait a second—with this Creator I don’t want any dealings. Those are the questions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Those are the claims of quite a few people, and that isn’t something cheap—there’s no question about it, it isn’t something cheap, there is no answer.
[Speaker J] It isn’t something cheap—cut off…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the diplomatic relations with Him if you find no dialogue, if you don’t find one. Did I ever tell you about my friend who told me: maybe He exists, but diplomatic relations with Him—I don’t want them. Meaning, the way He behaves, I don’t… this whole thing doesn’t seem right to me. Fine. A completely legitimate conclusion in my eyes.
[Speaker J] That brings me exactly to two topics you talked about, and also when you analyzed the whole issue of the existence of the Creator and so on, and afterward we got to the question whether it’s the Creator who wanted us to keep commandments and so on. Your final point was that every person in the end—it’s his inner intuition whether he wants to go with it and accept it or not. You came to that same point also in the topic of Torah study. When you tried to show the difference between the commandment of Torah study and study itself, you said that it’s obvious there’s a difference. This matter—that one has to study Torah—that’s intuition. I understand that that’s what ought to be. All of this is intuition, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The truth is, that’s the topic I was thinking of talking about. Meaning, I’ll just tell you one more thing about the previous topic for a moment. This idea that it’s presumptuous to understand His ways—in my opinion that’s not presumption, that’s the ABCs. We have to do it, and I think we also have a chance of succeeding, because He scattered hints for us. I think He also intended for us to try to understand it, because after all He told us that He is good, right? At least that’s how our tradition passes it down to us. On the one hand. I don’t know what “on the one hand” means—that He is good, not on one hand; He is good.
[Speaker G] There is no evil in Him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He is good, period. At least, what is accepted in tradition is that there is no other side; He is perfectly good. And if He is perfectly good, the meaning of the term “good” is something we understand very well. So if something in the things the Holy One, blessed be He, does doesn’t fit with that, then something here doesn’t work. And if someone gives us a tradition that contains contradictions—you know, in logic, from a contradiction you can derive any conclusion. That’s a theorem in logic. So if the tradition contains contradictions, then it says nothing at all.
[Speaker H] Tradition contains lots of contradictions—tradition. No, but apparently some of the contradictions are simply imaginary.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it depends. Not everything I don’t understand is a contradiction. Once you have a statement and its opposite, there is no such thing, no such thing in tradition, and if there is, then you just got confused. It’s nonsense. Fine, if it’s nonsense, throw it out. But I’m saying—it can’t be. There can be something I don’t understand, but there can’t be a contradiction, because a contradiction inside something means that that system in fact says nothing. That’s just a simple logical claim. So a contradiction cannot be; there can be things we don’t understand. You can now tell me, look, they say the Holy One, blessed be He, is good. Now I want to know: why does He make tsunamis? Excellent question, because after all the Holy One, blessed be He, told us that He is good; He didn’t tell us not to deal with it, right? Fine, you said something—I want to understand what it means. After all, we know what the term “good” means; it isn’t just some arbitrary word, we understand what it means. Now either I find a contradiction…
[Speaker F] Why don’t you want to call it a contradiction?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I do call it a contradiction. I’m just saying now the question is what I do with that, because a contradiction can’t really stand. So there are two possibilities: either I find some solution to it—and a solution means either that He isn’t good, or that the tsunami is good; meaning, I don’t know, I don’t know of another possibility. Or you find some out-of-the-box solution, as I said before: He can’t do better, so that’s why He made a tsunami. What can you do? He can’t do better. This is the best world He can make; this is where His power ends. I’m using borrowed language, because I explained once that it isn’t really correct to say that His power ends here; rather, contradictory things simply cannot be done. He can’t make a square triangle, because there is no such thing as a square triangle. So too He cannot make a system of rigid laws within which everything He wants to happen will happen, and yet nothing bad will happen with it. There simply is no such system of laws. There isn’t. There is no coherent series of laws that does the job. I’m saying this is a hypothesis—I don’t know—but it’s a possible explanation, yes. Or I really do cut off diplomatic relations with Him, or there is a contradiction here and therefore something here is not right.
[Speaker E] Or I just don’t go investigating within…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not saying this definitively. Clearly, I’m saying that I can arrive at the first two possibilities even if I myself haven’t found the explanation. I can assume that there is some explanation that says the tsunami is good, or that the tsunami is not within His power. That too I can’t prove. I can’t prove that there isn’t some set of laws that would do exactly the same job without the problems—right? Without the troubles created by these laws of nature. I’m only raising it as a possible hypothesis that could resolve the difficulty, but I can’t prove that there really is no such set of laws. After all, I also don’t really know what depends on what, and if you eliminate the tsunami, what other prices would be paid here? Today we already understand that in the world many things are connected to one another. Meaning, you can’t fix some local thing and think everything else will stay the same. Those are the options. I don’t know any others. But I do think the question has to be asked. A person has to give some thought to the question and think what he does with it. It’s a good question. You can’t just respond indifferently when someone tells you something and right before your eyes you see a frontal contradiction to what they’re telling you. What am I supposed to do? So basically what they told me isn’t true. I can’t just close my eyes and that’s it. What they told me isn’t true—that’s the meaning.
[Speaker H] And it’s not only what they told you. You keep referring to the tradition that God is good, but there’s also intuition. Meaning, my basic assumption about the Creator includes that He is all-powerful, and it also includes that He is absolute good. Meaning, even without someone telling me that, if I had to think about Him on my own, I wouldn’t think that if He created a world—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be. I’m not one hundred percent sure that I would have reached that conclusion without the tradition. I don’t know. Who says He is good? All-powerful maybe—even about that I’m not sure—but I don’t know.
[Speaker J] In any case, what should be the basis for preferring one of the three approaches?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whatever convinces you, I guess. Intuition. Intuition. In the end that’s where you remain; our decisions are ultimately made there.
[Speaker J] That’s a bit—
[Speaker G] Scary, no?
[Speaker E] It’s the strongest thing there is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They promised us a garden of—
[Speaker E] Roses. They promised us logical proofs, and you bring—
[Speaker G] This—and you do this.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but experiment—is that forced on us? No, that too begins with intuitions. Everything starts with intuitions.
[Speaker I] In science, you propose a hypothesis from intuition, afterward you go check it, but also—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That testing too is based on lots of intuitions. No, no—there’s always a way for me to explain all your facts through an alternative theory. You assume the simpler one is correct, so you assume that’s the right theory.
[Speaker I] Right. You have an intuition about some theory, and afterward you have an experiment—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That if it refutes it—
[Speaker I] Then the theory—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Isn’t—
[Speaker I] Here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but there are infinitely many other theories that are still here, and you still choose one of them.
[Speaker I] That’s true, but it fits all this, and I keep doing experiments until I find something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end you choose one without really having an empirical basis for that, even in the scientific method.
[Speaker I] But here it ends with intuition. I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t see a substantive difference. You—
[Speaker I] Can’t prove anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it doesn’t stand up to the test of falsification—that’s obvious, because these are not scientific claims. By the way, some things do stand up to a test of falsification. When it says, “Test Me now with this”—except in the matter of the tithe—meaning, it’s forbidden to test the Holy One, blessed be He, except in one thing. In principle, that should be tested experimentally. It’s supposed to stand up to falsification, and therefore I think it’s not true.
[Speaker E] What does it say there?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It says that it is permitted to test the Holy One, blessed be He, regarding tithing—that someone who gives a tithe becomes wealthy.
[Speaker E] So it’s permitted to test?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s the only case. “Test Me now with this.” Tithing—whether it’s a tithe of produce or also a tithe of money, doesn’t matter.
[Speaker H] No matter what he does? If he gives a tithe and takes the right steps in order to become rich—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does it actually mean when we laugh when we say that? Because it’s clear to us that it won’t work when we test it. Right? We don’t take these statements seriously—let’s be honest.
[Speaker H] I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hope it will work. I hope so too, but it doesn’t work.
[Speaker H] Maybe after a few generations? It doesn’t work.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In short, do statistics between people who tithe and people who don’t tithe, who started from the same point—I haven’t done it. How long continuously do you have to tithe? These are always those ad hoc excuses. That’s why I say it doesn’t really stand up to a test of falsification. Once I heard some Jew from the circles of Har Hamor and so on saying that if the State of Israel is destroyed, he’ll take off his kippah. I really respect that statement. I don’t agree with it, but I really respect it, because at least he takes his ideology seriously. He himself won’t do it—that’s obvious, I don’t believe him. But never mind. We don’t take these statements seriously. It’s easy for us to make these statements as long as they’re not put to an empirical test, and when they are put to an empirical test, then suddenly you’re not allowed to test the Holy One, blessed be He, you’re not allowed to examine—it’s forbidden. It’s a system that protects itself from any practical implication. Meaning, you’ll never catch it on anything that makes some practical claim. And therefore I cast serious doubt on all these assertions.
[Speaker C] The Torah tells you, for example, how to evaluate a prophet. It gives you an empirical test.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When there are prophets here and we can test them, then we’ll see.
[Speaker F] Did you hear this about tithing, the wordplay—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This thing? “Surely tithe”—one-tenth, tithe. That’s it. And now—now a tenth—
[Speaker F] Of prophets. You said it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A tenth of this, that, luck—
[Speaker F] And a tenth of your luck. Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you tithe. You deal in statistics; I don’t need to tell you how many numerological equivalences like that I can make.
[Speaker I] Now regarding prophets—you asked me once—Tosafot says about prophets, “A prophet does not prophesy about what will be, but about what is fitting to be.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but that’s after the prophet has been validated. When they test him, they test him empirically. After that he’s a prophet—no, after the prophet has been tested, now when you take his prophecy, that’s no longer a test of prophecy; now it’s prophecy, and Tosafot says that this prophecy is about what is fitting to be. Otherwise there’s no test. How do you test whether he’s a prophet or not?
[Speaker G] But the haftarah we read on Yom Kippur—about what is fitting for him, and about—“Is this the fast I have chosen,” and so on—it was talking about what we need.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there the prophet is rebuking, not prophesying. There the prophet is rebuking, not prophesying—that’s something else. We’re talking about prophecies, not rebukes.
[Speaker F] But then why do they say that? If Rabbi Akiva laughed and said, if this is fulfilled then that too will be fulfilled, that shows it’s not like that—that it’s what will be. I didn’t understand. Rabbi Akiva with his friends, when they cried—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And he—
[Speaker F] Said, if this was fulfilled—when they went there, over the ruins of the Temple—he said, if this was fulfilled then that too will be fulfilled.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So he wasn’t—
[Speaker F] Talking about what is fitting. He was talking about what will be.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, fine—what will be. But the question is whether it will certainly be. And the question is when it will be. There are things that in the end—fine—but it’s not that prophecy is only about what is fitting to be. “Fitting” doesn’t mean morally fitting. “Fitting” means what is expected to be. Most likely.
[Speaker H] Most likely—futurology at a high level.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. It’s futurology with a high probability, but only high probability, not certainty.
[Speaker E] “It is yet fitting that old men and old women sit in Jerusalem”—that too is fitting. That too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but not morally fitting. He wasn’t talking about moral fittingness. I’m not talking about moral fittingness. I’m talking about statistical fittingness—meaning, what is expected to happen. Anyway, this intuition—I was in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur, so I’m starting in that context. I was in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. There was some Midreshet Ein Prat of Micah Goodman—religious, secular, and all kinds of things like that—so by now they already have quite a few alumni, and they do this kind of Yom Kippur for everyone. All the alumni and everyone come. They rented some place in Jerusalem, hundreds of people came, some huge project. My daughter organized it, so that gave us motivation to come. And this whole thing… Where was it? At Havat HaNoar HaTzioni. They rented a place. At Havat HaNoar HaTzioni in Jerusalem. It’s some kind of campus place, I don’t know, with dormitories and such, and people came, families. There had to be sleeping arrangements, meaning they needed some… How many were there? There were many hundreds of people. Was it in Givatayim? There were some who came from the area, who live there, but the guests came from all directions, and they were all kinds, secular, religious—you couldn’t tell. And that too is a spectrum, it’s not… I had never seen with my own eyes how much this spectrum today is already just sub-stereotypes—there’s nothing. You simply can’t know anything. There were girls there with bare arms blowing shofar at the end of the day, at the end of Yom Kippur, swaying in prayer like rebbes’ wives. No, really, you couldn’t tell anything there. The whole thing is all mixed up. Like mixed prayer? Yes, in the sense… but religious people of many kinds. Meaning religious, you know, when I walked in there I kind of had to swallow hard. At first it was a bit much for me because it was in a sports hall—that was the place—and all these chairs, hundreds of chairs, lots of people. It was packed to capacity on Yom Kippur night and at Ne’ilah. There was air conditioning, let’s say that could have used improvement.
[Speaker F] Were there cantors or prayer leaders?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, cantors or prayer leaders? Professionals, you mean? No, no—prayer leaders. Actually not all that great; that too could be improved. Which prayer rite? Mixed, of course. Everything mixed—couldn’t be otherwise. Sephardi, Ashkenazi, all kinds, different rites, Yemenite. I don’t know exactly; there was even some prayer book there that already worked with the—had already done this mixing for them. I’m not sure. Then you walk in and you don’t know where the men’s section is. I was looking; I was sure there would be separation there, meaning they’d preserve some procedures, because they had consulted me too about a few things. My daughter consulted me to check what the boundaries were, what’s permitted, what’s forbidden. There was a woman reading the haftarah of Jonah, the maftir Jonah—that was a woman. And for the blessing, I told her to give it to a man, there would be sensitivities there, although I think she also could have recited the blessing. But just to prevent things. Later I thought there probably wouldn’t even have been sensitivities; she could have done the blessing too.
[Speaker H] In a place where you read the haftarah you can—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Already do everything, yes exactly. Now in front there was—I didn’t understand it at first—apparently there are people who already know the format; there’s already such a format. There’s a women’s section, a men’s section, and a “Israel section.” That’s what they call it; later they explained it to me. So in the back it was together, and in front there was some partition where men sat here and women there. Fine. So I sat there in the men’s wing. People were wandering around in different sections. It was total chaos, terrible chaos—I mean chaos in the sense of order, meaning, in terms of what you expect. Nothing was predictable, and everything was very relaxed, nobody was bothered by anything. The truth is that by the end I got so used to it, it seemed really, really sweet to me. No, really. There’s something here—there are a lot of people who would never come to a synagogue if it weren’t like this.
[Speaker G] So that should be expanded.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right. I’m in favor. I’m in favor. Somehow these phenomena almost never really manage to get outside Jerusalem. There’s a little in Modi’in, I think, maybe a bit. There are a few places. At Beit Midrash Hadar. Yes. In the United States that’s the source. There’s no sitting together there.
[Speaker E] In participation there are men and women sitting together?
[Speaker I] Yes, yes, sure.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Entirely together? In the back? At first I didn’t understand what—there’s a partnership minyan?
[Speaker I] Here—
[Speaker E] At Hadar, at Beit Midrash Hadar, once a month. It was on Rosh Hashanah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anyway, the whole thing was very interesting.
[Speaker I] I just saw letters of Rabbi Soloveitchik, various letters that he wrote. There are three of them there, and he comes out furiously against—furiously—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Furiously.
[Speaker I] Rabbi Soloveitchik—well known. He said that someone approached him and said, listen, in the community where I am they sit together there. He told him: pray alone. He told him: pray on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur alone. The man approached him and said, listen, permit me for half an hour on Rosh Hashanah to be in the synagogue, because the shofar blower told me he won’t be able to blow for me unless I come in there. He told him no—listen, hearing the shofar is a Torah-level prohibition—there is no value to prayer if they sit together.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, up to that point I don’t agree, but I understand. From there on, it’s simply incorrect. What Torah-level prohibition is there? Depends—depends on what.
[Speaker I] He repeats it several times—it’s really a Torah-level prohibition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let him repeat it, but it isn’t. It’s not forbidden. There is no source anywhere at all saying you have to sit separately in a synagogue, first of all. It’s all made up. And second, what there is—what there is—is that when women, or in general when you see exposed body parts, you can’t pray facing that. That’s true. That’s the problem with mixed seating. There is no problem with mixed seating in and of itself; it has no source whatsoever, and nobody is going to sell me any nonsense. Fine. In a place where there is a problem of praying facing nakedness, then words of sanctity are not said facing nakedness—there there are halakhic problems. And there, yes, that was the case. Meaning, women were dressed there in various ways. So there really were halakhic problems in the places where people sat mixed together. But if it had been possible somehow to make sure there wouldn’t be overly problematic dress there… we’d split words over head covering. Yes, divide it among them.
[Speaker H] Without head covering—that’s not splitting words. Divide head covering.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Without head covering there is a problem—could be without head covering, let’s say. Although I’m not sure. No, of course I’m sure—yes! No, that’s why I’m saying, fine. But I’m saying that for this very reason, in a place where they make a men’s section, a women’s section, and then also an Israel section, anyone who wants to sit together can sit together if they want. I sit in the men’s section and I pray—why should I care? Meaning, it doesn’t invalidate the place; there’s no problem with it. So if there are people who want to sit that way and do so—good health to them. It doesn’t bother me. If it does them good, then good health to them. But there was something there that I think was very—until I was there, I had thought about these things because I’d heard there was such a thing, but until I was there I didn’t understand the force of it. There’s something here that is very powerful. It’s a revolution beginning from below, obviously. No one agrees to it, but clearly at some stage it will catch on, at least in part of the public, and it has to. This spectrum has no other response. Today there is such a spectrum—between religious people, Reform, and all that—you can’t separate anymore, there’s no such thing. For a long time already the consumer movement from right to left, from left to right—you can no longer distinguish anything. I understood that at Shira Hadasha they don’t sit together.
[Speaker E] No, no—that’s why it’s not what you’re describing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I’m talking about—Shira Hadasha, what’s the issue there? That’s completely fine. What’s the problem?
[Speaker E] It started only in Jerusalem a long time ago, and now it’s already all over the country, like in Petah Tikva and Yeruham.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There I don’t understand the problem at all. You’re saying there it’s one hundred percent this.
[Speaker E] Yes, right.
[Speaker G] There was—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I remember in Yeruham there were many Jerusalem-type people from those Jerusalem communities in Yeruham—there are quite a few of them—and they had a synagogue where they were terribly conflicted about various things. Back then I was in the Haredi community, before all the processes I later went through, and I understood what they wanted. Sometimes it’s so strange—it’s a kind of ignorance, because there’s no rabbinic guidance. Once there is no rabbinic guidance, people simply don’t understand where they live. There were heated arguments there about whether it was permissible to make the women’s section parallel to the men’s section instead of behind it. With a partition? What’s the problem? I didn’t understand what they were talking about. What exactly is the problem?
[Speaker J] Let them come here to weekday morning prayers in the synagogue.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course. What’s the issue at all? It’s because there is no rabbinic guidance at all, and also no trust in rabbinic guidance.
[Speaker J] When we found out that Kadiel and David wanted to be elected—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To the religious council—and that whole moshav—no, no, that was later. Much later in Yeruham than what I’m talking about. I wasn’t in Yeruham when that story happened.
[Speaker K] And the big story is that Orthodoxy has post-trauma from Reform.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right, right. But I’m saying that’s a mistake tactically too, not only substantively. It’s a tactical mistake because you lose the people. You become irrelevant. Now if you’re telling the truth, then be irrelevant. But you aren’t telling the truth. The whole consideration is only tactical—how do you stop the decline? Tactical considerations have to be judged by their results. Meaning, if you’re telling the truth, then tell the truth always, and if you become irrelevant, then you become irrelevant—but tell the truth. What’s the problem? It could have been like the Vilna Gaon and the Hasidim—you could choose either. But tactical considerations need to be measured against outcomes. And if it doesn’t bring the results, why do it? Now, I don’t know what exactly “it doesn’t bring the results” means. There are communities where this conservatism still works apparently. People are very afraid of making changes. I remember here at Mishkan Yisrael, one Simchat Torah, they came to ask me if they could take the Torah scroll into the women’s section—whether it’s allowed to take the Torah scroll. I told them: what’s the problem? Why not? So from then on… so they took it, and afterward I heard there was world war. I probably wasn’t around anymore. But world war—how can that be? Taking the Torah scroll to the women’s section—what’s the problem? There’s a gloss of the Rema that says a menstruating woman should not touch a Torah scroll, and even that has no source; it’s an invention without any source or basis. Fine, there was such a custom in Krakow, okay. Here is not Krakow; here is Petah Tikva. Why should I care? The custom in Krakow was that women wouldn’t touch a Torah scroll because they were menstruating.
[Speaker J] Because of the Rema. What do you mean, we don’t follow the Rema?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Customs of Krakow—what does “follow the Rema” mean? If the Rema ruled like Maimonides and not like Rashba, that too I wouldn’t accept, but I understand those who follow the Rema. Fine. But here he didn’t rule like anyone. He tells you what the custom in Krakow was. So why should I care? Do I live in Krakow now? I can tell you now what they wrote was practiced in Petah Tikva; I’ll also write glosses on the Shulchan Arukh from here with the customs of Petah Tikva and everything will be fine—then it’ll be okay to do it. Meaning, the moment something gets written down, it turns into some kind of—
[Speaker H] Why did they practice that way?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why did they practice that way? I don’t know. An invention with no basis at all. Fine, but they wrote it. It has no basis—none.
[Speaker J] Wait, but if he thought it was correct? Why is there no basis? In Krakow people—but there’s no Jewish law saying “they practiced and therefore one should do it.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because I’m saying, in these liberal places, let’s call them that, there’s sometimes a very strange tendency to be very conservative even toward themselves, I think—to signal to themselves: no, we are within the framework of Jewish law. They don’t always know exactly what the Jewish law is and what isn’t Jewish law, because there’s no rabbinic guidance.
[Speaker F] But isn’t there Jewish law that Ashkenazim adopt the Rema across the board? Ashkenazim adopt the Rema—since when is it about Krakow, and whatever the Rema said, that’s it? And Sephardim, the Shulchan Arukh.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: there are rulings of the Rema, and there is adopting custom. I said that I also don’t agree with that, but fine, one can adopt it—or at least when you have no position. I don’t agree with it. If you have a position, fine, keep the custom. “If the Jewish law is uncertain in your hands, follow the custom.” If the Jewish law is not uncertain in your hands, why are you following the custom? Do what you understand. But that’s regarding legal rulings. When the Rema reports to me what the custom in Krakow was, why should I care? Why is that of any interest to me at all?
[Speaker G] Why did he report it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He thought it was a proper thing. He thought it was right for his people, for whom he was writing this summary of the practiced Jewish law.
[Speaker H] But even for them—is women being menstruating and touching a Torah scroll different there than here? What does “right for his people” mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying that was the custom there, so let them do it. But what does that have to do with me?
[Speaker H] But he writes it as a law book—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because he thinks that’s the custom.
[Speaker H] But even if he thinks so—so what if he thinks so? Fine, then what does anything the Rema says matter?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I open a law book, the Rema. Even the Rema writes—there are things he writes as law, and things he writes as custom. And if he writes law, you can tell me: look, since there’s a dispute between Maimonides and Rashba, I don’t know whom to rule like—or even if I do know, most people say that even if I know, I’ll go with the way the Rema ruled. Fine? Because that’s law, and according to that view the other thing is forbidden. Fine? Now I don’t know who is right, so I go with the Rema, and therefore I rule that way, and therefore the other thing is forbidden. But custom doesn’t mean something is forbidden. “Among us, the practice was not to do this way”—fine. “Among us, the practice was to stroll in the street on Friday night.” Fine, so what? What does that mean? He doesn’t say there that it is forbidden for women to touch a Torah scroll. He says that that was the custom there—that was their custom. There is no source for it; he doesn’t bring one. You can’t produce a prohibition for it because there is no source. Why should there be a prohibition? To prove a prohibition you need either a decree or a source from a verse, something Torah-level, some derivation, something.
[Speaker F] What—there’s no prohibition without a source? No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? No. Everything is permitted.
[Speaker H] Reasoning.
[Speaker F] What about uncovering the head? Is there a source for that? The whole issue of an uncovered head.
[Speaker H] Is there a source for that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? For women you mean? What?
[Speaker F] No, for men—is there really a prohibition? What’s the problem? There’s no prohibition, what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To walk bareheaded? Of course. What?
[Speaker F] Of course there’s no prohibition. The fact is we all walk bareheaded. So what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We all also wear—
[Speaker F] Pants.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Is there a prohibition on walking without pants? So what? Fine, that’s how people go.
[Speaker F] What? No. Do you see someone in a synagogue—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Talmud says—there’s a statement in the Talmud that someone praised himself for not walking four cubits without a kippah, without head covering. He praises himself for it because that is pious conduct, but there is no prohibition. What prohibition is there? What are you talking about? Yes, you don’t… Fine, so there is some value in doing it, but there’s no prohibition.
[Speaker F] By heaven, if someone walks into a synagogue without a kippah, it’s definitely Jewish law. Kippah maybe doesn’t suit him, but—what? He brought you Jewish law here in a book. No, no—a custom, sanctification of God, the person wants to—on the contrary—he comes into a synagogue without a kippah, you know what? What, in synagogue people aren’t okay? Leave it. Are you calling that not okay? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There for example, yesterday, there were guys there without kippot. Were there people there without kippot? There were people without kippot in the synagogue, in that sports hall, yes, during prayer. All kinds of people of every type and kind.
[Speaker F] Only in the Israel section were there—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, is someone blocking them? Someone without a kippah sat next to me—what, in the men’s section? Yes. Not regularly—he came for a few minutes, I don’t know, he wandered around, I don’t know what he was. And were all of them without kippot?
[Speaker G] Wait, I’m not sure if—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you ask me to guess, I think some of them weren’t. If you ask me to guess regarding the display. No, what display? Someone speaks to the person, so he comes. Should I throw him out of the synagogue because of that? Join him to the minyan—I won’t join him. I have my minyan; I have my group of people praying there. If someone wants to come to a synagogue and this speaks to him and does something for him, and maybe in the end he’ll even discover that he does believe, although he thinks he doesn’t—that can also happen. On the contrary, let him come. That’s excellent. Open this whole thing up a bit to different kinds of people. This exclusion—it’s not—
[Speaker H] You see travelers around the world, they go into ceremonies of whatever they want. Right, because it’s an experience.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, fine. But here it’s not exactly an anthropological experience. These are people who know these rituals, and many times have left them. We’re talking about people who know these rituals and left them, a large part of them, and they’re not—because they understand that here they can remain. That’s not wrong. There’s something deeper here.
[Speaker K] The question is whether one can say a blessing there—
[Speaker G] Without a kippah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the opinions are divided. Why? Because regarding words of sanctity there are opinions in Jewish law that require a kippah.
[Speaker F] So that’s what I asked—whether there’s a source.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Words of sanctity. To go around all day without a kippah—there’s no source. There’s that self-praise of Rav Shmuel or whoever it was, that he didn’t walk four cubits without a kippah. That’s praise. No—I’m talking about words of sanctity. For words of sanctity there are decisors who say one needs head covering, and what the source is—I don’t remember. Need to look it up. If there’s no source, there’s no prohibition. Why should I look? You look. I have no problem, God willing, I’ll look if you want me to. Check Google, and if I don’t find anything then there’s no prohibition.
[Speaker G] And regarding a woman? What? A woman’s head covering?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A woman’s head covering is written: “and he shall uncover the woman’s head”; the Talmud derives it from there.
[Speaker F] Yes, but there are rabbis who say it isn’t necessary. What?
[Speaker G] Who said if she went out to the courtyard—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, nobody said it isn’t necessary. There are people who in practice followed such a custom. Heads of yeshivot in Lithuania—a great many women did not cover their heads. The wives of major heads of yeshivot in Lithuania went without head covering. But I don’t think anyone said it was permitted.
[Speaker F] Why did they do it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. I have no idea.
[Speaker E] I once looked for someone who says it’s permitted—I don’t think there is anyone, I don’t think so. “Wear a wig,” they said.
[Speaker F] There is the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Responsum of Rabbi Messas—a ridiculous responsum, which we once learned, which we once learned—and in my life I’ve never seen such a ridiculous responsum. It’s nonsense of a kindergarten child. Not because it’s dangerous, but simply because it’s incorrect. There isn’t a single line there that connects to the previous one. If I had seen only that responsum, I would say the man doesn’t know anything. Yes, he starts out defending, but very quickly it develops there into the claim that someone who covers her head is absurd—that’s his conclusion at the end—and that’s just not… it’s nonsense. He gets completely carried away there. He starts with trying to defend Jewish practice and so on. Fine, okay. As far as I know, there is no opinion that women don’t need to go with head covering. The question is how much head covering—that’s another issue. The question is where. Fine. Maybe there is an opinion—there is a view in Jewish law, the Shevut Yaakov says that gathering the hair is enough; you don’t need head covering by Torah law, that gathering the hair is enough. Yes, there is such an opinion.
[Speaker E] So if the hair is short and can’t be gathered—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who is the Shevut Yaakov?
[Speaker H] You’re right, Rabbi—a marginal opinion. Who’s right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Who is the Shevut Yaakov? Can one interpret the Talmud that way? Shevut Yaakov—one of the important later halakhic authorities, one of the important responsa works.
[Speaker G] Yes, yes. The Beit Yosef in the Tur on Yom Kippur, section 135 if I remember correctly, says that in a city made up entirely of priests, and there aren’t enough men, not enough priests, not enough men, then women complete the quorum of seven on Sabbath.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And read from the Torah? Women read from the Torah, yes. Talmud. It’s a Mishnah that women count toward the quorum of seven. You don’t need the Beit Yosef for that. But for some reason everyone ignores it.
[Speaker E] I’ll tell you something I saw. Just something funny that happened with my daughter last year in Jerusalem. In an Orthodox minyan, and my daughter wanted to sing table songs, so they agreed on condition that she sing together with her brother. Together with her brother, singing together. So they sang one verse him, one verse her.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like when I wrote the article on Rabbi Messas—I wrote it with a female student of mine from Bar-Ilan, in the women’s study hall there where I teach. So I sent it to various Torah journals—they weren’t willing to publish it even when she was writing together with me. I heard that in Techumin there was a woman who sent an article—no—
[Speaker K] It was—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not Ganzel. Ganzel actually—
[Speaker K] Specifically—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think was accepted. Ah, Ganzel yes. Now—yes—then it came out in Kipa. They asked her to add her husband.
[Speaker K] So you discover that for contradictions between singular and plural forms we wrote, we checked—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Her husband had no involvement whatsoever. I spoke to her—nothing. He had no idea what the article even said. And from me they asked that I move her down to a footnote and thank her for her help. Such nerve. I was furious. And I’m talking about journals of Religious Zionists, not Haredim. There is no Torah journal willing to accept an article by a woman. None. As far as I know, there is no Torah journal willing to accept an article by a woman. No one. In Techumin they’re willing to publish non-halakhic articles by women. A few non-halakhic articles by women have been published. But a halakhic article—they won’t publish.
[Speaker K] There was a halakhic one on fingernails.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right—that’s another generation.
[Speaker E] In another generation it won’t be like that. I hope.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So in Asif, there’s that journal of the hesder yeshivot, Asif, volume 5 that came out now in the last two years—there I sent this article to part two. It’s a group in Yeruham that coordinates it; it works mainly in Yeruham. So I know some of the people, and they also got a little help from me when they established the journal and so on. Then they told me, look, maybe move her to a footnote. I said to them, are you out of your minds? What is this? Did the yeshiva move to Bnei Brak and I didn’t notice? What happened there? They said, no, there are Haredi wings, and we don’t want to lose the coalition. Like the Puah Institute. You know how coalitions always behave according to the highest—or lowest, depending how you look at it—common denominator. Right. I told them: why shouldn’t they be afraid that you won’t cooperate with them if there won’t be women’s articles? What, they don’t want coalitions? Only you want coalitions? No—yes—only they want coalitions. It’s always like that. I think it’s just part of an inferiority complex. And it didn’t help, so I also withdrew an article I had sent on my own. I told them not to publish it. I’m not publishing there anymore.
[Speaker F] That voice keeps repeating not to make separate factions and all that, and all the time they toe the line with the Haredim.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it’s not only Haredim. I’m talking—it’s not only Haredim. It’s—well, yes, Haredim, but also Hardalim. That’s also Haredim.
[Speaker K] Yes, I wrote in one of the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Newspapers that Hardalim are—yes, I wrote it in Makor Rishon, in a few places. Anyway, in parallel to the prayer there were of course other activities. Every day—I’m getting back to Jerusalem. Throughout the prayer there were what they call interest groups, chaburot, on all kinds of topics. On all kinds of subjects. Anyone who wanted to speak—like a Hyde Park kind of thing, a somewhat planned Hyde Park, meaning they set in advance who… Was that after the prayer? No, in parallel. In parallel, and after, and before, and at night—yes, all kinds of things. There was also some general lecture on the lawn Friday night; Micah Goodman gave a general lecture on the lawn. In my view it was a very nice experience. A completely different Yom Kippur.
[Speaker F] I didn’t feel the fast at all. Huh?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You didn’t feel the fast? Believe me, not at all. There was a room somewhere—I don’t know where—where there was food for whoever wanted. There are people who don’t fast, yes. There was food for whoever wanted.
[Speaker G] Yes, fine, maybe if some old person came who is forbidden to fast, etc.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yossi, defender of Israel, fills worlds. So there were all kinds of these groups in parallel, and I too gave one there during the repetition of the Amidah in Musaf. I decided to skip a little of the annual nagging, and I went to give one of these sessions in one of the rooms. Then I stayed there for about four or five hours, talking until Minchah. And I think that was a thousand times better than Yom Kippur and ten Musaf services of Yom Kippur. It seems to me the people got a lot of food for thought. So the topic was—in the end I got to intuition, because I kind of rolled into it; I hadn’t planned it exactly from the beginning. Yes, exactly. There I wanted to talk about faith and commandment observance—whether it is rational. That was kind of the title. And from there we rolled into everything. And there were religious people there too who are very troubled. Very much. And there were people—so that’s why we got the air-conditioned room, because it was the biggest group. What do you mean, five hours straight? That’s the long stretches of Musaf. Yes, optimism, famous. There’s a schedule with all the—yes, in Musaf this, and in Shacharit that, and in the break, and at night, and in the morning—all the time. Throughout the whole day.
[Speaker E] So what about Minchah?
[Speaker F] No—the repetition of the Amidah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I did pray, but “Unetaneh Tokef”—
[Speaker F] No, you skipped “Unetaneh Tokef,” you left me a chance.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m sure they discharged my obligation.
[Speaker G] I saw they had the mythological stories there. Not in all the prayers. “Unetaneh Tokef.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Do you know who composed “Unetaneh Tokef”? Amnon of Mainz?
[Speaker G] No, no, no, no, not Amnon of Mainz. Clearly not. Does it start with a shin? Yannai? Something?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yannai or Kalir—there are disputes. It appears in the Cairo Genizah. I’m going crazy—this only became clear to me today or yesterday. I don’t deal with these historical things; they bore me. But today someone wrote to me that in “Unetaneh Tokef” it doesn’t say “like sheep of the flock.” In the Genizah it doesn’t say that; it says “they pass before Him…” I told him, what Genizah—is that Amnon of Mainz? What Genizah? What are you talking about? But there are lots of copies of this thing in the Genizah, and it’s either Yannai or Kalir or one of the ancient Land-of-Israel liturgical poets.
[Speaker G] So what does it say if not—
[Speaker E] “Like sheep of the flock”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “They pass before Him”—I don’t know, I don’t remember. He said without “like sheep of the flock.” Anyway.
[Speaker G] It appears in tractate Rosh Hashanah in—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, “like sheep of the flock” appears in the Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah.
[Speaker G] There are textual emendation people who say it’s “like the ascent of Maron.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, “kivno Maron,” in Aramaic pronunciation—
[Speaker G] “Kivno—”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maron, like some kind of military unit. “Like the ascent of Beit Horon,” it says in the Jerusalem Talmud—that’s the real meaning of “like sheep of the flock.”
[Speaker G] So—
[Speaker E] It’s very strange that they say the angels are afraid because He starts judging them. No, in “Unetaneh Tokef,” “the angels hasten, trembling and dread seize them, for they say: behold, it is the Day of Judgment, to call the host of heaven to judgment.” “The angels hasten…”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s all metaphors. Who knows what an angel does among angels? It’s all metaphors, all of it. Nobody actually knows what happens with angels.
[Speaker J] So it was easy to dress up the story of Amnon of Mainz in order to create that frightening feeling on the Day of Judgment. Fine, now I don’t even know whether the story happened.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, you have to believe that it could have happened. In any case, you also have to believe that maybe he could have composed Unetaneh Tokef. In any case, no—and this kind of amazes me, but it really doesn’t interest me. What difference does it make whether Amnon of Mainz existed or not? The story is good, it puts you in the mood. But how much can you keep printing in every High Holiday prayer book and repeating something that historically, factually, is clearly not true? It’s just nonsense. This isn’t some debate where a certain scholar raises a provocation that maybe it’s not true. There are simple facts showing that it’s not true. So fine, erase it, finished. It’s not holy—the Rashi script letters that tell the story of Amnon of Mainz.
[Speaker C] And what about the books of Kingship and Remembrances?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, and there I say, fine, that’s not a problem, because there they’re not telling a story, it’s liturgical poetry. A piyyut doesn’t have to be committed to historical truth. But there they tell you in a note on the side, they give you… they give you historical notes, who composed it and when. What?
[Speaker F] The Ten Martyrs—is that not historical truth?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t know. It could be that they were killed as a matter of historical fact, but the poem isn’t faithful to history. The curtain stories didn’t necessarily happen. Yes, the curtain stories are something else. I said the piyyut isn’t faithful to history—the order and all that. And that they spoke to each other and consulted one another, after all some of them lived in different periods. So the piyyut can’t be historically faithful. The story itself may have happened, the Ten Martyrs, I don’t know, let’s say. In any case, I started talking there a bit about rationality and commandment observance and belief in God, and I told them I’d get to intuition at the end. There isn’t much time left now, so whatever I manage. I told them there are two different categories when we talk here about rationality, because belief in God is a factual claim. We talked about that in one of the previous years. When I believe in God, I’m not reporting a religious feeling. Maybe someone else is, but then I don’t count him for a prayer quorum, because he doesn’t believe in God, he just has a religious feeling. Let him take a pill and get it over with. But as far as I’m concerned, someone who believes in God is someone who makes a claim about the world—that there is a God. That’s a claim about the world, a factual claim. Now, true, there are people who think it’s correct and people who think it’s not correct. Many think we have no way to know whether it’s correct or not correct, anything could be. But categorically—that is, in terms of the type of claim—“there is a God” is a factual claim. I’m asserting something about the world. The question is whether I… Why don’t you count him for a prayer quorum? He doesn’t believe. What, a secular Jew can’t join a prayer quorum? Someone who doesn’t believe—no, of course not. What do you mean? He comes to pray. What is he doing there? What is he doing there? He’s a potted plant.
[Speaker F] What? So what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All that’s left is to put a flower on his head—he’s a potted plant.
[Speaker F] He isn’t counted for the prayer quorum?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he isn’t counted. What?
[Speaker F] Why isn’t he counted?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because he’s not—he’s not praying.
[Speaker F] Because he’s like a tape recorder. What, he’s just making sounds?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Give the tape recorder a circumcision and put it there too.
[Speaker F] So now I understand the Haredim who don’t count us. Fine, if everyone sets the line wherever they want.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not setting the line. Someone who doesn’t pray—you’re not praying. What do you want? What is he doing? He’s a potted plant.
[Speaker F] I don’t know, we’ve seen a thousand times that they take secular people off the street for a prayer quorum.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ve seen it, fine. I said I don’t count them for a prayer quorum. You saw others, not me. I don’t count them for a prayer quorum.
[Speaker F] He has the possibility… but it’s not totally far-fetched, to what extent believing is… I don’t know, I don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If he tells me, listen, I know to whom people pray, I’m praying—that’s enough for me. I don’t know how to check it at high resolution.
[Speaker H] But you assume he’s talking nonsense, that’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, you assume he’s talking nonsense. Then no.
[Speaker H] So that’s what it is. So what you said isn’t totally far-fetched. You’re saying now you have to assess a whole public of people: okay, they don’t believe, they don’t…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, fine, if you can assess, then assess. But no, I’m saying many people count them in, most of the world counts secular people for a prayer quorum because there’s a Jewish spark and deep down they believe and all that nonsense. What nonsense that is. “Captured child” means you forgive them so they won’t be punished, but that doesn’t turn them into believers. What does one thing have to do with the other?
[Speaker K] Why, their desire to join a prayer quorum—isn’t that some kind of minimum threshold indicating…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Depends. It could be they’d also join an Indian prayer quorum. It’s a nice experience—why shouldn’t they join a prayer quorum? Or maybe they don’t yet know it isn’t a nice experience. I don’t know, that could also be.
[Speaker K] Or they’re doing you a favor, right, they’re doing you a favor or they connect to the situation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even if they connect to the situation, so what? Nostalgia. It gives them a religious experience. So what? Never mind. In any case, the claim that there is a God is a factual claim. The obligation to keep the commandments is not a factual claim. True, it’s a normative obligation. That is, I think one should do such-and-such or not do such-and-such. That’s not a factual claim.
[Speaker J] If someone says as a fact: I believe—because I believe in the existence of God as a fact, I also believe as a fact that He is the one who commanded.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that He commanded—that’s true. So what? But why am I obligated? The fact that He commanded, with all due respect, very nice. But why am I obligated? I’m obligated because I think it is proper to obey the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. So there is a factual infrastructure for that obligation, but in the end there is always some element that is a normative decision. Meaning, you have to decide that it obligates. People mentioned here the “captured child”; we already talked about that too. There are people who think a “captured child” means lack of knowledge. Nonsense, of course. You can have a “captured child” who is a professor, a Torah scholar, and a world-renowned expert, who knows the entire Talmud, the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and the later authorities (Acharonim) backward and forward. He is a “captured child” because he relates to it like an Indian culture that he studies and knows very well. If he doesn’t understand that it obligates him, he is a “captured child.” It doesn’t matter how much he knows or doesn’t know. After all, it’s a claim of coercion; “child” isn’t some magic word. So why is he captured?
[Speaker F] What? Why is he captured?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Captured in the “hey,” in the “hey,” yes—
[Speaker F] Why is he captured?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He is captive to his mistaken conceptions. He is captive to his mistaken conceptions.
[Speaker F] Then everyone is a “captured child,” if so.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not everyone, what do you mean? There are people who sin; there are people who sin because of desire. They know they are sinning, but they sin—they have an inclination. I even know one or two of those.
[Speaker G] Fine, make a mistake within that framework, as they say, within that framework.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, fine, it happens, doesn’t it? Someone who truly believes—then he truly believes. What do you want? Then he’s a “captured child.” Someone who truly believes that what he’s doing is right—then he’s a “captured child.”
[Speaker F] I thought a “captured child” was only someone who never had the opportunity—say, he was born and never learned and never… he never had the opportunity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The accepted idea is that a “captured child” is someone captive to his mode of thought. He didn’t have the opportunity. What difference does it make whether the captivity is physical captivity or intellectual captivity?
[Speaker E] No, say he was educated in a religious home.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and what difference does that make? He was educated in a religious home and it only aroused antagonism in him, and the whole business seems bizarre to him.
[Speaker F] A “captured child,” sure. So he too is a “captured child”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. He grew up in a religious home, got the best Jewish education with a whole battery of philosophers and rabbis—nobody got better Jewish service—and he is completely a “captured child.” If in the end he understands that the whole thing is simply nonsense and doesn’t speak to him and doesn’t obligate him at all, he is a “captured child.”
[Speaker G] Was Elisha ben Avuyah in that category?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what happened with Elisha ben Avuyah, but if that truly was his conclusion, then yes, he was a “captured child,” obviously.
[Speaker F] But where is that written?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t have to be written, it’s… where is “captured child” written at all?
[Speaker F] Not that interpretation of yours of “captured child.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where are the other interpretations written? Where are the other interpretations written? First time that this… where are the other interpretations written?
[Speaker F] What people commonly think, “captured child”…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Among whom is it commonly thought otherwise?
[Speaker F] That a person who never had the opportunity…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying that among my circles it’s commonly thought otherwise. No, no, he’s right that usually people think that way—and it’s a mistake. People commonly think it, and it’s a mistake, what can you do?
[Speaker F] Like with the kippah. A lot of things that are commonly accepted aren’t correct.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Some would say that if something is commonly accepted… But all in all, anyone who doesn’t think like you is mistaken? No, not for me.
[Speaker F] For example, Rabbi, I don’t think he’s mistaken. Not mistaken? Then you agree with me. What do I know better than he does, that I should judge him? You are judging—do you agree with me or not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you don’t agree—
[Speaker F] —with me, then you think I’m mistaken. If you agree with me, then you said I’m not mistaken.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m asking you whether this is your own version or whether it’s in the sources that a “captured child”… What do you mean, sources? In the sources it says “captured child”; it’s an argument from coercion. “Captured child” is an argument for coercion.
[Speaker F] Now think: someone who never had the opportunity…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now think: who is someone under coercion?
[Speaker F] But the question is whether this is your own idea or whether it’s… because what people usually think is that a “captured child” is not a person who thinks differently but a person…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, usually. It’s also common to speak slander. A lot of things are common—so what?
[Speaker F] The expression itself, “captured child,” doesn’t fit your definition so well.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Your definition.
[Speaker F] “Captured child”—the literal expression appears in the Talmud. Obviously.
[Speaker K] Maimonides already borrowed it to speak about the Karaites. Exactly. And from there to the Chazon Ish and the secular Jew.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And a “captured child” in the Talmud really is talking about someone literally captured, but you ask yourself why a captive is under coercion. A captive is under coercion—it’s not a homiletic reading of the word “captive,” that he is captive to conceptions. Leave the word aside; I’m not talking about the word, I’m talking about the idea. Why is he captive? He is captive really because there is no… you can’t expect anything else from him. Now if someone sincerely reached the conclusion that he does not accept this whole business, by the same token you can’t expect anything else from him. He is under coercion to the same degree, right, and therefore both are exempt. Both are “captured children,” I agree.
[Speaker E] I’d like to continue this discussion next time, because in the end, in the end there were interesting things, but in the end it’s time and it’s a shame, a shame for such a thing… it was important to talk about what we talked about.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’ll talk. If you want, afterward we can do a series on it, because today I thought I’d do something one-time. So I’ll do it—maybe our next series will be a bit more philosophical.
[Speaker E] No, but are you giving this up completely now? We can. No, so I’m saying next week…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Next week there isn’t one anymore. Next time, yes—I mean after the holidays when we start.
[Speaker E] So you’ll already start the series then?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so there’ll be a series. Today is a one-time thing, so that’s why… what series? The claim that there is a God is a factual claim; the claim of obligation is a normative obligation. Now when you ask yourself whether some factual claim is rational, that is not the same question as whether some normative obligation is rational or not. On the other hand, aside from clarifying the relation between facts and norms, we also need to clarify what rationality is. The million-dollar question: what exactly is rationality? Usually, “rational” is whoever thinks like me, and “irrational” is whoever doesn’t think like me. Yes, that’s the accepted definition. The reasonable person, exactly. But what I think is that if we nevertheless try to extract some common denominator everyone can agree on: say I make some factual claim, and then when we ask whether it is rational or not, we are not asking whether it is true or not. That’s not the same thing. Meaning, I can arrive by irrational means at a true claim, or by rational means at an untrue claim. An untrue one. Okay? Rationality usually characterizes the way I arrive at the conclusion. Am I operating rationally or not? So if I formulate it simply, I would say: rationality characterizes the path of attainment, not the result. Meaning, am I consistent with my assumptions, and do I act or work correctly or draw conclusions correctly, and arrive at a conclusion that follows from my assumptions.
[Speaker E] Not follows necessarily—it doesn’t have to.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, is called for, not strictly follows. There’s something softer there; it doesn’t have to be deduction specifically. So if that’s the case, then rationality really talks about the path and not about the claim itself.
[Speaker I] And not about the debate or the assumptions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So now when I ask whether belief in God is rational, what many people are really mixing it up with is whether belief in God is true—that is, whether there is a God. That’s not the same question. The question whether belief in God is rational is the question whether the path to that belief is a rational path, like the way we reach other conclusions in life. Meaning, a reasonable logical path or a reasonable intelligible path on the basis of reasonable assumptions, or something like that. Now, what happens when we look at the question of rationality in general is basically this: when I want to ask about a certain claim whether I reached it rationally, then in order to answer yes, I need to point to, say, claim A. I need to point to claim B and an argument that takes me from claim B to claim A, right? If I can point to that, then I’m a rational person. Okay? Exactly. Now argument B—now you’ll ask me, fine, but argument B itself… after all, it also has to be rational. So I have argument C and some inference that will lead me from argument C to claim C, from which argument B will bring me to conclusion B. All right? The arguments are A, B, C, and the claims are A, B, C. And of course you already understand that this is turtles all the way down; I’ve mentioned that more than once. It never ends. So at some point it has to start. We talked about this when we discussed proofs for the existence of God. At some point it has to start. And the real question is how you relate to that starting point. Because if it is a starting point, then by definition you can’t judge whether it is rational or not. Because it’s a claim, not an argument. I don’t arrive at it by means of another argument. That’s my assumption, that’s my axiom. As for axioms, I don’t see how one can judge whether certain axioms are rational. Meaning, you can try to think whether they’re true or not, but not whether they’re rational. Because rationality examines or refers to arguments, not claims. But every argument comes out of a claim, and ultimately this whole chain has to begin with a claim. And the moment it begins with a claim, in a certain sense the question of rationality is emptied of content. Not entirely, yes? You still need to see that you’re proceeding correctly from the starting point. But since you can choose the starting point however you like, then what does that mean? So I’ll choose the conclusion as the starting point, and then I’m perfectly rational.
[Speaker E] You can’t choose the starting point however you like. Rather? Rather, really, by intuition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that’s where we’re getting. Meaning, so the question is: how do you judge foundational assumptions? All right? That is really the question. Because otherwise, without actually answering that question, what does it even mean to ask whether something is rational or not? Then you tell me: did you get in a reasonably logical way from claim A to claim B? But I have no way of knowing whether claim A itself is reasonable. So why should I care how you got there? I’ll just choose claim B automatically.
[Speaker H] Because it also helps neutralize a lot of… it’s a tool… this question is still useful in many cases where you’re simply coming down on a mere fallacy, a contradiction, and…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I’m saying that’s usually the problem. Logical contradiction—as Yehudit noted earlier—when we talk about rationality, we’re not talking about deductive logical arguments. It’s reasonable inference. Analogy too is a reasonable inference for this purpose. It doesn’t have to be deduction specifically. And the question of reasonableness—what is reasonable? Exactly. We reduced the question of rationality to the concept of reasonableness, and the concept of reasonableness also… that’s why I’m saying it’s a question… there is considerable doubt how much meaning there really is to the question of whether something is rational, beyond the question whether it is true. All right? Often that’s what people mean, but it’s not really the same thing, even though it’s not always possible to distinguish between them.
[Speaker H] Or how certain it is—that too. Because we call it faith. We call it faith, so—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Already there we somewhat collapse the… yes, although we talked about that too.
[Speaker H] Yes, but the fact is the term exists and people use it not the way the Rabbi uses it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I’m not sure.
[Speaker H] If we can’t infer anything from the terms, okay, maybe.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe I’ll talk about that in the series when I get there.
[Speaker E] I’ll talk about knowledge—actual knowledge—and levels of certainty. They talk about three factors. So, say, you know that A is true. Then A has to be true, you have to believe A—that is, to believe, to whatever degree—and you have to be justified in your belief in A. Now this justification—sometimes the justification is so basic that it’s much stronger than, say, logical justification.
[Speaker H] It’s just a level of certainty, no? It seems to me that’s what it comes down to.
[Speaker E] I’m talking about certainty, completely.
[Speaker H] There’s no completely—just a very high degree of certainty.
[Speaker E] Okay, you have justification, but it’s also true, and then you know that it is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Come on, we’ll deal with these things, even though I think we already dealt with them a bit once. Maybe we’ll deal with them when we talk about intuition in a somewhat more systematic way. I just want at least to close this section so we don’t leave like this in the middle. In the end, you have to arrive at a conclusion—that is, you have to arrive at the starting point by some means. To examine the starting point by some means—not even the other person’s starting point, but my own. How do I adopt a starting point for myself, not how do I judge someone else? And that is where intuition enters the field. Without that, I think none of the other discussions—truth and correctness and justification and rationality and validity and so on—have any meaning. Everything rests on intuition. Everything, including science, everything including philosophy, and also, in my opinion, ethics and normative obligations. There too. And we talked about that once as well, despite the categorical difference. Because no—but there you need to do… I talked about this because in order to arrive… after all, when I talk about intuition in relation to facts, I say: I have an intuition that this is true. Okay, how do you know that it’s true? I have an intuition. But you have to assume that true and false apply to this claim. And how do I know that that is true? Intuition. I have no other way to arrive at its truth. Fine—axioms in geometry. Yes. Now with normative claims, say a claim like “murder is forbidden,” there the question is not how I have an intuition, but what it even means to speak of intuition in this context. Intuition is grasping something immediately. But what am I grasping when I say that murder is forbidden? Is there something outside me that I am grasping? After all, a factual claim is a claim that we judge—and here too I’m being a bit superficial—when we judge it as true or false, it’s by comparison with a state of affairs in the world, in the simple sense. Okay? So that’s a factual claim. But what does it mean to say that the sentence “murder is forbidden” is true, or that “murder is permitted” is false? Compared to what state of affairs in the world am I supposed to compare it? What fact in the world or what reality in the world am I supposed to compare it to, in order to reach the conclusion that this sentence is true? Now again, I’m not asking how to make that comparison, or whether such a comparison is possible—no person has done it, that doesn’t bother me. As long as I believed there was something to compare it to, I would be willing to treat it as a factual claim that can be true or false; it may just be that I don’t have the tools to determine whether it is true or false. But the problem with moral claims is that it is highly doubtful to what extent one can even use terms like true and false in relation to them. Now if you can’t use terms like true and false there, then how can you say that intuitively you understand that murder is forbidden? Intuition, at least in the factual context, is understood as some ability of ours to create direct interaction with reality, not through—
[Speaker F] Why call it intuition and not assumption? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Intuition is the basis by means of which I arrive at my assumptions.
[Speaker F] The assumption can also be based on intuition. Rather, I think that such-and-such, I assume that such-and-such. Why do you assume it? Just arbitrary? Intuition. I’m saying: I have the assumption that induction leads to true conclusions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And where do you know that assumption from? How did you reach that assumption? Why do you think it’s true?
[Speaker F] Because otherwise I can’t build any pyramid, like you said.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If all you have is water and I’m alone—you have no clay, only water—then will you build a house out of water because otherwise you can’t build a house? You have no clay. What can you do—but you can’t build a house from water.
[Speaker F] You can’t build a house from intuition either.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s exactly what I’m saying. So then you say it’s not true. What? The fact that you have no other option doesn’t justify using intuition. You need positive justification; the fact that you have no other option isn’t enough. I’m asking why you think intuition is correct—or not intuition, why do you think the assumption is correct? Why do you think the assumption is correct? Because you have an intuition that it is correct, that’s all. That’s what I wanted to say. There is also, normatively, some sort of thing—the Idea of the Good or something, we talked about it—that exists outside you, and you can supposedly observe it with the eye of the intellect or with the eye of your intuition, and see whether it says that murder is permitted or forbidden. That is basically normative observation. And then it comes out that intuition is basically the basis both for normative statements and for factual statements.
[Speaker E] And I don’t think that means looking inward.
[Speaker H] It doesn’t have to be outside.
[Speaker E] But no, and it can be inward. I think yes.
[Speaker H] It could be that you were created with it and you slowly see it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I was created with it—so what? I was created with the desire to speak slander.
[Speaker H] And you slowly see it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] See what?
[Speaker H] That very thing we’re talking about.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the thing is out there, that’s what I see. There is no thing to see, you say; it’s all inside. So what am I seeing?
[Speaker H] What’s inside. I’m saying it doesn’t have to be something you see outside; that thing exists, but you don’t have to see it outside.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Never mind. So you assume there is a correlation between what you find within yourself and the good. I have no problem with that; it doesn’t bother me. That too is a kind of seeing, as far as I’m concerned. It’s also a kind of observation. After all, the observation isn’t sensory observation, so I don’t care—it’s also observation. And in the end you use that in order to understand what the Idea of the Good says. That’s enough for me; I don’t need more than that. Okay, I’ll stop here. Maybe we really will do a somewhat more orderly series.