Judging Evil: A Systematic Perspective (for Holocaust Remembrance Day)
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
- Moral relativism, objectivity, and judging “by his own view”
- Extreme cases, Nazis, and the systematic nature of evil
- The purpose of judgment and the distinction between judgment and self-defense
- Judging an act versus judging a person
- How a person can still come out “wicked” even when judged by his own standards
- Mistake, negligence, responsibility, and guilt
- Clarifying values before extreme actions, ISIS, and ideologies
- Responsibility within bureaucracies, the people of Shechem, and “the reasonable person”
- Authority, obedience, and personal responsibility
- A lesson for current political discourse
Summary
General Overview
The text argues that the common link people make between the question of whether to judge a person “by my standards or by his own” and moral relativism is mistaken, and that even if morality is objective, a person should still be judged by his own standards. It distinguishes between judging an act or a result, which is done according to the judge’s values, and judging the person who acted, which depends on his intentions, his outlook, and whether he acted against his own morality. It also presents mechanisms through which a person can still be found “wicked” even under judgment by his own standards. It adds that a mistake in facts or values is not always a full exemption, because there is responsibility for negligence and a duty of clarification, especially before extreme actions, and it applies these distinctions to responsibility within systems of authority and hierarchy, and to current political discourse in which each side attributes evil to the other.
Moral relativism, objectivity, and judging “by his own view”
The text presents the common claim that if morality is relative, then at most one can judge a person by whether he was consistent with his own values; whereas if morality is objective, then supposedly one may or should judge a person by the judge’s values. It rejects the second conclusion and argues that in principle one should always judge a person by his own standards, regardless of whether morality is relative or absolute. It explains that the intuition toward relativism comes from the difficulty of deciding moral claims in a way similar to factual claims, since they do not have a simple “observation” like looking at a table, even though the speaker himself accepts the possibility of moral observation in the style of Moore.
Extreme cases, Nazis, and the systematic nature of evil
The text argues that the commitment to judge a person by his own standards becomes especially difficult in extreme cases like the Nazis, and that people tend to stop there and draw general conclusions against the principle. He says that even there, assuming that really was their view, one must judge them by their own standards, and only then clarify what they actually believed and what motivated them. He adds that the systematic nature of evil is usually seen as an aggravating factor, but according to his approach, if a person acts out of a value system, that is precisely a mitigating point in judging the person himself, even though it may make him more dangerous from the standpoint of self-defense.
The purpose of judgment and the distinction between judgment and self-defense
The text distinguishes between decisions meant for self-defense and genuine moral judgment of “good/evil” regarding a person or an act. It defines self-defense as a consideration of danger and consequences, such as keeping away from a harmful environment for children, dealing with a threatening ideology, or destroying a robot shooting in all directions, and clarifies that self-defense is done according to the defender’s own standards, not the standards of the threatening agent. It defines moral judgment as determining whether a person or act is good or bad even when there is no instrumental purpose, and illustrates that such judgment can affect personal relationships, such as the decision whether one would want to be friends with a certain person.
Judging an act versus judging a person
The text sets out a fundamental distinction between judging the act and judging the person, and claims that this is the root of the confusion around “by my standards or by his own.” It gives the example of someone who killed a person by mistake, thinking he was a “pursuer,” and it later turns out the person was holding spray, not a weapon. He rules that the act was bad, but the person who did it is not wicked and may even be considered righteous, because by his own lights he was trying to save people. He explains that when one judges an act or a result, one does so according to the judge’s values and says the act is bad; but when one judges the person who acted, one must enter into his intentions and perceptions, and therefore judging the person is done by his own standards.
How a person can still come out “wicked” even when judged by his own standards
The text argues that a mistake in facts or a mistake in values, even under the assumption of objective morality, does not make a person wicked but mistaken, and therefore an explanation is needed for how someone can still come out bad when judged by his own standards. It proposes two mechanisms: weakness of will, where a person acts against what he himself thinks is proper even though he is not coerced and therefore regrets it; and a more common mechanism in which a person acts against his own morality out of self-interest, like a thief who admits it is forbidden to steal but prefers to be rich. He emphasizes that in the case of self-interest there is no regret, and the act is done as a decision in which non-moral considerations override the moral one, and for that one can judge the person by his own moral standards.
Mistake, negligence, responsibility, and guilt
The text says that mistake is not always a full defense, and distinguishes between “guilt” and “responsibility” through examples of negligence. It argues that a factual mistake can be the result of criminal negligence when it was possible to check and one did not, and that the more extreme the action, the greater the duty to check. It gives examples from Jewish law about an unintentional sinner who brings a sacrifice, and notes in the name of Nachmanides that there is some degree of negligence here, and also gives the example of drunk driving that leads to death as a case of “it began in negligence and ended in circumstances beyond one’s control.”
Clarifying values before extreme actions, ISIS, and ideologies
The text argues that even a value mistake is not always an exemption, because one can and must carry out value clarification, especially before radical actions like murder. It brings ISIS as an example of people who, in his view, believe they are fulfilling a religious command, and argues that they are still responsible because they are required to examine very carefully, before an extreme action that they themselves recognize as extreme. He gives examples from a Jewish context such as “You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget,” and the possibility of softening interpretations, and adds a quote from Dawkins that only in a religious world are there “good people who do bad things,” while qualifying that this is true in an ideological world generally, and illustrates this with communism as well, where people acted out of good intentions but committed atrocities.
Responsibility within bureaucracies, the people of Shechem, and “the reasonable person”
The text argues that it is difficult to come with complaints against lower ranks in systems like the Nazis, but that there is still collective responsibility because the collective is built from individuals, each of whom is “not a hero,” and thus enables the mechanism. He illustrates this through a biography of Stalin in which one man stands against a superpower thanks to bureaucracy and fear, and through the Maharal and Nachmanides on the people of Shechem and Maimonides’ claim regarding a “legal system.” He connects this to a story about Aharon Barak and a case of swerving so as not to run over a cat, and formulates the idea of requiring the “reasonable person” to be “more reasonable” in order to create a norm that will reduce disasters, while distinguishing between the legal verdict and the sentence.
Authority, obedience, and personal responsibility
The text argues that obedience to religious or institutional authority does not exempt one from responsibility, and gives an example from an interfaith gathering at ORT Ramla school, where others preached listening to elders, while he argued that the solution to reducing extremism is personal responsibility, not blind obedience. He connects this to conscientious refusal and the army, and argues that he would not go into battle with a soldier who would never refuse, because such an army produces worse orders. He tells an anecdote about voting for Degel HaTorah, about being summoned by Rabbi Shach, and about the answer of the maggid shiur that a person will have no answer in the heavenly court if he acted that way and relied on “the rabbi told me,” and concludes that relying on great authority is not an automatic defense and may be dangerous when it produces mass mistakes.
A lesson for current political discourse
The text argues that in the current political dispute around coalition and opposition, each side assumes the other side is wicked and therefore is unwilling to recognize that the other is acting according to its own genuine outlook and intentions. He argues that judgment of the act can be very severe even if judgment of the person does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that he is wicked, and that accepting that the other is not wicked but mistaken or holding a different view changes the nature of the argument and increases willingness to listen and compromise. He adds that in his opinion there is broad public agreement on the need for reform, but disagreement about the concrete “reform” and about the degree of extremity, and that images of “Holocaust” versus “redemption” and labels like “anarchists” or “the other side of evil” block the distinction between dangerousness that requires self-defense and evaluation of the person himself.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Yes. We’re talking about judging evil, and the question is whether, when we judge an act or a person, we’re supposed to judge him by our own view or by his own view. So I’ll just go back over it again for the recording. So if a person did something that is very problematic from my perspective, but according to his own view it fits, then the question is whether from my standpoint he is wicked or not. Right, that’s basically the discussion. Usually people connect this question to the question of the relativity of morality. Meaning, if I don’t believe in objective morality, and morality is some conceptual framework embedded in us or invented by us in one way or another, and everyone has his own ethical or moral system, then basically there isn’t much of a standard by which maybe to judge, right, so it’s fairly clear that at most, if at all, I can judge a person only on the question of whether he was consistent with what he himself thinks. But if there is an objective system, objective morality, meaning there is some standard to which everyone is supposed to conform, then people usually understand that one should judge a person, or at least one can argue that one should judge the person, not necessarily by his own standards but also by the standards of the judge.
[Speaker B] Maybe you could say,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so I—
[Speaker B] I agree, I agree.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that in a moment. Right now I’m just presenting what people usually say about this topic in order to say that I disagree. Usually they hang it on the question of moral relativism. Meaning, if morality is relative, everyone with his own moral system, then of course you have no place to judge a person according to an objective system. Right? Okay. So I’m saying no, that’s a somewhat different argument; in a moment. If I believe in relative morality, moral relativism as it’s called, and basically everyone has his own moral system—not as a psychological claim but as a philosophical claim. The fact that there are moral disagreements is obvious, that’s a fact; nobody disputes that there are moral disagreements. The question is whether those disagreements express the other person’s error from my standpoint, or whether they express the fact that there really is no moral truth, meaning morality is relative. I’m speaking now not about psychology but about philosophy. Meaning, under the philosophical assumption that there really is no single binding objective moral system, but rather each person is supposed to behave as he understands, and there is no such thing here as objective truth—then there is no room to judge a person by my own view. That seems to me, yes, straightforwardly correct. The other side is that if there is an objective system, then it’s commonly said that if so, then I should judge him not by his own standards but by mine. And with that I disagree, that I do not agree with. Not with the first side—with this side I disagree. Meaning, I want to argue that, in my opinion, yes, the first point is in fact correct.
[Speaker B] You said, what are you judging him by if there is no objective system? Subjectively, you can decide that according to the morality I hold, a person must not do…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you can decide whatever you want, but that’s not called judging him. That’s deciding. Judging him means seeing something problematic in him. No, judgment is not deciding that it’s forbidden; I’ll get to that in just a moment. Meaning, in my opinion that’s really not it. But tying the question of whether I judge him by his standards or by mine to the question of the relativity of morality is, in my view, incorrect. I’m saying the conclusion in advance, but that’s basically what I want to claim: it’s wrong. In principle, I think one should always judge a person by his own standards. It doesn’t matter whether you advocate relative morality or absolute morality. But before I get into that, what actually leads people to hold the view that morality is relative? I think people’s initial intuition is that morality is indeed binding, that everyone is supposed not to murder, not to steal, not to harm others, and the like. So what nevertheless causes many people to think that morality is relative? The nature of moral claims. Factual claims—I have some way to check them. When I say, “There is a table here,” how do I check whether that claim is true or not? I just look and see whether there is a table here. If there is, the claim is true. If there isn’t, the claim is false. Okay? Basically, in order to check that claim, what I’m supposed to do is make a comparison. A comparison to the state of affairs in the world that the claim describes. If there’s correspondence, if it matches, then it’s a true statement. If there’s no correspondence, the statement is false. But claims like “it is forbidden to murder”—there is nothing for me to compare them to. I mean morally forbidden to murder. What exactly am I supposed to look at in order to check whether that claim is true or not? Suppose someone says, “No, it seems to me that murder is actually fine.” What am I supposed to tell him? What should he look at in order to see that he’s mistaken? Someone who says there is no table here—I tell him, look, you’ll see, there is one. Okay? If he’s blind, that’s a problem, but in principle there is a way to make claims against him; there is a way to compare in order to check whether the claim is true or not. In the moral context there is no such option.
[Speaker B] It just depends what the Torah sees.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, a person says, “I don’t see why murder is forbidden.” What exactly am I supposed to direct his attention to? Yesterday you mentioned—
[Speaker B] what you said, that you can show him the soul, so someone who says murder is permitted, you can show him that there is harm here to the divine image.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, assuming that it’s not coherent. But what if it is coherent? Coherence is always the easy solution.
[Speaker B] It depends what the analogy is. People like Moore thought you could identify it in a way that’s like perception. How can I show you that something is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s excellent that they thought that. The question is what they would say to someone who doesn’t think that way.
[Speaker B] They can ask you the same thing too. You say there’s a table here—what would you say to someone who looks and doesn’t see it? What do you have to say?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but the fact is that people do see. And in morality that isn’t a fact. No.
[Speaker B] Even with a table people don’t always see. No, no.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With a table, I said aside from blind people, people see a table. You can decide; in fact, factual disputes are resolved much more easily than moral value disputes.
[Speaker B] In morality too there are…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are borderline disputes, not exactly.
[Speaker B] Not only are there borderline disputes, there are agreements…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not about agreement. I’m not talking about agreement. I’m talking about whether a dispute can be decided.
[Speaker B] Exactly—if people feel it, then that decides it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If people feel it, then there is no dispute. If people feel it, then there is no dispute. I’m asking what you say to someone who does disagree with you.
[Speaker B] How would you say to someone who disagrees with you in—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no such person!
[Speaker B] There is in factual questions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A blind person. Fine—he himself, by the way, will usually accept that he is blind in the physical context.
[Speaker B] Not always physically. No, in questions…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In quantum theory. No, in quantum theory he has to study physics. But regarding the existence of a table, if he himself doesn’t see the table and I tell him, listen, you’re blind, then he’ll accept that. Fine. And if the table isn’t far away—again, these are edge cases. If the table isn’t far away. Edge cases…
[Speaker B] Murder—you won’t find someone who thinks that’s fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? Here we are talking about the issue of the Nazis. What do you mean? People adopted en masse a moral system entirely different from mine.
[Speaker B] The question is whether they really thought that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so we’ll get there; I’ll get to that in a moment, or soon. So the claim at the root of moral relativism is that it is very hard to determine, or to find a way to decide, whether a moral claim is true or not, or true or false. Because there are no observations here in the ordinary sense that we have regarding facts. Okay? And therefore, as a result, there are people who conclude that morality is relative. Some will say it’s a social construction or whatever, imprinted in us genetically in some way or whatever it may be. So that’s what leads to the dispute over whether morality is relative or absolute. Now why is this important? Because when I want to argue that even when morality is absolute, I still have to judge the person by his own standards, this difficulty is very important in that context. Which, in principle, I don’t accept. In principle I agree exactly with what you brought earlier in the name of Moore. I think there is moral observation, and one can contemplate the idea of morality, if you like, in order to extract from that whether a certain act or a certain mode of conduct is moral or not. But the fact that moral observation is not something self-evident like sensory observation is very important for this discussion even if I am a moral objectivist. Okay? That’s why I introduced this point beforehand. Now, the claim that I am supposed to judge a person—even if I’m an objectivist—I am supposed to judge a person by his own standards and not by mine. I think many people can accept that; many people, on the contrary, would even say it from the outset. But when it comes to very, very extreme cases, like with the Nazis, then people recoil. When I tell them that I would judge Hitler or Eichmann or I don’t know who, Himmler, by their own standards—up to there. Now, if at the principled level I hold that one should judge a person by his own standards, I don’t think that is supposed to stop anywhere. In principle, assuming that really was their view—you mentioned that earlier, I’ll speak about it more—assuming that really was their view, then here too I judge them by their own standards. Meaning, one has to understand that the claim that a person should be judged by his own standards may sound reasonable and natural, but it is pretty hard to swallow when we apply it to such situations and such people. Okay, you simply don’t believe that that was really their view. Fine. That may very well be. Right, right. We’ll talk—I’ll talk about that more. But I’m only saying that in principle, assuming I become convinced that that really was their view, then there is no limit to this, meaning even in such extreme cases I am supposed to judge them by their own standards.
[Speaker B] The more extreme the case, the more likely it is that the person doesn’t really believe it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly, I’ll get to exactly that, I’ll get to exactly that, I completely agree. And that’s why I’m saying, at the principled level one has to be careful not to draw general conclusions from that. People want to conclude from the fact that I’m unwilling to judge the Nazis by their own standards that it is wrong to judge people by their own standards. Not true. In principle one should judge people by their own standards, and with the Nazis too, in principle one should judge them by their own standards—one only has to check what their standards actually were. In extreme cases it may be that we won’t accept that that was really their view. I’ll talk about that more. A person—forget the court for a moment—a particular person did a particular act. The question is whether he thought this was really the right way to behave, or whether he did it for other reasons. I’ll get to that too. I’m trying to do this systematically, so I’ll get to all these points as we go on. Look, maybe I’ll present it from another angle. The Nazis acted within the framework of a system. Unlike evil which in many other cases is some sort of outburst, not within a system, but rather a reaction, an impulse, some interest or another—yes, the ordinary bad acts we’re used to usually are not done within the framework of a system in most cases. There are such cases, but in most cases not. So I’m saying, what distinguished the Nazis—not only them, but there it’s very clear—is that there was some kind of framework there. No, I think opportunism isn’t like that, in my opinion no. By systematic I mean in the sense that it stems from a different value system. Not systematic in the sense that it is done all the time.
[Speaker B] A person who has a certain outburst doesn’t have some system of values in which it’s explained. No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that too; I hope in the end I’ll cover everything. But the fact that they act within a system is usually taken as a factor for severity, because the systematic nature of evil is seen as something that only intensifies my attitude toward them. They’re even more wicked; they hold a wicked system, it didn’t just slip out. Right, it didn’t just happen by accident. None of us is perfect; sometimes we behave in ways that are improper. But here the improper thing is their principled conception. They adopted the improper conception; it’s not that they happened to act improperly. But as I’m saying now, if I am really right that people should be judged by their own standards, then the fact that you act on the basis of a system is actually an argument for leniency.
[Speaker B] On the other hand, it makes them more dangerous.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, more dangerous—but that’s why I’ll still speak about that question too. Everything you’re raising I really do intend to discuss; I’m not brushing it off. The argument that it was done within the framework of a system actually becomes an argument for leniency, because if that is their system, then I judge them by their own standards, meaning basically yes, then he is okay because I judge him by his own standards. That’s just to sharpen this point. Of course, on the other hand it raises the question: if I really am supposed to judge every person by his own standards, then how can a person ever come out badly under such judgment? Every person—you judge him and he had his reasons for doing it. So when is a person not okay?
[Speaker B] When he judges himself?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the question is what he is supposed to do, not when he judges himself. What should he do? The person who did something presumably did it according to his own view, didn’t he? Not only normal. What is normality?
[Speaker B] Normality is a psychiatric concept.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so here the question arises—this raises the question—in what situations can I ever get to a point where—after all, there is no point to judgment if the person always comes out righteous, right? Judgment means deciding whether the person is righteous or wicked. So in what situations can I reach the conclusion that the person is wicked? That would be when he acted in a way that was not according to his own view. Is such a situation possible, where a person acts in a way that is not according to his own view? That is the second question. Okay? Weakness of will? Right. That isn’t even the main case; weakness of will is the harder case. There are simpler cases. Someone collecting protection money, for example, but we’ll get there. The claim I want to make—I’m just laying out the framework so we can move forward—the claim I want to make is against everything I said until now. Meaning, that one judges a person by his own standards. However extreme it may be, one should always judge him by his own standards. Okay? When he does it within the framework of a system, that is an argument for leniency and not an argument for severity. In principle, I’m saying, if that really is his system. And this has nothing to do with the relativity of morality. Okay? And in summary, such judgment still has meaning. I said in the end that despite all these demands, which seemingly would make me say, well, if so then there’s no room to judge a person, he always comes out righteous—not true. Meaning, despite all these very extreme demands, I argue that there is still room to judge people and they can still come out badly in such judgment. Not only come out righteous. So in order to begin clarifying the issue, we need to start with the question: what is the purpose of judgment? What is judgment? When I judge a person, what exactly am I doing here, or why am I doing it? There are sometimes situations where I judge people, acts, groups, for needs that I’ll call under the general heading of self-defense. Meaning, I don’t know, someone is dangerous because his ideology is, I don’t know, to kill me—then of course, regardless of whether he is wicked or righteous, I need to judge the fact of whether I am supposed to defend myself against him.
[Speaker B] As a matter of probability, as an objective matter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And therefore I call these things not judgment but self-defense. But self-defense can also exist in less extreme situations. For example, if I want to check whether I want my son to go study together with those children in school. Okay? Will there be a bad influence on him there? Will I live with them in the neighborhood? Do I want that? That too is not judgment but self-defense. Because ultimately what concerns me is the consequences. I am not discussing whether they are wicked or righteous by their own standards. Since by my standards they are acting wrongly, and I don’t want that mode of conduct to influence me or my children, I will distance myself from them. But that does not necessarily mean that I judge them as wicked people. I can judge them by their own standards as not wicked people, but in my self-defense considerations I will still defend myself against them. Okay? So this kind of judgment, let’s call it—that is not judgment but a kind of assessment that is self-defense rather than judgment—that is not what I am talking about. That is not my issue. If, I don’t know, there were a robot here in the street that suddenly starts shooting in all directions, obviously I would try to destroy it as quickly and efficiently as possible, right? Not because that robot is wicked. Robots are neither wicked nor righteous. I have no basis to judge a robot. But I need to defend myself so it won’t kill me. Okay? So when I make self-defense calculations, those calculations are supposed to be based on an assessment of how dangerous the one facing me is—not how wicked the one facing me is. And therefore I call it self-defense rather than judgment. Judgment is something whose purpose is to determine whether a person or an act is wicked, or good, or bad—not whether it is dangerous. And often those things may go together, a wicked act and a dangerous act, but there is no overlap between those two categories. Therefore when I speak about judgment in senses of self-defense, that is not my topic here. It seems fairly clear that that I would do by my own standards, not by his. Right? If he thinks that firing a rifle is not dangerous, but I think it is, I will still defend myself against him. Right? I will not judge him by his standards as long as the discussion is about my self-defense. And likewise not only in the factual sense but also in the value sense. If I think that, I don’t know, keeping commandments is the right thing and someone who does not keep commandments is not okay—call him wicked or not wicked, it doesn’t matter, but he is not okay—it may be that he is like a child captured among the gentiles and he truly believes in his own view, and I judge him by his own standards and he is not wicked. But still, I may not want to live in his environment, I may not want my children educated together with his children, because that may have an influence that is problematic in my eyes. Therefore I call that too—which is less extreme—self-defense rather than judgment. Okay, so what is moral judgment? Moral judgment is judgment whose purpose is to decide whether the person or the act is good or bad. You asked why at all I need to judge if it’s not for some purpose. After all, all the judgments that are instrumental, that are for the sake of achieving something or preventing something, I have taken out of the discussion. I’m not talking about judgments whose purpose is to know whether to keep away from this person, whether to eliminate him, whether to put him in prison, whether to defend myself against him, or things like that. I’m not talking about that. So these other judgments, whose whole purpose is simply to determine whether a person or an act is wicked or good or bad—why get involved with them at all? Good question; each person has his own areas of interest. Maybe you’re just an amateur philosopher. Maybe you nevertheless have some attitude toward a particular person: if you judge him by his own standards as wicked or righteous—not in the sense of threat, but in the sense that I want to know whether I feel like being friends with him. Not because he’ll harm me—I just don’t want to be friends with such a person. That’s not self-defense; that can already be, at least, a substantive claim. If I judge him by his own standards as righteous, even if by my standards he is wicked, it may be that as long as it doesn’t bother me, as long as I don’t need self-defense, I won’t mind being his friend. But if I judge him by his own standards as wicked, then even if I have no self-defense issue, I’m not afraid he’ll threaten me, I still don’t want to be friends with such a person. Okay? That’s a matter of taste; I don’t care. But I’m talking about that type of judgment. All right? So that’s the kind of judgment that is our topic now. The fundamental distinction in this context, it seems to me, is the distinction between judging an act and judging a person.
[Speaker B] I wanted to ask in the meantime—I want to know if someone is wicked or not because that
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] helps me with self-defense judgment. Why does that sound strange? For example, I think that someone wicked is more dangerous. If I see someone who stole, I want to
[Speaker B] know whether
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] it happened because he’s a sociopath and doesn’t care about me, in which case I’m more careful around him, or whether he has some system according to which stealing is allowed, in which case maybe I can cooperate with him in other matters. It’s possible, although I’m not at all sure you’re right, because many times precisely the more innocent person is more dangerous. Meaning, a person who understands—he himself understands—that he is not okay, maybe there is some sign, yes, that’s just an implication in the other direction. Okay, but still I’m saying that in the consequential sense my discussion is not relevant. Even if you’re right, my discussion is not relevant, because if I judge the person by his own standards and not by mine, that too is because according to my standards that’s what matters. Meaning, according to my standards, judgment by his own standards is important. That still isn’t judgment; that is still basically only instrumental. Do you understand? That’s why it doesn’t really matter.
[Speaker B] But in order to reach the goal I have to pass through genuine moral judgment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, I understand, but here moral judgment serves as a means. So no, because then it’s not interesting. Why? Because the question whether to judge him by his standards or not by his standards is not determined by the rules of ethics; it is determined by the rules of self-defense. You are saying that in some cases self-defense requires judging by his standards. I’m asking a different question: according to the rules of ethics, should a person be judged by his own standards or by mine? And here that is not the relevant question, because here the discussion is whether I need to judge him by his standards according to ethical rules, but even if I do the act according to ethical rules, I’m not doing it because the ethical rules say so—I’m doing it because that’s my way of knowing whether he is dangerous or not. Fine, then as far as I’m concerned I go to the ethics expert because for me he functions like a chief of staff, like a security expert. Do you understand? I’m asking how the ethics expert himself operates, not how the one who turns to him operates—how the one approached as an expert acts. Why he acts, yes, that’s the point.
[Speaker B] Fine, so if it has some instrumental purpose even if it’s not moral, you can justify…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it can justify it, but that doesn’t interest me. I’m saying it can justify it, but… no, that wasn’t my question. No, you’re asking—my question wasn’t why do it. Why do it, I said, doesn’t interest me. Do it because— I like doing it, someone else doesn’t like doing it, it doesn’t matter. No, so that’s why it doesn’t matter; I’m saying it’s not important to me. You decided to do it; now I want to know what that means.
[Speaker B] Fine? That’s the claim.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay. You know, it reminds me of—think of a situation where there is a person who serves the Holy One, blessed be He, not for its own sake. A maximum of reward, minimum of punishment—that’s his goal in life. He is a complete saint, punctilious about every tiny clause of Jewish law, but it’s all only in order to receive the maximum reward and avoid punishment, minimum punishment. Okay? Now how can you persuade such a person to serve for its own sake? The only way is to tell him, look, someone who serves for its own sake gets more reward. Right? That’s the only way. But you understand that this is not called serving for its own sake. That is basically parallel to what you’re saying here. You’re basically saying: sometimes I judge a person by his own standards, ethically, but I’m not doing it for ethical reasons. I’m doing it because that’s my way of diagnosing whom I need to defend myself against. So that still is not genuine ethical judgment. It’s like serving for its own sake only in order to get more reward. All right? It reminds me of Adam HaKohen—you know Adam HaKohen, the story, right? One of the mythological enlightened thinkers. He wanted to repent on his deathbed only in order to disprove the saying of the Sages that “even at the entrance to Gehinnom, the wicked do not repent.” It’s about the same thing. Good. So the claim is that one must distinguish between judging the person and judging the act. Suppose, I don’t know, someone… I see a person running in the street with some weapon and firing it in all directions. Fine, the law of the pursuer applies; I kill him on the spot. Then it turns out—I approach him and it turns out that he’s holding in his hand, I don’t know, a can of air freshener. He was spraying the street; it wasn’t a rifle at all, right? Or a handgun. He was just there, there was a bad smell, and he wanted to improve conditions for all of us. Okay? Was what I did a good act? No. I murdered an innocent man. But am I wicked—I who killed him? Certainly not, right? I am not wicked. On the contrary, I’m even righteous—not only not wicked. A person who understands that there is a pursuer here has an obligation to kill the pursuer. Right, I made a mistake; I did not assess reality correctly. You can’t judge without intentions. Okay, no, no—in my terminology, you can judge an act without intentions; you cannot judge a person without intentions. And I’m making a distinction here between judging the act and judging the person. Meaning, if you ask me whether the act was a bad act, the answer is yes. You murdered an innocent man. If you ask me whether the person was wicked, the answer is no. He was not wicked. Why? Because by his own standards he acted well. Right? Meaning that when I judge the person, I am supposed to judge him by his own standards. When we talk about judging by our own standards, it seems to me that what is meant is judging the act. Meaning, if you ask me whether such an act is something one ought to do, the answer is no, obviously—it’s murder. But is the person who did it a bad person? No. Meaning, there are many situations in which I can decide that a certain act is a bad act, and still not conclude that the one who did it is a bad person. Those are two different things. And therefore it seems to me that here is the root of the confusion—what I think is the confusion. Meaning, the claim is that when I judge an act, I judge it by my own standards. When I need to decide whether the act is good or bad, then if by my standards it is a bad, harmful act, or whatever, then it is a bad act. I judge that by my own standards; why should I care that he thought it was good? The result is bad; the act is bad. If I judge the doer, then here, even if I think the result is bad or that his act is bad, that does not mean that the doer is a bad person. Because if by his own standards it was a good act, then he is not a bad person. Maybe he is even a good person, as I said in that example. Not only can you not judge him as bad—you should judge him as a good person, righteous. He entered the fray and was ready to kill the pursuer in order to save people. Not all of us would be willing to do such a thing. Okay? So there is even room to appreciate him, not only not to judge him negatively. All right? So the fundamental distinction is between judging a person and judging the act. Okay? Now if I return to our extreme example of the Nazis, right, the Nazi who murdered Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, not… I don’t know, whoever it may be—the question is why he did it. The act in itself is a wicked act, and there I don’t care why he did it. Why? Because I determine that according to my values. Fine? So if I understand that one must not do such a thing, then whoever did it committed a bad act. But if I want to judge the person who did that act, then here I have to get into his innards, to see—meaning why, what he thought. Meaning what caused him to do that act, and without that you can’t judge him. Meaning, it’s not enough to point to the awfulness of the act in order to infer that the one who did it is a wicked person, or a bad person.
[Speaker D] By your standards. By my standards, always. Why not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because from the standpoint of the act itself—if that’s my view—then I think acts like that are bad acts. That’s what it means; that’s my position. When my view is that murder is bad, and let’s say your view is that murder is good, or not bad. Okay? Now you murdered. So I’m not judging you; I’m judging only the act. So it’s a logical identity. Meaning, when I say that in my view murder is a bad act, then I have said that your act is a bad act, because you performed an act of murder.
[Speaker B] If a volcano erupts, do you judge that as a bad act?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? No, that’s not an act. It’s not an act. A volcano doesn’t perform acts.
[Speaker B] Human
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] beings perform acts; they’re agents, yes.
[Speaker B] So you’re ignoring the layer of intention when we talk about condemnation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no. That’s not right. But I’m talking about a human action. A person who caused harm while asleep—“a person is always considered forewarned”—that’s not an act. That’s it. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a human being.
[Speaker B] Again, you’re saying that you ignore the layer of intention for condemnation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m not ignoring it. Again, I’m ignoring the layer of worldview, not the layer of intention. But that’s not the point here.
[Speaker B] No, I am asking.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I am asking whether the act was done intentionally. That, I do ask. I’m not asking what values led to it. But if he didn’t decide on the act at all, it just happened to him, then—
[Speaker B] I can’t even call that a deed at all. There was some earthquake and he farted. Right. You’re saying you judge that act stringently? Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I don’t understand—what is that supposed to mean? It’s an act of rescue. That’s what it means. “An act of rescue” is a statement about the person, and I’m talking about the act.
[Speaker B] The intention was to save, it wasn’t only—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to fart, it was also to save. Let’s synchronize terms; this is only about terminology. So I’m synchronizing the terms. What difference does it make? Call it intention, call it not intention. I’m talking about the consequential judgment, of what happened, okay? That you also have with a volcano. No, no, one second, I’ll explain. Not exactly, at least. The consequential judgment, or what happened objectively on camera, without getting into the psychological infrastructure at all—that’s what I call judgment of an act. I call that… that… that’s what I call an act, okay? The judgment that depends on the person’s values and outlooks—that’s what I call judgment of the person. Fine, that’s just to synchronize terms. Now there’s still a third case. There’s a case of a natural event that happens, not caused by a human being at all, okay? Now clearly what happened caused suffering, whether from a volcano or a robot or whatever. But—and they discuss this at length in ethics too—what is an agent? What is… what is an actor? In Hebrew they call it an agent. Meaning, what can even count as an act before asking whether it’s a bad act or a good act. Something that isn’t the result of a human decision isn’t even in that field. It isn’t an act. It has consequences, of course, that cause suffering—nobody disputes that—but you can’t speak of that thing as an act that is even subject to judgment, okay? Now again, definitions. You can accept them, you can reject them, I don’t care.
[Speaker B] No, but that’s an arbitrary distinction. The difference isn’t between—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it isn’t an arbitrary distinction. It isn’t arbitrary, because a person, for example, can be subject to some claim against him for having adopted a certain value system because of which he does this. No, wait—even if in the end he’s acquitted, still there is—wait, one second—but there is—even if he’s acquitted, I would still conduct a judicial process. With a volcano I don’t conduct such a process.
[Speaker B] Because you don’t know what came out—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No… okay… fine… again, semantics. It’s semantics. Meaning in the end… you know what? It’s like a volcano. Fine? It’s just semantics. It’s like a volcano. Okay? That’s it.
[Speaker B] Fine. So then, right, there’s no point talking—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] about judging an act to begin with. So I’m saying: judgment of an act is like a volcano. That’s what I call judgment of an act.
[Speaker B] So that’s something unnecessary. There’s never any reason to judge an act.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You didn’t understand. Judgment of acts means… what… I… I… I have a purpose. Yes, yes, yes. That’s it. That’s what I said—
[Speaker B] In a system that isn’t connected—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it is connected. It is connected. That’s not true, not true. Because there are certain things where there’s disagreement about the outcome—whether it’s bad or good.
[Speaker B] With a volcano too there can be disagreement.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course! That’s exactly what I’m saying. Right. So that has nothing to do with morality at all. No, it does. No, no, it does. Because the question whether the outcome is bad or good can itself depend on one’s position. That’s it. Right, also with an RPG.
[Speaker B] Right, also with an RPG; I’m talking about a box too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also with a box. I’m saying: I gave up on the line. I’m moving it, but I gave up on the line for the sake of the discussion because it’s just a semantic discussion. The claim, in the end, is that when we judge an act or a result—or however you want to call it—it is certainly determined by our values, including with a box. If in the end something happened that in my view is bad, then something bad happened here, whether it’s a box, a person, or whatever. Okay. That is certainly done according to my view. When I want to judge the doer, I claim that needs to be done according to his view and not mine. Okay? That’s really the claim.
[Speaker C] But now, if I said there’s a difference between judging the person and judging the act—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For example, do you judge a robot for what it did? Well? Why not? After all, the act is a bad act. Back to the box, right? The act is a bad act. Correct? That’s it. Meaning that in the end you judge the person by the way he formed a position, because you need a position in order to produce the thing. Therefore, judgment of the person, of the doer, not of the act, has to take his outlook into account. It has to be done according to his view and not according to mine.
[Speaker D] The bad act itself?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The bad act is bad because that’s how I think it’s a bad act.
[Speaker D] But he’s not wicked.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, no problem. That’s why he’s not wicked, but the result is still bad. A person—I don’t know—caused someone not to keep commandments. Fine, let’s not talk about suffering. He caused someone not to keep commandments. In my view that’s a bad result; in his view that’s an excellent result because he thinks keeping commandments is nonsense. Okay? So when I ask myself whether what happened here is bad, the answer is yes, certainly, because in my view it’s a bad thing. But the person who did it is not necessarily a bad person, because in his understanding he didn’t do something bad. With suffering there’s an automatic consensus, so it’s hard to talk about these things, but it doesn’t matter, so let’s take an example of this kind. Okay?
[Speaker D] But if the conclusion is according to the act or according to the person, what practical difference does it make?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said: for purposes of self-defense, I judge only the outcomes. But in order to judge the person—I said before that it’s really a question why to do that; maybe I’ll talk about it a bit later.
[Speaker B] The judgment of the act—the Rabbi is basically saying that it’s a kind of self-defense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s done for purposes of self-defense. Not that it is self-defense; the judgment is a judgment. But if the purpose of the judgment is self-defense, then the way I carry it out will be according to my view and not his. Okay? The claim that can be made about a person who did something bad in my view—bad, yes?—can happen in several ways. One possibility is error. There can be an error in the facts; there can be a moral error, that he adopts mistaken values, incorrect values. And again, all this assumes my view that morality is not relative, that morality is absolute. So someone who adopts a moral system different from what I think is correct is, from my perspective, mistaken. Mistaken in values, not mistaken in facts, but never mind—mistaken. Okay? Now when a person is mistaken, whether in facts or in values, then straightforwardly you can’t judge him as a bad person. Like with that pursuer I mentioned earlier, and likewise for someone who errs like a captured infant. Someone who errs in the moral dimension—you can’t say he is a bad person. He acted according to his own outlook, that’s all; what do you want him to do—act according to your outlook? Therefore, when we’re talking about mistakes, usually the mistaken person is not wicked. He is mistaken. So what does make someone wicked? In order to speak of someone as wicked, we need to note that we’re talking about someone who did something that was bad even in his own view, okay? But it didn’t stem either from an error in the facts or from an error in values. Now that’s already a very difficult question: how can such a situation even exist? And if I may, for one moment, I want to draw your attention to the fact that this just sharpens the question I raised at the beginning. How is it possible for a person to come out wicked from a judgment made according to his own view, right? Only now I’m spelling it out more. When I judge a person according to his own view, and I ask myself how he can come out wicked, let’s spell out why that seems impossible. Why did he do it if it didn’t fit his own view? Either because of error in the facts or because of error in values. But neither kind of error makes him wicked; he is mistaken, not wicked. So what does? Here there can be one of two possibilities. The more complicated possibility is weakness of will. Meaning, in philosophy there is the issue of weakness of the will. There’s a topic of weakness of will. The question is whether a situation can exist in which a person acts contrary to what he himself thinks should be done. Okay? Because on the face of it, that’s far from simple. Almost all of us assume this can happen.
[Speaker B] Like when you’re on a diet, for example.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it’s far from simple when you try to justify and understand how it can really happen. It’s very difficult. Right? If a person did some action, then usually he probably thought that was what was worthy to do—sorry. If he didn’t think that was what should be done, then why did he do it? What will you say—that he was coerced? If he was coerced, then again he’s not wicked. He was coerced. Meaning there’s something here that almost empties the possibility of a person being wicked of any content. How can a person fail? That’s what’s called weakness of will. When a person commits a sin, okay? And the sin does not stem from the fact that first he didn’t believe that Jewish law was binding and afterward he repented; rather, even then he was committed to Jewish law beforehand. And he sinned. Okay? I’m talking about a sin of that kind. Now after he committed the sin he suddenly says, wow, how did I fall like that? What happened to me there? So how does he explain it to himself? No, no—he wasn’t mistaken. Error is not wickedness. For an error you don’t even need repentance, I think. He says, I was weak, right? I failed. I was weak. The impulse overcame me or something. Now what does it mean that the impulse overcame me? Was it an irresistible urge? Was it something I simply couldn’t withstand? “His impulse clothed itself upon him,” right? If that were the case, then I wouldn’t need repentance, because then I’m coerced. No, it wasn’t like that. I could have withstood it. My whole remorse is based on the fact that it was an impulse I could have withstood, and I fell. I was weak. I couldn’t stand up to it. The prior warning maybe comes to verify that point, but in the end, in the end, it’s clear that when you are in a state I’m now calling weakness of will—meaning, I had a weak will and therefore I fell—what really happened here is that you acted in a way that you yourself understood was not okay. You could have acted otherwise, you weren’t forced to do what you did, and yet you did it. I don’t understand. If you thought you had to do A and that B was forbidden, and you were able to do A and not B, then why did you do B, or how did you do B? How did that happen? If you did B, then don’t tell me stories—apparently that’s what you really wanted to do. Let’s go with the diet example, right? Dieting is maybe the favorite example in this context. A person decides he’s going on a diet for aesthetic reasons, health reasons, whatever. He sees some delicious cake dripping with honey—an enticing cake—and he falls. He eats the cake. Now clearly he could have resisted. Otherwise he’s not wicked, so-called, right? He didn’t fail. What can you do? He’s coerced. That’s not called failure. Okay? What does it mean that he failed? “Failed” means I really didn’t want to eat the cake; my value system is to keep the diet, but I was weak. I fell. Right? That’s how we often talk to ourselves. “The leaven in the dough hinders,” as the Talmud says, right? What can we do—“the leaven in the dough hinders.” I really wanted to do Your will, “our will is to do Your will, but what can we do, the leaven in the dough hinders.” That’s exactly this claim. Okay. Well. On the face of it, that seems very strange. Don’t tell me you didn’t want to eat the cake but you ate it. If you ate it, you wanted to eat it. Rather what? The desire to eat the cake was stronger than the desire to keep the diet. Right, I’m not saying you don’t want the diet; you want the diet without the costs. Meaning, you want to be attractive and healthy without paying any price. That you certainly want; I agree. But don’t tell me you really didn’t want to eat the cake, right? When you’re taking into consideration all the aspects. Clearly you wanted to eat the cake, and that’s why you ate it. If you hadn’t wanted to, you wouldn’t have eaten. Okay? So very often a person who talks about weakness of will is actually fooling us and fooling himself. He’s basically saying: I really want to be God-fearing, but I also really love eating pork. And the pleasure of eating pork is more important to me than refraining from the prohibition, and therefore I ate the pork. So that’s not weakness of will. That’s desire for something else. Weakness of will means that I was weak and didn’t do what I really wanted. But here the claim is: you didn’t really want that. What you really wanted was to eat the pork—or more than to refrain from the prohibition. That’s the problem of weakness of will. Now there’s a philosophical claim—and I think people’s intuition usually says this too, though how to justify it philosophically is very difficult—that there are still situations of weak will. There can be a case where a person succumbs to temptation; he wasn’t coerced by the temptation, because otherwise it’s not failure, and yet he succumbed to doing something he didn’t want. How to justify that—that’s a philosophical issue, and I’m not getting into it here—but that’s one possibility for understanding when a person comes out bad in a judgment according to his own view. A person who did such an act out of weakness of will—and again, he is not coerced; if he were coerced, then he’s coerced, nothing to be done, but he wasn’t coerced, right? That’s what we’re talking about, and that’s why he himself regrets it. So when I judge him in such a case, there is justification to call him a bad person. Wicked, yes? Meaning, a person who acted badly.
[Speaker B] The sign is that he himself regrets it, and that’s also a category the Sages took up—this saying that the wicked are full of remorse; that’s the sign of a wicked person, a person who regrets what he does.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said, this mechanism of weakness of will—I think that’s the simple meaning of the statement. But there’s a second mechanism which, in my view, is simpler, much less complicated, and it seems to me more everyday. Maybe one could map them onto each other if one tried very hard, but I don’t think they’re the same thing. A person who acts against his own moral rules out of self-interest. Overpowering, yes, what you mentioned earlier. A person stole, and he doesn’t say that stealing is morally permitted; his moral theory is no different from mine. He too thinks stealing is forbidden. Fine, stealing is forbidden—so what? But I don’t want to behave morally; for me it’s better to be rich than to be moral, and therefore I steal. Now notice the distinction. This person, first of all, does not regret what he did, even afterward, in principle—unless he changed his worldview. But if he didn’t change his worldview, he doesn’t regret what he did. So this is not weakness of will. This is his will; he wants to steal. But that will is not the result of a moral calculation; it is the result of an interest that outweighed the moral consideration—interest minus the moral consideration. Meaning, on the one hand this is not weak will; it’s not a person who acted against what he himself thinks. He did what he himself wanted to do. But it is still true that he himself would agree that he acted immorally, and he says, fine, I don’t feel like being moral; I prefer to be rich. He agrees that he acted immorally. That’s enough to judge him even without weakness of will. I judge him for behaving immorally, for giving greater weight to self-interest than to morality. So here I don’t need to enter into all this complication of weakness of will—whether a person can claim, I did something although I didn’t want to do it and I wasn’t coerced. That almost seems impossible. I did something, I didn’t want to do it, and I also wasn’t coerced? If you weren’t coerced and didn’t want to do it, then why did you do it? But what I’m describing here doesn’t raise that philosophical problem. We know these cases; they happen every day. A person will tell you: I wasn’t okay. A person who stole and comes to court doesn’t say, yes, I think stealing is permitted. He doesn’t say that—that’s not the tactic—and in truth he doesn’t say it because he doesn’t think so. He only says, fine, I took a risk because I wanted to be rich. You caught me, fine, you got the upper hand, put me in jail. He usually doesn’t say it that way, but that’s basically what he thinks. Meaning he has no disagreement with me in moral outlook. That’s the point. But that still doesn’t mean he’ll act according to his moral outlook, because among the considerations a person takes into account when deciding how to act, there aren’t only moral considerations; there are also interests, urges, interests, whatever. And therefore this is another situation beyond weakness of will. And here notice: “the evil inclination in the heart hinders” doesn’t apply. I can’t now say, look, our will is to do Your will, but what can we do, the evil inclination in the heart hinders. It is true that he would also like not to steal, but he wants even more to steal in order to be rich. So he can’t say, look, I really wanted not to steal but I failed. Weak will? No. That’s not failure; it’s not weak will. It’s a decision. It’s a decision that in his eyes it is more important to be rich than to be moral. And for that you can judge a person. According to his own view—notice, according to his own moral view. You can’t judge him according to his view in general, including interests and values, because then obviously what he did is what he thought should be done. But moral judgment takes into account the moral criteria, not the totality of a person’s considerations—on the contrary. In the place where the considerations by which you acted were not moral considerations but other considerations, that itself is what I judge you for. So the fact that you did not act here out of weak will—that there is no weakness of will—doesn’t prevent me from judging you. So I think this is the simpler mechanism in the context of how one judges a person according to his own view and he can still come out wicked. That was really the question. So either weakness of will—which again is itself a question—or simply a person who does not act according to his own moral rules because he has interests, because in the end very often these are things that happen. I think that usually people’s sins are generally, it seems to me, of the second type. They have some urges or needs, interests, and that overcomes their moral considerations. Well, I don’t know if usually, but often. What? I’ve never seen—
[Speaker B] a sin of the second type, but I think that’s because it seems to me, as you said at the beginning—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that you can identify them.
[Speaker B] I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you can identify them, by the way, then in my opinion you need to take the first and show that it is like the second, not the second like the first. If they can be mapped, then there’s no such thing as weakness of will. What you call weakness of will is really impulse, and your desire to satisfy the impulse is stronger than your desire to preserve moral values. I understand, but I’m saying even if I agree that they can be mapped, I meant mapping the first onto the second, not the second onto the first. Right. No, not not to sin. To sin—if you don’t cancel that, that’s called sin.
[Speaker B] There is no weakness of will. There are two desires that conflict, and one is stronger than the other. That can’t be sin. Why not? Because over that one shouldn’t feel regret. I should regret the fact that I wanted—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you shouldn’t regret.
[Speaker B] that—to see what the goal is and achieve it fully. Right. Well, you can regret that, but that changes the concept of regret from the ordinary concept.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s not regret. There’s no regret here unless I repented. There’s no regret. No, and still I can be judged without regret. I—
[Speaker B] I’m asking how you explain the concept of regret.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I explained the concept of regret in the first mechanism.
[Speaker B] Whether it exists is not a simple question. It may be that you can map it onto the second. I completely agree with the assumption that there is such a thing as regret, but then—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I will not map the two—
[Speaker B] things onto each other, because in the second mechanism there is no regret. In the second mechanism there is no regret. No regret.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You want to be richer than moral, fine. You don’t regret that—that’s what you want. I think that if a person wants something, that means that this is his moral position. By definition. If a person wants to behave in a certain way, he thinks that’s what is appropriate. By definition. I can’t argue with definitions, but that sounds very strange to me. No, because “appropriate” means how I should behave taking everything into account. No, absolutely not. Morality is one particular kind of consideration that has to be taken into account, and a person has other considerations too, and in the end he has to make decisions. Morality comes after all the considerations and says what to do. And that’s a different definition.
[Speaker B] I don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can argue about definitions.
[Speaker B] No, I don’t think—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. A person says: I think stealing is forbidden, but I want to be richer rather than not a thief. Okay?
[Speaker B] What is appropriate in your eyes to do, given what you want? If you think that after what—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] what is appropriate given what you want is—no, you’re shifting from “appropriate” to “want.” I am deliberately using the concept “want” and not “appropriate.”
[Speaker B] Okay. Someone else wants—what is appropriate?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is appropriate to do is not to steal. It is appropriate not to steal. No, given that he wants. Given that I want, it is appropriate not to steal. But I want to steal. Exactly. Right. Okay.
[Speaker B] With—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] definitions it’s hard to argue, but I don’t agree. Well, in any case, the claim is that in the end what comes out is that when I come to judge a person according to his own view, I have to do quite a bit of investigation before I can declare someone wicked. Okay, a bad person, not a bad result, right? That’s what I’m really trying to claim here. First of all, I have to check whether in his own view he did something bad. After I reach the conclusion that in his own view he did something bad, I need to check why he did it. Was it because he was mistaken? Was it because he had an urge? Was it because he was mistaken about the facts, about the values—it doesn’t matter, various things. If he erred in values, then it’s not according to his own view; but if he erred in facts, what exactly happened there? If he did not err in facts, did not err in values, and still did what he thinks ought not be done for reasons of impulse, self-interest, and the like, then I can render a verdict on him as a bad person or a wicked person. That’s really the claim. Now I’ll go one step further. Even when the person is mistaken, whether in facts or in values, that still doesn’t mean he is innocent. Not every error is an automatic defense. Why? Because take a case where you go to kill someone, or that pursuer, right? If you didn’t check the facts properly and saw that he had a selfie stick in his hand instead of a rifle, and let’s say you could have checked—I’m not talking right now about a case where you can’t check—then that is criminal negligence. So right, you didn’t intend to kill him; on the contrary, you intended to do something good, and in that sense maybe you are a good person. But there is a kind of negligence here, and the more extreme the act you are doing, the more you are required to investigate thoroughly. And therefore, even if perhaps one can distinguish here between guilt and responsibility—terms one can debate—but I want to state the principle. Meaning, you’re not a murderer, but you certainly bear responsibility for the killing that occurred, since it happened as a result of your negligence. Right? Someone who intended to eat pork and ended up with lamb, or the reverse—someone who intended to eat lamb and ended up with pork. Then in principle, the first wanted to do a bad act, so he is a bad person and the result is not bad. He intended to eat pork and ended up with lamb. So the judgment of the act: a good act; the judgment of the person: a bad person. Okay. Someone who intended to eat lamb and ended up with pork—that’s what is usually called inadvertence. Okay. What is that inadvertence? Basically, the act he did is a bad act, but the person is not a bad person, because he didn’t know that what he was doing was a bad act. But for inadvertence one brings an offering, unlike coercion. Why? Because, as is commonly said—Nachmanides and others, yes—there is a measure of negligence here. Now what is the difference between inadvertence and deliberate action? In deliberate action, you are guilty; in inadvertence, you are responsible. Meaning, if someone drove negligently on the road, carelessly on the road, he certainly didn’t intend to murder. Or someone who drank wine and got drunk and started driving. He didn’t intend to murder; if he knew he would murder, he wouldn’t have done it, okay? So you can’t say that he is someone who intended to murder, that he is a murderer. But you can say that he bears responsibility for the killing that occurred, because this is “it began in negligence and ended in coercion,” right? Meaning, you basically began with a negligent act, and you know that if the consequences can be so grave, then be very careful not to be negligent. When you go to kill someone, check very carefully that the facts are clear to you, or that what you think about the facts is correct. Now I’m saying: there isn’t always time to check, fine. I’m speaking under the assumption that I had the ability to check and didn’t check. Then, even though what I did was a mistake and I did not intend an act of murder, that doesn’t mean I’m free of blame. Meaning, one can come with claims against a person for not checking. Now that can be said mainly regarding error in facts. There too, you can’t always check, but it’s more common, right? With respect to facts, check whether he is a pursuer or not a pursuer. But what happens regarding error in values? And again, my whole discussion assumes that morality is not relativistic, right? That there is moral objectivity. So someone who thinks otherwise is simply mistaken. Mistaken in values. There too I say: that is not necessarily a complete defense. I may still judge you negatively. When? If you didn’t carry out a proper examination of your values. And one can do moral inquiry in principle—harder, but possible. The fact is that in discussions of ethics between people, sometimes you encounter an argument that will persuade you. That can happen. At least if you are not very biased or very arrogant. Notice: sometimes arguments are raised that can persuade you. Meaning that if you had examined your values as well, and not only the facts, properly, you might have reached the conclusion that you were mistaken. Now again, that can always happen. But when you do an extreme action on the basis of the values you hold, you are all the more required to check whether those are really the right values in your view. Right? The example that always came to my mind in this context is ISIS. They do terrible acts. Okay, they take some journalist or whoever, some random Westerner who falls into their hands, and they slit his throat. Okay? When I saw these acts, I was horrified not only because of the act itself, of course, but because I suddenly thought that in our world it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing, only the result isn’t quite so extreme. Meaning, a Jew who accepts a certain value system because that’s what the rabbi said, or because that’s what is written in the Talmud, or in this book or that book, usually doesn’t really examine it. If it’s written there, then it’s true. The killing of Amalek, or whatever. Now usually Jews, at least nowadays, don’t do very extreme things as a result of that. Sometimes they do problematic things. Dawkins once wrote that in every society there are good people who do good things and bad people who do bad things. But only in a religious world are there good people who do bad things. I don’t think he’s right. It’s only in an ideological world, not necessarily a religious one. But he has an issue with religion, so he applied it there. Yes, in an ideological world—like with communism—there can be a situation where good people do bad things. Why? Because they believe that their values require them to perform that action. Right? “Oil on the wheels of the revolution.” The communists murdered millions of people, and I think a large part of it for what they saw as proper reasons, good reasons. They had good intentions. These weren’t just wicked people who decided to destroy everyone who didn’t look like them. That’s a very easy way to judge people; it isn’t true. They had good intentions; they thought that this was how they would bring good into the world. Now I say again: that doesn’t clear them of guilt. It may be relevant to punishment, but it doesn’t clear them of guilt, because you had to examine your value world much more carefully before doing such horrific acts. When the matters are, I don’t know, lighting Sabbath candles or reciting the blessing after using the bathroom, then I don’t need to check to the bitter end whether those values are really correct or not. Fine, maybe I was mistaken; so I recited the blessing and shouldn’t have, or I lit Sabbath candles and shouldn’t have. But when you murder—when you murder a people, when you murder a person, or abuse a people or a person—that is an extreme action. And for such an extreme action, you are required to check. And therefore what I thought there, when I see these actions of ISIS, of those guys there who were slitting throats—do they, do they not themselves probably, at least as I assess it, genuinely believe that this is what should be done? Right? Al-Baghdadi, from the mouth of the Almighty, told them that this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, expects them to do. So what do I want from them? They truly and sincerely believe that this is the religious commandment—that a non-Muslim person, or a Westerner, or whatever, should have his throat slit. Okay? My claim is that they can still bear responsibility. When you are required to perform an act that even you say is an extreme act—not just me. Meaning, there is a severe prohibition on murder in Islam too, and of course in the Torah and in Jewish law. It’s just that there are certain circumstances in which Jewish law says that nevertheless it must be done. But everyone agrees that this is some kind of very extreme act. In order to do an extreme act, you have to check very carefully whether it is really true that you have to do it. Okay? And therefore, for example, I don’t know—if I ever found myself in a situation where I had to kill an Amalekite, something like that—I don’t know if I would do it. I don’t know if I would do it because in order to do an action of that sort, again, maybe I’d be in the wrong, but factually, I’m not sure I would do it. Because in order to do such an extreme action, I’m not sufficiently certain that this is really what Jewish law expects of me to do. And we know, we’re familiar with all the interpretations that somewhat blunt the edge of the obligation to kill Amalek—calling to them in peace in Maimonides, and things like that. That means there are certain interpretive possibilities according to which I don’t have to just kill every Amalekite standing before me. Now suppose another person says: it says in the Torah, “You shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; do not forget.” What’s the problem? It’s written in the Torah, so he kills. Do I have a claim against him? The answer is yes. On some level—again, of course there are differences. Why? Because when you go to kill a people, a person—yes, even a person, but certainly a people—you have to be sure that this is really what is incumbent upon you. And you have to check very carefully. And if there are other approaches, examine them; maybe they are right. So I’m saying that even if you received—from Al-Baghdadi or from whoever—some instruction straight from the mouth of the Almighty that you must act this way, and you truly believe that that is what should be done, I believe you. You really believe that’s what should be done. That still doesn’t clear you of guilt. Because error does not always clear one of guilt. Error, when it leads to a radical act, places a certain responsibility on you for having erred. When the error leads to something and you yourself know that you are doing a radical act as a result of that error, then check very carefully that it is not an error. If it’s some routine action, fine, then a person—yes.
[Speaker B] I want to say something that I completely agree with, I always thought this way: for example, in the Nuremberg trials, whom should they have executed? The ones who regretted it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, if he regretted it because he changed his mind, or did he regret it because it was the kind of regret where already then he understood that he was doing wrong? Yes. In the religious context, in our context, I always think traditional Jews are much more relaxed than atheists. That’s obvious, even though usually people see it the other way around.
[Speaker B] No, because, like—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] atheists truly and sincerely don’t believe the story. Traditional Jews believe but cut corners. I’m talking about traditional Jews of that type; there are all kinds of traditional Jews.
[Speaker B] Yes, there are traditional Jews—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, no—the traditional Jews of that type, who believe but, okay, they can’t really be bothered now, they’re… much worse than someone who is an atheist.
[Speaker B] A second comment: I think, unfortunately, familiarity with people’s psychology shows that it’s simply too much to expect people to investigate something all the way through. Most people don’t do that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but I’m saying that in a place where you come to do a very extreme act—
[Speaker B] an extreme act—I look at the Nazis.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The people—
[Speaker B] in the lower ranks, not the ideologues and so on—I think it’s hard to come with claims against them. In my opinion, ninety percent of people who would find themselves inside some organization like that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s—
[Speaker B] once—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Aharon Barak once wrote—there was a case, and the Chazon Ish also addressed a case like this. Some woman was driving a car, and a cat passed in front of the car, and she swerved and went up onto the sidewalk and ran over a person, killing him. Now the lower court acquitted her, because that’s what a reasonable person would do. What can you do? A reasonable person in that situation would do exactly that—
[Speaker B] She tried to think.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. And Aharon Barak wrote that this was an unreasonable act by the reasonable person. Or something like that—not exactly that wording, but something along those lines. Now that’s a question. At first glance it sounds strange, but it’s not as absurd as it sounds. What do I mean? There are situations in which I agree: most reasonable people would act that way, and still that doesn’t clear you of responsibility. I’ll give you an example. I once thought about this after reading a biography of Stalin, some huge thick book. On every single page of that book I was going out of my mind. We’re talking about one individual against the second most powerful superpower in the world—Russia, the Soviet Union—with a hundred, a hundred and fifty million people, a huge army, everything—and he was alone against them. Everybody wanted to kill him, everybody hated him, everybody was afraid of him. I’m not saying in the collective farms they even knew about him; some admired him. But the people who understood, yes—the people in the capital, the educated people, the functionaries in the army and the security services, all his protégés whom he later killed, all of them wanted to kill him. And the man died peacefully in his bed, aside from conspiracy theories floating around there. How does that happen? One man stands against the second largest power in the world? The bureaucracy of a state succeeds in creating a situation where nobody dares rebel against him—and rightly so. Because if you want to kill him, you need the guard’s cooperation. So you go to the guard—who knows, maybe out of fear the guard will inform on you, and tomorrow they’ll hang you. So you can’t even get started. Now clearly, if we all united, you wouldn’t even need to kill him. He’d simply be left completely insignificant. One person can scream until tomorrow that he wants to kill the whole world—so what? He has nothing. He has no troops. He can’t do anything. The only thing that makes this whole story work is bureaucracy. The bureaucracy of a state where you have to obey the leader, and whoever doesn’t obey is punished. But every such thing depends on human beings. If the executioner won’t agree to punish me, then the fact that the leader decides to punish me won’t help him at all—nobody will punish me. In the end, in the end, the leader just decides; all the actions are carried out by the mechanisms. So how can it be that nobody succeeds—that all that power can’t overcome one solitary person? And this is exactly the story of the men of Shechem. The well-known Maharal on the men of Shechem. What happens with the men of Shechem? They ask there—yes, Maimonides says they were called to account because they did not have a legal system there, and therefore Simeon and Levi killed the men of Shechem. So Nachmanides asks, and the Maharal discusses it too: what do they want from the people? What do they expect the people to do? The king didn’t establish a legal system. Do they expect the private individual to judge the king? How exactly is he supposed to do that? What do you want him to do? Yes—the ordinary Nazis—what do you want, that he should rebel against Hitler? They’d hang him on the spot, shoot him in the head. What do you want him to do? My answer at least—and if I understand correctly this is true both for the men of Shechem and for Stalin and for Hitler—is: you’re right. I too, in that situation, probably would not have been any more heroic than the ordinary Nazis. And still, we need to make claims against the person. Because the fact that each of us individually is not a hero—that is exactly what enables, or creates, the situation in which someone who isn’t a hero can’t do anything. In other words, in the end there is some kind of collective responsibility, where each individual really is not guilty, because what can he do alone? But you understand that the collective is just the sum of all the individuals. That’s the paradox. A very slight guilt—I agree. That’s why I say these are arguments for sentencing. But I’m saying that assigning responsibility at the principled level—the collective is built out of the collection of individuals. Meaning, if each and every individual is not a hero, what can he do? This collection of non-heroes created the situation. So in the end, each one has one one-hundred-millionth of the blame. So what do you mean, slight? And I too would have behaved that way, I agree. I’m not claiming I would have been more heroic than they were. And that doesn’t mean—and that’s why I say—this is something, something I think is somewhat connected to the unreasonable act of the reasonable person, what Aharon Barak says there. There’s something in it… you demand that a reasonable person be more than reasonable. Because when you swerve off the road, check very, very carefully that you’re not killing somebody. True, instinctively, most reasonable people wouldn’t do that. That’s true. But he says: if we set this as the norm, then maybe people will suddenly start doing it. In other words, I think there’s a very similar logic to what I said here, and therefore it’s not as absurd as it sounds.
[Speaker B] That’s the faintest shadow of guilt. I’m talking about…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, the faintest shadow…
[Speaker B] Why? To blame them in the most…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: you can argue, you can definitely argue about the degree of guilt. And I’m not talking right now about… sorry, I’m talking about the verdict, not the sentence. Okay? I’m not talking about how much punishment to impose on him or how wicked he is, but about whether there is guilt. Okay? After that we can discuss the arguments for sentencing.
[Speaker B] If we were to classify those people as guilty,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They would be a thousand times more guilty. Fine, I accept all of that, there’s nothing to argue about, I accept it all. But still, the claim that there is guilt here—that’s what I want to argue. Even though as for arguments for sentencing, I completely agree. If you act like a reasonable person, then let’s say the question is what to do with that guilt after I’ve concluded that you are guilty. That’s true. But still, my claim is first of all: you need to know that you are guilty. That’s the point. The fact that you erred, the fact that you couldn’t, the fact that things were this way or that way—that is not an automatic defense. Therefore, even if I judge a person by his own standards, there are many situations in which he will still be found guilty. It’s not an automatic defense. It doesn’t leave us unable to judge people. I had the same thing once at some gathering in the ORT Ramle school, which is an Arab school. Very impressive, by the way. It was some interfaith gathering where they brought all kinds of rabbis, qadis, imams, Druze, Christians, Muslims, and so on, to speak with the students about tolerance, values, things of that sort. Now the participants in the discussion were all, overall, moderate people. Meaning, they genuinely wanted to moderate the youth, the young people. And they all spoke about the need to listen to the elders, to listen to the imam or the qadi or the priest or the sheikh or whatever it may be. And the assumption was that if you listen to the older, more balanced people, that will moderate the situation on the ground; in other words, it will lead to less extreme outcomes. And I argued there the opposite claim. I said that in order to get less extreme outcomes, you need not to listen to imams and rabbis and priests—it doesn’t matter, I addressed all the religions, not specifically imams. Because if everyone listens to the imam, then when the imam says something wrong, everyone does it. It comes out very extreme. If each person does what he himself thinks, and there is responsibility on you also as a private individual, you can’t say, “The imam told me,” or “The rabbi told me.” You are responsible for not checking. Even if you are a religious person and you obey the imam or the rabbi, the responsibility still does not come off you. I think in such a situation we’ll reach better results. That’s a tactical consideration, of course. What?
[Speaker B] Also in the High Court of Justice. What do you mean? If there’s a law that obligates me to do something, there needs to be responsibility on me to decide whether I obey the law or don’t obey the law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Conscientious objection and all that? Right, exactly. I spoke about this topic yesterday at one of those “living room memorial” events. There was a guy there who had studied with me in Yeruham in the second cohort, many years ago; by now he already has grandchildren. He had studied with me in Yeruham, and I reminded him—he asked a question like that—so I reminded him that he had been in a group of guys who were going out to officers’ course, and they went around among the teachers for conversations before leaving for the course. And when I spoke with them, I told them that I would not go into battle with a soldier whom I know would never refuse me. In other words, soldiers who never refuse are bad soldiers who create a bad army. Because even on the practical level—yes, even on the practical level—I’m saying, a commander doesn’t think twice before giving an order if he knows he’ll never be refused, so the orders come out worse. You think less carefully about whether this is really what should be done here. If you know you have independent-minded soldiers and they don’t automatically do what you think, what you say, you’ll think twice about what should be said here. Now I’m saying, these are extreme cases; you don’t refuse over every little thing you disagree with.
[Speaker B] Even in non-extreme cases it has an effect. Carrying out an order doesn’t cover all possibilities. There’s always an edge case. Now if your soldier has no backbone at all…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, he’s saying then the implementation of the order has to be according to the circumstances. Just using initiative.
[Speaker B] Yes, but
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about refusal; you’re talking about interpreting the order according to the circumstances.
[Speaker B] It can amount to refusing an order. Okay, that means they’re not used to making decisions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, it creates a worse army and worse orders. That’s basically the claim. And everything ultimately comes down to the fact that even in a hierarchical system, a truly hierarchical system—meaning yes, it is correct to obey the higher levels of the hierarchy, not when it isn’t correct; even when it is correct, that still does not mean you have no responsibility. It reminds me that in the first elections in which Degel HaTorah was formed, against Degel HaTorah—I think, the Haredi one—I was in Bnei Brak at Yeshivat Netivot Olam, a yeshiva for baalei teshuvah. I studied there, and Rabbi Shach was picking out with tweezers every last person who would vote for Degel HaTorah, because they were afraid they wouldn’t pass the electoral threshold. They had split off—something like that, yes—they had split from Agudat Yisrael and were afraid they wouldn’t pass the threshold. So I said there in the yeshiva that I was going to vote for Mafdal. And we had ties with Rabbi Shach’s family, even good ties; we were very close there. He heard about it and sent for me. I didn’t come. I knew what he was going to say to me, and I knew that if he said it to me then I’d do it too, so I didn’t go. In the end I voted for Degel HaTorah even though I didn’t go. But afterward I went to my shiur teacher and said to him: tell me, what will happen if I come before the heavenly court and they ask me, “Why did you vote for Degel HaTorah?” “Rabbi Shach told me.” Rabbi Shach told me—that’s very nice, but it was a serious mistake; you should have voted for Mafdal. What am I supposed to answer them? I asked him. And he said that the truth is, you have nothing to answer. That surprised me, a punchline like that—I didn’t expect such an answer from him. He said, the truth is, you have nothing to answer. But most likely Rabbi Shach is closer to the truth than you are. But if not, then indeed—they will call you to account. In other words, it is not a defense that you obeyed the rabbi, or not necessarily the rabbi, your spiritual leader or path-setter. That is not an automatic defense. If you trust that he is usually right, that can be your consideration for doing it, because you think he is usually right. But in the end, the decision is on you. Meaning, if you think for example that you are very, very convinced that he is not right, then fine—most likely maybe he is right, but here it is very, very clear to me that he is not, so I won’t obey him. In the end, hanging onto a great tree—as the saying goes, “he who wants to hang himself should hang himself on a great tree”—hanging onto a great tree is not an automatic defense. And that’s a good thing, because dependence on a great tree is a thesis that doesn’t always only moderate things; sometimes it is very dangerous. Meaning, when the mistake is made on a mass scale, when everyone does the same thing, it’s far worse than when all sorts of small people make small mistakes—in the end that somehow cancels out. Okay, the capitalist invisible hand works more correctly than leftist, socialist centralism. That’s the story. Now a lesson—and with this I want to finish—a lesson for our own time, yes, in these stormy days in the political argument, coalition and opposition. I don’t call it left and right because it has nothing to do with left and right—maybe even the reverse. The government is an extreme left-wing government and the protesters are extreme right-wingers. But let’s say opposition and coalition. There is some argument here. Okay, I also have a side in the argument, but that doesn’t matter, that’s not the issue here. What characterizes both sides is that each one thinks the other is wicked. That’s very clear. There is absolutely no willingness to recognize that the other side has a different position or doctrine. Either wicked or stupid, okay—but not that he is acting according to his own view. The point is that people are not willing to judge the other by his own standards; they judge the outcome. Now if someone says that this legal move will bring dictatorship, or I don’t know, the loss of our freedom—now suppose that’s true or not true, I’m not getting into the question of whether it’s true or not—he is not willing to accept the possibility that the other side, the opposite side, thinks differently from him. Not that he thinks dictatorship is good—that’s one discussion—but that he thinks it won’t lead to dictatorship. Now he may be mistaken, and his mistake may be terrible, like the mistake of the Nazis. But if he truly believes it, then the judgment of the act is indeed a very severe judgment, but the judgment of the person does not necessarily follow from the judgment of the act. And likewise for the other side, of course—yes, the coalition too, when it relates to the opposition, it’s the same thing. What wicked people, anarchists, and so on—and it’s the same thing. And my feeling is—and here you asked earlier why it matters to judge the person by his own standards; after all, what matters is whether I defend myself or not, and that’s a judgment of the act, not of the person—I think the attitude toward the argument is essentially different, different in essence, when you see that the person standing opposite you is not wicked but simply thinks differently from you. Then you are willing to listen, to make your case, to argue, to reach agreement or not reach agreement. In the end it may be that you’ll take extreme measures because you really perceive him as threatening your freedom, and perhaps you’ll even kill him because that’s the law of a pursuer—according to your view he’s going to lock you up in prison, I don’t know exactly what. Fine. But still, if you think that according to his own view his intentions are sincere, that he truly believes this is what’s right, I think you will be more willing to hear it and reach some kind of agreement, compromise, things of that sort. Something that will save you from prison but won’t give you the full satisfaction of your desires. If you understand that the other person is wicked, you aim for a decisive victory; you want to overpower him—in other words, eliminate him. If you understand that he is not wicked, you will be more willing—it may be psychology, but you will be more willing—to reach a compromise with him. Part of the problem of reaching agreement these days—which in my opinion, by the way, “reaching agreement” is a superfluous term, because there has already long been agreement. That is, most of the public, an overwhelming majority of the public, agrees completely about what should happen here. An overwhelming majority of the public. The difference—yes, I think I’ve spoken about this before—the petitions in favor of the reform include people who spoke on the radio, and I know some of them too, and they say: I support the reform, but of course it needs to be moderated; it’s not balanced enough, it’s too extreme, but I support the reform. Okay? Meaning, he actually supports reform, not this reform. Those who oppose—the petitions that oppose—it, they oppose the reform, not reform. They say: yes, this reform is extreme, true, there are things that need fixing, but this reform is extreme. Do you understand that both sides are saying the same thing? Or at least they can say the same thing. They are both saying: there needs to be reform, just not something this extreme. Only one says, “I’m for the reform, just not one this extreme,” and the other says, “No, I’m against the reform—true, something should be done, but not something so extreme.” So what is the argument? They’re both saying the same thing. And many times the argument—sometimes there’s even a switch: I think that those who oppose the reform are in favor of a more extreme reform than those who support the reform. They oppose the reform and support reform, not the reform. Yes, so I’m saying, in the end I think, even when I talk with people, I hear that in the end there is almost full agreement. Almost everyone I talk to—and I deal with this quite a lot, I meet people from all kinds of sectors because we’re trying to create various joint efforts in this context—everyone more or less agrees. It’s amazing how much agreement there is that you don’t see at all in the street. In the street you hear the two sides, for whom either the reform is a Holocaust or the reform is redemption.
[Speaker B] I think
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But many times, even out in the street, there are a great many people sitting in that zone of agreement. And what happens is—I have friends, I talk to them—because the other side is so wicked, they aren’t willing to hear anything at all. Fear—and not only fear; fear could also mean that maybe he is mistaken and it’s still frightening—but the claim is also that he is wicked, not just mistaken. Right. No, that’s a problem. No, no—I think it can be solved, as I said before; maybe it’s only psychology. But if each side understands that the other, by his own lights, is not wicked—by the other side’s own lights, no, no, it matters, it matters because in the end, once you understand that he is not wicked, you also understand that there is a limit to what he will do with the compromises you reach with him. It is connected, even though theoretically you can separate it; I think it is unequivocally connected. I see it also among the people I speak with. Lack of trust. Yes, there is lack of trust, I agree. But that, I’m saying—for our purposes, once again I’ll stop here—I’m only saying that for our purposes I think the storms we are living through today are to a large extent created by the fact that we do not make the distinction between judging the person by his own standards, which is a judgment of the doer, and judging the act, which really should be done by my own standards, and between the threat and defending myself against it, and the question of what my relation is to the person himself. As when a terrible threat is embodied in him: he’s a robot holding a rifle, so I don’t judge him, but he can kill me. So it may be that the threat is very great; I’m not getting into that argument at all. But that still does not mean that the one holding the rifle is wicked. And that matters; in the end it does project onto what comes out. Good. We’ll stop here. Continuing from… I wanted to ask what place there is
[Speaker B] for…