An Overview of Torah and Torah Study – Lesson 15 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To command. To command. From a warning to a commandment. We said that even Arabic speakers intuitively understand this, even though they don’t have a term for it, but they intuitively understand that these are two species of the same genus. What is that genus? What is it that distinguishes it from other genera? That it’s a verse of command as opposed to declarative verses. The defining feature of the verses that establish these positive and negative commandments is that these verses command us to do something. They are not descriptive verses. In philosophy they call them prescriptive rather than descriptive statements. Descriptive statements are statements that describe some fact. Abraham went here, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” — those are descriptive statements, declarative statements, what I called earlier indicative statements. The halakhic verses are not descriptive verses. They are not descriptive statements; they are prescriptive statements. And that means they precede description; they obligate the description. Okay? They tell you what to do. If they tell you “The Holy One, blessed be He, does not want you to murder,” that is a descriptive statement. If they tell you “You shall not murder,” that is a commandment. If they tell you that in the law — we talked about this a bit last time — if we say that in Israeli law there is a prohibition against stealing, that is a description. If they tell you “Do not steal,” that is a command. Okay? What distinguishes verses of commandments and warnings is that the verses in which commandments and warnings appear are not declarative verses. They are verses that establish obligations, positive obligations or prohibitions, but they impose an obligation on us. They are not describing something. That is the shared category. These are verses that belong to the normative sphere of what is forbidden and permitted, and not to the factual sphere of what exists and what does not exist. They belong to the ought and not to the is, in David Hume’s language. Okay? To what ought to be done, what should be done, and not what exists, or what people do. Just yesterday I heard some lecture — it doesn’t matter where I am — someone gave a lecture there on the philosophy of science. And among other things he brought up the Stanford school, yes? The Stanford beit midrash, the Stanford school, where they discuss philosophy of science through observations about what scientists do, or what scientific communities do. Okay? And they try to infer from that the philosophy of science, how science ought to behave. And I told him that in my view such an approach does not belong to philosophy at all; it belongs to science. It isn’t philosophy of science, it is science of science. Why? Because what they’re doing is basically describing what scientific communities do. How is that different from describing any other fact? That description is something you can test against the facts and see whether it is correct or incorrect. In other words, it is a scientific description. It is a science of how science works. Okay? I describe how science works, and I have a theory of how science works, but if I see a scientific community that doesn’t work that way, then I have refuted the theory. In other words, it really works like an observational science that can be refuted by observations, and therefore this approach has nothing to do with philosophy. It belongs to science.

[Speaker E] You could follow that logic and say that this whole course is basically not Torah study but the philosophy of Torah study.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, philosophy. I agree with the distinction that it is philosophy of Torah study, because I claim that this too is included in Torah. In other words, it’s not that what I’m doing now — Torah study too is not descriptive but prescriptive, and what I’m doing now is also

[Speaker B] prescriptive.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And when I learn that, say, it is forbidden to eat pork, then I am learning a statement that is not a description, right? It’s a command. And now I’m characterizing command statements; this is a continuation of the same thing. I don’t think that’s the gap.

[Speaker E] And according to that, there is no such field as philosophy of law, because philosophy of law too, if it deals with describing norms, then it too is actually itself, if—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Philosophy of law can determine how law ought to function, not how it actually functions. Exactly the same way that philosophy of science is supposed to deal with the question of how science ought to function. And if you discuss the question of how it actually functions, then you are a scientist, not a philosopher. You are simply describing human processes; that belongs to the human sciences. The scientific community is also made up of human beings, and you can describe how they conduct themselves. Sociology, anthropology — it’s a branch of sociology and anthropology. Okay? Which is scientific in principle, meaning you are dealing with facts; you compare it to observations and see. In our context, for example, I am making claims now, making various claims that are not accepted by many scholars of Jewish law and practitioners of Jewish law, and later I’ll make even more such claims. So what I am saying now is what Torah ought to be, not how people in fact perceive what Torah is. And therefore I claim this is philosophy of Jewish law, not a scientific description of Jewish law. For example, I once had a very interesting argument about this. I wrote an article once when the controversy arose around the conversions performed by the state conversion system. Yes, there was some rabbinical judge in Ashdod who said that the whole state conversion system consists of wicked people, because they do not require acceptance of the commandments. And once the judges are wicked, then no conversion done through them, even if someone did accept the commandments, is valid, because a religious court of wicked people is not a religious court, and a religious court is a constitutive requirement in conversion. So all the conversions of the state conversion system are void. That was his claim, and it reached the Supreme Rabbinical Court, which approved that ruling. In the end Rabbi Amar somehow gathered some panel for himself and overturned it in some strange way, doesn’t matter. In any case, around this there was a major controversy, and various issues were discussed here, and I also wrote my view: that in principle I agree that the state conversion system does not convert properly. I do not agree that they are wicked; they simply think differently from me. Someone who thinks differently from me is not wicked, so that doesn’t invalidate the person, but I do agree that most of those conversions are not valid. Meaning not because the judges are wicked, but because the conversion really is not a conversion, because there was no acceptance of the commandments there. But after that there was another discussion about whether acceptance of the commandments is even necessary at all. And there is a book by Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar where they discuss conversion; they claim that they spent years on it, researched the matter and so on, and came to the conclusion that acceptance of the commandments is a new invention of the nineteenth century. And I wrote an article saying that these guys are a pair of ignoramuses. I mean, these things appear in the Talmud, and what they call an invention of the nineteenth century is simply perhaps — and even that is not accurate — perhaps the requirement to perform an explicit acceptance of the commandments within the conversion process. But that acceptance of the commandments must exist in the background when you come to convert — that is the ABC of conversion. And I said that there never was — in other words, there cannot be a halakhic decisor who waives acceptance of the commandments in conversion. That was my claim. The examples they brought are not examples, except perhaps Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann or something like that, where there is some source that maybe does. And then some law professor wrote a critique of my article, and he said: what do you mean, there’s Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann in some place, and two others he brought there. So I told him: first of all, those two are incorrect; they do not waive acceptance of the commandments — you have to read them more correctly. And regarding Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann, maybe you are right, but that doesn’t matter to me. Why? Because if Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann writes that, then he simply made a mistake.

[Speaker B] Now what does that actually mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said that as a law professor he is right — meaning, wearing his hat as a scholar of Jewish law, he is not supposed to express an opinion. He surveys the halakhic opinions of various sages of Jewish law, and he is right: there you have Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann, he found one halakhic sage who waives acceptance of the commandments in conversion. So as a scholar he is 100% obligated to put all the factual findings on the table. But I’m not writing this as a scholar; I’m writing it as a halakhic person. And I, as a halakhic person, claim: there is no such thing; it is impossible to waive acceptance of the commandments in conversion. And if you find a decisor who waives it, then as far as I’m concerned he was mistaken. There is no such decisor. Not everything written in Rashi’s writings is a halakhic opinion. There are mistakes in Rashi’s writings too. Now the difference is a difference in perspective. No, Reform conversion — Reform conversions do not require commandments. Fine, okay, I’m talking about conversion according to Jewish law; otherwise, you could also have conversion to Christianity. I mean, no. Well, who knows, they call themselves Jews. Yes, never mind, they call themselves that — anyone can call himself whatever he likes. There are Christians who call themselves Messianic Jews. So too, those converts for that matter also call themselves Jews. I’m saying that anyone can call himself whatever he wants. I am making claims about what is correct, not about what people call themselves. So I say again: I don’t want to get into the issue; I’m just bringing this as an example of that distinction — he is speaking descriptively. He is an academic researcher, and he is right. Meaning, he needs to speak by describing what exists in the field. And from what exists in the field he found one decisor — in my opinion only one decisor — who really is willing, in one place, yes, Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann in one place is willing to waive acceptance of the commandments in conversion. Okay? But I, as someone engaged in the matter itself, prescriptively and not descriptively, say what Jewish law ought to be, what Jewish law should be, not what is actually found on the ground. Yes, he is like the Stanford school. In other words, he says — he describes what happens in halakhic communities. And I’m talking about philosophy of science, or of Jewish law in this case, not science of science or science of Jewish law. And in philosophy of Jewish law I can absolutely determine that no, there is no such approach. Because if there is such an approach, it is a mistake about an explicit Mishnah. There is no such approach. There are people who made a mistake about an explicit Mishnah. There are decisors — the Talmud establishes that there is such a category. So what does that mean? That someone who errs about an explicit Mishnah is also a halakhic opinion? No, that is an error. Now, as a scholar of Jewish law, he puts it on the list, and that’s fine. He places it among the various conceptions that we find descriptively; his description is a correct description. That is precisely because you are looking at it descriptively. But notice that what I did — I am speaking — now I ask you, Shmuel: what I did, was it a halakhic discussion or a discussion in the philosophy of Jewish law? Plainly speaking, it was a halakhic discussion. I claim that halakhically you need acceptance of the commandments in conversion. That is a halakhic position. Now on the meta-halakhic level I claim — and that may already perhaps be called philosophy of Jewish law — that it is not even possible for there to be another opinion. Beyond saying that this is my opinion. There are many people whose opinion is that acceptance of the commandments is a condition in conversion. But I am claiming something more radical. I am claiming that an opinion that disagrees with this is simply not a halakhic opinion. About it we do not say “these and those are the words of the living God.” Because in other contexts, even if I have my own opinion, I do not claim that the opinion of the one who disagrees with me is absurd, that it is not a halakhic opinion. I claim that in my opinion he is mistaken. Fine? Here I claim that it is not a halakhic opinion. That is already a statement I would perhaps call philosophy of Jewish law, and not a strictly halakhic statement, because I am speaking about Jewish law from the outside, about meta-Jewish law, about its boundaries. Not about what Jewish law says. What is correct and what is not correct — that is a halakhic discussion. Okay? Therefore what I told you before — that I think what I am doing and what Jewish law does are quite similar: neither is descriptive; both are prescriptive. In contrast, the description of what happens in the halakhic world, like that of that professor — that is descriptive. He was one of my soldiers in reserve duty, that professor. I think he may have had some baggage toward me. He wrote there with great anger. Fine. In any case, let me return to our subject. So what I actually want to say is that the implicit understanding, say, in Arabic, and the explicit one in Hebrew, yes, through the word decree, that there is something shared by commandments and warnings, really contains within it the understanding that what they share is that they belong to the normative sphere and not to the descriptive, factual sphere. These are statements that do not describe; they establish obligations, of prohibition or of duty, but they are obligations and not descriptions. A description is a neutral thing. I can describe that Jewish law forbids stealing. Someone who is not bound by Jewish law then won’t steal, say — whatever. That is a description. When I tell him “Do not steal” and he steals, then he has violated a prohibition, because I commanded him not to steal. Okay? It may be that he does not accept it and will violate the prohibition, but now I will already define him as someone who violated a prohibition. Because he transgressed a verse that commanded him something. Both neglecting a positive commandment and violating a prohibition — both are forms of violating a prohibition. And why? Because the verse you violated is not a descriptive verse but a commanding verse. And this category of command verses, as distinct from declarative verses, is the shared category of warnings and commandments. And just as, again, we call them command verses, according to Maimonides it is more correct to call them decree verses. Verses that decree things upon us. Now, let’s look at the continuation of Maimonides, and perhaps it will be clearer why he needed this introduction. Up to here was all this introduction. Now look. “However, negation of obligation is another matter, namely that you negate a predicate of a subject, and it contains nothing at all of the matter of command.” You see? In other words, Maimonides says that verses he calls negation of obligation — we’ll soon see examples — are verses of another type. Therefore they are neither warning nor command. Why? Because you are only negating a predicate from a subject; that is descriptive. “And it contains nothing at all of the matter of command.” It does not belong to normative verses; it belongs to declarative verses. And notice again: “it contains nothing at all of the matter of command” — not a good translation. Because in Arabic Maimonides wrote: it contains nothing at all of the matter of command, since in Arabic “command” really does describe the whole category; they do not have another word. In Hebrew I would translate it: it contains nothing at all of the matter of decree, because command already belongs only to positive commandments. When I am looking for a word that says what this whole normative sphere is, then according to Maimonides the right word is: it contains nothing at all of decree, not “nothing at all of command.” Okay, fine, but it’s a translation from Arabic. In Arabic that really is what it said. Okay? This transition is very interesting: you are reading a text written in Arabic, translated into Hebrew, and it speaks about the characteristics of Arabic and the difference between it and Hebrew. Now when you translate it, you also translate the Arabic aspect into Hebrew. And in Hebrew there is a word for it. So how do you describe the problems that exist in Arabic in a language where those problems do not exist? It is a translational tangle that can be solved, but one has to be very careful. And here I think there are problems in the translator’s logic. Fine. In any case, let me return to the continuation of Maimonides. What are these verses of negation of obligation? So he says: as when you say, “So-and-so did not eat last night, and so-and-so did not drink the wine, and Reuven is not Shimon’s father,” and the like. Right? You are basically negating some property or event from a person. “So-and-so did not drink the wine” is negation of obligation. The affirmative is “so-and-so drank the wine”; negation of obligation is “so-and-so did not drink the wine.” Okay? So I negate some affirmative thing from someone. “So-and-so did not eat last night,” “so-and-so did not drink the wine,” “Reuven is not Shimon’s father.” Meaning, the descriptive statement is “Reuven is Shimon’s father.” The statement that negates this description says this description is not correct: “Reuven is not Shimon’s father.” What is the character of this statement? It too is a descriptive statement, right? Not a commanding one. It describes; it says the description you gave is not correct, the description is different, it is not this description. But it still deals on the level of what the correct description is, right? These are descriptive statements, not prescriptive ones. Therefore verses of this type, although they contain the word “not” — “beware,” “lest,” “do not” are the indications that we are dealing with a prohibition, right? Here too there appears “so-and-so did not eat last night”; there is the word “not” here, but this “not” is not a negating prohibition and not a command. There is “You shall not murder” — that is a commanding “not,” a prohibition. “So-and-so did not eat last night” is a negating “not,” not a commanding “not.” Okay? And therefore a negating “not” is not a prohibition. A negating “not” is negation of obligation. That is what Maimonides says. Now on the face of it this is trivial. Fine, obvious — who would think of counting in the enumeration of commandments “Abraham did not love Sarah”? Fine? Or whatever, yes? “Abraham went to Sodom” is a positive commandment? Or “Abraham did not love Sarah” is a prohibition? It is absurd. So what is Maimonides dealing with here? What straw man is this? No one thinks this way. So look at the continuation. They are also negated with “there is not,” and with what attaches to it from the pronouns, like “is not,” “are not,” “you are not,” and the like. But negation in Hebrew is with the word “not,” as in: “And no prophet arose again in Israel like Moses,” “God is not a man, that He should lie,” “Trouble shall not rise up a second time,” “and no man stood,” “and none rose and none stirred from him,” and many such examples. And negation with “there is not,” as in: “and there was no man,” “and the dead know nothing,” and many others. Fine? So all these are negations. Thus the difference between warning and negation has already become clear to you. First of all, we understand the difference between warning and negation. And then we understand that warning belongs to the matter of command — that too has become clear to us. A warning is a kind of command. And it occurs only in the form of command equally — that is to say, just as the form of command always concerns the future, so too does warning. And it is not possible in language for command to be in the past, and likewise warning. A command is always “you shall not eat,” and not “you did not eat.” Therefore when there is a negation in the past, that is negation of obligation. When there is a negation concerning the future, that can be a command. “You shall not eat of it raw or boiled in water.” Yes, “you shall not eat” is future tense. But when they say “you shall not eat,” that is not a statement about the future; it is an imperative statement. And there is no way to insert command into narrative, because narrative requires a subject and predicate, whereas command is a complete utterance, as has been explained in the books composed on this. Fine, we won’t get into these linguistic details here, they are simple enough. And warning too cannot enter narrative, but negation can, for negation enters narrative and negates in the past and in the future and in the present, yes, in the present tense. And all this is self-evident if one makes the effort. Now look at the implication. Since this is so, it is not proper to count negative formulations that are negations among the prohibitions in the negative commandments in any way. “Negative formulations” here means uses of the word “not” in Scripture that are not command but negation — those are not counted among the negative commandments. And this is a demonstrative matter that needs no witness. It is obvious; it needs no proof. Aside from what we mentioned regarding understanding the meanings of the words so as to distinguish between warning and negation. Fine, Maimonides says this is obvious. And yet — so why is he writing it? “And this escaped others before us, to the point that he counted ‘She shall not go out as the slaves go out,’ and did not know that this is negation and not warning.” Now notice: “She shall not go out as the slaves go out” — maybe now we should read the explanation. And the explanation is as follows: God already ruled regarding one who strikes his Canaanite slave or maidservant and causes him, at the time of the blow, to lose one of the extremities of his limbs, that he goes free. Yes, one who strikes his Canaanite slave or Canaanite maidservant — his bondwoman, basically — and causes the loss of one of the twenty-four extremities of the limbs, he goes free. And we might have thought that if this is the case with a Canaanite slave, then all the more so with a Hebrew maidservant: if he causes her to lose one of the extremities of her limbs, she too goes free. That is what we would have thought. And Scripture negated this law regarding her when it says, “She shall not go out as the slaves go out,” meaning, as if to say: it is not required that she go free through the loss of one of her limbs. And this is negation of a law in her case, not a warning.

[Speaker E] What is he actually saying?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a law that when we injure one of the twenty-four extremities of a Canaanite slave or Canaanite maidservant, they go free. We would have thought, were it not for the Torah, that all the more so in the case of a Hebrew maidservant. If a Canaanite slave goes free, then a Hebrew maidservant certainly should. Okay? The Torah comes to negate that initial assumption and says no. If you cause the loss of one of the twenty-four extremities in a Hebrew maidservant or Hebrew slave, they do not go free. And that is the verse, “She shall not go out as the slaves go out.” Then he brings proofs for this from Hazal and so on. Now notice: is this really negation of obligation? How would you classify a verse like this? This is already trickier than what we saw before. When we say “Abraham did not go,” “did not love Sarah,” no one would think of putting that into the halakhic world, right? It’s a descriptive verse. Right? It describes a negative fact, not a positive one. But it describes; it does not command. Okay? No one would think of turning it into a prohibition. But here, “She shall not go out as the slaves go out” is clearly a halakhic verse, right? It tells us something halakhic. It tells us that here the law of emancipation through loss of a limb does not exist for a Hebrew slave. In other words, when you ask what category the verse belongs to, certainly this verse deals with Jewish law. Right? It belongs to Jewish law; it doesn’t belong to stories, to descriptions. But, says Maimonides, that is why the author of Halakhot Gedolot did not think of counting ordinary negations like the earlier examples, “so-and-so did not eat last night” — the author of Halakhot Gedolot would not turn that into a prohibition. That is obvious. This verse, though, the author of Halakhot Gedolot did turn into a prohibition. And Maimonides’ dispute with him here is no longer so trivial. Because he counted it as a prohibition precisely because this verse really does deal with a halakhic command. It says that halakhically she does not go free through loss of a limb. A Hebrew maidservant. This is not a description of events; it is not describing something that happened. It is definitely a halakhic determination, but Maimonides says: true, this is a halakhic determination, but it is not a commanding determination. This determination does not mean that if she goes free through loss of a limb, I have violated a prohibition. Right? It merely negates her right to go free through loss of a limb. In other words, would you think that she goes free through loss of a limb? No — the law of emancipation through loss of a limb does not exist in a Hebrew maidservant. The “not” here is not a prohibiting “not”; it is a negating “not.” It negates a norm, so it belongs to the normative sphere, but the “not” is not a commanding “not,” telling you do not do this, and if you do it you have violated a prohibition. It is negating. It says: that norm does not exist here. Therefore you cannot count this as a prohibition.

[Speaker B] The author of Halakhot Gedolot would say that you can,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and that is already not so absurd, because this does belong to the halakhic sphere; it’s not like the examples Maimonides brought above, “so-and-so did not eat last night.” Certainly the author of Halakhot Gedolot does not count that as a prohibition. He counts this as a prohibition because it really is a halakhic determination. Maimonides says: true, it is a halakhic determination, but a prohibition exists only when the “not” commands you: do not do, do not do, so that if you do it you have transgressed the prohibition established by that “not.” And here that does not happen. She simply does not go free through loss of a limb; it’s not that if you emancipated her through loss of a limb you transgressed a prohibition. You did not transgress a prohibition; she simply does not go free through loss of a limb. Okay. Now for our purposes, that is what I needed. For our purposes we are not dealing with negation of obligation, but it helped me a lot sharpen what I said in the previous class: that the basis that determines the halakhic framework is verses that are not descriptive verses but commanding verses. In other words, at the root these are verses that decree, yes, in Hebrew. These are verses of command and not verses of declaration. This linguistic distinction actually determines the categorical distinction between what is called Jewish law and what lies outside Jewish law. The command is what really makes the matter; it is what creates the difference. Again, here I want to get a bit into the subject of command itself. Until now we dealt with it only linguistically. Now I want to show its significance and its role in the halakhic world. So perhaps I’ll begin with Maimonides in the Laws of Idolatry. I’ll share it here. In the Talmud, Sanhedrin 61a: “It was stated: one who worships idolatry out of love or fear — Abaye says he is liable, Rava says he is exempt. Abaye says he is liable even though… Rava says he is exempt: ‘If he accepted it upon himself as a god, yes; if not, no.’” In other words, someone who worships idolatry out of love or fear, the way one serves God out of love or fear, so someone else serves the idol out of love or fear. Abaye says he is liable; he has violated the prohibition of idolatry and is liable to death. Rava says he is exempt. Abaye says he is liable even though — I mean, he worshiped; what do you mean, why shouldn’t he be liable? What does Rava say? Exempt — “if he accepted it upon himself as a god, yes; if not, no.” In other words, he is exempt because he did not accept it upon himself as a god. Now what does “did not accept it upon himself as a god” mean? A person who worships an idol because he really loves it or fears it, just as we serve the Holy One, blessed be He — Rava says this is not idolatry in the full sense. You are exempt.

[Speaker B] So then what is idolatry in the full sense?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What are you supposed to do in order to be a complete idol worshiper? Seemingly you did here everything you were supposed to do toward the Holy One, blessed be He — you did toward the idol. Instead of serving God out of love or fear, you serve the idol out of love or fear. What could be more fully idolatrous than that?

[Speaker B] Therefore, in fact, most of the medieval authorities, practically speaking—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everyone I know except Maimonides takes this Talmudic passage away from its plain meaning. Already Rashi there, and the Raavad in his glosses on Maimonides, and Rivash, and many others. They all explain that it means love and fear of a person, not of the idol. I worship Baal Peor, why? In order to please so-and-so whom I love very much or fear very much. It is not speaking about love and fear of the idol, but love and fear of a person who compels me. Because of that person I worship the idol he desires. What lies behind that interpretation? It is not the plain meaning of the Gemara, not the plain meaning at all. Why do the medieval authorities explain it that way? Because the straightforward reading of the Gemara seems absurd. If you worship the idol out of love or fear of the idol, then that is idolatry in the full sense. What could be more idolatrous than that? But Maimonides — as the Raavad, after all — the Raavad objects to Maimonides, look here.

[Speaker C] Meaning, Rabbi, Maimonides is the only one who understood the Kantian message in this Gemara?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I’m getting there in a moment, but yes. Maimonides writes as follows: “One who worships a star or constellation out of love, such as because he desired this form due to its craftsmanship, which was exceedingly beautiful, or who worshiped it out of fear of it, lest it harm him, as its worshipers imagine, that it does good and evil — if he accepted it upon himself as a god, he is liable to stoning. But if he worshiped it in its usual manner, or in one of the four forms of worship, out of love or fear, he is exempt.” You see? Maimonides is speaking here about love and fear of the idol, right? Rashi, for example, writes here: “Out of love of a person and fear of a person, and he did not consider it in his heart as a divinity.” That is love and fear. But Maimonides says: the love and fear are toward the idol, and the worship is of the idol. The Raavad here comments: “And we interpret it as out of love of a person and fear of a person, not out of love of idolatry nor fear of it.” Again, like Rashi. And it is obvious why, right? Because if you interpret it straightforwardly as Maimonides does, then the reasoning is unclear — that is, why is this worshiper not a complete idol worshiper? So what does Maimonides nevertheless think? After all, the plain meaning of the Gemara is like Maimonides — that is clear. This is another example of the tension in interpretation between fidelity to the language and fidelity to the logic. Which is preferable? To force the language or to force the logic? The medieval authorities force the language, while Maimonides forces the logic but sticks to the language. He says this is idolatry out of love and fear of the idol and not of a person.

[Speaker B] How can that be?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So in short, when is it idolatry? If this is not idolatry, then according to Maimonides when is it idolatry? Maimonides rules like Rava.

[Speaker B] So Maimonides writes,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And in fact it is already written in the Gemara: if he accepted it upon himself as a god,

[Speaker B] that is idolatry.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And what is the difference between accepting it upon oneself as a god and when I worship it out of love or fear? That is really the central riddle. And I once heard this answer from Nadav Shenarav, yes, my friend — he gave you a lecture last semester. So I heard this from him once. I made a whole big deal out of it, but the foundation is from him. He wrote an article about it once in Hakdamot. If I remember correctly he called it “Reflections on Idolatry,” meaning his reflections on the prohibition of idolatry. So his claim is that accepting something as a god — what does that mean? What is a god? A god is someone whose word I obey. Why do I obey? Because he is a god — there is no why. Just because. That is the meaning of a god. For example, the Talmud in Sanhedrin, at the beginning of Sanhedrin, discusses a court of three. From where do we learn that monetary cases require a court of three? Because the word “elohim” appears three times in the passage. “Elohim” there — “the master of the house shall be brought near to the elohim.” Who are the “elohim” there? The Holy One, blessed be He? No — the judges. “The master of the house shall be brought near to the elohim” means to the court. Since “elohim” is written three times in the passage, it means three judges. “Elohim” means judges. “You shall not curse elohim” — that too means a judge. Why does the Torah call a judge “elohim”? That sounds like idolatry by association. The answer is that there is a difference between “elohim” and any other authority.

[Speaker B] Another authority, when I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] obey it, I obey it for some reason. For example, I’m driving on the highway at a perfectly reasonable speed of 180 kilometers per hour, okay? Then I see from a distance, or my Waze alerts me, that there is police ahead. Okay? Immediately I slow down to the legal speed. Have I committed idolatry? Seemingly I have served the police out of fear, right? I obeyed the instructions of the law out of fear. Why is that not idolatry?

[Speaker C] Because you did not choose of your own free will, obviously.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to Rashi and the Raavad, because according to Rashi and the Raavad — the idol there really would seemingly be idolatry. That is, only if I fear the person and not the idol itself, then maybe not. But here the idol is the policeman, yes? He isn’t some outside person; he is the person. And according to Maimonides, what then? According to Maimonides this is not idolatry. Why? Because I served him out of fear. When would it be idolatry? If I would do what the policeman says because he said it. Not because there is some reason — because I’m afraid he’ll give me a ticket, or because I identify with it, because I think he is right that one should not drive fast because it’s dangerous. Or because I think there is value in obeying the law because it preserves the social fabric, or each person with his own reasons. The moment you have a reason, it is not idolatry. Idolatry is when you obey the idol because he is the idol. Without reasons. Because that is exactly the obedience we have toward the Holy One, blessed be He: when we ask why we serve the Holy One, blessed be He, the correct and only answer is: just so. Someone who says “I serve Him because what He says is the most correct, the most beneficial, it produces a proper society” is not serving God. He behaves well, he behaves nicely, he creates a proper society — he is not serving God. Serving God means doing what He said because He said it. That does not mean there is no explanation. There is an explanation for why — that is what I answered you earlier about the commandment. There is an explanation for why the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, but when I come to fulfill it, I fulfill it not because the explanation is correct but because He commanded it. And if so, then I have truly accepted Him as a god. A god is someone whose word I obey because he said it, not because of one reason or another, not even because I love him or fear him — even that is already an extraneous reason. I do it because he is a god, period. Even if I do not love him, do not fear him, nothing — it doesn’t matter. The commandments to love God and fear God are commandments, two commandments among the 613 commandments. But those are not the reasons why we keep the Torah. They are not supposed to be the reasons. We keep the Torah because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded. That’s it, period. Someone who keeps it because he loves God or because he fears the Holy One, blessed be He, is serving God not for its own sake. That is not service of God. Someone who keeps the commandments because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded — that is service of God. In addition to that, also love Him and fear Him, everything is fine, but you do it not because of the love and fear. You do it because He commanded, because He is the God. That is called accepting Him as a god. And if you direct that toward an idol, then that is idolatry in the full sense. In other words, if there is some other factor besides the Holy One, blessed be He, that you obey blindly, not because there is some logical reason one way or another but because he said so, that is idolatry. Meaning, if someone says you need to obey the law because it is the law, that is idolatry. All the mockery from the Haredim and so on — it’s not mockery, it is a true statement. That is idolatry. If you obey the law because it seems logical to you to obey the law, because one must preserve the social fabric, or because you are afraid of being punished, doesn’t matter, each person with his own reasons — that is not idolatry, because you have logic, you have a reason why you are doing it. You are not recognizing here another factor that has absolute authority like the Holy One, blessed be He, so that you do what He says because He says it. Period, that is enough. Nothing further is needed. If there is any other factor like that, that is idolatry by association.

[Speaker B] Rabbi, so with all this, the moment people go to the graves of righteous men, do they tell them that this is idolatry, or people kissing mezuzahs?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is something else; there is idolatry through intermediaries.

[Speaker B] No, but they don’t — but it’s not idolatry because he accepts it as a custom or something, but he doesn’t say that this is his god. Depends on what.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It depends. Some of them are idol worshipers and some are not. It depends on how you relate to this going to the graves of righteous men. For example, Maimonides writes at the beginning of the Laws of Idolatry that worship of the heavenly bodies began from the fact that everyone understood that they were servants of the King. And when you give them honor, that is actually giving indirect honor to the King, because you honor His servants, His representatives, or something like that. Maimonides says that too is idolatry. Later it became detached. Now you already worship them and forgot that you did it because they are servants of the King, but already at the first stage, when you worshiped the King through intermediaries, that too, says Maimonides, is idolatry.

[Speaker G] Rabbi, then why are judges, whom we said are called elohim, not actually idolatry? Isn’t that idolatry—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is not idolatry because they derive their power from the Holy One, blessed be He, therefore you are commanded to obey them, therefore you obey them, because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded you to obey them.

[Speaker G] And they are still called elohim because their authority is binding, but that is because the Holy One, blessed be He—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They are called elohim because they are essentially His extended hand. Basically, I obey them because that is what it means to obey Him. That is how one obeys Him.

[Speaker H] Does Maimonides say the same thing about the seven Noahide commandments, about—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, we’ll get to that in a moment. We’ll get to that in a moment. So fine — when Maimonides says that one who worships idolatry out of love or fear is exempt, that means that this is not idolatry for its own sake, yes, not idolatry in the full sense. The alternative — you asked when is it idolatry? Unless, Maimonides writes this, unless he accepted it upon himself as a god. If you see it as a god, if you do not worship it because you love it or because you fear it, but because it is the god. A god is worshiped even if you don’t love him, don’t fear him, nothing — it doesn’t matter. You should worship him because he is the god. I woke up in the morning with absolutely no love for the Holy One, blessed be He, and I’m also not afraid of Him. Not afraid of Him for some reason. Still I will serve Him because He is the God. That means He really is my God; that is service of God. Someone who serves Him because he loves Him or fears Him — that is not service of God. That is service for a reason. And again I say, this does not mean one should not love and fear Him — those are two positive commandments, love of God and fear of God. But love and fear are not the motivations because of which you serve. You serve because He is the God. Besides that there is also a law to love Him and fear Him. Another angle. To apply this idea a bit from other directions. For example, yes, this is an example Nadav gave me. Someone comes to synagogue every morning, mutters the prayer, and then goes on his way. The spiritual supervisors of course rebuke him: this is “a commandment performed by rote,” yes, that is not service of God, such a thing. You are supposed to come, have intention, ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for your needs, and not like someone compelled by a demon, coming every morning out of inertia. There is no greater mistake than this. That mumbled prayer every morning is the loftiest prayer there is. More than all the lofty intentions the spiritual supervisors talk about. Why?

[Speaker B] He does it despite the difficulty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. Why does a person come to synagogue every morning? If he doesn’t want to ask, and it doesn’t interest him, and so on — then why does he come? He comes because there is an obligation to come. We call it inertia, but one has to understand that this inertia often at least conceals commitment behind it. Otherwise why is he doing it? Let him stay home. He does it because there is commitment. Now true, on top of that — and this criticism is indeed correct — on top of that perhaps one ought to have intention and all those things. All true. But the intention and the asking for needs and all those things are not the reason why you come to pray. If you come to pray because of that, you are not serving God. You are… this is what Leibowitz says, yes? Then you are going to the health clinic. You are going there in order to be healed. Not in order to serve God and to pray. And he is right. He is wrong only in that he always takes a correct step but takes it too far. That is always Leibowitz’s problem. His first step is correct, but he takes it all the way, and there it becomes incorrect. In other words, he says: if so, you could also recite the phone book every morning as prayer. That is nonsense. Obviously Hazal instituted prayer because it has a certain content. And still he is right that in principle I do it… I would even do the phone book, meaning because I do it because that is what I was commanded to do. But on top of that, that is level one. On top of that there are levels two, three, four — various levels that can certainly add to the value of the prayer, and without them it is not complete. But with them alone, without the first part… without the first part, no, I’m not… to apply this insight to prayer

[Speaker E] It sounds a little almost impossible, this split consciousness. Meaning, if I come to prayer… no, it’s not a split.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker E] The whole content of the commandment is interests. Meaning, the whole content of the commandment is my interests and the things I need to be realized for me and the addition…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely not true. And certainly not in the era of fixed prayer. In the era of fixed prayer, ask for your own interests and everything is fine. But what are you doing according to the pattern that the Sages established, three times a day, at the proper times, according to the wording they established? What is that? That is exactly to tell you that prayer is first and foremost a commandment. And the intention required in prayer is first and foremost the intention to fulfill one’s obligation. After that comes intention for the meaning of the words, and intending that you are standing before God, and all of Rabbi Chaim’s well-known discussion. First of all, it is intention to fulfill one’s obligation. That’s all. You pray because there is an obligation to pray. That’s it. On the contrary, there it is actually very easy. We live completely like that. We’re constantly rebuked for living that way, because we really are also supposed to have intention and ask for our needs and so on—not just come for its own sake and pray because there is an obligation to pray. No, so it’s true that it’s not only that, but first of all it is that. Without that there is nothing. After that, you can add further layers. But without that there is nothing.

[Speaker E] Shlomovitz is right that it would have been easier if they had just given us a phone book, because then we wouldn’t have had this slippery slope at all, to fall into thinking that the whole essence is our own interests.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It would have been easier, but first of all, I never promised you a rose garden—who said they promised us it would be easy? And second, apparently there is also value in our asking for our needs or praising the Holy One, blessed be He, and not just reciting a phone book. There is meaning in that. But we do it because there is an obligation. What is the content of the obligation? It has content that has significance; it’s not just a phone book. They want to gain something more here. But that something more that you want to gain is like the prohibition of murder. The prohibition of murder has moral content. But I do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. He could also have commanded murder. Why doesn’t He command murder? Because He has an interest in people not being murdered. But I do it because of the command, not because of moral identification. But that does not mean the thing has no content in itself. Same thing with prayer. I do it because there is an obligation to pray. Why was this obligation established? Because it has positive content that is meant to help us in various areas of serving God, or in life, or whatever.

[Speaker E] I have an example where it works the other way around, because I see, for example, couples who come to me to get married and have gone through conversion. Now why did they convert? Why did they enter the gates of conversion? Out of interest, so they could marry a Jew. But I assume—let’s say that after they went through the process they really did accept Torah and commandments, as the religious court required, that it be for the sake of Heaven—and let’s say they really did, let’s say yes. Then basically it’s the reverse. First they came from a personal interest that was not substantive, and afterward they made it substantive. That’s the opposite of prayer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This connects to the controversy I mentioned earlier, that I had. I’ll tell you what I think about it. I think they are complete gentiles, and you cannot convert them or marry them off as a result—and the precedents people always bring in this context work the way you’re saying. What do I mean? There are many precedents showing that conversion for the sake of marriage is valid. Why? Because in the past, when every Jew observed commandments, that was the default. Again, that doesn’t mean they didn’t sin here and there, but basically Jews were committed to observance of the commandments. That’s what defined a Jew. Okay. Now a gentile comes along who doesn’t believe in the Holy One, blessed be He—or does believe in God, but does not believe in Judaism and its commandments. Okay? Because everyone believed in God back then. And now he wants to marry a Jewish woman; he fell in love with a Jewish woman. So he says, I’m willing to convert. What does that mean, that he’s willing to convert? It means I’m willing to enter into observance of commandments and truly become obligated, because that is what it means to be a Jew. Now I’m doing this not because I want to observe commandments; I’m doing it because I want to marry the woman. Fine, but for that purpose you accept upon yourself the yoke of commandments. And that’s perfectly fine. It’s true that he didn’t do it for the sake of Heaven, but in the end he did accept obligation to the commandments, and therefore after the fact the conversion takes effect. What happens today? Today the reverse happens. All those precedents are irrelevant. Everyone brings those precedents as precedents for today—that’s nonsense, it’s a misunderstanding. Because what happens today is that a person comes to convert in order to marry the woman, but today most Jews are not obligated to Torah and commandments. It is completely obvious to him that converting will not obligate him to observe commandments. And therefore there, if he converts for the sake of marriage, the presumption is that he did not accept Torah and commandments. Unless in the end it turns out, as you said—and that can happen, there can be such people—that after they went through the process they really did enter into this, and from doing it not for its own sake they came to do it for its own sake. That’s perfectly fine. Then it would be like those old precedents—still after the fact, but after the fact he is a Jew.

[Speaker B] Yes, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the partner he is marrying… it’s a simple presumption. A simple presumption: most converts today are definitely not like that. And that’s what I wrote, and everyone got angry at me. But if he marries someone—

[Speaker B] who observes commandments, then he understands that he has to observe commandments.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said: if I know, if I understand, that his ultimate direction really was to enter the Jewish people and observe commandments, even if it was done not for its own sake, that’s perfectly fine. That is learned from the precedents of the past, because in the past everyone was like that. You couldn’t enter the Jewish people and not show up in synagogue. It just didn’t—then you’re not Jewish. Meaning, it didn’t work. But today, to be Jewish—most Jews don’t show up in synagogue. So why would you assume that if someone undertakes to be Jewish in order to marry, he also understands that he is obligated in commandments and accepts that upon himself? Nonsense. And it’s also clear that most of them are not like that. You’re right.

[Speaker E] You’re right both conceptually and in the test of reality. I meet them a year after the conversion and they are secular in every respect.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But here again, even about that people bring precedents—that if you meet him a year after the conversion and he commits transgressions, that does not nullify the conversion. But again, the precedents are not relevant today. Because in the past you could say, fine, he intended seriously at the time of conversion, because that was my assessment. The fact that afterward he left religion—well, Jews also sometimes leave religion. That doesn’t prove anything, because what determines things is acceptance of the commandments at the time of conversion. Afterward he can be a Jewish sinner. But today, when you see that, then you understand that from the outset he never intended to accept commandments. It’s not that he later left religion. And in such a situation, then clearly the conversion was invalid from the start. Even if I discovered it only afterward, it turns out retroactively that the conversion was not valid, even though I didn’t understand that at the time. Rabbi Katz once told me—he was head of the study hall—he once told me that someone came to him; he had also married off a couple where one was a convert. He was converted in the morning—sorry, he converted him, he sat on the religious court that converted him on Friday morning—and then suddenly he heard that that same evening he was getting married to a Jewish woman, Friday night, the Sabbath. Right? He was marrying a Jewish woman. They had scheduled a wedding. Now, a wedding is not something you schedule from the afternoon to the evening, right? You book a hall, invite people. So clearly he had arranged it earlier. Therefore it was clear that already at the time of accepting the commandments he did not really intend to observe commandments. So he annulled that conversion. He said the conversion was invalid. Now, I argue that this is true even if it wasn’t that same night—even if it would be another year later. Today. It wasn’t true in the past, but today that is a clear indication that from the outset he did not intend it. Unless he really did observe commandments for a year and after a year he stopped. That’s something else. Then it may be that he really did intend to observe commandments and afterward left religion. Fine, that can happen. He says, but the simple presumption, if you don’t see what happened during the year in between, is that he did not intend from the outset to accept commandments. And that’s fairly obvious. It’s obvious—today, the image of a Jew is not a Jew who accepts commandments. Today that simply is not the image standing before the convert. Meaning, no—it is not correct to assume that it is self-evident to him that if he joins this community, then he observes commandments. Definitely not. And therefore this whole use of precedents is a baseless use. It is simply clinging to precedents—it’s deriving from the case itself and its own context while treating it as if it were in the same place. Meaning, you take the precedents and bring them here, but you don’t notice that the circumstances are completely different from what they were in those precedents and what they are today. The circumstances are entirely different; the precedents are irrelevant. On the contrary, the precedents indicate that today all these people are not converts. I said that I joined the dayan from Ashdod in this sense—that in my opinion most of the converts in the conversion system are gentiles. But I cannot disqualify them categorically, because I do not think the judges are wicked. They think differently from me; I think they are mistaken, but they are not wicked. They think differently. So therefore, as far as I’m concerned, if there is some indication that there really was acceptance of the commandments there, I cannot nullify that conversion. But if it is clear there was not, then in my opinion he is a gentile. The fact that the judges were fit does not mean—the conversion procedure was not valid even if the judges were fit.

[Speaker I] Okay, so that still doesn’t seal it. Can’t hear? Since when? Since when does a gentile have to observe commandments? In all conversions before two hundred, two hundred and fifty years ago, was there an obligation of commandment observance regarding conversions?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, since when? Since the creation of the world.

[Speaker I] Conversion is learned from the revelation at Mount Sinai.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The laws of conversion are learned from the revelation at Mount Sinai. The revelation at Mount Sinai was an event of accepting commandments. People don’t understand this—that’s their mistake. They think that in the Shulchan Arukh it does not say that one must accept commandments. And the custom is that they inform him of some commandments, but it does not say there that he accepts upon himself the yoke of commandments in the conversion process. So that means that no—

[Speaker E] it has to be in the process—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the conversion process does not require a formal act of “I accept upon myself the yoke of commandments,” but clearly the religious court has to assess that this person’s motivation is to accept commandments. The fact that it does not have to appear as a formal stage in the conversion process—because that statement, “I intend to accept commandments,” is not an indispensable stage in the conversion process—but clearly acceptance of commandments is the essence of the conversion process. It’s like the example I gave there: if you look in the laws of acquisitions, you will not find in the Shulchan Arukh that you have to intend to acquire. You’ll find pulling, lifting, four cubits, transfer, deed, all kinds of forms of acquisition—what works, what doesn’t work, how it works and how it doesn’t work, tons of details. And there is one terribly basic condition: that you intend to acquire. If you didn’t intend to acquire, and the object is within your four cubits, you did not acquire it. And even in your own courtyard you did not acquire it if you don’t want to acquire it.

[Speaker B] And even if you lifted it but didn’t want to acquire it, you didn’t acquire it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, the intention to acquire is certainly a constitutive condition. Why doesn’t that appear in the Shulchan Arukh? I’ll tell you why. The Shulchan Arukh speaks to someone who wants to acquire and tells him how he must carry it out. If you want to acquire, you have to lift like this, pull like that, lock, fence, breach—literally all three—everything… If you want to acquire, open the Shulchan Arukh and see what you need to do in order to acquire. As for someone who does not want to acquire, these laws are not speaking about him; it’s obvious that it doesn’t work. Meaning, if you don’t want to acquire, then you won’t acquire even if you performed the formal acts. That doesn’t need to be written in the Shulchan Arukh. In the Shulchan Arukh it is written: if someone wants to acquire, what must he do in order to carry out what he wants. But it is not written in the Shulchan Arukh that you need to want to acquire, because in truth you do not have to. If you don’t want to, no problem, don’t want to—just you also won’t acquire, that’s all fine. The same is true with conversion. It cannot be written in the Shulchan Arukh that you have to accept upon yourself the yoke of commandments, because the laws of conversion speak to someone who wants to accept commandments and tell him how to do it. If you want to accept commandments—circumcision, immersion, and the offering of blood—that’s how you accept commandments. You don’t want to accept commandments? No problem at all, as a gentile you are not obligated. You just won’t be a convert. Therefore this rule does not need to appear in the Shulchan Arukh, that there has to be acceptance of commandments. It’s absurd.

[Speaker I] Understood, understood, you clarified that point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Only someone who wants to accept commandments opens the laws of conversion and sees there how to do it, that’s all. Someone who doesn’t want to accept commandments—the laws of conversion are not speaking about him, and it’s irrelevant. Okay, I see we’ve already reached the end, so I’ll stop here. We’ll continue after Passover. Have a kosher, happy, and quiet Passover, and quiet—

[Speaker I] Good news, happy holiday, happy holiday.

[Speaker B] Thank you very much, thank you very much, good news.