This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
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Table of Contents
- God as a reasonable conclusion — the argument from complexity
- Rejecting the anthropic argument and the problem of regression
- The third path — modernity versus conservatism
- The Chief Rabbinate and the “image of the authentic rabbi”
- The government, the reform, and the dichotomous discourse
- Messianism versus security considerations — the missing distinction
- Mutual demonization and the vicious cycle
- Drafting Haredim and Religious Zionism
- A cross-sector alliance of liberals
Summary
General Overview
A long and in-depth conversation on the podcast “All the Cards on the Table” with Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham. The discussion moves between theological-philosophical topics (the existence of God, the argument from complexity) and current political-social issues (the coalition, judicial reform, the war, drafting Haredim). The Rabbi presents a unique position that combines sharp criticism of the government with a refusal to accept the secular-liberal narrative about a “messianic danger,” and tries to show the shades and nuances missing from public discourse.
God as a reasonable conclusion — the argument from complexity
The Rabbi presents the argument for the existence of God: great complexity points to a directed process. The second law of thermodynamics demonstrates that something complex is not created by chance. Even if evolution explains how life came into being, it presupposes a certain set of natural laws such that any deviation from them would not have allowed life — “who wrote the laws on the wall?” In the Rabbi’s view, the claim that there is no God is “far less rational” than the claim that there is.
Rejecting the anthropic argument and the problem of regression
The Rabbi rejects the multiverse argument (the anthropic argument): first, a multiplicity of universes does not make things easier but harder — “who created the infinite universes?” Second, in every causal chain there must be a “first link” that does not require a prior cause. The only question is where you stop: in matter (which by its nature decays and changes) or in God (who exists without a prior cause). The Rabbi argues that the assumption that matter exists without a cause is less reasonable.
The third path — modernity versus conservatism
The Rabbi returns to the central idea of the Third Path: the relevant divide is not Haredim versus Religious Zionists, but conservatives versus moderns. He rejects the language of “lenient” and “strict”: “I’m stricter than the conservative Haredim — the question is in what.” Modernity includes attitudes toward women, democratic values, openness — and these should be integrated with commitment to Jewish law.
The Chief Rabbinate and the “image of the authentic rabbi”
The Rabbi analyzes in depth the problem of elections to the Chief Rabbinate: both Religious Zionists and secular people choose conservative rabbis because “our religious utopia” is an image of “a black coat with a long beard.” Rabbi Stav (knitted kippah, sandals, served in the paratroopers) is perceived as a “toy rabbi” even by those who agree with him. “We’re so stuck that the conservatives managed to implant the idea that the standard for greatness in Torah is a Haredi standard” — memorized knowledge versus common sense.
The government, the reform, and the dichotomous discourse
The Rabbi presents sharp criticism of both sides of the discourse around judicial reform: supporters of the reform say, “It’s true we went too far, but reform is needed”; opponents say, “It’s true reform is needed, but they went too far” — “they’re saying the same thing.” The Rabbi argues that if we were willing to speak in a more complex language, we would reach agreements.
Messianism versus security considerations — the missing distinction
The Rabbi strongly disputes the view that the motivation of those continuing the war is messianic. In his view, Ben-Gvir is driven by nationalism and forcefulness, not by messianism, and even Smotrich — who uses messianic language inwardly — is driven mainly by security considerations. “The vast majority of them are not motivated by messianism. The security conception that says the war must continue until a decisive outcome — that does not stem from messianism.” The Rabbi himself shares that security conception but opposes the government on issues of religion and state.
Mutual demonization and the vicious cycle
The Rabbi describes a vicious cycle: when you don’t listen to the other side, it has no arguments, so it must be “stupid or evil,” so there’s no reason to listen to it. That leaves everyone with stereotypes and makes real discourse impossible. The Rabbi presents his personal frustration: “On most things I’m with you, not with them” — yet he cannot break through the wall in conversations with either side. In the Rabbi’s view, the liberal-secular side also displays “yeshivish thinking”: dichotomous, stubborn, unwilling to see nuance.
Drafting Haredim and Religious Zionism
The Rabbi analyzes why Smotrich gives in to the Haredim: not only coalition tactics, but also “inferiority feelings toward Haredim” and deep identification. Smotrich’s rabbis “are also Haredi,” and therefore they do not break up the coalition over military conscription. The Rabbi suggests: if there were a right-wing modern alternative that promoted a similar security policy but with a liberal religious outlook, it could get many votes — “as long as people are convinced it will really advance right-wing priorities.”
A cross-sector alliance of liberals
The Rabbi ends with a call to create “a broad liberal alliance” — Haredim, Religious Zionists, secular people — based on shared values rather than sectoral affiliation. If we can paint a more complex picture of the world, the extreme messianic “core” will remain a negligible minority, “and everyone else will live in peace.”
Full Transcript
[Speaker A] How great that you joined us for another episode of “All the Cards on the Table,” the podcast and videocast where I put all the cards on the table. And today I’m happy to host Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham, founder of “The Third Path” and a man of many accomplishments who also gives quite a few interviews online and speaks, presenting what I think is a very interesting view of what’s going on here, about Judaism, about a lot of things, and that’s why it was important for me to invite you. First of all, how are you?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank God, under the circumstances.
[Speaker A] What does “under the circumstances” mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You know, all the events around us: wars, the government, hostages, social rifts. Personally, I’m perfectly fine.
[Speaker A] Okay, so I explained the format to you: we take a card and talk about it. Read it out, because most of our listeners are only listening and not watching, so they’ll know what we’re talking about and we won’t look weird.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “God is a reasonable conclusion.”
[Speaker A] Right, so I’ll tell you why I put that there. One of the things I’ve heard you say in various contexts is that believing in God is some kind of logical inference that’s called for by reality, by the universe, and so on. First, I’d be happy if you’d explain the theory for a second, and then when I first heard that I had some questions, and I want to share those questions with you and talk about it a bit.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Well, truthfully that’s a very long lesson for a conversation like this, but I’ll try to summarize. Obviously, when we’re talking about a logical or rational view, it’s always based on some assumptions, and it’s much easier to measure the rationality of an argument than the rationality of an assumption. Because with an argument, you check whether the conclusion follows from the premises; with the premises, you evaluate them according to what seems plausible to you. So we all have some tendency to say that the other person’s assumptions aren’t rational and mine are. But still, it seems to me that on the basis of assumptions accepted by many people, you can derive the conclusion of God’s existence reasonably well. That’s what I mean when I say it’s logical and rational. I’ll say more than that: I think a view that says there is no God is, in my opinion, irrational, or much less rational.
[Speaker A] Why? Try to sketch for us that path by which you get from the fact that the world is so complex, and you know, a million systems and human beings and… how do you get from that to the claim that there has to be a God? Why isn’t it just some kind of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] you know, something…
[Speaker A] probabilistic?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, look. The claim in a nutshell is that something complex usually has to come into being through some sort of directed process. Something complex does not arise by chance, or at least it’s very, very unlikely to arise by chance. You can see that through the second law of thermodynamics in physics, but I’m not claiming this is a scientific theorem proving there is a God; that’s not the point. I’m illustrating it through the second law of thermodynamics. And since I see enormous complexity in the world, it seems very likely to me that something or someone created it. There’s the very famous formulation by the priest Paley, who says that if you see a watch lying on the ground, then apparently there was a watchmaker who made it. People have mocked that a lot and refuted it a lot, and so on. I think that argument is correct, but to show that you really have to go carefully through all the refutations and all the reasoning. Briefly, I’d put it like this: people who want to claim that the complex things in this world came into being spontaneously — meaning by chance, not by a guiding hand — basically have to assume certain natural laws. Take the emergence of life. If we focus on life, then today it’s generally accepted that this happened through evolution, and evolution overall gives a pretty good explanation, well grounded scientifically, and so on. The mistake here, in my opinion, is not that evolution is wrong — that’s what creationist fundamentalists claim. The mistake is that even if it’s correct, it doesn’t constitute an alternative, because when you say there was evolution, you’re assuming a certain set of laws, where any tiny shift in one of them, or in several of them, would not allow the existence of biology, life, physiology, and so on.
[Speaker A] You’re saying: who set the laws according to which the evolutionary axis runs?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. It’s like going into a factory that operates in a very impressive way.
[Speaker A] Something goes in, Bamba comes out, along the way there was…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And in the middle there are lots of workers and managers and marketers and advertisers…
[Speaker A] and physicists and machines…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] everything, full of all these complexities. Now I say, look, someone here is running the story, created and runs this story. My atheist friend walking beside me says, what do you mean? Look here on the wall, there’s a list of laws, everyone works according to those laws, and that’s how it comes out — you don’t need some supervisor here, some creator. Do you understand that that’s not an argument? The question is: who wrote the laws on the wall?
[Speaker A] Or maybe there are just infinitely many universes, and in this specific universe, probabilistically, some set of laws came into being, and you know, it’s one out of many possible sets of laws. Maybe in another universe there are no laws at all, and in another there are similar laws and people there have four eyes and eight legs, and here specifically we happened to land on this set of laws.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so that’s already the next stage. In other words, first of all that’s the basic argument. Now you’re raising what’s called the anthropic argument. Meaning, an argument that says basically there are many universes, we just happen to be in one that allows life, other universes allow other things.
[Speaker A] Maybe they also allow life, we don’t know, you know, it could…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] be that many…
[Speaker A] things we really just don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, it could be there are lots of things we don’t know, or other complexities that aren’t life — it doesn’t really matter. My argument against this — it’s certainly a possibility — but my argument is this: first, the fact that there are very many universes doesn’t make things easier, it makes them harder. I ask: who created those infinite universes? What is this, some spontaneous generation of universes out of the vacuum that doesn’t require explanation? Why doesn’t that require explanation? Where is this universe-generator, what is it, who created it?
[Speaker A] But why is the basic assumption that everything was created? Why can’t there be something that’s simply been here forever? And then you’ll say, what does “forever” even mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Depends what you’re talking about. Obviously at some point you’ll have to posit a first link in the chain. The question is whether you want to posit that the first link is matter, or material things, or what we know in our world — which to me is implausible. I mean, we know those things, and by their nature they decay, they change, they are produced by something else; order doesn’t just emerge from nothing in that way. Or there is something else, something not within our experience — I call it God, but the name isn’t important in this context — which exists without a prior cause, and that is what created us. The question is where you stop this regressive chain.
[Speaker A] But then with God too, according to the same logic, you’d ask yourself: who created God?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. That’s why I say the question is where you stop this regressive chain, because in the end you reach infinite regress. Infinite regress — turtles all the way down, like the famous saying. So if we’re willing to agree that an infinite chain is not an option, then the only possibility is that there is a first link that apparently does not require prior links that created it.
[Speaker A] There has to be one — whether it’s natural laws or God one level above, so to speak.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Now I’m saying that if you claim natural laws are entities, I have no problem with that — then that’s God as far as I’m concerned. But there has to be some primordial being or entity responsible for everything going on here. The accepted view is that natural laws are not entities; natural laws describe a mode of behavior, they are not entities. So if you’re talking about natural laws, I’ll still ask who legislated them. Laws need a legislator. Who made them, who enacted them?
[Speaker A] Even though each one is discrete on its own, and over billions of years — well, not that, but the dynamics among them also happened over billions of years.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not among them — the question is how each one came into being. How did this set of laws come into being? With laws, we generally understand that there has to be a lawgiver. Where did these laws come from? Now again, if you say they are entities, then you can tell me they are God, they are the first cause. But laws are not entities. Laws describe how things behave. Laws are not entities.
[Speaker A] Yeah, but it’s not really a law in the sense that someone wrote it. It’s not like somebody wrote that there’s gravity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? I claim that yes, someone enacted that law.
[Speaker A] So I’m saying you call it a law, but it’s not a law…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a mode of behavior.
[Speaker A] It’s just something that happens. Understand what I’m saying.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, but it happens this way rather than some other way, and I’m asking who is responsible for things happening this way and not some other way. You can’t say the law of gravity is responsible for it, because the law of gravity describes that behavior. But I’m asking: who is responsible for this being the behavior? It’s not certain there’s someone responsible, maybe yes, maybe no. So I say: if this is something complex, it’s much more reasonable to assume that there is something that legislated it, that is responsible for it, than to say it just somehow happened. And a complex thing doesn’t just…
[Speaker A] The question is why we need that at all. Why is there a need in the first place to say there’s some logical inference that God exists? You know, there are people like Leibowitz, for example, who said: okay, it doesn’t matter to me whether God exists; I decided that He exists and I choose… why does it matter?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, I’m discussing whether it’s true. The question of why it matters is another question. You could ask me, for example, why physics matters. I deal with physics; I dealt with physics in the past. Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn’t interest you. Fine. Everyone has their own fields of interest. I’m asking whether it’s true. If it’s true that there is a God, then that’s my claim. You can tell me maybe it’s true but it doesn’t interest me.
[Speaker A] Not me personally, not me at all. I mean asking in the first place whether there is a God or there isn’t a God, instead of saying: I decided that I believe there is a God, and I live according to — as we’ll talk in a moment about what that means — according to what I think God wants. Does that add something? Does it somehow strengthen faith?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously yes. Because if I invented this thing called God, then living according to that view sounds crazy to me. You invented something with no logic behind it, no authoritative source behind it that you need to obey.
[Speaker A] No, there is a source of authority — in the very fact that it can’t be disproven.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean it can’t be disproven? A lot of things can’t be disproven. I can’t disprove the existence of demons and fairies either. So what, should I accept their existence? That’s absurd. And if someone comes and says, I’ve decided there are demons — it can’t be disproven, right? Okay, that’s Bertrand Russell’s celestial teapot, if you know it. It’s completely meaningless. Now Leibowitz, I think, actually phrased himself imprecisely out of an excessive desire to be precise. Since he was a positivist, and he thought that only things fully defined and grounded scientifically and empirically are worth discussing, from his perspective he said this is just a plain decision, an arbitrary one. I suspect that when he spoke there about arbitrariness, he meant this is a decision I don’t know how to ground — but not that I invented it. Not that it isn’t true, but rather that it is true.
[Speaker A] He didn’t say there is no God. He said it doesn’t matter whether there is a God or not, I don’t know; I decided that I live according to Him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: if you decided, then I decided I live according to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. There are people like that. So fine, that doesn’t interest me; everyone has the right to decide whatever they want. But then he certainly can’t come with claims against someone who didn’t make that foolish decision, and I also don’t understand how he explains that foolish decision to himself. In my view, if there isn’t some authority or rationale behind it — if there is internal logic, I can live by that even without God, because it’s simply true. I don’t see the internal logic here. So either there is a source of authority or I’m not there. I can’t just make arbitrary decisions and live by them. I can, but there’s no logic in it. It doesn’t make sense. That’s not something I’m willing to operate by.
[Speaker A] Okay, that leads me to the next question, which is on one of the cards, but I’ll save time and ask it now. Let’s say we proved that God is the reasonable alternative. How do we get from there to where we are today, where we’re trying to interpret how He wants us to live our lives? You understand what I mean? How does the authority of God connect to Jewish law and customs and the various teachings? Fine, never mind for the moment whether it’s the Muslim tradition or the Jewish or the Christian or…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I actually think that does matter here, because each of those claims has to be examined on its own merits. It could be that some of them are more grounded and others aren’t. You can’t ask that question in a sweeping way. Now that’s on one hand. On the other hand, I really don’t believe in religious exclusivity. Meaning, unlike standard religious education, I don’t think we are the ones who are right and will sit there on the ramp in the VIP section while everyone else is dragged down into I-don’t-know-what, the depths of hell. I don’t believe that. I think that if people do the best they understand, so he grew up in some Polish village or some Moroccan village or wherever, and that’s how he thinks God expects him to act, and he does the best he can — I see no reason why the Holy One, blessed be He, would not take him into account and see him as someone fulfilling his obligations. The fact that I happened, for better or worse, to be born into a Jewish world — even if Judaism is, let’s say, more correct in some sense — is an accident. So I don’t believe in religious exclusivity. But I do think there are arguments in favor of my own view. In other words, I’m not a pluralist; I’m not claiming everyone is right. I’m only claiming everyone deserves equal treatment. Because they did the best they could, yes, they did the best they could. Still, in my view, I think — at least in my understanding — Judaism has more basis than other things.
[Speaker A] An empirical basis? A basis…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, a logical basis, an empirical basis, however you want to put it — a combination of many things.
[Speaker A] Like what? Give me an example.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, some sort of tradition reached us. Okay? Mount Sinai, developments over the course of history. Now the simplistic, banal presentation of the matter is: everything we know today was given to Moses at Sinai by the Holy One, blessed be He, and we are just a hollow pipe, right? Passing it along from one person to another and… well, that’s naïve, that’s nonsense.
[Speaker A] Yes, it’s obvious that’s not true; it’s already been proven, speaking of proofs — it’s already been shown that the Torah was written over hundreds of years and…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s a somewhat different discussion. There are academic critical fields and so on — I’m not even talking about that. I’m talking within the world of traditional sources, and even there it’s already clear that that isn’t true. You don’t need academic research or cross-checking with parallel sources. The Talmud itself describes the formation of laws; it does not claim everything was given at Sinai. And no one, until the apologetic period of our own day, it seems to me, really thought seriously that everything was given at Sinai. But I do think there was some kind of interaction there, something really was transmitted there. I have no way of knowing exactly what. But some tradition reached us, and at least in its documented portion — say the last two thousand years, something like that; before that you already have the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), things are more vague — it seems to me that it preserves the core reasonably well, at least the core. There are additions, there are influences, there are many things, interpretations, but it preserves the core very carefully, and it is also very strict about it — meaning it checks everything for its source, and if there is no source, it throws it out. So there is awareness, at least in the documented period, of reliable transmission of the tradition.
[Speaker A] Yes, but on the other hand there’s interpretation on a huge scale…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine…
[Speaker A] I mean, in the end take the Shulchan Arukh: most of it is interpretations of sentences that you and I and ten other people could interpret differently. If each of us sat down as a blank slate and read it, we’d interpret it completely differently.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely. And that’s why I say…
[Speaker A] So where does that divine hand touch there too, do you understand? Let’s say it touched at the beginning.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying, first of all, I claim there was a core.
[Speaker A] Let’s say there was a core, I’m with you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now within that core, since that core is very — let’s call it thin, amorphous, I don’t know what to call it — obviously it’s open to interpretation. I think the Giver of the Torah Himself had to assume we would interpret it, because He hardly closed off any corners. Most of the corners are left open.
[Speaker A] There are even corners that contradict one another.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, contradictions and unresolved things and so on. So because of that, He Himself had to assume we would interpret, and He also writes: “Do not turn aside from whatever they instruct you,” “if a matter is too difficult for you, whether between blood and blood” — meaning if there’s something you don’t know, go to the elders in the gate and so on, to the Sanhedrin. Therefore the mechanisms of development in Jewish law are part of it. And because of that, I make the following claim: although there are things about which I have no doubt that a large portion of what reached us is not correct, I have no doubt of that — but first, they developed out of the tools we were given; this is the result we have. Second, I have no way of knowing what really was correct originally. If I had such a way, maybe I really wouldn’t agree, I wouldn’t accept the result.
[Speaker A] You’re saying that out of the 613 commandments, maybe only 213 are the original ones, but since the correct ones got mixed together with the incorrect ones, I take all 613 on myself? Just as an example.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not talking about the 613 commandments, but about details within a commandment — there are lots of details. But as an example, yes, correct. And because of that, I claim that authenticity is not the only basis for authority. In other words, not only authenticity gives things authority. Even things that were not authentic, were not in the original, can still be authoritative if they were accepted by the authorized institutions. Say there’s a law passed by the Knesset that I don’t agree with, it doesn’t make sense to me at all — but it’s the Knesset.
[Speaker A] It’s not the same thing, because you don’t attribute supreme authority to the Knesset. Never mind — once you built some logical process here and said there is a God, I reached that conclusion, He touched us, I reached that conclusion, there is testimony, no testimony, whatever — He gave something, that something was passed like a torch along the way, lots of things got messed up, and now I also know there are things that entered completely anew and received authority from an existing institution — that existing institution is no longer really connected to that same God you started from.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is connected! Because that institution — the Sanhedrin, for example — is an institution whose foundation lies in verses in the Torah. The Torah itself said there are ways to interpret, refine, add, and deal with new things. Those mechanisms are built into Jewish law.
[Speaker A] Yeah, but that’s people.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham]
[Speaker A] First, it’s people, and second, by the same logic you could say the Knesset is also a kind of Sanhedrin, because it too now makes decisions for the Jewish people.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m saying — that’s the analogy. It’s not a Sanhedrin in the religious sense, but the logic exists there too. I can disagree with Knesset laws and still they obligate me. Again, in extreme cases I might distance myself from that, but in principle they obligate me. Why? Because that’s the system, that’s the authorized institution. And Jewish law too, even apart from divinity and religion — I’m speaking only about the logic here — is built that way. There are authorized institutions, and what those institutions determine is binding, not because it is necessarily correct — on the contrary, I assume much of it is not correct — but because this is the binding institution. These are the rules of the system. And if I’m part of the system, and this decision I did accept, then as far as I’m concerned, I adopt what the system says.
[Speaker A] No, but today it’s also very scattered, because you took on a system where, for argument’s sake, there is some generational chain in which every time there are halakhic decisors and those decisors innovate and so on — but today there are lots of decisors from all sorts of camps…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and how does a person choose?
[Speaker A] No, so that’s what I’m saying.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The other side of that same coin — and here many people attack me on this issue — is that I really am not committed to the system as it is, as-is. No. I am committed to the framework. Within that framework, I am a player like all the other players throughout the generations. And if I reach a different conclusion, then that’s what I’ll do, even if it’s accepted and all these decisors and those decisors think otherwise. Fine, that’s their right. I do not feel bound by them because they are not an authorized institution. The Sanhedrin was one, one in each generation, and it was an authorized institution. Everyone else — think of law professors interpreting Knesset laws. What he says doesn’t obligate me, even though he’s a greater legal expert than I am. He does not obligate me because he is not an authorized institution. Therefore I can interpret the laws differently. And if I reach a different conclusion, I’ll act differently. But if the Knesset determined something, I can’t just interpret it differently.
[Speaker A] Right. The Knesset is an authorized institution, like when the High Court rules and interprets.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. So that’s why I’m saying: in Jewish law too, it’s exactly like that. Today, for example, there are no authorized institutions. Today there are only interpreters — and that’s been true for many generations, not just today.
[Speaker A] Why, doesn’t the Rabbinate count?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Rabbinate? It’s a collection of petty bureaucrats who not only don’t understand Jewish law, they’re also not authorized. That despicable institution should have been shut down yesterday. I agree with you. But a Sanhedrin as there once was, when there was ordination — I’m talking about thousands of years ago — that was an authorized institution, exactly like the Knesset in our current system.
[Speaker A] So why, in your opinion, did Judaism stop? Because one of the beautiful things about Judaism in, say, its first fifteen hundred years — from Mount Sinai until the period of the Geonim, roughly, maybe a bit before — is that it was constantly renewing itself. We received Torah at Sinai, became a people, tribes, then not tribes, there are judges, we unite only for wars, then became one state, two states, exile, Talmud, no Temple, so we adapt ourselves, study house. Everything was very dynamic, it was a work in progress — and then suddenly, boom, it stops. What do I mean stops? They even want to go backward.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So here the answer really has to be divided in two. First, not everything really stopped the way you describe it. Maybe there’s that image — and there is such an image — but not everything really stopped. Things are happening, and significant things are happening. There is a difference between the big collective message, which presents things as though there is some closed, clear Torah — “Torah perspective,” as the Haredim call it, and other such things — and what actually happens on the ground. And on the ground there are many methods and many conceptions and an extraordinary ferment in the Torah world. A lot is happening even today.
[Speaker A] No, but that’s already minutiae, tiny little things. Not in the big issues. I mean, I have a lot of religious family, from Shasnik Haredim to Religious Zionists, and in the end once a year they come with some new ruling that actually you can’t light a barbecue fire from an existing flame on a holiday because of who-knows-what. That’s your innovation? That’s the Judaism that we…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, you’re not looking at the right level. On the level of halakhic rulings, those aren’t really the relevant questions — whether it’s this kind of barbecue or another. That depends on how you relate to the sources, you make your halakhic calculation, and you reach a conclusion. When I talk about innovations that respond to new circumstances, I’m talking about the big questions. I’m talking about the status of women, democracy, attitude toward different fields of knowledge, the essential questions. And in those questions, in my opinion, very significant things are happening.
[Speaker A] Really? Do you see innovation in that, or moving backward?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? A hundred years ago there was a huge struggle in Europe over whether to send girls to school. Beit Yaakov, Sarah Schenirer who founded Beit Yaakov — there was a huge struggle. What do you mean? It says in the Talmud that one who teaches his daughter Torah teaches her frivolity, and there are all kinds of sayings like that, not to teach women Torah. Today there isn’t a Haredi in the universe who doesn’t send his daughter to school, including high school, not just elementary school. In non-Haredi places, girls are already studying Talmud, taking rabbinate exams, maybe soon there will even be women judges in religious courts. The Rabbinate still won’t appoint them, but the Rabbinate is just a collection of clowns. I’m talking now about processes taking place in religious society, not the religious establishment. In the religious establishment, nothing is happening. That’s one of the problems because of which I think we founded The Third Path, to deal with that problem. But on the ground, a lot is happening. On the ground there is a spectrum of religiosity that, by the way, I don’t always like.
[Speaker A] Yes, like religious women — by the way, I was surprised, I only discovered this a few months ago — that there’s now a trend of religious women enlisting in the army, a really crazy increase, including combat roles and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Tons of them. Of course. And also in the field of Torah, which goes even further, there is very nice progress. I have criticism about how far it goes — it should be more — but still there is very nice progress. Things are happening. The only thing is, they’re happening below. And one of the problems is that this doesn’t get expression in the religious collective, in religious society, in the voice that goes outward.
[Speaker A] Because there’s a lid on the pot, which is the establishment, and it doesn’t let it flourish. Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The establishment is fossilized.
[Speaker A] Look, yesterday I read that the mayor of Herzliya wrote about an ice cream shop that got a 2,000-shekel fine from the Chief Rabbinate because they had Tzohar kosher certification and not regular kosher certification, and so on. Meaning, just when they came and created an alternative kashrut framework that makes room for more, they try to block it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that have to do with Jewish law? These are power struggles. It’s a corrupt institution running power struggles and trying to keep all authority in its own hands, while of course in the background sit all the corrupt appointment processes there — how people are chosen, who gets appointed there — it’s all openly political. If things like that happened in the court system, people’s hair would stand on end. Parties dividing things up among themselves — for heaven’s sake, what is this? We’ve become so used to this insane conduct of the religious establishment that even religious people no longer really understand that it doesn’t have to be this way. And despite the fact that on the ground there are so many movements, so many voices, so many protests, it doesn’t coalesce into a clear voice saying: friends, we have another alternative. We’re trying to do that in The Third Path.
[Speaker A] Tell me a little about The Third Path so our viewers will know it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, I’ll say it again in a nutshell. Religious identity today is divided according to whether you’re Haredi or Religious Zionist. Right? You ask a religious person what your identity is, and he’ll answer either Haredi or Religious Zionist. That’s the first word you’ll hear from him. After that there are details and nuances and so on. Okay? Now, what’s the difference between a Religious Zionist and a Haredi? Ostensibly, attitude toward the state. A Haredi is reserved or opposed to the Zionist enterprise, to the state, etc., and yes, today the Haredim are the national camp.
[Speaker A] Right, exactly — it’s the total opposite, you understand?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But they oppose the Zionist enterprise and the state, and the Religious Zionists are in favor. Now I ask: how does that express itself? In nothing. There’s simply no practical implication to this. Even the current struggles over military conscription have nothing to do with the question of Zionism. The Haredim don’t say we don’t enlist because it’s Zionist and it’s forbidden to cooperate with them. A few crazies say that,
[Speaker A] but that’s not what they believe; they just don’t say it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—they don’t believe that either. Rule by heretics, that’s the derivative… “rule by heretics” is anachronistic songs from long ago; nobody believes that. I’m telling you this from familiarity with that world from the inside. Almost nobody. It’s bizarre fringe elements. They don’t enlist because they don’t want to be corrupted, because they don’t want to stop being Haredi. Okay? So what really underlies this is separatism, not Zionism. Haredi-ism is separatism, or conservatism if you prefer. Separatism. It has nothing to do with the question of attitude toward Zionism. If you could give them something completely secluded that would preserve their Haredi way of life and not harm their lifestyle, there shouldn’t be any principled problem for them to enlist. Agreed. Now what does that really mean? That we’re preserving an anachronistic discourse. We identify ourselves by the question of whether we’re for or against the state. The state has already existed for eighty years. The people who are against the state today are sitting with the prime minister, in the government, and running this state that they supposedly oppose. So what are you talking about? There is no issue on the table today that has to do with the question of attitude toward the state. No religious person in the universe is troubled by the question of attitude toward the state. It’s… they keep speaking in that language because that’s the language we got used to. They’re not there. The argument is about modernity, not about attitude toward Zionism. And therefore what we’re trying to do in the third path—we’re saying, guys, let’s move the watershed line somewhere else. If there’s a watershed line that says these are anti-Zionists and these are Zionists, Haredim and Religious Zionists, and there are more modern and less modern people on this side, more modern and less modern people on that side…
[Speaker A] A matrix. Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So let’s rotate the coordinate system. And now the line that divides things will be the line of modernity, not the line of Zionism. And on the right side there will be modern Zionists and modern Haredim, and on the left side there will be non-modern Zionists and non-modern Haredim, as a slogan, okay? And we’re trying… Now the modern Haredim and the non-… the conservative Haredim and the conservative Religious Zionists have already made their coalition. We’re meeting them today in the coalition.
[Speaker A] Right, that’s why Ben Gvir and Smotrich and Goldknopf… and Ben Gvir are good friends.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. They’re basically operating together. They’ve already managed to connect those two quadrants that are on the right side of this axis of modernity. What we want to do is connect the two quadrants that are on the left side.
[Speaker A] So what you’re basically saying—this is a very interesting way of looking at it—you’re basically saying that the camp of faith, so to speak, okay, the religious people, has until now been divided into Zionists and non-Zionists, or more religious and less religious, let’s call it that too, because the Haredim see themselves as more conservative for that matter, yes. And I’m saying: let’s move this to who is willing to accept a 21st-century world and who isn’t. And here you actually find a greater alliance, say, with Tzipi Levi or another Haredi woman who is relatively liberal, Esti Shushan, than with Smotrich, for example.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Completely. I hardly see any difference at all between me and them. And that’s why I say we’re so stuck in this anachronistic discourse of yes Zionism… everything is built on something that basically doesn’t exist, the attitude toward the state.
[Speaker A] Why not extend that alliance to liberal secular people too?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because we’re talking about a religious outlook. I have no problem making alliances with them in relevant areas, but when I’m trying to create a religious identity, that religious identity is supposed to connect religious groups.
[Speaker A] And how does that express itself? Because the liberal Haredi person—liberal in what sense?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The liberal Haredi… a liberal will be faithful to Jewish law, like the liberal religious person, faithful to Jewish law, but his view of women’s status will be different.
[Speaker A] But with a secular person, though, that has become part of religion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I argue that it hasn’t.
[Speaker A] All these areas—Jewish law enters them today too. Look, take even the issue of the Land of Israel. They take some sentence from Nachmanides from who knows when and say, that’s it, the Land of Israel, every centimeter from the Nile to Lebanon and Syria, all of it is ours. That’s it, it’s part of Jewish law. So now if I’m with you, I’m being lenient.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m not speaking at all in the language of lenient and stringent. I’m more stringent than the conservative Haredim. The question is: in what am I stringent? But I reject this “more religious and less religious”—that’s their discourse. They try to portray it as though they are more religious and the others are “light,” as they call it. No. It’s a modern outlook and a non-modern outlook. I’m more religious than they are, because there are things I’m careful about that they’re not careful about.
[Speaker A] So what falls under “modern”? What characterizes this modernity?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying, as I said earlier, attitude toward women, attitude toward democratic values. And I’m saying that integrating them with a religious outlook is something that has to be worked on within the religious camp. I can’t do that with you. I can’t do it with you because you’re not part of the framework within which I operate, if I understand correctly—I don’t know you. But you’re not part of it, and therefore it can’t work there. Once this crystallizes there as an existing path, obviously it will be much easier to create alliances. You won’t even need to create alliances—it’ll be self-evident—with people who aren’t religious but who share liberal values.
[Speaker A] So you’re saying there ought to be, just for example, some institute for research on democracy and Judaism made up of Haredim and Religious Zionists.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are already such institutes. There are already such institutes, and that’s why I’m saying that’s not the point. The question is: how do we turn all the streams moving in those directions—there are lots of organizations and institutes and so on—how do we turn them into an identity voice? How do we brand them? In other words, how do we say: friends, we are not the “light” version of the Haredim and not the “light” version of Smotrich. We are a third path. Neither Haredim nor Smotrich—a third path. So don’t threaten me and don’t scare me with this rabbi or that rabbi.
[Speaker A] By the way, are there Reform and Conservative people in this third path? Why not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because they aren’t part of the halakhic framework. Conservatives, in my opinion, could enter, but for now that hasn’t been on the table. Reform aren’t part of the halakhic discourse, so there’s no point.
[Speaker A] They don’t limit themselves within the existing system.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re trying to show that it’s possible to be committed to Jewish law together with all modern values. And there are places where that conflicts, and there’s tension, and it needs to be resolved. That’s all fine. But because we’re committed to both sides of the coin, only we can look for and find the solution. Someone committed only to one side of the coin doesn’t help me—he has no problem. If he has no problem, he doesn’t need solutions.
[Speaker A] Tell me, this conservative alliance you’re talking about—which, by the way, is becoming more and more extreme—the new Jewish laws and new practices and new outlooks are only becoming more extreme and making everyday life harder and also moving further from modernity. In other words, going backward. You know, I’ll take Religious Zionism as an example—not only have they not moved in the direction of women’s rights at the institutional level, they’re moving backward. More separation, even more. Today that’s already in Bnei Akiva in first and second grade.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the symbiosis I talked about between the two conservative wings. The conservative Religious Zionists and the conservative Haredim are getting very, very close, and it’s no wonder you see it at the political level too, but it’s also happening on the ground. Politics is only an expression.
[Speaker A] And you don’t think that does real damage to the Jewish collective? Because it pushes people away…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In my view it does enormous damage. Exactly for that reason we’re trying to create the third path, to say: friends, it isn’t necessary. What’s happening today is that in people’s consciousness, a Religious Zionist person says to himself, okay, so if that’s the case, my rabbi is Rabbi Lior, Rabbi Tau, I don’t know, all the Hardal rabbis. Okay? Only I’m not really with them in my heart, but fine, because I’m weak. The person perceives himself as weak because he doesn’t have the conceptual framework that says no, there is another religious path. We’re not with them not because I’m weak; I’m not with them because I disagree with them. They have their own religious outlook, that’s fine. I have a different religious outlook, and therefore I’m offering an alternative to the path they offer. Now because that conceptual framework doesn’t exist, this dichotomous split keeps remaining all the time.
[Speaker A] But there are all kinds of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] voices like that, you know,
[Speaker A] Tzohar rabbis,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and Rabbi Benny Lau… completely. But there is no conceptual framework. When I talk to all of them, my friends, when I talk to them, they are unwilling to give up their identification with the Religious Zionist camp. Unwilling to give it up. They only say, “Smotrich stole Religious Zionism from us.”
[Speaker A] Meaning there’s no willingness to look at the Y-axis instead of the X-axis you spoke about.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. They’re unwilling. And that’s why, by the way, at the beginning we were defined as a third identity, “the third identity,” and under public pressure we turned it into “the third path,” because people didn’t want to give up their identity—Haredi identity or Religious Zionist identity. Those identities don’t interest me at all; that interests my grandmother. But my friends prevailed over me—that is, they’re not willing to give up that identity, and therefore we offer a path. Another one. You can remain Religious Zionist, Haredi, whatever—I don’t know what that means; it doesn’t mean anything. But you’ll belong to the third path, and no one will be able to threaten you with “all the leading sages of the generation” or statements of that kind don’t agree with you. Who are the leading sages of the generation? The Haredi sages of the generation don’t agree with me—fine, I don’t agree with them either. So what? The moment you’re identified with them and you perceive yourself as “light,” you’ll vote for them, you’ll keep going with them all the time even though you don’t agree with them, because you don’t understand that it’s legitimate not to agree with them—you think it’s weakness. If I tell you no, there is another understanding there, there is another religiosity, another religious model, then you say okay—you get some self-confidence, suddenly you see there’s a large public that really believes this. And that changes the field.
[Speaker A] It changes the field. Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It puts the anchor point somewhere else. Exactly. And then suddenly, newspaper polls—every two days you read that the rabbis of Religious Zionism gathered and decided, I don’t know what to do, some other damage, each time a different damage. Okay, now who appointed them rabbis of Religious Zionism? We’re talking about ten black-coated men who say Hallel
[Speaker A] on
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Independence Day, and that’s the only difference between them and Haredim—not the only one, but almost the only one. The public that actually sees them as a model, a figure to follow, is maybe ten percent of the religious public, but they are “the rabbis of Religious Zionism,” and this is internalized within Religious Zionist people themselves; it’s not a media mistake. It’s so deeply embedded in us that people perceive themselves as yes, we’re like them, only lighter; we’re weak; we can’t manage.
[Speaker A] You’re saying the whole reference point is them. Exactly. The religious utopia. Exactly. Even that person in Ra’anana or Givat Shmuel who sees Rabbi Dov Lior and Tzvi Tau signing a document—even if he says, “I don’t connect to this,” he feels weak in relation to them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s the religious utopia, that’s the religious utopia. Only what can you do—I’m part of the modern world, I can’t manage with it, but my son—I’ll want to educate him that way many times.
[Speaker A] And then basically you’re on the defensive instead of going on the offensive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And now I’ll say again—for example, think about the elections for the Chief Rabbinate. Every single time, the same thing happens: there’s a struggle of Religious Zionists against Haredim—I’m talking now about the chief rabbis, not the rabbinical judges—in miniature this happens everywhere. And then the Haredim always win, and the Religious Zionists lament their bitter fate: how did we fail to unite, and so on, and in the end Haredim were elected. This is a misunderstanding of the map. They did unite perfectly; the ones who have the majority were elected. The majority is conservative, the majority in the electing body, the majority in the establishment is conservative, and the conservative Haredim and the conservative Religious Zionists always go together, even though the Religious Zionists always cry afterward, “How did we fail to unite?” They go together because they really think the same way. Why do I care whether the chief rabbi says Hallel on Independence Day or not? What I care about is what he’ll do in the rabbinical courts, what decisions he’ll make—and there, what’s the difference between Haredim and Religious Zionists? A lot of times, by the way, the Haredi judges are more open than the Religious Zionist judges, more lenient, more open. It’s not identified at all with the division of Haredi versus non-Haredi; sometimes it’s even the opposite. It’s much more identified with the question of modernity, with the question of separatism, with the question of connection to the world. And if that’s what the struggle were about, then you’d see that in the electing body there is an absolute majority for the conservatives, and it’s no wonder the conservatives are elected every time. This crying is simply a failure to read the map correctly. I’ll tell you more than that: when I ask you or anyone else—or myself, or anyone on the street—when he sees Rabbi Stav, who was once a candidate to be chief rabbi, Rabbi…
[Speaker A] David Stav, the rabbi of Shoham, I’m just saying this for whoever…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A toy rabbi, as if—because he’s knitted-kippah, sandals, was in the paratroopers, was my youth-group counselor in Bnei Akiva, he’s not a real rabbi, he’s a toy rabbi, right? Who is a real rabbi? Someone in a black coat with a long beard, saying foolish things, nobody understands him, saying bizarre things—that’s a real rabbi. Now, and all the modern and liberal people think that too.
[Speaker A] You’re saying it sarcastically—I’ll just say, no.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying it genuinely.
[Speaker A] Sarcastically—you don’t think that about Rabbi Stav.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course not, the opposite. I think he’s in no way inferior to them. I’m just saying that this image is a disaster, because it’s embedded in all of us that a rabbi has some sort of image, that our religious utopia is that same bizarre thing we are constantly fighting against. And at the same time it always remains the authentic, real religious model. The others are fine—they’re secular people in disguise. And I’m trying to fight against that. By the way, within myself too—I have to fight with myself to get out of the education that was so deeply ingrained in me.
[Speaker A] And there’s also the matter of what he says, you know, because there are rabbis who look more “light”—take Rabbi Eli Sadan or Levinstein, they don’t look like…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They don’t wear black, but what difference does that make?
[Speaker A] They don’t wear black, but they talk like people who wear black.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but still, by the way, it would also be hard for them to be elected chief rabbi because of how they look, but at least they say foolish things the way Haredim say foolish things. And since they say foolish things, they have a chance of being elected chief rabbi. Only someone who says foolish things can be elected chief rabbi. A person who speaks sensibly, speaks logically, understands the world he lives in, has no chance. No chance. First, because in the electing body there’s a conservative majority, but beyond that, even the secular people there choose Haredim. Even the secular people in those electing bodies often choose Haredim because the figure they see before their eyes is their grandfather. Their grandfather was a rabbi. The authentic one, the one who’s really Jewish. Not this one I really like, who was with me in the army and everything is fine—but he’s not really a rabbi. There are limits, after all.
[Speaker A] You’re saying it all derives from the image we imagine of what an authentic Jew of the old days looked like.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And what Judaism looks like, and what a Jew looks like, and what Judaism looks like. And we’re so stuck that the conservatives managed to internalize the idea that the criterion by which you judge, for example, greatness in Torah is a Haredi criterion. And then right after that it becomes very easy to convince the whole world that all the great Torah scholars are Haredi. Why? Because the criteria we were raised on for judging Torah greatness are Haredi criteria. Like what? For example, knowing how to rattle off by heart, I don’t know, as much material as possible. Never mind that you’re talking nonsense—you have the thinking ability of a kindergarten child. Okay? Now in my view, especially today when there are computerized materials and databases and everything, the weight of knowledge is far less significant—still significant, but far less significant than it used to be. What matters much more is common sense. Now look at how all the Haredi sages of the generation talk—it makes your ears ring. We’re talking about stupid people, really stupid. Now, not in intelligence. You hear a lesson from them, there can be things…
[Speaker A] brilliant in Torah,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] in Torah, yes. They don’t understand reality. They’re literally like kindergarten children, really. This thing shocks me so deeply. When you hear Yitzhak Yosef, when you see Dov…
[Speaker A] Lando—you know what, forget it, I’ll tell the story without saying the names. I sat with a few very senior rabbis in 2023 around the issue of the regime coup. And I really came with professionals and we sat to give them, just for a moment, a grasp of where demographics stand, income versus expenditure, really like a 20-minute overview. Listen, it’s just unbelievable. Unbelievable. An inability to understand, living in some kind of imaginary reality. He said something to me like—I don’t remember exactly—“we pay more taxes because we have more children.” Truly delusional. I came out of there shaken.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, I wrote this on my website and I’m now writing a post exactly about this. Haredi thinking—and here, by the way, conservative Religious Zionists are a little different from the Haredim—but Haredi thinking doesn’t think in large scales or over long ranges. That’s how we got used to it; even Jewish law works that way. You won’t permit autopsies in order to study medicine. You’ll permit autopsies if there’s someone sick right now who needs help and you need to dissect in order to save him—that’s saving a life. Ah, but all of modern medicine is built on the fact that you have to learn somehow, you have to train doctors, you have to build a health system—it’s not a question of this doctor or that patient. That’s not the kind of thinking found there. They just don’t think that way at all.
[Speaker A] Because they don’t understand ahead.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, no—they’re not used to it; Jewish law doesn’t work that way.
[Speaker A] Because you’re very passive in the face of the word of God—you know, in the end it’ll be fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But what is “the word of God”? That’s exactly the point.
[Speaker A] No, so I’m saying, his answer was: come on, they’ve been scaring me for years, it’ll work out. But how will it work out? The graphs are already here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One of the reasons is that truly, somewhere deep down, although they always say no, no, we have to do what needs to be done in any case, even though the Holy One, blessed be He, watches over us and helps and all that—this whole nonsense is an internal contradiction, but never mind, people are so used to reciting it that everyone recites it—in the end, in the end, it expresses itself too. It expresses itself exactly in this, that they say okay, in the end, in the big picture, it’s not in our hands. The Holy One, blessed be He, will sort it out. We just have to manage things here on the small scale. And therefore graphs, large ranges, scales, how you run a state, where the state will be in twenty—he’d laugh at you. There’s nothing to talk to him about at all on that level. He doesn’t know what you’re talking about.
[Speaker A] Yeah, that’s what I felt live. But tell me, from your perspective, how did we get so mixed up to the point where you say they speak nonsense, okay? Now, you know, Haredim speak nonsense, so to speak, but at least they don’t have pretensions of leading the wagon. One of the things they don’t understand is that they’re already big enough that there’s no choice. But they still kind of say: I’ll ruin things only for myself. But those rabbis I mentioned, like Tzvi Tau and Dov Lior and others—how did their Judaism get to those places, and now they also want to pull the whole state with them? There’s always this missionary, messianic element here that says, “I know exactly where we have to go, God spoke to me yesterday and told me, listen, this is the path, this is how redemption will come.” How did this happen? This deviation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So here I said before that the question of range characterizes mainly conservative Haredim. Conservative Religious Zionists, who generally work with them on this, are actually a little different.
[Speaker A] Right, they’re long-range players.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, exactly. They do talk about the long range. But what’s the problem? They have a different illness, and I’ve written about this more than once. The illness is that they don’t see reality as it is. That is, they see the demons standing behind reality. So from their perspective, the State of Israel is not a state; it is “the foundation of God’s throne in the world.” That is, it’s a metaphysical-theological process, and so we’re playing here—we’re a little like marionettes, even though we have to do the work—but in the end there is some pre-charted process here, and you don’t relate to problems the way a reasonable, rational person relates to them. You say: let’s do this, this will come out; do that, that will come out.
[Speaker A] And that’s the problem when you disconnect from reality. At the end of the day, when Smotrich says “it’ll be fine, with God’s help economics,” or “difficult reckonings come before redemption, difficult reckonings come but they’ll be resolved,” he really believes it. He really believes it’ll be fine because it’ll be fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here too I’d qualify that a bit. I think Smotrich is more clear-eyed than people think. Precisely as someone who strongly opposes him and very much wishes he weren’t there—but he’s more clear-eyed than we think. A lot of times he uses a certain discourse. “With God’s help economics” doesn’t really operate for him. It may be that he’s not successful in economics and does foolish things here and there, I don’t know. “With God’s help economics” is always an excuse that comes afterward. He doesn’t rely on divine help; he truly thinks that’s the right way to run things. But it is true that his view, and the view of those who sent him—rabbis and operatives and so on—of reality is a view through metaphysical glasses. And because of that, the processes—say, everything that happens here, from their perspective, is a plot of the European Union.
[Speaker A] But I think beyond that, they constantly harness reality to the big story they invented for themselves. Meaning even if I’m not winning, it doesn’t matter—there’s no such thing as “I’ll retreat and end the war in Gaza,” because I need to take Gaza because that’s my path to redemption.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here we need to be a little careful. We have a tendency—and I think you, or people with the kinds of outlooks I know, have a tendency—to attribute everything to this, and I think that’s a big mistake. A big mistake.
[Speaker A] I hear them. I’m not guessing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—you are guessing. I’ll tell you why. You’re making an interpretation that isn’t correct. I’ll tell you why. In the sphere of the war, for example—and this is one of my major criticisms of all the protests and things like that, even though I’m sharply opposed to the government—in the sphere of the war, it’s not connected to messianism. Hardly at all. On the margins. On the margins. There’s a different security conception there, which by the way I identify with almost completely.
[Speaker A] But that’s not true. What do you mean? When Rabbi Kashtiel comes and says that even if they throw flowers at us from Gaza, we are obligated to conquer Gaza and Lebanon—what is that if not an outlook?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Kashtiel can give a lesson to his students
[Speaker A] and say whatever he wants. That’s who I’m talking about, those people.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not
[Speaker A] saying that every Religious Zionist who wants to continue the war has a messianic element in him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the point. The point is that the people who today want to continue the war, and their supporters both in politics and their supporters—not all of them are driven by messianism. On the contrary, the great majority are not driven by messianism. And therefore this security view that says we need to continue the war until decisive victory—which, by the way, I share—does not stem from messianism. Not necessarily. And in most cases, in my opinion, not at all.
[Speaker A] But my criticism is of the politicians, whom I know it does stem from messianism for them, do you understand?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A lot of times the discourse used to justify that outlook, at least internally, is discourse that can speak in that language. Look, after all, we were promised, and the Holy One, blessed be He, will help, and we have to conquer the land. That’s not the real consideration that actually drives many of them. The real consideration that drives many of them—and you can hear it, if you listen well you hear it easily. There are people who listen only to the messianic statements. I think if you listen carefully in a balanced way, you’ll hear this very clearly, because even I am not close to them, but I hear it very well. They have a different outlook. And therefore my criticism of them is actually mainly not in this area, but in the area of religion and state, in the area of religious outlooks, in the area of attitude toward women, in the area of democracy, in other areas. Not in this area of security and… what? In the area of human rights?
[Speaker A] In the area of human rights,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] human rights, attitude toward non-Jews, all kinds of things like that, LGBT people, all kinds of things like that. On that I have enormous criticism of them, and I think this coalition is a dreadful coalition.
[Speaker A] But it’s a package deal—their Torah is one whole thing. Forget it. Wait, so let me sharpen what I said. Not everyone who wants to continue fighting in Gaza is messianic or driven by messianism, but all the messianic people want to continue fighting in Gaza.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You understand what I mean? But how many such messianic people are there? Half a percent.
[Speaker A] When you look at the government, definitely not half a percent. When you look today at 68 seats in the coalition, the engine driving the war is the messianic engine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely not. Unequivocally not true.
[Speaker A] Why is it not true?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ben Gvir and Smotrich, who tell you “I’m leaving the government”… Ben Gvir and Smotrich are not driven by messianic motives. Ben Gvir certainly not, and in my opinion Smotrich too is not. Ben Gvir absolutely not. Ben Gvir is driven by nationalism, by forcefulness, not connected to messianism. It’s a right-wing, forceful, populist outlook, whatever—but it’s a political outlook. It’s not messianism. But Smotrich says explicitly, and also Struck. Ben Gvir—I’m talking now—Ben Gvir has a larger party than Smotrich and so on. That’s one thing. Second, even with Smotrich, who does use messianic discourse—Ben Gvir doesn’t even have that kind of discourse—in Smotrich’s case, where there is such discourse, in my opinion it’s discourse aimed at internal camp justifications. In the security sphere, he is not driven primarily by those considerations.
[Speaker A] He’s not driven?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t think what drives Ben Gvir and Smotrich is
[Speaker A] setting up Netzarim, Rafah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Absolutely not. They think Netzarim and Rafah should be established because they think only that way there will also be security. You can agree, you can disagree, it doesn’t matter. Of course it also integrates for them with Greater Land of Israel and the need to conquer it and hold onto it. That’s all fine. I agree. But in my opinion that’s a justification. If they thought it would be harmful from a security standpoint, they would not do it. Really? Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. I can see—Smotrich I don’t know personally, but I know many of his supporters, and with his supporters I speak, and what…
[Speaker A] A halakhic transgression if you now had to take…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not a halakhic transgression. Why not? Because where there is danger to life, you can retreat. Of course you can. What do you mean? That’s exactly the point. Just because something is forbidden doesn’t mean you never do it. Lots of things are forbidden. You know, we put up with Sabbath desecration too, we put up with many things. That’s part of reality. They don’t like it. I don’t like it either, it doesn’t matter, but it’s part of reality. We put up with lots of things. The discourse, many times—the messianic discourse and all that—is an internal discourse, and they always stick microphones in their faces, bring it outside, because there supposedly the real things are exposed. In my opinion, the real things are precisely what they say outside. Inside they say that in order to educate the kids, because twenty-year-olds need to be told that we are doing the word of God in every matter and commandments and transgressions and of course—and to give them some motivation to act and so on. So that’s the discourse that gives young people motivation. Most people—again, I don’t know them personally, so it’s hard for me to say this absolutely—but the supporters I know, and I talk with the supporters. It’s unequivocal. Unequivocal. Most of them talk about security considerations, period.
[Speaker A] In the public I agree too. In the public I hear that. I’m saying in the public, in the Religious Zionist public, there’s much less. Yes, yes, yes. Also among Smotrich’s supporters, as you go up the pyramid, the messianic outlook and the religious zealotry in the context of Religious Zionism grow exponentially.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The religious zealotry and the messianic outlook do exist.
[Speaker A] No, but I’m saying the higher you go—among the rabbis, really everyone in the front line today; among the politicians, almost all of them; and in the public, as you go down the pyramid, it’s less.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but what I want to say is that even if you go up the pyramid and the percentage of messianic people rises, even those messianic people do not make all of their decisions based on messianic considerations. They take security considerations very much into account—mainly, in my opinion—even at the top of the pyramid. Messianic discourse is discourse for certain needs. Depends on the matter.
[Speaker A] Because look, for example, in the regime coup, in the end when you peel that onion, the motivation was the same motivation there too—a messianic, dangerous motivation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At least. There too I disagree. Why? I disagree. By the way, regarding the regime coup, in general, in my view there’s some bug in the discourse there too, and it’s true everywhere. Enough—I’ll give you an example. Ads were published for and against the reform, okay? Those who supported the reform—I don’t like “coup,” I say “reform”—those who supported the reform said: look, true, they went too far, but reform is necessary. Right? Those who opposed said: look, true, reform is needed, there are things that need changing, but they went too far. Which means they’re saying the same thing. They’re saying the same thing. The whole question is whether you emphasize the half-full glass or the half-empty glass. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t differences of degree—of course there are. But everyone agrees a correction has to be made, almost everyone agrees a correction has to be made, and everyone agrees the corrections being made go too far. Now if we were willing to speak in that more complex language, then it seems to me we would get to agreements from both sides pretty quickly overall.
[Speaker A] And both sides don’t agree to that. I don’t agree. I’ll tell you why I don’t agree. Because the problem with what they did and are still doing is not what they do, it’s also why they do it. You understand? You can’t ignore the why. Meaning, when they came, for example, at the President’s Residence and said, tell us what you think the protest movement for and against thinks about various things, I said: guys, in the end I know where they’re aiming, they told me where they’re aiming. And when I have both the means and the intention, why would I take the risk? You understand? This isn’t Gideon Sa’ar making a change in the committee for selecting judges—nobody suspected him of wanting to change the democratic structure of Israel. He’s a more conservative person, more right-wing, he had an idea about how to reshape the committee. You didn’t see people going out into the streets. But when Rothman tells you, or Smotrich tells you at the edge, or if he doesn’t say it his rabbi says where he’s aiming, then why would you reach some kind of compromise with him? Do you understand? The problem is first of all where you’re steering the ship, and then whether I’ll help you get there along the way. It’s always like someone comes and tells you, listen, I’m basically planning to murder you, now just open the door. What does “open the door” mean? You see, I don’t have anything on me. So I’ll let you into the house and then, you know what, if I see a little knife that’s not my real fear—and that’s why it’s very dangerous to compromise with them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then I’ll tell you: it’s dangerous to compromise with people you disagree with and who are going in an extreme direction—but it’s also very dangerous not to compromise. A great deal of the extremism on that side stems from the extremism on the other side. A great deal. Very much.
[Speaker A] No, that’s not true. Very much.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m telling you, I’m in very intensive dialogue with both sides.
[Speaker A] But for them it’s a cast-in-concrete ideology, it has nothing to do with me, it’s not
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] connected to me.
[Speaker A] No, but it’s not connected to me. He wants a state of Jewish law and he wants everyone to repent because otherwise his messiah won’t come. It’s not connected to me; it’s not a reaction.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He wants that—and I also want everyone to repent, I also want a state of Jewish law. I just don’t want it here and now, and I also don’t want to force it on anyone. Now even if he wants those things, he understands where he lives, and he would compromise on an intermediate model. Absolutely.
[Speaker A] On the way there. Yes. But why should I give him that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Listen, if you don’t give it to him, then you won’t give it to him, and he’ll do it by force. That’s exactly the point. You understand? There’s a religious outlook here, from both sides.
[Speaker A] No, my outlook is not religious.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My outlook is religious.
[Speaker A] He tells me, listen, no, give me 20 percent of my desires in hand, and another 15 years—we sat with some roundtable with people who had worked at Kohelet and worked here and worked there—and he told me basically, listen, it doesn’t matter at all. I’ll take 10 percent, I’ll take 20 percent, we’ll fix this here, fix that there, in another 20 years we’ll be even more [powerful], and then we’ll do what we want. You won’t beat us.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, the point is this.
[Speaker A] Israel Zeira also told us in the field: you’ll disappear from here, it’s only a matter of time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, maybe that’s his demographic assessment, so what can you do—but unfortunately there is something to that demography.
[Speaker A] No problem, that’s exactly why I shouldn’t let them advance; I need to go on the offensive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re mistaken, because when you go on the offensive, they advance more. How? You go on the offensive, so if you manage to conduct a sensible discourse with both sides. But how can you talk to them
[Speaker A] sensibly with a person who tells me he knows what God wants? He knows. And by the way, that’s outrageous heresy.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s a different discussion, though.
[Speaker A] What outrageous heresy that is—“do not take the name of God in vain.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] None of them will tell you that he’s carrying out the regime coup because he knows what God wants. No. He has a model for how the state should be run; he wants to bring it to a place of a religious state or something like that, fine. But he doesn’t intend to force anyone—almost none of them intends to force anyone, that I know.
[Speaker A] Up to the point—up to the point where he has no choice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no point. They don’t intend to force, they don’t intend to force—that’s clear. I talk to people, I know them. What do you mean, “force”?
[Speaker A] What they’re doing now is coercion, obviously it’s coercion. What do you mean? Taking hundreds of millions from my pocket to fund Torah nuclei that will enter cities like Beit She’an or Ofakim or places like that and bring people to repentance with our money—that’s not coercion? True, he’s not coming and chaining people in handcuffs, but obviously that’s coercion, and it’ll only get worse because when the messiah doesn’t come by then, he’ll come into my house too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I—this is part of the discourse I can’t manage to conduct. That is, you don’t perceive reality correctly. You perceive it like they do. You too are looking at the demons behind reality, not at reality. If you look at reality, everyone has an ideal model. You also have an ideal model. I don’t know if you personally, but never mind—you as a type. It’s not connected to him. Yes, it is connected to him, what do you mean it’s not? Wait, wait, wait. You want a secular state, right? Not to make him secular—you want a secular state, right?
[Speaker A] I don’t want one—we established a secular state.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, what do you mean established or didn’t establish, yes established—that’s what you want, okay? So you also have a model, right? You understand that he won’t like that model, right? A secular state. So you understand that if he follows your mode of thinking, he’ll say: wait a second, I know what his rabbis—in quotation marks—say; they want a secular state. If we give them a little reform now, tomorrow morning they’ll make all of us secular. You understand that this is exactly the same discourse from both sides.
[Speaker A] That’s not right, Michael, you’re mistaken, and I’ll tell you why you’re mistaken. Because the difference is that his model binds me to him, and my model doesn’t bind him to me. Yes it does. Absolutely not, absolutely not. The redemption he envisions won’t come if I don’t repent. I can live as a full liberal pluralist person, and he, I don’t know, can wrap himself in a million garments. The bonding is only one-sided—that’s the danger.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s one of the biggest mistakes of the side you represent in this discourse, one of the biggest mistakes. And this mistake started with Aharon Barak, and I’m telling you this as someone who wants you to succeed. I constantly have friends, brothers-in-arms, that I talk to—and you, I assume, are connected there too, right? I’m going crazy, banging my head against the wall, unable to cross this Rubicon, to penetrate this wall. Meaning, Aharon Barak was sure he had only come to manage the discourse here, to allow people to talk; he wasn’t a side in the matter at all, so he didn’t understand what they wanted from him. But he was a side in the matter, and that’s what he didn’t understand. In reality, he was a side in the matter. And by the way, I agree with him on many things, and a bit also with his critics—I’ve got things this way and that way. Same thing here. When you talk about a secular state, do you know what’s happening today? Meaning, what’s happening now, when the state is no longer all that secular and overall there’s substantial religious representation in the government and so on—what’s happening with prayers in public places? What’s happening with separation in various places, according to people’s wishes? Do you understand that a secular state, in the model that will ultimately be here—or at least that they imagine will ultimately be here—is not a state that lets everyone live however they want? You’re mistaken, really mistaken. You’re looking at it through your own glasses. Try looking at it through their glasses, and you’ll see that in many ways they see it the way you see their takeover in the utopia where there will be a state of Jewish law here.
[Speaker A] No, but look, there’s an axis point here. I’m taking you back to what you said about God and the initial act. There’s an axis point here. It’s not as though the two of us came, there was no state, and now I present my thesis and he presents his thesis, and let’s find some kind of synergy. A state arose with a certain structure, a certain model, certain agreements—what do you mean? So first of all, admit that you want to change things, which Rothman doesn’t admit. Rothman says, what do you want from us.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I say—I argue—it’s not a question of whether I admit it or not. Even if that’s true, so what? If, say, now a majority of the state wants to change something, a significant majority for the sake of the discussion—there’s no holiness in what existed until now, right? We want to change it. There wasn’t a constitution until a certain point; they wanted to make a constitution—that’s also a change, isn’t it? Are changes forbidden? If the majority of the public agrees, through the accepted mechanisms, then changes are made. There’s no holiness to whoever founded the state and whatever he wanted. Today we stand on our own. Today we’re not rabbis and Ben-Gurion. No, that’s only half true.
[Speaker A] Why? Why is that only half true? Because in the end, there’s the question of why you got a state here in the first place and what you committed to. It’s only half true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, what I committed to? There’s a state here today. We’re here.
[Speaker A] Part of the agreement, part of what we received here—you know, in the partition plan and in the UN recognition of the state—was that this state is a democratic state, committed to human rights, the UN bill of rights, and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The state is a democratic state and committed to human rights in any case.
[Speaker A] Not in any case.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case. Yes. No one—almost no one—argues about that.
[Speaker A] Do you think that if today you gave the keys to Rabbi Dov Lior, this state would be democratic?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The state would be democratic and there would be human rights, of course, of course—with argument… no, not only for Jews. But we’d have arguments over where the line passes. But yes—don’t engage in excessive demonization. And I’ll say again: I’m sharply opposed to Dov Lior and to Smotrich and to all of them. I think people engage in excessive demonization of them, and that’s a mistake. It’s a mistake because the protest is shooting itself in the foot because of this. I try to convince people: look, I’m dying for this government to fall, I’m dying for it—and with your own hands you’re going to cause that not to happen. With your own hands you’re going to cause it so that after the elections are moved up, our wet dream will come true: this government will be elected again.
[Speaker A] Leave that aside—but you’re talking to me now about the elections. I’m talking to you about twenty years from now, thirty years from now, fifty years from now.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s an example—what do you mean, an example?
[Speaker A] I’m telling you… I think this demon has to be put back in the bottle, because otherwise I’m really just buying time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the demon is here. If you try to put it back in the bottle, you’ll only get hit harder.
[Speaker A] I can put it back in the bottle. Okay. I’ll stop funding things that are anti-democratic. I’ll stop funding things that are misogynistic.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Until the stage where the majority stops funding you.
[Speaker A] But it can’t.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why can’t it? It absolutely can.
[Speaker A] But this plague broke out in the first place because they let it break out, because they let it break out.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So again, exactly the same conception. You know, it’s really… the discourse is really pious from both directions. It’s… I can’t break through it. Meaning, it kills me, because I feel that I really don’t belong to either of the two churches. I really understand…
[Speaker A] No, you do belong, in the end, in the end…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m a religious person. But within these struggles, on most things I’m with you, not with them. On most things.
[Speaker A] But you’re not afraid of the reality that I…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m afraid…
[Speaker A] …am afraid of.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m afraid of it…
[Speaker A] …very much, more than you are.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? You said earlier—I also want there to be a state of Jewish law here. True. But my model for a state of Jewish law isn’t Dov Lior’s; it’s something completely different. It doesn’t matter, I have no model. No, it doesn’t matter—but I’m saying, on most of the issues currently under dispute, I’m with you and not with them. And a large part of my distress, of my frustration, is that your desires and mine will not be realized because it’s impossible to conduct discourse here. You want to put the demon back in the bottle. You can’t engineer reality—it’s impossible. The communists tried to do that, human engineering, social engineering they call it. It’s a very dangerous act.
[Speaker A] No, God forbid, I’m not saying… don’t twist my words… I’m not saying that, God forbid, I’m now going to do reeducation for Hardali Kookists—that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that a state can ultimately decide where it puts its resources. And if the State of Israel is funding, with billions for example, Haredi post-Zionist, misogynistic, racist education… every penny should be stopped. Good. So I can have a significant influence that way. Why? Because there will be fewer children…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m in favor of that. On this I’m completely with you.
[Speaker A] No, that’s what I’m talking about. And the same, by the way, with the Hardalim. If now a teacher in a school funded by the state calls for… I don’t know what… a state of Jewish law, that undermines democracy and that person should get no money from the state. Just as, by the way, if a left-wing teacher called for… I don’t know what… abolishing Israel’s Jewish identity, that person also shouldn’t get a shekel from the state.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so here, here we can discuss it. But I fully agree with stopping budgets. I’m not saying we shouldn’t fight for our ideas. But first, you have to understand who is standing opposite us. You know, I’ll give you…
[Speaker A] I understand. I think I understand pretty well.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think you don’t understand. And many… learning from writings and lessons is very problematic. You know, if you learn the Palestinians’ positions from their writings and speeches, you’ll understand that there’s no chance of ever reaching an agreement with them.
[Speaker A] No, but I also spoke, I sat…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I… and I say that I actually do hang on to hope that at some stage we’ll reach something—maybe not with Hamas, but something else. Because I’m not willing to learn from their writings and words. Because I understand that there’s something in reality that restrains all those people with the writings. There’s something strong in reality. There’s a certain pragmatism, and Judaism is overall pragmatic; Haredism is even more so.
[Speaker A] But this mutation, this mutation… you’re right in general, but this mutation…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Haredism is the father of pragmatists, and the Hardalim are a tiny minority that just…
[Speaker A] …just has great influence. By the way, you know that I always… people talk to me about demography, and I say: guys, the Haredim are excellent potential partners. They’re super pragmatic. It’s a matter of disconnecting from below, from the schools. The Hardalim are much more frightening. True, but the Hardalim are a very small group. But it’s growing. Twenty-seven percent of the religious today define themselves as Hardali, and the numbers are growing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Twenty-seven percent of that group is a very small number. Yes, four percent of the state. Exactly. That’s not an existential threat to our society. It is an existential threat because they receive a certain amount of power, and I’m telling you again: part of the power they get is because of the very black-and-white opposition to them. Why? I don’t understand—why?
[Speaker A] If now there’s a religious person from Givat Shmuel or from Ra’anana or from Jerusalem who doesn’t identify with the Hardalim—when Radman and his friends wage an all-out war against them, okay, let me put quotation marks here for a moment—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why does that bring you closer to them?
[Speaker A] So I’m telling you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that I can’t recruit people to the third path, and they tell me, “Look at the government’s opponents. We absolutely refuse to be identified with such a move.” Lots of religious people I talk to. These people are going after Bibi only because of Radman.
[Speaker A] That’s their responsibility, but you know, many times it’s because…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They feel he’s being hit, supposedly, and then they say, no, we have to be on the defensive now, we mustn’t compromise—
[Speaker A] Exactly what you said earlier. Fine, but these spineless people—it’s like I sat in a meeting with some Hardali-slash-Religious-Zionist people in one of the settlements, okay, without naming it so it won’t be awkward. Serious people, from a place they evacuated and then re-established. And they told me this about the hostages. They said to me, “Listen, the way you talk and all that—it pushed us away from the hostages.” I said, “What do you mean I pushed you away? Does that help you sleep at night? If it’s not good for you to demonstrate with me, then go demonstrate somewhere else for the hostages. How does that give you legitimacy not to demonstrate at all?” So same thing. If they oppose the government, what do they care what I do against the government? Let them oppose the government in their own way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s exactly the point. I completely agree with you. But my claim is to both sides: we’re people. People are driven by all kinds of reasons, not only by logic. Mostly not by logic. True. And they have this psychology or that psychology, this influence or that psychological influence. Now, anyone who wants to act in reality has to take those influences into account, even if they’re not logical. And if you take a path that distances people from joining you, even if it’s not logical, then first of all it’s not advisable to do it. I agree. And therefore—I’m saying, look, the point is this: I once spoke about a kind of vicious circle that imprisons us in public discourse. Look, no one listens to the other side. They don’t really listen to the other side. Even those who say they listen don’t listen. Meaning, usually—again, there are exceptions—but usually. Now, what happens is, if you don’t listen, then basically the other side has no arguments because you haven’t heard them, so there are no arguments. So you’re completely right, because all the arguments are on your side. So then why does he hold a different position? After all, he has no arguments. So either he’s an idiot or he’s evil. One of the two, right? Meaning, either he’s an idiot or he’s evil. Now, if he’s an idiot or evil, then I have nothing to listen to, because he’s an idiot or evil. “Messianic,” for me at the moment, falls under the category of evil, okay? So I have nothing to listen to—he has no arguments. Do you understand that this is a self-reinforcing circle? And what happens as a result is that we can’t conduct discourse. We can’t conduct discourse and we’re left with the stereotypes: these are messianic and dangerous and this and that and so on—which is true to some degree and very untrue in many other ways, despite all my opposition to them. And the other side is exactly the same. “These are the religion of the hostages,” and all kinds of things like that, and they’re willing to sacrifice everything for it. You don’t hear the arguments—there are arguments too. Meaning, listen. Now I, for example, on the issue of the hostages—without messianism and without anything—I won’t join a demonstration for the hostages at all. I won’t join. Even though I’m dying for them to come back, of course—everyone is dying for them to come back, everyone, including Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. But what about the price? Exactly. And therefore there’s an argument over the price, and it’s a completely legitimate argument. But they’re painted as people who don’t care about the hostages. I agree.
[Speaker A] But how dangerous is that? What do you mean? I, for example, am very ambivalent about dialogue circles. Because I say, guys, when people ask me to come to a dialogue circle or to speak, I say the question is with whom. In my view, I’m very permissive about where I draw the line—you understand what I mean? Meaning, not every religious person is messianic, and not every Religious Zionist, not even every Hardali. I ask, who are your rabbis, what are your worldviews, what values do you hold—and then I decide whether to sit with you or not. Because I know that with Smotrich I have nothing to talk about, because I won’t move him one centimeter. I truly can’t talk with him, and I really also won’t listen to him because I know what his agenda is, and I’m not willing to accept it and not willing…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m telling you from my own personal experience—a mirror image. I talk a lot with people from the other side.
[Speaker A] Smotrich doesn’t need to sit with me, by the way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? I often…
[Speaker A] Because I have nothing with him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I have something with you.
[Speaker A] You’re great, that’s why I’m sitting with you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, but that’s exactly the point. There are things of mine that I feel you’re not listening to. Not that you’re not listening—you surely have good intentions—but it doesn’t penetrate. It doesn’t penetrate you. And for me this is an experience from another world. I’ve been accumulating this for months already and I’m going crazy from it. I’m going crazy from it because I feel that I am in his discourse. I am in his discourse. I just can’t penetrate him. I can’t explain to him—look, I, for example, on the issue of the hostages and the war, am completely with the government. Completely.
[Speaker A] That I accept, here—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m giving you an example—that I accept. And I’m totally excluded in every area of religion and state. That I accept. It’s not dichotomous. No, you accept it, but many others don’t accept it, because there’s this picture that the government is black, period. And that’s a disaster; it doesn’t manage to advance the matter.
[Speaker A] I agree. I think the liberal public in Israel… in order really to stop this crazy deterioration…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …is creating one church against the opposing church.
[Speaker A] In order to stop this crazy deterioration, it has to look for the liberal or semi-liberal shades within the publics that frighten it today. It has to find them among the Haredim, it has to find them among the religious, it has to find them among the right-wingers. There is an alliance. The whole Israeli public, as you said.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And it also has to see, with a broader spectrum, the public that opposes it.
[Speaker A] Right, that’s what I said.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end, not just find others—you also have to understand their logic, not stereotypes. The stereotypes that it’s all messianism and they’re not even… that’s a stereotype.
[Speaker A] But you have to be very, very careful. In the end, the wisdom is whether we know how to draw the line with a surgeon’s knife at the maximal point—where Barak really met the real Hardali wall, which truly ideologically cannot be moved—then we’ve won in that context. And here, exactly as you say about the third path, I say to the liberals: there needs to be a values-based liberal alliance here that sets aside for a moment the size of the kippah and the size of the sidelocks, and by the way also whether you speak Hebrew or Arabic, and whether you’re Muslim or not. There needs to be a broad liberal alliance. And here, I agree, the liberal public really needs to correct itself. I’ll give you the best example: Haredi women. Women’s rights organizations often crucify liberal Haredi women. Why? Because they’re not feminists in the shade that women’s organizations require, so to speak. But they are liberal, and they are feminist within their own world of concepts. So that I agree we need to take on. But where is the line, and do you also bring Smotrich into the room? Smotrich as an example.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying that if we managed to draw a more complex picture of the world, then even if there were a core of one percent Smotriches and Rabbi Tau and people like that—fine, let that one percent remain there, and everyone else will conduct themselves in peace, and it won’t matter.
[Speaker A] What’s happening today is that there’s radicalization among the religious too, same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, on both sides.
[Speaker A] No, they also don’t need all the time—you know, I see this among Haredim too and also among Religious Zionists—there’s a sort of constant sense of persecution. Because when I come to that settlement in the West Bank and talk with them for three hours, they’re constantly in this victimhood mode of “you’re painting all of us with the same brush.” And I say, no—here I am with you. With you I’m sitting. Him I’m painting that way. Meaning, they too have entered some sort of mold where if you dirty me, you dirty him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It exists on both sides. Fine, true. And therefore I’m saying: once there are more shades on the ground, then even if some people are in the pure black or pure white shade, they’ll be a negligible minority, it won’t matter much. And therefore, in my view, this is an enormously important mission and challenge—and it’s not dangerous, it’s important, what you’re doing.
[Speaker A] No, it’s very important, assuming people see…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even within that core, to understand: there are arguments too. It’s not only messianism and only that. There are arguments—you can argue with them, accept them, reject them. There is also messianism in the story, but there are arguments too. And if we see that, we’ll be able to address the arguments themselves and not the slogans: that one is messianic and that one is left-wing and that one is this and that one is that. Just look at the arguments.
[Speaker A] By the way, here we need to go back one floor, simply—before the arguments and before everything—to values. Meaning, I often deal with all kinds of letters all the time—unity letters, this letter, that letter. I always say: I sign with people who tell me they respect the laws of the State of Israel and that they believe in a Jewish and democratic state. If everyone who signs commits to that, I’m willing to sign with them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but you know what “a Jewish and democratic state” means? You’ll argue about that.
[Speaker A] No, because the extreme Hardali rabbis say from the outset: no, democracy doesn’t work.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll tell you that this is a Jewish and democratic state, but you know—there’s ethnic democracy.
[Speaker A] No, democracy doesn’t work, democracy doesn’t work. Rabbi Ginsburgh said we’ve exhausted that event. Rabbi Ginsburgh is just… no, Rabbi Dov Lior too, and others. He’s not some eccentric, by the way. He has a growing audience of believers.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure of that. That’s a fringe of hilltop youth, I don’t know what. These people do believe in a Jewish and democratic state, at least for now. I’m not talking about the utopia where everyone will be pious, okay? Right now, almost all of them—it’s a Jewish and democratic state. The question is: what counts as a Jewish state, and does that encroach on the democratic part or not? Where is the line? Because in some way it always encroaches. The Law of Return also encroaches on a democratic state in a certain sense. Now the question is how much you’re willing to let it encroach, because there’s a certain tension between these two poles. So you’re painting it too black and white. Meaning, anyone who believes in a Jewish and democratic state, I’ll sign with him? Everyone, at the level of words, will tell you: we sign on to Jewish and democratic. The question is what Jewish and democratic means.
[Speaker A] But in the end I’m asking you—you know that person on the edge who says “state of Jewish law,” that’s not Jewish and democratic.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. What’s at the edge isn’t interesting. At the edge, when it happens and a majority of the public… but I—
[Speaker A] —don’t want to cooperate with him and advance him toward his goals. No problem. But what does he want now? Right now he wants Jewish and democratic. What his utopia is—everyone has utopias. It’s not our task to worry about that. Each person’s task is to make sure he doesn’t become a negligible minority, that he too will be here. And we’ll continue to struggle, each one with his utopias—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —and overall create something within which we can argue. By the way, I have no problem with people for whom that is the utopia, if they’re passive too. I have a problem with people for whom that is the utopia and they’re active—you understand what I mean? That’s also why I don’t like the word “messianic,” by the way. I always say “messianic zealots.” Because a person who believes in the messiah passively and says, you know, like in exile… No, messianism means acting. Exactly. I’m talking about those who think they know how to bring the messiah and what sequence of actions will bring him—they’re frightening. So I’m saying, there’s tremendous demonization, tremendous attachment to slogans and headlines, and I feel we’re losing the shades. And losing the shades is not a value in the sense of be tolerant, be nice, be enlightened. That’s not what I mean. This is what is leading us into our troubles. Meaning, this will solve the problems—it’s not only the value problem. Because when you see the shades, you…
[Speaker A] It’s a mechanism for producing pragmatic solutions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. And not all the utopias will fuse together.
[Speaker A] Last question to wrap up: Haredim and Religious Zionism in the context of the draft. How did we get to this situation? How did we get to a situation where the representatives of Religious Zionism—which really is a serving, fighting, sacrificing sector, and so on—cooperate with criminal draft-dodging?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, I talk with people. First of all, more and more of the public are genuinely rebelling against this. Smotrich is losing some electorate over this issue. By the way, apparently not all that much, if I understand correctly—not that he had all that much to begin with. Part of it, in my opinion, comes from what I said earlier. Smotrich himself also says—and by the way, I don’t believe him, but this is what he says—he says, look, we have to keep the government standing because otherwise we won’t win the war, we won’t bring back the hostages, I don’t know, all those things. And therefore, yes, the price is that we’ll give in to the Haredim, transfer money to them, give in to them on the draft, or make some compromise or another. I don’t believe him. He gives in to them because of an inferiority complex toward the Haredim, because basically, at root, he identifies with them. It’s not just tactics, because the fact is that they break up the coalition over the draft against their own interests, because no other coalition will give them more. And Smotrich’s rabbis don’t break—
[Speaker A] The approach you mentioned earlier with the Haredim, that approach of “leave it, it’ll be fine.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’ll happen in another six months, not in another twenty years. And Smotrich’s rabbis don’t break the coalition in favor of yes to the draft. Right? Meaning, there’s a certain asymmetry here, and the reason is that Smotrich’s rabbis are also Haredi—they identify with the Haredim. That’s why that cooperation is created there. And the more the public understands this, the more Smotrich will lose electorate. But what interferes with this process is that the public believes that Smotrich is—Smotrich as a model too—the solution for advancing right-wingness, the war, I don’t know, various interests, settlement, I don’t know exactly what. And at that price they’re willing to give up on Haredi service and everything else, because that’s the price. But if you tell them, look, you can be that way without giving in to the Haredim—let’s draw the shades, let’s separate for a moment…
[Speaker A] As if there were an alternative security discourse that says both and.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Let’s separate the shades for a moment. In this area you’re with him; in this area you’re not with him. So let’s see.
[Speaker A] There aren’t endless… one of the problems is that in bloc politics there aren’t endless options. It’s either you go with us and this is what you get, or you go with them and this is what you get—these kinds of bundles.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying, if there were, say, a right-wing party like Smotrich on war policy and settlement and all that…
[Speaker A] Which is basically what Bennett says.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, although his makeup isn’t Smotrich-like even on that plane. But on the religious plane he’s more liberal, more modern, he’s a democrat, everything’s fine. I think that party could get a lot of votes—as long as people are convinced it will really advance right-wing matters like Smotrich. And I think that’s Bennett’s real problem in taking votes from the right, because they don’t really believe he’ll advance right-wing policy. And Liberman—they don’t believe him on religion. Exactly. A bit more, but I’m not sure about that either. And so that’s part of Bennett’s problem in getting religious votes. Religious votes he doesn’t get. Meaning, he gets lots of votes from other places; religious votes he doesn’t get.
[Speaker A] Yes, that’s a whole discussion about what exactly is right-wing and security-minded in this approach. In the end, it’s not security.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it reflects the processes themselves, leave politics aside. It reflects the processes. Meaning, if we manage to separate these baskets that everyone has to answer… bundles, exactly. A “yes” answer on ten questions and he answered “no” on… no, on this question I answer yes, on this question I answer no. I want to see that.
[Speaker A] And on the other hand, you also have to know how to be a little pragmatic, because otherwise you get a lot of tiny fragmented parties.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, in the end you do pragmatism. In realpolitik you have to be pragmatic. But first of all, let the thinking be like that. After that, in politics, what you do—you have to see what to do. And what happens today is that because everything is camp-based, Smotrich doesn’t lose votes. He doesn’t lose votes even though everyone is angry with him on the issue of the draft, because they trust him to be the one who will advance these processes.
[Speaker A] And by the way, this whole story with the Haredim letting themselves not enlist during wartime is also insane heresy.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Terrible. I wrote a halakhic responsum on it saying that from the standpoint of Jewish law it’s simply ridiculous. An absolute obligation. It’s not…
[Speaker A] Not only an obligation—they themselves don’t even bother anymore to justify it, because even those who don’t study, from their perspective…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and they themselves give the orders to go to war, and they issue emergency call-up orders, and they make the decision. It’s crazy. It’s crazy.
[Speaker A] It’s simply—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, it really is inconceivable.
[Speaker A] Michael, thank you very much. We’re out of time. Maybe we’ll invite you for another one, because there were lots of topics we didn’t get to. Thank you.
