Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham: The Source of Morality in God, Absolute Values, and Halakha vs. Conscience — The Netanel Abraham Podcast

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t start from God and arrive at morality; I start from morality and arrive at God. But God here means some authoritative source that legislates the moral law, and we are basically obligated to obey His legislation, His command. Take an extreme example: Nazis. They killed Jews, Roma, homosexuals, whatever you want. They had to justify to themselves why they were killing those people. Now, those were crazy justifications, obviously unacceptable. But the very fact that they needed justifications means that they too recognized the prohibition against murder. Himmler, I think, said something like this — that he drank a lot of wine before watching those shootings into the pit, the mass shooting of Jews into the pit. Because even he understood, deep down, that there was something blatantly anti-moral here. There are anti-moral legal rulings: killing Amalekite babies, a mamzer being forbidden to marry — what are they guilty of, that their father and mother did what they did? I know this because my conscience tells me that it’s forbidden. So when the Torah says something else, as far as I’m concerned that’s a conflict. It’s not that I learn morality from it. On the contrary — everything I do with the Torah in moral contexts is to try to reconcile everything there that doesn’t fit with my moral feelings. Friends, just before we get into this chapter, I…

[Speaker B] want to stop and ask you for something. The biggest contribution you can make is to hit the subscribe button, and that way, thanks to you, we’ll keep bringing you the most interesting guests, the most interesting conversations, every single week. So that’s my only request to you. Leave a like, subscribe to the channel, and let’s continue with this episode. Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham, welcome.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Glad to be here.

[Speaker B] Thank you very much. I want us to start with: what is morality, in the first place?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At the most basic level, it’s simply a system of norms or rules that obligates us in our relations with others, you could say — something like that.

[Speaker B] A system of rules — what does that mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Behavioral instructions. What you may do, what you may not do, what is appropriate to do in different situations. It has various applications, but the rules themselves are something more abstract and broader. Say there’s a rule to do good. What does “good” mean? To make people better off — a bit more defined. Okay, what does that mean? In one situation it will tell you one thing, in another situation something else. It’s a very general question, and a difficult one.

[Speaker B] Right. So from here I want us to dive into the source of morality. I’ve heard you speak a lot, debating various people, about the source of morality. So where does this morality come from?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, here we really get into a question that requires me to go back to your first question after all. I need to complete at least one more aspect in order to move on to this one. The system of rules that we call morality — you might understand it to mean a set of behaviors. That is, in this situation you should behave this way, in another situation you should behave differently. And whoever behaves that way is behaving morally. But that’s not enough. Because according to that principle or idea, even a sheep is moral, since overall it does good, doesn’t harm anyone, it’s docile, it’s nice, everything is fine. So what’s missing there? What’s missing is the decision to behave morally, because it behaves that way because that’s its nature; it didn’t decide to behave that way. And that kind of decision is also not enough, because the decision also has to be made מתוך מחויבות לצו המוסרי — at least that’s what Kant taught us, and I agree with him. That is, if I behave morally but not מתוך מחויבות לצו המוסרי, that is not moral behavior. It can be nice behavior, convenient behavior; a person who behaves that way is of course pleasant to live around. But a moral person is something beyond that. It means a person who derives that behavior from his obligation to the moral command, the categorical imperative in Kant’s language. Why was it important for me to complete the previous question this way? Because that really raises the question: okay, so there’s an obligation to a command — who is the commander? Why is there an obligation toward him? If you’re saying it’s just a set of behaviors, okay, then it could just be a descriptive matter. You’re describing how I behave. You can also describe how the sheep behaves. About the sheep, I wouldn’t ask to whom it is obligated and who legislated the command to which it is obligated. But with respect to human beings, when we talk about morality, we demand not only a certain pattern of behavior, but also that the motivation to behave that way is part of our moral judgment. When I judge you morally, it matters to me not only what you do but also why you do it. If, for example, you help everyone in need, everyone who needs help, but only in order to get publicity and honor, then the behavior is pleasant and convenient, everybody benefits, it’s good that you’re here helping — all fine — but I would still not judge you…

[Speaker B] Right, not just the results.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not just the results — not even just the action. The action that leads to results is the moral action; the result is only a byproduct. I’m saying it’s not even only the action, but also the motivations by virtue of which I act that way. And that brings us to your second question: if there really is some command here, and my obligation to the command is a condition for seeing my behavior as moral behavior, then the question arises: okay, where does that command come from? Why am I obligated to this commander? And my answer is: God. But God not necessarily in the particular Jewish sense, or the Christian one if I were Christian — it doesn’t matter. I’m not talking about Him דווקא in religious terms, but in some broader philosophical sense. This God could be agreed upon between me and a Christian, or even maybe between me and a pagan. It doesn’t matter. As far as this argument goes, God doesn’t have to be the one who gave the Torah at Sinai, or who wants me to put on phylacteries, or wants me to turn the other cheek, or anything else. Rather, God is some authoritative source that legislates the moral law, and we are basically obligated to obey His legislation, His command. So in that general definition, there has to be some factor like that standing at the base of this system of laws. I call that factor God, but I could also call Him “Oysheleh” — it makes no difference.

[Speaker B] You said here that this is not necessarily the particular God of Judaism, Christianity, or other religions. So if it’s not that God — the one each religion claims to know what He says — then how do we know what He commands morally?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a good question. I think first of all, as a matter of fact, when I look at myself and also at others, I just know. Like, how do I know that my eyes are reflecting a door here? I know. You’ll say maybe they’re deceiving me? Could be, but I don’t think so. If I see a door here, I assume there’s a door here. A person has some sense of whether what he’s experiencing is right or whether it’s just some kind of illusion. A skeptic can always come and ask: how do you know? Maybe even your thinking that it’s not an illusion is part of the illusion. True, that’s possible. I have no answer to skeptical questions of that type, but they can attack anything, not just morality and not just religious belief, but anything. So in that sense, since I find within myself the moral command, the obligation to the moral command, and also the content of the command, I assume there is someone who legislated it and demands that I obey or behave accordingly. And in that sense, I think moral obligation is one of the ways to become convinced of God’s existence. That is, I don’t start from God and get to morality; I start from morality and get to God. Otherwise, I simply find within myself an obligation. If there were no such God in the background, I know of no other justification for that obligation, and so I have one of two options: either to say that this obligation is an illusion — that it’s simply not true, that it was just planted in me in the course of evolutionary processes or whatever — or to say no, apparently there is something in the background that gives this obligation validity. To me, the second option seems right. Some people accuse this argument of pragmatism. You know, David Hume said there’s a fallacy in moving from “is” to “ought.” Sometimes people call it the naturalistic fallacy. That is, you move from facts to what ought to be, from facts to morality. And he says that’s an invalid argument; factual premises alone cannot yield a normative, moral judgmental conclusion, and so on. Pragmatism is that same fallacy only in the opposite direction: it starts from the ought and derives from it the is. What does that mean? Since I want the world to be moral — it’s nicer to live that way, more pleasant, maybe only because of that can we live at all — so I invent God in order to give morality validity. That really means I start from the ought, from the fact that there should be morality, and derive from that the is, the existence of God. I do not mean that argument. In my opinion, such an argument is a fallacy. That’s pragmatism. In America, pragmatism is taken as a philosophical position; to me, it’s a synonym for a fallacy. I’m talking about something else. I observe within myself that there is implanted in me an obligation to a moral command. I understand that such a command exists. From that I understand — I decode — that behind it there is apparently someone who gives it validity. It’s not because I want morality to exist. “Therefore there is God” — that’s pragmatism. “I think there is morality, therefore there is God” — that’s not pragmatism; that’s already a logical argument.

[Speaker B] So the standard for morality basically comes from some kind of human insight?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. That is, the perception of what is moral and what is not moral — I find that within myself, within my conscience, like every one of us. And I really think it’s fairly universal, even though today it’s very popular to think that morality is subjective and everyone has his own morality and every group has its own morality. That simply doesn’t stand the test of facts. Why not? Because in the end, almost all people agree on almost all moral principles. The arguments are arguments at the margins. And even when there are disagreements, it’s usually not a disagreement about the value itself, but about its application. Take an extreme example: Nazis, who killed Jews, Roma, homosexuals, whoever you like. They had to justify to themselves why they were killing those people. Now, the justifications were insane and obviously unacceptable. But the very fact that they needed justifications means that they too recognized the prohibition against murder. It’s not that for them the prohibition of murder didn’t exist. The application in situations like these looked one way to them, and I disagree with them. I think they were wrong. But this is not a disagreement on the value level, at least not on the central value of the prohibition against murder. Maybe on the margins there are also value dimensions to that dispute, but in essence it’s not a value dispute. If you too thought, for example, that all Jews were plotting to destroy the world and were, I don’t know, harmful figures who had to be eliminated or else we wouldn’t survive, then I too would support killing Jews. So my disagreement with the Nazis, at least with some of them, is factual, not evaluative.

[Speaker B] Because in the end there’s a basic assumption that murder is bad, and they’re just trying to…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And they agree with that. Right. Obviously we all also agree that sometimes there is no choice. In war, you kill enemy soldiers. What can you do? You have to survive. Now if you think Jews are enemy soldiers — that they’re all basically part of some global scheme to destroy the world or take it over or whatever — then I can understand why someone would want to kill Jews. Not because he dismisses the prohibition of murder, but because in his opinion the application in those situations requires overriding the prohibition of murder, or killing those people, just as I think in war I’m allowed to kill my enemies. So even such an extreme dispute is not fundamentally evaluative; it’s factual. On the values, we agree. The fact that — yes — all those stories about Nazis getting drunk before shooting Jews, even Himmler, I think they told that about him, that he drank a lot of wine before watching those shots into the pit, the mass shooting of Jews into the pit, because even he understood deep down that there was something blatantly anti-moral here. He had to overcome that in order to do what he wanted to do. So that means that contrary to popular feeling, morality is pretty widely agreed upon. Almost. The disputes are pretty marginal. There are some here and there, but they’re marginal. And therefore I think that in a certain sense morality is the result of some kind of awareness, not of thinking. Just as I know there’s a door here because I see it, I know that the prohibition “do not murder” is a binding prohibition. I know this not with my eyes but with the eyes of the mind. But it is still a kind of awareness, not thinking. It’s not something I invented out of myself. I experience it in some sense as something in relation to the external world. I simply see that murder is forbidden — not with my eyes, but I grasp that it is forbidden. And in that sense it is a fact, an empirical matter, like seeing that there is a door here. Then I ask myself: who made the door? Exactly the same way I ask myself: who legislated the moral law, and why was this obligation toward it created within me? And this is one possible way to arrive at belief in God. That’s why it’s not pragmatism; it’s observation. Okay?

[Speaker B] Yes. So you basically used the term “laws,” moral laws. Can that be compared, for example, to laws of nature?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In a certain sense, yes. Because the laws of nature, even if you want to, you can’t deviate from them. Right? Moral laws, you can. You can act against the moral law; you can murder. What you cannot do is determine that murder is good. That you cannot do. You can think it, you can fantasize that murder is good, but in that sense, in my opinion, that’s just delusion. So you can act against it. There is some similarity to the laws of nature in that the definition of what is good and bad is not in your hands, just as the laws of nature are not in your hands. Unlike the laws of nature, in relation to morality you can still act immorally; you cannot act un-physically. We don’t have that option.

[Speaker B] Right. A few years ago you had a debate with Professor David Enoch, in “Machloket B’Alma,” where he basically argued that morality consists of truths — you probably…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ethical realism.

[Speaker B] Exactly, ethical realism. Why isn’t that view correct? Why is morality not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s completely correct. I began that debate there — in fact, I agreed to enter that debate only because I saw that we had a shared platform; otherwise there’s no point in talking, since we start from different points. We start from the same point, only he’s an atheist and I’m a believer. But we start from the same point, so there was something to argue about. Not that I convinced him, apparently, and he didn’t convince me either, but the dispute was meaningful because we really were talking on the basis of the same conceptual platform. And he says — and here I completely agree with him — that morality is not subjective. It’s not something society decided, and certainly not something I myself decided. Rather, it has some anchor in reality itself, and when I understand that something is moral, that’s the result of observing objective reality, something outside myself. It’s not some determination I made and could just as easily have made differently, or that society made and could have made differently. No — it’s objective. In that sense we agree. From there on, the dispute began. Because in my opinion, once you see that there is this objective thing that is binding, I ask myself why it is binding, who created it, who stands behind it, who gives it validity. He argued that this question doesn’t trouble him, and therefore he doesn’t think one needs to get to God as the basis of the matter. I think one does. And maybe I can illustrate this from a slightly different angle. I once saw an article by Ari Elon. Ari Elon, the son of the late Judge Elon, became secular; he’s a kind of secular preacher, a secular homilist, but very much within the world of Judaism, engages a lot with Judaism and so on, and he really has an extraordinary gift of expression. I agree less with his arguments, but among other things he made a distinction there between religious people and secular people. He said there is a rabbinic Jew and a sovereign Jew. That’s part of the wordplay he likes. A sovereign Jew is a Jew who legislates his own values, who determines for himself what is good and what is bad. And the rabbinic Jew is one for whom the rabbis or the rabbinic system determines what is good and what is bad. And of course he also meant to say that the sovereign Jew is the ideal figure, the better one, while the rabbinic Jew is not the kind of figure he recommends becoming. And I wondered when I read that what he would say about a sovereign Jew who legislates for himself, with his own hands or his own mind, the value of being a contract killer. He adheres to that value to the very end. Actually, not even a contract killer — just a murderer, someone who simply wants to kill, to thin out the world’s population. He adheres to that value, legislates it in a completely sovereign way for himself, and acts on it devotedly. I assume — I don’t know Ari Elon personally — that he would not see such a person as a moral ideal. So I ask: why not? After all, he legislates his own values. So what can the answer be? True, he legislates his own values — but what values is he legislating? He is legislating bad values. And then I ask: who determines that those values are bad? After all, if I am the source, and he legislates that value, then that means that for him it is the good value. Is there some external standard that is supposed to determine whether that value is good or bad? If you think that this man is not a model figure, not an ideal figure, then maybe you don’t notice it, but you are actually smuggling in a view that says there is some given standard. That standard is not one I legislate. Someone else legislates it, or I don’t know, it exists somewhere. And it determines whether the values you legislated are good or bad. Someone who legislates good values for himself is a person worthy of appreciation. Someone who legislates bad values for himself may be sovereign, but certainly not worthy of appreciation. So that means that beyond the distinction between rabbinic authority and sovereignty, there is another parameter here that he somewhat ignores in that discussion — namely, the standard. Who determines what is good and what is bad? And I ask: what is the source of that standard, who really determines it? Now as an atheist, he cannot give an answer to that question. David Enoch, for example, does give an answer. He says: I don’t know; it’s just a given fact. I don’t know who determined it; it’s just there. Okay? But he understands that there is such a fact — something Ari Elon ignores. And I go one step further and ask myself: okay, there is such a fact, and there is also a world, and I still ask who created it. Just as with the world, I ask who created it, so too with ethical facts, let’s call them that, I ask who created them — meaning, who is it that gave them validity? So they exist there — so what if they exist there? They exist, and I don’t feel like doing that. Who can make a claim against me? What are these facts — are they beings to whom I owe something? There has to be someone behind this who has authority over me, or something like that. And therefore this has to be what I call God.

[Speaker B] So that’s where your statement comes from, that morality has validity only because of God?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes.

[Speaker B] I understand you. So if we follow that line of thought — you mentioned the Nazis, and I want to bring something closer to us: Hamas, for example. A lot of people think they were acting immorally, in our discourse. What do you think about that event?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think they absolutely acted immorally, and for the simple reason that God does not command what they are doing. But on the other hand, they probably think He does command it, and they are mistaken. That is, the fact that I can’t point to it or measure it with physical measuring instruments doesn’t matter, because I’m saying this is a fact. There is an ethical fact. And if there is an ethical fact, then the fact that they think otherwise about it only means they are mistaken; it doesn’t mean they are as right as I am. So what they are doing is blatantly immoral. But when I come to judge them as human beings, not their act, that’s a completely different matter. I definitely think that when judging a person, you should judge him only according to his own view. And I am not a moral pluralist. I think people who think differently from me are wrong, also in the moral context. But on the other hand, if they are honestly mistaken, then I can’t come with claims against them. That’s really what they think — what do you want from them? So when I judge the person, not the act, I need to judge him according to his own view. And therefore, since I don’t know exactly what goes on in the minds of Hamas people — and obviously each one is different — but if we speak about some hypothetical, typological figure, if there is a person who is honestly convinced that God demands that he do such and such, then I can’t blame him. I can kill him in order to defend myself, but I wouldn’t kill him as punishment for being immoral. That is, I judge him according to his own view. The act is blatantly immoral, but the person is a mistaken person. What can I do? Human beings make mistakes. So of course I can and must defend myself, but judge him? I can’t judge him. I might judge him only in this sense: I can ask whether he exercised the full extent of his judgment when he decided that this really is what God wants. Because when you do things that radical, you need to be sufficiently convinced that this really is what God wants in order to carry them out. And maybe on that point I can make claims against them. With all due respect to the sheikh who told you this is what must be done, you should have exercised more judgment and checked how he knows. Is it really true? But again, each case depends on the individual. There may be a person who simply isn’t capable of critically judging the sheikh. He’s not smart enough, he’s too trapped inside that whole framework. Each person has his own constraints. So here there’s a whole spectrum of figures. I cannot pass judgment on any concrete individual as long as I don’t know what’s going on inside him — what his capacities are, his tendencies, what he knew, what he didn’t know. I don’t know. In general, I say: I reject the act; I judge the doer much less, depending on the circumstances.

[Speaker B] So if morality is something real, and every person can determine from reason, from intellect, what is moral and what isn’t, then why are there moral deviations like what we saw with Hamas?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Some of them can come from error. There are errors in physics too, and even in mathematics, which is the most precise thing there is — people sometimes make mistakes, right? They calculate and make a mistake in the calculation. It can happen. So in moral reasoning too, a person can make mistakes. That’s one thing. Second, there are drives and biases. We are not disembodied intellects. We are people made up of many things. Thinking is one factor, one function within us. There are many other functions. We have emotions and drives and pressures and all kinds of environmental influences, all sorts of things. And many times those things overpower our thinking. So an error means the thinking itself was mistaken. The other kinds I mentioned mean the thinking is correct, but even what I myself think is right — I won’t always do it. There are drives, there are inclinations. Each of us, after all — we don’t always do what we ourselves think is right. That’s a philosophical problem in its own right: weakness of will.

[Speaker B] We don’t always act rationally.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or morally. Sometimes it’s very rational, because you make money, for example. So from the standpoint of self-interest, you can justify why you were immoral, because you preferred to make money. So it may be rational but not moral.

[Speaker B] So are there justifications for immoral acts?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean by justifications? Certainly there are no moral justifications. But a person can come and say: with all due respect to morality, making money matters more to me. So he’ll do something immoral if it makes him a lot of money. Are you asking whether I accept that? Usually not. I think not. But a person may make that calculation. You certainly cannot make a moral decision when you have a conflict between a moral value and an interest or a value of another kind. Even in the religious context, say there is a conflict between a moral value and a religious value. There are many such conflicts. The decision between those two cannot be made with moral tools, but it also cannot be made with halakhic tools.

[Speaker B] So what do you do in a case like that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Since when there’s a conflict between two systems, it’s obvious that tools belonging to one of those systems cannot be the tools that decide. So it has to be some tool, or system of tools, that is outside both of them — some much more abstract and larger framework. How exactly to define it, that’s another question. It’s very abstract. But if we are in fact making decisions like that, there must be some system of that sort.

[Speaker B] I understand you. I also want us to touch on this idea that in the modern age we live in now, a lot — and you say this a lot too — we act very much according to emotion, from the gut. You spoke a lot about this around the hostage deal. So why is a person who acts according to emotion not moral?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A person who acts according to emotion is not moral, and he’s also not immoral — he’s simply not an agent. That is, when you judge someone as moral or immoral — we spoke earlier about a sheep — I don’t speak about a sheep in terms of moral or immoral. Moral or immoral applies to what philosophy calls an agent: someone who makes decisions soberly and acts accordingly. Now if a person lets go of the reins, says, fine, I’m not making the decision, I’m just going to let myself flow — I’ll judge him for that. That is, for deciding to let go of the reins. But assuming he is choosing, then yes, I judge him. If he chooses badly, I judge him; if he chooses well, I also judge him. But only a person who chooses is someone I judge at all on the moral plane, whether I determine that he is moral or immoral. A person who acts on the basis of emotion is simply not an agent; he’s a sheep. Now here I need to be a bit more precise, because a lot of people will take what I just said badly. Not that it bothers me if they take it badly — if I think it’s true, it’s true. But once, a student in the yeshiva in Yeruham where I taught came to me. He was seeing a woman, and he was wondering whether to go ahead or not — whether to move toward marriage or let it go. So he asked me: should I follow the heart or the head? The heart says yes, the intellect says no — I don’t remember, maybe the other way around — but he had some dilemma between heart and intellect. I told him: only the intellect. But obviously you need to take what the heart tells you as one of the inputs in the deliberation that the intellect makes. That is, if you have chemistry with her, that’s a very important consideration; or if you don’t have chemistry with her, that’s a very important consideration. But it is not exclusive. The feeling of “yes chemistry” or “no chemistry” is not supposed to make the decision. It is an input. You feed that input into the head, and the head will make the decision. Sometimes there are considerations such that despite chemistry, it’s not advisable; or even if there isn’t chemistry, still it is advisable. So I’m saying decisions are always made here. That doesn’t mean I completely ignore what emotion says; I simply don’t let emotion make the decision. The same is true in the moral sphere. Emotion has an important role in the moral world, and many researchers make the mistake of identifying morality with emotion, but that’s a mistake. Emotion influences morality, and that influence is good. But if you let emotion determine what you will do, then you are not acting morally; you are a sheep.

[Speaker B] Why is that influence of emotion on morality a good thing?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because many times our emotion points us in the right direction. We are wired in such a way that our conscience usually hurts when we do something wrong and is happy when we do something right. Fortunately, that’s how we are built. And therefore it’s very worthwhile to take seriously the inputs you get from your conscience. But the decision you need to make here. And the example of that — now I’ll get to the hostage deal. In my opinion, again, there were good considerations in favor and good considerations against. I don’t dismiss that. It was a very serious debate with genuinely serious arguments on both sides. I opposed almost all types of deals all along the way, but I completely respect people who thought differently from me. What I respect less are people who thought differently — or rather, didn’t really think differently from me. That is, people who were incapable of seriously considering opposition to a hostage deal because their hearts hurt. Those people were truly in a terrible state. In those situations it’s unbearable to think of a person — a woman, a man, whatever — being in such a state. How can you harden your heart and start talking about conditions, about whether you agree or don’t agree to a deal? You’re sending people to die in agony. Now that is a very important consideration, and I think everyone should weigh it. But as I said before about emotion: it gives you an input. Now make the decision. That is, this is a very important consideration, but there are others. And my feeling was that many of the supporters — not all of them, but many of the supporters of the hostage deal — did not take the second step. Once their emotion made them identify so strongly with the situation of the hostages there, the possibility of even considering the other option became closed to them. You can argue about the future considerations, but my feeling was that there wasn’t really a debate there. They were not truly prepared to consider the other option. Someone who seriously considered the other option and then decided as he did — he is certainly a fully moral person, acting by the intellect and not by emotion, all true. I’m not claiming that every supporter of a hostage deal is an emotional person. I am claiming that support for a hostage deal often came from an emotional basis. By contrast, opposition to a hostage deal, in most cases — not all, but most — was completely non-emotional. Because the emotional identification is in favor of it. That’s obvious.

[Speaker B] Everyone feels that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. And to say something against that — and even when you’re talking about families whose own son was there — then of course, yes, it’s obvious where their emotions lie. And if they are nevertheless willing to go against that, it points to judgment — maybe biased, I’m not talking right now about whether it was justified or biased — but it points to the judgment of an agent, of someone who says: I take my emotions as input, and now I will make a decision. Now, to the great astonishment or surprise of many people, when you look at the opponents versus the supporters, you see that usually the opponents of the deal were religious people, right-wing people, and especially religious people. And that points to another surprising effect, which I think runs against many people’s intuitions: in my view, what we might call the secular left — as a very rough generalization, because it doesn’t have to be specifically the left in the narrow political sense — tends more toward sentimentality, toward emotionalism. And the right, in my opinion, functions in a more rationalist way. Now it may arrive at wrong conclusions, but it does seriously weigh views that don’t fit its initial gut feeling, its initial intuition or emotion. And it may be wrong in that, maybe it ignores emotion too much, or maybe not. But it is still much more agent-like than the other side. The common image is the opposite: the common image is that right-wingers are nationalist Indians acting entirely from the gut, while the left is something terribly intellectual and rational. I absolutely do not accept that. Again, there are all kinds of people on both sides — it’s a generalization — but as a generalization I think it’s the opposite of the truth.

[Speaker B] You touched here on conscience — I don’t want to put words in your mouth — but conscience, sorry, does emotion bring us to a certain kind of conscience? Is there a connection between emotion and conscience?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a definitional question. I think the stomach pains that conscience arouses in me are an expression of emotion. Conscience is the moral emotion. In my definition, anyway — that’s just a question of terminology. I call that moral emotion — the one that hurts when I do something wrong — conscience.

[Speaker B] That’s your definition of conscience.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Now there are cases where it will hurt me and I still won’t obey it, because it’s an input. There are other considerations, and I may act differently. Sometimes I need to amputate an injured person’s leg in order to save him. Now when I amputate his leg, it is very hard to do that. I don’t know how many people could do it in real time. It is very hard, and hard for good reasons, because it hurts him and I don’t want to hurt another person. But on the other hand, that is the right thing to do — you’re saving his life. To do that you need to be an agent, because a person who acts on the basis of emotion — and I’m speaking here about good inclination, not bad inclination — when you surrender to the good inclination, you arrive at wrong decisions. Because you must not surrender to inclinations, not to good inclination and not to bad inclination. They provide inputs, and then you make your decisions — and decisions are made here, not here. And there’s a joke I always remember in this context from Dov Sadan — maybe you’ve heard or read it. He said that the next person who will make a revolution in the world will be a Jewish orthopedist. Why Jewish? Because most people who make revolutions in the world are Jews. Why an orthopedist? Because the first Jew who made a revolution in the world was Abraham our Patriarch. He said: look upward, know the world — who created it? Use your head. Moses, Abraham our Patriarch. The second Jew who made a revolution in the world was Jesus, who told us: friends, the Merciful One wants the heart — you need the heart. The next Jew who made a revolution in the world was Marx, who said everything is capital, everything is in the belly, in interests. The next Jew who made a revolution in the world was Freud, who said everything is below the belt. So we started with the head, moved to the heart, went down to the belly, and then below the belt. The next one will be an orthopedist. Now I think there is a very real insight behind that. The insight is that the world has become much, much less rational — much less. That doesn’t mean less intelligent, not at all, but less trusting of reason. People always acted according to emotion and against reason — that’s human nature. What is new in the last two or three generations? That it has become an ideology. We are despairing of reason; we don’t believe in reason as what guides our way, and therefore the ideology is to act in a way that I feel connected to — that’s how it’s called in existentialist terms — which basically means going with my emotions. There’s another story I always remember in this context. I’ve spoken quite a bit about these things. There was that reality TV music program with the chairs, with Shlomi Shabbat — I don’t remember what it was called, The Voice I think — and Shlomi Shabbat was one of the judges. After someone performed a song there — I was watching it with my children — he said: listen, the performance, you could argue about this or that, but the heart, the heart, the heart — the heart came through. And that was it; everyone started shouting, cheering, standing on their chairs. Then they moved on. So I said, wait a second — what did you decide? The intellect said one thing, the emotion said another, but you didn’t say what the bottom line is. And when I said that, my kids were rolling on the floor laughing. Why? Because it was obvious to everyone — you don’t need to say anything. If the intellect says one thing and the emotion says another, then obviously that’s where the truth is. And I said, wait, why exactly? If the intellect says one thing and emotion another, then let’s see — there needs to be some third principle that decides between them. Take these considerations, take those considerations, weigh them, reach a conclusion — maybe this way, maybe that way — but the conclusion has to be made here, not here. And that’s another indication that we really are descending from the head to the heart to the belly to below the belt. Freud turned what is below the belt into our basic motive; he ties everything, in essence, to eros, right? So eros becomes much more than just a sexual drive; almost all your behavior is, in some way or another, the result of eros. And that is really the deepest descent from the model of the agent who makes decisions here. The lowest point is there — until the orthopedist arrives.

[Speaker B] Why has there been this descent from intellect to heart in recent generations?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have a hypothesis. I don’t know exactly how to test it or establish it, but I have a hypothesis. Over time, we became very, very strong in recursive thinking, logical thinking, mathematical thinking, very precise philosophical thinking, in contrast to ancient philosophy, which was less precise. Analytic philosophy brought that precision to some kind of peak. Mathematics in its modern form is much more grounded, much more — the same insights people once had, today we define much better and know how to prove on the basis of well-defined premises. So we became very strong in recursive logical thinking. But logical thinking has a certain drawback. Namely, logical thinking derives conclusions from premises, right? But logical thinking has no way of checking which premises are correct. Okay? If you have premises, logic will tell me what conclusion follows from them and what conclusion does not follow from them.

[Speaker B] You can’t get to the premises through logic?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. How would you? If you get to premises through logic, that means there are prior premises from which you got there. Fine — I’m talking about the initial set. Okay? You have no way to check that. And then suddenly, out of this logicism, this focus on logic, postmodernism burst forth. Why? Because it basically means that if you have certain premises, then you work with logical tools and arrive at this conclusion; if you have different premises, you work with logical tools and arrive at that conclusion. So who is right? Since you begin from two different systems of premises, a logical person has no way of deciding who is right. And the more you put the focus on logical thinking, the less and less able you are to determine what the truth is, because logic deals with consistency, not truth. Which conclusion is consistent with which premises — but which premises are true, and therefore which conclusion is true — that is not the role of logic. Now if you place no trust in anything but logic, then you have lost the ability to decide. And then suddenly people say: wait, so all our decisions are really just emotional, subjective matters, because decisions aren’t logic. So what are they? And since that is so, they’re just emotion. If it’s emotion, then that’s the right way to decide, and therefore you have to go with emotion, and anyone who doesn’t work with emotion is alienated, captive, disconnected, cynical, a pathetic rationalist, and so forth. And I think that really was a path by which, in the end, we threw out the baby with the bathwater. Because logic is a very important tool. Once you see it as the whole picture, you’re left with nothing.

[Speaker B] Precisely because we give so much weight to logic, because of that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We lost the ability to get to truth. Because logic only — as logicians say — deals with validity, not truth. Truth is a property of a proposition: a proposition is true or false. An argument in logic, deriving a conclusion from premises, is valid or invalid, not true or false. Logic does not deal with the concepts of truth and falsehood. Logic deals with the concepts of invalidity or validity. Does the conclusion follow from the premises, or not? But are the premises true? I don’t know — that’s not the logician’s business, nor the mathematician’s. And is the conclusion true? Same thing, because if you don’t know about the premises, then you don’t know about the conclusion either. All you know is: if the premises, then the conclusion. Okay? Ask a mathematician: what is the sum of the angles in a triangle? An honest mathematician should tell you: I have no idea — tell me what your axioms are. If your axioms are Euclidean geometry, then it’s 180. But if your axioms are different, then it’s minus 274 — I don’t know. Give me your premises and I’ll tell you. He can’t tell you what the sum of the angles in a triangle is. All he can tell you is: if the premises are these, then this is the sum of the angles that results. That is the role of the mathematician and the logician. Those who see mathematics and logic as the only tools, as the only basis for the acceptability of claims, are left with nothing. Because in effect you don’t know how to determine premises. So you’ll determine one set of premises, I’ll determine a different set. You’ll be consistent with your premises, so I have nothing to say to you. I’ll be consistent with mine, so you have nothing to say to me. And that’s how we were left with different narratives, each one inside his own bubble. We have no ability to conduct discourse and no ability to judge one another. There are no objective standards outside the narrative. Which brings us back, by the way, to the moral standard. Right? You legislate laws for yourself — very nice. But if you legislate a bad law for yourself, you don’t want that. But who determines what “bad” means? Oops — nobody. I’m an atheist, after all, so there isn’t anyone. So who determines it? Nobody does. And then you arrive immediately at moral relativism. Because if nobody determines it, then I understand that I’m just talking nonsense. And that’s how you arrive again at postmodernism in the ethical, moral context. Earlier I was talking about postmodernism even in factual or mathematical contexts.

[Speaker B] So basically these fundamental premises come from God?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s already a question one can debate. From God, or from some kind of immediate awareness you have, some intuition you have. Maybe trust in intuition is based on belief in God. That’s a separate discussion. I tend to think yes, but it’s another discussion. First of all, though, I think a person has to admit that he must have some trust in his ability to judge premises, not only to judge the derivation of a conclusion from premises. Not only to judge arguments, but also to judge claims.

[Speaker B] So how do you judge those claims?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: if something doesn’t seem reasonable to me, doesn’t make sense — that is, it doesn’t seem reasonable. Someone will say: what do you mean, doesn’t make sense? Whether something makes sense or not is a matter of taste. Which is really the analytic person speaking — the person for whom only logic determines anything. Everything else is hallucination. I don’t think so. I think common sense is some kind of faculty of immediate perception of facts or claims. And I can become convinced that a claim is true or false even though I have no proof for it. Someone who dismisses that, then for him there are only arguments, no claims. He can know nothing about anything. But someone who accepts our ability to judge claims or adopt claims as true — not with certainty, you can never know with certainty. Certainty belongs only to our mother, logic. But you can judge claims, adopt them, and then whatever you derive from them is, for you, true — until someone convinces you otherwise. So yes, the root of everything really is the trust you place in intuition. If intuition, for you, is just emotion, something subjective, then fine. But if intuition is really an additional cognitive tool — besides the five senses I have, with intuition I observe something, call it the idea of the good or something like that — and from that I derive what is moral and what is not moral. You see? That’s…

[Speaker B] Yes. There’s a quote of yours I’d like you to explain: “People who believe in a morality that obligates them are, in my view, people who believe in God.” Why does someone who believes in morality necessarily also believe in God?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’d say two things about that. First of all, that’s what I explained earlier, because I think valid morality — not just morality, but morality that obligates them, I emphasize — morality that obligates them: why is it obligating? Because behind it stands some entity whose command I am apparently obligated to obey. That’s what I was talking about before. So it’s clear that someone who wants to be consistent needs to assume the existence of God as the basis of binding morality. Now here I want to avoid a mistaken interpretation of what I’m saying. I am not claiming that an atheist does not behave morally. Not at all. I don’t even think one can point to any clear difference showing that religious people are more moral than atheists. Sometimes, to my sorrow, I even feel the opposite. What I am saying is that if an atheist behaves morally, then one of two things is true: either he is an implicit believer — he doesn’t admit it, but he basically believes in God because he perceives the thing as binding — or he is not really moral. He is a sheep. Then what? He does those things because it feels nice in his stomach. It also feels nice in my stomach to behave morally; all of us are built that way, and thankfully so. So that’s why he does it. But to call that morality is a mistake, because morality is something rooted in a binding command, not something that merely feels nice in my stomach. Here we’ve come back to something we already discussed. So there are moral atheists who behave morally, but either they are inconsistent — meaning that if there is no God, then there is no binding morality — or they are implicit believers, meaning they are consistent but unaware.

[Speaker B] I understand. So I’d like now to connect this to Judaism. You also said that Jewish morality is an oxymoron. Why is that? Why is Jewish morality an oxymoron?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because morality is morality. If I think a certain act is moral, then I demand it of all human beings, not only Jews. And if that act is immoral, then I demand that all human beings not do it, not only Jews. Now obviously there are disagreements in the field of morality — I said they are mostly on the margins, but there are some — but there are disagreements among gentiles themselves, among Jews themselves, and between Jews and gentiles. The speaker’s origin plays no role here. I also do not think we learn our moral principles from Jewish sources. Anyone who presents it that way, in my opinion, is deceiving himself or deceiving me. Why? Because we learn it from what our conscience, our moral awareness, tells us, and then we also happen to find it here and there in the Hebrew Bible. I have never seen anyone on earth who had a moral intuition telling him that X is positive and then said, “Ah, but I learned the Bible, so apparently it is not positive.” No. If you see an act in the Bible that seems immoral to you, that is a passage that requires resolution or interpretation. Why? What’s the problem? The Bible says otherwise — so apparently you were wrong and it’s actually moral? No. If Jacob lied, then you need to explain why, because lying is forbidden. Why is it forbidden? Here, Jacob lied, Jacob is a righteous man, so apparently it’s permitted, no? No. Because I know it is forbidden. How do I know? The Bible says otherwise, doesn’t it? I know it because my conscience tells me it is forbidden. So when the Torah says something else, from my point of view that is a conflict. It is not that I learn from it. On the contrary: everything I do with the Torah in moral contexts is to try to reconcile everything there that doesn’t fit with my moral feelings. That’s all. So I always remain with my own moral feelings; I simply try to reconcile, or fail to reconcile, various things in the Torah so that it will fit. But I will never learn from there what ought to be moral for me. That is why I claim that the Torah is not a source of morality. Again, historically it was a source for many moral principles. I’m talking about today. A person growing up today, I don’t think he draws his morality from the Torah, and if he does, then in my opinion he arrives at distorted things. And I also don’t think he’ll reach conclusions different from a gentile who doesn’t engage with this, or from a secular Jew who doesn’t learn it from the Torah. They will think more or less the same about morality.

[Speaker B] Why can what you learn from the Torah become distorted morality? In what sense?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are people who identify Jewish law with morality. Then they also learn morality from Jewish law. Then they say: look, if the Torah says to kill Amalekite babies — which in my view is immoral — then that must be the Torah’s morality. And if that is the Torah’s morality, then there is no conflict now if he goes to kill a baby in Gaza, for example. Okay? He’s not in conflict, because what’s the problem? That’s our morality. The morality of progressive gentiles doesn’t interest anyone. Our morality says you have to kill the enemy’s babies. I’m just saying — that’s only about Amalekites, but let’s say you classify the people of Gaza as Amalekites. Now I might perhaps arrive at the same conclusion — I don’t, but suppose — yet I am first of all in conflict, because it is obvious to me that this is immoral. Now I have to check: maybe the Torah nevertheless obligates me to do it even though it is immoral. Then I have to make a decision. And even if in the end I decide that the baby must be killed, exactly like that fascist over there, I arrive there מתוך מחויבות למוסר כקטגוריה בלתי תלויה מההלכה, and when there is a conflict I have to decide. I don’t know — sometimes this will prevail, sometimes that will prevail. And I may decide as he does, but from a completely different starting point. And because he is not in conflict, he will much more easily always decide in that direction, and it comes out distorted. So for example, now concretely about a baby in Gaza, I said some things that sounded very harsh to people, but on the other hand I also said very harsh things against the militant views of “kill them all, kill them all.” I say: if in order to deal with Hamas we have to kill many, thousands of uninvolved civilians — innocent, or at least uninvolved, “innocent” is already more complicated — then if there is no other choice, it has to be done. Because that is the people threatening me, and I am not willing to bear the consequences just so they can be saved. I am not required to pay with my life so that they may live. But all of that is only if I have to do it in order to survive, if I have no other way to hit the terrorists except by harming uninvolved people too. In that case, I’m fully in favor — babies, old people, it doesn’t matter. What do you mean, “doesn’t matter”? My heart may hurt, but it has to be done. So even, you know what, dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza — I don’t remember who said that, Amichai Eliyahu maybe, someone in the Knesset — it caused an uproar. I don’t rule it out at all. If that is the only way I can overcome this insane threat coming from Hamas, then one should consider doing it. But on the other hand, from there to jump to the view that all of them should be killed because they are all little terrorists, and even if they aren’t threatening me now, they will threaten me later — that, in my opinion, is the result of a seemingly similar position that does not understand that there is also a second side of morality, in addition to nationalist, Jewish, whatever-you-want-to-call-it thinking. I say: okay, if it’s necessary then it’s necessary, but if it isn’t, then anyone who does it is a murderer and must bear full responsibility for his deeds. Whereas from his point of view, he immediately moves to saying that all of them should be killed, even as a punishment, not as prevention or as the only available way of dealing with a threat I otherwise cannot survive. For him it turns into punishment: now they are all under the law of a pursuer, all Amalekites, all must be killed. And that is exactly the kind of distorted leap that comes from the fact that although I might reach the same conclusion as he does, his view does not understand that there is a genuine conflict here. From his point of view, whatever the Torah says — there is nothing else. There isn’t any morality saying: wait, check again. Is that really what the Torah says? There is something very immoral here. And even if it does say that, who says I will obey it? Morality also binds me. And that too is divine will, from my perspective. Both are divine will. So I am in conflict. And then it’s not obvious which of them will prevail.

[Speaker B] So how do you bridge this conflict between morality and Jewish law in cases like these?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, there are conflicts within the moral world itself; you don’t need to get to a conflict between morality and Jewish law. Jean-Paul Sartre tells about a student of his during the Holocaust who came to him with a dilemma. He lived in Paris with his elderly mother. His father had, I think, been murdered by the Nazis, and his older brother was collaborating with them. This was under Nazi occupation there. And he was torn. He wanted to flee to the Free French army, to de Gaulle, in order to fight the Nazis, to fight evil — a very important value. On the other hand, if he fled France, he would leave his mother alone with no help. She was elderly and sick. What should he do? If he stays there, he’s not fighting evil. So this is a dilemma between the value of fighting evil and the value of helping an elderly mother. This is not a dilemma between Jewish law and morality but between one moral value and another moral value. What do you do there? I don’t know. Dilemmas. In analytic ethics this is called the incommensurability of values. The values are incommensurable — they have no common measure. So what does that mean? It means you cannot measure the values and decide which outweighs the other, because values are not the kind of thing that can be placed on some scale. That’s the problem. There are also solutions, but… therefore, you have no way to determine which outweighs which. In exactly the same way, deciding between a religious or halakhic value and a moral value suffers from the same problem. I’m only saying that this is not unique to a clash between a moral value and a halakhic value. Even between two moral values you have the same dilemma. And if there you know how to decide, then here too I know how to decide. There is nothing unique about this kind of decision.

[Speaker B] So let’s take a concrete dilemma I heard you talk about, which I didn’t really understand. If someone comes up to you with a gun to rob you and asks for one shekel, you argued that it is morally permitted to kill him. Why?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Morally permitted — yes. Not that it is morally ideal to kill him. If you want not to kill him and instead give him a shekel, fine, maybe you’re even worthy of praise. But I have no complaint against someone who kills him. It is completely permitted. Why? Because he is basically threatening my life. He is a pursuer. Right? A pursuer — we all agree you are allowed to kill one. Except that here I can save his life by giving him one shekel. True. But I do not owe him a shekel. Okay? I don’t owe him that shekel. What is he doing? He is using my morality in order to get a shekel out of me. Right? He is basically saying: look, that fellow is moral; he won’t kill me to save a shekel. So he’ll give me the shekel. Right? And tomorrow morning he’ll do it to you too, and to someone else for a thousand shekels, and so on. So I say that a phenomenon like that may not be something one should surrender to. It may be that what I should do is this: he is a pursuer. The fact that I can save him by giving him a shekel — I’m not obligated to give him the shekel. So he’ll say: yes, if you don’t give me a shekel, I’ll kill you. Fine. You want to kill me? I’ll kill you first, because you have the legal status of a pursuer.

[Speaker B] I see. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now this is part of a much broader family of problems — call them territory problems. But that’s a separate topic.

[Speaker B] Yes, absolutely. And as we’re coming toward the end, there’s this issue of morality and commandments. Are commandments necessarily moral?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the contrary. They are not necessarily moral. I don’t mean immoral, but non-moral. That is, it’s not that the commandments are anti-moral; they simply have nothing at all to do with morality.

[Speaker B] Why? Just a minute and a half…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, there are sharp disagreements about these tensions between Jewish law and morality. And I want to argue that these tensions are only apparent. Why? I divide the world of Jewish law into three subcategories. There are moral laws: giving charity, as you mentioned; honoring parents; not stealing; not murdering; and so on. Moral laws. There are anti-moral laws: killing an Amalekite baby; a mamzer being forbidden to marry — what are they guilty of, because their father and mother did what they did? And so on. And there are non-moral, neutral laws: you may not eat pork. That has nothing to do with morality — not anti-moral, just irrelevant. There are many such laws. Now I say: let’s start with the non-moral laws. What do non-moral laws show us? That Jewish law has goals other than moral goals. Right? The prohibition on eating pork obviously does not come to achieve a moral goal. So what does it come to achieve? Apparently there is some religious value that is achieved if you don’t eat pork — I don’t know exactly what — or at least not damaged if you don’t eat pork, and so on. So all the non-moral laws already teach me an important lesson: at the basis of Jewish law there are goals beyond moral goals; there are also religious goals. Fine? That’s the first lesson. If so, let’s move on to the anti-moral laws, the next category. Why do people feel uncomfortable with anti-moral laws? Because they feel: wait, how can that be? Jewish law strives for morality, so how can its morality be so distorted, so crooked? No. Jewish law strives for religious goals. Sometimes that clashes with a moral value. And as we said before, there are also clashes among moral values themselves. If you sincerely believe that Jewish law leads to religious goals that also have value — not moral value, religious value — then there is great importance and great value in trying to attain them. Sometimes that clashes, and then you need to decide whether you prefer this value or that value. By the way, the decision does not always go in the same direction. It’s a dilemma, a conflict that has to be decided. But it is a conflict, not a contradiction. There is a difference. A contradiction means you cannot both be non-moral, both kill a baby and not kill a baby. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying: the religious goal is achieved by killing an Amalekite baby. The moral goal is damaged if you kill an Amalekite baby. Now you need to decide which goal is more important. But even if I decide to kill the baby, does that mean I’m indifferent to morality, or not committed to morality? Of course not. I’m very committed, exactly like you. I just also have other values I am committed to, and sometimes because of the clash I have no choice. Someone who isn’t committed to religious values doesn’t understand this at all, because for him there is no dilemma — there is only one value, so how could you kill babies? Fine, I respect that. But he also needs to understand that what I’m doing is not because I disdain moral value, but because I prefer another value over it. What can I do? That value matters too. That’s about the anti-moral laws. Now I want to make an even more far-reaching claim, and this really is my own claim alone. Up to this point I can actually bring quite a few sources that support it. The facts fully support it — in terms of facts I don’t even understand how one can argue. And there are also some Jews who explicitly wrote things like this. But this third thing, I don’t know anyone who wrote it — maybe there is someone, I just don’t know of one. My claim is that even the third category, the moral laws, are also intended to achieve religious goals and not moral ones. That is, for example, the Talmud says: למה לי קרא סברא הוא — why do I need a verse? It is logical. Why do I need the text to tell me something if I understand it on my own by reason? Then I don’t need a verse for it; I understand it myself. So why was “You shall not murder” written? You might tell me: well, maybe in the past people wouldn’t have understood it, and today we’re just used to it because it’s written. Maybe once people didn’t understand. But how does the Holy One come to Cain at the beginning of creation, at the beginning of Genesis, before there was “You shall not murder,” before there was “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed”? There was no command at all. Yet it was obvious that Cain was supposed to understand that murder is forbidden. God came to him with claims. Which means that the Torah itself assumes that the prohibition of murder is not learned from the Torah and not understood from within the Torah; I understand it on my own. So why write “You shall not murder”? It is written in order to say that someone who murders, beyond the moral problem involved, there is also a religious problem involved. That is, a religious value is also damaged, not only a moral one. And therefore even this part of Jewish law, the supposedly moral part, is moral only because its instructions parallel the instructions of morality, but in fact it is aimed at achieving religious goals, not moral ones. It just happens that in this case there is a parallel between them. So this category too does not strive for morality. And I can bring evidence for that too. For example, there are whole discussions in tractate Sanhedrin about what happens if someone murdered in such-and-such a way — he put the person there and then left the fire to reach him, or left him under the sun to dry out and die, but he didn’t do it directly with his own hands.

[Speaker B] Indirectly, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. There are many situations where Jewish law says he is not liable to death; he is not considered a murderer. Now morally he is a murderer in every sense. It doesn’t matter whether you did it this way or that way. You caused his death, deterministically, that’s clear. What you did brought about his death. So why should I care whether I did it indirectly or directly? I performed an act as a result of which a person lost his life, intentionally and deterministically. So I argue that the halakhic prohibition of murder is not the moral prohibition of murder. The halakhic prohibition of murder has definitions: sometimes it applies, sometimes it does not. The moral prohibition of murder would not distinguish among all those situations. He is a moral murderer in all the scenarios described there in the Talmudic discussion. He is not a halakhic murderer because the religious goal is not fully damaged if you did it this way, but it is if you did it that way. But morally, of course, you are immoral in both senses, in both situations. So I say there is evidence for this in the legal literature itself as well, that even the moral laws are not interpreted according to the rules of morality. Which means that even there I argue there is no overlap. And if that is so, then I have now completed a move that leads to a complete disconnect between Jewish law and morality. No part of Jewish law touches morality. So there is really no point in asking whether a given law is moral or not; it is irrelevant. Even when it is moral, that’s accidental — just an accident. That doesn’t mean I am not committed to morality. I am committed to morality exactly as I am committed to Jewish law. But they are two categories. And now I need to decide, when they conflict — I don’t know, you have to decide what to do when conflict comes.

[Speaker B] So if you’re committed both to Jewish law and to morality, can Jewish law be challenged in a case of something immoral?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In principle, no. Because if Jewish law says it, then apparently the religious goal is achieved that way, at the expense of the moral goal.

[Speaker B] So a religious goal overrides a moral goal?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say it overrides. I said that therefore there is a conflict, and Jewish law is not nullified just because it is not moral. What I will do — that’s another question, because I am committed both to Jewish law and to morality. But it’s not that Jewish law is simply canceled. There are certain situations in which the moral consideration takes part inside the religious interpretation itself. I’ll give one example. There are a few examples, but really they’re marginal. For instance, when you have a doubt, and there are two possible legal interpretations, and you don’t know which one is correct. Now in principle there are rules for doubt: with Torah-level doubt you rule stringently; with rabbinic-level doubt you rule leniently. If you’re in doubt and it’s a Torah-level law, you need to be stringent. I argue that in a place where one course of action is much more moral than the other, or where the other course seriously harms the moral plane, you are allowed to decide in favor of the lenient side even though the general legal rule is that Torah-level doubt requires stringency. And here the moral consideration tells you: choose this interpretation rather than that one. But that is only if the interpretation itself meets halakhic standards. If both interpretations are halakhically possible, then the decision between them can be made on the basis of morality. But morality by itself will not determine that this law is correct or incorrect or what the law says, because these are two independent categories.

[Speaker B] So basically these are two parallel lines — morality does not mix with Jewish law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct.

[Speaker B] I understand you. So in closing, do you think we as a society will return to morality over emotion?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m too small a person to predict the future. I assume — who knows — if redemption ever comes to the world and the Messiah arrives and the world is repaired, a repaired world is a world that conducts itself according to the head and not according to emotion. If that happens, I believe it will be part of the story. But I can’t predict the future. I’m not great enough for that.

[Speaker B] Right, right, we don’t know how to predict the future; we’re not prophets. Michael, thank you very much — it was really a pleasure. If people want to read more of what you do, see more of your content, where can they go?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, there’s my website called “Responsa and Articles.” You can search “Michael Abraham” on Google — it’ll probably be the first result you get, or the second, I don’t know, maybe Wikipedia. And from the site there are already links to articles and books, where I go into many things in detail. There are a huge number of posts on the site; it’s a site with a tremendous amount of material. There are search lines there and ways of querying with bots and so on — it’s a pretty sophisticated operation, I think — and you can find there discussions of a great many issues.

[Speaker B] Yes, absolutely. You write tons of articles, you’ve written hundreds of articles, dozens of books — really a huge amount of thought-provoking content, in my experience — and I’m very grateful to you for that. Rabbi Michael, thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Likewise, with pleasure.

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