On the Essence of the Laws of Repentance in the Rambam – Lesson 4 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

Okay, so until now

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ve basically been talking about the two tracks in the process of repentance. There’s the accounting track, the ledger-like one, and there’s the essential track, the inner reversal—“I am not the same person,” as Maimonides describes it. And last time I finished by trying to explain what exactly essential repentance—the great repentance—involves. And the claim was, I tried to show that there’s some kind of problem there that isn’t just a psychological difficulty, but a conceptual problem, a logical problem. In other words, how can it be that a person is required, deliberately, to change himself? Meaning, if I think X, then what does it mean that I’m required to change my whole system to Y? I myself am supposed to change to Y, but I believe in X. Meaning, if I believe in Y and therefore want to change, then I no longer need to change—I’m already there, I already believe in Y. So there’s something very problematic here as long as we understand it as something happening deliberately. It can happen to me suddenly—that I thought X, and afterward suddenly I think Y, okay? But to deliberately take myself from X to Y is simply not defined on the logical level. And therefore I said that I don’t have—we talked about weakness of will, I’m not going back into all the details now—but I said I’m not completely sure I even have a good answer to this issue. I understand the problem much better than I understand the solution.

[Speaker B] Could you say—I don’t know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You know, I’ve written about this a few times on my site—how is a proof by contradiction built? You take some assumptions, show that they lead to a contradiction, and therefore clearly at least one of the assumptions is false, right? You have to change one of them. What happens if all the assumptions sound very reasonable to me—which is usually the case? A person might arrive at a different conclusion. It could be there’s a problem in the argument that I simply haven’t found, but there is some flaw in the argument, and therefore I’m not willing to give up my assumptions. Okay? In other words, there are paradoxes that often on the one hand look like a proof by contradiction. On the other hand, why is it defined as a paradox? Because it leads me to a conclusion that I’m certain is false. Achilles doesn’t overtake the tortoise? Clearly that’s false, okay? So what am I supposed to do now? After all, if I’m intellectually honest, here is an argument showing me that Achilles really doesn’t overtake the tortoise, right? Was I mistaken in thinking Achilles runs faster and overtakes the tortoise? No, I’m supposed to be honest and understand that this is a proof by contradiction. No—well, leave that for now—even if it’s impossible to measure in practice, maybe what you see is mistaken, your sight is deceiving you, okay? I’m only using it as an example. What I want to say is that there’s always the option of saying that my assumptions are strong enough that even if you show me they lead to a contradiction, I’ll assume there’s probably some flaw in your argument, even though I’m not smart enough to understand where the flaw is, okay? And therefore I still won’t give up my assumptions—I’ll stick with them. And that’s a completely legitimate conclusion. In other words, a person often says: look, my common sense says this cannot be, and now you have a wonderful argument showing me that it is true anyway. Fine, then I suspect there’s something wrong with the argument. I don’t know how to put my finger on what’s wrong there, but it seems pretty clear to me that something there is wrong. I think we’ve all encountered situations like this more than once in our lives, where someone presents an excellent argument, but somehow my gut tells me the conclusion is wrong. That conclusion is wrong. I can’t show him where he made the mistake, but that conclusion is wrong. Now here too, you can arrive at the same conclusion. In other words, you asked: maybe we should conclude that yes, it really is impossible to repent. But you could also say no—I’m so convinced that repentance is possible, that decisions are possible, because I know it from myself, I know I can change myself, I know there is such a thing as weakness of will, and all sorts of things like that. Now this argument—I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong with it, okay, but I’m still sure something there is wrong. Meaning, okay? So that’s why I say I don’t even have a criterion for when to choose the option of being intellectually honest—right, I thought X, but they proved to me that X is false, so I have to give it up. After all, that’s honesty; you don’t just stubbornly cling to your position. As opposed to saying: listen, this is so obvious to me that it’s true, so no, something in the argument cannot be right. I don’t know—I can’t put my finger on it—but something in the argument is wrong. Okay? So I’m saying both possibilities are open here. I, for example, lean toward the possibility that repentance is possible. I offered some kind of explanation, but I said I myself am still somewhat unsure how satisfying that explanation really is. But in any case, I’m sufficiently convinced that a person has free choice, and can sin, and can also repent, to say that even if there is some contradiction here, fine, I’m not smart enough to understand where the mistake is, but I think there is a mistake here. Okay? So in the end the conclusion was this: repentance means returning to being a chooser. Returning to being a chooser. Taking the reins into your own hands. I dropped the reins, and that’s how I came to sinning, and repentance is returning to grasp the reins, returning to hold them and not letting impulses or the environment carry me away. And that’s why Maimonides places his discussion of choice in the laws of repentance; that’s why Maimonides does not count a commandment to repent, because there cannot be a commandment to choose. Being a chooser is the condition that makes it possible to command you. So in essence, what is ultimately required of you is to return to being a chooser—and that is the essence of repentance. Now I want to show this from a slightly different angle, and study a certain chapter in the Tanya, chapter 9. Let me enlarge the font. There. Okay? “Now the dwelling place…” Basically, this chapter—really this whole section of the book, but especially this chapter—I think is truly the core point, dealing with the struggle we have between good and evil. Okay? When the kindergarten teacher taught us that we have a good inclination and an evil inclination—yes, you probably still maybe even remember the songs about the good inclination and the evil inclination that you mustn’t let in, and all that—so there’s a struggle, within us there is a struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination, and the goal is that the good inclination should win. That’s the kindergarten picture. But that picture is suitable for kindergarten, more or less. And why? Beyond the question of what exactly these inclinations are, just on the conceptual level. In other words, if the struggle is between the good inclination and the evil inclination, and a good person is someone whose good inclination overcomes his evil inclination, and a bad person is someone whose evil inclination overcomes his good inclination—then who is the person? There are two inclinations beating each other up; whoever is the bigger bully wins. What does that have to do with me? In other words, what is my part in all this? Am I the sum of these two inclinations? Who am I? I once saw—what? Okay, meaning there has to be someone here who decides. Or in other words, it’s not a struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination. The good inclination and the evil inclination are trying to pull me, and I have to decide. In other words, they are not struggling with each other—that’s a foolish description of the struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination. What? It’s external. Yes, yes, in a moment I’ll talk about that. Both of them—both of them are external, but one second, I’m getting there. So what I want to say is, this is the scheme. What the author of the Tanya is actually trying to present here is the alternative scheme: that this is not a struggle between inclinations, but something a bit different. It reminds me that I once saw an article by a Jew named Aharon Rabinovitch—psychology here—he was a psychology lecturer, or maybe still is, I don’t know. I saw the article many years ago. And there he tries to identify, in Nefesh HaChayim, in the Tanya, in various Hasidic books, I don’t know, all sorts of things like that—he tries to identify where the self is located. The ego, yes, what we call the self—where in the map of the soul is it located, which part of the map of the soul is it? And he says that the author of the Tanya has one view of this, and Nefesh HaChayim has another, not important. And when I read it back then, my feeling was that he was making a mistake already in how he framed the discussion. Because the self is not some part of my psychological map; the self is the owner of the map. The self is the one that the map describes, or the one to whom it belongs. It cannot be some part of the map itself. Right? I mean, the person—he is the one who has a psychology. The person is not one square within his own psychological map. That’s just conceptually foolish, okay? And therefore I think that maybe what he meant was what’s called the sense of self, or some particular psychological aspect. It doesn’t matter—I’m not criticizing him right now, I’m only using this to say that this is the same move I made before with the inclinations. Meaning, it’s also not correct to say that the self is the two inclinations. The self is the owner of the two inclinations. These two inclinations act on me, or within me, or whatever. But clearly there is some something—or more precisely, someone, a subject, yes?—that these two inclinations are trying to pull one way or the other. But the decision, what determines whether he is righteous or wicked, is made by him, not by the inclinations. If my good inclination was created stronger than my evil inclination, that doesn’t make me righteous—it makes the Holy One, blessed be He, righteous. He created me with a strong good inclination; what does that have to do with me? What determines whether I am righteous is my choices, my decisions, whether to go here or go there, okay? Yes, the struggle between the inclinations is not a description—it’s an incorrect description of the struggle taking place within us, yes, whether to be better or worse.

Now let’s try to see his description. “Now the dwelling place of the animal soul, which is from kelipat nogah, in every Jew, is in the heart, in its left cavity, which is full of blood.” And maybe before that, one more sentence: the author of the Tanya describes this struggle not as a struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination, but as a struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul. We basically have two souls, two aspects in our soul, whatever, that struggle against each other. And then, pictorially, I’d describe it like this: in fact, the struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination is a struggle between right and left—each of you can decide who’s who, who’s the good side and who’s the bad side, I don’t want to express a political opinion before the elections—but anyway, it’s some sort of struggle between right and left, and the author of the Tanya rotates the axis system. The author of the Tanya says: right and left—the inclinations—are here; the struggle is between the divine soul and the animal soul, between above and below, not between right and left, okay? That’s the big picture, now let’s look inside. “The dwelling place of the animal soul,” yes, the lower part, “is from kelipat nogah.” That’s a bit of a riddle, so I’ll help decode it: in Kabbalah there are four shells; three shells are utterly evil, and kelipat nogah is a mixture of good and evil. Kelipat nogah is basically the snake’s skin—it’s the skin of the serpent, the serpent that injected its contamination into Eve there in the sin of Adam the First, the serpent injected its contamination into her—that is kelipat nogah. So the snake’s skin is the serpent’s skin, the serpent as a metaphor if you like, Meir Ariel—and this thing entered the human being through the inclination. And this thing, this kelipat nogah, notice, that’s an interesting point, is a combination of good and evil—it is not utterly evil, okay? In that sense the shell is not necessarily something evil; it is something that mixes evil and good. So the dwelling place of the animal soul, whose source is in kelipat nogah, in every Jew, is in the heart, in the left cavity. Again, not a biological description of the heart, of course. In the left cavity, “which is full of blood,” okay? There is a right cavity and a left cavity; the left cavity is full of blood, and there the animal soul resides. And Scripture says: “כי הדם הוא הנפש” (“for the blood is the life”). The animal soul, yes? “And therefore all desires and boasting and anger and the like are in the heart, and from the heart they spread throughout the whole body, and also rise to the brain in the head, to think and meditate on them and to become cunning through them, just as the blood originates in the heart, and from the heart spreads to all the limbs, and also rises to the brain in the head.” What is he saying? The blood in the left cavity of the heart rises through the whole body, so the animal soul, as a metaphor, yes? The animal soul is also there, and from there it spreads through the whole body, including the brain. But its center is here, and from there it spreads to the brain, okay? To think about them and meditate on them and get clever through them, all sorts of things like that. In a moment I’ll explain it. “But the dwelling place of the divine soul is in the brains in the head, and from there it spreads to all the limbs, and also in the heart, in the right cavity which contains no blood,” as it says: “לב חכם לימינו” (“a wise man’s heart is at his right”). So the animal soul is in the left cavity of the heart and from there spreads to the whole body including the head, and the divine soul is in the head and from there spreads to the whole body including the heart, in the right cavity which has no blood, okay? The animal soul spreads through the blood; the divine soul spreads through air, I don’t know—not through blood, okay? “And it is the love of God like burning fiery flames in the heart of the enlightened, who understand and contemplate with the knowledge in their minds those things that arouse love; and likewise joy of heart in the glory of God and the splendor of His majesty, when the eyes of the wise man in his head, in the brain of his wisdom and understanding, behold the glory of the King and the splendor of His greatness, without limit and without end and without boundary, as explained elsewhere. And so too the other holy traits in the heart come from Chokhmah, Binah, and Da’at in the brains…” Okay, so that’s the description up to this point of the two souls, their locations, how they spread through the whole body, and so on. “But behold it is written: ‘ולאום מלאום יאמץ’ (‘one people shall prevail over another people’), and ‘ורב יעבוד צעיר’ (‘the elder shall serve the younger’).” That’s Jacob and Esau, yes? “For the body is called a small city. And just as two kings wage war over one city, each wanting to conquer it and reign over it, that is, to govern its inhabitants according to his will, and that they should obey him in all that he decrees over them, so too the two souls, the divine and the life-giving animal soul from the shell, fight with one another over the body and all its limbs: the divine soul desires and wills that it alone rule over the body and guide it, and that all the limbs obey it and be nullified to it completely, and become a chariot to it, and become garments for its ten faculties and its three garments mentioned above, which will all clothe themselves in the body’s limbs, so that the whole body be filled by them alone, and no stranger pass among them, God forbid; that is, the three brains in the head shall be filled with the Chokhmah, Binah, and Da’at of the divine soul, which is the wisdom of God and understanding to contemplate His greatness, which is without searching and without end, to generate through knowledge… and fear…” He abbreviates, and so on and so on, in the heart and so on. In the end, desire, the heart’s desire in the right cavity, should be paved over with love, full and overflowing, until it spreads also into the left cavity to subdue the other side, the element of evil waters there, namely desire from kelipat nogah, to change it and transform it from delight in this world into love of God, as it says: “בכל לבבך” (“with all your heart”), meaning with both your inclinations. That is, the two inclinations. “That is, that he should rise and come and reach the level of great love and exceeding affection…” and so on. Yes, so the divine soul wants to transform even the animal soul into part of its rule—and vice versa. Each of them wants to take over the whole body, okay? The war is over the whole city, even though each of them has its headquarters somewhere else, okay? “But the animal soul from the shell wants exactly the opposite—for the person’s own good, that he should overcome it and defeat it, like the parable of the harlot in the holy Zohar.” Fine? The king sends the harlot to test his son; he wants the son not to be seduced, and the harlot also wants the son not to be seduced, but her role is to try to seduce him, okay? In any case, what the author of the Tanya is basically saying here—let’s summarize for a moment—we have a struggle between the divine soul and the animal soul. The animal soul is rooted in kelipat nogah, and kelipat nogah mixes good and evil. These two souls dwell in different places in the body. The body here is of course an astral body, yes? Not the physical body. Meaning, the divine soul dwells in the brains, in the intellective faculties of the brain, and from there spreads to all other places, including the right side of the heart. The animal soul dwells in the left side of the heart with the blood, and with the blood it spreads to all the limbs, including the brain, to become clever through it and think and all sorts of things of that kind. And that’s basically the struggle: the goal of the whole struggle is to subject the whole structure, the whole body, the whole city if you will, to itself. So the animal soul may dwell in the heart, but it wants the brain too under its control; and the divine soul may dwell in the brain, but it wants the heart too under its control. In other words, the struggle is for the whole pot, okay? So in fact, if we look at it geometrically the way I described before, at first we began with the idea that the struggle is between right and left, between the two inclinations. Then I said he rotates the axes and the struggle is between above and below, between the divine soul and the animal soul. But now suddenly we discover that it’s not even between above and below—each of these two wants to control the whole structure, not just the upper and lower parts. Wait, no, these are not inclinations—the souls are not inclinations, I’ll explain in a second. So the picture is more complex. The point is that the divine soul is not only good—it too can involve evil and good; and the animal soul too is from kelipat nogah, a mixture of good and evil. This is not a struggle between good and evil. So what is it between? What exactly is opposed to what in this struggle? What I want to claim is that a person’s inclinations, both the good inclination and the evil inclination, belong to the animal soul. Inclinations belong to the animal soul. Even a good inclination is still an inclination. When I want to do good because the inclination—the horses, yes, remember the reins?—the horses are taking me to do good, that’s not called that I did good. It just means my nature took me to do good. Right? The parable I always use in this context—I once heard it from Amnon Yitzchak, yes? He once said that the town rabbi woke up at 4:00 in the morning, slaughtered a sheep, covered it with a sheet in the main road, and started shouting: “A righteous man, a righteous man has died! A righteous man has died!” Yes? He’s a great actor, Amnon Yitzchak. So everyone wakes up at 4:00 in the morning and looks—what is the rabbi doing there? Apparently some terrible tragedy happened. They join him in the funeral procession, all weeping bitterly. They get to the cemetery, take the righteous man, uncover him, lower him into the grave, and then discover that this righteous man walks on four legs. So they want to replace the rabbi with the righteous man and put the rabbi inside instead. So he says to them: “Wait, I don’t understand what you want from me. Every time I rebuke you, you say: ‘What do you want, Rabbi? I don’t hurt anyone, I don’t kill anyone, I don’t steal. I’m a totally righteous person. What do you want from me? Everything’s fine.’” He says to them: “The sheep was also righteous in that sense. It didn’t hurt anyone, it didn’t murder anyone, it didn’t steal from anyone—it’s perfectly righteous.” Now what’s behind that story? The point behind it is that righteousness doesn’t mean doing good. Doing good is not righteousness. Righteousness means doing good out of choice. And that doesn’t exist in a sheep. That’s why it isn’t righteous—not because it doesn’t do good. And basically what the rabbi wanted from them when he rebuked them, yes, what did he want from them? He didn’t want them to behave well. He wanted them to choose. To start being choosers. Earlier I mentioned the phrase “get the Religious-Zionist out of you,” right? So basically what he wanted was that they stop being Religious-Zionists. That’s really the claim. Start being choosers. Start being people who make a decision and carry out what they themselves decide. And the claim—what I want to say—is that when the author of the Tanya speaks about the struggle between the divine soul and the animal soul, basically the struggle is between… the divine soul is a choosing person, and the animal soul is a non-choosing person. When a person doesn’t choose, he can do a lot of good—if the good inclination takes him to do good, right? Because he is basically handed over to his inclination. “The wicked are in the hand of their heart; the righteous have their heart in their hand.” The heart is not necessarily a bad thing, but they are in the hand of their heart—meaning the heart carries them, and wherever it carries them, that’s where they go. Going along with the crowd, yes? So it’s the same with us. In other words, animal soul means not being a chooser, not holding the reins. The result may be many good deeds—that’s irrelevant. If your good inclination is strong, like the kindergarten teacher says, then you’ll do a lot of good. If your evil inclination is strong, you’ll do a lot of evil. But in the end, you’re not doing either of them—it’s not you doing it. The horses are carrying you, the inclinations are carrying you. That’s a person of the animal soul. Therefore a person of the animal soul is not a bad person. He is a non-choosing person. A person of the divine soul is not necessarily a good person. A person of the divine soul is a person who chooses. “Knowing good and evil.” Hm? Knowing good and evil, right? Knowing good and evil—that’s in that very sin of Adam the First. In that very place. Knowledge means connection; maybe I’ll still comment on that later… wait, we’ll see in a moment. So basically the struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul is not a struggle between good and evil, right and left, but over the question whether you choose or do not choose. Will you be a choosing person—that is, a person in whom the divine soul is actually functioning—or a person of the animal soul? Animal soul means like the sheep: you can do a lot of good, but you’re still a sheep.

[Speaker D] Therefore it’s…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Animal soul in the sense that—like an animal. Meaning, animals can behave very well, that’s not the point. People often say that living next to animals is less dangerous than living next to human beings. Animals don’t do evil intentionally; sometimes they do things because they have an interest, but that’s just their nature—they do what their nature dictates. So if you are a person of the animal soul, you’re like an animal. You do what your nature dictates. You don’t choose what you decide to do. Now, what is the meaning of this spreading through the whole body, yes? That the animal soul originates in the heart and afterward spreads through the whole body, and the divine soul originates in the head and also spreads through the whole body. So one might have thought—ah, so the struggle is probably not between good and evil, but between the wise and the foolish. You should be wise and not foolish. But that too is not correct. There are people of the animal soul who can be geniuses—that has nothing to do with wisdom at all—and there are people of the divine soul who are not great intellectuals. This is not wisdom versus stupidity. And here I’ll maybe bring in something I’ve spoken about more than once before, so I already have a fixed arsenal of illustrations. I once heard Shlomo Nitzan on the radio, and he told a joke in the name of Dov Sadan, who was a literature scholar at the Hebrew University, a very interesting man. He said that the next person to make a revolution in the world will be a Jewish orthopedist. Why Jewish? Because usually whoever makes a revolution in the world is Jewish. But why an orthopedist? Because, he says, the first Jew who made a revolution in the world was Abraham our Patriarch. “שאו מרום עיניכם וראו מי ברא אלה”—“Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these.” Meaning, use your head. In other words, see that this didn’t create itself, okay? Moses our Teacher—well, in another way—use your head. The second Jew who made a revolution in the world was Jesus, that man, who told you that the Merciful One wants the heart—meaning He wants the heart; leave all the philosophizing and the commandments and all that aside, the heart is what matters, okay? The next Jew who made a revolution in the world: Karl Marx, right? Who said—what?—everything is in the belly. Capital basically determines what we do, okay? Everything is in our interests, in our needs. The next man who made a revolution in the world—the Jew? Einstein? Freud. Einstein doesn’t fit the progression, so leave Einstein alone. Freud, of course, who says everything is below the belt, right? We started with the head, moved to the heart, went down to the belly, then below the belt. The next Jew to make a revolution in the world will apparently be an orthopedist—in the sense that everything is in the feet, a podiatrist. So what’s behind all that is actually something more serious—as usually with good jokes, by the way, there’s a serious point behind every joke. What is the meaning of this? This process really is happening. This process of the dominance of the head, heart, belly, yes, the sexual organs—it really is happening. There really is some sort of downward movement in the world of the center of gravity. And it’s not that the world is becoming stupider. It’s a mistake to identify this with a shift from wisdom to stupidity—that’s not the point. The point is: what guides whom, what leads you, who makes the decisions in you. You can be a genius, but still make your decisions from the heart, from the belly, or from the navel, okay? Or lower. Okay? You make your decisions from there not because you’re stupid—you may be very intelligent—but your decisions are made there. Think about the world today: many times there is a kind of despair from reason, in practice. Postmodernism is perhaps a very clear expression of this. There is a kind of despair of reason: reason cannot lead me anywhere, because these assumptions will lead you to one conclusion and other assumptions will lead you to other conclusions, so with reason you won’t get anywhere. So what then? The heart, right? In fact all existentialism, this search, this longing for what connects with me, and things of that kind—they’re part of that same phenomenon.

[Speaker B] Do what feels right to you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I don’t know if “what feels right to you,” but what you connect to. Let’s phrase it in a less crude way, but it’s still the same thing. I mean, you basically don’t trust your head as what directs you; rather, the heart is what directs you. And after that, of course, communism comes and says no, the belly directs us. And then psychoanalysis, yes, where what directs us is even lower. Okay? So the point is not a move from wise people to stupid people, but from wisdom to stupidity. Stupidity can be expressed by a very intelligent person—it has nothing to do with his level of intelligence at all. The question is how much trust he puts in the intellect, how much credit he gives the intellect. Today people tend to identify morality with emotion. And there is no greater mistake than that. Morality is in the intellect. What’s in the emotion is a sheep’s morality. Meaning, you do it because your stomach hurts. Okay, so what? Morality is something you do because you decide that this is the proper way to behave. Morality is part of the intellect, not part of the emotion. Emotion gives inputs. I once spoke about this—there was a friend of mine, still is, but at the time he was principal of the environmental high school in Sde Boker, a very good high school. I was teaching then in Yeruham, in the hesder yeshiva, and he said to me: come speak to us during the Ten Days of Repentance about themes of the season—but without God, without Torah, without anything like that. Just talk about atonement, forgiveness, pardon, repentance, I don’t know, all kinds of things like that—but not religious matters. Fine. So I decided to rise to the challenge, and it really turned out to be a very interesting evening, with all the students and teachers, high-level people, I was very impressed with them. In any case, I said to them like this, I started this way: suppose I hurt someone, okay? And I have no guilty conscience about it at all—I’m missing the conscience lobe, okay? The conscience lobe has been cut out; I don’t feel anything, fine? But I go home and come to the conclusion that I was wrong. Entirely intellectually, nothing in the gut, nothing in feelings, experiences—nothing. Intellectually. I understand that I was wrong, and I decide to go make peace with him. I walk there humming a cheerful tune along the way, since I don’t feel anything, right? No pangs of conscience, nothing. I get there and ask his forgiveness for hurting him, okay? Will you accept such an apology? I asked them. Now suppose you know what’s in my heart—normally we can’t know, but Elijah the Prophet comes, I allowed myself to mention Elijah the Prophet despite the rules, and tells you that inside I feel nothing, okay? Would you accept such an apology? As I expected, there was almost complete consensus there that no, because it’s hypocritical, you don’t really feel regret, you’re doing it from the lips outward. But I stressed: it’s not that I’m doing it in order to gain something, meaning that I’ll placate him and then he’ll be my friend and give me all kinds of things I need from him. No, I’m really doing it because I understood that I was wrong. It’s just not accompanied by sensations, feelings, experiences; it’s a cold intellectual understanding, okay? I told them that in my eyes there is no purer apology than that. Someone who asks forgiveness because his stomach hurts is just supporting his own stomach. He wants to ease the stomachache he feels, so he goes to ask forgiveness in order to calm his stomach, or his heart, or his belly, or whatever is lower, okay? Someone who goes to ask forgiveness despite not feeling anything—that’s the greatest penitent there is. He does it truly because that is what is right, because he understood that he was wrong and has to appease the other person in order to atone for what he did—without any feelings. So what? What’s the problem with that? I was once at TED; there was a talk by some American neurologist, I think. She had gone through some accident and lost the ability for empathy—meaning, she couldn’t feel the other person, okay? And she described in the talk, it was very interesting, how she nevertheless manages to function normally in society. Because without empathy, you hurt others—you can’t really function socially. She simply learned it. Meaning, she learned it as a kind of imitation, fine? A bit similar to A Beautiful Mind, for those who saw it; anyway, a somewhat similar move. So at some point I thought to myself: what exactly is she missing? Is she really immoral? Is she an imitator? Is she artificial intelligence behaving morally? I think not. She’s very moral—maybe more than all of us—because she acts with empathy because she understands that this is the right way to act, not because she has some emotional impulse pushing her there. She lacks the emotional dimension that drives her to act; it’s a cognitive decision. Again, not sure it’s entirely pure, because she understands there are social costs if you don’t behave that way. Doesn’t matter. But on the principled level, she lacks nothing. Meaning, empathy is not morality. It’s a mistake—all the psychologists of morality identify those two things, it’s just bizarre. Empathy is not morality. Empathy gives you inputs, an infrastructure that can help you in making moral decisions. Meaning, say I’m considering whether to punch someone, and if I have no empathy, then I don’t even understand that he suffers from the punch. What, I suffer—that I know. But I don’t feel the other, so I don’t understand that he’s really going to suffer from it, so I’ll punch him—I behave immorally, so to speak. But it’s not that I’m really an immoral person. I simply lack data. If I had the data, if I understood that he suffers, I wouldn’t do it. So even if I punch him, it’s not a flaw in my morality. It’s like if I’m blind and I walk over someone and trample him—I simply don’t see that he’s there. So I’m missing data because I don’t know he’s there, but that doesn’t mean I’m immoral, right? I just don’t have the data needed to make moral decisions. Just a second—I only want to finish this. What I want to say is that empathy, or emotions in general, experiences and emotions in general, are data that you need in order to make moral decisions—but they are data. It’s not that empathy is what drives your behavior, because if that’s the case, then you’re a sheep. Okay?

[Speaker B] Fine, but still, don’t you want to reach a state where most of your software will operate that way—don’t you want everything to be…?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With me? No, no. No, no, wanting that is perfectly fine. My discussion is a principled one. No, I understand what you’re saying. I understand what you’re saying, I do. But that’s goal-oriented, utilitarian—I agree. Fine, but that’s not what interests me. I’m talking right now on the value plane. What has value? Not the question of how to conduct yourself so that… no—

[Speaker B] Better? No, it’s not better.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not better.

[Speaker B] Why? Because then it’s like—not touching fire—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not better, except in the sense that you’ll suffer less from him. He is not better in his image of God, he is not better in his moral behavior. No, he doesn’t internalize it, so now he doesn’t behave through decisions, he’s just like that. Again, a robot—that’s exactly the problem. A sheep too—it’s nicest to live near a sheep. Because the sheep has no evil inclination at all; it’s so nice, such a good neighbor. Exactly. So I don’t want people like sheep. Fine, to each his own. I don’t want people like sheep; the world would be too boring.

[Speaker B] You don’t want bad people.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t want bad people; I want choosing people. And the price of their being choosing people is that they will also do evil, and I want that. I’m not going to live in a sheep pen. No, I want such people, yes. Right, the price of your being a chooser is that sometimes you’ll also choose evil. Correct, agreed—and still. Think about it: I once saw a dialogue written by Raymond Smullyan, an American Jewish logician, who did logical stand-up comedy performances. He lived to a very old age, died at 100 I think, or something like that, a few years ago, not that many years. I once saw a dialogue of his, later translated into Hebrew. He has a book called The Tao Is Silent, I think. He defined himself as a Taoist, and he tried to explain Taoism to a Western audience, okay? So in one of the dialogues there, a person comes to the Holy One, blessed be He, and asks Him to take away his freedom of choice. Why? Because he can’t bear the responsibility it places on him, and it’s hard for him, so he asks that his choice be taken away, okay? So the Holy One plays games with him, leads him through logical loops, and does all sorts of tricks there. Among other things He asks him: tell me, but you do know that if you had no choice, you also couldn’t have made this request? And now you chose to go in the direction of wanting to give up choice. In other words, the moment you’re already exercising judgment and preferring one option over another, you’re using the mechanism of choice. Are you really willing to give that up? And then suddenly he hesitates a little. Well, now—this is exactly what I’m saying. If you want a world of sheep, health to you. There is a world of sheep; you can go live in a pen.

[Speaker F] It’ll be easier for them to be drawn to it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s something else. I want choosing people. Now you’re telling me there’s psychological or other value in internalizing positive things, because then it’ll be easier for you to choose the good—fine. But that’s a means. For me, the value lies in choosing the good—that is the value. And if you’re moved—not out of choice, but simply moved to do good—that has no value. Okay? There was a story here—let me tell you, my arsenal of illustrations is starting to run low. I once saw a reality music show, I don’t remember which one, maybe The Voice, the one where they turn around in the chairs. The Voice. And there was Shlomi Shabbat there, one of the judges—I think that was the one. And someone sang there, I don’t remember already, and everyone got all excited, as always. Then all the judges say what they think, and I was watching it with my kids. Then Shlomi Shabbat says, listen, the head says there were problems here and here, but the heart, the heart, the heart—and everybody shouts in total ecstasy. And when it was over—wait, so what did you decide? My kids were on the floor laughing. Because for everyone he didn’t need to add another sentence, right? Meaning, if the head says it wasn’t right, but the heart, the heart, the heart—the decision is obvious, right? Meaning obviously you passed to the next stage, right? But why did he pass? I mean, if the head says this and the heart says that, okay, so now let’s see what we decide. He doesn’t even bother to say what he decided. Why? Because where there’s a clash between heart and head, obviously the heart decides. That’s the process I described before, do you see? You see a person, I don’t know, an art critic, okay? He reviews a concert or an exhibition, paintings or whatever. And he explains how moving it was and how much it… tell me something! Who cares how moving it was? You’re an emotional type, so it moved you. Tell me what you saw there, how meaningful it was, what techniques he used, what exactly—I don’t know—what interesting creative things you saw there. Say something of value.

[Speaker B] When you feel something—when you touch fire, you touch fire, you don’t need to explain it, you feel the heat. So he says: the heart—the song hit him right here, I don’t need to—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Think—it goes straight to the heart. And what did the head say there? That it wasn’t done properly?

[Speaker B] It was crooked, this and that… Here when I touch a pot, you say it’s not hot, the head says there’s nothing—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the head says it’s not hot and I touch it, then that means the head was mistaken—it is hot.

[Speaker B] You couldn’t have known it was hot.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I couldn’t have known, but now I know.

[Speaker B] You know only afterward.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right. He didn’t say that—that’s what I’m saying. If he had said that, then fine. He didn’t say it. He basically said: you have lots of problems, but if you moved me then there’s no problem at all, so you pass.

[Speaker H] Because he doesn’t need to think.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? He does need to think, he has to explain. It could be he has no potential to get anywhere because his technique is terrible. So what? That’s a consideration; you have to take it into account. Decide afterward whatever you decide. I’ll give you another example. There once was in Yeruham…

[Speaker H] The heart always wins.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say the heart always wins. I said you have to use judgment. And who uses the judgment, by the way? Heart versus head—who uses judgment? The head, of course, right? Once a student came to me, also in Yeruham, and said: look, I’m seeing a girl, and the question is whether to follow the heart or the head. Only the head.

[Speaker B] Most decisions…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So he says to me…

[Speaker B] So he says to me that… what does that even—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Mean? But what about the feeling of chemistry and love and things like that? I told him: that’s perfectly fine, it’s very important, it’s important input for the decision the head will make. You need those inputs, because clearly the chemistry between you is a very significant factor in the decision—that’s fine. But it’s a factor in the decision; it’s not that the heart makes the decision. The heart gives you input, like the empathy I spoke about earlier, and now make the decision. Decisions are made in the head, okay? Therefore, if I return to the author of the Tanya, then basically what he’s saying here is that the divine soul, which is in the head—why does it spread downward also to the heart and everything else? Here I get to your comments. We make use of the heart. The heart gives us some kind of input in order to understand sensations, emotions, experiences, empathy, everything we talked about before. Even our moral conscience gives us certain signals about what is right and what is not right. But in the end, the divine soul uses those signals and makes the decisions here. Okay? I think that many, very many, of the public arguments we have today are arguments between the brain and the heart—not between fools and wise people, but between brain and heart. The clearest example, I think, is the argument over the hostages. And again, it doesn’t matter what your own position is right now, but the argument was conducted in such a way that those who opposed the deal raised arguments, while those who supported the deal cried and wailed. They spoke of feelings—how can this be, they’re in tunnels, they’re suffering—and all of that is true, I’m not belittling it. It’s terrible. Okay? But the sense was that they were unwilling to hear arguments after that. Meaning, if the heart has spoken, like Shlomi Shabbat, yes? The heart has spoken, full stop. Whoever thinks otherwise is heartless—that is, he’s not part of the game, there’s nothing to discuss with him. No, never mind—I think the average person in the street wasn’t acting out of political interest. I believe in their authenticity. Fine, but no, it works differently—it works in reverse. The authenticity—I believe in the authenticity. It was authentic; it wasn’t manipulation. Again, some of it was, yes, but in general it wasn’t manipulation. People sincerely thought that—but they thought it because their heart was screaming. And you try to explain to people: look, but there are all sorts of other considerations we also need to take into account—and there’s no one to talk to. Now notice that, by the way, the same thing happened with Gilad Shalit. Same thing. Suddenly there was complete consensus in favor of—what do you mean, pay any price and so on. My wife and I went to speak with Gilad Shalit’s parents, with Aviva and… I forgot his name, in Jerusalem. They had a protest tent there; we went to speak with them. And they asked: tell us, why aren’t the religious people with us? Why aren’t the religious camp in this struggle? I said: because there are good considerations against it. Meaning, if Gilad Shalit is brought back—and the heart hurts terribly—but if they bring him back and release, I don’t know, all kinds of murderers, then many people will be killed, there will be a sense of victory on the other side, there are all sorts of considerations. Again, you can weigh this against that—I’m not speaking right now… You’re making a serious mistake, I’ll tell you why: because there was no proposal like that at all. There was no proposal, release these people and… No, because there was no such proposal, I’m saying again. In Entebbe yes. But I’m saying, that was another era, then everything was right-wing. Rabin was solidly right-wing, Ben-Gurion was solidly right-wing. No, it’s not that bloc, it’s another bloc—the parents of that bloc. That’s exactly the point. It’s the same descent from the head to the heart that I’m talking about. Meaning, what happens today—notice the correlation, one second, the correlation is very strong. You said before that these are Bibi supporters and these are Bibi opponents; the correlation is reversed. Meaning, the people—and I am very much not a Bibi supporter, full disclosure, far from it, very far from it—but the correlation is such that people on the right side of the map are more people of the divine soul. There are more religious people there—a very clear correlation. And on the left there are many more—it’s not one-to-one, but it’s a very strong correlation. And I’m not talking right now about who is right; I’m simply describing reality. And reality is this: people think that being religious is about emotion, heart, experiences and all that, while being secular is rational—and it’s exactly the opposite. Secularism is pure emotionality. Secular people generally conduct themselves in a super-emotional way. And religious people—one of the misunderstandings secular people have about the religious is their super-rational, rationalistic mode of conduct. Meaning, the head determines, not the heart. And therefore, I think you will find far more religious people on the side opposing prisoner releases than on the side supporting them. And again, regardless of who is right. It may be that the truth is on the other side, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about what kind of arguments are used and what kind of thinking is taking place. The right-wing style of thinking is more rationalistic; the left-wing style of thinking is more emotional. That’s just how it is. And although the public image is the opposite, it’s simply not true.

[Speaker B] Every parameter you test.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Clearly. Rationalistic, not—

[Speaker B] Rational.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely, of course. No one understands them—how are they willing to give their lives for some abstract goals and so on? That is exactly their rationalism. Now you may disagree, and I said it’s not necessarily rational—it’s rationalistic. Rationalistic means: they too want to live, believe me. They too don’t want to commit suicide. But they are willing to subordinate their simple feelings, their instincts, to ideology. That is unequivocally rationalistic conduct. And that is what the world doesn’t understand. The world doesn’t understand because it says: “Wait, how are you capable of doing such a thing?” But the question isn’t how are you capable; the question is why do you think it is right to do such a thing? That’s what needs to be clarified, not how you’re capable. How am I capable? I overcome it, take a pill. That’s not the point. But when the world asks “How are you capable?” it assumes the heart decides. Let me give you another example. There was once a chemist in Jerusalem, very anti-religious, named Israel Shahak. Know him? Every now and then he’d publish letters in the newspaper and stir up uproars and all kinds of things. Often the stories were fictional, but never mind. Among other things he told a story that he had seen a group of religious Jews walk by a non-Jew in distress on the Sabbath and not save him, leaving him to die. And Jewish law says that one does not desecrate the Sabbath to save the life of a non-Jew, okay? That was one story. Another story concerned the wife of a priest who had been raped, and they forced the couple to separate. A priest’s wife who had been raped, and they forced her to separate from her husband—that is what Jewish law says, okay? And in the end it turned out that one of the stories, or maybe both of them, were fake—not true. And everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Why are you breathing a sigh of relief? It’s true—that’s what Jewish law says. So what difference does it make whether it happened or not? If that’s what Jewish law says, then his criticism is correct, okay? So what difference does it make whether it happened or not? Now what happened? I talked with people around that issue, and I said to them—it was with the story of the priest’s wife—so the whole country was in an uproar over it. I spoke with people and they said to me: “Look, how are they capable of doing that—those judges who tell them they have to separate? How are they capable of doing that? Don’t they have a heart?” So I told them: “Of course they have a heart—but the heart doesn’t decide.” Not only do you assume they have a heart, you also assume that the heart is what ought to decide. That’s not true. Meaning, I have a heart, my heart hurts exactly like yours. If I were the judge sitting there, it would hurt me more than it hurts you. Your heart hurts in your armchair in front of the television; he has to sit there and issue the ruling. His heart hurts much more than yours. But he believes that this is how one ought to act, that this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, expects of him. Wait, just a second. Now you may disagree—fine—but understand that this is what he thinks. So if that’s what he thinks, then even if his heart is built exactly like yours, he will still reach a different decision. Now the argument wasn’t: why do you think that? Because that would be a real argument, and it should be conducted. Is Jewish law correct or not? Should one be bound by Jewish law or not? That’s an argument that should be carried out. But the argument wasn’t conducted that way. The argument was always: don’t they have a heart? How can they act this way? And I’m saying: what do you mean they don’t have a heart? You assume that if they had a heart, they wouldn’t do it. Why? There are other considerations besides the heart. Why does it follow that if the heart says something, that’s the end of the discussion? And people just couldn’t understand that. It’s unbelievable. It is so deeply embedded in the culture around us—you have to notice this. It’s embedded so deeply that emotion is the final authority. That is, if emotion says something, period. No intellectual arguments will help you. And this characterizes the secular public much more than the religious public, contrary to the usual image—much more. I think one of the least understood aspects of religious conduct in secular eyes is precisely this aspect: the detachment from your simple feelings. What, you don’t have the simple feelings I have, that the priest’s wife and her husband should stay together? I do have those feelings. I’m not detached from them. You insist that I’m detached from them. I’m not detached from them—but I have other considerations too. This is one input I take into account. I’ll try to find a leniency, because I understand that this is a truly difficult ruling for the couple; I’ll try to find a leniency. But if I can’t find one, then in the end I’ll make the decision with my head and not with my heart. In essence, what the Rabbi—

[Speaker B] Said—they deny the source of authority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, which is why I say that wasn’t the argument there. Again. The rationale of—

[Speaker B] They just don’t know how to say it, so…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they do know how to say it. They do know how to say it, and they say it. That’s not the point. They say: forget your beliefs or not your beliefs—that’s another matter, okay? We have a disagreement about that. But where is your heart? That was the argument. And I’m saying: what do you mean, forget belief? If these are my beliefs, then even if my heart looks just like your heart, I will still make different decisions. The whole point is that they said: leave aside the argument about beliefs and Sinai and all that—it’s not relevant, it’s not interesting. And even if you believe these silly things, good for you—but where is your heart? Do you understand? There’s a much more fundamental meta-argument going on here. The meta-argument is over the question: who decides, okay? Therefore, if I return to the author of the Tanya’s description, then in his description the conflict is between two souls trying to cover the whole body. In both of them there is both brain and heart. So what is the difference between the divine soul and the animal soul? The divine soul is one whose center is here, and from here it goes down to the heart to gather information, receive inputs, and make decisions. And the decisions are made here. This is the center; this is the locomotive. Emotion and experience are the cars that it pulls behind it—they serve it, okay? And in the animal soul it’s the opposite. The locomotive is here, and from here it rises to the brain to get clever and think and so on. What does that mean? You use logical arguments. Every person—an intelligent person—has arguments; he will often explain his position. But it is clear that those explanations come in order to serve the feeling he has in his heart. The heart decides. And the intellect serves the heart—that is the animal soul. And in the divine soul, the heart serves the intellect. Therefore, on both sides you can have very intelligent people and less intelligent people, in both camps. In both places there is both brain and heart, in both places. The difference is over the question of who is in charge, who makes the decisions, and who serves the one who makes the decisions. That is the difference between the divine soul and the animal soul, and that is the struggle the author of the Tanya is describing. It’s not a struggle between evil and good. It’s not a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. It’s a struggle between the divine soul—which is a train of wisdom and emotion, with wisdom in the locomotive—and the animal soul, which is again a train of wisdom and emotion, but with emotion in the locomotive and not wisdom. And it’s very subtle; it’s kind of a fractal structure. You have to go in—on each side there are all the sides. In the end the question is simply who is in charge. That is the difference, and that’s where the struggle is. And the meaning of that struggle—and here it connects to what I talked about last time—the meaning of that struggle is exactly this question. Namely: are you choosing, or are you being dragged along? Are you holding the reins, or are you letting the horses carry you? The horses, of course, are the inclinations, the emotions, the…

[Speaker B] Because if you go with… the divine soul is a better source… but if your rationale is wrong, like the Nazis, then it’s much more—much more destructive.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that in a moment.

[Speaker B] It can be much more destructive.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that in a moment. That’s also what you asked earlier. Because earlier you asked what happens if someone is choosing—which is supposedly ideal—but chooses evil, not good. Where does that fit in? In another moment, I’ll get there. I talked about it when I spoke about the Religious-Zionist thing, but I’ll get there. Dangerous—again, danger doesn’t interest me. I’m not speaking in terms of outcomes. I’m speaking about how I judge the person, not what brings danger to society. That’s consequential judgment. I’m not talking about that. In terms of consequential judgment, live next to sheep—that’s the best thing consequentially. So no, that’s not what I’m talking about. But I’ll get there in a second. So what I basically want to say is that the author of the Tanya is rotating the picture of our inner struggle. It’s not between evil and good, not between wisdom and stupidity, but over the question who decides. And the descent that Dov Sadan described—from head to heart to belly and so on—is not a descent from wisdom to stupidity, but from a state in which the head decides, to a state in which the heart decides, to a state in which the belly decides, to a state in which urges decide. Okay? That is the descent being described. Where is the locomotive located in the body? That’s the question. Not which part of the body participates. The whole body participates in every mode of conduct. The question is: who is the locomotive and who are the cars? That’s really the discussion. I forgot—you wanted to ask something earlier. Yes?

[Speaker G] Regarding the place of—you say think with the head, the head first. Now if we take the case, for example, of Gilad Shalit’s parents—was it or wasn’t it right for them to think with the heart, because it’s their son and his life depends on those decisions? Is there no place for thinking with the heart? Only with the head, always, in everything?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think it always has to be with the head.

[Speaker G] That’s to say—and if you were among them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then maybe I wouldn’t succeed in thinking with the head, but that doesn’t mean that’s what should be done. Meaning—no, I’m not accusing them.

[Speaker G] Whoever is in that situation—I’m too small for that, I’m not accusing them at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m only saying, on the principled level, what is required of us is to operate with the head. Many times that’s very hard. And therefore, by the way, part of the point is that they should do their part and demand what they demand—fine, everything’s fine. And the same with the families of the hostages—that’s perfectly fine, no problem. But that’s why there are authorities who are supposed to make the decision after hearing those inputs, and the authorities are supposed to be detached from the interests involved there and understand the decision for better or worse. And they are the ones who should make the decision. So here we are basically dividing roles within society. Very often one of the claims was: “And if your son were there?” Yes? They asked Bibi or whoever it was: “And if your son were there?” The answer should be: “If my son were there, I should resign and let others make the decisions.” That’s what I should do if my son were there.

[Speaker B] His son is there now? Hm? Tzvika Mor, one of them, said: “Don’t do it.” Yes, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s an example of—yes, of the right, what I talked about before: a rationalist.

[Speaker B] Right. Right, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And it’s the same discussion. No, that’s a different question, but it’s the same discussion.

[Speaker B] It’s the same discussion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, the claim is: “Wait, where was your heart?” And my heart was exactly where your heart was—and I have other considerations. That’s exactly the point. So there, for example, Tzvika Mor really is a different kind of conduct from the Shalit family. And again, I’m not judging. I don’t even know what I would do there, and that doesn’t interest me—I’m not going to judge them at all. What I’m trying—Abraham our Patriarch? What? I don’t know—

[Speaker G] It could also be that you wouldn’t even be here. I have no idea.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I know, I think I know what the right thing is to do. But judging a person who acted in a way I think was wrong is not my business. The Holy One, blessed be He, should judge him, not me. And that’s fine. I completely understand it, and I think it’s good that their voice is heard. It’s good that their voice is heard, because that too is an input that has to be taken into account when making the decision—but not only that! That’s exactly the point. And the demand that came from the field was that only that should have a place in decision-making, and that’s not right! That’s exactly the problem. And you see—it’s the same argument. It’s always the same argument.

[Speaker G] To respect the place of a person who is hurting and thinking from the heart.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Right. Especially since if I were in his position, I’d probably behave that way too. So this is not a judgment of the person at all; it’s a judgment of the position. Yes, a judgment of the position, not of the person. But show respect for that, yes. But decision-makers still need to make the decisions and not automatically follow people’s distress—and it is real distress, terrible distress. Real and authentic, all of it true. And that still doesn’t mean you should go with it. Those are two different things. And it’s very hard to convey such a message in the atmosphere surrounding us today, very hard. Because today we are in those areas, in those areas.

[Speaker D] I saw that 42 died?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. What does that mean?

[Speaker D] It adds to the issue. A good, organized army. What? Yes.

[Speaker I] Fine,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And they didn’t make such a huge uproar.

[Speaker I] No,

[Speaker D] Whether it’s rational or irrational.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again, I—

[Speaker D] They took the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] General calculation into account.

[Speaker I] Right, I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying again, it makes no difference at all who was right. I have a position and it’s not interesting, that’s not the point. I’m trying to show the pattern of the discussion. No, no, that’s exactly the point. It’s not true that everyone makes the general calculation. No. There are some people who ideologically refuse to make the general calculation. That is exactly the point. And it may be that the general calculation says yes, one should make a deal—I don’t care, I’m not… I think not, by the way, personally, but that doesn’t matter. That’s not the subject of the discussion. I think that… that… the issue is not who was right; the issue is how the discussion is conducted, okay? So therefore, basically, if I come back to us, what I want to say is that…

[Speaker H] To be—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A penitent means to return to conducting yourself in the mode of the divine soul and not in the mode of the animal soul. That’s basically what it means to repent, now in this language. Now, maybe one more point to complete the picture: what is this animal soul that rises to the brain to get clever and think thoughts? Yes? The animal soul too has logical and intellectual arguments at the basis of its claims. How does that work? So I said earlier: those arguments serve the heart, serve the emotion, the experience, the feeling. Think, for example—I gave the example earlier that you mentioned, the hostages. You could also hear arguments in favor of the deal. It doesn’t matter now—there are arguments. It’s not that there were no arguments there at all. But it was pretty clear that those arguments were serving the emotions. Meaning, after my emotion says it’s obvious we need a deal, now I try to build arguments that will justify that. A bit like—I once heard in some introduction to philosophy course someone say: what’s the difference between theology and philosophy? In philosophy you take assumptions and derive conclusions from them; in theology you take conclusions and derive assumptions from them. You already believe in God, and now you build an argument proving God’s existence. Anselm’s prayer at the beginning of the Proslogion is a wonderful example. He prays to God to enlighten his eyes, and then formulates the proof of God’s existence. I mean, yes? And he took a lot of flak for that, not justly. In any case, the claim is that very often, even if you raise sophisticated, logical, perfectly coherent arguments, they are serving your emotions. And emotion is really what decides. Let me give you an example of a type of conduct that can be like this. It doesn’t have to be, but it can be. Take, for example, a philosophical discussion in ethics, in morality. Think of a dispute between a utilitarian view and a deontological view—a view that evaluates things in light of outcomes, versus a view that evaluates things in light of a person’s intentions, not his outcomes. Okay? So for example, the deontologist can come to the consequentialist, the utilitarian, and ask him: you think the moral act is the act that brings maximum utility, okay? Say there are ten people whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in the middle of winter—yes? Manchester United…

[Speaker C] It happened, there was one case.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there was—there was more than one. There was some Peruvian or Chilean soccer team, I don’t remember, and there was Manchester United too. Anyway, never mind. Their plane crashed and they’re there, and they can’t get out, they’re in the middle of nowhere, snow all around, not a living soul, no food, nothing. Drinking water they have—they melt snow—but no food. Now they can either slaughter one of them so the others can eat him and survive, or stay there together and die. Okay? So—

[Speaker C] But they ate the dead. They didn’t kill someone to—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, they ate those who died. Yes, yes. Anyway, there’s a very powerful movie about it. In any case, the claim is that the deontologist says to the utilitarian: look, according to your view, it comes out that they should slaughter one so that the other nine have food and survive. So what is he trying to do with an argument like that? He’s basically trying to say: see where your approach leads, therefore admit that it’s wrong and retract, okay? Now what does he expect the utilitarian to answer? He should say: right. No? I’m a utilitarian, aren’t I? Utilitarian means maximum utility. Maximum utility—so you slaughter the tenth and eat him so the other nine can stay alive. What kind of argument is that? What do you want from me? Yes, right, agreed, that’s what should be done. Why are you hurling this at me as if… understand where your position leads, therefore clearly it’s wrong. Why clearly is it wrong? It leads there because your stomach hurts. Because it makes your stomach hurt to slaughter a person—so what? Fine, your stomach hurts, but rational, intellectual consideration says that’s what is right to do. And therefore that’s what I intend to do. But the truth is that often in discussions like this, opinions really do change following arguments of that kind. And philosophical articles in ethics often use thought experiments of this kind: you draw some situation and examine what a given moral position says about it, and that serves as an argumentative tool. I try to show you the implications of what you think in order to cause you to retract, to change your mind. What’s the assumption behind this? Well, you can interpret it in two ways. One possibility is basically to say: look, the fact that I think consequentially or utilitarianly is all very nice, but when I see the situation before my eyes, my stomach hurts and therefore clearly we throw all these intellectual things into the trash—the gut works, okay? And that basically means that we construct an argument—utilitarianism is an argument that can be formulated in very sophisticated ways, and there are hundreds and thousands of articles on it and all sorts of things—but in the end all those articles just reflect what’s happening in the gut, okay? That’s what they do. And I use my brain, which is an analytical tool, to formulate the theory that will best express, in the most convincing way, what my gut thinks or feels, yes? That’s one possibility. There’s another possibility—and this came up earlier too—that says no, it’s not the gut, it’s intuition. I have an intuition saying it is not right to behave this way. So if my theory says something that leads to a conclusion that contradicts intuition, that’s like a kind of paradox, as I said earlier. It may be that I need to re-examine my theory, because my theory isn’t coherent—not because it clashes with my gut, but because it clashes with my head, only with the common-sense part of the head, not the logical, recursive part of our thinking, okay? So if we mean it in the second sense, then there’s no problem, and I fully agree. But my feeling is that very often it’s the first sense. You see people slaughtering someone and eating him—you can’t bear to see that, right? The moment you see such a thing, immediately: no, no, no, I retract, I’m not a utilitarian and not anything. Which is basically an emotional bias, a feeling-based bias. You’re trying to change someone’s intellectual position by acting on his emotions, okay? And that’s an example of what I said before. Therefore, many times even articles in philosophy are actually built like this: they present situations that arouse a very strong moral emotion, and through that they try to prove a moral thesis. But often, at least, that means you are actually subordinating the intellect to emotion, okay? Emotion determines, and intellect formulates the theories so they express what emotion says. Let me say even more than that: how do you build such a theory in the first place? You start with certain cases, formulate a hypothesis, and say: this case doesn’t fit the hypothesis, okay, let’s shave the hypothesis a little so it also fits this case—like a scientific experiment, yes? When the theory doesn’t fit the experiment, we tweak it a bit, right? Then I do another experiment—thought experiment in this case—another situation: doesn’t fit, I shave another corner. Another experiment: doesn’t fit, shave another corner, until I arrive at the perfect theory, okay? That’s how you build a theory in philosophy. Now what does that mean? It means that the theory is nothing but an overall description of the collection of gut feelings I had. I formulated it in intellectual, coherent, logical terms, but basically it was tested or built in such a way that it represents the collection of my gut feelings. So I used the head, and sometimes brilliant arguments in the head—not every person can do that. He may be very smart. But his wisdom is not the wisdom by which he decides. It isn’t what determines what is right to do. What determines what to do is the gut. The wisdom—this is what he writes here—that the animal soul rises to the brain “to think thoughts about them, to become clever through them,” and so on, because you are crystallizing your gut feelings into some intellectual pattern, okay? But in the end the gut decided, not the head. And that’s what Dov Sadan meant when he spoke of the descent into the belly. People no less intelligent and perhaps even more so, but they are driven by the belly, and the intellect serves the belly. The belly decides what to do, and the intellect serves the belly.

[Speaker D] What? Yes, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay? So that is basically the author of the Tanya’s description of this process. And if I return to our larger discussion about repentance, then the claim is that being a penitent means returning to conduct yourself like a person with a divine soul, not an animal soul. That is what it means to repent. Now I want to go one step further. Well—should I start? We have one more meeting, so I’ll try to at least lay out the outline of what I planned. I think I mentioned in the first lecture, when I discussed whether there is or isn’t a commandment to repent, I mentioned Meshekh Chokhmah’s explanation of Maimonides—I think I mentioned it. Meshekh Chokhmah explains why, according to Maimonides, there is no commandment to repent: because repenting means stopping the sin. And the very fact that the thing is defined as a sin is enough; there’s no need to also tell me not to sin. From the very fact that it’s forbidden to eat pork, it follows that I should stop eating pork. There’s no need to count another commandment: stop eating pork. From the fact that eating pork is a sin, that already says it, right? The commandment would be redundant. So—I don’t remember how much I said about this or whether I said it—but where is his mistake? There is a fundamental mistake here. The mistake is that repentance is, first of all, factually not simply stopping eating pork. Repentance has four components: abandoning the sin, regret, resolve for the future, and confession. Okay? Abandoning the sin is the only thing connected to stopping the sin. All the rest are things I would not have known if all that was written was that it’s forbidden to eat pork. What, would I know that if I ate pork I have to confess and accept upon myself for the future not to do it? Not doing it in the future is true, but accepting it upon myself—that act called repentance does not follow from the prohibition against eating pork. Abandoning the sin, yes—don’t eat pork, of course. But abandoning the sin is only one item out of the four in the definition of the process of repentance. And I’ll say more than that: even if the whole process is ultimately aimed at one thing—namely that I won’t eat pork afterward, let’s say—even if all of this is simply the means by which in the end I won’t eat pork, I still think there’s a mistake in the conception that repentance is a means and not an end. It is seen as a means of reaching a state where I don’t sin. This psychological process I go through is just the means of reaching the desired state. And my claim is that the value of repentance lies in the process and not in its result—or at least also in the process, not only in its result. And one indication of this is that the Talmud says that a penitent is greater than a perfectly righteous person. It brings a dispute among the Amoraim whether a penitent is greater or a perfectly righteous person is greater. It says that “where penitents stand, perfectly righteous people cannot stand,” because of the crowding, as is well known, and therefore the penitent is greater. Now I ask: in what sense is a penitent greater than a perfectly righteous person? Suppose the penitent completely succeeds in repenting, so now he becomes perfectly righteous. How can he be more than perfectly righteous? What is more than perfectly righteous? Isn’t perfectly righteous the maximum? No? What do you mean asymptotic? Asymptotic—

[Speaker B] No,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Asymptotic doesn’t mean the process—it only means that the target is the goal but we never actually reach it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying even if we did reach it, the goal is not the destination but the road toward it—not because it’s asymptotic and we never get there. That’s still a consequential way of thinking. What I want to say is: when I say a penitent is greater than a perfectly righteous person, what am I actually saying? Some want to say it’s because he made more effort, had to fight more, and so on. But that too, in my view, is an incorrect approach. What, do you think a righteous person doesn’t fight? No? So the struggle never ends, but still the question is whether the value lies in the destination I reach or in the path I travel. So I say—what, a righteous person doesn’t fight? Who thinks a perfectly righteous person doesn’t have to struggle? On the contrary, he struggles every single moment. The penitent had moments where he didn’t struggle and fell, and afterward he returned to struggle. There’s this assumption that a perfectly righteous person means rest, no problem, it comes free to him, okay?

[Speaker F] Yes, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not how it is. So I don’t think it can be hung on effort; it’s not a question of effort. The effort argument would only mean that the penitent deserves more reward—according to the pain is the reward. That doesn’t mean he is greater. “Greater” means his spiritual state is higher, okay? I claim he is greater, not only that he deserves more reward. Why is he greater? Because the penitent repented, and the righteous person did not repent. Now true, suppose repentance brought me to a state where I am perfectly righteous, okay? Like the perfectly righteous person. So what is my advantage over him? The road there. I’m in the same state, but I underwent a process of change, I underwent a process of repentance, and therefore I am greater than he is because the process is not merely a means of reaching the state of being perfectly righteous; it has value in itself. Meaning, the value function is a weighted sum of the derivative and the function. The derivative also contributes to the value, not only the state you ultimately arrive at. Think, for example, about a body that has velocity. The velocity is not merely a means of reaching the next destination; being in motion has value in itself. Even if I’m moving—even if I’m moving in circles. Yes? Think.

[Speaker J] So the perfectly righteous person—the… it’s like a constant? Yes, zero.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The function is constant; the derivative is zero. Yes. So the value of repentance is the value in the fact that I am progressing, not only in the fact that the progress leads me to a higher state. That too is true, but not only that. There is also the dimension of the derivative. And the penitent has that, while the perfectly righteous person does not; that’s why the penitent is greater than the perfectly righteous person. Okay? Now, Meshekh Chokhmah assumes that the goal of repentance is to bring me to a state where I don’t sin. In the end, the destination is the state I reach. And here I disagree with him. The process of repentance is itself the goal here; it is what gives value to the process, not only the destination you finally reach, but the very fact that you are moving. There are sometimes recommendations from management experts who say to a factory that it’s good to have dynamism in management, in processes—change things. Now people think the dynamism is simply to make it more efficient and get better results. Sometimes dynamism has value in itself. Just the very fact that you are in motion—even if two states produce exactly the same productive efficiency, okay? For the sake of argument—even then it can be worthwhile for the factory to move from one state to another, even though you won’t see it in output, at least not directly.

[Speaker B] You don’t always know where the malfunction is, so once you make a change—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again, you’re returning to consequential thinking. I’m saying: the very fact that I made a change—not because I’ll discover the malfunction and the state will become better, because then again it’s consequential. The very fact that I made a change does something to the workers, it does something to the factory. That sense of dynamism contributes not because of the state I reach in the end, but because of the mere fact that there is dynamism here. Okay? It’s somewhat parallel to—there’s a very interesting passage from Rabbi Kook in Orot HaKodesh, part 2, where he says that one of the perfections is to be becoming perfected. Growth itself is not only a means of becoming more complete; the process of growth itself is one of the perfections. Then he asks a theological question. He says: if that’s true, then the Holy One, blessed be He, lacks that perfection, because He is already perfect, He cannot become perfected, right? So He is missing one of the perfections, so He is not perfect. And his answer sounds a bit like pilpul, but think about it a little—there’s something to it. The answer he gives is that that is why we were created. We were created because we are deficient creatures who can grow, and through us, basically, He actualizes the growth that He Himself cannot undergo. That is why we were created. And there he writes: “This is the secret of service for the sake of the Most High.” What does that mean? We usually tend to think that the Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t need us—only we need Him, and therefore gratitude toward Him and so on. That’s not true. He needs us. If He didn’t need us, we wouldn’t be here. We work for Him; we do things He cannot do. He needs us. “Give strength to God.” We can’t—exactly, “Give strength to God” is the verse always cited in this connection. We perform some action He cannot do—the action of growth. He needs us. You know, at the end of the Book of Jonah there is the argument from the gourd. Right? Jonah sits there, asks to die, there’s sun, and the gourd shades him, and then the worm comes and the sun, and the gourd dries up. Then he asks to die, and the Holy One asks him: “ההיטב חרה לך על הקיקיון?” (“Are you so very angry about the gourd?”) He says to Him: “היטב חרה לי עד מוות” (“I am very angry, to the point of death”). The Holy One says to him: “אתה חסת על הקיקיון אשר לא עמלת בו ולא גידלתו” (“You pitied the gourd, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow”),

[Speaker D] And I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “And shall I not pity Nineveh, the great city, with all its people and many beasts?” and so on. It’s a strange argument from the lesser to the greater—I’d even say a foolish one. What kind of argument is that? The Holy One says Jonah pitied the gourd—but Jonah needed the gourd, it gave him shade. Like the old comedy line: a fisherman loves fish? If he loves fish, why does he catch them? Right. He loves himself; he wants the fish for himself. So what kind of argument is that?

[Speaker H] Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch asks that in Kos Kesef.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. So where’s the bug in that argument? Meaning, what’s the answer to the bug in the argument? There are two possible answers. Both are illuminating, I think. One answer is that we look at this like political commentators. A political commentator, when he sees a move by a politician who has an interest, assumes the move is suspect—he did it out of self-interest. But maybe he did it honestly, because he really thinks it’s right, and it also happens to further his interest? I’ll say more than that: in politics, those often go together, because if you succeed in advancing the agenda you genuinely believe in, that also brings you your electorate—meaning that’s also your interest. So this constant separation people make—that if he has an interest then that’s why he acted—is not a correct distinction. At least on the political plane, very often the two match. They do what they believe in and it also brings them their interest, and that’s perfectly fine—that’s what they’re supposed to do. So from the perspective of a political commentator, we basically look at anyone who has an interest and assume he acted for the sake of the interest, okay? Not true. I may have an interest and still not have acted for the interest; I acted because I truly believe it is right. Jonah too—we say the gourd gave him shade, so obviously he didn’t pity the gourd, he just wanted the shade. Who told you that? Maybe he truly did pity the gourd. True, he also needed it, it also gave him shade—but he also pitied it. Maybe yes? The Holy One saw in his heart that he did pity the gourd. That’s one lesson. But there’s also an opposite lesson. Yes? It says there is a difference between Jonah and the Holy One. The answer can be either that we misunderstood Jonah, or that we misunderstood the Holy One. This first answer tells us: you misunderstood Jonah; he really did pity the gourd despite having an interest. The second answer says: you misunderstood the Holy One. You think Jonah needs the gourd and the Holy One doesn’t need Nineveh? Of course He needs Nineveh—otherwise why did He make them? He sends Jonah there to save them because He needs them. That’s why He created them. Therefore the argument is excellent. Just as you need the gourd, I need Nineveh, the great city. Yes, there is room for comparison. “Service for the sake of the Most High,” what we spoke about earlier. Now the whole Book of Jonah basically revolves around this point. How does the Book of Jonah begin? It begins with the Holy One sending Jonah to Nineveh to bring them to repentance, and Jonah refuses. What, is he a little child? He’s a prophet. The Holy One tells you: go to Nineveh and bring them back, and he refuses. What do you mean he refuses? The common interpretation says he refuses because he disagrees ideologically. They asked wisdom: what is the punishment of the sinner?

[Speaker C] That he should die.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. You sinned—we talked about this, yes? You sinned, that’s it, you’re done. What do you want? The strict line of justice says they should get the punishment they deserve. That is Jonah’s view. So he flees from the Holy One, a kind of conscientious objection, okay? And then the Holy One teaches him a lesson. What does He say to him? He says: you pitied the gourd, and shall I not pity Nineveh, the great city? You needed the gourd; I too need Nineveh. Now why do I need Nineveh? What do they do for Me? We spoke about this before—because they sin and repent, which is something I, the Holy One—so to speak—cannot do. I am perfect; I cannot become perfected. Human beings can become perfected: they sin and repent, and through that they grow, and that is what I need from them. So the Holy One says to Jonah: you didn’t understand the whole game. I do not create people in order that they should keep commandments; I create people in order that they should repent. And you can’t repent without sins. You sin and then repent and improve—that’s why you were created. Sin is not some accidental fall, oops, it happened to me, too bad, a mistake. No! Sin is built into creation. That’s what it exists for. If there were no sin in creation, it wouldn’t exist. It exists in order that there be people who sin, and “a righteous man falls seven times and rises,” and return through repentance. And then we’re always frustrated, because the next year we’re standing before the same broken trough; once again we try to say, okay, next year we’ll be much better—until the next Day of Atonement. Then on the next Day of Atonement, same thing all over again, and it’s terribly frustrating. But it shouldn’t be frustrating. As long as we’re in a state where we truly want it and truly undergo this process of self-improvement, then it doesn’t matter that afterward we fall again—it’s not important. In the end we are here in order to fall and rise. The process is the point, not ultimately arriving at some state. That’s why they always tell you each year to try to be in a better state than the previous year. You don’t have to. If possible, of course that’s good, but you don’t have to. What you have to do is your best to improve, no matter where you end up. Improvement itself, even if it happens in circles, is perfectly fine. That is the purpose for which we are here. In other words, repentance really—“repentance preceded the world,” the Sages say. Why? Because the world was created for this: that there be deficient creatures here who repent. That is what completes the Holy One, blessed be He. That is what He needs from us. Jonah thought that if Nineveh sinned, then they failed in their role—so wipe them out. They’re here to keep commandments. If they don’t keep commandments, wipe them out, they’re unnecessary. The Holy One says to him: no, they are here in order to sin and return, not in order to keep commandments. You don’t understand the whole idea. Now the point is that this is why Hasidim say—why is it that “one who says, ‘I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent,’ is not given the opportunity to repent”? What kind of initial thought is that, “I will sin and repent”? That is the initial thought. The initial thought of “I will sin and repent” is the initial thought of a righteous person who wants to be a penitent, because a penitent is greater than a perfectly righteous person. So he wants to sin and repent, sin and repent, in order to be a penitent—not in order to enjoy both worlds, to sin and then afterward repent and come out well on all sides. No—they say, right, it’s a Hasidic quip, but there’s a real point in it. He basically understands that his role is to fall and rise. He doesn’t want to be perfectly righteous; he wants to be a penitent. So he says to himself: I will sin and repent. So the Sages tell him: good thought, don’t do it. Practically we do not recommend it—don’t worry, you’ll sin even without initiating it, okay? So you don’t need to initiate it. And if you do it deliberately, then “he is not given the opportunity to repent.” Leave that to the Holy One—His purposes with the process of repentance and all the rest. You just worry about being as good as you can. But if you’ve already fallen, then don’t let your spirit fall—repent, because that is your purpose: to fall and repent. Your purpose is not to be righteous; your purpose is to be a penitent. The world was created so there would be penitents here, not so there would be righteous people. Perfectly righteous people the Holy One—

[Speaker C] Doesn’t need. Okay? Fine, we’ll stop here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

[Speaker C] After the holidays, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, we’re meeting again on Tuesday—today is Tuesday—next Tuesday there’s one more.

[Speaker C] Right, Rosh Hashanah…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Day…

[Speaker C] Yes. Ah, yes, hello.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s a question.

[Speaker C] Yes,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay.