Q&A: Understanding the Brisker Rav’s Words About Midnight
Understanding the Brisker Rav’s Words About Midnight
Question
Hello Rabbi,
It is brought in the book Mishnat Yaakov on chapter 7 of the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, halakhah 6, on matters relevant to the day. I didn’t really understand the Brisker Rav’s answer there, and I’d be glad if the Rabbi could explain it.
The question is how there can be such a thing as at midnight, since every moment can be divided into two. If so, no single moment exists. And his answer, as I understand it, is that indeed death also occurred in the part before midnight, so that the firstborn was called dead after midnight. But if so, what about all the parts of time that passed from the moment of death until midnight, and from midnight until they were called dead? And the fact that they were called dead is exactly at the same time that they stopped living. So I really didn’t understand at all.
“Now I asked our master the great genius, Rabbi Yitzhak Zev of Brisk of blessed memory, what relevance is there at all to saying ‘at midnight’? After all, something divisible has no graspable instant of time at all, so there is no such reality as midnight. So how can we say that the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him ‘at midnight’?
And our master of holy and blessed memory said to me that death also does not occupy time, for there is no instant of death. Rather, as long as one is alive—one is alive; and when life ends, that is death. Therefore it is entirely fitting to say ‘at midnight,’ because until midnight they were alive, and when midnight ended their life ended, for death occupies no time at all.
And he gave me as an example what is stated in the midrash: ‘And God finished on the seventh day His work which He had made’—but wasn’t the world created in six days? Rather, with the completion of the sixth day, creation was finished, and immediately it was the seventh day; and that is what is said: ‘And God finished on the seventh day.’”
Answer
This is a well-known passage, and I once wrote about it in Midah Tovah.
What he is claiming is that death is not an event but a description of a transition between states, from life to death. Therefore there is no problem with it occurring exactly at midnight: before midnight I was alive, and after it I am dead. So at midnight exactly, I died. Only a state extends over time, but a transition between states can be defined at a discrete point in time.
Discussion on Answer
Balak portion, 5767.
I once wrote a short article on the subject. I’d be glad to know what the Rabbi thinks of it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9E4_GqxDvG5ZEtOZWR6QXNpMjRadVFKMTEyUnFWQ25LRkMw/view?usp=sharing
The question actually has nothing to do with the plague of the firstborn. The assumption—which is pretty intuitive—that death happens in a single instant gives rise to the question. The Brisker Rav’s answer is self-evident after three seconds of thinking about what really happens in reality.
Ahiya, many thanks.
Actually I hadn’t noticed that in your formulation (whether or not there is a soul in the body) the problem still stands, and the Brisker Rav’s explanation doesn’t provide an answer.
A.H., I didn’t understand why this seems so simple to you. At the instant of midnight, is there or is there not a soul in the body?
A few comments:
1. I wrote an article on Zeno’s arrow paradox, and there I explained it. See here:
2. I didn’t understand your definition of the square root of 2. According to you, Dedekind defined it as a collection of two sets. But it’s a number, not a set. It reminds me of Frege, whose definition of number I never understood either (for example, 3 is the collection of sets whose number of elements is 3). a. A number is a number, not a set. b. It’s circular.
3. I didn’t understand your explanation with Dedekind cuts. The accepted model in physics for the time axis is the ordinary continuous axis, not a set of lengths as you defined it. On that model, your explanation doesn’t hold water. The question of what the state was at midnight has not been answered.
4. In my opinion, the simple explanation is your second explanation. Life is a process that cannot be defined at a point in time (see my article mentioned above). However, if we had a soul-meter, then it really would have to give us a result at a point in time, and then the question would be what it would show at midnight.
In my opinion, the Brisker Rav can be understood differently, in a way that also fits what I wrote in the first part about souls—that they asked him how God could kill the firstborn at midnight, since midnight is between two parts of the night and there is no such time. And he answered them that there is no time of death either; rather, as long as one is alive—one is alive, and when life ends, that is death (there is a soul or there isn’t a soul).
As for the comments:
2. As I understand it, in modern mathematics they try to define everything by means of sets, so the concept of “set” remains undefined (along with a few other things such as the relation “is an element of”), but everything else has a definition. (They don’t define “set” because if you don’t want a circular definition, you have to start somewhere.) For example, Frege really did define the natural numbers in the way you wrote. (It isn’t circular; I can define 3 without using itself, for example: the set of all sets equivalent to the set {a,b,c}.) By the way, Frege’s definition isn’t the only one—John von Neumann proposed a different construction for the natural numbers.
The definition of the square root of 2 also isn’t circular. (I intentionally made the wording cumbersome—“all the rational numbers whose square is less than 2, or that are less than 0”—instead of “all the rational numbers that are less than the square root of 2,” so that it wouldn’t be circular.) By the way, here too this isn’t the only definition—Georg Cantor proposed another construction for the real numbers.
3. I tried to explain how both intervals could be open, and I gave an example from rational numbers. It follows that midnight might not be a time but a cut (similar to the square root of 2, which is not a rational number but is a cut of sets of rational numbers).
Actually, I didn’t address the possibility that both intervals are closed. There’s a problem with that: suppose for contradiction that both intervals are closed; then there is a last time point before midnight and a first time point after midnight. Let us look at the span of time between these two points. We wanted there to be a possibility of dividing every time interval further and further, so we can divide this time interval into two and we get another point in time—a contradiction.
I didn’t define time as a set of lengths; I only argued that in order to measure time maybe we don’t need to use a set of numbers that satisfies the completeness axiom (like the reals), and then you can divide the night into two parts, each of which is an open interval, and that way there is no time point of midnight and no question at all.
1. I didn’t understand your suggestion. At the instant of midnight, is there a soul in him or not? Midnight too is a point on the time axis. Even if you define midnight as the limit of the open sequence before midnight, it itself is of course outside it. That is, you will say that he was alive until midnight, and from midnight onward he was dead. But then again it comes out that at midnight he was dead.
2. Even the definition you suggested above I’m not sure is not circular. Equivalence implicitly assumes the number three (someone who doesn’t understand the meaning of the number three isn’t sure to see equivalence here). But that can be debated. Beyond that, as I wrote, I don’t understand how it is possible to define a number as a set or a collection of sets. A number is one thing and a set is something else. The number counts the elements of the set; it is not the set itself. The same applies to the square root of 2. You defined it as a union of sets, and again I don’t understand how a number is defined as a set. Here I don’t even understand the connection (unlike with Frege).
3. To that I replied that the model for the time axis in physics is a continuous axis. That is also how each of us perceives it. If you want to define something else, that’s fine, but you haven’t solved the problem. It’s like an analytic solution to paradoxes (type theory), which simply builds a language in which they cannot be expressed. See also section 1.
1. What I’m suggesting (in the first part) is that midnight is not a point on the time axis; there is no time called midnight (both intervals are open), and when people say “midnight” they mean the cut between the two intervals. That’s my proposal. But if you say that according to modern physics time must be measured with real numbers, I accept that—you’re the physicist. (I thought it wasn’t necessary. In geometry, for example, there are proofs that you need to use real numbers to measure segment lengths; if there are such proofs also regarding measuring time, I’d be glad if you’d enlighten me.)
2. It isn’t circular. Sets are equivalent if and only if there exists a one-to-one and onto function from one to the other. (That doesn’t implicitly assume the number 3.) I didn’t invent this definition, and I cited it in the name of those who said it. In any case, it’s not related to the discussion.
3. This isn’t a language in which they can’t be expressed; there simply is no such time called “midnight” (just as when you cut a cake, there isn’t a crumb in the middle that is the boundary line).
1. It isn’t a question of proof, and I don’t think a proof is possible regarding space either. Anything connected to the world and not to mathematics cannot be proven mathematically. It is only a question of which mathematical model to use. In physics they use the continuous axis with respect to time just as with space. In relativity they even interchange with one another (that is, in moving systems space becomes time and vice versa).
2. About the circularity I’m not sure, but it doesn’t matter here. My main puzzlement was how to posit a number and define it as a set. A number is not a set. And indeed, as I wrote, my puzzlement was about Frege and not about you.
3. There is a time called midnight on the continuous and ordinary axis. t=24:00.
1. Right, it’s a fiction because it can’t be proved or disproved, but it does answer the difficulty about midnight.
3. If one uses real numbers, there is such a time (because of their continuity); if not—not necessarily. (And in that case it would be t=6:00 in proportional nighttime hours.)
In any case, thank you very much, and happy holiday!
A note:
Maybe this wasn’t clear (mainly because of the previous comment): in the first part of the article I suggest that perhaps there is no point in time called “midnight.”
Measuring time in a number system that does not satisfy the completeness axiom is indeed a language in which the problem cannot be expressed, but in truth there really is no such time and the problem truly does not exist at all.
By contrast, using real numbers apparently presents a problem (which in practice does not exist). One can speak about the time point “midnight” if one uses real numbers (t=6:00 in proportional nighttime hours), but that is a meaningless expression.
Sorry for the trouble—where is this in Midah Tovah? I couldn’t find it.