Question

A friend sent me a critical article about the trilogy that was recently published: https://mishgiotnakeni.wixsite.com/mishgiot-nakeni/post/critique-of-rabbi-michael-abrahams-trilogy General introduction: I have finished reading the trilogy, and I have to say the work is not serious. There are many jumps, skips, inaccuracies, and errors. M. A. sold us a set of books that is unconvincing and not comprehensive. As I wrote and already said: the author is an interesting person, but his intellectual boldness often turns into arrogance and hasty conclusions (or errors or claims that are not sufficiently argued). And again, he is not one of the Bible people, meaning he is not one of the people of faith. M. A. says he does not care what the sages said in the past, yet throughout the entire second volume he engages in hair-splitting discussions of the medieval authorities. But the word of God (the Torah) does not interest him. He does not understand that his conclusions lead to the destruction of Jewish faith and to contradiction within his own approach. He frequently errs in interpreting verses, the Talmud, and the medieval authorities. He builds his entire book on ideas that, in my opinion, he does not prove in the book: Torah from Heaven, not everything is foreseen, the authority of the Oral Torah, and our ability to carry out changes in Jewish law under current conditions. I will explain the main difficulties that arise from the book and bring examples of the amateurishness mentioned above. Needless to say, it is better for the educated reader to study each topic separately from other books. For example, regarding the Oral Torah, the books of Rabbi Ariel, Inbal, and Havlin are worthy of study, and volume 3 is in no way a substitute.

Volume 1: the last section, dealing with the source of faith in Torah from Heaven and the obligation to observe its commandments, which on its face seems to be the main and most foundational part of the book and of the trilogy, is astonishingly the most neglected and superficial section of them all. The work of grounding faith is apparently less important to the author than analyzing Anselm's ontological argument; that is ridiculous. The content is also plainly problematic; once again it is an example of the author's amateurishness. Just as nothing can be learned from the Bible, one also cannot derive from it the “witness argument.” Maimonides already rejected it in the Guide (Part II, chapter 33; there are contradictory passages, as is his way in the Guide, but that is not the place to elaborate). Just for the reader's amusement, the author reveals his ignorance of the Hebrew Bible in his identification of the eagle and in his rash declaration about the obvious fulfillment of prophecy.

Volume 2: M. A. sees a logical contradiction between free will and complete knowledge, including of the future, and briefly explains that without free choice there is no point to all the commandments, etc., and therefore one must give up “knowledge.” As I noted, in my opinion M. A. did not prove that there is a logical contradiction, and surprisingly and oddly, here he justifies free choice from Scripture (in fact he does not justify it for a secular reader, and he departs from his own method in the book, so once again one has to turn to other books). In addition, he claims there is no individual providence, but that there is nevertheless the possibility of sporadic divine interventions in the world. I did not understand where he gets the idea that such interventions are possible, and I am very puzzled that he accepts Rabbi Levin's miracle while at the same time dismissing the question of why the righteous suffer. In short, M. A. arrives at the conclusion that providence exists only for exceptional individuals, and only rarely. After some late-night reflection, I retracted that, because what actually follows from his words is that one must return to a literalist reading of the Hebrew Bible (“And He regretted,” and the like), and to see the patriarchs and the prophets after them as those exceptional individuals. There remains a way to preserve the structure on that basis if one accepts the distinction between the individual and the collective—essentially, a way to understand the prophecies from Abraham and the Exodus through the prophets of destruction and all the way to the prophecies of the messianic era and the promise that the Jewish people will not be destroyed. However, he did not notice this problem (M. A. did not even wrap himself in five adornments), and later rules explicitly (chapter 14) that there is no difference between individual and collective. Here he destroys faith. The only thing in his words that could save biblical faith is his claim that things were different in the biblical period. There were miracles and revelations and so on. He brings no justification or reasoning for this at all, even though it is a rather strange claim; after all, anyone with basic learning who has read Psalms and Job knows that the question of why the righteous suffer is not new. Most miracles were not open and obvious, and Maimonides in the Guide also rejected the witness argument (Part II, chapter 33, as above).

After all these sweeter-than-fine-gold remarks, M. A. does not think to say that the Torah is the word of God and that everything in the Torah obligates him by virtue of being God's word (pp. 316–317). For some reason he invalidates the Hebrew Bible and aggadic literature but leaves Jewish law standing. Why? Because it has formal authority. From where? Hint: he does not provide an answer in this volume. And in volume 3 as well there is no satisfactory answer. [A reminder: everything is open to interpretation and serves only as inspiration, except for the halakhic part.] The questioner (the simpleton whom he uses) asks, for the first time, a good question regarding the Sages' interpretations concerning the idolatrous city, the stubborn and rebellious son, “an eye for an eye,” and so on. What does the sharp and expert rabbi answer, the one who relies only on his own intellect? We see that in other cases the Sages did not do this, even though in those cases too there was a moral problem. Apparently they had a tradition, or learned it from a verbal analogy. See p. 353. That is a weak argument, to say the least. Even more so when one considers the counterexamples he pulls out:

• Capital punishment: Rabbi Akiva's position in Mishnah Makkot 1:10; Mishnah Sotah 9:9, the heifer whose neck is broken, and see also Babylonian Talmud Avodah Zarah 8b: once murderers became numerous, they stopped the ritual because they could no longer judge them. And see The Power and Role of Jewish Law, pp. 78–79.
• Mamzer status: Mamzerim are permitted to marry into the congregation because of strained concerns (Shulchan Arukh Even HaEzer 4:14 with Rema; Even HaEzer 4:15 with Be'er Heitev note 20; Even HaEzer 4:26 Rema). A mamzer may, from the outset, cohabit with a Canaanite maidservant. See Beit Yosef, Even HaEzer sec. 4, par. 25, and Shulchan Arukh 4:25.
• Homosexuality: Jews are not suspected of it.
• A wife's dependence on her husband: yes, they improved the situation a bit with the ketubah, with the rule that she can refuse, and so on.

In order to prove his opinion that the commentators on the Talmud and the halakhic decisors are not agenda-driven in their interpretations, he brings, perhaps by chance, the laws of eating pork and preparation—examples from which nothing can be inferred, because they are morally/value-neutral. Once again, he proved nothing, and it sounds rather amateurish.

There are many other issues on which I disagree with him. I will add only one small question. M. A. argues that almost all the narrative and moral sections are no longer relevant today. My simple question is why he does not say the same about the halakhic section. (He hints at this in volume 3, but does not draw the conclusion and does not admit it openly.)

Summary:
• He does not prove his main claims.
• He does not apply his critical remarks to the biblical period and to Jewish law without justifying this selective choice.
• Twice he brings a text from Maimonides, presents his view on the issue under discussion, and rejects it. Afterwards he quotes another text and rejects Maimonides' words according to his own view, not Maimonides'. First of all, these quotations are unnecessary, and second, there is no difficulty on Maimonides, because according to his own approach it works out. See pp. 202 and 276–277.
• P. 220: “All the laws of sacrifices are irrelevant today.” The Passover sacrifice is relevant even today.
• Pp. 346–347: nonsense. In principle one could also have learned about the revelation at Mount Sinai from other sources… but the fact is that there is no such historical book covering the history of Israel, and archaeology cannot reconstruct an entire period.
• P. 379: they most certainly did study Bible and philosophy in the yeshivot. The author can find sources in scholarly books about the yeshivot of Spain, for example in the time of Rabbi Hasdai Crescas. In Eastern-Sephardic yeshivot they used to study Bible and grammar properly until quite recently.

Volume 3:
P. 243: “According to Maimonides and others, establishing a prohibition without a source is a Torah prohibition.” We will bring just a few examples from which it follows that Maimonides himself violated this Torah prohibition:
Maimonides, Laws of Forbidden Relations 12:10: “But if an Israelite has relations with a gentile woman, whether she is a minor three years and one day old or an adult, whether unmarried or married, and even if he is a minor of nine years and one day old, once he has relations with the gentile woman intentionally, she is executed, because through her a stumbling block came to Israel, like an animal.”
Maimonides, Laws of Sanctification of the New Moon 5:1–2: “Everything we have said about establishing the beginning of the month based on sighting… may be done only by the Sanhedrin in the Land of Israel, or by ordained judges in the Land of Israel authorized by the Sanhedrin… or by anyone standing in their place after them. But when there is no Sanhedrin in the Land of Israel, months are not established and years are not intercalated except by this calculation that we use today. And this matter is a law given to Moses at Sinai: that when there is a Sanhedrin, they establish it by sighting, and when there is no Sanhedrin, they establish it by this calculation we use today, and there is no need for sighting…” [Nachmanides' gloss: “And I have also seen in his Laws of Sanctification of the New Moon that he said: when there is no Sanhedrin in the Land of Israel, months are not established and years are not intercalated except by this calculation that we use today, and that this matter is a law given to Moses at Sinai—that when there is a Sanhedrin, they establish it by sighting, and when there is no Sanhedrin, they establish it by this calculation we use today. This too is difficult for him, that he should call this a tradition and a law given to Moses at Sinai when it was not stated in the Talmud and is not mentioned anywhere. He himself mentioned there that in the days of the sages of the Mishnah and likewise in the days of the sages of the Talmud until the days of Abaye and Rava they did not establish by calculation, but relied on the Land of Israel's establishment by sighting. And we have already explained that the Sanhedrin did not function after the destruction, and even if it did function among them, it did not have the law of the Great Court or of the Sanhedrin at all…”]
Laws of Torah Study 1:11–12: “A person is obligated to divide his study time into three: one-third Written Torah, one-third Oral Torah, and one-third understanding and comprehending the end of a matter from its beginning, deriving one thing from another, comparing one thing to another, and judging through the hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is expounded, until he knows what the essence of those principles is and how to derive the forbidden and the permitted and the like from things learned by tradition; and this matter is what is called Talmud…” “Three of them in Written Torah, three in Oral Torah, and three with his own thought reflecting to understand one thing from another. And the books of the prophets and writings are included in Written Torah, and their interpretation in Oral Torah, and the subjects called Pardes are included in Talmud.”

And furthermore, there are quite a few halakhot whose source is unknown to us, or was unknown in earlier generations, or derives from sources that are not authoritative. According to Maimonides in the introduction to the Mishneh Torah, the Babylonian Talmud is the highest halakhic authority:
(31) “Therefore the people of one country are not compelled to follow the custom of another country, and one court is not told to decree a decree that another court decreed in its own country. Likewise, if one of the Geonim taught that the law is such-and-such, and it became clear to another court that arose after him that this is not the path of the law written in the Talmud, one does not listen to the first but to whichever opinion reason inclines toward, whether earlier or later.”
(32) “These matters apply to laws, decrees, enactments, and customs that arose after the compilation of the Talmud. But all the matters in the Babylonian Talmud are binding on all the house of Israel, and every city and province is compelled to conduct itself according to all the customs practiced by the sages of the Talmud, and to decree their decrees and follow their enactments.”
(33) “Since all Israel agreed to all those matters in the Talmud, and those sages who enacted, decreed, instituted, judged, and taught that the law is such-and-such are all the sages of Israel or most of them, and they are the ones who received the tradition concerning the fundamentals of the entire Torah, person from person, back to Moses.”

If so, why did Maimonides rely on other halakhic sources as well—midrashei halakhah and the Jerusalem Talmud, which sometimes contradict the Babylonian Talmud, and in addition aggadic sources (Laws of Forbidden Foods 9:2 according to the Maggid Mishneh; Laws of Forbidden Relations at the beginning of chapter 22 and Avot de-Rabbi Natan at the beginning of chapter 2), innovative interpretations of Scripture, and reasoning (Laws of Forbidden Relations 12:10; Laws of Kings 6:7; Laws of Mourning 1:5)? A question not discussed in the book at all. In addition, the author mixes all the methods together, and on his plate are opposite and varied approaches that he presents as complementary, when they are not.

P. 248: Maharam of Rothenburg writes the exact opposite, as brought in Hagahot Maimoniyot note 4 on Laws of Marriage chapter 25. Regarding a woman who apostatized, see his responsa, Prague edition, no. 1020.

P. 576: “Secularism is a new phenomenon, whose essence is indifference and denial of the Torah and its Giver, but not rebellion against it.” I invite the author to open the books of Zalman Shneour and Y. L. Gordon and get a taste of hatred for Judaism. This is not the place to elaborate, but when I saw this nonsense I could not ignore it. The secularism we know today is also not monolithic. And with all due respect, besides “Aher,” who in any case was intellectually coerced, who rebelled against the Torah? In Shlomo Ben-Ami's book, the author attributes to Ben-Gurion the following statement: “The Israeli people are a people without history” (erasing the exilic past, etc.). [What is the difference between this people and the Palestinian people?!]

P. 592: “In such a reality it is clear that there is an obligation to conquer the land and build a Temple.” What?? If he meant, Heaven forbid, that it was forbidden to abandon territories acquired in war and to return the Temple Mount to the Ishmaelites, fine. If not, I am astonished.

Regarding the question of the halakhic attitude toward secular Jews, M. A. failed badly, and to tell the truth and be precise, he did not even try to justify the positive attitude. He indeed does not naïvely accept the halakhic decisors' decision to classify them as “captured children,” but he gives no reason for this, and in any case his conclusion is almost identical to theirs. It is clear to any sensible person that in the time of the Hazon Ish, many secular Jews, if not most, were wicked out of spite. And people “coerced in their beliefs” who despised Torah and those who observe it have always existed: Hellenizers, sectarians, heretics, ignoramuses, and boors. Why not investigate a bit, see what characterizes each group, and see whether there is any similarity?