No One Has Power over the Spirit – A Response to Rabbi Shilat’s Critique (Column 340)
Late last week I received a link to Rabbi Yitzhak Shilat’s (hereinafter: RYSh) critical response to the second book in my trilogy, No One Has Power over the Spirit, which was published on the website of the journal Asif (see about it in Column 56). His remarks respond to a student who asked him for his opinion of the book.
RYSh, as is his way, was courteous and fair-minded enough to send me an email pointing me to his “sharp” response (his term). Even before reading it I replied that, given our acquaintance, I am confident his remarks are reasoned and grounded in argument, and in such a case sharpness is a welcome spice. If someone thinks my words merit a sharp response—either because they are utter nonsense or because they are harmful—then he should express that loudly and clearly. In any case, I am the last person who can complain about sharp phrasing.
On Shabbat I read his remarks and discovered that the great majority of his arguments were already answered in the book itself, and other parts were answered in previous columns here on the site. Still, mainly out of my great appreciation for RYSh as a talmid ḥakham and a wise, practical, educated, and thoughtful person, I thought it proper to present a systematic position in one place; therefore I will devote this column to a detailed engagement with his words. The order of topics and the headings are mine and follow the order of his article.
Introduction
In the introduction RYSh expresses discomfort with “the cheapening of talk about God as if He were some object like a person or a ‘teapot,’ Heaven forbid, about whom we must know whether He exists and what business we have with Him.” This is a strange comment, for a straight philosophical discussion of any subject must begin from a balanced, non-biased starting point. Was I supposed to assume that He exists and only then begin to discuss His existence? Or perhaps first pray to Him and praise Him and only afterward discuss whether He exists?[1] When discussing the existence of God, we must not assume anything about Him. We assume there is some entity defined within the discussion, and then we set out to examine the evidence for its existence—and, of course, the counterarguments. That is the nature of a philosophical discussion (as distinct from a theological one, in the two senses I defined in the book). What “cheapening” is there here?! For my part, I do not see how one can conduct a straight discussion otherwise.
He adds that regarding the sages of the generations he also found in my words presumptuous and blunt statements. It is hard for me to say anything general and sweeping about this, but as a rule I truly do not recall such statements (especially after the editing by Ḥayuta Deutch, who weeded out several phrasings that could be read that way). I presented a reasoned and well-grounded picture to the best of my understanding, and indeed in many cases it is “thin” and does not fit the conventional view. There were cases in which I disagreed with them, and I assume I also claimed that they erred. Is deviation from the conventional view necessarily presumptuous and blunt?! By the way, Maimonides, with whom RYSh has dealt extensively, introduced unconventional conceptions as well. Moreover, Maimonides himself wrote in the introduction to Sefer ha-Mitzvot about the enumerators of commandments preceding him that they were poets (and so one ought to relate to their system). Is that not a presumptuous and dismissive expression? And what of Naḥmanides who wrote of Baal ha-Maor “ancient words from a new elder”? Does that lead RYSh to avoid engaging with the teachings of those great early authorities? When I say that the sages of the generations have no authority in matters of fact and thought, that is neither presumptuous nor blunt. It is my view, and I argued it in detail (see below). How could I state it otherwise? I wonder!
At the end of the introduction, RYSh (with appreciation) notes my logical bent and skills, but adds a sentence that he claims briefly sums up his critique: that logic drives me out of my mind. Since this remark touches the foundations of the dispute and the infrastructure of the entire book, I must address it here. I devoted several of my books, mainly Two Wagons and True but Unstable (at least parts of which, RYSh told me in the past, he read closely), to explaining the place of logic in philosophical discussion in general. I explained there that logic is a necessary framework for every discussion and that deviation from logic is impossible. Speech that deviates from logic—even if it concerns God—says nothing and is therefore irrelevant (see also here on the site in the article this, in Column 299 and the series that followed, and much more). I presume RYSh does not recommend that we assert a thing and its opposite about God. If God created the world, one cannot also say that He did not create it. If God revealed Himself at Sinai, one cannot also say that He did not. Our statements are always subject to logic, even when we refer to (pardon the bluntness) unintelligible entities. Even if one were to say that X is above logic—whatever X may be—that statement is meaningless and senseless; there is no point in uttering it. This does not, of course, mean that logic is the only tool, or that by its means we can arrive at all conclusions and nothing else is needed. Certainly not. Those books of mine were devoted precisely to this point. I elaborated there on the emptiness of the analytic—that is, that logic by definition does not add knowledge, and therefore nothing can be learned from it (only to rule out contradictions and to derive conclusions from premises that are themselves not the product of logic). The synthetic approach in which I engage so extensively is itself an answer to this puzzle and an attempt to avoid a situation in which logic drives us out of our minds. I showed there that logical positivism and postmodernism are approaches that logic drove out of their minds, and those books are devoted to rejecting them. It is odd to me that precisely for this I was accused by RYSh.
My conception on this matter is the following: a logical contradiction is unacceptable with regard to any subject, including God. In this sense logic is indeed a non-negotiable condition. But our knowledge of God does not derive from logic but from reasoning and/or tradition. These are also the sources from which the early authorities learned what they wrote about God. In that, I am no different from them, and I do not know whether, in RYSh’s view, there is any other source. Weeding out contradictions is, of course, another matter, and that must be done regarding our conception of God as well. If such a conception justifies the description that logic drives me out of my mind, I plead guilty.
RYSh ends the preface by saying that what follows is a specification of that summarizing sentence (that logic drove me out of my mind). I now turn to his arguments and will ask whether they indeed show that logic drives me out of my mind. I hope that at least here I may be permitted to use it.
Halakhah, Faith, and Science
RYSh cites that in the first talk I claim that with regard to the thought of faith there is no concept of authority or authorized tradition, and that the Sanhedrin has authority only in the halakhic field:
That is: even if all the sages of Israel from Joshua bin Nun to our day were to say that the meaning of “The Lord our God, the Lord is One” is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is “utterly simple”—this should not prevent us from thinking that He is composite, or corporeal (God forbid), because no one will tell us what to think. Perhaps you know why the interpretation of ‘and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes’ we are indeed obligated to accept from the sages, but the interpretation of ‘the Lord is One’ we are not? What is the reasoning for saying that ‘Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua,’ etc., relates only to the interpretation of verses of practical instruction and not to the interpretation of verses of faith?
This passage contains many inaccuracies. First, I distinguish between formal authority (the obligation to accept someone’s words, or those of some authorized body, regardless of whether they are correct—like the laws of the Knesset) and substantive authority (the reason to accept someone’s words because he is an expert in some subject, simply because he is likely not to be mistaken). With regard to substantive authority I do not distinguish between fields. In any field it is sensible and reasonable to accept an expert’s words because he is likely correct, but of course there is no obligation to do so. That is common sense and a logical conclusion, not an obligation. Regarding formal authority, I indeed distinguish between the fields and claim it can be defined only with respect to halakhah but not with respect to thought and facts in general. My argument here is truly a priori and not based on sources (though I also brought sources as illustration, among them from Maimonides). The question whether the Holy One is one and in what sense is a factual question: either He is utterly simple unity (whatever that statement may mean) or He is not. Now someone arrives and claims that this is the meaning of divine unity. Can one even speak of an obligation to accept his words merely because he said them? Even were it a Sanhedrin, one cannot demand that I accept; all the more so regarding Maimonides. If I have not been convinced of it, then I do not accept it. Even if I repeat those words a thousand times because of such an “obligation,” that is mere lip movement. And if I have been convinced then of course I accept it, but again not because of authority and obligation but because I was persuaded.
I do not see how one can disagree with this simple logical claim. Its opposite is a logical contradiction (demanding that I accept something I do not accept). I can refrain from selecting on Shabbat even if in my opinion it is not prohibited, because the Sanhedrin has authority to determine that it is forbidden (as with the laws of the Knesset). That is perfectly well-defined logically and conceptually. But can I truly say “I believe in the coming of the Messiah” if in practice I do not believe it? Either persuade me or I do not believe it. On the conceptual level, there is no such thing as obligating someone to believe. Here, indeed, logic rules. Does this mean logic has driven me out of my mind? If so, I plead guilty.
So far I discussed formal authority and the fact that it cannot be defined with respect to facts (as I explained in the book, ideas in the realm of thought are almost all facts). But even regarding substantive authority there is no full symmetry between the fields. I claim that tradition in the realms of thought is far looser than the halakhic tradition. Realms of thought are based on philosophies influenced by the reasonings and conceptual worlds of the thinker, and therefore I have far less confidence in the reasonings of thinkers in Jewish thought. I also do not accept the assumption of expertise and knowledge in these matters. What knowledge or expertise did the Maharal or Saadia Gaon have in these realms that I or RYSh do not? Why should I accept Maimonides’ opinion if I am not convinced?!
I stress that contrary to what RYSh writes, if there is a principle transmitted as a tradition from Sinai I clearly accept it—in halakhah and in thought. But that, too, is acceptance by virtue of correctness (substantive authority) and not by virtue of authority (formal authority). I accept it because I am convinced (for the Holy One knows this; He is a “specialist” whose words one accepts because they are correct). Needless to say, there are very few principles regarding which there is agreement among all the sages of Israel (including the interpretation of the verse “the Lord is One,” the description he cited), such that the question is fairly hypothetical. Beyond that, I claim that even when there is agreement, a consensus among sages does not testify to a Sinai tradition (for there are principles that became entrenched and accepted). I already noted that Maimonides himself innovated against the tradition he received, in halakhah and in thought, and RYSh does not refrain from engaging with him and his teachings. So, yes, it is proper to consider seriously what all the sages of Israel say, but if I am not persuaded—what, in RYSh’s view, am I to do? Recite lip service that I believe it?
Incidentally, Maimonides is the father of the view that what comes as a tradition from Sinai has no dispute about it (see, however, Responsa Ḥavvot Ya’ir §172), and it seems that almost all of Jewish thought falls into that category. If so, and if this is not a tradition from Sinai, why should I accept what human beings—wise as they may be—have said? As noted, if I am persuaded I of course accept; but if after examining their words it still seems to me incorrect, must I force myself to accept something which, to the best of my judgment, is not true? Can I do so at all? Such a statement would be a lie, mere lip service.
RYSh himself ends this section with regard to scientific statements, where he concedes that one is not obligated to accept them (as Maimonides and his son wrote, and which Maimonides applied even in the halakhic realm, for example concerning the evil eye and mysticism), because they did not come as a tradition from Sinai. If so, he too agrees that what did not come by tradition need not be accepted. I can only wonder whether, in his view, all the principles of Jewish thought came as tradition. If so, which principles are these: Maimonides’ (about corporeality, regarding which Ra’avad already noted that many and great ones disagreed with him), the Maharal’s, or perhaps those of Sefer ha-Ikkarim? How did dispute arise about such foundational principles that supposedly came from Sinai? How would Maimonides—who holds that no dispute falls upon a tradition from Sinai—explain that?
It is odd that at the end of the section he cites Maimonides’ chapters 2–4 in Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah where he uses Aristotelian philosophy and science “to explain great principles of the deeds of the Master of the world.” RYSh is precise in Maimonides’ language “I explain,” stressing that it is his explanation and not something transmitted. Needless to say, Maimonides there disagrees with several earlier sages on the basis of those reasonings. To a large extent he creates a new picture of his own in these realms. And I stand and wonder: here we are dealing with the most fundamental principles of Jewish thought, not neutral science. So, in RYSh’s view, may one in Jewish thought formulate a position by reason and logic against tradition, or not? Is Jewish thought on the side of science (where one may disagree with Ḥazal and the early authorities) or on the side of halakhah (where one may not)? This is truly a counter-example to his claim.
In sum, it is hard for me to believe that RYSh actually disputes even one of the methodological principles I set out in the first talk. They truly belong to an elementary logical framework that I suspect he, too, would be compelled to accept. There may, of course, be specific questions about one principle or another—whether it is true, and whether it came from Sinai or not—but these are specific disputes, not about the general methodological principles with which his remarks here deal.
Tzimtzum Literally
Here RYSh begins with the assertion that as a physicist I relate tzimtzum (divine “contraction”) to physical space, and in his eyes “this is simply unbelievable.” What I wrote—and it is true in the overwhelming majority of conceptions I know—is that tzimtzum relates to all that exists, physics and metaphysics, which of course includes physical space as well. RYSh writes, “It is unbelievable that someone with extensive knowledge in philosophy does not understand that the Ari z”l is not speaking at all about physical space and time, but is dealing with metaphysics.” Note that in his words he not only claims that tzimtzum addresses metaphysical things (which I concede) but that it deals only with them. To that I can only say that after years of dealing with these areas I do not know a single kabbalist who holds that tzimtzum was not said with regard to physical space (perhaps one can find such a person at the ends of the earth—after all, the gates of interpretation are never locked—but that is not really important).
As is known, the idea of tzimtzum comes to resolve a difficulty or tension between the conception that God is infinite and omnipotent and that “there is none besides Him,” and our recognition that the universe exists outside of God—that is, that there is something besides Him. RYSh himself writes here: “The question that tzimtzum comes to answer is how to understand the relationship between absolute infinity and the finite reality familiar to us.” Before explaining how he contradicts himself, I note that he did not define precisely what the difficulty is. What exactly is the problem? According to the principle of charity I assume he means what I wrote above (whether everything is divinity or whether there are things separate from divinity). Well then, ask yourselves: does this difficulty not relate to physical space? Does his expression “the finite reality familiar to us” describe the Platonic world of ideas, or the world of Atzilut? Or perhaps metaphysics? Is “the finite reality familiar to us” not also, and perhaps mainly, the material objects and the space that contains them? So how does RYSh understand the Ari’s solution regarding physical space, if in his view tzimtzum does not address it at all? To paraphrase his words: it is simply unbelievable to me how a person knowledgeable in Jewish thought can entertain such a mistaken (and self-contradictory) interpretation of the Ari, and cling to it decisively while claiming that anyone who interprets otherwise is “unbelievable.” Or has logic driven me out of my mind here as well?…
As noted, in my discussion I do not deal only with physical space but with all dimensions of reality, physical and metaphysical. And I claim that the idea that tzimtzum is not literal (the view accepted in Ḥasidism) is self-contradictory and therefore empty of content (and it does not resolve the difficulty). This is, of course, true also with respect to metaphysical reality; so even if RYSh were right in his interpretation, it would not change anything.
Within his remarks, RYSh explains that my logical questions have no place because we are dealing with a “secret,” in his words (on the assumption that there are dimensions of thought exempt from the yoke of logic). Absurdly, he illustrates the “secret” of tzimtzum (let me remind you: the very “secret” supposedly exempt from logic) with a mathematical example. If that is not an oxymoron, I do not know what is. But we have not finished. RYSh illustrates the “secret” by the relation between a finite-length segment on the number line and the infinite number of points within it. As noted, he does not explain precisely what difficulty this is meant to resolve, but in any case I did not understand what this banal example is supposed to show. True, a line segment of some length on the number line contains infinitely many points (real, even rational). What is so secret or incomprehensible about that? And even if there were some secret here, what difficulty would it resolve? Is the difficulty that the totality of entities in reality is God, and therefore the problem is how the sum of the sizes of the entities of reality (pardon, of metaphysics, since tzimtzum deals only with them) yields an infinite result? Is he intending to assume a pantheistic conception whereby God is nothing but the material aggregate? I doubt whether Spinoza is the peg upon which to hang an illustration of fidelity to tradition.
Incidentally, there is also a mathematical error in his words, for the difference between a segment and a point is not size but dimension.[2] The difference between the length of the segment and the nature of the points derives from the relation between different dimensions (a segment is dimension 1, a point is dimension 0), and is not connected to differences of length. A point has no length (it is not true that its length is 0; only objects of one or more dimensions have length). From this you understand that the length of the segment is not the sum of the lengths of the points (for a point has no length). Moreover, the ABCs of Calculus I at university teach that one cannot define a segment as a collection of isolated points standing side by side (one needs the property of density as well). I would expect someone who studied mathematics at university (and not only from the early authorities, who did not understand modern mathematics and therefore made not a few such mistakes) to know this.
But beyond all this, there is no secret whatsoever in this example. Zeno’s paradoxes, like other paradoxes regarding the infinite, are all answered without special difficulty when one treats the subject systematically and defines the concepts properly. Incidentally, that is what mathematicians do. Bringing mathematics as an example that logic is not everything is simply a grave misunderstanding. The claim that this is a secret reminds me of similar claims regarding “the unity of opposites,” which, as Rudolf Otto wrote (in the preface to the English edition of The Idea of the Holy), is a notion that serves as the refuge of the lazy. Instead of thinking and defining, they explain that this is a wondrous secret and thus “solve” the problem. If there were a paradox or contradiction in the foundations of mathematics, then all mathematical theorems would disappear like fine dust, like a dream that flies away. As is known from logic (yes, that very thing which is not everything), from a contradiction one can derive any conclusion whatsoever (and its opposite).
In the concluding paragraph of this section, RYSh turns to quantum theory. Again, this is a classic example of populist use of scientific ideas that are irrelevant. He tries to show from there that “not everything is logic,” as he writes. In this he is, of course, mistaken. To his credit it should be said that he is in good company, since there are interpreters of quantum theory who erred in this as well. If quantum theory toppled logic, it would topple along with it (the mathematics used is subject to simple binary logic, and as noted, from a contradiction one can derive any conclusion). Incidentally, I noted precisely this in an article I published in the journal Tzohar (“What Is ‘Chalut’?” Tzohar 2), when RYSh was the editor.
I cannot refrain from remarking that RYSh’s discussion in this section, in all its parts—precisely because we are speaking of a very wise and educated person—provides a marvelous illustration of the typical pitfalls in the field called “Jewish thought.” Among other things, I explained in my book that people dealing with these subjects fail to define concepts properly and therefore get entangled in empty statements, liken a thing to what is not like it, raise irrelevant arguments, manufacture disputes where they do not exist, and make use of philosophical and scientific ideas that are not of the matter, and the like.
Providence
On the question of knowledge and free will, RYSh claims that the Holy One is “beyond time,” and therefore the question does not arise at all. I devoted a series of columns to this (299 and onward) and long discussions in the comments, and I will not return to all that here. I merely note that again RYSh does not explain precisely what he means by this statement: that He created time? Possibly. That time does not exist at all except in our cognition? Possibly. That one must not make assertions about Him that include a time index? Then what is the meaning of the verse “And the Lord spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai,” which specifies a place (and time)? When I say that “God knows something today,” this has a very clear meaning, and no one disputes that it is a true statement (perhaps He also knew it always, but that does not matter). Does RYSh think this cannot be said? But the moment you have said that God knows something today, there is a logical difficulty with the claim that I choose freely tomorrow. So how does the claim that He is beyond time help? (Even if we assume it has a well-defined meaning.) Thereafter he mentions Ra’avad’s explanation that His knowledge is like that of astrologers, and therefore there is no contradiction. But if that resolution satisfies him, I do not understand why he needs the notion that He is beyond time. And what did Maimonides think, for whom this was not acceptable?
Incidentally, he himself notes that I cited several later authorities who argued thus, and he adds Gersonides (Ralbag). In my opinion, Maimonides also held this, which is why the above “solution” of Ra’avad was not acceptable to him (I believe Shnei Luchot ha-Brit writes so regarding Maimonides’ view). In any case, it emerges from RYSh’s words that my approach here is not even against the accepted tradition (since there are differing views). So what is the problem—that he disagrees with me? One can, of course, argue, as with any sugya, but what does this have to do with the claim that logic has driven me out of my mind?! Did logic also drive Ralbag and Maimonides out of theirs? Why is my stance here a deviation from tradition?
He goes on, in varied formulations, to claim that conduct according to the laws of nature is compatible with divine involvement just as it is compatible with free choice. Again, RYSh does not define what combination he sees between divine involvement and the laws of nature (see the next section). Beyond that, divine involvement is necessarily a deviation from the laws of nature, just as free choice is a deviation from them. The question whether this occurs or not is a separate question. I explained in my book that divine involvement means that were it not for the involvement, X would have been expected to occur, and God intervenes and causes Y to occur. Without this there is no need for His involvement. If so, involvement means conduct contrary to what the laws of nature dictate. That is the very definition of involvement, no? Regarding whether there are “gaps” in nature—see the next section.
Toward the end of the section he returns to the claim that “God is not within time,” and therefore does not make decisions at any particular point on the time axis. I suspect his intention was to argue against my thesis about God’s change of policy (withdrawing from the world as the generations progress). But to the same extent one could raise that claim against the change in His policy regarding open miracles, or prophecy, for these have, by all accounts, disappeared from the world in recent generations. Does RYSh claim there are no changes in divine policy? What is so strained in my claim that there was a change of policy regarding divine involvement in general? (See the discussion of this and the burden of proof in Column 243.)
And perhaps his intention here is to argue against my position that sees a contradiction between divine involvement and natural conduct. If so, I did not understand how this vague sentence (see above) relates to the discussion. Whether God decided at the creation of the world or whether He will decide in the future, the event that occurred now still deviates from the laws of nature. I indeed rejected in my book the claim of the Maharal and Maimonides (based on a midrash) that the miracles were embedded in the creation from the start (this is the subject RYSh discusses here), for two reasons: 1) How do they know this? Is that a tradition from Sinai? 2) This does not solve the problem, for the splitting of the sea still contradicts the law of gravity—something our eyes see does not generally happen. So what is gained by this strange theory? On the contrary, the very recourse of Maimonides and the Maharal to this theory calls for explanation: why did they need it at all? It seems they themselves refused to accept divine involvement in the present in creation. Do they deviate from the tradition of the generations? I may not accept the “solution” they proposed, but in any case, from the thesis itself it appears that once again RYSh has brought a “counter-example.”
He concludes the section by saying there is a system of judgment and, alongside it, a system of kindness. But again, there is no definition of how they are integrated and how this solves the problem. Bottom line, he claims there are deviations from nature, and I do not see why the existence of a “system of kindness” changes anything in this regard. Once more, blessed vagueness.
I have not entered here into the strong arguments I presented in favor of my position because this is not the place (I have done so more than once; besides the book itself, see for example Columns 262, 280–281, 297, and many others). Among other things, I showed that Ḥazal themselves, when they maintained this picture, held that there are gaps in science and therefore thought there can be miracles within nature (i.e., that do not deviate from it). Today we know this is not true (and I remind you that regarding the laws of nature, RYSh himself conceded that we are not bound by Ḥazal). My purpose here was only to show that RYSh’s claims are irrelevant to the discussion—not to establish my position as such.
The Proper Combination
In this paragraph RYSh tries to present in more detail the combination between the two systems—nature and kindness. From the comparison in the previous section to free will, it appears he thinks that a divine decision generates a natural chain according to God’s will. That is also what he explains at length here. But this is not a combination of two systems. The thesis of divine involvement necessarily assumes that at some stage it was not the laws of nature that determined what would happen but the divine decision. RYSh merely claims that from that point onward everything proceeds according to natural causal relations. He explains that just as a person lifts a stone and throws it of his free will, and from that point the stone moves according to the laws of mechanics, so too God decides “clouds to drive” and from that point the laws of nature govern.
But the complexity of meteorological laws and our inability to predict rain—what many refer to as the solution—are not significant here. First, our ability to forecast rain is constantly improving. By now it is no longer true to attribute rain or drought to the sins of the past week (since a week in advance we already know how to forecast). Continuing scientific knowledge will cause the continuing theological retreat of RYSh and his colleagues into the realms of apologetics. But beyond that, meteorological events occur through forces and particles. At bottom, everything is mechanics, even if complex. Therefore there are laws of nature that determine things there as well, only they are very complex and we cannot calculate everything precisely. We know that in chaotic systems, despite their deterministic conduct, we cannot predict in advance what will happen—but they are still deterministic. God can perhaps hide behind this complexity; that is, were I convinced that He does move things, perhaps I would rely on the complexity to say that because of it we do not notice His involvement. But only if I had any indication that this is indeed what He does—if I saw any connection between spiritual state and rainfall, in space or in time; if I saw forecasts refuted when the spiritual state improves or the reverse. But all the indications at hand show that meteorological processes occur like any other natural process, and that is what we all assume. Only we are reluctant to give up the slogans with which we were raised, and we prefer to repress and live a lie: to continue declaring that everything is in God’s hands while behaving in practice precisely the opposite. Therefore, in my opinion, the burden of proof is on whoever claims otherwise. I will return to this point in the appendices.
RYSh naïvely assumes that if one retreats backward the contradiction is resolved—not so. Retreating backward merely conceals the problem and sweeps it under the rug. There is no escaping the conclusion that at the stage where God is involved, the laws of nature are suspended (there is a deviation from them). This cannot be disputed once one understands that the laws of nature are deterministic (there are no gaps in nature). If RYSh wishes to claim that the laws of nature are not such, then we have a scientific dispute—and I treated it at length in my book The Science of Freedom, chapters seven and eight. But if not, he can only claim that God’s involvement is hidden somewhere deep in the causal chain, but in that place there is indeed a deviation from nature. For this, as noted, we have no indication.
I do not know whence RYSh drew his resolute declaration in this section that every serious scientist today estimates that scientific research is infinite and will never end. Perhaps it is true and perhaps not, but there is no basis for the claim, and I am not at all sure that this is what most serious scientists would say. The example from the late 19th century, when people thought science was finished and were refuted, is exposed to the very attack he directs at me in the appendix (regarding Popper’s principle of falsification and arguing from a single example).
Again, I did not lay out here my considerations in favor of the picture I propose; I dealt only with RYSh’s arguments. Assuming I have good arguments for my picture, I do not see in his words any argument that challenges them. Incidentally, as I already noted, in my book I address all these claims and reject them precisely as I have done here. One only needs to read. If RYSh disagrees with my arguments there, he should have explained why, rather than repeating here claims that I already presented there and refuted.
Prayer (?)
Here all of RYSh’s arguments simply run out. I could not find a single argument. He explains that “you made a laughingstock of us,” without clarifying in what and why. The only substantive thing that appears in this entire section is my description of the Shabbat pamphlets. A reader might get the impression that my main argument is that because there are Shabbat pamphlets and people read them—therefore prayer does not work. Indeed, this does not sound very impressive—only that this is not what I wrote (and note well: not that I did not write only this—I did not write this at all). The Shabbat pamphlets were an illustration, and the fixation on them alone while ignoring all my arguments is perplexing.
Later in the section he remarks that he prefers to leave the decision of what is called Torah study (to which I dedicated an entire part in my book) to Ḥazal and the early authorities. I have no interest in arguing about taste and smell and preferences. To each his preferences (though some early authorities wrote as I did—but they are apparently not part of the Sinai tradition “against which I rebelled”). From a published critical essay I would expect some arguments in favor of the author’s position, not declarations of personal taste. Especially since I invested effort and detailed my reasons well (in the book and here on the site). Does RYSh expect his position to be accepted and the article to be published merely because he prefers one thing or another?!
Even the declaration that my theology is not “thin” but “anorexic” (a witticism I have heard more than once), and the concluding declaration—anchored in Wikipedia—that I or my theology urgently need fattening, are not arguments. If in the end I am right, then that is the result. If I am not right, one must argue substantively about the arguments themselves and ultimately see whether we are left with a thin, anorexic, or fat system. Bottom line, reading this entire section was rather embarrassing for me. The previous paragraphs presented arguments that do not hold water, some containing actual errors—but here there were no arguments at all.
Before moving on to the appendices, I end here with a remark to the editors of Asif. From a respectable journal I would expect an editor to tell an author that he is not prepared to publish a section that contains declarations, preferences, and personal recommendations without reasons and arguments. A journal is supposed to be a venue for reasoned articles, not a re-write of a rabbi’s personal mussar talk to his student (in which I would also expect reasoning—but that is merely my personal taste).
Appendix A: The Confirmation of a Scientific Theory
RYSh opens this appendix by describing a lecture series he heard as a student from Prof. Carl Hempel, one of the great philosophers of science in the last century. The opening is odd to me, for the claim he subsequently presents stands in stark contradiction to Hempel’s position on which he relies.
The falsification principle that RYSh learned from Hempel belongs to another Carl, almost contemporaneous (born three years earlier and died three years earlier), Karl Popper. Popper taught that one cannot prove a scientific theory—at most one can falsify it. The reason is not necessarily that the theory deals with infinitely many cases (as RYSh wrote), since many theories do not. The problem that prevents empirical proof is that not all cases are accessible to us. For example, the theory that all crows are black refers to a finite set of objects (all the crows that exist today is a finite number; even all the crows from the creation of the world until their extinction will presumably be a finite number, albeit large). Yet even if we try to observe them all, we have no practical way to know that we have indeed seen them all. Therefore we have no way to prove the theory empirically. But we do have a way to falsify it: if we find a single non-black crow. Popper claimed that a scientific theory can only be falsified. In his view, science should speak only of certainties, and therefore one can speak of a falsified theory—and nothing more. Regarding a theory that has withstood all tests to date, Popper held that scientifically one can say only that it has not been falsified.
Hempel held a different position. Hempel is considered the father of the theory of confirmation. In his view, although one cannot prove a scientific theory, one can confirm it. If we observe many cases in which it is corroborated, then although we have not proved it, we have confirmed it. Popper was unwilling to compromise on anything less than proof, for in his view science should deal only with the certain. Therefore he held that, scientifically, one can speak only of a theory not yet falsified, and any other statement is speculative (uncertain). Hempel, by contrast, was prepared to regard many experimental verifications as confirmation. For him, probability also has weight, not only certainty. Correctly, RYSh claims that confirmation depends on additional factors (for example, if all the crows we observed were only in Africa, that is a weaker confirmation of the general theory than what we would get by observing a sample of crows from all continents). Needless to say, for Hempel, too, a scientific theory is not certain. He merely claims it is more probable than its negation, and the better the confirmation, the greater the gap in probabilities. This differs from Popper, who within science was willing to accept only claims of certainty.
After the preface about Hempel, RYSh claims that my attempt to strengthen the theory that only the laws of nature and human actions determine what occurs here (and not providence or prayer) by means of test cases where the prayers of many Jews were not answered (such as Naḥshon Wachsman or the three teens) is childish. He claims this does not even begin to confirm the theory because: (a) no one claims that prayer is always answered; (b) other factors that affect the acceptance of prayers were not taken into account; (c) I did not examine in the “experiment” the many cases in which people reported that their prayer was answered.
Reading this after the preface about Carl Hempel was very strange to me, for this is precisely what we learned from Hempel in contrast to Popper. After observing many crows and seeing that they are all black, I will infer that all crows are black. Popper would object—as RYSh does—that such a conclusion is rash, since I have not observed them all and perhaps there are unseen crows that are not black. But precisely Hempel, RYSh’s teacher, would say that the theory that all crows are black has indeed been confirmed (though it is, of course, not certain—like any scientific theory). That is exactly what I claim in the book: from the fact that we have not seen prayer answered in a clearly demonstrable way, there is no indication that such a thing exists in the world. The conclusion is not certain, but it is more probable than its negation. People’s reports that prayers were answered, to which RYSh refers, are meaningless in this context. We all know how people fail in the statistical understanding of things that happen to them (I have discussed this many times on the site; see, e.g., Columns 38, 87, and many more). If someone recovers after praying, how can he know whether it was because of the prayer? What exactly am I supposed to test in such an experiment?
If anything, one could perhaps conduct experiments on large numbers of people divided into treatment and control groups, with double-blind methodology, and then test the statistical significance of the effects of prayer or of righteousness and mitzvah performance. Incidentally, such experiments have been conducted, usually among Christians, and the results are highly disputed (I have noted this more than once). It is just as well that among Jews it is forbidden to conduct such an experiment (“Test Me now in this”). How convenient—this prohibition allows us all to remain with the Popperian claim that there is no proof that there is no effect. But precisely Hempel—on whom RYSh relies—teaches that convenience is not everything. If there are no indications and all our experience points the other way, then the theory that there is no effect is more probable. No one speaks of certainty—neither Hempel nor I, his humble follower.
Incidentally, in my book I explained why I think that even those who declare complete faith in the Master of the world’s control over medicine likely do not believe this thesis. Among other things, I argued there that all the medicine on which they (and I) rely is based on experiments that ignore the most important influence in the field: mitzvot and prayers. Would you take a pill or use a medical procedure based on experiments that ignore the most important factor in the phenomenon being studied?! Of course, I raised many more arguments in the book, beyond the fact that in the cases of Naḥshon Wachsman and the three teens the prayers were not answered (that was only an illustration, not an argument)—but for some reason RYSh chose to ignore them.
Appendix B: An Imagined Tangle Regarding Repentance
The second appendix deals with the problem of weakness of the will, which arose only in passing in the book. I will not enter into it here, for RYSh’s remarks suffer from several pitfalls that I discussed in columns devoted to the matter (172–173). He relies on Maimonides’ pseudo-psychological theory in Shemonah Perakim which—even if I accepted it—would not alleviate the fundamental difficulty. In the end he proposes a formulation that might perhaps resolve the difficulty (a person must decide whether he acts according to his values or not), but without properly defining the problem and the concepts. Both the problem and a similar formulation as a solution appear in my columns noted above, where I explain why it is far from simple to justify the claim that this indeed solves the problem. But for RYSh, all this is simple and self-evident. When one fails to define the problem and the solution properly—everything is self-evident.
A note in the margin of my remarks: Not coincidentally, several of my arguments here rely on Maimonides’ writings. This is not because he constitutes a source of authority for me—for, with all my appreciation for him, as I explained there is no possibility of accepting authority in these realms. The reason I rely here on Maimonides is that RYSh devotes much of his energy, time, and talent to studying Maimonides’ halakhic and philosophical teachings; therefore, I wonder how he criticizes my approach, which rests on principles remarkably similar to those of Maimonides, while directing most of his arrows precisely at my use of those very principles.
[1] See, however, my remarks at the beginning of the first talk about Anselm’s preceding prayer, and why the common mockery of it is unjustified.
[2] See my article “Zeno’s Dichotomy and Modern Physics.”
Discussion
More power to you; good old solid stuff.
What I’m missing in all these response columns (to Rabbi Shilat, Rabbi Roth, etc.) is that after all your substantive engagement with their claims, you don’t say a few words about the phenomenon as a whole: very intelligent rabbis raising recycled, far-fetched, and implausible arguments against you, while refusing to think critically in any real way.
As if these disputes between you just happen to arise by chance, as if it just happens to bother them that you hold like the Shelah on divine foreknowledge and free will, and so many other such disagreements. Even RY”SH’s accusation that logic has driven you out of your mind you interpreted simply, without understanding that buried here is the statement: “Not everything has to be examined by pure reason; reason led you to heresy”—which is borne out by everything he says about quanta and mathematics, etc.
With Rabbi משה Rat you argue over entire issues of journals about providence and whether it exists, while Rabbi Rat himself has already written that he is sure God intervenes in the random opening of the Iggerot Kodesh and helps him make the right choice on their basis.
In yeshiva I learned that when there are several disputes between two sages, one tries to reduce them to as few underlying principles as possible. So here there are not ten disagreements between you about foreknowledge and free will, providence, prayer, etc. etc., but one disagreement: how intellectually honest and courageous am I willing to be in making change.
Wouldn’t it also be worthwhile to write about this to the rabbis too, of course after all the substantive replies?
An especially clear response post.
I would recommend including RY”SH’s article and this post as recommended reading in your “Critical Thinking” course.
I could not agree more with your remark about the characteristic failures in the field of “Jewish Thought.” It is so embarrassing to read rabbis writing on subjects in which they are not experts. It harms the meager reputation they acquired through such labor.
Your arrows are sharp—peoples fall beneath you.
Maybe regarding Hempel and Popper (and I apologize in advance, I haven’t read RY”SH’s response):
From RY”SH’s perspective, the claims you raise are not confirmations of the thesis that prayer has no significance, but refutations of the thesis that prayer does have significance. So in his view you are operating in a Popperian space, while he assumes there are confirmations for the thesis of efficacy (which he may or may not have brought in his response), and the apparent refutations are not decisive.
Of course, even according to Hempel, a genuine refutation is enough to reject a theory, even if it had previously enjoyed many confirmations. It seems that the question addressed to RY”SH in this context is why, in his view, these are not genuine refutations.
As a student of RY”SH, I say sadly that his words are unworthy of being said. I thought his intellectual integrity would lead him to agree with your logical arguments. Too bad. Instead, there is here a retreat into the style of Haredi rhetoric.
I just have to say that secular people are no more open than religious people. That’s probably just the nature of the world.
I don’t believe in discussing motives and psychology at all. Every argument should be discussed on its own merits, and the psychological conclusions are each person’s own private matter.
These are refutations of the thesis according to which prayer always has significance, and confirmation of the thesis that usually it has no significance.
You have strange claims.
A line is defined by 2 points, and one can find infinitely many points along it.
Quantum mechanics certainly contradicts logic. All the principles of logic:
1. The law of non-contradiction—in quantum mechanics a particle can be in a state in which it has a certain property and the negation of that same property.
2. The law of the excluded middle—a particle can be in an intermediate state between true and false (the measurement will decide toward one of the extremes).
And your difficulty is based on shutting your eyes and asserting that it cannot be that a mathematical theory would create a world in which the laws of logic do not hold. But that is just a statement. There is no problem creating a world with anti-logical axioms and using logic to infer things from those anti-logical axioms. It is a wonder that this works at all, but that has nothing to do with the claim about the non-logical nature of physical reality itself.
Posek, usually I don’t respond to your remarks, since you toss out slogans and unclear, unfounded declarations with astonishing confidence, but I always harbor the suspicion that perhaps you mean something definite and maybe it is even true, and I am just the one who doesn’t understand what you mean. This time you deviated from your custom, because you wrote demonstrable nonsense in a field in which you apparently understand nothing whatsoever. Fine, so again I won’t respond. 🙂
Judaism is not a matter of philosophical inquiry.
The reality of the divine from the standpoint of Judaism, and whether He exists or not, is not relevant at all..
The same goes for authority in the gentile and philosophical sense of the word.
Judaism does not begin with inquiry but with remembering the revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He, to our forefathers.
We are not interested in whether He exists or not, as Rabbi Cherki said.
We are interested in the fact that He was revealed.
We are interested in the fact that He transmitted commandments, laws, and prophetic messages.
How do we know this is true?
Because revelation is a psychological-inner fact preserved in the collective soul of the nation.
In the collective soul of the nation, the memory of revelation is burned in.
And because of this we believe.
In the words of the great figures in the fields of thought and theology there are engraved remnants of prophecy and knowledge about the world, remembered in the psychological memory that passed through them from Moses to Maimonides and to Ramchal and the Netziv of Volozhin, and on to the Ra’ah and his son Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook; and from that we accept their authority in matters of thought.
Even if they erred, they nevertheless were right. Or one might say they did not err, because what we call error is simply reading their errors in the wrong language.
They translate that same remnant of prophecy and wisdom they possess into words.
But the words do not always reflect the intention of the inner soul, the inner memory of prophecy that exists within them.
They may say there is individual providence at every moment, and according to the laws of nature we see that there is not—shall we stop believing?
Heaven forbid.
We will interpret the concept of individual providence differently. We will descend to the root of what is hidden behind the statement and discover what the Torah truly wanted to tell us through that principle of faith.
And Judaism has never cared about facts in the accepted and philosophical sense of the word—I repeat.
Even the existence of the Holy One, blessed be His name, may perhaps be interpreted differently, in a Spinozist-pantheist way. And if philosophy and science discover this in another 400 years,
it will not negate the fact that He was revealed.
If we are to associate us Jews with a philosophical school,
perhaps it can be said that we are more postmodernist than we want to admit.
From our perspective there is no objective truth about the world.
There is an inner, factual, and immense truth from our perspective—one engraved within our souls and spirits..
But it says nothing objective.
Rather, it illuminates and looks upon the world with a more divine and powerful perspective of revelation.
I am writing mainly out of the poetic impulse in my soul. Please do not say that this collection of words says nothing.
Deliberately I encoded messages within a psalm that is not very understandable.
But a wise person like you can understand what I mean.
Preface: RY”SH’s intention is not to bring an argument against you, as he himself wrote, but to say that you do not write as a “rabbi” but as a heretic (in your attitude toward God and Hazal), and your words should be understood accordingly.
A Jew who accepted the Torah from Sinai and accepts the hierarchy that God established—and which you accept despite yourself—does not speak this way, no matter what his conclusions or personal opinions are.
As Maimonides writes in Hilkhot Avodah Zarah, not everyone is capable of understanding everything, and therefore one must rely on the tradition; so the claim that logic drove you out of your mind is justified in that you dispute rather than ask.
Halakhah: Again I did not understand whether you deliberately did not address what the rabbi meant to argue. Certainly we do not know exactly what was given at Sinai and what was not. Maimonides in Sefer HaMitzvot tries to bring rules for determining what is “de-oraita,” but from there to saying that one cannot accept their words as truth on this topic is excessive. That is, it is not “absurd”; it is a deviation, an opinion with no basis in the tradition given by God. (See also Bartenura on the beginning of Avot.)
Providence: Here I no longer understood whether I understand. The statement that God is above time means that God is not defined by time, meaning it is impossible to say any temporal description about Him (and therefore it is not precise to say that God knows today); you did not address this at all. (This is the view of Ramban in Job and of Maimonides.)
And yes, you deviate from the tradition when you state a lone opinion that has already been rejected (the end of Rabbi Shilat’s paragraph).
Proper integration: Providence is another factor that you do not understand how it works. You attacked a factor that can be understood with the claim that it creates a contradiction, but a third factor, which is not understandable in how it integrates, is not contradictory (and this is only a rough analogy to say that it is similar to free choice).
Prayer: As you yourself wrote, it is preferable to listen to experts, and Hazal are far more expert than you in what Torah study is; that is an excellent and simple argument.
And this is all before I even got into the rest of the faith-related claims later in the post, which definitely show that logic has driven you out of your mind.
Regarding a line defined by 2 points and containing infinitely many points—every high-school student knows this. The Greeks already knew this.
Regarding quantum mechanics, whoever imagines that the objects in quantum mechanics are logical entities has not understood it at all. Or he has forced it to fit his categories of thought so much that he is really talking about something else altogether.
If the simple proofs of the non-logicality of quantum mechanics that I wrote in the previous comment are too complicated, it is enough to note that the physical uncertainty principle stands in contradiction to the logical principle of certainty.
Rabbi,
There is one thing I didn’t understand. It feels to me like you’re digging in at bizarre levels over the claim that if we accept that the laws of nature are deterministic, then they cannot be reconciled with providence. And therefore on your view one has to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, “changes” nature a bit so that it is not deterministic in order to allow for providence. Suppose He nudges a few electrons into a certain place, and from there on everything is natural.
So what is the problem with that, for heaven’s sake? What is so difficult about that statement? Why are so many people unable to accept it?
I understand your question whether this is common or not, but what is so “logically” difficult about that claim? You and many others argue at length about this silly issue. Obviously if there is providence then there is some change in the laws of nature and …?
How is this different from human free choice, where on your view they too change nature in the brain and trigger some electron, for example, and perhaps even *eliminate* something else in order to preserve the conservation laws….
I really haven’t managed to get to the bottom of what you all mean.
As I understand it, even Pele Yoetz writes this.
Posek, why not stick to vague and emphatic declarations—that has always been your art! When you write things that have some actual meaning, the result is rather embarrassing. Isn’t that a shame?…
Well, I assume you don’t expect me to repeat the same things for the thousandth time. Just read and you’ll see my opinion. It has been explained dozens of times, in the book and on the site.
With God’s help, 14 Heshvan 5781
Rabbi Shilat nicely pointed out the comic dimension in the approach that tries to create a ‘harmonization’ between the view of Epicurus—that there is no providence in the world—and punctilious observance of the commandments according to talmudic halakhah, which includes, among other things, three daily prayers…
The two things, which flatly contradict one another, simply do not go together, and they look like the joke about the Litvak who converted but keeps on ‘studying Torah for its own sake’ 🙂
If we already have a desire to adopt something from the legacy of Epicurus, I would recommend adopting his method of teaching his students while walking in the open air.
And especially in these Corona days, there is nothing better than serving God and studying His Torah in the open spaces, as King David said: ‘He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.’
With blessings, Menashe Hoffer
My words are clear and decisive. To one who covers his thought with curtains, they will seem vague.
Rabbi Shilat mentioned Rav Kook’s words, that prayer brings a person to intensify his will, to connect a person’s personal will with the will of his Creator. We might say figuratively that through prayer a person becomes a ‘ruler over the spirit’—over his own spirit.
The spiritual transformation that prayer brings about in the will of the one praying—it is this that may bring about a change in the divine decree, for ‘The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth.’
With blessings, M. Hoffer
Well, in my humble opinion (a slick pair of words, except that I don’t have a better substitute right now), on the main issue over which you and Shilat disagree—you are both telling the truth. Really only part of it—each of you is saying a different part. Let Shilat’s mind be at ease: in the end “logic” does not succeed in driving you out of your mind, and you yourself fail in it in this article. And that, in my view, is the real problem.
I will try to explain and justify my words:
You are indeed right that in matters of the essence of intellect, the mind is compelled to think in a certain way and one cannot command thought. But what you refuse to acknowledge—and here Shilat is clearer-eyed than you—is that Judaism is a sincere attempt to do precisely that, namely, to command thought. True, this attempt is hopeless from the outset, but if one ignores it, as you occasionally do, one castrates the image of Judaism.
I wrote here at length in the past about how I ground this thesis of mine (the problematic nature of the “Torah from Heaven” model), and this is not the place to elaborate.
A good illustration is the two supportive comments you received on this article:
“The Complete Monotheist” writes this:
“Judaism is not a matter of philosophical inquiry
The reality of the divine from the standpoint of Judaism, and whether He exists or not, is not relevant at all..”
This is, in essence, also your position (even though you of course deny it).
Or in an even less rational formulation (I didn’t think that was possible…) from another commenter (“Interested”):
“A Jew who accepted the Torah from Sinai and accepts the hierarchy that God established and which you accept despite yourself does not speak this way [like Michi], no matter what his conclusions or personal opinions are.”
Woe to such support.
Although I haven’t read the book, with regard to tzimtzum Rabbi Shilat is right.
I studied a bit of Kabbalah and have a tiny bit of understanding in it (what the kabbalists call “attainment”). For example, I know that the rabbi does understand and attain the concept of three lines (right, left, middle—kindness, judgment, mercy). The rabbi understood that this refers to childhood, adolescence, maturity, or expansion, limitation, and renewed expansion (or dogmatism, analytics, syntheses, or fanaticism, pluralism, generality according to Rabbi Kalner—and I too have some such triad of my own). Does the rabbi understand and attain to the same degree what tzimtzum is? Does RY”SH attain this? Otherwise this whole discussion is ridiculous. You both have images in your heads and are arguing over which image is correct. It is like the Christians’ arguments about how many angels can stand on the head of a pin. I once heard the rabbi say that tzimtzum means how much the Holy One allows human choice. So what is the whole discussion if it was in physical space or not?
Hello R. Michael, may he live and be well. This morning I received a link to your response to my review article published in ‘Asif.’ Let me begin by saying that I am not familiar with your website (I very rarely browse internet sites), and it will take me time even to look through all your remarks from last night, written with impressive speed (by the way, I see you have devotees who read your words and rush to respond at hours when most human beings are asleep…). I only wish to comment on one point of yours, on one of the most significant theological issues here, namely the matter of providence. You write that “meteorological events are produced by forces and particles, and in the final analysis it is all mechanics.” In order to posit divine intervention one must posit the existence of “gaps in the laws of nature” and prove their existence. I am astonished: since you admit that human beings have free choice, which is not the necessary result of a chain of physical events, why is the intervention of countless human beings in meteorological events—by turning on a heater, throwing organic waste into the yard, etc.—not in need of “gaps in the laws of nature,” but simply flows along with them without either interfering with the other’s work, whereas divine intervention cannot be like that? (Though in my opinion divine intervention, unlike human intervention, does not occur through a current divine volition, but is programmed in the divine “computer” from the beginning of creation.)
By the way, Hempel is not my teacher and rabbi. I only heard several interesting lectures from him. I have no obligation to extend the “chain of tradition” backward to Popper and Carnap and the like. And as for the theory of confirmation: those who try to confirm the efficacy of prayer by experiments are presumably not the kind whose prayers are accepted.
Sh.Tz
It is not that Rabbi Michi read the writings of Epicurus, decided to become his loyal disciple, and therefore determined that there cannot be providence in the world.
I am not trying to be Rabbi Michi’s spokesman and represent him or defend his positions. But as a regular reader of the site for years, I would say that one of the goals that seems to me most important to clarify on this site is that it does not matter who said a certain argument—whether Epicurus, Plato, or Rabbi Yehuda Halevi—but whether it is true or not. And the fact that there is a claim or certain claims that one thinks are correct, and by chance or not by chance they are also the views of a certain thinker or person, does not mean one must accept that thinker’s entire doctrine. Nor does it mean one should reject a certain claim just because a certain thinker said it, if it seems correct to you.
Epicurus also said other things: that the purpose of the world is pleasure, that there is clearly no life after death, and that the gods have no divine command or will concerning human beings at all (apart from the matter of providence, in my humble opinion I do not find any other points of overlap).
In my humble opinion*
By the way, although this whole topic is a matter of definition—a point does in fact have length. Zero length. It is a matter of measure theory. The rabbi is invited to ask his son what I am talking about (or read a bit on Wikipedia). In measure theory they define measures on every subset of points in a given space. If the space is the line (all the points on the line), then a point too constitutes a subset of it, and therefore one must define a measure for it too. A practical consequence is the integral of a Riemann function over the space of all points between point zero and one on the real line, whose size is zero. The rabbi is invited to Wikipedia in order to clarify what a Riemann function is. According to the rabbi’s words, that integral would be undefined rather than zero.)
And this, of course, as opposed to the Dirichlet function (defined on the same domain), whose integral is indeed actually undefined according to the definition of the Dirichlet integral, which is built on the definition of measure according to which a subset of the line containing one point has measure (its length) zero.
Sorry. There is no such thing as a Dirichlet integral. I meant the integral according to the definition of Lebesgue. What is called the Lebesgue integral, which is a generalization of the definition of the Riemann integral to every subset of points on the line and not only to open or closed intervals.
Rabbi Yitzhak, greetings.
Of this it is said: “To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning, and Your faithfulness in the nights.” 🙂
Regarding providence, as I also wrote in the book, I do not deny divine involvement on the a priori level (for the mouth that prohibited is the mouth that permitted), nor even on the factual level (that it happens in practice). I only claim that in practice it does not appear that way (perhaps in sporadic cases that nobody sees), and therefore whoever claims that it does happen bears the burden of proof (I referred to essay 243, where I dealt with the burden of proof regarding the claim of a change in divine policy).
As for human freedom of will, that is something we experience directly (and unlike prayers being answered, here there is no reason to doubt our perceptions), and therefore the burden of proof lies on whoever denies it. I elaborated on this in my book The Science of Freedom.
From this you will understand that once I have a reasonable indication that God is indeed involved in the world, I can accept explanations for why we do not see it—for example, that He hides behind the tangled causal chains. Otherwise this is an ad hoc theory with no basis whatsoever and no reason to accept it. Especially since almost all of us do not assume it either, as I explained at length in the book and briefly in my response essay here.
The scientific worldview is that particles do not move unless a force acts on them. If you saw a particle moving, it would not occur to you to say that there was no force here and that the Holy One moved it without the action of a force (even though we both agree that in principle this is possible). Meteorology is nothing but a many-particle system. I noted that you yourself agreed that the scientific determinations of Hazal did not come to them by tradition, and therefore their statements on this matter can certainly stem from a mistaken scientific conception (and in the book I even showed that this is indeed the case, mainly from the sugya of praying over the past).
I explained all this very clearly in the book.
As for Hempel, first, it is established for us that even one from whom he learned what the filth on a ladle is is his teacher. But here, of course, I used this only figuratively, since in your response you relied on ideas you learned from him. Therefore I argued to you what in the language of our sages is called: “from the place from which you came.”
By the way, I did not understand why one should assume that the divine involvement is programmed from the beginning of creation. If there is His involvement and not everything proceeds according to the laws of nature, then why not say that it is happening now? The policy is fixed, and therefore there is no change of will here (which I also do not see as a problem, but that is another opera). But this really is an unimportant question for our purposes, since the dispute is not over when the decision to deviate from the laws of nature was made, but whether it happens.
[In parentheses I will add a point that just occurred to me. This discussion between us reminds me of Maimonides’ argument in Root One against the Ba’al Halakhot Gedolot, for having included Hanukkah and Purim in his count of the 613 commandments. And Maimonides wonders at this:
Indeed, as for Moses having been told at Sinai that He would command us that when at the end of our kingdom such-and-such would happen to us with the Greeks, we would be obligated to light the Hanukkah lamp—I do not see that anyone would imagine this or entertain it in his thought.
Now one must examine why it bothered Maimonides that the Holy One knew this in advance and indeed commanded accordingly. And I would further ask: what room is there for this difficulty? For the Ba’al Halakhot Gedolot could make your claim regarding miracles: the Holy One determined that if there would be a victory we would need to celebrate it, and Hanukkah and Purim are particular cases of this general law (though there is room to discuss why they were counted as two commandments, but that can be resolved, and in any case that is not Maimonides’ difficulty against the Ba’al Halakhot Gedolot).
Whether God exists or not is indeed not relevant at all to Judaism.
The holy Ari calls the Holy One, blessed be He, “the absolute zero.”
All the sefirot themselves are described in positive terms according to the holy Ari. But the Holy One Himself, according to the Ari, cannot be called by any designation—only “the absolute zero.”
That is, He cannot be described in words. It is impossible to attribute anything to Him: existence, non-existence, will, beginning, primacy.
All we know is not whether the Holy One exists or not.
Rather, we know of His revelation and that He conveyed His will. We know this with certainty because it is truth (not historical truth! At this point I go even further than my predecessors). And I say that revelation is not at all a datum that can be defined as an event that did or did not happen in history; that too is not relevant at all (just as the findings of evolution and the development of man from the ape are not relevant). Revelation is an inner truth of a connection between the disclosure of the command of the Holy One and the souls of the people of Israel. And this fact is engraved in the soul of every Jew from the giving of the Torah until our own day—just as we do not need philosophical or scientific proofs for the bond between parents and children, or for a person’s love of his land and his belonging to his homeland, so we do not need philosophical proofs for the factual bond that exists between the soul of the nation and the divine command..
That simple. That complicated. That is how all the great enlightened thinkers and philosophers complicated things when they tried to translate Jewish truth into philosophical concepts of truth, and the Jewish concept of the divine into philosophical concepts of deity, and into Christian and Ishmaelite-Muslim concepts of deity.
I am not saying, heaven forbid, Doron, that Judaism is based on falsehood, that atheism is right, and that I am bequeathing lies to my children. Rather, Jewish truth is something above reason, above scientific truths, above the rules of logical thinking, above concepts of true or false if you like. In my view these are two completely separate realms that exist in parallel.
There are no new miracles (new creation):
Ten things were created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight, and these are they: the mouth of the earth, the mouth of the well, the mouth of the donkey, the rainbow, the manna, the staff, the shamir, the script, the writing, and the tablets.
Jewish truth is above reason? Who revealed this secret to you? The senses? Imagination? Report? Or perhaps your intellect? And that God who, in your opinion, neither exists nor does not exist—did He give you a Torah that also neither exists nor does not exist? And the sefirot you mention—where was it revealed to you that they neither exist nor do not exist…?
In short: you make the false assumption that you can act (believe, fulfill commandments, etc.) on the basis of zero information.
On this matter you indeed reflect very well Judaism’s opinion of itself (and in fact the Torah’s opinion of itself).
With God’s help, 14 Heshvan 5781
To ShTz”Y—greetings,
The basis for rejecting the views of Aristotle (who denies individual providence) and Epicurus (who denies providence altogether) is found by Maimonides (Guide III, ch. 17) not in a ‘philosophical demonstration’ but in the testimony of the Torah and the Prophets, which are full of this principle, as well as in the conception of justice—that it is not just for a rational being not to receive recompense for his choice for good or evil.
In the following chapters Maimonides explains that God’s providence over man depends on the degree of his bond with his God. The closer a person is to God, the greater the providence over him, whereas the wicked who are distant from God are left to the ‘accidents of time.’
In chapter 9 of Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah Maimonides explains that the principal recompense of a person is the refinement of his soul for the life of the World to Come. The reward and punishment in this world are incentives, comfortable ‘service conditions’ that make it easier for one who does good to continue all the more in acquiring his perfection. And conversely, the sinner is punished in that the acquisition of his spiritual perfection becomes more difficult.
In his commentary on the Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Pe’ah, Maimonides explains that there are commandments for which, besides the ‘principal’—the perfection of the soul for the World to Come—a person merits ‘fruit in this world’ because of the benefit his good deeds have brought to other people; the person is entitled also to the ‘fruit’ in this world. In Hilkhot Ta’aniyot Maimonides explains another reason for a person’s sufferings in this world: to awaken him to repentance and to the correction of his deeds.
The principle of providence and recompense was established by Maimonides among the Thirteen Principles of Faith explained in his introduction to Perek Helek. And all of them are based on explicit verses in Scripture, so that one who believes in the Torah and the Prophets should also believe in the principles of faith that they established.
With blessings, Sasson Mugbar LeTzion.
Why do you claim that the length of a point is not 0? The simple definition of length is Lebesgue measure, and the Lebesgue measure of a point is 0.
Sh.Tz
I do not agree with many of Rabbi Michi’s views. One could say that I have inclinations and have seen a more mystical or spiritual reality than he has, also in matters of providence.
But Michi has explicitly written many times that although Scripture indicates that there was providence in their time, in his opinion this does not mean one must assume that there is providence today as well. I see no problem or logical contradiction here—why can a person not believe in events that happened to the prophets and in the writings, and nevertheless think that the reality today in these matters is different? And why must a person accept Maimonides’ festival of principles? Even if he is halakhically obligated and believes in Torah from Heaven. Before Maimonides wrote the Thirteen Principles, didn’t Jews keep commandments?
Maimonides wrote other things that are not included in the Thirteen Principles—he called people and great sages who believe in the coming of the Messiah by way of miracle fools. Will you follow him and define most faithful Jews as fools? Maimonides also thought that those who rise in the resurrection of the dead will rise and die a second time—will you remain faithful to Maimonides on this point? Or, as I assume, will you say that you follow the opinion of the majority of the sages of Israel? And what about his opinion on all matters of demons in Kabbalah, the sefirot, and the like?
It always amuses me how the enlightened types from academia at one extreme and believers in classical orthodoxy try to cling to Maimonides in order to fence out as illegitimate opinions people who say otherwise than Maimonides said. (The pathetic enlightened ones use his doctrine to prove with his help that a real Jewish person must be an enlightened bourgeois humanist from Katamon, and the conservatives use it to prove that a real Jew never disagrees with the opinion of our rabbis. And no one says the simple truth—that Maimonides was a very sharp man, with complete intellectual independence and self-confidence, and that the outlook he regarded as true and correct would mock and ridicule both most of the bourgeois of Katamon and most of the conservative Hardalniks and Haredim alike.) By the way, when I say full of self-confidence, I do not mean, heaven forbid, that Maimonides was arrogant or haughty, but that he was a man who toiled in Torah and in the search for truth all his life—and from that did not fear to state his decisive opinion in many fields and sharply dispute views he regarded as incorrect, without needing to apologize.
All the principles of faith established by Maimonides in his introduction to Perek Helek are explained in the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, and no one who believes in the Torah can dispute them.
Differences of opinion exist in the details, such as whether the redemption will be natural or miraculous, and whether providence extends to every living soul or only to human beings (or only to the children of Israel)—but they do not change the fact that the principles—that there is providence and that there will be redemption and the like—are principles explicitly stated in Scripture, and there can be no dispute about them.
With blessings, Sh.Tz.
Sh.Tz, regarding individual providence and God’s involvement in the world today, there is nothing written in the Torah that guarantees that that providence and intervention will be in all generations. Just as the miracle of the Exodus and the revelation at Mount Sinai do not mean that one is obligated to believe that those miracles also occur in this period, so too there is no obligation or necessity to assume and believe that today there is individual providence.
To say that it will not be renewed in the days of the Messiah and the like, as is indeed written explicitly in the Bible, while on the other hand still believing in the Torah—that is indeed a logical problem. But that is not what is being discussed here (in this post). Rather, it is about the disbelief that today, as of now, there is providence and intervention.
Likewise, from a broader perspective, one can always interpret things in the Bible in different ways and on different matters (as, for example, I philosophized with you in the past that on the other hand it is written in the Bible that in the future the nations will accept the kingship of God, yet there were nevertheless sages of Israel who expounded that in the future the nations would have no existence at all). And many times, not only in this case, Scripture indeed departs from its plain meaning.
In all generations *
And yet there were sages who expounded*
Doron
It’s not on the basis of zero information, but by the fact that…
From the giving of the Torah until the Enlightenment there was not a single Jewish heretic.
The divine revelation is a simple fact for every Jew just as the sun rises in the morning—and that shows that it really happened.
In other religions there were always heretics, always skeptics. But not in Judaism. No one ever dared question the authenticity of the revelation. This was a fact known in the soul of every Jew just as every infant knows who his mother is.
If you want, I base my faith on an upgraded witness argument.
Not only are we the only people who claim a collective revelation.
We are also the only people with no real heretics.
The apostates to Christianity, the first Reformers, and so on—yes, they tried to get better conditions and positions among the gentiles. But even they did not dare deny the revelation.
And the heretics of the age of atheism are merely Jews educated in frameworks that sanctify the church of reason and assumed that revelation is impossible because that is how their heads were washed.
Rational,
Are you sure? What you are basically saying is that from the giving of the Torah until the Enlightenment the Jews held a piece of information (a principle of faith) according to which what matters is not the information but the binding norm given to them at Sinai. In other words: information expressing the idea that the norm precedes all information…
Don’t you see the paradox?
On the contrary, your appeal to the witness argument not only fails to solve the problem, it aggravates it. If the witness argument is valid—as I myself tend to think—the situation is really a mess. Faith in the Sinai revelation, according to that, is not faith at all but an “act” that God commanded us.
In a world made entirely of such “acts,” there is no place for God, Torah, the people of Israel, or in fact anything at all. Because any attempt to put faith (information) before the act expressing it will rightly be seen as a distortion of Judaism.
A pretty depressing world, in my opinion.
I didn’t understand what density has to do here. His claim was that an (infinite) collection of points represents a segment. Very often people treat a segment as an infinite set of points.
The density of the rationals (in Q and in R minus Q) says that between any real numbers in a segment there is a rational. That does not refute the segment’s being a collection of points.
One can even imagine this as two endpoints with another point between them, and between each of the points and the additional point there is yet another point. In the end there are infinitely many points in the segment.
There is a big difference between the following claims:
“An infinite collection of points represents a segment”
“There are infinitely many points in a segment”
The first is not true. The second is true.
The one who disqualifies does so by his own blemish.
Notice: Rabbi Michi comes with claims against RY”SH that he does not justify his arguments.
Maybe Rabbi Michi, unlike RY”SH, always tries to justify his arguments, but the justifications are not very impressive (to put it mildly).
For example, as best I remember, regarding the difficulty of “How can there be (physical) defects in reality if they were created by a perfect God?”
Rabbi Michi’s answer is that “the current state is the best that God could create within the framework of the laws of nature.”
This answer is so ridiculous (with all due respect to Rabbi Michi) when told about a perfect and infinite God, that when you present it to an atheist or to a believer looking for serious answers, you simply embarrass yourself.
So Rabbi Michi, it is important that you know that wisdom is not only “to provide an argument,” but to provide a serious argument, and not some joke or another. The fact that you write “arguments” in your book changes nothing if their level is so low.
Ehud, you talk like a beginning noob. In reality there are no physical defects at all. It is ridiculous even to say such a sentence.
Physical defects in physics. Not serious.
A remark on the question of whether tzimtzum is physical or not: see Etz Hayyim, Gate 1, Branch 2, discourse on circles and straightness.
… And behold, then the Infinite contracted Himself at the central point within Him, in the very middle of His light (Said Meir: our rabbi said this relative to us, and this is enough for the understanding) and He contracted that light and it withdrew to the surrounding sides around the central point, and then there remained an empty place and air and a vacant void from the actual central point, like this [here there is in the book a drawing of a circle with a point inside it – N.S.]. And this contraction was equal all around that empty central point, such that the place of that void was round on all its sides in complete equality. And it was not in the shape of a square with right angles, because the Infinite also contracted Himself in the aspect of a circle with equal proportion on all sides. And the reason was that since the light of the Infinite is equally balanced in complete equality, it was therefore also necessary that He contract Himself equally on all sides, and not contract Himself more on one side than on the other sides. And it is known in geometry that there is no shape so equal as the shape of the circle, unlike the shape of a square with protruding right angles, and likewise the shape of a triangle and so too the other shapes. Therefore it is necessary that the contraction of the Infinite be in the aspect of a circle…
With God’s help, 15 Heshvan 5781
To RMDA—greetings,
It seems that Rabbi Shilat’s explanation of Maimonides’ view—that the divine intervention realizing the principles of reward and punishment is ‘programmed’ in advance from the time of creation—is based on Maimonides’ words that the occurrence of miracles was stipulated in advance from the six days of creation, that from the outset it was determined that at a certain hour there would be a deviation from the laws of nature.
The possibility of programming in advance the divine response to human choice is possible according to Maimonides’ explanation of ‘All is foreseen, yet freedom is given,’ namely that God knows in advance what a person will choose of his free will. And when the outcome of the choice is known to the Creator in advance, He can program nature in advance to respond according to the autonomous choice of the human being.
In my humble opinion there is no need to say that the ‘stipulation with the acts of creation’ is a prior decision that such-and-such will happen, but rather that an overarching ‘condition’ was placed in the laws of nature in advance that bends them to the laws of recompense. Thus the divine response of recompense to human choice is not a ‘change of will’ of the Creator, but the implementation of the law of recompense that is embedded in the foundation of creation no less than the law of nature.
This is how Maharal explains the condition that the Holy One made with the ‘acts of creation,’ except that he says this while disagreeing with Maimonides (whom he understood as R. Y. Shilat does), but in my humble opinion one can say so also in Maimonides’ view.
With blessings, ShTZ”L in the field.
Doron
My response was a parody of the fellow who calls himself “The Complete Monotheist.”
Since that is his style of writing, and the writing style of some other users here such as The Last Posek.
I responded to you in the style in which he would respond.
And in short:
His main claim is that Judaism is a realm above reason and knowledge.
Therefore speaking with him in terms of logical thinking will not help.
Parody*
Calls himself*
In quite a few mathematics courses, a segment is represented as a collection of points. That is not exactly wrong. The fact that there is also density does not change this. These are not points standing side by side at fixed distances or as a sequence converging within that segment, but rather that in every subsegment of the original segment there are infinitely many points. Therefore one can define the segment as a collection of points.
In any case, it seems that this is a matter of definitions and point of view.
Nadav.
From my familiarity with your article and with paradoxical and a-logical sentences that you enjoy quoting and publishing,
I assume this is from some Hasidic or Chabad book of some sort. Is that not so? (Even though it sounds like a style suited to the Kabbalah of the Ari.)
A Jew makes a parody of another Jew? Have we become like Sodom? May God save us.
“The Last Posek,”
You are invited to look here and see what I mean.
https://www.hayadan.org.il/random-aspect-of-evolution-2809147
I have no idea why you thought I meant anything beyond that.
If a body being built (at times) in a defective way does not count as a “physical defect,” then I don’t know what does . . .
That is Rabbi Michi’s point. A segment is not just an infinite collection of points.
After all, the sequence 0, 0.9, 0.99, 0.999… is also an infinite collection of points, but it is not a segment.
The property of density is very important because between 0.9 and 0.99 there must be an additional point.
That is, the claim: if it is a segment, then it has infinitely many points on it—is true.
But every infinite collection of points is a segment—that claim is not true.
In the courses in question the segment is defined that way, but there the definition is not in the reals but in an arbitrary collection of points. Not even numbers.
In the reals, density is also important. And that is what the rabbi is talking about.
I suggest you read the article to which Michi responded. You’ll see that his claim was that a real segment is an infinite collection of points, and that, as stated, is mistaken.
Rational: I wrote it—it’s a quotation from the book Etz Hayyim by Rabbi Hayyim Vital.
In any real segment there cannot be “holes”; the property of density guarantees this. In “non-real segments” this is not necessary. There are places where a segment is defined only as something real; any other object will be defined as a “line,” because the definition can sometimes create confusion.
Rabbi Shilat’s claim is that 0+0=segment.
I don’t really agree with this because it is a matter of definitions, but I don’t see how density refutes it. After all, infinitely many points each of which has length 0 (a problematic thing, but definition-dependent) yield a segment.
He did not claim that every infinite collection of points yields a segment. That is why I do not understand exactly how this refutes his words.
Indeed you wrote Etz Hayyim, and I should have understood that this referred to that same Tree of Life of Rabbi Hayyim Vital. And indeed this is the Kabbalah of the Ari, as I had supposed (or more precisely the interpretation or transmission/editing—depending on how one looks at it—of Rabbi Hayyim Vital of the Ari’s Kabbalah).
And the Alter Rebbe, if I am not mistaken, refers in some places to that same famous Etz Hayyim. Not for nothing is the style of esoteric speech (or more precisely: speech that sounds esoteric and incomprehensible to people like me, who are ignoramuses in Kabbalah and Hasidism) in some cases shared by some Hasidim and some kabbalists. Sometimes one relies on or quotes the other.
The Cantor set is a set of infinitely many points between zero and one that is not a segment. (Its dimension is less than one).
Nadav, there is no dispute that the description in Etz Hayyim is “spatial,” but RY”SH argues that all this is a metaphor for a discussion of metaphysics. Therefore one cannot prove anything from here against him.
That is very hard to argue with,
In any case, the arguments he brings (the angles of the triangle and the square, the symmetry of the circle) are very, very physical. In my estimation it takes quite a bit of intellectual gymnastics to explain what the spiritual counterpart is of “protruding angles” that exist in the square and the triangle (and really in every other geometric shape except a circle). That is possible, of course, especially in these fields, but we still haven’t gotten past the shifting of the burden of proof.
Nadav
You are invited to open Talmud Eser Sefirot by Rabbi Ashlag. No proof is needed. It was clear to me from time immemorial that he is not speaking about our reality. It sounded frighteningly superficial and also meaningless (who cares about geometry?) and I always knew there was some depth there that was what mattered, not those descriptions—even before I encountered Rabbi Ashlag.
Emanuel
You haven’t said anything. “Read that huge book and there you’ll find the answers to all your questions” is not an answer to any specific question.
There is something to your claim, Doron,
Several proofs for your claim:
Commandment 1 in Maimonides—to believe that there is a Creator.
Commandment 47—not to stray after your eyes—this is heresy (the prohibition on reading heretical books).
The prohibition on following a prophet of idolatry even though he brought proof for his words, because “the Lord your God is testing you”:
If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder comes to pass of which he spoke to you, saying, “Let us go after other gods, whom you have not known, and let us serve them”… That prophet or dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, for he has spoken rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to lead you astray from the way that the Lord your God commanded you to walk in; so you shall purge the evil from your midst. (Deuteronomy 13:2)
And in the Mishneh Torah:
How is one who prophesies in the name of idolatry [judged]? This is one who says, “Such-and-such an idol” or “such-and-such a star told me that it is a commandment to do such-and-such,” or “not to do so,” even if he directed the law correctly, to declare the impure impure and the pure pure—if he was warned in the presence of two witnesses, he is strangled, as it is said: “And the prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.” And his prohibition is included in what is said: “And the names of other gods you shall not mention.” It is forbidden to conduct debate and discussion with one who prophesies in the name of idolatry, and one does not ask him for a sign or wonder, and if he performs one on his own initiative, one does not heed him, nor does one reflect upon him; and anyone who thinks about his signs, perhaps they are true, violates a negative commandment, as it is said: “You shall not listen to the words of that prophet.” (Hilkhot Avodah Zarah ch. 5)
By contrast, Ramban disagrees with Maimonides on commandment 1 because one cannot command the essence of belief as a commandment. But on the other commandments he does not disagree.
And Rabbi Michi, true to form, is a rationalist and holds that in principle there are no commandments concerning thought, whereas you are an empiricist and claim that in practice there are commandments concerning thought, as I have shown. The rabbi resembles Maimonides, who despite all the verses and midrashim indicating God’s corporeality (Rashi on “Lech lecha” brings that the Creator sent His hand and helped Abraham in the circumcision) came and imposed his view that the Creator has no body or bodily form. And Rabbi Michi too comes and imposes his view that there is no commandment concerning thought, and imports liberalism into Judaism.
By the way, the doctrine of Kabbalah was not meant “to understand the relation between absolute infinity and the finite reality familiar to us.” All these words point to the fantasies of the writer (RY”SH). What is “absolute infinity”? Is there a non-absolute one? Who cares about infinity at all? What does this word even mean to him? Does he experience it in everyday life? This whole argument is completely ridiculous. Kabbalah deals with “divinity,” meaning the ways of God’s providence over the world and His governance of it. That is according to Ramchal, and so too it appears after studying his words (the concepts of Kabbalah, after the appropriate isomorphism, receive meaning and understanding; they come to life). And according to Rabbi Ashlag (in a complementary, not contradictory way to Ramchal), Kabbalah deals with refining man’s ego (his selfhood) and with the meaning and purpose of his creation and existence, and with his redemption and the redemption of the world. And that too makes sense. But this empty philosophical discussion (the debaters have no idea what they are talking about) about what tzimtzum means is like two uneducated people finding a book on advanced physics and beginning to argue over the character and meaning of paragraphs in the book instead of first learning basic physics themselves.
Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 1, Chapter 1, section 5, and the inner commentary there. But one has to read the chapter from the beginning. I still do not fully understand what he is saying, but I know with certainty (after much time I invested in studying it) that he does understand what he is talking about. It is something one can sense.
And it is rather depressing for me to see a physicist who works in a non-trivial field (complex systems) in physics (or maybe mathematics? computer science? that field—is it like chaos? or, alternatively, game theory? Anyway, this division into categories is mainly for administrative purposes) displaying such superficiality, unable to recognize wisdom when it is right in front of him. Man, why are you sleeping? Wake up from your dogmatic slumber.
I am an ignoramus. Maybe I know a little Gemara, but I have no understanding at all in Kabbalah, and likewise not in mathematics or quantum theory (when I see equations, I try to run away if possible). I’d be glad if someone would explain to me.
A. Intellect (mine at least) says that there cannot be infinity in the material world; no one has ever encountered anything infinite, and the very negative definition “infinite” hints that this is something that cannot exist—and not for nothing is the Creator called “Infinite.” I understand that mathematics can invent such a concept and use it, but in the world it cannot exist. I would think that there is an end to largeness but no end to smallness and divisibility—but if so then there are infinitely many tiny details, and therefore the division of matter should also be infinite. If I understood correctly, quantum theory also claims this: there are particles and energies that cannot be divided. It is not clear to me whether this means that distances also must come in fixed sizes, although intuition says that they too have a fixed size (I would be glad to hear from someone who understands this). And behold, what a marvel and wondrous mystery—how objects leap from place to place, as if we were pixels on a computer screen.
I also understand that in mathematics every number is divisible, and therefore there are infinitely many numbers or points between two numbers (or along a segment)—but this cannot be so in reality, and according to quantum theory indeed one cannot fit infinitely many objects between two points. Perhaps this is what Rabbi Shilat meant by the mystery of numbers.
B. After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, is not defined, so I do not understand why Kabbalah needs tzimtzum. This Infinite One can include all of us in a way that we do not understand, and there is no place to ask questions. Moreover, the answer that He contracted Himself in order to create a world—this too we (or at least I) cannot understand, so what have we solved here? I can understand that there is contraction in awareness—that is, the fact that a person does not feel the Creator, and some even think He does not exist, is a contraction—in awareness, that the Creator contracted Himself so as not to be clearly recognized, not in reality. And again, perhaps this is what Rabbi Shilat meant.
That does count as a physical defect, yes. But it is not a defect in reality, only in the eye of the beholder. A defect is a subjective concept.
In reality there is no human body. There are elementary particles. In the eye of the beholder a human body is created and defined. Don’t confuse the subjective, which depends on arbitrary definitions, with reality.
And to your question: what seems more defective to you, a person who limps a little or a person who is dead?
If you altered the laws of physics slightly, that body would not be formed at all. In that sense this is the best possible. Think and understand—it is not that complicated.
The doctrine of Kabbalah is a human invention of heresy against the Torah.
The coupling of the Holy One with the Shekhinah. Incest within divinity. Unbelievable that such things were even said by a Jew. All the more unbelievable that they were accepted.
Running after idolatry. Even in our generation.
I wanted to write the clarification that has not really been written here and explain part of the roots of the disagreement.
As opposed to M.A., RY”SH’s basic assumptions are completely different. RY”SH is not trying to attack the question of the Creator’s existence almost ex nihilo, with minimal axioms in logic and a very critical point of view toward proof from historical events. RY”SH lives the national consciousness and the historical narrative, which compel (according to the accepted Orthodox outlook) the Exodus and the giving of the Torah, and consequently, from that, the existence of God becomes self-evident [I am not entering into the issue that this point of departure is apparently the Kuzari-Maimonides dispute. It is sufficiently clear to me that RY”SH’s point of departure is based at least in part on the Kuzari, and in any case in our matter even Maimonides would agree].
Therefore RY”SH uses expressions like “I would abandon” and “it bothers me greatly” regarding the discussion of “teapots” and the belittling of sages, etc. RY”SH does not invalidate the discussion itself from M.A.’s point of view (and I even think he gives it a place philosophically), but he sees in it a “moral” defect, at least when it is written in a book by an author whom not a few define as a rabbi in Israel.
That “moral” defect is the fact that the entire history of the Jewish people, all the miracles and the ongoing providence over the Jewish people, are only a marginal argument in the discussion about God, and that one has to get through a great many pages of discussion about teapots in order to be reminded of what for many is such an absolute reason for a whole life of self-sacrifice (I confess I have not read the book, but it is hard for me to believe I am mistaken about the large number of pages. If so—forgive me).
That is what he means by “logic drove him out of his mind.” Not that he is claiming logic is not the ultimate basis for every discussion; I have no doubt he agrees with that. Rather, the intent is that instead of sitting all day in front of a computer (or with paper and pen) and dealing with propositions and logical rules that A->B->C, one should also reflect on and delve into what is clear even to someone who has not studied logic, and also into what it is not so urgent to know how to formulate in those terms: faith in the God of Israel. (Similar to Ein Ayah on Shabbat 30 regarding “faith by immediate recognition,” and as Hazal said: “Words of truth are recognizable.”)
Regarding the question of the authority of sages in matters other than halakhah: I think the example of “one in utter simplicity” is indeed a bit strange, and fair enough, as you say. But as has already been said here, there are foundations of Torah that are certainly agreed upon by everyone, and that are explicit Torah verses. For example, “that He exercises providence”—however we interpret that, there is an obligation to believe in providence; there are explicit verses on this matter. Certainly RY”SH’s view is the same regarding the World to Come and the resurrection of the dead, which, although not mentioned explicitly in the Torah, are a consensus of all “Jewish thought.” Therefore it is impossible to say that we do not accept the World to Come and the resurrection of the dead on Hazal’s authority if “we prove there is no scientific basis for it,” for that is a contradiction in itself.
Regarding providence, as I understand it RY”SH holds that there is intervention by God in nature in the simple sense (changing molecules). I do not think M.A.’s objections are especially difficult ones; it is all a matter of point of view and willingness to accept the idea of divine intervention. God does not need to fear that “we will catch Him red-handed changing molecules”; one can trust Him to intervene in creation in a way that will also fit, from our perspective, the ways of nature (even though we know that the truth is that He changes molecules behind our backs).
The discussion of prayer is a direct continuation of the discussion of providence, and therefore RY”SH allowed himself to be cynical there; but there too there is a purpose. RY”SH feels that according to M.A. the point of departure of the discussion for most human beings is cynical, just as he repeatedly says that human beings themselves do not believe in providence and in prayer. I think RY”SH came to say in what he wrote about prayer that there are in fact great figures (and with them many ordinary people) for whom providence and prayer are not trivial matters, and Hazal spoke well when they said, “For when vileness is exalted among the sons of men”—that things that stand at the pinnacle of the world, human beings treat lightly.
The other discussions seem less important to me…
There is no need to repeat M.A.’s arguments here; I know and understand them well. I am only setting out the disagreement here.
The smallest physical length that can be measured is the Planck length. Search Google. It is a very tiny number with 34 zeros after the decimal point. Likewise there is Planck time, the shortest time that can be measured.
Regarding tzimtzum, indeed after the literal tzimtzum of the Arizal, in the school of the Maggid of Mezeritch and the Alter Rebbe they argued roughly what you are arguing: that there was no literal tzimtzum. And that what contracted at first was only the Infinite Light and not the Infinite Himself. And also afterward the contractions were only from our eyes, not in reality.
It seems you have never given thought to the amount of prayers and tears of Jews that were poured out throughout history during the pogroms and in the Holocaust.
It is always easy to close one’s eyes and make claims. That is no wisdom.
With God’s help, 15 Heshvan 5781
To Nadav—greetings,
Understanding a kabbalistic text literally is a forbidden corporealization of divinity. The words are metaphors for the ways of divine governance in the world. There is a governance of ‘circles’ and a governance of ‘straightness.’ See Rabbi Eliezer Hayyim Shenvald’s article “The Secret of the Circles of Creation and the Straightness of Renewal” (Shabbaton bulletin, 9 Av 5780):
‘There are two foundations in creation: the fixed foundation and the changing foundation. The fixed foundation of creation—the laws of nature that do not change—is the foundation of the world and its stability depends on it. The changing foundation is the creativity and renewal that allow the world to advance and develop.’
There is in the world a circular principle of fixed regularity, but within it there exists the linear principle, goal-directed, which allows growth and progress toward a more perfected and better world,
as Rav Kook describes it: ‘For existence rises, going and ascending, and its principal place spreads beyond the narrow limitation of the blind, deaf laws, and it grasps the whole system of self-life, which is full of intellect and will, and generosity and uprightness fill all its expanse’ (Orot HaKodesh III, p. 25).
With blessings, Shimshon Tzweibel-Ring
‘
Natural lawfulness does not distinguish between the good and the wicked. The laws of nature are ‘the mighty iron laws, which do not change in their operation… doing their good to all the wicked, and with their burning side also scorching the good and upright’ (Orot HaKodesh, ibid., p. 24).
The fixed natural lawfulness gives the world its dimension of stability. But as Maimonides wrote in Guide III:17, a system of moral judgment must also operate among beings with intellect and choice, encouraging those who do good and deterring those who do evil, and thereby advancing the world toward goodness and justice.
With blessings, Sh.Tz.
It is always easy to read only the last line of what I wrote and to raise the argument from human suffering. With an argument like that, no discussion at all relating to God has any meaning, so I don’t know why you want this from me specifically.
Thank you very much for the answers. I have follow-up questions:
A. The question is whether this is the smallest length in fact, or only the smallest one measurable? The truth is that the question is somewhat philosophical (because apparently we will never be able to answer it, at least not with physical tools).
B. Are these quanta not really a physical solution to Zeno’s paradox? On Wikipedia there appears a mathematical solution that again uses an infinite mathematical series (that infinity again); the question is whether this is a physical solution to the paradox. (Although again, in my view the existence of magnitudes that cannot be divided is on the one hand necessary, but on the other hand equally paradoxical.)
C. Is there anyone who explains tzimtzum literally—someone capable of understanding what it is and how it answers the question of how we are separate from the Holy One, blessed be He?
Y.D.
Even I think there is something to my claim.
What is not clear to me is why you turned me into an empiricist..?
In any case, I agree with every “rationalist” whatsoever that one cannot command thought (which is in fact an expression of a dualist thesis saying that the realm of spirit is not subject to determinism, at least not to physical determinism).
My claim against Judaism is that even though this is a necessary truth that cannot be undermined, it still tries with all its might to do so—“we will do and we will hear.”
On the contrary, this resounding failure is to a large extent the legacy of Judaism throughout all history, for good and especially for less good…
What especially fascinates me is Michi’s impressive attempt (not sarcastically) both to support the philosophical thesis I expressed here and also to tell himself and us that it accords with authentic Judaism.
A (Jewish) head against the wall.
A fascinating and enlightening discussion. Thank you!
In the article “Did Maimonides Permit Himself to Disagree with Hazal?” by RY”SH (http://asif.co.il/download/kitvey-et/Ma%27aly%27yot/mal%2030/1%20(12).pdf) it seems that RY”SH agrees with and reinforces the claim that even Maimonides, in matters of beliefs and opinions, tended to be innovative and groundbreaking, and in fact used the power of his intellect and genius to cling to his insights even if they did not match the Hazalic mainstream and were even far from it. Therefore, what M.A. is doing, in my poor understanding—even if his thickness is incomparably smaller than Maimonides’ smallness—is not essentially different.
Hello to the rabbi
In one of the rabbi’s lessons I heard him tell about how, when he sat on Shabbat in Takhkemoni in the city of Bnei Brak,
he was always amazed by the fact that the Torah scholars there were truly lions in study and conceptual analysis,
grinding mountains against one another and agreeing on (almost) nothing.
And on the other hand, when some rabbi or mashpia would come to speak about faith, (things that my son from kindergarten would be embarrassed to say, in your words),
those same lions would listen with great attention,
as though receiving the words from the mouth of the Almighty.
The debate here about a tradition of faith from Hazal arouses in me a similar wonder:
why is it that in the Mishnah and Talmud we indeed find disputes and dialectics, a profound descent to the depths,
and clarification of matters—nothing is bought in a sack—
but on the other hand, in matters of faith or homiletics on theological topics, they seem like those same lions reclining in Bnei Brak,
hearing and not challenging by debate or inquiry, until it seems they do not care what their colleagues expound or think?
It is the smallest length, the pixel of the universe. Smaller lengths have no meaning.
It can definitely constitute a mechanism for solving all of Zeno’s paradoxes. Transition from pixel to pixel by means of a quantum smearing of the probability of the body’s location. The progress is statistical.
The whole matter of contractions is empty. There is no content there, only mumble-ization and inventions of words and connections between them that can be changed according to feeling and need.
At first it was spatial; afterward they began to interpret it spiritually. At first it was contraction in God’s essence; afterward contraction only in the light. It is all arbitrary and idolatrous.
The proof that Kabbalah is a delusion that speaks about none of our reality at all (neither the physical nor the spiritual) is that none of the sages of Kabbalah ever developed a device that works in reality. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just mental babble for various naïve people who do not know their right from their left.
It is written, “In the beginning God created.” It is not written, “In the beginning God contracted Himself.” Any such statement is contrary to the Torah, and this is a new Torah that Moses our teacher did not receive.
The Ari calls Adam Kadmon that, not the Holy One, blessed be He. And this follows Ramban regarding prime matter.
So don’t call Him absolute zero either.
Thank you very much. (I don’t understand why Michi is dismissive in his replies to you; your explanations are persuasive. But the truth is that he is also dismissive of me in areas I understand better, like Gemara, and I have never merited a fair answer from him.) On the other hand, I would not rush to disparage the great sages of Israel such as Ramban, Rabbenu Bahya, Rashba, the Ari, the Vilna Gaon, the Ben Ish Hai, and the great Hasidic masters, etc. etc., of course. It seems to me that the halakhic decisors also did not develop any device that works in reality—and so too anyone who deals with a spiritual field. On the other hand, they have a very great influence on people’s actions—and that seems to me the main thing.
“And if I was convinced, then of course I accept it, but again this is not done because of obligation and authority but because I was convinced.”
It is certainly possible that the fact that something was defined as an obligation gives logical weight to one side in the logical deliberation. As was written: “In every field it is sensible and reasonable to accept the words of an expert because he is probably right, but of course there is no obligation to do so.” Suppose that all the Sanhedrins in all generations say that the meaning of “The Lord is one” is “one, simple, in utter simplicity,” but there is no commandment to obey the Sanhedrin. And my logical judgment says that He is complex. I am human, and I understand logically that I may be mistaken, so I assess my own logical judgment as only 99% likely to be right. Were it not for the commandment to obey the Sanhedrin, I would regard them as wise experts, yet my judgment is that there is a 1.1% chance that they are mistaken. Therefore the sum of my logical considerations is not to accept the sages’ words. But after the obligation to obey them, another logical consideration is added. It may be that the obligation to obey them is God’s word telling me that the chance that they are wrong is very small, only 0.1%, and then the sum of my logical considerations is that the “experts” are right and I am wrong. (Like a situation where there is an expert whose words I do not accept, but after it becomes clear to me that he is more of an expert than I thought, I accept his words even though my conclusion in my own logical deliberation was different.) So here is a case where the obligation created a situation of acceptance that is not mere lip service.
I completely disagree. If in the totality of considerations on the merits I do not accept that thesis, then the command has no weight and no ability to change anything. Suppose that in my view there is a 60% chance that the Sanhedrin are wrong, and for me the acceptance threshold is 80%. What difference does the command make?
In the comment “See Guide III ch. 17 and onward,” paragraph 3, line 1
In chapter 9 of Hilkhot Teshuvah Maimonides explains…
I did not claim that a command always has effective logical weight. At the threshold you specified, indeed it has no weight. Different people have different thresholds, so it is (likely) that there are people and cases where a command does have logical weight for them. Therefore there is no place for your refutation. It may be that there is a command to obey the sages with the aim of creating a substantive acceptance of their words, and even if sometimes (and perhaps often) this will not succeed, sometimes it will.
Meaning, God’s command is not only a command but also a revelation about reality?
Moshe, I hope you understood what you wrote. I did not.
To Shlomi. Yes, it is also a disclosure of דעת.
“The proof that Kabbalah is a delusion that speaks about none of our reality at all (neither the physical nor the spiritual) is that none of the sages of Kabbalah ever developed a device that works in reality. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
An amazing proof, Posek. Now everything is clear. If only those kabbalists had developed some transistor, coffee machine, or even a rake, they would have been saved from your rulings. Mercy on those fools.
With God’s help, 16 Heshvan 81
The first to teach the world to pray was Abraham, who everywhere he went called in the name of the Lord, and Onkelos translated: ‘and he prayed there in the name of the Lord.’ His prayer is the prayer of the individual standing opposite an alien and idolatrous world and seeking to make a revolution in it, and it is combined with great deeds of outreach and kindness.
With the establishment of the kingdom of Israel stands David, a great man of action, and he strengthens the pillar of prayer. All his deeds are accompanied by prayer and request for divine help. The many prayers he left constitute a mouthpiece for the individual and the multitude to express in them their hopes and the stirrings of their hearts.
And at the height of the terrible exile, when there will be ‘a time of distress such as never was since there was a nation until that time’ (Daniel 12:1)—‘and at that time Michael will stand before the Creator to demand redress for the insult of Israel’ (Rabbi Isaiah of Trani, ad loc.). And his prayer will be answered, as it is written: ‘And at that time your people shall escape, everyone who is found written in the book,’ and the Rid explains: ‘that is, all Israel, for they were all written in the Creator’s book.’
The Midrash links Michael’s power of prayer to the prayers of Moses, who returns to the idea of the uniqueness of God, beginning with the Song at the Sea—‘Who is like You among the mighty, O Lord’—and ending with ‘And this is the blessing,’ where Moses concludes: ‘There is none like God, O Jeshurun, who rides through the heavens to help you, and in His majesty through the skies.’
With blessings, Sh.Tz.
Ralbag (Daniel 10:21) explains the angel’s words to Daniel, ‘And there is none who strengthens himself with me in these things except Michael your prince’:
‘And behold, you should know that there is none who strengthens himself with me in all these wars that I wage on your behalf except Michael your prince, from whose side individual providence cleaves to you… For from the side of general providence it would have been fitting that evil befall Israel, and therefore you find that Gabriel could not protect them from evil in the days of the Greek kings in the way he protected them in the days of the Persian kings, because Israel was not then worthy that this providence should cleave to them.’
Ralbag’s words are based on Maimonides’ words in the Guide, chapters 17–19, that individual providence is given to a person according to the degree of his attachment to God. Therefore Ralbag says that in the days of Greece Israel, by virtue of their own merit, were not worthy that individual providence should rest upon them to save them ‘from the accidents of time,’ but rather through the agency of Michael their prince, who extends the kindness of individual providence even to one who is undeserving.
Even in the future troubles, ‘Michael the great prince shall stand over all the princes who overflow from the influence of the stars, who are the princes of those kingdoms, as mentioned earlier, and he is “the one who stands over the children of your people,” together with Gabriel, to extend to them individual providence… And then the Lord will perform a wondrous miracle, directing the fifth kingdom to endure forever… Then I will turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord and serve Him with one shoulder, and this will cause there to be no more wars after this, for there will be no differing beliefs there’ (Ralbag on Daniel 12:1).
With blessings, Sh.Tz.
A shorter response to Rabbi Shilat could have been:
He quotes Maimonides in order to attack you. (Laughter has been made for us, Rabbi Shilat.)
That same Maimonides who said in that very Guide from which he quotes that if he had been convinced of the eternity of the world he would have found another interpretation for the chapters of Genesis.
I hope he won’t claim that reason drove him out of his mind.
And if the sorcerers could fly people on carpets from Europe to America, they too would be saved from my rulings.
And if grandmothers had wheels, they too would be saved from your rulings.
And if and if.
On the ground they did nothing. Meaning, they were just charlatans or naïfs who were trapped.
And indeed the kabbalist magicians tried to say that there is practical Kabbalah and created amulets claiming that they are effective. That is, the technology Kabbalah developed is the amulet industry. Sorcerers.
In my fantasies I was born in a dictatorship of thought in which I am a cruel tyrant regulating the thoughts of the subjects—the decisors, the early and later authorities—and even punishing them for every stupidity that issues from the place where their brains ought to have been.
A sweet fantasy.
Nice 🙂
That is precisely the point: Maimonides does not cross the red line (the eternity of Aristotle), whereas M.A. does. Therefore Maimonides has commitment to Torah and tradition, and M.A. does not.
With God’s help, 16 Heshvan 81
The idea that one can erase from Judaism the principle of providence and recompense, with which all the sacred writings are filled, reminds me of the joke:
There was once a story of two engineer friends who lived in two different countries behind the ‘Iron Curtain.’ One day one visited his friend and saw that he lived in a magnificent villa, and asked: ‘How is it possible in a communist country to get to a villa like this?’ The host took him to the window and asked: ‘Do you see the bridge over the river? I built that bridge, “and of all that You give me I will surely tithe to You.”’
After two years, the guest paid a return visit to his host and saw that he lived in a splendid castle, and asked: ‘How did you manage in a communist country to get to such a splendid castle?’ The host took him to the window and asked: ‘Do you see the bridge over the river?’ The guest replied: ‘I don’t see any bridge.’ The host answered: ‘That bridge, which you don’t see—I built it…’ 🙂
With a blessing of ‘workers’ solidarity,’ Sazio Levinsko
Something I would be happy to read an explanation of, or a place where you elaborate:
If there are no gaps in nature, then in fact there is also no free choice, right?
That is, where does free choice take place within deterministic nature?
And if you found a place where nature is not deterministic, and therefore free choice exists there, can providence not dwell there as well? (Even if only as “providence tilts a person’s free choice so that it will bring deliverance to some individual”?)
See my book The Science of Freedom, and more briefly in my article on free choice:
https://mikyab.net/%d7%9b%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%9d/%d7%9e%d7%90%d7%9e%d7%a8%d7%99%d7%9d/%d7%9e%d7%91%d7%98-%d7%a9%d7%99%d7%98%d7%aa%d7%99-%d7%a2%d7%9c-%d7%97%d7%95%d7%a4%d7%a9-%d7%94%d7%a8%d7%a6%d7%95%d7%9f
You are undermining that rabbi’s world by saying things that are hard to hear, for him and for his flock, and he has to respond the way he does. Otherwise what you want to happen might happen—namely, to shake up and awaken those sheep. The various rabbis’ reactions to your words are a necessity of reality; otherwise they would be forced to admit that they’re a bit mistaken. I’m completely secular and I enjoy reading your provocative words, but to the Haredim these are probably words of heresy. You claim there are contradictions in their world, and contradictions can cause a person to examine his beliefs and clarify them in depth—which I assume is what the various rabbis do not want to happen. In any case, you know all this and continue on your way because you cannot do otherwise, and by the same token they also cannot do otherwise. That’s the situation, Man 🙂
There is no doubt that you are razor-sharp, but be careful not to tear the curtain that hides the lie they have sold many Haredim over the years, because who knows what will happen … If only everyone were as logical as you, but that won’t happen, because most of us do not have that ability. Maybe a bit of humility and compassion for others would help here. And maybe not—what do I know 🙂