For the sin we have sinned before You through inattention (Column 276)
With God's help
On the Sabbath I spoke in the synagogue about Jethro, who heard and came. The portion begins with "And Jethro heard" ("And Jethro heard"), and as is well known, the Sages expound this in the Talmud in Zevachim 116 (and in the Mekhilta), around the question whether Jethro arrived before the giving of the Torah or afterward (for there is no earlier and later in the Torah). The issue is made to depend on a tannaitic dispute:
As a tannaitic dispute: “And Jethro, priest of Midian, heard”—what report did he hear that he came and converted? Rabbi Yehoshua says: he heard about the war with Amalek… Rabbi Elazar of Modi'im says: he heard about the giving of the Torah [and came]… Rabbi Eliezer says: he heard about the splitting of the Red Sea and came…
Three tannaitic views are cited here regarding what Jethro heard: the war with Amalek, the giving of the Torah, and the splitting of the Red Sea.
Rashi at the beginning of our portion cites only two of them:
And Jethro heard—what report did he hear that he came? The splitting of the Red Sea and the war with Amalek.
The commentators have already noted why Rashi brings only two of the opinions, and why he presents them as a single opinion. Note that these are the two views that maintain that Jethro arrived before the giving of the Torah (that is, that our portion is arranged in chronological order), but beyond that it seems that they have something else in common. Hearing about the giving of the Torah presents Jethro as someone who came to join Torah and the service of God; that is, he is interested in a relationship with God. By contrast, the other two views connect his arrival to hearing about the miracles performed for Israel. He heard that something unusual had happened and asked himself what lay behind those events. So there is a difference between the interpretations: according to the interpretation of R. Elazar Ha-Moda'i, he wanted to join Torah and the service of God, whereas according to the two interpretations Rashi brings, he merely noticed an unusual event that had taken place and wanted to examine what it was about. That is why Rashi here brings those two interpretations and presents them as one interpretation.[1]
Attention to one's surroundings
What is Rashi saying about Jethro? Many have already asked why only Jethro came after those events. Was he the only one who heard about them? That is unlikely. And yet only he came. Jethro's advantage over other people was that he paid attention to what was happening around him. Everyone heard about the events, but only Jethro thought to examine what lay at their root, and so he responded and came.
Many of us do not pay attention to the events that happen to us. Things pass us by, and we do not even wonder what lies behind them. Jethro was unusual in that he had attentiveness to what was happening around him. One can even point to a difference between the war with Amalek and the splitting of the sea. In the war with Amalek we are speaking about victory in battle, which can also be interpreted as a natural event.[2] The splitting of the sea is an open miracle. Both kinds of events require attentiveness from us. If something happens around us, whether unusual or ordinary, it is worth asking why it happened. Who brought it about? What does it mean for us? What is the explanation? It is not good to pass by such things with indifference and dulled senses.
What does the heretic before you have to say about this?
I assume that some readers are surely wondering whether I have retracted my doctrine of treating things as happenstance, that is, a doctrine that refuses to see God's hand behind unusual events. Is it not right to learn from Jethro that we ought not to relate to things in that way? Is it not right to hear and come?
To the best of my understanding, no. My claim is that if an unusual event occurs, it is certainly worth examining why it happened and what it means. But such an examination must be conducted soberly and with systematic, logical judgment, not by leaping straight to conclusions. The determination that this is God's hand (or the hand of the latest baba) is not necessarily the result of thought or attentiveness. Sometimes it is simply a hasty conclusion. It is certainly worthwhile to think about events and their significance, but one should not determine in advance what the conclusion of that thinking ought to be. The conclusion that this is not God's hand can also be the result of reflection on the events. Moreover, in my opinion, in many cases precisely the conclusion that this is God's hand stems from insufficient thought (that is usually the case, in my view). People immediately jump to the conclusion they are accustomed to, or to a conclusion that someone has put in their mouths, or that their gut tells them on a superficial level, without thinking again about probabilistic and logical considerations.
Take, for example, the return of the Jewish people to its land. It has become commonplace on everyone's lips that these are unusual events and that we must not treat them as happenstance. Anyone who pays attention will see that this is certainly a miracle. But in my view it is entirely proper to examine the possibility that this is indeed an unusual event, yet not necessarily a miracle. It was not brought about by God, but by the "minister of history." Against the background of the Spring of Nations and the awakening of nationalism in Europe, the Jewish people too awakened and sought a national home for itself. Our heritage brought us to the Land of Israel. Our cultural and religious connection to it provided a basis that made such an awakening possible after so many years and despite so great a dispersion. But in the final analysis, it may have a natural and rational explanation.
Such a naturalistic perspective does not mean that these events have no significance, or that no conclusions can be drawn from them. Specifically regarding the return to the land, I have explained here several times that it can be attributed to our unique culture, even without appealing to direct divine involvement. Such an explanation too requires examination and attentiveness to events, and relevant conclusions can also be drawn from it. Removing God from the stage of history does not necessarily mean (though at times it does) indifference to events and a lack of attention to their meaning. It is always worthwhile to ask, but the demand to ask does not mean that the answer must always be: God.
Photography as a parable
There is a very well-known photographer named Alex Levac, recipient of the Israel Prize for 2005. One of his well-known photographs is Arab laborers repairing Herzl's statue at the HaSira Junction in Herzliya (the link was posted in the comments. Thanks to Yuval). The absurdity is indeed glaring, almost laughably so, but when I saw the picture I thought to myself: if I had been passing there, would I even have noticed that there was something special here? Would I have taken a camera out of my pocket? Certainly not. A photographer like Levac is supposed to be alert to a situation that every other person passes by without noticing it.[3] Here too we are dealing with an unusual event, but it is not miraculous in any sense. And yet Levac noticed that it was saying something to him, or at least illustrating and sharpening an important insight for him. All this happens in the course of an ordinary, banal, everyday event that took place beside him on the street, an event that all of us would have passed by without batting an eyelid. Alertness to prosaic events can sometimes teach no less, and perhaps more, than miracles and unusual events.
Between Jethro and Abraham
The midrashim tell us of another person who was special in that he—and only he—paid attention to the events taking place around him. I of course mean our patriarch Abraham. Maimonides, at the beginning of the laws of idolatry, describes the development of this strange phenomenon up to Abraham, and this is what he writes:
1. In the days of Enosh, mankind made a great error, and the counsel of the wise men of that generation became foolish; Enosh himself was among those who erred. This was their mistake: they said, since God created these stars and spheres to govern the world, set them on high, and apportioned honor to them—and they are attendants who minister before Him—they are worthy of praise, glorification, and honor. This, they said, is the will of God, blessed be He: to magnify and honor those whom He has magnified and honored, just as a king desires honor for those who stand before him—and this is honor to the king himself. Once this idea arose in their hearts, they began to build temples to the stars, to offer them sacrifices, to praise and glorify them in words, and to bow down before them, in order to attain the Creator’s favor according to their depraved understanding. This was the essence of idol worship. And this is what its worshippers, who understood its basis, would say—not that they claimed there is no God except this star. This is what Jeremiah meant when he said, “Who would not fear You, O King of the nations? For to You it is fitting; for among all the wise men of the nations and in all their kingdoms there is none like You. But in one matter they are brutish and foolish: the doctrine of vanities is but wood.” That is: all know that You alone are God, but their error and folly lie in imagining that this vanity is Your will.
Up to this point, an attitude toward the heavenly bodies had developed according to which they were attendants of God, and the duty to worship them and accord them honor was based on the idea that this was a way of honoring Him through them.
Now comes stage two:
2. After many days had passed, false prophets arose among mankind and said that God had commanded them, saying: Worship this particular star, or all the stars; offer sacrifices to it and pour libations to it in such and such a manner; build a temple for it and make its image, so that all the people—women, children, and the rest of the common folk—may bow down to it. They would show them an image they had invented from their own minds and say: This is the image of such-and-such a star that was revealed to him in his prophecy. In this way they began to make images in temples, under trees, on mountaintops, and on hills. People would gather and bow down to them, and they would tell all the people that this image has the power to do good and harm, and that it is proper to worship it and fear it. Their priests would say to them: Through this worship you will multiply and prosper; do such-and-such, and do not do such-and-such. Other deceivers then arose and said that the star itself, or the sphere, or the angel had spoken with them and told them: Worship me in such-and-such a way. Thus they informed the people of its mode of worship: do this and do not do that. This matter spread throughout the world: to worship images through various rites, differing from one another, to offer sacrifices to them and bow down to them. As time passed, the glorious and awesome Name was forgotten from the mouths and minds of all existence, and they no longer recognized Him. Thus all the common people—women and children—knew only the image of wood or stone and the temple of stones, having been trained from childhood to bow to it, worship it, and swear by its name. Even the wise among them, such as their priests and the like, imagined that there is no god except the stars and spheres for whose sake and likeness these images had been made. But the Rock of the universe was not recognized or known by any human being except a few individuals in the world, such as Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shem, and Eber. In this way the world continued to turn until the pillar of the world was born—our patriarch Abraham.
The attendants began to acquire independent status, and in the end people forgot who stood at the basis of the matter and began to worship them themselves. Natural phenomena acquired independent standing. There was no longer someone standing behind them.
And now Abraham comes and reverses the direction of thought:
3. Once this mighty one was weaned, he began to roam in his mind while still a child, and began to think day and night. He wondered: how is it possible that this sphere should always move without there being a guide to direct it? Who causes it to turn? For it cannot turn itself. He had no teacher and no one to inform him of anything; rather, he was immersed in Ur of the Chaldeans among foolish star-worshippers. His father, his mother, and all the people worshipped stars, and he worshipped with them. But his heart roamed and understood until he attained the way of truth and grasped the line of righteousness through his sound understanding. He knew that there is one God, that He guides the sphere, that He created everything, and that among all that exists there is no god besides Him. He realized that the entire world was in error, and that what had caused them to err was their worship of the stars and images, until the truth was lost from their minds. At the age of forty, Abraham recognized his Creator. Once he recognized and knew, he began to formulate replies to the people of Ur of the Chaldeans and to debate with them, saying that this was not the path of truth in which they were walking. He smashed the idols and began to make known to the people that it is fitting to worship only the God of the world; to Him alone it is fitting to bow, to offer sacrifices, and to pour libations, so that all creatures to come would recognize Him. It is proper to destroy and break all the images, so that the people not be led astray by them as these people were, imagining that there is no god except these. When he overcame them by his arguments, the king sought to kill him, but a miracle was performed for him, and he went out to Haran. There he began to stand and proclaim in a loud voice to the whole world that there is one God for the entire world, and that it is proper to worship Him. He went from city to city and kingdom to kingdom, calling and gathering the people, until he reached the land of Canaan, proclaiming all the while, as it says, “And he called there in the name of the Lord, God of the world.” When people gathered around him and asked him about his words, he would teach each and every one according to that person’s understanding, until he brought him back to the path of truth. Thus thousands and tens of thousands gathered to him; these were the people of the house of Abraham. He planted this great principle in their hearts, composed books about it, and taught it to Isaac his son. Isaac sat teaching and warning others. Isaac taught Jacob and appointed him to teach; he sat teaching and strengthening all who attached themselves to him. Jacob our patriarch taught all his sons; he set Levi apart and appointed him head, seating him in an academy to teach the way of the Lord and to observe Abraham’s commandments. He instructed his sons that the office should never cease from the descendants of Levi, with one appointee after another, so that the learning would not be forgotten. This matter continued to spread and grow among the descendants of Jacob and among those who joined them, and there came into being in the world a nation that knew the Lord—until Israel’s days in Egypt were prolonged, and they reverted to learning the Egyptians’ ways and worshipping stars like them, except for the tribe of Levi, which remained steadfast in the commandments of the patriarchs. The tribe of Levi never worshipped idols. And the principle that Abraham had planted was nearly uprooted, and the descendants of Jacob were on the verge of returning to the world’s errors and delusions. But because of the Lord’s love for us, and because He kept the oath to Abraham our patriarch, He made Moses our teacher—the master of all the prophets—His emissary. Once Moses our teacher prophesied, and the Lord chose Israel as His inheritance, He crowned them with commandments and informed them of the way to worship Him and of the law concerning idol worship and all who go astray after it.
Abraham, like Jethro, paid attention to the events taking place around him. Like Jethro, he too drew conclusions and began to teach human beings understanding. The root of the matter is attentiveness to the various phenomena around him (who turns the sphere). Everyone sees the movement of the stars, and at that stage no one thinks that something must stand behind them. Only Abraham asks himself who moves them. He asks, draws conclusions, and in the end also acts upon them. Just like Jethro.
With one difference. Jethro stood astonished before unusual phenomena, whether actual miracles or merely unusual events. Abraham, by contrast, asked himself what the meaning was of the natural and regular order that we all know so well. His claim is that there must be someone who operates all these fixed mechanisms. Jethro was struck by the exceptional and the strange, whereas Abraham wondered about the source of the constant and the natural. To stand before nature itself and ask who created these, or who turns the sphere, is a higher level of attentiveness to one's surroundings. Abraham had no need of miracles and unusual events. From his perspective, regular nature requires explanation no less, and perhaps more, than a miracle or an unusual event. Nature is something all of us encounter every day, and yet only Abraham paid attention to it and asked what it means and what it says for him.
As the saying goes, newspapers mainly write about a man who bit a dog, since journalism deals with the exceptional. But science deals with a dog that bites a man. It focuses on natural and ordinary behavior and stands wondering before it: what is its meaning, and what does it say? What law governs it? For a mature and thoughtful person, the natural requires explanation and arouses wonder no less than the exceptional, and perhaps more. If science has any relation to unusual events, it is only in order to challenge the ordinary laws and refine them still further. The goal is to understand the world's ordinary behavior, not the exceptional. I have already noted several times that a mature and adult humanity ought to marvel at ordinary nature more than at a miracle, and perhaps this is the explanation for the disappearance of miracles from the landscape of our lives. Chaotic behavior can also be random. But orderly behavior points to a manager or a lawgiver. This is the essence of the physico-theological argument, which is discussed in the third and fourth conversations of the first book in the trilogy.
Evolution
In the aforementioned third conversation, I pointed out that neo-Darwinians in fact suffer from the same failure as the idolaters in Abraham's day. In their view, nature does not require explanation. According to their approach, explanations that appeal to the laws of nature solve the entire problem and remove all puzzlement. When you ask them who is responsible for the laws themselves (what I there called "the argument from laws"), they do not understand what you want from them. It is just there, like any other system of laws. For them, discussion can take place only within the laws and not outside them. An alert person like Abraham teaches us that the very fact that there are fixed laws teaches that there is someone who legislates and operates them (who turns the sphere). Abraham found his Creator through the argument from laws, that is, through focus and reflection on the natural rather than the exceptional. Wonders apparently made little impression on him (and the witticism on this is well known: "Signs and wonders in the land of the sons of Ham"). The failure of idolatry that appears in Maimonides so strange and puzzling appears among us every day. We all stumble into it. We see nature as a sufficient explanation that stands on its own, while forgetting the one who stands behind it.
Think of all the great scientists (Einstein was perhaps the most prominent among them) who feel and express profound wonder at nature. This is not just aesthetic pleasure, but a religious feeling and awe (something like what Rudolf Otto called the sense of the 'numinous,' which is even beyond the sublime). When one encounters an aesthetic structure created by chance, it certainly arouses admiration, but not awe, and certainly not religious feeling. In my book God Plays Dice I argued that Einstein's "secular" religiosity, in my opinion, expresses (even if unconsciously) the sense that there is someone or something standing at the basis of the astonishing phenomena that science describes. To seek scientific law, wonder alone is enough, and one does not really need religious awe, but if it exists, then in my opinion it testifies to something beyond nature.
The ability to wonder what stands behind ordinary phenomena, and apparently also behind unusual ones, is rare. But it is what leads people to discover new things. People who ask "why?" one more time, beyond everyone else, are the ones who can expose additional layers. Einstein said of himself that the fact that he succeeded in changing our attitude toward time was the result of late maturation. Usually people encounter and absorb the concept of time only once they have already grown up, and then they do not ask questions about what they have grown accustomed to. Nature seems self-evident to them. He, precisely because he matured late, did not lose the childlike sense of awe and wonder, and therefore when he encountered the concept of time he asked why it is as it is, and whether that is necessary. That is why he was able to conceive a different view of time from the customary one. This whole process was accompanied in him by that same religious feeling, which is an inseparable part of Einstein's scientific discoveries and Abraham's theological ones.
"For the sin we have sinned before You with attention": Implications for learning
There is a similar phenomenon in the world of Talmudic learning as well. In my book Two Carts (part thirteen, chapter 3), I pointed out that the move from Jewish law to thought is made by asking one additional "why?" After completing the analytic study (which in the Brisker method deals only with the "what" and not with the "why"), one asks why one more time. After reaching the conclusion that one sage holds that this is a law concerning the object and the other that it is a law concerning the person, or that one holds it is a sign and the other says it is a cause, and so on, the average Talmudic analyst stops and moves on to the next passage. But someone who asks one more "why?" can uncover additional interesting layers (see there for several examples). At least in my own case, almost all of my novel insights came in that way. I simply continued one small step beyond the average analyst.
Here is another educational lesson. Years ago, when we studied in yeshiva the topic of intercalating the month, we dealt with the tannaitic dispute whether the New Moon after a thirty-day month needs to be formally sanctified, or whether it is sanctified on its own (because "The heavens sanctified him" ["Heaven has sanctified it"]). I remember that when we studied the passage, we encountered quite a few explanations, and rather quickly I noticed that there was one simple and compelling explanation that answered all the difficulties, but for some reason none of the commentators said it. I asked our lecturer why, and he referred me to Rabbi Eliezer Silver's Anfei Erez (president of Agudat Ha-Rabbanim of the United States and Canada in the middle of the twentieth century). He told me that the book was in the Beit Yechiel kollel (advanced study institute) at the beginning of Rabbi Akiva Street (this was before the age of computers and computerized databases). I asked him how he knew, and he told me that he had prayed Mincha there many years earlier, and during the cantor's repetition that book happened to come to hand, and there he saw the explanation that I had proposed for the passage. I was quite stunned. I too, to my shame, have the habit of doing quite a bit of reading (also) during the cantor's repetition, and usually these are books that happen to be lying around (which is why it is important to pray in a place with a rich and interesting library). But I hardly remember what I read, and certainly not a novel point on a specific passage after many years have gone by.
He then gave me a piece of advice worth its weight in gold. His claim was that everything depends on the attitude with which you approach the book. If you read it casually just to pass the time and see a few nice things, not much will remain with you. In general, if you study merely in order to be righteous and not to neglect Torah study, not much will come of you. But if you approach every few minutes of reading, casual or otherwise, with a different attitude, everything will look different and take on greater significance. If you read and pay attention to what you are reading, mentally summarize what you read and what the novel point there was, and then file the matter somewhere in your mind (this answers such-and-such a difficulty, disputes such-and-such a position, and so on), then you will derive enormous benefit from these chance readings.
For me this was a lesson worth its weight in gold, and I pass it on here to the reading public free of charge (thus fulfilling in myself the verse that says: "Pass it on"). This is another implication of the importance of paying attention to what passes before our eyes. Alertness to what we in any case go through, experience, or do makes things far more meaningful. If we wonder why something is as it is and think about explanations, we will discover hidden treasures. To return, in closing, to Jethro: I would actually recommend that he join the acceptance of the Torah, and less the war with Amalek and the splitting of the sea. Those are matters for excitable children. People with mature thinking ought to be more excited by the Torah and by the encounter with God than by this or that miracle.
[1] And perhaps in the Talmud too there is no dispute between them, although its wording does not seem to indicate that.
[2] Unless everyone heard about the dependence of the battle's outcome on the raising of Moses' hands.
[3] Although here he says that in fact it was precisely an alert friend who drew his attention to the situation and summoned him to photograph it.
Discussion
Apparently Joseph needed to be corrected when he said, “It was not you who sent me here, but God,” and someone had to clarify to him: what do you mean, God? There were entirely natural and logical reasons why he got to Egypt (his brothers sold him, for example), and he was just jumping to irrational conclusions. Or when the prophets said that God was sending Assyria and Babylonia to strike Israel, you should have explained to them that the motives of those kings were completely political and natural, so what does God have to do with it? Or when Hazal said that Levi became lame because he spoke defiantly toward Heaven and also because he enacted the High Priest’s bow, you should have told them that the natural cause is sufficient and there is no need to posit a spiritual cause.
For some reason you keep claiming that only an overtly supernatural miracle can count as a sign of providence, and everything else is only statistics. But that is not how the prophets and Hazal understood providence. They saw the hand of God even in natural events. It is completely a straw man to claim that providence is only a supernatural miracle, and then deny it because, look, there are natural causes for everything. True, there are natural causes, but things could have happened entirely differently as well—and there would have been natural causes for that too.
It is a bit strange to me to think that God promised in the Torah and through the prophets that He would gather the dispersed of Israel and return them to their land, but when it actually happens, it was not God who did it but the “minister of history” (in the style of: “It wasn’t Moses our Teacher who wrote the Torah, but his cousin, who was also called Moses our Teacher”), because God Himself changed His mind about His promises and decided to abandon the world to its fate (who said so? Because like Yuri Gagarin, we “don’t see Him”). Only if the sea had split in two would you accept that this was divine providence? Or could even that be explained statistically?
A nice derashah. [I won’t refrain from noting, with disappointment, that even when I read about Liebek’s picture, I also didn’t notice that he had noticed something interesting.] It should be added that in these categories, the early masoretes, who catalogued unusual phenomena, are Jethro; and the later grammarians, who uncovered the explanations for the ordinary phenomena throughout the Bible, are Abraham. The same is true of the cantillation marks: the older books dealt with lists of interesting phenomena without understanding the rules themselves (sometimes they found various details that followed from the rules), and afterward others came and discovered the rules. In such a way that the lists of empirical findings actually hindered the formulation of the generalization a bit, because there really were odd things there (you can feel that something is too strange even without knowing what should have been natural). In both of these characteristic cases, similar to your presentation of ordinary lomdim, attention to the exceptional came before (or without) attention to the regular.
But Abraham, the prototype of Jethro who notices the exceptional, is capable of drawing more specific conclusions from it. Abraham could arrive at a theological God; Jethro could advance to a conscious, providential God. Would Einstein have arrived at new and general thoughts about the nature of time without an urgent theoretical need to explain particular incomprehensible empirical phenomena (I’m not familiar with general relativity, so if your remarks refer to that, then disregard this)? In that sense, it seems to me that Newton is an even better example. Ostensibly, in Newtonian mechanics there were no sharp conceptual revolutions that strike people as strange and alien (believing in a mysterious “force” is not so different from the ancient belief that the gods produce things by the power of their will), but rather a systematic arrangement into a cohesive and precise structure that also allows one to reach conclusions. And he too did not manage to get there from the ordinary nature of falling apples, but from the ordinary-yet-distant nature of planetary orbits (though there the reason was probably mainly measurement problems). Perhaps in his mathematics there were truly revolutionary moves that grew out of repeated contemplation of things that, fundamentally, already existed.
Interesting that the only context in Hazal where they mention the root sakran (“curious”) is as a negative trait (the woman was not created from the eye so that she would not be curious, because curiosity is a negative trait).
It seems to me that Rabbi Michael is trying to say two things. The first is where to invest our energies: in understanding nature or in hypothesizing a miracle? Understanding nature is, in his view, a more mature move than understanding the miracle. And the second is that we cannot know or see God’s providence, both regarding the Land of Israel and regarding the story of Joseph and his brothers. I can emphasize the word “we” for you (that is, it doesn’t necessarily mean Joseph has to be corrected…)
The danger with Liebek, at least according to the article you cited, is that he is oriented toward the exceptional: a tan on a separation fence, religiosity in an unnatural place. At a certain point this already becomes a matter of rote habit. Like the automatic attack on one politician or another. Or like the fixed opposition between researchers (in the humanities and social sciences, and probably in the natural sciences too). Then there is already a mechanical systematicity here that cannot really be subsumed under the heading of paying attention. Maybe only in photography.
I forgot to add that in Sha'arei Yosher, for example, the strong feeling that always accompanied me there is that he starts digging around from the beginning. I no longer know enough to give examples and suggest distinctions, but the experience of learning that book had a real effect on me in making me think that the pearls are not found in over-sharpened difficulties and connections to remote sugyot, but from within it itself, by reexamining the fundamentals.
The main thing I forgot—it isn’t only to notice and remember; it is to notice and to do, to act. Abraham’s conclusion from the burning fortress is not a detached philosophy lesson but “to keep the way of the Lord” = to do righteousness and justice.
You don’t need to “invest energies” in order to see the hand of God in events like these. It seems the energies are invested דווקא in trying to deny it. And why can’t “we”? If the Torah and the prophets foretold the Return to Zion and the ingathering of the exiles, and we see it being fulfilled before our eyes, what could be simpler than to assume that God is indeed keeping His promise? To assume that He does not intend to fulfill it, but by complete coincidence the “minister of history” is doing it in His place?
The picture under discussion: https://bidspirit-images.global.ssl.fastly.net/gallery316/cloned-images/127641/001/a_ignore_q_80_w_1000_c_limit_001.jpg
It seems you read only partial verses from the promises in the Torah. As best I recall, the promise is tied to a spiritual level in almost every place it appears. It seems to me that we are scrupulously fulfilling many of the things for which the promise is exile from the land.
Rabbi Moshe, shalom,
You wrote, “They saw the hand of God even in natural events.”
On the other hand, according to Rabbi Michi, nature is completely deterministic + human free will (the randomness posited by quantum theory is irrelevant).
If nature is deterministic, how can one see the hand of God in natural events?
Why not simply assume that even “rare and special” cases (such as the survival of thousands of Jewish communities independently over many hundreds of years in a completely hostile environment) are the result of those communities’ adherence to Torah, without needing to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, shifted some gear lever?
*To be clear, Rabbi Moshe, I do agree with you, but Rabbi Michi says there is no need to think that someone up above moved some gear lever in order to cause thousands of Jewish communities to survive independently in a hostile environment.
So one has to come to an understanding of why an active intervention by the Creator of the world is indeed required here, and why one cannot rely only on the fact that adherence to the divine Torah brought this about.
Also, after we reach the conclusion that active divine intervention is required, we need to think about how this fits with what we know today about nature, because according to Rabbi Michi, it simply cannot fit (at least not according to the scientific knowledge we have today).
Regards, Ehud
An explicit verse says that the opposite of fear of Heaven is not lack of fear of Heaven but lack of paying attention…: “Whoever among Pharaoh’s servants feared the word of the Lord made his servants and his livestock flee into the houses. But whoever did not set his heart to the word of the Lord left his servants and his livestock in the field.”
For you the emphasis is on the response, and less on examining the root of things—that was my emphasis.
Rabbi Moshe, there is a fallacy in these remarks of yours that we have already discussed more than once. There is no such thing as a miracle within the framework of nature. There simply isn’t. The laws of nature lead reality in only one direction. In nature there is no situation in which there are several natural possibilities for development.
Beyond that, and we have already discussed this too, when there are prophets they can reveal to me the meaning of one event or another, even if it is not a miracle. The need for a departure beyond the bounds of nature arises when there is no prophecy to do the job for us.
God’s promise that we will return to the land does not have to occur by miracle but can happen by way of nature. After all, you yourself told us this in your comment here. When God gives us a Torah and instills in us a certain culture and certain values, that can lead to results. Except that, contrary to what you wrote above, in such a situation there is no direct divine involvement (now), since there is no miracle within nature. In this description, the divine involvement was at the giving of the Torah.
Excellent. Thanks. I’ll add a link into the post.
Many thanks—a thought-provoking article. In this article too, are you following your usual view that one cannot learn new things from the Bible, only fit it to an existing worldview? Or perhaps did you in fact learn something new here?
With God’s help, 22 Shevat 5780
In a certain sense, the miracle of the war with Amalek is greater than the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea. If at the splitting of the Red Sea the great power of the Holy One, blessed be He, was revealed in overturning the systems of nature—then in the war with Amalek the power of the Omnipresent was revealed in creating a psychological revolution within man. A nation of slaves that had been sunk for decades in degrading servitude turns, in less than a month and a half, into a fighting nation, a nation for whom the sight of Moses’ hands instills faith that brings victory.
Such a revolutionary change in people’s nature—from a mass of downtrodden slaves to a believing and fighting nation—announces a new message to humanity, the message of the ability to rise up against evil. This trait—rising up against injustice—Jethro found in his son-in-law, a stranger in the land who rose up alone against the local people. And now Jethro sees that his son-in-law has succeeded in infecting his people with this trait.
And Jethro grasps that a people from whom one can choose men who will go out to fight bravely against an enemy—surely one will also find among them “capable men who fear God,” who can assist Moses in the ongoing task of leading the people with justice. Just as Moses commanded Joshua, “Choose men for us,” so Jethro advises Moses, “And you shall seek out from all the people capable men.” The nation of slaves is ripe for leadership!
Regards, Shatz
Obviously this is consistent with my general approach. First, at most I learned it from a midrash of Hazal, not from the Bible. But clearly, if I did not think this was the proper way to act, I would not learn it from those midrashim either.
And perhaps the war with Amalek, and alongside it the honorable reception of Jethro, who comes to convert—was a test of the fitness of the people of Israel to bear the word of God to humanity. A nation that knows how to rise up against evil, and on the other hand to receive the convert with love, can be a “kingdom of priests” that will lead humanity toward the good.
Regards, Shatz
And what should the compulsive lomdan do if, even after your answers, he still asks why? (I suffer from common harassments like these from that same vague inner voice.) The “why,” unlike the “what,” is infinite and tolerates no explanation of why it ought to disappear.
Then keep thinking until the point that seems sufficient to you.
Thanks for another good piece.
[Since we’re already at thanks and “amens”: it often happens that singers and stand-up comedians are asked about the meaning of their lives, and they answer: to make Am Yisrael / people happy (respectively). So I won’t miss the opportunity, and I’ll thank you for excellent columns that make me and people like me happy. At first I thought of expressing this in my poetry, but I’m doubtful, between column 107 and onward; besides, even if it gladdens people, it still requires investigation whether it gladdens God.]
You touched on the point of personal contribution in lomdus, and on that I’d be glad to know whether it happens to you (and if so, whether often) not only to arrive at deep understandings, but to learn a sugya and raise difficulties that in your opinion are basic, and yet the commentators were silent about them?
One might say that one who probes more deeply than others will certainly also raise more difficulties than they do, but I mean basic difficulties.
And I’ll illustrate with three, and if it isn’t difficult for you, I’d be glad if you answered them each on their own merits.
Specifically—in Sukkah 24a, in the conclusion of the sugya, Rabbi Meir’s view is that a partition standing in the wind, or one that is not [capable of being made—Tosafot in Eruvin] made by a person, is not a partition. And although this is not ruled as halakhah, it certainly requires explanation what possible connection such reasoning has to the reality of partitions; and even if it can be explained, and I do have some explanation, shouldn’t the commentators explain such a thing?
And close to that: in Rabbi Yehudah’s view that a sukkah must be made from the four species, by a kal va-chomer from the four species, this is unbelievably strange—is a kal va-chomer made from the details of one commandment to another? I did see something by a contemporary author who discussed it, but the commentators?
In general—with the Rambam’s famous innovation (the introduction to his commentary, and Hilkhot Mamrim) that no dispute arose concerning a halakhah given to Moses at Sinai, many quills have been broken over the factual correctness of the claim, but almost no one has discussed where he came up with such a thing (and he has almost no predecessor among the Rishonim) and by what sort of induction? Did he suddenly one day understand that in this area disputes had not arisen? [I have with me the fine book Nata Betokhenu and have not yet reached the relevant chapter on this.]
Sorry for the great length
and many thanks
As for a halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai—it seems to me this is simply reasoning. Since a halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai is certainly tradition and reception, then one person says, “I received that regarding such-and-such matter, the halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai permits it,” and the other certainly does not say to him, “I received that regarding such-and-such matter there is no halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai permitting it,” but rather says, “I received nothing,” or “I received a halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai that such-and-such matter is forbidden.” If he says, “I received nothing,” then the reasonable explanation is that one received and the other forgot (or his teacher forgot, or his teacher did not transmit it to him), and therefore the second will accept the tradition from the first. If the second says that he received precisely the opposite, then this is no longer mere forgetfulness, but one of them ultimately invented halakhot out of his own head—and on that the Rambam says, on logical grounds, that this is implausible.
Not exactly; check disputes about halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai and you’ll see, especially in edge cases such as measurements in the dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish and the like. And logically too—could there not have been corruptions?
With pleasure.
It does happen to me at times to raise such difficulties.
As for your questions:
1. This is really not a typical difficulty among commentators. It is a form of reasoning that is roughly like ta'ama de-kra, and usually they do not ask such things. As for the matter itself, it may be connected to the act of making that is required in a sukkah (as in “you shall make,” and not from that which is already made).
2. I don’t know what you meant here. There is Rabbi Yoshiya’s view that even the walls must be from the refuse of threshing floor and winepress. And again, this is not a typical question of the commentators. Perhaps someone like Atzmot Yosef could raise such a difficulty.
3. It probably came to him by reasoning. I do not know from where you infer that he has no predecessor among the Rishonim. The Rishonim usually do not deal with such rules.
It is worth placing replies in the same thread (you need to click “reply” at the end of the first comment in the thread, and then your reply enters at the end of the thread).
I didn’t understand what there is to check. Do you mean the difficulty that we do in fact find disputes about halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai? That is unrelated to the question whether there is or is not a logical basis. It is simply a difficulty on the Rambam, and they have already discussed this at great length (like the Havvot Ya’ir 192).
In the last comment, I meant “Lamah Li,” who wrote that the reasoning here is not compelling. And regarding what you wrote, that he probably had some reasoning—this itself is the question: in all the many discussions about the correctness of the Rambam’s words (see the index volume there), did they not find it proper to try to examine the reasoning behind it?
And regarding the answers to the 2 points I raised earlier, in my humble opinion what you wrote is not precise, but that is a specific issue, so this is not the place.
And what do you actually think the reasoning is?
—To your replies, one can’t insert into that same thread, right?
You can insert into any thread. Go back up until you reach the first comment, and there click “reply” and enter your comment. It will appear at the end of the thread.
In my opinion this reasoning is problematic, and therefore it is hard for me to defend it. It may be that he wrote this as an answer to the heretics (so that they would not come to cast doubt on halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai).
As for your question about the commentators, this is very typical of their approach. As I wrote, they usually do not enter into reasoning on the meta-halakhic plane.
To Rabbi Michi.
I’ve seen in several places that you write that there is no miracle through the way of nature, and that there is no divine intervention in nature (I don’t explicitly remember seeing this claim, but that is how it seems to me from the general drift of your remarks). I have several questions that I’d be glad for you to answer or direct me to a place where you explain the subject in detail:
I assume that when you say there is no miracle through the way of nature, your intention is that any intervention would produce a result that had no feasibility by way of nature.
1. As far as God is concerned, there is no limitation of nature, and therefore any intervention of His in any form is perfectly logical. When people speak about a miracle through nature, they mean that the miracles are done in such a way that we will not necessarily be able to attribute them to a supernatural power. Therefore Rabbi Moshe’s claim can be correct: if something very statistically unusual happened that God had promised in the past, it is reasonable to assume that He caused it, except that He did not want to appear openly and therefore concealed His involvement. (I am not entering the question of how unusual the thing actually is.) And I want to emphasize that the question whether it is really a miracle or just a biasing of probability changes nothing from God’s perspective, but only from ours, and for us there is no difference between the two states as long as we cannot measure them.
(Perhaps in the past the Torah’s promises, such as “and I will give the rain of your land,” were fulfilled in a tangible way, and in the eyes of that generation such intervention was equivalent to what would count for us today as intervention on a very small scale or in very complex systems.)
2. I don’t understand physics, but can’t a large-scale biasing of quantum probabilities (or whatever it may be) affect our reality? Is such a bias not possible according to the laws of nature? (That is, does it not happen in one out of x cases that such a bias occurs naturally?)
3. What kind of meaning (in relation to God) can events have if they involve no involvement by God in any way? (If an enemy fights us for plunder, how can that be connected to idolatry, for example, assuming idolatry does not cause wealth?)
4. How plausible does it seem to you that 4,000 years ago God created a culture, and on that basis He could promise that the people who received it would never disappear. Is the probability that the Jewish people would not disappear in exile really so high that God could be sure 3,000 years in advance that the people would return to its land? (For the sake of argument, suppose the probability of Israel’s returning from exile is 50 percent—how could God promise in advance that we would return if He does not intervene from time to time; does He operate by a “let’s hope it works” method? 🙂).
It may be that the case of the trip is not a miracle, because it is measured relative to the other cases in which people got stuck on the road. But the coincidental combinations in stories from the Six-Day War, for example—there is nothing to compare them to, since not every day such a war breaks out and its results are examined. And likewise the miracle of Purim, and so on. They are all within nature, but the pressing sequence of coincidences would seem to point to a guiding hand even though it is all within nature. No?
Yair, you asked many questions, and I’ll answer briefly (why not in a separate thread?):
1. The Holy One, blessed be He, can of course intervene. My claim is that in practice it does not seem that He does so. Anything could be true, but there is no indication that this is so. I did not say that the Return to Zion is not a miracle, only that there is no indication that it is a miracle.
2. A biasing of quantum probabilities is also intervention in nature.
3. The meaning is not in relation to God, but meaning in the sense that it says something to us. For example, if we conclude that Jewish culture contributes to survival, that is a meaningful lesson. Whoever does not ask himself what the meaning of this survival is will not understand that lesson. That is exactly what I argued here: meaning is not necessarily divine involvement.
4. The Shelah, in his introduction to Beit HaBechirah, writes that God cannot know in advance what will happen, and therefore when He reveals Himself to a prophet, He says what is expected to happen, but it may be falsified. Beyond that, it may be that God would have intervened had there been a need (that is, if we had not returned to our land on our own), but who told you that this in fact happened? Perhaps we returned on our own by natural means. See the end of section 1.
I didn’t understand.
There are events in which there is a sequence of coincidences within nature. For example, the miracle of Purim: Mordechai discovered Bigthan and Teresh in time, the king’s sleep fled, etc. Everything can be explained as coincidences. But doesn’t such a sequence of coincidences indicate heavenly assistance, even though everything is natural and does not contradict nature?
Absolutely not. When many events happen, there are also special combinations among them.
So Purim is not a miracle, and there is no need to thank God for it any more than for the ordinary laws of nature that He implanted in creation?
Correct. The miracle is an opportunity to thank Him for creation itself. I discussed this at length in the second book, No Man Controls the Wind. If there is a prophet who reveals to you that the hand of God stood behind an event, then of course he can say so, and I will accept it from him.
With God’s help, 1 Adar 5780
If what happened in the Megillah was a coincidence, then how do you recite “who performed miracles for our forefathers in those days at this time”? And how do you say in Al HaNissim: “And You in Your abundant mercy frustrated his counsel and spoiled his plan”? I am astonished!
Regards, Shatz
First, who told you that I say it?
Second, I raised two possibilities: either it really was ordinary nature, and this is merely an opportunity to thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for all creation. Or it was a miracle despite its natural appearance, because this was revealed to us by divine inspiration. According to the first possibility, the thanksgiving is for creation and its laws that brought the matter about. According to the second possibility, it is ordinary thanksgiving. The wording points more to the second possibility, but does not necessarily exclude the first. The Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the power to prosper (as the Ran explains in his derashot), and thereby He frustrated the counsel of Ahasuerus and Haman (through Mordechai and Esther).
Moses and Jethro both belong to the type that pays attention, seeks to learn and understand what the phenomenon is telling him—and then acts accordingly. That is the root of the hidden covenant between them. Moses sees phenomena in the world (his brothers suffering, the Egyptian striking, the Hebrew striking, Jethro’s daughters by the well, a burning bush), learns their meaning, responds, and also pays a price—he is forced to flee for his life, risks it by confronting thugs, or dedicates his life to carrying out the mission of freeing the people from the yoke of slavery. Jethro too responds to the rescue of his daughters—“Call him, and let him eat bread”—he repays kindness to the rescuer and returns good for good. (A lovely midrash in Exodus Rabbah expounds the verse in Proverbs, “Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it”—about Jethro, who gave Moses bread (and a home and protection and a wife), and by that merit was privileged to join Moses, Aaron, and the elders and eat bread with them.) He too responds to Moses’ burdens and gives him good advice that almost becomes Torah—“you shall seek out.”
(This is unlike those who notice only when reality is holding a gun to their head, and even then they are only looking for somewhere to flee and to cover their asses.)