That’s why I say that as long as we don’t have indications allowing us to decide one way or the other, it’s better to choose the option that also fits the tradition and the verses.

That is the original question about my approach. I tend to think that if there is no indication whatsoever, then it probably isn’t true. To accept it, you have to say that there is providence, but that the Holy One, blessed be He, is playing hide-and-seek with us and concealing His actions. There seems to be no clear correlation between anything and anything. So I’m not inclined to accept such interpretations despite their fit with the verses and the tradition. As I said, I too am willing to accept that there are sporadic interventions.

Following up on this question: I seem to remember that in the lecture series on repentance you said that every process of repentance involves the Holy One, blessed be He, and that it cannot happen without His intervention at all (just as “a prisoner cannot free himself from prison”). But people returning to repentance is something that happens every day, which means that according to your view the Holy One, blessed be He, actively intervenes in the world and in people’s thoughts as a matter of routine. And all this seems contrary to your usual view that He intervenes only in rare cases. How can this be reconciled?

With God’s help, 10 Cheshvan 5778

In Psalm 94 the author raises the question, “How long shall the wicked, O Lord, how long shall the wicked exult?” The success of the wicked leads them to think that the Lord does not intervene: “And they say, ‘The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob does not discern.’”

And the author refutes this thought by saying: “He who planted the ear, shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see? He who disciplines nations, shall He not rebuke—He who teaches man knowledge?” Would the One who created His world with wisdom and implanted in man a moral sense act immorally and abandon the world to behave without judgment or accountability? (An argument raised by Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed III:17.)

The author therefore concludes that the sufferings of the righteous are meant to awaken them to become better and to atone for their sins: “Happy is the man whom You discipline, O Lord, and teach out of Your Torah, to give him rest from days of trouble, until a pit is dug for the wicked.”

The success of the wicked is temporary: “Though the wicked spring up like grass… it is only that they may be destroyed forever” (Psalm 92), whereas “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree, grow like a cedar in Lebanon… They shall still bear fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap and freshness, to declare that the Lord is upright; He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

And sometimes what applies to the wicked is: “Leave the drunkard alone and he’ll fall on his own.” In their lust, which never finds satisfaction, they don’t know how to say “enough,” and then they fall.

Had Hitler not opened a second front against the Soviet Union, and had his Japanese allies not opened a second front against the United States, they could have calmly finished their work. Had they left the USSR and the USA neutral, they would have defeated solitary England, conquered India and the Middle East, and quietly exterminated all the Jews from Europe to the Far East (while the Jews of America and the USSR would have disappeared on their own through assimilation.

But in their wickedness they were in too much of a hurry, opened a second and third front, and were defeated. Once the USA and the USSR entered the war, both sides developed nuclear weapons of mass destruction, creating a “balance of terror” that prevented—and still prevents—world wars “to this very day.” All thanks to two unnecessary attacks…

Our choice, by definition, includes the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, because He is part of us. That does not mean He chooses for us, but rather that the very fact that we choose, or change values and attitudes, is possible only because a part of Him is within us.

Our master Shatzal,
Which position were you aiming at in your response—
the position that the Creator intervenes in His world, or that He does not?
You started with a jug and ended with a second-hand Susita from a doctor.

If a part of Him is within us, and that part is what makes changes in values possible, why shouldn’t we say that that same part also serves as a point of interface for intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, in people’s choices at moments when He sees fit to intervene?

Rabbi Shatzal,

Why don’t you open a blog of your own, where you can write your opinions and ideas?

Regards,
H. Z. Berger

And I do not mean this as a jab, Heaven forbid, but only as an expression of wonder.

Oren, of course you can say that, and we’ve already discussed it. But one still has to understand that this is not the same claim. I argue that a person is a composite of a divine point together with our flesh and blood and spirit. That is the human being himself, and that is the creature who chooses. God is not necessarily involved in the specific choice being made right now; rather, the very fact that He is part of me enables me to choose. Therefore this composition does not mean His involvement. He merely enables me (the person = He + I) to choose.
The Holy One, blessed be He, can also intervene in the laws of nature, but observationally it seems that He does not. So my claim regarding His intervention through human choices is also not principled but empirical. I am not impressed that He does this. I would only add that if He in fact did do this, it would of course reduce the responsibility of the choosing person, and therefore in the end this proposal also raises a principled difficulty.

Why don’t you start your own religion that claims that the Lord does not intervene in the world? Judaism, at any rate, clearly says that the Lord watches over His creatures; see Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed III:17, who brings proof for this both from Scripture and from reason: how can one suppose that the One who created the world with wisdom and implanted in man a sense of justice would abandon it? As King David, peace be upon him, expressed it in Psalm 94: “He who planted the ear, shall He not hear… He who teaches man knowledge.” Is there any greater “indication” than this that there is providence in the world?

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

With God’s help, 10 Cheshvan 5778

The response was not aimed at the content but at the form.

Regards,
H.Z. Berger

The question is why you take over the focus of the discussion and use it to expand at length on explanations of various verses and midrashim, as the good hand of the Lord is upon you.

Some think they can support their arguments with mockery and contempt, and some think that a substantive discussion of a subject that is one of Judaism’s fundamentals should be based on deep understanding of its sources. I already replied to you in the past (to your comment from such-and-such a date on the portion “and you shall eat the flesh of your sons”…) that the questions raised in these discussions have already come across the tables of the earlier sages, and it wouldn’t hurt you to pay attention to what they said and discover, to your surprise, that you did not “invent the wheel” 🙂

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

That itself is the problem.
What are we supposed to do in cases where the answers they gave don’t really resolve anything for me?
If Maimonides writes that reason and justice require intervention, but from examining and thinking about things I see that in practice there is no intervention,
it won’t help if you quote Maimonides a thousand times unless you enter into the substance of the argument and deal with it.
I grew up on religious apologetics.
I know all the stale answers; I chewed on them to the point of choking, with self-deception.
I think I deserve intelligent and more honest answers than a collection of repeated Maimonides quotes and scraps of verses.

With God’s help, 11 Cheshvan 5778

To M.B.B.—greetings,

Do you have a monopoly on intelligence and honesty? It seems to me that in both areas Maimonides has credentials slightly stronger than yours. Maimonides’ genius in Torah, philosophy, and medicine is visible in his writings; your comments have not yet impressed me to quite that extent 🙂

Maimonides held fast to his faith under the hardest possible conditions, fleeing the sword of the Almohads from Spain to Morocco, and from Morocco to the East until he reached Egypt, and there too he suffered difficulties and troubles. The Jewish people in his time suffered persecution and humiliation all over the world, from both Edom and Ishmael. He had every justification to come before his God with the complaint “Where are You?” yet he did not do so, but strengthened his people in faith, for his generation and for generations to come.

And you? You sit comfortably in the Holy Land as it is being rebuilt, flourishing and prospering, open to all Jews who can freely come up to it and live there without the yoke of the nations—something neither the sages of the Talmud nor the medieval or later authorities merited. You see before your eyes the beginning of the realization of the prophets’ vision of the return of the Jewish people to its land and the beginning of the ingathering of the exiles—something that happened to no other people returning to its land after two thousand years of exile and subjugation—and you respond with indifference.

The land wonders: “Who has borne me these, while I was bereaved and barren?” And you? You ask: “Where is your God?” You see no “indication” of divine intervention. Everything is self-evident. What could be more natural than one lamb surviving among seventy wolves? What could be more natural than a people returning home after two thousand years? Trivial. So what?

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

Rabbi Michi: “Our choice by definition includes the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, who is part of us.” Is this a new conclusion of yours? I hadn’t seen it in your earlier discussions of the subject, and now it sounds far more plausible. Because one can say that indirectly the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes through the creation of human beings. It has almost a pantheistic scent to it. And see Shagar’s explanation of Maimonides in To Illuminate the Doorways, p. 94:

“One may ask, regarding Maimonides, what is the difference between his approach and secular humanist approaches that believe in humanity’s ability and its reason to develop its powers and bring redemption? Why should we call this process divine providence rather than nature? The answer is that according to Maimonides, providence, like miracle, is not the result of divine intervention disrupting the existing order of things in the world, but precisely of the world’s being this way and not otherwise. In other words, the fact that within man—humanity—there exist powers and talents is itself providence. Maimonides stands before the fact of being as such, and before this fact his wonder arises—why is it thus and not otherwise?! In this wonder lie the marvel, the miracle, and faith. In short, for Maimonides the miracle, like providence, is not a ‘miracle’ at all, but nature. However, this is not mechanical nature but holistic nature, in which the enlightened person finds the perfect integration between spirit and body, between character traits and intellect, between individual and collective.”

Have you softened your position a bit, or did I miss something? In any case, it seems to me that if you emphasized the positive and not only the negative, your words on this matter would be more understandable and more accepted.

I’ve dealt with this in a few places orally regarding the paradox of weakness of will. You can see it, for example, in my article on two mechanisms of repentance:

על התשובה: בין טכניקה למהות

What you wrote about Maimonides’ view parallels what I wrote about evolution (divine governance takes place through the laws of nature). In addition, Maimonides’ view is that miracles were built into the nature of creation from the outset. I dealt with this in the recordings in the series on miracles and nature.

Thank you very much. I’ll look into it.

With God’s help, 11 Cheshvan 5778

To Shatzal—greetings,

I am not Y.H. HaKohen, and I don’t know what he wrote to you. I searched the site for the words you mentioned (“and you shall eat the flesh of your sons”) and found the exchange between you.

I saw that he recommended that you open a blog of your own, and I join him in that. I do not join in his disrespectful language.
I respect you and your great knowledge in many different subjects—history, biblical criticism, and more.

I wasn’t addressing the subject of the argument itself here.
I wanted to tell you that your comments sometimes go beyond what is customary in this kind of conversation.

When someone raises a question, you answer specifically what he asked. You don’t “pour out” a whole lecture, which sometimes does not include a specific answer but instead constitutes a sticky, apologetic system of little homilies.

Regards,
H.Z. Berger

Of course it is your right to do whatever you want. I only noted that you depart somewhat from the norm.

To these pillars of gold, who offer me good advice, in courteous language, and whose style has even been polished—greetings,

As for your saying “and you shall eat the flesh of your sons and daughters”: since one of the leading speakers here already defined me as a “stiff-necked Yekke,” among the Yekkes that expression was considered a blessing—that your sons and daughters should be God-fearing and trustworthy in matters of kashrut, so that you could eat meat at their homes without any concern.

I too will offer you some good advice:
Respond to the substance of the matter and not with derisive labels such as “stiff-necked Yekke,” “little homilies,” and “sticky apologetics.” A serious reader is not persuaded by insults you give someone you disagree with, but by the level of your arguments and their grounding.

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

With God’s help, 12 Cheshvan 5778

To Gil—dear Gil,

In Maimonides’ words in many places it is explained that the Holy One, blessed be He, gives recompense for good deeds and their opposite also in this world. I already noted above Maimonides’ words in Guide for the Perplexed III, chapters 17–19, where he expands on this. Likewise in his introduction to the chapter Helek, he established recompense as one of the fundamentals of religion.

In chapter 9 of the Laws of Repentance, Maimonides explains that the main recompense is the spiritual perfection in the World to Come; the good a person receives in this world is not the main reward but rather “working conditions” that make it easier for a person to acquire perfection. And the punishment in this world is a worsening of conditions that makes it harder for the sinner to attain perfection.

In his commentary to the Mishnah on the first chapter of Peah, Maimonides adds that for commandments that benefit society, a person receives “fruits,” in addition to the “principal,” the spiritual perfection reserved for the World to Come.

In the Laws of Fasts, Maimonides says that one upon whom sufferings come should examine his deeds, and not attribute them to chance. Suffering is, according to Maimonides, like pain in the body that arouses a person to identify the health defect in order to heal it.

Maimonides’ statement in his commentary to the Mishnah on “ten things were created at twilight,” that miracles were implanted in nature from the six days of creation, does not at all contradict the above, because:
A. Not every divine intervention involves changing the laws of nature; a natural process can develop in different directions, in all of which there is no violation of natural law.
B. Even in cases where recompense requires changing the laws of nature—since the law of recompense has existed and stood from the six days of creation, and a condition was made with nature that it would “fold up” before the law of recompense.

On these issues Rabbi Chaim Weisman expanded at length in his book Prophecy, Choice, and Providence—Studies in Maimonides’ Beliefs, published by Har Bracha Institute, which has not yet reached my hands, but Rabbi Yitzhak Shilat warmly recommended it.

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

To Shatzal: I want to tell you that your writing here makes the site worthy and scholarly. Your knowledge and sharpness are like water for a weary soul, and they provide a serious pole to the views here, thereby opening the spectrum in between to lively and alert discussion. About those two who are trying to offer you good advice in elegant language, one may expound: “He who disqualifies, disqualifies with his own flaw.” They are the ones who divert the discussion into personal quarrels and cynicism. There are such people everywhere, and they pollute the airwaves with what tires the serious reader and forces him again and again to scroll down—in the spirit of “the dogs bark and the caravan moves on.” I personally wouldn’t waste time answering them at all.

With God’s help, 12 Cheshvan 5778

To Gil—greetings,

Thank you for the encouraging words.

On one point Mr. H.Z. Berger, may he live well, is right. The sages of the Sephardic tradition had a phrase constantly on their lips: “Whoever lengthens, troubles” (a play on the cantillation names that Ashkenazim call “merkha tipkha,” and Sephardim: “markha tafha”).

If the sages instructed one to teach his student briefly, then all the more so for someone who is not in the category of one’s student and who does not have excessive patience to listen—especially when These are things they are not accustomed to hearing. I did not come to persuade only the already persuaded, and to those who are wavering one must present things briefly and pointedly.

The length of my comments stems from the fact that a significant portion of them comes from new study and clarification of my own as a result of the questions raised in these discussions, and the words are written during the study itself; for that reason they contain length and sometimes digressions from one aspect to another within the same topic.

When the new subject is clarified for me sufficiently, I can shorten and summarize, and indeed I often do so—especially when from various responses I got the impression that the commenter did not understand my intent—and I add a short summary, hoping that in this way the points will be absorbed.

With thanks and regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

As for your advice not to respond to offensive comments, I really do generally ignore them or remark on them with a hint of a smile. For example, to someone who dated his letter “the day… of the portion ‘and you shall eat the flesh of your sons,’” I replied with the date “the day… of the portion ‘the Lord will open for you His good treasure’” 🙂

This past Elul they began a new method of group attack: one starts and his friends answer after him, apparently in order to defend tribal territory from the foreign intruder. When I now saw that the trend was returning, I found it proper not to hold back…

Our master Shatzal, let’s try to discuss the matter itself, without slogans, and see whether it works:

A discussion opened here between Rabbi Michi and the site editor Oren regarding individual providence.

At the beginning of the discussion, they both agree that there is no indication of any intervention whatsoever.

They both agree that the tradition supports intervention.

Oren prefers the tradition (and to reduce the tension between it and the lack of indication, he narrows it).

Rabbi Michi prefers reality as it appears to our eyes.

1. Is this description of the discussion acceptable to you?

2. Do you agree that according to the tradition there is intervention?
3. Do you agree that there is no indication of this in our physical world?

If everything is agreed, we’ll continue.

H. Z. Berger

As described in the second part of my response “No indication?” and in my response “Do you have a monopoly on honesty and intelligence?” I brought additional examples elsewhere. Just think: if a human being has the ability to choose, does the Holy One, blessed be He, not?

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

Just a brief side note.
I too side with Shatzal on this. Responses should address the content and not the speaker, and they should be written in a non-offensive way (although cynicism is completely permitted. See my explanatory remarks about my style on the site). In extreme cases I delete a comment (this has happened very rarely so far).
As for the arguments themselves, I haven’t been following and I don’t know.

To Shatzal,
First, I want to join Gil’s words,
or at least some of them.
On the one hand, your writing adds a great deal for me,
and I would miss it if you weren’t here and anywhere else you comment,
with knowledge and good spirit.
On the other hand, as I wrote, it’s more pleasant when you respond to the point and not with a collection of quotations.
Continuing to our matter:
It’s hard for me to accept a God who made a Holocaust and murdered a million innocent children,
the spiritual Holocaust that the holy state, the first flowering of our redemption, brought upon the heads of tens of thousands of Yemenite children,
hundreds killed every year on the roads,
and thousands killed in the wars of the State of Israel and in its terror attacks.
A state that encourages mass Sabbath desecration,
etc. etc.
Of course these are partly pretty hollow slogans,
but the idea is clear.
I am increasingly inclined to agree with Michi’s claim about the plausibility of the Creator’s principled non-intervention in nature.
To me it makes far more sense than the claim that there is constant intervention that causes such catastrophes and harms to happen.
In addition to the reasoning that if there were constant intervention in nature, no scientific conclusion could be reached.
And all the wisdom and depth of mind of our master Maimonides still have not convinced me of the opposite.
Just as you too do not accept the Maimonidean view in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah:
“All the stars and spheres possess soul, knowledge, and intellect. They are alive and stand and recognize the One who spoke and the world came to be. Each and every one, according to its greatness and rank, praises and glorifies its Creator like the angels. And just as they recognize the Holy One, blessed be He, so they recognize themselves and recognize the angels above them. And the knowledge of the stars and the spheres is less than the knowledge of the angels and greater than the knowledge of human beings.”
And yet this does not diminish his greatness and depth of mind in the slightest,
rather it reflects the scientific values of his time.
Yours,
Moish

With God’s help, 12 Cheshvan 5778

To M.B.B.—greetings,

As is well known, Jews have a custom of answering a question with a question (the first Jew was Cain, who was asked “Where is Abel your brother?” and replied, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” 🙂 ), so this time, instead of answering—I’ll ask!

In comparing your words with those of Oren (at the beginning of the discussion), I see that there are here two views diametrically opposed in their understanding of the theory of “divine non-intervention” attributed to Rabbi Michael Abraham.

According to Oren’s description, the Holy One, blessed be He, did intervene in the past, but in our time He has greatly reduced His intervention because there is no need for it, since humanity has advanced morally so much that it can manage on its own. The Creator, seeing that He has left His world in good hands, can withdraw and operate the system on “automatic.”

By contrast, from your words it sounds as if the state of humanity today is catastrophic—holocausts, wars, accidents, and diseases, a terrible and awful condition that would require urgent divine intervention. Therefore, its absence indicates the Creator’s inability to intervene, since the laws of nature are an inviolable law that binds even the lawgiver himself.

So what does Rabbi Michael Abraham really hold—like Oren or like Moses?

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

What is difficult for me about Oren’s conception is the many disasters you describe, from which it still seems hard to leave humanity to “manage on its own.”

What is difficult for me about your conception is King David’s question: “He who formed the eye, shall He not see… He who teaches man knowledge?” And in Maimonides’ wording: “a very ugly deficiency that requires bad beliefs regarding God, corrupts the order of human existence, and effaces all man’s moral and intellectual virtues. I refer to one who denies providence over individual human beings and equates them with the individuals of the other animals” (Guide for the Perplexed, part 3, end of chapter 17).

Hello Shatzal.
I’m not sure you described their views correctly, but I’ll leave that to them. My view is that intervention decreases as a matter of policy because we have matured and are required to stand on our own feet. The Holy One, blessed be He, can of course intervene, but chose not to do so.
The view that there is no need to intervene because we are already moral seems problematic to me in light of the events of the twentieth century.
The view of inability is absurd, because the one who prohibited can certainly permit. Non-intervention is the result of a decision and policy, not of inability.

With God’s help, the eve of 2.11.2017 (one hundred years since the Balfour Declaration)

To Rabbi Michael Abraham—greetings,

You assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, reduced His intervention in the world because of humanity’s maturation, and here I ask:

A.
As the leaders of the world’s countries appear in our time—does the world really seem mature enough to you to be left running “on automatic”? The guys who lead the world do not give the impression of being more righteous or wiser than their counterparts in the past.

B.
Is there historical proof that in the past there was greater intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, in His world? From the little I know of Jewish history in earlier times, I get the impression that empires always posed a threat to the Jewish people. And strangely enough, in the last hundred years it seems as though some empire is always mobilizing to support us.

When England withdrew its support for the “national home,” the Americans entered the picture and supported us. When the Americans returned to neutrality, Stalin suddenly became a supporter. Stalin returned to his old ways, and the English and French came in to support us. De Gaulle returned to his old ways—the Americans returned to support us. And when a hostile president arose in the USA, and all the polls showed that his successor would win, specifically the more friendly candidate won.

Every link in the chain of events has 999 natural explanations, but the consistency maintained continuously over a hundred years raises a question: perhaps, after all, the Holy One, blessed be He, is operating “behind the scenes” to incline the hearts of kings for the good of His people and His inheritance?

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

And perhaps the increased divine help in our generation came following the increased human effort? When a person begins a commandment, the Lord completes it for him, and helps him “behind the scenes” in what is beyond human power.

When Jews increased immigration to the Land from the end of the eighteenth century onward, and in the nineteenth century began agricultural settlement in the Land, and toward the end of the nineteenth century began organizing and speaking about establishing a state—the awakening of desire from below brings increased help from above.

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

Hello again, Rabbi Shatzal,

I just saw that you serve as a librarian under Rabbi Nissim. So I tip my hat to you.

I asked you regarding the indication of divine intervention.

I request your clarification:

Let’s put aside our traditional sources, and our logical proofs.

Let’s also put aside (with your permission) the history of the Jewish people (because one person will wave the state’s rebirth, and another will answer him with the disaster of the Holocaust).

Let’s take the average person on the street, religious, secular, or non-Jew, from Israel or Australia. Are you able to discern a correlation between his moral, value-based behavior—and success, health, avoidance of various disasters, and the like?

Can you answer me without a question?

H.Z.B.

One who walks in integrity and faith, behaves in a moral and value-driven way, and strives to do the will of his Creator—wins the greatest gift in life: the gift of freedom, liberation from impulses of envy, hatred, and competition, liberation from desires whose natural end is harm. He does not take what he has for granted, and therefore he rejoices in what he has.

Even if he walks through the valley of the shadow of death, he is secure, for he knows that his God leads him with justice and righteousness and does not execute judgment without due process. Knowing that the Lord disciplines him as a man disciplines his son in order to arouse him to elevate himself and improve his deeds, all his days will be a striving toward truth and goodness. And when his time comes to return to the God who sent him, he will come with his days in hand—days used for good. Is there anyone richer than he?

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

In paragraph 1, line 2:
… the greatest gift in life—the gift of freedom, …

Let the audience see and judge.

I asked you a very simple question:

Is there a correspondence between a high score on the scale of values and religion, and a high score on the scale of material success?

Instead of answering the question, you answered that a high score on the scale of values and religion earns a high score in the feeling of serenity and trust in God, and a high score in reward in the future to come.

In short—you did not answer.

H.Z.B.

After all, your question was whether one sees in reality the fulfillment of the Torah’s promises in this world. So one must clarify what is promised to one who does good in this world.

To this I answered clearly, bringing Maimonides’ words (in my response “On providence in Maimonides’ thought”), that the principal recompense for a person is the spiritual perfection that he acquires here and carries with him to the World to Come.

The material good that a person receives in this world is, according to Maimonides, peace of mind, which enables him to strive to acquire perfection, while the punishment is the scattering of the mind through troubles that confuse a person and distance him from perfection.

This is the “this-worldliness” promised to one who does good, and this undoubtedly exists for one who lives with a compass and knows what he is seeking.

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

In my last response I only added that spiritual perfection also expresses itself in “plain physicality.” There can be a person who has endless wealth and honor, but whose life and health are ruined from the ground up through bitterness and frustration. And opposite him, the perfected person lives pleasantly with what he has. So who has more of “this world”? The bitter man, for whom all he has “is worth nothing,” or the one who has contentment and finds joy in his labor?

I see no point in continuing.

I ask you the same question again and again, and because you are uncomfortable answering it honestly, you put a different question in my mouth.

I do not want to be dragged into low territory, so let us part as friends.

Farewell.

Chaim Zeilig Berger

Shatzal, here are my answers:

A. First, my claim is that the world is mature enough, not moral enough. As I sharpened in my previous message. Second, I’m talking about scientific knowledge and the ability of the individual and society to function without divine involvement. See, for example, desalination and the like.

B. There are reports of miracles and prophetic statements about divine involvement in history. With flesh-and-blood eyes I’m not sure I would see it (except for open miracles).
About the “wonders” you mention—we’ve already discussed them. There is no wonder there, but at most a slight deviation. But statistics allow deviations from the ordinary course, and therefore one cannot define any such thing as a miracle. See The Black Swan by Rabbi Nassim Taleb, may he live long.

With God’s help, 13 Cheshvan 5778

To Rabbi Michael Abraham—greetings,

Scientific knowledge has made weapons of mass destruction accessible, or almost accessible, to every deranged tyrant. And in parallel, the greed and collapse of values in the “enlightened” world increase its indifference toward those madmen—see the case of “the Iranian nuclear program.” What prevents them from carrying out their schemes? Only God knows.

Open miracles were rare even in the days of the prophets, and all the more so after prophecy ceased, and even when they occurred they were for a short time. But the constant wonder of one lamb surviving among seventy wolves, filled with hatred for the Jewish people—was defined by the Men of the Great Assembly as “these are His mighty acts.”

Thousands of years in which an exiled and persecuted people survived among its enemies, when in every generation the Causer of causes found it a route of escape—when we were expelled from here we found temporary refuge there, and so on—all this is just “a slight deviation from statistics,” and no more? And that during those thousands of years the people preserved its character and uniqueness and did not assimilate like all the other peoples exiled from their land—is that too just “a slight deviation from statistics”?

In performing open miracles that alter the order of creation, the Creator does not do much. The sages already spoke critically of that person on whose behalf the order of creation was changed. But the help of the Causer of causes “behind the scenes,” making use of scenarios that do not contradict nature, is no less vital today than it was in the past.

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

To Shatzal,
About the survival of the Jewish people, the sages already said in Yoma that “these are His mighty acts”: one lamb among seventy wolves and it is not devoured.
And it seems to me that the very fact that the name of the Lord is called upon the Jewish people is what frightens the nations and causes them to leave the Jewish people in peace (and if you ask about the Holocaust, the Vilna Gaon already wrote that from the moment the return to Zion begins, the name of the Lord passes to the Jews living in the Land of Israel and leaves the Jews in the Diaspora, and this is not the place to elaborate). And here one can say that it’s not that miracles are not happening, but that from sheer habit you do not see them. For the miracle that the name of the Lord is called upon the Jewish people occurs in our Torah portions when the Lord tells Abraham, “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” And this is the closing of the first blessing of the Amidah, for which one is obligated to have intention (since we’re already dealing with intention in prayer).
And these matters connect with Rabbi Michi’s view that there is no need for open miracles. Everything is already laid out on the table and works on its own.

And yet, as someone who knows history, I agree that there are strange things in the last few centuries, but declaring them a miracle borders on manipulation, in my opinion. And so silence is beautiful for the wise.

Y.D., where is that in the Vilna Gaon?

With God’s help, 13 Cheshvan 5778

To Y.D.—greetings,

From your words in the penultimate paragraph, I understand that you see only two states: on the one hand a state of “open miracles,” and on the other a state where “everything is laid out on the table and works on its own.”

I wrote that there is an intermediate state of “providence within nature,” in which the Holy One, blessed be He, does not depart from the order of creation and the laws of nature, but acts “behind the scenes” to preserve His world and His creatures, and this is the way the world operates most of the time.

A state of constant openly miraculous governance existed only in the Exodus from Egypt and in the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, during which they lived under clouds of glory, ate manna, drank from Miriam’s well, and every journey and encampment was by divine command.

Once Israel entered the Land, the manna and the clouds of glory disappeared, and the people began to function within the natural world, by human effort and natural means, and open miracles diminished and became rarer and rarer.

There is not and cannot be a state in which the world “works on its own” without close providence. Providence is carried out behind the scenes in order to leave room for human initiative and choice. A person needs the regularity provided by the lawfulness of nature in order to plan his actions, but without divine help and protection, human action will not succeed.

The level of providence is a function of human responsiveness and willingness to do the will of the Lord. The more a person initiates and acts in a positive direction, the more “accusers spring up against him from here to Gihon,” and he needs increased divine help and protection to enable him to complete the tasks he has taken on.

This is the proper mode of conduct for a person: acting with all his strength through the natural means that his Creator has placed at his disposal, while raising his eyes and calling constantly to his God to “complete it for him”!

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

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On the different ways Torah thinkers dealt with the Holocaust, Rabbi Dr. Tamir Granot expanded at length in his book Faith and the Human Being in the Face of the Holocaust, vol. 1: Holocaust Thought, published by Tevunot – Herzog College. The book’s chapters are based on lectures that can be viewed on the “Virtual Beit Midrash” site of Yeshivat Har Etzion.

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

With God’s help, Thursday, on the portion “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?”

From reading this week’s Torah portion, our faith will rise and soar, for not surprisingly, it will decide our argument:

When the father of our nation stands in negotiation before his Master and pleads before Him, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” and the blessed Lord makes clear in plain language that He repays every creature according to its due, returning to him according to the work of his hands.

And even if there is wickedness and strife in the city, God remembers and counts all that is forgotten, distinguishes between righteous and wicked, for He is a King who loves righteousness and justice.

And afterward we see that by the merit of the righteous man, Lot is saved from the valley of tears, he and all that is his. Only his wife, who withheld her hand from sharing her salt with the poor, from giving bread to guests and charity to the needy—she is the one who “merited” to become a pillar of salt, a horror to all flesh.

In other words: an eye sees and an ear hears, and all your deeds are written in a book—to repay a person according to his righteousness or his wickedness, measure for measure.

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

In just another moment I will say that denial of individual providence testifies to ingratitude: when a person is saved from cold and snares on the road, and from all the evils that are liable to come upon the world, yet the recipient of the miracle does not recognize his miracle.

And this is explained by Rashi on Exodus 17:

“I am always among you and ready for all your needs, and you say, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’ By your life, the dog will come and bite you, and then you will cry out to Me and know where I am. A parable: to a man who placed his son on his shoulder and went out on the road. That son would see an object and say, ‘Father, take this object and give it to me,’ and he gave it to him; then again, and again. They met a certain man, and the son said to him, ‘Have you seen my father?’ His father said to him, ‘You do not know where I am?’ He threw him off, and the dog came and bit him.”

From this you learn that the ingratitude of ignoring the constant providence over every step may cause and hasten harm to a person—may the Merciful One save us.

Reply ↓

To the honorable author of the previous message—greetings,

You have every right to write whatever you want and to sign with any pseudonym you want, but not in my name!

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

With God’s help, Friday eve, on the portion “so that he may command” 5778

To Zeilig the imitator—greetings,

What you brought from this week’s Torah portion added another dimension for me in understanding the greatness of Abraham’s patience.

After all, Abraham explains his call to his children and household “to keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice” also in a utilitarian sense: “so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken concerning him.”

The existence of five cities flourishing and prospering “like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt,” while openly thumbing their noses at Abraham’s faith and values, was used by all the scoffers of the generation as “irrefutable proof” against Abraham’s claim that walking in the ways of the Lord also brings success in this world.

Prosperous Sodom is a refutation of all Abraham’s arguments—and even so he does everything in his power to save it.

Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger

I just saw this now and almost deleted the forged message. Since Shatzal clarified what he clarified and even addressed it, I am leaving it in place with a warning. Forgers will have no hope.