Q&A: Is General Providence Possible Without Individual Providence?
Is General Providence Possible Without Individual Providence?
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
I can’t manage to accept or understand the idea that there is no general providence over the Jewish people.
For example, thousands of Jewish communities survived in completely different regions of the world independently of one another (whereas no “Babylonian” or “Roman” communities survived). For example, Operation Focus in the Six-Day War, and so on and so on.
That is, from my perspective, the probability that the Jewish people would survive is not as remote as a lottery result like 5,16,3,41,26, but rather looks more like 1,2,3,4,5—and that happening for a million consecutive drawings.
In other words, given that this is how I see things, I would have to be truly crazy to conclude that there is no God behind it.
My question for the Rabbi is this:
In his book, the Rabbi gives an explanation that general providence is not possible, among other reasons because the collective is made up of a number of individuals, and if there is no individual providence, then there cannot be general providence that does not come through individual providence (over the individuals 🙂 ).
I hope I understood correctly.
My claim is this: if I have concluded through my own reasoning that there is general providence, and the deduction requires that there is also individual providence, based on the Rabbi’s explanation cited above (which I accept), even if I do not understand or see individual providence in practice.
If so, according to the Rabbi’s view, is it still possible to infer that there is general providence without individual providence?
Best regards, Ehud.
Answer
This debate has already taken place here more than once. In my view all of this is possible, and if you examine the other cases (nations and their survival) and place our history within the full set of cases, perhaps you will find that the probability is not all that low. I mentioned here the accident in Gedera (search the site). Beyond all that, even if our survival is unique—and I personally think it is—it does not mean that the hand of God was at work here. It could very well be a product of our culture and values, and of the Torah.
Discussion on Answer
You are taking my words out of context. My claim that there is no individual providence comes from looking at the world. My claim that there is no general providence is based on several considerations, among them that general providence is the sum of instances of individual providence.
And from this it follows that even if you have reached the conclusion that there is general providence, that does not necessarily mean there is individual providence too. On the contrary, the arguments against individual providence remain in force.
Let me sharpen the question, because I didn’t really understand how the answer addresses my question.
Suppose I reached a definitive conclusion, regarding the survival of the Jewish people, that this is supernatural general providence (and not a product of our culture and values and our attachment to the Torah). In that case, can one infer that there is individual providence as well (because the collective is derived from the individuals), or is it possible to maintain that there is a “supernatural hand of God” for the Jewish people as a whole, but without individual providence?