As for God (without connection to Judaism specifically), I think the evidence is truly excellent and that this is the rationally required conclusion, so I didn’t mention that. As for the evidence regarding prophecy and the supernatural element in the Sinai Revelation—this is testimony to a historical event just like the wars in Indian mythology about their gods. The point here is not about the Sinai Revelation as a historical event (which I believe happened), but about the supernatural part, regarding which it turns out that belief in it is like any other mystical belief. After all, I have not received from life experience any evidence of anything supernatural from anywhere, and I have no way to test this claim, so why should I accept the supernatural part דווקא here?

Regarding an event that happened to a person privately, how is that different from a divine revelation that happened to him privately, as far as classifying it in the category of mysticism?

It seems to me that the questioner here is not distinguishing between a supernatural reality (which may be interpreted as “non-rational”) and its explanation. For a supernatural reality could exist, and there might actually be good reasons to assume its existence.
The traditional Jewish claim is that the most successful explanation is the one that accepts the Torah’s testimony about the Sinai Revelation literally. That is to say: specifically one who claims that the Sinai Revelation was a natural event without divine revelation and so on is holding a non-rational position. At least that is how I understand the “argument from testimony.”

I didn’t understand the claim. When I say that there was a Sinai Revelation, what that means is that God was revealed—not that people stood there and imagined things. I do not distinguish between the metaphysical dimension and the physical dimension.

Oren,
It is different because we have experience with people’s reports about natural events that happened to them (as to us). But we have no experience regarding reports of mystical events, and even the person experiencing it has no such experience. Therefore there, trust in the report is more subjective.

What I mean is that there really is a historical root to what is said in the Torah—for example, that Moses went up the mountain, carved tablets, and brought them down (not as someone’s fantasy, but as a religious ritual), and the myth about the Divine Presence descending and speaking began later over the years. Why accept the mystical explanation specifically, and not the non-mystical one, as long as (and assuming that) the same existing data can also be reconciled with a non-mystical explanation?

It could also be that his name was Yankele, family name Rabbenu, and not Moses. I see no point in this pilpul.

With respect, I didn’t understand how the question sounds like empty pilpul. Your method, if I understood correctly, is to accept the most reasonable data, and therefore you usually reject mystical explanations—not because they are necessarily untrue, but because in practice your way of accepting the matter is to rely on whoever said it. So I’m asking: in this case, what is the difference? If one can reasonably account for the event (taking into account the argument from testimony and the rest of the data) without needing the mystical aspect—so that according to the data there was a non-mystical ceremony that was the historical basis for writing what is said in the Torah, but no Divine Presence actually descended—why should I accept the mystical explanation, with which I am not familiar from anything comparable, over an ordinary historical explanation?

Because a tradition was transmitted about an event in which God was revealed and gave us the Torah. You want to accept the existence of the event, but without God and without Torah. There is also the possibility that the prophet there was Yankele Benno and not Moses our Teacher, and that what was given there was the Upanishads by a three-winged alien from Venus. And those present were the Tanzanian people, not the Jewish people.
The mystical aspect is not an explanation of the event but part of the facts of the event. You can accept or not accept the existence of the event, but to go inside it and decide what yes and what no based on a classification of mysticism versus non-mysticism is unnecessary pilpul not worth engaging in.
I’ve exhausted this discussion.

Rabbi Michi. There are two huge and essential differences. To assume that the story took place with aliens and Yankele Benno is to sin against the actual factual description of the event. By contrast, the interpretation of that same event can definitely change according to the impression of the audience. Even today there are those who think that various mentalists have supernatural powers. They do not claim that Lior Suchard’s name is Moishi Tzulshtein, but they certainly err in their interpretation of the same trick they saw, understanding it as sorcery rather than sleight of hand.

To that one must add the obvious assumption that we have never witnessed an open miracle (you yourself currently think that every event and occurrence has a natural explanation). If so, whoever wants to prove that in the past things were different must overcome the presumption and prove it one hundred percent. Testimony alone, when there is a reasonable possibility of mistaken interpretation, seemingly is not enough to overcome the presumption. Unlike the name Yankel, concerning which there is no presumption at all, so there is no reason to assume that Moses our Teacher’s name was different…

I thought of two more obvious differences: 1. Regarding technical details, there is no reason for anyone to have an interest in them. Changing Moses’ name contributes nothing to the credibility of the story, unlike falsely producing the giving of the Torah, which fits very well with the theory of a leader who wants to control his people through false belief in God (as those who spread miracles and falsehoods do to this day, whether for leadership or money or both).

2. Even more obvious: the discussion about Moses our Teacher’s name is irrelevant to the broader discussion, so that question does not arise. The question regarding the truth of the giving of the Torah directly from God obviously changes the whole picture.

The attempt to compare factual descriptions to a description that can easily be interpreted as a mistaken interpretation of sleight of hand is very puzzling to me.

Yos—as someone who defines himself as religious and rational, I don’t think we need conspiracy theories.
My question is innocent and called for based on what Rabbi Michael himself said. The event itself as a historical event has no significance (for most people) if it is not a mystical event. At the same time, we do witness cases (even innocent ones) of stories that take on a mystical dimension over time, like the Trojan War and so on. I’m not saying it isn’t true or that someone forged it or tried to gain something from the story; I’m simply asking why the rational conclusion is to accept the mystical explanation over any other explanation (including any non-mystical explanation whatsoever, regardless of its content, so long as it is plausible and possible). So maybe his name really was Yankele, but that is not relevant. What is relevant is the mystical question. It’s not as though every explanation is dichotomous—either completely false or exactly as written and holy (and even if so, why believe the explanation of “exactly as written and holy” rather than the one that denies it). So Rabbi’s position is not clear to me, the one that basically says that the event is one solid block and it is an empty discussion to try to extract information not stated in it from the existing data. Personally, I think the Torah is from Heaven (which is a term that requires explanation) and that there was indeed such an event; regarding the content, to be honest, one cannot really know what was there.

Torah from Heaven as a rational and non-mystical claim (and one that must be well defined, that is, it is not defined). Interesting. I think the discussion really is over.

I didn’t think you’d respond, but since you did, you focused on an ad hominem irrelevant to the discussion. My personal view and my definitions are not relevant at all (and if what you wrote was directed at my words, that is also not what I claimed). The question was about your method and why you choose to accept the event as something that happened (including a mystical supernatural dimension), and you answered that there is good evidence for it and therefore accepting the event is not really mysticism. Fair enough. So I asked why not separate things and accept an explanation that does not include a supernatural part, and from your answer I understood that it cannot be separated. At that point I no longer understood. Just as, by way of contrast, Jesus may have existed but did not walk on water, or he walked on land but from the point of view of whoever saw it, it looked like he walked on water—that is, the evidence (the transmission of the book to us and the tradition that was passed down, etc.) points to several explanations, one of which is mystical-supernatural and the others not—why is it more reasonable to accept the religious interpretation of the event rather than the others that contain nothing supernatural? If you say that from your perspective you see no plausible option that the event did not occur in reality, and not only that it occurred but that it happened precisely as described (in terms of the mystical aspect of the Divine Presence and so on), and that there are no other options or that all the other options are far more remote and irrelevant, then fine—that is your view. My question begins only on the assumption that you recognize there are plausible alternatives and choose the one with the supernatural interpretation.
Even though you said you were done, I’d be glad if you would address this.

Where did you see any ad hominem here? I quoted your own words, which by definition is addressing the words and not the speaker.
As for your question, I’ll try one last time. When we speak about the Sinai Revelation, we are speaking about an encounter with the Holy One, blessed be He. This is not an interpretation of the event; this is the event. If you want to claim that the people of Israel just stood there and sang “Hatikvah,” that is not the Sinai Revelation. If you want to claim that it received Torah, but not from the Holy One, blessed be He, rather from Heaven, I do not see why that is not a mystical explanation.
As for me, I have explained again and again in lectures that I do not rule out mystical matters where that is reasonable. Therefore, in my understanding, the event was an encounter with the Holy One, blessed be He, and not with the chariots of the gods. I explained at length in the first book of the trilogy why this seems very reasonable to me. Now decide whether you call that mystical or not—it doesn’t really matter.

I think you’re missing the difficulty in my question. According to your explanation, the event is a kind of religious tautology. The event is an encounter with God, so there are no other options. I’m not claiming anything about the event. I’m not giving an explanation or interpreting; I’m only asking: could there not be an alternative explanation that brings us to where we are now, with the same Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the same tradition? Secular Bible scholars, for example, would say that there is an alternative explanation, and it does not include the people’s encounter with God, and I think one can assume many such “earthly” explanations, whatever they may be. Now, given what I said, I ask: how does it come out that specifically the explanation of an encounter with the Holy One, blessed be He, is the chosen explanation, given its mystical aspect? From what I’ve read (and I’ve read quite a bit), you do explain why the event / encounter with God seems plausible to you and not far-fetched, but not the opposite question—why (or whether) the other explanations (the secular ones) seem less plausible to you to such a degree that it is preferable to accept דווקא the mystical explanation. That is what I asked.

What other option is there?
Aliens?
The entire people of Israel were on psychedelic drugs that made everyone hallucinate exactly the same thing?

There can be all kinds of alternative explanations. Who said there couldn’t? But all this has nothing to do with the question of mysticism. The question is whether there was or was not such an event. One can certainly claim there was no such event at all, regardless of interpretation. It never happened. After all, that is what the vast majority of those secular people you mentioned claim. So why not accept that, but accept other interpretations of the event? This whole discussion goes back to the question whether there was or was not a Sinai Revelation. That is a discussion I already conducted at length in the first volume of my trilogy, and I see no point in repeating it here.

It seems to me that Michi is not answering Ohad’s question directly. Mysticism is definitely connected to this, contrary to what he says. The claim Michi is presenting is that the mystical interpretation—that is, an encounter with God that took place at Sinai—is the most plausible explanation compared to the other explanations (the non-mystical ones). That’s it.

The Sinai Revelation is an event with no Jewish or religious importance whatsoever compared to the sin of the golden calf.

There is no tradition and no broad testimony about the Sinai Revelation. That claim is fake and stands in explicit contradiction to what is written in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the Mishnah.
The validity of the Torah is not derived from the Sinai Revelation but from the status of Moses our Teacher.
Belief in the Messiah is not mysticism but hope for the future that someone will save the Jewish people. Like the belief that we will return to the Land. There is nothing mystical or hidden about this.

Doron, why is mysticism a plausible explanation? To assume that there was divine intervention in the world (when we have never encountered such a thing) is preferable to an explanation of sleight of hand? Even nowadays people tend to believe in heavenly miracles when they are looking at a simple magic trick. Why not assume that this was also the case 3,000 years ago, when the world was far less enlightened and advanced?

What sleight of hand? How exactly would that work?
How can you claim that God’s intervention is not the plausible explanation when you are not bringing any other serious alternative?

The truth is that even today there are tricks whose workings I don’t know. How does Suchard predict in advance the numbers you thought of? How does Copperfield make people disappear? The fact that you do not present an alternative does not leave you with the option of sorcery alone, but only with lack of knowledge. Tricks and sleight of hand have existed forever; producing sounds and thunder does not seem to me to be something very hard to do. They were told that the source of those sounds came from the Holy One, blessed be He, and the rest is history.

Are you really saying that sounds and thunder would not be hard to produce in ancient Egypt???
Nowadays I don’t know anyone who could do such a thing to an entire people without it being seen as sleight of hand, so obviously in ancient Egypt, lacking technology and means, there was no chance of doing such a thing.
That is the simple conclusion.
Of course people took obligations upon themselves as a result of that event, so they wouldn’t just say that it was the Holy One, blessed be He.

It is not described that they actually saw God with their own eyes. They believed that the scenario taking place before them was a divine revelation. It may be that there was thunder that day, and in addition a hidden voice dramatically recited the Ten Commandments, and the people believed that it was a voice from the mouth of God, or there are many other technical explanations. We are talking about a people yearning for a redeemer, and when a leader came who succeeded in bringing them out of Egypt, they trusted him blindly, even when he described to them that God was being revealed before their eyes at that very moment, together with good stagecraft. This is really not a far-fetched situation; I don’t understand how the alternative of a heavenly and supernatural voice becomes the necessary explanation…

Indeed it is not described that they saw God, because such a thing is impossible.
Now you’re actually offering an alternative one can discuss. As for the thunder: if there was just ordinary thunder that day, no one would see it as an impressive event proving anything.
As for a “hidden voice”—you are thinking in modern terms. With the technology of ancient Egypt, such a thing was impossible. Do you think they used microphones? If Moses had shouted, they would have heard that it was Moses. You can’t fool an entire people this way. In addition, after two commandments the people ask that Moses speak in place of Moses—if in both cases it was a human being, why would they ask that Moses replace the Holy One, blessed be He? And how does the replacement help?
As for the motivation of the people of Israel—it may be that they yearned for a redeemer, but why would they take upon themselves the yoke of commandments? Why would they do such a thing unless it was God? Besides, factually the people of Israel did not trust Moses blindly at all (the sins of the people of Israel), so there is no reason they would suddenly trust Moses blindly. (Rabbi Cherki proves—technically this is Manitou’s point in addition—that the entire source of the Sinai Revelation is that the people of Israel did not accept Moses’ authority blindly, as it says: “And all the people answered together and said: All that the Lord has spoken we will do.”)
As for Moses’ motivation—it is not clear to me how much of the story you accept (that Moses gave the Torah?), but if you say that the rest of the Torah is also real events with mistaken interpretation, then Moses clearly does not want to rule the people. He refused leadership from the outset (the episode of the bush), he says, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets” (I think that’s the right quote), and there are other cases. In addition, unlike an ordinary king, he did not bequeath the kingdom to his children—another characteristic of someone not interested in ruling the people.

Your basic mistake is that you think revelation of God is not plausible. Before the Sinai Revelation we already understand that there is a God and that He must be worshipped. So naturally there would be a revelation, and one only has to check where it happened. (That is Rabbi Michi’s approach, if I understand correctly.)

Additions to the Torah can be written after the fact (that is also the logical explanation for all kinds of childish descriptions of the creation of the world and so on, a method that even believers tend to adopt), so I’m not impressed by descriptions of the bush and so forth.

Sleight of hand is often based on things that happen in reality anyway. It is enough that they produced a voice (Moses hired someone with a deep and terrifying voice; it doesn’t have to have been him), and then they imagined that the thunder was a result of that higher power now reciting the commandments to them.

After Moses had already redeemed them from Egypt, the people believed in him completely. It may be they understood that the only way to continue with him and be redeemed was by accepting the Torah. But you don’t even need to get that far: the moment you believe absolutely in a leader and he explains to you that you are being exposed to God right now, you assume that you must fulfill everything God has told you. Just look how many millions accept all sorts of “fathers” under the threat that if not, something terrible will happen to your family.

God is something exalted and elevated; His whole essence (and also the proof of His existence) is that something exists beyond our world of concepts. How do we know His intentions and the logic by which He would want to reveal Himself to a people? Classic anthropomorphism.

I have to admit that I’m becoming a bit convinced. But where do you get the premise that the people of Israel wanted to accept commandments and believed in Moses with complete faith?? You just made that up, and it also contradicts the testimony of the text itself. Of course, here enters the question of how much you believe the verses. In addition, it does not seem plausible that one can fool an entire people of 600,000 men. How many fools can there be? Certainly not an entire people.

From what I understand (and Rabbi Michi can correct me), the premise is that one must worship God, and if so then there is some particular way to worship Him, and in order to know the way to worship God a revelation is required, otherwise there is no way to know how to worship Him. Therefore, the plausible thing is that there would be a revelation of God.

After thinking briefly about the topic, I understood Rabbi Michi’s answer. He says that the option of revelation is not an interpretation of the event but is itself part of the testimony. And if an entire people testifies to something (not tells about it and believes in it, but testifies that they were there), then apparently it is true.

It is not described in the verses that there were 600,000; those are all sorts of homiletics.
I claim that our eyes also see nowadays that in factual descriptions people do not err, but in mystical interpretation they do. So why is it so complicated to assume that a leader with charisma and powers of persuasion (in an age when the concept of leadership had an even broader meaning than today) convinced them that this was a divine revelation?

I see that you are not well versed in the verses. It is written explicitly in several places.
Our eyes do not see phenomena of people giving the interpretation that God is speaking with them unless they have gone insane. Again, the issue of 600 thousand people all testifying to the same thing comes in here. It is hard to believe that so many people fell into the trap of such stupidity if it did not really happen.
In addition, there is no reason that people would want to take obligations and listen to laws, and for that purpose imagine things. It goes against all logic and instinct. Again and again you assume without basis that the people of Israel were captive to Moses, whereas it is described otherwise many times, and there is no evidence for your claim.

I’d be glad to know where it says that. Generally speaking, there are things that can be rewritten after the fact.
The relationship with Moses had its ups and downs. I assume that after he brought them out of Egypt, he was perceived as a strong leader with powers.
People still believe today that a séance speaks to them, that righteous men have a transmission from God, and so on and so forth.
3,000 years ago belief in supernatural powers was many times greater, and it was easier to deceive.

P.S. To this day many claim that the laws of the Torah benefit a person. Why not assume that this is what they were told back then too?

“These are the counted of the children of Israel: six hundred and one thousand seven hundred and thirty.”

— Book of Numbers, chapter 26, verse 51

“These are the counted of the children of Israel by their fathers’ houses; all the counted of the camps by their hosts were six hundred thousand and three thousand five hundred and fifty.”

— Book of Numbers, chapter 2, verse 32

“These are the counted of the children of Israel: six hundred and one thousand seven hundred and thirty.”

— Book of Numbers, chapter 26, verse 51

You are just assuming things. If in fact they opposed Moses time and again, there is no reason to think that from the outset they admired him in an unfathomable and unquestioned way.

Even nowadays, people who believe in all kinds of fantasies do not reach the level of saying that God spoke with them. As you yourself bring in your examples: a séance speaks with them (that’s a dead person, not God), or that a righteous man has a transmission with God. Even such people do not believe that God speaks with them; only crazy people (that is, people genuinely suffering from mental illness) think such things.

Again you are begging the question by assuming that back then it was the easiest thing in the world to fool people. God speaking with you and with an entire people at the same time is not something easy to convince people to believe in, certainly not when they are obligated on that basis. People do not just believe such things, and if it is an entire people then it is probably true.

As for the P.S.: even the promise that the laws of the Torah benefit a person rests on the fact that there was a Sinai Revelation and that the Torah was given by God. In other words, even in order to convince people of the benefit of Torah law, they first need to believe that God spoke with them. The promise that the laws of the Torah benefit a person only comes after the Sinai Revelation and does not constitute a reason to believe that God spoke with them, and certainly not a reason for commitment. So there is still no reason people would want to commit themselves to commandments unless they are certain that it is from God.