Has God Abandoned the Earth? A Fascinating First Dialogue Between Rabbi Yoḥai Makbili and Rabbi Michael Abraham on Divine Providence – Yiram Netanyahu
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Opening and introduction of the participants
- Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham’s position: divine involvement as miracle and the absence of indications
- Rabbi Dr. Yochai Maccabelli’s position: Maimonides, providence as rescue, and free choice as randomness
- The dispute over nature, quantum theory, “gaps,” and the distinction between epistemology and ontology
- Indications, intuition, and statistics as a basis for attributing providence
- Prayer: praise and thanksgiving versus petition, inner falsehood, and translation into theological language
- The history of the Jewish people, disasters versus salvations, and asymmetry in attribution
- Summaries and conclusion
Summary
General overview
The episode presents a conversation in the framework of “In the Spirit of Maimonides” on divine providence as examined through philosophy, science, and modern conceptions, with Rabbi Dr. Yochai Maccabelli and Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham. Their shared starting point is that human beings have free choice and that there is no simple individualized providence “over every single leaf,” but the disagreement centers on the questions of randomness and determinism, and whether divine involvement can occur within the laws of nature or only as a miracle that breaks the laws of nature. The discussion expands into the question of whether one can diagnose a “miracle,” the relation between epistemology and ontology, and practical implications, especially regarding prayer and the interpretation of historical and personal events.
Opening and introduction of the participants
The episode opens with the announcement that the discussion will go beyond the boundaries of Maimonides and deal with divine providence according to what we know today from research, science, and contemporary philosophy, along with the presentation of the changed format with Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham joining Rabbi Yochai Maccabelli. The host introduces Rabbi Dr. Yochai Maccabelli as connected to the Mishneh Torah project, an editor of Maimonides’ writings and a Katz Prize winner, and Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham as a rabbi-teacher at the Beit Midrash at Bar-Ilan University, a PhD in physics, writer of columns and responsa on a website, and author of books including the trilogy and the book “No Man Has Power Over the Wind,” which among other things deals with providence. The host explains that he chose two speakers who are relatively close in outlook in order to clarify the differences between them, and says by way of introduction that both agree on free choice and on rejecting sweeping individualized providence over every tiny detail, but they differ regarding randomness in nature and determinism.
Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham’s position: divine involvement as miracle and the absence of indications
Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham argues that the Holy One, blessed be He, can intervene in the world because He created the world and its laws, and therefore can freeze them, change them, or bypass them. Rabbi Abraham states that divine involvement within nature is impossible, and that any involvement is necessarily a miracle, that is, a deviation from the laws of nature, because given the same data there are no “gaps” for another natural result, and if a different result occurs that is a deviation from the natural course. Rabbi Abraham explains this through the example of a sick person: if he would have recovered even without intervention, there is no need for intervention, and if he would not have recovered without intervention, then recovery as a result of intervention means a change in the natural course. Rabbi Abraham makes an exception for quantum theory as a domain in which several results are possible from the same given state according to accepted interpretations, but argues that even there divine involvement means changing the result that would have occurred without the involvement, so there too it is a deviation from the laws of nature, except that the laws of nature there are statistical rather than deterministic.
Rabbi Abraham defines a “sufficient cause” as a sufficient condition in which if A exists, B must occur, and clarifies that in quantum theory this is a statistically sufficient cause. Rabbi Abraham argues that when he looks around him, he does not see indications of divine involvement, and that the rational-scientific default is to assume a natural cause even if it is unknown, as in investigating a plane crash where everyone assumes there is a natural cause even if it has not been found. Rabbi Abraham mentions David Hume’s question and suggests that someone who claims there is no cause and that it is a direct act of the Holy One, blessed be He, does not really think that seriously, and argues that in practice most people act as though the world runs naturally even if they do not say so. Rabbi Abraham does not categorically deny sporadic intervention at certain points in time and place, but says there is no way to know when there was such involvement, and therefore he will never say “here there was involvement,” even if in principle it is possible.
Rabbi Abraham notes that this stands in opposition to the common educational outlook, to verses in the Torah, and to the tradition of the Sages and the sages of the generations regarding involvement, but he is not sure he accepts every diagnosis by the Sages of such involvement, because “we are all human beings,” whereas the Torah does not err. Rabbi Abraham tends to think that the miracles in the Torah really were miracles because prophets provided such a diagnosis, but today there are no prophets, and therefore no diagnosis that allows us to say that a miracle occurred; he brings the Book of Esther as an example, saying that he himself would have interpreted it naturally were it not for prophetic interpretation. Rabbi Abraham proposes a model in which the Holy One, blessed be He, changes policy across the generations and reduces involvement, like parents who lessen intervention as a child matures, and explains that humanity has matured in terms of knowledge and ability, and therefore “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to human beings.” Rabbi Abraham adds that “no one disputes” that open involvement decreases over the generations, that there are no open miracles and no prophecy, and proposes that this extends to hidden miracles as well, so that usually they do not exist, even if sporadic cases may exist without any ability to diagnose them.
Rabbi Dr. Yochai Maccabelli’s position: Maimonides, providence as rescue, and free choice as randomness
Rabbi Dr. Yochai Maccabelli presents himself as influenced by Maimonides’ outlook but not limited to it, and asks to begin with definitions of “providence.” Rabbi Maccabelli argues that according to Maimonides, the world is run through the laws of nature, and this is “general providence” or “the way of the world,” whereas providence in the individual sense is the extraction or rescue of a person from the laws of nature. Rabbi Maccabelli says that when something bad happens, there is no need to ask “where is the Holy One, blessed be He,” because the laws of nature explain the event, and “no evil comes down from above,” while providence is the rescue from the evil, not the occurrence of the evil itself. Rabbi Maccabelli adds that for Maimonides, providence is connected to consciousness and to a person’s connection with the Holy One, blessed be He, and is therefore elusive, just as consciousness and connection are elusive.
Rabbi Maccabelli connects this to free choice and argues that free choice allows randomness in the world, because not everything is foreseen and not everything is deterministic. He illustrates this with the inability to know tomorrow’s temperature because of the influence of human choices on the system. Rabbi Maccabelli notes that in Maimonides’ view there is randomness even in a world without human beings, whereas he himself thinks that in such a situation everything would be deterministic, but in practice free choice introduces a dimension that cannot be factored in even with immense computing power. Rabbi Maccabelli argues that one cannot prove from the outside when an action was done out of free choice and when out of natural necessity, and compares this to the question of providence: just as one cannot “prove” free choice from the outside, so one cannot prove from the outside whether there was providence. Rabbi Maccabelli notes that in the Guide for the Perplexed appears the possibility that a person who is not under providence may experience good or bad “purely by chance,” and therefore it is hard to prove a diagnosis of providence, but he thinks one can see in the history of the Jewish people a sequence of salvations that explains why the Jewish people still exist while other peoples disappeared, even if one can propose alternative explanations of faith and human resilience.
Rabbi Maccabelli argues that free choice shows that the world is “not closed,” and therefore there is room for intervention even through the laws of nature. He proposes a model in which, without intervention, there are different probabilities for different outcomes, and connection and consciousness can affect the odds, without any guarantee and without systematization. Rabbi Maccabelli mentions quantum theory as a context in which outcomes are not deterministic but probabilistic, and adds that there are articles that extend the influence of quantum theory from the micro level to the macro level. Rabbi Maccabelli argues that defining a miracle as “what cannot be explained” shrinks as scientific knowledge grows, and cites Maimonides at the end of the Epistle on Resurrection about the masses’ perception that the less something is explained, the more it appears to be a “miracle”; he illustrates that a wireless telephone would have seemed miraculous a hundred years ago, and today it does not. Rabbi Maccabelli presents the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, as something that can operate within a space of probabilities and that depends on connection and consciousness that are hard to measure, and therefore does not show up in studies.
The dispute over nature, quantum theory, “gaps,” and the distinction between epistemology and ontology
Rabbi Abraham raises the distinction between epistemology as the theory of knowledge and ontology as the theory of being, and argues that probability describes our state of knowledge, not what is happening in the world, because in a specific case the person will in fact live or die even if we do not know which. Rabbi Abraham argues that changing “percentages” is wordplay, because in the end one result occurs, and therefore if the Holy One, blessed be He, causes a person to be in “three percent” rather than “ninety-seven percent,” that is deterministic involvement replacing the result that nature would have produced, and thus it is a violation of the laws of nature. Rabbi Maccabelli replies that in quantum theory uncertainty is part of reality and not only a lack of knowledge, and that a transition from micro to macro may be possible, and therefore one can speak of a space in which there is no necessity for a single result. Rabbi Abraham replies that even if one assumes quantum theory also governs the macro level, still in a given case “without involvement” there would have been one result and “with involvement” another, and therefore this is a miracle; he adds that even changing a quantum probability distribution is a violation of the statistical laws of nature because the Schrödinger equation determines the distribution.
Rabbi Maccabelli argues that the discussion returns to the question of religious possibility so long as there is no absolute proof against it, and compares this to the idea that if there were absolute proof that there is no free choice, the whole picture would be shaken. Rabbi Maccabelli brings Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed, part II chapter 25, on changing the interpretation of Torah in accordance with research up to a point, and argues that if Aristotle had proved that the world was not created, Maimonides would have had to give in, because interpretation cannot be stretched infinitely. Rabbi Abraham focuses on the logical argument that if there is “involvement” that makes a difference in the outcome, then necessarily what nature would have done has been changed, and therefore nature has been violated, whereas Rabbi Maccabelli insists on the possibility of a non-deterministic space in which the involvement does not go beyond the probabilistic framework of reality.
Indications, intuition, and statistics as a basis for attributing providence
Rabbi Abraham argues that there are no indications of divine involvement, and therefore even if such involvement is possible in principle, he will not accept a specific claim that “here there was intervention,” because there is no way to know. Rabbi Maccabelli compares this to the fact that free choice also cannot be measured from the outside but is learned from inner feeling and consciousness, and extends this to the feeling of connection with the Holy One, blessed be He. Rabbi Abraham proposes a reservation distinguishing between a claim of immediate intuition that “the Holy One, blessed be He, was here,” which one cannot really argue with, and an inference based on a statistical wonder—“this wasn’t supposed to happen”—which he rejects, because rare cases do happen and because sometimes there are calculation errors due to lack of statistical skill. Rabbi Maccabelli agrees with the distinction and adds that the question is where the person takes the experience, and that the value of wanting to “make the Holy One, blessed be He, present” in life may be significant, whereas Rabbi Abraham emphasizes that the discussion is about truth and not about educational usefulness, and says that he tends to come out against a foolish conception even if its educational results are positive, because “a lie cannot stand.”
Prayer: praise and thanksgiving versus petition, inner falsehood, and translation into theological language
Rabbi Abraham distinguishes between prayers of praise and thanksgiving, with which he has no problem because they can refer to the creation of the world and its laws, and prayers of petition, which in his view make no sense if the world runs according to the laws of nature without ongoing involvement. Rabbi Abraham explains that he continues to ask in obligatory prayers because he cannot rule out sporadic involvement, but he minimizes requests beyond the necessary minimum, and argues that where there is a natural way out, a prayer of petition feels to him like “a falsehood within myself.” Rabbi Abraham is willing to pray mainly when there is no natural way out, because maybe there will be a rare deviation, but he sees routine requests as problematic in terms of the sincerity of prayer.
Rabbi Maccabelli argues that prayer is divine service and has many layers that are not reducible to changing reality; he connects prayer to relationship, consciousness, and the social-moral influence of a praying community, alongside the exceptional possibility of intervention. Rabbi Maccabelli rejects the idea that one can be one hundred percent sure that a prayer will not be answered, and argues that the future is open and that even medically one cannot determine things with one hundred percent certainty; he proposes translating prayers into a broader language of “life” that is not only physical life. Rabbi Abraham responds that the question is hypothetical, and that if there really is no chance of an answer, then there is no point in saying a request that cannot be fulfilled merely in order to be spiritually elevated; he says that moving one’s lips without a real cognitive process is not prayer. Rabbi Maccabelli argues that prayer language as a whole requires a kind of “translator,” similar to Maimonides’ project of translating corporeal expressions about God, and suggests that the raw words are translated into a more correct meaning of relationship and consciousness.
The history of the Jewish people, disasters versus salvations, and asymmetry in attribution
Rabbi Maccabelli proposes that the historical survival of the Jewish people and emergence from disasters are wondrous and express a sequence of salvations in which one can see providence, even though he agrees that disasters in themselves are naturally explained and that one should not seek heavenly punishment in them; he mentions Meron as a case in which he stresses human responsibility and a safety-based explanation. Rabbi Abraham challenges this by saying that statistical rarity exists on the side of disasters as well, and that if disasters are interpreted naturally, there is no reason to infer divine involvement from rarity on the side of salvations; he presents this as an inconsistent asymmetry. Rabbi Maccabelli replies that the asymmetry stems from the working assumption that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good, and that evil is attributed to human beings and human free choice, whereas rare and elusive deliverance is assigned to an additional dimension of relationship and rescue, and he admits that this is a belief that cannot be proven. Rabbi Abraham returns and asks why, if one is willing to accept enormous rarity in evil as a natural or human product, one does not also accept rarity in good as a natural product, while Rabbi Maccabelli persists in the distinction between nature, whether good or bad, and rare “rescue” toward the good as an essential dimension of relationship.
Summaries and conclusion
The host suggests that the point of difference also lies in the burden of proof and the starting point: for Rabbi Abraham, the default is that there is no involvement and no diagnostic possibility of identifying a miracle, whereas for Rabbi Maccabelli the starting point allows for relationship and influence that cannot be measured but shapes identity and consciousness. Rabbi Maccabelli concludes that the essential point is the possibility that the relationship between a human being and the Holy One, blessed be He, sometimes “extracts” and rescues, and that prayer is broader than functional petition; he compares this to a feeling of love that cannot be proven but is foundational to one’s identity. Rabbi Abraham concludes that he accepts this description of the disagreement and suggests that they can continue clarifying additional points based on viewers’ responses. In closing, the host mentions an example from the book about getting a ride “exactly” with the number of seats needed, as an example of the gap between a natural-statistical interpretation and an experience of providence, and ends by saying that the disagreement touches not only on understanding reality but on one’s attitude toward it, after which the participants take their leave.
Full Transcript
[Speaker A] Hello everyone, we’re in a special episode in the series “In the Spirit of Maimonides,” episode five, but this time we’re going to go further beyond the boundaries of Maimonides and discuss divine providence according to what we know today from research, from science, and from the philosophical world of our time. You can already see the change—that I’m not here alone with Rabbi Yochai; Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham is also here. Hello, Rabbi.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hello, hello.
[Speaker A] So I’ll just introduce everyone for the sake of those who are new. Rabbi Dr. Yochai Maccabelli is from the Mishneh Torah project, an editor of the Mishneh Torah project, the Guide for the Perplexed, and more, winner of the Katz Prize for making Maimonides’ writings and thought accessible to the public, holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Haifa, and is a high-tech professional. All right, him you already know relatively well. Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham is a rabbi-teacher at the Beit Midrash at Bar-Ilan University, has a doctorate in physics, maintains a website with lots of columns on topics of Jewish thought, ideas, philosophy, Jewish law, and more, including responsa, and is also the author of various books, including the trilogy. Actually there isn’t really a name for the trilogy, so I just need to show all three of them: “The First Foundational Principle,” “No Man Has Power Over the Wind,” and “Walking Among the Standing Ones.” The second book is really the main one for our episode, because we’re going to be dealing with the whole issue of providence—“No Man Has Power Over the Wind,” among other things, deals with the topic of providence. Okay, the reason—and I’m sharing this a bit behind the scenes—why I chose specifically to bring Rabbi Michael Abraham and not another rabbi, Rabbi Sherki, people suggested all kinds of people to me, is that I was specifically looking for two people who are relatively close in approach. Meaning, not one person who says yes, there’s literally an angel over every leaf telling it “grow,” in the sense that there is individualized providence over every single leaf at every given moment, but rather two people who are relatively close in approach, and specifically there to see the differences between them. That seemed more interesting to me. So anyway, there are points of disagreement between you; we had a conversation beforehand, and today we’ll clarify that. I do want to say a long introduction, but I’m almost done. The starting assumptions of this discussion are: both of you agree that a person has free choice, meaning there’s no one here saying, no, everything is deterministic, there is no free choice—there is. I do recommend that people listen to the previous episode with Rabbi Yochai and me on the topic of providence—an hour and forty minutes, if I’m not mistaken—but it provides the basis for this episode. It’s recommended to listen to that episode and then come to this one, to understand the approach better. And I’ll add a link in this episode to that earlier one for whoever doesn’t know how to find it. So, there is free choice, and neither of you believes in this idea that every little thing is individualized providence over every detail, but rather a more general kind of approach, which we’ll discuss today. And the things you don’t agree on are, broadly speaking, randomness in nature and determinism. So let’s open the conversation. And after all that introduction, please, we’ll begin with Rabbi Michael Abraham. Your approach, broadly speaking, with the dramatic title, “God Has Forsaken the Earth.” The ball is in your court—to explain what that means and how you reached that conclusion. After that Rabbi Yochai will respond. By the way, if you use technical terms, try to—because there are all kinds of people who don’t know all the terminology—try to simplify the term or concept or foreign word. Up to here, I’ll stop talking; the floor is Rabbi Michael Abraham’s.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe I’ll begin with a general preface, because I’ve already gotten quite a few responses in this spirit: I’m not claiming that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot intervene, okay? That’s obvious. The same mouth that forbade is the mouth that permitted, and if the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world and its laws, then He can certainly also freeze them, change them, bypass them, and do whatever He wants in that context. That’s the first point. The second point—and you mentioned this earlier—is that in my opinion involvement within nature is impossible. Whether I accept that there is divine involvement in the world or not, if there is involvement in the world, it is a miracle. Meaning, there is no involvement that is not a miracle. In other words, any involvement is a deviation from the laws of nature. Let me explain that in a very simple way. If I assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved—I don’t know, I’m sick and I ask Him to heal me—then one of two things is true. If I would recover even without Him, then obviously I don’t need His help; I would recover naturally. If I would not recover without Him, that means the natural course would lead me not to recover—to die, I don’t know, to problematic results. If the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes and causes me to recover, that means He changed the natural course, and therefore the very fact that His act is involvement in the world means miracle—that is, a deviation from the laws of nature. What stands behind this is… in my opinion there are no gaps in nature. By “gaps” I mean: there cannot be a situation in which, given a certain set of data, there can be two natural outcomes for that situation. And since that’s so, given the data there is one possible result according to nature. If a different result happens, that’s a deviation from the laws of nature. So if what happens is what was expected, then there is no divine involvement. If what happens is not what was expected, that’s what I call divine involvement, and that means we deviated from the laws of nature. There is one exception here, and that’s quantum theory, at least in the accepted interpretations. Quantum theory does allow several results from the same given state, but even in the context of quantum theory, in my opinion, involvement by the Holy One, blessed be He, is a deviation from the laws of nature. It’s just that there the laws of nature are statistical, or however you want to put it, rather than deterministic, and still—
[Speaker A] Suddenly we’re hearing the rabbi a bit weakly, I don’t know why.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, even within the framework of quantum theory, is in any case involvement that changes the result that would have occurred without that involvement. And since that’s so, we’re basically talking about a miracle even in the context of quantum theory. That’s the second assumption. Okay?
[Speaker A] Is there a connection to “sufficient cause,” what the rabbi just said?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, sufficient cause—but again, if I include quantum theory too, then it’s a statistically sufficient cause. Because in quantum theory it’s not a sufficient cause in the deterministic sense that, given the cause in the caused case, the effect can only be one thing.
[Speaker A] So a word about sufficient cause, because I read the book and I still…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A sufficient cause means—or a sufficient condition, yes—it means that if A is a sufficient cause for B, then if A happened, B will necessarily happen. Okay? Something else can’t happen. B can also happen from C, meaning C can cause B and A can cause B, but A can cause only B, not something else. That’s called a sufficient cause. Okay? Necessary and sufficient means there is only A and no C, but that’s just parenthetically. In any case, the second assumption in short is that divine involvement is always a miracle. And He can intervene, as I said earlier. But here’s the point: when I look around me, I don’t see indications of divine involvement. I see that, by and large, things that happen happen in a natural way. If we don’t know what the cause is, the accepted assumption—at least in rational scientific thought—is that there is a cause, we just haven’t found it. In other words, we don’t know exactly what the cause was. For example, let’s say a plane crashes. A commission of inquiry is appointed to check what happened there. The commission doesn’t find anything. Everyone knows— including the most God-fearing people—everyone knows that there was some cause that caused the plane to crash. No one will say, right, there was no cause, the Holy One, blessed be He, smashed the plane. Right? That’s a possible result—nothing is found, there is no cause, it was simply that the Holy One, blessed be He, despite there being no cause, caused the plane to crash. Now, that proves nothing. Someone can come and say, okay, people who think that way don’t really believe in divine involvement, but there is divine involvement, and therefore no—I really think there doesn’t have to be a cause. Here I’ll only ask the question David Hume asked: put your hand on your heart and tell me whether you really think so. That’s all. I have no claims against someone who says otherwise; I simply don’t believe that any serious person truly says otherwise. And therefore my claim is that even those who don’t say what I’m saying, almost all of them—I don’t want to commit myself absolutely, but almost all of them—do think what I’m saying, they just don’t say it. They’re not used to this form of expression because it goes a bit against our education. So my claim is that basically even those who don’t say it usually think it. Now, I have to say, as a result of what I’ve just said, it’s clear that there can be sporadic interventions by the Holy One, blessed be He, because as I said, He can. It’s not that He can’t intervene. The whole question is what He chooses to do. So there can be sporadic interventions at some point in place and time where He does decide to change the laws of nature—and that is always a change in the laws of nature, meaning there is no involvement without changing the laws of nature—but I cannot rule out that there was such an involvement that changed the laws of nature. So I do not categorically deny involvement by the Holy One, blessed be He. I deny it in the ongoing sense. The ordinary world runs by way of nature. In sporadic places intervention is possible, although anyone who tells me there was intervention there—I won’t accept it. Because we have no way of knowing. We cannot know such things. We can always find scientific reasons, natural reasons, and therefore even if someone feels that a miracle happened to him or claims that a miracle happened to him, in most cases I can also show where the error in judgment is—but why does that even matter? Even if I can’t show it, my assumption is that even if it happened there, you can’t know that. And therefore, even if I admit that in principle involvement is possible, I will never say: here there was involvement. And that’s not the same thing. I won’t say that here there was involvement because I have no indication whatsoever. I don’t know of indications that there is divine involvement. Now, just one final note—I don’t want to go on too long here—I’ll just say: obviously this contradicts the accepted view on which I too was educated, and I assume you were too, that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved. And again, how involved—one can argue about that, of course—but in principle He is involved. “Then I will give your rains in their season,” “if you keep My commandments,” and so on—it’s written in the Torah, repeated in the Prophets, and tripled in the Writings. And of course by the Sages and the wise men of the generations. But my claim is that even if I accept that—and by the way, I’m not sure I accept even those diagnoses—not every time someone in the Talmud says that there was divine involvement will I accept it, because I’ll say that he too could have been mistaken; we’re all human beings. About the Torah I won’t say that, yes? The Torah was written by the Holy One, blessed be He; He presumably did not err. But, but, but I’m saying that even if in the past there was involvement—and I tend to think that the miracles described in the Torah probably were miracles; there were prophets who said these were miracles—today we don’t have prophets who can give us a diagnosis that here a miracle happened, like, I don’t know, the Book of Esther. The Book of Esther—if I had been there I would have said no miracle happened, no divine involvement; every occurrence of “the king” means Ahasuerus, not the Holy One, blessed be He, contrary to the midrash of the Sages. But if prophets come afterward and say no, no, here the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved, then okay, maybe so. Today we don’t have prophets. Why was there involvement in the past and today I don’t think there is, or at least I have no indication there is? I tend to think a possible explanation—though of course it’s not certain, but it’s a model that can give an explanation—is that the Holy One, blessed be He, changes His policy. In other words, in the past He was involved, and gradually His involvement declined, until in the later generations it’s doubtful whether it exists at all. Why is that? Again, just as a further suggestion: I claim that just as a child grows up and his parents gradually stop holding his hand and doing everything with him or in his place, but instead give him more and more slack, and eventually allow him to act—and also want him to act on his own power—so too the Holy One, blessed be He, does with us. You are mature human beings—well, mature, whatever that means—but humanity has matured. Not the age of the individual person; humanity has matured. We understand the world more, we have broader scientific knowledge, we think—I think, at least—in a more systematic way, we have the ability to manage on our own. We’ve grown up, matured. And therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, says: okay, from here on, “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to human beings.” And so He basically allows us to move forward. One last note I want just to accompany this point with is that no one disputes that divine involvement diminishes over the generations, regardless of my thesis. Meaning, the fact that open miracles do not happen—I think that’s fairly agreed upon. The fact that we no longer have prophecy is also fairly agreed upon. In other words, all the open involvements of the Holy One, blessed be He, no longer exist today according to any view.
[Speaker A] Already in the Second Temple period, meaning it’s not something—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, of course, across the generations—it’s a long process, obviously. But I’m saying that if we already see that there is such a policy—meaning I didn’t invent this—namely that the Holy One, blessed be He, is gradually withdrawing His involvement from the world, a policy in which the Holy One, blessed be He, slowly withdraws His involvement from the world, then all I’m saying is that this also applies to hidden miracles, not only to open miracles. And therefore I think, or assume, that usually there are no hidden miracles either—again, sporadic cases can happen without any diagnosis—but I don’t think one can ascertain that. I think that’s enough for an opening.
[Speaker A] Thank you. I’ll just say in one sentence before Rabbi Yochai Maccabelli responds that this statement has implications—for example prayer, how you understand it, and so on—but that’s not our subject; you deal with that in the book. Rabbi Yochai Maccabelli, your response: what do you agree with and what do you disagree with?
[Speaker C] Thank you very much. First of all, Rabbi Michael’s books are very, very interesting. All right, there are many, many things here. Let’s start with definitions. First, I’ll say openly that I’m very influenced, inspired by Maimonides’ conception. It comes close to a great many things; it narrows down many, many other conceptions, but it’s not only Maimonides. Fine, I’m saying that at several points I’ll mention where Maimonides held differently. So first of all, let’s define what providence is. Providence according to Maimonides: this world is conducted by means of the laws of nature, and that is the way of general providence, you could call it, and that is the way of the world, the world’s ordinary course. Providence is the removal or rescue of a person in salvation from the laws of nature. Meaning, if something bad happens, what needs to be investigated is not where the Holy One, blessed be He, is, because the Holy One, blessed be He, works through the laws of nature. In every event of evil that happens, we can investigate it according to the laws of nature. Meaning, if a plane crashes, there’s no need to check where the Holy One, blessed be He, is here, and so on. It is an event—bad events happen. No evil comes down from above. Bad events happen according to the laws of nature. Providence is our rescue from the laws of nature. According to Maimonides, this providence is connected to our consciousness with the Holy One, blessed be He, meaning it is a function of time and consciousness and the person and so on and so on, and it is elusive, exactly as our consciousness or our connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, is elusive. Now, that leads to two things, and I want to project this and connect it to the free choice that both Rabbi Michael Abraham and I affirm, and almost the entire Jewish world today agrees with, although that wasn’t always the case. There is free choice, and this free choice allows randomness in the world. Meaning, the fact that there is free choice means not everything is foreseen, not everything is deterministic. For example—I demonstrated this—I cannot determine today what the temperature will be tomorrow in Kedumim, because there is free choice here. And it could be that in a world where no human being ever existed, no person were found, then Maimonides says there is still randomness. I think there is no randomness there, but rather it really is all deterministic. But the fact that a person has free choice is what leads to the fact that we do not know and it is not foreseen, and therefore there is a certain randomness here. Because I won’t be able to know what the temperature will be tomorrow—maybe someone will light a fire, maybe a firefighter won’t want to put it out, or I don’t know. There is a whole space here that I cannot factor in at all. Even if I had the greatest computational power in the world, I still couldn’t factor it in at all. There is a free dimension here, and it affects the whole system. This dimension cannot be proven. Meaning, I—and Rabbi Michael Abraham agrees with this too, he wrote about it in the book—since it cannot be proven, I can’t give an indication. I can’t say this action was done entirely out of free choice, or this action was done by the laws of nature and had to be done. I don’t think that can be measured. And therefore the meaning of that for providence—whether there was providence here or there wasn’t providence here—is that just as I cannot know whether there was free choice here, except that from my own feelings I can know that there was free choice here, or can assume it to some degree, I think that’s exactly the same field we’re in here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] May I ask a clarifying question for a moment, Rabbi Yochai? Just a clarification, because I didn’t understand. Are you using human free choice as an analogy to divine involvement? Or are you claiming that this is the point where there is freedom in nature and through it the Holy One, blessed be He, can also Himself intervene?
[Speaker C] No, I’m saying there are two things here. One is an analogy. It really is that just as you can’t know that there is free choice, just as you can’t examine it from the outside, so too you can’t examine whether there was providence here or not. There are cases, Maimonides says, where there is rescue from something, but it is completely accidental—Guide for the Perplexed, part I, chapter 23 if I’m not mistaken—“and his bad and his good will be entirely according to chance.” Meaning, a person who is not under providence may have good or may have bad. It is very hard to distinguish whether indeed—or to prove, not to distinguish—to prove fully to another person, okay, listen, this rescue was providential and not from… Still, I think one can see within our history that a sequence of salvations kept us in existence. Meaning, the fact that there is evil and the fact that there are disasters—that is fully guaranteed, meaning that is the world’s ordinary course—and the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, says that, according to Maimonides, that is the world’s ordinary course. But the Holy One, blessed be He, also promises to save us. Is this providence really rescue or not? I think in this case one can see it from the history of the Jewish people—that we are still here and other peoples disappeared entirely. That too can’t be proved completely, because one can say, listen, human beings believed and so on that they were under providence, and that caused them to—fine, possible. I don’t know. I don’t know how to prove it completely. But I think this conception has a place; it is a very, very compelling option. It cannot be ruled out. The second point I’m making is that the fact that there is free choice here means the world is not closed. Meaning, there is room here for intervention even through the laws of nature. Now, on this point of the mode of intervention, I think—and I think this also emerges from—that it’s not different from what was in the Torah, from what was in the time of the prophets, and from what exists in our day. The big difference is that today we know how to explain many more things. And therefore Maimonides says at the end of the Epistle on Resurrection that in the eyes of the masses, the less something can be explained, the more miracle there is. And the definition of miracle is—I think—a mobile phone, using a wireless phone, that was a miracle a hundred years ago. Today it’s not a miracle. The fact that we can explain more and more things by means of nature does not diminish the fact that it is a miracle. Right? Because a miracle is something I don’t know how to define. I’m not necessarily saying a deviation from the laws of nature; Maimonides tries to minimize that. He believes in miracles, I also believe in miracles, but I don’t think they have great theological significance. But fine, I don’t know how to explain it, so I’m forced to say it’s a miracle. Because I don’t think there’s a difference; it’s just that today we know how to explain things and reduce the space in which something is called a miracle. Is there intervention in that sense? I think yes. And I think quantum theory also speaks in terms of probability. And there are articles that also expand the range of quantum theory from the micro level to the macro level. Yesterday, for example, I sent you an article on this, that there is something that can accumulate in the micro level in quantum theory and turn into macro. Meaning, it could be that there is a probability—it’s not that, okay, without intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, the person will definitely be sick, and with intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, here he’s not sick. Rather, without intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, there is some probability that he’ll be sick, and some probability that he won’t be sick. It still remains in the category of probability, which I don’t know how to predict—I don’t know how to determine, more precisely. But the fact that a person did something—I assume that’s a fact, and this is a very great faith-commitment, it’s not something different from faith in free choice—I assume it affects his chances of being saved. It’s not guaranteed, it’s not that; it’s something that is hard to measure too. The level of consciousness—it’s not whether you pray or don’t pray, but whether you are with the Holy One, blessed be He, or not with the Holy One, blessed be He, without getting into concepts of what “with the Holy One, blessed be He” means. But it’s something that’s hard to measure, and therefore it doesn’t show up in studies or things like that. I believe it’s there.
[Speaker A] By the way, this is also a question—really a clarification. Do you mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, plays within the statistics of whether he’ll be sick or healthy? Meaning, let’s say there are three percent who will recover in this situation, because we know there are medical miracles—so if he prays well, or if he is under providence, or if he is connected to the active intellect, or whatever it may be, then the Holy One, blessed be He, will make sure that he’s in that three percent? In other words, He plays within the statistics—is that what you mean?
[Speaker C] Exactly the way we play with my free will—and I don’t know how to define it. Meaning, I can’t say from the outside: listen, come on, if you think properly and do such-and-such and so on and so forth, then this is what will happen. But we do know that my free will affects reality. My free will affects even my chances of recovery, right? If I’m happy and so on—and that’s scientific—and I have the ability to be happy or to overcome things and so on. And the Holy One, blessed be He, also has free will to play—I don’t know how. Meaning, I don’t know how; I’m only saying that it isn’t systematic. Meaning, it’s not: let’s play this consistently, and okay, every time I take a risk I’ll pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, and then it will happen like this. Maimonides says—he takes the verse from Job, from Elihu—“Once, twice, three times with a man.” You can play with it once, twice, three times; it’s not systematic. It’s not some regular thing. The world follows its normal course. In many, many ways this connects very strongly with Rabbi Mikhi’s view, but even so, it still exists there as faith and as consciousness. So yes, it’s not every time that someone says, listen, I have an intuition that the Holy One, blessed be He, was really with me—then He really was with me. Fine? I can isolate that, I can somehow qualify it, because people say the same thing about idolatry too, and people who do terrible things can also say the same thing. So I can qualify those statements, but in general the idea of God being present here, which people perceive, seems to me to be a good thing—just like people having a greater awareness of their own free will. So I think that kind of closes the picture: there is free will, and therefore there is the possibility of randomness. Our own free will is also really very slight, and on this I agree; it’s ninety-nine point nine, I don’t know what, maybe more than that—most of what we do is without free will, it’s automatic. But our consciousness causes it to happen. And we believe that through free will I can change part of reality, certainly not all of it. The same is true regarding providence: there is an involvement here that can save me, pull me out of these equations—but not in the sense of going against nature, rather through nature, in a way that can play with the probabilities a bit, in a way I don’t fully understand.
[Speaker A] So the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, plays with probabilities—do you consider that divine intervention? Yes. I understand. So Rabbi Michael Abraham would say that from that perspective this is basically a miracle, because every intervention…
[Speaker C] No, a miracle—we need to define what that is.
[Speaker A] Okay, I’ll let Rabbi Michael Abraham
[Speaker C] say it, but I’ll speak with him. A miracle, according to the definition I understand, is something I cannot explain by the laws of nature. That’s all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so if that’s the case, then it’s actually good that you got into this, because I completely disagree with that definition. But before that, I’ll note that it seems to me there are quite a few points we didn’t mention, and I think they all sit on one chain: the distinction between epistemology and ontology.
[Speaker A] Now those are foreign words that need to be explained.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, and ontology is the theory of being. Meaning, the question of what I know about the world—that’s what epistemology deals with. And what exists in the world—that’s what ontology deals with. And it’s not always the same thing, because our knowledge does not necessarily know what is happening.
[Speaker C] But now it seems to me—and I think we both agree—that about ontology we can’t really say anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I think we can say something—but wait, I need to sharpen that further. But I specifically want to use the example you brought about the sick person. Let’s say we said he had a three percent chance to recover, and the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened and turned it into ten percent. To me, that’s an evasion. I’ll tell you why. Because at the end of the day, what would have happened to him if the Holy One, blessed be He, had not intervened? We don’t know. Wait, I know that, of course—but I’m asking at the hypothetical level. What we know—epistemology, our knowledge—is that we know he has a three percent chance of recovering. But statistics or probability describe our state of knowledge; they do not describe the world. In the world itself, this person either would recover or would not recover—one of the two, right? It’s just that we don’t know, so we say he has a three percent chance across many cases. But this particular person, if we had waited and the Holy One, blessed be He, had not intervened and nothing had happened to him, one of two things would have happened: either he would have recovered or he would not have recovered. Now if the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened and changed the probabilities—“changing the probabilities” is just wordplay, because what you really mean in the end is that if I had waited without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, this person would have died. And now I might think there’s a three percent chance he would recover, fine, but in the end it would turn out that he was among the ninety-seven percent who die. And now the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened and caused him to be among the three percent who remain alive. Which means that in fact the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened bluntly in the laws of nature—not statistically. He intervened deterministically, because this person was supposed to die, and the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, caused him to live. The statistics that change from three percent to ten percent—that’s in epistemology, meaning, when we look at what’s happening there, we don’t know how to predict what will happen with this person, so we say that in three percent of cases he will recover. And we estimate that in three percent of cases he will recover. But that’s just words, because in the end, if the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened, then He changed the laws of nature here in a deterministic way, not a statistical one. The statistics are with us. And therefore this is a very important point, because I think quite a few of the things I disagreed with in what you said lie at exactly this point.
[Speaker C] Okay, so the question really is—I think the models I’m drawing on here come from quantum theory. Meaning, it’s not just that we don’t know; it’s not something that’s simply A or B, or I don’t know what. Some of this uncertainty is part of reality itself. It’s not just that I don’t know; there is real indeterminacy here. The difference between me, between the position I’m presenting, and the position you’re presenting, is that you also agree to this in the quantum domain—you just say it’s in the microscopic domain. And I’m saying there is a possibility that the microscopic domain spills over into the macroscopic domain. That’s the whole difference. That’s all. And I’m not claiming—by the way, I’m not claiming—I think there are studies on this—but what I want to say is that there is a possibility that this happens; it is not impossible for there to be a transition from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Just as it is not impossible that a person has free will. As long as I don’t know otherwise—if I did know otherwise, I think if there were complete, absolute certainty, I think logic and truth would force the conclusion that there is no providence. I think I’m saying something—I think I read this in your writings as well, and I think it’s in Guide for the Perplexed—it’s also a misunderstanding of both Spinoza’s reading of Maimonides and something I also saw in your writings. Maimonides says in Guide for the Perplexed, Part II, Chapter 25, that it is possible to change the meanings and the interpretation of the Torah according to research findings. But there is a limit. I think it’s fairly clear from Maimonides there, if you read the chapter, that if Aristotle had had a proof that the world was not created, then there would be no way to reconcile the Torah with that view. Meaning, in my opinion Maimonides would have yielded. What can you do? There’s a limit to how far interpretation can be stretched. Yes, so I think that if there really were proof—not just that such a thing can’t happen, but that such a transition truly cannot occur—I think that would be a major question. But as long as that possibility remains, then I think there is room here, a possibility, and that space is the space of our faith. Exactly like with free will. If there were absolute proof that we have no free will, I think we wouldn’t be here in that sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll say two things here about quantum theory, because indeed quantum theory has a unique phenomenon in which the statistics are not epistemic but ontological. Meaning, the uncertainty, or vagueness, or probability—whatever we call it, freedom—it is not freedom because of our lack of knowledge, but freedom in reality itself. At least that is the accepted interpretation; there are disputes about this. That is the accepted interpretation. But I want to argue, precisely in this context, two things. First of all, I want to return to the example of the sick person and insist on it. Let’s say quantum theory also governs people’s recovery and illness. It doesn’t, but let’s assume it does, okay? Because you claimed that this is a possible mechanism. Okay, I claim it’s not, but let’s assume it is, okay? I will still ask you: what would have happened if the Holy One, blessed be He, had not intervened?
[Speaker C] Either he would have recovered.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said maybe. Not “maybe”—I’m asking hypothetically. Meaning, in the hypothetical case where you say there is involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, without violating the laws of nature, right? That’s really your claim. Now I ask: what would actually have happened to that person—not statistics, not probability, nothing. What would actually have happened to him if the Holy One, blessed be He, had not intervened?
[Speaker C] Either he would have recovered
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] or he would not have recovered. If he would have recovered, then you don’t need the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He; then the Holy One, blessed be He, can refrain from intervening and he would recover. I’m saying that this means the person would have died without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, and because of the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, he lived. By definition, right?
[Speaker C] Now if that’s the situation, in the end when you compress it to yes or no, I’m saying it may be—again, I’m saying there is a certain space of randomness here in which I can’t tell you yes or no. Meaning, it may be that a person—let me try to phrase it this way perhaps—in Maimonides’ view it’s much simpler. The fact that he is righteous raises this possibility, and then maybe it crosses a certain threshold—but again it’s some probabilistic threshold, and I’m deliberately speaking in this probabilistic language, because that language helps me model it much more, much more…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s exactly why I want to insist with the sick person, because I think it’s a good example for sharpening the positions. In the end, I’m asking: give me a scenario in which the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes within the framework of the laws of nature, including quantum mechanics. Fine? Give me such a scenario where, again, it’s clear that I can’t know what would have happened to this patient with or without the Holy One, blessed be He, because it’s statistical. But I can’t know that—that’s not my question. I’m asking for a principled scenario, ontological, not epistemic. Meaning: what would have happened to this person without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, and what happened as a result of the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He? If you say that without—and I’ll sharpen why I’m asking—
[Speaker C] No, no, I understand the question. I think I understand it very well. Give me—and I’ll return the question to you—give me a scenario where from the outside you can decide regarding free will.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I can’t. I’m not asking an outside question. We’ll never know this, I completely agree. That’s not the point. I’m asking a question about what really happens—not about epistemology, not about how I see it. Give me a hypothetical scenario—none of us will ever know that it’s this scenario—but tell me, describe to me what, in your view, could happen there without any of us knowing, that would describe a situation in which the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened without violating the laws of nature.
[Speaker C] When, for example, there is someone who is sick, or someone drowning at sea, or whatever it may be,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and a wave
[Speaker C] of the water could drown him. Okay. The fluctuations of the wave.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not what the wave did, not what it could do. What would have happened to him if the Holy One, blessed be He, were not involved? Would he drown or not?
[Speaker C] It’s possible.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not “it’s possible.” I’m asking what happens in the hypothetical case. Don’t tell me what you know; I don’t know either, obviously. We can’t know.
[Speaker C] But I can’t. You’re forcing it into some framework that I reject—that’s exactly what I reject. There are four possibilities.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are four possibilities. Quantum theory and the view.
[Speaker C] Wait—in the quantum view you agree that there is. I think our disagreement is about moving the quantum view from micro to macro.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no, no, no. I’m talking about quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics governs the person’s recovery. Let’s accept that for the sake of discussion. Fine? Completely. Everything behaves according to quantum mechanics. Now I ask: there are four possibilities. There aren’t more than four, only four. One possibility: that this patient would die without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He. Yes. And then the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened and he lived. That’s one possibility. Second possibility: this person would die, and the Holy One, blessed be He, did not intervene, of course—because if He intervened, what would be the point?—and he still died. Third possibility: this person would live, the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened, and he died. Fourth possibility: he would live, the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened, and he lived. Now, live and live, die and die—that’s not involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, right? We agreed. There are two possibilities left to describe involvement: either he would have died and the Holy One, blessed be He, made him live, or the reverse. Now, in both of those cases, it means that in the natural course A would have happened, and after the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, B happens. Which means the laws of nature were violated. QED.
[Speaker C] No, I think the definition—I think when you… First of all, that’s a good question. That’s a good question. Here I enter into the probability of live-and-live, which I think can also exist. Meaning, it depends how he lives and how he…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Leave it, leave it. Let’s talk in binary states: alive or dead. He can live better, less well—then I’ll build the question around that. What would have happened, how well would he have lived without the Holy One, blessed be He, and how well does he live with Him—that changes nothing. Let’s talk about the binary problem.
[Speaker C] So I’m saying that there may be, there may be a situation in which he was supposed to die and he died, and there is still providence.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—what do you mean by providence? Involvement. Leave providence aside. Involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He. Did the Holy One, blessed be He, intervene there?
[Speaker C] I said: it may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not intervene there, and there is still providence.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m looking for a case where He did intervene and the laws of nature were not violated. That’s our discussion.
[Speaker C] Our discussion—our discussion is about the concept of providence. Meaning, there may be providence here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? What is it if not the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world?
[Speaker C] So let’s change the word. No, no, no—there is involvement, there is involvement, but providence is not measured only by whether in the end the person dies or doesn’t die. I—leave that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s not talk about providence; let’s talk about involvement.
[Speaker C] The involvement, if you want—even if you want—the involvement of God in the world is not measured only by whether in the end he dies or not. Meaning, it may be—and this is also one model of involvement—that the person dies, but okay, there was still involvement, there is something that remains after death.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What changed? What changed as a result of the involvement?
[Speaker C] What changed is—it’s the part that today we’d call his consciousness or I don’t know what. His consciousness changed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Did something in reality change? What? Did something in reality change as a result of the involvement?
[Speaker C] Something in reality that I measure did not change; something in reality that I do not measure did change.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And now I’m asking about the reality
[Speaker C] that you don’t measure. Yes. Did something change in that reality?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. And without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, that would not have
[Speaker C] happened? Without the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, that would not have happened, because in the sense…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good, so you’re saying the laws of
[Speaker C] nature were violated.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s what I’m saying.
[Speaker C] Right. But he’s saying—I have no problem with there being domains in which the laws of nature are not the only laws we know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. That’s why I’m saying: I’m not arguing right now about the question of whether the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes or not. If He violates the laws of nature and intervenes, that’s one claim—we’ll discuss that separately.
[Speaker C] Not right now—but there is no violation there of the laws of nature. In what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because one thing would have happened, and as a result of the involvement something else happened.
[Speaker C] Wait a second—there is—we can both agree that there are two sets, two systems of laws. One is the laws of nature, which we measure, we know, and so on. Fine? There are additional mechanisms—they are not measurable in the sense that the laws of nature are—mechanisms of consciousness, mechanisms—I won’t speak to you here about…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What difference does it make? Make up whatever mechanisms you want. I’m asking what would happen without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, and what happens after the involvement. If it’s the same thing, then there is no involvement. If it’s not the same thing, then the laws of nature were violated. There is no third possibility. That’s it.
[Speaker C] I don’t—I don’t understand. I have to challenge that point. Okay. A person was—let’s say—at a certain level of consciousness or connection to the Holy One, blessed be He—let’s not call it that, let’s not get into names now—a connection with the Holy One, blessed be He, in some sense, okay? He prayed very, very intensely; that connection increased, okay? The Holy One, blessed be He, bestowed good upon him—I don’t know what—in some connection, on this wavelength, this wavelength that existed between them, which I cannot measure and so on. In the end the person died. Fine? But there was—there is something there which I believe is there in the relationship of the person with the Holy One, blessed be He, and it is something that remains after death. The Holy One, blessed be He, intervened in that. He did not intervene in the laws of nature, but He intervened in other mechanisms of providence or of another kind of involvement that I cannot measure and cannot refute.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re circling around this point. I’m asking whether something different would happen with and without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He. I don’t care about death and life.
[Speaker C] Yes, yes, something different would happen—not at the level of the laws of nature.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what is “something different”? The laws of nature determine the result.
[Speaker C] I believe that a person has a relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He, in some kind of way that is not just a physical relationship.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not a physical relationship, fine, I don’t care.
[Speaker C] So I’m saying, this relationship—I can’t measure it—I…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not asking about measuring it either. No, that’s not the point. Maybe I’m not explaining myself properly. All these things, I’m willing to accept for the sake of the discussion—it doesn’t matter. I’m asking a question. Our disagreement is not about whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved—that’s a different question. Our question is whether the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, necessarily violates the laws of nature. Meaning, if He intervenes and violates the laws of nature, for the sake of this discussion here I agree. I’m asking whether involvement is possible without violating the laws of nature. My claim is that such a thing is impossible, and he says yes.
[Speaker C] Yes, I said—it’s like Maimonides says—there are two systems of laws here. There is a system of the laws of nature…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, these mechanisms don’t help, because I’m asking what would have happened without the Holy One, blessed be He, intervening.
[Speaker C] So wait, I just want to formulate the definitions. There is a system of the laws of nature. There is a system of laws of intellect, let’s call it that, okay? That intellect is my relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He, and so on. The Holy One, blessed be He, can act within that system, which is not within the system of the laws of nature.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s why I’m saying—it doesn’t matter to me at all how He acts. Let Him act against the laws of nature. I’m asking a simple question.
[Speaker C] And where is the contradiction? I still don’t understand where the contradiction is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll try, I’ll try once again to clarify. I’m not sure I’m succeeding in making it clear. If I claim this: if the person were to continue without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, X would happen. Yes. And involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, means that Y happens—I don’t care what Y is: dead versus alive, living better versus living less well, more connected to the Holy One, blessed be He, versus less connected to the Holy One, blessed be He. For me all of that is the same thing. Right. But if something happened other than what would have happened according to the laws of nature—then what should have happened according to the laws of nature did not happen; something else happened. So that means there was a violation of the laws of nature. That’s all.
[Speaker C] Meaning, no, I don’t think the conclusion follows from what you’re saying. Meaning, a person prayed, was very sick, died. Fine?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no intervention in the laws of nature here. Okay. There is—
[Speaker C] here intervention in the person’s standing, and we believe there is something here…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but that’s something else—standing—I have no problem with that.
[Speaker C] But that is the level—I’m not saying it’s a high standing, obviously—but that is the level I’m talking about, as an additional level beyond the laws of nature.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no—you spoke about changing the percentages of the patient’s recovery, which is why I’m in this discussion. Changing the percentages of the patient’s recovery means there are practical results here—meaning the patient recovers, whereas he would not have recovered without it. So I’m not talking about the question whether I become righteous as a result of having prayed—that’s obvious; that’s not called divine involvement.
[Speaker C] No, it is. I believe there is some kind of addition here. There are two models here, and I think you’re ignoring them. The involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, can be in the physical realm, and it can also be outside the physical realm.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s talk about the patient. You spoke about the patient—let’s talk about the patient.
[Speaker C] Yes, this patient. This patient has his own system of intellect, his consciousness, and so on and so forth, and he has a medical system. It may be, it may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, will act within his medical and physical system and the patient will be saved. That is one type of providence, one type of involvement. There is a second kind of involvement: the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene now on his physical level—the patient will die, He does not intervene on his physical level—but He intervened on another level,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] on the level
[Speaker C] of his consciousness, of his connection with the Holy One, blessed be He, which we believe is there. I…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, I have no idea how to handle those things. I’m not even sure I understand what they mean. I’m talking about the first part. The first part you said…
[Speaker C] There is a model—wait a second, wait a second—maybe let’s go back a bit. There is a model, and Maimonides is there as well in Guide for the Perplexed. This is, say, the model of Job, okay? Maimonides says: in the end, Job suffers terribly. He suffers physically, he suffers, his children die, all his possessions are lost, and so on and so forth, and he does not understand that the greatest thing he had was not lost. His consciousness was not lost. There can be such a model, and it may be because of that that people thought Maimonides held that there is no physical providence. Yes, when Maimonides presents that model, he presents a model in which everything collapses—everything physical, all the physiology, all the materiality collapses before his eyes—and yet something remains in his soul. So there is also that model, which exists.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I insist on returning to the example we were dealing with at the beginning, which you raised. There is a patient. He has a three percent chance of being saved. Right. As a result of the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, it rises to ten percent. Okay. Now I’m talking about that. Alive or dead. Okay. Can that happen without violating the laws of nature, including quantum theory?
[Speaker C] I think so.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How? If without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, the patient would die, and as a result of the involvement he lives, then something in the laws of nature changed. I don’t understand how one can argue with that.
[Speaker C] First, I can—and I believe there can be deviations from the laws of nature.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, deviations are fine—we have no argument there.
[Speaker C] If there are deviations… then fine, so where is our disagreement? There can be deviations—if you agree that there can be deviations from the laws of nature…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m willing to agree to everything; that’s why this is not the discussion. My discussion is the question whether one must assume that there was a deviation from the laws of nature in this case. If we agree that yes, then we agree. Our disagreement is over whether there can be a case in which there is no deviation from the laws of nature and nevertheless the percentage rises—the percentage of recovery rises. That was the disagreement. If we agree on that, then fine, then we agree.
[Speaker C] So first, we agree that there can be deviations and that they can be explained this way. Wait a second, a second—and here comes in the first thing I said. I can say that this is a deviation, but it may be that one day we will be able to define it as—part of the laws of nature.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, because if it were part of the laws of nature, then it would happen even without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He. It has nothing to do with the question of what our knowledge today is about the laws of nature. I’m talking about the laws of nature as they really are, not as we know them. So it doesn’t matter if we discover in the future—then we’ll simply discover that it wasn’t a miracle, but that he would have recovered on his own as well. Fine. I’m talking about the hypothetical question, not the question of what we know—not the epistemic question, but the ontic, metaphysical question. What really would have happened without involvement, and what will happen as a result of involvement. And in that context I cannot see, logically—it has nothing at all to do with knowledge of reality or anything—I cannot see at the logical level how quantum theory changes anything regarding the question of whether the laws of nature were violated here. In my opinion they were violated categorically.
[Speaker C] I think we could talk here about the laws of quantum mechanics, but I don’t think the public and the audience…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It has nothing to do with the laws of quantum mechanics at all—we don’t need to talk about the laws of quantum mechanics. No, because my second remark was supposed to be—I haven’t gotten to it yet—that even if you accept quantum laws, where the Holy One, blessed be He, changes the quantum statistics, that too is an intervention in the laws of nature. Since the Schrödinger equation determines the distribution of probabilities, and if the Holy One, blessed be He, now does something on His own initiative, intentionally, not as a lottery, then that is a violation of the laws of nature in every sense. It is a violation of the statistical laws of nature. But the previous argument—that was my second remark—but the argument until now was about the first remark. Leave it; you don’t need to know anything about quantum theory. All you need to know is that without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, this patient would have died, and with the involvement he lived, and it makes absolutely no difference what governs the matter—whether quantum theory or macroscopic medicine, it changes nothing. The very fact that this is the situation means that the laws of nature were violated.
[Speaker C] Fine, I don’t think so, but I think this is already a disagreement that reaches a point where we really do need to return to quantum theory and talk about probabilities and Schrödinger’s cat and so on, and I’d be happy to do that. But I think that in the present framework—I just want to say, I just want to summarize the following. There may be, there may be this transition in which we do not know—even within quantum theory, if you want, we also do not know the models completely—and within that model there is a probability that this will happen, there is a probability that this will happen, and there is a probability that it will not happen, and still that does not break the laws of nature for me, and it still allows for something else. Meaning, there is a probability that this person will not live, and there was involvement—there was involvement whether in the spiritual dimension or whatever, or even within the physical dimension, but I think that is already a physics discussion that I think can be had, but perhaps I think we’ll do it in another framework or later.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, fine. Good, we can move on.
[Speaker A] Or wait, let me summarize for a second what you don’t agree on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, I’m not fully clear—I haven’t sharpened it for myself completely—what exactly we disagree about, but it seems to me, if I understood correctly, that Rabbi Yochai claims that there can be a case—and I’m talking about this, not about spiritual changes and not at all about the laws of quantum theory—there can be a case, whether through the laws of quantum theory or not, there can be a case in which a patient would die without involvement, and with involvement he would live, and no law of nature was violated. That seems to me, if I understood correctly, to be the position Rabbi Yochai presented. I claim that such a thing is impossible. The percentages can rise to ten percent, no problem, but only if laws of nature were violated. Meaning, it cannot happen without a violation of the laws of nature, and my claim is that quantum theory changes nothing about this.
[Speaker C] I think there is—wait a second, wait a second—I think there is a point here that returns now to randomness and so on and so forth. Your assumption says that the laws of nature were already fixed in advance—that’s the idea of “the Lord has forsaken the earth,” the laws of nature were fixed in advance. No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With quantum theory I agree with you—there are lotteries, it is not fixed in advance.
[Speaker C] No, no, I’m saying there is the basis of the assumption I use, and I think maybe that is one of the differences. Were the laws of nature fixed in advance—the laws themselves fixed in advance—or, as I think, the Holy One, blessed be He, continuously gives life to the laws of nature or sustains them all the time. And therefore our grasp of the law is not—meaning, I believe the laws of nature exist at every moment; it’s not that a law of nature was fixed in advance and that’s it, but rather the laws of nature continue to exist all the time. The Holy One, blessed be He, really—I…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m willing to accept either formulation; in my view there is no difference at all. For our purposes there is no difference at all. Meaning, if the laws of nature are described by the Schrödinger equation, I don’t care whether the Holy One, blessed be He, continuously gives life to the Schrödinger equation all the time, or whether He created the world with the Schrödinger equation and let it run on its own. It still has to operate according to that equation. Suppose so. Fine.
[Speaker C] That’s fine—this is a purely theoretical disagreement. We can leave it, fine, we can leave it that way, it…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t mind arguing with you about that.
[Speaker C] But the question is whether in the end we believe there is providence—that the Holy One, blessed be He, saves the Jewish people, or can save a person, even not through nature.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so that’s already a different question. So we have indeed moved here to a second question. Until now we were dealing with the question of whether there can be involvement within the framework of the laws of nature—that is, without violating the laws of nature. Now you are asking a second question. The second question is: okay, let’s say—at least according to my view—that this cannot be, that there is no involvement without violating the laws of nature. There is still room to ask whether this in fact happens. Meaning, does the Holy One, blessed be He, indeed intervene and violate the laws of nature? But does it happen? Okay, that’s a second question, unrelated to the first. Fine? Now, I said earlier—what is the position?
[Speaker C] Do we have a dispute over whether there can be deviations from the laws of nature in which God saves the Jewish people, or not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying—we spoke about this in the preliminary conversation—this is what I also said to Yiraam, that I’m not sure we’ll find a disagreement between us on this matter. Because as I said, there can be sporadic cases in which the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved. How can I know that He is not involved at some place and time where no one saw and I have no way of ruling it out? It would be very dogmatic in a scientistic direction. Meaning, no—I’m not dogmatic, not this way and not that. What I do think is that we have no indication whatsoever that this is happening anywhere. Meaning, we cannot know that it is happening.
[Speaker C] It may be happening,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can’t rule it out.
[Speaker C] Like free will?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct.
[Speaker C] Okay, moving on.
[Speaker A] But I want to sharpen something here. There is a difference. Because when Rabbi Michael Abraham says “I don’t know,” his starting point is that it isn’t so—unless you prove to me that it is. Whereas for Rabbi Yochai—really for most religious people—the starting point is that the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes. We don’t always know when, but basically if there are various things that seem to me illogical or a bit outside the statistical range—like the existence of the Jewish people, the establishment of the State—some people will say the coronavirus, I don’t know, various things—there I would say yes, the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened. In other words, because we were educated this way, or for various reasons, they will say—and again, for Rabbi Michael Abraham it’s no, prove it to me. You need to come prove to me that there was intervention, because I see reality living and existing without all these things, so why do I need to bring in some variable that you claim exists here? I’m speaking for the Rabbi correctly? Prove to me that there was intervention. So there is a real issue here of how I perceive reality and the world—intervening or not intervening. I accept that formulation, I completely accept that remark.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I completely accept it. Meaning, I think that really is true—I understand that there will be disagreement between us on this point. But even Rabbi Yochai says that in fact involvement is very rare, so I’m not exactly—I’m not actually sure that he is generating the second position you described. I generate the first one, that’s clear. I’m not sure Rabbi Yochai generates the second, but the common view does generate the second.
[Speaker A] He’s not a classic representative of the second, because for example regarding the disaster at Meron, Rabbi Yochai did say: what do you want, you didn’t follow instructions—I’m saying this in my own words—you don’t need to look for some punishment from Heaven; you didn’t follow the safety instructions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I said—that I’m not sure there is a disagreement between us on this matter.
[Speaker A] I didn’t say he’s the opposite extreme, but there is still some space between you, where Rabbi Yochai will say the establishment of the state is a miracle, the Jewish people live miraculously.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But how does that follow from the view? That’s why I’m saying—it’s a quantitative question that is hard to decide, and neither of us will be able to establish it. Fine, so you think yes, I think no. We both agree there’s no way to really know this, because there are alternative explanations. Fine, so we’ll remain—
[Speaker C] There’s the story that you
[Speaker A] bring
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] in the book, that you were in some place.
[Speaker C] I think—wait—I want to sharpen this, because it really is a point. I’m really not in the camp that thinks every leaf and so on, and certainly not every disaster—a disaster needs that kind of reading. Rather, rescue—rescue for us, or our deliverance—we really can, exactly like in the analogy, exactly like one can escape from the deterministic natural mechanism, the mechanical one if you like, of the human being through free will, one can also get out of that mechanical mechanism, if you like, through the free will of the Holy One, blessed be He. Fine? Agreed. Good, then we agree, no problem.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the question is whether it happens and how often it happens, but we agree.
[Speaker C] I agree that it happens, that it is not common—that’s certainly true, it’s an exception—but I think it is essential, exactly as free will is essential. Meaning, my statement is that I can be rescued from an impossible reality, an almost impossible one, or a statistically impossible one, or whatever—in practice, that’s what I… because free will too, in the end, as Einstein wrote, God does not play dice. With free will too you can say, listen, this reality really is entirely statistical, and yet we still say there is some intended intention here, or something like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, when it comes to free choice, the way I look at it is like what Schopenhauer said about Kant. Kant made a distinction between things-in-themselves and things as I perceive them. The first is the noumenon, the second is the phenomenon. And Schopenhauer remarked that there is one place where we do have some kind of direct access to the noumenon, to the thing-in-itself, and that is when we look inward. Right. When we look inward, we grasp ourselves from the inside, not from the outside. Not how it appears outwardly, but the thing itself. In that sense there is a difference; for purposes of diagnosis there is a difference. In terms of the logic, I agree that it’s the same thing, but in terms of diagnosis there is a difference. My concern is that with free choice, we do have a way of knowing whether and when we chose freely. We can be mistaken, it’s not certain, but we do have the possibility of making a claim about that. As for involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in my opinion we do not. You can say He intervened and I’ll say He didn’t, but we have no way to point to it, to ascertain that this is really so, because there we’re talking about something outside us.
[Speaker C] Certainly, certainly. This is an important point, and I want to sharpen it and continue from there. I can never know whether someone loves me. I can know that I love someone else. But we live in a world in which we sense, we feel. Yes, someone can tell me, listen, maybe that’s a completely mistaken intuition; maybe you think you’re loved and you think your wife loves you, but really it’s all a complete fiction. I can’t prove him wrong. But I think the fact that we think we are loved—and exactly similarly, I’m not saying with certainty, you can’t prove that certainty—but that fact affects our identity, affects who we are, just as the recognition that there is providence affects us. I think that connects very, very strongly with this, and it’s… there is admittedly some crossing of a bridge here, but it is definitely there in terms of my identity, in terms of my consciousness that there is providence. Of course I can’t—I’m saying, people use this providence in a very inflated way, way too much, and I think it really is special and sharp and sparse and elusive—but I think it exists, and there is something deep there in my identity, even if I can’t prove it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll suggest a qualification that I think we may be able to agree on. When something statistically surprising happens to a person, or something like that, and he comes to the conclusion that it was a miracle or divine involvement, that can come in two forms. He can say to me: I feel in my intuition that there was divine involvement here; I smell the Holy One, blessed be He, so to speak, metaphorically. Meaning: I have an immediate sense that He was here. That’s one claim. About that claim, I’m suspicious of it, but I can’t argue with it. Meaning, there are things that we have intuition about, as you said—someone loves me—I have an intuition, even though I don’t know how to prove it or point to any evidence for it. There are indications, but maybe he’s just playing a game. So if someone says to me, look, I have an immediate feeling that the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved here, I’ll agree with you at least for the sake of the discussion. Meaning, I don’t really believe him, but I can’t know; maybe a person does have such an intuition, and even if I don’t, he does. Okay. But many times people draw that conclusion only because of the statistical wonder in reality. That’s a subtle difference, but a significant one. Meaning, the person says: look, something happened here that had a 99% chance not to happen, and therefore apparently the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved. He’s not saying: look, I have an immediate sense that the Holy One, blessed be He, is here, because with that I don’t know how to argue. But if he says: look, something happened here that is so improbable that it proves the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He—then I do argue with that. Because… because, as they often say in the yeshivas, when the Rosh—one of the great medieval authorities (Rishonim)—would make a certain claim, he has evidence from here, evidence from there, you can argue with him. He has evidence from here, maybe good evidence, maybe you have other evidence. But when the Rosh says, “it seems to me,” yes, “it seems to me that this is so,” then no one has any room to argue. Meaning, his intuition is entirely what that statement rests on. By analogy, I want to say the same here. It is very hard for me to argue with someone who says, look, I have an immediate intuition that the Holy One, blessed be He, is here; I have some sense of smell that you don’t have. That’s what he’s saying to me, yes. Fine, I don’t know—how can I know? Maybe he does have it. I can’t deny such a thing. I don’t have it, but fine. But if he says: look, this is not a matter of a sense of smell, I have evidence. Here, look—this is the statistical calculation; something happened with a ninety-nine percent chance that it could not have happened; therefore I have proof that the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved—then I do argue with that. Because in most cases where people bring this kind of statistic, first, rare things can happen too; second, very often there is a mistake in the calculation because many people simply lack statistical skill. So maybe on that we can agree—on the distinction between these two situations.
[Speaker C] We can agree, but there’s another point here, which is where it takes the person. Meaning: do I recognize the… I look at it this way—when I hear stories like this left and right, yes? Some of them provoke an inner laugh in me. Really? That’s what made you keep the Sabbath, or whatever? It really sounds completely delusional. But fine—the question is where he takes it. I recognize in him something else; I recognize in him the consciousness or the desire to find and make present the Holy One, blessed be He, in his life. All right? In my eyes that has very, very great value. Therefore, if this really is nonsense that causes him to do some other nonsense, then I’ll tell him, listen, this really is complete delusion and… But if this nonsense causes him to make that presence more real in better ways, fine—I can’t, after all, I can’t pull him out of that story. He says, listen, I don’t know, it just so happened that I put the prayer book in my bag, took it with me, and was on my way to synagogue, and nothing happened to me. Fine, so okay—if that strengthens you to go to synagogue, I appreciate it. Yes? It may be complete, utter nonsense. Because lots of people went to synagogue and it didn’t save them from anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s an educational question, not a philosophical one.
[Speaker C] Yes, exactly, exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Educationally, maybe—I can perhaps… I don’t agree, but that’s not the discussion. I’m discussing the question of what is true, not how to educate people, whether to endorse their lies or their mistakes or not endorse them. By the way, I love truth very much, for all kinds of reasons. I think falsehood does not endure. And if reverence for Heaven is based on a foolish view, I will oppose it despite its positive results. But here this really is an educational disagreement.
[Speaker C] I think that’s true when it really is complete nonsense and some threshold of—I don’t know what. Because if a person tells me, listen, because I went to synagogue—well, that’s not true, yes? But going to synagogue adds something, and so on, to the overall accumulation—then I think yes, that’s certainly not the statistics. I agree completely. Yes, definitely on that point. Well, that’s the…
[Speaker A] So wait, I want to lead to another practical implication that we haven’t talked about. Meaning, you’re saying there aren’t such differences, but beyond that—and on this I still haven’t really gotten an answer—meaning, is the establishment of the State a miracle according to Rabbi Michael Abraham or… I mean, I assume the rabbi might say no, or that it can’t be ruled out, but the burden of proof is on the one who says that the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened, right? And Rabbi Yohai Makbili would say it’s a miracle. There’s also an implication for the world of prayer, and you talked about that right at the beginning. Meaning, if the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene, what is the point of praying? So indeed Rabbi Michael Abraham writes in his book that he isn’t sure there is a point in praying. Meaning, there is a practical implication to this view, and here I really do think there is a consequential gap between you, what’s called a practical difference. And Rabbi Yohai Makbili says, I assume, yes? Of course you should pray, you should pray and there’s a chance—so let’s talk about that for a second, because it’s not that there’s nothing there. The gap may be small, but its implication is very, very large, for example regarding prayer, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think the gap is still small. Let me clarify my position, because I think mine is the trickier one here. Meaning, first of all, in the context of prayer I have to distinguish between the different types of prayer. There is thanksgiving, there is praise, there is… right.
[Speaker A] I mean prayer where I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, not where I praise Him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: as for praising the Holy One, blessed be He, I have no problem with that—not because I think that something He did here, He produced right now with His own hands, but because He created the world and these are His laws, and this thing came into being, I praise Him for creating the world with such laws. I can even thank Him—even thanksgiving, where ostensibly some miracle happened to me, I don’t know, something happened to me and I thank the Holy One, blessed be He—even there I have no problem with it, because I thank Him for creating a world in which such a thing can happen. Now, it happened according to the laws of nature, but the one who created the laws of nature is the Holy One, blessed be He. Why do I do this only when a so-called miracle happens to me—which I don’t think is a miracle, but why? Simply because human nature is to awaken in those moments. So at those moments it is a good opportunity to thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for what I really should have thanked Him for all along—for “Your miracles that are with us every day.” But fine, that’s just human nature.
[Speaker A] The problem here is there’s a bit of an educational aspect—meaning, since the person was awakened specifically in those situations, then there is some small educational dimension here, fair enough.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The big problem is requests, because in requests it’s obviously not the case that I’m asking the Holy One, blessed be He, to now create laws of nature such that in a moment I’ll be healed. He already created the laws of nature, meaning what will come out will come out. In my picture, asking has no point. But here I need to say a few things. First of all, as I said, sporadic interventions can happen. Now the question is of proportions and so forth; these are quantitative questions, but sporadic interventions can happen. I cannot rule that out. If I could be convinced that such a thing never happens, I would not make requests in prayer. I would not make requests in prayer, because even if I had to—I can’t commit falsehood within myself. I can move my lips, but lip movement is not prayer. Prayer is lip movement accompanied by a cognitive process, and I cannot ask the Holy One, blessed be He, if I have no doubt that He does not answer and the request has no meaning. Since I’m not sure—because after all I cannot rule out sporadic involvement—therefore I do continue also with requests. But I minimize them to the bare minimum required. Meaning, the obligatory prayers, I say them. Usually I don’t intend to ask for myself; I intend to ask for someone who is in a situation with no natural way out. Maybe the Holy One, blessed be He, will answer—God willing. If He won’t answer, apparently He won’t answer, but I don’t know. If He won’t answer, then no. Therefore I won’t add requests beyond what I am obligated to say. Again, I haven’t been in a situation where I had lost all hope and so on; I don’t know what I would actually do there, but you’re asking me what in principle I think one should do. I don’t see much point in praying beyond what is required, but you know—since divine involvement is possible in principle—fine, at least where there is no natural solution. If I have a natural solution, I don’t pray.
[Speaker A] So that means that if someone is sick and people say, say Psalms for him—which isn’t part of any obligation or anything—you wouldn’t say Psalms? No, no. But you’re saying you wouldn’t, because the chance that the Holy One, blessed be He, will intervene here is so low, because He almost never intervenes?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because I would feel I was being false within myself.
[Speaker A] But you say there is a small chance that He would intervene.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I’m saying: if it were something like—the State of Israel, the hostages—not even the whole State of Israel, fine? They are facing certain death, and we have no way, let’s say for the sake of discussion, yes? We have no way to help them or do anything about it. Maybe there I would pray, since, fine, maybe there is some sporadic involvement there, yes. Any situation where there is some natural way to handle it—I feel I am being false within myself if I pray, even though theoretically I still could pray: maybe here the chance would rise by an epsilon. Fine, maybe. I don’t know.
[Speaker A] And maybe the Holy One, blessed be He, will put into the prime minister’s head—I don’t know—to carry out some daring operation, or enter the terrorist’s mind for a second, I have no idea.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, that too is intervention in nature. So fine, indeed.
[Speaker A] So why not pray for that small chance that maybe He’ll intervene in his mind and do something to the terrorist?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, there may also be a small chance that He will stop the law of gravity. Why do you need to enter the terrorist’s mind? After all, once the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved in the world—and this is another point I wanted to say to Rabbi Yohai earlier—therefore I asked him in what sense he understands choice: whether this is an analogy, or whether through human choice the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes, because that would essentially be a non-deterministic part of nature. I want to argue that if it’s the second sense, then I disagree. Because when the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes through a person’s choices, that is intervention in nature in every respect; it’s just that nature also includes human choices. If the person would have chosen X and the Holy One, blessed be He, causes him to choose Y, that is, to me, exactly the same as if the law of gravity would cause something to fall and the Holy One, blessed be He, stops it and doesn’t let it fall. I see no difference between involvement in a person’s choice and involvement in a law of nature. It’s just involvement, like in quantum mechanics—changing the statistics or changing the choice, whatever it may be—that is intervention in every sense. So if you want to tell me there is a chance of involvement, then forget human choices, don’t bring into it whether He’ll put something into Bibi’s head or into Sinwar’s head or whoever—no. Let Him stop things, let Him bring down the walls of the house, let those guys escape, and strike all their guards with blindness. Fine, that too is a kind of involvement that could happen.
[Speaker A] Actually I hadn’t thought about it that way. When you present it like that—whether it sounds delusional or not delusional—there’s almost no chance I’d pray for such a thing. It’s the same thing, I hadn’t thought of it that way. Rabbi Yohai, what do you say to that interesting argument?
[Speaker C] There are a lot of things here. First of all, I think the difference—the truth is that between us the difference is small, but it’s essential. It’s like free choice: yes or no. In my eyes, providence: yes or no. But wait a second, I want to challenge your question about prayer. In my view, prayer is service of God, no less. The Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t need you to express it in words or not express it in words. All right? It may be that your whole life expresses it, but not through prayer. Fine? So prayer is not the—someone asked me two or three weeks ago, there was a story of a circumciser who died during a circumcision. And I said to him, listen, what kind of question is that? If he had died while taking a walk, what difference would it make? In my eyes, all of life is the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, and commandment. Whether he prayed, whether he performed a circumcision or didn’t perform one, whether he went to eat—that too is a commandment. What difference does it make? It’s ridiculous.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “One who is engaged in one commandment is exempt from another commandment”—so if all of life is being engaged in a commandment, then you can exempt yourself from the commandments altogether.
[Speaker C] Yes. No, but don’t you see—the Talmud asks that; the Talmud asks that. It says, but it was a rickety ladder. Yes, so fine, but all of life in my eyes is commandment. And therefore prayer is not—it is just another way, that’s all; there doesn’t have to be something special about it. If someone does things—and I think in the end, beyond prayer there are many facets, yes? Many facets, just as life itself has many facets. There are many things that remind us of what we always want, and in those requests that we remember and use to remind ourselves: okay, listen, we want this, and the redemption of Israel is very important, and healing is important, and the ingathering of the exiles is important, and so on and so forth. Fine? I think that in the end this also creates something in reality. Meaning, when there is a drought and everyone together—not only as momentum, but everyone together prays—I assume there is something here that creates reality, not in the sense of a physical natural reality, yes? But that there is more compassion among people, and more sensitivity to miserable people than in a normal situation, and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But will rain come down from it? What? Will rain come down from it?
[Speaker C] No, I’m saying—wait, slowly. First of all, it has good blessings in itself, yes. Will rain come down from it? I think what is called technology in these cases has solved much, much more than prayers. Fine? But I, I, I think the fact that people pray about it creates something in the connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, and in some kind of relationship that rescues them. It’s not some mechanism. I think that this connects us to the Holy One, blessed be He, in such a way that He has free choice and He chooses the way—whether He will save us from this trouble or not, I’m not sure, not sure at all. What did you mean in that sentence—who has free choice? The person? The Holy One, blessed be He, too. If you want, the Holy One, blessed be He, too.
[Speaker A] So I don’t understand—when I pray for rain, what exactly is my expectation?
[Speaker C] When I pray—let me put it this way. When I pray for myself, then there is something in my relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He, that can also bring about, in an exceptional way, something.
[Speaker A] Even something that Rabbi Michael Abraham would say is intervention and a miracle.
[Speaker C] No problem. But even Rabbi Michael Abraham can agree that there is intervention. Fine.
[Speaker A] Right. He only says it’s extremely rare and the burden of proof is on you. No problem—rare is also fine.
[Speaker C] Fine, but he—
[Speaker A] He always proceeds from his starting point that it doesn’t happen, which is a very important starting point. His starting point is that it doesn’t happen. Your starting point is that it can happen, and then I relate to that—but he kind of doesn’t relate to it; he says it doesn’t—
[Speaker C] I don’t think so, that it happens as a system. I also completely agree that it’s not a method. It’s not a method: go eat unhealthy things and pray to the Holy One, blessed be He. It’s not a method.
[Speaker A] No, fine, I’m not talking about that.
[Speaker C] Fine, but most prayers are like that, yes. Most prayers are: come, make up for what I… So I think there are many, many answers to that, not necessarily changing reality on that point. But does prayer have some effect? Does human thought have some effect on reality? I think yes. It is exceptional. It is exceptional.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And on that I can agree. That’s a natural effect. Yes.
[Speaker C] Both natural and not natural, fine, that can also be. When I look at the history of the Jewish people in the end—is the history not of the disasters, but of the rescues from them—in the end, isn’t it wondrous? To me it is wondrous, to the point of almost being infuriating. How great our durability is, our survival throughout history. And that is not merely an effect of—I think…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the series of disasters we went through is no less wondrous. So if from that you do not infer that the Holy One, blessed be He, did it, then why does the wonder—which is after all a corresponding wonder—lead you to infer that the Holy One, blessed be He, did this? After all, the statistical evidence on this side and on that side is similar.
[Speaker C] Okay, that’s a question. When I see the series of disasters that this people has gone through, then I think of each disaster that really, I think, ought to be judged only on the natural level. Meaning, why didn’t we solve…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So why not do the same thing for every rescue? That’s what I don’t understand.
[Speaker C] Statistically it’s the same statistics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying—
[Speaker C] But the ability to continue and come out of this story—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end—
[Speaker C] By the way, in our history most things were not rescues. Meaning, most of the Jewish people were not saved.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so that’s exactly why I’m asking. I don’t understand. You say: the series of rescues—what an extraordinary wonder, the Holy One, blessed be He, did that. But the series of disasters is also an extraordinary wonder, and there you say: no, that’s nature, the Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t do it.
[Speaker C] You—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re saying that this level of statistics is not enough to infer divine involvement from, because otherwise you would infer it on both sides of the equation.
[Speaker C] Right, just as I can—and I return to that same example of free choice—meaning, the statistical rate at which human beings do evil to themselves is terrible. The statistical rate at which they rescue themselves from that evil is seemingly small. Yes, and nevertheless I say that this small thing, these rescues, are small. The level of evil and the level of disasters we have gone through are much greater than the level of the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Greater—so I say that the Holy One, blessed be He, stands behind all those disasters.
[Speaker C] I do not think that the Holy One, blessed be He, stands behind all those disasters.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to your own view, I’m saying. I think He stands behind this and not behind that. But according to your own view, if you say that statistical rarity is an indication that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved, then the statistical rarity of the level of disasters is much greater than that of the level of rescue. You yourself said that the series of disasters we went through is inconceivable. The series of rescues is also rare.
[Speaker C] The series of bad things a person does to himself is much greater than the series of rescues he brings about for himself. I think that’s a very good analogy. Meaning, most human beings, most people, most of the time, are either dissatisfied or this or that, or they cause themselves harm, and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And they also save themselves many times.
[Speaker C] And the series of rescues, where they manage to extricate themselves—this mechanism really is rare.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But fine—maybe they extricated themselves.
[Speaker C] Why are you bringing… No, I’m saying—they extricated themselves, leave the Holy One, blessed be He, aside for a moment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you say that on the side of rescues you do see the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Speaker C] I’m saying that on the side of a person rescuing himself, I see free choice, which is rare and small, but it is there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is doing evil to yourself not a choice? What? Doing evil to yourself is also a choice. There are human beings who choose to do things that harm them, that make things worse for them.
[Speaker C] No doubt. But here I think that—I think they do that to themselves. I don’t make that analogy on the side of evil. I say: the series of rescues by the Holy One, blessed be He—the amount of evil in the world, as against the series of rescues, which is very, very small and sparse and elusive, yet still exists there—that in my eyes is providence. Exactly like free choice, without extricating you from the story. But the mechanism, the mechanism is natural and evil and cruel.
[Speaker A] Wait, but Rabbi Michael Abraham is asking: why don’t you make that inference? Just as the good things are from the Holy One, blessed be He, because they’re wondrous, so too the bad things, which are even more wondrous—why don’t you say divine intervention there? Why do you leave it only for the good things? That’s basically the question. That’s first of all a good question. I think it comes from the assumption that this world is good and that God is good.
[Speaker C] And from that I say this thing. Fine, but then I ask the other side of the coin. So if you tell me that on the bad side your assumption is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved because He is good, then that means that even an event with such low statistical probability, you are willing to accept that it happened without the Holy One, blessed be He. So why are you not willing to accept that the good events, even if their statistical probability is low, also happened without the Holy One, blessed be He? Whichever way you look at it. Either say also about the bad things that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved, or say that in the good things too He is not involved. But that you decide yes here and no there—that seems a somewhat puzzling assumption.
[Speaker C] It is not an unfounded assumption, because even if I—again, I return to the analogy of free choice, all right? A person’s free choice. I think that the times when a person does evil truly intentionally are very few. Most people act out of lack of understanding and so on, lack of attention, lack of—I don’t know what—ignorance, and so on. And their ability to emerge from that machine is a wondrous ability; that is free choice. Therefore I say it really is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there your decision that they have free choice does not stem from the small probability that it would happen; it stems from the inner feeling that here I chose freely. That is an internal diagnosis. Right.
[Speaker C] And it is the same—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —thing with the Holy One, blessed be He, and it is the same thing here. I assume that the Holy One, blessed be He—
[Speaker C] —is good. I assume that reality is good. No, no problem, but who told you that the Holy One, blessed be He, did it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good reality may have happened because of the laws of nature—the good things. Ah, that can also be, certainly—
[Speaker C] —that that can also be, certainly. But why do you assume—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that the Holy One, blessed be He, brought about the establishment of the State? Why do you assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, did it? I don’t understand. The Holocaust no, and the establishment of the State yes? The Holocaust is a far more wondrous thing than the establishment of the State, and if there you are willing to live with the fact that it’s nature or human choice or whatever it may be, then why with the establishment of the State do you think it’s the Holy One, blessed be He? If you’re willing to live with so small a probability and still say it is a natural event, then I do not understand why the small probability that the State would be established makes you think that it is the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He. You are willing to see a small probability as something natural too, no?
[Speaker C] First, that is a big question. It is a correct question and in place. It stems from a working assumption—a working assumption that the world is good; people are bad. Among people there is a lot—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The world is not so good, if what even the Holy One, blessed be He, did—there is natural good too, right? So when do you decide that the good is the Holy One, blessed be He—when it’s rare? But I showed you from the bad side that rarity is not an indication.
[Speaker C] No, that too helps me interpret the matter. When I look at the Holocaust, I say: God gave, the Holy One, blessed be He, gave human beings free choice; they chose to do evil; that’s human beings, finished. Was there also rescue within that mechanism? Is there rescue too—is it only from the Holy One, blessed be He? No, it is also part of natural reality.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or not from the Holy One, blessed be He, at all. Why do you decide that He is there at all on the side of rescue? That’s what I don’t understand.
[Speaker C] I say that if the Holy One, blessed be He, is there, He is there on the side of the—if the Holy One, blessed be He—wait a second, slowly—if the Holy One, blessed be He, is there, then ostensibly He is also in the Holocaust and in that, in the sense that He sustains free choices and gives people the possibility of doing evil, okay? So there can be evil in the world, and even if there is coronavirus, it exists within the reality the Holy One, blessed be He, made. Meaning, there cannot be a reality in which there is no coronavirus or in which a person is not vulnerable. He made that, meaning—
[Speaker A] In the laws of nature, not that He created coronavirus right now.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the laws of nature, right, in the laws of nature.
[Speaker C] So the laws of nature can also bring good, can also bring good, no doubt at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So where is the asymmetry?
[Speaker C] I’m saying the asymmetry comes from that same inner place where I see my free choice and my ability to extricate myself from the laws of nature. Meaning, free choice is in my eyes an addition to the laws of nature. I can’t prove it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In my eyes too, in my eyes too—I agree. But I’m talking about the Holy One, blessed be He, not about free choice. Why, on the good side, when it is rare do you say this is the Holy One, blessed be He, and when it is not rare it is nature, but on the bad side, whether it is rare or not, it is the laws of nature? I’m saying: either way, if good can exist also without the Holy One, blessed be He, then rare good can also exist without the Holy One, blessed be He, because rarity is not an indication of the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He. I see that from your treatment of the bad side, meaning, that you say on the bad side—
[Speaker C] Not because of their rarity. The rarity is a characteristic, not the essence. The essence is whether I can extricate myself. My world is completely natural, all right? In all things. There is something that extricates me on the spiritual level, on the level of consciousness, on the level of faith in God and His relationship, that extricates me from time to time, all right? But that is in an exceptional way, in a rare way, in a way that enables me to be rescued. But the evil and the good in the world naturally are completely natural. I believe there is exceptional rescue only toward the good, not toward the evil. Fine—this is a belief, not something I can prove. But I believe that reality, overall, apart from human beings, yes? Reality is good. Human beings are bad. And I can be rescued not because of human beings and so on and so forth; I can be rescued also by means of my free choice, yes? But also by means of something rare and unique.
[Speaker A] Right, so I’m saying—
[Speaker C] There are parts of prayer that are valuable in themselves; they rescue you from this reality even if nothing happened. Meaning, a person prays to the Holy One, blessed be He, and nothing happened. He didn’t recover, he wasn’t healed of his cancer, he’s going to die in two days, and it’s certain that he’ll die in two days, and he dies. Fine? But he rescued himself from some state of consciousness that I believe has great value in his soul, because I believe there is a soul.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Can he recover as a result of the prayer? Because if not, then there is no point in praying just for that side effect.
[Speaker C] No, I’m saying there is a point in praying even if you know in advance—if in advance you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —ask the Holy One, blessed be He, heal me, while I am sure He will not heal me and nothing of the sort—I am being false within myself in order to improve my spiritual standing.
[Speaker C] No. Let me give you an example and an analogy: the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. I know that we—we know, suppose I were there—we are going to be completely defeated, we will all die, and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, in a totally absurd way, I will still fight, even though I will die and even though I will be in that situation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I agree completely, but that has nothing to do with this. I fight because I think there is value in Jewish dignity even though lives will not be saved. Fine, I fight for dignity, not for life. But when I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for healing, if—let us suppose—I am convinced that the healing will not come, there is no point in asking. The fact that after the request I become more righteous or more connected to the Holy One, blessed be He, that is not a reason to say false things. “He who speaks lies shall not stand before My eyes.”
[Speaker A] Is there a Talmudic passage that says that if there is some old person who is definitely going to die, it is forbidden to pray for him? Isn’t there some Talmudic passage like that?
[Speaker C] Wait, wait—no, no, I don’t think so. There’s no such thing. Up to the very last moment everything is open.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—there’s the story of the maidservant of Rabbi’s household. They said of her that she stopped praying so that she would let the Angel of Death take him.
[Speaker A] Yes, there’s something like that. They also said—I think Rabbi Eliyahu, at some point in the second round, when he accepted what he had—they said, listen, that’s it, stop praying, there’s no point, it’s lost.
[Speaker C] So I think, I think the more correct prayer is not to pray, “I don’t want to die, I want to live,” but rather, “I pray to the Holy One, blessed be He: do what You want, if that is the right thing, if that is the right thing.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To ask Him “heal us,” you are not asking Him “do what You want.” No, I’m saying—that’s what I want, I’m expressing what I want. I’m expressing what I want.
[Speaker C] I want to live. Explicitly. I want to live.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then say “I want to live,” don’t say “heal us.”
[Speaker C] No, for me it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Heal us” is a request to the Holy One, blessed be He, to be healed. It’s not a statement of “I want.”
[Speaker C] I don’t do the Holy One, blessed be He’s calculations. I do my own calculations. I do my own calculations, I do my own calculations, and I say what I want. The Holy One, blessed be He, will do His calculations; He has free choice. I believe He can. And if He thinks it’s preferable that I die, then I remain in the position that still, I did not give up on something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not the argument. I’m saying that’s not the argument. Meaning, the argument is: if you think the prayer can be answered, I understand why you pray—that’s obvious. You only argued that even if, let us suppose, we adopt a view according to which it cannot be answered, there is still a point in praying because it improves my spiritual standing or something like that. And to that I say no, I don’t agree. Because if it cannot be answered—let us suppose I assume it cannot be answered—I am not willing to improve my spiritual standing at the price of speaking falsehood. And I don’t think it would improve it either. If there is a chance of being answered, then of course. And then of course it’s not certain that I’ll be answered—no problem, I accept all of that. It’s not certain that I’ll be answered, and still the prayer does not return empty and there is an improvement in my spiritual standing—all that I am willing to accept.
[Speaker C] The argument was only whether there is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —a point in praying for the sake of improving spiritual standing even if there were no chance of being answered. That’s the argument.
[Speaker C] So I think prayer has to be broader than such a narrow thing. Meaning, it’s not—I pray even if I know I’m going to die anyway. Fine? I am going to die anyway, and I still pray. I think that has value for my soul, just like—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You are saying words that are false.
[Speaker C] No, why?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because you know you will not be healed.
[Speaker C] I’m now taking the analogy of the Warsaw Ghetto. Fine? I know that we are all going to die.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the fighters are not fighting in order to live. It’s a bad analogy. You assume that fighting is only for the sake of being saved. No—there is fighting for the sake of dignity. So they fight because they want to save Jewish dignity; they know they will die. No problem, everything is fine. The analogy is not good, because here, when you ask to be healed, a request to be healed is for the sake of being healed. Otherwise I would say: Holy One, blessed be He, I want a connection with You, I want spiritual elevation. I want that. Fine—if that’s what you were saying, I would have no comment. But to say, “Heal us, Lord, and we shall be healed,” under the assumption—if we accept the assumption that He will not answer and I am certainly going to die—what? Because in the end I will be spiritually elevated, therefore I utter falsehoods? Ah.
[Speaker C] I don’t think those are falsehoods. I think they require translation. Meaning, when I ask for something…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then don’t ask! Say: I want a connection with You, Holy One, blessed be He. Say: I want to be healed—not “heal me,” because I know You will not heal me. But I’m just reporting to You: I want to be healed. Or: I want a connection with You. That I understand. The words are fine. It’s like the Talmudic discussion in Tractate Ketubot, that when you say “I want a connection with You” because that’s what you want, it’s not in order to be healed or for Him to heal you—you want it for the sake of the connection. That’s perfectly fine.
[Speaker C] And if He doesn’t heal him? What? Now I hear a person praying. I say to him, listen, it may be ninety percent, ninety-nine percent that it won’t happen.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter. Then he is praying for the remaining one percent. That’s not a problem.
[Speaker C] One hundred percent that it won’t happen.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it’s one hundred percent, then he… then he has nothing to pray for. No! Then say: Holy One, blessed be He, I want a connection with You. Say that, pray that. You cannot say “heal us.” What? Just like that?
[Speaker C] But the way that… after all, even the last level, the way that… really, the future is open. To some extent, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Open means there’s some percentage. That’s why I’m saying, on that I’m not arguing. If there’s some percentage, then pray. Fine, no problem.
[Speaker A] A person who’s told, you have cancer, metastases all over the body, there’s no chance. But he can say, I’m praying…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he can even say, “even if a sharp sword is resting on his neck…”
[Speaker A] Meaning the question is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, he can say there’s no natural chance, but he’s asking the Holy One, blessed be He, to go beyond nature and nevertheless heal him. That’s a prayer I can accept.
[Speaker A] So in what situation would you say there’s no such possibility that some crazy miracle like that could happen?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not saying that. I was only arguing because I understood Rabbi Yochai to be claiming: leave it, even if it’s certain he won’t recover, there’s still meaning to it—as if in the hypothetical situation where there is such a thing—
[Speaker A] Such a thing—one hundred percent—and still he should pray.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. There is no such situation. I don’t think you can be in a state where you’re certain you won’t recover. Even spontaneous recovery can always happen. Meaning medicine can’t determine anything one hundred percent. Fine, that’s obvious in practical situations. The question here was a hypothetical one.
[Speaker C] I think what should… in this case, again, I don’t look at someone praying like that. I would say to him: if you’re praying for life, pray for life in the broader sense of life, not only physical life. Okay? That’s what I would suggest to him, and I think that’s the right way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A different prayer, that he should switch to a different prayer—very good. Not “heal us.”
[Speaker C] I think that should be the kind of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem, with that I have no argument.
[Speaker C] No, but when I say it—what I’m trying to say is that I need to activate some kind of translator for these prayers. These prayers are very, very crude, very raw, very imprecise. And I don’t think this is different from Maimonides’ great work on the terminology of the whole Torah—that God has eyes and He sees, and that He has, and that He hears us, and so on and so on—where all of it needs a translator that translates it. So when someone tells me… or when someone tells me… look, I think you always have to activate that translator. It’s not simple. Meaning, we speak in one language, but many times we mean something much more different. So here there’s no essential disagreement.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you translate it into something else, I wouldn’t have chosen those words, but fine. If you really mean what you say, then there’s no problem at all. The argument is with someone who says something, knows it won’t happen, but says it in order to be elevated, or to… okay, that’s already another discussion.
[Speaker C] Yes, definitely.
[Speaker A] All right, there’s more to continue with, but we’ve gone over time, and we said we’d only go over by ten minutes. So, the summary stage? So I can summarize, or do you want to summarize? I can summarize from my angle what I’m hearing, but it seems to me maybe it’s better if you summarize, and maybe I’ll say a sentence at the end. Does one of you want to summarize? For me, the summary would be: how do you experience the point of disagreement, or the central points of disagreement? Less what you agree on, more what, in your opinion, you don’t agree on. Say: I don’t agree with this point and this point and this point.
[Speaker C] I feel there’s agreement, very, very broad agreement, on… on reducing the extent of involvement…
[Speaker A] But you said a nice sentence: even if it’s small, it’s essential. And for me, it’s important—let’s just sum up what’s essential here, what the essential points are.
[Speaker C] The essential point in my view is that there is a possibility that the connection between a person and the Holy One, blessed be He, can extricate him. Either through the laws of nature or through intervention—which Rabbi Michael doesn’t agree with—but that’s the sufficient condition we talked about earlier, and also through other mechanisms that really open up the possibilities, the possibilities of prayer, which in my view are much broader than that. And I think they exist, I think they really do, from a very basic premise, namely that just as people love me, okay, so I believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, has a personal relationship with me, or with the Jewish people—there is some relationship with me. I can’t prove it, I can’t speak about it, but it’s a feeling of love. That is exactly the great reality of love. Therefore I think it’s essential, because love really is something very, very great and essential, and I think it drives many, many of our actions. It exists there, even though I can’t prove it; it’s part of my identity. I think that’s the small but essential difference. We agree that this really isn’t a method, that it’s not that this is the norm—most, most things. We agree regarding if fifty percent of the world is evil, then we agree regarding evil. I think there’s much more than that, but fifty percent of actions and so on. I think there’s a rescue here, ultimately, that’s all.
[Speaker A] Rabbi Mikhi, closing words about the gaps—if there are any—or what you agree with?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I don’t really have much to add to what Rabbi Yochai said. I think that more or less, more or less, summed up what was here. There were other points too—whether there is involvement within nature or whether all involvement is outside nature, okay, that was the first part of the conversation. But overall, what Rabbi Yochai said seems to me to reflect the disagreement.
[Speaker C] Maybe I can suggest—maybe people watching us will raise other points and so on, and then maybe we can do another part, maybe things that still weren’t clarified well enough.
[Speaker A] Yes, it’s just that there’s Rabbi Mikhi’s story in the book about being stuck at night, the whole family, and then a car arrives with exactly the number of seats Rabbi’s family needs, and exactly to the place, in some God-forsaken area. I wanted to talk about that, but we’ve already gone over time. But that’s a good example of something Rabbi Michael Abraham told his students: there’s no providence, it’s statistics, it can happen, you need to check all the situations where it happened, and that’s how you know whether it’s a miracle. And Rabbi Yochai Makbili, in my opinion, would say: unbelievable providence. Exactly what you needed, exactly for my location, exactly the number of seats—that creates some gap for me. Meaning, after all, I walk around in the world, I have thoughts, and I say: what I experienced, or what I saw happening in reality, this war, yes providence, no providence—so I’m trying, I’m asking myself, what’s the takeaway from this conversation? Meaning, what am I now supposed to think? So I’m still torn.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ultimately, this difference or this dispute that you’re describing is not a dispute about how I understand reality, but about how I relate to it. Meaning, how I understand reality seems to me to be very close. How I relate to it—there I do sense more of a difference.
[Speaker A] But if a person knows that the Holy One, blessed be He, sent me that very ride, or that it’s simply completely unrelated—Yiram, you’re not interesting, he just happened to pass by—that’s even on the level of how important I am to the Holy One, blessed be He, that He took care to send me that ride, that He put it into the driver’s head to travel here, like Rabbi tells it—if they’d told me to go by another road, and they went by the long route and all that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if I explain why statistically there’s no proof from here, I assume that on the statistical calculation we’ll agree—that is the statistical calculation. And still Rabbi Yochai will relate to it one way and I’ll relate to it another way. So that means the argument is about how one relates to reality, not about what reality itself is. Even in this case.
[Speaker A] I don’t know whether Rabbi Yochai will reach the conclusion that statistically there’s any chance of that ever happening.
[Speaker C] I think there’s no issue here with statistics; it’s not in theology. Statistically I have no problem with that statistic, and I don’t give it—that is, as an observer from the side I can say, listen, it happened, it’s not, it’s not…
[Speaker A] That story wouldn’t leave an imprint on you—that here it happened to me exactly?
[Speaker C] I’m saying, though, if a person truly feels that he is completely loved—I don’t know—loved from above, and this is not something contradictory, meaning he’s not now saying, listen, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent me two packs of cigarettes, wow, do you know what that is, thank you so much, wow.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And from that he feels it—after all, indications don’t exist either here or there, only—
[Speaker C] He feels it, okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He feels it from that too.
[Speaker C] Right, so here there is a difference between the different attitudes. I would relate to it—that is, if someone comes and tells me, listen, I was at some, I don’t know, psychedelic party and I felt, I don’t know what, that the Holy One, blessed be He, is close to me, then I say, listen, go get hospitalized, or whatever. And if it’s not… if it’s cases like that—listen, he’s doing nonsense—I tell him, listen, this, this isn’t it. I have absolute proof that you’re talking nonsense. Okay? But if that thing, for you, was some kind of place of influence toward something right, wonderful, terrific. It’s consequential.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It may be that consequentially it has a positive effect. I’m talking about how I see the case, not what its implications are. It could be that afterward I tell the guys, the Holy One, blessed be He, saved me, it was an open miracle, and everyone would repent and become perfectly righteous. Meaning, it could be that it has tremendously positive results. I’m not talking about the question of the results; I’m talking about the question of how I really see the case, and that’s it.
[Speaker C] So I, I can see it as completely, completely statistical, and still appreciate, in the place where I appreciate, even if it’s statistical—I appreciate someone who has a presence.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For him, for himself, it’s a reality; that’s education. It’s not a difference in seeing reality itself.
[Speaker C] Right. In seeing reality, I can agree that there’s no—this is completely delusional, yes—but fine.
[Speaker A] Well, thank you very much. I’ll just remind everyone that the story with the ride and other things discussed here are also in the book. Are you seeing it backwards or straight? I don’t know.
[Speaker C] Straight, straight.
[Speaker A] Because I’m seeing it backwards, okay. So thank you, and all right, we’ll see from the comments how to continue from here. Thank you very much.
[Speaker C] To Rabbi Mikhi, thank you very much Yiram. Thank you very much Eli, goodbye.
[Speaker A] It was fascinating. Thank you.