Mysticism – Lesson 19

Table of Contents

• Planning the series and the connection to mysticism
• The Mishnah in Berakhot: one who cries out over the past and a futile prayer
• The Talmud in Berakhot 60a: Leah, prayer about the sex of the fetus, and the two answers
• The ruling of the Shulchan Arukh and Maimonides’ omission
• “One should not pray for a miracle” and the halakhic link to anti-mysticism
• The fundamental claim: there is no involvement “within the framework of nature,” and every request is a request for a miracle
• Determinism, laws of nature as sufficient conditions, and the implications for prayer
• An overt miracle and a hidden miracle: rejecting the distinction through the example of the fetus
• Scientific criticism of the Talmud regarding the sex of the fetus and expanding the category of “over the past”
• A theological-halakhic conclusion: either requests are forbidden or the meaning of request collapses
• A qualified practical position regarding requests in prayer

Summary

General overview

The lecturer says he wants to cover two topics before the Passover break that relate to attitudes toward mysticism: praying for a miracle and messianism. He opens with the topic of praying for a miracle through the Mishnah and Talmud in Berakhot about “one who cries out over the past.” He presents the common interpretive view that this is not just a “pointless” prayer but an actual prohibition, and shows how the discussion develops into the question of praying for a miracle and whether there is any divine involvement at all “within the framework of nature.” He argues that every request for intervention is by definition a request for a miracle, because the laws of nature are deterministic and leave no “gaps.” Therefore, the usual distinctions between an overt miracle and a hidden miracle, or between “nature” and “beyond nature,” are not coherent. From this emerges a sharp difficulty concerning the very idea of petitionary prayer, and he concludes with a qualified practical stance: he has a deep problem with requests in prayer, but without actually deleting the blessings of request from the Amidah.

Planning the series and the connection to mysticism

The lecturer says there are two meetings left until Passover, and he wants to deal with prayer for a miracle and then with messianism, since both topics connect to the general discussion about mysticism—what it is and what status it has. He presents prayer for a miracle as a topic he developed on his website and as belonging to the broader question of the religious attitude toward departures from nature.

The Mishnah in Berakhot: one who cries out over the past and a futile prayer

The lecturer quotes the Mishnah in Berakhot: “One who cries out over the past—this is a futile prayer,” and brings the two examples: praying that a pregnant woman should give birth to a male, and praying, after hearing cries in the city, that the event should not be in his own house. He explains the straightforward meaning: reality has already been fixed, so there is no point praying about it. But he notes that the commentators understood this as a halakhic prohibition and not merely as advice not to waste time. He emphasizes that the phrase “a futile prayer” is not the same as “do not take the name of God in vain,” so the question is what exactly the possible prohibition means and what its rationale is.

The Talmud in Berakhot 60a: Leah, prayer about the sex of the fetus, and the two answers

The lecturer cites the language of the Talmud, “And does mercy not help?” which sounds like a claim that prayer is ineffective. He shows how Rav Yosef objects from the story of Leah, who called her child “Dinah” after judging her own case and praying that the fetus be turned into a female so that Rachel would not be “like one of the maidservants.” He presents the first answer, “One does not mention miraculous acts,” as a distinction based on spiritual level, where righteous people or special individuals can expect a miracle, unlike an ordinary person. He connects this to examples of prophets such as Elisha and to the story of Gideon’s fleece. He then presents the Talmud’s second answer, that Leah prayed “within forty days,” and cites the baraita that lays out stages of pregnancy and what one may pray for at each stage, so that what has already been fixed is no longer subject to prayer. He adds that the Talmud continues and asks how prayer can help if the sex of the fetus is determined by “if the man emits seed first” and “if the woman emits seed first,” and it resolves this by establishing a case “where both emitted at once,” so that in certain conditions the sex of the fetus would not be determined until forty days.

The ruling of the Shulchan Arukh and Maimonides’ omission

The lecturer quotes the Shulchan Arukh, which rules in principle that one who prays over something that has already happened—including prayer about the sex of the fetus “after forty days from conception”—this is a futile prayer, and that one should pray for the future and give thanks for the past. He notes that the Shulchan Arukh effectively adopts the Talmud’s second answer and not the first, and that the very inclusion of this in the Shulchan Arukh suggests a prohibitive aspect and not just advice. He adds that Maimonides omits this Jewish law, and he does not know why. He raises the possibility that Maimonides understood it as non-halakhic guidance—simply a statement that there is no point praying for something where prayer cannot help.

“One should not pray for a miracle” and the halakhic link to anti-mysticism

The lecturer cites the Jerusalem Talmud in Taanit, according to which “one should not pray for a miracle,” and describes how halakhic decisors connect this to the topic of “prayer over the past” as a request for a miracle. He says that in some places people distinguish between an overt miracle and a hidden miracle, proposing that it is forbidden to pray for an overt miracle but permitted to pray for a hidden one. But he presents that distinction as dependent on the assumption that there are two kinds of divine involvement in the world. He argues that the halakhic conclusion emerging here fits into a broader family of halakhic statements that minimize the status of mysticism and departures from nature in religious life—so much so that even appealing for a departure from nature “from God’s side” is presented as problematic.

The fundamental claim: there is no involvement “within the framework of nature,” and every request is a request for a miracle

The lecturer argues that there is no such thing as “God’s involvement within the framework of nature,” and calls that an oxymoron, because every prayer for a sick person and the like assumes that by the course of nature one outcome may occur, and one is asking that a different outcome occur instead. He brings a story that Chayuta Deutsch cited in the name of Yeshayahu Leibowitz about praying for a sick person, where Leibowitz said that if he had known it was cancer, “he wouldn’t have gone to pray,” because “people don’t recover from cancer.” The lecturer attacks the distinction between an illness “from which one can recover” and one “from which one cannot,” because prayer is said precisely for the possibility that the person will not recover, even when dealing with a common illness. He suggests that the standard solution is to say that cancer would require an overt miracle while the flu would only require a hidden miracle, but he argues that this too does not explain the topic, because prayer about the sex of the fetus is a hidden miracle in a period without ultrasound, and nonetheless the Mishnah calls it a futile prayer.

Determinism, laws of nature as sufficient conditions, and the implications for prayer

The lecturer develops a philosophical argument that the laws of nature are deterministic and that there are no “degrees of freedom” in a given state, so once all the data are given, the future is univocal. He presents a distinction between a sufficient condition and a necessary-and-sufficient condition through examples of producing fire by a match or by focusing the sun’s rays, and concludes that a cause is a sufficient condition, not a necessary-and-sufficient one. He brings an anecdote about Yuval Steinitz and his book The Tree of Knowledge and the “paradox of conditioning,” says that Steinitz’s argument is wrong but his conclusion is right insofar as a cause is a sufficient condition, and explains how causal chains are not nullified by this. He argues that processes that appear random, like a chaotic system, throwing dice, or “random” components in evolution, are deterministic in essence, and that probability is a methodological tool resulting from limitations of information and computation. He mentions Laplace and the idea of “give me all the data and enough computational power.” He notes that chaos is not an exception to determinism, and that quantum theory is more complicated, but even there one is dealing with laws of nature that determine distributions, so a request for intervention means changing the laws of nature or the distribution.

An overt miracle and a hidden miracle: rejecting the distinction through the example of the fetus

The lecturer rejects the claim that one may pray for a hidden miracle but not for an overt miracle, because one of the Mishnah’s examples—prayer about the sex of the fetus—is a request for a hidden miracle that is not observable at the time it occurs. He adds that one could even view changing the sex of the fetus as, in principle, a medical procedure that human beings might one day be able to perform technologically, but it is still a miracle when it is done without prior natural causes. He sums up that every appeal for divine intervention is a “miracle,” because it changes what was supposed to happen according to the natural course of events.

Scientific criticism of the Talmud regarding the sex of the fetus and expanding the category of “over the past”

The lecturer argues that scientifically the sex of the fetus is determined at fertilization, not on the fortieth day, and he goes further: from a deterministic perspective, it is “fixed from the six days of creation.” So the halakhic division according to stages of pregnancy does not reflect the facts. He brings an anecdote about a discussion in online comments surrounding a terror attack in Gush Etzion and the question of the blessing of thanksgiving for someone who had not been on the bus. He argues that the blessing of thanksgiving is always for “something that did not happen,” in the sense of a danger that was averted, and that there is no essential difference between different links in the chain that led to the event. He uses this to argue that distinguishing among different stages along the timeline does not change the fact that every request is aimed at changing a deterministic chain of events.

A theological-halakhic conclusion: either requests are forbidden or the meaning of request collapses

The lecturer formulates two assumptions that stand at the basis of the topic: a factual assumption that there is involvement within nature and miraculous involvement, and a normative assumption that it is forbidden to ask for miracles but permitted to ask within the framework of nature. He argues that the factual assumption is mistaken and should be replaced with the fact that every involvement is a miracle, but that the normative assumption of the Sages must be accepted as halakhic authority. The combination leads to the conclusion that one may not ask God for anything. He presents the sharp difficulty this creates for petitionary prayer, especially for the text of the Amidah, which contains requests as part of the obligatory prayer.

A qualified practical position regarding requests in prayer

The lecturer says that in his view God is not involved anyway, so the issue of requests troubles him greatly beyond the specific question of prohibition. He says he is not sufficiently certain to delete or actually give up the blessings of request in the Amidah, and raises the possibility of relying on views that direct the requests toward the collective plane rather than the individual one, mentioning that he thinks Rabbi Kook in Olat Re’iyah speaks in that direction. He concludes by saying that he has a very hard time with requests in prayer, but for now he does not feel sure enough to give them up.

Okay, where we are now—what I still want to get through in the two meetings we have left until Passover, or until the Passover break, is this. First of all, I want to talk a bit about—this actually wasn’t in the plan, but somehow this topic developed on the website, and I thought it was also connected to what we’re doing here: prayer, praying for a miracle, which of course also connects to our general discussion about the attitude toward mysticism—what mysticism is, what its status is, and so on. And afterward I want to talk a bit about messianism as well, which also connects in various ways to mysticism. I hope I’ll finish both of those things by the Passover break, and with that we’ll wrap up this series on mysticism.

So I’ll start with the issue of prayer—prayer for a miracle. One moment, I’m sharing here.

There is a Mishnah, yes, in Berakhot, a well-known Mishnah: “One who cries out over what has already passed—this is a futile prayer.” Yes? If someone cries out and asks the Holy One, blessed be He, regarding something that has already happened, then this is a futile prayer.

Now two examples are brought. “If his wife was pregnant and he says: May it be Your will that my wife give birth to a male—this is a futile prayer.” Yes? His wife is already pregnant, she already has a fetus in her womb, and he doesn’t know its sex, but the sex is already fixed—it’s either a boy or a girl in there—so there is no point now in praying that the child there who will be born should be a male, because this is prayer about the past; this reality has already been determined.

Second example: “If he was coming along the road and heard a cry in the city, and he says: May it be Your will that it not be from within my house—this is a futile prayer.” Meaning, he hears that something happened in the city, sees some fire or something like that, and he prays to the Holy One, blessed be He, that this fire not be in his own house. So it says this is a futile prayer. Why? Because again, the fire is already taking place at that point, and to pray now is basically to pray about something already determined. That’s what is called crying out over the past.

Now here, of course, in the way the Talmud formulates it, there is room to hesitate over what exactly “a futile prayer” means. It can be explained as meaning: it’s pointless, it won’t help, it’s already a done deed, what has already happened cannot be changed—therefore it is a futile prayer. It’s not like a false oath. But what is the problem with it being a futile prayer? Maybe there’s no problem—just know that there is no point in praying for such a thing. What happened, happened. That is, seemingly, the simple meaning of the Mishnah: when the Mishnah says “this is a futile prayer,” it doesn’t appear on the face of it that we are dealing with a prohibition, but rather with something pointless.

But somehow, in the commentators, the perception is accepted that this is a prohibition—not just a statement that it’s merely pointless. In other words, this Mishnah is treated as a Mishnah with a halakhic aspect. It’s not just some recommendation not to waste your time for nothing, but some conception that it is forbidden to pray a futile prayer.

Now it’s not like a false oath—where you swear that a stone is a stone or something like that, where you utter God’s name in vain without any practical consequence. Nothing comes of it. Uttering God’s name—who uttered God’s name here? He prays, says this—so pray without God’s name. It’s not that. No one here spoke about a blessing or some specific formula. If you pray over the past, this is a futile prayer. If he had uttered God’s name, then it wouldn’t need to say “a futile prayer”; rather, this would be “do not take the name of God,” yes, taking God’s name in vain. That is a known prohibition, and it could have referred to it by name. “Futile prayer” is something else.

So I’m saying again: in the literal sense, it could have meant simply a pointless act—that’s all the Mishnah came to say. But in the usual treatment, this thing seems to be forbidden. What is the meaning of that? Why exactly is this forbidden?

There are commentators who wanted to say that you are using up your merits, essentially—or that it can deduct from your merits if the Holy One, blessed be He, answers your prayer. There is also perhaps a possibility of saying that this is an attempt to ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to act not according to His policy. And somehow the Sages say that this is improper in some way, because His policy is that the world should operate through the natural order, and we are not supposed to ask Him to depart from that. Maybe one could say it is because there is a reasonable chance it will not be answered, and that could lead to a loss of trust or faith that people have in prayer, because they see that the prayer is not answered—or something along those lines. I don’t know exactly.

But on the face of it, the accepted view is that this is a prohibition and not merely a recommendation—a recommendation not to waste your time.

Now the Talmud there says, on page 60, regarding this Mishnah: “If his wife was pregnant and he said: May it be Your will that she give birth,” and so on—“this is a futile prayer, and mercy is of no use.” On the face of it, it sounds like the Talmud is saying that it doesn’t help. “Futile prayer” would then fit the first interpretation precisely: there is no point, it is pointless, such a prayer won’t help, because what has already happened cannot be changed.

How does that fit with the explanation that this is a prohibition? It doesn’t necessarily contradict it. It could be that there is a prohibition because it is pointless. The claim is: because such a thing cannot work, a prayer of this kind—praying a prayer that cannot work or cannot be answered—there is a prohibition in that.

The Talmud continues. It says: Rav Yosef raised an objection: “And afterward she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah”—that is Leah. So she gave birth to a daughter and called her Dinah. What is meant by “and afterward”? Rav said: After Leah judged herself and said: Twelve tribes are destined to come from Jacob. Six have come from me and four from the maidservants—that makes ten. If this one is male, then my sister Rachel will not even be like one of the maidservants.

Yes? If what comes out now is a male, then in effect only two children remain, and then Rachel can receive at most two children, and two children is like the maidservants. And therefore she prayed that this son should turn into a daughter. Immediately he was transformed into a daughter, as it says, “and she called her name Dinah.”

Less than the maidservants? I can’t hear. It’s less than the maidservants. If this came out as a son, then Rachel would have only one son, because there are already eleven. No? Yes. Meaning, if there are four from the maidservants and six from her, if this comes out as a son, then Rachel will have only one—yes, correct, less than the maidservants. Because it was transformed into a daughter, then Rachel had two, which is like the maidservants, right.

So seemingly the Talmud brings this as an objection. Because above we saw that one does not pray over what has already happened—or “may it be Your will that my wife give birth to a male”—whereas here we see that Leah did pray regarding the sex of the fetus.

So the Talmud brings two answers there. First answer: “One does not mention miraculous acts.” Meaning, our Mishnah was not dealing with miracles. That is, if you are, say, a prophet or someone on a very high spiritual level who can perhaps expect that the Holy One, blessed be He, will perform a miracle for him—fine. But an ordinary person is not supposed to expect such a thing, and therefore he should not pray that the fetus should come out male.

The point is that the Talmud here is apparently saying that this depends on the level of the person. If there are some extraordinary righteous people or something like that, maybe they can ask even regarding the past. An average person is not supposed to ask regarding the past.

And by the way, how does that connect with what we saw above, that “mercy is of no use”—meaning that such a prayer is ineffective? We see that in principle it can help, only it depends on your spiritual level. Earlier I inferred that from the Talmud it seems that it simply doesn’t work—not that there is some prohibition or something. The Talmud apparently says that even if the Holy One, blessed be He, can perhaps deviate from nature and perform a miracle, He does so only for people on special levels. Otherwise He does not, and since He does not, perhaps there is also a prohibition.

You see this among the prophets, Rabbi. What? Again? Among the prophets you see this, when Elisha asks for a miracle, or Gideon, I think, with the fleece of wool. They asked for miracles and received them. Yes.

And if you wish, say alternatively—the second answer: “Leah’s case was within forty days,” as it was taught in a baraita: During the first three days a person should pray for mercy that it not spoil. From three days until forty days, he should pray for mercy that it be male. From forty days until three months, he should pray for mercy that it not become flattened. From three months until six, he should pray for mercy that it not be a miscarriage. From six until nine, he should pray for mercy that it come out safely.

So the Talmud here brings a baraita that sets milestones along the pregnancy timeline—at each stage, basically, what becomes fixed. Okay? So in the first three days, it’s that it not spoil—that it not turn out to be a drop that won’t actually develop into a fetus. From three to forty days one can pray regarding the sex of the fetus, and so on—but only up to forty days.

So what does this mean? The Talmud says that what Leah prayed was when her fetus was less than forty days old. And what the Talmud—or the Mishnah—says is forbidden, to pray regarding the sex of the fetus, is after forty days. Meaning, according to this answer there is no difference between righteous people and non-righteous people. The question is when you pray. And what is the basic idea? The idea is, as the Mishnah says, that this is crying out over the past—crying out over something already determined. So at each stage you have to see what has already been determined. What has already been determined—you can no longer pray about it. Therefore the Talmud lists here, at each stage, what is determined at that point, and from then on you can no longer ask about those things that have already been determined.

The Talmud continues there at the end: “And is mercy effective?” But didn’t Rabbi Yitzhak son of Rabbi Ami say: If the man emits seed first, she gives birth to a female; if the woman emits seed first, she gives birth to a male, as it says, “When a woman conceives and bears a male”?

Meaning, here the Talmud asks: You are saying that within forty days one can pray regarding the sex of the fetus, but even within forty days its sex is already fixed. The question of who emitted first is what determines the sex of the fetus. If so, then already before forty days one should also not be able to pray regarding the sex of the fetus, because the sex has already been determined from the moment of conception.

So the Talmud says: What are we dealing with here? A case where both emitted at the same time. It’s talking about a situation in which they both emitted at the same time, and therefore the sex of the fetus was not fixed until forty days, and from forty days onward it is already fixed.

Now of course—I don’t think, again, I don’t know exactly what is meant here by emission, what exactly “who emitted first” means. But whatever the case may be, the Talmud is basically saying that under certain conditions the sex of the fetus is not determined until forty days.

Actually, I don’t think the Talmud means to say that the couple involved know who emitted first—or in other words, that they already know the sex of the fetus in the woman’s womb. Rather, the point is that since there is a possibility that the sex is not yet fixed until forty days, you can still pray. Not that anyone who knows the sex is already fixed can’t pray even up to forty days, whereas someone who knows it isn’t fixed should pray. I don’t think they know who emitted first and who afterward. The point is that since there is still a possibility that the sex has not yet been fixed until forty days, the prayer can still be said. From that point on, it is fixed in any case, and therefore there is no point in praying about it.

Now the Shulchan Arukh brings this as Jewish law: “One who prays regarding what has already passed—for example, he enters a city and hears a cry in the city and says, ‘May it be Your will that this cry not be from within my house,’ or his wife was pregnant after forty days of pregnancy”—you see, it brings the Talmud’s second answer, not the first—“and he said, ‘May it be Your will that my wife give birth to a male,’ this is a futile prayer. Rather, a person should pray regarding what is yet to come and give thanks for what has already occurred.”

Here too, in the Shulchan Arukh, the wording is not clear, because it does not say explicitly that it is forbidden to pray; it says that this is a futile prayer. True, the Shulchan Arukh is not supposed to bring theological recommendations or recommendations against wasting time, so there is room to say that if this is brought as Jewish law in the Shulchan Arukh, that means it is a prohibition and not merely that it is a waste of time.

Maimonides, by the way, omits this. Maimonides omits this law, and I don’t know why; I haven’t seen any discussion of this issue. It may be that Maimonides truly does not see this as a halakhic statement and therefore does not bring it. He says: this is not a halakhic statement, it is simply a recommendation—don’t waste your time on such a prayer, because it cannot help.

So in the end, the conclusion brought by the decisors is like the Talmud’s second answer: that we are talking about prayer after forty days from the formation of the fetus, and from then on there is no possibility of praying, because the sex of the fetus is already fixed.

Now, the common claim—or the common explanation—for this matter is this. In the Talmud itself—well, maybe before that—there is also the Jerusalem Talmud, and it is brought in many places, in tractate Ta’anit, that one should not pray for a miracle. We are not supposed to ask for a miracle. And some halakhic authorities connect that to the Talmud here, saying that the Talmud says not to pray over the past because prayer over the past is essentially a request for a miracle, and we are not supposed to pray for a miracle, but rather to pray for—let’s call it—natural involvement by the Holy One, blessed be He, not for a departure from nature.

I’m not getting into the issue of special righteous people right now, for whom the situation might be different, who perhaps can pray for a miracle—that’s what the Talmud there brings—but again, the halakhic authorities do not deal with that option.

Now there are places where it is implied that the prohibition on prayer is only with regard to an overt miracle, but one may pray for a hidden miracle. It’s not that one may never pray for a miracle at all; rather, one may pray for a hidden miracle and one may not pray for an overt miracle.

What exactly is the difference? Maybe I’ll first say something about the motivation behind this distinction that people make. “Do not pray for a miracle” basically assumes that there are two kinds of divine involvement in the world. There is involvement that departs from the laws of nature, outside the bounds of nature—and for that one may not pray. And there is involvement within the framework of the laws of nature, and for that one may pray—or maybe it is even desirable to pray. Two kinds of involvement.

The problem is that there really aren’t two kinds. Every involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, is miraculous involvement. There is no such thing as involvement within nature—even though all the commentators and thinkers and rabbis and philosophers and whoever else you want write about it—this is all nonsense. There is no such thing. There is no such thing as involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, within the framework of nature. That sentence is an oxymoron: involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, within nature.

Why? Why do I make that claim? Because—maybe I’ll formulate it this way. When we ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to intervene, then we are basically saying—let’s say we pray for a sick person—we are basically saying this: we fear that this sick person is going to die of his illness, and we ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to heal him. If he wasn’t going to die anyway by the natural course, then there would be no need and no point in praying—he isn’t going to die anyway, so what’s the issue? Rather, we are praying about the possibility that maybe the sick person will die, and we are asking the Holy One, blessed be He, to prevent that—that is, to intervene and heal him.

That means we are asking the Holy One, blessed be He, to intervene, to depart from the laws of nature. Nature was supposed to kill this sick person, and we are saying to the Holy One, blessed be He, to make sure that things do not proceed according to the natural course, but rather that he be healed.

Just today—today Hiyuta, Hiyuta Deutsch, who edited the trilogy, posted a nice story as a comment on the column I’m talking about now, on praying for miracles. She brought a story there that she— in her book about Nehama Leibowitz, she has a book she wrote about Nehama Leibowitz—there she says that Yeshayahu Leibowitz said… he had prayed for someone—who was it? Rabbi Kook, I think? I don’t remember anymore. And when he came back from the prayer they told him that Rabbi Kook had cancer or—I don’t remember—something like that. I’m not sure I remember the story correctly. And then he said, “All right, then forget it. If I had known, I wouldn’t have gone to pray,” because people don’t recover from cancer. Meaning, at least in that period, cancer was a disease from which there was no recovery, a terminal illness. He was willing to pray for illnesses from which one can recover, not for illnesses from which one cannot recover.

What is the difference? Seemingly the difference is that in illnesses from which one cannot recover, you are praying—you are asking for a miracle, that the Holy One, blessed be He, should heal despite the fact that this is an incurable disease. That can’t be, there’s no point—that’s everything we said until now. But if you pray over an illness from which people sometimes do recover, then that’s not a miracle; you ask the Holy One, blessed be He, that he recover. It is possible according to the natural order.

Yes, what he said there reflects exactly that assumption—that one can intervene through the natural order, that the Holy One, blessed be He, can intervene through the natural order, and that what was forbidden in our Talmudic discussion is a request for a miracle. But a request for involvement through the natural order was, of course, not forbidden, because that is the very meaning of asking the Holy One, blessed be He.

Except that, as I said before, that is a mistake, and I’m surprised at Yeshayahu Leibowitz, because he should have understood this very well. Any illness whatsoever—even an illness from which people recover or may recover—what does it mean “may recover”? Either way: if this person would have recovered even without my prayer, or even without involvement by the Holy One, blessed be He, then there is no point in prayer—he would have recovered anyway. The prayer is said because of the possibility that he won’t recover, and I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to intervene and heal him after all. In other words, I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to perform a miracle, to depart from nature, to stop the natural course of that illness in relation to this particular person.

I don’t care that other people recover naturally. I am praying for this particular person because I fear that he will not recover naturally. Which means that there is in fact no difference at all between diseases—between cancer and the flu. There is no difference. So what if nobody recovers from cancer and many people do recover from the flu? My prayer concerns the possibility that this person may not recover from the flu, and I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to heal him. So what is the difference between that and cancer? Both are requests for a miracle. There is no difference.

You can say that there is a difference between an overt miracle and a hidden miracle—that recovering from the flu is a hidden miracle because people do recover, and recovering from cancer, at least in that period, was an overt miracle, because people don’t recover from cancer. And basically what he meant to say was that one does not ask for an overt miracle, but one may ask for a hidden miracle. But from the sources she brings and quotes there, it doesn’t sound that way. He wants to claim this is according to nature and that is not according to nature, and therefore for this one may pray and for that one may not. That is not a question of overt miracle versus hidden miracle.

Now, why do I say there is no such thing as recovering “according to nature”? As I said earlier, because what I want to claim is that according to nature a certain result would occur, and I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, that another result occur. So I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to freeze nature or depart from the natural course. Therefore, by definition, every appeal to the Holy One, blessed be He—every request for divine involvement—is basically a request for a miracle, by definition.

I’ll sharpen this a bit more, as I did in the columns before the one I’m talking about here. In the previous column I explained that there are no, contrary to what people may think, no gaps in the laws of nature. And the laws of nature are deterministic. There is no situation in which the given reality is some definite way—say, the set of existing data right now—and the next step is open. A can happen and B can happen. Given all the data in the current state, it determines in a one-to-one way what will happen next. There are no degrees of freedom within the laws of nature.

Let’s say a person is in a certain medical condition. Given that I have all the current data about his condition, in fact his future is defined, his future is unique. There aren’t two possibilities—either he will die or he will live. What will happen to him is dictated by his condition. Okay? That is the claim according to the laws of nature.

And therefore the claim is—I formulated it there in the language of conditions—that the laws of nature are sufficient conditions for events. That is actually the definition of a law of nature. A law of nature is supposed to be a sufficient condition for what happens.

I brought there that there is a dispute among philosophers about how to understand the relation between cause and effect. There are philosophers who want to claim that the cause has to be a necessary and sufficient condition for the effect—necessary and sufficient together. And there are philosophers who claim that the cause is a sufficient condition, that it is enough for it to be a sufficient condition for the effect. It does not have to be necessary—just sufficient, not necessary and sufficient, but sufficient alone.

What is the difference? A necessary and sufficient condition means the cause effectively becomes a unique cause. If the cause is a necessary and sufficient condition for the effect, then that means that if this effect occurred, then of course beforehand there was the cause. It cannot be that the effect occurs without the cause preceding it.

I’ll give you an example: the creation of fire. The creation of fire can have a cause such as, for example, I focus the sun’s rays with a magnifying glass onto paper, and that creates fire on the paper. So I created the fire by focusing the sun’s rays. Another possibility: I simply light a match and ignite that paper with a match. So I have two causes for the combustion created there in the paper: either ignition by a match or by focusing the sun’s rays.

What does that mean? It means I cannot say that focusing the sun’s rays is a necessary and sufficient condition for the creation of fire. If it were necessary and sufficient—especially necessary—that would mean fire cannot be created without it. But it can be created without it. If I did it with a match, then I did not focus the sun’s rays, and nevertheless fire was created. Which means that the fact that fire was created does not mean that beforehand there was focusing of the sun’s rays. Therefore focusing the sun’s rays is not a necessary and sufficient condition for fire. It is a sufficient condition for fire. That is, if you focus the sun’s rays, there will be fire. It is sufficient for there to be fire, but not necessary. Okay? That is the meaning of something being sufficient but not necessary and sufficient.

The same is true of the match. The match is also not necessary, because the fire can also be created by focusing the sun’s rays, even without lighting a match. So lighting the match too is not a necessary condition but a sufficient one.

So this means the following: when I say that lighting the match is the cause of the creation of fire, or focusing the sun’s rays is the cause of the creation of fire, what I have said is that the cause is a sufficient condition for the effect. Not necessary and sufficient—just sufficient. I am not saying there cannot be conditions that are necessary and sufficient. There can be causes that are necessary and sufficient conditions. I am only claiming that not every cause has to be necessary and sufficient. There are also causes that are merely sufficient conditions without being necessary. Therefore this whole dispute between philosophers is nonsense, in short. A cause is a sufficient condition; it is not a necessary and sufficient condition. Anyone who says otherwise is simply mistaken. It’s obvious.

I brought there that anecdote—I won’t go into details. Yuval Steinitz, in his book The Tree of Knowledge—that’s the name of the book, really three essays of his—brings there in the middle essay a proof against the conception that a cause is a necessary and sufficient condition for its effect. His claim—he calls it the paradox of conditioning—is that if A, say A is the cause of B, now let us assume for the sake of discussion that A must be a necessary and sufficient condition for B. If that were so, then there could not be a causal chain of more than two links.

Why? Because what does a causal chain of more than two links look like? I have A as the cause of B, and B is the cause of C, and so on, D and E and so on. Let’s talk about the first three links: A is the cause of B, B is the cause of C. Now let us assume for the sake of discussion that A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B, and B is a necessary and sufficient condition for C, because we are currently assuming that a cause is a necessary and sufficient condition.

Now if so, then A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B because A is the cause of B, and we said that B is a necessary and sufficient condition for C. But one of the properties of a necessary and sufficient condition is that it is reversible. If B is a necessary and sufficient condition for C, then C is a necessary and sufficient condition for B. And therefore it follows that both A and C, in this chain, are each necessary and sufficient conditions for B. But that contradicts another property of a necessary and sufficient condition, because a necessary and sufficient condition is supposed to be unique. There cannot be two conditions each of which is necessary and sufficient for the same result. So that is how he proves that if there is a causal chain longer than two—three and onward—the causal relation there cannot be a necessary and sufficient condition. That is his proof against the philosophers who identify a cause as a necessary and sufficient condition of the effect.

It is, of course, a plainly mistaken proof, a wrong argument, because the necessary and sufficient condition does not have to be unique in the sense he means. When I speak of a causal chain A causes B and B causes C and C causes D and so on, the necessary and sufficient condition for B is that A precede it and C and D and E follow it. A, C, B and E—all of these together are the necessary and sufficient condition for B. Except that part of that condition is before B and part of it is after B along the timeline. Logically that makes no difference. Conditions do not have to appear before what they condition; the condition need not be temporally prior. It is only a logical relation between them. Therefore the claim that there cannot be a causal chain of length greater than three is incorrect; there can be, when A and C together are a necessary and sufficient condition for B.

When we talk about the uniqueness of a necessary-and-sufficient relation, we mean when A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B and there is no C there at all, and C is necessary and sufficient for B when there is no A there at all. That cannot be. There are not two independent necessary and sufficient conditions. But there can be a necessary and sufficient condition composed of several components, and all those components together are the necessary and sufficient condition for what is conditioned. Okay? Fine. I’m just saying this parenthetically, as an anecdote. Whoever wants can look in my column, number 461.

In any event, for our purposes, never mind that Steinitz’s argument is mistaken. His conclusion is correct. Meaning, a cause is a sufficient condition for the effect. For example, because of the example I gave earlier with matches and focusing the sun’s rays, where those really are two different causes that can bring about the same effect, each one without the other. Not both together, but either one without the other can bring about the effect. That means a cause is a sufficient condition, and not a necessary-and-sufficient condition.

Okay. Now, if we reach the conclusion that a cause is a sufficient condition for the effect, then that means that if the cause occurred, the effect must appear. Right? It’s a sufficient condition. Once you know the cause occurred, that is enough to infer that the effect will also appear. Okay? That is the meaning of a sufficient condition.

So if that is so, when I speak about explanation or the natural course of events as cause and effect according to the laws of nature, that means that the laws of nature basically constitute the cause or explanation of what occurs. And in that sense the laws of nature are a sufficient condition for what occurs. For example, if a body is suspended in the air—a body with mass, yes—suspended in the air, then there is the law of gravitation. The law of gravitation says it must fall to the ground. Okay? There is no such thing as a body hanging in the air and not falling to the ground. Once it is in the air and there is the law of gravitation, that is enough to determine that the body will fall—unless, of course, there is some balancing force, in which case the situation is different. But given a reality in which only gravitation acts on that body, it will fall downward.

When reality is more complex—say there is another force pulling it in the opposite direction and balancing gravity—then it will not fall. Okay? But that does not contradict the sufficiency of gravitation, because the sufficiency is not that of gravitation alone but of the laws of nature as a whole. The full set of laws of nature is a sufficient condition for what occurs.

This reminds me: when I was in sixth grade, I was at a summer camp in Nehalim, at Yeshivat Nehalim. And they brought us some hypnotist. And I remember that hypnotist asked for a volunteer, laid him down—a magician, hypnotist, yes, a hypnotist I think—laid him on a bench and lifted him, lifted him into the air to a height of twenty centimeters, put him to sleep like that in hypnosis, and lifted him twenty centimeters in the air above the bench. I saw it with my own eyes. Okay? I have no idea what that means from my perspective today, but that is what I saw there.

Now, just an amusing remark that occurred to me afterward, yes, after a few years I thought to myself: what happened there? Does that mean he was standing in the air even though the net force on him was not zero? That is, gravity acts on him, there is no force balancing it, and nevertheless he stands in the air—which contradicts Newton’s second law, yes, that if a force acts on you, an acceleration develops in the direction of the force. Okay? So did that hypnotist deviate from the laws of nature, or not?

Maybe that hypnotist created a force—he knows how to create it, I don’t know how—that balanced the force of gravity, and the net force on that guy was therefore zero, and that is why he stood in the air. Because if he stood in the air, that means the net force on him was zero. He cannot stand in the air if the net force is not zero. He knows how to produce a force that balances gravity. So maybe he did that and did not depart from the laws of nature. But of course that doesn’t solve the problem. It doesn’t solve the problem because the question is how he created the opposing force. If he created the opposing force by means that are not natural—you see how this enters our discussion of mysticism—by means that are not natural, then he still departed from the laws of nature. How does he produce a force without there being a source for that force? That too is a departure from the laws of nature. It doesn’t help me to move to the plane of forces; that is equally a departure from the laws of nature.

All right, I just remembered that in our context. In any event, for our purposes, the claim is that if you take into account all the circumstances and all the relevant laws of nature, the future is uniquely determined from the current situation. There is no situation in which you know all the data about the current state and there are two options or two optional futures—two different things can happen. No. The laws of nature do not allow such a thing. And that is the meaning of the sufficiency of the laws of nature.

If the laws of nature are the explanation, as is commonly thought, or the cause, then that means the totality of the laws of nature is a sufficient condition for what will happen. And given that—as Laplace said—give me all the data and enough computational power, and I will tell you what will happen from now until the end of days. It is only the result of a calculation. A very complicated calculation, and we do not have all the data in hand, and therefore we do not know how to do that calculation. But at the principled level there is a calculation that can do the job. Give me a computer with infinite computational power, feed it all the relevant data about the current situation, and it will tell you everything that will happen from now until the end of days—except for human choices, and I’m not getting into that now. But in inanimate nature at least, or in nature without choice, the computer will give you everything that will happen.

So the meaning of all this is that given a natural present state, the future is unique. There is no degree of freedom at all; there are no gaps in the laws of nature.

Two exceptions one might perhaps raise in this context—I spoke about this in Friday lessons some time ago—are chaos and quantum theory. These two domains are often regarded as non-deterministic. What I described now is basically determinism. When I say the laws of nature are a sufficient condition for what will happen, I’ve basically made a deterministic statement: that the current state uniquely determines what will happen next.

Now the two exceptions to determinism are chaos and quantum theory, but neither is relevant to us. Chaos is irrelevant because that is simply a mistake. Chaos is completely deterministic. A chaotic system is a system in which I do not know how to predict what will happen, but only because the calculation is complicated or sensitive to initial conditions—not because there is no such calculation.

Take a piece of paper, stand on a second-floor balcony, and release the paper. Can you predict where on the ground it will land? The answer is no. We have no way to predict it. No supercomputer will succeed in making that calculation. It is insanely complicated. Why? Because it depends very much on exactly how I released it, what the winds were along the way, air density, the shape of the page, and all kinds of things like that. Very, very complicated. So making that calculation is very complicated. But there is such a calculation. In principle, if you give me all the data and a sufficiently powerful computer, I will tell you exactly where that piece of paper will land. The fact that I can’t predict it is simply a computational limitation on my part—or a limitation of the data or of the calculation, one of the two. That’s all. But in principle it is a completely deterministic process.

Take an example closer to our world: rolling a die. When I roll a die, we are used to treating the result as though it were random. Yes, it might come up one, two, three, up to six. And it is impossible to predict where the die will land. Anyone who could predict it would make a lot of money in gambling. We cannot predict it. Does that mean there is something random here? The answer is no. There is nothing random here. This is Newton’s laws. The die is a physical object with mass. You give it an initial velocity, there are winds, air density, the die’s shape, initial velocity—take all that into account, and in principle there is a calculation that will tell you where the die will land, what the result will be.

Why do we use probability here? We say the probability is one-sixth for each result, assuming the die is fair. Why do we use probability? There is not really anything random here. This is Newton’s laws; it is completely deterministic. We use probability because this thing is chaotic. It is not random. The calculation is very complicated and depends very delicately on initial conditions. If you throw the die with the same force but at a tiny bit different angle, the result will already be different. Therefore it is very sensitive to initial conditions, and because of that we do not know how to perform this calculation, and de facto we treat it as though it were a random process. We use probability to handle the results of die rolls. But this use is only because of our lack of information, not because in reality there is some degree of freedom that allows the die to land on one, two, or three. Once it leaves my hand, in principle the Holy One, blessed be He, can tell you on which face the die will land. I don’t know, because I lack computational power.

So this is a good example of something we are used to treating as random when there is nothing random there at all—only our limitation or lack of information or lack of computational power. The same is true of all natural phenomena. Even if we do not know how to predict them, that is only because of our limitation.

Take evolution. Ask biologists and they will tell you that in evolution there are parts that are random. Random, chance, whatever—you have two kinds of animals born, and suddenly a lion comes into the area. You know the joke about two guys and then a lion comes into the area? One of them starts running, and the other changes into running shoes. So the first says, are you crazy? Start running already. What good will running shoes do? Will you outrun the lion with running shoes? The lion will catch you either way, with or without the shoes. And he says: I’m putting on the running shoes so I can outrun you, not so I can outrun the lion. Meaning, if I run faster than you, the lion will eat you, not me. So I don’t need to outrun the lion in order for it not to eat me.

So yes, two human beings are born and a lion arrives in the area. The one who remains is the one who runs faster, okay? Because the lion will eat the other one. Now by contrast, if some other predator comes, one where strength matters and not speed, then the one who remains is the stronger one, not the faster one. Which means survival is a function of circumstances, and the circumstances are a matter of chance. Will a lion show up here, or a bear, or drought, or rain? And each set of circumstances dictates survival of different traits, because the traits that survive are those that adapt better to the new circumstances. Okay? To the conditions prevailing in that place.

But of course there is nothing random here. The fact that a lion or a bear happens to show up looks random to us because we don’t know how to calculate it. But in principle the lion and the bear are outcomes of natural processes, of the laws of nature, which determine whether a lion or a bear shows up here. Very complex, and therefore none of us knows how to predict it in advance. But in principle there is a calculation that will tell us whether a lion or a bear will show up. It is all the result of a deterministic calculation.

It’s just that we are accustomed—and rightly so, on the methodological level—to treat it as though it were a random process, this thing as though it were random. Because the calculation is so complicated, we do not know how to make it, and we prefer to use probability and speak in the language of probability. But one should not confuse the methodological plane with the substantive one. Methodologically we use probability, but substantively there is nothing random here. Nothing accidental. Everything is deterministic.

Quantum theory is more complicated. According to the common interpretations, at least, there there are gaps—meaning there can be two different outcomes from the same set of circumstances. But even there it doesn’t matter—and it doesn’t matter for two reasons. First, because this happens only on very, very small scales. Beyond a micron or a few microns, there are no quantum phenomena anymore, so in our world quantum theory has no significance. Beyond that, even quantum theory is a system of laws of nature—just laws of nature that determine distributions of possible events. They do not determine which event will happen, but rather the distribution among the different events that may happen.

Why am I saying all this? Now I return to us, to our discussion. If the system of laws of nature really is a sufficient condition for what will happen, that means that when I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to do something other than what is expected to happen naturally, I am basically asking Him to depart from the laws of nature. Because, as I said, the assumption of those who say there can be divine involvement within nature is basically that within the framework of nature there are several options that can occur, and I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to choose option B and not option A, among two options both compatible with the laws of nature, yes? Both possible according to the laws of nature.

But if I say there is no such thing—that the laws of nature always dictate one possibility, there is never a situation with two possibilities, two possible futures that are compatible, yes, that accord with the laws of nature and the circumstances that exist now—then that means that whenever I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to intervene or to do something other than what is expected to happen, I am essentially asking Him for a miracle. It is a request for a miracle. Always, by definition. Every request is basically a request for a miracle.

Now, here I return just to the remark about quantum theory. Even according to quantum theory, even if we ignore the issue of scale for a moment and say we are working on the quantum plane, even there when I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to intervene, I am basically asking Him to change the quantum distribution, because the quantum distribution carries out a kind of lottery. Event A can happen with one probability and event B with another. When I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, I am saying: please make event A happen and not event B. That means I am once again intervening in the laws of nature. There is no involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, without His being involved—that’s an oxymoron, right? If He is involved, that means He changes something that would not have happened without His involvement. Therefore all this talk about involvement within nature is nonsense. There is no such thing.

And it amazes me every time anew to discover how many scientists and philosophers, and of course theologians and thinkers and rabbis and commentators, have wasted words on involvement within nature and outside nature; how many arguments I had about these things on the site. It’s just nonsense. There is no such thing. Involvement within the framework of nature is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. Involvement is by definition a departure from the laws of nature.

So if that’s the case, it turns out that every request we ask of the Holy One, blessed be He, is basically a request for a miracle. Because we ask Him—every request for intervention is essentially a request to depart from the laws of nature. So first of all, that means that if I adopt the Talmud’s conclusion that there is a prohibition on praying for a miracle, a prohibition on mystical involvement, yes, on departure from nature, praying for mystical involvement, then that means that in fact there is a prohibition on praying at all, on asking the Holy One, blessed be He, for anything, because everything we ask for is in fact a departure from nature. And if it is forbidden to ask for a miracle, then you can’t ask for anything, because everything you ask for is a miracle. That is essentially the problem created by the Talmud’s conclusion here.

Now I want to sharpen a bit the connection to our topic. Why did I bring all this here? Because I think this prohibition among the Sages joins an entire family of halakhic statements we’ve seen, all of which say: we do not grant mysticism—miracles, departures from nature—a standing in our religious world. And this seems strange. Again, from a certain religious way of thinking you would expect the opposite—to accept it, all the more so. It is almost identified with an appeal to departures from nature, to what is beyond nature, to metaphysics, to mysticism, and so on. And the halakhic approach in this context is very, very consistent, as we’ve seen in various places. Here, in this case, there is apparently even a prohibition, if we adopt that this is indeed a prohibition and not merely something pointless. A prohibition against turning to or requesting some mystical departure from nature. It is forbidden to do that; forbidden to ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for that.

Just as it was forbidden for us to engage in divination, sorcery, turning to all kinds of powers—we talked about that—from the demonic side or all kinds of things like that, this now takes on a much broader meaning. We are forbidden to ask for such things even from the Holy One, blessed be He. In general, we are forbidden to ask for departures from nature. This has nothing to do with the demonic side or not the demonic side. Even from the Holy One, blessed be He, we are forbidden to ask that He depart from nature. In that sense it frames those prohibitions as a kind of private case of something broader. I assume over there the prohibitions are more severe—over there it’s idolatry, martyrdom rather than transgression. Here I don’t know exactly what the significance of this prohibition of “futile prayer” is. As I said, these are strange kinds of reasons. It’s not exactly clear whether it is a Torah prohibition or rabbinic—apparently rabbinic; I don’t know exactly what.

But still, once we take this into account too, it seems that those prohibitions are just a particular case. We are not supposed to rely at all on departures from nature, on mysticism. One must not turn to mysticism. Okay? That is basically the meaning of what emerges from the Talmud here.

Now of course the conclusion as I’ve presented it here seems very problematic, because it basically says that one cannot ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for anything. We are constantly educated that one should pray and ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for our needs—for healing, for livelihood, for health, everything you want. All of Jabotinsky’s “M”s, if you like. One must ask the Holy One, blessed be He. But the conclusion that comes out here is that one cannot; one is forbidden to ask Him for anything. At least it is futile to ask Him for anything, but apparently it is also forbidden. So what remains of the world of prayer if one really may not turn to Him? Prayer, by definition—now I’m placing it in our context—prayer by definition is ostensibly a turn toward mysticism. It is an appeal for mystical involvement in the running of the world. That is the purpose of requests in prayer. And if what we see here is the conclusion that this is essentially forbidden—that one may not turn to mysticism—then what does that leave of prayer, or of the requests in prayer?

Prayer has several parts; requests are only one part. But let’s talk now about the requests in prayer. Because of this, there are indeed those—I return to Leibowitz—who wanted to argue that there is a difference between praying for an overt miracle and praying for a hidden miracle. Prayer for an overt miracle is what was forbidden in the Talmud. Prayer for a hidden miracle is permitted. Every request, as we’ve now seen, is basically a request for a hidden miracle. So if it is forbidden to ask for miracles, hidden or overt, then one cannot ask for anything. Therefore the obvious solution is that what the Talmud forbids asking for is an overt miracle, not a hidden miracle. A hidden miracle one may request. Every request is basically a request for a hidden miracle. One may not request an overt miracle.

And that is apparently also what underlies this Leibowitz story about cancer versus another disease. Another disease—recovering from the flu—is a hidden miracle, because people recover from the flu. You cannot tell that a miracle occurred. But recovering from cancer is an overt miracle. So for the first one you may pray; for the second you may not.

I said: in Leibowitz’s case that is probably not the explanation of his words, so there it’s simply a scientific mistake on his part. But at the theological level this is a very common approach, one that distinguishes between a hidden miracle and an overt miracle. Except that it cannot be right. It cannot be right because at least one of the examples brought in the Talmud is a hidden miracle, not an overt miracle. When I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, that my child be a male— is that an overt miracle? How is that an overt miracle? When that child is born, he will be male. I do not know whether he had always been male. That change, that miracle that happened inside the mother’s womb, is a hidden miracle. We are speaking, after all, about a period without ultrasounds. As long as the child is not born, we do not know its sex. So what is the problem? Asking about the sex of the fetus is a request for a hidden miracle, not an overt one.

According to the thesis that one may ask for a hidden miracle and only an overt miracle is forbidden, then why is it forbidden to ask regarding the sex of the fetus? Fine, the fire—when there’s a fire in the city and I ask that these not be my household members—that is an overt miracle, because there are people in the city who do see the fire, so they see whether it’s not in my house or whether it is in my house. If the Holy One, blessed be He, performs a miracle, that would be an overt miracle. But the prayer regarding the sex of the fetus is a request for a hidden miracle, not an overt one. And if the Talmud says that this too is forbidden, then the formulation in the Talmud is indeed one of a request about the past. It doesn’t matter whether that “past” is overt or hidden. A request about the past, a request about something already fixed—a request for a miracle—is forbidden, whether it is an overt miracle or a hidden miracle.

So that means the distinction between an overt miracle and a hidden miracle is incorrect. One may not ask for any miracle.

I’ll tell you more than that: in some respects it isn’t even a miracle. After all, all I’m asking the Holy One, blessed be He, to do is perform a sex-change operation on the fetus in its mother’s womb. I assume that if not today, then before long, human doctors will be able to do such a thing. It is even within human reach. So what is the problem with asking the Holy One, blessed be He, to do that? Is this even a miracle? Is this request a request for a miracle? No—it’s a request to perform a sex-change operation in the mother’s womb. A medical procedure that in principle is within human ability as well.

But of course every request for a miracle is like that. What is a miracle? I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to bring rain. Assuming we have technology—I don’t know, silver iodide, yes—to increase the amount of rain in clouds, then we too can bring rain. When we ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to bring rain, we are telling Him: do it without our doing the required actions. That is what is called a departure from nature. That does not mean the Holy One, blessed be He, necessarily has to do something that humans cannot do. True, if humans can do it, usually I won’t ask the Holy One, blessed be He—I’ll go to a human who knows how to do it. So that sort of miracle I simply don’t ask for. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a miracle; it is. I just don’t ask for it because it’s within my reach; I can manage on my own. But it is a miracle. Every such thing is a miracle. It is a miracle because something happened here without the natural causes that would have brought it about. Naturally this was supposed to come out male; no doctor intervened; and the Holy One, blessed be He, turned it into a female. So that is a miracle. Every divine involvement is a miracle, period.

Now, I’ll go a bit more into the details of this Talmudic example about the fetus. Actually the Talmud is wrong—scientifically, I mean. The sex of the fetus is determined when the egg is fertilized, right? When the egg meets the sperm cell, that is when it is determined whether it is XX or XY—okay? Whether it is male or female. Someone on the site remarked that there are also all kinds of additional conditions; not important. At the basic level, it is clear that this fetus is already known to be male or female long before forty days. From the moment of its formation it is already clear whether it is male or female. So scientifically the Talmud is mistaken. The sex of the fetus is not determined on day forty but on day zero.

But in fact, it’s not even day zero, but six thousand years before that, because what happens at the moment of intercourse is itself a natural result of processes that happened earlier. So in the final analysis, when we look at the deterministic chain in its full length, this thing has been fixed since the six days of creation—whether a male or female would come out here. I’m saying, except for human choices. But it’s either laws of nature or human choices. And therefore in fact I cannot ask about the sex of the fetus even before I got married. Even then I cannot ask about the sex of the fetus; it is still a request for a miracle.

Not to mention that asking about the sex of the fetus means assuming that by default the fetus is supposed to come out female, and I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to make it male. Therefore it is clear that by definition this is a request for a miracle, as I said before. And this is true at every stage of history. Even if my grandfather, before I was even born, had asked that when I have a child, my son should be a male—that too would have been a request for a miracle. It has nothing at all to do with what stage of pregnancy we are in.

There was another interesting example that came up there in the exchange with Hiyuta this morning in the comments on that column. It was about the attack this morning in Gush Etzion. There was a woman there who said she needed to recite the blessing of thanksgiving because she had been waiting for that same bus at the stop inside the town and not at the stop outside the town. So someone answered her that one does not recite the blessing of thanksgiving for something that didn’t happen, only for something that did happen. Nothing happened to her; the attack didn’t happen to her, so there is no reason to recite the blessing.

That is of course incorrect. The whole blessing of thanksgiving is for something that did not happen—for a sick person who did not die, for sea voyagers who were saved. I say the blessing for something that did not happen. The question is only how close you have to be to the possibility that it could have happened to you and did not happen, in order to say the blessing. The question is what level of closeness is required.

But in principle, every stage from the six days of creation until this morning in Neve Daniel was in fact a stage on the way to that attack. And a person could recite the blessing of thanksgiving even for the fact that he was born to this mother and not that mother, or that they moved here and not there, and therefore he was not in Gush Etzion and was not harmed in that attack. There is no principled difference between that and being at another bus stop, or being inside the bus but not in the gunman’s line of fire, or being in the line of fire but the gun jammed. There is no principled difference. This whole chain is deterministic. It does not matter which link in the chain you are at. And therefore in principle, every request—and this is what I’m summarizing here—every request is a request for a miracle.

Now I’ve really finished the connection to our topic, because what I wanted to show here was one more halakhic reservation about recourse to mysticism—even mysticism on the side of the Holy One, blessed be He, not on the side of the demonic realm.

But here I’ll just complete the picture in this context, though it no longer really pertains to these lessons. So what is actually going on here? What is happening here, in my opinion at least, is that there is a prohibition on asking the Holy One, blessed be He, for anything at all. Because what is written in the Talmud here rests on two assumptions. The first assumption is that there are forms of involvement that are miracles and forms of involvement that are within nature. That is a factual assumption, and it is not correct. The second assumption is that one may pray for involvement within nature, but one may not pray for involvement of the kind called a miracle. That is a normative halakhic assumption.

Now the authority of the Talmud lies in its normative determinations, not in its factual determinations. If it turns out that the Talmud was mistaken factually, then it was mistaken. One has to act according to the correct factual assumption, not according to the Talmud’s factual assumption. The norms established in the Talmud are halakhically binding.

Now look what comes out. Factually speaking, the Talmud was mistaken. There is no involvement that is within nature. Every involvement is a miracle. Therefore I am not supposed to accept that factual determination of the Talmud. On the other hand, I am supposed to accept the Talmud’s normative determination, because it has halakhic authority. And what did it say? That one may not ask for miracles.

So if we now combine the factual conclusion with the Talmud’s norm, then every request for involvement is a request for involvement by way of miracle on the one hand. On the other hand, there is a prohibition against requesting involvement by way of miracle. What is the conclusion? There is a prohibition against requesting involvement. So why pray? What about the Amidah, all the request-prayers? For nothing?

The conclusion is that one cannot ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for anything.

Now what should be done in practice? Look, in practice I think He isn’t involved anyway, regardless of whether one may or may not ask Him. Therefore the whole issue of requests is, to me, genuinely a very troubling question—the question of requests in prayer. Outside of prayer I ask for nothing. But in prayer itself there is a mandatory liturgical text that includes requests. So what does one do with that?

Look, I’m not certain enough to tell myself that this is forbidden to say and that I should erase parts of the Amidah. If I were sufficiently certain, I would have to erase it. I’m not sufficiently certain. I’m not sufficiently certain because I don’t know. It may be that for requests on behalf of the community—there are decisors who want to say that if the community asks, one may pray even for a miracle, even an overt miracle. So I say: I can intend those requests in the Amidah on the communal level and not the private level. Once I get to a point from which there is no way out, and I am completely convinced that this whole business is baseless and forbidden, then truly it will no longer be possible to say it.

For the time being—I think Rabbi Kook says this in Olat Re’iyah—I am still not certain enough to take such a far-reaching step. I think Rabbi Kook in Olat Re’iyah speaks about this more or less this way: that you can’t talk only to yourself or only about something private. Healing is something general—that there be healing in the world, that such things exist. Right, there are quite a few who say that one should have the community in mind and not the private individual.

All right, that’s just a theological comment, not so directly connected to the question of miracles. What does one do with prayer in such a worldview? The requests in prayer are really very difficult for me. But for now, again, I don’t feel certain enough to give them up.

That’s it, up to here. More power to you. Thank you very much. Goodbye. Shabbat shalom.