God and the World – Lesson 6

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m going to mute everyone. The conclusion, in the end, is that the world operates by means of two basic forces, or two baskets of basic forces: human choices and laws of nature. That’s it. In other words, the only factor that is not subject to deterministic nature is human will. Yes, human choice. At least I believe in free choice. There are people who don’t believe in that either, but I do believe in free choice. I think that’s what is called nature. Nature means the laws of nature plus human choices. Human choices are also nature. We were created naturally in such a way that we have the ability to choose. In that sense, from my perspective, that too is part of the laws of nature. Not in the sense that it’s deterministic or that it’s physics, but it’s part of nature. That’s the natural way the world functions. And my claim is that once you accept the natural functioning of the world, there is no room for involvement by the Holy One, blessed be He. Now, I’ll qualify that a bit and say—I think I already said this—that I can’t rule out the possibility that there are certain places or certain times in which the Holy One, blessed be He, does intervene after all without anyone noticing. I can’t rule that out. It could happen. What I’m saying is that in the general picture, in the ongoing course of things, it is not true that everything is in His hands. More than that: usually it is not in His hands. If there are some rare events like that, I can’t rule it out. It may be so. But still, I’ll say something a bit more far-reaching about that. The burden of proof is on the person who says there is such intervention, because even the one who says there is hasn’t seen it happen. Just as I haven’t seen it happen. In other words, in the end, if the natural course of things is not like that, and you claim that there are events that are like that, I would expect you to point to them. Do you have any indications that show you this is happening? I don’t. So I say: I can’t rule out that it happens, but on the other hand I have no indication whatsoever. I don’t see what would make me think that this happens. And again, let’s leave the verses aside for the moment. We’ll get to the verses later. And of course I’m setting aside not only the verses, but also the writings in Jewish thought of all kinds of commentators and thinkers and halakhic decisors and whatever you want, who of course write against this thesis. But for me that’s not a consideration. They can write it; I simply disagree with them. For me that’s not evidence. Obviously, if there were something in the Torah—and if I think the Torah was written by the Holy One, blessed be He—then I assume that is evidence. And that’s why I said we’ll still get to that. We’ll discuss it. Okay. Now, another remark I want to make in this context. The basis of the argument I raised here is the assumption that in nature there are no gaps. When I say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved in nature, what that means is: the laws of nature are deterministic, and involvement by the Holy One, blessed be He, means violating the laws of nature at that place and time, in that event. Yes—violating the laws of nature. There’s no such thing as involvement within nature. Either involvement or nature. That’s the first claim. The second claim is: there is no involvement; there is only nature. But first of all, the infrastructure here is that you can’t have both. There’s no such thing as involvement within nature. Now, what I showed earlier is that if there is divine involvement and there is also a natural explanation, then the two contradict each other, because each one is a sufficient condition. But there’s another possibility. It could be that there are certain things with respect to which nature is open. In other words, given the specific situation I’m in, the business can go in several directions, not necessarily in only one direction. The laws of nature don’t dictate one and only one direction, but allow several directions. And then the Holy One, blessed be He, can choose one of them. And then what happens here is that there is divine involvement that does not contradict the laws of nature. In other words, it doesn’t fall under the whole argument I raised before, because the whole argument I raised before assumed that divine involvement means a deviation from nature. But if there are gaps in nature—and here I’ve defined what is meant by gaps—gaps mean that there are certain circumstances that do not dictate what the next step will be, do not dictate the continuation. The continuation can proceed along one of several tracks. And then, if such a natural state really exists, involvement by the Holy One, blessed be He, can avoid contradicting the laws of nature. He chooses path B out of six paths. Okay? So He says: the world will go in direction B out of the six directions. So here the Holy One, blessed be He, determined where the world would go from among several possibilities, but this does not contradict the laws of nature because the laws of nature allow it. So if that possibility exists, then my previous argument is not correct. And therefore we need to add one more point here. And that point is that there are no gaps in nature. In other words, the laws of nature, at least as we know them today, are completely deterministic. The only exception is quantum theory, and quantum theory—first of all, there’s a dispute over whether it is deterministic or not, a dispute among interpreters of quantum theory. But even if yes, it’s clear that the gap in nature in quantum theory exists on tiny scales, and on scales that are irrelevant to the behavior of human beings, animals, or climatic events or things like that—earthquakes or things of that kind—scales that are simply irrelevant. We’re talking about scales of individual electrons; there we can talk about quantum phenomena. But the macroscopic laws, the laws of nature as we know them around us, are all deterministic. So in that sense quantum theory also does not allow a gap within the laws of nature, or involvement by the Holy One, blessed be He, that would not contradict the laws of nature. I’ll say more than that: I discussed this at length in the book The Science of Freedom, because there I talked about free choice and whether it can be inserted into physics. But here the logic of the discussion is very similar. And what I argued there is that even if this were true on the larger scales, and it could be that what quantum theory says is that there are several possibilities for natural dynamics and the Holy One, blessed be He, chooses one of them—then there you have divine involvement that does not contradict the laws of nature. But that’s not true, because quantum theory also determines the probability that each of those six tracks will occur. It doesn’t say that it’s free or random in some unrestricted sense; there are probabilities. And if the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes, then He is actually violating the natural probability, and that too is a law of nature. Therefore, in the end it is always intervention.

[Speaker F] But violating it in one case still doesn’t violate the statistics.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, He can determine one case and take it into account in the next case. And I’m saying: the statistics are built from one case plus another case. The moment quantum theory says that this business is run by a lottery, where the lottery says there is a 20% chance for this path and an 80% chance for that path, now the Holy One, blessed be He, comes and says, okay, I choose path A. Then He deviated from the laws of nature, because it did not proceed in a random 20/80 way; it proceeded in a deterministic way of one—He decided it would go there. So that too contradicts quantum theory.

[Speaker F] But statistics themselves—since the probabilities also apply per individual case, right? Is that what you mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course. The laws of nature apply to every case, and in every case the weights are 20/80. Now here, in this case, it didn’t proceed at all according to a 20/80 lottery; the Holy One, blessed be He, decided this is what would happen, period. That contradicts the laws of nature on the principled level. It could be that what quantum theory can contribute here for those who think about involvement within nature is that they can say: this is where He hides. Here we won’t see that He is involved, but clearly He is involved and clearly He has deviated from the laws of nature. We just won’t notice it with our eyes. But to hide, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not need quantum theory. The Holy One, blessed be He, can make an apple fall on Newton’s head, and nobody will know that it wasn’t gravity, because which of us checked the strength of the branch holding the apple above Newton? Nobody. So we don’t really know that the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved there. So in order to hide, He doesn’t need quantum theory. If you assume He hides and is actually involved, then you can assume that regardless. But if you say that the laws of nature work and His involvement is not supposed to contradict them, and you want to claim that it takes place within them, quantum theory won’t help.

[Speaker F] So on the large scale I understand why, because you can’t say that the apple didn’t detach. On the small scale too?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I said before—no. Because even on the small scale, if the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved, then it means this was not an event of a 20/80 lottery, but rather an event chosen deterministically, event A. That contradicts quantum theory. Now it’s true that none of us will feel it, but the same is true of the apple.

[Speaker C] But are you willing to distinguish between a blunt and obvious intervention like, I don’t know, rain in the middle of the summer—no, that’s not a good example—something even more unusual, the splitting of the Red Sea, and something subtle like that you-

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re really talking about a hidden miracle and an open miracle. I’ll get to that in a moment. My claim, as a starting point at least, is that even hidden miracles don’t exist. Since a hidden miracle too is a deviation from nature, and again I say: the Holy One, blessed be He, can also hide behind Newtonian mechanics; you don’t need quantum theory. After all, every time an apple falls to the ground, none of us measures what the apple’s weight was against how much force there was—whether He said this apple will fall even though according to the laws of nature it shouldn’t fall. In other words, He has no problem hiding; that’s not the issue. Therefore, if someone supports this kind of conspiratorial thesis, as if the Holy One, blessed be He, is really intervening all the time but hiding from us behind the laws of nature, then fine—I have nothing to say to him. He can always hide. But I think that’s an unreasonable thesis. There’s no indication whatsoever that it happens, so why assume that it happens? We generally assume that things that happen have natural explanations. I also gave examples in the previous class: when a committee is set up to investigate an airplane disaster or an epidemic or all kinds of things of that sort, and the committee’s findings—even if the whole committee is composed exclusively of God-fearing doctors or God-fearing researchers, God-fearing scientists—not one of them will write in the findings: “The public did not pray well enough, and therefore the plane crashed.” Until they find where the crack in the wing was or what the pilot’s error was, they haven’t finished the job. What does that mean? It means that we do not in fact assume that things happen by the action of the Holy One, blessed be He. Things happen naturally. And therefore, in principle, it could be that He is playing hide-and-seek with us. Meaning that He is always hiding and always activating all kinds of things without us seeing. That’s not reasonable; we don’t assume that. We always assume that what happens conforms to the laws of nature; otherwise we also couldn’t rely on a plane reaching its destination, given that we made the scientific and technological calculations and built the plane. So what? The Holy One, blessed be He, can’t decide it won’t reach its destination? Yet I rely on it reaching its destination. If it doesn’t reach its destination, I’ll be very surprised. Why? Because my assumption is that things work naturally. And everyone is like that, not just me. Therefore I say that this is all of our initial intuition, even if there can always be a conspiracy theory. Generally I don’t put much stock in conspiracies, but in this context too, you have to understand: this is basically a conspiracy theory. Essentially, the Holy One, blessed be He, shows us laws of nature, but behind them He’s actually running around and doing completely different things and hiding every time. And if we check, then He immediately hides behind them and won’t intervene. He intervenes only where we don’t see. Do you understand how much that smells like an unfalsifiable thesis? Because every time I test it and see there’s a natural explanation, you’ll say, “Well, because you checked, He hid. He is always involved only when nobody checks.” Okay, and what happened when I checked after He had already done it? Ah, He knew in advance that I would check, so therefore here He didn’t intervene. You understand? So this is a thesis that is very easy to defend; you can’t attack it. It’s an unfalsifiable thesis, and not for nothing philosophers and scientists are suspicious of such theses. And I too am suspicious of such a thesis, even though it could be true. Any conspiracy could be true. It could also be that the ones who murdered Rabin were three demons riding on the roof of Yediot Aharonot and they sent Yigal Amir to make cap-gun sounds from the pistol. Anything is possible. But it’s not reasonable, there’s no indication whatsoever that it happened, and therefore I don’t think it happened. Again, without arguing now about Yigal Amir conspiracies—just an example. You can hang everything on conspiracies. The simple way is that what we see is what is happening, and there’s no point in playing games. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me that the Holy One, blessed be He, is playing hide-and-seek with us. Every time we check, this thing works. That’s the point. And if it doesn’t work, we will examine and investigate and think again until we find why it worked, why it happened. And we won’t say, “Ah, here the Holy One, blessed be He, simply intervened—that’s all—so there’s no natural explanation here, everything’s fine, we’re going on our way in peace, closing the commission of inquiry and going to sleep.” We won’t write in the findings: “There is no natural explanation; this was a punishment because they didn’t pray well enough in the morning.” That’s it, the committee’s work is done. Would anyone accept such a thing? Nobody would accept such a thing, including people who don’t—That’s it.

[Speaker C] Because the assumption is that the Holy One, blessed be He, acts through natural things…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again. So you’re going back once more to the question about Newton. So I’m saying: then what did He do? He basically caused this germ to get there, and the germ killed the people in the epidemic. So I’m going to start a commission of inquiry into how the germ got there; that too has natural explanations. Somewhere there has to be involvement by the Holy One, blessed be He, that violated the laws of nature—somewhere. Even if you retreat one step back, two steps back, three, somewhere there was involvement that deviated from nature. Now if you accept involvement as that kind of involvement, then why not stop at the first step? What’s the problem? I didn’t find any crack in the wing; apparently they didn’t pray well enough, the Holy One, blessed be He, brought down the plane. What’s the problem? After all, somewhere He intervenes—that much we agree on.

[Speaker C] Because the world doesn’t work that way, it never works that way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it doesn’t work that way, then the germs too… the germs also arrive for reasons…

[Speaker C] God made it so that the technician responsible in the technical division of the flight didn’t check; he had the flu that day, he had a headache, he didn’t check well. As a result there was a malfunction. As a result… there’s this whole chain of circumstances, and then five people died there. The problem is that it won’t work, because out of five people, maybe four were righteous and only one actually deserved it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no—only the wicked died. The Holy One, blessed be He, is all-powerful; there’s no problem. He put only wicked people on the flight. But that doesn’t help you at all—that’s what I’m explaining to you—it doesn’t help you at all, because the question of why he got the flu is also a question that has a scientific answer. And you tell me: no, the Holy One, blessed be He, caused that. So why not just say directly that He caused the plane crash? Why do you have to retreat backward?

[Speaker C] So the plane crash—there are fine-tunings, because someone sneezed next to him and someone else sneezed two meters away and he wasn’t wearing a mask.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The only distinction that could matter here is the distinction between a hidden miracle and an open miracle. That’s all. But a hidden miracle is a hidden miracle and an open miracle is an open miracle; I don’t care whether it’s subtle or crude—what difference does that make?

[Speaker C] So the world operates with hidden miracles.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He can bring down the plane, He can bring down the plane with no problem and hide behind hidden miracles and everything is fine. No problem to break the wing. He’ll break the wing. Won’t the committee investigate? Afterward we found a crack in the wing; we’ll examine ourselves to see why it happened. There was a manufacturing defect; we’ll go back to the factory and investigate there. Why? The Holy One, blessed be He, broke the wing—what’s the problem? He did a hidden miracle. Nobody saw how the wing broke. We don’t assume that this happens, so if it doesn’t happen here, why should it happen one step back or two steps back? And if it does happen there, why not assume that it already happened here and not go one or two steps back? I don’t see what is gained by that.

[Speaker C] Because God did not create the world that way. He created the world in the natural way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if He created the world in the natural way, then the flu also arrives in the natural way. What do you gain from the technician’s flu? In any case, you are giving up the laws of nature.

[Speaker F] Maybe, maybe it’s that—wait, Rabbi—between an open miracle and a hidden miracle, beyond the semantic distinction, do you think there is some reasoning that the Holy One, blessed be He, supposedly prefers that even if He does a miracle, it not be open?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to hidden versus open miracles in a moment. What I’ve said so far is that my claim, at least, is that when I say there is no divine involvement, it doesn’t mean only that there are no open miracles. That there are no open miracles today, we all know. There are no open miracles today. I am claiming that there are no hidden miracles either, by and large. Again, I can’t rule out a point here and a point there where it does happen anyway—I don’t know—but there is no indication, and the scientific outlook, the natural outlook, says that a thing that happened has a natural cause. And therefore there too I do not assume, as a default assumption, that the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved. Now I want to bring you an example that really sharpens this issue of open and hidden miracles. Once- maybe I’ll just summarize what I wanted to say here in this section. Basically my claim is that there are no gaps in science. In other words, every divine involvement is a miracle. The claim that there is divine involvement within nature is a misunderstanding. There is no such thing in the world. Conceptually there is no such thing. Conceptually there is no such thing as God’s involvement within nature, even though you will hear this in almost every text that deals with providence—they’ll write about it—and they’re all mistaken. There is no such thing. It’s simply not true. It’s confusion—they’re confused, not just mistaken. There is no such thing. Any divine involvement means that, according to the laws of nature, A should have happened, and the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened and B happened. So that means He deviated from the laws of nature. No tricks. And the assumption behind that—that there are no gaps in nature, what I said before—that’s the infrastructure from which this comes out. Now what I actually want to claim is that if I really say there are no hidden miracles either, because a hidden miracle too is a deviation from nature, only we don’t see that there was a deviation. And as I said before, a hidden miracle can exist in Newtonian mechanics; you don’t need quantum theory for that. When we see an apple fall, none of us checked the strength of the connection. It’s a hidden miracle, even if the Holy One, blessed be He, made the apple fall and its mass isn’t enough for it to fall. That’s a hidden miracle to exactly the same degree as with an individual electron in quantum theory, because both there and here we do not see that there was a deviation from nature. Therefore you don’t need quantum theory to talk about hidden miracles. But if we assume that something that happens, happens because of natural reasons, then that means we are basically assuming that there are no hidden miracles either. That’s what we assume—with the exception that, I don’t know, maybe there are certain cases where yes. We usually assume it didn’t happen, there’s no indication that it happened, and even if someone says hypothetically that there are such things, that won’t help me, because nowhere will I assume that’s what happened, because the default is that it didn’t happen. Whoever wants to claim that it did happen, let him bring evidence. Now look, there is a Talmudic passage, in tractate Berakhot in the last chapter. The Talmud there talks about a prayer concerning the past. And it says there, yes: someone who sees a fire and says, “May it be Your will that these not be members of my household,” or his wife is pregnant and he prays, “May it be Your will that it be a male,” okay? So the Talmud says: this is a vain prayer, this is a prayer about something already past; it is forbidden to do this. Forbidden. Now the Talmud there distinguishes between praying about the fetus when it is not yet forty days old and after forty days. After forty days it has already taken shape; it is already clear whether it is male or female, that has already been determined, and therefore there it is no longer relevant to pray. Before forty days one still can; it is still an open question, and therefore one may pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, that it be a male or that it be a female. If someone wants, he can pray in either direction. In any event, the question is: what exactly is the difference between a fetus that is less than forty days old and a fetus that is more than forty days old? In a fetus that is eight months old—not forty days, much more than forty days—if the Holy One, blessed be He, were to turn it from male to female, that would be a hidden miracle in every respect. Right? After all, nobody knows—and I’m not talking about the age of ultrasound, I’m talking about the time of the Sages. In the time of the Sages, nobody knows whether in the belly or womb of this woman there is a male or a female. So what’s the problem? Why can’t I pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, that He turn the male there into a female or vice versa? By the way, nowadays even a human being could do that. In principle, it would be possible to do sex-reassignment surgery in the womb. It’s only a technological question. In principle, just as it can be done outside, it can also be done inside. I’m not a doctor; I don’t know whether they already know how to do such a thing today, but I assume it’s only a technological matter—if not today, then in another ten years, another twenty years. In principle, even human beings can do it. So why shouldn’t I pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, that He do it? What’s the problem?

[Speaker D] Maybe the problem here is that the Talmud says it’s a theological problem—you troubled your Creator to bring forth fruits out of their proper season. It’s like it’s chutzpah, according to what the Talmud says there—that it’s the burden, you’re burdening-

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] God- no, no, why not burden-

[Speaker D] Why is it permitted to burden-

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Him when it is still less than forty days old? Why is it permitted to burden Him when I ask for rain?

[Speaker D] Because apparently that’s not a burden.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is that not a burden?

[Speaker D] To bring forth- the Talmud clearly understands that there is a concept of burden: you burdened your Creator to bring forth fruits not in their proper season. Now if it were in their proper season—what do you mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This has nothing to do with burden at all. For the Holy One, blessed be He, there are no burdens.

[Speaker D] By the way, but the Talmud does mention it as something that is not proper to do.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true. The Talmud- the Talmud is talking about asking for a miracle. That’s what is called burden. Burden means that you are uprooting nature. But I’m saying: if it is forbidden to pray for a miracle-

[Speaker D] Like-

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] as the Talmud says there, that means it is forbidden to pray even for a hidden miracle, because after all an eight-month-old baby—even if a miracle is done there—that too is a hidden miracle. So are you telling me that it is forbidden to pray even for a hidden miracle?

[Speaker D] No, a hidden miracle with burden is forbidden; a hidden miracle without burden is permitted.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no difference, so where is the burden anywhere?

[Speaker D] Why not? The Talmud says burden is indeed a parameter.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it is not a parameter. There is no parameter of burden at all. For the Holy One, blessed be He, there is no burden at all. What the Talmud is talking about is a place where He has to violate the laws of nature; that is what is called burden. Meaning, when He has to perform a miracle.

[Speaker D] So after forty days-

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He- that the Holy One, blessed be He, should do a miracle for me—that deducts from my merits in the World to Come and all sorts of things like that. The point is the miracle, not the burden. And at eight months and at twenty days it is the same miracle. And by the way, they are both hidden. So then what? If I am forbidden to pray even for an eight-month-old baby, that means I am forbidden to pray for a hidden miracle too. So why am I allowed to pray about a twenty-day-old fetus? There too it is a hidden miracle, and here too it is a hidden miracle. What is the difference? So I’ll tell you what the difference is. Because the Sages understood that until forty days this is an open question. The fetus does not yet have a clear sex of male or female, and there the Holy One, blessed be He, can intervene within nature; His intervention will not be a miracle. At eight months the fetus’s sex is already fixed, and then if I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to intervene, I am asking Him for a miracle. In other words, it is a prayer for a miracle. And the prayer before forty days is not a prayer for a miracle but a prayer for involvement within nature. That is the only explanation I can think of for this Talmudic passage. Now, if I speak through my lenses today, and after all I know that even at thirty days the fetus’s sex is already clear—male and female have already differentiated, definitely differentiated—then what does that mean? I’ll say more than that: not only at thirty days. Every prayer in which I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for something is a request for a miracle, because as I said before, there is no involvement that is not a miracle. So every prayer to the Holy One, blessed be He, is a prayer for a miracle. And the distinction between a prayer for a hidden miracle and a prayer for an open miracle does not stand up to scrutiny, because a fetus of eight months is a prayer for a hidden miracle, and even that is forbidden. So you can see that when the Sages permitted prayer, they probably held that these are situations in which what I am asking for is not a miracle, because nature itself is open. Once nature itself is open, there are different possibilities—the cells can differentiate as male or female—we ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to make them differentiate as female, and then that means He has not violated the laws of nature, He has not deviated from the laws of nature; He has acted within nature. That is permitted. But when the sex is already fixed, there I am asking for a miracle, and that is forbidden. But in light of what I said before, according to the scientific knowledge we have today, all natural processes are deterministic and fixed in advance, and therefore every prayer to the Holy One, blessed be He, is a prayer for a miracle without exception. There is no prayer to the Holy One, blessed be He, that is not a prayer for a miracle—categorically!

[Speaker D] So wait, then even before forty days it would be forbidden according to determinism?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One second, one second, I’ll explain. We’ll get to the implications in a moment. First I’m trying to explain what the problem is in the Talmud. What I basically want to argue is that if it is forbidden to pray for a miracle, including a hidden miracle, then it is forbidden to pray at all—to ask, not to pray, sorry—forbidden to ask. There are other parts to prayer, but the part of requests—one may not ask, because every request you make of the Holy One, blessed be He, you are basically saying to Him: intervene, change nature, do something for me that nature by itself would not have done. And then basically my claim is the following: the Sages who made this distinction assumed, in my opinion mistakenly, that there are gaps in nature. That is how they understood it, and it’s clear that they understood it that way. By the way, sages much later than the Sages also understood it that way, all the way down to our own day. There are sages who write about involvement within nature, which in other words means they claim that there are gaps in nature. But what can you do—it’s a mistake. There are no gaps in nature. And because of that, there is basically in the Sages an assumption that is scientifically mistaken in this passage in Berakhot. And now, first of all, I have an explanation for why the Sages really make distinctions between situations: here it is permitted to pray, here it is forbidden. They say: these situations are not prayer for a miracle, so it is permitted; these situations are prayer for a miracle, therefore it is forbidden. But now the big question that comes up is: what about us today? Today we hold—I do, and I think this is the accepted view in the scientific world—that every divine involvement is a miracle. And therefore every prayer or request to the Holy One, blessed be He, that He intervene, that He do something, is a request for a miracle. Now one of two things follows: either it is forbidden to ask the Holy One, blessed be He, because every request is a miracle and the Sages said it is forbidden to ask for miracles—that’s one possibility. The second possibility is to assume that the assumption that it is forbidden to pray for a miracle is not correct. The Sages’ assumption or ruling that it is forbidden to pray for a miracle is based on the fact that there are situations in which prayer is not prayer for a miracle. But once it has become clear to us that in all situations prayer is prayer for a miracle, now either it is forbidden to pray at all, or it is permitted to pray for everything and there is no such prohibition against praying for a miracle, asking for a miracle. Those are the two possibilities. Now I say the following: if I now have to decide how I relate to the rabbinic ruling—after all, the Sages have halakhic authority. Okay? The Sages have halakhic authority, and therefore I am bound by their halakhic rulings. I am not bound by their scientific conceptions; they have many scientific mistakes, so that is obvious. Certainly I am not bound by a scientific determination that the Sages made; that is irrelevant. If they were mistaken, then they were mistaken. We already discussed that there is no authority with regard to facts. If so, then out of the two possibilities I presented here—either to say that it is permitted to pray for a miracle against the Sages, or to say that it is forbidden to pray for anything—the possibility that it is forbidden to pray for anything does not actually go against the Sages. It goes against the scientific conception of the Sages, because I am basically saying there is no prayer that is not a prayer for a miracle, but I adopt the Sages’ halakhic ruling that says it is forbidden to pray for a miracle; only their science was mistaken. The conclusion is that it is forbidden to ask for anything. By contrast—wait, wait, one second—by contrast, if I choose the opposite option, namely that I nullify the prohibition on praying for a miracle and then one may pray for anything, then I have actually gone against the halakhic authority of the Sages, not against their science. Now in Jewish law they do have authority. I’m not saying this categorically, by the way, because it is clear to me—at least to me—that this ruling itself, that it is forbidden to pray for a miracle, is itself nourished by the scientific conception. In other words, if they had been equipped with the scientific conception of today, I assume at least that they would not have ruled that it is forbidden to pray for a miracle. And therefore there may also be room to disagree with their halakhic ruling, and then adopt the view that yes, it is permitted to pray for everything and there is no prohibition against praying for a miracle. Okay? But still, note well: there is no difference between a hidden miracle and an open miracle. You can see that in the Sages. The distinction is not hidden miracle versus open miracle; even for a hidden miracle it is forbidden to pray. That is not the point. Therefore the distinction between a hidden miracle and an open miracle is not relevant.

[Speaker C] In their aggadic material, at any rate, at every step they assume—in aggadic thought, I mean, in aggadah, in narrative teachings—they constantly assume there is non-natural involvement. Clearly. A person’s house is unstable; the whole tractate of Ta’anit with all that, with all the righteous people-

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] who kept-

[Speaker C] watch over it, and woe to his generation when it harmed this, every person’s righteousness and what happens to him naturally with…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not his generation, that was someone else there, yes. Right, of course. That is definitely an assumption of the Sages, I completely agree. I’m only claiming that in light of our scientific outlook today we need to reexamine this issue, because basically the Sages were probably sitting on a mistaken scientific assumption. And the science of their day, as is known, was full of errors; there are many scientific mistakes there. So this is not some great novelty. Now the question is what to do with it. Here there are two possibilities: either cancel the Jewish law or cancel the factual outlook. If I cancel the Jewish law, then I permit praying for miracles. Or I cancel the Sages’ picture of reality, and then I say it is forbidden to pray for anything because everything is a miracle. I adopt their Jewish law that it is forbidden to pray for a miracle, but in terms of reality I know that every prayer is a request for a miracle, so the conclusion is that it is forbidden to pray for anything. Now let everyone choose.

[Speaker C] No, they instituted prayers and they instituted blessings. They instituted the Amidah, which is full of requests.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, correct, there’s no doubt about that. That’s why the dilemma here is a hard dilemma. Now, since I’m not sufficiently convinced—not one hundred percent convinced—that there is no sporadic involvement here and there by the Holy One, blessed be He, I don’t feel strong enough to cancel the Amidah or stop praying the Amidah. Even though on the principled level I really can’t direct my intention in that prayer, in those requests. I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe in it. But since there is some possibility that there is nevertheless involvement, and who knows, maybe the correct option is that it is permitted to pray for a miracle—I don’t know—then maybe it’s not sufficiently clear or not sufficiently certain for me to cancel the prayer. You know, in principle, if I came to the clear conclusion that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved anywhere and everything is a miracle and the result is that it is forbidden to pray for a miracle, forbidden to pray for anything, I would not pray the Amidah. I would not pray the Amidah not because I have the authority to disagree with the Sages, but because I cannot pray the Amidah even if I want to. I can move my lips and voice requests, but that is not called asking. To ask means to intend and think what you are saying, right? That is what is called praying. Moving your lips is nothing. That is what the Sages say in the famous aggadah in Yoma—yes, “Where are His mighty deeds? Where are His awesome acts?” They wanted to cancel all the blessings because He is not “the great, mighty, and awesome God”—where are His awesome acts? where are His mighty deeds? and all those things. And there the Talmud asks—I no longer remember the exact wording, yes, the Talmud, beloved by Rabbi Amital—the Talmud there asks: how can this be? What do you mean, they disagree with things we received from Moses our teacher? So the Talmud says: the seal of the Holy One, blessed be He, is truth, and He hates falsehood spoken about Him. The Holy One, blessed be He, is not pleased by a prayer that I say because I am obligated to say it because the Sages said so, but after all I don’t believe in it and I don’t intend it and I’m not really asking; I’m only moving my lips and making sounds. That is not called prayer. Therefore here it is not a question of authority to disagree with the Sages. If I reached a definitive conclusion, it would not be because I disagree with the Sages, but because I cannot perform the Jewish law they require me to perform. I simply am not capable. Even if I very much wanted to, I can’t. So therefore I simply can’t perform it. That’s all. Like I had in basic training, yes—the commander had some- it reminds me, just an association—I had a strong inflammation in my thumb, some kind of abscess that hurt very badly. So we were standing there in formation in the second week of basic training, and I was holding my hand up because if I lowered it, the blood pressure on that thing became terrible and it hurt a lot. So my commander says to me, stand at attention; when you stand at attention your hands are stretched down. So I showed him the hand and said to him, listen, I can’t. He says to me, are you refusing? I said yes. Well yes, I hadn’t gone through the necessary preparation that soldiers generally go through—that you’re not supposed to say “I refuse.” You’re supposed to say “I can’t.” I’m here, but you don’t utter the explicit words “I refuse.” I didn’t know that and I said it, and I was confined for another three weeks. My parents didn’t see me from enlistment until the end of basic training. In any case, the point is not that I don’t want to, but that I can’t. Can’t. That’s basically what I should have said to that commander. Same thing here. I very much believe in the authority of the Sages. I don’t think I can disagree with them, and I would very much like to fulfill their commandment to pray the Amidah. But what can I do—I can’t. I can move my lips, no problem, I can move my lips, exhale air, say words, everything is fine. But so long as I have reached the conclusion that this business doesn’t work, then I am not really asking; I am only moving my lips. Meaning, I cannot fulfill this Jewish law even if I really want to; it’s not that I disagree with the Sages, I simply can’t. It’s like someone who has no left arm, so he does not put on tefillin on the left arm. What, is he disagreeing with the Sages or with the Torah? No—he can’t fulfill it because he has no left arm, what can he do. It’s that kind of thing. Only I’m saying that right now my conscience pricks me a bit because I’m not sufficiently sure that nowhere is there any divine involvement, and therefore I don’t feel sufficiently categorical that I can cancel the requests. Rather, I ask in a general way: if there is someone who is in a situation where there is no natural solution, then I ask that the Holy One, blessed be He, help him. That’s all.

[Speaker F] But the number of verses that—I’m not even talking about aggadic passages.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, we said we’ll get to the verses. If you mean to ask again about the verses, it’s a waste of time. We’ll get there.

[Speaker F] Verses not just in number—verses that speak about prayer specifically, even in the latest Torah portions, there are plenty of them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying that verses that speak about divine involvement exist in abundance.

[Speaker F] No, no, no—not about divine involvement, about prayer specifically.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it’s the same thing. If there is divine involvement, then there is no problem at all with prayer.

[Speaker F] No, fine, okay, so I’m saying regarding the verses of-

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Prayer, they are nothing but more verses about divine involvement. That’s all.

[Speaker F] So the question is why that itself isn’t enough to basically set aside the view that says maybe the halakhic obligation is actually not to pray.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said that I’ll get to the verses of the Torah. I said that I’ll get to the verses. We’ll discuss them, we’ll discuss the verses.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, I just want to ask a question about this. The Rabbi assumes that if I pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, then basically that’s intervention, and basically a miracle is happening here. But you could understand it like Maimonides’ approach: that basically I pray, and there’s no intervention by God here, it’s not that the Holy One, blessed be He, changes, it’s that I change, and then I rise to a higher level, and once I rise to a higher level I receive it without the Holy One, blessed be He, intervening. It’s kind of like how the Sages say that the constant will of the Holy One, blessed be He, was what split the Sea of Reeds, that the Holy One, blessed be He, made a condition with creation. So He also made a condition with Arik, that if Arik prays he’ll get the money without Me changing. So there was no intervention here at all. He didn’t bring about anything. He’s static.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll explain, I’ll explain, I understand. Okay.

[Speaker D] What’s wrong with that? Then you still need to pray even if there are no miracles.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll explain, wait, let me.

[Speaker D] Fine, I just want to finish the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, the point is this: what you’re basically saying is that maybe there is no divine involvement, rather it’s like the condition the Holy One, blessed be He, made with creation. Maimonides, whom I mentioned in the previous lecture—or maybe the one before that, I don’t remember anymore—says that basically the result or consequence of prayer is a natural result of the person’s own change, or of the prayer, in one way or another, and no divine involvement is needed. The point is, why did I come to the conclusion—there’s nothing gained by this. Because why did I conclude that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved? Because I concluded that things that happen happen because of the laws of nature. I simply observe; I see that things happen because of natural causes. Now if you tell me that prayer changes me and therefore abundance comes down upon me from above and I recover, then you’re basically telling me—

[Speaker D] Not comes down—it was always there! It didn’t come down, that point is very important. It didn’t come down, it was always here; once you rose, you encountered it. Because if you say it came down, then once again you’ve gotten to the point that the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened. It was always there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll explain, I’ll explain again—not true. It doesn’t matter whether it was always there or not always there. Wait, give me a second. The question is whether, when my fever went down, that happened because of a physiological process or because of a spiritual process. If I conclude that these things happen for natural reasons, then any non-natural explanation—whether it’s divine involvement, or abundance from the six days of creation, or abundance descending today—doesn’t change anything. What you’re basically telling me is: it wasn’t the laws of nature that did this, but something outside the laws of nature did it. That’s what you’re saying. Now if that’s so, what difference does it make whether it’s divine involvement or not? The same reason that led me to say there’s no divine involvement also leads me to say that this isn’t true either. What is that reason? That I know that when I take acetaminophen, the fever goes down, regardless of whether I prayed well or didn’t pray well. That’s all. Therefore I assume that my prayer is not what lowers the fever. Now the question of whether, in the thesis that prayer lowers the fever, that’s because of divine involvement, because of abundance that has existed since the six days of creation, or because of abundance descending right now, really makes no difference, because all these theses tell us the same thing: it’s not the laws of nature, it’s something else. And from my perspective I reject all these theses with that very same argument. It’s not something else; it’s the laws of nature. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s divine involvement—

[Speaker D] I’m having trouble understanding. It does matter, first of all because you still have to pray. Second, it elevates me, and then the abundance meets me. Wait, doesn’t the Rabbi agree that if I pray, I change, and then the abundance does meet me? Is that considered something natural? No.

[Speaker C] What kind of abundance is this? Either you get run over or, Heaven forbid, you don’t—they should all be healthy—but whether the car hits the person or doesn’t hit him doesn’t depend on his spiritual level. If I’m—

[Speaker D] Holy?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you’re holy, then it won’t hit you—that means it’s not a natural process, right? That’s all. So the same argument that rejects divine involvement rejects that too. What difference does it make now—you replaced the Holy One, blessed be He, with something else. So what difference does it make? The question is whether you believe there is something else besides natural processes. If yes, then talk about the Holy One, blessed be He—why remove Him from the picture? And if not, then what does it help me that you removed Him from the picture and put other demons in His place? What difference does it make? You gain nothing from this.

[Speaker D] That you still need to keep praying. If I don’t pray, the abundance won’t come down.

[Speaker G] What’s missing in the obligation to pray?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You gain psychological calm, no problem; take a pill and it’ll calm you too. But the Rabbi also agrees… I want to gain something intellectual, not something psychological.

[Speaker G] With regard to the obligation to pray, we learned from the Rabbi—he quoted Nefesh HaChayim—that basically we ordinary people don’t understand the content of prayer, and what we need to do is focus on precisely saying the words. He says the words—not even the meanings. So that’s what’s incumbent on me. In a way—or not in a way—that seems similar to Leibowitz’s view: I could have read the phone book. But prayer does have some meaning that speaks to our hearts, as though the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us some psychology, and that’s it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin didn’t change anything—but you don’t need to bring him; bring me the whole Jewish tradition. I don’t need Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin. I’m arguing against that. So what does it help that Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin says it too? I’m arguing against him as well.

[Speaker G] No, he says that I need to direct my… I don’t understand the meaning of prayer, if I understood correctly—if I understood correctly how the Rabbi explained him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Prayer is some kind of upper spiritual plumbing, okay? All kinds of mantras that you don’t understand, but they open the plumbing above. Right, and what you’re saying is—

[Speaker G] When I say, “Heal us, Lord, and we shall be healed,” I’m supposed to focus on the words themselves and not on the meaning accepted in ordinary language.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you gain nothing, Yossi, it changes nothing. You’re just proposing another kind of magic. At the end of the day, what you’re saying is that there’s some spiritual action here that intervenes in nature; it doesn’t work according to the laws of nature—something else. So why should I care whether it’s this kind of plumbing or that kind of plumbing, or whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is directly involved? The question, again, is whether I’m willing to accept that things happen here that have no natural explanation. If so, then—

[Speaker G] I actually do get medical leave, and I say “Heal us.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem, say “Heal us,” what’s the issue?

[Speaker G] I say the text of the prayer even if I really don’t feel like it—I’m dying to be sick, I want to get medical leave—and even so I’m still obligated to say “Heal us” three times a day.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That you’re obligated—I agree. I’m not asking whether you’re obligated; I’m asking whether there is any result to saying “Heal us.” A result that you don’t understand, but there is a result. I claim there isn’t.

[Speaker F] Does there need to be a result every time for the very possibility itself to be enough to justify asking? I mean, sometimes we ask human beings for something too even when sometimes there isn’t even a chance—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there’s no chance of getting it, I don’t ask—isn’t that a waste of time? What do you mean?

[Speaker F] I don’t know if it’ll be accepted, I don’t know, it depends—if the chance isn’t exactly zero, then yes…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, if there’s a small chance of getting it then I ask? Of course—especially if I really need it. But if I say there’s no chance of getting it, then I don’t ask.

[Speaker F] But for that you really do need to be—I don’t want to sound empiricist—but really there has to be—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I said earlier: if I were truly 100% certain, then I really wouldn’t ask either. And since I’m not 100% certain, that’s not strong enough to cancel the Amidah, and so I do in fact ask.

[Speaker F] But maybe in these matters, after all, apparently technically—in terms of appearances—you can’t be 100% certain. It’s not that you haven’t yet been convinced, or someone else maybe has; there’s no way to know with 100% certainty. That’s all—there’s always going to be—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m not talking about 100%. Enough certainty that it’s clear they’re mistaken. Say, if in the Sages there were something based on the idea that the law of gravity is incorrect, then I wouldn’t obey. Even though maybe the law of gravity isn’t correct either—lots of things could become clear later on. For me, that’s certain enough to argue against the Sages. Can I reach that kind of certainty in our world?

[Speaker F] But here, in order to refute such a thing, the question is whether it’s even… I mean, to refute it you’d really need to refute every possible case, and that seems to me technically impossible.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, once we understand how the world behaves, it could be there will be tools with which we really will become convinced. I don’t know, maybe. So maybe I’ll never be convinced, fine. But on the principled level, if I reached a conclusion with the same degree of certainty I have about the law of gravity—if I reached the conclusion that there is no divine involvement—then I wouldn’t say the Amidah. It’s not 100%; I’m not—there’s no 100% in anything. But enough.

[Speaker F] So that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I’m asking is—

[Speaker F] Whether basically the 0.1% possibility that still hasn’t been ruled out is not sufficient reason? I’m not saying it’s worthwhile, I’m not saying it’s worth the time or that it’s worth—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I’ll say again: it’s not a question of time. It isn’t worth the time, and I wouldn’t pray “Heal us” if I weren’t obligated.

[Speaker F] Exactly, but the point is that there’s an anchor here in the obligation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The opposite. Since I’m obligated, it works the other way around. Since I’m obligated, and I’m committed to the halakhic determinations of the Sages, in order not to observe it I need to be sure it’s a mistake. Sure that it cannot be.

[Speaker F] One hundred percent? One hundred percent?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know whether you can ever be sure in one hundred percent terms—that’s already a philosophical question. Now the practical difference is with prayers that are not the obligatory prayers—not the prayers that the Sages established as required. Prayers about specific situations. Optional obligation?

[Speaker G] I don’t deal with that at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I see no point in it whatsoever; it’s a waste of time. Again, it could be—I’ve never been in a situation where all options were exhausted, I’m facing something terrible, and I have no natural way of dealing with it. Maybe in such a situation I too would toss out some prayer—if it helps, good; if not, no harm done—as Bernard Shaw said. But in the normal course of things, in ordinary life, I don’t add any prayer beyond what I’m obligated to say. Nothing.

[Speaker F] But the Sages’ prayers, apparently—I mean, in the end there is room in them—not everyone is of course obligated to ask, but at least including the additions that anyone can add—there’s room for anything. So what’s the difference between adding something in prayer and anything else?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said there’s room, there’s room—do whatever you want. Since I think, by reasoning, that it doesn’t help anyway, there’s no point wasting time on it. So that’s why I don’t do it as long as I’m not obligated. As for what I am obligated to do, I do it because I’m not sure—I’m not 100% sure that it’s wrong. So I do what I’m obligated to do. But if you ask me whether it really works—no. And therefore anything I’m not obligated to do, I won’t do. That’s all. It’s simply a pragmatic consideration; it’s not a very theoretical question.

[Speaker F] That’s perfectly fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. In any case, that is basically the claim. And if so, the result is—I see this has taken me a lot of time—the result ultimately is that there really is a not-so-simple dilemma here. Because on the one hand, you know, there is authority—we’ve spoken about concepts of authority more than once. There is authority in the normative realm; there is no authority in the factual realm. Here, though, it’s a kind of case where the facts determine the norms. The scientific conceptions of the Sages determined the Jewish law that the Sages established. And now this is a not-so-simple dilemma, because if I conclude that the factual assumption on which they relied is not correct, then does an obligation still rest on me to remain loyal to their normative ruling? I don’t know. Since I’m in doubt, for now I continue, because I don’t know. But it’s a very difficult question. There is a very interesting seam here between facts and norms. The norms here are not detached from the facts, from the conception of reality. And in the conception of reality—and by the way, there are quite a few places like this in the Sages—yes, all the presumptions: “It is better to dwell as two,” I don’t know what—any presumption you like. A presumption is the result of a conception of reality. And if I understand reality differently, that will also change Jewish law established by the Sages—not only do I disagree with them on the scientific plane, but this has halakhic implications as well. If I’m not worried about snakes falling into uncovered water at night, or I don’t think that—I don’t know—that fish and meat are dangerous, assuming it’s a physical danger and not a spiritual one, I’m not entering that debate now—then factually they are not correct. So should I continue not eating fish and meat together? After all, it’s obvious that this is the result of a factual determination, an empirical outlook. So there is a not-so-simple dilemma here, because this distinction between authority regarding facts and authority regarding norms is sometimes not so sharp. There are norms that are the result of a view of facts. And then I don’t know. I’ve laid out the dilemma; I don’t have a solution for it. I have two possibilities. One thing is clear to me: the Sages understood reality incorrectly. The Sages understood reality in a way that posits gaps in physics or in the laws of nature. And therefore they made distinctions between legitimate prayers and illegitimate prayers. In my opinion, their factual assumption is incorrect. And now the question is what to do with that. I don’t know.

[Speaker F] The only question is whether this derives from that conception, or whether from the outset they had, from many other sources—sorry that I’m going back to verses and not even to a specific verse—but from many other sources, an understanding that prayer definitely has meaning and definitely helps. For whom, and why, and in what percentages—that’s another question. And in that context maybe they found that there are also margins about which one is permitted to pray. But if you found a verse and you saw—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You would find that for everything. Show me those—where did they get that from? Show me where they got that from. Unless they got it from those verses that say that the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes. Those are straightforward matters—but about that too I’ll speak later, so once again we return to the same question. Fine, I’m not going to get to it today, because my time is up—it took me much more time than I thought. Fine, there’s still, as they say, much more to say. Okay, any other comments or questions or—

[Speaker D] Rabbi, I wanted to ask something related to what the Rabbi wrote in his second book, which is connected indirectly. The Rabbi mentioned in the previous lecture Joseph the righteous, on “and he saved him from their hand,” and the Rabbi brought Or HaChayim: “and he saved him from their hand,” meaning from the hand of one with free choice. For if they kill him, there is no proof that he spoke falsely, because free choice can override the matter. So I said, great, the Rabbi writes that, so apparently a person can kill someone even if it wasn’t decreed upon him, and everything is fine. And a few pages later the Rabbi brings that what caused him, as it were, to lessen the importance of prayer was that the whole Jewish people prayed for Nachshon Wachsman, and the Rabbi said that here he felt that something was about to happen—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And people asked me about that on the website too—and nothing happened.

[Speaker D] And my question is, how do you reconcile the two texts? After all, those who murdered Nachshon Wachsman had free choice. They can kill someone even if it wasn’t decreed upon him. So how would prayer help?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll reconcile the two texts very simply: there aren’t two, there’s only one. The second text doesn’t exist, at least not in my writings. I didn’t say—what?

[Speaker D] Which second text? Nachshon’s or—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The one about Nachshon Wachsman. What I said there was not that Nachshon Wachsman was what convinced me that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved in the world. I said that it made the penny drop for me, and then I started thinking about the issue. But why did the penny drop?

[Speaker D] They had free choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then I started thinking about the issue and reached the conclusion that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved neither in acts of free choice nor in natural events. There’s a difference between a trigger that makes you think about something and a proof that you present. They asked me this on the website too; maybe Rabbi Shilat even wrote this, I don’t remember. Someone on the website asked me about this, and I explained that I didn’t bring it as a proof—I brought it as a psychological trigger that made me think about the issue. I was standing here in the face of a phenomenon where I expected divine response, and it didn’t come. So then I started thinking: why not? And then suddenly I start thinking—wait, actually it doesn’t happen in less dramatic contexts either; not only in contexts of free choice but also in natural contexts. And then the whole doctrine that I wrote there in the book developed. It was a psychological trigger; it was not a proof.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, one more thing—just generally—regarding what the Rabbi says, that there are no open miracles. All the wars of Israel, for example—I heard Avigdor Kahalani. Avigdor Kahalani describes in the Six-Day War that he alone stood with one tank against 150 tanks on the Telim line in the Golan Heights.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not an expert in military history, in any—

[Speaker D] Case—no open miracle is documented.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I promise you, even without being an expert in military history, that stories like that can be found in all armies in all generations.

[Speaker D] But these aren’t stories about the Baal Shem Tov; the enemy soldiers say it too—they tell similar stories.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? They’re similar stories, and they have natural explanations.

[Speaker D] No, they said that a hand came out from heaven and signaled them to stop. What natural explanation is there for that? And all the tanks fled. There are loads of stories like that. This isn’t the Baal Shem Tov; these are people still alive with us—you can interview them. And the soldiers fled and said a hand from heaven drove them away. Also, the Baal Shem Tov story was told to me by—

[Speaker G] Someone in the Yom Kippur War gave me an order to say Psalms. And in fact, in the bunkers there were craters from Katyusha rockets all around, and not a single hair on my head fell.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In short, give—

[Speaker G] There’s still more to come, there’s still more to come.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] These things are not miracles. But I said I’ll get to that too—I’ll get to the Holy One, blessed be He, in history. We’ll talk about that later. For now I spoke only about Him in nature, but in history it really is more connected to what you’re talking about. Okay, so let’s stop here. Thank you very much, goodbye.