Another Look at Supplication to God
Hey Miki
I would love to know what you think about my following insight:
While I was trying to “market” my explanation to the public regarding our wages in this world, another idea occurred to me:
It seems to me that on a principled level, as a public we should not turn to God with requests and supplications. The background to my position is the Holocaust – because the supplications and cries for “heavenly help” of the masses of Jews who were massacred or “merely” suffered hellish torments – were not answered.
If we turn to God in supplication and expect help from Him, this means that we assume that we are indeed worthy of receiving help from God, but “apparently” the saints of the Holocaust were not worthy of this help.
I repeat that I reject institutionalized and public supplication, but it is clear to me that it is impossible to prohibit a spontaneous appeal by an individual!
All the best to you
The fact that a request was not answered proves nothing. There can be many considerations here and there. This is an example of the law of small numbers that I discussed in my column here .
Beyond that, you are confusing issuing a prohibition with the question of whether it is beneficial or not. After all, your claim is that it is not beneficial (it will not be answered), so what difference does it make whether or not you issue a prohibition? Why would an individual be answered if masses of individuals in the Holocaust were not answered? The same argument that you raised also applies to individuals. So even if the individual turns and begs and you do not issue a prohibition on him, he will not be answered.
I did not explain myself well: my intention regarding the prohibition of public supplication is from the moral aspect only, while it seems to me that it is impossible to prohibit the individual from supplicating, and this is because supplication is spontaneous. It is impossible to prohibit supplication, just as it is impossible to prohibit faith.
You can't forbid anyone from begging, nor can you forbid the public. The only question is whether it helps or not.
Safra Teva, Mikhi
I return to your first answer:
The fact that a certain supplication was not answered does not prove anything. There can be many considerations here and there. This is an example of the law of small numbers that I discussed in my column here.
It seems to me that even if we assume that not all the victims of the Holocaust begged for salvation, but only a sixth of them, does a million souls fall into such a situation within the definition of “small numbers”?
Or perhaps [which is very, very possible!] I did not understand your words correctly.
Regarding the prohibition on supplication - I mean to prohibit institutional supplication. It seems to me that a decision [or recommendation] should be made on this by the religious establishment that, out of identification with the martyrs of the Holocaust, we are prevented from begging for our lives in public, and every person is entitled to take any means he sees fit to try to convey the evil of some decree that seems to be hovering over our heads.
Let's hope that there will be no more situations like this, but even "just" natural disasters can be devastating.
These are indeed small numbers. Take as an example a situation where you see that all the horses on a certain island are black (there are masses of horses there). Is it correct to conclude from this that all the horses in the world are black? This is a rash conclusion because all the horses you saw are horses from one island and perhaps this is a special population of horses and one should not conclude from it about all horses. In the Holocaust, masses of people were not answered. Does this mean that supplications are not answered? Not necessarily, since this is a collection of masses of people in one particular situation. It is possible that God decided on the Holocaust and therefore did not answer the supplications at that time. There is no learning from this for all situations and people. This is one special situation, even if there were masses of people. In this sense, this is still the ”law of small numbers”.
I don't really understand the point of banning supplications. This is a democratic country and anyone who wants to will beg as much as they want to whomever they want. Although the chance of being answered is probably slim, as you know my position. I'm just saying that your argument is problematic, but the conclusion (that supplications are usually not answered) is completely acceptable to me, and as you know, I'm not a "prayer" like you. In my opinion, God usually does not answer, neither to the individual nor to the public.
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