Confesses and Forsakes: Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu’s Apology and Its Meaning (Column 546)
With God’s help
Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.
In Column 543 I quoted Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu’s words regarding the disaster in Turkey and its victims. He wrote there that there is cosmic justice in the matter, for everything that happens is done “in order to cleanse the world and make it better,” and therefore we must thank God and sing praise for what befell them. This stands in contrast to the natural tendency to pity them, which stems from shortsightedness:
It’s not that we are insensitive to human suffering. Absolutely not. But if, God forbid, we don’t give thanks to God who protects us—this is ingratitude. If we think it was random—this is hardness of heart. If we think we are more compassionate than He is—this is wickedness and folly.
And he concludes:
Therefore, let us say aloud the words from the evening prayer: “The God who exacts retribution for us from our adversaries; who pays retribution to all the enemies of our souls; who preserves our lives and has not let our feet stumble; who leads us upon the heights of our enemies; and raises our horn over all who hate us.” We will give thanks in Nishmat Kol Chai for all the goodness, miracles, and wonders that You have done for us and for our fathers. We will give thanks in the Sabbath Mincha and say: “Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and Your Torah is truth.”
I criticized him very sharply for these remarks and attributed them to his theological outlook (which is the conventional one). I wrote there that Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu possesses several notable virtues, foremost among them integrity and the courage to say what he thinks (as in speaking out against sexual crimes within our camp, even when committed by prominent figures and rabbis), and I wrote that this very courage is likely what led him to draw conclusions from his theological views. Such courage and integrity are lacking in many who hold the same theological views but are unwilling to draw from them the full, necessary conclusions; rather, they prefer to leave things in fog and ambiguity, speaking vaguely about our inability to understand the Almighty and His ways, about leading “complex lives” on different planes (understanding that everything He does is moral even if we don’t comprehend it), and the like.
This past Sabbath, an article containing his apology was published in Olam Katan:
Following the criticism he received, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu apologizes for what he wrote, and this deserves great appreciation. Once again he demonstrated the integrity and courage that accompany him. Some will say that I, too, should apologize, with courage and integrity, for the harsh language I used toward him. In order to examine this issue—and not only for that reason—I wanted to consider the meaning of his apology, because I think it teaches us a great deal about the depth of the problem and its roots. I will return to the matter of my own apology at the end.
Preliminary Examination
At the beginning of his apology article, Rabbi Eliyahu writes:
When I read the criticism of the esteemed rabbi… regarding my words in this bulletin about the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, I understood that the recognition of the pain and suffering of those injured in the earthquakes and of the families of the dead was very much missing from the article…
And he concludes:
It is very important for me also to say something to any Turks who read the translated article and were hurt. Know that the entire State of Israel aches over your disaster, and therefore sent you planes with the finest officers and doctors to help you in these difficult moments. We all strengthen the hands of those dear people assisting you and hope that healing will come to you quickly. The entire article came out of the belief that earthquakes do not happen by chance and that we are obligated to try to understand what God is saying to us and to you. Forgive us if you were hurt.
Essentially, he says that he shares their sorrow and asks forgiveness if they were offended. At first glance, an apology and correction made with integrity is worthy of respect. But let’s look a bit more closely, and I hope you will understand why I am not satisfied and am unwilling to end the discussion here.
An apology to someone “if he was offended” usually conveys that I stand by what I wrote but did not intend to hurt him. This is an apology without retracting the content. It would seem that here there is mainly an apology for a lack of tact (which is one of the failings I pointed out in my critique; to my mind, the most marginal of them), without retracting the content. And no wonder, for the content is nothing but the theology accepted by him and by many like him (in fact, likely most of the public, at least declaratively), and the conclusions necessarily flow from that theology.
What he is saying is that what happened is precisely what they deserved as haters and enemies of Israel, and as a result the world became cleaner and better. But he regrets that people suffer because of this and is sorry that people are hurt when told so. A bit strange, no? In effect, there is an apology here but no retraction of anything he said. At most, he simply does not want to hurt. In practice, there is no apology here but rather a completion of what was lacking in his previous article: the acknowledgment of suffering. If he were to write an updated article now, it would contain exactly the same things (since he did not retract any part of the content of his words), only adding expressions of sorrow and sympathy for their suffering and hurt.
Fine, so let us imagine for a moment the corrected article. It is the original article, with additional expressions of sorrow and sharing in the suffering. Let us now examine what exactly such an article claims, and whether it differs in any way from the original and is less deserving of condemnation. I will ask which of the failings I pointed out were corrected by this apology. After that I will address why such an apology must, in fact, be almost empty of substance.
The Corrected Article: An Initial Look
In that column I explained that his words rest on the assumption that everything that happens in the world is the work of the Almighty’s hands.[1] In addition, for every such act we have the ability—and even the duty—to interpret it (despite the customary “were it not that I fear” disclaimer that we do not know the calculations of Heaven) as an act of correcting and cleansing the world (mainly for our sake). All this remains unchanged, and the necessary upshot is that the deceased are our enemies who were justly punished, just like the Egyptians who drowned in the sea. Therefore it is clear that he still believes we must praise and laud the Almighty for this.
Everything he wrote in the first article stands, except that now he also adds displays of empathy for pain and suffering. He also explained there that we should not share in the Egyptians’ sorrow. Such an approach is appropriate for angels, not for us. And in general, as I wrote there, if the Almighty does this, then it is the right action; therefore we, too, should in principle act so (assuming we know the full accounting, of course).
But if so, I do not understand three things: (1) What exactly are they supposed to be hurt by? (2) For what exactly is he asking forgiveness? (3) Why indeed should we share in their pain?
Consider a terrorist who murders Jews and is injured or suffers a heaven-sent disaster. Would Rabbi Eliyahu not tell him that he is our enemy and that he rejoices at what happened to him? Perhaps there is a lack of tact, but would such a statement be, in his eyes, an improper hurt for which he would apologize? Alternatively, would such a terrorist truly be hurt by such statements? After all, he is indeed our enemy. And if for some reason he were nonetheless hurt, should that matter to me? The three difficulties above would certainly not arise here.
Well, you are probably saying to yourselves that there is a difference: the infants who were killed in agony in Turkey are not really terrorists. But I do not understand that either. Why, then, did they deserve what they received? Does the Almighty render judgment without justice? Rabbi Eliyahu explained that it is punishment for enemies, the work of God’s hands. So whichever way you look at it: if they are enemies, the description above regarding a terrorist applies— they will not be hurt, there is no need to apologize even if they are, and certainly not to ask their forgiveness. And if they are not like terrorists, then it was not deserved; in that case it is unclear why the Almighty did this to them.
The claim that we do not know the calculations of Heaven is irrelevant, because Rabbi Eliyahu argued that we must try to understand nonetheless and even proposed an interpretation that seemed to him right and demanded. That is, in his view it is plausible that the Almighty acts this way. What remains is only the lack of tact. In other words, everything is true, but it is impolite to say it out loud. As I said, the apology is only for the lack of tact. That was one of the failings I pointed out, but to my mind it is the least of them. This is the place to return to my critique of his words.
My Critique
I had the impression that almost all of the rabbinic critics of his remarks truly share his theological assumptions. They criticized him within the accepted theological framework—some for lack of tact and some on more substantive grounds. They offered claims that try to distinguish between the justice of the matter and our duty to rejoice. In fact, he himself speaks about this in his apology. But as I explained, within this picture it seems that Rabbi Eliyahu is indeed correct. If these are the acts of the Almighty, then what ought to be done was done, and whoever suffered deserved to suffer. There is no reason to share in their sorrow (aside from the matter of tact). He even appears more honest than his critics, for he is willing to draw and state the necessary conclusions of their shared theology.
In contrast to those critiques, my critique attacks the theological framework of the discussion—that is, the content of his words and not just their lack of tact. Therefore my critique is directed also at his critics, and I insist on continuing to discuss the matter because the discussion testifies a thousandfold to my claims. This is not a random error, a slip of the pen, a lapse that can be corrected by an apology. There is a deep problem on the theological plane, not just a simple lack of tact. This critique remains valid even more so with respect to the corrected article.
In fact, the corrected article contains an inherent contradiction: Rabbi Eliyahu’s conclusions truly flow from his theological assumptions. So how can someone who shares those assumptions criticize the conclusions? We must understand that we have grown accustomed to this agreed-upon falsehood, as if one can believe that everything that happens here is the work of the Almighty’s hands—and of course that all this is pure morality—yet nevertheless we are not permitted to act thus and are not even allowed to rejoice in it. But this is simply an inconsistent view. It is living in contradiction. It is roughly like the lie of “bitachon (trust) and hishtadlut (effort)” that I have addressed more than once (see, for example, Column 279).
Sharpening the Point
If everything that happens here is the work of the Almighty’s hands, and everything He does is supremely moral, then what happened to every infant there is justified. According to Rabbi Eliyahu’s interpretation, the justification is that he is our wicked enemy who threatens us. If he is not such, then the Almighty is not acting justly, and that, of course, does not fit Rabbi Eliyahu’s theological assumptions.
If so, then we ourselves should behave in exactly the same way: slaughter, with torment, every infant and every elder who perished in the disaster—just as the Almighty did. True, we lack complete information and would not know whom to slaughter; but assuming we had the information—and the Almighty certainly has it—then all this is entirely justified and that is how one ought to act. Is anyone prepared to stand behind such a conclusion?
And regarding rejoicing versus sharing in pain and sorrow, the situation is very similar. If our enemies are struck, there is no reason to share in their mourning and pain. On the contrary, one should rejoice as over the Egyptians’ drowning in the sea. One may, of course, regret that human beings use their free will to act so wickedly and therefore merited annihilation (with torment), but that is true of terrorists as well as of Hitler. Alternatively, if they do not deserve this fate, why did the Almighty do it to them?
You might say it is to achieve other goals (perhaps to deter adults from starting up with us), or to repair the eternal Sephirah of Hod. To that I say that I see no moral justification to butcher infants in torment in order to achieve those aims. Let the Almighty, who is omnipotent, correct matters directly without going through the slaughter and torment of infants. Is anything too wondrous for the Lord?!
We are so accustomed to these questions that no one even tries to re-examine the theology that leads to them. We prefer to remain with “requires further study,” to mumble that we cannot understand the Almighty’s ways, and so on. But this makes no sense. Clearly I cannot understand the Almighty’s ways—so what? Even if I cannot understand them, it remains clear that if He butchers infants there is some moral justification. I don’t know why, but they deserve it. So what’s the problem? Why must one share in their sorrow? How are they different from terrorists who were killed—only that in the terrorists’ case I understand why they deserve it and why they are wicked? And I have not yet raised the question of how it is even possible that infants deserve such a fate. Did they choose evil or do anything wrong?
One cannot hide behind empty statements that we do not know the calculations of Heaven. Such a statement may suffice to answer questions, but not contradictions. If I do not understand why we lay tefillin, you can tell me there is some correction I do not grasp. But here we are dealing with contradictions, not questions. There is a terrible injury to those who did not sin. How can one say that there is a moral act here but I do not understand why? This is simply empty verbiage. It cannot be a moral act. Only if you say that the Almighty could not have corrected what needed correction in any other way. But is anything too wondrous for the Lord?!
No wonder the discussion—the original article, the critique, and the apology—is empty of all content. On the assumption that one adopts this theology, the initial article candidly and courageously presents the necessary conclusions flowing from it. All the rest is denial and repression, nothing more (aside from the tact issue).
The Theological Alternative
So what is the alternative? To truly retreat from the malicious nonsense written in the first article, there is no choice but to relinquish the theological assumptions at its foundation—attention, please, both to the critics and to Rabbi Eliyahu himself. One cannot scold him for his conclusions or apologize for lack of tact and be done, for given their theological assumptions these are the conclusions that follow. The only alternative is what I have written here more than once (see Column 214, here and here, and in great detail in the second book of the trilogy), and I will not spell it out again here. In brief, my claim is that evil in the world is not the work of the Almighty’s hands. Natural evil is the product of the laws of nature, and human evil is the product of people’s choices. The only difficulty regarding the Almighty is why He does not intervene to prevent these terrible outcomes. But here one can propose explanations that are not forced. This is a question, not a contradiction.
Regarding natural evil, such as an earthquake, I explained that there is no system of natural laws that could bring the world to the ends assigned to it by its Creator without elements of suffering. This is simply logically impossible, and therefore even the Almighty is constrained by it and cannot overcome it. He can, of course, freeze or suspend the laws of nature, but if He decided that the world should operate according to natural laws, He has no way to intervene and prevent suffering and pain. Why does He want a world run by natural law? That is already a question, not a contradiction, and there are even good answers (for example, that without this we could not manage in this world, nor understand what we ought to do in any situation. See the references above).
Clearly I, too, rely on unproven assumptions regarding the world’s goals and its natural laws, and regarding the “corrections” and benefits of the commandments (which, in my view, are not aimed at moral ends). But here we are offering an answer to a question, not to a contradiction. That is precisely the difference. My not knowing the goals does not pose a special difficulty. It is an outcome of observing the commandments and reality. In contrast, the claim that everything that happens here is the work of the Almighty’s hands, coupled with the assumption that He always acts in an exquisitely moral way, creates a frontal contradiction with reality, not merely a lack of understanding. A contradiction demands resolution, and one cannot accept the demand to live in contradiction. Not only because we cannot do so, but because there is no such thing. I cannot believe X and simultaneously ‘not-X’. One cannot settle for the answer that the Almighty’s ways are beyond our ken (see this article on this).
The Ethical Alternative
Exactly the same holds on the ethical plane. According to the conventional theology, people are forced into peculiar statements that require us to live in duality. The duality Rabbi Eliyahu describes—between rejoicing and thanking the Almighty and sharing in sorrow—says that even if an act causes suffering, if it was justified we may rejoice and give thanks for it while also sharing in the pain. But if a wicked person is struck for his wickedness, there is no reason to feel his pain (and if he is not wicked, why didn’t the Almighty save us without harming him?!).
According to this demand to live in duality, we would seemingly also have to offer praise and thanks to the Almighty for victims of terror attacks among us. That, too, the Almighty did not do for nothing. If they were killed, it must have been deserved (see the bizarre comment by the cousin of the victims of last Friday’s attack. This is truly a pinnacle of that foolish duality. He explained that the Almighty would have killed his cousins anyway, because that is what had to happen). Moreover, the fact that we feel their pain and disaster, as we recall, should not prevent us from thanking the Almighty for having brought justice to light. Exactly as in Turkey. So after every attack we must thank the Almighty for cleansing and repairing the world. A few more superfluous people have been gathered from here, to our joy. True, to us they seem righteous and undeserving of death, but that is only because we do not know the calculations of Heaven. The truth is that they were evil villains, and we presume that the Almighty judges truthfully. Does this sound serious to you?
Is it not far more reasonable to say that what happened to the victims of terror attacks or natural disasters happened because of the laws of nature, and not as a decision of the Almighty? In such a case it is clearly cause for sadness and sorrow, and this requires no theological explanations nor interpretations of the calculations of Heaven (which, as we recall, we do not know). In such a case it is also clear that although the outcome is morally horrific (and there is no need to presume that the slaughter of infants in torment rests on some hidden moral considerations), it was not the Almighty who decided it and carried it out. At most He did not prevent it—but for that there are explanations, as above.
On the Meaning of the Apology: Living in Contradiction
An apology means saying that what I did was wrong. In light of what I have described, Rabbi Eliyahu’s apology dealt only with the matter of tact; regarding the content, there was and could be no apology (unless he repents of his theological views. That does not seem to be the case here). How should I judge a person who holds theological positions that contain a contradiction: on the one hand, God is good; on the other, He Himself, by His own hand, commits malicious acts that admit of no justification?
I don’t know. More than once I have spoken about people who live with such a contradiction—those who believe in the binding force of morality but are materialists, or those who believe in the binding force of morality but are atheists. I have shown in the past that the two conceptions I have described here are inconsistent (see, for example, Column 456), and now the question arises whether such people are moral. Seemingly they are committed to morality, but that commitment rests on an error. It seems to me that this depends on the following question (which also arises in that column): assuming a contradiction, we have two ways to interpret someone who holds such a view:
- Such a position expresses a hidden (unconscious) faith in God.
- Such a position expresses a mistaken commitment to morality—namely, the commitment is psychological, not philosophical.
Interpretation A indeed reflects a moral stance and a moral person who has a philosophical error, whereas Interpretation B reflects a non-moral person living in error. He is moral “by accident” (for the moral motivation is part of what defines the act and the person as moral). Incidentally, in my opinion, in most cases and people Interpretation A is the correct one.
We must understand that conventional theology demands that we live with several contradictions. One is the belief that God is good and that everything that happens in the world is His doing (and that we must thank Him for both evil and good). Another is the belief that everything proceeds naturally and yet God can intervene (without violating the laws of nature). Another example is that “all is foreseen, yet freedom is granted” (foreknowledge and free will), and so on. Therefore the question of how to relate to a person who lives in contradiction is a very important one for judging and evaluating those who hold the conventional theologies.
In Conclusion: What About My Apology?
Anyone who thinks that my last column was written to say there was no anger in my words, only a calm presentation of my stance (I simply went to the Milog dictionary and chose the only words suitable to the situation: fool, parasite, idiot, corrupt, liar, and the like), has not understood me. Clearly I was angry, and clearly the harsh expressions were an expression of that anger. What I claimed is that this is a sharp way of presenting arguments, not name-calling (expressions that relate to the person irrespective of the arguments). I certainly chose this phrasing because of the anger, and that goes without saying.
Up to now I have explained why the anger is justified with respect to a theology that leads to such a malicious worldview. This is truly slander of the Almighty. What about the critique of a person who holds such a theology? It is clear to me that Rabbi Eliyahu genuinely intended to apologize because he intuitively realized that there is something defective in what he wrote. But so long as he has not changed his theology, that apology is empty of content (aside from the matter of tact, as stated). My words here are nothing more than an attempt to minimize harm to people (those thousands of Turks who subscribe to Olam Katan, or to its translations into colloquial Turkish, and read the words while still lying under the rubble).
Rabbi Eliyahu holds a contradictory theology. The problem is his conception, not the words he wrote and the hurt that arises from them. It is a malicious conception, even if the person is not aware of it. He does not examine the picture in which he was raised and educated, and thus holds a malicious picture. There is some degree of culpability in this. I truly do not think that everyone who holds such a view is necessarily a bad person. Certainly not. It is a person who does not think correctly and is unwilling to examine his positions (and the positions he was educated into) critically. The discomfort that led him to apologize indicates that he is likely a good person who does not want to hurt others. But if he has already caused hurt, the source is the positions that still harm them. What good is such an apology? It resembles someone who curses his friend and then adds, “Well, I mean it in friendship.”
There is a point closely tied to the distinction I have made here. In one of the talkbacks to the previous column, it was pointed out to me that I classified a person as an idiot, whereas I should have related to the statement and not to the person. In my response I wrote that there is seemingly something to this. Now we can understand what this is about. If it were a random slip, human error, then we are all human—no one is infallible. But as I have shown here, this statement is not accidental. It is an inherent result of the theology that Rabbi Eliyahu holds. On the contrary, those who do not draw his conclusions are the ones who slip, randomly and unconsciously. Rabbi Eliyahu has reiterated these theological positions several times in the past, and it is clear that this is not an offhand remark that does not represent his views. In such a case, it is indeed appropriate to relate to the person and not only to his statement.
The reservation one can raise is that although the statement is malicious, the person himself is merely mistaken (living in contradiction). This I certainly accept. A person does not understand that his statement is malicious; thus, even if he believes it and says it with complete faith, he is not necessarily a wicked person. For example, people who believe in a woman’s right over her body and permit abortions believe in malicious principles. To the best of my judgment, they permit murder. But it is clear to me that not all of them are bad people. They hold malicious views, and they bear some blame for not critically examining the values within which they were raised and educated and within which they live. And yet it is hard to say they are wicked. For this—and only for this—I certainly apologize to him. But I still expect him, as I expect his critics, to examine themselves and free themselves from these malicious conceptions that are rooted in an uncritical adoption of intellectual and theological principles. So long as they do not do so, they bear some blame for the malicious statements that follow from them.
[1] Many will say that one can also hold that some things are His doing and some are not. Involvement does not necessarily mean that everything is His work. But if so, how do we know that the earthquake is the work of the Almighty? Perhaps it belongs to the realm of natural occurrences? All those who seek meaning in every event—including terror attacks and earthquakes—are in fact assuming that everything is His work. Even those who justify the judgment and say that we do not know the calculations of Heaven, without offering bizarre interpretations like Rabbi Eliyahu’s, are in fact assuming that indeed everything is the Almighty’s work. They are no different from him at all.
Discover more from הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Regarding what you wrote in the comment: It is truly impossible to know what is coincidental and what is not. What is needed is to also take into account the possibility of B, when it is relevant. This is not an expression of determination but a normative decision (if a person sees that suffering is not upon him, he should scrutinize his actions). This is also, in my opinion, what the Maimonides says at the beginning of the laws of fasting.
Beyond that, you are completely right that for some reason the public is not willing to accept the fact that God does not directly determine everything. It is not clear why, because beyond almost logical necessity, this is also the opinion of many of the early ones.
I think that an apology in such cases constitutes a kind of moderation from the end of things. It is not repeating yourself, but it is also different from expressing the same thing exactly, simply politely. It is a qualification from the end of things. Yes, I think it is a punishment that they deserve, etc. And on the other hand, I share their grief (perhaps among other things, he says that he shares their grief. It is worth emphasizing that alongside the wicked, who in his opinion are the majority, there are perhaps also some normative people who do not want to destroy the Jews. Or maybe they are all like that, but there are among them those who are probably like babies who were captured and not that bad). Another thing that I think gives the motivation to qualify is the whole matter of emphasizing how much the joy in their disaster does not come only from purely nationalistic emotions from the stomach, but from considering that it is part of the divine order. Then of course there is also a place for both emotions at the same time - after all, if in my roots I am happy about the destruction of the wicked, mainly because that is what the Almighty commanded, I can be happy about their destruction. And to express sorrow at the same time, for His mercy is upon all His actions, His virtues, and His conduct in all His ways, and so on.
I don't understand you
On the one hand, God is subject to the system He created – so let's say I agree and agree that He cannot prevent earthquakes, because that's how He created nature (I don't agree with that, but for the sake of it…).
On the other hand, you yourself have written more than once that God can intervene in miracles, but He doesn't do it.
That is, He can, at least for the thousands of Turkish children buried under the rubble, perform some miracle and inject them with oxygen (and food and water), and yet He doesn't do it, even though we all agree that He is not subject and that He can perform miracles (and has performed them in the past).
So why doesn't He still perform miracles on innocent Turkish babies buried under the rubble?
These are things that have been explained at length in the sources I referenced and more. Here I focus on the fallacy in the prevailing perception and its implications.
What I found is the claim that God does not intervene so that we can learn to manage on our own.
I can't understand this, let's make a comparison with what we see in our world (logical, right?):
Let's say a father teaches his son to swim. He also expects his little son to learn to manage on his own, along with the buoys and methods he taught him to swim (equivalent to the laws of nature with which we are supposed to manage).
But wouldn't the father who sees his son (a child free from abundance, of course) drown, run to save him?
Why tie the "manage on his own" together with "not saving"?
To me, this sounds shocking.
Dror
I wrote this to explain his general policy of not intervening in general. Why he doesn't save in particularly acute cases is because there is no reason not to intervene in any trouble, and then we're back to disabling the laws of nature. But that's detailed in the second book. If it really isn't here in an organized way, maybe I'll do a proper column about it in the future.
A second/minute 😉
I want to flow a little more before future articles (and maybe you'll also address what I'm writing now).
You believe that in the past, God would have intervened.
This means that if, say, 3,000 years ago (the biblical period in which, according to you, God intervened) there had been an earthquake (which there certainly would have been) due to the laws of nature, which, as mentioned (God is subject to them), then God would have intervened and performed miracles, and thus all the children and criminals (or at least the majority) who were buried under the bricks that fell from the walls would have miraculously survived, do I understand you correctly?
Another thing, it is reasonable to assume according to your method, if we go back about 2,500-3,000 years (as mentioned in the biblical period) we find that there was actually no infant mortality during childbirth or death in the cradle (or almost none).
For you maintain that it is reasonable that God would have intervened in miracles (within the laws of nature to which He is also subject) and saved every infant who suffocated or suffered from distress during childbirth or from distress in the cradle.
Did I understand your method correctly?
Dror
No. Even when he intervened, it doesn't mean that every event was his doing. There were events that were his doing and some that weren't. Then there were prophets too and they could say what was his doing and what wasn't.
Regarding the question of whether there was no death without a cause at that time, I don't know. Still, not intervening is different from causing the thing. Intervening requires a very good reason, since it involves undermining natural conduct.
Incidentally, he is not subject to the laws of nature. He chooses not to intervene in various doses.
You are angry about what Rabbi Eliyahu wrote: If God is watching over and intervening in reality, then it is problematic that infants are buried alive. I understand that.
Let's say that 3,000 years ago there was an earthquake in which infants were buried alive. An earthquake that was not the work of God, but a product of nature.
In your opinion, then God was in a position to intervene. If so, how did he choose which infants to save and which not?
In your opinion, did he save all of them or only some?
And if he saved only some (or did he not save at all, because let's assume it was a natural event) then what is the difference between what you claim and what Rabbi Eliyahu claims?
After all, if even 3,000 years ago babies were buried and suffocated to death under the rubble, with God watching over reality, it turns out that you believe exactly as Rabbi Eliyahu does.
And I think babies buried under rubble without ever having sinned are a very good reason to change nature for their benefit, right?
Dror
A small (big) correction to my post – There is a big difference between you and Rabbi Eliyahu.
Rabbi Eliyahu says that God causes earthquakes (including the last one). You believe that He does not.
And yet, the question to you still stands – Do you believe that God should not help rescue an innocent baby girl who is choking to death because of an earthquake that results from nature that He created?
Dror
We are entering into a discussion here that I did not want to enter into, because it demands that the picture be laid out in a column dedicated to it. I will answer briefly.
I see no difference between 3000 years ago and today. In both cases, God can intervene. What has changed is only His policy. Therefore, the question of why He does not intervene exists today as it did then.
I argued that not intervening is different from doing. There are considerations that can explain non-intervention (because He wants the laws of nature not to be violated). But this is an explanation that is not on the moral level but because of other purposes (that is why He created rigid and fixed laws of nature). If He were to intervene every time someone suffers, then why not intervene in the suffering of a single person? And even in small suffering? There is no limit to what can be said, and therefore it makes sense to say that He does not want to violate the laws of nature and that the world behaves as He has always done. But to say that He himself commits immoral acts is not a possible explanation for this, except for what I am saying now.
It is possible to assume that God does something morally wrong for other reasons (as I explained regarding immoral laws), but then I still do not say that his actions are moral as Rabbi Eliyahu claims.
Beyond that, he can achieve his other goals without harming babies, because he is omnipotent. And if you say that there are things that are prevented from him (there are goals that even he cannot achieve otherwise), the entire theological structure that justifies every act of his on the moral level falls apart again. The immorality is indeed forced upon him, but the action is still not morally justified. This is what I am arguing, that evil is forced upon him, and this is contrary to the accepted position that evil does not descend from above, that God is omnipotent and cannot be prevented, and therefore everything we do is good even if we do not understand it.
!!Word in the rock
In the context of the issue at hand, how does the Rabbi understand Chazal's requirement to bless for the bad with joy as for the good?
I assume the intention is to accept judgment. While they probably saw everything as the work of God, I disagree (at least in these generations).
What does it mean to disagree?
This is not some Hasidism or extra.
A section in the Shulchan Aruch. Halacha is settled. The soul must be brought to a state where it is able to thank Hashem even for the bad.
So what? I didn't understand. If there's something that's a mistake, it's a mistake.
Now I'm completely confused.
Isn't there a matter of formal authority that the Shulchan Aruch has over us?
There is no factual issue here. The Shulchan Aruch is simply addressing us so that we can do mental work, to know how to accept the bad as we accept the good. And this is halakha for all intents and purposes.
What I'm trying to understand is that if this is indeed a matter of formal authority (you're welcome to disagree with me) that does not stem from any factual argument, and it is also not a matter of something halakhic that is only relevant to a given time, then is it legitimate to say that you/I/Yotzemach do not agree to apply this in his life?
There is no formal authority for the Shul. His ruling, and certainly one that depends on a worldview, is not binding. See Och Si' Ram S'ch and Terva Nachat Dak Kedushah.
But the Shul in this case draws most clearly from an explicit Mishnah that says that it is obligatory.
The section you brought to review is a Hasidic practice of the R.A. that the Shul noted.
According to what is written on the Wiki, you do give authority to the Talmud and the K.V. to the Mishnah. So if something is mentioned so clearly in the Shul (which is based on a clear obligation in the Mishnah and not on Hasidic custom), what does that mean for you?
I have written here before that it is not possible to speak of authority in relation to facts and in relation to worldviews. Formal authority exists only in relation to halakha.
But when it comes to laws that depend on a worldview, then it is not possible to speak of formal authority regarding them, neither of the Talmud nor of anyone else, including the Shul. If in my opinion this worldview is incorrect, or at least incorrect today, there is no way to be bound by the halakha that is derived from them.
Although there is certainly room to divide between laws that derive from a worldview indirectly, about which it can be said that they must be observed even if one does not believe in the worldview underlying them. For example, laws that are derived from a socialist worldview. But blessing upon the good and the bad is not an indirect derivative of the worldview, but rather a halakhic anchoring of the worldview itself. Regarding such laws, one cannot be bound if one does not believe in the worldview.
After all, the Talmudic instruction to bless for the bad and the good can be interpreted differently from the Shul, and therefore here we are actually talking about the Shul and not the Talmud.
I have neither the time nor the interest to deal with the question of providence that you have extended in volume 2 of your terrible trilogy. (I read it in its entirety during the Corona lockdowns, may it be for my atonement). But I cannot pass over one matter in silence.
The Almighty “kills and revives, brings down Saul and raises up” (Sh. 1:6), but in no way is He a murderer, a slaughterer, or a criminal, for a simple reason – He is the owner of the house. He created life and He can and is permitted to take it whenever He sees fit. He is not accountable to anyone, not even you! And not just because He is stronger than you, etc., but because He is simply permitted to do so. It is His! As the Romans said Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi (What is permitted to Jupiter is forbidden to the ox). Only man can murder. God can kill, but it is never murder, because murder is a forbidden killing, and God permits it. In any case, it is questionable why God “murdered” babies from the beginning. He simply did not do it (whether He created the earthquake or whether it was “just” a natural event that He did not prevent). So why? Like this. I assume that He has His own considerations and not everything we are supposed to understand and can understand, and also from what we can understand, He is not obligated to explain everything to us.
And although I said that I do not want to engage in “thin” theology here, Yours (in my eyes, truly anorexic), you were asked above why God didn't prevent disasters when He was "young" (so to speak) and intervened in the world at every step? Why the "massacre" of the babies of the flood generation, Sodom and Gomorrah and the families of Korah, Dathan and Abiram (Aisha in Rashi)? How can He command us "not to stand by the blood of your neighbor" while He Himself is "indifferent" to terrible disasters? What is your theology useful here? So you "explained" that He changed His policy. Bravo. Once upon a time He really couldn't stand the "massacre" of babies, and one day He got tired of preventing it. Now everything is understood and there are no contradictions/difficulties and comes to Zion Goel.
But, as I said, I don't want to deal with it here… (contradiction/problem or question about me, I don't really care…).
Mordechai, in relation to those who do not want to engage in something, it seems that you are overcoming this unwillingness in a very vigorous way. Congratulations.
Regarding your claims:
1. God is tested by His own standards. He himself said that he acts morally and that is how it is generally thought. You are mixing up levels of discussion. This is not a question of rights but whether this is what is truly morally right to do. You are mixing up levels of discussion. God himself tells us that he acts morally, and Rabbi Eliyahu certainly assumes this. So to defend Him by claiming that God is not subject to moral laws is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A Pyrrhus defense.
2. Regarding the question of why He does not prevent disasters, see my discussion here with Dror: https://mikyab.net/posts/79959#comment-70946
In short, perhaps during the Corona period you were unable to concentrate, you should go back and read again. 🙂
In your books you have prolonged the ”weakness of will” and I am a classic case study… and until you send me to read your triple horror again (why didn”t God prevent this disaster and for how many more sins do I have to atone?), you haven’t even bothered to read my sloppy talkback…
I did not claim that God does not act morally or immorally, and I do not claim to know what God refused to reveal even to Moses our Lord (according to certain interpretations). What I claimed is that even if God is subject (or subjected himself) to morality, this does not mean that we can judge him and determine whether his behavior is moral or not, because the laws and rules of morality that apply to us are not necessarily relevant to him. To illustrate: I am currently writing (and responding to you during short breaks I take at work). Am I allowed to throw away a draft I wrote that I don't like? Yes. Am I allowed to throw away a draft you wrote that I don't like (there are probably quite a few of them)? No. The difference is that this is mine and this is yours. Only the owners are allowed to decide what to do with their creation. Life and the entire world are the creation of God. He is allowed to do with his as he pleases and he doesn't have to give a reason. But that doesn't mean there is no reason, and the fact that we can't explain every act or omission of his doesn't mean it is immoral. It is moral by definition, because he is the owner of the house. Therefore, the argument "why did God murder children" is an insult to God. He is allowed to because he created them and he (alone) is allowed to decide when to kill them based on considerations reserved for him. (“Who created you in judgment…. And He killed you in judgment”, and He is the only one who has the right to judge individually).
And yet, it is permissible to ask questions and seek explanations (as Moses did), we just need to remember that God does not owe us an answer and we are not allowed to ponder His dimensions.
And all this does not concern the question of whether God caused the earthquake Himself (“Who looks at the earth and it trembles”) but that it is the product of some natural process that He “only” did not prevent. That is so, it is not murder or massacre because He is the owner of the house also over the souls. But if a human being could have prevented death without endangering himself and refrained from this – he is certainly standing on the blood. Why? Because a human being is not the owner of the house. He is here as a creature who must keep the commandments of his Creator and does not have the privilege to consider other considerations (which may be relevant to God but not to us, see Yevamot 9 and Achm).
So why did this happen? I hesitated to answer.
Mordechai.
I am not here to defend Rabbi Michi's position or represent it.
I am responding because the point he raised is puzzling to me.
After all, none of those who criticized Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu criticized him from a position of criticism of God. In fact, no serious person claims to write a criticism of God, but rather criticizes another person who claims that the claim that God did so and so is unreasonable because of logical inference. The fact that in this way, supposedly for the sake of discussion, God is subjected to the laws of logic does not mean that we have criticism of Him.
Even in the Jewish-Christian polemics and in all books of Jewish thought, when they claim proof of the existence of God or the truths of Judaism, they supposedly subject God to human logic as to what He should do, or they claim that God is obliging an external factor to decide in principle, but it is not likely, based on the information we have, that He would choose to act one way or another.
After all, all religious recognition of the observance of Torah and commandments begins with accepting a logical or theological argument from the conclusion regarding the will of God, which is determined by reason. And the human mind is subject to logical argument. To argue that any hypothesis regarding the reasonableness or unreasonableness of actions from the conclusion to God is an audacity towards Him. It is an argument from which it is impossible to depart. Because according to the same logic, it is also possible to put on tefillin to pray to the Temple and to the renewal of sacrifices and the resurrection of the dead. And for the fact that in the end every Jew will be redeemed and repent because he will not reject him, this is also an audacity towards Heaven - because who said that He is obligatory towards us?
After you understand what I wrote, it will go up. I'm sure it wasn't difficult for you to understand that there are those who take this logic a step further. And also assume that it is unlikely that God will punish in our time in a collective or indiscriminate manner. And as a result, we avoid and shy away from attributing the same action to Him.
Is God subject to morality? Rabbi Lichtenstein claimed that he is, and I was not convinced by his arguments.
Is God subject to logic? Rabbi Michi claims that he is, and I was not convinced by his arguments either.
But – and this is the great sorrow – I do not have a systematic Mishnah of my own. I simply do not know.
I will be able to explain on another occasion why I think these two questions are simply unsolvable, but none of this concerns Rabbi Eliyahu's words, nor Michi's revelations about him, nor the rest of the discussion that developed as a result of these things.
Rabbi Mordechai, perhaps you haven't recovered from the Corona virus. When you write D Bar and its opposite, it does indeed hermetically prevent any criticism.
Moral criticism of the Blessed One is not a matter of rights. If he is obligated to act morally, then I examine his consistency. Whether it is his right or not, let him argue in court.
This is also nothing new, of course. Starting with Abraham our father, who for some reason did not accept your broad opinion and claimed that the Judge of the whole earth will not judge, and so on, and many more.
Therefore, your comparisons to the question of whether it is creative or not are also irrelevant.
The claim that he owes us answers also probably comes from the Corona virus. It has not occurred to me and has never occurred to me. This is Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu's assumption, not mine. For some reason, he is not content with asking questions, but rather explains to us in the name of the Blessed One what is happening and why. Perhaps after the vapors have cleared and the shadows have fled, you should remember what the discussion is about.
successfully.
She is the giver. Our forefather Abraham tried to save Sodom and for this purpose he gathered arguments that he thought would help him. In the end, Sodom was destroyed with its people, women and children (there were probably more than 50 innocent people in it). Did he reflect on the standards of the Holy One? (The Sages say that when the Holy One rebuked Moses, he mentioned the fathers who did not reflect on His standards). And this is definitely a matter of rights. When you act according to your right, you are moral. The Holy One is the owner of the house over the world, and therefore by definition he cannot be called a "murderer" or a "child-slaughterer" even if he himself shook the earth. This is his right, and therefore it cannot be claimed that he is immoral (apart from the impudence of the matter). It is wonderful that I understood what is not understood.
The question of whether he himself actually shook the earth or whether the earthquake was “natural” and God “in general” did not prevent it, is secondary and unrelated to the discussion I tried to raise here. As I wrote in my first response, I am not interested in getting into it because it is an endless loop and as far as I am concerned, there is no solution.
The same is true, of course, for all the great men of the world who ”argued” with God. They asked politely and sought to understand out of humility, and did not ”judge” God. Neither for His morality nor for His consistency. Those who tried to judge – were rebuked at best (cf. Job's friends). Usually, by the way, God did not provide answers. Again, because that is His right.
I've already answered everything, but you're entrenched in your own. It's not wonderful because of your intelligence, but because of your bias. Good luck.
The question, Mikhi, is very simple and I was unable to understand your answer. Do you think God can “murder” or is anyone who attributes this to Him simply making a categorical error? The subject interests me personally because I have devoted quite a few philosophy classes to it (I teach at a school). The question I posed to my students is whether there is a distinction between murder and manslaughter.
What does can mean? If you assume that he is inherently good, then ‘God is a murderer’ is an oxymoron. But how does this relate to our discussion? Are you also staying in Mordechai's steam room?
There is nothing in your words except a refined heresy in the principles of faith under the guise of complexity of thought and criticism. You are incapable of criticizing the logical failures of your perception that stems from a deep cut in the plantings. You remind me of the other Elisha and the backward, dark, and horrifying spiritual regression process that man went through.
Can't God cancel earthquakes? And isn't He above the laws of nature that He Himself created, determined, and conditioned every act in Genesis? And aren't all of these dependent and dependent on the actions of all creatures and in particular the actions of the people of Israel, for good and for the better? It is horrifying and horrifying to read such empty sentences.
The world really does not have to reach its destination and function, through human suffering at the hands of the forces of natural systems, this claim is both heresy and a miserable and horrific blasphemy against God, as if suffering is deterministic and predetermined - the Creator prepared the forces of nature in advance in a potential way only, for every variation and possibility. It is up to us to determine whether the destructive forces of nature will come to fruition - or not. It is shocking that such a thing even needs to be explained.
Why do babies suffer? Why were children killed? If you disbelieve in reincarnation, you do not have a good explanation. But then you find yourself at best on the fringes of Orthodox Judaism of the present - and not the one that did not recognize in part the reincarnation of souls, until a certain time. For those who believe in reincarnation, the answer is simple - if a person did not sin at all in this incarnation, and he suffers - this is due to his sins in previous incarnations.
‘There is no death without sin and no torment without iniquity’ – Shabbat page 5.
In order to deny the principles of faith, you must reduce your concepts and terms and all spiritual possibilities – That is why heresy is so backward, thought-cut, plucked from the finger and fabricated. It assumes what is wanted and establishes distorted and unfounded basic assumptions - and on its back it is heresy and cuts off the plantings. The very vitality and sustenance of heresy stems from the artificial reduction of concepts, and from the backward negation of entire spiritual systems.
Your very tendency to follow hypotheses that neglect private providence and enslave a backward, crippled, ignorant, and blind Greekism to the natural forces of the universe - in sharp, jarring, and screaming contrast to the entire Bible and the words of the sages, a small portion of which I will quote here - and there are hundreds and thousands of verses and sayings like that in them, as you know - is pure heresy and a terrible Hellenization of consciousness. This is real spiritual backwardness.
Everything you said has nothing to do with Judaism at all - but rather with apostasy in the principles of faith. At least be honest enough to admit it. There is not a single biblical, Torah, Sage, or Orthodox source that supports your words.
Your criticism does not really stem from depth and excess of thought and complexity, but from a deep and terrible spiritual darkness in which you find yourself on a personal level. You are unable to criticize your criticism and see and recognize that it stems from a narrow, crippled and backward perception of spiritual realities.
From the following sources, we clearly see that the Creator, blessed be He, wants us to take personal morals at a time when there are terrible natural disasters and to strengthen ourselves in everything that needs to be strengthened and to know that this happened from Him, blessed be He - even if it happened to the Gentiles, and even if the Gentiles have only general providence and not private, as they have over the Jews, according to the Maimonides”s system, which the Baal Shem Tov shared. There is no contradiction in this, since either way the matter came from Him, blessed be He. The verses prove this unequivocally and how far the spirit of your words is from the words of the prophet. This itself shows that you are wrong and misleading in the principles of faith. In a horrifying, shocking and embarrassing way.
Zephaniah 3:
‘ A Woe to the city, and to the dove, that is saved. B She obeyed not the voice, that took not the law; She trusted not in the LORD, that drew not near to her God. I have destroyed the nations, their faces are turned away: I have made their streets desolate, that none passeth by: their cities are forsaken, that none dwelleth. I said, If thou wilt fear me, thou shalt take the law.
‘God is faithful and there is no injustice, righteous and upright’
And this is the language of the Talmud (Yerushalmi Tractate Berakhot Chapter 9 Halacha 2): “Elijah, of blessed memory, asked Rabbi Nehoria why earthquakes come to the world, and he said to him, Because of the sin of giving and tithes!
One scripture says, "The eyes of your God are always there," and another says, "Whoever looks at the earth and it trembles, touch the mountains and they will smoke." How can these two scriptures be fulfilled when Israel does the will of a place and takes out of their tithes according to their custom, "The eyes of your God are always there from the beginning of the year to the end of the year and nothing is damaged, when Israel does not do the will of a place and does not take out of their tithes according to their custom, who looks at the earth and it trembles." He said to him, my son, your life is like this, it is a joke, but this is the essence of the matter, except that when the Holy One looks at the theaters and circus houses that are sitting safely and peacefully and His temple is destroyed, it is like a sword for his world to destroy it, this is what is written, Og will roar over Noah – for Noah. Rabbi Acha said, in the sin of lying in bed, the Holy One said, you have shaken my body for something that is not yours, your life is like I am shaking my world over that man.
And Rabbin said, because of the dispute!!!. In the Babylonian Talmud (Berachot 55, page 1), they only cited the reason that the prophet Elijah pointed out, which was as a result of the destruction of the Temple and the exile of Israel, and it is written in the Talmud: “What is the island of Guha [earthquake], when the Holy One, blessed be He, remembers His sons who are in sorrow among the nations of the world, He sheds two tears into the great sea and His voice is heard from one end of the world to the other, and we are Guha”
‘No man lifts his finger from below, but He is proclaimed against him from above’
There is no contradiction between God being good and merciful, and the disasters and horrors that occur in the world - the Bible itself states that the Creator is merciful, good, and full of grace, and in the same breath the Bible describes terrible disasters and states that they are the hand of God. Your interpretation of good in its context with God is childish, inferior, simplistic and distorted. Good does not only mean caressing and pampering and giving good and visible kindness - but all His actions are for the good - even the most difficult human suffering and suffering. Everything is directed towards the good. To say that evil is forced upon the Creator is delusional, horrifying, completely absurd and disconnected from any Jewish textual context - and even spiritual. It is simply childish and inferior.
It is said that God is a "creator of evil" - and that evil and suffering have a good purpose - to purify, cleanse, wash and wash from sin and iniquity - both Jews and Gentiles. Revenge and cleansing also come for the sake of justice and righteousness and truth - so that everything is directed towards the highest moral goals of retribution for sin and punishment and of cleansing, washing and purging from the dirt and filth of sin - and this is made clear in the following verses in Isaiah
‘Wash, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds, from before my eyes’
A father who punishes his son, rebukes him and scolds him, in order to educate him for his own good, in order to bring him to the right path, is he a bad and evil father? It is so childish to think so. In order to deny the absolute goodness and grace of the Creator, you need to cut off concepts and uproot spiritual systems, names such as reincarnation.
Here are 2 verses that unequivocally prove that God punishes and torments with good, moral, compassionate, paternal and merciful intentions.
‘And you know today that when a man chastens his son, the Lord your God chastens you’
‘ For whom the Lord loves He reproves and chastises the son of man He delights’
This is the alphabet of Judaism - Judaism to which you have lost all true connection. And here is the problem - that you are being sent to Judaism. You are perceived as a representation of an Orthodox view - and it is not. You do not even represent a Reform view - but a pagan view. Your words testify well about you. You do not cite any source or any Torah view for your words - simply because there is none.
Therefore, your words are no different from the words of a secularist or an atheist. - The problem begins when your words are treated as representing Judaism - and it is not - you represent heresy.
‘They said of him about the other Elisha, that the books of the nations fell from his lap, and the Greek singer did not cease from his mouth’ - these are lines of your image.
And this was said about you and your kind:
Zechariah 1:
‘And those who turn back from following the LORD; and who have not sought the LORD, nor inquired of him… And I will punish the men, who are stubborn in their ways, who say in their hearts, The LORD will not do good, nor will he do evil’
There is indeed no way to argue with such a long collection of irrelevant claims.
The response does not respect you - not me. It is very irrelevant and irrelevant to claim irrelevance without proving why. It is an evasion of glory. It is an expression of helplessness and argumentative distress. Everything I said is very relevant and very relevant. If such basic and central Torah sources are irrelevant to you, then this is exactly what I am claiming - that you have no connection to the Jewish religious faith. Not even to the Karaite or Conservative or perhaps even Reform - since none of these would claim that God has left the land and no longer intervenes in what is happening here. They say other nonsense, but not this, to the best of my knowledge.
The very explanation that God was once involved and now is not is completely contrary to the Bible. It has no basis in any verse.
It is what the prophet Ezekiel said in chapter 8:
‘Say to me, Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, each in his inner chambers: for they say, The LORD does not see us–The LORD has forsaken the land. 13 And he said to me, Return again, and see great abominations that they do’
And as I have already emphasized elsewhere - the desire to be freed from oppression and the duty to struggle with the evil inclination, on the path to liberation and the discharge of desires, is significantly involved in the philosophy imported for this purpose, of leaving the land.
You are lying deeply in your soul when you pretend to conduct a theological - spiritual - discussion and draw conclusions from it - without being able to base your words, even a thread of hair, on a Torah source. This is a Torah that the devil did not create. Your power begins and ends with an abstract and vague discussion that is disconnected from any Torah text - and with asking forced and fabricated questions that stem from extremely erroneous assumptions - as soon as you start pulling out verses - your arguments will be silenced and the absurdity will be revealed in its nakedness.
You have no way to deal with the verses I brought, such as ‘God is faithful and there is no injustice, righteous and upright’ - something that contradicts, destroys, and completely refutes your words about immorality or evil related to the Creator, the Blessed One, may He have mercy on him.
You have no way to deal with the verses that unequivocally prove that God punishes and torments with good, moral, compassionate, fatherly, and merciful intentions.
‘And you know today that when a man chastens his son, the Lord your God chastises you’
‘ For whom the Lord loves He chastises, and He chastises the son in whom He delights’
There are no verses that contradict these verses - and in truth, one could quote hundreds of verses in a similar vein here.
Therefore, your mouth will be in vain. These are pure and appalling words of heresy and nothing more. There is no depth or complexity or substantive argument or any relevant reasoning to your words. Nothing. And for no reason, because the moment you turn to the Torah texts - they will hit you on the head from all sides. You have no Torah thread to hold on to.
You are a living, shocking and horrifying embodiment of the words of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov about those who are not worthy of learning external wisdom and do so, and slowly undergo a process of terrible spiritual retreat.
If you decide to deny these verses - better. Here will be the burial of the Orthodox disguise and the taking of your Judaism and Torah.
Don't forget the orphan's Kaddish.
I am opening a new comment here, because there is not enough space in the previous comment thread that I opened.
In preparation for the future article that will deal with the issue of God's intervention, I have prepared a small sandler's note.
I would appreciate your consideration of the following points in the future article:
(:) I am reading the blog and I do not see that it is defined what exactly God's intervention looked like in the past (beyond general statements about miracles and prophecies).
Therefore, I would be happy to describe and provide as much technical detail as possible about how you think God's intervention looked like in the past.
I understand that we are very limited in our ability to know what it looked like, and still, I would appreciate reading a “description”, which is even a gamble from your point of view.
If some description was presented, if there is a possibility of presenting references supporting this thesis, it would be very nice (but not mandatory because there probably will not be references).
If, for example, you claim that no babies died in an earthquake or that there was no crib death, it would be nice if there were sources for this somehow.
(:) You wrote that one of the reasons that God stopped intervening in the world is so that we could progress.
Even 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, humanity progressed (based on uncorroborated findings and evidence), along with God's intervention that existed then (in your opinion).
If you agree that it did progress even then, it means that God's intervention does not stop humanity's progress.
If so, doesn't this completely undermine your explanation that God stopped intervening so that we could progress?
(:) Regarding the past, you wrote –
” Intervention requires a very good reason, since it involves an undermining of natural conduct.
On the other hand, he writes:
If He would intervene every time someone suffers, then why not intervene in the suffering of a single person?
So that is a very good reason
An earthquake with thousands of babies buried and dying is a very good reason to violate the laws of nature in days when it is known that God intervenes.
Someone who has a thorn stuck under the toe of their left foot or whose horse is a little sick and this causes them grief, this is not a reason to violate the laws of nature.
Therefore, the request is to you again
Define the situations in which you believe there is a “very good reason” (as you put it) to violate the laws of nature and perform a miracle.
(:) Back to your statement that God wants us to manage on our own and therefore does not intervene.
We see in reality that any father can teach his son to manage on his own, but when the son is in real distress (certainly if the son is buried under rubble and has difficulty breathing),
any sane father would run to help his son, even if it involved spending a million dollars (for that matter, breaking the laws of nature by a hidden or overt miracle).
I still don't understand why you associate the “father who wants us to learn” with –not saving even in extreme situations with the gods of buried and suffocating babies”?
Our experience in reality teaches that the connection you make between these two concepts makes God clearly immoral (with all due respect to the excuse of “not breaking the laws of nature”).
(:) Back to our day, in which, according to you, God does not intervene at all –
You argue that in terms of potential, God is not subject to the laws of nature and can do, if He wanted to, anything. For example, prevent an earthquake.
Therefore, as a result, God is also “subject” to the suffering caused by the laws of nature that He created and which He allows to operate freely.
First, I would like to acknowledge the limits of the decree. If tomorrow it is discovered that a huge asteroid (say 40 kilometers) is expected to hit humanity soon,
and humanity will be helpless in the face of treatment – Even in such a situation, will God allow hundreds of millions of people to die or will He already intervene?
(:) As someone who criticized Rabbi Eliyahu so strongly, isn't your method at least as problematic as Rabbi Eliyahu's (if not much more)
When in major events of many thousands of innocent people who suffocate for many days under the rubble, God chooses not to intervene when
it is quite clear that there is no possibility of “managing on your own” for someone who is currently buried under tens of tons of concrete?
Dror.
First, we decide that those children and babies did not sin and did nothing – and were not killed by the decree of God - God bless you - contrary to the entire written and oral Torah - and from there we get entangled in unnecessary questions?
If they died – it means that they sinned in other incarnations, and here in this incarnation the debtor found a place to collect his debt. God decreed the earthquake and the deaths. It is His work. And it is the most just thing there is. Because all the children and babies who were killed there paid for their sins from previous incarnations. That is all. To say (as Michael says) that God does not intervene in creation and allows disasters to happen is simply heresy, since it contradicts the entire Bible. And I have shown this in a nutshell, in the 3 messages here. There is no trace of this in the Bible or in the Sages.
The complication begins when spiritual concepts are curtailed and spiritualists deny reincarnation, and on the basis of this backward and blind distortion, irrelevant questions are asked because they stem from a false premise - that those children did not sin. And I am not saying this to you - but to the words of Michael Avraham.
Do not make it difficult or ask about distorted and incorrect starting points. It is not possible to provide a straight and plausible spiritual answer to a distorted premise. Distortion comes from distortion.
There is no Torah source that shows that God allows the laws of nature to act on their own, and to claim innocent victims - God forbid - see his 3 responses to Michael Avraham, where I proved to him his terrible error and the terrible heresy inherent in it. Any philosophical discussion that is not supported and based on sources and verses - is a flower of the crow.
‘My laws are true justice together’ - the principled divine justice can only be understood when one takes into account everything together - the ’together’ - the totality of spiritual possibilities and the beliefs of Judaism as a whole - including the belief in reincarnation. Without this – nothing begins.
Of course, even without the belief in reincarnation, it is obligatory to believe in the goodness and divine grace, since the Bible itself obliges us to do so, as I have proven in the messages here. However, in order to logically understand why infants and infants are punished and suffer - for this, the belief in reincarnation is necessary. And the great sages knew in detail the reincarnations of humans, and therefore their awareness on the subject reached the most individual levels, as can be seen, for example, in the writings of Saint Arius, and did not remain only on the abstract principled plane.
See what I said to Michael in the three messages.
Yaakov, there is no mention of the reincarnation of souls in the Bible or the Talmud, and what will you do with the schools that did not accept the issue of reincarnation, and our great Rabbi Saadia is at their head? Do you throw all your love at the issue of reincarnation?
And there is no negation of this belief in the sources you mentioned. So it is not a belief that has a theological problem with it to bring it under the wings of Judaism, God forbid. And today it is an accepted belief in all avenues of Orthodox Judaism. Rabbi Saadia Gaon today, after the revelation of the Holy Scriptures, would probably have accepted this belief. This belief was less known among the masses of the people at the time, as the secret doctrine as a whole.
And even without the belief in the incarnation, I have already shown here that the Bible itself requires that God is merciful and completely good and completely intervenes in every detail of creation, and that all suffering and all death, all sorrow and all abundance and blessing and success - are His decree. It is just that without the belief in the incarnation, the matter remains without a resounding spiritual explanation, capable of straightening the crookedness of the heart and the doubts. I completely cast my love on everything that comes under the beliefs of Judaism and its foundation in the Holy Places and is the fruit of the revelation of the Most High God
If you do not cast your love on this - you will cast away from yourself the purity of heart and the clarity and clarity of soul regarding the ’saying that the Lord is upright and there is no error in Him’ -if you seek to eradicate spiritual systems - you are responsible for the clouding of your heart regarding the goodness of the Lord - especially after this belief has already spread among Judaism.
.
There is a negation when the great prophets and Job wonder how a righteous man can be evil and good to another.
Job was not a prophet to the best of my knowledge
2.. It is not required that Job knew the secret of the reincarnation of souls
To the best of my memory, no prophet argued about a righteous person and bad for him, but why did the path of the wicked succeed - and the success of a wicked person who is good for him in this world is not a question whose answer is necessarily linked to a previous incarnation, such as giving a reward for mitzvot in a previous incarnation, since it is possible that God is paying him for certain mitzvot that he fulfills in his current incarnation or that He is in a sense paying his enemies to his face to destroy him from the next world - as the Gemara states
In Ecclesiastes, the matter is mentioned that there are righteous people who deserve the same as the deeds of the wicked and vice versa.
There is vanity that is done on earth, that there are righteous people who deserve the same as the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people who deserve the same as the deeds of the righteous; I said, "This too is vanity."
He does not raise a question there, but rather says this and adds that this too is vanity. There is an abstract verse here that leaves ambiguity regarding the intention of Solomon - who was not a prophet either.
From his words, "This too is vanity," it sounds like he came to say that the question of humans about this is itself vanity because man is too small to ask such questions, and only a prophet who comes into the secret of God and the secrets of souls knows the answers to it.
Anyone who does not believe in the heavenly revelation and in the revelation that was given to special individuals such as the holy Hari Rabbi Nachman and their like - it is certain that if he had lived in the days of the prophets and in the time of the Tanakh - he would have denied their prophecy to the same extent. This is a spiritual pattern that repeats itself..and I am not saying this towards you, but in general
In the next hour I will give another response to what Michael "answered" to me, you are invited to read it
The belief in the reincarnation of souls is far beyond the scope of Judaism. It is a broad and universal belief. It is shared not only by a few religions but by all of humanity. It is a widespread belief. The spiritual logic of reality itself leads to it, the tenets of the Jewish faith themselves logically lead to it, just as the promises of the Torah logically lead to believing in the permanence of the soul and life in the next world, for who would bother to keep commandments whose reward is temporary? And how do we explain that the wicked live longer, and vice versa?
The mentally disabled and the foolish will say that there is a contradiction between the promise of the Torah to the righteous and its warning to the wicked, and actual reality, because such is the way of the blind and the mentally handicapped - to find artificial contradictions from a hardened place of curtailing concepts and spiritual systems - such as heresy in the permanence of the soul.
And the enlightened scholar will understand that on the contrary - from here the permanence of the soul is proven - in light of the promises of the Torah - and instead of contradicting what is impossible and unreasonable to contradict - the wise will establish from here a strong pillar and a solid foundation from reality itself, on the promises of the Torah, and will see in them a proven derivative of the permanence of the soul. - Reality itself dictates that the promises of the Torah are mainly spiritual for the life of the world to come
What we said on the subject of the reincarnation of souls - the artificial contradictions exist where concepts and possibilities are reduced, and from a particularly narrow canvas and lack of spiritual connections.
.
Yaakov. It's a shame that you rely on your best memory. The question of the righteous and the wicked was asked in the Bible (in the books written by prophets), even if you interpret the verse in Ecclesiastes in different ways. In Psalms, my heart is empty, and I am troubled all day long. In Habakkuk, why are you silent about the wicked, who is more righteous than him? Job was not a prophet, but his words were not written in the Bible for nothing. And God did not answer from the perspective of reincarnation (although there are interpretations that the answer to Job's claims is the secret of reincarnation). The conditions in Berakot 7 attribute the question of why there are righteous and wicked to an ancient prophet named Moshe ben Amram. This is apart from the fact that one should be very skeptical of the claim that matters of reincarnation contribute to the explanation of reward and punishment in this world. In general, I suggest that you pretend less and think more.
I don't know what made you think I was pretending and not thinking - isn't this pretense on your part to say yes? I definitely use the wheels of thought before I move my pen here. My words are not characterized by casual laconicism, are they?
The sources you cited really do not contradict the belief in reincarnation. The fact that a person returns in reincarnation and is told there for his bad deeds in another incarnation, is one leadership - not a single one. Divine leadership is integrated and complex and the reincarnation is not the whole picture - it certainly constitutes a significant layer, but divine consideration takes into account additional things
A person can correct his sins from the previous incarnation through many commandments and rights, and in particular by answering the weight for what he did in previous incarnations. The commandments and rights can soften, delay, postpone, and even cancel what he is destined to suffer as a result of sins in other incarnations.
Not every person has the opportunity and right to correct the sins of his incarnations through commandments and rights
So all the questions of the great men of the Bible do not contradict in any way the belief in incarnation, since divine leadership is dynamic, a complex, integrated, and deep flow. Elam
By the way, David was not a prophet either - and a prophet also has a glass ceiling of the totality of his revelations and knowledge - each prophet according to the height of his rank. Not every prophet reveals everything. Not every prophet was privileged to know all the secrets of creation and souls for their purpose.
I completely believe that the prophets certainly knew the secret of incarnation, but their questions came from an expectation of sweetening decrees, despite the fact that man was destined to suffer for actions from a previous incarnation
God answered Job in this spirit: You are small to contain and encompass the study of creation and the institutions of the earth. This is the bottom line and this is the message there – This fits perfectly with what I said in the previous paragraph
Chazal are the ones who said about the path of Dorush, what Moses asked, and they say whatever you want. Chazal concealed the secret of the incarnation and the Chazal themselves said that they do not reveal the secrets of the Torah to anyone except to a person at a high spiritual level.
The reincarnation may be a true secret that has been revealed, but it is not at all reasonable to think that there is a serious question that cannot be answered without the secret of the reincarnation in a way that all of Judaism depends on its containment. Because there were great and good – prophets, Amoraic Tanais, geniuses and pioneers – who did not know (or did not grasp) the secret of the reincarnation, and they too had a complete and good Judaism. Your statements regarding the prophets do not seem to me and I see no point in discussing such narrow-mindedness, think as you wish (although see the Ramban” in Shaar HaGmul – the great father of the reincarnation method, who also finds hints in the words of Elihu whose answer is the secret of the reincarnation – what the prophets say about it and what they shout about the matter). Why do you think God does not answer Job easily and simply as you answered – there is reincarnation and it is a very simple thing and therefore everything is in law and in law very well.
I agree that Judaism does not depend on this, and I did not say that without this belief a person is considered a heretic or that his Judaism is questionable, but that without knowledge of this secret, many questions will inevitably not be able to reach their solution.
After all, this discussion, without knowledge of the secret of reincarnation, no excuse is truly satisfactory and does not sit well with the heart - a believing Jew does know and believes even without knowledge of the secret of reincarnation, that God is good and all His actions are directed towards goodness and mercy - but he is left without an answer that reconciles everything in a smooth and appropriate manner, on a principled level, regarding children and infants who died. Job also felt that God was good and merciful after God's words to him - but he still could not understand the secret of his suffering.
God did not reveal to Job the secret of reincarnation, just as He did not reveal to him the secret of the world to come, according to the verses in Job, nor even the secret of the Sefirot.
There is no reason why the same Bible that does not explicitly speak of the spiritual world and the immortality of the soul should speak of reincarnation. This is not the style of the Bible, for various reasons that we will not go into. This is a subject in itself
Although the immortality of the soul and the spiritual world are mentioned in Saul's visit to the witch and the raising of Samuel's soul - and Saul's very visit to raise/lower a soul, shows and unequivocally confirms that the belief in the immortality of the soul was widespread and known during the time of the Bible among the people of Israel - and additional verses show this - the Torah does not systematically mention the spiritual world in a textual manner, as a mishna, or as a divine statement that is not ambiguous.
And yet, in the act of the witch there is a significant presence of this world, and of the belief that prevailed in it, during the time of the kings and prophets.
It is truly difficult to conclude from questions from the great scholars of the Bible about their system of beliefs.
Who can guarantee that Job did not come to know the secret of reincarnation and yet his mind wandered during his torment and he threw things upward? Is everyone who believes in reincarnation immune from throwing things upward during sorrow? Not really. Sorrow drives away the mind, said the wise.
Indeed, according to the Ramban, the mention of God hinted to him in his words the secret of reincarnation.
The secrets of the Torah and creation are a precious thing, and not every person is entitled to them.
Yaakov,
I don't deal in reincarnation.
I come to the tabula rasa, to hear what the claimant has to say. I don't put words in his mouth.
He has the unique and strange claim, and therefore the burden of proof is on him.
For my part, he can use reincarnation, hocus pocus, Mickey Mouse or gravity.
I will judge his thesis by the level and plausibility of the arguments.
Dror
Please, Michael is welcome to give his opinion on the subject of reincarnation. I wouldn't bet that he believes in it. I didn't decide for him whether he does or doesn't, if you read me from a reading comprehension perspective..
And what does it mean that you don't deal with reincarnation? You deal with theology, right? That's what the discussion revolves around, right? You're not blabbering about the weather here, but rather expounding theology – the belief in reincarnation, to the best of my understanding, is strongly connected to the subject.
Regarding the plausibility of his arguments - without Torah, without Tanakh, without the foundations of faith – You can treat God with almost anything you want. And you can refute any argument, as you mentioned, according to its level of logic. But as soon as he draws conclusions that are disconnected from basic Judaism and sharply contradict its great canons - then the debate with him is not in the internal Jewish-religious arena – but a debate between an Orthodox Jew and someone who is not one, consciously.
My claim is that reality itself leads to a necessary logical conclusion regarding the reincarnation of souls. Therefore, this belief is very widespread among peoples and religions.
As soon as a holy man like Rabbi Yitzchak Luria was honored to reveal himself on the subject - if I deny his words and doubt them, I am no better than those who deceived the prophets of the Bible and despised their words and their prophecies and dismissed them as tellers of parables and dreamers of dreams - as is clear from the Bible itself..
.
Partial quote from my words to Michael -
From the following sources, we clearly see that the Creator, blessed be He, wants us to take personal morals during times of terrible natural disasters and to strengthen ourselves in everything that needs strengthening and to know that the thing happened from Him, blessed be He - even if it happened to the Gentiles, and even if the Gentiles have only general providence and not private, as they have over the Jews, according to the Maimonides”s system, which the Baal Shem Tov shared. There is no contradiction in this, since either way the thing came from Him, blessed be He. The verses prove this unequivocally and how far the spirit of your words is from the words of the prophet. This itself shows that you are mistaken and misleading in the principles of faith. In a horrifying, shocking and embarrassing way.
Zephaniah 3:
‘ 1 O look, and be saved - the city, the dove. 2 She did not hear the voice, she did not take morals; She did not trust in the LORD, she did not draw near to her God… I have destroyed the nations, their faces have become pale; I have made their streets desolate, so that no one passes by; their cities are forsaken, so that no one dwells. 7 I said, “If only you will fear me, you will take instruction.”
‘A God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is he.’
You have no way to deal with the verses I brought, such as ‘God is faithful and there is no injustice, righteous and upright’ - something that contradicts, destroys, and completely refutes your words about immorality or evil related to the Creator, the Blessed One, may He have mercy on him.
You have no way to deal with the verses that unequivocally prove that God punishes and torments with good, moral, compassionate, fatherly, and merciful intentions.
‘And you know today that when a man chastens his son, the Lord your God chastises you’
‘ For whom the Lord loves He chastises, and He chastises the son in whom He delights’
There are no verses that contradict these verses - and in truth, one could quote hundreds of verses in a similar vein here.
Therefore, your mouth will be in vain. These are pure and appalling words of heresy and nothing more. There is no depth or complexity or substantive argument or any relevant reasoning to your words. Nothing. And for no reason, because the moment you turn to the Torah texts - they will hit you on the head from all sides. You have no Torah thread to hold on to.
Beyond the fact that the concept of souls is a distinctly Torah concept and there is no problem or logic in assuming that a soul comes into the world once - it will not return to it again and again if necessary, because one way or another the souls will return to their bodies in the resurrection of the dead - then a reality in which infants and toddlers who have not sinned are killed and suffer – must logically lead to the belief in reincarnation.
It is very illogical (and of course pagan and terribly short-sighted) to break the strong pillars of the Torah as a result and decide that God does not intervene or that evil or evil is connected to it in some way, God forbid. It is illogical because the Torah says otherwise - that same Torah is historically and logically proven.
It is indeed logical to deduce the belief in reincarnation from the very human suffering of those who have not sinned. It must lead and lead to this on a logical and philosophical level.
. And when a holy and heavenly person like Ariel comes and gives, shows, and explains that same faith to us following a spiritual revelation he received - then we have a spiritual morsel in the basket of our spiritual faith.
‘The accepted perception’- this is a deceptive word-washer - these are the principles of faith and not an accepted perception. – It's like saying that the truth of the Torah, its being given from heaven and the reality of God are an accepted perception’- these are the principles of faith, since the entire Bible is full of them - the entire Bible is full and saturated with passages that explicitly say that everything is from it - every disaster, every calamity, every suffering, every joyful and pleasant thing. Every salvation. Everything in general. And the moment your words contradict the Bible and its spirit in such a sharp and fundamental way - you testify to yourself that you do not believe in the Bible. Leave the Oral Torah – you do not even cross the elementary threshold of faith of the Bible.
Our own human reality clearly embodies a paternal model between parents and their children, in which parents can scold, get angry, punish, scold and torment their children – out of good intentions, compassion, love, concern, a desire to teach and help - even if the Bible did not exist - it would be possible to learn from this human model about God's attitude towards us.
Beyond proofs from the Torah - this is a matter of simple human rational logic that makes a simple projection from our human parental model – which is a microcosm - to the divine attitude towards us.
That is why I wrote that your model of divinity is childish and inferior – and even terribly distorted and absurd, and especially visceral and emotional. There is no spark of rationality or logic in it. You and the little boy who screams at his father who cursed him and tormented him, for his own good, are equal in their level of intelligence and rationality.
The very question of what sin children and infants committed is blindness. Their very suffering shows that they sinned in one incarnation - the fact that they suffer is a divine sign for all intents and purposes.
Are you inclined to deny the reincarnation of souls? Shame on you. So, the moment you remove such a significant and Jewish and Torah-based spiritual possibility – from the list of insights and explanations – your complaint is removed. You said nothing. You have lost all right to complain about God's ways - the moment you reduce spiritual possibilities and eliminate spiritual systems - because in doing so you reduce countless variations in which His providence is manifested.
You cannot argue why such and such happened to such and such a person - if you deny any spiritual possibility. Any spiritual insight. The very question and argument begins with a distorted premise and starting point - that there are no reincarnations. Therefore, it is an addictive game.
It is like a judge not interested in hearing the accused and the suspect claims that he was not at the scene of the crime in real time, because he was meditating at the time. The judge does not believe in meditation, and therefore the accused's argument is not acceptable to him…
You cannot incriminate a person without giving due consideration, in a substantive manner, to all his arguments and reasoning. You cannot philosophically and morally omit and undermine an accused's argument - because of your personal belief.
You cannot claim anything and everything against God - even if you believe in the Torah and the Bible - you are obligated to know that God is good, merciful and gracious and that all of His actions, including punishment, reward, vengeance and cleansing - are related to the foundations of justice, morality, spiritual cleanliness and purification from sin.
And also because after the belief in the reincarnation of souls was accepted in Judaism - the moment you do not accept it – the moment you tend to deny a spiritual insight that allows you to receive answers – and which is founded on the words of the saints of the Most High and is hidden in the Holy Mountains and originates in a spiritual revelation that those great men of the world – namely the Holy One ” according to his own words – thereby you testify faithfully that you are looking for plots and excuses to withdraw from the place, because resentment is deep in your heart. Like the Israelites in the desert who said ‘Is there a God among us if not’ - that is really you. And this is utterly disgusting and hateful to God.
The bottom line: In order to deny God's absolute grace, mercy, and goodness, it is necessary to cut, uproot, and reduce entire spiritual concepts, essences, systems, and possibilities. That is why this heresy is so narrow-minded, inferior, short-sighted, crippled, and spiritually backward. Beyond the fact that it constitutes a heresy in every way in the principles of faith in Judaism... and this heresy, like any other heresy, serves low personal goals and interests and earthly desires. This exempts a person from being held accountable for his actions and gives him wonderful instinctual credit - for according to this blind and backward, inferior outline of a heresy, it is possible to sin as our soul desires and not be punished, for God is not so active in the field, God forbid. Let us be humbled and let us be freed - the end of a heresy in instinctive thought first.
‘Israel knew that there was no real foreign worship and did not worship it except to allow them to commit fornication in public’
You will face it.
‘But they did not look at the work of the LORD, and did not see the operation of his hands’
(Isaiah 5)
.
Well, Reverend Rabbi, you have 2 mistakes.
1. To think that he apologized to the Turks.
To think that he wanted to apologize for his own words.
Well, he holds exactly as he wrote from the beginning, but because his readers were shocked because they did not have the “feelings” that he has, then he apologizes to his readers, and since his readers live this second and all that bothered them from the beginning was only the tact, anyway he apologized for the tact because that is exactly what hurt his readers… and to be precise
[Well, I am happy and very much enjoying the firmness, and I already thought that here I had an opportunity to receive a rebuke. But I was wrong. I have no such opportunity.
1. He writes to Hadiya apologizing to them. But you are certainly making noble use of the principle of kindness.
2. I did not think so. On the contrary, I have proven that his words do not contain an apology for the substance of his words, but only for the tact.
So there you have it, you were wrong. And apparently I have doubts whether you were wrong about two things or one. But the simple conclusion is that you were actually wrong about three things: a. In saying that I was wrong about two things (I was wrong about 0). b. In saying that I was wrong about the recipient of the apology (see 1). c. In saying that I was wrong about the content of the apology (see 2).
Be strong and courageous.
Well, you're not really wrong.
My point is that ”you expect too much from them” all they care about is an ideology that suits them regardless of reality, they wanted to teach their flock “transparency” and when it interfered with the readers' taste, he immediately apologized for exactly what was interfering. I'm not saying that's how he acts in what he has influence (of course, if he were here, God forbid, he would send help to our cousins) but when it's just for the purposes of “studying” he's a bit over the top. That's how it is in yeshivahs, the gap between “halakha” and the keras sabrah of a general class is only very
‘Fathers shall not die for their children, neither shall children die for their fathers; a man shall die for his sin in the day he dies’ - another foundation for the fact that there is no suffering without sin and no death without iniquity - whether for Israel or for the Gentiles.
17 Ah, Lord GOD, behold, thou hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power and by thy outstretched arm: nothing is too wonderful for thee. 18 He shows mercy to thousands, and repays the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them: the great God, the mighty, the LORD of hosts is his name. 19 Great is the counsel, and many are the wonders, whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the children of men, to give to every man according to his ways, and according to the reward of his doings. As you have set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, even to this day, and in Israel, and among men; and you have made yourself a name, as at this day. (Jeremiah 22)
We see from these verses that after the verses that say that God punishes the children for the iniquity of the fathers, immediately following comes the next verse: ‘For your eyes are open to all the ways of the children of men, to give to each one according to his ways, and the reward of his deeds’ - the ways of the Jews are not said, but only of men – Even Gentiles - to tell you that even when sons are punished for the father's sin - this is on the condition that they themselves are sinners and deserve it due to their evil deeds in the current or previous incarnations.. Gentiles are obligated not only to the 7 commandments of the sons of Noah, but also in everything that branches off from them and in their history in everything that has to do with a person to his fellow man.
There is King Saul who asked infants what sin they had committed? Regarding Amalek, and they explain that it was obligatory to kill them all because God by His hand produced the seed of Amalek - but this is specifically true for that case. Here too, we are talking about a commandment to kill - and not about something done by God.
‘Out of the mouth of the Most High does not proceed evil and good’ refers to the good and evil choices of humans – in keeping the commandments or neglecting them. And according to the nature of the choice, so is the nature of divine providence, for good and for the better.
“The iniquity of the fathers visits upon the children” -and not upon infants and young children -and this is said when the children hold fast to the deeds and sins of their fathers.
‘For the iniquity of vows a man's sons die’ – This is also said on the condition that the sons themselves sin and do not change from the deeds of their fathers, we do not say infants die, but rather their older sons.
The verb that comes out of our words is this: When infants and young children groan, get sick, suffer and are killed, this must be interpreted as a just and obligatory divine retribution for sins and crimes from previous incarnations.
To Jacob
With apologies to you, your statement represents, in my opinion, a complete irony
On the other hand, you write that denying that earthquakes and disasters come upon the world directly from God and by His will is heresy because God's ways are hidden and that the Bible records cases in which God does indeed inflict collective punishment and there is no reason to assume that this is not the case today either.
On the other hand, you are quite guilty of the sin that you yourself cry out against when you write that it simply must be carried out through a form of punishment for previous incarnations because otherwise there is no justice in the world. But in your Bible, in Chazal and in the Rishonim, nothing is written about reincarnations either. When Israeli babies or Gentile babies died, our sages really did not see the need to excuse God's leadership by saying that they were reincarnations or roots of the souls of people who sinned. Rather, they saw it as a result of an act of collective punishment that also came upon a baby or a woman who did not sin. themselves. It is not written anywhere that in the plague of the firstborn that the firstborn who died were granted the next world or a reincarnation that entitles them to the next world. Nor were the children of the Canaanites who died when the Israelites entered the land promised them any special heavenly compensation.
You also interpret the Ari” in a way that suits you, in my humble opinion. From what I have read, he speaks of a cosmic doctrine of reincarnation that aims to correct the entire deed of the first man. In that in every soul there are roots of souls and sparks of souls that are connected to each other and need to undergo correction. And from what I remember reading, he speaks of generations and great people, wicked and righteous, who have all kinds of sparks in them that need correction - and many times I also remember reading in his book about reincarnations of personalities like Balaam and Haman - which clearly shows that there is not necessarily something here that comes to express heavenly compensation, but rather a process that comes to redeem distortions of spiritual forces from endings that exist within great wicked people or great righteous people.
As for the fact that the Sages did not explain spiritual matters according to the doctrine of reincarnation, this is what I answered another commenter here: The Sages concealed the secret of reincarnation and the Sages themselves said that they do not reveal the secrets of the Torah to everyone, except to a person at a high spiritual level. This was said about the story of Genesis and the story of the Merkava, and it is also said in Tractate Pesachim that they do not reveal the secret to the people of the land. There are many secrets and secrets that the Sages knew and did not reveal - according to the words of the Sages themselves. Therefore, your question regarding the words of our Sages has been removed. By the way, in the Zohar in Saba Demishpatim it is explicitly written about the reincarnation of souls, and in the Zohar on the commandment of Yevom it is explicitly stated that the deceased returns to the child who is born.. So it starts already with the Rashi..
3. The hidden ways of God are not a verse known to me, but the hidden ways of God are not. It is conceptually similar but not certain that it is the same. There are subtleties here that we will not go into, the verse itself does not really belong to our discussion, but I had to mention it
4. Show me one verse in the Bible that means collective punishment and the Sages interpreted it in such a way that it contradicts ‘A man shall die for his sin’ and all the other verses that I mentioned in the responses to Michael - the Sages said that there is no death without sin and no suffering without iniquity. And just as the fathers pay for their sons, this is precisely when there is sin in the hands of the son - so in the plague of the firstborn and in every other calamity. Every punishment that seems collective contains within it individual providential punishment for sins, and there is no contradiction between these two elements and everything is perfectly integrated and synchronized by the Deity.
The Sages tell us stories of personal divine providence about Titus, Nebuchadnezzar, and many other Gentiles.
The Sages said that in times of severe judgment, the standard of justice does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, and it begins with the righteous, as it did during the destruction, according to our sages. But even then, everything is governed by private providence, because even this lack of distinction between those who had many rights and those who did not - is in God's decree and determination, and this is another layer of the general rules of His conduct with His creatures, and so the severe judgment that is specifically extended to the righteous is a careful private providence, and what happened there also came about for sin - for the righteous not to spare the sinners, so that everything always begins and ends with divine providence.
Harry explains that all those from the people of Israel who worked hard in Egypt were incarnations of the generation of the flood that corrupted their seed and now they are being enslaved to hard work to correct this sin. And he also explains the sin of Adam and its implications regarding the nature of each person's correction, according to the degree of his pleasure in sin.
Where did I speak of heavenly compensation in the punishment that comes for sins from previous incarnations? This is an obligatory divine retribution - not compensation or atonement.
The Ari speaks of individual people constantly, as he speaks of rules regarding the subject of reincarnations in the book Shaar Gilgulim, and not only there but throughout his writings.
Rabbi Yaakov,
Your words are hidden by yourself.
You write “Since permission was given to destroy, he does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked”
And immediately – But even there everything is managed by private providence. Isn't that a contradiction.
Private providence means – Each individual is judged for himself – The righteous for himself and the wicked for himself –
You add that this lack of distinction is in the decree of God – But it is still a lack of distinction –
That at the time permission was given to destroy, – He does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked.
And in our case – Since the house falls in the earthquake – It will fall on all its inhabitants, great and small.
And in the matter of the reincarnations – “And you know that as a man chastises his son, so the ’ your God chastises you”.
This baby who was hurt and all his days thereafter will be in torment – he did not know for what
he was punished. You will say to him: Turn from the sins you committed in a previous incarnation – he will say to you – Tell me what my sins are. Where is this when a man chastises his son?
The issue of authority over facts was mentioned above, I have now seen an amusing news quote:
“At the end of the discussion, the chairman of the committee, MK Moshe Gafni, read a summary, according to which: “There is no connection between the reform of the judicial system and the damage to the Israeli economy, and that an attempt to link the two is a political attempt”. The committee held a declaratory vote on the matter, with opposition members opposing its existence and claiming that it lacks authority and is illegal.”
And in the opinion of Maharam Gafni, Y.L. that a vote on reality is an indirect vote on policy measures, all experts and decisions in the future, to the extent that they are subject to the policy decisions of the Finance Committee, are obliged to assume, when they come to determine policy, the factual assumption that there is no connection between the reform and the damage to the economy.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev turns pale with envy. 🙂
If only it were like those who argue (saying that from the crossroads onwards) in the dispute, it would be like Balaam's donkey and donkey.
Speaking of Rabbi Aviner, his current position (it's forbidden to rejoice, innocent people were killed) didn't stop him from rushing to write a really stupid column about the war a year ago. In Ukraine:
https://www.srugim.co.il/650151-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%91-%D7%90%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%A8-%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%90%D7%95-%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%93-%D7%9E%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%97
Much of the trilogy was cooked up or was already ready during the Ezk’ach period, where Michi wrote that in order to blame God for disasters, etc., you need to prove that He could have created the world with more useful laws of physics. Words that were not understood then or today.
Whether he has remained in this position since then I do not know. I have not read his books, I am not familiar with the books of Or HaChaim or Feldheim.
Michi would have been called a purifier of the impure and a defiler of the pure. Still balanced?
I propose another possibility that I cannot rule out (nor confirm) - God is behind everything that happens.
Since we do not know the heavenly accounts, we should not look for the cause of events even if sometimes it is tempting or seems trivial to someone.
The joy and sadness that we are supposed to express in reality is supposed to be in accordance with our ability to understand without involving the providence that we are unable to perceive (maybe sometimes yes, but we have no indication when we are right).
According to this view, we are sad when someone is injured/dies in a terrorist attack because we judge reality without trying to understand the involvement even though it exists.
In the earthquake in Turkey, we are sad because that is how we perceive reality (innocent people, women and children are injured) and again without harming (or supporting) the existence of divine involvement.
By the way, I think our feelings are rational even assuming that there is providence and seemingly it can be argued that everything is intentional and there is nothing to be sad about.
Ultimately our feelings are based on our reading of reality and we cannot feel emotions about what is not found at any level that we can perceive.
I suppose this is very simplistic but I would love to hear your opinion on this direction.
Thank you
You are talking about (psychological) facts and I am talking about norms. You are describing when we are sad, and it is trivial that it happens according to our understanding of reality. This does not require theories and explanations. I am talking about the question of when we should be sad, and this is a normative question (i.e. when something bad happens). The discussion here is about norms, not facts.
This still does not indicate the problem with the concept I propose (the part that concerns divine involvement before addressing emotions).
Rejoicing that a baby dies is of course delusional on a psychological level, but in my opinion not delusional on a normative level.
This may sound terrible, but again, on a normative level I am suggesting divine involvement that we do not perceive.
The example you gave that theoretically we should have killed the person who died there, but we cannot know who, does not contribute to your thesis in my opinion, because by definition we cannot know or justify such behavior, and therefore it is not just a technical obstacle, but a kind of world that runs parallel and we have no ability to understand it and in any case to interact with it or act upon it.
The meaning of what I am proposing (at least de facto) is that providence should not affect our conduct in the world.
I don't understand. You're claiming there's a moral explanation, but we just don't know it? That's what everyone says. What's new here?
Some explanation. Not necessarily moral. Even if that's what everyone says, I don't see the problem because, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't draw Rabbi Eliyahu's conclusions (which, according to you, should indeed be drawn according to his method). We don't rejoice at all not because of tact but because there's no point in asking what we're supposed to feel normatively according to an approach that says we have no perception of providence. This is a question that has no practical implications. (A possible practical implication is joy over a baby who died - this is the "desirable" emotion, supposedly, according to the thesis I'm proposing, but it goes back to the point that we can't develop feelings about what we can't understand in any way). Perhaps to explain the point better: Imagine for a moment that you were given a prophecy for a moment and an understanding of the divine process and assume for a moment that the baby who died is part of this process. Wouldn't you be happy? Isn't it right to rejoice in such a case? In my opinion, it is right to be happy because you understand the need and what it serves. Back to our reality - emotions should not be based on norms that we do not understand. We remain with psychology (which is based on norms that we do understand - killing a terrorist, for that matter).
If you assume that God does not act morally, then the discussion does not arise. If He acts morally, even if we do not perceive it - again, there is no room for sharing in the grief, after all, the one who died deserved to die.
I do not understand what you want to achieve in this strange discussion. To defend Rabbi Eliyahu's position? Are you presenting a different position. To present a position in which the discussion does not arise? Clearly, there is such a position. To present a thesis with the same assumptions without the conclusions - you did not succeed.
Well, I think we have exhausted ourselves, at least here. Perhaps there will be room for this discussion in the next column that I am writing on the problem of evil. There I will try to present all the possibilities, and if you think that your possibility is different - I would be happy to hear it. For the time being, I see nothing new here and no solution to the difficulties.
I did start by presenting a different position (from yours and his).
The new thing (or not) is that you don't have to assume that an event like the earthquake is unforeseeable in order to be sad.
I'll look at the next column and respond if I see that it's related to the same issue.
As someone who brought up the subject of the "problem of evil" in this post, I can say that my desire is to read a column that explains what you think God's involvement in the world would have looked like during a time when, in your opinion, He was involved in the world.
I am interested in hearing about events for which He is responsible - earthquakes that He created (miraculous - supernatural earthquakes), and also about earthquakes that came from nature (events that He did not create). How He was involved in each of these cases is up to you.
This is very interesting because you are really angry at Rabbi Eliyahu for making people think about God in an orderly way. And here we go, let's read and hear how you yourself think about God according to your approach.
In conclusion: I have no interest in just a general discussion about the “problem of evil”, only questions about your words, as I have presented in this post in an orderly manner.
Dror
*In a neat manner = in an ugly manner
I'm really happy to hear about your interests. Maybe you could elaborate more on them. I'm sure the other surfers here have also wondered what exactly interests you.
When I work for you, I will certainly act accordingly.
In my humble, non-conclusive but correct opinion, he asked a serious and important question. You, of course, do not have to answer, (after all, you are “Mra Datra” and do with it as you please), but the question is certainly begging and the lack of an answer is also an answer…
Rabbi Mordechai. You probably didn't notice, but this discussion is already underway, and I already wrote above that I would dedicate a proper column to it and answer it.
It is certainly true that this is a question worth discussing, but here it was not a question but rather instructions for writing my intended column. His impudent manner of presentation invited a response as I wrote. As for a response, as I wrote, it will come soon.
Indeed, your famous and extreme sensitivity to Victorian tact and etiquette deserves greater respect.
Rabbi Mordechai (are you really a rabbi?), this is not just one question.
There are other questions, I will mention a few (a breakdown of all the questions is above):
(-) Why include ” ‘God who helps everyone with every thorn that gets under their feet’ together with ‘God who helps when there are clear cases of inability to act’.
A good example of inability to act is what happened to tens of thousands of innocent children in Turkey and Syria.
Why not learn from our experience, that every sane and rational father helps his son when the son is in danger of death and terrible suffering (like the earthquake in Turkey), but indeed lets the son cope alone when he has a mortgage debt or a thorn that gets under his feet. Isn't it likely that God, the Almighty, would be like that too?
(-) Why did God stop intervening “so that we could progress”, if one were to argue that humanity was progressing well anyway, even in the periods in which, supposedly, He was involved.
There is no need to stop intervening, because it is clear that humanity progressed even 10,000, 5,000, 3,000 years ago.
Dror
I don't quarrel with anyone, except those who quarrel with me.