Very important questions for the long-distance runner!
Our Lord, teach us,
1. In lesson 5 in the HaKhvat va’olam series, regarding the case from the Magra where a duty is transferred to a debtor, with the one who was exiled and the one who committed death… What is your concern? Even if this was done accidentally, as the Gemara says, there is still divine intervention here and the situation is being navigated so that one will be killed and the other will commit exile. This may not violate freedom of choice because it is an act of mistake, but in the end, the person who died still passed away prematurely because if it were not for the transfer of this situation from heaven, that person could have continued to live… The same applies to the Ramban’s excuse regarding conspiring witnesses who were instigated after the death of the “accused.”
2. In the same shiur above, the Rabbi stated and quoted the Rambam that according to his view there is no divine providence/intervention at all. Not in the actions of humans, nor in natural phenomena, nor even in miracles. How does this reconcile with the Rambam in the MUN, Chapter 3, who enumerates 5 systems of providence (the heretics, Aristotle, Ash’ariyah, the opinion of our holy Torah, and the opinion of the Rambam), because ostensibly his approach in the chapter is exactly the approach of Aristotle, who says that God only created the world and the laws of nature and severed contact, therefore why did the Rambam have to state his own opinion as the fifth opinion? His opinion in the chapter does not reconcile with his opinion in the MUN, where he claims that there is a private providence over humans, saying that providence “is only in the individuals of humans.”
3. I would be happy if the Rabbi would refer to the source or explain why, in his view, a change in God or the awakening of will is not a defect in His perfection or infinity, but rather an improvement on His part (which goes back to the issue of the complete and perfect), because the entire difficulty of the Rambam in attributing will (which indicates a certain deficiency) or change to Him is in the axiom (from the Rambam’s perspective) that with God there can be no change or will by definition. And the Rambam is careful not to say God’s will but God’s wisdom. Even though even according to the Rambam’s view, which claims that everything is already inherent in the laws of Genesis and at the time of creation itself, and even the miracles, it is still not clear how he explains the moment of creation itself, because there must be an intervention in time and an awakening of will?!
4. Regarding the “weakness of will”, with the example of repentance for example, why should one be forced to say that the only possibility that seems plausible to the Rabbi that can reconcile the “What is your mind” argument (regarding whether the cause of repentance is external to the person and forced upon him or is immanent to the person and then it happened independently anyway because the person himself willed it), is by the fact that apparently there is really no dichotomy and there is a type of cooperation between man and God, in the sense of “the one who comes to be purified helps or is in his hand” or “open me an opening like the point of a needle…” etc.
Why can’t it be said that a person who repents (at least some of them) was previously religious/traditional and they still believe in God and the Torah and they are simply in the category of “yoke breakers” and not ideologically secular, and the reason they were secular until now was only because their instincts overcame them and they succumbed to the temptations of the world. And when they decided to repent, it was because they truly believed in it all along but did not put it into practice… without attributing this to external intervention.
And what’s the problem with saying that a person is made up of many desires and when he gives in and eats chocolate while deciding to go on a diet, it only means that this specific desire to be thin was weaker than the desire for it to taste good at that moment, so he ate the chocolate. It’s true that in the end, the bottom line, at that moment when he ate the chocolate, that’s what he really wanted (at that moment only) and his choice was the result of his will and not the result of an external factor or other factors. What’s the problem with assuming that there are, for example, different types of desires, a momentary desire and a long-term desire. Like with a religious person who really wants to pray every morning at dawn but in reality stays in bed and only gets up at noon… I don’t think you can say that he didn’t really want to pray at dawn. Maybe the problem is just in the wording of the argument “weakness of the will” versus “weakness of the specific will” for example…
5. I wanted to know what the difference was between the opinion of our Torah (Chazal) presented in the MUN and the opinion of Maimonides himself. From what I understood, it is that both agree that there is general providence over nature, and private providence over man, and that the degree of providence depends on man’s behavior. The only difference between them is the criterion for the degree of providence.
This is because according to Chazal, the criterion is his righteousness/wickedness, and according to Maimonides, his wisdom/ignorance. If my accuracy is correct, can it be said that according to Maimonides, a person who observes a mild as well as a severe rule but not out of his wisdom, nor out of having arrived at this through the rigors of study and contemplation, but only out of the habit of growing up and seeing it at home, or out of blind faith without investigation, can it be said that he is not enlightened or not truly religious?!
And the question is also asked on the other side, can it be said that in fact Chazal also taught Maimonides, since a person’s righteousness or wickedness (which is measured by his strict adherence to the Torah commandments) is the result of his rational decision whether to accept with his mind the claims about the truth of the Torah and faith in God (perhaps except for that person who really does not think and does everything out of habit as “the mitzvahs of learned people”), since in the end everything rises and falls on our minds, even faith… (as Rabbi Shimon Shkop, whom the Rabbi likes to quote)?!
Sorry for the length…
I have been grappling with these questions for a long time, I would be grateful if the rabbi could answer everything and address all the points or at least refer to the sources.
PS!
I would like to point out that I have almost all of the Rabbi’s books and I really like your lessons and greatly appreciate your work. I think that in our generation and in the spirit of the times, this is the most important thing to be concerned with.
In terms of “know what you’re going to answer” because there are many opinions and explanations and it’s very easy to get lost in the depths of the world of thought.
It is important to hear, learn, and give a platform to slightly more intellectual and “professional” interpretations compared to the “shallow” explanations of many rabbis or Torah “thinkers” such as the “repentant” ones, who have already taken root in the minds of many religious people of our generation. Moreover, sometimes this shallowness exposes our beliefs and opinions to ridicule and ridicule by our secular brothers who have learned a little and make it difficult for us to return…
Go to Oriyta!
Thank you very much!
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