Was the Mount Sinai ceremony a spell?
To Rabbi Michael Avraham
In the past, I sent you a question about the status of Mount Sinai and you referred me to the fifth verse.
I read it very carefully and was unable to find an answer to my question.
The question is about the Mount Sinai situation. Who said it wasn’t magic?
But I’m not asking this just like that, and to explain my question I’ll give an example:
The family members of the world’s number 1 magician are already used to him surprising them.
Once he enters a closed box and is suddenly discovered on the other side of the room, and once he floats in the air. They have no idea how he does it and every time it seems natural to them, but they know it’s just magic and they’re no longer excited because they’re used to him surprising them anew every time.
One day their father came and suddenly did something to them that he had never done before. Suddenly, in the middle of dinner, he ordered them to tie him tightly in a closed box and burn the box in the fire. They did so and waited until the fire was over. When it was over, they suddenly saw their father peeking out from under the ashes.
To this day, they have not seen him perform magic on such a scale, but my question is, should they begin to believe that their father received supernatural powers or should they believe that this too is magic and that their father has simply specialized a little more in the “wisdom of the cosmos”?
In my opinion, it would be completely irrational to see this magic as evidence that he has supernatural powers, because even the other magic tricks he did, they don’t understand how he did them, except that they know that they are just magic tricks and that in the school of magicians they teach how to do them, and so it is much more clear that the last magic trick is also just magic tricks and is, in general, magic tricks that only expert magicians know how to do.
So it is with Moses our Lord.
We know that there were sorceries in their time and we know that they did supernatural things with them [such as blood plagues and frogs that the sorcerers were able to do on their own]. We also know that Moses grew up in the house of Pharaoh, the king of sorcerers, and it is most natural and logical that the boy learned how to do sorceries. Later, he went out for a good few years to other places and was even close to Jethro, the priest of Midian, so it is logical that during these years he specialized more in sorceries and even learned from other peoples.
Even if I have no information that he actually understands magic, I still won’t believe him when he shows me how he does something supernatural, just like when the son of the world champion in magic who grew up in a house where magicians hang around all day comes and does something supernatural to me, I’ll immediately attribute it to magic.
And now when Moses comes and performs miracles for us, we attribute them to God Almighty instead of sorcery, and in my opinion, this is the most irrational thing in the world.
And if you try to answer me that even the sorcerers could not do spells of such magnitude as tearing the sea in two. In my opinion, this is not an answer because such an answer can only be given by someone who understands spells and knows the “wisdom of spells” and then he can claim a certain supernatural thing that is no longer within the scope of spells and he proves divine intervention. But a person like me who does not understand spells and also has no idea how the sorcerers invented frogs, I do not think it makes sense that I would see a sorcerer doing a supernatural thing and claim that it is not spells but divine intervention, just as the members of the sorcerer’s family who do not understand how he does the cosmos cannot claim greater sorcery that is truth and not sorcery.
[And it should be clarified that in magic, I do understand that there are supernatural things that can still be said to be outside the realm of cosmology because they cannot be sleight of hand, like a magician who slaughters a person and then brings him back to life. But in spells that are not achieved by sleight of hand, it is much more complicated for a person like me to express opinions about when it is magic and when it is truth, because I have no understanding of them.]
Sorry for the length, but that’s the only way I feel I’ve expressed myself.
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This is the point. Many people believe to this day that they saw David Copperfield split his body in two on the magic stage. They believed 100 percent that it was a supernatural force or magic. But after the field developed and the technologies were revealed, they realized (some) that the spectacle they saw was a trick. And so I join Eli's question, how do we know that back then it wasn't a trick that was interpreted as magic? Perhaps during this period (which is also almost certain) criticality was lower and people tended to attribute everything to higher powers rather than natural explanations (like the Native American dance and thousands of other examples of the naivety that ruled the world until recently when it came to the simple laws of physics)
And I agree again with the answer I gave him.
If there was someone out there who knew how to do magic at the level of voices from the sky, he would probably have advanced technologies, far beyond his contemporaries. So I work with him.
This reminds me that in many arguments one side says to the other, "I know the data better than you and you don't have enough of a clue about it," and supposedly considers his position to be 100 percent correct, thus closing the other's arguments. But I argue on the other hand that there is a high probability that even if I knew the specific data, I would remain in exactly the same position. It is possible that I have no right to continue arguing and arguing, but that certainly does not invalidate my side and certainly does not justify his position. ..
In order to verify the event of the giving of the Torah, don't we need a higher probability and a greater certainty to oblige us to such a specific way of life? Is it enough for us that we have no idea about the magic and the feelings of the miracle-watchers, in order to eliminate the scenario of magic in the giving of the Torah, which on the surface sounds very logical?
This is one of the essential questions that I feel I have not received a clear answer to, and therefore I continue to pester you with... In my opinion, the giving of Torah by God should be a near certainty (our rabbi taught us that there is no absolute certainty) in order to believe in the mountains of commandments and such a strict view, and I really don't understand what I don't understand here.
You are repeating the same difficulty, which I understand has already been answered.
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