On Interpretive Integrity and Dealing with Difficulties and Contradictions (Column 243)
The original tension: a world governed by nature versus a Bible of providence and prayer
The column opens from the tension between two pictures of reality. On the one hand, a straightforward look at the world, and also the actual behavior of believers, researchers, and people who pray, assumes that ordinary reality runs according to natural law: when a plane crashes, people examine the pilot and the materials, not the quality of the passengers' prayers; even believers do not build scientific research on the assumption that prayer will determine the results. On the other hand, the Bible is full of descriptions of answered prayer, reward and punishment, miracles, and divine involvement. He stresses that the issue here is not to decide that whole dispute all over again, but to clarify what intellectual honesty requires when the difficulty seems real. That is why he invokes Maimonides and the Ran, who hold that one should not automatically dismiss either the words of the sages or what is evident to the senses, but should seek a resolution that takes both sides seriously.
The proposal: hester panim as cessation of involvement, not hidden miracle
To reconcile the contradiction, he returns to his earlier proposal: God changed His policy in the world and gradually withdrew from it. Just as everyone agrees that prophecy and open miracles disappeared over the generations, it may be that hidden miracles disappeared as well, so hester panim means not concealed involvement but actual cessation of involvement. The possible explanation is a parental model: parents accompany a small child and then let him stand on his own, and likewise, as humanity and religious people gain more knowledge and ability, there is less room for direct top-down management. This yields a provocative further claim: divine hiddenness may be the result of progress rather than decline, and therefore there is no reason to romanticize magic, amulets, and saints' graves as if they reflected deeper spirituality.
Karen's challenge: Torah too must not be bent to fit science
The questioner, Karen, argued that if one rejects apologetics that twists science to fit Torah, one should also reject apologetics that twists Torah to fit science. In his view, the Torah clearly speaks about providence, reward and punishment, and prayer, and even if we do not currently have a convincing mechanism for reconciling that with the determinism of nature, one may live with the contradiction or suggest options such as hidden intervention, God being above time, and the like. He replies that, in his opinion, these are not serious options but empty declarations, yet the main issue here is not whether each such solution has been refuted, but what one should do methodologically when there truly is no simple and straightforward reconciliation.
Why the plain meaning really does count against the proposal
He explicitly concedes that if one reads the Torah tabula rasa, without bringing in any external data, the plain meaning that emerges is one of a two-way relationship between האדם and God: prayer is answered, commandments bring reward, and sin brings punishment. In that sense, if someone else had proposed his reading on the basis of the text alone, he himself would say it is inferior to the plain meaning. Moreover, there is no clear proof in the Torah that this policy was destined to change, so from the text alone there is no reason to add the assumption of change. On the basis of Scripture alone, then, his proposal looks both logically strained and in tension with the idea of the eternity of Torah.
The sequence analogy: what overcomplication means
To sharpen the discussion, he introduces a mathematical language of pattern recognition. There is an interpretation that ignores structure present in the data, an interpretation that retrofits a rule to every detail, a balanced interpretation that relies only on the structure that actually appears, and an interpretation of overcomplication: one that adds a condition or qualification that does not emerge from the data themselves. His proposal regarding Scripture is, at first glance, of this last type: to say that the biblical description was true for its own time but not for the future is an addition that does not contradict the verses, yet is not anchored in them by itself. Therefore, if the only datum were the biblical text, this would be weaker than the plain meaning.
Why historical and scientific data do anchor this extra complication
But, in his view, interpretation is not done on the basis of the text alone. We also have later data: the world as we know it appears to run by fixed laws, without any visible dependence on our spiritual state or our prayers; in addition, even within tradition itself there are clear phenomena of change, such as the end of prophecy and open miracles, and there are biblical laws and institutions that no longer operate in the same way. If so, observation does not stop at the verse but continues onward, and it discovers that the situation changed. In such circumstances, the interpretation of changed divine policy is no longer a gratuitous addition but an explanation anchored in the data, and it may even become the called-for interpretation if one refuses to deny what is manifest. This also weakens the simple theological objection from the eternity of Torah, because that principle turns out to be more complex than a flat yes-or-no notion of no change.
The charity principle: sometimes a strained reading is the honest one
From there he turns to the principle of charity. Just as one judges a person favorably and chooses the explanation that saves him from lying or wickedness when the context supports it, so too with texts in general, and especially with a divine text, one should prefer an interpretation that keeps us from attributing nonsense or falsehood to it. In that sense, he says, his reading is not a crooked distortion but a way of judging Scripture favorably without denying reality. He adds that his opponent is doing something similar: if he refuses to conclude that the Torah is simply false and instead prefers hidden mechanisms of intervention for which there is no evidence, he too has already departed from the plain reading. The disagreement is not between honesty and distortion, but between two non-plain readings and over how much one is willing to force common sense and one's picture of the world.
Why talmudic ukimta and midrash are a different, more problematic case
This is the central methodological point. A talmudic ukimta is not like his move, because an ukimta narrows a general statement of the Mishnah or an amoraic dictum to a special case, such as a festival that follows Shabbat or a slave who is bound and asleep. That creates an additional difficulty: if that is all the source meant to say, why was it phrased in a general and misleading way? Therefore ukimta, and likewise midrash in relation to peshat, are cases of undercomplication: it is not enough to show the difficulty that forces the interpretation; one must also explain the source's original wording. By contrast, in his proposal of changed policy there is no problem at all with the wording of the verses: the Torah accurately described what was true in the biblical period; the claim is only that later on the picture looks different. That is why Karen's criticism misses the correct classification of the move.
The methodological conclusion: not every non-plain reading twists the text
The conclusion is that when there is a genuine contradiction between the plain sense of Scripture and what is manifest, intellectual honesty does not require one to remain with the plain sense as if nothing happened. Sometimes the more strained reading is precisely the more honest one, provided it rests on the full set of data and does not simply ignore them. An interpretation of the ukimta or midrash type requires an additional justification for the source's wording, because it subtracts from what the source says; an interpretation of changed policy is easier, because it does not contradict what the Torah says but only adds that the situation described there did not continue forever. Therefore, in his view, the proposal of gradual withdrawal is not an apologetic escape from the difficulty but a legitimate interpretive response to a difficulty that cannot be ignored.
With God’s help
About three weeks ago I was asked on the site (within the thread, by Keren) a question about my view regarding God’s withdrawal from the world, as I have described it here several times in the past. The questioner raised a principled methodological reservation about the intellectual honesty of the interpretation I proposed, and I therefore thought it proper to devote a column to it. Before I get to his words, I will provide a bit of background.
Presenting My View: The Two Sides of the Difficulty
I argue that a straightforward look at the world shows that it follows its own course, that is, it operates according to the laws of nature. It does not appear that God is involved in it, at least not in an ongoing way (sporadic interventions hidden from our eyes cannot be ruled out, but of course they cannot be confirmed either). I have shown from several angles that God-fearing people as well see reality this way quite naturally. Thus, believing researchers do not feel obliged, out of religious scruples, to control for biases between the sample and control groups arising from piety, the quality of prayer, and the like. On the face of it, people who are prayed for do not seem to recover more often (there are disputed studies on this, mainly in a Christian context). On the face of it, mass prayers (for example, for the recovery of a well-known Torah scholar) do not yield clearly positive results. In addition, whenever something happens we look for the natural cause that brought it about, and no one is satisfied with the claim that some person did not pray properly or that his spiritual level was deficient and that therefore what happened to him happened. When a plane crash occurs, none of us looks for flaws in the quality of the passengers’ prayers, but rather in the quality of the materials from which the plane was built or in the pilot’s conduct. The same is true of researchers who are very righteous and deeply God-fearing, and I will not dwell on that here.
That is one side of the dilemma. Yet Scripture is full of God’s response to prayers and His involvement in the world. It is very difficult to ignore the fact that this is the biblical worldview. The obvious question is how to reconcile these two sides.
Methodological Note
Before I continue, I must clear away expected comments. Many will say to me: how do you know that God is not involved? Perhaps you do not see it? Might it happen only rarely, in ways that escape our notice? (By the way, as I said above, I am in principle prepared to accept that possibility, although there is no indication that it actually occurs.) Perhaps all the righteous people you described are sinning in that they ignore God’s hand and look for a natural explanation? Others are more refined and explain that the two planes do not contradict one another, and that God sometimes intervenes within nature. I will not address these claims here in detail, since I have dealt with them elsewhere and have already rejected them ad nauseam. In my view, these claims mainly express misunderstanding and conceptual confusion. But my main concern here is not whether the picture I described is correct, but the methodological question: assuming the difficulty I described really does exist and has no simple solution, what is the intellectually honest way to relate to the biblical verses?
Still, before entering the thickets of methodology, it is worth recalling Maimonides’ words in chapter six of Shmoneh Perakim, where he raises a difficulty. On the one hand, the philosophers say that the righteous person whose nature inclines to the good is preferable to one who conquers his impulse and rules his spirit, whereas the Sages say the opposite (“Do not say: It is impossible for me to eat pork…”, and more). Maimonides there takes pains to reconcile the two views. But what matters for our purposes here is precisely the question itself. Notice that Maimonides does not summarily dismiss the philosophers’ position, even though it apparently contradicts the Sages. He assumes that if it seems correct to him, that is good enough reason to interpret the Sages differently. For him, both sides of the difficulty deserve serious consideration, and when there is a contradiction we must resolve it.
Similarly, in the context of scientific conceptions and scientific facts, one can find comparable statements among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). A prominent example is the Ran’s claim in Sukkah (1a in the pages of the Rif, s.v. “Rather, in the shadow.”, and in other medieval authorities): “Can we really deny what is plainly evident?!” (‘Can we deny what is perceptible?!’). On the strength of that consideration, the Ran arrives there at a forced interpretive conclusion (even in his own view), solely because of an observation he made in reality which he refuses to ignore in the face of the seemingly required interpretation of an authoritative source (the Talmudic text).
If so, in our case as well, the scientific outlook according to which there are fixed natural laws by which the world operates should not automatically be rejected in the face of the plain sense of the Torah’s verses, even if it does not seem to fit them. Nor is it enough to wave one’s hands about various hypothetical possibilities. We must take both sides of the dilemma seriously and seek a reasonable and fitting resolution of the contradiction, such that both sides (the biblical verses and the scientific picture) receive proper consideration in the final picture that emerges.
Back to My Picture
To resolve the above contradiction, I proposed a model of gradual withdrawal from the world. I argued that no one disputes that God changes His policy in the world over the generations. Although the Torah speaks of prophets and prophecy, and also of open miracles that God performs, everyone agrees that prophecy has ceased and open miracles have disappeared from the stage of the world over time. My claim is that hidden miracles disappeared to the same extent. This means that God is no longer involved in the world, although in the biblical period it appears that He was. He withdraws from us, and that is divine hiddenness. My claim is that, contrary to the accepted view that speaks of divine hiddenness as concealed involvement, what is happening is that divine involvement in the world has simply ceased. I suggested a possible explanation for this: like parents who help their child function in the world, and gradually allow him to manage alone until he stands on his own feet. So too God accompanied us when we still lacked scientific knowledge and the ability to manage on our own, and little by little He leaves us to conduct ourselves independently.
At the margins of my remarks I would note that, in light of—or rather, in the darkness of—this conception, it is possible that divine hiddenness is the result of our progress and not of a decline in our spiritual level. On the contrary, the more connected we are to the material world and the more we know about it, the less part spirituality takes in our lives, but that is not regression; it is progress. A culture that believes in magic and miracles (like the amulet-kissers and grave-prostrators of Garbuz) is nowadays perceived as primitive, and in my opinion rightly so. Its members are less skilled at analyzing reality and therefore tend to attribute phenomena they do not understand to miracles and sorcery. We are no longer supposed to be there. People revolt against this ‘Garbuzian’ conception for several reasons. From the left it is attacked because it refers mainly to Mizrahim, but from the right as well it is attacked because, from a religious and traditional point of view, such things have meaning and influence. Garbuz speaks from a secular perspective that does not believe in this, and his remarks were perceived as contempt for religion and the religious, or as Ashkenazi condescension. I accept neither criticism, and I certainly identify with the core of Garbuz’s remarks.[1] The criticism from the left is politically correct foolishness. If those who do such things are mainly Mizrahim, that does not mean there is anything real to them. With all the respect I do not have for political correctness, it cannot determine reality. If magic does not work, it makes no difference that a large group of people thinks it does. And as for the criticism from the right, faith does not mean ignoring reality. The question whether these acts actually help is a factual question, and tradition does not determine facts. Moreover, even if one accepts the tradition (as I do), that does not mean that what happened once necessarily happens today as well. The world and God’s policy within it can change, and in my assessment do indeed change.
I now return to Keren’s question.
The Question
This is what the questioner wrote:
Miki, you are known for your honesty, but here, unfortunately, you have twisted yourself entirely. Just as we recoil from apologetics and do not want to force science to fit the Torah, but rather cling to honesty, integrity, and the search for truth, so too on the other side we must not force the Torah to fit science, but examine it freely. In the Torah, providence, reward, and prayer most definitely exist. There are disputes about the measures and the limits.
There are several ways to solve the difficulty between the determinism of the laws of nature and God’s freedom to answer prayer, all of them at the level of theories (hidden intervention, God above time, a breach of determinism from within the laws of nature, and more. You have already gone over most of them and tried to refute them, and you did not convince me. In any case, even if they are refuted, there is probably some other mechanism, or else there is a serious problem in the Torah—which cannot be solved by a crooked interpretation). In science too we have contradictions, and we try to reconcile them with theories until we manage to find the straightforward path. The fact that in the meantime we live with contradictions does not make us abandon one experimental method or declare one theory false, or explain findings in an unconvincing way.
He is really dealing with two points: the duty to be honest in interpretation and in thought, and not to twist the texts; and the possibility of resolving the contradiction in a straighter way.
And this is what I answered him:
I will devote a column—without making a vow—to your methodological claims here, since they concern not only the question under discussion here but the methodology of dealing with difficulties and contradictions in general. Here I will only say that there are not many possibilities, as you write. In my opinion there is not even one reasonable possibility. One can always make declarations that have no backing (like a miracle within nature and the like). All these ‘possibilities’ are very easy to refute, and I have done so here more than once. But wait for the column (240 according to the present plan), where I will explain this in greater detail.
As noted, in my view there is no straighter way to resolve the contradiction, and his words on this point are mistaken. But the subject of this column is the methodological point: what does one do when there is no way to reconcile the texts in accordance with their plain meaning? Is the picture I proposed really intellectually dishonest? What should I do in such a case? So here is the promised column (you can see that in the meantime three other columns entered that were not planned then), in which I will try to touch on the aspect of the duty of interpretive and intellectual integrity and its proper application in cases such as these.
The Interpretive Point of Departure
When one reads the Torah tabula rasa, that is, without any prior biases, I completely agree that the conception that emerges from it is that God is involved in the world, answers prayers, and manages affairs. The section “And it shall be, if you surely heed.” and others like it speak explicitly and at great length about this. Our relationship with God is, and probably also should be, a two-sided interaction. In that sense, if someone had proposed an interpretation like mine of the Torah, I would say that, from the standpoint of the biblical text, it is an inferior interpretation compared to the simple alternative. It is important to understand that, in my view, there is no proof from the Torah that this reality will not change, or that it is not supposed to change, but in the absence of additional considerations there is no reason to assume that it will change. That is an additional assumption that there is no reason to add to the game.
To sharpen that last point, I will present here a mathematical framework that I will later use to describe my claims.[2]
Mathematical Background and Illustration
Think about the following sequence of numbers: 1,3,5,7… What is the next number in the sequence? I assume many of you will say 9, because you assume that the rule instantiated by this sequence is the odd numbers. But equally the next number could be 11, because the sequence instantiates the rule of the prime numbers.[3] Which of the two is the correct ‘explanation’ of the sequence? (As noted, each ‘explanation’ yields a different prediction for the next number.) It seems that from the data we have there is no way to know. Both explanations are possible, and on the face of it both seem equally probable.[4]
Now think of a person whose afternoon-nap habits you observe throughout the year 5779. The results of those observations can be represented as a vector of 1s and 0s, whose length is the number of days on which we observed him (365 days), and wherever he slept we place the number 1. In all the other places we put 0. Our purpose is to find the regularity in this vector, that is, what this person’s sleep policy is. To move forward, I will now refer to the following data obtained from observations of him over the year: this person slept every Sabbath afternoon, and on the other days we found no regularity. Sometimes he slept and sometimes he did not. From here on I will argue that for the sequence obtained one can propose five kinds of explanation (and innumerable specific explanations), each of which can yield a different prediction about what will happen on subsequent days:
- One can infer from this that there is no regularity at all in his conduct. This is a random sequence, and the fact that he slept on all the Sabbaths is accidental. It follows, of course, that from the data we have there is no way to predict what that person will do on the days to come.
- One can infer that there is perfect regularity on all the days (simply ‘tailor’ an ad hoc function that describes exactly the days on which he sleeps)[5]. From this one can predict what he will do on every day (incidentally, the observation will not necessarily yield sleep on all the Sabbaths. It depends on the function we construct, since, as noted, there are infinitely many possible such functions).
- One can infer that on Sabbaths he sleeps regularly, but on the other days there is no regularity (the sequence is random). From this one can predict that he will sleep on the next Sabbaths, whereas regarding weekdays we have no way of knowing.
Before I continue, let me tell you that our cousins the mathematicians have a name for each such kind of explanation, and they even rank them (in terms of explanatory power and the quality of prediction they provide). Explanation C is the preferred explanation, since it rests on the data we have and neither adds anything to them nor subtracts anything from them. Explanation A, by contrast, is called underfitting (insufficient fit), because it ignores part of the data (the sleeping on Sabbaths), that is, it assigns them no significance even though they have a clear structure. Explanation B is called overfitting, because it assigns significance even to data that, on their face, display no visible order. We create an ad hoc order, and the indication that this is ad hoc is that we have infinitely many ways to do it. In other words, the data do not really yield Explanation B in any natural way, even though it apparently explains them all. As is well known from almost every field of life (except the interpretation of aggadic literature and Hasidic teachings, and perhaps literature and poetry in general), ad hoc explanations are always bad explanations (because they are given after the fact, and anything can be explained after the fact).
Now consider another explanation:
- One can infer that he sleeps on Sabbath afternoon only in odd-numbered years, and therefore on the next Sabbath (which is at the beginning of the year 5780, which is even) he should not sleep. Moreover, perhaps on weekdays he actually does always sleep, or perhaps only on every Tuesday of an even-numbered year, and so on. From this one can infer a wealth of future observations, which of course means that they have no real status at all. Give me a future forecast and I will build you an explanation that yields it.
It is important to understand that this explanation differs from all its predecessors, including Explanation B. As we saw, even in Explanation B one can fit very many functions to the data, but there we are at least fitting them to the data we have, and from that trying to predict the future. By contrast, within Explanation D there is no attempt at such a fit. We are not using the data we have at all; we are putting all of them into a closed box and declaring them irrelevant to predicting the future. I think we would agree that such an explanation is worse than all its predecessors. Explanation A looks at all the data, and particularly at their random part, and draws the conclusion that all the data are random (the sleeping on Sabbaths is an accidental result). Explanation B uses all the data, and even builds an explanation that accounts for them all in a consistent and coherent way. Explanation C, by contrast, uses the other part of the data, the one that appears systematic and coherently structured, and regards the rest as accidental (that too can be seen as using all the data). But unlike all these, Explanation D does not use the data we have at all. It ignores them and places them all in an irrelevant box (that is, in the past, to which the future is unrelated), and therefore the chance that it will predict the future correctly is negligible. Its predictions are worth very little. They yield only what you yourself inserted into your ‘explanation.’ The data contributed nothing to it.
The defect in an explanation of type D is not only the multiplicity of possibilities and predictions (which also exists in Explanation B), but that the predictions it offers simply are not connected to the data. An explanation of type D adds an ad hoc constraint without the slightest anchor in the data themselves (there is nothing in them that hints that this is specifically an odd-numbered year). This can be formulated differently: the complexity proposed by this explanation is unnecessary in order to account for the data, and therefore there is no reason to adopt it over the simple and obvious explanation. Our cousins the mathematicians have a name—albeit a less well-known one—for this kind of explanation as well. They call it overcomplication (excessive complexity)[6].
It is important to understand that an explanation of type D, with all its defects, is not contradicted by the data we have. It fits them well. In other words, the problem with an explanation of excessive complexity is not a contradiction with the data, but only that it is not anchored in them at all. It is entirely the product of our free and creative imagination.
As noted, there is also a fifth kind of explanation, and I will come to it below.
Back to the Thesis of Policy Change
The analogy to our case is obvious. According to the picture I propose, the description that appears in Scripture regarding God’s policy was true for a certain period but ceased to be true at a later time.[7] This is exactly an explanation of the type of excessive complexity (overcomplication). It does indeed fit the biblical description completely, but the constraint it imposes on the data (= the biblical description) puts them all into the ‘box of the past,’ which is not relevant to what occurs in the future. From the analysis above it is clear that, at least in the absence of other considerations, although there is no contradiction between this explanation and the data, it obviously has an inferior status relative to the straightforward explanation, according to which the Torah describes reality as it always is (that the person will continue to sleep on the Sabbaths of 5780 as well).
This is the logical difficulty in such an explanation. One may also add a theological difficulty. One of the principles of faith is the principle of the eternity of the Torah (“This Torah will not be changed.”), which tells us that the principles of the Torah are eternal and are not supposed to change. This principle strengthens still further the difficulty with the picture I proposed, according to which God’s policy as described in the Torah changes over the years.
The Significance of Additional Considerations
Up to this point we have dealt with interpreting Scripture according to its plain sense, without involving additional considerations. On that plane, the picture I describe is indeed a highly problematic interpretation (overcomplication). But all this is true given the fact that all we have is the biblical description and nothing more, that is, that those alone are the data we must interpret.
But as I have already explained above, there are indeed additional data here, and we must not ignore them. I mainly mean two things, and they address the two difficulties presented in the previous section:
- At least for the sake of discussion, I assume here that our current scientific worldview teaches that the world is conducted according to fixed laws, and it does not appear that matters depend on our spiritual level or on our prayers, and in general it does not seem that God is involved in the world’s conduct. If so, we have extended the observation sequence beyond the Torah’s verses and seen that the situation changes. These are additional data that must be taken into account when we build an explanation (a theory). And in the example I gave above, we saw that on the Sabbaths of 5780 that person indeed does not continue to sleep on Sabbaths. Clearly that ought to change the explanation we had previously adopted. This is an attack on the logical difficulty in my explanation, since it can no longer be treated as overcomplication.
- We have found other things in the Torah that changed despite the principle of the Torah’s eternity, such as open miracles and prophecy (and of course also quite a few commandments, such as the law of the beautiful captive woman,[8] the laws of slaves, and the like).[9] This consideration attacks the theological difficulty (by appeal to the eternity of the Torah). It seems that the interpretation given to that principle is too simplistic, and this opens a theological door to explanations of the kind I proposed.
It should be remembered that an interpretation of the type of overcomplication is consistent with all the data we have. They do not contradict it. The logical claim against it is only that it adds a constraint, or a change, that has no anchor in the data. But if one takes the continuation data into account as well, it seems that it now does have such an anchor. At that point it becomes the very interpretation called for by the biblical verses, at least if one treats our conception of reality as a valid basis no less than the interpretation of the verses (in accordance with the Ran cited above, who instructs us not to deny what is perceptible, and with Maimonides’ policy in chapter six of his Shmoneh Perakim).
Judging Favorably (The Principle of Charity)
In my article on the principle of Ockham’s razor, I pointed out that sometimes intellectual honesty actually requires a ‘crooked’ interpretation of a text or an event. The example is the Mishnah in Avot, “Judge every person favorably.”. The commentators on the Mishnah note that the obligation to judge favorably does not stand in opposition to reason; rather, it is precisely required by the use of sound reason. When you see the leading sage of the generation chasing after a betrothed young woman with a knife in his hand, in the public square and in full view of all Israel, it is more reasonable that he is running after her to return a knife she forgot in his house than that he wants to rape her. This is not a crooked interpretation but a reasonable interpretation, required by acquaintance with the circumstances and with the people involved. By the same token, if two interpretations of a text or of a person’s claim stand before me, one of which presents him as problematic (a liar or a fool) and the other offers him a fitting meaning, it is preferable to choose the latter even if it is forced. In philosophy and interpretive theory this is called the principle of charity. This is certainly true when we are speaking of a divine text, which is not suspected of stupidity or lies.
In this terminology, one may say that what I did to Scripture was an interpretation that ‘judges it favorably.’ I proposed a meaning according to which Scripture is not speaking nonsense or falsehoods, and also does not force us to deny our worldview and our common sense.
Even if we take Keren’s proposals seriously, one may wonder why he himself does not draw the seemingly most obvious conclusion, that the Torah is simply false. That is, it is a human product that does not really know what is happening. Why does he prefer the ‘crooked’ interpretation that God does intervene but hides within nature? After all, he argues that although we do not see any dependence of what happens on our actions and prayers, we should nevertheless assume that there is such a dependence. If so, it is clear that he too is forcing the texts. Why does he do this? Because he assumes they are certainly true. So how is his proposal different from mine? We both choose an interpretation of the overcomplication type, and the difference is only in the question of how far I am willing to force my common sense and my worldview. The Torah, for both of us, has already been forced.
From this point on, read carefully, because the point is somewhat subtle but very important for our purposes.
Comparison to Ukimtot
It is now natural to compare this with the concept of ukimta. At first glance, such interpretive ‘bending’ is exactly what happens in Talmudic interpretation. There too, when one encounters a difficulty in a Mishnah or a baraita, one makes an ukimta, that is, one proposes a forced interpretation in order to resolve the difficulty. And there too, apparently, this stems from the other side of the dilemma, namely from a reasoning or an opposing source that forces us to depart from the plain reading. Because of that difficulty we have no choice but to propose a forced interpretation.
In the terminology I have proposed here, it seems that an ukimta is not an interpretation of the type of overcomplication, but of a different kind (the fifth in number), which at first glance appears worse. To clarify this, let us look at two examples (which were discussed in my article on ukimtot). The first is the ukimta at the beginning of Tractate Beitzah. The Mishnah there brings the rule that an egg laid on a Jewish holiday is forbidden to eat (according to Beit Hillel, and so the law is ruled). On 2b the Mishnah is set in an ukimta, namely that it deals only with a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath (that is, on Sunday),[10] and the prohibition is tied to Rabbah’s law of preparation. Another example is Rava’s rule that one who places a bill of divorce in the hand of a woman’s slave has divorced her (this is called placing it in ‘her hand’), and the Talmud sets that statement in the case of a slave who is bound and asleep. In both these cases the Talmud takes a rule that appears in a Mishnah or in some amoraic statement in general form, and sets it in a very specific case. That is what usually happens in the ukimtot made by the Talmud.
A Fifth Type of Explanation
To which type of explanation, among the four we encountered above, can this be assigned? It is easy to see that it is none of the four. This kind, on its face, appears worse than overcomplication, and in fact it does not fit any of the other three either. We have now reached a fifth kind of explanation:
- On reflection, ukimtot of the kind we encountered here seem parallel, in the afternoon-nap example, to an explanation that determines that only on even-numbered Sabbaths does he sleep as a matter of policy, whereas on the other Sabbaths the fact that he slept was accidental. That is, even from that part of the facts which seems unequivocal (sleeping on Sabbaths), only some of them are taken into account in building the explanation (the theory). In the Talmud’s formulation, what we are really doing here is making an ukimta: the policy of sleeping on Sabbaths, which appears at first glance to be a general policy, is actually true only for even-numbered Sabbaths and not for all Sabbaths (just as the qualification in Rava’s case is that the slave is only a slave who is bound and asleep, and just as the ‘holiday’ in the Mishnah is only a holiday that comes after the Sabbath). Such an explanation may be called undercomplication (insufficient complexity). If an explanation of overcomplication adds information to what is in the data, an explanation of undercomplication gives up part of the information in the data.
Why is an explanation of this kind more problematic than the four we encountered above? Because it does not offer an explanation for a phenomenon that apparently does have an obvious explanation in the data, or at least for part of it. It is more convenient for me to show this problematic feature by means of the two examples of Talmudic ukimtot that I brought above. In both these examples, the proposed explanation does not fit the data in the text, and this means that it is actually unclear why the text is worded in that way. If the Mishnah wants to state a rule only regarding a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath, why does it not write that? If Rava wants to state a rule that is relevant only to a slave who is bound and asleep, why does he not write that? It is important to understand that this is a difficulty for the explanation proposed in the ukimta. Even if there is a difficulty that forces us to squeeze the Mishnah and set it in an ukimta, the question still remains why the author of the Mishnah wrote a mistaken and misleading formulation. To this question the ukimta explanation offers no answer. By contrast, the explanation I proposed for the change in God’s policy (which is of the overcomplication type) does not suffer from this defect. For there is no question why the Torah describes God’s involvement in the world. It was written that way because that is indeed what happened then, and I claim nothing else. What I claim is only that now, in the period after the Bible, it is no longer so. Therefore the picture I described presents no difficulty vis-à-vis the data (as I wrote, it fits them well), but only a phenomenon of excessive complexity. An explanation by means of ukimta, by contrast, contradicts the interpreted text itself, because the ukimta removes something from what is written in the text. In the Mishnah in Beitzah a general rule is written regarding every Jewish holiday, and the Talmud interprets it only regarding a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. That is what arouses the difficulty regarding the wording of the interpreted text, something that does not exist in our case. Notice that if in the Mishnah in Beitzah the rule had been written explicitly only regarding a Jewish holiday that falls on Sunday, and the Talmud had proposed that on a Jewish holiday that falls on Monday it does not apply, that is, it refused to extend it beyond what is written, then that might perhaps have paralleled an explanation of excessive complexity. In such a case the Talmud would merely have added a constraint after the text but would not have contradicted what is actually written in it. But, as we saw, that is not what happens in an ukimta.
An Implication of the Difference Between the Fourth and Fifth Types of Explanation
There is an important implication to this difference. To establish an explanation of the ukimta type (undercomplication), it is not enough to present the difficulty that forces us to place the Mishnah in a unique case. In addition, what is needed is an explanation of why the Mishnah itself is formulated in language that is not precise (that is, why it wrote the rule with respect to every Jewish holiday, and not only with respect to a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath). Without such an explanation, the strain of the ukimta is not justified (even though the difficulty that led to it is clear and troubling). By contrast, in explanations of the type of excessive complexity, the very existence of a difficulty (an opposing source, a fact, or a reason) is enough to justify them, as we saw in the mechanism of judging favorably (because in an explanation of excessive complexity there is no problem with the wording being interpreted).
It seems that Keren’s challenge to me, quoted above, assumes that my explanation is an ukimta. That is why he claims against me that the existence of a difficulty still does not justify it, because I am twisting the texts. He would be right if this were an ukimta, but as stated this is an explanation of a different type (overcomplication), and it does not twist the texts. It fits them completely, but claims that what comes afterward looks different from what is described in them. For that purpose, it was enough for me to point to the difficulty that compels it (the contradiction with the facts and with the scientific picture of the world), as I did above.
What really is the explanation for the formulation of the Mishnah in explanations of the ukimta type? What is the justification for the Mishnah’s seemingly defective wording? One of the problems in understanding ukimtot is that the Talmud sets up the ukimta but never answers this difficulty. My above-mentioned article on ukimtot deals mainly with this question. I showed there that the wording of the Mishnah is always precise, and that it expresses exactly what the Mishnah came to say. That is because the ukimta always comes to solve a side difficulty and not to qualify the cases with which the Mishnah is dealing. There is not really a contradiction between the explanation of the ukimta and the wording of the Mishnah. But, as stated, that entire move there is needed only with respect to explanations of the ukimta type. Explanations of excessive complexity have no need of it. As I explained, there is no difficulty in the original wording there that needs to be explained.
A Similar Phenomenon in Midrashic Interpretation Versus the Plain Sense
A similar phenomenon can be seen in the relation between the plain sense and the midrashic reading. The Vilna Gaon’s approach is that the midrashic reading is not the depth of the plain sense, as others think, but a parallel interpretive plane to the plain-sense one. Still, the midrashic reading is usually prompted by some difficulty that exists in the plain sense. Only the force of the difficulty does not replace the plain-sense interpretation, but adds a midrashic interpretation. But there is an important point here that many miss, and the Vilna Gaon shows it in his characteristic brilliance. I will bring here an example from the third book in my trilogy, which deals with this point.
R. Menashe of Ilya, in the introduction to his book Binat Mikra, cites in the name of his teacher the Vilna Gaon an example that illustrates his approach to the relation between the plain sense and the midrashic reading, and the logic behind it. The Vilna Gaon’s words refer to a verse in the book of Proverbs (12:25):
If there is anxiety in a man’s heart, it will suppress it; but a good word makes him glad.
One should note that it does not say here, as people usually think, “Let him speak of it.”, but “Will suppress it.” (note the vocalization). The meaning of the term “Let him remove it.” in this verse is not clear. On this the Talmud expounds (Sanhedrin 100b):
“If there is anxiety in a man’s heart, let him remove it.” Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Assi: one said, let him remove it from his mind, and one said, let him speak of it to others.
The Talmud offers two different ways to read the verse: either “Let him remove it from his mind.” or “Let him speak of it to others.”. R. Menashe explains that the plain-sense interpretation of the verse is that worry bends the heart (and this is also clear from the antithetical parallel later in the verse: “But a good word makes him glad.”. Joy, in the Sages and in Scripture, is usually an expression whose meaning is expansion), and according to this the letter shin in the verse is right-pointed. But according to the Masorah the verse is written with a left-pointed ש, and this contradicts the plain sense and instructs us to use the midrashic route. R. Menashe explains that one cannot read the verse according to its plain sense (the bending of the heart), because according to that it should have been written in the masculine: “If there is anxiety in a man’s heart, it will wear it down (= the heart, or the person).”, and therefore the Sages expound the verse as though the word were written with a left-pointed ש — “Let him remove it from his mind.”.
At bottom, the Vilna Gaon’s claim contains a fascinating explanation of the phenomenon of the plain sense and the midrashic reading, and of the relation between them. In his view, the verse was written[11] in a defective form from the standpoint of the plain sense, and this was done deliberately in order to force us to expound it. But this does not mean that the midrash reveals the depth of the plain sense, for if that were so, the midrash itself would have been written directly as the wording of the verse (“If there is anxiety in a man’s heart, let him remove it from his mind / speak of it to others.”), and then we would not have needed to get entangled in homiletical interpretations of the written wording. They could likewise have written ‘money in place of an eye’ and spared all the complexity, and the midrash would already have been the plain sense itself. The Vilna Gaon explains that the defective writing is intentional, in order to hint to us that the plain sense remains in place, but that in addition to the plain sense there is also another plane of reference, the midrashic reading. The irregularity teaches that the two interpretations stand side by side. This is the only way the verse can hint to us that we must relate to the verse on both planes of reference together, the plain sense and the midrashic reading. Any other form would have led us to only one of the two interpretations. Even if one does not accept the Vilna Gaon and his student’s implicit assumption that the Masoretic text is a reconstruction of the Torah’s original writing by God, this example still illustrates the general idea that the midrashic reading is a plane of reference parallel to the plain sense, and that the full picture is the combination of the two. But beyond that, for our purposes, this analysis demonstrates that when one offers a midrashic reading on the basis of a difficulty in the wording vis-à-vis the plain-sense interpretation, the difficulty alone is not enough to ground the midrashic interpretation. One must also provide an explanation of why the verse is not written directly in a way that would teach us the midrashic interpretation. The Vilna Gaon explains that this is intentional so that we preserve both the plain sense and the midrashic reading in their place. Exactly as we saw with ukimtot. The relation between the plain sense and the midrashic reading is also of the type of undercomplication.
All this with respect to the midrashic reading. With respect to ukimtot, as noted above, the simple wording of the Mishnah describes the principle itself precisely. The constraint that leads to the ukimta is secondary. There too it is undercomplication, as in the relation to the midrashic interpretation, and therefore there too an explanation is required for the wording adopted by the Mishnah (and the ukimta explanation by itself is not enough to answer the difficulty). By contrast, in our case (that of the change of policy), we saw that this is an explanation of the type of overcomplication, which is a less bad interpretation, since it requires no justification beyond the very existence of the difficulty itself.
[1] See on this in Column 10 and here.
[2] See on this in chapter seven of my book Mad’ei HaHerut. The distinctions and examples here (regarding the first four kinds of explanation) are taken from the book of my friend Prof. Moshe Koppel, cited there.
[3] I apologize to the mathematicians among us for including 1 among them.
[4] Incidentally, there are also infinitely many other explanations, each of which would predict a different number as next in this sequence, but most of them are of an inferior kind (less simple), as will immediately be explained.
[5] There is no principled problem in doing this (there are infinitely many such explanations). See the previous note.
[6] What is really meant is an excess of information (drawing a conclusion that contains more information than is in the data).
[7] In fact, this is probably a gradual process, but that is not important for our purposes.
[9] It is no accident that I did not mention here the laws of sacrifices, which apparently are destined to return, although Rabbi Kook argues that they will not (rather, offerings will be brought from vegetation), or the wiping out of Amalek, which is no longer relevant (see on this in Maimonides, positive commandment 187, and in our article on the third root in the book Yishlach Sharashav), and more.
[10] In my article there I explained that the medieval authorities probably disagree about whether this is really an ukimta, and this is not the place.
[11] I of course assume that the Masorah reflects the way the verse is written. This is the accepted traditional view, and certainly that of the Vilna Gaon, who said all this.
Discussion
I agree, but in my opinion there is no moral problem here (except in extreme cases like the Holocaust).
I think the view you present in the name of the Bible, as though God constantly intervenes in natural reality, is too simplistic a reading of the Bible. I call this conception of divinity “God the kindergarten teacher”; it sees God as some sort of super-nursery-teacher in charge of handing out candy to children who behave nicely and giving beatings to children who run wild.
The section “And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen” and a small number of similar passages deal with only one intervention, namely the ability of Israel to survive in the Promised Land: if they keep the Torah, rains will come and there will be peace; and if not, they will be forced into exile from it. God made a covenant [-signed a contract] with the children of Israel that He gives them the land on condition that they observe the commandments there. This is the only divine intervention mentioned in Scripture [besides the miracles of Moses and Elijah, etc.], and from the moment Israel was exiled from its land, it was no longer relevant!
In a number of places in Scripture (mainly in Psalms and Job) it is written that doing good is worthwhile [“And he shall be like a tree planted by streams of water”], whereas doing evil is not worthwhile [“Not so the wicked, but like chaff,” etc.]. But nowhere is it written exactly how God rewards the righteous or how He punishes the wicked. Presumably this idea is absolute and eternal, and it stems from biblical morality. It is founded on the claim that if the world behaves purely according to laws of nature, and there is nothing at all that rewards the good and punishes the evil, it follows that God Himself is not moral, and if so then human morality too lacks any real anchor in reality.
The Bible tells of Abraham, Jacob, and David dying, and it is not mentioned that people prayed for them not to die, as they did for Rabbi Ovadia. Before a war they make sure that those who have betrothed women will not die, and they do not send half the soldiers to a “Psalms headquarters against missiles.”
The Bible recognizes the supremacy of the laws of nature, within which it demands that man behave morally out of recognition that morality pays in the end, without supplying the explanation of exactly how it pays.
Because of lack of time I read quickly, and God willing I’ll go back and study it again.
Your argument would be correct if the Torah did not refer to the future. But in the section “And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen” there is no time limit. The sections Nitzavim and Vayelekh explicitly refer to the future. According to you one would have to say that we matured, but with God’s help we will yet return to childhood.
And I really do not like the expression “the kindergarten-teacher conception.” It has more than a whiff of condescension.
A. For a long time I have been trying to understand your basic assumption that God’s involvement in the world is empirically detectable. That is, one can observe whether God is involved / not involved. Are the two possibilities equivalent in your eyes? That is, suppose He does intervene – would you expect to get observational studies showing mathematically how God is involved, how prayers have an effect, how faith may help in cases of medicine, economics, and more? It seems to me this assumption is quite puzzling. This faith has no meaning at all if things can be clearly predicted. A faith that stands at the basis of religion cannot be measured with scientific tools that prove its truth, because in that case it is no longer religion, it is science. You need to show a sensible model of intervention and not something absurd.
In my humble opinion the process is built like this. Faith in God comes from the force of the accepted proofs; faith in the Torah comes by virtue of tradition or probability, etc. As part of this faith in the Torah, we also believe in its basic outlook (only in what is written in that Torah), that God supervises and intervenes; of course over the years the concealment has grown greater, and that too is a principle that appears in the Torah. But there is no scientific tool that can establish this for us. Except that you developed an argument that faith/Torah cannot determine facts, and that there is no binding significance to any plane that is not halakhic but rather theological or aggadic. On this position, which erases the authority of some parts of the Torah, it is indeed hard to find support for the question of providence and divine involvement.
B. Another assumption of yours is that there is a contradiction between acting according to nature (medicine or a plane crash) and acting religiously (prayers or belief in divine involvement in physics). This assumption is unclear. After all, the term “intervention” in X itself indicates that there is an X that basically stands and functions on its own, except that here and there there is intervention. That is to say: God created a nature that rolls along by itself and according to its own laws. There is no doubt that a person who comes into the world is supposed to conduct himself according to the rules of nature and also analyze different events according to the laws of nature. But religious faith says that one must also take the laws of intervention into account, and therefore when troubles occur one should examine one’s deeds; likewise one should pray several times a day for intervention or help with livelihood and health and the other needs of man (and forgive me, but a person who feels obligated to halakhic Brisker-Platonic prayer by virtue of grounded authority, yet does so in dry mumbling while Kant books fall out of his tallit bag, is a very strange person in my eyes). This is a basic part of faith.
C. If I understand correctly, you explain the decline in divine intervention by saying that we are progressing. That is, in the 19th century God had to address particular cases of infection and help (or not). But in the 20th century, once penicillin was discovered, the issue of infections became institutionalized within nature and “relieved” God from having to attend to specific cases. That is, the need (illness) passed from God’s domain to nature’s domain. This sounds nice, but also a bit ironic. Every generation has its own problems and troubles, and God is never short of work. That is, science is far from providing solutions to every problem, and there is still a very broad field for turning to God. And indeed, even in this vast area we hardly hear Him, so in terms of our “maturity,” whereby we can manage on our own, we still have a lot of progress to make. I would add one small point: in the view of many of the Rishonim, God’s involvement is the trigger for maintaining the connection between us and God, whether in faith or in prayer, and therefore this involvement cannot be uprooted from the world. But of course these arguments are not relevant from your perspective.
I am not dealing right now with the method of this question (and I have no issue with what you presented), even though that is the new and central part of the current post; my arguments concern the question and answer themselves. I will only note that your argument that despite the principle of the Torah’s eternity there are things that changed, such as the beautiful captive woman and the laws of slaves, is not relevant here. For we certainly accept a change in circumstances (as you explained nicely in your article on enlightened idolatry and on changes in halakha), but as I wrote above, we have no indication that in matters of providence the circumstances here have changed.
In any case I thank you for clarifying the matter.
The section “And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen” explicitly refers to Israel’s entry into the land of Canaan; look in the Bible at the context in which it appears. Before that it speaks about the land’s needing water every year [“not like the land of Egypt, where…”].
In the section Nitzavim there is a promise that if Israel returns in repentance, God will return them to their land. According to the accepted interpretation this promise has still not been fulfilled, since Israel have not repented. And in fact this is the only intervention mentioned in Scripture concerning the period after the exile [besides the promise of “I have not despised them,” etc.].
The Bible itself describes a change in the level of providence after the Flood, to the point of canceling the linkage between the level of human morality and nature’s response, at least on the level of the cycle of days, seasons, climate, and agriculture. As it says: “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake… While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.” (And if I were Greta Thunberg – I would find an ukimta to justify the climate protest. But that is not the topic here.)
In fact the pattern already has its source in the place of Shabbat in the creation story (chapter 1), whose basic meaning is God’s cessation from His labor and the beginning of man’s labor, who was created in His image, “to work it and to guard it” (chapter 2). This is a pattern that keeps becoming realized after the Flood, and later in the division between the seventy nations and the people of Israel.
So this distinction, between close providence and a gradual transfer of responsibility to man, which in fact makes the commandments possible, is internal to Scripture.
In fact, individual providence, as in the section “And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen,” is preserved in principle only on the national level, and only in the people of Israel when they are in their land. Anyone who looks at the context sees that it is rooted in the fact that there is no individual providence over seasonal nature in Egypt, where the Nile will continue to water it naturally, and only the Land of Israel “the Lord your God seeks, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year,” according to the deeds of the people of Israel. (And from here, incidentally, there is a biblical source for Rosh Hashanah as a Day of Judgment (for the people of Israel in their land)).
To be specific, even in Israel, after the sin of the calf, a reduction in the level of providence is recorded. And so throughout the Bible, between the books of the prophets and the later books, where there are no longer (“open”) miracles. And our sages already said: “Where is Esther alluded to in the Torah? As it is said: ‘I will surely hide My face.’” And one could expound that the idea of the lessening of (open) providence found in the Scroll of Esther already has its source in the Torah in the idea of hester panim, the hiding of the face.
Of course in Hazal these things, the lessening of providence, are more explicit. And the cessation of prophecy, one of the foundations of the Torah, is only one of them.
Even regarding rain, do you see a connection between prayers and rain? Meteorological forecasting works pretty well. I do not agree with you regarding the conception that emerges from the Bible as a whole, but that is not the topic here. “The Lord kills and gives life; He brings down to Sheol and raises up”…
Aryeh, that is not essential. I wrote that the change was gradual, and only for the sake of simplicity I described it as a change all at once.
A. An empty slogan with no content. If the Holy One, blessed be He, heals בעקבות prayers, I certainly expect that to be visible. And if not – then this is a theory that cannot be falsified, and I have no trust in it. You have already gotten used to all the stale excuses that hide faith behind an opaque covering and thus protect it. Faith or no faith, those are words. Faith means knowledge. There is no difference between them.
B. I explained briefly why you yourself (that is, any reasonable Jew) do not believe in this. See the examples regarding explanations of events that happen, and that too was of course stated in extreme brevity.
I have already answered this here more than once. This is just conceptual confusion. Divine involvement means that according to nature X should have happened, and because of a divine decision Y happened. The laws of nature are deterministic in the sense that if the current state is given, the next state is fixed uniquely. Therefore any involvement contradicts the laws of nature. There is no involvement within nature. These are mere empty words.
There definitely are indications, for one cannot deny what is plainly evident. The entire scientific picture of the world is one great indication.
I showed this from the section Nitzavim regarding the entry into the land. I think also here on the site. And in Hazal, see also the post here: https://mikyab.net/posts/62397
Hello, honorable Rabbi.
The great difficulty I have with the conclusion here, the rabbi raised and dismissed easily, and I would like to raise it again and show the difficulty of the answer: the rabbi challenged his own view, for we were promised that the Torah would not change. The rabbi’s explanation of the challenge: but the Torah is full of God’s providence in His world, is it not? The rabbi answered: this is no challenge, because many things the Torah spoke about have changed, such as prophecy and several other commandments. I would like to raise the challenge again, but a bit differently: first I would say that when we were promised that this Torah would not change, in my understanding the intention is not to the Torah’s stories and spirit but to the Torah’s commandments, and likewise not that there will be no commandments that we cannot fulfill, as the rabbi noted. Rather, the commandments themselves exist in their essence and they will not change. Now to my challenge: what emerges from the rabbi’s words is that the commandment of prayer does not belong in our times. In itself this is reasonable, as I mentioned, but the problem here is that all the commandments whose suspension we have found for the time being are because of some deficiency in reality, in my opinion – for example, the wayward and rebellious son, whose existence in the world was impossible (according to one view) because of a deficiency in the nature of the world. But here the rabbi is proposing a great novelty, namely: that the Holy One, blessed be He Himself, by His own choice, is the reason for the loss of the possibility of the commandment of prayer, and this is a novelty the like of which we have not found. Likewise, these things join David’s claim about the Holy One’s immorality in this, for He commanded the commandment of prayer and by His own choice now prevents it from him, and without prior notice to boot..
A. Again, I agree with you that from reality we can never learn about God’s involvement. It is not something that can be observed, and if it were observable then we would be dealing with science and not religion, and certainly not faith. Period. This can be based only on a written source in which we believe. I do not see this as a feeble excuse any more than believing that there is a Rosh Hashanah and a Shabbat. It is also important to understand that plainly this is not a binary question – do prayers heal or not. Most prayers are not answered immediately and tangibly and fully, and on this question too countless explanations have been written (not all of them successful, true).
B. I wrote below, in section B (in my second message), why reference to nature does not contradict belief in God. We are not supposed to conduct ourselves here above the way of nature, because the overwhelming majority of things are conducted through nature and that is how we are to conduct ourselves.
Again, here too you are expecting one hundred percent. Absolutely not. The laws of nature are X, and that is how the world runs. Once in a long while there may be a change because of prayer, which is itself vague and impossible to prove. And as stated, we will not be able to prove from an answer to prayer that God is involved, because it is never presented as something proven that cannot be refuted. We believe in it only within the framework of the faith that “Who is like the Lord our God, whenever we call upon Him?”
You are again begging the question. The scientific picture of the world is an indication if you see it as contradicting God’s involvement. Did the scientific picture of the world only “come into being” now, or was it only “discovered” now? And in the time of the Bible and Hazal, if science had existed, would it have discovered different things? According to you, if the laws of nature had been investigated in their time the way they are investigated today, they would have discovered that the law according to which water always drains to the lower place is relevant only on condition that there is no Moses our teacher striking with a staff and crying out to God to split the sea, and then a few hundred years later the researchers would update the law and “discover” that nowadays crying out to God does not work either. Do you believe this?
People noted here, and you did not address it, that if today in the modern age there is intervention, it must be hidden, because in a situation where everything is tested in a lab, if clear intervention is found it would lead to the annulment of free choice.
What makes the Holocaust special in this respect? If it is not okay to let people (or living creatures in general) suffer, is the problem the quantity? For a moral being who can intervene and prevent pain without effort – seemingly a good reason is needed to refrain from doing so, whether it is an injured cat or millions of people being systematically murdered. Even if there is a good reason for non-intervention, that does not make the situation “not morally problematic”; it is problematic, but the alternative is more problematic.
What kind of argument is this about the annulment of free choice?! Did the revelation at Mount Sinai really take away the free choice of those who made the calf?
With God’s help, 5 Tishrei 5779
To Lesha”I – greetings,
The revelation at Mount Sinai created a very powerful effect of internalizing faith. After all, they saw the revelation of the Lord plainly; but afterward the state of concealment returned, in which ostensibly “the world goes on in its usual way.” The concealment intensified greatly on the fortieth day, when they expected Moses to arrive and he delayed coming, and suddenly the people felt abandoned.
Presumably “thinkers” arose among the people who argued: indeed, the Lord performed open miracles in Egypt and at Mount Sinai, but now “we have matured”; the Lord sees that we can “manage on our own” without His constant supervision, and from now on the calf, symbolizing the power of the laws of nature, will lead us.
Against such an “empirical reality,” which argues very logically that once there was providence but today we have been abandoned – indeed it was not easy to stand firm 🙂
With blessings, Hur
I did not see any novelty here that requires a response. I have already addressed all of it. The distinction between outlooks and commandments regarding the Torah’s eternity might perhaps be stated, though by logic there is no reason to distinguish.
I do not see why repeating the same arguments over and over constitutes further engagement. I already answered everything. You are simply conceptually mistaken.
There is nothing to address. Theories can run from here to Petah Tikva. Science works, and we all assume that it works. Hidden interventions are a thesis that cannot be refuted, and no one really behaves that way. Therefore I also do not believe someone who declares that he believes in it.
The Holy One’s disengagement is based on His giving us free choice. The ability to choose also includes the ability to do evil (see Chagigah 5a: “There are those swept away without justice,” and Rashi there). Therefore, as a rule, there is no moral problem at all with this withdrawal. Admittedly, in extreme cases (like the Holocaust, though not necessarily only there) I would expect intervention. But as a matter of fact there was none. So what exactly is the argument about?
No one behaves that way!! That is not true. I know many people who, because of their faith in God, make less effort for their livelihood and are also calmer because they feel that God intervenes in creation, and “whatever the Merciful One does, He does for the good.”
In short, most rational believers do not think that God’s involvement can be proven empirically, which is utterly absurd. (By the way, you yourself brought that there are studies confirming the benefit of prayer, but there are also contrary studies, so even empirical studies would need a consensus of the whole research community, in your view.) They first of all conduct themselves by way of nature, but they also believe in prayer, which they practice several times a day, by virtue of faith in tradition and not by virtue of personal experience.
To sum up, you insist on assuming that: A. if prayers work, this must be subject to scientific observation; B. belief in involvement must be based on personal experience and not on tradition and belief in the truth of the Torah; C. in the time of the Torah, divine involvement was probably scientifically predictable, and therefore today, when scientific prediction does not confirm this, it follows that there is no longer any involvement. This is to be explained by the fact that we matured and the whole business now “runs” fine on its own…
Preposterous assumptions, each one more than the last, and you dismiss the arguments with a wave of the hand by saying you do not see the need to repeat the same assumptions. I think the point of disagreement is clear.
The way God intervenes in nature is through the human being, who thinks about what God desires and acts accordingly.
With God’s help, ערב שבת קודש “for the Lord your God will not fail you nor forsake you,” 5780
To Ramad”a – greetings,
You nicely defined the Lord’s providence in His world as clothed in natural form when you said, “there are all kinds of theories from here to Petah Tikva.” Petah Tikva truly is the best example of people who believed that man makes the effort and the Lord assists him far beyond his own strength and ability.
The founders of Petah Tikva were a few men of faith, who began with great faith in an enterprise that by the laws of nature had no chance. How many suffered from the swamps and malaria, how many suffered from rioters and hostile authorities, how many times they had to leave and returned again and again. And “at the end of the day” – from all the crises and setbacks they emerged strengthened, until today it is a large and flourishing city materially and spiritually.
When you examine each and every stage, there is no open miracle at all, but when you see the process as a whole you understand that without divine help everything would have collapsed at one stage or another, and always at the right moment the “chance” event happened that saved the situation and made it possible to go on and succeed all the more.
Precisely one who believes in God and His hidden providence is the one who sows, the one who enters into a risky investment, out of trust in the Rock of Israel and his Redeemer, that when a person “opens an opening like the eye of a needle,” the Lord assists him in finishing his work, in order to fulfill His promise: “But you, O mountains of Israel, you shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to My people Israel, for they are soon to come.”
With blessings for a peaceful Sabbath and a complete sealing for good, S. Tz. Levinger
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…and the Lord assists him far beyond his strength and his ability.
Hello honorable Rabbi,
1. In your discussion of the difference between an explanation like the ukimta and your explanation (overcomplication), you wrote that you are only required to resolve the difficulty and do not need to address the question of why the Torah did not write this explicitly. You wrote that the reason is that the Torah merely wrote about providence, etc. However, I cannot understand why the above difficulty nevertheless does not exist here – after all, one can challenge and ask why the Torah did not write that providence was destined to withdraw from the world gradually, as you propose?
2. Likewise (though of course this question is closely connected to the previous one), if I may note something in a personal tone: although I accept your words in full as you presented them here, the only point that is still not clear enough to me (and needs careful thought) is your assumption (which you addressed in one sentence) that “it is important to understand that in my view there is no proof from the Torah that this reality will not change, or is not supposed to change, but in the absence of further considerations there is no reason to assume that it will change. This is an additional assumption that there is no reason to add to the game.”
I would be glad if you could expand on why, in your view, it is so obvious that there is no reason to add it to the game? It seems that without this assumption your explanation comes closer to being similar to an ukimta.
Thank you and good night.
1. The question why the Torah did not add information for us is a question, not a difficulty. But the wondering why the Torah writes incorrect information is a difficulty. When the Torah says that the number 2 is even, you cannot challenge it by asking why it does not write that 4 is even too. Because it didn’t want to. In any event, that is a question and not a difficulty. But if it writes that all numbers between 1 and 5 are even, you can certainly challenge that this information is wrong (and therefore resort to an ukimta that it meant only 2 and 4).
2. The explanation is in the previous section.
Hello,
In the article you analyzed the mathematical reasons for preferring a parsimonious interpretation over over-complexity unsupported by the data, and therefore when in your opinion there is external data hinting that a person sleeps only on Shabbat of a non-even year you have no problem accepting the theory as correct. But in the synthetic reality, besides the fact that the explanation is unsupported by the data, there is another reason not to assume this theory, namely that it is implausible that a person would behave in such a bizarre way, and this puzzlement is a reason not to assume that this is how he behaves even if there are some hints that can fit such an assumption [that is, that there is no over-complexity].
Your explanation, forgive me, is very puzzling indeed, as is attested by the large team of attackers [who are not counted only among the conservatives, as is evident between the lines]. It is not logical in terms of the idea underlying it, it does not fit with an important part of the commandments built on a relationship with God [such as prayer, trust in Him, love of Him because “He is your life,” reliance on His promises, etc.], and it goes against the expectation that God would inform us of such a possibility. So even if there is external data that causes the explanation not to suffer from over-complexity, it is still only an analytic-mathematical detached explanation, one that in order to accept it requires ignoring many reasons that oppose it.
In your words here you admit that the thesis of a hidden God cannot be refuted, and because of this you refrain from relying on it, in keeping with the scientific [or “scientistic”] method that what is not measured does not exist. But interestingly, this very thesis is expressed explicitly in the Torah: God explicitly said that in the time of disconnection from His people He would behave toward us in hiddenness until we reach a state where we are astonished and ask, “Is God among us or not?” [and this was said in an age when there was no person who did not believe in a higher power, something that developed mainly in recent centuries, and certainly not in the idolatrous-Eastern world], and no empirical proof for this will be found.
So precisely the one who fully believes in both systems will find it easier to compel the theory of a hidden God, one that cannot be tested statistically, but from time to time does send wonderful stories of answered prayer and deliverance that leave room for someone who wants to say that this is statistically explicable – and he rubs his hands in pleasure: see, I succeeded, just as I said.
Indeed, if the reason driving your words is covert heresy – namely that in the depths of your heart [or your “general outlook,” which is not explicit in religion] you do not believe in the philosophical conclusion you present in your notebooks, and therefore in previous posts you wonder about those who act on the basis of metaphysical assumptions [as though all your own religious actions are not built on such an assumption, great as the difference may be], and therefore you hurry to remove from binding religion everything that contradicts your covert worldview, then actual providence is indeed a slight aid to the matter.
Hello hello, first of all thanks for the article, and to the matter at hand:
A. I agree that there are laws of nature according to which the world runs, etc. etc., and that this is how things work in the majority of cases and with the overwhelming majority of people. B. A person worthy of it receives treatment beyond nature, because he broke his own nature (that is at least how I explain the logic of it), and two groups of people can merit this:
1. The people of Israel, as appears from the verses of the Torah and the Prophets, do receive special treatment. One can argue about why and how, but in practice that is how it seems from the verses. You claim that reality has changed, but it seems to me that this is a puzzling statement given that there is not the slightest hint in the verses to what you are saying (that is not definitive proof, but there is logic in it). The same applies to a righteous individual, who receives treatment beyond nature, as also emerges from the verses of the Torah and the Prophets.
B. The central reason I think things work beyond that, as implied by the plain meaning of the verses (which I agree in the end is often interpreted according to the current worldview), is this:
In the article you claim that today we do not see that things operate in an exceptional way, but it seems to me at least that this is not so. There are thousands of stories (and people I know personally) for whom, thanks to Rabbi Eliyahu for example (his blessings and the like), crazy things happened that are statistically absurd. True, one can always say that it did not happen because of that, and there are blessings that also do not work (no one claims this is hocus-pocus), but exactly as one can explain that the ball did not fly because the foot kicked it, and yet we would not claim that this is a reasonable possibility, and one can explain that actually the whole world we see does not exist and everything is in our mind, and yet we would not think that because it is not a reasonable probability – the same applies here.
You can say it is strange, that it is crazy – maybe, and I agree – but listen, there are thousands of stories, fine; some are exaggerated, some are imprecise, etc., but aaaall of them liars? all frauds? People (with their feet on the ground) whom I know personally told me that crazy things happened, things they themselves doubted would happen – are they all liars? I don’t know, but to me that is puzzling. And even if these things are not absolute, I think they are highly probable in a way that should lead one to change one’s worldview (like the kick of the ball, etc.).
At first I too thought that in some sense God had left the land and nowadays things go on completely disconnected, but when you hear so many stories about special people for whom things really do work differently, that made me change my view (again, only regarding very special people; I agree that regarding the ordinary individual this is not the case).
I remember that in the past you brought the story about the child whose jaundice they removed with pigeons, and you told your parents that even when one sees something strange, that does not mean it is true and rational. But there too one could have said that it was not the pigeon, etc. – and yet the proof is that even you associated it with the pigeons (even if not absolutely, still in a sufficiently plausible way that made you say there was something to it).
Thank you very much
To Ramad”a – greetings,
I wanted to ask the honorable rabbi:
Now that we have arrived at this – that we have matured and no longer need the Lord’s providence – perhaps we should go one step further and say that since we have matured, we again no longer need the 613 commandments that belonged to our “period of childhood.” After all, that is the difference between a child and an adult. A child needs detailed guidance from his educator, whereas an adult determines the norms for himself.
With blessings, Jaazaniah son of Shaphan, one of the founders of the “The Lord has forsaken the land” school (Ezekiel 8:11) 🙂
There is no doubt that additional considerations enter here, and I described only the logical infrastructure of such a discussion. That was my topic.
As for your comment itself, I do not agree. People are conservative and cling to what they are used to, even if when they examine themselves they do not really think that way. This can be shown, and I brought examples of it.
In my opinion nothing in the assumptions of serving God is connected to the prevalent worldview that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved. That is a development of people and not Torah from Sinai, and those were people who assumed a different picture. If you assume mine, you can develop a service of God wholly suited to it.
Of course the scientific picture of the world is also based on what is usually seen, and you can always argue that the scientific generalization that there are laws of nature is an invention of scientists. But we all think this way and accept it. On those assumptions, God is not here. He is not some demon trying to move things and freezing up every time someone looks at Him. That seems ridiculous to me. But each person with his own assumptions.
I am willing to acknowledge any solid fact brought to me (exactly like the case of the jaundice. See also in the fifth notebook my discussion of the “day witness” argument against miracles). But the tall tales that circulate among people (such as the miracles of Rabbi Eliyahu, etc.) are usually not facts but superstitions of people unskilled in thinking. When a solid fact is brought before me, not stories, something that can be checked and tested, I will acknowledge it.
What charitable interpretation or ukimta do you propose for the fact that you skipped the number 2 in the series of primes (and none of the commenters even noticed!)?
For the fact that I did skip it.
My apologies to his honor. We shall correct the definition of the series to the odd primes. 🙂
All right, I do not think there is any fundamental disagreement between us. After all, if for the sake of argument your wife told you this had happened to her, presumably you would believe her. The reason you do not believe is that this is common among people – fair enough. I met reliable people who told me such things, and therefore it sounds sufficiently reasonable to me (I would not expect you to believe it because of what I said).
And of course given the fact that there is no hint in the verses to what you are saying, this adds to my not finding room to think that your argument sounds convincing. And again, thanks for the article; it opens the mind.
What is wrong with the Gemara in Berakhot 20a?
Rav Pappa said to Abaye: What is different about the earlier generations, that a miracle occurred for them, and what is different about us, that a miracle does not occur for us? If you say it is because of their learning – in the years of Rav Yehudah all their learning was in Nezikin, while we learn all six orders. And when Rav Yehudah reached Uktzin, “A woman who pickles a vegetable in a pot,” and some say: “Olives pickled with their leaves are pure,” he would say: I see here the depth of Rav and Shmuel. Yet we learn thirteen academies in Uktzin, while Rav Yehudah, when he removed one shoe, rain would come; and we torment ourselves and cry out and cry out, and no one pays attention! He said to him: The earlier ones would hand over their lives for the sanctification of God’s name; we do not hand over our lives for the sanctification of God’s name. As in the case of Rav Adda bar Ahava, who saw a certain Cuthean woman wearing a crimson garment in the market. He thought she was a Jewish woman, so he arose and tore it from her. It was discovered that she was a Cuthean woman. They assessed against him a penalty of four hundred zuz. He said to her: What is your name? She said to him: Matun. He said to her: Matun, Matun, is worth four hundred zuz.
In the case of derash and peshat, I think even more extremely than the Vilna Gaon. I think that derash is indeed parallel to peshat and not the depth of peshat (whose depth I call “the secret within peshat”), and that it indeed hangs on some verbal difficulty that exists in peshat (referring to the heart in the feminine and a left-sided shin), but in my opinion the difficulty in simple peshat ought also to be solved within the framework of simple peshat. That is, in my opinion there is some linguistic phenomenon that existed in biblical Hebrew that caused the change of gender and the expression of the shin. Or alternatively, the reference is not to the heart but to worry or to some other feminine entity in the background, and a person in biblical times who knew Scripture well understood what and who it was. In my opinion, in biblical times anyone literate in Scripture understood the verse with no difficulty at all. I call my approach “the autonomy of each interpretive layer,” or “the axiomatic approach to studying the Bible.” My assumption is that all the problems in the Bible ought to be solved entirely from within the Bible itself, given the proper tools. The Bible ought to be explained from the Bible. Quite similarly to the axiomatization of halakha (the halakha created by R. Chaim of Brisk, whose method is described as such in Kol Dodi Dofek by Rabbi Soloveitchik: halakha ought to be explained only from and by halakha, quite similarly to the axiomatic approach in mathematics). The approach of those who claim that midrash is the depth of peshat, and also the approach of the Vilna Gaon, both suffer in my opinion from the same mistake as the approach to problems in science called “God of the gaps.” That is, to solve problems in peshat by means of midrash is like explaining scientific problems by means of God (“and here the miracle occurs”). I think that the rabbi, by the way, suffers from this with respect to his proofs for creation of the world from the Big Bang theory, which says nothing about creation but only about a singularity of Einstein’s equations in spacetime that existed 14 billion years ago.
I claim that the verbal difficulty in the verse arose only because of the development of the Hebrew language over the generations (from biblical times to the period of Hazal), and upon that the midrash was built. That is, the midrash (the true one!) is a kind of genuine actualization of what is written in the Bible. Every time the language changes we discover another layer of depth in the Bible that was latent in it until the development of the new language. But this depth is completely objective, and one can argue about what the correct midrash of the verse is, and there is a decision in that argument.
Incidentally, as a continuation of my words, I call the approach of solving problems in peshat באמצעות midrash (midrash as the depth of peshat, or the approach of the Vilna Gaon) “midrash of the gaps” (by analogy to “God of the gaps”).
Hello Rabbi,
I heard a lesson of yours given at Yeshivat Yeruham in which you spoke about repentance. The conclusion in the lesson was that to reach repentance on the level of “the Lord, the Lord,” one must have God’s help, and that this is essentially the kindness that God did with us in repentance – that He helps us… How does this fit with the conception of disengagement you presented in the article?
The Vilna Gaon does not solve problems in peshat by means of midrash. He argues that there is a distortion in the wording of peshat in order to hint that the verse has both derash and peshat. That is exactly the difference between him and those who hold that derash is the depth of peshat.
That is part of nature. Our ability to choose freely stems from there being within us something of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is not His involvement at this moment.
But that is exactly what I am claiming. There is no distortion at all. We simply do not understand the semantics and syntax of the Hebrew of the Bible. The distortion was not created intentionally, nothing of the sort. It was created because of changes in our language. The only thing that makes the midrash true is my claim that the development of language over the generations is also under God’s providence (like evolutionary development: the developed creature was latent in the earlier, more primitive creature), and therefore the verse acquired another, deeper meaning parallel to the simple one, which had been hidden in it since it was created. And it was revealed only now. It seems that the rabbi did not read my words seriously.
Good week
Unfortunately I do not have the ability to expand now (especially after a long response was accidentally not sent), so I will only briefly say that in my opinion your interlocutor has an advantage over you because you change the system from what it was in biblical times from one end to the other, whereas he, like you, does not believe in open intervention but at least presents a more coherent conception of reality and history. It may well be that this indeed has logical weight that deserves reconsideration. What do I mean? In his view the normative miracles in biblical days were not public and nature-shattering – at least not from the days of the Judges onward (the era of salvation of the Exodus from Egypt and the wilderness is the exception, and that needs explanation. There were Rishonim who found natural explanations (supervised by God) even for phenomena like the splitting of the sea / the plagues of Egypt / the manna in the wilderness and the giving of the Torah at Sinai, so that reality would be coherent for their own times of interpretation – uniformity, again the same argument as your interlocutor’s). The miracles in the days of the monarchy occurred around a great prophet like Elisha and the like. And if so, it is quite possible that even in our times miracles occur among kabbalists like the Baba Sali and greats like Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky. That is, this is a common claim among believers that there are miracles and wonders among certain righteous people. Moreover, even among ordinary people there are many testimonies about “individual providence” that was realized in their lives following a change of action/prayer. What does all this mean? It means that although there has been hester panim in the reality of our lives since the destruction of the Temple, God still dwells with His people and supervises and reveals Himself to whoever strives toward Him: “Happy is the man who does not forget You, and the son of man who strengthens himself in You, for those who seek You shall never stumble, nor shall all who take refuge in You ever be put to shame,” etc. This conception is more coherent and smoother than yours. With a bit of interpretive-conscious “squeezing,” it can explain that even in our times there are miracles (which, because of their rarity, are hard to observe in a laboratory), and that also in biblical times the miracles were more “rational” than the plain sense suggests. Human consciousness changed beyond recognition, and exceptional events were then perceived as open miracles, and natural causes were not taken into account. But even natural events – even the splitting of the sea due to a strong wind all night – were perceived as God’s providence through the natural world, and so one should see His much more hidden providence today as well (because of: A. His hiding His face; B. the change in modern consciousness and the lack of openness to “seeing miracles,” as written in the book White Man, Black Gods (have you already read it?); and C. perhaps also because we matured a bit, and have not yet reached our second childhood (speedily in our days!))
In short: it is preferable to explain historical reality as fairly uniform, without too many jumps and drastic changes – by being open to miracles in the present and flexible in interpretation of past miracles – rather than assume a world that for 15 billion years proceeds in the creeping naturalness of cruel evolution, and then suddenly a revelation of mythological miracles and a childish, irritable god who bursts into the arena he created for a thousand years of juggling tricks, and finally returns to his hiding place and keeps silent for thousands of years in a sort of autistic meditation that only the devil knows how one can emerge from without His intervention into a more optimistic reality than the age of machines and cloning and selfie-children that Yuval Noah Harari presents in his mountains of musings.
“Truly You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (Isaiah 45:15)
First, this is not a drastic change but a completely gradual one that fits the data quite well. Just as prophecy ceased and open miracles ceased, so too the hidden ones.
As for the question whether there are hidden miracles or not, of course one can always claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, is playing hide-and-seek with us, but here one is already entering into interpretive squeezes greater than mine. This is a theory that cannot be falsified and there is no reason to adopt it. Especially since nobody acts in accordance with it either (as in the examples I brought).
The question of the existence of sporadic miracles is a different question. And I have already written here too that regarding this I have no way to say one way or the other.
Good week.
I know no one dared ask, and I know why too… but all the same I will try my luck: I know the rabbi holds that no essential intellectual authority should be attributed to the Rishonim, but still the rabbi agrees that among them were very intellectual and profound people. Why, in their generation, did no one explain things the way the rabbi does? After all, this answer resolves a great many difficulties and it is fairly simple..?
Such fear reigns here on the site, and I did not know? Good thing there is one brave man in Sodom.
Even today there are many intellectual and profound people, and I have not heard anyone explain it this way. By that argument you could reject any new explanation. Maimonides’ method in the second root regarding the status of derashot – why did no one explain it that way before him? And so too many other cases. There is a certain conservatism in people, and they are afraid to depart from what appears to them to be principles of faith.
Beyond that, people were not aware that the laws of nature do not allow divine involvement within them. Today this is clear to us because of scientific knowledge.
But your question has no basis to begin with. There definitely were those who thought this in various shades. Maimonides wrote that there is no divine involvement and took this from midrashim of Hazal, who also wrote this. Even the open miracles, according to that view, are embedded in creation. There is an article by Rabbi Shmuel Ariel collecting sources in Hazal about “the world follows its usual course” (and minimal divine involvement).
I hope the daring paid off…
Where does Maimonides speak about lack of involvement? Does this not contradict Maimonides, who writes that when there is trouble one must cry out to God and repent, and if one does not do so, this is the way of cruelty?
For example, in the eighth chapter of the Eight Chapters (see also the Maharal’s introduction to Gevurot Hashem):
As for the famous saying among people, and one may find similar expressions in the words of the sages and in the language of Scripture, namely that a person’s standing, sitting, and all his movements are by the will of God, may He be exalted, and His desire – this is a true saying, but in a certain sense. This is like one who throws a stone into the air and it falls downward, and we say of it that by the will of God it fell downward – a true saying, because God willed that the whole earth should be at the center, and therefore whenever a part of it is thrown upward, it will move toward the center. Likewise every part of fire moves upward, by the will that fire should move upward. Not that God now willed, at the time of the movement of this part of the earth, that it should move downward.
And on this the Kalam theologians disagree, for I heard them say that the will in every thing is always at each moment anew. But we do not believe this. Rather, the will was in the six days of creation, and all things continue according to their natures always, as it says: “What has been is what will be” (Ecclesiastes 1:9), “And that which is to be, already has been” (Ecclesiastes 3:15), “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Because of this, the sages had to say that all the miracles departing from the custom of the world, which were and which were destined to be, all had their will pre-established in the six days of creation, and it was placed in the nature of those things then that what occurred would occur in them. And when it occurred at the proper time, people thought it was something that happened now, but it is not so. They greatly expanded on this matter in Midrash Kohelet and elsewhere. And their statement in this matter is: “The world proceeds according to its custom.” And you will always find in all their words, peace be upon them, that they flee from attributing will to one thing after another and at one moment after another.
Regarding the relation of this to his words in the laws of fasts, that requires discussion. Perhaps prayer brings about the results in a “natural” way (in the sense here). Or perhaps this is only a way of speaking to the worshippers, but not that there will really be an answer and so on. The matter depends on how one relates to contradictions between the Mishneh Torah and the Guide for the Perplexed. Some have attributed them to concealment of problematic theological principles, revealed only in the Guide to the perplexed, and which he did not want to present to the general public in the Mishneh Torah (esoteric writing).
Regarding what you responded above, that there is no immorality in God’s leaving the world, I do not understand the claim: A) the world is based on existential cruelty; the natural world cannot exist without the strong preying on the weak, and the fact that among them there is one species that “can choose” to live ideal and just lives does not solve the question. B) even regarding man, God is the One who created these machines, and knows that “the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth,” and the suffering people inflict on one another throughout all the years of the world is quite expected and known in advance. So what justification is there for creating creatures when it is known that they will hurt one another [and greatly], and often this is not within their choice at all but they were born into such a system [“below the point of choice”], such as life in the cruel era of old when they would cut off arms and legs without batting an eyelid, as one sees constantly in the animal world around them and from which they emerged? What can man do but choose to follow his ingrained inclination? That is not called righteous but sanctimonious.
In short, it is not clear at all what the justification is for creating a world with so much unjustified pain [if there is no providence, and there isn’t – at least not for animals / gentiles / ordinary people], and without intervening to save the oppressed [contrary to what He commanded us in His Torah], especially when He gave the purpose of all this only to a very small handful of people, and even they do not fulfill their purpose with all that much success.
And as to the article itself: even if we accept that we see no intervention in the laws of nature and the expected statistics [which in my humble opinion is not true – for one familiar with the stories of people marrying off children in the Haredi public (which I know), at least, I think a study that checked this would lose its mind at how it happens. For example my father, who is poor and needy, married off close to ten children with almost no debt. And while one cannot prove from individual cases, relative to the huge explosion that was supposed to happen among all those marrying off children, we hear far fewer echoes of that, which says something. And likewise stories on similar planes, where statistics predict crisis and reality proves otherwise], the explanation that says this comes from something positive like the world’s maturity and the like fits only if we say that there will not in the future be a coming of the Messiah and life together with God and the Temple etc. According to that, the first period in which we lived close to God was a period of learning and habituation so that we could go out into life and know how to swim on our own, and as the years go by God disconnects from the world and lets us conduct ourselves alone like adults [in what content? what did we learn in that period that is still relevant to our times? what was then that we do not need today? in what sense did we mature, as distinct from the gentiles who did not have this guidance? moral progress is related to human development and awakening, not to Jews specifically. Likewise, the message of religion was not a moral anchor (in this it was close to the spirit of the time, apparently in the Bible, and even the Torah’s commands are built out of this primitive morality) but religious guidance, and there is no reason we should need it less today than then, if anything the opposite]. But the outline described in the Torah and the Prophets says the opposite: that we are His treasured people and close to Him forever, and that if we sin there will be a period of distancing and hiding of face from Him [which, for all I care, may also include a complete lack of providence, but as concealment and not as an ideal and “progress”], but there will always be an expectation of returning to Him, and the moment this happens He will return to us and circumcise the foreskin of our heart; and the prophets went on to describe the days of the Messiah [hinted at in the Torah’s “end of days”], etc. According to this, even if we agree that hiding of face includes also a complete lack of intervention in whatever happens to the Jewish people, individually and collectively, in the present and in all of history, still this is only a result of disconnection and distance, not of ideal maturity.
And although if this hiding is not complete [as you understand it], changing the wording and the explanation leaves the categories fitting the past and the future and their true meaning.
I hope you understand the arguments you wrote, because I do not. The world is not based on cruelty. That is a choice made by the people in it, a small portion of whom choose cruelty, and our role is to deal with them.
Beyond that, your challenge is really strange. You claim that there is involvement by the Holy One, blessed be He. So now there is no cruelty in the world? Why does He not prevent it? Either way, your challenge has no force.
I did not understand the second question at all (the matter of Haredi weddings).
You wrote that we have not seen that prayers for Torah scholars work for their healing, etc. As an outside observer, I דווקא do see a clear advantage for the greats of the generation in terms of longevity, and more than once they were saved from medical complications around age 100. Of course one can always attribute this to the fact that they are people with activity and influence and that is what keeps them alive – in the end there is a natural explanation for everything – nevertheless one could just as easily argue that those great figures, who not infrequently conduct themselves with an unhealthy lifestyle in terms of diet, exercise, and hours of sleep, live long because of their greatness in Torah and devotion to commandments and because of the prayers of the public. Likewise, a clear connection has been found between happy people and their health and ability to recover from illness. Therefore, even if and when scientifically religious people are found to be healthier, the researchers will argue (perhaps rightly) that this is because they have more meaning and therefore more satisfaction and happiness, and therefore greater resilience and ability to recover from illness, etc. That is to say, there may indeed be a connection between people who pray and believe in the Creator and their health, except that there will be a natural explanation for how to interpret it. Which again brings us back to the definition of a “miracle by way of nature,” despite the definitional problem in the matter (a miracle is a deviation from nature). This again brings us back to an explanation that is more satisfying here for most of the commenters.
P.S. What does the rabbi have in mind when he prays “Heal us,” and does he at all?…
First, even the facts are not clear. This is your ungrounded impression. And you were right that even if they are true, they have simple natural explanations. By the way, in a controlled study one could test this, for example against the life expectancy of people whom the public needs who are not righteous Jewish figures.
But the question of a miracle within nature is not relevant to the matter. Here it is simply an oxymoron that does not depend on any facts of the type you described. If there is a difference, then it is miracle and not nature; and if there is no difference, then it is nature without miracle.
When I say “Heal us,” I mean to ask that there be intervention in favor of whoever needs it and has no natural way out. In the hope that perhaps it may help someone, though it is a very faint hope. As I said, sporadic involvement I cannot rule out.
If we are already talking about Maimonides, then in fact Maimonides writes that there is providence over the righteous. For example, this is how he explains the saying in the Gemara that “so-and-so is destined for so-and-so,” etc., in Responsa of Maimonides no. 436:
A question about “Everything is in the hands of Heaven except fear of Heaven”… In the end every single thing in human acts comes to involve a commandment or a transgression. And what our sages said, “Everything is in the hands of Heaven,” refers to the way of the world, its processes and its nature, such as species of trees and animals and souls and dispositions and spheres and angels – all is in the hands of Heaven, and we have already elaborated in the commentary to Avot on this matter and brought proofs…
And what your teacher said to you, “The daughter of so-and-so for so-and-so, and the money of so-and-so for so-and-so” – if this were a universal decree and the words were to be taken literally, why does the Torah say: “Lest he die in battle and another man take her,” and “another man shall profane it”? Is there any sensible person in the world who would doubt this matter after what is written in the Torah? Rather, it is fitting for one who understands and whose heart is rightly directed to take this matter explicit in the Torah as principle and foundation, and not demolish a building and a fixed peg that cannot be moved. And when he finds a verse from the prophets or a statement of our sages that conflicts with this principle and contradicts this matter, he should interpret and seek with the eye of his heart until he understands the words of the prophet or sage. If their words can be understood in line with what is explicit in the Torah, all the better; and if not, he should say: I do not understand the words of this prophet or sage. Their words are obscure and not according to their plain sense. And when the sage said, “The daughter of so-and-so for so-and-so,” this is by way of reward or by way of punishment. If this man or this woman did a commandment for which it is fitting to reward them with a fine and praiseworthy match, the Holy One, blessed be He, matches them with one another. Likewise, if it is fitting to punish them with a match in which there will be constant strife and war, He matches them. And this is like what they said, “Even one mamzer at one end of the world and one mamzeret at the other end of the world, the Holy One, blessed be He, brings them together and matches them.” And this matter is not equal for all, but only for those who incurred obligation or merited, as seems right in the eyes of God, may He be exalted. And all these things are built upon what we explained in the commentary to Avot, as you understood. And you are a great sage and have an understanding heart, for you understood the matter and knew the straight path. Written by Moses son of Rabbi Maimon, of blessed memory.
So too this emerges from the end of his words in the Guide of the Perplexed…
The responsum is in no. 436.
I already mentioned here that there are apparent contradictions in Maimonides’ words between different writings, and there are various ways to deal with them. But I do not see much value in this, because I do not regard his doctrine as something authoritative that binds me. What he did not think will not prevent me from thinking otherwise.
True, it is possible that there are righteous people who have special providence over them. I cannot deny that possibility, nor can I affirm it. Exceptions can always exist, and nature has nothing to say about them.
That is exactly where I would like clarification. Even in the past, when supposedly people prayed for rain and it immediately appeared, there were natural explanations for that too – clouds formed by silver iodide and who knows what… In what exactly has this changed today? Today too the situation is that you can attribute life expectancy and recovery from illness to natural things, and you can also argue in return that God created nature in such a way that if people pray and study and keep the commandments, and thereby feel meaning in their lives, nature will heal them because of that. All this assuming you do agree with me about the facts, because your claim is that even if they are true there is a problem with the very claim, and I want to understand what it is. What am I missing here? And by the way, the impression is actually fairly well based on a simple brief glance at the leading Torah sages and their unusual life expectancy over the past several decades.
With God’s help, 8 Tishrei 5779
Maimonides counts providence and reward as one of the principles of religion in his introduction to the chapter Chelek.
In chapter 9 of the Laws of Repentance, Maimonides explains that the main reward is the correction and purification of the soul for the life of the World to Come. The reward promised by the Torah in this world is not the reward for the good deed itself but an incentive, better “terms of service” for the doer of good that make it easier for him to merit the purification of his soul for the World to Come (and God forbid the opposite for the sinner, harsher “terms of service” that make it harder for him to attain spiritual perfection).
An additional reason for benefit in this world beyond the spiritual reward reserved for the World to Come, Maimonides mentions in his commentary to the Mishnah at the beginning of Peah on “things whose fruits a person eats in this world while the principal remains for the World to Come”: these are things that benefit other people, and therefore a person merits the “fruits” of his acts beneficial to society in this world besides the “principal,” namely the purification of his soul for the life of the World to Come.
An additional reason for divine intervention in this world is mentioned in chapter 9 of the Laws of Fasts (as Nachum mentioned): it is a warning signal to a person that he must improve his ways, as our sages said that if sufferings come upon a person, he should examine his deeds.
Maimonides bases the principle of providence in the Guide of the Perplexed, part III, chapter 17. Against Aristotle’s opinion that providence applies only to species and not to individuals, and Epicurus’s opinion that there is no providence at all, and on the other hand the opinion of those who hold that even animals have individual providence – Maimonides holds that providence applies only to the human species, since man has intellect and choice, and therefore justice requires that he bear responsibility and that his choices be overseen.
Maimonides there also bases the existence of individual providence on the words of the Torah, which is full of statements about individual providence, reward of good for the doer of good and punishment for the sinner, and likewise on the words of the prophets and the writings, such as David’s words: “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see? He that chastises nations, shall He not rebuke? He that teaches man knowledge?” (Psalms 94), and Jeremiah 32: “Whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men, to give every one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds.”
Since in Maimonides’ view providence depends on intellect, it would seem that in our days, when intellect has greatly increased and people have enormous capacities to do good or evil, providence ought to be intensified so that not every madman equipped with weapons of mass destruction can destroy the world in the blink of an eye..
And as Maimonides explained in the Guide, chapter 17, there are modes of providence also within nature. For example, he illustrates there that a ship’s sinking in a storm is natural, but a person’s being on that ship is not necessary. It is therefore enough to delay a person slightly so that he misses the ship, thereby saving him from drowning. Many examples can be brought for this principle. But that is not the topic here.
What Maimonides is grappling with in chapter 8 of the Eight Chapters (and likewise in his commentary to Avot, chapter 5, the mishnah “Ten things were created at twilight”) is the question of “change of will” involved in a miracle that alters the laws of nature, and he explains this by saying that the possibility of deviating from those laws at the needed time was embedded in nature מראש, just as there are laws of nature, so too there are laws of reward, and when there is a contradiction between them that cannot be bypassed, it is proper that the laws of reward should be able to override the laws of nature, for “Were it not for My covenant day and night, I would not have appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth.”
Clearly God will not break the laws of nature without need. He will not grow breasts for a man to nurse with when one can give the mother health so her milk not dry up, or provide the father with income so he can hire a wet nurse; only in special situations is a miracle needed.
The principle of “stability of the divine will” established by Maimonides also prevents the possibility of a “policy change” and adoption of a “disengagement plan from the world,” as Ramad”a proposes.
With blessings, S.Tz.
It would be worthwhile to study the subject in the book of R. Chaim Weisman, Clarifications of Beliefs in Maimonides – Creation, Prophecy, and Providence in the Guide of the Perplexed, published by Machon Har Bracha, which unfortunately I still have not purchased, and presumably it would add to what I have gleaned.
I have already explained the matter several times on the site. People always knew there were laws of nature, but they thought God could intervene within the laws, that is, that there is freedom allowing His intervention. Therefore they thought a natural explanation did not contradict divine involvement. Today it is known that this is not so.
Your impression itself is a wonderful demonstration of what I keep saying here, how people who are unskilled fall into statistical traps. You hear about a few elderly rabbis who become leading public figures (which happens at a very advanced age, so obviously they will be very old. Those who did not reach that age did not become leaders of the public). I assume you do not know the average age of Torah scholars in general, and particularly in comparison to other populations (ordinary Jews, and other people, gentiles or secularists, whom the public needs). You cannot possibly have any information about this if you have not done or read the findings of a grounded, systematic study.
With God’s help, 8 Tishrei 5780
At any rate, if we assume that modern man is more mature – mature thinking is characterized by the ability to grasp complexity. It is not “either black or white,” either the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes with open miracles at every step, or the Holy One, blessed be He, “has completely disengaged from reality.”
It seems rather that our predecessors held a complex view, according to which the Holy One, blessed be He, does not go “head to head” against the “orders of creation” that He Himself established, and on the other hand “His eyes are open upon all the deeds of man” (Jeremiah 32), and He finds the right balance between preserving the laws of nature and the laws of reward.
This complexity was beautifully explained in Ramchal’s book Derekh Hashem, part II, chapter 3, “On individual providence,” and “give to the wise and he will become wiser still.” In my response below I brought “Sources for Maimonides’ approach,” where he too explained the complexity of the subject.
With blessings of strength and good writing and sealing, S.Tz.
In paragraph 4, line 2
…it is a warning signal to a person…
In paragraph 5, line 5
…and there should be divine oversight over his choices.
Regarding God’s distancing Himself, you adopt a view similar to that of David Weiss Halivni in his book Breaking the Tablets, where he also addresses the place of the Oral Torah in relation to the Written Torah. https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%93%D7%95%D7%93_%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%91%D7%A0%D7%99#%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%97%D7%95%D7%AA_%E2%80%93_%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%98%D7%AA%D7%95_%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%90%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%AA_%D7%A2%D7%9C_%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%90%D7%94
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%93%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%A1_%D7%91%D7%A0%D7%99_%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%A7
Below is a study dealing more or less with this point.
One could easily argue that faith and observance of the commandments is what lengthens life, and not necessarily the researchers’ interpretation. I have no idea whether that is so, but it does undermine the very clear assertion that there are no differences between a population that prays and keeps commandments and one that does not.
These things are well known and have been discussed here more than once. There are parallel studies in other places in the world, not necessarily on Jews, and there are many different explanations for this. Some of them, by the way, are technical (Haredim do fewer dangerous things, including army service, trips, extreme leisure activities, and the like).
With God’s help, 8 Tishrei 5780
Do we need studies to prove the life-giving power of faith and prayer? Surely this follows both from Scripture and from plain reason.
If from Scripture – Moses our teacher says in his Torah: “And what great nation is there that has gods so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call upon Him?” Would the Lord deny His promise in His Torah and God forbid “break contact”?
And if from reason – when a person turns to his God in prayer and in words of appeasement and supplication, the human heart is stirred to improve its deeds and rise higher so as to be worthy of God’s kindness; and how much closeness of heart is thereby created between man and his Creator? Especially when a person prays not only for his personal needs but for the honor of Heaven.
Whether the Holy One, blessed be He, will grant a specific request or not depends on complex questions. Is the person worthy of the fulfillment of his request? Or perhaps what a person imagines would be good for him – his Creator knows is not suited to him, and “sometimes a father says: no.”
But the very existence of an “I-Thou” dialogue between man and his God, a discourse in which the Lord listens attentively to the thoughts of His creature, the very feeling that “there is someone to talk to” – gives life to a person and breathes a new spirit into him.
Prayer is related to the sense of “hope,” and one who prays is “filled with hope,” charged with hope, and by this he emerges from being stuck and from despair, and finds within himself new strengths and new ideas for good action. So even before the Lord grants the request – the very turning to the Lord adds renewed vitality to a person.
And when through his prayer a person is moved to elevate his will and renew his ways of life – the likelihood increases that “as in water face answers to face,” so too the Lord will bestow upon him and add help and blessing.
With blessings, S.Tz.
Paragraph 7, line 1
…And when through his prayer a person is moved to elevate his will…
With God’s help, ערב Yom Kippur 5780
To David – greetings,
The words of the Gemara are well known, that the Men of the Great Assembly answered the question “Where are His mighty acts? Where are His awesome deeds?” by saying that God’s might is shown in His restraint toward His enemies; and on the other hand, His “awesome deeds” are expressed in that He sustains the sheep among seventy wolves.
In the state of exile it seemed that the Holy One, blessed be He, had removed His providence from His people and allowed their enemies to raise their heads. Yet precisely in this state His hidden governance stands out, instilling fear into the hearts of the rulers filled with hatred, some kind of psychological brakes preventing the powerful “wolves” from realizing the full extent of their hatred and swallowing the “sheep.”
In the Holocaust we saw what the “wolves” are capable of when for a short time even the basic moral restraint was removed from them. And from what those “wolves” did after two hundred years of “enlightenment,” we learn retroactively that the continued existence of the people of Israel during the 1,800 years before that, when the “wolves” were more savage, stemmed from God’s “awesome deeds,” from the wondrous restraint He put into their hearts.
Even in the Holocaust the Holy One’s hidden governance found expression, both in the wondrous rescue stories experienced by each of the survivors and in the fact that in the end the “wolves” did not succeed in fully carrying out their scheme. Indeed, their tireless appetite itself brought about their downfall. That appetite led the Germans to open a second front against their Russian allies, and the Japanese to attack neutral America. So from the intensification of wickedness came its downfall.
With blessings for a complete sealing for good, for a good and blessed year, S.Tz.
Regarding the studies:
The fact that you have natural explanations for the matter does not cancel the other possibility, namely that there is a non-natural explanation here, and again you no longer have the question that providence is not seen [there is no proof, but it can no longer be ruled out, and from now on there is no reason not to believe the Bible and tradition], and it seems to me that one who lives within the believing public gets the impression that there really is something in its conduct beyond those explanations [and again, even if not, it still can no longer be ruled out].
It can certainly be ruled out, because whoever comes to extract from the view of science and common sense bears the burden of proof. No one has a proof even for the law of gravity. The same level of evidence we have in favor of the law of gravity and the laws of physics is what supports my view.
Simply ridiculous. You are coming out against the view expressed in the Bible, and this is all you have in your hand?? You have an a priori assumption that there is no providence, and that’s it, with no connection or evidence from reality.
By chance I ran into this: https://youtu.be/YV29dSZ8hsM
Eliezer, if you just want to be stubborn – health to you. I explained my words well (also in the parallel threads taking place here). I explained that the claim that there is no providence is based exactly like the claim that there is a law of gravity. You can of course argue that there is no proof that there is a law of gravity (and you are right: there are no proofs for laws of nature). But this follows from that. I also explained why I am not arguing against the Bible. But I see no point in speaking to a wall.
The laws of nature operated once as they do today [only people did not know that], and just as we assume gravity has not changed, so too we should not assume causality has changed. And if we accept the testimony of the Bible that in the past there was providence, and we have no *evidence* proving a change of policy [which, as stated above, there is not], one cannot prove by force of a law of nature that something changed. That is all.
If I were in your place I would deny the whole Bible because of this difficulty, but to prove a change of policy by means of a law of nature that always existed is ridiculous.
So it is a good thing you are not in my place.
Do open miracles (like the Red Sea) accord with the law of gravity? And what about the testimony of prophets, which does not exist today?
Happy New Year
With God’s help, ערב Yom Kippur 5780
To Ramad”a – greetings,
And what of the Torah’s testimony that there is reward and punishment? And what of Moses our teacher’s testimony: “For what great nation is there that has gods so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call upon Him”? And what of David’s testimony: “He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” and “The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth”? And what of Jeremiah’s testimony: “Whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men, to give every man according to his ways” (32)?
And if you would say that the Holy One changed His policy – the prophet testifies: “I am the Lord, I have not changed; and you sons of Jacob are not consumed.” And if you believe that a human being by his choice can cause the brain to send different signals to the nervous system – should it be beyond the Lord to do so? Did not Maimonides teach us in Guide III:17 that justice requires that a being with free choice be subject to oversight and reward?
With blessings of strength and good writing and sealing, S.Tz.
I finally understood you.
You claim that since in the past there were deviations from the regularity of nature, it is not hard to accept that there were also more frequent hidden interventions. But in our time, when we see that all the phenomena investigated are governed by fixed and clear laws that never change, there is reason to assume that the whole approach has changed completely [because of “maturity” / “concealment”], and now everything is according to the laws. Thank you.
S.Tz.L., you yourself answered it (a change of policy). “I the Lord have not changed” – is that also said about prophecy and open miracles? And about slavery and the other halakhic examples I brought? (That is already head-on against the eternity of the Torah, in the simplistic interpretation you propose.)
Nothing is beyond the Lord. Certainly if He created the world He can change it. But my claim is that in practice He does not do so. That is His decision and not a lack of ability.
Exactly right. Not only is there good reason to assume this, but we all in fact do assume it (even those who deny it). I brought several examples of this.
I really do not consider myself a “skilled thinker” (not sarcastic), so perhaps you can help me, because in the personal case that happened to me and my wife I have no explanation based on laws of nature.
When my wife was pregnant with my firstborn son, friends pushed us to go for a blessing to Rabbi Moshe Ben-Tov of blessed memory. At first I did not want to go and avoided it. Though I do believe in the power of people considered great righteous individuals, provided they are Torah scholars and known for their humanity, for example the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The main reason for my opposition was the assumption (which I still believe) that 99 percent of the babas of all sorts are liars or delusional, so why should I trouble myself.
The guys around me (I was then studying in a Komarno Hasidic kollel) pushed a bit more and made an appointment. I said, fine, what is there to lose, especially since I had some prior acquaintance with the rabbi from a few times I had prayed in his synagogue, and he had impressed me.
We entered, the rabbi opened the mezuzot we had brought with us, looked at them, and said they were kosher. He “rapped me on the head” about making no interruption. I didn’t understand why, and it also didn’t feel pleasant. Then he added: you have two places in the house where there had been a mezuzah and they were removed. He asked: do you know where? I tried to remember and answered: yes, in the living room. I remembered that there was a marking there for a mezuzah that had been uprooted. The rabbi said: do you remember the second place? The house we were living in had many doorways and I had no idea what he was talking about. He smiled at me and said: there is a place with an opening roof; there had been a mezuzah there – put both of them back up, without a blessing.
Indeed, there were two places in the house where there was a marking for a removed mezuzah. The surprising one was the second place, which I did not remember at all: a porch where the previous landlord had cut away part of the ceiling and made it into an opening roof so that he could put sukkah covering on it.
The only two places where there was a marking for a removed mezuzah were those spaces. How did he know about the porch? Suppose there are many such porches – does everyone remove mezuzot? That does not seem likely.
That is indeed impressive. If it is true, then it seems to me that he has some sort of abilities.
However, in order to determine the existence of such abilities one would need to conduct a more systematic test (test him on a sample group and a control group, and against guesses by other people).
Incidentally, telekinetic and other abilities are documented in several contexts and experiments (though there are disputes about most of them), even apart from rabbis and various kabbalists. I really do not rule out the possibility that they exist. A similar story about the future could have been stronger (because here the information already exists, and so telekinetic communication is less implausible in such a context).
I am far from being a rationalist who denies the existence of things science has not yet explained (and perhaps will not explain either). My claims here are different. Regarding such phenomena I am suspicious-skeptical, but I do not dismiss them out of hand.
With God’s help, ערב Yom Kippur 5780
To Eliezer – greetings,
After all, Ramad”a himself believes that every human being with free choice affects a change in nature by his will, causing the brain to send different electrical signals to the nervous system, signals that were not sent before his decision. In other words: every being with free choice performs the miracle of changing nature.
Since the Lord made clear in His Torah and through His prophets the principle of reward and the principle of the eternity of the Torah – it is therefore clear that these laws are valid today as well, and indeed all the laws of nature depend on the laws of the Torah, as it is written: “Were it not for My covenant day and night, I would not have appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth.” Thus the laws of reward are eternal.
What is complex, as explained in Scripture, in the words of Hazal and of our earlier and later sages, is the question of timing and revelation. There are open miracles and hidden governance, there are things whose fruits a person eats in this world and things whose reward is kept for the World to Come, there are situations in which the attribute of justice is activated and situations of “slowness to anger.”
In our generation we have merited a somewhat less hidden governance than in previous generations, in which it seemed that the seventy wolves ruled the roost and in another moment would devour the “sheep.” In our generation the wolfishness of the “wolves” reached its peak in the terrible Holocaust, in which the Jewish people learned that it is impossible to assimilate among the nations.
And in wondrous fashion, after the Holocaust the process of the sheep’s return to its land and to upright national life increased, with material growth and afterward spiritual ascent as well. In wondrous fashion, the longtime friend of Israel, British Foreign Secretary Bevin, became an adversary, and the notorious hater of Israel, Stalin, for a moment became an “enthusiastic Zionist,” who supported the establishment of the state at the UN and sent us weapons even when our American friends declared an “embargo.” And immediately after fulfilling his “historic mission,” he returned to his wickedness and sought to deport all the Jews of his land to Siberia, a scheme prevented only because of his sudden death.
The Lord, who promised that He would “not fail you nor forsake you,” stands by His promise and does so in scenarios that appear entirely natural. Every move has a “natural explanation,” but the process as a whole is wondrous.
With blessings for a complete sealing for good, S.Tz.
A wondrous salvation that appeared by natural means is told by Hagai Huberman (“Hallel on the 28th of Tishrei,” on the Arutz 7 site). A Phantom squadron commanded by Yiftah Spector was sent on the eve of Sukkot 5734 to bomb the Syrian General Staff compound. Because of heavy cloud cover in the area they could not carry out their mission and received permission to return.
The squadron commander requested another mission, and then they told him that a Syrian armored division was racing toward the Golan and the Israeli counter-force had not managed to arrive. Spector’s squadron rained down on the Syrian armored force the 40 tons of bombs originally intended for the Syrian General Staff, thereby saving the Heights and perhaps the whole State of Israel.
Another squadron hit the Syrian General Staff after finding a gap in the wall of clouds, and wondrously there was one shack they did not hit, and that was the shack where the Israeli prisoners were being held, though they had no knowledge at all of this fact.
On second thought, this could be chance. On porches there is often a mezuzah issue. To validate it I would test him on a group of twenty questioners and count how many misses there were.
Moreover, I would track the questions: does he ask everyone the same thing, and in one case it hits by chance? If so, I would myself ask a group of twenty others and see what the hit rate is (there are questions that hit fairly well, especially after extensive experience like his: decades in the mezuzah field give you common patterns).
In addition, I would check what exactly the order of the conversation was. Sometimes out of amazement our memory ignores some hint we gave him, or the fact that the order of the conversation was slightly different from what we remember. I have already encountered examples like this, and one can see more every day in court.
And in addition, there is always the possibility of deliberate fraud (if you booked an appointment, he sends someone to check interesting data about you).
And again, all these are only hypothetical possibilities before reaching a clear conclusion. So none of this means he does not have abilities, and as I said I do not categorically deny it. These are only points worth checking before reaching conclusions.
Lior Suchard, for example, performs “wonders” no less impressive and says explicitly himself that he has no supernatural powers. I have no idea how he does it, but there are different tricks (some of which I wrote about here).
Regarding Lior Suchard and the like, it is possible that they really do have some kind of supernatural abilities, and they themselves do not understand how they manage to know certain things about people. When they try to explain to themselves how they know what they know, they will presumably prefer to choose a natural explanation because it seems more reasonable to them (cold reading). Alternatively, perhaps they prefer to explain their abilities to others in a natural way so people will not laugh at them or dismiss them as crazy.
To S.Tz.L.
The rabbi does not think the world is deterministic, and he agrees that there are parts within it that can affect nature, such as human choices, but claims that God refrains from doing so and instead leaves the world to run according to its nature. And the Rishonim mentioned this approach as well, except that they did not go to such an extreme, and said that with respect to the righteous there is providence.
If you ask Arabs, you will hear similar but opposite stories: in every campaign and war there are good moments that “just worked out,” and hard moments in which “the decree was decreed,” and there is no evidence from one or two stories to prove anything. Only if we prove that statistically there is a serious deviation here, that there should have been more failures and something prevented them [as perhaps in the Gulf War], is there room to see providence in this.
I have not accepted the rabbi’s view; I have understood it. Yet personally, for years I have not prayed for myself because of the feeling that who is as distant as the Lord our God whenever I call to Him [God forbid, but what can be done], but I do not deny that there may be providence for other people and for the nation in general. In my opinion, while it is possible to explain, like the rabbi, that what we see before our eyes – that everything the Torah said and that was supposed to be visible in practice is not taking place – is because God stopped supervising completely, that is not necessary. It may be only the noticeable involvement that He stopped entirely [contrary to what His Torah promised], but hidden management may still exist, and one cannot measure or rule it out [because every trouble can be punishment and every success can be accidental], apart from faith in the Torah or alternatively faith in the known laws evident to the eye.
Regarding Rabbi Ben-Tov – from time to time one hears stories like these, but not necessarily about people known among us as “righteous”; there are also other strange and bizarre people, some of them even gentiles, and in cultures like Africa and the Philippines such things are found. And although I do not know how to explain this or rule it out [if indeed the stories of success are not covering over a large number of failures. For example, regarding one of the Haredi rabbis known for his “wonders” and bizarre blessings, it is also known that he messed up many times, except that that is not told…], I therefore would not build on this as proof of a divine connection, but either some trait or a successful natural trick or something not recognized today, but universal.
P.S. As far as I know, Rabbi Ben-Tov’s son is continuing in his path… apparently he inherited his power.
Everything is possible, but as a starting point we have only his own words about himself. Beyond that, whichever way you take it, I have no problem with what you say. Even if he has abilities, that only means there are such phenomena and not only among kabbalists/rabbis. That is part of the nature of the world. I wrote that I do not rule this out categorically and that there are fairly systematic reports of such phenomena.
Eliezer, just note the arguments I raised from the behavior of believers (who do not neutralize the influence of prayers and divine involvement in medical studies, though we all rely on studies that did not do so; likewise on investigative committees for airplanes, and so on in all areas of our lives). Therefore, in my opinion, even someone who declares that he does think prayers help does not really act that way, and therefore I do not believe him. The scientific worldview (I mean that the world is governed by nature and that is all) not only works but is accepted by everyone, including those who deny it. As for the excuses about “human effort,” they are of course ridiculous on their face. A stupid invention not worth discussing.
With God’s help, 12 Tishrei 5780
Faith does not contradict human effort. On the contrary, a person “believes in the Life of the Worlds and sows.” Sowing still does not guarantee success; after all, how many harms can come on the way to success that a person has no control over. And so a person “sows in tears” and needs much help from Heaven in order to succeed.
And more than once a person toils and does everything, yet years pass and he does not succeed, and then the Lord arranges for him, seemingly by chance, the breakthrough. Thus the British researcher Fleming searched for a substance that would harm harmful bacteria without harming healthy cells, until “by chance” he encountered a Petri dish for growing bacteria on which mold had grown that harmed the bacteria, and thus he discovered penicillin.
About this one may say: “You labored and found” – “by chance” after much labor – believe that it was help from Heaven and not mere happenstance. Faith does not prevent effort but strengthens it, by breathing into a person hope to continue searching without despair.
With blessings, S.Tz.
And on the other hand, faith gives a person limits to effort, so that the end does not sanctify improper means. A person knows to stop in the midst of his work to find time to devote to his spiritual building and to nurturing his family and children, and even when he exerts himself with all his energy, he will not “cut corners” and will not give up the values of integrity.
I was told about R. Ephraim Horowitz, of blessed memory (father-in-law of Rabbi Yehuda Brandes, may he live long), who had a printing house in Tel Aviv. A large part of his income came from a certain institution that regularly ordered printing jobs from him. One day the liaison man of that institution informed R. Ephraim that if he wanted the contract to continue, he had to give him a substantial bribe. R. Ephraim refused absolutely, and thereby lost a significant part of his sources of income. But within a few days, a man from another institution arrived and placed regular printing orders with him, and he profited from his insistence on honesty.
R. Ephraim, who stood by “you shall conduct your business faithfully” and “you shall set fixed times for Torah,” passed away a few months ago in good old age, leaving behind generations of sons, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren occupied in Torah, work, and acts of kindness. They noted the symbolism in the fact that he went to his eternal home just as he finished his morning prayer.
Paragraph 1, line 3
…and therefore a person “sows…
Paragraph 3, line 2
…and not mere happenstance. …
In paragraph 6, line 1
R. Ephraim, who stood by “you shall conduct your business faithfully”…
Hello Rabbi,
A question,
Maybe the disconnection (I prefer that term to withdrawal) is an effect of the decline of the generations? That is, the disconnection is ours (less worthy / less receptive – the Shekhinah is less among us) and not, Heaven forbid, God’s, for after all “the whole earth is full of His glory” and “there is none besides Him.”
And perhaps this connects to the statement “The death of the righteous is equivalent to the destruction of the House of our God,” meaning that similarly to the Temple, so too through the righteous God causes His Presence to dwell upon Israel. And if so, then if there are fewer righteous people (as a result of the decline of the generations), automatically there is less Shekhinah. But again, that is only because we are not worthy of it; it is always present, to the same degree and intensity, only we are not worthy.
With blessings for a happy festival!
Anything is possible. My main claim is that there is disconnection. The explanation I suggested (our maturing) is of course one proposal among many possible ones. Here it is only a matter of reasoning.
With God’s help, ערב שבת קודש “He made you and established you,” 5780
To Eliezer – greetings,
A good factory manager is aware at every given moment of what is going on in his factory and maintains constant supervision and control over what is happening. On the other hand, a good manager knows how to do this without his workers feeling at every moment that the manager is spying on them and standing over them “with a stopwatch in hand.” Such a worker, who is under constant pressure, becomes a “cog,” a “small head,” and loses all initiative and independent thought.
A good manager also will not rush to help the worker every moment he feels stuck and needs the help of “the technical team.” When there is a real need, the manager will intervene and “put out the fire,” but in a significant number of cases the manager will note the request for help and decide – based on his familiarity with the worker and his abilities – that he can be trusted to deal with the problem and seek a creative solution on his own.
Thus the worker develops into a “big head.” He will report every malfunction and problem to the manager; it is his duty as a worker to inform the manager of the existence of a problem. If the manager responds to his request – that is a sign that this is indeed a problem beyond the worker’s ability. But if the manager does not respond – that is a signal to the worker: “You can handle it.”
And so Ramchal writes in Derekh Hashem (which I mentioned above), part III, chapter 2 on “individual providence,” that sometimes the Lord does not change the situation because of a person’s prayer, for בכך the Lord is signaling to the person: “This is your destiny. This is the trial that is placed upon you to cope with,” whether by finding ways “to live with what there is” or by finding creative ways to solve it.
There is a well-known joke about a Breslov Hasid and a Chabad Hasid who were sent to Gehinnom. The Breslover cries out: “Rabbenu, get me out!” and Rabbi Nachman arrives, grabs him by his peyot, and pulls him out of there. The Chabadnik also cries out: “Rebbe, get me out!” The Rebbe comes and says to him: “You are here on a mission – open a Chabad house here!” 🙂
As a good manager, “the Manager of the world” is likewise always “on top of things,” keeping “His hand on the pulse” in order to decide whether He needs to “support the fallen and revive the dead,” or whether it is enough for Him to be a “helper” to the worker in coping with the problem, a “shield” against outside harm, and a “savior” when there is a serious malfunction requiring the intervention of “the technical team.”
With blessings for a good Sabbath and a happy festival in the shade of faith, S.Tz.
Incidentally, it is worth noticing the difference between the names of Moses’ sons. The name of the first expresses despair over the situation in which he is stuck “as a stranger in a foreign land.” By contrast, “and the name of the other was Eliezer” – he was born to his father when he was about eighty, after sixty years of being “stuck” in Midian, and then Moses remembered also “the half-full cup” – “for the God of my father was my help and delivered me from Pharaoh’s sword.”
When a person grasps “the half-full cup,” how great God’s kindness has been toward him – then he is filled with strength to attack also “the half-empty cup,” to aspire and act to fill it. Therefore every prayer of request is accompanied by praise before it and thanksgiving after it. Gratitude for “what there is” gives strength to aspire and act to complete “what is not yet…”
In paragraph 5, line 1
…the Breslover cries out: …
In paragraph 6, line 1
…to decide whether…
In paragraph 8, line 2
…in order to aspire and act…
There, line 3
…gives strength to aspire and act…
As usual, thank you for an interesting and lucid column 🙂
I wanted to note something that perhaps you address elsewhere, and if so then forgive me for not having read it – you asked in what way Keren’s explanations are preferable to yours. I wanted to point out that the explanations Keren offers (or does Keren offer them? Isn’t Keren a woman?) stem from exactly the same place you describe: from the need to reconcile conflicting observations or positions. The need to claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, runs the world in hiddenness does not arise only from the clash between the texts and visible reality. It also comes from another important and vital element – our moral perception and the understanding (or faith) that it reflects and expresses divine morality. In other words – just as we are compassionate, presumably He too is compassionate. And if He decided to leave the earth and let us do whatever we want without rescuing the oppressed and the like, the difficulty is not only that the Bible says otherwise, but because the way we conceive of God is otherwise. The need to say that He still supervises – whether only over the righteous, or by general providence over history, or that He manages to maneuver His providence so brilliantly that it cannot be seen – stems in part from the need to reconcile our moral conception with a world that appears arbitrary – and with a God who appears indifferent. The alternative in many cases is truly a philosophical God who is not interested in the fate of human beings, in which case it is unclear why He commands us commandments, and worst of all – it pulls the rug out from under the most basic assumption of morality (usually implicit), namely that it comes from a source external to us. Therefore explanations like Keren’s arise from the same place your explanation comes from – from an unwillingness to give up a very basic element in one’s worldview, and an attempt to preserve it as much as possible.
(You also do this, in practice, when you give a moral rationale for the Holy One’s distancing Himself, so that we can learn to walk on our own, etc. – I’m not saying you ignore this consideration, only pointing out that it exists and in fact is very dominant, and I missed an explicit discussion of it).