On Divine Involvement Within the Framework of Nature and on Faith Declarations in General (Column 691)
I have devoted quite a few columns in the past to the matter of divine involvement in the world. Among other things, I argued there for two claims: 1) A conceptual claim—there cannot be divine involvement within the framework of the laws of nature. Any divine involvement, by definition, deviates from those laws. 2) A scientific-empirical claim—there is no ongoing divine involvement in the world (not even as a deviation from the laws of nature), perhaps aside from sporadic cases. This past Shabbat (Parashat Bo) I spoke in the synagogue about the first claim in light of the Ramban’s well-known comments on the parashah, and I arrived at several new points I wished to present here.
“That we should believe concerning all our words and occurrences that they are all miracles; there is no [such thing as] nature or the customary order of the world.”
At the end of Parashat Bo there is a verse commanding the mitzvah of tefillin. In his commentary there, the Ramban elaborates on why the Torah finds it important to recount the miracles God performed in Egypt and in general, and why it is important that we remember them (among other ways, by donning tefillin):
“And now I shall tell you a general principle regarding the rationale for many mitzvot. From the time idolatry existed in the world, from the days of Enosh, opinions began to become confused regarding faith: some denied the basic principle and said that the world is primordial; they denied the Lord and said, ‘It is not He.’ Some denied His particular knowledge and said, ‘How does God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?’ (Psalms 73:11). Some admitted His knowledge but denied providence, rendering man like the fish of the sea, over whom God does not watch and with whom there is neither punishment nor reward; they would say, ‘The Lord has abandoned the earth.’ And when God desires, regarding a community or an individual, and performs for them a sign that changes the customary order of the world and its nature, all of these opinions are nullified, for the wondrous sign indicates that the world has a God who created it, who knows and watches and is able. And when that sign was decreed beforehand by the mouth of a prophet, it further confirms the truth of prophecy—that God speaks to man and reveals His secret to His servants the prophets—and with this the entire Torah is upheld.”
The miracles (visible to all) teach us that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the Master who created the world and its laws, and the proof is that He can also deviate from those laws. At the end of his comments there, the Ramban broadens the discussion to concealed miracles and writes:
“And from the great and publicized miracles a person comes to acknowledge the concealed miracles, which are the foundation of the entire Torah—that a person has no share in the Torah of Moses our teacher until he believes that in all our words and occurrences, all are miracles: there is no nature and the customary order of the world, whether among the public or the individual; rather, if one performs the commandments, his reward will cause him to prosper, and if he transgresses them, his punishment will cut him off. All is by the decree of the Most High, as I have already mentioned (Genesis 17:1, and above 6:2). And the concealed miracles will be publicized in matters of the community, as will come in the Torah’s promises regarding the blessings and the curses, as Scripture says (Deuteronomy 29:23–24): ‘And all the nations shall say, Why has the Lord done thus to this land? … And they shall say, Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers,’ such that the matter will be publicized to all the nations that it is from the Lord in their punishment. And concerning the fulfillment [of the commandments], it is said, ‘And all the peoples of the earth shall see that the name of the Lord is called upon you, and they shall fear you.’ I shall further explain this with God’s help (Leviticus 26:11).”
In essence, according to him the core of faith is in concealed miracles. The visible miracles merely remind us that all our occurrences are nothing but miracles in which there is no nature and no customary order—that is, that everything that happens to us depends solely on performing the commandments and not on nature. The Ramban emphasizes that his words concern everything that happens to every individual or to the public at large (“whether in public or in private”); all of this results solely from their spiritual state and not from the laws of nature. He sees this as such a clear and fundamental principle that he declares that anyone who does not believe this has no share in the Torah of Moses our teacher.
As I have mentioned more than once, to my shame I have no share in this belief, and although perhaps I therefore have no share in the Torah of “Moses ben Nachman,” I hope I still have a share in the Torah of Moses (ben Amram) our teacher. Here I wish to clarify the picture and its ramifications, and why it seems utterly implausible to me. In the end I will also arrive, from here, at a prevalent phenomenon of claims I shall call “faith declarations.”
Involvement Within the Framework of Nature
On its face, the Ramban here writes that there are no laws of nature in the world at all. Everything proceeds miraculously. It is hard to believe that this is truly his intent. The Ramban was a physician who treated the ill, and in various places in his commentaries it is clear that he was a rational person who accepted the existence of natural laws. If we are precise in his language, he speaks about “our occurrences,” namely what happens to human beings, and not necessarily about everything that happens in the world. So perhaps he indeed accepts natural law, but specifically regarding human beings he claims that what happens to them is a result of their deeds. But that too is implausible, for as a physician he treated human beings’ illnesses. If his intent were that all human occurrences are miracles and not dependent on nature at all, he ought to have sent his patients to pray or repent instead of prescribing medications or medical procedures. In other words, his function as a physician would have been superfluous; he could have done the same as a rabbi or a good friend.
If indeed the Ramban accepts the existence of natural laws, it raises the possibility that perhaps he intends to identify the actions of nature with the action of God. This claim can be read in two different ways:
- One could say that nature operates regularly according to its laws, but the One who operates them is God. That is, there is in fact no force of gravity, only a law of gravity. The law of gravity describes the manner in which God operates, and the One who brings about the phenomena is God and not natural forces (such as the force of gravity). Still, God acts according to fixed rules, and the laws of nature describe them. This picture seems to assume a correlation between our physiological state and our spiritual state: what is supposed to occur given our spiritual state in fact occurs via the laws of physiology as well.
- Alternatively, one could say that God created the laws of nature and through them He Himself acts. That is, everything takes place exactly as the atheist conceives it (attraction between masses is caused by gravitational force), except that the laws (and the forces) themselves are the work of God’s hands; therefore it is considered that He is the One who brings about all that happens in our world.
It is very hard to read either of these formulations into his wording. As for the second formulation, the Ramban says there is no nature—not merely that God created natural law. But even the first is implausible. The first formulation also says that there is nature and that everything happens in a natural and regular way—only that God is the One operating it. That is, my recovery is a function of physiology, not of my prayers or good and bad deeds. Under this picture, one can predict whether I will recover or not, even if the ultimate mover is God. The Ramban explicitly writes that events in the world do not occur with natural regularity and are not dependent on the natural state but on our commandments and deeds. The description I suggested says that the laws of nature indeed describe what happens to us, but that is not what he wrote. Even if we say that the laws of nature themselves take into account our spiritual state, this is still implausible. The natural laws we know do not depend on spiritual state; if so, it follows that at least they are incorrect. Is it reasonable that he really thought this?
It therefore seems that the Ramban’s intention was to say that the world indeed operates according to the laws of nature, and the healing of the sick is also governed by those laws. But he claims that this does not contradict the belief that everything that happens to us is in God’s hands according to our deeds and spiritual level. The assumption here is that God can be involved in the world even within the framework of the laws of nature, without violating them. In essence, he claims that not all divine involvement is a miracle, for there are “gaps” within natural law that allow for divine involvement. Thus, what happens to human beings does not contradict natural law. Within the possibilities that nature presents, God succeeds in inserting His policy, healing those who are worthy of healing and the reverse.
Why This Cannot Be Correct
In column 280 I explained why this cannot be correct. I shall present it here in two ways (the distinction between them will be important later).
The first formulation is that there is no freedom or “gaps” within natural law. The laws are deterministic (I will get to quantum theory below), meaning they determine that given a particular natural state (assuming it includes all relevant data, even if unknown to us) the outcome must be X and nothing else. Therefore, if God decides to change that and do Y, He has deviated from the laws of nature. The laws of nature establish causal relations in which the cause is at least a sufficient condition for the effect. This means that given a particular (complete) state of affairs—namely, all the data in the world are fixed—the outcome according to the laws of nature is unique and necessary. Any change in that outcome constitutes a deviation from natural law.
I emphasize that I do not mean to claim that God cannot do this. Certainly He can, for He created the laws of nature and He can suspend them or deviate from them (“the mouth that forbade is the mouth that permits”). I am only claiming that if He chooses to intervene, that necessarily deviates from natural law—that is, it is a miracle. My claim is that there is no divine involvement within the laws of nature (claim 1 above), not that there is no involvement at all (claim 2 above, which I am not addressing here).
The second formulation is as follows. Suppose I am ill and pray to God to heal me, and He answers my prayer. If by nature I would have recovered anyway, then there is no divine involvement here; God simply let nature operate, and the “answer” to my prayer is meaningless. Conversely, if without the prayer I would not have recovered and only thanks to God’s intervention did I recover, then that intervention necessarily constitutes a deviation from natural law. Something occurred that was not supposed to occur according to the laws. Again: there is no situation in which both possibilities fit natural law.
To understand why this confuses people so much, we must consider the topic of the concealed miracle.
Between a Concealed Miracle and Involvement Within Nature
Think of a person who is ill with a disease from which we know the chance of recovery is 10%, while the rest die. Now I learn I have that disease, and I pray to God to heal me. He answers my prayer, intervenes, and heals me. Can we say that this is involvement within the framework of natural law? After all, 10% recover, so there is no deviation from natural law. These are statistical laws, so it seems that there really are “gaps” in nature, i.e., situations in which the very same circumstances can yield two different outcomes.
But at least according to the accepted scientific view, this is a mistake. The statistics of recovery concern all people who suffer from that disease. Among them, 10% recover and 90% die. But for any given individual patient, the outcome is deterministic. If we knew all the relevant medical information about him precisely, and we knew all the theoretical medical information about such a disease, we could predict with certainty whether he would recover or die. Our inability to do so does not stem from the fact that truly, from the same state two different results can come forth; rather, it stems from our lack of information (both about the patient and about the theoretical information concerning the disease). Therefore some people will recover and some will not (for each person the result follows deterministically from his condition).
According to the information we have today, curing disease is part of the natural sciences and is entirely deterministic. The use of probability and statistics here stems from a lack of information—that is, it is an epistemic and not an ontic matter. Just as our use of probability to describe the outcome of a coin toss or a die roll does not mean that there is something truly random there. The coin toss or die roll is entirely deterministic, and our resort to probability is only due to partial information and computational difficulty, not because there is a real “gap” in nature itself. It is epistemic rather than ontic (see the series of columns 322–327). It is important to understand that our lack of information changes nothing regarding whether nature is deterministic. Nature itself is deterministic; we simply do not know the laws or the data in full.
Let us return to our patient. Suppose he was supposed to die of this illness (he belongs to those 90% who die), and God intervened and saved him. Now he becomes part of those 10% who survive this disease. Did a miracle occur here? Was there a deviation from natural law? Most certainly. If that person was supposed to die (even though we cannot know that), then God intervened and altered the natural course and healed him. Therefore, here too we are dealing with involvement that deviates from natural law. Of course, if that person was supposed to be among the 10% who survive, then God did not intervene at all. We will naturally never know which of the two possibilities is correct: whether God intervened and deviated from natural law, or whether the person recovered naturally. In any case, if God intervened, it is a miracle that deviates from nature. It is, however, a concealed miracle, since we have no way to perceive that a miracle occurred. Even so, that miracle deviates from natural law; it is simply done without our knowing it.
It is important to understand that “involvement within nature” and “concealed miracle” are not synonymous expressions. A concealed miracle is an act that deviates from nature, but we are unable to notice it (an epistemic rather than an ontic issue). Involvement within the framework of nature is divine involvement that does not deviate from natural law at all (which, as we saw, is impossible). A concealed miracle is certainly an option God can employ, but involvement within the laws of nature is not. A conceptual analysis shows that any involvement on His part constitutes a deviation.
Back to the Ramban
What, then, did the Ramban mean? One might say that his intention is that God intervenes in what happens to us, but as we have seen, in doing so He necessarily deviates from natural law. This is of course possible in itself, and perhaps this is what the Ramban means when he says that all our occurrences are miracles. But this possibility exists in his words only if, in his view, this happens from time to time and not always. Otherwise there is no nature at all and everything is miraculous. Yet it seems clear that he did not mean that, for he writes that “all our words and occurrences are all miracles; there is no nature and the customary order of the world, whether in private or in public.” That is, he claims this about every single thing that happens to each of us. Could it be that everything that happens to us is not the result of natural law but of divine involvement? If that were the case, there would be no physiology regarding human beings. Acetaminophen would reduce fever only for those who “deserve” it; antibiotics would work only for those whose spiritual level warrants healing; surgeries would fail for wicked people, and so forth. A physician (of human beings—excluding veterinarians), like the Ramban himself, would have no role, and his knowledge would have no significance.
In short, I have no share in the Torah of Moses ben Nachman, for his words are not acceptable to reason and contradict the scientific knowledge we possess. I hope nonetheless to have a share in the Torah of Moses ben Amram. I take comfort that I am in good company, for as I showed in column 659 (and many others), it appears that even the Ra’ah (and indeed the Gemara itself) has no share in the Torah of Moses (ben Nachman), for in Chagigah 5a he explains the Gemara’s statement “there are those who perish without justice” as referring to cases in which a person kills his fellow. That is, in his view (and in the Gemara itself), a person can die without deserving to die—so too, certainly, become ill or be injured. True, the Ra’ah there discusses an act that is the choice of another person (Reuven who murders Shimon), and perhaps natural death, in his view, is not possible without justice (so it seems from his words, since he explains that “there are those who perish without justice” as in the case of one who kills his fellow—apparently coming to exclude natural death). Still, this smells like some distance from the Torah of Moses ben Nachman. And of course there is also “everything is in the hands of Heaven except for cold and heat.” But even if there were no sources supporting my view, it would not change anything. Scientific and logical analysis compel the conclusion that the Ramban is mistaken here.
Gaps in Nature
It seems the Ramban assumed that there really are gaps in nature. In other words, in his view, given a particular state of affairs two different outcomes are possible; therefore divine involvement does not contradict the existence of natural law. Moreover, it seems that, in his view, this is essentially the case with regard to human beings, and thus he can say that all our occurrences are nothing but miracles and contain no nature whatsoever. As for the role of a physician according to him—I truly do not know how to answer. But this appears to be the assumption in his words here.
We saw a similar assumption in column 280 regarding the issue of praying about the past. We saw there that the distinction between a fetus under forty days (for whose change of sex one may pray) and one older than that (for whose change of sex one may not pray) does not fit the assumption that it is forbidden to pray for an open miracle but permissible to pray for a concealed miracle, since changing the sex of a hundred-day-old fetus is also a concealed miracle (in a world without ultrasound). Why, then, is it forbidden to pray for that? Moreover, in such a case there is, in fact, no miracle at all, for God could intervene and perform gender-affirming surgery in the mother’s womb. This is a medical act that, in principle, a human surgeon either already can do or will be able to do shortly; therefore one can view this as a request for intervention that is not a miracle at all. I explained there that the distinction between the ages of the fetus must be based on the assumption that before forty days the fetus’s sex is an open question, and therefore even if God intervenes and changes the sex, this is done within the laws of nature. Not so in later stages, when the fetus’s sex has already been determined; then the request is for a miracle—i.e., a deviation from natural law—and that is forbidden. The conclusion that emerges is that it is forbidden to pray for a miracle, whether concealed or open. It is permitted to pray only regarding open situations (“gaps” in natural law) in which divine involvement is not a miracle at all. Behold, then, that in the past the Sages thought that natural law is not deterministic, and there could be cases of divine involvement that are not miracles—that is, that are not deviations from natural law. So, it seems, the Ramban also assumed.
A Note About Our Time
In that column I noted that today we know this is not the case. The sex of the fetus is fixed in the very first days of pregnancy (and in my estimation, there is nothing truly random in the differentiation process; there is simply a mechanism we do not yet fully understand). This, of course, raises a serious question regarding the conclusions that would follow from that sugya. One possibility is that we must reject the Talmud’s mistaken factual assumption and understand that there are no gaps in nature; therefore today we are forbidden to pray for anything at all (not even for changing the sex of a one-week-old fetus), for any involvement is a deviation from natural law, that is, a miracle. A second possibility is to reject the halachic ruling that forbids praying and requesting a miracle, for every request is a request for a miracle; therefore it would be permissible to pray for a change in the fetus’s sex at any age (at least when ultrasound is absent).
The view of sages in those generations is certainly understandable. Scientific knowledge at the time was not what ours is, so they assumed that nature is not deterministic. They were not angels; contrary to popular belief, they had no scientific knowledge beyond what existed in their days. What is harder to accept is that later sages keep repeating this nonsense of involvement within the laws of nature, as though their scientific knowledge remained stuck in the Middle Ages. Their commitment to the views of the early sages (and fear that they might not have a share in the Torah of Moses) forces them to hold either to logically absurd claims (that divine involvement could occur within deterministic natural law) or to scientifically absurd claims (that natural law is not deterministic). This is a conservatism deserving of censure. Critical thinking must also be applied to basic beliefs. As we learned: “Plato is beloved and Socrates is beloved, but truth is most beloved of all” (see column 215 and many more).
Further Puzzles
In the last sentence I hinted that my critique of the Ramban’s position rests on two pillars: science, which posits that the laws are deterministic; and logic, which says there is no divine involvement that can take place within deterministic laws. Logic is not up for debate. It turns out that the weak point that must be examined is the scientific one: are the laws of nature really deterministic? The Ramban—like several Talmudic sugyot—apparently thought so, but our scientific knowledge today says otherwise.
This can be questioned on at least two planes:
- How confident can we be that natural law is truly deterministic? Take recovery from disease as an example, as discussed above. The fact is that patients sometimes do recover from almost every disease. That is, in this area outcomes are not dictated deterministically by the current state. In standard scientific thinking, this is attributed to lack of information (theoretical or about the particular patient) and is considered merely an epistemic problem; but who says that’s right? Perhaps there is truly an ontic gap here and not merely an epistemic one? The reductionism of medicine and the life sciences to chemistry and physics is a standard scientific assumption, but there is no necessity to adopt it. Let me already note here that the Ramban’s claim is that all our occurrences are miracles—meaning there are no natural laws regarding human beings. This is an extremely far-reaching conjecture, and I think the facts quite clearly say otherwise.
- Quantum theory (in the standard interpretation) teaches us that there are non-deterministic processes in nature. Given one state, two different outcomes are possible, and quantum theory even gives us the probability for each of them. If so, there is room to argue that in some situations God can take either of two courses, neither of which would deviate from natural law.
I shall begin with the second question.
Quantum Theory and Its Significance for Our Topic
In principle, quantum theory should not play a role in the discussion, since it deals with very small scales and very low temperatures. The events that happen to us are at large scales and very high temperatures; therefore quantum effects are not supposed to be present. Certainly, to claim that every single one of our events is governed by quantum theory is far-fetched. Beyond that, quantum theory specifies a distribution over the possible outcomes. Divine involvement in those outcomes would still violate natural law; it would change the distribution (assuming that when God heals me, He does not leave someone else—who should have recovered—ill in my place. If that were so, it is hard to accept that it is permissible to pray such a prayer). In effect, it can be said that God changed the laws of quantum theory, which are the relevant natural laws for our case: quantum theory dictates a particular distribution, and God imposed a different one.
This answers the quantum-based question. Still, the question remains regarding the determinism of natural law itself. We raised the possibility that this assumption may be mistaken even if science adopts it. Assumptions are assumptions; they carry no necessity. If so, perhaps divine involvement within the framework of natural law is indeed possible. The answer I shall give to this question will also address the difficulty posed by quantum theory. Before that, a methodological note.
A Methodological Note
Suppose we could find a possible explanation for the Ramban’s view—whether this requires saying that our scientific picture is wrong or some other explanation. Perhaps it would be a forced explanation, perhaps even a spacious one. My question is entirely different: why assume from the outset that there must be an explanation? Why look for one? Why is there a difficulty here that compels us to re-examine our scientific (and other) worldview and seek explanations? Does the Ramban have alternative sources of information regarding science or thought that we can assume are not mistaken? On the face of it, the simple avenue is that the Ramban erred because he drew on ancient and outdated scientific knowledge—and thus there is no need to be troubled by this question.
I claim that the very search for some explanation of his words—even if we find one—is based on the assumption that they are supposed to be compatible with the modern scientific picture (or, more precisely, with the truth). This assumption itself is misguided; therefore the search as a whole seems unnecessary and based on a methodological error. I nonetheless engage in it here mainly because many people do not share my methodological understanding, and I wish to clarify it.
What Would Have Happened Without the Involvement?
Above I presented two formulations of the claim against involvement within the framework of natural law. One was based on the determinism of those laws; the other examined what would have happened without divine intervention. Now I wish to argue that the second formulation topples the Ramban’s words even if we assume that natural law is not deterministic (whether due to quantum theory or simply because the existing scientific conclusion regarding determinism is mistaken).
Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that in a given patient with a given disease two outcomes are indeed possible—i.e., in his state natural law does not dictate whether he will recover or not. The distribution of 10% recovery versus 90% death reflects ontic indeterminacy in reality itself and not merely partial knowledge (epistemic uncertainty). At first glance, in such a case divine involvement does not contradict natural law.
Even so, one can raise an argument similar to what I raised above regarding quantum theory. If we assume that the distribution of the chances of recovery is X (only this time it is not due to our ignorance but to indeterminacy in reality itself—note that this is also the accepted view in quantum theory), God’s involvement changes that distribution. A statistical law is still a law; changing the distribution is a change in natural law. From another angle: the distribution of chances of recovery itself stems from some structure of the world. The structure is not deterministic but statistical, so it does not dictate one outcome but a certain distribution; still, divine involvement changes that distribution. After the involvement, the situation is that the only possible outcome is recovery, with probability 1. If so, here too we have a change in natural law. This is very similar to what we saw above regarding the implications of quantum theory for our discussion.
Here I wish to argue something even more far-reaching. Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that there is no natural law here at all, not even a statistical law—that is, we assume that nature says nothing about the chance of recovery and anything can happen. The matter is truly open, with not even an average distribution. Still, it is clear that if we waited and God did not intervene, something would in fact have happened. What would have happened? One of two possible outcomes: either the patient would have recovered, or he would not have. If we assume he would have recovered, then there is no need for divine intervention. If he would not have recovered, then God’s intervention changed what would have occurred in the natural course. Is that not a deviation from nature (even if not from natural law)? Nature itself would have gone in direction A, and God caused it to go in direction B. My claim here is that even if there are gaps in nature and its laws are not deterministic—and even if there are no laws at all, neither deterministic nor statistical—divine involvement still constitutes a deviation from the natural course.
This is, of course, a matter of definition. One can claim that indeed there is a deviation from the natural course that would have happened, but not a deviation from natural law (for there are no laws). Thus, for example, one may claim that it is permissible to pray for a deviation from the natural course so long as there is no deviation from natural law (deterministic or statistical). If there is a law, then perhaps God wants the world to operate that way; therefore His involvement that violates those laws is problematic (and perhaps we are forbidden to pray that it occur). But when there is no law at all, this is not truly a deviation from nature, even though it is still a different course than what would have happened without the involvement.
To my mind, this too is involvement. In any case, nothing in this offers a way to reconcile the Ramban’s words. To claim that, we would have to assert that there are no natural laws—even statistical ones—regarding human beings. Physiology would not exist as a scientific discipline. As noted, even the Ramban himself (who was a physician) likely did not think so.
Faith Declarations and Making It Up As We Go
Bottom line: not only is the Ramban incorrect, I do not even have a possible explanation of what he could have meant. If we adopt the final model above—that regarding human beings there are no laws, neither deterministic nor statistical—then his words imply there is no physiology at all. It is not reasonable that he meant to say that.
But beyond the Ramban’s intent, we can wonder what those who quote him with such enthusiasm to this day mean. Before asking whether the Ramban is correct, and even before asking whether they themselves believe it, the first question is: what are they even saying? Do they themselves understand what they are saying? Do they mean there is no physiology? That there are statistical laws and that involvement does not deviate from them? That there are deterministic laws and divine involvement does not deviate from them? None of these options is plausible; some are not even possible. I think none of the speakers truly knows which of these he intends with such statements.
In my impression, people make such declarations only because they exude the aroma of deep piety, and that alone suffices to wave around these sentences—even if they are absurd, and even if they have no meaning at all. Well, we can always call it “learning Chassidut,” and then we are exempt from giving any coherent meaning to the sentences under discussion. The feeling of depth covers the substantive vacuum. One can leap into the “empty space” and grasp the twelfth hair of the dikna kadisha (“holy beard”), and thereby resolve all the difficulties of Dawkins and the rest of the skeptics (see, for example, my lecture here).
Think about claims concerning bitachon (trust in God) and hishtadlut (human effort), about divine providence over His world, claims that everything is found in the Torah, claims about the special virtue of Israel, claims about tzimtzum not to be taken literally, claims that anyone killed for his Judaism is a saint (what is sometimes called “Kiddushei Ta’ut” [sanctifications by mistake]; see column 215), and many more of the sort. Many such claims merited chapters in my book Ein Adam Shalit BaRuach, and they are all declarations without real basis. Some of them have no coherent substantive meaning whatsoever—but that does not prevent many believers from asserting them emphatically as though they descended directly from Sinai, simply because they exude the aroma of piety. I call these “faith declarations,” namely, claims that have no logic and/or source, and in many cases even the proponent does not truly believe them; but through them he broadcasts his unqualified faith in our holy Torah, and therefore they are exempt from critical thought (see column 52 on the difference between derash and pilpul and on the rule “one does not object to a derash”).
Example: The Sabbatical-Year Promises
A wonderful example of this kind of absurd discourse I found in a pleasant podcast someone sent me a few days ago, in Yoav Rabinovich’s series “The Rhinoceros.” I highly recommend listening. Note that in this example we are dealing with a principle that actually has a clear source, and yet I still regard such claims as “faith declarations.”
His topic is the proposal by Shas ministers to establish a training fund for farmers who observe the Sabbatical year (as far as I know, the law has meanwhile passed a preliminary reading). Yoav Rabinovich presents explanations from Shas MKs for the bill. They explain, quite nicely, that it is incumbent upon us to ease the burden on those righteous people who let their fields lie fallow in the Sabbatical year. Rabinovich notes there that they also have the options of heter mechirah or otzar beit din, but they chose to be righteous; if so, why not at the public’s expense?! After all, the state treasury currently has a surplus. There hasn’t been a war in the past year and a half (a fact—none of their neighbors in Bnei Brak was harmed; what are they even talking about?!), no regions of the country have been devastated (the holy city of Bnei Brak stands intact, thanks to the promise of the righteous R. Chaim Kanievsky), and of course the Haredi sector’s contribution to the GDP covers any deficit that could arise even if there had been a war (thankfully there was not), so there is no problem with funding sources. But the morality of this band of robbers is well-known and is not our topic here. Here is the point relevant to us.
Immediately afterward, Yoav Rabinovich brings a series of fervent quotes from Shas MKs explaining that observing the Sabbatical year actually benefits the economy. How so? Because we have a promise and a blessing of double and triple yield for those who observe Shemitah. And, of course, there are innumerable stories (who has not heard of miraculous rescues from locusts and the like) that prove this clearly and absolutely. True, some halachic authorities have already written that nowadays Shemitah is rabbinic, and such a divine promise does not apply; but the honorable MKs apparently have not heard of this—and besides, the facts prove them right. Fortunate are we who have merited.
But then Rabinovich rightly points out that these statements do not quite fit the earlier explanations for the bill. If we are truly promised by the Almighty Himself triple yield to those who let their fields lie fallow, turning them into wealthy men, why does such a farmer need a publicly funded training fund to help with his difficulties? He is not in distress—on the contrary, thanks to Shemitah his situation will only improve. Perhaps their intent is only a loan until the enormous yield arrives (which, as we know, is already supposed to sprout in the sixth year)?
It seems many of us would pass over such statements and the like without batting an eye. We have become so accustomed to these “faith declarations” that, as noted, their aroma of piety obviates any examination of content (recall, “one does not object to a derash”). If the one saying it is a righteous man, then surely he is right, no? He is above logic and reason, and one can demand human effort while simultaneously preaching trust in God—and many more wondrous contradictions along the way.
On the margins, I wonder what this collection of liars (and robbers) actually believes. In my estimation none of them truly believes this promise, and none would stake a single coin of his own on the divine promise in whose name he swears. Well, he prefers to stake our coins on it. Perhaps that itself is the fulfillment of the divine promise, like the well-known story of Moshke and the squire. Likewise, I think those who quote the Ramban with such enthusiasm about all our occurrences being miraculous do not believe it and would not bet a worn-out coin on it. But piety requires declaring these holy declarations and not examining them.
Not for nothing are scientific experiments on the effectiveness of prayer conducted only by Christians. They actually believe their beliefs; we merely declare “faith declarations” without truly believing them. On the contrary, anyone who would actually act upon them would be labeled even by the religious as “messianic” and “delusional.” But the declarations we must maintain.
Oops, how did I forget that it is forbidden to test God—except with tithes (“Test Me now in this,” see Ta’anit 9a)?! If so, fear not—theories like these are unfalsifiable. Oh, there’s more: God is above logic—did you forget?! By the way, has anyone here ever checked the matter of tithing? That one we are indeed permitted to test! I assume not. And what do you think about long life for those who honor parents and send away the mother bird? It would be interesting to see what would come out of (forbidden) tests of these as well—and even more interesting why none of the fervent faith-declarers conducts them in an orderly, systematic, statistically significant way (aside from grandma tales about miracles and wonders for those who tithe and honor parents). Why don’t the Shas MKs conduct a proper survey of the state of the Shemitah observers (before receiving the unnecessary money from the training fund)? That way they could bring facts and persuade us (of what? To make or not make the fund?).
If you ask me, even regarding promises that have a source—such as “Test Me now in this” (at least a source in Hazal) or long life for those who honor parents and send away the mother bird, and the wealth in store for those who let their fields lie fallow in the seventh year—no one here truly believes. It’s good for agenda-driven radio interviews, but not a single one of our coins would we invest in it…
So why is it written? And what do the verses mean? There are several possibilities, and the question is an excellent one. But a question is no substitute for factual examination, and if someone does not believe this, then he does not believe it—even if it is written, even if he is wrong, and even if he declares it with boundless enthusiasm.
Discussion
The conceptual argument is correct according to what we know *today* about nature (and even that is only according to those who hold that quantum phenomena have some effect on the macro level).
Your empirical argument is reasoned like any average secular person who asks me on the street, "So where do you see your God?" – beyond "I don’t see it," I didn’t see any innovative argument from you that God does not intervene.
I’ll ask a question –
suppose I win the lottery a million times in a row (without cheating), which is far beyond a statistical miracle, but on the other hand is something that can be entirely explained within the framework of the laws of nature.
Would that be a miracle, that is, divine involvement, or not?
There are many contradictions in his writings on this issue, and so too in the Rambam.
Before getting into this fascinating discussion, it’s worth clarifying: I did not claim in this post that there is no divine involvement. There are posts devoted to that, and your question is discussed there ad nauseam. Here I claimed only that if there is involvement, it necessarily goes beyond the natural course.
Because of lack of time, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to look up and read those posts.
So I’d be happy if you could summarize – how can one show that God does not intervene in the statistics of things that happen within the framework of the laws of nature?
So the lottery example is not a good one, because such things don’t actually happen. But on the other hand, there is a great deal of testimony from people about natural events that cannot be explained merely as a "statistical miracle." That is, although it is often hard to define a sample and distribution for the reported events, it sounds astonishing (assuming these people are not making up their stories).
By the way, one of these things might perhaps be the events of 10/7, or as one military commentator put it, "It’s as though all the stars aligned exactly in Hamas’s favor and exactly against Israel." For example, Hamas breached the country at dozens of different points, and at all of them (so I read) they had the upper hand (at least at the beginning of the war). Also the people in the General Staff who conducted two conversations that night and still saw no need even to raise the most basic level of alert at the outposts.
Or the fact that Hamas held a major exercise just three or four days before 10/7, and still they saw no need to reinforce forces in the sector; the Air Force failed, the Navy failed. . . .
So on 10/7 no supernatural things were observed (nor are there arguments like that), but the coincidences are simply astonishing.
With all due respect to your lack of time, because of my own lack of time I’ll refer you again to those posts.
The Ramban himself, in his introduction to Job and in his sermon Torat Hashem Temimah, addresses some of these earlier points.
In his introduction to Job he writes: "…for if we say of nature, which sustains everything, that no man or beast dies on account of merit or guilt, then once we believe that God cut this one off before his day arrived by means of nature, behold the hand of the Lord performed a miracle and altered nature in the splitting of the sea before His congregation and in drowning our enemies within it; the only difference between this and that is from the hidden to the manifest. And if we stubbornly say that one who eats terumah will not die, as you said, by a change in nature, but rather God will bring about for him foods that produce illness, or in war he will go down and perish in the usual way, then the configuration of his star is changed by his sin for the worse, or by his merit for the better, and nature does not govern. And if God changes his mind through his sin so that he will eat harmful foods that he would not have eaten had he not sinned, it is easier than this for the nature of good food to be changed into something harmful for him. And it is written: ‘Either the Lord shall strike him, or his day shall come and he die, or he shall go down into battle and perish’ [I Samuel 26:10]; and the plague is a change of nature to strike him, while war is his death by the decree of the Most High. And the matter of ‘And I will give your rains in their season’…"
The Ramban himself explains that there cannot be gaps in nature, and therefore if one wishes to say that there is reward and punishment, one must say that there is a miracle (a hidden miracle). And precisely on this point he attacks the Rambam in Torat Hashem Temimah.
In my opinion, the difficulty you raise is simply because he exaggerated his language. Against those who do not believe in providence and deny miracles, he says that a person has no share… that all our words and all that happens to us are miracles, but he does not mean *all*; rather, *many* things that happen to us are miracles, because otherwise there would be no reward and punishment. And *everything* that happens around you involves the hand of God. (I feel I may not have phrased this well enough.)
That is the conclusion I reached after prolonged study of the Ramban at the end of Parashat Bo, the introduction to Job, Torat Hashem Temimah, and other places in his writings. I’d be glad to hear your opinion.
Maybe. I haven’t checked all the sources, and I wrote that there are apparent contradictions in his words.
The intellect of man. It should read: all the occurrences of man.
And perhaps that is what the Rambam means. It should read: the Ramban.
Thanks. Corrected.
The rabbi asked why farmers who stop working once every 7 years because maybe it’s the sabbatical year need money 💸 from the state.
After all, there is a promise from God that they’ll have 💸, isn’t there?
It’s a good question about the money that all kinds of Shevi’it organizations collect from the public, promising "I will command My blessing" to the donors.
Why doesn’t "I will command My blessing" go straight to the farmers so they won’t need to collect?
Someone told me that it’s a promise to the farmers,
but not to the activists who organize them, who organize the Shevi’it funds for the thieves, and those the public has to finance; and the activists have no promise of "I will command My blessing."
What does the rabbi think about this?
What really is the explanation for promises written explicitly in the Torah, such as sabbatical year, tithing, and sending away the mother bird / honoring parents? Things that once happened and today no longer do?
To remove any doubt – I agree with the rabbi that even if we do not yet find an answer, that still does not prevent him from drawing conclusions from reality itself, and certainly we should not deceive ourselves because of that.
But in any case – what does the rabbi think the explanation is?
And still, this smells like a certain distance from the Torah of Moses son of Nahman. In my opinion, correct it to ‘our teacher Moses son of Nahman.’
If I won the lottery jackpot twice – the second time thanks to the Rebbe’s blessing –
did that change the distribution?
Since the distribution represents an infinite number of events – there is room there for any result whatsoever –
without the distribution changing.
And the simpleton asks: after all, we learned from the philosopher Kant that the human mind cannot grasp lack of causality –
and yet quantum theory posits pure randomness – something that happens with no cause at all – but
within a distribution. So if "gravity" compels every object to fall to the ground – what compels the electron
to obey the distribution?
Regarding prayer for a miracle and for the sex of the fetus, I think it may perhaps be explained differently.
If we assume there are 2 criteria for which one may not pray: (a) something visible to the eye (based on the Gemara in Ta’anit 8), and therefore it would be permitted to pray as long as I do not know the sex of the fetus (even up to 9 months).
(b) an event that has already occurred. True, our nature is deterministic, but the timeline plays an important role in it. Even if there is an event whose outcome has already been determined (for example, when I throw an apple, at the moment of the throw it is already determined at what speed it will hit the ground), the outcome still has not yet happened. The prohibition against praying about the sex of the fetus actually reveals to us that there is an additional criterion to "hidden from the eye," namely "an event that has not yet occurred." It appears from Hazal that after forty days "the fetus is formed," and its sex is formed as well. Even though 40 days prior to the formation of the fetus (perhaps at the joining of sperm and egg?) its sex and other things were already determined (based on the Gemara in Sotah 2).
In summary – prayer is permitted and is not defined as vain only if it concerns an event that has not yet happened (even though it has been determined) and is hidden from the eye. Therefore, if we were to perform a DNA test on a 10-day-old fetus and know its sex – prayer to change its sex would be in vain.
This explanation keeps Hazal’s laws regarding vain prayer relevant even within a deterministic conception of nature.
As for reconciling the Ramban’s words (although it seems that I too have no share in the Torah of Moses son of Nahman, and I also see no need to reconcile every philosophical position of one medieval Torah scholar or another):
One could say that the Ramban held that there are gaps in nature, and that the Holy One, blessed be He, channels nature according to each person’s righteousness into the appropriate statistics. The reason to engage in medicine is a kind of "hishtadlut" (practical effort). A sort of religious ritual with no causal connection to healing the person. By the same token, instead of giving a sick person antibiotics, one could offer a bird burnt-offering on his behalf. But this is part of serving God in order to be healed, in addition to charity and repentance, etc.
I assume that you would dismiss the idea the moment you read the concept of "hishtadlut," which in most discourse about providence and God’s knowledge is entirely meaningless. But here I think it has some sense.
I don’t think this is a reasonable explanation, but if we are already talking about the Ramban’s view, it is preferable to set him up with an explanation that can be coherent. Well, the principle of charity and all that…
Why do you need activists? Doesn’t the Holy One, blessed be He, know how to give His blessing without their kind assistance?
The fund is intended for the farmers, not for the activists.
When one says Torah of Moses, one does not add Torah of our teacher Moses. It’s a play on words.
I don’t know. Perhaps length of days means in the world that is entirely long, as Hazal sometimes expound. Perhaps once it was different. Perhaps there is another interpretation. Regarding the sabbatical year, they have already said that nowadays, since the sabbatical year is rabbinic, there is no blessing. Tithing is a statement of Hazal and not of the Torah, and it could simply be a mistake.
Yes. I explained this in the post. It has nothing to do with the number of events.
Many have asked the question about Kant, both from relativity and from quantum theory. The distribution is a result of the quantum structure of the universe. I have written several times that this is a different kind of causality (not direct).
I see no difference. So the cause of its sex has already been created and then canceled. After all, you can pray for a change of sex even after it has formed, like a surgeon. Nor is it clear why there should be a prohibition against praying for a miracle only once it has already formed.
One can always explain that there is an obligation to perform some meaningless ritual and that’s it. One could also say that we eat in order to make an effort and not in order to survive. What am I supposed to do with such an explanation? We are obligated to perform voodoo rituals.
Not that I think my opinion interests you, but I’d be glad if you would respond to me.
I actually do believe and think that the Ramban is right, if I understand him correctly.
First, a glossary:
“A revealed miracle” – a case that contradicts the laws of nature, so that one sees that God acted in the world.
“A hidden miracle” – a case that happens in a way consistent with the laws of nature, but it happened through divine intervention.
I understand the Ramban to mean that the events that happen to us are directed by the Holy One, blessed be He, and have a spiritual cause.
It is true that a natural chain of events caused them to happen, but there was divine intervention so that they would happen.
The Holy One, blessed be He, certainly can intervene in nature all the time and perform hidden miracles, but in such a way that it will not be evident to human beings that there is a breaking of the laws of nature.
The easiest place to realize this is in the statistical world: as long as there is some chance that something else may happen, then it is possible that although according to physics it was not supposed to happen, the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes and causes it to happen, but this is not evident to us and therefore it is hidden.
This can also be expressed in coincidences for which the Holy One, blessed be He, is responsible; the creation of desires in different people (not determining what they will decide), such as Hamas members or the Babylonians; rare timing of a chain of events so that a person manages to escape a sinking ship, and so on and so forth.
I think this for several reasons:
1. The Tanakh is packed full of the message that although it seems that nature simply happened that way, it is divine intent (Joseph and his brothers, the destruction of the Temple, the Book of Esther, and more).
2. All people have the intuition that not everything is understood, and that there is a great deal of “luck”; for me that is where God is found, in statistics and in luck.
3. Logic: the very understanding that the Holy One, blessed be He, can break nature means I have no obstacle to saying that He does not break it all the time.
P.S.
As I understand it, “a vain prayer” is prayer about a situation that would require a breaking of the laws of nature in a way visible to us.
Why is there no difference? Surely in both cases there is divine intervention in nature; it has to be so, you proved that in your post. The difference is the timeline. It is permitted to pray for an event that has not yet happened, and not for one that has already occurred, even though both were determined מראש.
Why should that be forbidden? I have a few hypotheses of my own, but it doesn’t matter that much. Is it clear to you why one may not pray about something visible to the eye? Again, I have hypotheses about that too, and that also seems puzzling, but here it seems you do not dispute that this is the halakhic rule…
Why do you think your opinion doesn’t interest me? Arguments interest me, and I really don’t care who raises them.
But you write as if you did not read the post. A hidden miracle fits the laws of nature? How does that happen? Why is it still considered a miracle?
Intervention in people’s choices has come up here many times as a possibility, but such intervention too is not within nature. In nature we have free choice. I see no advantage in assuming such intervention over intervention that violates the laws of nature. Just as we see that there are laws of nature, we see that people have choice. And certainly I am not willing to accept such intervention in all our affairs (whereas sporadic intervention I am willing to accept even in nature).
I see no logic in such a prohibition, no more than a prohibition on praying about something that starts with the letter L onward. Artificial ad hoc explanations are abundant. Moreover, I also do not think that this distinction between what has already been realized and what has not been realized is correct. The fetus has not yet been born, and therefore one can perform a miracle (or an operation for sex reassignment) so that a male is born even though in the womb it is already female. Has that already happened or not happened? How is this different from praying about a fetus less than forty days old that already has traits that will develop into a female, and turning it into a male?
The prohibition against praying for a miracle makes sense. If the Holy One, blessed be He, wants the world to be run by laws, we should not pray to Him to change His policy. That is not what He wants. The prohibition against praying for a revealed miracle, even that I understand somewhat. It is too blatant an intervention (and perhaps detracts from my merits in the World to Come). But why is it forbidden to pray about something that has already happened? From where did the sages derive this strange principle? And all this even assuming one can define something as having already happened, which I do not agree with.
A side note: regarding the sabbatical year, already in Hazal (Sanhedrin 12) they did not intercalate the year during the sabbatical year so as not to create a problem for the economy. I don’t think there is any contradiction here. As you once wrote in another context, these promises are one element that is weighed together with others, not something exclusive, and in any case one does not rely on a miracle.
What is a different kind of causality? My head, probably like Kant’s,
understands only a cause that preceded the event.
And how would you discover in reality that the distribution has changed?
If quantum theory determines that there is a probability P for a certain event
within a certain time, then P is determined on the basis of many repetitions of an experiment; a small change here and there
would not change the determination.
The boor’s question – I didn’t succeed in understanding from the article why the distribution changed.
No problem. That also happens with every scientific law, as I wrote in the article about ukimtot. But still, the question whether this law as such is correct is one thing, and the question I asked is whether people believe in it. I also asked why it is not examined statistically (while neutralizing the other influences, as with every scientific law). And as for our matter, those Shas people explained that it would be good for the economy. If they do not rely on the miracle, then let them not declare that we will profit from it, and I would also expect them not to leave their fields fallow (there is the court storehouse arrangement and the sale permit).
And by the way, in the sabbatical year one *does* rely on the miracle. There is a promise in the Torah. The fact is that we are required to leave fields fallow.
The causality here is not one event causing another event, but the structure of the world that dictates a mode of behavior. That is a causal relation of a different kind. The random quantum event has no physical cause in the accepted sense, since it is random. But it has an indirect cause, namely that our world has a quantum nature and therefore such events can occur in it.
I won’t discover it. Why do you think I am supposed to discover it? It’s a hidden miracle.
I didn’t understand the boor’s question, because of my great boorishness.
Since in Parashat Vayera and in the Book of Job the Ramban writes things that are completely opposite, it follows necessarily that his intention is different from what appears on the surface, and in my humble opinion the problem lies in terminological confusion concerning the terms "nature" and "miracle," because these terms have two meanings:
"Nature" –
1. A blind (non-intelligent) force that runs the world.
2. An intelligent force that runs the world in a pattern perceived as fixed.
"Miracle" –
1. The conduct of the world under the direction of an intelligent force toward a specific purpose, in accordance with human behavior.
2. Conduct perceived as deviating from the fixed pattern.
When the Ramban in Parashat Bo speaks of "nature," he means nature 1, whereas in Vayera and in Job he means nature 2. A "hidden miracle" is miracle 1, whereas a "revealed miracle" is miracle 2.
That is: in Parashat Bo he says that the Torah rejects the conduct of the world according to nature (1), a blind force; rather the truth is that it is conducted according to an intelligent force in a fixed pattern (nature 2), and directed to specific purposes according to human behavior (miracle 1). Therefore, there is no essential difference between "miracle 1" and "miracle 2," since both are based on the management of the world by the intelligent force, and the only difference is frequency: miracle 1 happens all the time, whereas miracle 2 happens only rarely.
In Parashat Va’era he explains that "nature 2" and "miracle 1" do not contradict each other, because God often arranges the result in such a way that it is not perceived as deviating from the fixed pattern. In Parashat Vayera and in Job he notes that the difference between the conduct of "nature 2" and "miracle 1" depends on the spiritual level of the individual and of the nation in general (it should be added: also on different periods in history).
To the best of my knowledge, the reality apparent to our eyes and the science known to us contradict none of the above assumptions. What is true, however, is that the more knowledge we have of the fixed pattern according to which the world is conducted, the more the possibilities for "miracle 1" shrink, since it becomes more common for us to perceive a deviation from the pattern. So your words are correct that today there are far fewer miracles of this kind, but it seems to me that there is still plenty of room left for them (more than you claim), since we are still far from perfect knowledge.
P.S. His language in Parashat Vayera: "The knowledge of the Lord, which is His providence in the lower world, is to preserve the general classes, and human beings too are left to chance occurrences until the time of their visitation comes." And in Job 36:7: "And one who is distant from God in his thoughts and deeds, even if he does not incur death for the sin he sinned, will be cast off and abandoned to chance occurrences… and because most of the world is of this intermediate class, the Torah commanded the warriors to arm themselves… for they are fit to conduct themselves according to the way of nature and chance."
Following post 689, I think you laid out all the tools to solve the issue with the help of quantum theory, especially through the possibility of a superposition state. (And forgive me in advance if I missed or misunderstood something.)
If we think of a case in which a person is ill with a distribution of 10% chance of recovery versus 90% chance of death, as long as there is no certainty regarding the state of the disease’s progression (the measurement), instead of seeing the probability as something future such that at some point there will be a coin toss and his fate will be determined, one can see the situation as a superposition state (an ontic uncertainty regarding the condition of his illness) in which the person lives *both realities at once*; he contains both realities in which he is both terminal and recovered. This remains so until a measurement (gathering physical indicators of the illness, for example) causes one of the realities to collapse.
If you view God’s involvement as that of a player who plays by the laws of nature that He Himself established, but with one significant difference: He is able to measure any given superposition state and cause the additional possibilities to collapse – then He can cause any of the possibilities to be realized in reality without affecting the percentages of the distribution specific to the illness. Therefore, prayer may help cause the collapse of one of the possibilities by asking God to measure (and thereby decide) what the true reality is among the various realities in superposition.
And regarding the effect on statistics – you yourself wrote several times that if in a number of tosses one side of the coin came up, there is no indication here regarding the rest of the coins in the world. By analogy – according to the Ramban, providence applies only to Israel, and the proportion of Israel to the nations of the world is statistically negligible, so even if there is divine involvement with the people of Israel, there would not necessarily be any noticeable statistical effect that could be measured.)
And if I return to the Ramban in light of this, one could try to interpret him according to your second explanation: that God created the laws of nature and through them He Himself acts. But the laws of the world include the possibility of superposition – that is, they can behave in more than one way – and until there is an exact measurement, the one who can play with the switches and decide in which state each law behaves is God, in accordance with the observance of the commandments by the people of Israel.
(One could let the imagination run and say that from the moment humanity began to measure and notice the regularity of nature, we caused the collapse of the world’s ability to perform revealed miracles through a drastic change in the laws of nature, and therefore we have not seen evidence of such things.)
As an aside – I am not a physicist and do not understand the theory deeply, and therefore do not understand why this is far-fetched, but it may be that today we are aware of a considerable number of forces operating in the world and are able to measure them, and therefore the forces behave in a <1,0] way, as opposed to particle behavior where we still do not understand what causes, for example, electrons to be in a dual state in the first place – and therefore they can still remain in a permanent state of superposition.
I explained why quantum theory is of no help here. I didn’t understand what you are proposing beyond that. It seems to me that you do not understand my arguments about statistics (the distribution) and quantum theory.
And
Perhaps the Ramban means that everything a person does is not according to the laws of nature, because they cannot determine what he will do? That is, by “all our occurrences” he means what the person does, not what happens to him.
That is not his intent. He says that everything is determined according to commandments and sins. So he is talking about what happens to him.
Is there any place for the blessing "Blessed is He who performed a miracle for me," and the like, if there is no divine involvement? Or is it simply thanking God that the person was saved even though statistically he was not supposed to be saved and he is among the one percent who are?
When I dealt with divine involvement in the world, I also explained the implications regarding requests, thanks, and praise.
However, "Blessed is He who performed a miracle for me" raises a problem also because of the wording (since it was apparently statistical and not a miracle). There I really would bless only over a clear miracle (the splitting of the sea).
To say that people are not willing to put down 10 agorot on "Test Me now in this" is rather ironic. In practice, people set aside a tenth of their money because they truly and sincerely rely on that promise…
Allow me to respond to these points:
My basic assumption:
The laws of physics, as we know them, are nothing more than an expression of our limited knowledge. We define the "laws of nature" on the basis of what we succeed in measuring and describing, but we have no certainty whatsoever that this is the full description of reality. The universe is rich and complex far beyond what we are capable of investigating, and there is no reason to think that everything inaccessible to us does not exist or does not operate.
Some will say that if the Holy One, blessed be He, were operating within the laws of nature, we would identify His intervention. Since we do not see conspicuous violations of the laws of physics, the conclusion is that He does not intervene. For if He did intervene, it would be evident in measurable results.
But this claim assumes that the Holy One, blessed be He, in His infinite power, is not capable of acting in a way that will not be revealed to the human eye. Why think that the Creator, who created the laws of physics, does not know how to use them better than we do? After all, we ourselves know how to perform subtle manipulations within a complex system without breaking its rules – all the more so the Creator, who knows every level of the system, from the greatest to the smallest particle.
One may compare this to a casino owner who knows how to control the outcomes of the game without changing the statistical average. This is not an ordinary casino, but an owner who can control every one of the parameters. He is capable of causing a certain player to win without this changing the general distribution of the game. So too the Creator: He can choose, from among the possibilities that already exist within the framework of the laws of nature, the outcome that will bring about His purpose – without violating the measured probability.
Whoever claims that the laws of physics are unchangeable is in effect saying that human knowledge – limited and partial as it is – is what dictates reality, and not the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. This is a problematic approach, because it places human understanding above the Creator’s sovereignty. Is it conceivable to say that the world "behaves" according to what human beings have defined as laws, and that the Creator is prevented from intervening because this is how we see reality? That is an absurd claim.
It can be argued that the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself determined that nature should proceed according to certain laws, and He does not change them – because if He changed them, it would be revealed.
But this is an artificial assumption: who said the Creator limited Himself completely? How can one determine this? In fact, there is no reason at all to assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene – unless someone already wants to believe that. Whoever believes that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not act in the world simply holds a different belief – a belief that denies the power of the Holy One, blessed be He. But why prefer such an interpretation? Why believe in the Creator’s self-limitation when one can believe in His ability to act within the laws of nature? If there are two possible interpretations – one in which the Holy One, blessed be He, acts and one in which He is supposedly "limited" – why prefer the one that diminishes the Creator’s power?
Is it not more reasonable to assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, who created the laws of physics, knows how to act within them without our noticing it? The fact is that we too, with our human creativity, succeed in acting within natural frameworks and steering them as we wish. All the more so the Creator can do so to a far greater degree.
The Creator can intervene in the world in a subtle way, within the laws of physics themselves, without this being considered an overt violation of the laws. Divine intervention is not a revealed "miracle" that shatters what is familiar to us, but an action within the existing system.
One may argue: if so, why do we not see this intervention? If the Holy One, blessed be He, acts, we should be able to identify it in our measurements.
The answer is simple: who said we are capable of identifying it? After all, it is obvious that there are processes in nature that we do not fully understand. Take genetic mutations, for example. Any change in DNA can cause a certain mutation, but we have no way of knowing why specifically this mutation happened and not another. If the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to stir up a plague, it is enough for Him to change a few letters in the DNA of a certain virus – and from the standpoint of science, it will look as though this were a random process. There is no way to prove that there was not a guiding hand here.
So how can one claim this is impossible? What is the source of the absolute certainty that the Creator does not do this? There is no proof of it at all – only belief. This is an assumption without scientific basis. On the contrary, one should always choose the interpretation that grants power to the Master of the Universe, and not the interpretation that limits Him.
In summary:
1. To assume that the laws of physics are unchangeable is a belief, not science. There is no scientific way to prove that the laws hold in exactly the same way in every place and at every time, and who determined that this regularity is complete? It may be that there are higher laws that we simply do not know and perhaps will never know in our limitedness.
2. The belief that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene in the world assumes that human understanding dictates reality, instead of recognizing that the Creator acts as He wishes.
3. Divine intervention can occur on levels that cannot be identified by direct measurement. Just as a clever casino owner can skew outcomes without changing the average winnings, and just as mutations occur in a way in which it is impossible to determine with certainty what drove them.
Therefore, whoever claims that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene because "otherwise we would see it" is in effect imposing on the Creator limitations that He Himself did not set. That is a belief like any other, and it is problematic – because if one is already choosing a belief, it is better to choose the one that recognizes the greatness of the Creator and not the one that diminishes His power.
Absolutely not. They tithe because in their opinion there is a mitzvah or some value in it. Those promises are not the motivation, and none of them would put even a shekel on that promise. How many of them would bet a significant amount on what the results of a study would be that checked whether one really becomes wealthy from tithing or not? In my estimation, none.
My impression is that this definitely is the motivation. Many are lax about much more important commandments but are careful about tithing. A study is not really possible, since every person is in a completely different life situation from his fellow. It will always be possible to argue that if that person had not tithed, he would have lost more, and if that other person had tithed, he would have earned more…
This is the kind of evasion common among believers. That’s what statistics and large numbers and regression techniques are for. This very evasion itself teaches us about the believer’s attitude toward those declarations.
There is a fairly new field called quantum biology; one can read about it on Wikipedia. According to this school, quantum effects have a quite significant impact דווקא in biology, because sometimes the activity of a gene/virus/protein/cell is affected also by the state of a single atom, and there are situations where such a quantum effect affects the whole body.
Perhaps in the probability of recovery there are not only initial conditions but also quantum effects in which God can intervene without violating the laws of nature.
I know about this matter, and I think I remarked on it. But I explained that quantum theory, even if it is relevant, does not help involvement within nature.
I’d be glad if you would refer me to an article on quantum biology. According to what you explained in the article (and also in the past), quantum theory is not relevant to what happens in the "macro world" of many atoms at high temperatures, but it turns out that it *is* relevant to biological processes.
As for the fact that statistically the quantum distribution will be uniform – that does not affect the health state of a single individual when in any case there is a 10% probability that he will recover.
What I mean is that even given all the initial conditions, it is impossible to predict in advance whether a specific person will recover because of quantum effects, so what is the "problem" with introducing God into quantum randomness?
You determine the distribution on the basis of experience – if you received
the bell shape, you will determine that it is a normal distribution and also
its mean and variance. But that mean and that variance
will not change even if you change infinitely many values. If you are not capable of discovering
that the distribution changed, you cannot claim that it changed.
I don’t have an article on quantum biology. I also explained in the post here why quantum effects do not change the picture.
Can one not say that the two work together, namely that the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes in the world and determines things according to considerations of reward and punishment and other considerations, and one of His significant and important considerations is not to deviate from clear laws of nature (except in rare cases like the splitting of the sea), but yes to deviate from laws of nature that are not clear; but even there the intervention is (usually) in hiding, so that it does not contradict the statistics?
And therefore the Ramban was a physician, and it is important to make practical effort in every area, because otherwise the Holy One, blessed be He, probably will not help him, since one of the Holy One’s important considerations is that He does not depart from the laws He established when doing so would require intervention and changing clear laws of nature, and likewise does not depart from statistics. Therefore prayer can help, at least to depart from laws of nature that are not clear, because there is a large margin even within the statistics (if a few more people live, that will not break the statistics)?
One can say anything. I do not know what clear and unclear laws of nature are.
By clear I mean laws of nature obvious to everyone, such as that the sea does not split in two; by unclear I mean laws of nature that are not clear to us, such as whether a certain sick person will die.
Why is this not a reasonable explanation in the Ramban (and in general for understanding the concepts of providence and prayer)?
Forget the “clear” part. You are simply talking about a hidden miracle. In the post I already showed why that is not possible.
Hello Rabbi,
Have you ever accompanied a dangerously wounded or gravely ill person on the brink of death through prolonged treatment/hospitalization?
Those who deal with such a situation come to realize that the number of open junctions or “gaps” in the healing process is infinite, at every step and every moment. From the powers of body and soul of the patient himself, to the exhausted nurse at night who did or did not change gloves when moving between the last two beds on her shift. From the powers of perception and diagnosis, the diligence or laziness, the greatness or smallness of spirit of the attending professor, to the precision of the medical measuring instruments that led to one decision or another.
If you stand, for example, before a young, strong man, a soldier with a head injury from the war, you will come to see that from the standpoint of medicine and science, the human brain is still a huge, dark, unknown expanse. No one really has any idea how an injured brain will function, and where things will go.
After an extended experience of accompanying someone like this, the very question of whether the Ramban is right or not at least succeeded in making me laugh a healthy laugh. Who can really know? What do we know or not know about the laws of nature and the possible gaps?
(Is the human soul, character, resilience – which are fixed within his brain cells – part of the laws of nature or not? Yet their effect on the healing process can be critical even according to science and medicine, and yet they can change at any given moment.)
What is hidden vastly exceeds what is revealed, and although science can sketch laws of reality according to the knowledge in its possession, we can never know whether there are gaps or tiny fragments of tiny gaps, where and to what extent.
To sum up my overlong words: I obviously cannot refute your view with proofs, but the example of the patient, and of prayers for him, feels to me like the least relevant example to use here.
Hello Rabbi.
I’ve been reading your articles for quite a while, and usually enjoy them very much; many thanks.
To be honest, this time it felt to me a bit like a letdown…
To write about the Ramban’s approach on this topic without addressing other sources of his from his many books felt a bit like shooting an arrow and then drawing the target around it afterward…
Best regards.
Perhaps one could explain that the Ramban’s intention is the opposite: prayers and individual providence are part of nature in the sense that one who prays improves his condition statistically. That is, in his view it is like a law of nature: the closer one is to God, the more God watches over him.
Another point. I have read studies on prayer that included Jews as well, and not only Christians or Buddhists. Here is one, for example:
https://www.ima.org.il/MedicineSite/Article.aspx?NewspaperArticleId=1708
If another source in the Ramban’s many books seems significant to you for the matter itself, perhaps you should bring it.
If you thought this was a study of the Ramban’s method, you were mistaken. I address his words here on their own terms, since they are quoted quite a bit. There are major contradictions in his words on this issue, and I already wrote that. The Ramban’s own position does not especially interest me, since I do not engage in theology, and certainly not in the study of the thought of the Rishonim.
A question for the rabbi: following the article, the rabbi showed regarding gaps in nature and hidden miracles that they are in fact in the category of miracle and intervention,
and the rabbi also brought an example from the quantum domain, where there is a dimension of randomness.
But what about human thoughts, or more precisely the dimension of randomness and free choice there?
It seems that in this area one can find a parallel to the idea of a gap in nature with the reception of a new idea?
Whether I thought of 4 ideas or one additional new idea, etc.
And then bring divine involvement into the ideas without changing the laws of nature, and thus create a gap here?
This question has already come up here many times in the past. Briefly, I do not see what you gain from it. So instead of intervention in the laws of nature, you get intervention in human choice (which is also part of nature). The Holy One, blessed be He, can do both this and that, but apparently He does not want to, certainly not on a regular basis.
Hi, the difference is that in nature there is no gap, while in human ideas there is free choice, and the very planting of an idea, without forcing the person to choose it, but only the idea, can have an effect.
In your opinion is there really no difference?
Because in fact the great novelty is that there is no gap in nature, whereas here in this realm of thoughts, etc., it seems that there is?
There isn’t, and I explained why. In addition, planting an idea that otherwise would not have arisen is intervention in nature and not only in choice.
1. The bitter waters – their physical effect, for sickness and death or for health and fertility, depends on the woman’s actions.
The Holy One, blessed be He, created for us an openly miraculous gap in the laws of nature and instructed us to use it in the judicial system. Why assume that beyond that He does not intervene?
2. Following the bitter waters at Marah, an instruction for the generations from Moses (son of Amram): "If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in His eyes, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, all the disease which I put upon Egypt I will not put upon you, for I am the Lord your healer" (this week’s parashah, Beshalach). So why say that He does not?
–
In the opening lines I wrote that this is not the subject of the post, and that I elaborated on it extensively in the past. Search for divine involvement in the world.
Thank you for the wonderful article.
Two comments:
1. In my humble opinion, the dispute between the Ramban and the Rambam (although the rabbi already noted that there are contradictions in their words) is semantic. According to the Rambam, everything is built into nature; the miracle is only the timing (and here too one could discuss whether it is deterministic; it seems the Rambam writes this in Avot regarding things created on Friday at twilight). According to the Ramban, there is no such concept as determinism and fixed nature at all, because nothing is predetermined. Rather, God governs the world in a systematic way, and therefore any deviation from that is a revealed miracle, and we need not fear deviations in daily life (therefore the sun will rise in the morning and a painkiller will help a headache).
2. Regarding the understanding that divine intervention contradicts nature and determinism, perhaps one might make it intelligible by saying that what is not known is not necessarily considered to have happened. Like the philosophical question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound? Or can something we do not identify at all exist? That is, although the world is deterministic, we cannot know what will happen because we lack knowledge, and that knowledge is considered non-existent.
And a question for the rabbi, if possible: is it worthwhile to pray for the healing of the sick, and in general?
1. I raised that possibility regarding the Ramban and rejected it (if everything is conducted systematically, then the result does not depend on commandments and sins).
2. I am not dealing with what is considered or not considered. The question is what happens, not what is considered.
One may when there is no natural solution, but I would not count on it.
Regarding the Ramban’s words – the Ramban himself notes "as I have already mentioned," and his intent is to what is explicit in Genesis 35:1 and Exodus 6:2 concerning the meaning of the name Shaddai. In both those places his words are much more moderate and understandable. Since he himself refers to those places, apparently one should interpret his words here in light of what he wrote there, even though this somewhat presses the language here.
And this is his wording:
[1] "And the reason for mentioning this name now is that by it the hidden miracles are performed for the righteous, to save their souls from death, to keep them alive in famine, and to redeem them in war from the sword, like all the miracles done for Abraham and the patriarchs and like all those that appear in the Torah in the portion of ‘If you walk in My statutes’ and in the portion of ‘And it shall come to pass if you shall hearken’ in the blessings and curses – all of them are miracles, for it is not in the nature of things that the rains should come in their season when we worship God, nor that the heavens should be as iron when we sow in the seventh year; and so with all the promises in the Torah. But they are all miracles, and in all of them the constellational system is overcome, except that there is no change in the ordinary course of the world as there is in the miracles performed by Moses our teacher in the ten plagues, the splitting of the sea, the manna, the well, and the like, which are signs that publicly alter nature, and these are done by the Ineffable Name which He made known to him."
(Genesis 35:1)
[2] "And the meaning of the verse is that He appeared to the patriarchs by this name, which overcomes the systems of heaven and performs with them great miracles in which the ordinary course of the world was not annulled: in famine He redeemed them from death, and in war from the sword, and gave them wealth, honor, and every good thing. And they are like all the promises in the Torah in the blessings and the curses, for no good comes to a person as reward for a commandment, nor evil as punishment for a transgression, except by way of miracle. And if a person is left to his nature or to his star, his deeds will neither add anything to him nor subtract anything from him. But all the reward of the Torah and its punishment in this world are all miracles, and they are hidden; to those who see them they are considered the ordinary way of the world, but in truth they are punishment and reward for a person. Therefore the Torah goes into detail about promises in this world, and does not explain the promises of the soul in the world of souls, for these are signs contrary to nature, whereas the continued existence of the soul and its cleaving to God is something fitting to its own nature, that it return to the God who gave it." (Exodus 6:2)
1. True, but that still leaves room for changes and also explains why the Ramban as a physician did not prefer prayer.
2. The question is whether this is a matter of what is considered, or of what exists.
Thank you very much.
A – With your permission, if you would kindly answer Amaria Halevi Weil’s question above from 4/2; I don’t know why you didn’t address it, it sounds reasonable,
especially since we see how precious free choice is to Him, to the point that because of it He created the world only,
and because of it He is limited in knowing the future,
so again I’d be happy if you would address his words above.
B – In one of the places on the site you answered someone who asked about the Creator’s cruelty in the Holocaust, that He did not prevent it, and you answered him, roughly speaking, that the Creator has long since stopped being involved in His world.
If so, I wanted to understand what you mean by saying He is not involved.
Do you mean that He does not know what is happening? Because if He does know, then what kind of answer is that to the man about the Holocaust? That is exactly what he asked – why does He not intervene if He knows.
Or do you mean that He also does not know? Then that is more than what we discussed about choice and knowledge, namely that He knows only not the future; so does He also not know what is happening? It does not seem likely that this is your intention; and even if so, how would He give reward and punishment? Only when a person dies would He suddenly know everything?
Thank you.
I have explained this dozens of times already. Search “the problem of evil.”
A – Again, I’d be happy if you would answer A.
B – What you wrote about the problem of evil I’ve read several times and understood: that if one wants a system of laws that will provide everything the current system provides but without the bad results, one must prove that such a system exists.
But that is not my question; my question is not about the problem of evil. The reason I asked about the Holocaust is because there you did not answer him as above, but rather answered that it is because He long ago stopped intervening.
So let’s leave aside the Holocaust and the problem of evil (perhaps by mistake you answered him that instead of the usual answer that there is no other system of laws, etc., what I quoted above).
I am asking what you mean by saying He is not involved.
Do you mean that He also does not know? Then that is more than what we discussed about choice and knowledge, that He knows only not the future; so does He also not know what is happening? It does not seem likely that this is your intention; and even if so, how would He give reward and punishment? Only at a person’s death would He suddenly know everything?
He does not know what will be chosen. He does know what happens deterministically. And by the way, even if He did know, that would not interfere with reward and punishment in any way.
A – ? “And I pleaded with…” Let it be important in Your eyes as though I pleaded the numerical value of va’etḥanan plus 1 (as brought in the Midrash, that if he had prayed one more prayer he would have been answered), and do not send me away empty from before You.
B – What does “deterministically” mean?
And I did not say that if He knew it would interfere with reward and punishment;
on the contrary, I am asking: in order to give reward and punishment with precision and exactness,
should He not indeed be involved in the world in everything that happens, at least in knowledge, in order to know about the choice according to what conditions and tests, etc., it was made?
Forgive me,
if you could answer my questions, I’d be glad.
Thank you.
I already answered everything. I have no time to waste on repeating things over and over. He indeed knows everything that is happening, but not what will happen. I have completely exhausted this.
Sorry for butting into this interesting argument,
but I’m interested too,
(and it seems to me this is more what Yodai was interested in from the start)
why indeed you are not answering
Amaria Halevi Weil from 04/02/2025 at 09:10,
and these are his words above:
My basic assumption:
The laws of physics, as we know them, are nothing more than an expression of our limited knowledge. We define the "laws of nature" on the basis of what we succeed in measuring and describing, but we have no certainty whatsoever that this is the full description of reality. The universe is rich and complex far beyond what we are capable of investigating, and there is no reason to think that everything inaccessible to us does not exist or does not operate.
Some will say that if the Holy One, blessed be He, were operating within the laws of nature, we would identify His intervention. Since we do not see conspicuous violations of the laws of physics, the conclusion is that He does not intervene. For if He did intervene, it would be evident in measurable results.
But this claim assumes that the Holy One, blessed be He, in His infinite power, is not capable of acting in a way that will not be revealed to the human eye. Why think that the Creator, who created the laws of physics, does not know how to use them better than we do? After all, we ourselves know how to perform subtle manipulations within a complex system without breaking its rules – all the more so the Creator, who knows every level of the system, from the greatest to the smallest particle.
One may compare this to a casino owner who knows how to control the outcomes of the game without changing the statistical average. This is not an ordinary casino, but an owner who can control every one of the parameters. He is capable of causing a certain player to win without this changing the general distribution of the game. So too the Creator: He can choose, from among the possibilities that already exist within the framework of the laws of nature, the outcome that will bring about His purpose – without violating the measured probability.
Whoever claims that the laws of physics are unchangeable is in effect saying that human knowledge – limited and partial as it is – is what dictates reality, and not the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. This is a problematic approach, because it places human understanding above the Creator’s sovereignty. Is it conceivable to say that the world "behaves" according to what human beings have defined as laws, and that the Creator is prevented from intervening because this is how we see reality? That is an absurd claim.
It can be argued that the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself determined that nature should proceed according to certain laws, and He does not change them – because if He changed them, it would be revealed.
But this is an artificial assumption: who said the Creator limited Himself completely? How can one determine this? In fact, there is no reason at all to assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene – unless someone already wants to believe that. Whoever believes that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not act in the world simply holds a different belief – a belief that denies the power of the Holy One, blessed be He. But why prefer such an interpretation? Why believe in the Creator’s self-limitation when one can believe in His ability to act within the laws of nature? If there are two possible interpretations – one in which the Holy One, blessed be He, acts and one in which He is supposedly "limited" – why prefer the one that diminishes the Creator’s power?
Is it not more reasonable to assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, who created the laws of physics, knows how to act within them without our noticing it? The fact is that we too, with our human creativity, succeed in acting within natural frameworks and steering them as we wish. All the more so the Creator can do so to a far greater degree.
The Creator can intervene in the world in a subtle way, within the laws of physics themselves, without this being considered an overt violation of the laws. Divine intervention is not a revealed "miracle" that shatters what is familiar to us, but an action within the existing system.
One may argue: if so, why do we not see this intervention? If the Holy One, blessed be He, acts, we should be able to identify it in our measurements.
The answer is simple: who said we are capable of identifying it? After all, it is obvious that there are processes in nature that we do not fully understand. Take genetic mutations, for example. Any change in DNA can cause a certain mutation, but we have no way of knowing why specifically this mutation happened and not another. If the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to stir up a plague, it is enough for Him to change a few letters in the DNA of a certain virus – and from the standpoint of science, it will look as though this were a random process. There is no way to prove that there was not a guiding hand here.
So how can one claim this is impossible? What is the source of the absolute certainty that the Creator does not do this? There is no proof of it at all – only belief. This is an assumption without scientific basis. On the contrary, one should always choose the interpretation that grants power to the Master of the Universe, and not the interpretation that limits Him.
In summary:
1. To assume that the laws of physics are unchangeable is a belief, not science. There is no scientific way to prove that the laws hold in exactly the same way in every place and at every time, and who determined that this regularity is complete? It may be that there are higher laws that we simply do not know and perhaps will never know in our limitedness.
2. The belief that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene in the world assumes that human understanding dictates reality, instead of recognizing that the Creator acts as He wishes.
3. Divine intervention can occur on levels that cannot be identified by direct measurement. Just as a clever casino owner can skew outcomes without changing the average winnings, and just as mutations occur in a way in which it is impossible to determine with certainty what drove them.
Therefore, whoever claims that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene because "otherwise we would see it" is in effect imposing on the Creator limitations that He Himself did not set. That is a belief like any other, and it is problematic – because if one is already choosing a belief, it is better to choose the one that recognizes the greatness of the Creator and not the one that diminishes His power.
It is not fair for you to go on an attack campaign against the Ramban without seeing and comparing his words elsewhere, if you write that there is no point at all in trying to reconcile his words because in the past people thought there were gaps in nature and there is no reason the Ramban would not think so, while the Ramban elsewhere explicitly writes that there are no gaps in nature, then certainly there *is* reason to reconcile it (and certainly not to dismiss it with a wave of the hand).
You wrote: “By the way, has anyone here ever checked the matter of tithing? That one is permitted to check! I assume not.” P.S. This refers to the tithe of produce, which as far as you know nobody today separates for the Levite. To apply this to monetary tithing is even worse than the blessing of “and I will command My blessing” in our times when the sabbatical year is rabbinic. (And although in the Rema YD 247:4 this does not follow, see there. See Pitchei Teshuvah in the name of R. Yaakov Emden and the Shelah, and clearly they are right, for even if on logical grounds they understood that it does apply, the moment you check and see that it doesn’t, their opinion is disproved (if you were to see that it doesn’t), and you would not be able to conclude that the whole blessing does not exist.)
And later: “And what do you think about the long life promised to those who honor parents and send away the mother bird? It would be interesting what would come out of those (forbidden) tests.” P.S. Straight Gemara, man! Rabbi Yaakov already beat you to it in Kiddushin 39b.
You provide the document and its refutation within your own words. Clearly nobody means to test it, with or without the excuses. People quote it regarding monetary tithing too, but none of those who quote it will test it. And the excuses that in a rabbinic context the blessing does not exist, or that it exists only if one gives it to a Levite, are part of the same approach of avoiding any possibility of refutation. And regarding Rabbi Yaakov in Kiddushin there, that too is part of the same move. Of course we all rule like him, but only concerning the test and not concerning the quotations and the promises. That too is the very same issue.
And of course everyone also rules like the "there are those who say" in the Rema there in 247:4 (that some say that only with tithing may one test the Holy One, blessed be He, and not with other charity), and that too is the same issue.
In short, please don’t mess with my head.
Where did you see an attack campaign against the Ramban? What I write assumes reading comprehension above third-grade level.
By the way, it is also not true that the Ramban quoted above says there are no gaps in nature. On the contrary, he brings the claim that there is involvement within nature and does not argue against it that it is impossible because there are no gaps. He only argues that it would have been preferable for the Holy One, blessed be He, to alter the nature of the foods rather than arrange for different foods to come to him. That is an example of an apparent contradiction.
Michi, they asked you twice why you are not addressing and responding to Weil’s claims.
As for the substance of the matter, I’ll let you in on a secret: after I read all your posts in the past on this topic, including the comments below of every sort and kind, I happened (subject to the eye of the beholder) to learn once the beginning of the Book of Job with the Malbim’s commentary, and I saw like a thread running through how he interprets Job’s arguments with his friends on precisely this topic (whether God has abandoned the earth, in your words, as Job argues to his friends, or whether He watches over it with active individual providence, as the Ramban says, etc.) in a philosophical way and progression that expands throughout the book, where he clothes your arguments in Job’s arguments to his friends, and then back again in the responses of his friends to Job, and so on. And if I thought that in the long posts and comments we had exhausted the possibilities, I was mistaken, and it became clear to me that you burst through an open door, so that more or less after only a few chapters he is finished dealing with your arguments (which, as noted, are advanced by Job in response to the answers of his companions), but they continue deepening the move, so that with every ping-pong exchange between them it becomes more and more complex, without changing the subject but on this very subject. You are invited to read there from the point at which your claims were answered and onward into regions you have not yet reached (perhaps you will also derive from this the benefit of “authority bias” and in our language, “If the early ones were like human beings, we are like donkeys,” which brings humility: if even a late authority like the Malbim covered all sides of the matter within a few verses and keeps going and going, then all the more so an early one like the Ramban). And this is how it keeps branching out and deepening until God Himself answers him (all the more so you) regarding all his philosophical claims, or rather his mistakes. (And interestingly, the common denominator in the examples God shows Job to prove that He really does supervise and act in our world in the past, present, and future are examples in nature that on the one hand a third-grader would understand, and on the other hand even Miki as a philosopher would admit are miraculous and prove divine providence in His world in detail, even though they are constant and supposedly part of nature, and not sporadic sorties here and there as you like to say. For lack of space and time I will bring only two examples from what God proves to Job (and Michi):
One: when a doe needs to give birth and her womb is narrow, a snake comes and bites her and her womb widens and she gives birth. And the second: when a wild goat, from the pain of childbirth, throws her young from a high cliff, the Holy One, blessed be He, perfectly times an eagle to receive them on its wings and return them to her (and her mercy for them is rekindled) – see there and enjoy.
As for the studies you sent us to do, I will refer you to a study (real and serious, not sarcastic) done by your colleague from the Third Way, Dr. Eliezer Hion, in cooperation with the Civil Service Commissioner and others, on dozens of families, and he claims he even managed to put God’s intervention in our day “into Excel,” all in his new book “Livelihood from Heaven.”
But there is something unfair in your sarcasm, because every time people show you examples from our own times that contradict this presumptuous thesis, either you ignore them, or you deny them, or you feign innocence – as you recently wrote to the one who asked you about the astonishing miracle the Holy One, blessed be He, worked recently through the Yenuka for an avrekh, something equivalent to winning the lottery several times in a row, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emoUX2lvZMM
you dismissed it weakly with eye-rolling, “I don’t know”! So instead of sending us to sterile studies and mocking, you take up the gauntlet and answer seriously and analyze the case: why does it not contradict your entire doctrine on this matter? And that is much easier to verify (even first-hand, and backed by documents) than sending us to studies that from the start you know won’t be done, not even by you.
Since you read all the posts and comments of every sort and kind, surely you also saw this comment: https://mikyab.net/posts/80003/#comment-71055
Well done, Rider of She-Donkeys. (By the way, between you and me, don’t say it out loud so Michi won’t catch on: if you are wise and understand one thing from another, just as “Rider of She-Donkeys” is a pseudonym, so too Hector, and he is in fact riding on a pseudonym, and from a wise man like you one should at least suspect as much.) In any case, did you notice there that in his reply he did not address at all the main subject for which we have gathered here and there, namely this matter at hand, “Job according to the Malbim’s commentary.” Look carefully and you will find.
I hinted to you that Samuel the Seer knew where Saul’s lost donkeys were, but you, Samuel, testified that you read everything including the comments of every sort and kind, and then came with a new find in hand: the Malbim’s commentary on Job. But not only is there no new find here in something lost, because it already appeared there (and did no good at all), but on top of that you did not bring from his words any real argument as an answer to the claims raised in those posts; you only waved your hands as though there were new answers and interesting claims there, like Hector did there. And after you promised to bring two examples, you tried to bring one little thing from the Malbim about the doe and the eagle, and now I announce to you the news that this thing is found in the book called the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Bava Batra; go learn it in the elementary school, besides the fact that it is not true in reality. Therefore there was nothing to answer Hector there regarding the referral to the Malbim’s words, and your later words all the more so. As for me, I am riding the she-donkey – that is, using the lost thing you supposedly found – and informing you that you have achieved nothing with your words, only multiplied lofty speech. Since you were not burned by lukewarm water, may you yet be scalded by hot.
I thought you understood one thing from another, but I was mistaken. I hinted to you that Hector there is a pseudonym, and the one who wrote the message there is Hector riding on Shmuel (and not on she-donkeys). In any case, just as there he was not answered, so here I was not answered.
You don’t expect me to copy here the entire Book of Job with the Malbim’s commentary. It is one continuous move woven throughout the whole book; look there and you will find satisfaction.
I always enjoy the instinct of those who write, without minimal knowledge, “that is not true in reality,” when the reality they do not know and have not checked, just “and the Lord opened the mouth of the she-donkeys,” as “Rider of She-Donkeys speaking in the name of Heaven.” (Just for your general intelligence: Rabbi Aharon Pfeuffer, chief rabbi of South Africa, relates in passing that he once went out with his students there into the field and they got to see this phenomenon of the doe. But I deliberately do not want to fall into that trap of getting into testimony, even reliable testimony of rabbis or National Geographic researchers, because there is no end to it, and after I make the effort to prove it, Michi in all his genius will come and write to me, even if so, there is here no more than one story of a sporadic exception, which I already agreed to, and nothing more. Therefore I brought it only as two representative examples out of many others that God shows Job – for us, Michi – as an ordinary occurrence in nature and not as some one-time intervention.) But meanwhile you caused damage with your intervention, because now Michi will see himself as exempt from answering the comment, relying on Rider of She-Donkeys, and about that I already wrote there (under my literary name Hector): “What has one born of woman to do between us?”
Hector of the furnace, how could you copy here the entire Book of Job with the Malbim’s commentary if your own mouth testified there that you had learned only a quarter of the book, and here that you learned only the beginning of the book? Rather, you copy blindly whatever you find written and say, Aha, my mother-in-law, I have seen light. And that which a Torah scholar does in order to evade in a tractate is when one asks him whether he knows, but that he of his own accord should leap up and prevaricate – that we have not heard. There is no doubt that you have great and astonishing knowledge about the reality of does and ibexes, and it is good that you returned to insist on this so that we may know your quality. Instead of sending us here and there and relying on factual claims that you have no power to substantiate, let me offer you good advice: try to make one conceptual argument on the substance of the matter. Go back to learning the Malbim, and when you find one good conceptual argument there, write it here, and I am confident by heavenly grace that either your answer is already found in those posts and comments which you read, or you will receive here a double-edged answer for having made thunder, and you will know and understand from where the matter proceeds.
Friends, it seems to me that this learned discussion has been fully exhausted. You are welcome to fight it out directly among yourselves, but not here.
I will respond to the substance one last time, and from here on, out of respect for the “horse and its rider,” I will give you the right to the last word, and let the readers judge “who is being sophistical.” Although by now it is quite clear that Michi’s response, for the sake of which we gathered, we already missed because a being born of woman entered between us. When I trouble myself and write to you in all three responses that there is one long move there from beginning to end that handles Michi’s claims and closes all the gaps and then continues onward branching out and deepening, until God Himself appears in person and gives Job the final finish that causes Job to admit his mistake – therefore the expectation that I should write one argument from there misses the point, since it is one constructed move and one must study the book from the beginning, at least until the point to which Michi’s claims have reached. Just as you would not expect me to write you half a formula in nuclear physics that reconciles quantum theory with Einstein’s theory of relativity. And despite all that, I finally brought, within what one can bring on such a platform, two examples (out of many) that God Himself gave to Job, which I defined as being understandable on the one hand even to a third-grader, and satisfying the demands of Michi the philosopher (admittedly nowhere near Job, but still a philosopher), proving God’s involvement in nature. What I received from that being born of woman was “Don’t confuse me with facts.” Interesting that Job did not think to say this clever line in his dispute with God when he flung before Him the accusation that Job had become His enemy. Carry blessing in your labors, and kindly take the final response.
I would like to present another angle that occurred to me. I will try to explain it at length and clearly, attempting to address the claims you raised in the post itself:
First, the conception you present is based on the simple and familiar methodological assumption of Occam’s razor, according to which one should always prefer the simplest explanation, one that requires fewer assumptions and fewer entities. Your main claim is that the “natural” explanation, the simple and direct one – namely that today there is no systematic divine intervention in nature – is the philosophically and scientifically preferable explanation, because it saves us from adding superfluous assumptions about miracles and hidden divine actions.
But that assumption, for all its strength and quality, is not a law of nature or an absolute truth, but only a rule of thumb. In scientific and historical reality, we often see that the apparently “simple” explanation is not in fact the correct explanation. Quantum theory, for example, is a theory that completely contradicts basic human intuition about the nature of the world. An electron existing in two places at once, or the “spooky action” of quantum entanglement across vast distances, seems almost impossible intuitively. And yet countless experiments show that this complex and “illogical” theory is in fact correct, while the classical explanation, simpler and more intuitive, is clearly wrong.
So too with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Compared to Newtonian mechanics, general relativity is more complicated and harder to understand. And yet it has been confirmed by precise experiments time and again, despite its mathematical and philosophical complexity. Simplicity is not an absolute value but a methodological tool. Sometimes it is precisely a complex explanation, or at least a less intuitive one, that best fits the whole body of observations and facts on the ground.
Now let us return to prayer and divine intervention: the explanation I am proposing is indeed less “simple” methodologically, but it is certainly possible and can fit the reality we see around us, and even solve the problems you raised. The basic assumption is that the entire world belongs to the Creator, and He governs it absolutely. Within that framework He decided – as it is explicitly said in prophecy, “And I will surely hide My face on that day” – to apply a policy of hester panim, hiddenness of face. The meaning of this hiddenness is that human beings will have no way to discover Him by empirical means, because any empirical discovery would cancel the hiddenness of face, that is, would cause an open and clear revelation of God. Such a revelation, if it were to occur, would not come by way of a small deviation in statistical measurements, some Excel sheet, but through a total and unequivocal revelation (like the revelation at Mount Sinai).
It follows from this that any experiment we try to perform in order to test the effect of prayer is bound to fail. Why? Because the experiment is an attempt to discover God through statistics, while God predetermined that He would not be discovered in that way. As the master of the world, God is able to ensure that the sample of the experiment will be biased or unrepresentative. For example, if we choose a large sample of people who pray, God is able to arrange that precisely the pray-ers included in the experiment will be exactly those whose prayers ought not to be answered (for hidden reasons, such as sins, various cosmic reasons, or considerations known only to Him). Or alternatively, He will ensure that the results are interpreted wrongly. Human beings have no technical way of coping with such divine planning, because He is not an “observer from the side” but the manager and designer of reality at every moment. That is, if there were a clear positive result that prayers are indeed answered statistically, at that very moment the divine policy of hiddenness of face would be broken and God would be revealed clearly to the world. And since this is exactly what the Holy One, blessed be He, decided should not happen, He will ensure that every empirical experiment fails in advance.
Beyond that, as you noted, there is an explicit halakhic prohibition of “You shall not test the Lord your God,” which forbids putting the Holy One, blessed be He, to an experimental test or empirical statistical check of this sort. Whoever performs such an experiment, aside from the methodological problem, violates a clear prohibition of the Torah. Such a person is liable to be punished, and the punishment may be expressed precisely in the fact that the results of his experiment will be skewed and invalid. As for tithes, extending this to charity in our day is incorrect, because the prophet is speaking about the Temple and actual tithes. Likewise, we are dealing with hiddenness of face. Sabbatical year too would need to be not in one field but in a certain majority – can one really arrange such an experiment in our generation?
Therefore, the argument that the burden of proof rests on the one who believes in divine intervention (and therefore he is obligated to present empirical evidence) is not correct in this case. When we are dealing with a supreme being who predetermined hiddenness of face, and controls every detail of nature and every possible empirical outcome, there is no way to apply here the ordinary rational-scientific principle of “burden of proof.” There is simply no empirical or statistical possibility of measurement, because it was predetermined that there would be no such possibility. In fact, every experiment showing that prayers do not help confirms the claim of hiddenness of face just as much as it confirms the claim that prayer is ineffective. And then we return to Occam’s rather dull razor.
Does this mean there is no point in praying? On the contrary. Just as a person who has a justified request from his boss – a request he is not sure he deserves or not – will always prefer to ask it rather than give up in advance, so the religious person continues to pray. It is a mitzvah, the action costs nothing, and under the appropriate conditions (when there is a spiritual barrier that only prayer can remove), it will also influence and help. One who does not pray may miss a spiritual opportunity, just like someone who refuses to take a lottery ticket offered to him for free. There is no reason to pay even one shekel for a lottery ticket, but there is no reason to refuse a free ticket. Especially since we are not dealing here with “probability” in the usual scientific sense, but with a spiritual channel that may be useful or blocked, depending on the state of the person and the world at a given moment.
The conclusion is that one must separate the world of faith, in which prayer operates, from the world of science and statistics. The attempt to impose scientific tools on the reality of faith leads to an internal contradiction, in which the measurement itself contradicts the prior conditions established by the Creator. Therefore, the attempt to prove or disprove the effect of prayer scientifically is doomed to failure from the outset, and no conclusions should be drawn from it regarding the true validity of prayer.
P.S. I saw that you wrote that you do not respond because you already answered the argument in the past. That means you expect the reader to be conversant with your various writings, including your replies, to an impressive degree. That is not a rational demand – you could easily copy-paste repeated answers or provide a reference to the place where you think the answer is found. That is minimal respect for someone who made the effort to write a comment that, even in your opinion, is non-trivial; after all, you claim you answered it in the past.
The Ramban’s words are riddled with contradictions from place to place.
Where are there contradictions in the Rambam on this matter?
That’s not the reason, but rather because Moses is greater than “our teacher” as a name.
You assume that if the Holy One, blessed be He, manages what happens in the world, then a sick person ought only to pray, and the work of the doctor is meaningless, etc.
Why? Perhaps what interests the Holy One, blessed be He, is not only whether a person prays, but also how much a person tries to cope with his illness. Of course one may ask: but we see that people who both pray and go to the doctor still die. Yet in my opinion all questions of this sort are meaningless, because we really cannot know all the motives of the Holy One, blessed be He, to the very end. But in any case there is no reason to think that He is interested only in prayers and not in actions.
By the way, the Ramban himself, in his commentary on Job
chapter 36, verse 7,
writes that providence applies only to the righteous, while most of the world is judged by chance occurrences and lives according to nature, and therefore the Torah commanded everyone to go out to war.