Dogmatics – Lecture 16

Table of Contents

• General Overview
• The tenth principle in Maimonides and verses as proof
• Passive providence versus active providence, and the meaning of the principle
• A semantic discussion of the concept of “providence” and anthropomorphism
• The Torah as presenting ongoing involvement, and comparison to Maimonides’ choice
• Not seeing divine involvement today, educational bias, and criticism of attributing miracles
• Miracle within nature, hidden miracle, and the laws of nature
• Prayer, praise and thanksgiving versus petition, and the authority of the Sages
• Biblical miracles, the decline of miracles over the generations, and an optimistic interpretation of divine hiddenness
• Criticism of “effort” and of the gap between religious declarations and actual conduct
• Modern challenges, uncertainty, and the question of the religious value of existence without open miracles

Summary

General Overview

The lecture moves from Maimonides’ ninth principle to the tenth principle, which states that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows the deeds of human beings and does not neglect them, contrary to the view that “the Lord has forsaken the land.” The speaker suggests that Maimonides is focusing mainly on knowledge and observation, which do not necessarily imply active involvement in the world, and raises doubt as to whether Maimonides intended active providence at all, or whether it exists but is not a “principle.” The discussion broadens to the question of whether divine involvement can be identified today, to criticism of attributing “miracles” without examination, and to the distinction between an open miracle and a hidden miracle, along with the claim that any divine involvement means a deviation from the laws of nature. Finally, a conception of “hiddenness” is proposed as a policy tied to humanity’s maturation, and its implications are explained for prayer, human effort, and the way religious people actually conduct themselves in practice.

The tenth principle in Maimonides and verses as proof

Maimonides defines the tenth principle as the assertion that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows the actions of human beings and will not neglect them, unlike the one who says, “the Lord has forsaken the land.” Maimonides brings verses such as “Great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the children of men,” “And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth,” and “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah, how great it is,” in order to establish the principle. The speaker interprets the wording “your eyes are open” as portraying mainly surveillance and knowledge, not necessarily action in the world, and emphasizes that Maimonides quotes from those verses specifically the parts that describe seeing and knowing, not the descriptions of the action that follows them, such as the flood and the overturning of Sodom. The speaker suggests the somewhat strained possibility that “and will not neglect them” hints at active involvement, but argues that the straightforward meaning is continuity of awareness, not abandonment.

Passive providence versus active providence, and the meaning of the principle

The speaker distinguishes between passive providence as knowledge, monitoring, and moral recording of deeds, and active providence as involvement that changes events in the world. He argues that the real religious centrality lies דווקא in the passive assumption, because it grounds religious obligation, the difference between theism and deism, and the claim that actions are not neutral but have significance as good and evil. He presents two possibilities regarding Maimonides: either Maimonides does not believe in active providence, or he does believe in it but it is not a principle and therefore is not included in the article of faith. He sharpens the point that the tenth principle can be read mainly as a declaration about the existence of values and the human role in the world, where “knowledge” is a metaphor for the fact that things are relevant and not indifferent, not a technical description of “information in the divine mind.”

A semantic discussion of the concept of “providence” and anthropomorphism

The speaker notes that the word “providence” does not appear in Maimonides, and that he himself is using it as a convenient label to describe “knows the deeds of human beings.” He agrees that the entire discourse about divine knowledge and about “the Lord has forsaken the land” is conducted in anthropomorphic language, and argues that “knows” is also anthropomorphic, so the practical question is whether human actions matter and are religiously relevant. He interprets “does not know” as “it does not interest Him,” and as removing the moral-religious relevance of actions, not as a philosophical claim about limits on knowledge.

The Torah as presenting ongoing involvement, and comparison to Maimonides’ choice

The speaker says that in the Torah there are many descriptions of divine involvement, and even an ongoing system of reward in this world, such as “And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen… then I will give your rain in its season.” He argues that if Maimonides had wanted to prove constant active involvement, it would have made sense to bring verses of that kind, or descriptions of the plagues of Egypt, and not only opening verses about seeing and hearing an outcry. He insists that the question in the lecture is not what can be proven from the Torah, but what Maimonides seems to be trying to prove in the formulation of the principle.

Not seeing divine involvement today, educational bias, and criticism of attributing miracles

The speaker argues that from his perspective he does not see any indication of divine involvement in the world today, neither looking forward nor backward, and explains that religious people “see” miracles as a product of education and indoctrination, while non-religious people interpret them naturally. He argues that an atheist outlook can also be biased, but still finds it hard to imagine an example in which a person could point objectively to an event that compels interpretation as divine involvement. He gives a personal example of an accident in Gedera in which a neighbor from Yeruham with a large, empty vehicle stopped immediately and picked up the family, and he stresses that without statistics about how often similar events happen, it is impossible to determine that this was a miracle. He adds examples of attributing miracles to missile events and wars, and argues that without even basic probabilistic calculation there is no “smell of a miracle” there. He distinguishes between the question of whether there was a miracle and the question of whether one should thank God even if He “brought the trouble and then saved us.”

Miracle within nature, hidden miracle, and the laws of nature

The speaker rejects the idea of “divine involvement within the laws of nature” and argues that any involvement means that nature would have led to one result and the Holy One, blessed be He, changed it to another result, so there is a deviation from the laws of nature even if it is not visible. He defines a hidden miracle as a deviation from the laws of nature that cannot be identified from observation, and an open miracle as a deviation that is clearly visible, and emphasizes that the difference is whether a person sees the violation, not whether a violation occurred. He argues that the laws of nature on the macro level are deterministic, and that even if one introduces quantum indeterminism, an intervention that directs the outcome still counts as intervention. He concludes that accepting a scientific picture of the world makes it very hard to accept hidden miracles, because they require physical events with no natural cause even if no one notices them.

Prayer, praise and thanksgiving versus petition, and the authority of the Sages

The speaker says that he generally does not believe in divine assistance or in constant active involvement, but he does not completely rule out sporadic possibility, and therefore does not categorically reject fixed prayer. He explains that praise fits even a naturalistic conception, because it relates to the creation of the world and its laws, and that thanksgiving too can be interpreted psychologically as a moment of awakening to give thanks for nature and the world, not for a supernatural miracle. He says that petitions are the hard problem, because if there is no involvement there is no point in asking, and he cites the principle that the Holy One, blessed be He, “His seal is truth, and He hates falsehood attributed to Him,” to explain that one cannot express a request that is not genuinely true in one’s soul. He argues that fixed prayer remains a binding practice against the background of uncertainty and the absence of an absolute negation of sporadic involvement, but requests beyond the fixed liturgy seem to him illogical except in a state where “all possibilities have been exhausted” and there is no natural solution.

Biblical miracles, the decline of miracles over the generations, and an optimistic interpretation of divine hiddenness

The speaker says that he tends to believe that at least some of the biblical descriptions reflect divine involvement, and attributes this to the prophets who testified to it. He argues that divine involvement decreases over the course of history, and notes that everyone agrees that prophecy and open miracles ceased, and he extends this also to hidden miracles. He proposes seeing this distancing not as punishment and pessimistic divine hiddenness, but as an educational process like that of parents with a child: at first close accompaniment, and afterward granting independence as humanity matures, in a way that expresses trust and responsibility rather than abandonment. He formulates this as a desirable policy in which “the heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to human beings,” and the human being is required to act in the world by his own powers.

Criticism of “effort” and of the gap between religious declarations and actual conduct

The speaker attacks the Lithuanian yeshiva-world conception of effort as “dancing at two weddings,” where people say that the Holy One, blessed be He, does everything, but the person must act as though he is the one determining matters. He argues that people do not really believe this in practice, and gives examples such as running to the very best doctors or calling the fire department instead of reciting Psalms, while using religious language that attributes everything to God’s will. He says that this doubleness is not necessarily conscious lying, but rather self-deception, and declares that he places much greater trust in intuitions and in unconscious patterns of action than in conscious declarations.

Modern challenges, uncertainty, and the question of the religious value of existence without open miracles

In the discussion, the claim is raised that the modern age presents stronger intellectual and theological challenges, and the speaker replies that dealing with them is placed upon the human being because he has the intellectual abilities and tools for it. There is also the suggestion that life in uncertainty, and in the absence of immediate reward and punishment, creates a space in which observing commandments despite hiddenness gives greater meaning or reward. The speaker does not develop a doctrine of reward, but agrees that the picture changes when there is no immediate leprosy in the wilderness and no open miracles. The discussion ends by distinguishing between the absence of empirical proof for providence and the a priori possibility of “hide-and-seek,” and returns to the speaker’s claim that even those who hold such a position do not actually live by it in practice.

All right, let's begin. Last time we dealt with the ninth principle, the main point of the ninth principle, which is the eternity of the Torah, so to speak. And now we're moving to the tenth principle. The tenth principle: that He, may He be exalted, knows the deeds of human beings and does not neglect them, not as the view of the one who says, “The Lord has forsaken the land,” but as it says, “Great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the children of men,” and it says, “And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,” and it says, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great.” These all point to this tenth principle. Basically, this principle speaks about the interaction between the Holy One, blessed be He, and the world. And Maimonides’ claim is that those who say “The Lord has forsaken the land” are mistaken; rather, the Holy One, blessed be He, still knows the deeds of human beings and does not neglect them, and so on. Now here there’s some room for hesitation, because I assume at least a good number of you know my outlook on these matters, and when I read Maimonides I wonder whether, on the face of it, he omitted the question of active providence. Meaning, when we talk about providence, we talk about it on two planes. One plane is passive providence, meaning the Holy One, blessed be He, follows what is happening, I don’t know, records it, gives us merit points and liability points, each person, because what happens here matters to Him. In other words, we were created here in order to carry something out. And that is passive providence. Active providence is a claim that says the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved in the world, meaning He acts in the world, changes things in the world. That’s a different claim, a more radical claim. In other words, not only does He passively follow what happens, but He is actually involved in what happens. Some would say maybe He causes everything that happens, and for the sake of this discussion we’ll call that active providence: that the Holy One, blessed be He, acts in the world. Now when we look at Maimonides’ formulation of this principle, on the face of it, it seems that he omitted active providence; he speaks about passive providence. The tenth principle: that He, may He be exalted, knows the deeds of human beings and does not neglect them, and not as the view of one who says, “The Lord has forsaken the land,” which can be interpreted in both directions, but rather as it says, “Great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the children of men.” Again, “your eyes are open” — you follow what is going on. And it says, “And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,” and it says, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great.” These all point to this tenth principle. Now I don’t know whether Maimonides—he intervened here. Sorry, Rabbi, the verses Maimonides brings here clearly show that the Holy One, blessed be He, did intervene, did become active. No, so the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved — I don’t need Maimonides for that. Obviously there are verses that show it. The Torah is full of involvements of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world. But the fact that Maimonides brings these verses in order, apparently, to substantiate only the passive claim and not the active claim — that’s what I’m talking about. I’m not talking right now about the question of what is proved from the Torah. I’m talking about the question of what Maimonides is trying to prove. It’s obvious that in the Torah we often see that the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened, of course. But if Maimonides chose these verses to support his view regarding providence — these are verses that also speak about passive providence. What do you mean? What other verses could he have brought? They’re verses that show He sees and not necessarily intervenes? No, no, on the contrary — after these verses, intervention comes. What do you mean? The Flood? “The wickedness of man was great in the earth,” or “the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah” — all these are verses after which involvement came. Yes, yes, that’s what I’m saying, yes. Right, but I’m saying that what Maimonides takes from these verses — the verses contain both things, both the passive and the active — but in Maimonides’ wording it seems that his principle is only the passive principle, and when he brings the verses, he brings them to support the passive principle. The verses themselves also contain the active aspect, but I’m asking what Maimonides wants to do with that. And apparently, from his wording, it seems that he is speaking only about the passive aspect. Now, I’m not entirely sure, because notice what it means: “He knows the deeds of human beings and does not neglect them.” It could be that he means to say “knows the deeds of human beings” — that’s the passive part — and “does not neglect them” — that’s the active part. Meaning, He did not neglect them, He is still here, He is still involved. I don’t know, maybe you can interpret it that way somehow, but it’s too minor. I mean, the main point is missing. And “The Lord has forsaken the land” can of course be interpreted in both ways, but “your eyes are open upon all the ways of human beings” — that too seems only passive, not active. And even in the verses he brings afterward, “And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,” and “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great,” he brings only those verses, only the part in the verses that speaks about the passive dimension. After He saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, He also brought the Flood — but Maimonides doesn’t bring the verses that say He brought the Flood. He brought only the opening verses that say the Holy One, blessed be He, saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. Same with the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah. So somehow it seems — I’m saying, you could force another reading, I’m not one hundred percent sure of this — but on the face of it, Maimonides seems to be focusing specifically on the passive question and not bringing in the active issue. And if that’s true, it really calls for explanation, because look: the eleventh principle says that He rewards generously those who keep the commandments of the Torah and punishes those who transgress, and that the great reward is the World to Come and the severe punishment is excision, and so on. Meaning, that is already talking about the World to Come. Rabbi, but what is the meaning of “and does not neglect them”? I’m saying, one could say that “does not neglect them” is the active issue, but on the face of it I wouldn’t read it that way. “He knows the deeds of human beings and does not neglect them” — He is still there to see what they do. It seems that if “does not neglect them” is also passive, then why is it written? You don’t need it. “He knows the deeds of human beings and does not neglect them” — if “He knows the deeds of human beings” already suffices to understand that He is passive, why add “and does not neglect them”? I’m not making midrash out of an extra letter in Maimonides’ wording. In other words, it’s not that. “The one who says, ‘The Lord has forsaken the land’” means that the Holy One, blessed be He, was in the land and now He left. Maimonides says no, He did not neglect it. Meaning, He knows the deeds of human beings, and it is not true that He neglected them; He continues to know the deeds of human beings to this day, He did not neglect that. In my view that is the simple explanation. Because if he meant to include the active issue too, he should have said something much clearer: He knows the deeds of human beings and also operates everything that happens here. He says nothing of the kind. “And does not neglect them” is some vague expression where you can’t really know what exactly he means. And does “does not neglect them” refer to the human beings or to the deeds? I don’t know — “the deeds of human beings,” I don’t understand the difference. “And does not neglect them” means not as the one who says “The Lord has forsaken the land,” meaning that the Holy One, blessed be He, neglected. No, He did not neglect. He still knows the deeds of human beings. I think if active providence were meant here, it should have been more explicit. More detailed. It should have been clearer. You have to formulate what you mean. And also afterward, again, the verses he brings both regarding the Flood and regarding Sodom and Gomorrah — he brings only the opening, which talks about the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows. He does not bring the continuation. The continuation, His involvement, is there, but that is what Maimonides does not bring. Yes, as if he could have chosen lots of verses from the Torah that specifically show He is active. Obviously. “And the Lord brought a flood upon the earth,” the plagues of Egypt — are there not enough things in the Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He, did? Somehow it looks like Maimonides is focusing, again, I’m making a claim about Maimonides, not about the Torah. In the Torah one can of course see both the passive and the active. In Maimonides, my impression is that he chose to focus specifically on the passive issue. Rabbi, can one say that the first part, “He knows the deeds of human beings,” is directed against those who say there is a God, but a God who created and was never involved in the world, while “and does not neglect them” is for the view that there is a God and He was involved, but today He no longer knows and has sort of abandoned it? Meaning… I said that “and does not neglect them,” in my view, the simple meaning is not active providence, but rather that He continues to know the deeds of human beings, unlike one who says “The Lord has forsaken the land”; He still continues in the same state as before, that He knows the deeds of human beings — but it’s all on the passive level. Yes, I was being precise that maybe the first part, “He knows the deeds of human beings,” is against those who say that from the outset God, whoever created the universe, was never interested in human deeds. And “and does not neglect them” is for one who says God created the world and was interested at some stage in human deeds, but afterward He abandoned it and is no longer interested. You’re dividing it into chronological stages, fine. But practically speaking, the claim is that it’s all about the passive issue. That’s also what you’re saying. Yes. How does the Rabbi understand here the place of Maimonides’ position in the Guide for the Perplexed on general and particular providence, which seemingly fits what the Rabbi is saying to a considerable degree? Look, I’m not sufficiently expert in the Guide for the Perplexed, so I don’t know how to answer. I do know that in Maimonides there are various statements that contradict one another, and so to say something about what Maimonides thought on this issue sounds to me like something that’s a bit hard to do — at least for me. There are places in Maimonides where it seems that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene in anything. He does nothing, and even the miracles that happened in the past were not done by the Holy One, blessed be He, but rather the claim is that He made a condition at the act of creation — yes, Maimonides writes this — that He made a condition at the act of creation, at the time of creation, and in the end it happened automatically. Meaning, it was embedded in creation, but the Holy One, blessed be He, was not involved from the moment of creation onward, had never been involved — that is what is written in certain places in Maimonides. In other places somewhat different things are written. So I don’t know. There are various contradictions there, and I’m really not going here to present some orderly doctrine of Maimonides’ view. We’re studying his principles. So in this very minimal and brief wording, it seems to me that — I don’t know, at least I understand, and again I say I’m not one hundred percent sure — but it seems to me this is the spirit that emerges from the words, this is the simple meaning, that he really speaks only about the passive issue and not about the active one. Here there is — so we asked ourselves, first, where does he get it from? That’s simple: he brought verses, and many more verses could be brought. The second question we always ask in the context of the principles is: why does he see this as a principle? Why is this such an important foundation that it has to enter the thirteen principles or the thirteen foundations? Now, regarding passive providence, regarding knowledge, this is probably very important because our service of God basically presupposes that the tasks imposed on us, the missions imposed on us, are still relevant. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, created us in order that we perform various things, because without that, of course, our existence has no religious meaning, even if the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world. Meaning, that says nothing from our standpoint. It’s like what we said about those believers in a philosophical God who do not translate that into religious obligation — what is called deism versus theism. So Maimonides wants to say here: no, this is not a philosophical claim alone; there is also a religious statement here. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, cares what we do. Part of the reason — not part, but the reason — He created us is because He wanted us to do various things, and therefore it matters to Him. So it was important to Maimonides to say that this matters to the Holy One, blessed be He, that our actions are not a neutral matter from His point of view. Meaning, it matters what we do and what we do not do. So I think this is definitely an important foundation. Regarding the question of active providence, here there is some room to discuss, because even if we assume there is active providence, one can still ask what that means from our standpoint. Yes, then we get to all those, in my opinion, bizarre theses about effort — the obligation to make an effort even though in fact we do not really affect what happens. And then if you live that absurd dichotomy, which I think most religious people do, it may not mean much from my point of view. It doesn’t mean much because in the end I still have to advance the matters I’m advancing in the normal, natural, ordinary way. The fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, is also involved here does not necessarily touch my daily life. Maybe in requests, in prayer a bit, or things of that sort, but it’s doubtful how much this is really such an important principle. In that sense passive providence is much more foundational in my view than active providence. It is a weaker assumption, but in my opinion its importance is much stronger. Because passive providence essentially says that our deeds matter. The Holy One, blessed be He, is interested in what we do and what we do not do. That is important — that is why we are here. By contrast, active providence — I’m not sure how much this really, even if true, is a principle. Meaning, how meaningful is it really. Rabbi, I think the passive assumption is a necessary condition for any kind of belief at all, whereas the active assumption is not necessarily. I don’t know if for belief, but for religious obligation. For religious obligation, yes. The passive one. That’s what I said — that’s the difference between theism and deism. The basis of theism has to be that the Holy One, blessed be He, cares what we do; otherwise why do it? Meaning, it is clear that the assumption that there is good and evil, that there is what one ought to do and what one is forbidden to do, is basically the translation of this principle that says the Holy One, blessed be He, is interested, He examines, it matters to Him what we do and what we do not do. Therefore in my view, although this assumption is perceived by us as the weaker assumption — passive providence — I think that if we check what is more fundamental, it is much more fundamental than active providence. Active providence — theologically people may feel it is important, but on the practical level it should not affect in a very substantial way what we do. Maybe on the margins here and there we pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, if we are desperate and have no way of advancing things naturally. But it does not really affect our day-to-day life; it is not a very foundational basis for how we act. And that actually opens the possibility of explaining the absence of active providence from Maimonides’ words. Because if I am right that Maimonides is speaking here only about passive providence and not active providence, that can be explained in two ways. It can be explained that Maimonides does not think there is active providence — one possibility. A second possibility: Maimonides thinks there is active providence, but it is not a principle. Meaning, it is not an important thing. Therefore when he enumerates the principles, among the principles he includes only passive providence because that is a principle. Rabbi, but what is the meaning of passive providence? What does it mean to supervise in a passive way? To follow what happens. So in what sense is that supervision? To supervise someone is to follow. To follow, to follow what happens passively — I don’t call that supervision. When I babysit, am I not supervising the child? Fine, and do I supervise the child in a passive way? No, but wait, Rabbi, when I supervise a child as a babysitter, if something happens to him I become active. No, fine, that’s one kind of babysitter. I’m not sure the Holy One, blessed be He, is a babysitter of that kind. The concept of providence can also be interpreted in this sense. Providence is providence. The second principle — the next principle, the eleventh principle — talks about reward in the World to Come. So maybe this too has a translation into reward and punishment in the World to Come. Fine, those may be practical outcomes of providence, but in the World to Come, not here. No, but again, the meaning of the word providence is that if something happens, if I need to intervene, I intervene — that’s what it means that I supervise, as it were… Maybe let’s sharpen it: the word providence does not appear in Maimonides. I inserted it. Maimonides says that He knows the deeds of human beings. That is what Maimonides writes. I call that passive providence. No, so then according to what I understand there is no providence here, there is knowledge — He knows. Words, what difference does it make to you? Call it whatever you want, call it compote. No, because “passive providence” sounds to me like nonsense, like the terms contradict each other. So again, if you don’t like the word providence, I have absolutely no problem with that. If you don’t like it, then don’t be compote — what difference does it make? Maybe in English the word is “observe.” What? Maybe the English word is “observe.” Yes, right, exactly. So that’s not nonsense. No, clearly not. I’m saying the English model gives—fine. It fills out his life in a certain sense. Again, I think the argument is semantic, so why argue about it? Meaning, call it whatever you want. In Maimonides the term providence does not appear. So what difference does it make? Why argue about it? If the term providence appeared in Maimonides, then one could discuss the meaning of the word providence in order to understand what Maimonides means. No, but the importance of the word providence, Rabbi — the importance of the word… Yes? Rabbi, but it seems to me that the importance of the word providence doesn’t come from Maimonides. It comes from our use of it — active providence, particular providence, and all these things. It’s a concept that appears. Call it whatever you want. I’m asking what is written in Maimonides. If you want to say… So you want to suggest that I not use the term passive providence, but instead use the word observation. Fine, then I’ll use that, okay? Everything is fine. So are we settled? Just a pointless argument… Why is it interesting? It’s a semantic argument, sorry, not a passive one. Why is it interesting? What difference does it make? Fine, okay. Okay. Rabbi, Rabbi… Rabbi, it’s not clear to me what it means to say that God has no passive providence. To me that sounds like such extreme anthropomorphism. I mean, there is information about what is happening in the world. God says, listen, I don’t have enough hard disk space to process it, and I don’t have the attention, and I don’t want to, I’m busy… A statement — a statement you can’t say about God. There is information in the world and God doesn’t know? It’s not a matter of memory, I have no issue. But what does it mean that God doesn’t know? There is information — what does it mean that God is aware of it? This is such anthropomorphism that it doesn’t fit, it’s impossible. I don’t understand those who say “The Lord has forsaken the land.” What does it mean to say there is information in the world and God doesn’t know it? What does that mean? Is there some center in the brain that didn’t receive the information? Yes. In the divine brain? Isn’t that extreme anthropomorphism? No, no. All our speech about God is speech of personification, yes, anthropomorphism. That is how we speak about Him. So in this context too we speak about Him in anthropomorphic terms. What is the problem? And saying that He knows is also anthropomorphism. Right, exactly. Fine, but you can’t separate the knower from the knowledge, and Maimonides says that about God. No, no, again I say: those who say “The Lord has forsaken the land” — don’t bring Maimonides into this for me, because Maimonides truly rejects that position. And you ask, what position does he reject? He rejects the position of “The Lord has forsaken the land.” That position says that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not interested in what happens here. Does He know or not know on some philosophical level? He is not interested in what happens here. That is what “does not know” means. By the way, “knows” — yes, like “And Adam knew Eve his wife” — “knows” is some kind of connection. It is not necessarily knowledge in the sense of knowing. Rather, “to know” here probably also means that it matters to Him, that it is relevant from His standpoint. That is probably the meaning of saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows in this context. The question is whether it matters to Him or not. As if He created us for amusement, and afterward went off sailing to other districts. Sailed off elsewhere; He isn’t interested. That is the conception of “The Lord has forsaken the land.” Maimonides comes to exclude that conception. Okay? That is the claim. And now here — as I said before — first, I am not one hundred percent sure that Maimonides is speaking only about the passive matter. It may be that the active matter is also here, though I tend to think not. There are too many indications — or too few indications — of the active matter to say that Maimonides intends that as well. This claim itself can be interpreted in two ways. Either Maimonides says there is no active providence, only passive — and yes, I’ll continue using the word providence with your permission — or Maimonides says no, there is active providence too, but it is not a principle, and therefore I do not count it among the thirteen principles. Meaning, the principle is passive providence. And again, even passive providence — I don’t think the intention is whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is looking. I can even build on what Shmuel remarked earlier, and I am not asking whether the information is in His mind — in His mind, or in whatever equivalent of a mind there is for Him. That isn’t the question: whether the information is there. The question is whether the information is relevant from His point of view. Or in other words, whether there is good and evil. That is really the question. Meaning, if from the Holy One’s standpoint it matters what we do, that means that what we do is not neutral. There is good here and evil here. That is the important point. Meaning, the claim is that we have a role in the world — that is the point. Whether the Holy One, blessed be He, watches us or doesn’t watch us, knows or doesn’t know, that is a metaphorical way to say it. As I adopt what Shmuel said, He presumably knows everything that happens; that is not the point. The question is not whether the information is present for Him, but whether He is interested in it, whether it is relevant. And why does it matter whether it is relevant? It is not a statement about Him; it is a statement about our world. Meaning, the question is whether the deeds we do involve good and evil. Are there things that are permitted, obligatory, or forbidden to do, or basically can you do whatever you want, because the Holy One, blessed be He, is no longer in the picture, He is not interested, He created you here and went on His way? So in that sense… in that sense it seems to me that this whole discussion does not speak about the Holy One, blessed be He, at all; it speaks about us. And that sharpens even more the distinction I am making between passive and active providence. Because if I explain it this way, then the focus is not providence at all. The focus here is not that the Holy One, blessed be He, is looking at us, and the question whether He looks and is involved or only looks. It also doesn’t matter that He looks. That isn’t the point. The point is that there is something to look at. The principle speaks about us — namely, that there are deeds we are required to do or not do, and the world is a world with values, meaning that there is good and evil here. It’s not that you can do whatever pops into your head. That is the point. And the metaphorical way to say that is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is interested in what we do. In other words, these are not neutral acts; they are acts that have significance, for good or for bad. Once I interpret it this way, then in truth active providence has no place here at all; it is simply irrelevant. If it needed to be there, it would have to be a different principle entirely. This principle speaks about the fact that this world is not a neutral world, not a meaningless world, but rather there are tasks here, things that are important to do or forbidden to do. Active providence is some statement about what the Holy One’s relation to the world is — is He involved here, is He not involved here, what does that have to do with this? Even if it is true, it is a different principle. Okay? So if I really look at it that way, then it is even more than the two possibilities I mentioned before. Even if the Holy One thinks that the principle of active providence is true, and even if He thinks it is a principle — not only true — still it should have appeared as the fourteenth principle, not as part of the tenth principle. It does not appear, and therefore we have to draw conclusions. But I’m saying there is one more step beyond what I said before. It is really something entirely different from the principle we are discussing here. And in that sense we can now ask whether that entirely different thing is also a principle or not, whether it is also true or not true, and why it doesn’t appear if it is true and if it is a principle. Therefore either it is not true or it is not a principle. The conclusions I mentioned earlier still stand; I’m just sharpening them even more now, because I’m basically claiming that if it were both true and a principle, it should have appeared separately and not within the tenth foundation or the tenth principle. That is the claim. Now I really want to get into the matter itself a bit. Up to this point I read Maimonides, tried to understand what he says and the meaning of what he says. What really stands behind these words? So yes, I have a lot bottled up about these matters, so let’s talk a bit about these issues of active and passive providence. Look, as I said before, the discussion I conducted until now was a discussion about Maimonides, not about the Torah. In the Torah it is obvious that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved. Not only are there descriptions of acts in which the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved, but it says, “And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen… then I will give your rain in its season.” Meaning, this is even more than merely that He brought a flood once because something happened there, or He overturned Sodom and Gomorrah because of something that was done there. There is a claim here that on an ongoing basis our deeds determine — ongoing in every sense — whether rain will pour down on us or not. Whether rain will fall here or not. If anything, Maimonides should have brought those verses. Those are verses that say how the Holy One, blessed be He, manages the world on an ongoing basis, not that He intervened once because some local need arose at a particular time and place for His involvement. Show me that the Holy One is involved all the time. If you act this way, there will be rain; if you don’t act this way, there won’t be rain; the destruction of the Temple; all kinds of things that the Holy One does as an ongoing response to how we behave. If you want active providence, bring those things. So in the Torah itself, clearly there are very strong indications also of active involvement. Everything I said before was about why it doesn’t appear in Maimonides. But now I also want to talk about the Torah, not only Maimonides. It is hard to deny that at least in the Torah’s own description, the Holy One, blessed be He, is also actively involved and not only passively. That on the one hand. On the other hand, at least for me, it is very hard to deny that we do not see it. We don’t see it. I don’t see this involvement anywhere. Not even in hindsight? What do you mean, in hindsight? Looking back. Two or three years pass and you remember some event that happened — not even then, you still don’t? Okay. I don’t see a difference between hindsight and from the outset. No, sometimes it takes time to process. Fine, but that’s a technical matter. I mean, when I look at the world, forward or backward, I do not see any indication of divine involvement. Now there are all kinds of people… who do see it — a lot, I think, or at least claim that they do. I attribute that to the fruit of education, or indoctrination, whatever you want to call it. They are basically committed to seeing it that way, because from their perspective there is even, let’s say, a principle of faith that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved. We just saw in Maimonides that I’m not sure they are right that there is such a principle of faith, at least not in Maimonides. But clearly it is a very basic part of the religious education of all of us, for those who received such an education, yes? So people’s habit of looking at the world through those glasses is so strong that I have no doubt the picture they see is biased. And the fact that all kinds of people who received a religious education see the miracles of the Holy One, blessed be He, in all sorts of places, while people who received a non-religious education are not moved by any of these miracles in the slightest. They have natural explanations, or at least it seems to them fully consistent with a completely natural world and does not cause them to rethink their theological outlook. So there is some indication here that our perception of the world — by the way, also the atheistic perception, not only the believing one — is biased. It is biased by the education we received. That goes in both directions. Now if you ask me, okay, let’s set the biases aside for a moment; let’s try to clear away the biases as much as we can and see what we actually see. It seems to me that it is very hard for me to imagine a situation in which someone points to something and says to me, here you objectively see divine involvement — not because I know God is involved, so I say, well, if it happened then apparently the Holy One, blessed be He, did it. Yes, so my favorite example is the accident in Gedera, some of you have probably heard this from me already. When we lived in Yeruham, I drove with the whole family to some family celebration — I think it was in Kfar Chabad. We were coming back to Yeruham at one in the morning, in the car, with six children, the two of us and six children. No, then it was only five — maybe my daughter hadn’t yet been born, I don’t remember anymore. Doesn’t matter, five or six children. And we reached Gedera on the way back to Yeruham. Some young woman came out from some side road, the guy in front of me braked, I hit him, the car was finished. Before I even had time to realize the car was finished, a large empty car stops next to me, belonging to a neighbor of mine from Yeruham. We’re in Gedera. I hadn’t even had time to think, oy vey, what am I going to do now with seven people, eight people, stuck in Gedera and needing to get to Yeruham? What, order two taxis with four seats each, pay for all that? I don’t know, that’s a lot of money at one in the morning, which is also night rate. I hadn’t even had time to think about it, because I had only just realized there had been an accident, and next to me stopped a neighbor of ours — yes, the house next to ours — with a big empty car. He took all of us, we left the key in the car and told the kiosk nearby that we’d send a tow truck there, and off we went, sailed happily to Yeruham. Well, that Friday, it had happened sometime in the middle of the week, I don’t remember exactly. On Friday I made a tish for the students there in the yeshiva and I said to them, okay, here, now you’ll have miracle stories to write afterward in eulogies about the open miracles that happened to me because of my great righteousness. But I want to puncture a little hole in that balloon, or in that sail. And the claim basically is that I do not attribute this to a miracle. I do not attribute it to a miracle because in order to determine that this is a miracle, I would have had to make statistics of how many people got stuck in situations like this, and among those cases, for how many people did this kind of thing happen. Now if it happened, say, ten thousand times, and one time there really was that neighbor who stopped there with a big car that can hold seven people — then that’s not a miracle. The statistics say that one out of ten thousand can happen. If I came to the conclusion that there were only five such cases and in one of them it happened, that is already much more significant. Then one can begin to talk about some statistical significance. I’ll tell you more than that: this was at one in the morning, okay, with eight people, which of course a regular taxi can’t hold, and a regular car of a neighbor couldn’t have picked us up — it had to be a big car. Not only a big car, but a big empty car. Why are you driving a big car if it’s empty? Third, the man was a politician who traveled every other day from Yeruham to Jerusalem and back. That night he told me he had missed the turn at Latrun. Otherwise he wouldn’t have reached Gedera at all. He would have gotten to Masmiya. Meaning, he missed the turn at Latrun, somehow got to Ramla — he said he didn’t know where he was — and somehow in the end they got to Gedera. There was no Waze then, none of these things. He had no idea where he was. They got to Gedera. Not only that, he hadn’t even noticed we were there; the accident had just happened. Meaning, he hadn’t even noticed us yet. His wife says, wait, wait, stop a second, the Abraham family is here. At the last moment he stopped. He said, okay, so the Abraham family is here, so what? They hadn’t even seen there had been an accident. So he stopped, picked us up, and left. Meaning, the coincidences here are very dramatic. If you calculate the probabilities — I don’t know how to calculate it — but the likelihood keeps dropping. Okay? And still, in order to determine that this is a miracle, you need to make some broader statistical test. It has to be: how many such cases were there, and among them in how many cases did something like this happen, and see whether there is statistical significance here or not. As long as I haven’t done that, it is entirely possible that this is the statistical case in which it did happen out of ten thousand others in which it did not happen. Okay? You wanted to ask something. Rabbi, I just didn’t understand why statistically, if it happens more often, that makes it more likely to be a miracle rather than the opposite. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why statistically the Rabbi says that if it happens more and in more cases, then it’s a miracle and not the opposite. If there were many such cases, say ten thousand, okay? And let’s say the probability that in such a case a neighbor with a big car and all the rest would stop next to me is one in ten thousand. So if ten thousand cases occurred, then in one case this so-called miracle would happen, right? So for me to be that case — fine, someone has to be that case, no? So I’m that case. But if there were only five such events in the whole world throughout all of history, just to say something, and the chance of such a thing happening is one in ten thousand, that is already more problematic. You can still say, of course, that it is one in ten thousand, so in the next nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-five cases it really won’t happen. After all, it isn’t said at which event in the sequence this thing will happen. It will happen in one out of ten thousand events. It could happen in the fifth of them, fine. But still, if there were only five such things, that already begins to be more significant. If there were ten thousand such cases, then no. You understand that if I watch the tossing of a die and I see that I got one hundred consecutive sixes — that’s a miracle, right, on a fair die? A real miracle. But if afterward you discover that you tossed, I don’t know, an infinite number of sets of one hundred tosses, and in one set it happened that there were one hundred sixes, then it isn’t simply a miracle; it’s just statistics. Okay? Of course you need very many tosses, but it can happen. So the question how many times this occurred is very important. Or all these miracles people tell about — missiles that don’t hit, and all kinds of how the Holy One, blessed be He, saved us from missiles and who knows what from Gaza, and all kinds of nonsense of that sort, or the missiles from Iraq, or the Gulf War, all kinds of nonsense like that. In my opinion there is not the most basic statistical check there. It doesn’t even smell like a miracle to me. Just simple statistics: what is the chance of being hit by such a missile? Zero. Fine, so indeed almost nobody was hit. So what happened? What miracle was there? When there was now the attack from Iran and there wasn’t one dead person except one Palestinian who came out of Gaza. Okay? What is this? A few missiles fell here and there wasn’t one dead person because everybody was in safe rooms and all that. What miracle was there here, exactly? Did anyone ever make some statistical calculation showing what the probability is? To me it seems completely reasonable and natural — unlike Gedera, where that really is a very rare event, and there I need to think maybe there were many more such cases and therefore maybe it wasn’t a miracle. Here I don’t even need that hypothesis. It just seems to me like something natural. But regarding Gedera, which happened once, one has to ask different questions altogether: what exactly is the focus here? That you saved two taxi fares? Is that the focus? That a neighbor came and took you? So why was there an accident to begin with? It’s like when people tell us that the Ishmaelites, when they took Joseph, were carrying spices that day instead of petroleum, and I always think: wait a second, but now he’s going to prison for twenty years. Where are the proportions here? Where’s the proportion? Okay, so those are other questions, yes? All those who had a miracle and recovered from an illness — but the fact that they got the illness, that wasn’t a miracle. I mean… why? And the same happened in Gedera: why was there an accident to begin with? No, so leave that aside. That’s exactly why I’m not talking about God’s goodness. You are attacking the question, the discussion, the issue, on the level of whether it proves the goodness of the Holy One, blessed be He. I’m not talking about that at all. I’m talking about whether He is involved, both for bad and for good. Here you only need to check the statistical significance; it doesn’t matter right now whether this did me good or how much good it did me. The question is whether such a thing has statistical significance for the claim that it cannot be natural. And I say no. The question whether I also need to thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for doing me good here — that is another question. Meaning, someone might tell me: know that there is statistical significance here; I checked, this event happened three times in history and you are one of them, and here the miracle happened to you, and it is one in ten thousand. So it is statistically significant. I can still say: okay, but to say thank you to the Holy One, blessed be He, I’m not going to say. Why? Because He hit me with the accident, and afterward He also saved me. So because of that I should thank Him? That’s a different discussion, you understand? You’re talking about the question of His goodness. I’m not talking about that question. I’m talking about the factual question whether He is involved. Is there some indication here that this is not a natural thing? No. I think there isn’t. That’s a different plane of discussion. I agree with your remark; I’m only saying it deals with a different plane. So the claim is — returning to the course of the discussion — that it is very hard for me to imagine a situation in which, on an unbiased view, if we were not already equipped with this theology that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved and does all kinds of things, I would really see here something that has no natural explanation, something that has to be a miracle. Even the return of the Jewish people to its land, by the way. The return of the Jewish people to its land is often presented as something supernatural, something that can’t happen, never happened before, or things of that sort. I’m not impressed by that. Not impressed for several reasons. First, it is something that can happen. I do not see here a deviation from the bounds of nature. The chance is one in however many, and true, in one case it happened. First point. Second, it may be that it happened specifically to us because of the culture in which we were raised — the longing for the Land of Israel, the holiness of the Land of Israel, the sentiments toward the Land of Israel, yes, the intellect, the Torah’s command to settle the Land of Israel, and of course the exile, which never stopped troubling us but also did not absorb us into the nations because we remained distinct as Jews — again because of the culture and because of Jewish law and Torah that accompanied us. And therefore specifically for us that really caused us to return to the Land of Israel. And in some respects this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Meaning, the fact that the Torah says we will return to the Land of Israel, or not the Torah, the prophet, or whoever — fine, this is a prophecy that fulfills itself. So I’m not impressed even by that on the statistical plane. Now all of you look at arguments of that sort and say: well, okay, that’s heresy. Meaning, yes, I’ve heard this more than once, also in writing. Fine, so I’m a heretic — what can I do? I’m trying to examine the facts. When I try to examine the facts in an unbiased way, trying to clear away the background noise, the education that I too received like all other religious Jews, then if I clear that away and try to look impartially, I do not see indications of such involvement. I don’t. But you distinguish, Rabbi — you distinguish between a miracle and a miracle carried out by physical means. Right? What is a miracle carried out by physical means? Well, basically you’re saying it’s not statistically significant, and therefore it isn’t a miracle. Right? That’s the claim. Okay, fine. No — if you mean a miracle within nature, I’ll deal with that in just a moment. Yes, that’s what I mean. Okay. So that is the point of departure. Now look, if they tell me: fine, that’s the point of departure, but yes, “If you walk with Me casually, then I too shall walk with you in furious casualness,” what Maimonides writes in the laws of fasts, that one who says everything is chance and so on, that this is cruelty, and that everything is from the Holy One, blessed be He. By the way, here is another Maimonides who speaks about the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world, who says that if we attribute everything to chance, that is cruelty, that is denial of the Holy One, blessed be He. How that fits with other Maimonideses who say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved in any way — who knows. But I said I am not pretending here to present Maimonides’ position. In any event, the claim is that if I were… I can, from an unbiased perspective, say there are no indications of it, and still say… we have a tradition that the Holy One, blessed be He, told us that He is involved. And if something happens to you, apparently the Holy One, blessed be He, did it. And even then I would say okay, fine, if we accept a tradition, we accept it. But I would still have to ask myself: where? In order to know that this specifically is what the Holy One, blessed be He, did and not that, I need to understand that it is apparently something special, not something statistical, not something that fits. But there isn’t — as I said before — I have no such statistical calculation. So even if I accepted the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, I don’t see what tools I would use to attribute it to this case and not to another. For that I would still need the statistical tools, even if I accept as a premise that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved. Beyond that, I want to claim: since I think this has no indication at all, it is therefore hard for me to accept this claim. On the other hand, I do believe the descriptions of the Torah or of the prophets, and I think that there were simply prophets there who told the people there was divine involvement. Someone who has information and tells me there will be divine involvement — if there were a prophet here whom I recognize as a prophet, did the checks, all that is needed, and he tells me: look, this is divine involvement, here the Holy One, blessed be He, acted — as in the Scroll of Esther, say. There too it happened by way of nature, right? But people with divine inspiration tell us that here the Holy One, blessed be He, was behind the scenes. Okay, if he says so, I accept it. But today I have no prophets. So by what will I decide? So I have no indication of such a thing. And what I want, perhaps before the bottom line, is to add a few more indications or a few more comments, sorry. There is a claim that divine involvement does not require a deviation from the laws of nature. An open miracle is when you speak about a deviation from the laws of nature, but there are also hidden miracles. Hidden miracles are miracles done within the laws of nature. Everything looks completely natural, and yet in fact the hand of the Holy One, blessed be He, is stirring the pot. That is the claim. A great many people hold this claim, because it reconciles wonderfully the tradition that there is divine involvement with the rational, logical, scientific way of looking — however you want to call it — according to which we do not see it. Fine, so the Holy One, blessed be He, is hidden. So these are miracles within nature. But that is nonsense. It is simply nonsense. Whoever says that is simply confused. Why? There is no divine involvement that is within nature. What is divine involvement? Divine involvement means that according to nature, X was supposed to happen — for example, that I was supposed to die from an illness. Now I prayed to the Holy One, blessed be He, to save me. The Holy One, blessed be He, performed a miracle and saved me. Now what does that mean? There are some people who recover from that illness too. Meaning, there is a natural possibility of recovery. That does not help. Why does that not help? Because if I recovered according to nature, then the Holy One, blessed be He, did not do it; nature did it. When I turn to the Holy One, blessed be He, I tell Him: look, there is a twenty percent chance to recover and an eighty percent chance to die. Please make sure that I am among those who recover. What is He supposed to do now? If I was going to come out among the twenty percent who recover anyway, then He did nothing; nature did it. If I was supposed to be among the eighty percent and He intervened and caused me nevertheless to recover, well then He did change something in the natural course, so there was a deviation here from the natural operation of the laws of nature. There is no such thing as divine involvement within nature. It is a categorical confusion. There is no such thing. Whenever I say the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved, it means that according to nature X should have happened and the Holy One, blessed be He, caused Y to happen. People confuse this with the question whether in nature X always happens. No — there are situations, especially in medicine, physics is more deterministic, but in medicine there are situations in which a certain percentage of people have this happen to them and another percentage have something else happen to them. That is obvious. And still, when I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to recover from such an illness, I am asking Him to violate the laws of nature. You can’t escape that. Because if I am among the twenty percent who recover, then I don’t need Him; nature would heal me. If I want Him to intervene and heal me, I am basically asking Him: look, if I am among the eighty percent, do something, change it. So in my case He intervened. He did not change the laws of nature in the sense that it is still twenty-eighty, but clearly somewhere in the micro-level, in the chain of events in my case, in my physiology, something happened there not according to nature. I expect the Holy One, blessed be He, to change that and lead me to a different outcome than what was naturally expected for me. Therefore the claim that there is involvement within the framework of the laws of nature is a claim born of misunderstanding. Confusion. There is no such thing. Every divine involvement is a deviation from the laws of nature. There is no involvement within the laws of nature. Rather, there is hidden involvement, there is a hidden miracle. What is a hidden miracle? It is a miracle that when I see it, I do not know that there was a miracle here. If, for example, someone recovered, and twenty percent of people recover from this illness. But he recovered because the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened. Meaning, he was really supposed to be among those who die, but the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened and he recovered. This is called a hidden miracle because I don’t know that here it was because of the Holy One, blessed be He; I say, fine, maybe he is among the twenty percent who would have recovered anyway. Now the truth is that the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved, there was a deviation from the laws of nature — I just don’t see it. So what does that mean? That the difference between a hidden miracle and an open miracle is not whether the laws of nature were violated. In both cases the laws of nature were violated. The question is only in the person, not in the object. Do I see that they were violated or not? If I see that they were violated, that is an open miracle. If I don’t see that they were violated, they were still violated but I don’t see it — that is a hidden miracle. That is really the difference. And therefore it is incorrect to connect the distinction between an open miracle and a hidden miracle to the question whether there is a deviation from the laws of nature or not. These are simply two completely different questions; there is no connection between them. It is always a deviation from the laws of nature. Of course, the assumption underlying this is that the laws of nature are deterministic. That if, in Laplace’s demon — given that the natural state is fixed, if I have all the data as a supercomputer with infinite memory and infinite computational power, give me all the data and I can tell you what will happen according to the laws of nature. Okay? And if the Holy One, blessed be He, changed it, then He deviated from the laws of nature. But the laws of nature basically determine in a deterministic way what the outcome will be. There is no situation in which according to the laws of nature there can be two possible outcomes. There is no such thing. There is such a thing according to certain interpretations at least in quantum theory. But on the macroscopic plane, in our daily life, there is no such thing. And when we talk about miracles, we’re not talking about quantum miracles. Miracles that happen on the quantum plane will wash out; there is dephasing on larger scales. So that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about something that happens on the macroscopic plane. On the macroscopic plane, nature is completely deterministic. It doesn’t matter, I can claim even more than that, yes, despite Norton’s dome; I also explained there why. I want to claim more than that. I claim that in quantum theory too it doesn’t matter, because in quantum theory too, true, there are two possibilities, but still, if the Holy One, blessed be He, ensures that I go to this possibility, then He still intervened. Because if it were just quantum theory, then a random draw would occur and either I would get there or I would get there. If the Holy One, blessed be He, made sure I got there, that means He still intervened. So even quantum theory won’t help here. But certainly on the macro level, classical physics, where everything is deterministic. Yes, including Norton’s dome. So maybe He really does intervene in hidden miracles? What? Maybe He really does intervene in hidden miracles. Could be. Right now, could be. But I’m saying we have to distinguish between the question whether it is a hidden miracle or an open miracle, and the question whether the laws of nature were violated or not. If there was divine involvement, the laws of nature were violated, period. It may be that I don’t notice they were violated — then it is a hidden miracle. At the splitting of the Sea everyone saw they were violated — so that was an open miracle. Okay. And then people claim maybe open miracles ceased over the generations, today there are no open miracles anymore, but hidden miracles still exist. Yes, Nachmanides at the end of Parashat Bo says that a person has no share in the Torah of Moses unless he believes that all our occurrences are miracles — yes? He means hidden miracles. So that is a common claim. But note: even a hidden miracle is still a violation of the laws of nature. And now I ask the question: from the rational perspective of an enlightened person living today, who knows the scientific picture of the world, how likely is it that there are hidden miracles? Again I remind you: a hidden miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. An electron moves here without any force acting on it. Yes? It happened there somewhere. We didn’t see it; it was a hidden miracle, but it happened. To what extent am I prepared to take seriously the possibility that electrons sometimes move without a force acting on them? That something happens without there being a physical cause that made it happen. Rabbi, wait, but the Rabbi gave the example of eighty-twenty. But what about a case where there is no eighty-twenty? There is one hundred or zero. The person is supposed to die with full certainty, okay, but he comes out of it. Okay, so what is that? A miracle, obviously. So that’s an open miracle above the laws of nature. Have you ever seen such a case? I don’t know whether there was or wasn’t. I don’t know. But there is no one hundred percent in anything. Medicine is like eighty-twenty; there is no one hundred percent in anything. What do you mean there is no one hundred percent in medicine? A person with terminal cancer — that isn’t one hundred percent? No, of course not. There is no one hundred percent in anything. People have recovered from everything. There is no one hundred percent for anything. Maybe there is some example, but it doesn’t matter — it’s the same thing as eighty-twenty. No, it’s not the same thing. No, it’s not the same thing. One hundred-zero: if something happens toward the zero side, then I know it’s a miracle. I just don’t think there are situations that are one hundred versus zero. That would be, as it were, an open miracle. Yes. There are maybe — doctors claim that after brain death a person does not come back. It’s an irreversible state. And therefore every now and then there was a report, say in Denmark a few years ago, of someone who came back from brain death. And the claim is that this cannot happen; the doctors were not prepared to accept such a thing. In the end it seems to me they found some explanations one way or another. That maybe, I don’t know, maybe that is almost the only thing that I — again, I’m not a doctor, I don’t understand this — but from what I know, that is maybe the only thing I hear doctors say is one hundred percent. Meaning, from brain death you do not return. Therefore people claim that organs can be harvested, because between brain death and cardiac death organs can be harvested, since brain death is irreversible. Meaning, you don’t come back; there is no chance at all of your returning. By the way, even about that I would have my doubts. I think in medicine there is nothing that is one hundred percent. But I don’t know. I’m saying, of course I’m not a professional — just a general impression. I’ll say more than that, and this I know also about myself, but it’s obvious to me that it’s also true of doctors and of all these disciplines: if such a thing happened, they would search for reasons under the ground to explain why from the outset it wasn’t really brain death, and therefore he came back. So that is from the outset a theory that cannot be falsified. Meaning, any counterexample you bring, they will assume there was some explanation even if we didn’t find it, because after all it can’t happen. But apparently it can. In short, this is only a hypothetical question. But hypothetically I agree: if something happened that is zero percent, then it is an open miracle. Yes, that is obvious. Anyway, for our purposes, what I basically want to say is that if you accept the scientific picture of the world, then it is in fact very hard to accept that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved in the world. Even hiddenly, not only openly. Because every involvement is a deviation from the scientific picture of the world. Every involvement, even if I don’t notice it. So it may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, is playing hide-and-seek with me and is involved in some hidden way without my noticing. But when I look, the world I observe always operates according to the laws of nature. Newton’s laws always work. Okay, but in situations where I don’t notice it, the Holy One somehow pops out, does something, and slips back into heaven. Okay? Playing hide-and-seek with me. Meaning, maybe. I have no way to rule out that option, but I’m saying that in general, basically, I tend to think that such a thing does not happen. I cannot rule out that sporadically, at some time or place or another, it does happen — active involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He. But generally I do not accept it unless there is some very unequivocal indication. As I said before, the miracle by definition, where I checked that there were no other such cases, or something like that — that is almost hypothetical, it almost cannot happen. So Rabbi, that means you also reject the concept of heavenly assistance. All these expressions, “with God’s help,” “if God wills” — are all these things nonsense? I don’t know if they are nonsense, but I don’t believe in them, yes. I’m saying that sporadically maybe yes. And then people ask me, according to that, why do you pray? I say it depends on which part of the prayer. There are parts of the prayer that are praise, there is thanksgiving, and there is request. Okay, so with praise I have no problem. Praise — I praise the Holy One, blessed be He, for creating the world, including its laws. And even if the events that happen here are products of the laws of nature, I still praise the Holy One, blessed be He, for having created these laws of nature. So praise is not so problematic for me. Thanksgiving too, which seems more problematic: what is thanksgiving? The Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t really do it; it happened naturally. So what are you thanking Him for? So I say there too I can explain — or not exactly explain; I’m not sure that this is what the Sages intended — but I can give it meaning within my present worldview too, even if the Sages did not originally intend it, and obviously they did not. I can give it reasonable meaning. I basically say: one should thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for what happens in the world, for returning my soul to me every morning. Not that a miracle really happens every morning. Human beings wake up every morning; that is not a miracle, it is part of nature. Right? So why do I thank Him? Because this is a certain moment that psychologically can arouse us to thank the Holy One, blessed be He. For what am I thanking Him? For the fact that nature causes me to go to sleep and wake up the next morning. But at this moment there is in me some… there awakens in me some feeling in which I am more ready, or it is easier for me to grasp or connect to this feeling of thanking the Holy One, blessed be He. If a so-called miracle happens to me, then I know — if a so-called miracle happens to me, I am a rational person, it is not a miracle. But in the end I was in distress and came out of that distress. This is a good opportunity; let’s use the opportunity to thank the Holy One, blessed be He. For what? Not for the fact that He saved me; He did not save me. It happened naturally. Rather, for the fact that He created the world, in which I can function, I can live, and in this case I also came out of some difficulty. So basically the claim is a psychological one. I thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for nature and its ongoing laws. Because I cannot thank Him for every single thing; we are not built that way. We live the day-to-day. The day-to-day is prose, not poetry. Yes? There are certain moments in which, although it’s a mistake — nothing there is supernatural — but there are moments in which the soul awakens. So the Sages tell us: in those moments, use that awakening to thank the Holy One, blessed be He. For what to thank Him? For the world, for its natural operation. Therefore both praise and thanksgiving do not create a severe problem for me. Regarding requests, that is much harder. Because to ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for healing, livelihood, and the like — if He is not involved, then everything is natural, so what do I have to ask for? And these requests neither add nor subtract. So in what sense, what meaning do requests have? Here, truly, I really am in trouble with this matter. I tell myself: there is an enactment of the Sages. And that enactment has authority. And that authority is formal authority. Meaning, if something was established in the Talmud or established in the Sanhedrin, then it is binding. However, if I were convinced that these requests are really not answered, then even if this enactment were binding, I cannot pray. Asher Avital used to quote the Talmud in tractate Yoma, I think, about how some came and reduced the praises of the Holy One, blessed be He: Daniel came and reduced them to one — well, not reduced to one, but “the great, mighty, and awesome God.” “The great, mighty, and awesome God” — they reduced the praises. “Where is His awesomeness? Foxes walk in His sanctuary — where is His awesomeness?” You cannot say “awesome.” Nor “mighty” nor “great” nor anything — they removed all the praises. And the Talmud asks: how can you remove the praises established by Moses our teacher in the Torah? Are you changing the wording of the Torah? And it answers: because the seal of the Holy One, blessed be He, is truth, and He hates falsehood spoken about Him. You cannot say things that inwardly are clearly false to you. I do not question the authority of the Sages, who established that one must request three times a day in the Amidah. But I cannot ask if I do not believe in it. It is simply impossible for me to do it; I cannot do it. I can say the words. But asking is not saying words. The words express a request. But if there is no request within me because I don’t believe in it, then uttering the words is not the enactment of the Sages. The enactment of the Sages is to ask. The words express the fact that I am asking. Therefore if I were convinced of this, I would not be able to say the requests. Despite the fact that there is no authority to dispute the enactment of the Men of the Great Assembly or of the Sanhedrin, of the Talmud, and so on. But as I said before, I cannot rule out that sporadically, in some case or at some particular moment, the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved. I cannot rule it out categorically. Therefore I do not have complete certainty that tells me: no, I cannot ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for anything, because it simply won’t happen. I do think that usually it doesn’t happen, or almost always it doesn’t happen. But if in some sporadic case it can happen, that still has some practical implication. What implication? That I will say the fixed prayer, including the requests. But requests beyond that, I see no reason to say. Meaning, unless it is clear to me that all options are exhausted. Meaning, there is no natural solution at all. Then maybe this will be one of those sporadic cases in which the Holy One, blessed be He, in His goodness deigns to intervene, and then I pray. What can happen? If it doesn’t help, it won’t hurt. The Holy One, blessed be He, can… This outlook that says you should ask all the time and the more you ask the better — I think that is impossible for someone who adopts the view I described here. It simply makes no sense. Okay, and what is asking beyond the fixed prayer? Anything. What do you mean? The mashgichim are constantly telling you the opposite: ask about everything, pray beyond the fixed prayers, ask for everything you need, involve the Holy One, blessed be He. The mashgichim never stop talking about this. No, but what is the problem with that? Let’s say, would I say it’s a waste of time? No, there’s no problem with it. I’m saying that since I don’t believe these things are answered — or I believe that usually if there is a natural solution, then I will use the natural solution and solve the problem. And in places where all options are exhausted, maybe I will ask the Holy One, blessed be He — perhaps He will intervene here after all. But to ask on an ongoing basis does not really fit with the view, with the picture, that I described here. I would have thought the practical implication in fixed prayers, because there are blessings there, is that if I don’t believe in it, maybe that’s even a question of a blessing in vain. Exactly right. But beyond the fixed prayer there are no blessings. No, and that’s a problem, but not the main one. The main problem is that there is no point in the request even without a blessing. It’s just moving your lips. Yes, a kind of waste of time. Yes, I mean, no — it’s also insincerity. It’s contempt toward the Holy One, blessed be He, just as the Talmud says: the seal of the Holy One, blessed be He, is truth; He hates falsehood spoken about Him. If you don’t believe He is awesome, don’t say He is awesome. When you say He is awesome, you are expressing something that you really think. But to say the words in a way that does not express something you really think — don’t say them. On the contrary, that is falsehood before the Holy One, blessed be He, and He hates that. Not because you are not obligated — just as the Men of the Great Assembly could not change what Moses our teacher established, and I cannot change what the Sanhedrin established. True. It’s not changing; I simply cannot fulfill this halakhic requirement because I do not believe in it. What can I do? I can only say the words. Therefore I say that this has some implication only in the sense that beyond the fixed prayers, in ordinary cases, and not in a very, very extreme case where there is no natural solution at all, I see no reason to make requests. But as for the fixed prayers and so on, I am not sufficiently certain, categorically, that there is no involvement, to say: okay, I simply cannot say the fixed prayers at all. That just isn’t an option for me. Now in this context maybe I have a few additions. This took more time than I planned. First of all, there are two additions I still want to get in. One addition is: how do we relate to miracles that happened in the Bible, yes, in our tradition? The splitting of the Red Sea, the ten plagues, whatever, even the revelation at Mount Sinai. Encounter with the Holy One, blessed be He, is also some kind of supernatural event. Here it seems to me that I do tend to believe at least some of these things — not every detail in the pyrotechnics of Mount Sinai is a factual description — but I do tend to believe that there were miracles there. There were prophets who testified to the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He. Meaning, I accept the testimony of the prophets that the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved. I only claim that He probably changed policy. In the past He was involved, and over the years His involvement keeps decreasing. Now, everyone agrees with this thesis. This is not my thesis. For example, everyone agrees that there are no open miracles today anymore, right? Everyone agrees that prophecy existed once and no longer exists today. There is no argument about that. All I want to claim is that the same is true of hidden miracles. That is my addition. But the claim itself, that the Holy One’s policy is to be less and less involved over history — that is a claim that is hard to argue with. Everyone agrees to it. Whether to apply it to hidden miracles or not — that is another question. Therefore I say — and now I will also try to offer an explanation for it. What do I mean? Usually people understand this as some sort of withdrawal of the Holy One, blessed be He, from the world. This is concealment of His face, a kind of punishment. The world declines, deteriorates, yes, the Holy One appears in it less. In my eyes it is the opposite. This is the ascent of the generations. The claim is that just as parents raise their child, when he is small they do everything for him. When he grows a bit, they hold his hand and accompany him in every step he takes. He grows more, so he gets a longer leash, he does more things on his own, the parents still watch from the outside — yes, with passive providence. When he grows and becomes really grown up, then he stands on his own feet. The parents leave him now; he lives his life, because he can manage, he received the tools, he lives his life, now he can manage. I claim that the same is true of the Holy One’s relation to us, to human beings. Jews, human beings in general, it doesn’t matter. At the beginning humanity was still in a childish state, did not know how to manage. There was not yet science, of course. People did not know how to manage, so the Holy One, blessed be He, had to accompany them at every step. Little by little humanity advances, little by little we stand more and more on our own feet, and then the Holy One says: okay, you are already big children. I slowly withdraw, because in the end, “You cast truth to the ground,” yes? The Holy One, blessed be He, created the world so that we would function in it, not so that He would do everything for us. So at the beginning, in order that we grow and develop and be educated and receive tools, He accompanied us. Little by little we became big children, and He says to them: okay, from now on, “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to human beings.” From now on you have to manage on your own. Therefore this concealment of the face actually expresses some kind of responsibility or trust that He places in us, like parents with a child. It is not concealment in the sense of punishment; it is concealment in the sense of: you are already big children, you don’t need Me to do everything for you. Now conduct yourselves as you understand, use your own heads. And in that sense, in my view, this is actually an optimistic look at the process of God’s concealment, not a pessimistic one. This was a policy planned from the outset; it is not punishment for sins. Okay? Wait, but the Rabbi says humanity and not the Jewish people, because he thinks this is a universal process, as it were? Yes, yes. It happens to us and it happens to the whole world. Yes, but Rabbi, in the biblical period His intervention was so obvious for the whole world, as it were — that’s what the Rabbi claims? Even in the period of the Torah, the intervention was not… I don’t know if so obvious, but there was more, more involvement. Listen, in the period of the patriarchs, it is described there that the Holy One, blessed be He, is revealed also to Abimelech, not only to Abraham. The Holy One speaks with people, and not only Jews, not only Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Holy One is present in people’s lives. He is involved there, He causes things, He brings a flood, He tells Noah, He is there. The Holy One sends messengers to Pharaoh, brings ten plagues on them, the revelation at Mount Sinai — at least in the rabbinic description, the whole world saw it in some way, not only the Jewish people. Again, I don’t know to what extent these aggadic descriptions are actually factual, but the simple outlook is that the Holy One is present in the world, not specifically only for the Jewish people. Maybe more for the Jewish people, I don’t know. But He is present in the world. Christians too have traditions about miracles that happened to them, whether true or not, but they too basically adopt this picture that the Holy One was more involved in the past. And I claim that this is a deliberate policy. It is not punishment or concealment of the face or decline or anything of the sort. On the contrary. That was the plan from the beginning. We grew up; now manage on your own. And in that sense it could be that the involvement — what I called active providence — of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world keeps receding, not because He was never there, yes? I am not claiming that because of the laws of nature the Holy One cannot be involved. Obviously He can. It’s not a question of His ability. The question is what His policy is, whether He wants to intervene. If He wants to, He will intervene. The mouth that forbade is the mouth that permitted. He created the laws of nature, and if He created the laws of nature then of course He can suspend them or change them or deviate from them. Okay? It is not a question of His ability. The question is what His policy is, whether He wants to do that. And from what I see around me, it seems to me that He does not want to. I do not see indications that He is involved. Once He did want to, and today apparently He wants to less. That is the claim. Now, does… Rabbi, then if I understand the Rabbi correctly, when the Rabbi goes out against those who see a miracle in every little roll and everywhere, the Rabbi isn’t only saying: I looked as a scientist and saw that it doesn’t happen. I have criticism against you because you are acting against God’s will, against God’s policy that you should not have a consciousness that He intervenes and that He is a father constantly taking care of a small child. Rather, take responsibility for yourselves. And you are still living in some historicism that sees God in history and running everything, and then you… Yes, I mentioned earlier the thesis of hishtadlus, the Lithuanian movement. Meaning, the thesis of hishtadlus basically says: I want to dance at two weddings. The Holy One, blessed be He, does everything, but that does not exempt me; I have to do the actions necessary to achieve the results. Now that is of course utter nonsense. But there is no one who doesn’t say it — from the greatest of Israel down to the smallest. There is no one who doesn’t say this nonsense. And in my opinion there is also no one who believes it. No one really believes it. Again, I am often not claiming that people are lying. Rather, if they themselves would not truly examine themselves inwardly, they would see that they don’t believe it. But they are so used to living this way that a person lives in split consciousness. He recites it authentically; I’m not claiming he is deceiving. In the conscious sense he really thinks that way. But when you look inside, clearly you do not really believe it. You run after the best doctor… In Bnei Brak people run hysterically after the greatest doctor imaginable for every little illness. Now if this is only the obligation of effort, it is a bit hard to accept something like that, right? Fine, go to a doctor because there is an obligation of effort, but basically all you need is to sit in the kollel. Send your wife to some doctor you happen to find, let her draw lots just to fulfill the obligation of effort. It doesn’t really hold water. Meaning, “Torah protects and saves,” and all those things. You say there’s a car accident, people come to comfort someone whose relative was killed in a car accident, and you know — we don’t understand the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He, He has His own considerations, and so forth. What is the assumption? The assumption is that the Holy One, blessed be He, did it, yes? That’s obvious. We just don’t understand. But at the same time you say: wait, wait, there needs to be a commission of inquiry, there needs to be… The next person destined to die won’t die if you make a commission of inquiry; he’ll die by the left wheel or by the right wheel. So what? You understand that this is speech in a language of split consciousness. Human beings live in a way they don’t really believe in. Don’t really believe in. And therefore, again, I say, they are not lying. It’s not a lie. They are lying to themselves. Meaning, inwardly they do not really believe it, but in declarations — sure, very forceful declarations that everything is in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He, and so on and so on. But people don’t really believe it. And personally, I put more trust in people’s inner intuitions than in their conscious conceptions. In conscious conceptions, yes, I am a devotee of System A of Daniel Kahneman, not System B. Meaning, what works within us unconsciously, that I trust more than the conscious system. In the conscious system there are many biases. Well, I’ll stop here. Maybe I’ll make some completions next time. But there is a question, Rabbi. You said that you think this is, as it were, a policy of the Holy One, blessed be He. It’s a suggestion. I don’t have a source for it, but it seems to me a reasonable explanation. I don’t know, because when we look at the last two hundred years, we see the opposite. The world, on the contrary — it seems to me that we need the Holy One, blessed be He, much more than people needed Him five hundred years ago, in the theological sense. No, that’s really not true. I think it’s obvious that in the technological and scientific age we have more power to do harm, but the harm is ours. And the Holy One, blessed be He, says to us: friends, you’re already big children, you have all the means. If you decide to commit suicide and kill one another, that too is called suicide — because I claim that all of humanity stands before the Holy One, blessed be He, not each person separately. So the fact that someone threatens me does not mean, wait, Holy One, blessed be He, save me. Humanity is supposed to function before the Holy One, blessed be He, as a mature entity. Meaning, manage life; you already have ways to deal with it. The fact that you are killing one another — I expect you to stop that and manage it properly. As far as nature is concerned, nature threatens us less today; we know how to get along with it. By threat I meant theological, but never mind. Today there is much more theological threat than there was two hundred or three hundred years ago, so I don’t understand this policy. On the contrary, He should be with us more, not less. What does “theological threat” mean? I didn’t understand. I think the last two hundred years, in which a super-materialist worldview has placed the believing person in challenges that did not exist two hundred or three hundred years ago. You mean intellectual challenges? Yes. Fine, but for that we have a head, and with intellectual challenges we can cope. With illnesses, if we have no medical knowledge, then we have no way to cope. Then we can ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to heal us. But with intellectual challenges, we were given capacities to deal with them. And if we do not manage to deal with them, that is our crime. Meaning, deal with them better. But the great failure, it seems to me, from what I understand, is that awareness of the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He — unlike the version you gave with the child and the child’s maturing, where the parents can withdraw — here, when the Holy One, blessed be He, withdrew, as it were, then we no longer have complete certainty as there was then regarding the principle. Fine, so one must cope under conditions of uncertainty. And actually, following what Didi just said, it seems to me that once we live in such a reality where there really is uncertainty and we do not feel God, and nevertheless we keep Torah and commandments, it seems to me that gives us, as it were, greater reward. Maybe. I don’t know. I do not deal with reward. Because there is no immediate reward and punishment; say in the wilderness, when they spoke slander there was immediately leprosy. Right. So who would speak slander then? It’s frightening to speak slander. Leibowitz already said that open miracles never brought anyone to repentance. At the revelation at Mount Sinai they worshipped the calf after all the pyrotechnics. But fine, no problem. I’m not arguing with those things. Maybe. Maybe even stronger: Moses our teacher turns to the Holy One, blessed be He, and asks Him, “How shall I know that You sent me?” And God knows that a person on Moses’ level is not supposed to be impressed by all the pyrotechnics, so He says to him, “When you bring this people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” “You shall serve God on this mountain.” The change in mentality from a nation of slaves to a nation that serves God is something that Moses our teacher is supposed to be impressed by. Not by… Just an emphasis on “you shall serve God” — the plain meaning of the verse is that the emphasis is on “on this mountain,” that this is the sign. Meaning, if you arrive at that same mountain, that is the sign that this really is My mission. And you’re saying “you shall serve God” is the focus, because if you change mentality… Each of you is watching a movie. Each of you is watching a movie. You’ve already been sitting here two hours and something in front of the computer — enough. But it is worth distinguishing between whether there is empirical proof for the existence of divine providence today, and the fact that if we see a different reality… Meaning, we are in some sort of tie. Meaning, one can claim a priori that there is divine providence, but we have no proof of it from nature, and therefore it… Yes, it may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, is playing hide-and-seek with us. It may be. And that is also the common claim. Meaning, one has to start from there. Right, it’s a common claim, and in my view unconvincing. It is not empirically grounded — that I agree — but it does not claim to be empirically grounded; in a certain sense… It may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, is playing hide-and-seek with us. I only claim — and this is a claim one might call empirical — that people themselves do not really think so. They themselves — let them not sell me fairy tales — they themselves do not operate under that assumption. Maybe they are mistaken. Maybe the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved in everything. But people themselves, including the most righteous and those who wave this around the most, do not really act that way and do not really believe that. Psychologically yes, not practically. Meaning, maybe their level of anxiety is usually lower; maybe you can see it there. I wasn’t speaking practically. Level of anxiety — you know, a person is a complex creature, so our psychology works in all kinds of ways. When you check at the root how a person behaves, where does he run first when he is sick: to the study hall or to the doctor? He runs to the doctor. So don’t tell me that the study hall is the decisive thing and there is only an obligation of effort. And again, I am not claiming that is right. I am only asking what he believes, before the question whether he is right or wrong. So the fact that most people think that way does not impress me. Obviously, because we all went through this indoctrination. One could say it’s preservation of life, but even in things that aren’t preservation of life, in practice if his house catches fire he’ll call the fire department and not say a chapter of Psalms. That’s obvious. Exactly. Okay. Good. Goodbye, good night.