Dogmatics – Lecture 17
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The tenth principle: passive providence versus active providence
- Two possibilities for omitting active providence from the principles
- Maimonides in Laws of Repentance chapter 10: serving out of love and not for reward and punishment
- Love and fear: commandment, motivation, and the meaning of “love” in Maimonides
- Laws of the Foundations of the Torah: the path to love and fear through contemplation of creation
- Miracles, laws of nature, and the conception of the Creator’s greatness
- Prayer, a hidden miracle, and rejecting “involvement within the framework of the laws of nature”
- A vain prayer in Berakhot and the Sages’ understanding of nature
- Human evil, natural evil, free choice, and “some perish without justice”
- Natural evil, determinism, and the logical limits of “a better system of laws”
Summary
General Overview
The speaker explains Maimonides’ tenth principle about providence and argues that its plain meaning is more passive providence than active providence, even though the phrase “and did not abandon them” can sound like involvement. He suggests two possibilities for why active providence is omitted from the principles: either it is not a “principle” even if it is true, because the principle is meant to teach that our actions are meaningful and that the Holy One, blessed be He, cares about what we do; or it is not true, because there is no ongoing divine involvement, even if sporadic interventions may occur. He bases the distinction on Maimonides’ words in Laws of Repentance chapter 10 about serving not for the sake of reward and punishment but rather “doing the truth because it is truth,” and expands on the relationship between prayer, miracles, laws of nature, human evil, and natural evil, and on the fact that the Sages conceived of the possibility of “involvement within nature” differently from the scientific deterministic understanding.
The tenth principle: passive providence versus active providence
The speaker reads Maimonides’ words, “that He, exalted be He, knows the deeds of human beings and has not abandoned them,” as emphasizing that the Holy One, blessed be He, has “His eyes open to all the ways of humankind,” and not as the view that “the Lord has forsaken the earth,” but not necessarily as a declaration of active involvement. He says that the alternative Maimonides sets up is knowledge and providence versus abandonment, and that this can be understood as passive providence that does not require ongoing intervention.
Two possibilities for omitting active providence from the principles
The speaker proposes a first possibility according to which Maimonides does not regard active providence as a principle, even if he does not reject it, because passive providence establishes a foundation for serving God by determining that our actions have significance as good and evil, right and wrong. He proposes a second possibility according to which active providence was omitted because it is not true, and presents his personal view that there is no ongoing divine involvement, though sporadic involvement cannot be ruled out, while saying that it is hard to extract a coherent doctrine from Maimonides because of contradictions in his writings.
Maimonides in Laws of Repentance chapter 10: serving out of love and not for reward and punishment
The speaker quotes from Laws of Repentance chapter 10, law 1: “A person should not say… I will fulfill the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom in order to receive all the blessings… or in order to merit the life of the World to Come… and I will separate from sins… in order to be saved from the curses…,” and emphasizes Maimonides’ ruling that “it is not fitting to serve the Lord in this way,” and that this is the “level of… the ignorant, women, and children” until they “serve out of love.” He quotes from law 2 that one who serves out of love “does the truth because it is truth, and the good will ultimately come because of it,” and interprets this to mean that serving God is not supposed to be self-interested but value-driven, so that the truth and the moral significance of actions are the main foundation, not heaven’s reaction in terms of consequences.
Love and fear: commandment, motivation, and the meaning of “love” in Maimonides
The speaker distinguishes between the commandments to love God and fear God, and service that is motivated by fear in the sense of reward and punishment, and explains that fear is not supposed to be the reason for the service even though it is a commandment. He raises a difficulty between Maimonides’ words in Laws of Repentance about “serving out of love” and his words in Laws of Idolatry chapter 3, law 6, about one “who worships idolatry out of love or fear” being exempt, and resolves it by saying that in Maimonides “love” appears in several senses: in Laws of Repentance “love” is an intellectual motivation of “doing the truth because it is truth,” whereas in Laws of the Foundations of the Torah love is an emotional-spiritual relation created through contemplation of creation.
Laws of the Foundations of the Torah: the path to love and fear through contemplation of creation
The speaker quotes Laws of the Foundations of the Torah chapter 2, law 2: “At the time a person contemplates His deeds and His wondrous creations… he immediately loves…,” and in parallel, “he immediately recoils and fears,” and also cites chapter 4, law 12: “When a person contemplates these matters… he increases his love for the Omnipresent… and fears and trembles at his own lowliness.” He concludes that love and fear arise from contemplation of the world’s ordinary and regular operation and not from exceptions to it, and presents a view according to which it is precisely the ongoing regularity that testifies to the Creator’s greatness.
Miracles, laws of nature, and the conception of the Creator’s greatness
The speaker argues that miracles are not necessarily an expression of greatness, but can appear to be a deficiency, because greatness is expressed in a creation whose laws “already do everything that needs to be done” without intervention. He adds that people are impressed by miracles because that is “the way of little people and fools,” whereas a mature person ought to be impressed by the fixed order, and he connects this to the discussion of faith and evolution and criticizes the “God of the gaps” idea as a basis for faith.
Prayer, a hidden miracle, and rejecting “involvement within the framework of the laws of nature”
The speaker defines “divine involvement” as a deviation from natural regularity, and argues that involvement “within the framework of the laws of nature” is a categorical confusion. He uses the example of probabilistic medicine—“twenty percent” versus “eighty percent”—to say that if there were an answer to prayer, that would mean the Holy One, blessed be He, moved a person from the “eighty” to the “twenty,” meaning there was an actual deviation even if it is a “hidden miracle” that cannot be identified. He explains that probabilistic division reflects human lack of knowledge and not indeterminism in nature, and therefore a prayer that is said to have been answered is necessarily a change from the course that was supposed to occur.
A vain prayer in Berakhot and the Sages’ understanding of nature
The speaker cites the Mishnah in Berakhot: “One who sees a fire in the city and says, ‘May it be Your will that these not be members of my household’—this is a vain prayer,” and the ruling of “May it be Your will that my wife give birth to a male” after forty days as a “vain prayer,” and argues that the distinction teaches that the Sages thought there are prayers that can be answered within nature before a certain point, whereas after that point it would be a deviation from nature and one should not pray for it. He states that today, given a deterministic conception, even before forty days it is in fact a deviation, and therefore a broader question arises about the very idea of requesting needs in prayer.
Human evil, natural evil, free choice, and “some perish without justice”
The speaker distinguishes between human evil and natural evil and explains that human evil stems from free choice and therefore is not a theological difficulty: if the Holy One, blessed be He, prevented all human evil, then “de facto we would have no free choice.” He cites Chagigah 5a, “some perish without justice,” and Rabbeinu Chananel’s explanation, “for example, a person who killed his fellow,” to show that a person can die even though he did not deserve it, because of the murderer’s free choice. He also brings the story of Rabbi Amital and Abba Kovner, that the right question is “where was the human being during the Holocaust,” not “where was God during the Holocaust.” By contrast, he presents another rabbinic conception from Makkot 10b about “the Holy One, blessed be He, brings them to one inn” as a model in which natural death is integrated into a reckoning of judgment, but he himself distances himself from this conception, especially in cases of large-scale disaster such as a tsunami, and argues that even in natural evil, those “who did not deserve to die” can die.
Natural evil, determinism, and the logical limits of “a better system of laws”
The speaker argues that the question, “If God is good and all-powerful, why is there natural evil?” assumes that there exists an alternative rigid system of natural laws that would do everything the world does without those cases of suffering, and he places the burden of proof on the questioner to show that such a system is possible. He compares this to the impossibility of a “round triangle” or “a stone that the Almighty cannot lift,” and argues that there may be no deterministic set of laws that would prevent tsunamis and other harsh outcomes without dismantling the rest of the world’s structure. He concludes that one can still be impressed by creation even if it is “good” and not “perfect,” and that in the area of divine involvement he has no experiential indication like the one he has regarding free choice, and therefore he does not assume ongoing involvement, only at most rare exceptions.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We were in the middle of going through Maimonides’ principles, and we were basically at the tenth principle, which speaks about providence. And we discussed there—I said that I’m not entirely sure whether Maimonides, it seems that Maimonides did not include active providence there, only passive providence, even though his wording could also be stretched to include active providence, because he writes that He, exalted be He, knows the deeds of human beings and did not abandon them. What does that mean? What is this addition, “and did not abandon them”? It could be that “He knows” is passive providence, and in addition, “and did not abandon them” means He didn’t forsake the earth, He is still involved in what happens here. But I think the simple understanding, I think the plain reading of this principle, is that it refers only to passive providence, and not like the opinion that says “the Lord has forsaken the earth,” but rather as it says, “great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of humankind.” Meaning, you can see that the alternative Maimonides is speaking about is that the Holy One, blessed be He, has His eyes open to our ways, but not necessarily that He is involved, rather that He oversees.
And I said that this omission—the focus on passive providence and not active providence—can be explained in two ways. One way is to say that Maimonides does not see active providence as a principle. Passive providence, yes, but active providence, no. So it’s not that he doesn’t accept active providence, but rather that he doesn’t see it as a principle, and therefore it doesn’t enter his Thirteen Principles. And I think the idea behind this is that passive providence, although it sounds like a more minor claim, actually contains a more essential foundation for the Jewish worldview, or for the foundation of Jewish law, of serving God, because if the Holy One, blessed be He, watches over us passively, that means He cares about what we do. And so this principle is not really a principle about what the Holy One, blessed be He, does; it is a principle that speaks to us, and tells us: what you do is meaningful. Meaning, these are not neutral things, not uninteresting things; these are things that matter. What you are obligated to do, or forbidden to do, or permitted to do—these are things with meaning.
By contrast, active providence is a statement about what the Holy One, blessed be He, does in the world. The Holy One, blessed be He, is involved here, maybe answers prayers or things of that kind, and therefore it doesn’t cast too significant a light on everything we do, except perhaps the issue of prayer, which I already noted and I’ll get back to. But basically it doesn’t touch the foundation of the Torah worldview or of serving God. So that’s regarding the possibility that active providence was omitted because it is not a principle.
The second possibility was that active providence was omitted because it is not true—not because it is not a principle, but because Maimonides does not accept it. Now on this I spoke a bit, because it connects to things that I think are true. I have no idea what Maimonides thought about them; I said it is very hard to say anything about Maimonides’ position on these issues, because there are contradictions in his words in various places, and therefore I’m not completely sure one can extract from him some coherent picture on this matter. Meaning, from all his writings and all his formulations there are all kinds of contradictions. But at least the way I see things, I tried to explain why I think there is no involvement—at least not on an ongoing basis—no divine involvement, at least not on an ongoing basis, though one cannot rule out sporadic involvement. At specific points in time and place, it may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved. And therefore, if that really is what Maimonides thinks, then one could say that he omitted active providence because it is not true, not because it is not a principle—at least not in the usual sense that says everything that takes place here happens by the power of the Holy One, blessed be He.
Now before we move on to the next principle, I have a few additions regarding the two possibilities we discussed—both the possibility that it is not a principle and the possibility that it is not true. I’ll begin with additions to the possibility that it is not a principle. I said that the possible explanation for why it is not a principle—even if active providence is true, but less important than passive providence—is that passive providence is not really a metaphysical claim about what the Holy One, blessed be He, does, or about His policy, but rather a claim about the meaning of our deeds and actions in the world. Our deeds and actions in the world have significance; the Holy One, blessed be He, oversees because there is good and evil here, right and wrong, and therefore our deeds are meaningful deeds. By contrast, active providence is a claim about the Holy One, blessed be He—whether He is involved or not involved. So maybe that is true and maybe it is not true, but it is not such a fundamental thing in the religious worldview, and therefore it is not a principle.
I want to sharpen a bit more what exactly this means. Sometimes when we ask ourselves why we serve the Holy One, blessed be He—yes, I’ve had more than a few conversations with people about this, and been asked about it, on the site and off the site—many people say: we serve the Holy One, blessed be He, because there is reward and punishment. Meaning, because our actions have consequences; we can gain or lose depending on whether we do the right or wrong things, and therefore it is worthwhile to do the right things. And the claim—both Maimonides’ claim, and I humbly join him on this point—is that this is not supposed to be the basic motivation for serving God. The motivation for serving God, as Maimonides writes at the beginning of chapter 10 of Laws of Repentance, is that one does not serve the Lord in that way—yes, in the way of reward and punishment. Maybe let’s look at it inside for a moment.
Laws of Repentance. Here it is, chapter 10 of Laws of Repentance: “A person should not say: behold, I fulfill the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom in order to receive all the blessings written in it, or in order to merit the life of the World to Come; and I separate from the transgressions that the Torah warned against in order to be saved from the curses written in the Torah, or in order not to be cut off from the life of the World to Come.” And Maimonides says: it is not right to serve the Lord in order to receive reward or punishment in the World to Come, or in order to receive the blessings or avoid the curses in this world—yes, “and it shall come to pass, if you surely listen,” and “if you will not listen,” and so on. So there are consequences, both in the World to Come and in this world. So Maimonides says: true, there are consequences, but “it is not fitting to serve the Lord in this way.” Meaning, that is not supposed to be the reason why you serve the Lord. “One who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages.” Yes, “and the only ones who serve the Lord in this way are the ignorant, women, and children”—forgive me, the women sitting here—“who are trained to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.”
So Maimonides says: even if that is true, that is not supposed to be the reason why I serve the Holy One, blessed be He. So what is? That is in law 2. One who serves out of love—in other words, the previous one was serving out of fear; what is appropriate is serving out of love. And what does that mean? “He engages in Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, not out of fear of evil, and not in order to inherit good, but he does the truth because it is truth, and in the end the good will come because of it.” Meaning, the proper way to serve the Holy One, blessed be He, the proper reason to serve the Holy One, blessed be He, is not in order to get something or avoid distress or sanctions—not in this world and not in the World to Come. So what is it? Serving out of love. What is serving out of love? To do the truth because it is truth. And he says, “and in the end the good will come because of it”—not because it isn’t true that we receive reward, in the World to Come or in this world, but because that is not why we are supposed to serve the Holy One, blessed be He.
You see, this is exactly the move I spoke about in connection with the tenth principle. He says: even if it is true that the Holy One, blessed be He, is actively involved, that is not supposed to be the reason why I serve Him. It may be true that He is involved. So what, then, is the reason? The reason is to do the truth because it is truth. What does that mean? Because what we do really are the meaningful things that ought to be done, or ought to be avoided. And that is exactly what passive providence reflects. Passive providence basically says that our actions are supposed to be done this way and not otherwise because that is the truth—not because there is active providence, and then there are reactions to what we do, which would be serving not for its own sake—but because the Holy One, blessed be He, watches and sees, because it matters to Him that we act this way and not otherwise, because that is the truth.
And here we really see this distinction that Maimonides makes between the question of whether something is true and the question of whether it is important. Meaning, the fact that there is reward and punishment in the World to Come may be true—it is true—but it is not supposed to be significant in terms of what we do in this world, why we serve the Lord. And therefore, even if it is true, perhaps that is why—this is my suggestion—even if it is true, it is still not a principle. So what is the principle? The very fact that this is the truth, that this is how one ought to behave. And that is what passive providence reflects. Because passive providence basically says: the Holy One, blessed be He, ensures that we truly serve this way and not otherwise, that we serve correctly, regardless of what He does to us as a result. And therefore passive providence really is a principle, while active providence—even if it is true—is not a principle. That is, that could be the claim.
And this is the greatness of our father Abraham, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, called “My beloved,” because he served only out of love. And this is the level that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us through Moses, as it says, “And you shall love the Lord your God.” And when a person loves the Lord with the proper love, he immediately performs all the commandments out of love. So yes, this Maimonides—I’ve spoken about it more than once in these series, and law 3 also has very interesting points. But for our purposes here, the important distinction is between law 1 and law 2. Because what this means is that even if my actions have consequences, I do not serve the Holy One, blessed be He, because of those consequences. And therefore the fact that my actions have consequences may not be a sufficiently important principle to enter the principles. What is important is that my actions are meaningful, that this is the truth, that this is the way one ought to act.
And if you ask me why I’m really doing this, the answer is supposed to be: not in order to receive reward in the World to Come or in this world, and not to avoid punishment, but because this is the truth. Because this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. And if this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants, and that is the truth, then that is the reason I am supposed to act this way, “and in the end the good will come.” Meaning, not because the good will not come as a result of what I do, but because the fact that the good will come is not supposed to be the reason why I serve the Holy One, blessed be He. Service is not supposed to be a self-interested consideration, or I don’t know what to call it, egoistic, but rather a value judgment, because this is the right way to act.
This can be expanded on a great deal, and I’ve spoken about it more than once, along with Maimonides in Laws of Idolatry regarding accepting Him as a god. Yes, Maimonides writes there in Laws of Idolatry, chapter 3, law 6, that one who worships idolatry out of love or fear is exempt. This is a dispute between Abaye and Rava in the Talmud, and Maimonides rules like Rava, that one who worships idolatry out of love or fear is exempt. And I think the explanation is that religious worship—both of the Holy One, blessed be He, and of idolatry—is worship that has to be done not out of any other consideration, but because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it, because I accepted Him upon myself as God, and therefore His will is the truth, that is what obligates. And if He said so, then that is what I do.
And therefore the motivation for worship—even though love of God and fear of God are commandments, meaning they are not negative things, not incorrect things. On the contrary, there is a commandment to love the Lord and fear Him. I was asked about this on the site not long ago. They asked me: how can it be that there is a commandment of love of God and fear of God, but it is not right to serve the Lord out of love or fear—or at least out of fear? I was asked. Out of love, yes, it says that one should serve, in what we just continued reading. And the answer is that it is true that there is a commandment to fear the Holy One, blessed be He, but at the same time it is not right for that fear to be the reason why I serve Him.
As for love, that too is apparently difficult, because Maimonides in the chapter we just read says that yes, one should serve the Lord out of love—not out of fear, but yes out of love. But in Laws of Idolatry Maimonides writes: one who worships idolatry out of love or fear is exempt. Meaning, these two motivations are not correct motivations for religious worship, even love, not just fear. But when you look carefully, you see that the concept of love in Maimonides is interpreted in several ways, in several senses. In Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, Maimonides speaks about love of God in the sense that one should love the Holy One, blessed be He. In Laws of Repentance, in what we read now, Maimonides speaks about serving out of love, which means doing the truth because it is truth. Not an emotional matter, not some emotional relationship to the Holy One, blessed be He, but an intellectual, philosophical motivation for why I should serve the Holy One, blessed be He. I should serve Him, or fulfill His commandments, because that is the truth. And for Maimonides that is called serving out of love.
Meaning, love of God as a commandment, and serving out of love—the concept of love in those two is not the same concept. Love of God as a commandment is an emotional relation to the Holy One, blessed be He, and even there one can discuss whether it is an emotion or not an emotion. But serving out of love in Laws of Repentance means doing the truth because it is truth. That is called serving out of love. It excludes fear, and it also excludes love in the sense of Laws of the Foundations of the Torah. No emotional relation to the Holy One, blessed be He, is supposed to be the reason why we serve Him. We are supposed to serve Him because that is the truth. And this is a kind of cold, intellectual motivation—excuse me, cold and intellectual—for serving God, and not love and fear toward Him, even though there are commandments to love and fear. It is not that one should not love and fear Him, but those should not be the motivations for serving Him.
And therefore, if I return to the tenth principle, then perhaps for that reason passive providence is a principle and active providence is not a principle. It does not take part in the consideration; it is not supposed to take part in our considerations for why to serve the Holy One, blessed be He. Reward and punishment still exist, even though that is not supposed to be the motivation for service, and even children and fools and I don’t know what else—and women too, according to Maimonides—do serve the Lord from that motivation. Maybe that is the reason why it exists, because there are people who will not serve the Lord simply because it is the truth, and so they need some bonuses, some… yes, like educating a child: he does a good deed, we give him candy. Why? So that he will do the good deed. But in a certain sense, this kind of education is a bit destructive, because somehow we are causing him to do the good deed in order to get candy, and not to do the good deed because it is the good deed.
There is some experiment people always talk about—I don’t have a specific reference, but I know it is always mentioned—some experiment they did with monkeys. They used to play in their cage with wheels and turn the wheels just as a sort of game. At a certain point they started giving them bonuses. Whoever turned the wheel got a banana. Fine. So each time he turned the wheel he got a banana. After a while, once they got used to this, they stopped giving bananas. The moment they stopped giving bananas, they stopped turning the wheels. Meaning, even though their natural tendency had been to play by spinning the wheels, once they got used to spinning the wheels in order to get some benefit, some bonus, then the moment the bonuses stop, you no longer turn the wheel. In other words, it ruins the education.
So here too, if you get used to receiving reward for your actions, and this is meant to get you used to doing those actions, in the end there is also something destructive here, because eventually you enter a situation, a consciousness, in which you do the actions only for the reward you receive, and you don’t really do them because this is the truth. So in a certain sense, instead of “from doing it not for its own sake one comes to do it for its own sake,” even a person who would have served for its own sake—you get him used to serving not for its own sake and trap him there.
Now true, if the reward is in the World to Come, then it doesn’t work like with the monkeys. Because it’s not that every time you did an act you felt that you received some positive bonus, and that could condition your action on getting the bonus. You don’t actually receive it now; you just know that this reward is stored up for you at some point. So it doesn’t create the kind of destructive conditioning that happens with the monkeys. What about reward in this world? Maimonides does speak also about the blessings and curses written regarding things in this world, and intentionally does not speak about reward and punishment in this world, because there is no reward for a commandment in this world. But the blessings and curses written in the Torah are written about this world.
And even there, it seems to me there isn’t really the same conditioning as with the monkeys, even in this world. Why? Because we don’t really see, even in this world, the reward we receive. I don’t think anyone can really say that he clearly feels a correlation between his conduct and what happens to him. So even if there is a divine response to what happens to him—what I called active providence—I don’t think it’s like the monkeys, where you see: ah, now I prayed, so tomorrow rain fell. So then the moment you don’t need rain, you won’t pray, or when you see that rain was not given despite your prayer, you’ll stop praying. Even when you pray and rain falls, you don’t really see that the rain came because of the prayer.
And therefore it is very hard to determine in a statistically significant way that there really is a divine response, or divine answer, to your prayer or your good deeds and the like. Therefore even with reward in this world—not only with reward in the World to Come—it is hard to see how this thing works. Or rather the opposite: how this thing damages the motivation of our service of God. On the contrary, in a certain sense my feeling is that people who really believe in divine response believe in it completely independently of the facts. Meaning, even if the facts show no divine response whatsoever, they are still certain that their prayers or deeds were answered.
And so in all the places where there is a completely natural explanation for what happened, people still insist on seeing in it some divine response to their actions, to their prayer, and so on. Which shows that the ambiguity in this matter is so great that even if active providence exists, it does not really have the destructive effect that reward has when you give it like the bananas to the monkeys. On the other hand, still, this is the way of children and fools and so on, because it is not really fitting to serve the Lord in this way. And therefore children begin this way so that when they grow and are educated, they will understand that this is how one should act—not for the reward one receives, but because this is the truth. So even if it does not have the destructive effect, still, of course, this is not yet the ideal state. It is an intermediate stage that is supposed to lead you to maturity, to stop being a child, and really act because this is the truth.
And therefore, either way—whether active providence exists or not—it is not supposed to play a role in my considerations once I have grown up, once I have passed the educational stage. And therefore Maimonides may not see this as a principle. That is the addition to the first path: why Maimonides omits active providence—because it is not a principle, not because it is not true.
Now one more addition to the second path. The second path, as I said, is that perhaps Maimonides omits it because he does not think it is true. Meaning, he does not think that what happens in the world—and there are places in Maimonides where he says these things clearly; I told you it is hard to derive from Maimonides an orderly doctrine on this matter—that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not really answer, at least not on an ongoing basis, our prayers, or is not really involved in the world according to our deeds. And if indeed that is so, then it does not enter the principles because it is not true, not because it is not a principle. I explained this at length last time, and I just need to make a few more additions.
I spoke about the fact that natural conduct according to the laws of nature essentially assumes that the laws of nature are a sufficient condition for what happens. Right? The scientific attitude toward the laws of nature sees the laws as a sufficient condition for phenomena. So if that is a sufficient condition, then it contradicts the idea that things happen by the Holy One, blessed be He, according to our deeds. Meaning, if it is done by the Holy One, blessed be He, according to the fixed laws of nature, that may be, but that is not what is called divine involvement.
One can say, as Nachmanides says at the end of Parashat Bo, that “a person has no share in the Torah of Moses unless he believes that all our occurrences are nothing but miracles.” Now Nachmanides himself agrees that there are laws of nature. Meaning, clearly nature behaves in an orderly way: when a body has mass it falls toward the earth; when someone turns on a flashlight there is light; meaning, there are laws of nature. But there are those who want to argue—or commentators who want to say that this is what Nachmanides meant—that these laws of nature are not some blind independent causes and the Holy One, blessed be He, has not forsaken the earth and now the business runs naturally; rather the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself brings about all these phenomena, only He does so according to fixed regularities. But if that is the claim, I have no problem with that. It does not interest me. That is not what is called divine involvement. Divine involvement means that it does not work according to the laws of nature.
Because if those really were the laws of nature—what is called divine involvement—then response to prayers or to good deeds is not part of the story. That is a physics indifferent to my prayers and to my good deeds. So if divine involvement is through physics, even if it really is the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, at every moment, it makes no difference. Because in the end, fine, but at every moment He makes sure that masses attract one another by a force proportional to one over r squared, not because there was a prayer here or there wasn’t a prayer here—yes, like Newton and the apple.
So when I speak about divine involvement, or the denial of divine involvement, what I mean is that the regularities are not absolute. Meaning, there are not really laws of nature; the laws of nature are some kind of illusion. Okay? That is basically the claim. And I said that involvement within the framework of the laws of nature is simply a categorical confusion. There is no such thing. It is just a mistake, all those who speak about involvements of that kind. Because divine involvement is basically when I ask, say, the Holy One, blessed be He, to heal me. Then my assumption is that by the natural course I will not recover, and I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to make it so that nevertheless I will recover. And therefore there is some deviation here from the ordinary natural regularity. That is the meaning.
Now true, sometimes—usually in medicine, unlike physics—it is not an exact science. And so there are diseases in which the chance of recovery is, say, twenty percent, and the chance of not recovering is eighty percent. Okay? So the fact that I recovered, ostensibly, could have happened within the framework of the laws of nature. So I said—I think I spoke about this—that this is not correct. Because if it really happened within the framework of the laws of nature, according to which twenty percent of people recover, then again this is not an answer from the Holy One, blessed be He, but simply what the laws of nature did. True, by the laws of nature themselves, twenty percent of people recover from such an illness completely naturally, unrelated to prayer or divine response to prayer or the person’s good deeds or anything like that.
Therefore, when I turn to the Holy One, blessed be He, and see my recovery as an answer from the Holy One, blessed be He—meaning, He answered me and healed me—this means that the Holy One, blessed be He, caused it so that although I belonged to the eighty percent who were not supposed to recover, He caused me to be among the twenty percent who do recover. And therefore, from the standpoint of my physiology, He did intervene. He did change the natural course of what was supposed to happen here. So at most you can say that recovery from an illness is a hidden miracle. Because if it happened to me, I can never know whether it was the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, or whether I simply belonged to the twenty percent who recover from such an illness anyway. So I do not see that there was a miracle here. But assuming there was hidden divine involvement that I did not see, that involvement is a deviation from the laws of nature. So in that sense one cannot say that this is involvement within the laws of nature. One can say it is a hidden miracle. That one can say. Therefore involvement within the framework of the laws of nature and a hidden miracle are not synonyms. They are two different things. Now there are two additions I wanted to give to this picture.
[Speaker B] An addition—Rabbi, can I ask a question in the meantime? Yes. If I go back to the issue of love and fear: if we really start from the assumption that today we no longer really see God’s involvement in an active way, and we also don’t really know what will be in the World to Come—meaning, reward and punishment in the World to Come, I don’t think anyone can say what that is or how it feels there or what exactly it is—then how can one receive anything resembling a feeling of love and fear if both here and there we don’t know what the Holy One, blessed be He, really is, except that we understand that we have to carry out what He asks, and in practice we do it because He asked? We don’t feel Him in any way. So how can one love or fear such a thing?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides actually—Maimonides himself answers this in Laws of the Foundations of the Torah.
[Speaker B] What? What’s the answer?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And what is the way to love Him and to fear Him? Wait a moment, let me find it for you. The Laws of the Foundations of the Torah. Here. In two places in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah he addresses this. Here. Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, chapter 2, law 2. Yes, maybe law 1 first of all. This honored and awesome God commands us to love Him and to fear Him, as it says, “And you shall love the Lord your God,” and it says, “The Lord your God you shall fear.” And what is the way to love Him and to fear Him? When a person contemplates His deeds and His great and wondrous creations, and from them sees His wisdom, which has no comparison and no end, immediately he loves and praises and glorifies, and longs with a great longing to know the great God, just as David said, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” And when he thinks about these very matters, immediately he recoils backward—this is love, and now this is fear—he recoils backward and is frightened, and knows that he is a small, lowly, dark creature, standing with slight and meager understanding before the Perfect Knower, as David said, “When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers… what is man that You remember him?” And according to these matters I will explain great principles from the works of the Master of the universe, so that they may be an opening for one who understands to love the Lord, as the sages said regarding love: through this you come to recognize the One who spoke and the world came into being. And then in law 3—and after that there are two additional chapters, chapter 3 and chapter 4 in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah—Maimonides talks there basically about metaphysics, physics and metaphysics, spheres and angels and separate intellects and all kinds of Aristotelian matters, where for him this recognition of the world is the basis for generating love and fear of the Holy One, blessed be He. You don’t need to see His exceptional acts, right? You need to see His conduct in His regular conduct in the world, not His departures from it. Just look at how the world is built, and that’s what is supposed to do it for you. The same thing also in chapter 4, law 12, toward the end of those chapters. You see here in law 13 he says: “And the subjects of these four chapters”—meaning the first four chapters in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah. We’re in chapter 4. All of this is basically the ways to love the Holy One, blessed be He. How does it end? “When a person contemplates these things”—yes, there we were in chapter 2 when the whole story begins. Here we are after Maimonides has finished describing all the Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, he returns to the point and says: “When a person contemplates these matters and recognizes all creatures, from angel and sphere to man and the like, and sees the wisdom of the Holy One, blessed be He, in all beings and all creatures, he increases his love for God, and his soul thirsts and his flesh longs to love God, blessed be He. And he fears and trembles at his own lowliness and poverty and insignificance when he compares himself to one of the great holy bodies, and all the more so to one of the pure forms separated from matter, not joined to matter at all. And he finds himself as a vessel full of shame and disgrace, empty and deficient.” Yes, this is basically the way to love the Holy One, blessed be He, and to fear Him, and in Maimonides’ view this intellectual contemplation can in fact generate emotions—love and fear—even though, as I mentioned earlier, and I’m not getting into it here, it’s not clear that the emotion is really the goal. The emotion may be some kind of expression of the fact that you are in the proper relation to the Holy One, blessed be He, but it’s not the goal. In any case it can be generated. But he specifically opens in law 1 by saying that it is a commandment to love and fear, meaning that yes, it is a goal. Right, but the question is what is this “to love and to fear”? Is this “to love and to fear” the same emotion that we call love and fear? Or is it the mental state whose emotional expression is the emotion of love and fear? That’s a different question, but I’m not going into it here, because that’s a minefield in itself. But for our purposes, you asked: if we don’t see, if we don’t have some clear interaction with the Holy One, blessed be He, that we can see with our eyes, how is it possible to love and fear? On the contrary. Those who think that our connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, has to be made through deviations from nature, through miracles, through some sort of individual attention from Him to us—what are you talking about? A mature person should see that the opposite is true. The ongoing conduct of the world is what should bring us to love and fear, not deviations from the ongoing conduct. I’ll say more than that. Many times people think that in order to see how great the Holy One, blessed be He, is, you need miracles. Miracles reveal to us how great the Holy One, blessed be He, is, because He controls nature and arranges the systems of nature and so on. That’s a huge mistake. Miracles show that He is small, not that He is great. Meaning, miracles show that the Holy One, blessed be He, apparently can’t manage to do everything He wants through fixed laws of nature. In order for what He wants to happen, He sometimes has to stop, depart from the laws of nature, and make sure that what He wants to happen actually happens. If He were, so to speak—if He were really great—then He could set the laws in such a way that He wouldn’t need to intervene. The laws would already do everything He needs done. Yes, but that’s only if human beings
[Speaker B] didn’t have free will, only if that last thing you said. No, no, I understand, I’m getting there already, because the suffering and pain in the world can
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] be caused by human beings and not by the Holy One, blessed be He. I’m getting to that in a moment. I’m just saying that in principle, the less the Holy One, blessed be He, needs miracles, the greater He actually is. And that means He can set the laws of nature so that routinely, and without His involvement, they will do exactly what needs to be done. And the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, sometimes needs to depart from nature, to create a miracle, basically means that there are actually limitations on Him, that He’s not all that great, because the fact is He didn’t manage to make orderly laws of nature that would do the job without His occasionally stopping them and intervening. And in that sense, says Maimonides, specifically when you look at His creatures and His ordinary deeds, the natural ones, that is the reason to see His greatness and our nothingness and to generate love and fear toward Him—not the miracles. Meaning, in that sense this is simply a conceptual mistake. Miracles are the opposite—they are a difficulty. If the Holy One, blessed be He, is omnipotent, then why does He need miracles? Let Him make laws of nature that will carry out everything that needs to be carried out without His having to intervene every time and give oversight or corrections so that what needs to happen will happen. If He is so omnipotent, then all the more so, let Him make laws of nature like that, so there’s no need to intervene at all, and they will already do the job completely. And therefore in that sense, specifically, as Maimonides says in those places we saw in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, what Maimonides says there is that the routine is what proves His greatness, not His active involvement in the world. On the contrary, His lack of involvement is precisely the basis that shows His greatness. The perfection of creation, so to speak. Yes, exactly. That He succeeded in making a creation so perfect that it does exactly what it needs to do without His needing to intervene at all. But it may be that He occasionally performs miracles precisely for that reason—because people have become coarse-hearted toward the routine, they’ve gotten used to it. Take the splitting of the Reed Sea, right? You could say: why didn’t He foresee that the Egyptians would pursue them, and the laws of nature would move the sea? But when He wants to show His greatness and people have already gotten used to the routine, then He shows them the miracle. True. Meaning, I think following what Maimonides wrote in chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance, he basically says that the small-minded and foolish people, who don’t understand that the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He, is specifically evident from the routine conduct, the ongoing natural conduct of the world—they are the ones who require the Holy One, blessed be He, perhaps to perform a miracle, because from their point of view that is the more tangible expression of the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, is great. So on the contrary, in that sense, it is true that among human beings this is sometimes how it works, and we can all see it. People are impressed by miracles, not by the routine conduct. But the truth, says Maimonides, is that this is actually a trait of the small-minded and foolish. Meaning, in the end, a wise and mature person should be impressed specifically by the routine, not by miracles. And this connects to arguments—I’m going off into all kinds of things I didn’t actually plan to discuss, but it’s exactly the same idea. There are all sorts of discussions around faith and evolution. And the claim is that there’s no need to believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, because we have an evolutionary explanation for the emergence of life, for what is going on here; we have natural explanations. We don’t need to posit the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He. What does that really mean? That positing the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, is only for a place where we don’t have an explanation—based on miracles, what’s called “God of the gaps.” Now this is very strange, because usually atheists, when a believing person comes and says, look, science can’t explain this, therefore there is God—atheists already have a ready-made answer to that: this is God of the gaps. You’re trying to prove the existence of God from a gap, a gap in scientific understanding. And that’s a mistake, because fine, we’ll do more research and we’ll understand that too. Right now we don’t understand it; once they also didn’t understand what we understand today; in the future we’ll understand the rest as well. So don’t build the existence of God on the miracle. On the other hand, those very same atheists themselves explain that there’s no need to come to faith in God because after all we have natural explanations for everything. Meaning, they themselves assume what the creationists assume—that for God you need something that nature cannot explain. The only difference is that they say, yes, but if nature can’t explain it yet, that still doesn’t mean anything, because it will explain it later, we’ll know in the future. But on the conceptual level, both sides in this argument accept that the routine really is a substitute for God. If the routine proceeds properly, then there is no need for God. And both are mistaken about this. Because it is precisely the routine that shows that there is God. Precisely the fact that… Just as an aside, Rav Khaim? Right? Yes, originally. Yes, so there was a school there, Yavneh, and there was a school principal there, Rav Hon, I don’t know if you heard of him. I studied there. Okay, so did I. I was in middle school with Bandel. I was in high school. But every Friday he would take a science book and read to us how the human body works, every single detail in the human body, and then he would say to us: whoever produces this routine thing—you simply have to believe in Him. Exactly. And I think evolution and the laws of nature are the greatest proof of the existence of God—not only is it not a refutation, it is the greatest proof. Meaning, you see that He can do something that you can explain in a completely natural way, meaning the laws of nature do all the work. So who legislated the laws of nature? Who caused the laws of nature to be such that they managed to do all the work without our needing divine involvement? This whole story proceeds in a completely routine and natural way. Meaning, even if it is true that you can explain everything naturally, that only magnifies the Holy One, blessed be He, all the more and requires all the more the assumption of His existence. He was the legislator of these amazing laws. And therefore this approach that says that in order to see the Holy One, blessed be He, and be impressed by Him and by His greatness, there has to be a miracle, there has to be involvement, a departure from nature—that is the way of the small-minded and foolish. Meaning, the wiser and more intelligent people should see the hand of the Holy One, blessed be He, precisely in the routine conduct. Miracles are actually an inferiority. They only mean that apparently He did not manage to produce perfect laws, and therefore from time to time He has to depart from them, freeze them, so the business will work properly. Now here—I said I had two additions. One addition, or maybe I need to make one more clarification. So why indeed are miracles done? So Ezra suggested earlier: miracles are done because human nature is such that specifically the miracle arouses them to love or to recognition of the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He, and not the routine. I think it’s not only that—or perhaps even if it is that, it’s certainly not only that. Why? Because my claim is that there are situations—and here I return to what Hagai said earlier, I think—there are situations to which the laws of nature cannot respond. It is simply impossible. Why? Because in the end, the Holy One, blessed be He, also gave human beings choice. And once human beings have choice, that means that in a given situation a person can choose one way and can choose another. Now if the Holy One, blessed be He, wants that person to fare badly, then He has to intervene, because it cannot be a natural response. A natural response means: if this is the given state, then the next result is what the laws of nature determine—what difference does it make what you chose? If you want there to be a response to what human beings choose, then you must depart from the laws of nature; there’s no way around it. You cannot leave it operating in a completely natural way. Beyond that, I think that even in the natural sense, even without human choice, there may be situations in which what should happen according to the considerations of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not
[Speaker C] what would happen by the laws of nature, because there are no laws of nature that can do the job in that sense. And here I want to broaden the discussion a bit
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and I want to say, basically, there is a question about evil in the world.
[Speaker C] Why is there evil in the world at all?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Which in a certain sense is a continuation of what we were talking about before. If there is evil in the world, then the Holy One, blessed be He, is not perfect. Because the fact is, if He were perfect and omnipotent, then He would have created the world in such a way that there would be no evil in it. So here I say: we need to distinguish between two kinds of evil. There is human evil and there is natural evil. Natural evil is not really evil, because something evil is only the result of someone who chose to do something evil. If someone did something bad in his sleep, or because that is simply his nature, then he has no criminal responsibility, right? An impulse that cannot be controlled is not really called evil. I call it evil in the sense of human suffering—a tsunami, a plague, something like that. Meaning, the results are bad results, but it is not evil in the sense that there is someone here—other than, perhaps, the Holy One, blessed be He—who caused it, but not human beings. So there is human evil and natural evil. Now, why does human evil exist in the world? That is a simple question. If the Holy One, blessed be He, did not allow human evil, then in the end it would turn out that we have no choice. Since choice means that we can do either good or evil. But if every time we wanted to do something evil, the Holy One, blessed be He, would intervene and not let us do it, then in effect it would turn out that de facto we have no choice. Now if the Holy One, blessed be He, wants us to act out of choice—and apparently that is what He wants, because He gave us the ability to choose—
[Speaker B] then He must allow us to do evil.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And therefore the fact of why there is human evil is not difficult at all. The Holy One, blessed be He, also
[Speaker D] on the site not long ago—the claim is that the goals of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world are not just a collection of bottom lines. It’s not only what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to happen, but that He wants it to happen through our choice. It’s not enough that it happen; it has to happen through our choice, otherwise He wouldn’t have needed to give us choice, He would have had to program us to do what He wants to be done.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To keep the Sabbath, to eat kosher, it doesn’t matter, all these things. Why did He give us choice that allows us to violate these commandments, and for what He wants to happen not to happen? Because it is no less important to Him that the thing be done out of choice than the fact that the thing be done. Right? That’s a simple inference. Since that is so, He necessarily must allow things to happen even though they are evil in His eyes. Meaning, things happen that He does not want to happen. If a person chooses to desecrate the Sabbath, that does not mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants him to desecrate the Sabbath, as all kinds of fools say, people who believe that everything that happens here is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to happen. That’s nonsense. The Holy One, blessed be He, wants us to have choice; He does not want us to desecrate the Sabbath. But if He wants us to have choice, there is no escaping it—He must allow us either to desecrate the Sabbath or to observe the Sabbath. That is the meaning of choice. And therefore if we choose to desecrate the Sabbath, then certainly something has happened here that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want to happen. What has happened is something He wants us to choose—but what we choose, if we choose evil, that is certainly not what He wants. But if every time we chose evil He would prevent it, then that basically means that He would be taking away our choice. And therefore, for example, in tractate Hagigah, the Talmud says in Hagigah 5, “There is one who perishes without justice.” Meaning, a person can die even though he does not deserve to die. Why? So Rabbenu Hananel says—and explains what “there is one who perishes without justice” means—such as when one person killed his fellow. If someone decides to kill another person, then the other person will die even though he did not deserve to die. Why? Because the first one, the murderer, has free choice. If the Holy One, blessed be He, would not let him do it every time he chose evil, then de facto He would be taking away his choice. And therefore it turns out that there are outcomes that can happen against the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is the meaning of human evil. Therefore human evil is not a theological difficulty—why is there evil? Human evil exists because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us choice, and choice means also the possibility of doing evil, not only the possibility of doing good. Yes, so where was the Holy One, blessed be He, in the Holocaust? Like the story Rabbi Amital tells, that once he met with that political commissar of the Palmach—what was his name—Abba Kovner, Abba Kovner.
[Speaker D] So he says, Abba Kovner says that he abandoned his faith because he asks
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] where God was in the Holocaust.
[Speaker D] Yes, Abba Kovner was a partisan. And Rabbi Amital answered him that the question that troubles him is where man was in the Holocaust, not where the Holy One, blessed be He, was in the Holocaust. And that’s a very interesting reversal, because specifically the heretic asks where the Holy One, blessed be He, was in the Holocaust, and the believing Jew asks not where the Holy One, blessed be He, was, but where man was in the Holocaust. And what is the idea behind that? The version in your book is that he stopped believing—he says to him that he stopped believing in man.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, yes. The claim is that when a person decides to do evil, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene, because if He were to intervene, that would be a negation of the person’s choice. Therefore if something bad happens in the world and it is human evil, the question is a question about the one who did it, not about the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, enabled us to have choice, but He expects us to use it for good things. If we use it for evil things, then the source of the evil here is us, not the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore the question is where man was, not where the Holy One, blessed be He, was. So that’s regarding human evil. What about natural evil? That is a harder question. Because indeed when the Talmud says there, “There is one who perishes without justice,” Rabbenu Hananel explains it as when one person killed his fellow. It is not for nothing that he explains it specifically that way. Because when one person kills another, the person chooses to murder. So that is human evil. Human evil can indeed cause things to happen even though the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want them to happen. That is choice. What happens with natural evil? Natural evil is the tsunami, I don’t know, plagues and all kinds of things like that. So here some will say: well, natural evil really is all part of the accounting. Meaning, if someone dies and it is a natural matter, not the result of human choice, then nature killed him. If nature killed him, then apparently he deserved to die. Everything the Talmud said—“there is one who perishes without justice”—applies when the evil is human evil, as Rabbenu Hananel says, such as when one person killed his fellow. He comes to exclude a situation of natural evil that can cause something the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want to happen. That—no. Because nature is in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He; the laws of nature were set by the Holy One, blessed be He. So what they do is apparently what really needs to happen. And in that—Rabbi, but why do you call it natural evil? Meaning, I think the proper definition is everything that is not human evil. Also a person who dies from… I already said that natural evil is really not a good definition, because who says it is evil? It is what needs to happen according to that view. Right, and then you don’t need to get to extreme cases like a tsunami and things like that. Any death that does not stem from human evil. Yes, that is the claim. That is, so to speak, death in its proper time and season. No, I understand, but I brought the tsunami intentionally because I do not accept that thesis. We’ll see in a moment. But the claim is that among the sages, apparently—or at least in certain places; there are contradictions about this in the sages too—but in certain places it seems that if there is a deviation, if something happens that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want to happen, that is evil only as a result of human choices. Because that is the meaning of the choice He gave us. But if something happens that is unrelated to human choices, something natural, then clearly that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to happen. Yes, there there are no deviations from the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. And therefore, for example, the Talmud in Makkot 10—I spoke about this very briefly in the last Sunday lesson—in Makkot 10 the Talmud says: what is the case of an unintentional murderer? Such-and-such one murdered intentionally and was liable to death, such-and-such one killed unintentionally and was liable to exile. The Holy One, blessed be He, brings them both to one inn: the one liable to exile above and the one liable to death below, and then the iron slips from the wood of the one above, falls on the one below and kills him. So he received what was coming to him—he was killed—and the one above becomes an unintentional murderer and we exile him, and he too received what was coming to him. Yes, that one was liable to exile and he received the punishment coming to him. And then what emerges from the Talmud here is that indeed even when a person dies, this is basically the work of the Holy One, blessed be He, or part of the Holy One’s accounting. A person does not die just like that. And this seems to contradict the Talmud in Hagigah. First of all, there are also contradictions between passages; that’s not terrible. But I think there is no contradiction here, since here the unintentional murderer did not choose to kill the person beneath him. It is not the result of human choice. It is basically a natural event, because the iron fell from the wood. So true, he was not under complete compulsion; he was negligent, he wasn’t careful enough, but it is clear that he did not choose to murder. And if a person dies, then here, says the Talmud, this does happen only if the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that he really deserved to die. Everything the Talmud in Hagigah says—that one can perish without justice—is when the killing was done from the murderer’s decision or choice. Then something can happen that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want. Yes, but what does it mean, “he deserved to die”? It’s not a punishment, it’s just his time. No, no, “he deserved to die”—the Talmud says he was liable to death. The person who died because of the unintentional killer? Yes. So he died as a punishment? Yes, that is what the Talmud says. That one was liable— the one below was liable to death; the one above was liable to exile. Now the iron of the one above fell on the one below and killed him, so the one below got what was coming to him, and the one above now goes into exile and also gets what was coming to him. And the person who dies of a malignant illness at a young age—what is that? A punishment? Yes, apparently according to that view, that is what follows: things that happen in a natural way, that are not the choice of a person, are indeed part of the Holy One’s accounting. That is usually the view. I tend not to accept that, and I think that natural evil too is not always the work of the Holy One, blessed be He, and perhaps usually is not. And that is why I mentioned the tsunami and epidemics, because with a tsunami and epidemics it is hard for me to accept that speculative thesis that all the millions or hundreds of thousands who were killed there were exactly those whose death sentence had accumulated, and the Holy One, blessed be He, summoned all these millions to the same place, brought upon them some huge tsunami, but everyone who died there was exactly someone who deserved to die, and right there there just happened to be some terrible concentration of hundreds of thousands of people who were liable to death, much more than in any other place in the world. Come on, you’re talking about the fact that some of them were one-year-old babies. Yes. So that thesis sounds very dubious to me, and therefore I tend to think that there too people died who did not deserve to die, even though it was the result of natural evil and not human evil. How do you explain that? Nature is in the account of the Holy One, blessed be He; it’s not human choice. So here I return to what I said earlier. My claim is that when someone complains and asks why there is natural evil in the world—after all, if the Holy One, blessed be He, is omnipotent, then He should have made sure there would be no natural evil in the world. So regarding human choices we said: it can’t be, because He wants to allow us choice, and to take away from us the possibility of doing evil is basically to take away our choice. But what about natural evil? My claim is that anyone who makes such a claim is basically assuming—or first of all, assumption number one: the Holy One, blessed be He, wants there to be laws of nature in the world. That’s obvious; we see that the world behaves with very clear regularities.
[Speaker E] Bodies with mass fall toward the earth, acetaminophen lowers fever, meaning there are laws of nature, so apparently the Holy One,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] blessed be He, wants the world
[Speaker E] to behave in that way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] natural, according to rigid laws. That’s the first premise. The second premise, or if you want, the second claim, is that if you want to argue that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not perfect because, after all, there is evil, after all there is natural evil, then you’re basically telling me that there is some other system of laws that could have done everything the Holy One, blessed be He, wants, without exceptions and without evil, without people suffering for no reason when they don’t deserve to suffer. Okay? Who says there is such a system of laws? Meaning, what you’re really saying is that this is the best of all worlds, what Leibniz said. The best of all worlds that operates with rigid laws. That is, if you say there are worlds without rigid laws, no problem, every time something bad is supposed to happen to someone who doesn’t deserve it, the Holy One, blessed be He, will intervene and make sure it doesn’t happen. Fine. But if you tell me no, the original assumption of the Holy One, blessed be He, is: I want a world with rigid laws, and that indeed is probably His will, we know that. Now if that is what He wants, then your argument, if you’re raising objections against the Holy One, blessed be He, notice that you’re making a rather far-reaching assumption. You want to claim that there could be a rigid system of laws—not a system without laws, but a system of rigid laws—that would do everything the legal system in our world does, except for those places where bad things happen, where bad things happen to good people. Who says there is such a system of laws? In mathematics this is what’s called a removable discontinuity. Meaning, at those points where something bad would happen to a good person, there it would behave differently. Everywhere else it would behave as it ought to behave now. Who says there even is such a thing? On the contrary, I have no mathematical proof, but my simple intuition tells me there is no such system of laws. There is no rigid system of laws that can do the job that way. That would preserve all the functioning of our world, and at every point where something bad happens to some good person, something else would happen. So there is no such system of laws. In any case, I want to argue that whoever raises this objection against the Holy One, blessed be He, the burden of proof is on him. Who told you there is such a system of laws? If there were, then indeed there would be a question why the Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t make it. But maybe there isn’t. Or at least, you who are arguing against the Holy One, blessed be He, the burden of proof is on you to show that there is such a system. And that means, basically, that there are actions or states that are simply impossible. So the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not do them is not because of any deficiency in His omnipotence; it’s simply impossible to do that. It’s like asking why He can’t make a round triangle. Because there is no such thing as a round triangle; it’s a contradiction. Or why can’t He create a stone He cannot lift? He can’t create a stone He cannot lift because there is no such stone. A stone that the omnipotent cannot lift is an oxymoron. But you’re basically saying, you’re basically saying that a tsunami is like the law of gravity. Right. That’s what you’re saying? Right. It’s a result of the laws of nature; that’s not me saying it, that’s obvious. It’s a result of the laws of nature. A tsunami is a result of the laws of nature. If you want there not to be a tsunami, you have to change the laws of nature. If you changed the laws of nature, it could be that elsewhere something else problematic would arise. The question is whether you can change the laws of nature in such a way that all the ordinary things happen as they do today, and only the problematic things for good people are prevented. Who says there is such a set of laws? That is really the claim. And if there is no such set of laws, then you can’t have a claim against the Holy One, blessed be He: why didn’t You create the world that way? There is no such world. It’s like asking: why didn’t You make a round triangle? And therefore I argue that natural evil, too, is not necessarily a refutation of the goodness of the Holy One, blessed be He, or of His omnipotence. You understand, there is a combination here of two assumptions: that He is both good and omnipotent. Because if one of those assumptions is missing, then there is no refutation. But if you assume both that He is good and that He is omnipotent, then the question arises: so why do bad things happen? After all, He wants them not to happen—He is good. But we have this luxury—luxury in quotation marks—because a tsunami, we experience it once every, I don’t know, twenty or thirty years. But what about a hypothetical case where every six months half the world sank into the sea? Would you still be able to say that sentence? Would you still be able to say it? Why not? I don’t know, but maybe that would be the optimal situation, I have no idea. I don’t know how to run simulations with all the systems of laws on earth and see which one is optimal. But I’m saying that whoever raises objections against the Holy One, blessed be He, has to show that there is a system better than the existing one. And if the existing system were worse than what I know today, I might still think that this is the best system there is. What can I do? I don’t know. So that’s… But how does the Rabbi relate to this explanation or this answer when people say that really, when such a disaster happens through nature—or even not, even when it’s a human event and not—no, not a human event, a natural event—and this answer that says that basically we can’t enter into the calculations of the Holy One, blessed be He, and maybe this is really reincarnations and so on… No, I’m saying there is no need for that, no. Reincarnations or not is another question, but there is no need to come with complaints against the Holy One, blessed be He, or to say—as people always console themselves—we don’t know His ways and His considerations, and who knows, and of course the assumption in the subtext is that there must have been some calculation here. And there was, and the person died because the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that he would die, only we don’t understand why, because he is righteous, so why should he die? No, that’s a mistake. The Holy One, blessed be He, did not decide that he would die; he died because that’s what came out, what can you do? That’s exactly the point. I do not accept all these theses of “we don’t…” Even the theses that “we don’t understand,” because those theses still claim there is an explanation, only we can’t understand it. I say no, there is no explanation. It’s not an accounting of the Holy One, blessed be He; there is one who is swept away without judgment. What, so what, so that means it’s by chance? Yes, by chance. That’s the claim. The Talmud says it: there is one who is swept away without judgment. Where did you say—you said the Talmud says that? One second, one thing at a time, yes. No, no, when you mentioned “there is one who is swept away without judgment,” you gave Rabbenu Chananel’s interpretation that it’s only in the context where human choice intervenes. Rabbenu Chananel limits it. Excellent, up to this point, you’re the most up to date here, yes. It’s not clear—I said that. I don’t accept it. I claim that even in natural evil there can be one who is swept away without judgment. Now regarding the question of reincarnations, that is a different question, because even if there is one who is swept away without judgment—and maybe in principle, essentially, if there is one who is swept away without judgment—there still arises the question of justice. So if someone dies even though he did not deserve to die, where is the compensation? The Holy One, blessed be He, does still compensate. Then someone can come and say: there are reincarnations, the World to Come, I don’t know exactly what, and there in the end everything works out. No, but again, but but but the Rabbi begins with the assumption that someone died even though he did not deserve to die, but you can change that assumption; you can say that there is no person who dies without deserving to die. You can say that, correct, I just don’t agree with it. I said that’s the accepted view. So yes, so the initial assumption that… I think it is not correct. I’m just saying that this has nothing to do with the issue of reincarnations—quite the opposite. Precisely because of what I’m saying here, that as far as the death here is concerned it was not justified, or the suffering here was not justified, that is precisely a motivation to say maybe there are reincarnations, maybe there is a World to Come, and there after all everything works out. Okay? That’s the claim. But we’ll mainly discuss that next time, we’ll talk about the World to Come, and then we’ll discuss it there. Rabbi, isn’t that what the Talmud means when it says, “At the time permission is given to the destroyer to destroy, he does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked”? That’s your claim, that’s basically your claim. I can bring many more Talmudic passages about this. The Talmudic passages contain contradictions on these matters. That is, there are places where it says this, places where it says that. There is an article by Rabbi Shmuel Arieli, if anyone wants to look it up, where he also talks about evil in the world, and he brings many Talmudic passages and medieval authorities (Rishonim) showing that yes, things can happen that are not the result of some divine accounting. The Holy One, blessed be He, does not do them. On the other hand it says, “Over every blade of grass stands an angel and says to it: grow.” You can bring quotations in both directions, so you won’t be able to derive some coherent picture from the passages, in my opinion. I think that philosophically speaking, both natural evil and human evil can occur, and the results can be against the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. Why? I still want to finish here, so allow me a few more minutes. Why is it, though, that in many places among the Sages we see that natural evil is not… Human evil, yes—there is one who is swept away without judgment. Natural evil, as in the Talmud in Makkot, there it is according to the accounting of the Holy One, blessed be He. I think that among the Sages there really was a view that nature itself allows the Holy One, blessed be He, to be involved. It’s not a deviation from nature. Therefore, there is no reason for natural evil to happen, because within nature the Holy One, blessed be He, can maneuver things so that naturally what should happen will happen. Only human choice is not in His hands, but nature is. And that’s a natural view. That’s at least how the Sages saw it, and that brings me to the issue I mentioned last time, of involvement within nature, and I said that this is a mistake. It’s a mistaken conception that understands the laws of nature as non-deterministic, but today we know that that is not correct. The laws of nature are deterministic. Again, I’m leaving quantum mechanics aside right now, although it doesn’t really change anything here either, but the laws of nature—at least in the familiar, macroscopic, everyday world—are deterministic. Where do we see that the Sages did not see it that way? That brings me to prayer, as I mentioned before. The Mishnah in Berakhot, in the last chapter of Berakhot, says: “One who sees a fire in the city and says, ‘May it be Your will that these not be the houses of my household,’ this is a vain prayer.” And in the commentators you also see that this is forbidden, not just a pointless prayer. It is forbidden to pray for such a thing. Or, “May it be Your will that my wife give birth to a male.” If his wife is already pregnant and he says, “May it be Your will that my wife give birth to a male,” this is a vain prayer. And the Talmud says that this is only after forty days. Before forty days from the embryo’s formation, one may still pray for that, but after that, no. Why is it really forbidden? I think people usually assume that it is forbidden to pray for an open miracle; you may pray for a hidden miracle. That’s supposedly the claim. But that’s not correct, because an embryo after forty days is also a hidden miracle. The fetus is inside the woman’s womb. Now its sex is already fixed after forty days. Let’s say it is female. And I pray that it should be male. That’s a hidden miracle—there was no ultrasound, they didn’t know whether it was male or female. I pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, that He turn it into a female—sorry, into a male—a hidden miracle, and everything should be fine. So why is it forbidden to pray after forty days? That too is a hidden miracle. So clearly the distinction between before forty days and after forty days is that the Sages thought that before forty days, when the Holy One, blessed be He, turns it from female to male, that is not a deviation from nature. It’s a hidden miracle, but not really a hidden miracle—it’s not a miracle at all. It’s not a deviation from nature. And after forty days it is a deviation from nature, and a deviation from nature, even if hidden, one may not pray for. That is the distinction according to the Sages. Now today we know that this is not true. Even before forty days the sex is already fixed. So what… Because nature is deterministic; there is nothing random in nature. Nature is deterministic. So from here it is clear that the Sages apparently understood nature as not closed, not deterministic, and therefore there could be divine involvement within nature. So they say, fine, for that you are allowed to pray, but not for a miracle. One may not pray for a miracle, including a hidden miracle. But today we understand that there is no such thing; every prayer is basically a prayer for a hidden miracle. And then the big question is whether one is allowed to pray and ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for things at all. That is a separate discussion. But for our purposes, what I want to learn from here is that from the Sages’ perspective, not every prayer is a prayer for a deviation from the laws of nature. They understood that there are prayers that can be answered within the framework of the laws of nature. And from that we can also understand why in the Sages one can find what we saw earlier: that human evil really can deviate from the divine will, but natural evil cannot. Why not? Because if the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want it, then within nature He will alter things so that what should happen will happen. Because the conception is that there is room for divine involvement within nature. Nature is not deterministic. Therefore, from the Sages’ perspective, in natural evil there cannot be something that goes against the will of God, only in human evil. But today we know that nature is deterministic, and therefore, as I said before, in my opinion even in natural evil something can happen that is against the will of God. And if you want, there are also sayings of the Sages to that effect—yes, “when permission is given to the destroyer to destroy,” and so on. But I’m saying that the conception I’m presenting here stems from more updated scientific knowledge. We understand that the world is deterministic and there is no such thing as involvement within nature. So if there is no such thing as involvement within nature, then one must understand that in order for nothing to happen that should not happen, nature itself would have to be different, not that the Holy One, blessed be He, would intervene. But who says there is a system of natural laws that could do it differently, better than the existing system? That is not at all certain. Whoever makes that claim, the burden of proof that there is such a system is on him. Okay, so the Rabbi keeps saying that nature is deterministic. What? The Rabbi keeps saying that nature—we see that nature is deterministic. But the same claim can be made about free choice, and we manage; the Rabbi solves that through topology and those kinds of things, maybe one could say the same answers regarding choice among the Sages—what do you mean? We see that there is free choice. Yes, I understand, but we see determinism too, so we manage with both pieces of evidence. First of all, because we see this and we see that, so I accept everything I see. Divine involvement I do not see. I understand, but that nature is deterministic does not rule out that gap that could be created within divine intervention, just as we do not
[Speaker B] say that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] intervene, of course He can intervene. It’s just that when He intervenes, it will be a deviation from nature, that’s all. He can intervene. Now the question is whether He does that, not whether He can. I don’t see that He does it. That’s the claim. I don’t see it. Maybe He does it here and there and I don’t see it.
[Speaker B] Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying it also makes sense to assume that the amount of His intervention is roughly equal to the amount of free choices there are in this world.
[Speaker D] That I don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know at all whether there is intervention. So He knows the topography—He doesn’t exert Himself, so to speak, in that, is that the point? No, because He wants the laws of nature. He wants natural functioning. The fact is that He created the world with laws of nature. We do not see any place of divine involvement that goes against the laws of nature. We don’t see it; maybe there is, but we don’t see it. Human choice we experience directly. So there it is clear to me that I exclude it from determinism. But with divine involvement I simply do not see any indication of it. But Rabbi, would it have been a problem for the Holy One, blessed be He, to create laws of nature that are perfect in that sense, such that only those who deserve to die die? I claim yes. What yes? There are no such laws. What do you mean, no laws? As if He didn’t create them? No, no, no. There is no such mathematical system of laws. Not that He didn’t create it. It doesn’t exist in His toolbox; there is no such system of laws available to Him. It doesn’t exist. It’s like a round triangle. It’s a logical contradiction. There are no such mathematical laws. So it is impossible to create a world whose laws are those laws.
[Speaker C] Not only that, you’re also saying that the burden of proof is on the one who says that
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t know that there are no such laws. But I claim that whoever raises a difficulty against the Holy One, blessed be He, the burden of proof that there is such a system of laws is on him,
[Speaker C] because I can always say maybe there is no such system.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but there is no burden of proof here that is on me.
[Speaker B] I don’t need to prove anything, as though something exists
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that could exist or not exist; this is all theoretical here, there is nothing concrete here.
[Speaker E] No, but you are making claims against the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re saying, after all, that You are not acting perfectly or not acting well. And who told you that?
[Speaker B] Do you know that there is a better system of laws?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whoever raises
[Speaker B] objections bears the burden of proof.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We say: one may answer with difficulty, not ask with difficulty.
[Speaker E] On the one hand we are supposed
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to marvel at how perfect the world is and how perfect creation is; on the other hand we understand that it is not perfect, because what can you do—there are those who die even though they do not deserve to. So creation is good, but it is not perfect. Creation is good. Listen, all in all the whole business runs in a very impressive way. True, there are places where sad things happen. Okay. And still, from the day-to-day functioning one can certainly be amazed. That’s the claim. Yes, yes. Good, up to here we’ve finished the tenth principle, so I didn’t get further, but at least I finished this. Any other comment or question? I have one more question, Rabbi. When you speak about eighty and twenty percent, eighty percent and twenty percent, maybe that needs to be sharpened. It’s not that it’s some kind of game, because when a person prays it isn’t a zero-sum game. Maybe what’s meant is that it becomes seventy
[Speaker F] nine and twenty-one, not eighty-twenty.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, that’s what
[Speaker F] I’m
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] saying: that if
[Speaker F] the recovery rate is eighty-twenty,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] then people think that if that’s the case, then you can pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, and that will not
[Speaker F] require Him to deviate from the laws of nature.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not correct. Even if the recovery rate is eighty-twenty,
[Speaker B] for a specific person
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] if I knew his condition completely, I would know whether he belongs to the eighty or to the twenty, because nature is deterministic.
[Speaker B] The division between the eighty and the twenty is
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] simply due to my lack
[Speaker B] of knowledge, but the world is deterministic. Therefore if I ask the Holy One, blessed be
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He, to heal me, then maybe it will be a hidden miracle, because people won’t know whether
[Speaker C] I was among the twenty percent
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] anyway, or whether the Holy One, blessed be He, performed a miracle here. So it’s a hidden miracle, but if He was involved, it is still
[Speaker C] a miracle, because it has basically become
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] twenty-one percent instead of twenty. That’s what I meant. Thank you. Okay, so good night, goodbye. Thank you very much. Sabbath peace. Thank you.