God and the World – Lesson 7

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So it turns out that the Holy One, blessed be He, leaves a realm that is under our control. As I said, this issue has to be discussed on two planes: one plane is vis-à-vis the laws of nature, and the second plane is vis-à-vis human choices. And divine involvement in human choices is one discussion, and it’s relatively easy to deny that the Holy One, blessed be He—when we, when a person chooses to do something, that is basically his own decision, he is responsible for it, he did it, he could have done it and he could have refrained from doing it, it’s not the Holy One’s decision. For these things you can also bring quite a few sources from the Sages and from the medieval authorities (Rishonim); it’s a pretty simple point. Even though, again, there are those who insist on saying that nothing happens here unless it is the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, but that is nonsense. On the contrary, when people choose to sin, it is very likely that this is not the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, does not want us to sin; He commanded us not to sin, and there is no reason to assume that He is the one who determines our sins. “Everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven.” We spoke about that. I brought the Rabbenu Hananel in Chagigah who says that there are those “swept away without justice.” The example he gives is a person who kills his fellow. When a person decides to murder, he can succeed even if the victim does not really deserve death. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, did not decide that this person had to die, but since the murderer has free choice, if he decides to kill him he can succeed. That doesn’t mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot intervene, but it does mean that many times the Holy One, blessed be He, may also choose not to intervene and let these things happen even though they were not supposed to happen. And I brought the Talmud in Makkot regarding an unintentional killer, which describes the situation as though everything is the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He. And I said yes, but that is only when we are dealing with unintentional killing, because in unintentional killing the murder is not the result of a conscious decision by the killer who decided to kill the victim. It happened through negligence; he has a certain responsibility, but it’s not that he decided to kill the injured party. In such a case the Sages say that indeed this is the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He. But with an intentional murderer, as Rabbenu Hananel writes in Chagigah, there can be someone “swept away without justice.” So therefore the involvement—or withdrawal—of the Holy One, blessed be He, from events that are the result of human choice is relatively simple. It’s pretty clear: human choice is in our hands and not in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He.

But my claim was that even with regard to the laws of nature, it is not reasonable that the Holy One, blessed be He, runs the whole thing on an ongoing basis. Meaning, that basically everything is in His hands. As I explained, the central argument is that an explanation is supposed to provide a sufficient condition for what is being explained. Meaning, if I claim that the apple fell on Newton because of the law of gravity, that means that if the conditions that constitute the explanation for the apple’s physical fall are in place—that is, the apple’s attachment to the tree was weaker than the force gravity exerted on it—then the apple falls, regardless of whether Newton sinned beforehand or didn’t sin beforehand. If the physical conditions are met, then the result is supposed to occur, assuming that we say that the laws of physics constitute an explanation for an event of this kind. The same on the other side: if I assume that theological considerations of reward and punishment, or things like that, constitute an explanation for the apple falling on Newton, then it means that those theological conditions are a sufficient condition for the event that happened, and therefore it doesn’t matter whether the force of gravity overcomes the apple’s attachment to the branch or not. Assuming theology is the explanation, it should happen regardless of the physics. And therefore, basically, you have to decide. These two explanations cannot both operate in parallel. It’s either a theological explanation or a physical explanation.

Or in other words, what I argued is that any involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the laws of nature is a miracle. There is no such thing as involvement within nature, as people often say. There’s no such animal. Because in the laws of nature there are no gaps, no spaces, no openings. The moment you give me all the data about the present situation—as Laplace said—I’ll tell you what will happen from here on. The laws of nature determine this in a very clear and deterministic way on the scale we’re talking about. On the microscopic scale, in quantum theory, there are debates. There it could be that there is some deviation from deterministic behavior. But as I said, even in that context, divine involvement is a violation of the laws of nature. Even if the laws are not deterministic, there is still some distribution dictated by quantum theory, and therefore divine involvement in any case is some kind of violation of the laws of nature. So basically you have to decide: either there is a theological explanation or there is a natural explanation.

What this only means, though, is that nature as such operates by virtue of the laws of nature and not by divine involvement. It may be that there are points, certain places or times, at which the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes and truly departs from nature. There is no involvement within nature, but that doesn’t mean there cannot be involvement outside the framework of nature. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He—the mouth that forbade is the mouth that permitted—when the Holy One, blessed be He, created the laws of nature, He can also freeze them. He can also decide that at a certain point He intervenes, freezes nature, and decides on His own what is going to happen there, or independently causes what will happen there. Therefore the claim I made earlier about the sufficiency of explanations is a claim that only says that the ongoing conduct of nature is not the hand of God. The ongoing conduct of nature is the laws of nature. That does not rule out the possibility that there is divine involvement at certain points in time and space, where indeed the involvement would not be within the framework of nature. But yes, the Holy One, blessed be He, can also freeze nature and be involved.

That is why many criticisms that came up on the site and elsewhere, saying: what do you mean, the mouth that forbade is the mouth that permitted—if the Holy One, blessed be He, created nature, can’t He freeze it? Of course He can freeze it. But the very fact that there is nature—He created nature—means there is nature. Once there is nature, that means that ordinarily it is not the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He; ordinarily it is the laws of nature. You can say there are certain points where He intervenes, freezes the laws of nature, and decides on His own what to do. Against that, against that claim, it is very hard to deal, because it is a claim that cannot be either confirmed or refuted. How would you know whether there are certain points where some event happened that has no natural explanation? After all, when we see something, we don’t know; it may have a natural explanation. We don’t check every place to see exactly what happened there and what forces were involved there. Therefore, in principle, it is definitely possible that events occur around us that have no natural explanation; the Holy One, blessed be He, did them. Of course, we cannot detect that. Events that we can detect as miracles are open miracles; that doesn’t happen in our time. But it could always be that there is some concealment of the Holy One, blessed be He, and behind the scenes He is stirring things and doing things that are, that are deviations from nature. But as I say, the ordinary course is certainly not that; the ordinary course is the laws of nature.

I’ll stress again—I think I said this last time—that I am not referring at the moment to the option, which also came up quite a bit in the criticism, that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the one who governs ongoing nature. Meaning, He does it, but according to fixed laws. In that context I say: that may very well be, but it is not relevant to us. Because still the conduct is conduct that is fixed and uniform and proceeds systematically according to the laws of nature. I spoke about the difference between the force of gravity and the law of gravity. So if you choose to say that there is no force of gravity, but rather the Holy One, blessed be He, simply causes masses to be attracted to each other, yet there is no actual force of gravity, there is only a law of gravity—the law only says what will happen when there are two masses at a certain distance, so the law says exactly what is going to happen there. But who causes the thing? It could be that it is the Holy One, blessed be He. That doesn’t interest me. Meaning, that is a conspiratorial question that doesn’t interest me. Why? Because I can still tell you exactly what will happen. It is not the result of a decision that the Holy One, blessed be He, makes in light of the circumstances each time as to what will happen. Rather, it is something fixed. So I don’t care whether the Holy One, blessed be He, stands behind that fixed something. Bottom line, the conduct is fixed and natural. From my standpoint, that is natural conduct. It doesn’t matter whether there are forces in reality causing it or whether the Holy One, blessed be He, moves things every single moment, as long as He does so according to fixed laws—I don’t care. It’s still nature and the whole business still operates according to fixed laws.

The question is what happens in sporadic occurrences, let’s call it that. Meaning, could there be points in space and time, certain points, where the Holy One, blessed be He, nevertheless intervenes? The ordinary course I have already ruled out. In the ordinary course it cannot be. So there cannot be involvement in places where there is human choice, and there cannot be ongoing involvement in natural conduct either. But it still may be that there is sporadic, local involvement, at a certain place and time, where the Holy One, blessed be He, somehow decides to change the game. Meaning, to move things and depart from the laws of nature. That of course is possible; it is hard to rule that out.

In this context I brought the Talmud in tractate Berakhot. The Talmud speaks there about prayer concerning the past, such as “May it be Your will that these not be members of my household”—someone who sees there is a fire in the city and prays, “May it be Your will that these not be members of my household,” or someone whose wife is pregnant and he prays, “May it be Your will that it be a male.” And the Sages forbid these prayers because it is prayer concerning the past. And I said that the Talmud distinguishes there between before forty days and after forty days of the fetus. If it is less than forty days, then one may pray; if more than forty days, then one may not pray. Now, I said that even after forty days this is still a hidden miracle. As long as there is no ultrasound, nobody knows the sex of the fetus in its mother’s womb. And so in principle, if one may pray for a hidden miracle and the whole problem is only prayer for an open miracle, I would expect that one should always be able to pray regarding a fetus, even when it is eight or nine months old. As long as we haven’t seen it, it is a hidden miracle. The fact that the Sages forbid this prayer means that they are saying: do not pray even for a hidden miracle; one does not pray for miracles. But then the question arises: so why before forty days is one permitted to pray? My assumption is that apparently the Sages understood that before forty days this is not a miracle. Meaning, before forty days the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, can be involvement within the framework of nature. After forty days the sex is already fixed, and so there you are praying for a miracle, and that they forbade. Even though it is a hidden miracle, one may not pray for miracles, whether open or hidden. But before forty days this is not a prayer for a miracle—otherwise the Sages would not have allowed it—but rather a prayer for the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, within the framework of nature.

Okay, now that is very strange in itself, because what are you really telling me? You are telling me that if I had not prayed, this fetus would have been male, and I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, that it be female. I am intentionally reversing what the Talmud says. I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, that it be female. Meaning, absent the prayer, one result should have come out, and through prayer I ask that the Holy One, blessed be He, produce a different result. What is that if not involvement in nature? It is exactly involvement in nature. Meaning, according to the regular laws of nature, one thing is supposed to come out, and I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for something else to come out. So why is this not involvement in nature? Just on the logical level it is hard to understand how the Sages understood that this is not involvement in nature. But they understood that apparently at this stage this is a decision of the Holy One, blessed be He, and there is no nature here. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, decides what will be—whether it will be male or female—and I ask Him to decide in the direction of female and not in the direction of male. Okay?

But now the dilemma was—and this occupied us a bit last time too—what to do with the modern insight of our own time, according to which even before forty days, even before the age of forty days, the sex of the fetus is already fixed? And so basically such a prayer too is a prayer for a miracle, because nature is deterministic. Even praying over a fertilized egg is already a prayer for a miracle. Because in the end nature is deterministic, and even in places we do not understand—and again, cell differentiation is apparently an issue. In biology, I am not sufficiently expert, but I understood that there is not much understanding there of how this whole thing happens. Still, it is clear that there is some deterministic mechanism that determines this matter. The fact that we do not know it—fine, we do not know it. But there is such a mechanism.

What this means, basically, is that we now have a kind of dilemma as to what to do. Because in principle, I accept the authority of the Sages in the halakhic context; I do not accept it in the scientific context. In the scientific context they have no authority. Obviously we know science better than they did, and therefore we know the laws of nature better than they did, and so my natural tendency is to say: okay, then their scientific assumption is not correct. Their scientific assumption is that up to forty days the matter is still open; involvement can be within the framework of nature. Therefore I am not obligated to accept this scientific principle. But once I do not accept the scientific principle, that has implications for the halakhic principle. Because what does it now mean? That I actually cannot pray for anything, because every prayer is a prayer for a miracle. So if I accept the halakhic principle that one may not pray for a miracle, and reject the Sages’ scientific principle that there are things that are not prayer for a miracle—meaning, basically every prayer is for a miracle—then I am left with the conclusion that one may not pray for anything. Because every prayer is a prayer for a miracle.

Alternatively, I can say that if the Sages had known that every prayer is a prayer for a miracle, it is likely that they would not have forbidden praying for a miracle. Then I would say: fine, then I reject the Sages’ halakhic principle. Even though I am committed to the halakhic rulings of the Talmud, to the halakhic determinations of the Talmud, still I say that in this context, since it is built on an incorrect scientific assumption, it may be possible to reject the Sages’ halakhic determination. And so here I say: I’m in a dilemma. I don’t know what to do with this on the halakhic level. Just today someone asked me—just today someone asked me—about the blessing of thanksgiving, yes, how can one bless the Holy One, blessed be He, with the blessing of thanksgiving? If I do not think that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the one who bestowed these things, then in what sense can I say the blessing of thanksgiving? I truly do not know. Meaning, I do not know what to do with this dilemma between the Sages’ scientific conception and the Sages’ halakhic determinations. Because in this case the halakhic determination is apparently a function of a scientific conception.

Okay, so we talked about that last time. The point I want to move to now is something I also mentioned—I think in previous sessions—that people themselves usually, at least in my impression, do not really believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, is running things here. Even though they can declare this with great devotion, in the end in practice you see that they do not conduct themselves that way. In practice, when an investigative commission checks why a plane crashed—yes, that was the example I gave, I think—it will not conclude its work until it finds where the problem was: the mechanical failure, the crack in the wing, the fault in the engine, I don’t know exactly what. Meaning, until they find that thing, they have not finished their work. Yes, it is clear to everyone, including the greatest God-fearing people, that there was some mechanical failure there if the plane fell. And that basically means that we assume things have natural causes. And if you want, for that mechanical failure too, we would also have to look for what the explanation for it was. The explanation—in the end there is a natural, physical chain here, which is supposed to lead us to the result. Therefore, many people recite lofty slogans about how everything is in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He, and in the end everything is accounted for, yes, in some theological accounting. I think we do not live that way.

And I also spoke, I think, about medical research—not sure actually, so maybe I’ll say it now. When people do medical research, they are basically checking, say, usually they want to test some medical procedure or some medicine. So they take a sample group and a control group, and they give the medicine, say, to the sample group, and a placebo to the control group, and they compare the results. And if there are significant results in the sample group, then that means that the medicine or procedure is effective compared to the control group. Now the question is: in these studies, does anyone take into account the level of righteousness of the sample group versus the control group? Or the quality of the prayer of the sample group versus the control group? Seemingly that is the most important parameter to examine. And in studies of this kind you usually have to neutralize parameters that can affect the result. Therefore, if you want to test whether the medicine worked, you must neutralize differences in the level of righteousness and the quality of prayer between the two groups. Otherwise, you ignored the most important parameter affecting the result. And I have never heard of a study that did this, that checked this issue, that tried clearly to neutralize those differences. Sometimes it might be neutralized if you take a sufficiently large group; you can assume the level of righteousness is similar, or the quality of prayer is similar, because there are offsets in large groups, I don’t know. But I have never heard of anyone who even checked this issue, who related to that parameter. Including God-fearing researchers, doctors who pray devoutly every morning. And by the way, I have also never heard of anyone who refrained from a medical procedure or a medicine because it was based on studies that did not take this distinction into account, that did not neutralize that parameter. Why? If indeed prayer is what determines things, and everything else is just a cover behind which the Holy One, blessed be He, operates, then I wouldn’t care a bit about this research. I would not take medicine based on such a study or undergo surgery based on such a study. The most important influencing parameter was not taken into account—are you crazy? You can’t rely on a sloppy study like that.

I bring these examples to show that even people who, in a declared way, live with the consciousness—I don’t think they are lying—but they live with a consciousness as though everything is in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He, and talk about it in grand terms, do not really live that way. And truly, in my opinion, they do not believe it. They do not believe it. And therefore I don’t take all that much account of—don’t give much weight to—these declarations by people that everything is in the hands of Heaven. I don’t mean I don’t give much weight because they are stupid or because they don’t understand correctly, although that too could be; but I’m saying I don’t give it much weight because in my opinion even they themselves do not really think that way. There is no such human intuition, contrary to what people keep telling me; I do not accept that. Most people do not have such an intuition. They can recite slogans about it, but in life they do not operate that way. And therefore I do not put much trust in declarations about intuitions of that sort.

Maybe I’ll now bring up another important point in this context of human intuitions. Many people—not many, but quite a few people—report all kinds of miracles that happened to them. People were saved in war because of a book of Psalms that remained in their pocket, and the bullet got stuck precisely in the book of Psalms, I don’t know, all kinds of things of that sort. They met Mama Rachel and I don’t know what, said abracadabra and ascended to heaven just as the shell fell on the exact spot where they had been standing. Forgive the cynicism, but these reports really do not inspire much confidence in me. So all kinds of reports about one miracle or another, and I don’t know what—the rockets in Gush Katif there, in the Gaza envelope, where so many rockets fell and there were so few casualties, and all kinds of calculations of this type meant to show that the hand of God protects us from all evil, except for the times when it doesn’t protect us. Reports of this kind are often based on a misunderstanding of statistics—what I once called in one of my columns the law of small numbers, as distinct from the law of large numbers.

Take the favorite example I tend to bring in these contexts, because it happened to me personally: the miracle in Gedera, as I call it. We were driving with the family at about one in the morning, I think, something like that. We were coming back from a family celebration in Kfar Chabad, driving with the car, with six children, my wife and I and six children, to Yeruham. On the way, in the Gedera area, some woman came out of a side road, entered, the guy in front of me braked, and I slammed right into him. The car was done, dead. Now it’s one in the morning and eight people are stranded in Gedera on the way to Yeruham. I’m not even talking about how much two taxis would cost that could hold eight people from Gedera to Yeruham—that’s just financial loss. But what do you do with the car? Where—what do you do in such a situation? In short, all these thoughts only went through my mind hours later. They didn’t go through my mind at the moment of the accident. Do you know why? Some of you already know because you heard this—from me. Simply because I didn’t have time to think about it at all. Before I even understood that there had been an accident, a large empty vehicle belonging to a neighbor of mine from Yeruham stopped next to me. He took all eight of us—my wife and I and six children—into his vehicle and drove us home, straight to Yeruham. Our neighbor.

What are the odds that such a thing would happen? By the way, we left the key in some shop that was open there, we called a tow truck, and the tow truck later took the car, but that’s not important. On the way, in this neighbor’s vehicle, it turns out the guy is some kind of political activist, a local politician in Yeruham, and he used to drive all the time from Yeruham to Jerusalem because of his affairs, a route he knew by heart. He says to me, listen, I don’t know what happened today—he tells me this on the way, when we’re already driving with him—I don’t know what happened today, I missed the Latrun interchange. When he goes down from Jerusalem, the route south goes by getting off at the Latrun interchange from one road and turning south. I missed the Latrun interchange, I don’t know, I got to Ramla, places I don’t know at all. I somehow passed through Gedera and all those places, I don’t know them. By the way, I think this was before the Waze era, yes, before Waze, meaning you actually had to know how to navigate somehow. And that’s it—I really don’t understand how this happened; it’s the first time this has ever happened to me.

Of course, when did it happen to him? Exactly when I needed him in the accident. Everything was calculated in advance, because it happened to him even before the accident. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, already knew there would be an accident, diverted him from the Latrun interchange, moved him around in this whole business, and brought him exactly on time to the site of my accident. Now the even nicer part is that while he was driving there, the accident hadn’t happened yet. Meaning, it was literally at the exact second it happened. I hadn’t yet had time to understand that there was an accident. He said to me, listen, I didn’t see anything. My wife says to me, listen, the Abraham family is here, I see their car, maybe stop and ask if they need anything, something like that. He says, okay, so they’re here, so what happened? They stopped for a moment with the car and then they’ll continue driving. No time, it’s one in the morning, got to get to Yeruham, there’s still another hour and a half, two hours of driving. He didn’t want to stop at all. His wife says to him, no, no, stop—maybe they do need something after all. And in the end he decided to stop.

Meaning, notice how many coincidences had to happen along the way for this guy to stop next to me the second the accident happened, really just a few seconds after the accident, with a large empty vehicle that could hold all eight of us. He also told me that he had missed a few hitchhikers who were supposed to ride with him—I’m sparing you details that I myself no longer remember all of—and therefore he remained empty, with a large vehicle that could hold all of us. What are the odds that such a thing would happen? That a person on his routine trip from Jerusalem to Yeruham misses the turn he already knows by heart, with a large vehicle, not a small vehicle, a large empty vehicle available for eight people, and stops the second I have an accident. And he didn’t want to stop at all and his wife persuades him. Yes, add up all the coincidences here—zero chance.

Okay, so afterward of course I got to Yeruham. I think it was Thursday; on Friday, the next day, I held a tish for my students in Yeruham. Sober and skeptical as I am, I held a tish and said to them, so, what do you say—should we recite the Great Hallel now? I mean, for the miracle the Holy One, blessed be He, performed for me. So the guys said, yes, of course. I said to them, I don’t know, I’m not convinced that this was a miracle the Holy One, blessed be He, did for me. Because from my perspective as a rational person, there is some probability, I don’t know, one in a hundred thousand, that such a thing would happen. I’m just throwing out a number, I don’t know how much—very small, right? But I didn’t check how many cars in the world got stuck in the middle of the night far from home and were passed by such vehicles. It could be that there are a hundred thousand people for whom this didn’t happen, and for one lucky person like me, it did happen. So if the odds are one in a hundred thousand and there were a hundred thousand such cases, then the expectation is one—that in one of these cases it would happen, in one of these situations it would happen. And as long as I haven’t checked how many times this occurred and such a car did not stop, and how many such cases there were, how can I determine that this thing is statistically unreasonable? A rare event can definitely happen if there are enough trials in which it could happen.

This reminds me that I once wrote an article in Assia—yes, on Jewish law and medicine—about using evidence for rare phenomena. I didn’t invent this; it’s Daniel Kahneman and Tversky, who got a Nobel Prize for it. They made a whole profession out of it. But these are things that have very important uses, again in medicine and law. I have a friend, a judge, yes, with whom I shared this matter. I said to him: look, suppose someone is standing before you on trial for murder, and you have evidence of a quality of one in a hundred thousand that he is the murderer. Meaning, 99,999 out of 100,000 that he is the murderer; there is a one in a hundred thousand chance of error. Do you convict him? Of course, what do you mean? That’s solid evidence; we convict on much weaker evidence. Then I said to him: tell me, how many murderers are there in the population? Out of a hundred thousand people, how many are murderers? I don’t know, less than one, I assume—hopefully at least, yes? No, thank God we have few murderers in the country. So let’s say it’s one in a hundred thousand, okay? So you have a one in a hundred thousand chance that this person murdered, but one in a hundred thousand is also the number of murderers there are in the population. So that evidence isn’t worth much. When you are looking for rare phenomena, you cannot use evidence whose rarity is not sufficient to capture the rare phenomenon. The example of this—and that’s what I wrote about later in the article—is also in medicine.

Let me give another example. I go to the doctor and he suspects I have some rare disease. Let’s say, I don’t know, the probability is one in a hundred thousand people who have this disease, okay? He sends me for a test. This test is a good-quality test, 99% correct, okay? Both false positive and false negative, same thing, symmetric—meaning it can say “sick” for someone who isn’t sick and “not sick” for someone who is sick, by one percent. Fine? A test considered excellent—one percent is a very good test. Okay? Now I took the test and the result says I’m sick. What is the probability that I’m sick? Now a typical doctor, almost all the doctors I know, on seeing such a result would immediately hospitalize me, send me for surgery. A test with 99% quality says I’m sick—what could be better than that? In medicine it’s never 100%, but 99% is very good. Now if I asked the doctor, tell me, what is the chance that I’m sick? Most doctors would answer me 99%. I’ve actually tried this, not only on doctors but on others too—medical students certainly. I once checked a group of medical students to whom I gave a lecture on this issue. They said yes, 99% that you’re sick.

That’s complete nonsense. There’s almost no chance that I’m sick. I can go home calm and cheerful and not worry at all that I’m sick. Let’s do the math. Suppose there are a million people in the country. One in a hundred thousand has this disease—it’s a rare disease. So there are a hundred sick people, right? Ten sick people, sorry. One in a hundred thousand out of a million is ten sick people. Okay? Now suppose all one million go through the test. How many will come out sick on this test? Since the test misses by one percent and there are a million healthy people—because there are only ten sick people, that’s negligible—so let’s say for the sake of discussion there are a million healthy people. Since the test has a one-percent miss rate, ten thousand will come out sick. Right? Ten thousand is one percent of a million. How many are actually sick? Ten. Meaning, the test identifies ten thousand people as sick when in truth there are only ten sick people. So if the test indicated that I am sick—and this is a 99% quality test—if the test indicated that I am sick, the probability that I am sick is one in a thousand. A 99% quality test says I’m sick. It’s a bit hard for someone not trained in statistics or probability to grasp this, but the test is 99% quality, an excellent test, and I tested positive—the probability that I’m sick is one in a thousand, one tenth of a percent. The probability that I am in fact sick, not that I am not sick. You don’t need to worry about that; one in a thousand is practically no chance. You can go home in peace. There’s no chance you’re sick.

Why is that? Because a test with a one-percent error rate is a very crude, very poor test when you are talking about a phenomenon that appears one in a hundred thousand times. With probability, evidence—this is a very rare phenomenon. To catch small fish you need a net with holes much smaller than the fish. Same thing here: a test that is supposed to capture a rare phenomenon needs a resolution on the order of the rarity of the phenomenon, and preferably of course even higher resolution in order for the test to be meaningful. But if the test is of the same order of magnitude, and the test says I’m sick, then the chance I’m sick is half. A fifty percent chance is already something worth checking. That’s not something you dismiss. If you really want to know whether you are sick, you need a test whose error rate is one in a million or one in ten million, if you really want the test to say something about you. There are no such tests. A test with one-percent accuracy error is considered excellent. Yes, by the way, regarding the COVID tests, the COVID vaccines—they talk about ninety-three percent, ninety-four percent success. Understand, that’s a six-percent miss rate, and that is considered a very good vaccine. Okay? Those are the orders of magnitude we’re dealing with.

The example I brought there was the famous effect in psychology—famous, though not certain to exist in psychology—called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. I assume you know the stories of Munchausen. Baron Munchausen was someone who liked to exaggerate in order to impress his listeners, so he told Arabian Nights-type stories, all sorts of wild exaggerations. Munchausen syndrome, in psychology, is a condition where a person wants to draw attention to himself. By various odd means he wants to draw attention to himself, so he does things to himself; he can even harm himself just so people will pity him and pay attention to him. Now there is Munchausen syndrome by proxy. What does that mean? That you harm someone else in order to draw attention to yourself. For example, you harm your children, because then everyone pities the family and again you get attention. So the goal is the same goal, but you do it to someone else, not to yourself. That’s why it’s called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. By the way, there were suspicions that the “starving mother” in Jerusalem, for example, actually suffered from this syndrome. Meaning, she starved her children in order to draw attention to herself, so people would pity her or things of that kind, and that is why she did those things.

Okay? There was a woman in the United States—no, not in the United States, in England, sorry—whose two children died at home, infants, two infants, of crib death. Okay? She was put on trial for murder, and a doctor came, Sir Roy Meadow, who was essentially the discoverer of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, the fellow who coined it, I think, if I remember correctly. And he testified in court, as a doctor, that the probability of crib death is one in eight thousand. Therefore the probability of crib death of two children in the same home is one in sixty-something million, the product of the probabilities. And therefore there is simply no chance that the two children died of crib death; she plainly murdered them, because the probability is so tiny. The woman went to prison as a result of that testimony, without any supporting factor. That expert testimony sent her to prison. Until after I don’t know how long—she sat in prison quite a while—until after some time a statistician came to court and explained to the idiotic judge and the no-less-idiotic, in fact even more idiotic, doctor the nonsense they had committed. How many women murder two of their children? That is a very rare phenomenon. In order to catch a rare phenomenon, you need a test with much, much better resolution than the rarity of the phenomenon. Or in other words, if, say, one in I don’t know ten million women might murder her children—I don’t know how many—that’s an extremely rare phenomenon, then a one in sixty-four million probability in Britain could very well materialize in one woman. The alternative is no more likely. The alternative—that a woman murders two children—is no more likely than that two children died of crib death. Therefore this statistical calculation is irrelevant.

This statistical calculation is merely a testing instrument whose error quality is one in sixty-four million. The chance of error is one in sixty-four million. But if the phenomenon itself is as rare as one in several million, then this is not good enough evidence. Or between us: it could be that one woman among all the mothers in Britain would have two children die of crib death. True, the probability is one in ten million, but there are ten million mothers in Britain, so it will happen to one of them. Yes—the black swan phenomenon of Nassim Taleb. The same phenomenon. He argues that this matter—he’s an economist and statistician of Lebanese origin—he wrote the book The Black Swan. He argues there that Warren Buffett and all the great investors have no clue about investing. Rather, out of a million investors, one will succeed over many years. That’s probability. That one happens to be called Warren Buffett. That’s all. There is no reason to be impressed by his economic or investment skills. It happens to him, that’s all. In that case he’s called Warren Buffett. Who says he’s talented? Now in that context, in my view he is not correct. But the argument is an interesting one. Meaning, the argument is interesting because it says that things that seem very, very probabilistically persuasive to us, when examined further, turn out not to be so persuasive probabilistically. It depends how many trials there are.

So what am I saying all this for? Those miracles everyone reports—I don’t know, the rockets in Gush Katif, or the book of Psalms that protected against the bullet, or things of that kind—these things are far from convincing me. Even if they really happened, although the descriptions of course often tend to beautify reality and amplify it. But even let’s say it really happened as described, still, the fact that a rare event happened does not yet mean anything. The question is in how many cases it happened. Meaning, how many people were hit by a bullet and had a book of Psalms in their pocket, and it hit their other pocket? How many such people were there? I don’t know. And therefore it is very hard to derive any unequivocal conclusion from that. As long as you do not know how many such trials occurred or what your sample space is, the low probability still does not mean there is a miracle here. The low probability only means that it happened in one case out of I-don’t-know-how-many. And therefore these reports—yes, this is what most alternative medicine is built on. I’m being careful with my language so I say most; it could be all of it. But alternative medicine is in many cases basically built on this. As long as I still had the energy—I had the energy to argue with people—on the Lod core bulletin board, yes, there’s some Google Group here, of the Torah core in Lod. And every time there was some new advertisement there for these alternative miracles—I don’t know, breastplate stones and Bach flower remedies, I don’t know, all sorts of nonsense people treat with, miracles and wonders, my grandmother, all the doctors gave up on her and she took these drops and immediately recovered, tried and proven, yes? And there are people here making a living by the hundreds from this, and people supporting them by the thousands, for all this nonsense that mostly, if not entirely, has no basis. No basis whatsoever. Not even a statistical basis, never mind a scientific one. They don’t even pretend to have a scientific basis. There is no statistical basis that it works at all. They didn’t test it with sample groups and control groups to see if it works.

There’s a book by Simon Singh with someone else called Trick or Treatment, where he goes through one alternative medicine technique after another, surveys the very few studies done systematically—with double-blind controls, with all the proper methodology—and shows that none of these techniques has any statistical basis. Meaning, none of them works. So what do you do with all the stories about someone’s grandmother, where everyone gave up and these drops saved her? On the optimistic assumption that it is really true. Let’s say it is even true. Does that mean anything? The answer is no, it means nothing. Why? Because obviously sometimes there are medical miracles, and sometimes there are situations where a person recovers and you have no idea why he recovered. Obviously that happens. It also happens sometimes without his taking those drops. One out of however many gets out of it miraculously anyway, or the diagnosis was wrong, or spontaneous remission, or placebo. If he trusted the drops he received, that trust itself has a healing effect. That’s called placebo. And therefore scientific trials try to neutralize the placebo effect as well, in order to see whether the medicine really works.

By the way, placebo is great. If it healed him, wonderful. That’s why I’m often in doubt whether to fight over these things and explain to people the stupid statistics they are relying on. Maybe it’s not worthwhile. Meaning, maybe better to leave them foolish so they’ll trust the drops, and placebo works to some extent, so maybe it really will help them, who knows. Alternative medicine is built on placebo or spontaneous healing. And therefore I am always in doubt whether—“the wisdom of the poor man is despised,” as they say. So I don’t know. In any case, as long as I had the strength, I fought there on the bulletin board and explained to people not to throw their money into the garbage, and told people involved in alternative medicine to go look for more moral, more justified livelihoods. At some point I gave up. But most of the arguments revolved around the fact that every one of those practitioners explained to me with signs and wonders that his grandmother—it’s simply tried and proven—he has dozens of patients who recovered from his drops beyond any doubt and nothing else helped them.

Some of this, of course, simply isn’t true. People deceive themselves, not only others. They look at things with too favorable an eye. Very often you have to set clear criteria for what counts as recovered, what counts as your condition having improved. Very often there is some more empathetic perspective that can see improvement even where there isn’t really improvement. But beyond that, of course, there is the statistical issue. What do I care about your grandmother? Put a hundred grandmothers in a sample group, a hundred grandmothers in a control group, and then you’ll see whether there is really a statistically significant result in favor of the sample group. That is how these things are tested in medicine. If you tested it that way, I am willing to accept the medicine as a significant medicine—provided, of course, that you neutralized the prayers and the commandments and all the things we talked about earlier. But if you did that, fine, I understand. But the stories about your grandmother don’t interest me—they may interest my grandmother, not me. Stories about isolated cases prove nothing. People don’t understand this. Isolated cases prove nothing. In order to prove something, you need proper statistics. You cannot rely on isolated cases.

And therefore all sorts of phenomena that are open miracles and things like that are merely rare phenomena, and rare phenomena happen from time to time. If you throw dice enough times, you’ll get twenty sixes in a row. At some point, in some sequence, you will get twenty consecutive throws of six. Just throw enough times. Therefore rare events are very, very dubious evidence, including, by the way, the establishment of the State of Israel, victories in war, miraculous rescues of various units or people or whatever it may be. There is no war without such stories. And I’m not talking about stories that are outright lies. There is no war in which this does not happen. Because from time to time such things happen. From time to time the few defeat the many. We’re now in Hanukkah, so I’ll allow myself to be an apikores on this point too. From time to time the few defeat the many. It happens. There is such a “miracle.” So if it happened once in a thousand battles, in the case of the Hasmoneans for example, then what’s the problem? Who says that’s a miracle? There were a thousand battles in which it didn’t work, and once it did. And if the Hasmoneans won five battles rather than one, then the probability drops; it’s not one in a thousand, it’s one in a hundred thousand that the few would win five battles. Okay—but maybe there were a hundred thousand battles in which it didn’t happen, or a hundred thousand confrontations in which it didn’t happen, and one confrontation in which it did happen. It is very difficult to bring proof that a rare event is a miracle. And the very strong intuitions people have that here clearly there was a miracle often stem from a statistical failure, from a statistical misunderstanding. That’s all.

And therefore I am very unimpressed by all these miracle stories. There are places where it is more convincing, and those are places where there is a prior prediction that the thing will happen. Meaning, if someone predicted in advance that in this war the few would defeat the many, and in the end that is indeed what happened, then that carries greater weight. It carries greater weight because it means someone put his finger on where this rare event would occur. Since the fact that the rare event happens—it happens by chance—so how would you know where it would land? Would it land on me? On someone else? I don’t know. If someone had said in advance: you will get stranded in Gedera and such-and-such will happen to you—in such a situation that has much more weight. A rare event—of course you need two things: that it be a rare event, and that there be a prior prediction of where and to whom it will happen. Okay? Therefore, for example, if you find prophecies that were fulfilled in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or something like that, there it carries more weight. Because if a rare event was predicted in advance and it really happened, then the indication is a stronger indication.

Another place where one can give this weight is where there is prophecy. If there are prophets, and the prophets know how to identify that a certain event is a miracle performed by the Holy One, blessed be He, then fine—the prophet tells me that information. I am talking about a situation in which we, with our own meager human and natural powers, try to determine whether a certain event is a miracle, without information from behind the curtain from prophets and things like that. I claim that our ability to do that is negligible. We have no ability to know when a miracle happens and when a miracle does not happen, and therefore stories of people being impressed by miracles do not impress me. They do not impress me. I have no indication that we really can check when something is a miracle and when it isn’t. Therefore these stories do not convince me at all. Not victories in war, not the low casualty rate from rockets, and not all sorts of miracle-and-wonder stories. Miracles that are plainly against the laws of nature—the splitting of the sea or something like that—that is another story. But I do not think there are miracles like that in our period. In our period we are always dealing with miracles of statistical probability, that is, with rare events that seem unlikely to have occurred—statistical miracles. But with statistical miracles it is very difficult to determine that we are really dealing with a miracle, because rare events happen from time to time.

So the point, basically, is that people’s reports that a miracle happened to them, and people’s very strong intuitions, are often simply indications of a lack of statistical skill together with indoctrination and long years of religious education that teaches you that you must find the hand of God behind every event. Forgive me for speaking like the greatest of apikorsim, but what can you do—sometimes rational thinking is necessary even for religious people. And therefore people’s feelings do not really convince me that they are actually seeing a miracle before their eyes. People can honestly—not because they are lying to me, again—people can honestly think they are seeing a miracle before their eyes because they are simply not statistically skilled, they are not using their heads forcefully enough. And therefore, therefore I do not tend to think, as I said before, beyond the independent arguments—the arguments as such against divine involvement—I also claim that people deep down do not really believe in it, and even those who do believe in it, it is often the result of the combination of those two parameters: lack of statistical skill plus long-term indoctrination that the Holy One, blessed be He, accompanies us and guards us and is involved in everything that happens to us. Remove that, and in my estimation many of people’s intuitions will disappear—as I can say about myself, how it disappeared for me once I internalized that in fact there are statistical errors here. Statistical errors plus indoctrination.

Now I want to continue further and talk a bit about involvement in history. Involvement in history is perhaps one of the strongest things brought today as an argument for the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He—things like the establishment of the State of Israel, the ingathering of exiles, victories in war, and things of that kind. Now here I must say that the situation is better than what I described before, because the ingathering of exiles and the establishment of the State of Israel were also predicted in advance by the prophets. Not the establishment of the State of Israel in that exact sense, but the restoration of independence, the Messiah, kingship, and so on, in one way or another. So there is an element here that one cannot completely ignore. It is not only statistical rarity, which by itself in my eyes doesn’t say much, for two reasons.

Suppose there had been no prior prophecies. I say: I see the rebirth of the State of Israel, the ingathering of exiles. Does this by itself not convince me that this is the hand of God? The answer is no, it does not convince me. Why does it not convince me? Because first, the statistical calculation says that such a thing can happen; it is not something absurd. It is not against the laws of nature; it simply does not usually happen. Fine, so for one people out of I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of peoples, for one people it did happen. As I said earlier—so what does that mean? A rare event can happen in one out of a thousand cases. Fine, so for one people it did happen. Why does that necessarily mean there was a miracle here? Second, these events are of course the result of the culture and the beliefs and the atmosphere within which the Jewish people lived for thousands of years. We grow up on the idea that there is a commandment to settle the Land of Israel, that there are prophecies that we are supposed to return to the Land, that we are commanded to return to the Land, that we aspire to return to the Land, and at a certain stage some nonbelievers arose and decided that one also had to do something besides pray, and therefore they brought us back to the Land. So it may even be that this event is not a natural event and is a rare event, and beyond the statistics that it could happen—but it happened not necessarily because of the hand of God or divine involvement, but simply because our education and our culture led us to act toward that end. Not for nothing did people act to return to the Land of Israel; there was a long-standing ethos that we were supposed to return to the Land of Israel, that we were expected to return to the Land of Israel, and that we had a commandment.

I think I also brought this in the book: Yigal Allon said that Safed in the War of Independence was saved by the deed and by the miracle. The deed was that the elders of Safed poured out all their prayer before the Holy One, blessed be He, and offered fervent prayers for the salvation of Safed. That was the deed. And the miracle was that the Palmach platoon arrived on time. That’s roughly the point. In any case, to our matter—the Palmach division, I think it was, I no longer remember. In any event, the claim I want to make is that historical events in themselves are far from convincing me that the hand of God is here. True, there is some prior prophecy, and in that sense I can no longer reject the matter outright. It still is not clear proof, because prophecy can still be fulfilled in another period—we could yet be exiled again and return again—I still do not know whether this is really the end of days of which the prophets prophesied.

The interpretations we give to the verses of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) are so creative and free and elastic that it is obvious that when the State of Israel is destroyed, we will explain all those verses in a way that poses no difficulty at all in understanding that yes, yes, this wasn’t that redemption; the redemption about which they prophesied will come soon, it will come later. That’s the experiment—and it didn’t succeed. See the Lubavitcher Rebbe and his being the Messiah. Meaning, everyone understood he was the Messiah until he died, and then they explained that we were not worthy, and therefore the Messiah died—or for those who believe he died, passed away, sorry—and the Messiah will come in his time and at the proper time, speedily or I don’t know when in the future. Okay? Explanations after the fact—we are champions at giving explanations after the fact. Once you can give after-the-fact explanations to the verses, I do not put much trust in explanations that go forward rather than backward. The Oracle at Delphi always gave prophecies that could be explained no matter what occurred; whatever occurred would fit. The prophecies were sufficiently vague that whatever happened would fit the prophecy. That is how the reputation of the Oracle at Delphi was built: he is always right. He is always right because he is sufficiently vague to encompass any future that may happen.

And if you want, the modern Oracles at Delphi—like Passig from Bar-Ilan and the rest of the modern magicians, who today call it forecasting, it becomes the science of forecasting—I have never seen a greater piece of nonsense than the science of forecasting, except perhaps gender studies. But recently the university has many flourishing sciences; the world of science is expanding exponentially. In any case, these forecasts—when I read them, when Passig came to the country after his post-doc, yes, he is the founder of forecasting in Israel, I think, he brought this thing to Israel, and he lectures at Bar-Ilan today, I think, or at least used to. In any event, some rabbi sent me something from him, very impressed. Passig described there how the State of Israel would flourish and prosper, and he had all sorts of very optimistic forecasts. So he sent me this thing and asked what I thought, from the perspective of a rational person who also understands statistics and scientific analysis. He wanted my opinion. I told him it was all nonsense. Why was it all nonsense? Because if you look, you’ll see that he said nothing sharp, nothing about which you could clearly say it had failed to come true. He talked about vague periods with flourishing and declines alternately; from time to time there would be a decline. You know, like after the disengagement, they explained that this is Israel’s rhythm, that sometimes it goes down and sometimes it goes up. Meaning, this theory survives every empirical test—the theory that we are now on the sure road to redemption. At first people say it will happen; if it happens, then they explain that in fact it happened but we were not worthy, and all sorts of things like that. It also reminds me of the explanations for the absolute righteousness of Lenin or Stalin, to make the obvious distinction; they too were always right. No matter what happened, they were always right. Meaning, whatever happened confirmed what they had said. Okay? That is a feature of prophecies that are sufficiently vague or sufficiently open to creative and free interpretation, such that they can be fitted to whatever happens. And it is a very clear feature of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). Anything written there, we know how to fit more or less to whatever happens. We will never lose confidence in the idea that the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is always right. Why? Because whatever happens, we will explain in one way or another that it fits what is written there. But precisely because of that, I do not trust things learned from there. Because if you learn something from there, I would expect that if it does not occur, you would say: okay, then I no longer believe in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), because this is what the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) said and it did not occur. But we all know what will happen if your prophecy based on the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is disproved: you will simply explain that we did not understand the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) correctly. So those prophecies are not worth much.

The criterion of falsifiability is a very significant criterion for a scientific theory. A theory that cannot be falsified is a theory that says nothing. If you take no risk of being disproved, then I also do not believe what you are saying. If you are always right, then you are saying nothing. Those are different ways of saying the same thing. Therefore, the inference that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved in historical events because of considerations of rarity is, in my view, very dubious. History is complicated, and many surprising things happen in history, and still we always look for explanations for those surprising things. That is how historians make their living. Therefore I have great doubt whether one can thus confirm divine involvement. As I said, once there is prior prophecy it becomes a bit stronger; it is harder to reject it out of hand. But since those prophecies are to a large extent the Oracle at Delphi—even the prophecy of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), with all the distinctions I myself make in this matter—still, the prophecies are sufficiently elastic and sufficiently vague that one can explain everything.

Yes, this issue of testimony that you can refute, and the relation between that and a theory that is falsifiable—again, that’s a comment here in the chat. There is an article by Hanina and Yemima Ben-Menachem, a married couple—he is a jurist and she is a philosopher—about the relationship between these two principles. It once appeared in Hakdamot; I don’t remember, they also have a longer article in English, and in Hakdamot there was a Hebrew summary. You can read it there. There are connections between these principles, but also differences.

In any case, to our matter, that is regarding involvement in history. I want to raise one more argument touching on history, and here the argument is as follows: people have some tendency—yes, Yossi Avivi once said, “history is a lofty need.” Meaning, from history, when one studies history, one can understand the ways of providence. Right? A very common and popular statement—that from history one can learn the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He, and how He conducts Himself in the world and what He wants from us and all sorts of things of that sort. A nice slogan. But again, in my sins I am a cold rational apikores, dry as dust, and I woke up from that one too. I woke up from that one too because I keep discovering that like the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), history too suffers from infinite elasticity. Meaning, everyone learns from them what he wants to learn from them.

Take the Holocaust, my favorite example—sorry, it is not my favorite at all as an event, but as an example it is a good example. The Haredim learn from the Holocaust that one should have opposed Zionism all the more, with greater force and intensity. It was not enough; people cooperated with Zionism, and therefore the blow of the Holy One, blessed be He—the Holocaust—came upon us. The Religious Zionists learn from the Holocaust that we did not cooperate enough with Zionism, that we did not come to the Land en masse, and therefore the Holocaust came upon us. Yes, the Holocaust physically wiped out the exile. And basically what this means is that each side learns from the Holocaust what it already thought beforehand. Right? That is basically what it means. And therefore we learn nothing from the Holocaust. Because basically what it means is that if there is something from which everyone learns what he wants, then it means he did not learn it from that thing. He simply planted it into that thing, because he wanted to reach that conclusion. Like the Oracle at Delphi. History, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and the Oracle at Delphi basically function in the same way. The prophecy is sufficiently vague that one can hang anything on it, and therefore I am not willing to draw conclusions from those prophecies.

Now you may ask me: then why were they written? I have no idea. I don’t know. I have no idea. Maybe after things happened I can try to explain those prophecies after the fact. I don’t know; it requires a lot of analysis. But that doesn’t change the fact that one really cannot learn anything from them. Theological questions are all well and good. I have no answers. But what can you do—I still do not think one can factually learn from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). Therefore I too would very much like to learn from there, but what can I do—I can’t, and I also don’t think others can. They think they can, but they can’t.

And in this context there is a catch—what in yeshiva language they call a “chap”—a certain nuance that I wrote about in the second book of the trilogy, on this matter of learning from history. Suppose the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to teach us something from history. Now, the fact is that He failed, right? At every step He failed completely. Nobody learns anything from history. Certainly not—I mean, people don’t even learn historical lessons from history. As Ben-Gurion said, historians are experts in what was; nobody is an expert in what will be. But when I speak about theological lessons, then certainly one cannot learn anything from history. Okay? As I said earlier—and I gave the example earlier too, and there are of course many more examples.

What does that say about the teacher who is trying to teach us these lessons through history? What does that say about his pedagogical ability? Meaning, if he is trying to teach us and none of us succeeds in learning, then there is something problematic about the teacher’s pedagogical ability. Now you may say, fine, there can be successful teachers or good teachers who fail to teach because the class is negligent, lazy, sleeping, uninterested, not engaged, or things of that sort. But that is not the situation here. The situation here is that people with quite high intellectual abilities come from all directions—Haredim, Religious Zionists, whoever you want, everyone involved in learning from history. We are talking about people with good intellectual abilities, and also people who sincerely try to learn what history teaches us, and they are really not lazy and truly want to learn to the best of their understanding. And the fact is that everyone reaches the conclusions to which he was captive in advance. What does that mean? It means that the failure here is not because of the students; it is because of the teacher. The teacher does not succeed in teaching us anything, even though the whole stage of history supposedly exists in order to teach us various theological lessons according to those views. But it does not succeed. We learn nothing from it.

So what does that mean? By the way, drawing conclusions such as when we are struck, we should repent—that is not called learning from history. To repent means I learn that certain things I did were sins. I learn that from the Shulchan Arukh, not from history. History’s only purpose there is to get me to look at the Shulchan Arukh and examine myself against it to see whether I am sinning or not. I do not learn that a certain thing is a sin from history. I know of no example of that. History is merely a motivation to “search and examine our ways,” but not that history teaches us what is a sin and what is not a sin. That does not happen, in my opinion.

In any case, what am I trying to claim? I want to claim that if I believe in the pedagogical ability of the Holy One, blessed be He—and I do believe in it—then the required conclusion is apparently that He simply is not the teacher. He is not really trying to teach us anything. That is the mistake. The mistake is that people think He is trying to teach us something, and then they look for what He is trying to teach. But from the fact that people do not succeed in learning anything, my conclusion—and to me this is the required conclusion—is that He is probably not trying to teach us anything. If He were trying, He would succeed. He is omnipotent, He can do anything, He is perfect, He can do anything you want. If He wanted to teach us something, He could teach us. Unless, again, we have free choice. If we have the evil inclination and we are unwilling to learn, then He cannot teach us, because we said that what depends on our choice is in our hands, not in His. But here, when people are not choosing evil—they are sincerely trying to understand history. I believe both sides here are not choosing evil. This is how they understand history. Neither the Satmar Rebbe, nor Rabbi Shach, nor Rabbi Avraham Shapira and Rabbi Kook—none of them was driven by the evil inclination. They all come with the best of their understanding to understand what history says, and they reach opposite conclusions, each in his own direction. So this means that apparently it is not that the Holy One, blessed be He, failed to teach us, but that He is not trying to teach us at all. History is not happening because the Holy One, blessed be He, is trying to teach us something.

Now, that does not mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not causing history. That conclusion cannot be drawn from here. It only means that even if He is causing it, He is not causing it in order to teach us, but for other reasons—because He wants to bring about some state of affairs, and not in order to teach us. That could be. I did not rule that out with this argument. But the idea that people are trying to learn from history something about what is right and what is wrong, whether one should be Zionist or anti-Zionist—that’s nonsense. It is begging the question, demagoguery, and the rest of the salad. There is nothing there. You cannot learn anything from history on this matter. Therefore one has to decide, by logic, by various halakhic sources, whether to go with Zionism, against Zionism, each according to his view—but history will not teach us anything on this issue. History can be explained in every possible way.

And this, I would say, is another argument that comes out not necessarily against the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in history, but against the attempt to give history a theological interpretation or to learn something from history. I mean to learn something theological. In my view that is completely unreasonable. Therefore it joins everything I have said until now, where bite after bite or nibble after nibble I am trying to show you that even if there is some involvement of some kind by the Holy One, blessed be He, it is something that may perhaps exist in rare places. We will never be able to discern it. We will never be able to know whether there was involvement somewhere, even if there was. We will not be able to know that there was, and therefore there is no point in dealing with it. There is no point, when someone dies, to start searching and asking: wait, why did he die, and why do I deserve this, and lofty are the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He, can we know them, can’t we know them. Who said these are the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He, at all? He died because someone decided to murder him or harm him, I don’t know exactly what happened, or all sorts of other things. Therefore these are not things from which one can really try to learn anything. And we cannot attribute any event to the Holy One, blessed be He, even if we assume there is involvement—and that is the important point here. I am willing, for the sake of discussion, to accept that at least in sporadic cases there is involvement. That still means nothing, because in the end I will never accept someone’s claim that the involvement was here. Meaning, that there is an event he can point to as the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He. That I will never accept. Even if I accept that there can be involvement, we cannot see it. Therefore every claim of involvement, or an attempt to learn from a particular event about something, I reject out of hand—even if I am willing to accept the thesis that there is sporadic involvement.

Now, “the deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children,” and everything people asked here in the chat—“the deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children” may be something said after the fact, a kind of diagnosis that one can see after the fact: what the fathers do will also happen to the children, because we in the end live within the culture created by our fathers, so it is no wonder that we do things like our fathers did; we are influenced by them. That is one point. And second, even if the Sages said this, I do not agree. The Sages have authority in the halakhic realm; in the realm of thought I do not find myself obligated to accept the Sages.

Now true, since we are dealing with Hanukkah, I’ll end just with this: Hanukkah is ostensibly an example—and Purim too—of miracles within the framework of nature. That is how we were always educated, right? The Scroll of Esther, yes? Things happen there that are ostensibly political, human, regular, natural processes, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is working behind the scenes. And in Hanukkah too we thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for performing miracles for us in the war. It is interesting, by the way, that at least in certain places they choose to mark Hanukkah specifically through the miracle of the cruse of oil and not the miracle of the war, and the miracle of the cruse of oil really is an open miracle. It is not a statistical miracle. Victory in the war is a statistical miracle.

But even in the context of statistical miracles, this connects to a question that arises in general according to my view: if the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved, then for example what place is there for thanking the Holy One, blessed be He? To thank Him in prayer, blessings of thanksgiving. I thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for things He does for me. If I do not believe He does things in the world, then what place is there to thank Him? So here my claim—and this also connects to Hanukkah, days of Hallel and thanksgiving—is that I personally do not thank the Holy One, blessed be He, because He intervened there in Hanukkah and helped the Maccabees win, because I do not think that happened. At least I have no indication that it happened. I don’t know, maybe it happened, but I have no indication that it happened. If there had been a prophet saying that it happened, that would already be different—but this was after the age of prophecy. But if there had been a prophet saying it happened, I would accept it. Yet this is after the age of prophecy. Purim, maybe not; in Purim there was still divine inspiration, the last prophets were still there in the Men of the Great Assembly—Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. But Hanukkah is certainly already after the age of prophecy. Therefore I do not know how much one can put one’s finger on the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved there. The Sages thought so, but we have already seen that the Sages saw things in a somewhat different way. They had, I think, an incorrect understanding regarding natural processes. I assume they were not champions of statistics either, and therefore it is not implausible to me that they could have erred in the interpretation they gave to events.

Still, I say Hallel and thank the Holy One, blessed be He, because just as I thank Him in every context, I thank Him for creating the world, for giving people wisdom and courage to do things. But they used those tools to win the war by means of their talent and courage, and that is why they won. That is what the Derashot HaRan writes: “for He is the one who gives you the power to achieve.” Yes, “my power and the might of my hand”—those verses about “my power and the might of my hand” that they always invoke. The rebukes of mashgichim against those who speak like me say this is “my power and the might of my hand,” terrible, dreadful. So my claim is: look at the verses. The alternative to “my power and the might of my hand” is not that everything is the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He. On the contrary, the verse says what I am saying. The verse says: do not say “my power and the might of my hand,” but what? Understand that “He is the one who gives you the power to achieve.” The achievement is yours. The only question is: who enables you to act? Who gave you the wisdom to act? The courage to act? The power to act? Who created nature and the means you use in order to act? The Holy One, blessed be He, in the six days of creation. And therefore these victories and these so-called statistical miracles are simply opportunities for people to thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for the world He created. At least that is how I see these thanksgivings for miracles, including the miracles of Hanukkah. I am not talking about the splitting of the sea. The splitting of the sea is an open miracle. I am talking about the miracles of Hanukkah and maybe Purim—though in Purim, again, perhaps since there was divine inspiration one can accept that some hand of God was there behind it, I don’t know.

Okay, so we also ended with some apikores-style line about Hanukkah. That’s a good point to end on. If anyone wants to comment or ask, now is the time.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, I wanted to ask—I want to go back maybe two lectures—to what the Rabbi said about tzimtzum in the literal sense and tzimtzum not in the literal sense. The Rabbi presented tzimtzum not in the literal sense as something that just can’t really be said—that it’s as if everything is an illusion, and really it’s just… only the Holy One, blessed be He, is here and we’re not here. But the other side seems a bit difficult to me too. Because we understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, is a necessary being. That means that if He disappears, we disappear with Him. That’s how it is. So how can we say tzimtzum in the literal sense—that means He isn’t here. So I’m asking this: if He isn’t here, how are we alive? From my perspective, He’s gone. He’s completely gone. Or are we saying tzimtzum in the literal sense, but not all the way—that tzimtzum in the literal sense isn’t literally all the way through—and then it’s just empty words.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll answer that in two ways, or maybe three. First: who said that if the Holy One, blessed be He, disappears, we don’t exist? Where did you get that from? I think that if the Holy One, blessed be He, had not created us, we wouldn’t exist. But once we do exist, then why should… where does this thesis come from, that we need His presence because otherwise we can’t be here? It’s a very common thesis. I don’t know of any authoritative source for it, and I’m not at all sure I accept it. That’s first.

[Speaker E] A necessary being—Maimonides says that He is a necessary being. Isn’t that an authoritative source?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, the fact that Maimonides says something still doesn’t make it an authoritative source. Second, the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, is a necessary being doesn’t mean that He is necessary for me to exist. It only means that He cannot fail to exist. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t exist without Him. Where does that come from?

[Speaker D] So what is our connection to Him? What is our connection to Him?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s another question. One question at a time, step by step. So right now what I want to say is: who says that He is a condition for our existence? Another point—third point, second or third, I’m already not keeping track—His withdrawal is not a withdrawal from the world, or from reality, but His withdrawal from the place in which we were created. He gives us some kind of space in which to exist, but He exists. He exists as the encompassing one, maybe as the one who fills, but He is not us. And a fourth point, or third, or fourth—and this also appears in Kabbalah—is that there is also a residue in the empty space. Meaning, something of Him remains even in the empty space. And when I say that the tzimtzum is literal, I don’t mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, is necessarily not here. Rather, I mean that I am something separate—I am not Him. It doesn’t mean that somewhere within me, around me, in some way affecting me, the Holy One, blessed be He, is not present. The claim that tzimtzum is not literal means that there is nothing besides Him; we simply do not exist. The claim that the tzimtzum is literal does not necessarily mean that He is not. He is here, even here. He is here, but He is not me. Both He is here and I am here, but there is no identity between me and Him.

[Speaker D] I understand. Now, Rabbi, one more question. The Rabbi makes a kind of leap with individual providence. Meaning, I understand that an individual person really can kill—can kill me and so on—but I distinguish between things that happen, say, on the train itself, and changing the route of the train. The Rabbi makes a leap, sort of, between us and a war like that of the Nazis. I’m thinking to myself that the Sages say, for example, that they tried to kill Moses our teacher and his neck turned into a neck of marble. I don’t care whether that happened historically or not. Or Jacob our forefather and Laban—then the Holy One, blessed be He, came to Laban and said to him, “Take care not to speak with Jacob either good or bad.” I understand those as belonging to the roots of creation. You can’t divert the train from its track. That means it could be that between one person and another the Holy One, blessed be He, really doesn’t intervene. But if, for example, someone wants to divert the train from its track—tomorrow to drop an atomic bomb on all the Jewish people, and then there is no Jewish people, no prophecy is fulfilled—so even that, in the Rabbi’s view, even that is something in which the Holy One, blessed be He, really would not intervene? To divert the train from its track?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know that. First, I don’t know. It definitely could be.

[Speaker D] No, I’m asking—I want to know what the Rabbi thinks about it. Not “I don’t know,” that’s not… I mean, what do you think would happen?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “I don’t know”—that’s what I think about it. I don’t know. What, do I have to know everything? There are things I don’t know. I don’t have a position on that. It could absolutely be that the Holy One, blessed be He, would intervene in such a situation. It could be. Who says not? I’m perfectly willing to accept that. But the point about large scales is something I’ll deal with in the next lecture. So let’s leave that for now. I’ll still talk about the phenomenon of large scales. Okay? So I’ll leave that for next time, because that’s exactly the next point I’m getting to.

[Speaker B] Is there a question?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Someone there is speaking—I can’t hear, it’s faint.

[Speaker C] One second.

[Speaker B] Can you hear better like this? Yes. I wanted to ask two things. First—maybe again I’m jumping ahead—but it’s a bit about verses. There was the last haftarah, the one we didn’t read but would have read for… the first section in the two-year cycle, which ends with… I’m not quoting exactly, I don’t remember the verse precisely, but: “Can there be evil in a city and the Lord did not do it?” Meaning, what’s special there is that it’s not just another verse showing God’s involvement—of course there are many like that—but it sounds almost indispensable, as if: can it be that there is evil and God did not cause it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So on this matter of the verses that speak about the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, I’ll talk next time. Okay? What do we do with the verses, and what do we do with the other testimonies to God’s involvement in the world? We’ll also talk about that next time, God willing.

[Speaker C] May I ask a question? Yes. It’s written in Rabbeinu Bechaye at the end of the Book of Numbers—I’m not bringing this as conclusive proof, only as a question mark. It says, “for the fallen one will fall from it”—he was destined to fall from the six days of creation. All the events that are supposed to happen in nature are already engraved, and they only come to be carried out. As if the Holy One, blessed be He, made the forces of nature swear, and they only carry out the actions. And sometimes it says in midrash that the Holy One, blessed be He, asks the sea to return the money, or sometimes to return the… He asks nature to change from the oath that the Holy One, blessed be He, imposed, or the reverse—that nature swore to the Holy One, blessed be He, that it would keep to its course during the six thousand years of its creation. To look at this in such a way that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene at all, or to look at it in such a way as to give us the sense that after all, the Holy One, blessed be He, is behind everything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that… again, the idea that the Holy One, blessed be He, is behind everything in the sense that He does every single thing—I don’t accept that at all. As for the large scales, I said I’ll talk about that next time. But again, the fact that Rabbeinu Bechaye writes that way—I simply disagree. There are statements in the Talmud of that sort, although in the Talmud there are statements in every direction. And I won’t accept it from there either, because I don’t think the Talmud has authority in these areas. I don’t think the Amoraim understood this better than I do; they were not prophets.

[Speaker C] Even if there is a midrash, you’re saying that anything from the authoritative halakhic text does not obligate authoritative homiletic or aggadic authority, because you’re saying—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ve spoken about this several times in the past. Yes, I have a long discussion about the question of authority—where there is authority and where there isn’t authority. I also talk about it in the trilogy, but I’ve spoken about it here in lectures too. Yes, there is no authority in non-halakhic areas. There cannot be; conceptually there cannot be authority. Okay, that requires—

[Speaker C] But is it honest and fair enough to say that since my rationale doesn’t fit these things, I can put them in question and not accept what great people like Rabbeinu Bechaye or Tannaim and Amoraim expressed in a pretty explicit way?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? What? I’ll consider respectfully what they say, and I’ll reach a conclusion. If I agree with them, fine; and if I don’t agree with them, then I don’t agree. What can I do?

[Speaker C] I hear. Thank you very much.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Good night, happy Hanukkah.

[Speaker E] Happy Hanukkah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Tomorrow we still have another day, and Sabbath שלום. Goodbye.

[Speaker C] Happy Hanukkah.