God and the World – Lesson 8

Table of Contents

• God’s involvement in the world versus the laws of nature and human choice
• Involvement in history and the pedagogical consideration
• The “large-scale” thesis and the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad
• A statistical explanation of Maimonides: the law of large numbers and tipping the scales
• Criticism of the possibility of involvement only at the collective level
• Hidden miracles, indications, and the burden of proof
• Torah versus science: prior presumption, current presumption, and a policy change
• A model of gradual withdrawal as an expression of trust
• The “celestial teapot” thesis and the rejection of unfalsifiable theses
• Questions from the audience: Nachmanides, interpretation, uncertainty, and induction

Summary

General overview

The text argues that a systematic, scientific way of looking at the world leads to the conclusion that there is no clear indication of God’s involvement, and that experiences of a “miracle” often stem from poor statistical intuition and the law of small numbers. It rejects any binding theological reading of historical events such as the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel, and places at the center the question of the burden of proof: whoever claims there is involvement needs to show real signs of it. It examines the “large-scale” thesis through the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad in the Laws of Repentance, and proposes a statistical-structural explanation of Maimonides, while concluding that even influence on large processes requires some influence on particulars. It suggests reconciling the Bible with our current picture of the world through the claim that there was a historical change in divine policy and a gradual withdrawal from open miracles and prophecy, and it criticizes positions about hidden miracles that cannot be falsified as resembling Bertrand Russell’s “celestial teapot.”

God’s involvement in the world versus the laws of nature and human choice

The text states that people interpret statistical anomalies and supposed miracles as the result of the “law of small numbers” and a lack of statistical skill, and therefore a strong feeling that something was miraculous is not a real basis for divine involvement. It formulates the main consideration as the absence of any clear indication that God is involved, and argues that the ordinary view is that the world operates in a constant, orderly way and according to the laws of nature. It allows for the principled possibility of isolated interventions that cannot be tested or ruled out, but places the burden of proof on whoever claims there is involvement, not on whoever claims there is not.

Involvement in history and the pedagogical consideration

The text describes a tendency to interpret historical events on a theological plane in opposite directions, where the very same Holocaust can be seen as punishment for opponents of Zionism or, conversely, as the result of opposition to it, with the common assumption being that the Holocaust was an act of God and only the interpretation of its purpose changes. It presents a “pedagogical consideration,” according to which the systematic failure to teach lessons through history shows that God apparently is not trying to teach through events, because if He wanted to convey a message, He would succeed, being all-powerful. It adds that this pedagogical failure rules history out as a vehicle for messages, though it does not rule out the possibility that history is generated by God for other reasons; at that point it returns to the scientific starting point, which speaks of the consistent operation of nature without visible interventions.

The “large-scale” thesis and the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad

The text presents a thesis according to which individual events are governed by nature and free choice, while God steers the large historical processes. It cites Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance, chapter 6, halakhah 5, who interprets “and they shall enslave them and afflict them” and “and this people will rise up and go astray” to mean that it was not decreed that any particular person must sin; rather, what was given was “the way of the world,” and any individual could have refrained from sinning even though the collective outcome was expected to occur. It cites the Raavad’s critique, which calls Maimonides’ words “lengthy words lacking substance” and “childish talk,” and argues that if there is a general decree then it must apply to particulars, and that one cannot separate the collective from the individual because the collective is nothing but the sum of the individuals.

A statistical explanation of Maimonides: the law of large numbers and tipping the scales

The text explains Maimonides’ logic through the law of large numbers, in which random results from many trials organize into a stable distribution, so that the structure of the system “dictates” the big picture without determining every single event. It suggests that this is how one can understand a statement about a collective outcome through a “tipping of the scales” in individual dilemmas, so that each individual still has free choice, but statistically a general direction emerges. It distinguishes between the Egyptians, where one can speak of creating circumstances that lead to enslavement, and “and this people will rise up and go astray,” which is read as a prophecy or diagnosis rather than a decree, where God “sees” an existing tendency and therefore predicts that a significant public will fail, without determining who the actual names will be.

Criticism of the possibility of involvement only at the collective level

The text argues that even if we are talking about statistical biasing, the very shaping of tendencies means involvement at the level of the individual, because the large process is produced through the decisions of individuals and through material processes in their brains and bodies. It states that influence on the large scales requires some influence on the small scales as well, and therefore the claim that God is involved only in broad historical processes “doesn’t hold water” at the principled level. It points to another difficulty that remains even after the idea of tipping the scales: theoretically, all individuals could choose the good, and then the prophecy or decree would not be fulfilled; and if the outcome must nonetheless occur, then a moment is required at which someone’s choice is taken away, which brings the claim back to particular involvement.

Hidden miracles, indications, and the burden of proof

The text states that large scales do not provide proof of a miracle, because large processes also have natural explanations, and from here the debate returns to the question of whether there are deviations on the small scales. It allows a “non-constructive existential statement” of the possibility of hidden involvement that cannot be identified, but rejects claims of knowledge according to which “this specific event is a miracle” in the absence of an open miracle that runs against the laws of nature. It argues that whoever presents hidden involvement as a thesis immune to refutation is required to bring evidence, and that in the absence of an indication, the initial assumption is that nature operates according to its laws.

Torah versus science: prior presumption, current presumption, and a policy change

The text describes an opposing claim according to which the Bible describes miracles and involvement, and therefore the burden of proof lies on whoever claims there is none; then it presents a clash between the prior presumption of the Bible and the current presumption of the scientific picture of the world. It proposes a solution based on the example of a ritual bath that had been full and was found lacking, which leads to the conclusion that there is no contradiction but rather a change at an unknown point in time, and it parallels this to the claim that divine policy changed over the course of history. It argues that in the past there were open miracles and prophecy and today there are not, so a change is already agreed upon; consequently, the claim that the hidden dimension has remained as it was requires proof and cannot rely only on what is described in the Bible.

A model of gradual withdrawal as an expression of trust

The text offers a possible explanation for the withdrawal: God behaves like a parent who accompanies a child and then gives him independence, and as humanity matures with science, technology, and the capacity for thought, the involvement decreases. It interprets what is perceived as the hiding of the divine face not as punishment but as an expression of trust and an expectation of human responsibility. It emphasizes that there is no certainty that this is the divine logic, but the very possibility of a coherent explanation prevents one from dismissing the withdrawal thesis, especially in light of the open indications of the end of prophecy and the absence of open miracles.

The “celestial teapot” thesis and the rejection of unfalsifiable theses

The text uses Bertrand Russell’s example of a small teapot orbiting Jupiter to argue that a thesis that cannot be tested or refuted is suspect and does not receive a “fifty-fifty” probability. It compares this to the claim that God is involved “at every step of the way” while no sign of that is ever seen, and from that concludes that there is no reason to assume involvement without indications. It ends by saying that whoever claims divine involvement bears the burden of proof, whereas the position that relies on the laws of nature and human choice stands as the default.

Questions from the audience: Nachmanides, interpretation, uncertainty, and induction

The text includes a question that sharpens the point that no symmetric move was being claimed from open miracles to hidden miracles; rather, open miracles in the past serve to deflect an objection from the Bible against the present assumption of non-involvement. It includes the comment that these remarks run against Nachmanides’ position, “from the hidden miracles we learn about the open miracles,” and “a person has no share in the Torah of Moses unless he believes that all our occurrences are miracles,” with the response that distinguishes between “the Torah of Moses son of Nachman” and “the Torah of Moses son of Amram.” It presents the problem of interpretation and the “hermeneutic circle” as an inherent difficulty when there is no independent source that decides between interpretations, and states that despite the uncertainty there is a right and a wrong, but there is no way to achieve full certainty and “we have been condemned to live under conditions of uncertainty.” It answers a side question about Sherlock Holmes by saying that the inference is induction, and even “abduction,” and it addresses the question about Maimonides and the Raavad by saying that the statistical understanding can explain Maimonides, but still leaves the principled difficulty that influence on the collective passes through particulars.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time we talked about the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world—or over the last few sessions—the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world vis-à-vis the laws of nature and vis-à-vis human free choice. And I also spoke about what leads people to think that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved—things like the law of small numbers, all kinds of miracles that are the result of various statistical anomalies, and that usually this is simply a lack of statistical skill. People have some very strong feeling that a miracle happened to them, but when you think about it in a more systematic way, you see that this has no real basis. And therefore, really, beyond any positive assertion, it seems to me that the main consideration is simply the absence of indication. Meaning, there doesn’t seem to be any clear indication that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved. After that I moved on to the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in history. And I said that we tend to interpret historical events on the theological plane in various directions. The Holocaust was the example I gave, it seems to me, or the establishment of the State, or various events of that kind, where we are used to seeing some occurrence with theological significance, both for good and for bad. Meaning, people who support Zionism will see the Holocaust as a punishment given to those who opposed it, and those who oppose it will see the Holocaust as a punishment for those who supported it. But in the end, the common assumption of all sides is that the Holocaust was the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the only question is the interpretation—why He did it and for what purpose He did it. And I said that in this context there also arises an argument I called the pedagogical consideration. Meaning, the systematic failure of the Holy One, blessed be He, in His supposed attempts to teach us various lessons through historical events seems to indicate that He probably is not trying to teach us. Because if He were trying to teach us, we may presume that He would also succeed. And the fact that historical events do not teach anyone anything, but only reinforce in each person what he thought beforehand, only means that the teacher is not really succeeding in conveying the message to us. And since the Holy One, blessed be He, is omnipotent, then presumably if He wanted to convey the message He would also succeed, and if He doesn’t succeed that is an indication that He probably does not want to. And I noted that this only means that historical events are not a tool in His hands for conveying messages to us, but it still does not rule out the possibility that He is the one bringing about the historical events—not in order to convey messages to us, but for reasons known only to Him, for example to lead history in a certain direction He wants it to go, regardless of the lessons we derive from the events. But He intervenes in what happens here in order to steer the world, or history, to places or destinations He wants it to reach. So on that issue, I of course cannot rule that out on the basis of the pedagogical consideration, but here the scientific outlook really comes in, the simple outlook that people have, I think, which says that the whole business proceeds according to the laws of nature in a systematic, constant, orderly way and without interventions. And again, as I’ve said more than once, every now and then in such places or at certain times, at very very specific points, maybe He is involved—there is no way to test that or rule it out. But since the ordinary way of looking at things is not like that, it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the one who claims that there is involvement. He may be right, but it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the one who says there is involvement, not on the one who says there is no involvement. On this matter, in the previous class, a claim came up regarding the large scales, and I said I would address it later. What does that mean? There is a thesis that says that while it is true that specific events that happen to a certain person, to a certain factor, to a certain material object, happen because of the laws of nature and the world follows its normal course, still, the Holy One, blessed be He, does steer the large processes of history. Meaning, every person can do whatever he wants, but on the large scale, basically, the Holy One, blessed be He, leads things. Now on this issue, maybe one can strengthen the point a bit by means of an interesting dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad, in the laws of repentance. One second. Here. Laws of Repentance, chapter 6, halakhah 5—I’m sharing it. Maimonides says this, after saying that there is a fundamental principle that every person has choice, and things depend only on us and not on the Holy One, blessed be He, and there is reward and punishment and we are required to repent and so on, so in halakhah 5 he writes as follows: “And what is the meaning of what David said, ‘Good and upright is the Lord; therefore He instructs sinners in the way; He guides the humble…’ and so on? It means that He sent them prophets, informing them of the ways of the Lord and bringing them back to repentance. And also that He gave them the power to learn and understand, for this quality exists in every person, that whenever he is drawn in the ways of wisdom and righteousness he desires them and pursues them. And this is what our rabbis of blessed memory said: ‘If one comes to purify himself, he is assisted,’ meaning he will find himself helped in the matter.” So yes, the Holy One, blessed be He, basically helps us understand and guides us in some way in how to behave properly. And he continues: “But is it not written in the Torah, ‘And they will enslave them and afflict them’—so He decreed upon the Egyptians to do evil?” Right, after all, in the Covenant Between the Pieces, the Holy One, blessed be He, says to Abraham our father about the Egyptians, hundreds of years later: “They will enslave them and afflict them for four hundred years, but I will also judge the nation whom they shall serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.” So already in the Covenant Between the Pieces, hundreds of years in advance, the Holy One, blessed be He, decrees that the Egyptians will do evil. And it is also written, more verses, “This people will rise and go astray after the foreign gods of the land”—so He decreed upon Israel to worship stars and constellations? And why then does He punish them? So if the Holy One, blessed be He, decreed both on the Egyptians and on the people of Israel to sin, then why do they deserve punishment? So Maimonides says as follows: “Because He did not decree upon a particular known individual that he would be the one to go astray, but rather each and every one of those who went astray after star-worship and constellations—if he had not wanted to worship, he would not have worshipped. The Creator merely informed him of the ordinary course of the world.” What does that sentence mean? Each and every individual has free choice. What the Holy One, blessed be He, said in advance—that Israel would sin or that the Egyptians would sin—He informed him of the ordinary course of the world. We’ll come back to that point in a moment. “To what is this comparable? To someone saying: in this people there will be righteous and wicked people.” Right, someone says that in this people there will be righteous and wicked people. “That does not mean that the wicked person can say that it has already been decreed upon him that he be wicked because He informed Moses that there would be wicked people in Israel, as it says, ‘The poor will never cease from the midst of the land.’” So a person cannot say, “What do you want from me for being wicked? The Holy One, blessed be He, already said in advance that there would be wicked people in Israel.” That is not a claim; things still depended on you. “And so too with the Egyptians—each and every one of those who oppressed and harmed Israel, had he not wanted to harm them, he had permission not to, because He did not decree upon a known individual, but merely informed him that in the end his descendants would be enslaved in a land not theirs. And we have already explained that man has no power to know how the Holy One, blessed be He, knows things that will come to be.” Meaning, Maimonides basically says that the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, informs us—the Egyptians will enslave Israel, or Israel will rise and go astray after idolatry—this is not considered a prior decree, something that takes away our choice. Each and every one of us has free choice. So how does the Holy One, blessed be He, make these determinations in advance? He determines the ordinary course of the world. What does “the ordinary course of the world” mean? That is the critical point here. So Maimonides explains that each and every human being has free choice, but still, in the large, collective course of things, the Holy One, blessed be He, can determine where the whole system will go. For example, the Holy One, blessed be He, says that the Egyptians will enslave Israel—in general. Now, each and every Egyptian has free choice, but still, after all the Egyptians each make his own choices, the Holy One, blessed be He, is basically saying: the overall picture will be that the Egyptians will enslave Israel, even though each and every one has free choice. How does the Holy One, blessed be He, know this in advance? So this is what Maimonides says: “We have already explained that man has no power to know how the Holy One, blessed be He, knows things that will come to be.” So that is another discussion which we’ll talk about later. But the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, says this in advance does not compel our choice. Each and every person still has free choice. Why am I bringing Maimonides here in our context? Because it is very reminiscent of the claim I mentioned earlier, that the Holy One, blessed be He, basically steers the large scales of history—where the whole business is going. Every individual can do whatever he wants and has free choice, and all is given over to one’s choice. But in the larger process, the Holy One, blessed be He, basically determines the direction. And that is in fact what Maimonides is saying here. In the large process, Maimonides says: the Egyptians will enslave Israel. Each and every Egyptian has free choice. Or, Israel will worship idolatry. Each and every Israelite has free choice, but generally speaking Israel will worship idolatry. That is basically Maimonides’ claim. I’ll come back to that claim, but first let’s look for a moment at the Raavad. The Raavad objects to him and says this: “But is it not written in the Torah, ‘And they will enslave them and afflict them,’ and so on? Abraham said: these are lengthy words with no seasoning, and by my life I almost say they are the words of a youth.” He’s talking like a child, Maimonides—things with no substance, they’re not seasoned. “Will the Creator say to the idolaters: why did you go astray? And if they say, I did not mention you by name, so that you could say I decreed it upon you?” He is now basically describing what Maimonides explained. Let us say someone went astray and worshipped idolatry, and the Holy One, blessed be He, comes to him with complaints. So he says: what do You want from me? After all, You said that Israel would go astray after idolatry. Then the Holy One, blessed be He, will say to him—this is what Maimonides says—the Holy One, blessed be He, will say to him: but I did not mention your name specifically. I only said that Israel in general would go astray after idolatry. You had free choice. That is the picture of what Maimonides describes. Now to that the Raavad says: “Then the idolaters will say to Him: and upon whom did Your decree fall? Upon those who did not go astray? Then Your decree was not fulfilled.” What is he really arguing here? You decreed that Israel would go astray after idolatry, or that the Egyptians would enslave Israel, and you still claim that each person has free choice. So basically the Raavad’s claim is that if each person has free choice, then how can you determine the large scale? After all, what happens on the large scale is just the sum total of what happens on the small scales. And if everyone on the small scale—each individual person—has free choice, then on the large scale too you cannot know in advance what will happen. Therefore the distinction Maimonides makes between individual people and global, collective processes is groundless. You cannot say that the Holy One, blessed be He, decrees in advance without saying that He takes away choice from individual people. Because if one individual chooses—let’s formulate it this way—say there are one hundred Egyptians, and the Holy One, blessed be He, decreed that the Egyptians would enslave Israel. Now each one has free choice. Ninety-nine Egyptians chose the good; they will not enslave Israel. Does the hundredth Egyptian have free choice? If he too chooses not to enslave, then it comes out that all the Egyptians will not enslave Israel and the decree of the Holy One, blessed be He, will not be fulfilled. So what follows? That the hundredth Egyptian does not have free choice. But that means that even on the individual level, the collective decree of the Holy One, blessed be He, in fact dictates to people how to behave even on the individual level. You cannot make such a sharp division as Maimonides does between the individual plane and the collective plane. The collective plane is nothing other than the sum total of the individual events. And if the individual events are free, then on the collective plane too you cannot know in advance what will happen. And that is what he says. And “we have already explained,” sorry, “but, but ‘this people will rise and go astray,’ yes, I’m reading here. But ‘this people will rise and go astray’—we have already explained that in this matter the knowledge of the Creator is not a decree.” After all, in chapter 5, one chapter earlier, Maimonides says that the prior knowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He, does not compel choice. So here too, the Raavad says, I do not understand the problem that was troubling Maimonides. The fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, said beforehand what would happen does not contradict the fact that we have free choice. And there is no need to arrive at this distinction of Maimonides between the large scales and the individual people. No—even with regard to an individual person, the Holy One, blessed be He, can know in advance what will happen, and that still does not contradict the fact that the person has free choice. So why did Maimonides need to make a distinction between the large scales and the small scales? “And moreover—one moment—and all the more so here, where even Moses said, ‘You will surely act corruptly,’ while I am still alive with you, and all the more after my death.” Even Moses can say this in advance. “And certainly the Creator could say so without a decree. And the matter of the Egyptians is not a question for two reasons.” Right, that it was decreed upon the Egyptians to enslave Israel. “First, because it is known that the Creator exacts punishment from a wicked person only through one more wicked than he. And after He exacts punishment through that one, He returns and exacts punishment from the one more wicked than he for his own wickedness.” What does that mean? Israel got hit because it deserved to get hit. Who hit it? The Egyptians. It’s not that the Egyptians weren’t wicked. They were wicked, and therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, caused them to strike Israel, so that afterward He would also strike them. And if He strikes them by means of a third party, that third party too will get struck, because it too deserves to get struck. He exacts punishment from a wicked person by means of someone more wicked than he. So really this whole story is some kind of chain that the Holy One, blessed be He, rolls along from above. It is somewhat reminiscent of what we discussed regarding the Talmud in Makkot, right? What is the case of accidental manslaughter? One person is liable to death and another liable to exile, so the Holy One, blessed be He, brings them both to one inn. The one liable to death is below, and the one liable to exile is above. Then the iron slips from the wood, the person below dies as he deserved, and the person above goes into exile as he deserved. And on that I already commented—I think I mentioned that Talmud passage—basically the Talmud says that every accidental killing is arranged by the Holy One, blessed be He, because there was someone who deserved exile. So the Holy One, blessed be He, arranged that he would now accidentally kill someone and then receive the exile he deserved. And the question that arises here is of course: how did the first liability to exile arise? That person was liable to exile because he had committed accidental manslaughter previously, only there were no witnesses, so he did not get the exile he deserved. So the Holy One, blessed be He, brings him to an inn where he will commit accidental manslaughter in front of witnesses, and then he’ll get the exile he deserves. Now I ask: why did he commit accidental manslaughter in that earlier case where there were no witnesses? That did not happen because he deserved exile—after all, he was not exiled. Right? So why did he kill accidentally there? Or alternatively: when was the first accidental killing that started the whole chain and created the first liability to exile? That first one itself is not based on a prior liability to exile, because it is the first. Meaning, this explanation cannot be a full explanation. Okay? Therefore this claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, exacts punishment from a wicked person by means of someone more wicked than he is a very strange claim. Because in the end there has to be some beginning to this chain, and the beginning cannot be explained in this way. So the beginning was not done by the Holy One, blessed be He. So if the beginning was not done by the Holy One, blessed be He, but rather some person simply decided to be wicked, then why can’t we say the same thing about the subsequent links in the chain? If you already decide that people can do something even without the Holy One, blessed be He, activating them, then why stop at the first link in the chain? Say it about the later links too. Therefore this claim of the Raavad is problematic. And so he says—I continue reading—“And so it says, ‘Ah, Assyria, the rod of My anger,’ and ‘when your destruction is complete you shall be destroyed’—meaning, because of your wickedness and your arrogance of heart and your boasting against Me. And the Egyptians too were wicked and deserving of those blows. And had they listened to Moses at first and sent Israel away, they would not have been stricken nor drowned in the sea, but Pharaoh’s willful wickedness and his contempt for the Creator, blessed be He, in the presence of His messenger Moses, caused it.” That is the first answer: that the Holy One, blessed be He, exacts punishment from the wicked by means of one more wicked. “And the second: because the Creator said, ‘and they will afflict them,’ but they enslaved them with crushing labor and killed some of them and drowned some of them, as it says, ‘I was a little angry, but they helped for evil’; therefore they became liable.” Meaning, they volunteered more than what the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them to do. But that again is a very problematic business. So that means that indeed one can do things even without the Holy One, blessed be He, deciding on them. First of all, you can already see that from the Raavad, right? That one can do things even without the Holy One, blessed be He, deciding on them. After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that the Egyptians would harm Israel at level X, and they did it at level 2X. So that means that this delta, this addition, they did without the Holy One, blessed be He, commanding it. So in any case, the Raavad does not end up saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, dictates everything that happens here in the world. But for our purposes that is less important. I want to talk a bit about the matter of the large scales themselves, and that is why I brought this Maimonides and Raavad. Really, what I wanted to show from Maimonides was an example of this logic that distinguishes between what happens to private individuals and what happens on the large scales of history, on the level of nations, on the level of historical processes. And the claim is that the Holy One, blessed be He, directs the large scales, even though every individual person has free choice. And about this the Raavad asks, saying this is “childish talk,” “unseasoned words.” What does that mean? Surely the collective is nothing but the collection of the particulars that compose it. And if the collective does something, that means that at least some of the particulars do that thing. So it means that in the end the decree of the Holy One, blessed be He, descends also to the scale of the individual person; it does not remain only on the collective level. So what? Does the Holy One, blessed be He, indeed take away choice from human beings on the individual plane? There too, does He in fact dictate what happens, or only on the collective plane? The Raavad says: you cannot affect the collective plane without affecting the individual plane. How do you make it happen that the Egyptians enslave Israel? You bring it about that such-and-such individual Egyptians enslave Israel. So he says that in practical terms, the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, was also on the individual plane, not just on the collective plane. You cannot make this separation that He intervened on the collective plane but not on the individual plane. And in that sense, if I return to our issue, I say the same thing: suppose the Holy One, blessed be He, brought about the Return to Zion, the return of the Jewish people today—I mean in our times—the return of the Jewish people to its land. Because this is a global process, a historical process, every individual has free choice. You cannot say that. You cannot say that because this process in the end was carried out by people. By the steps of specific people who decided to do various things, including the individual who came and settled in the land. Not only the great leadership figures—Herzl and Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky—but also the individual people. In the end this process is a collective process that happens through each one of the ants that makes up this whole collective. Therefore one cannot say that the Holy One, blessed be He, directs only collective processes but does not direct the individual people—meaning, sorry, does not compel the individual people. So what does Maimonides mean after all? The Raavad asks a good question. So what does Maimonides nevertheless mean? It seems to me that what Maimonides means here is the following claim. Maybe I’ll bring an example. In statistics we know a law called the law of large numbers, probability—the law of large numbers. What does that mean? Suppose you roll a die. So when I ask you what the result of the roll will be, you have no way of knowing. There are six outcomes—let’s talk about a fair die for the sake of the discussion—there are six possible outcomes, you cannot tell me in advance what the outcome will be. But now I say to you: let’s roll this die six billion times. And now I ask you what the result will be. Now you actually can tell me. With a very, very high approximation, there will be a billion times on one, a billion times on two, a billion on three, and so on. The distribution is uniform, it’s a fair die, and therefore when the numbers are large, when the number of rolls is very high, then we already know that the occurrences of the outcomes will be distributed equally among the numbers. When I roll it six times I cannot say that it will be once on one, once on two—once on two, once on three—there is almost no chance that will happen. When you roll six times, there is no chance that it will come out exactly once on each face. That will almost never happen. But if you roll six billion times, then always—if you run such experiments of six billion each time—you’ll see that in all those experiments it will be roughly a billion each time. A billion plus a hundred, a billion plus a thousand, but around a billion, meaning a negligible deviation relative to a billion. And that is what is called the law of large numbers, which is a very strange and confusing thing, by the way. It is very strange and confusing because apparently, if there is no dependence between one throw of the die and the next throw of the die, then how do the results of all the throws organize themselves exactly according to this distribution of a billion on each face? After all, they know nothing about each other. Each roll has its own result; it doesn’t know. That’s the miracle of the law of large numbers. And the miracle is even greater. The fact that the results arrange themselves as a billion on each face is because of the independence, not despite the independence. Because there is no dependence between one roll and the next, therefore the distribution is uniform. If there were dependence between the rolls, the result would be different. Meaning, not only is independence not an objection to the uniform distribution, independence is the basis for the uniform distribution. Because there is independence, therefore it will fall an equal number of times on each face. And the greater the number of rolls, the closer and closer we get to the theoretical probability, right? A sixth of the time on one, a sixth of the time on two, and so on. That is what is called the law of large numbers. When the number of rolls tends to infinity, it will fall exactly on a sixth of the—this is the limit, right? Or the central limit theorem, as it is called in statistics. That means that when the number of rolls tends to infinity, then the fraction of the rolls that falls on each face converges to one sixth. Okay? That is basically the law of large numbers. What does it mean? It means that a very interesting miracle is happening here, namely that everything proceeds in a completely arbitrary and random way, but the result is a very well-organized result. Or in other words, whoever built the die and made sure that the die would be a fair die—meaning that the chance of each face is the same chance—basically dictated the result of the experiment with six billion throws. Even though on each individual throw he does not touch it; whatever comes out comes out, he doesn’t care. Still, the big picture is dictated in advance by the structure of the die. If for example he had made a die that has some tendency toward the face five, to land on face five, an unfair die—say face five comes up with twice the probability of the other faces, somehow the die is heavier in that direction or something like that—then the result would be, I know in advance, that the result would be that it falls one seventh of the time on each number and two sevenths on the number five. Right? That would be the result. Or in other words, when I build the die, the structure of the die dictates not what will happen on each throw. On each throw, whatever happens happens, I have no control. But it does dictate what the picture will be on the large scales. When you throw seven billion times, I’ll tell you exactly how it all will come out. And that, I think, is an example of what Maimonides wants to claim here. Basically what Maimonides is saying is this: when the Holy One, blessed be He, decreed concerning the Egyptians that they would enslave Israel, what He did was in fact tilt the scales of the dilemma faced by each Egyptian in favor of enslavement. Right? He has a dilemma whether to enslave Israel or not to enslave Israel. So if, let’s say, ordinarily it was fifty-fifty—I’m just throwing out numbers, of course it should probably have been much less—but let’s say fifty-fifty, then the Holy One, blessed be He, turned it into sixty-forty. He created some circumstances. What does that mean? Each and every Egyptian can decide not to enslave Israel. Because after all he can decide in the direction of the forty percent. Okay? Maybe it will be a little harder for him to decide that, but he can, he has free choice. But if you look at a billion Egyptians, or a million Egyptians, then you’ll see that six hundred thousand of them enslave and four hundred thousand do not enslave. Meaning that tilting the balances of the large process really does dictate the outcome on the large scale, even though each and every Egyptian has a free decision and can choose not to enslave Israel. You can have control over the large scales without explicitly intervening on the small scale. That is basically the claim. I think that is what Maimonides means to say. By the way, let us say one more thing. Maimonides brings two examples. One example is the enslavement of Israel by the Egyptians. The second example is “this people will rise and go astray,” the anticipated sin of Israel, that they will go worship idolatry. And in the second case it is even more far-reaching, because it is quite clear that Maimonides does not mean to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, tilted the scales so that sixty percent would worship idolatry and forty percent would not. The Holy One, blessed be He, did not decree on us to worship idolatry; He predicted that we would worship idolatry. With the Egyptians, you can say that He decreed that they would enslave Israel, and even there one can discuss whether He decreed it or not. But with regard to the fact that Israel would go astray after idolatry, there it is quite clear that this is not a prior decree of the Holy One, blessed be He, but a prediction. He simply said that this is what would happen. There what is happening is not that He designed the die, but that He made a diagnosis of the die. He says: the way I see Israel, it seems to me that right now they are in a state where the scale in favor of idolatry weighs sixty percent and not fifty, and therefore I predict that at some stage there will be a significant public in Israel that worships idolatry. Not because I caused them to do it—the Holy One, blessed be He, does not cause Israel to worship idolatry. On the contrary, He wants them not to worship idolatry. So how does He predict in advance that they will? Because He sees the scales. Each one has free choice, but He sees that the distribution is not fifty-fifty but sixty-forty, and therefore He can say in advance that generally there will be quite a few idol worshippers. Who exactly will be an idol worshipper? Each one has free choice, and therefore He does not determine by name who will worship idolatry and who will not worship idolatry. He determines the general weights. The general weights will express themselves in the distribution of the people who do or do not worship idolatry. So if with the Egyptians one can talk about the Holy One, blessed be He, determining the weights so that they enslave Israel, with the prediction that Israel will worship idolatry that is probably only observation, not determination—not that the Holy One, blessed be He, caused Israel to worship idolatry, but that He simply predicted; He saw the situation, He saw that there was some problematic tendency in Israel toward idolatry, and then He says: I can already see that in the future what will happen is that there will be quite a few idol worshippers in Israel. And this, I think, is what Maimonides writes above, that the Holy One, blessed be He, “the Creator merely informed him”—do you see?—“the ordinary course of the world.” Right, “each and every one of those who went astray after star-worship and constellations—had he not wanted to worship, he would not have worshipped”; everyone has free choice. So what did the Holy One, blessed be He, inform in advance regarding the Egyptians or regarding Israel worshipping idolatry? “The Creator merely informed him of the ordinary course of the world.” Meaning, I’m telling you that I simply see the structure of the spiritual weights standing before these people, and I’m telling you that statistically this is what will come out. Who exactly will be among the sixty percent that worship idolatry and who not? I do not know; each one has free choice. But generally I’m telling you that it will divide up somehow sixty-forty. This is an example of the possibility of controlling the large scales without intervening in the small scales. The small scales proceed in a completely free way, but the large scales are dictated in advance by the Holy One, blessed be He. Or in other words, if we return to the example of the die, the Holy One, blessed be He, builds the die in such a way that overall the throws, the whole picture, is dictated by Him. Each and every throw—you don’t know what will come out there. Or if we return to historical events, the Holy One, blessed be He, builds our culture, the atmosphere in which we act, in such a way that in the end there will be a movement among the Jewish people that returns to the Land of Israel. Who exactly will do it and who won’t, who will join, who will oppose, who will support? Free choice—each one decides what he wants. But since the Holy One, blessed be He, built the die, shaped the die, in the parable of course, the circumstances within which each one makes his choices, then the Holy One, blessed be He, has the ability to shape what will happen on the historical scale, on the large scale, even though each and every person has free choice. I think that is what Maimonides intends to say here, and then it can provide support for the claim about the large scales that came up in the previous class. It seems to me that Moishy raised this claim in the previous class. So here this thing really is possible, but one must pay attention to the following point. Assuming that the Holy One, blessed be He, really did shape the die. This basically means that the Holy One, blessed be He, does intervene on the individual scale. Meaning, there were people who would have made certain choices, and because of the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, they will make other choices, because otherwise the distribution would be like the distribution of a fair die, right? Meaning, if the Holy One, blessed be He, shapes the die differently, that means that in each and every throw the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved. True, the two outcomes can be in either direction. Meaning, the die can fall on one or on two, but the statistics on each and every throw are sixty-forty and not fifty-fifty. It is not only on the large scales. After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, built the die differently. That means that in every throw when you roll the die, the hand of the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved here—not only on the large scale. The large scale is built through involvement in every event on the small scales. Okay, that is basically the claim, and therefore in the end the Raavad is right at the principled level. Meaning, suppose the Holy One, blessed be He, built the die in such a way that it has a tendency—you know what, let’s take a coin, not a die, it has only two outcomes, heads or tails. Fine? So the Holy One, blessed be He, basically created the coin in such a way that heads—heads is idolatry, okay? Asherah. So the tendency toward idolatry is sixty percent versus the tendency not to worship idolatry, which is forty percent. Okay? Suppose the Holy One, blessed be He, did this. Then what this means is that there will be people who, without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, would not have worshipped idolatry, and after the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, they decide to worship idolatry. Or in other words, the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened in how this person is functioning. Because in the end, if people choose to worship idolatry, we are talking about a collection of specific, individual people, and each one of them who decided this decided it because of the change in the relative weights that the Holy One, blessed be He, made. Therefore the Raavad is right. In the end there is involvement here also on the level of the individual people; you cannot say there isn’t. It is just an involvement…

[Speaker B] Why do you need to say sixty-forty? Why not fifty-fifty?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter. That’s why I’m saying it’s just an example.

[Speaker B] Fine, and then there’s supposedly no intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there is intervention. If the tendency were fifty-fifty, then I too could have predicted that they would worship idolatry, because if it’s fifty-fifty then I know that fifty percent will worship idolatry. That’s why I’m saying it’s just an example. My claim is that if it were fifty-fifty, people would overcome it and would not worship idolatry, because they would choose the good; they would fight against that fifty percent. But if it’s made sixty-forty, then people still struggle, but still there will be those who fail. Okay? It’s only for the sake of the example, of course; it’s only to illustrate the idea, the logic. So the claim in practice is that when the Holy One, blessed be He, influences the large scales, clearly there is also involvement in the small scales. You cannot influence only the large scales without going through the small scales; there is no such thing. Okay? Therefore when you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, determines the large scales, what you’ve said is that He also intervenes in what happens to the individual person, or to the individual particle if you like, or to some specific individual body. It’s just that the involvement there is an involvement that does not determine the result but only tilts the scale more in the direction the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to produce. Okay? Therefore everyone still has choice. Maybe it’s harder for him, but he still has choice. He can choose good, he can choose evil. The Holy One, blessed be He, only determined the general picture. But now I’m going to ask the Raavad’s question once again. Suppose ninety-nine percent of the people chose not to worship idolatry. Fine? There is free choice; in principle that could happen. Maybe a small chance, but there is a chance it could happen. Two to the power of minus ninety-nine—that’s the probability. If each person has fifty-fifty, then the chance is one-half for one person, so for ninety-nine people choosing that it’s one-half to the ninety-ninth power. Okay? So that’s the probability, assuming there is dependence between the people, of course. So the probability is very, very small, but it exists. Theoretically such a thing could happen. What will happen now with the hundredth person?

[Speaker C] I asked on the side the question that Shoshan asked. He said something and then came to raise his own question. So—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What happens in the end with the hundredth person? Does he have free choice or not? One of two things. Either he does not have free choice, and then again the Holy One, blessed be He, has already intervened in a blunt way, because He decided what this person would do—not merely tilted the scales in the desired direction—or else, theoretically, it can really happen that the prior prophecy of the Holy One, blessed be He, will not be fulfilled. If by chance all the Egyptians chose the good. They would enslave Israel? After all, each and every one has free choice, says Maimonides; the determination is only a collective determination. So I explained that what a collective determination means is a tilting of the scales in choice. Fine—but even when the scales are tilted, there can still be a situation in which all the Egyptians choose the good. A very small probability, but possible. Such a situation can happen. And then what? Then that means that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not correctly predict what would happen. And then all this means, overall, is that it really can be that what the Holy One, blessed be He, says in advance will not happen. He says—what Maimonides writes—He states the ordinary course of the world, right? He says what is expected to happen if no unusual things occur here, in the normal statistics. But if by chance there is some mobilization and everyone chooses the good, fine, then it could be that what the Holy One, blessed be He, said in advance will not happen. Or alternatively, that the Holy One, blessed be He, will intervene and force at least one of the Egyptians or one of the Jews to do what He had determined in advance would be done. And then it is indeed intervention. Therefore in the end one cannot escape the point that even when you talk about involvement on the large scales, in the final analysis the Holy One, blessed be He, moved an electron here that was not supposed to move according to the laws of nature, even at the individual, microscopic, specific level. Because in the end the large processes happen to people, and people are driven by material processes; people are bodily creatures. Therefore in the end there is indeed involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, also on the individual plane. There is no such thing as involvement only on the large scale without involvements on the small scales. There is no such thing. Therefore the argument that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved in the large scales but not in the small scales does not hold water on the theoretical, principled level. One can of course say that the Holy One, blessed be He, makes such small interventions that we do not notice them, and that they appear in the large scales. Meaning, the Jewish people returns to its land. How did that happen? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, moved some electron in the brain of ten people, nine of whom ignored that electron, but Ben-Gurion did not ignore it, or Herzl did not ignore it, and he worked with it. So in the end the Holy One, blessed be He, moved Herzl to a place Herzl would not have gone without the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He. There was involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, also on the individual, specific scale, not only on the large scale. And if so, I return again to what I said earlier: if I assume that on the individual scales the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene, because things proceed according to the laws of nature or human choices, then on the large scales too there cannot be involvement. You cannot make that separation. You can say that there is involvement on the large scales, but that’s just words. All you can say, if you insist, is that there is involvement on the small scales in places where I don’t notice it—which I said from the outset I cannot rule out. Sporadic interventions, right? Specific interventions in various particular places where nobody notices, but something there deviated from the laws of nature. Therefore in the end the large scales do not help at all.

[Speaker E] In the end the question is whether there is