The Essence of Miracles, Lesson 1

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, wait, I’m going to talk about all of this—both about your answer and about his question. I’ll get to all of it. Maimonides’ claim too, ostensibly, preserves the concept of miracle, but that’s not true. It too empties the concept of miracle of content, because every deviation from the law is ultimately just an error in measurement. Meaning—not an error in measurement, sorry—an error in basing the previous measurements on the new situation. In other words, we made some unjustified extrapolation. We saw the graph going like this, and we thought it would keep going like this. And who says? It could be that up to here it’s like this, and from here it’s like that. Why assume it continues? The problem of induction. Why assume the graph will continue the same way? We assume that, but there’s no real reason for it. So there you go—the law is actually like this. That’s the law. And therefore everything is fine, it’s all proceeding according to laws. Except that if that’s the law, then once again that means there are no miracles. So according to Maimonides too there are no miracles—not only according to Nachmanides. Because all this really says is that we don’t know how to describe the laws of nature completely. We know how to describe only the tame part, let’s call it, of the function. These are functions, some parts of which are wild and some regular. We know how to describe their regular parts, their non-wild parts. There are certain parts that are genuinely hard to describe,

[Speaker E] Let’s call them discontinuity points,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, whatever, it doesn’t matter. There are points there that we don’t know how to describe, because they appear too rarely. We won’t be able to make some generalization that predicts their appearance. So what? Does that mean there’s no law here? So somehow, astonishingly, it turns out that both the speakers—the mutakallimun, yes—or Nachmanides, and also Maimonides, who hold completely opposite views, both empty the concept of miracle of all content. That is, or the concept of nature of all content—it doesn’t matter what you call it. In the end, they empty the distinction between miracle and nature of content. Call it whatever you like. It could be that Nachmanides will call everything miracle, and Maimonides will call everything nature, but in the end the difference between miracle and nature doesn’t exist for either one. Okay?

[Speaker G] No, but the question is how you define a miracle. If a miracle is an event that happens very, very rarely, whose probability of occurring is very low, and that’s how you define miracle—and I think that’s how Maimonides understands it. Now, the fact that he says that things like the splitting of the Red Sea or “sun, stand still at Gibeon” and everything written there—that was planned, as if it was planned in advance by the Master of the Universe. But still, it’s an event that appears only very rarely.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even though it too was planned. Yes. Meaning that only rarity determines the miracle, not deviation. But that again brings us back

[Speaker H] to the question—well, I’m saying even more than that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] More than that, it brings us back to the question: what is a law? Before we discuss what a miracle is, we need to ask what a law is. Maybe I’ll jump ahead a bit, because I see this keeps coming up, so I’ll move a little ahead. Look, there are two ways to understand the concept of law, a law of nature. One option is de facto. Meaning: I have a coherent description of a collection of phenomena within some single conceptual framework, so I call it a law of nature. In that sense, saying “law of nature” is actually saying nothing. It says something about me, not about the world. It says: I found a simple language or a simple conceptual picture that manages to describe a great many phenomena efficiently. That’s all. Why? I am making a claim about the world—I don’t want to describe only the phenomena I observed, I also want to describe phenomena I didn’t observe. Fine, true—but when I say there is a law, I’m not making a claim about the world. When I say there is a law, all I’m saying is: I found an efficient description for a collection of phenomena. Maybe it’ll also help me make predictions, that’s not important. But I found a simple description for a collection of phenomena. When I say there is a law of nature in the world, I haven’t said anything about the world. It’s the same as saying that in situation X this happens, in situation Y that happens. It’s like, for example, if I talk about the concept of a democratic state. I can describe it in two ways—what in logic is called defining by content and by extension. Extensive and intensive. Fine. If I define by extension, then I list the collection of democratic states. That’s one way to define the concept of democracy. The second option is to define the content of the concept of democracy. So what does that mean? Elections every so often, separation of powers, civil rights, whatever—some collection of characteristics that we define as democracy. These are two equivalent descriptions. But still there is a difference between them. The first, by extension—that description by extension basically says that the concept in itself does not necessarily have real content. It can be an arbitrary definition, a convention. We simply have some agreement regarding this collection of states, which for some reason seem similar to us in some respect—even though every two states are similar in some respect. Okay? But we choose that similarity because it’s nice for us, I don’t know why, useful for us. But there is nothing real in the world that we are saying when we say “democratic state.” Rather, it is simply useful for us to define this set of states under one heading. Up to this point I understand the concept “democratic state” as a convention. It’s an agreement. We agree among ourselves to define such a concept. Saul Kripke, yes, an American philosopher—he’s an Orthodox Jew, a brilliant philosopher, an American analytic philosopher—argues that this concept, he calls this concept baptism. Because he’s an Orthodox Jew, he calls this way of making concepts by convention “baptism.” We baptize the concept and thus give it its name. It has no real meaning. It’s the result of a social agreement that baptizes it, and that is how it gets its meaning. Okay? In contrast, that’s a conventionalist conception of the concept.

[Speaker C] But without content, without agreement on the content of the concept?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, what do you mean without agreement on the content? We all roughly understand what we’re talking about, but we could just as easily have gathered a different collection of states and called them hypocratic states. Doesn’t matter—what difference does it make? The main thing is that we understand we’re talking about this collection of states. In principle I could have gathered any set of states, defined them under a name, and that would have been a perfectly legitimate conceptual group. Even if I didn’t—even if it wasn’t accompanied by that understanding that there is really something shared among these states. That takes it even further. There’s nothing shared. But I call this set of states hypocratic states. Fine, I always can. So for some reason it’s convenient for me to call דווקא this set of states democratic. Okay, so what? There’s nothing special about it. It’s a convention. The other view says no, there is content to the concept of democracy. The set of characteristics of the concept democracy is not just some collection of characteristics; together they form some whole that has significance not merely as a collection of characteristics. This whole together constructs something that doesn’t exist in each of the individual characteristics separately. Because if I were to gather, say, states that have ten million inhabitants and whose name begins with K and were founded in the fourth century BCE or earlier—I could call that concept “akomforkan,” let’s say, a state that is akomforkan. Okay? Is there any problem with that in terms of set-theoretic definition? It’s a perfectly fine definition.

[Speaker B] But then it’s an arbitrary definition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, according to content, it’s not according to—

[Speaker B] It’s not according to the set.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, obviously. But I’m saying: the combination of concepts has no meaning—the combination of properties, sorry. I could combine any set of properties and determine some group. With a democratic state, at least the feeling is that the combination is a combination of properties that are related to each other. Meaning, when I combine the property of elections every so often, separation of powers, civil rights—it’s not that I just combined three properties because it’s convenient for me to deal with them, but rather together they create something called perhaps fairness, or something called proper conduct toward citizens. I don’t know exactly what you want to call it, but they join together into something that gives meaning to the whole. And therefore it’s not an arbitrary definition, it’s not a convention. Fine. About conventional concepts you can’t argue. Make a different convention. About concepts defined by content, you can argue. Someone else will say: democracy? What are you talking about? Democracy is much better without separation of powers. What do you mean “much better”? Then call it plutocracy and that’s it, and now it’s without separation of powers and that will be your concept. My concept includes separation of powers. What’s the argument? If we’re arguing about something, that means there is a right and wrong—it’s not just an empty definition. In what sense is it right? It’s right because the concept democracy is not just a collection of features. This collection of features creates something, and if one of them doesn’t fit, then it needs to be replaced. And if we have a dispute about one of them, then we have a real dispute about what democracy is. But that means there is something in the concept democracy that goes beyond a set of states or a set of characteristics.

[Speaker I] Normative? What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Normative? Doesn’t matter—something. But there is some whole created from this set of properties. Fine? The same thing applies to laws of nature. Laws of nature can be understood in exactly those two ways. You can understand the laws of nature as something created ad hoc. I take a collection of features—a collection of, sorry, phenomena—I manage to find some common explanation for them, very elegant, so I call it a law of nature. What’s the problem? Now suddenly I define: this is physics, this is biology, this is psychology, doesn’t matter, and within each field too—this is quantum, this is mechanics, this is relativity, this is thermodynamics, whatever—even within physics I divide things up. But there is no real division between the subjects. I simply choose collections of phenomena that are easy for me to deal with within the framework of the language I came up with. It’s nice because I found an efficient and convenient language, so I divide the phenomena. If I had found something common to the tides and the behavior of gazelles when lions chase them, then I would have included those two phenomena under one law of nature, and that too would have been a law of nature, and there would be a scientific field dealing with gazelles chased by lions and tides. The fact that I don’t remember—by the way, that itself says there’s a convention here. Because the thing that isn’t a convention, you remember. Really, I’m saying—no, no. A convention is an ad hoc convention,

[Speaker B] that if it were accepted, yes, you would remember.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, obviously—an ad hoc convention. But if something is meaningful, then even if it happens right now I’ll remember it better. So when I gather the phenomena and create from them a field in science governed by certain laws, according to this view, the conventionalist one, that is basically a view that says this is just in our heads. Meaning, because our heads are built this way, we gathered these phenomena together. Understand: before Newton, nobody would ever have thought to associate the tides, the paths of the stars, and the falling of objects to earth with the same field. What connection is there between these things at all? Who saw any connection between them? The moment Newton found—or conceptualized the law, actually invented according to this view, not found—the law of gravitation, then suddenly we found an extremely efficient description for phenomena that, on the face of it, could just as well have been seen as belonging to different laws. But since we found an efficient language to describe specifically this whole, now we called this field mechanics or gravitation, doesn’t matter, and we included in it the phenomena we manage to bring under its wings, and that’s all. But that says nothing about the world. In contrast, if I understand that a law of nature makes a claim about the world—not only classifies it into groups out of considerations of efficiency and convenience of use, but says something about the world—then it says there is such a thing as gravitational force, not only the law of gravitation. And that’s a huge difference that people don’t notice. When I say there is a law of gravitation, that can also be interpreted conventionally. We all agree that this collection of phenomena together falls under the title “law of gravitation” because it really is very efficient. One law explains a great many phenomena, so why not use it? That doesn’t say something about the world, it only says that our way of thinking finds it convenient to divide things this way. But if I say there is a gravitational force, then I am basically saying that when I let go of this book and it falls downward, it falls downward because the force of gravity pulls it. And therefore when I connect it with the paths of the stars and the tides, I connect it because it truly belongs in the same place. Not because I conventionally agreed to put these three kinds of phenomena in the same group, but because they really belong to the same law, since that law expresses reality. The law of gravitation expresses the fact that there is a force of gravity. The moment I understand that there is a force of gravity—not just as words, but really there is such an entity called gravitational force, there is such a phenomenon in the world, because of which objects are drawn to one another—then the collection of the phenomena is no longer arbitrary. The question is which phenomena are generated by gravitational force, and there are other phenomena generated by something else. That division into groups of phenomena—or into scientific fields in this case, which is the same thing—is no longer an arbitrary division; it is a division that makes a claim about the world. All right? And so in fact the same thing I said earlier about concepts can also be said about phenomena and laws of nature. What’s the difference between them? If I understand that laws of nature—after all, if the laws of nature are only a convention, then all that means is that after the Holy One, blessed be He, decided all His decisions along the time axis, you simply drew the function. That’s the law. What’s the problem? You can always do that. Draw the function—what happens in every situation—you’ll get something, I don’t know. Whatever you get is the law of nature. What’s the problem? I can always describe a law of nature, as I said before, as going like this and then jumping. Fine, that’s also a function. What’s the problem? So from my standpoint that’s a law of nature. But behind this law of nature—and this is a conception of miracle that apparently neither Maimonides nor Nachmanides accepts, but this is the real conception of miracle—this conception says that what really exists in the world is gravitational force. Gravitational force says that the world behaves this way. And if such a jump occurs, that means the gravitational force suddenly isn’t operating, or that some other force outside the law is operating here. So there is a violation of the law here. Therefore, when I understand the law as something that is not a convention but something essential, then you can’t turn every function into a law. Only if that law describes behind it a mechanism that generates it, that brings it into effect. That is the second meaning of the concept of law. So now the question is: what do I regard as a law? Everyone can decide for himself. If a law is simply taking all the behaviors and organizing them into some function so that one can—and you can always do some approximation good enough, take a sufficiently large polynomial and you can approximate almost anything—then one can find a mathematical law that describes almost any behavior. Okay, no problem, you can do that. Have we found a law of nature here? I claim not. We have not found a law of nature. We found an efficient description for many phenomena, true. As long as we do not understand the mechanism that generates that function, it is not a law of nature. It is a description of phenomena—maybe an efficient description—but a description of phenomena. Only when we identify the force or the field or whatever physical phenomenon lies behind these phenomena, from which we derive this function or manage to extract this function, only then does it become a law of nature. But if so, then the concept of miracle does remain. And that the concept of miracle is not defined by rarity—now I return to your question. You suggested defining the concept miracle by rarity. That is basically a definition that takes this peak as something not essentially different from the straight line, but only rarer. The straight line goes along for most of the time axis, and at certain points there are jumps there, so it’s rare—therefore it’s a miracle. What stands behind that proposal is a conception of this graph as a graph that is a convention, as a graph created ad hoc. I see the behavior and I draw a graph that tracks the behavior. So yes, here indeed it was like this, and up to here it was like this. What’s the problem? It’s the same thing. It’s just rarer, so we call it miracle. Okay, that’s not important. But at the principled level, in that proposal we are assuming the laws are conventions. But if we understand that the laws reflect reality in the world, forces in the world—if so, then you can’t say that. You can’t say that this peak that suddenly appeared there is also part of the law. What does it mean, part of the law? Show me the field or the force that produces this sort of behavior. As long as you don’t show me that and put it to the test, it’s not a law of nature. Now true—and I still say this—all of this is philosophy, because when you bring it down to an empirical test, one can also think of a law that generates such a phenomenon. The fact that we haven’t found such a law is because all our observations were observations of this segment. Maybe indeed—and therefore the claim I made earlier is not a claim that Maimonides is wrong; I’m just explaining what he says and what he doesn’t say. Okay? He may be right. But still, in order to say this is part of the law of nature, he basically has to say either that this law is a convention, and then what happens is by definition part of the law of nature because there is no such thing as a law of nature, all right? And then in fact that’s Nachmanides, not Maimonides. That’s Nachmanides who basically says there are no laws; each time what happens is what the Holy One, blessed be He, decides will happen. If Maimonides wants to say the opposite, and he argues against the speakers, the mutakallimun, he wants to say the opposite. Saying the opposite means there is a law of nature. The Holy One, blessed be He, embedded it in advance in the nature of things. But there is a law of nature. When we say there is a law of nature and it is not a convention, now tell me how it can be that from the start there is such a law of nature? Apparently, Maimonides will say, the force of gravity is more complex than we think. And if we had observed all the observations, including the moments of miracles, we would have…

[Speaker J] What? In physics this has happened more than once—that there was a law of nature, and then they found one experiment where something else happened.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And they found that it needed to be qualified, changed, in terms of—

[Speaker J] They changed the law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Low velocities, high energies, small systems, large systems in quantum mechanics, and so on, right. And so therefore I say: I’m not claiming here that Maimonides is wrong; I’m trying to explain what he says. If he argues against—Nachmanides understands the laws of nature in a conventional way. That is basically what Nachmanides says. Nachmanides claims there is no such thing as laws of nature. He does not claim we cannot make predictions—that’s nonsense. Nor does he claim that nature does not behave more or less uniformly—and of course it does. He only claims that this is an ad hoc description. There isn’t some force here generating it; the Holy One, blessed be He, generates it Himself at every moment. Not a force He created at Creation and that runs the business on His behalf; the Holy One, blessed be He, runs it Himself at every moment. Maimonides argues against that.

[Speaker F] What? “Who renews each day the work of creation.” Yes, all right, okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s Nachmanides. Maimonides, by contrast, argues against it. What does it mean that he argues against it? Apparently he understands that laws of nature are not conventions. Laws of nature are laws that really reflect forces in reality. If they reflect forces in reality, then Maimonides’ claim is a bit trickier. It’s a claim that says that the real law of nature, the real gravitational force, is some function that depends on time in some way. That’s the law, that’s real, that’s really the force. That’s how gravitational force is defined. Gravitational force is a function of time. Usually gravitational force works according to the product of the masses divided by r squared, except in such-and-such year from Creation—or from the Big Bang, if you prefer. At that stage there is some peak there, and it’s multiplied by some other function that equals one everywhere except at that point where it blows up, if it’s some kind of delta function. Okay, that’s it, and that is the real gravitational force. All right? That is Maimonides’ description. This is somewhat connected to a problem that I think I already discussed—the problem of Wittgenstein, following a rule, one of the well-known problems in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. That problem basically says this: when we want to determine probability—or say, in a sequence of numbers, though it’s also true in a sequence of phenomena—with a sequence of numbers it’s easier to see. We want to determine what the probability is, what law lies behind this sequence. Fine? So I tell you: one, two, three, four, five, six, and now question mark. What comes next? Everyone will say seven, right? Because the assumption is that the function of n equals n. Fine? n equals one gives one, n equals two gives two, and n—right? But it could be that the next number in the sequence is twenty-four. And the sequence is f equals n up to six, and when n equals seven then f of n is twenty-seven—twenty-four, I don’t know what I said there. Okay? That’s one way to describe it. But then indeed that means it’s a definition inside curly braces, for those who know: when n equals this, it’s this, when n equals that, it’s that. Okay, that’s an ad hoc way of defining it. You can do it more elegantly. You can construct a continuous function, meaning a polynomial, yes, that will give those results. There’s no problem doing that. Take a polynomial with six coefficients; you have six constraints; determine the coefficients that satisfy those constraints—no problem at all. Then it will come out that the law of nature is one plus three n minus four and a quarter n squared plus five and a third n cubed minus pi n to the fourth, I don’t know, all sorts of things like that. And you’ll see—plug in n equals one and you’ll get one; n equals two and you’ll get two; three gives three; four gives four; five, six, twenty-four. No problem at all. I can generate whatever you want, to order.

[Speaker D] All the numbers in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We won’t get into that argument. If that’s what it’s like, then it’s problematic. In any case, the point is that this law of one, two, three, four, five, six, twenty-four can be described in a way that is ad hoc, conventional. And fine, okay, I’m describing what happens—no problem, that too is a law. The law is that up to six it’s n, and from seven onward it’s twenty-four. Fine, that too is a law, no problem. But one can do something more—in analogy to what we saw earlier in the laws of physics—one can build the force that creates this function, meaning build the polynomial I mentioned earlier, such that if you plug in one you’ll indeed get one. That is parallel, in some sense, to finding the real law of gravitation—not describing the phenomena by a function, an ad hoc function, yes, the conventionality of those laws. Therefore, in fact, the two pictures, that of Maimonides and that of Nachmanides, both erase the distinction between nature and miracle, but still they are not the same thing; they are opposites. In what are they different? Nachmanides understands the laws as conventions, while Maimonides understands the laws as something in the ontology of the world, the reality of the world. There is something in the world—there is gravitational force too, not just the law of gravitation. According to Nachmanides, you have a law of gravitation. Fine? Okay. Now of course that… fine, let’s first read Maimonides in his commentary on the Mishnah. I already mentioned to you in the eighth chapter that they do not believe in the renewal of will from time to time, but that at the beginning of the making of things—it’s the Sages, of course—but that at the beginning of the making of things it was placed in their nature that everything that would be done with them would be done. Fine? Meaning that their nature was already programmed so that at the right time what was supposed to emerge would emerge, exactly following the midrash we read below. Whether it was something that would happen regularly, and that is the natural thing, or whether it was only at distant intervals, and that is the wonder. Exactly your proposal. The difference between miracle and nature is only the probability of getting it. Meaning: how many times it appears. That’s all. The frequency, yes? The question is how many times it appears. Therefore he said that on the sixth day it was placed in the earth that it would swallow Korach and his congregation, and in the well that it would produce water, and in the donkey that it would speak, and likewise the rest. And the Torah was written, and the writing was written before Him, may He be exalted, as it says: “And I will give you the stone tablets, and the Torah and the commandment which I have written to instruct them.” And “the writing” is the script on the tablets, as it says, “and the writing was the writing of God.” Because everything is imprinted in advance. Just as the Ten Commandments are imprinted on the tablets, the laws of nature are imprinted in creation. And lest you say: if all the wonders were placed in the nature of those things from the six days of Creation, why were these ten singled out? Those are the ten miracles that occurred in the Temple. Know—or in other words, what distinguishes miracles at all? One could ask that much more broadly. What in fact distinguishes miracles? To that he already answered above, right? Frequency. That is, something that happens rarely is what is called a miracle, but there are no miracles. There are no miracles. That is basically what he says. Everything is in advance. The Sages, ostensibly, say this, while Nachmanides argues. Know that they were not singled out in order to say that there is no wonder that was placed in the nature of things from the six days of Creation other than these. The intention is not to claim that only these ten miracles are the only miracles in the world and all the rest were placed in the nature of things. Rather, he said that only these were made at twilight. Meaning: ten things were created on Friday at twilight. He does not mean to say that these ten things are the only things that are miraculous; rather, the emphasis is on twilight. Meaning, these ten things alone were created at twilight. And all the other wonders were indeed placed in the nature of the thing through which they were done at the beginning of its being made, and not after it was made at twilight. For example, he said that on the second day, at the time when the waters were divided, it was placed in their nature that the Red Sea would split for Moses, and the Jordan for Joshua, and likewise for Elijah and Elisha. And on the fourth day, when the sun was created, it was placed in it that it would stand still at such-and-such a time by the statement of Joshua to it, just as Joshua would say. And likewise the rest of the wonders, apart from those ten—and they were placed in the nature of those things at twilight. Fine? So that’s as a note. Now, we need to distinguish another point. That is, on the face of it, there seems to be a real problem here with free choice. Because if the assumption is that the thing a person chooses is not predictable in advance—that is, it depends on him, and therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot foresee it in advance, and about that we have already argued quite a bit, so we won’t get into it again. But if that is the assumption, then it means it cannot be that within the nature of reality itself there is already implanted what is to be done in response to a person’s choice. After all, a person’s choices are not dictated in advance, and the behavior is a function of the person’s choice. So there is something problematic in the picture Maimonides is describing. Now here I really return to what… this is Shmuel’s question, and what you answered him—that was, I think, correctly—that the laws of nature do not say what will happen. The laws of nature say what will happen if the circumstances are such-and-such. If there is a body standing here, the laws of nature say it will fall. But the laws of nature do not say that it will fall. They say that if a body is standing here, then it falls. Now there can be a law of nature that says: look, if the person chooses to do this, then this will happen, and if the person chooses to do that, then that will happen. Meaning, if the person chooses to jump, gravity will pull him; if the person chooses not to jump, gravity will not pull him. Does there have to be a change in the law of gravity here? No. The law of gravity is one. It responds differently, of course, to different circumstances. Okay? Therefore this does not contradict, I think, Maimonides’ claim that everything is implanted in the nature of reality. Reality is simply some given system of laws. The person chooses freely, and that is not predictable in advance—for the sake of the discussion let’s assume right now that it is not predictable in advance—so a person can choose this way and can choose that way. What he chooses will create circumstance X or circumstance Y, but the law of nature is one. That law says that under circumstance X this will happen, and under circumstance Y that will happen. Fine? Therefore the fact that things depend on choice, and even the assumption that the choice is not known in advance, does not contradict the picture Maimonides proposes here. Maimonides claims that the system of laws is given; we determine the initial conditions, basically. We say what the situation is from which the laws begin to operate. So if we choose this way, that is one kind of initial condition; if we choose that way, the initial condition is different. But the initial condition does not concern the equation; the laws are only the equation. The laws only say what will happen if the initial condition is this—how things will continue from there. The laws of nature do not say what the initial condition will be. Fine? So it seems to me there is no real contradiction here, and in fact there are two conceptions facing each other, both of which empty the concept of miracle—or the distinction between miracle and nature—of all content. Nachmanides turns everything into miracle, or says that the laws are conventional laws and not essential, while Maimonides turns everything into nature. He says the laws are essential laws and not conventional, and they also include the occurrences that we call miracle. Why is it a miracle? Because it’s rare, that’s all. Now of course we can start asking ourselves what the meaning of miracle is. Clearly both conceptions—or not both conceptions, Nachmanides’ conception—is that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants something at every moment, and that is what happens at every moment. He will of course have to deal with the theological problems with which you began, which led the Sages and afterwards Maimonides too to understand that it cannot be that new desires arise over the course of history, but rather everything is implanted in reality in advance, because otherwise there would be changes in the Holy One, blessed be He, an imperfect creation, everything we talked about earlier. By the way, the concept of an imperfect creation—for Nachmanides I think there is no problem with it, right? Here’s another practical difference. After all, he presented two problems that led the Sages to this view that there cannot be a will that is renewed, but rather everything is implanted in advance. One problem is that there cannot be change in divinity, and the second problem is that if He needs to intervene, that means the laws in themselves are not perfect. Right? Now according to Nachmanides, the second problem does not exist, right? There are no laws. He did not decide to make the world with laws. No problem.

[Speaker G] And this too—that He has to intervene—is also here? I mean otherwise what connection would there be between man and the Creator?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. You can call everything law, but in the end it is all intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, and there is no problem here that it ostensibly runs according to laws, except that they’re not perfect so every so often He has to intervene. He intervenes all the time; He doesn’t intervene every so often. It’s all—He is constantly intervening. So there’s no problem of a clash between the policy of creating the world to run according to laws and the fact that He nevertheless has to intervene, meaning the laws are not doing what they need to do. So the second problem Nachmanides solves. The first problem still has to be dealt with, yes? Namely, what does Nachmanides do with this conception that says: how does the Holy One, blessed be He, change? After all, if His will is different at every moment, that means something in Him has changed. Okay? So fine, on the theological level I said I’m not even sure how critical that is—but that’s according to Nachmanides. What happens according to Maimonides? According to Maimonides, again, the second problem doesn’t exist, right? The second problem doesn’t exist because the Holy One, blessed be He, truly does not need to intervene; the law itself from the start already does all the work. Everything is perfect. There’s no problem at all; these are perfect laws. Fine? What about the first problem—that there cannot be change in the Holy One, blessed be He? That problem also doesn’t exist. Meaning, he solves both problems, whereas Nachmanides solves the second and not the first. Right? It may be that he doesn’t regard the first as a problem.

[Speaker I] But in the creation of the world there was change, wasn’t there?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Yes, about that they don’t speak. What happened in the creation of the world—perhaps time itself was also created, and then maybe we cannot even ask that question at all. About that neither of them speaks. Meaning, that’s true, that’s a separate question. Okay. Of course, one could say that the creation of the world itself was also some kind of miracle-peak that comes on Maimonides’ scale: the law determines that there will be a boom from the moment at which a world is created. No problem—that too. We all live on that peak.

[Speaker E] What about time being created? Then it’s not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying, I’m saying without resorting to time being created—I’m saying one could also fit that into this conceptual framework. Okay. So that is basically, more or less, the picture. Now what I want to do is look at the Maharal’s words in the second introduction to Gevurot Hashem. To photocopy that is a lot of pages, so I don’t know—maybe next time I will photocopy part of it after all, because I won’t get through all of it, but I may want to go through the first few pages. And the Maharal basically deals with exactly the same question and also lays out the motivations and various things like that, so I want to look a bit at what he says. So I’ll start reading the beginning, and we’ll continue, I hope, next time. “The wonders and signs and marvels that the Holy One, blessed be He, performed in His world, and by which He made His mighty acts known to the inhabitants of the world—it is fitting to make known their way and their matter, so that the act of God may be clarified.” Yes, one needs to understand the way and matter of the wonders in order to clarify how the Holy One, blessed be He, performs His deeds. “Even though for the Jewish people, who believe and do not investigate with their intellect and thought to know hidden things, this is not necessary.” Someone who doesn’t investigate hidden things—then there’s no need, no problem at all. Why? “For they are simple in the way, walking in the Torah of the Lord; they believe all the words of the Torah and the prophets, and the signs and wonders that came in the Torah and the prophets—they do not outsmart them.” What? Maybe that’s how it should even be. I’m not sure the Maharal even agrees that this is how it should be, but that is at least how he chooses to portray it. “And to them it is known”—to those simple people who have no problem—“that God performs mighty deeds and wonders, and everything He desires in His world He does; to destroy, to build, like clay in the hand of the potter, by His will He expands and by His will He contracts, for He created it from nothing and to nothing He can return it—such is the view of the believers.” Up to here. So for the believers there is no problem at all; no need to explain anything; everything is fine. The Holy One, blessed be He, can do whatever He wants in the world. Now what does that mean? That’s an interesting point. But maybe let’s read one more sentence and then come back for a moment. “But there came men of investigating heart, who investigate with their intellect and their knowledge about God, philosophizing, wanting to act clever about hidden matters and revealed matters, and these are with them and before their eyes, several and several such matters.” What are the last words? They want—philosophizing—what? “and these are with them and before their eyes.”

[Speaker B] “With them” with an aleph? As in blocked off?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, “with them,” aleph-tav-mem, yes. What is “blocked off”? No, no, “with them,” together with them, meaning opposite them. The things standing before them are the revealed things, and they want to investigate also the hidden things, to understand what is going on with the hidden things. “For this one said such and such and that one said such and such, until concerning the essence of the human intellect and soul, opinions and investigations multiplied. Yet all of them are wind, and there is no substance in them, for what can a material human being know? Even though God gave him knowledge and wisdom, behold his knowledge and wisdom are attached to matter, and his knowledge and wisdom have connection and relation to matter. How can he know separate things”—“separate” meaning spiritual things not connected to matter—“even our knowledge, our wisdom, which are mental functions, are inside matter, so they cannot grasp the separate things. And just as man does not connect with the separate things, so he cannot stand upon their matters and their deeds, unless the hand of God did this, in that He made His ways known to Moses and afterwards to the prophets, and from them the sages received and informed us in the midrashim and in their words of hidden concealed matters. And when these philosophizing men investigated from their own knowledge and intellect concerning the acts of God, there were those who went out onto a completely alien path,” a completely mistaken path. “And these are not fit to have their memory and their words mentioned, except as the Sages said: ‘Be diligent in study so that you may answer the heretic.’” Yes, so one need not even mention these alien, problematic views, except because we need to learn how to answer the heretic. But there is some mode of presentation here that—I’m not sure, I’m a bit uncertain as to what exactly he himself means. Who is really preferable in his view, the simple believers or—? Because after all, if indeed the Holy One, blessed be He, does whatever He wants—if that is the truth—then it’s not because they are simple and don’t investigate, but because that really is the truth. They investigated and reached the conclusion that there are no laws; the Holy One, blessed be He, does whatever He wants.

[Speaker B] But they didn’t investigate because it doesn’t require investigation—meaning, because they saw something

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] simple in the Torah and saw no reason to start… But the question is whether that thing is true. The question is whether this conception is correct. Is it that because they saw no reason to investigate, therefore they hold a mistaken conception?

[Speaker B] Why? Therefore they hold the correct conception.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Which correct conception? Of what?

[Speaker B] That what is written is what is true, period.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that the Holy One, blessed be He, does everything, expands, contracts, as He wills—in other words, there are miracles. In a moment we’ll see that he himself does not hold that way. He himself does not hold that way, and he explains it, but for now this whole introduction is saying… I’ll explain it to you in your own philosophical terms. What does “in your own terms” mean? You devote thirteen pages here. You explain very well that this is your view, and the view of the Sages, and everyone’s view. He will bring those statements of the Sages that I mentioned earlier. Okay? Meaning, this really is his position. So now what does that mean? He depicts those simple, faithful, righteous people who do not go off onto a foreign path, and they believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, at His will expands and at His will contracts. In other words, they believe in the view of the mutakallimun, the theologians, those who say that the Holy One, blessed be He, decides at every moment and does whatever He wants. And these are the simple believers. And the sophisticates—no, they want to fit it into the laws of nature; they’re men of science, they’re philosophers. Wait a second, this contradicts the laws of nature—what do we do with that? Something here isn’t right. So they’re in a bind; some of them end up with problematic views, others less so, but one way or another they are asking a question that apparently shouldn’t be asked, or at least that’s how it seems from here. But on the other hand, he devotes quite a few pages to explaining this matter to them, and after he explains it, it turns out that they are right and the simple believers were wrong. The simple believers who think that the Holy One, blessed be He, expands and contracts and intervenes—the mutakallimun—they are mistaken. He holds like Maimonides. So now—is it better to be simple, or better to be an investigator?

[Speaker K] More beneficial to be simple.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] More beneficial to be simple, but you won’t always hold the correct view. So it won’t lead you into any problem, and that’s the point. But your view is not necessarily correct. So if that’s the case—you know, it’s like Rabbi Kook, whom I keep coming back to, who says that it’s better to fail through baseless love than through baseless hatred. And I say it’s better not to fail through either one; that makes more sense. What do you mean? Same thing here. You’re telling me, look, if you’re an investigator you can reach problematic conclusions, go off into a bad culture, and so on—so be simple. Being simple is better even if you’re mistaken. True, but the best is to be an investigator who also reaches the right conclusions—that’s better than both. Okay? So there’s something here, an interesting rhetorical presentation by the Maharal, and I don’t know exactly what he means, but it seems to me that the logic speaks for itself. In the end, he is claiming that the sophisticates are right and the simple believers are wrong.

[Speaker B] Maybe it seems that the Maharal basically saw it as someone risking his faith only so that he could answer those heretics.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And after he risked his faith, he arrived at a conclusion that is different from simple faith. It’s not that he returned to simple faith and it turned out to him now, through reason, that it was true. No—it turned out to him that it wasn’t true. But at least he didn’t become a heretic; he continues to keep the commandments, and now he also knows the truth. He’s wonderful, everything is fine. There had been a concern that he would go off into a bad culture.

[Speaker B] Meaning, were it not for the need to answer those heretics, it would have been preferable for him not to know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So he would have remained a fool; he would have preferred not to know. And here is a wonderful example of the phenomenon I spoke about—I think I spoke about it in To the Perplexed of the Generation, when we mentioned Rabbi Kook. There were all kinds of statements there of this sort. And here is a marvelous example of how problematic paths and outlooks and groups and conceptions ultimately improve the conceptions, the real philosophies. Because without the people who take the risks—and also fall because they took risks—then even those who don’t fall would not look the way they do. A classic Rabbi Kook idea, of course: that the sinners and criminals and so on ultimately improve the path of serving God. I think this is an excellent example of that point. We’ll continue next week.