The Essence of the Miracle, Lesson 3

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

The dispute between Maimonides and the mutakallimun about nature and miracles
Law, force, and dispute in the philosophy of science
A stipulation in creation, time versus circumstances, and the example of “a positive commandment caused by time”
A map of positions: Maimonides, the mutakallimun, the “standard” view, and a fourth possibility of “there are no miracles”
The Maharal: three difficulties with miracles and his answer of “the order of miracles”
Laws of nature, laws of the separate realm, and laws of connection: comparison to Maimonides and the meaning of “software”
Prayer, dialogue, and providence: gears versus standing before the Holy One, blessed be He
“There is no information”: Jewish thought as reasoning, not a tradition from Sinai
Kabbalah, “kabbalah” as a label, and Greek philosophy in yeshivot
Tradition, institutions, and fighting over tradition as a cover for lack of roots

Summary

General Overview

The text presents a conceptual framework for the dispute about nature and miracle between Maimonides and the mutakallimun, and adds as a third position the Maharal’s view, according to which miracles too have an order and a fixed lawfulness determined in advance as part of an ordered connection between the natural world and the separate realm. According to the mutakallimun, the laws of nature are only regularities, and every moment is a fresh decision of the Holy One, blessed be He; therefore nature and miracle differ only in frequency. According to Maimonides, there are forces and laws implanted in creation, and even exceptions were included in advance in the conditions that the Holy One, blessed be He, made with creation, such as the splitting of the Red Sea. The text then presents the Maharal’s claim that miracles are not a change in God’s will or in the world, but an ordered phenomenon that appears at certain times and under certain circumstances according to the lawfulness of Israel’s cleaving to the separate realm. From this emerges a sharp critique of the common notion that Jewish thought is “information from Sinai” that is binding as a matter of faith, alongside a discussion of prayer, dialogue with the Holy One, blessed be He, and the status of Kabbalah and Greek philosophy in yeshiva study.

The dispute between Maimonides and the mutakallimun about nature and miracles

The mutakallimun understand the laws of nature as mere regularities and not as mechanisms of force, and therefore what happens in the world at every moment is the result of a renewed decision of the Holy One, blessed be He, at that very moment. The mutakallimun empty the distinction between miracle and nature of content, because nature too is really a collection of frequent “miracles,” and the distinction is made only according to degree of prevalence. Maimonides sees behind the regularities actual forces and mechanisms established in creation, and therefore the world is conducted according to a system of laws implanted in advance, including exceptional events that were included as conditions in creation, such as the splitting of the Red Sea. Maimonides empties the distinction between miracle and nature of content in that everything is included within one lawfulness, where the exceptions are “non-regular parts” of the same legal graph.

Law, force, and dispute in the philosophy of science

The text distinguishes between the law of gravity as a description of regularity and the force of gravity as a claim about an entity or causal property that is not directly visible. The dispute between Maimonides and the mutakallimun is presented as an early version of a contemporary dispute in the philosophy of science between seeing a law of nature as a statement about something real in the world and seeing it merely as a tool for classifying and organizing phenomena. According to the regularity view, deviation from nature is just a momentary change of will and therefore poses no principled problem; according to the forces view, deviation indicates that our acquaintance with the law was partial and that another “wild” part of the same law has now been exposed. The standard view of miracle is presented as a third position, according to which there are fixed natural forces, but at the moment of the miracle the ordinary force is “frozen” and another force or a direct will of the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes. The text emphasizes that this is not just a semantic matter but a factual claim about what actually causes the event.

A stipulation in creation, time versus circumstances, and the example of “a positive commandment caused by time”

The text corrects the phrase “timetable” and suggests that, for Maimonides, exceptions depend on circumstances rather than on time, so that a law of nature can be formulated as a function of circumstances under which it weakens or changes. An example is brought from the discussion in tractate Kiddushin 34 about Nachmanides’ view that counting the Omer is not “a positive commandment caused by time,” and the explanation offered is the distinction between an obligation that depends on time itself and an obligation that depends on circumstances that occur in time. This parallel is applied to laws of nature, so that one can describe a “law of gravity” as circumstance-dependent, where those circumstances may be the product of human choice even though the lawfulness itself was implanted from the outset.

A map of positions: Maimonides, the mutakallimun, the “standard” view, and a fourth possibility of “there are no miracles”

The text arranges a “map” of possibilities: the mutakallimun’s position, in which there are no forces and only renewed wills; Maimonides’ position, in which there are forces and one lawfulness that includes even exceptions; and a third, “standard” position, in which the natural force is frozen and an outside intervention takes place. A fourth possibility is mentioned, discussed in the Maharal, according to which there are no miracles at all, and the speakers point out that the Jewish people as “believers, children of believers” do not necessarily enter into these subtleties. Within the conversation, participants raise objections to the plausibility of various options, including the claim that saying everything is a miracle is “superfluous” if one could establish forces in advance, and the claim that theological logic requires some relation between deviation from law and the concept of God’s will.

The Maharal: three difficulties with miracles and his answer of “the order of miracles”

The text moves to reading the Maharal’s introduction and presents the first point as the claim of “the philosopher,” according to which the world operates on the “side of ancient necessity” without change, and therefore signs and wonders are impossible altogether. A second point is presented, in which the difficulty is raised of how one thing can come to be from another rapidly against natural processes, such as water turning into blood “in an instant” without preparation and time. The text sharpens the point that saying “a miracle is supernatural” does not by itself solve the difficulty within a modern physical framework. A third point is presented as a theological difficulty: if the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted an orderly system of natural laws, then deviating from them looks like acting against His will, or like an indication that the laws He established are insufficient to realize His will. Against this, the text suggests the possibility of saying that His will included both the laws and the exceptions in advance. The Maharal’s answer is brought as the claim that miracles themselves have an “ordered order,” arising from an ordered connection between the natural world and the separate realm; therefore miracles appear “at certain times” and are not constant. In particular, Israel has an ordered system of miracles because they “cleave to the separate realm.”

Laws of nature, laws of the separate realm, and laws of connection: comparison to Maimonides and the meaning of “software”

The text places the Maharal within a conceptual world similar to that of Maimonides in that there are laws and forces and not merely regularities, but emphasizes that the Maharal distinguishes between natural laws and the laws of the separate realm, or of the connection between the natural and the separate. It is argued that, for the Maharal, miracles are not a change in God’s will or a change in created beings, but an expression of an additional system of lawfulness implanted in advance; thus he answers the difficulties about change and deviation from order. The text uses the metaphor of “software” to argue that in all these deterministic positions “nothing happens now”; rather, everything was determined at creation, and the difference is whether there is one software system, two software systems, or no software at all. A reservation is raised that lawfulness may depend on circumstances rather than time, and therefore the decline in the frequency of miracles can be explained as a circumstantial change, such as weakening of the connection to the separate realm, rather than as a dictated temporal process.

Prayer, dialogue, and providence: gears versus standing before the Holy One, blessed be He

The text presents the provocative conclusion that, according to Maimonides and the Maharal, there is no “intervention” of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world after creation; even open miracles function as part of a fixed lawfulness established in advance, in a manner similar to “set it and forget it.” It is argued that one can still say that prayers “work” if they are part of the laws of the separate realm, but the dialogical experience of standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, is replaced by a description of activating “gears” that were predetermined. The text compares this to Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin’s description of moving spiritual mechanisms, and sharpens that the dispute is not about the certainty of an answer to prayer but about the very existence of a direct dialogue with a living will in the present. Within the argument, it is claimed that even an answer to prayer means a change in the physical system, and on the other hand it is argued that the text is dealing with miracles that contradict the laws of physics, and that not every prayer is necessarily an open miracle.

“There is no information”: Jewish thought as reasoning, not a tradition from Sinai

The text argues against the notion that Jewish thought is binding information given at Sinai, and claims that Maimonides and the Maharal themselves operate out of logic and transparent considerations, not out of a transmission of facts. It is argued that commitment to people is not binding when there is no explicit tradition but only reasoning, and therefore even today one can formulate different worldviews on the basis of modern knowledge and logic. The text identifies in contemporary education a tendency to turn “Jewish thought” into a discipline with an aura of authority simply by entering the beit midrash, and compares this to discussions of “what is science” in fields where the very definition testifies to weakness in the field’s identity. It is argued that the many disputes in the area of providence and miracles prove that there is no single traditional item here, and the text presents as an innovation of recent generations the transformation of conceptual details into tests of heresy.

Kabbalah, “kabbalah” as a label, and Greek philosophy in yeshivot

The text argues that the label “Kabbalah” is not convincing proof that it is indeed material transmitted from Sinai, and suggests that emphasizing the label indicates an internal concern about a shaky foundation and a need for rhetorical defense. Examples are brought from the Dor Daim in Yemen and apologetic legends surrounding Maimonides, alongside a position that recognizes the value of spiritual intuitions even without attributing to them a Sinaitic transmission. The text argues that the prohibition against studying Greek wisdom has become a joke, because the main place where Aristotle is studied today is precisely in yeshivot through the Guide for the Perplexed, Saadia Gaon, and earlier philosophical frameworks. It is argued that there is a selectiveness by which materials “drafted” from Kant or Hegel are accepted only when brought through rabbinic authority, while engagement with modern philosophy itself is rejected in the name of “converting” foreign wisdom.

Tradition, institutions, and fighting over tradition as a cover for lack of roots

The text attacks patterns in which groups present themselves as representatives of ancient tradition even though they rely on relatively recent figures, and brings examples from Har HaMor and Brisk, where “tradition” is in fact attributed to later developments such as Rabbi Charlap or Rabbi Chaim. An anecdote is brought from a memorial book in which “the treasures of the ancients” turn out to be the teachings of Rabbi Charlap, as an illustration of the use of rhetoric of antiquity. The text uses the literary example of Chaim Grade’s “The Yeshiva” to describe how outward zeal against heresy and desires can reflect an inner struggle, and likewise constant speech in the name of tradition may serve as an inner struggle over a feeling of rootlessness. In this context it is argued that the Maharal’s disputes and explicit reasoning demonstrate that this is a construction of a worldview, not the reception of sealed information, and the text closes by saying that next time he will continue summarizing the Maharal and move forward in the discussion of miracles.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we were in the Maharal’s introduction, just to get back into the context. I started with the dispute between Maimonides and the mutakallimun on the question of how we view the laws of nature and how we view miracles. The mutakallimun see everything that happens in the world as something that is not really based on forces. I’m already explaining it this way in terms of the implications that I think lie behind the dispute. Rather, laws are just regularities. Meaning, regularities means what keeps recurring all the time—that’s what’s called a law. And therefore, what happens in the world at any given moment is the result of a decision of the Holy One, blessed be He, at that moment. And if, at that moment, the Holy One, blessed be He, decides to do something that isn’t exactly according to the accepted regularity up to now, then He does something else. It doesn’t change anything. There’s no force here that has to be stopped, interrupted, frozen. Every single moment the decision is made anew. You can make this decision and you can make another decision. So this outlook of the mutakallimun empties the difference between miracles and natural conduct of any real content, because natural conduct too is really just a collection of miracles. I mentioned Nachmanides’ well-known statement, then qualified it afterward in light of Arik’s comment, and we’ll probably come back to Nachmanides next time. But Maimonides sees that behind the conduct, behind the regularities that we observe as the normal behavior we know, there stand forces. And once there are forces, then those behaviors are really the result of existing mechanisms. They are not a decision made at that moment by the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, created the world within some framework of laws, and that system of laws runs it in one way or another. And really, everything is embedded at the moment the world is created. Everything begins and ends there. Everything else is just conduct according to the laws established there, including exceptional conduct. Meaning, even the exceptional conduct—Maimonides brings the condition that the Holy One, blessed be He, made with creation, yes, that when the Jewish people reach the sea, it will split before them, and so on—and basically the claim is that even the things that appear exceptional to us are simply non-regular parts of the law. Right, I said the graph of the law looks like this—basically regular, and then suddenly there’s some local craziness, and afterward it goes back to normal. But all of that is the graph; that’s what the law looks like. Meaning, that is the law. In a certain sense this too empties—not in a certain sense, this too empties—the difference between natural conduct and miracles of content. They are just different parts of the graph that describes the behavior of the relevant force. The force of gravity has some sort of graph that suddenly goes through a very rapid change there in the Red Sea region, in that space-time area.

[Speaker B] What Nachmanides—what the original interpretation is—is that according to Nachmanides everything is miracles; according to Maimonides nothing is, everything is nature.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. But both of them are really completely emptying out the difference between miracles and nature and turning it into a matter of how common it is, that’s all. Meaning, the difference between miracle and nature is just the question of how many times it appears. If it appears relatively rarely, then it’s called a miracle; if it appears often, then it’s nature. According to Maimonides, both really stand on—what stands behind them is some set of laws. And according to the mutakallimun, there are no laws standing there; it’s just wills, a collection of—in general the Holy One, blessed be He, wants the same thing, but sometimes He wants something else. So then something else happens. And then, as I said, the standard conception of miracle is neither this nor that. The standard conception of miracle is that there must be forces standing behind the laws of nature. Meaning, no, it’s not just a regularity that we observe, that the same thing keeps happening all the time; rather there is some force because of which the same thing keeps happening all the time. I spoke about the difference between the law of gravity and the force of gravity, right? The law of gravity says that every two masses attract one another—that’s only a description, a regularity, that’s what always happens. But the force of gravity is that same entity that none of us—and nobody else ever—has seen. Nobody has seen the force of gravity. But we assume that there is some such phenomenon or some such entity, and it is what makes sure that all bodies are always drawn toward one another. Meaning, that’s why they are drawn. So behind the phenomena we see, there stands some sort of metaphysics—some kind of… It’s a little strange to call the laws of physics metaphysics, but still, yes, there stands some sort of reality beyond the revealed, perceivable reality. What?

[Speaker C] Can’t I say that it’s the nature of matter that causes it? Meaning, it’s not something beyond the matter.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care whether that thing is a property of matter or an entity in its own right. But there is something beyond what we see that causes what we see to happen. Don’t call it metaphysical, I don’t care, it’s—

[Speaker C] Only if what we see is not the matter itself but just the appearance of the matter, then okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s even more so. That’s just—even before I’m talking about processes, even the object I’m looking at isn’t really the actual object because the image…

[Speaker C] Yes, but if I’m looking at the object itself, it’s not something beyond the object itself; it’s a property of it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay, but that property too—you don’t see that property. Meaning, you see that it is attracted, you see the phenomenon. You don’t see what inside the thing causes that phenomenon. So it is something beyond. And therefore, behind this dispute between Maimonides and the mutakallimun there is really a dispute that still exists today in the philosophy of science, over the question of how we really see the laws of nature. Do we see—whether a law of nature is a statement about the world, meaning a claim about the world, so that when I say there is a force of gravity I am really making a claim about something that exists in the world? Or do we say no—when I say force of gravity, that is merely a way of organizing the set of phenomena I know? What I am really saying is that a collection of objects attract one another. It is convenient for me to say this in the language of there being a force of gravity that pulls them, but that is only a classification of the phenomena. I do not mean to say anything beyond the set of phenomena we all know. Just to offer an efficient classification of them. Okay? And from this dispute, of course, follows the attitude toward deviation from nature, or apparent deviation from nature. Because if all there is here is just regularity, then there is no problem. When a deviation from that regularity occurs, it just means that at that moment the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted something else. Okay? There is nothing essentially different about that from His usual wills. And in Maimonides’ conception, where behind the laws there are also forces, the claim is that when something different happens, that simply indicates that the law we knew until now, or the force, or the character of the force that we knew until now, simply wasn’t exact. We knew only the regular parts of the graph, but there are also some more unruly parts of it, wilder parts of it. And therefore now we have a fuller acquaintance with the law of nature. But really everything is included within the law of nature. Whereas the standard conception—I already started saying this—the standard conception of miracles is neither this nor that. That behind things there are forces, and there is some moment when the force is frozen and another force intervenes here, or whatever, the Holy One, blessed be He, in some way creates behavior different from what the forces were supposed to dictate. That is not Maimonides’ approach and not that of the mutakallimun; that is a third approach. Okay? So now, what exactly is this intervention? Of course one could say that this is all semantics. What do you mean, what is this intervention? Put the intervention into the law and it becomes part of the law. So that’s just semantics. That’s why I say—it is not just semantics. Because if I understand the law as something that expresses the force, then there is a factual question here: what causes the splitting of the Red Sea? The force of gravity? No. There was another force. It’s not that the force of gravity underwent some kind of change; the force of gravity was frozen. And now something else intervened here, and that is what took care of the splitting of the sea. Meaning, if I understand that behind things there is some metaphysics, let’s call it that, then the conception of miracle is the one we are generally used to. Right? That there is some freezing of the ordinary metaphysics and an intervention, or suddenly a breaking into physics of some other alternative force, or a direct will of the Holy One, blessed be He, whatever. And that is the concept of miracle. That the Holy One, blessed be He, actually—this is the only way in which the Holy One, blessed be He, really appears literally in history. Meaning, at that moment the Holy One, blessed be He, performs some action here that is no longer done in the ordinary way by the force of the laws of creation. In the two previous conceptions, in one conception He always appears, and in the second conception He does not appear at all, except at the stage when He created the world. Now of course that doesn’t mean He didn’t do the miracle. He did do it. He created the law, and that law includes within it the event of the miracle as well. It’s not as though something here is operating independently of the Holy One, blessed be He, but this is not an appearance that happens at the moment the miracle occurs; it’s simply the character of the law.

[Speaker D] He already set the timetable.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I already said there then that this is a bit—that’s a somewhat delicate point, and we’ll see. He probably determined the condition, not the timetable—the circumstances. Meaning, the law is not the Red Sea—I mean, not that the water is always drawn downward except for a certain stretch of time when it isn’t, and then it continues. The law says that whenever Israel is in distress, then the force of gravity somehow suddenly weakens, or something like that. Meaning, it depends on circumstances, not on time. And if those circumstances—yes, exactly—if those circumstances did not occur, then it would not happen at that moment. Meaning, and whether those circumstances occur or not may perhaps be the result of human choice, and human choice is indeed in human hands. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t all still laws of nature implanted in creation from the beginning, because those laws of nature simply say what will happen given that the circumstances are such-and-such. It’s not a function of time; it’s a function of circumstances. We once talked about—just a second—we once talked about a positive commandment caused by time. Do you remember in what context that was? And I said there that Nachmanides writes that counting the Omer is not a positive commandment caused by time, in Kiddushin 34. And everyone wonders—what do you mean? How is that different from all the commandments of the festivals, or any commandment dependent on time? Why is that not a positive commandment caused by time? So I once saw someone who wanted to explain that a positive commandment caused by time is a commandment that depends on time itself. Time itself determines the obligation, the liability in the commandment. But a commandment that depends on circumstances, where the circumstances appear at some time—that is not a positive commandment caused by time. Because according to that, even Grace after Meals would be a positive commandment caused by time. I have to bless only when I’ve eaten to satiety. When did I eat to satiety? At breakfast. Therefore Grace after Meals is an obligation only at eight o’clock, say, when people eat breakfast. Okay?

[Speaker B] No, so I’m saying—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the conception. In another second I’ll come back to counting the Omer. So this is really—obviously everything happens within the axis of time, along the time axis, at some time. But there is a difference between a case where the result depends on time itself and a case where the result depends on circumstances, where the circumstances of course occur at some time, but it is not time that determines it; it is the circumstances that determine it.

[Speaker B] But if the circumstances are fixed in time, which is not like breakfast, because counting the Omer is not like breakfast.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, obviously, right, that’s what—just a second. Correct, but still the claim is that the reason we count the Omer is not because the date of the sixteenth of Nisan arrived, but because something happened, or is happening, on the sixteenth of Nisan, and that obligates the counting of the Omer. But the fact that it happens at some time—fine, I also eat breakfast at some time. It’s true that there it’s fixed, it happens the same way every year, but still what obligates me in the counting is not that the date arrived, but that something happens that always happens on that date.

[Speaker C] Something happens—the offering of the Omer?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For example. Or the transition from Passover to Shavuot, doesn’t matter right now. The Exodus from Egypt, say.

[Speaker C] If what happens there is Passover, then it does seem more like it’s the date.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I said, I talked about it there, that even with Passover it says not to eat matzah before there was an Exodus from Egypt.

[Speaker C] There’s something there—that shows it’s the date and not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, and therefore matzah is time-caused. But counting the Omer is a result of eating matzah. Eating matzah is a result of the date. Eating matzah is a result of the date.

[Speaker C] If it’s a result of the festival, then it is—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, it’s of eating matzah now.

[Speaker C] But why connect it to eating matzah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because that’s the meaning—what happened on Passover as against what happened on Shavuot. It’s not connected to the nature of time at that moment, but to what happened at that moment. So in that sense it is not a positive commandment caused by time. Fine—but all I want to say is that in relation to our issue it’s the same thing. Meaning, there is—meaning, you can formulate the law of gravity so that at a certain moment it doesn’t operate. Okay? Then that’s like a law caused by time, right? A law explicitly dependent on time. And you can formulate the law of gravity so that under certain circumstances it does not operate—where the circumstances always appear at some time, like Grace after Meals. But it is not a function of time. What will appear in the mathematical description of the law of gravity is not the force as a function of time, but the force as a function of circumstances. It’s just that the circumstances are of course a function of time; they appear at a certain time. So in that situation, that’s what I corrected there, that—

[Speaker B] We should have added that to some chapter in the book on gravity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Maimonides’ book should really have been written that way. He should have explained the force of gravity as a function of circumstances. That’s what he claims—that this is a condition that the Holy One, blessed be He, stipulated in creation, but it is embedded within the force of gravity itself that it is conditioned by such-and-such circumstances. Okay? So that’s the—yes.

[Speaker B] I wanted to say that the third possibility seems to me the most… In the first possibility, the existence of those details is by choice, it’s in something prepared, and therefore it’s not correct that it’s just a force that the Holy One, blessed be He, created—it can’t be.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the first possibility there are no forces at all. You’re talking about the mutakallimun—according to the mutakallimun there are no forces.

[Speaker B] In the first possibility the Holy One, blessed be He, already implanted forces in advance, established forces, established—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the second one, what you mean. Yes, never mind. Okay.

[Speaker B] And part of that is simply a function of certain deeds. And since they are a function of deeds that are spiritual, of choice, which are not physics—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they are the result of physical deeds, except that the physical deeds are the result of choice.

[Speaker B] Something here is evaluative, after all, in order to know whether—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The criterion is a criterion of whether those who need the miracle are righteous or not, not only whether the Jewish people are standing there, because the Jewish people—that’s a fact.

[Speaker C] Wait, even the Jewish people—that too is—

[Speaker B] Something here doesn’t seem logical. The first possibility, the one you call that everything is miracle, is superfluous.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean superfluous?

[Speaker B] If the Holy One, blessed be He, could determine forces in advance that would operate over time, then why would He need to intervene every single moment?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why He needs to, I don’t know, but—

[Speaker B] The question is whether He can determine things at every single moment. The third possibility doesn’t seem logical.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m only writing down the third view here. So we have Maimonides, the mutakallimun, and Dafna. Fine, no problem, I’m just laying out the map right now. I understand, but there are considerations in both directions. I don’t think that… I don’t think the problem with the mutakallimun—

[Speaker B] There’s also a fourth possibility.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? That there are no miracles at all? Yes, we talked about that there in the Maharal. Right.

[Speaker C] Okay, so this is the map of “the Jewish people are believers, children of believers,” who investigate with their intellect and thought, as was mentioned here at the beginning. Right. Do they also really have a view, or is that basically not being investigated?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think they don’t—they don’t enter into that question—

[Speaker C] Of the subtleties, that’s what I think, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, in any event, so we saw in the Maharal’s introduction the discussion about miracles. I said that it’s really divided into several points. The first point—look at the first page, in the right-hand column, really the first column, the fifth line from the bottom. “And behold, the first, whose memory shall be no more.” You see? Fifth line from the bottom, at the end of the line. “And behold, the first, whose memory shall be no more”—that is really the first point that comes up in his discussion of miracles. And he says that this is “the philosopher who says that all things came from Him in the intelligible order, in his view, on the side of ancient necessity, which has not ceased and will not cease, and everything proceeds according to its custom and order. And since all things came from Him in an intelligible order on the side of ancient necessity, which has not ceased and will not cease, then there is no change in the world that departs from the intelligible order, and not even the wing of a fly will lengthen, nor anything at all.” Meaning, there are no miracles. That’s the first conception. There are no miracles; everything simply goes according to the rules. Here it’s not completely clear to me whether he really rejects this or not, because he says this is some kind of heresy that he’s only… But he says something—he says “according to his view,” in the second line in the left-hand column, “according to his view, nothing is found that changes its nature, for everything is on the side of necessity. And if so, signs and wonders, which are a change in the nature and custom of the world, would not be possible at all, for everything must proceed according to the necessary order that comes from Him, without addition, subtraction, or any change whatsoever.” Okay? All right. Right, that’s what follows from his position. He means to argue some claim here against that position, I don’t know. It may be that he is simply describing the conclusion that follows from it. “And the essence of his statement is that the world is on the side of necessity, and because it is on the side of necessity it has no beginning, and therefore the world is eternal—this point will be answered in its proper place.” That too sounds as though he has already answered the first part. “And this point we will answer in its proper place.” I don’t know whether the previous sentence—

[Speaker C] He says that something follows from this that contradicts the Torah, so I assume that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Meaning, it can’t be, because according to that miracles could not occur. These are the heretics that I’m just mentioning for that purpose, but according to them it comes out that there were no miracles at all—but that can’t be, because the Torah says there were.

[Speaker E] And in the sentence “And if so, signs and wonders, which are a change in the nature and custom of the world, would not be possible at all,” that seems to me like the summary of it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “For everything must proceed…” Yes, so it does seem as though that really is a critical claim. Of course, those people were not especially shaken by that criticism, because that’s exactly what they say. They say there were no miracles, period. So what is he saying to them? Right, according to your view miracles are impossible. Correct—that’s what we said. Fine, but he says this is apparently plainly outside the pale, so there’s no point discussing it—it’s outside the framework. Meaning, if someone believes in nothing, what do I have to discuss with him? But someone who believes in Torah cannot hold such a conception. After that there is the second point: “And he will further support his words by saying, how can one thing come to be from another thing”—I won’t go over that again. That is the second point: how does blood suddenly become water, how does water suddenly become blood? Nature doesn’t allow that. And then he talks about how natural processes take time and require some kind of preparation. Water has within it some sort of preparation that would enable it to turn into blood, and if it doesn’t have that preparation, then it isn’t possible according to the laws of nature. So how does water become blood in an instant, not in a process that takes some amount of time? So he says this is not a difficulty at all, because fine, true, that is the natural way, but a miracle means something exceptional, something supernatural. Still, it goes against the laws of physics. So what’s the problem? There are miracles; miracles are not subject to the laws of nature. It’s not the same thing, because here by definition spirit is not subject to the laws of physics. The simple conception of someone who hasn’t studied neuroscience or physics and thinks there is free choice—he doesn’t think of it as something supernatural, as something that breaks the laws of physics. Extra-physical, yes. What difference does it make whether it’s supernatural or not—that’s another question. But it isn’t physics.

[Speaker C] Fine, so it goes beyond physics, but again, the simple person thinks of it as something that is—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what the simple person thinks, but let him carry the calculation through to the end and he’ll understand that it does break it.

[Speaker C] What do you mean? And therefore it raises a difficulty, whereas in the case of miracles it doesn’t raise a difficulty because that is already clear from the outset.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that’s psychology. But on the principled level it’s the same thing. What difference does it make? I claim that I have a spirit, and therefore things can happen that are against the laws of physics. That’s what I’m claiming. So what will the neuroscientist say? He’ll say, what do you mean? But that’s against the laws of physics. Fine—what do you want? That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m presenting this not in order to show that the neuroscientist is an idiot—on the contrary, I want to show that this claim that is raised against the Maharal is not such an absurd claim. The point that it goes against the laws of physics really is problematic. Meaning, certainly at least in modern thought, I think it is not so simple to assume that things somehow happen against the laws of physics. Even though, apparently, that is just the definition of a miracle—so what’s the problem? The miracle happened against the laws of physics. What are you trying to tell me—that something there was lifted up without any force acting on it in the waters of the Red Sea? When I translate it into that language it suddenly looks less trivial. Meaning, what? Some molecule of water rose up without any force acting on it at all? Then how did it rise? What do you mean? There are certain rules for how things like that rise. Meaning, this is not such a bizarre and baseless thing as it might seem on first reading. It really is something that requires explanation. Meaning, it’s not—

[Speaker C] But it’s not exactly—if that’s the intention—isn’t that exactly what was said a few sentences ago?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker C] Because the previous section—that according to his view nothing is found changing its nature because everything comes from necessity, and if so that same thing would not be possible—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but there it is because everything emanates from the Holy One, blessed be He, whereas here it is because I know the world and it operates according to the laws of nature. The result is the same result, okay, that’s clear. And now the third point—and that’s where we stopped—is in the left-hand column, five lines from the end of the paragraph. “And likewise what he said,” okay? Do you have it?

[Speaker C] Five—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Five lines from the end of the paragraph in the left-hand column, meaning above the end of the paragraph, before that.

[Speaker C] Earlier the Rabbi explained this differently, this claim—I understood it differently, at least.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The laws of logic and the laws of physics.

[Speaker C] Yes—that the problem here is that they grasp the laws of physics, and he said the water turned into blood, so it’s as if it’s not the same thing, it’s a different thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that’s what lies behind this claim too, maybe. Basically there’s some kind of claim here that says—especially when you’re talking about a miracle, leave free choice aside for a moment, the example of free choice—but with regard to a miracle, what you really want to say is: this can’t be. Meaning, it’s like acting against the laws of logic. After all, this is the nature of water—it’s water. If it behaves differently, then it simply isn’t water, it’s something else. Fine, but that’s… okay. And likewise what he said: since the world was necessarily derived from Him, may He be blessed, if its governance were not according to the order of nature, then this would be a change from the order solely according to His will. And we say that certainly everything is according to His blessed will. And even according to that thinker, who believes in eternity and that everything proceeds from Him through the order of necessity, as if by compulsion—even though certainly that is not so, because belief in eternity is incorrect—still, even according to his own position he is mistaken. Because what he said, that the miracles that come from God, may He be blessed, have no intelligible order at all—that is simply not true. And now he moves on to present his own position. But this is sort of the end of the objections or alternatives that he rejects. What is he actually saying here? Again, the conclusion is always the same conclusion, it’s just that each time he reaches it from a different angle. These are different arguments in favor of the conclusion that no deviation can exist. And what he says here is—let’s say the first argument was that if everything emanates from the Holy One, blessed be He, then changes cannot occur in the Holy One, blessed be He. Okay? The Holy One, blessed be He, does not undergo change, so if so, how can what emanates from Him change? The second argument says, from the perspective of my conception of nature: how can water turn into blood? If it’s water, it can’t turn into blood—that’s the second argument. The third argument is what he writes here, that this contradicts theology. Why? Because if the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that the world would operate according to laws—and we see that He did decide that it would operate according to laws—then deviation from the laws is action against His will. Not in the sense that it emanates from Him in the metaphysical sense, but in the theological sense. Meaning: how can something happen against the will of the Holy One, blessed be He? If the Holy One, blessed be He, had not wanted the world to operate according to fixed laws, He would not have made laws. But if He wants the world to operate according to fixed laws, and that does seem to be what He wants—after all, there are fixed laws—then these deviations are seemingly evidence that something here is being conducted against the will of God. Or alternatively, as I said earlier, perhaps His will is not perfect. Because, in other words, the realization of His will cannot be achieved by means of the laws that He established. The fact is, He gets stuck in certain situations and suddenly has to change things. That’s the other side of the same coin. How can that be? A perfect being ought to have been able to establish such laws that there would be no need to deviate from them in order to realize what He wants—that He would not need to deviate from them in order to realize what He wants. Okay?

[Speaker C] Here’s a good question: why not say, that’s it, it was His will—exactly what she said—

[Speaker B] And it was His will to deviate from them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] His will is that there be laws and that He deviate from them, so that means… okay, that’s an answer that could be possible. But really, if you want laws—listen, there’s some sense to this question. Meaning, if you want conduct according to laws, then do it according to laws. If you want it not according to laws, then why not—what’s the idea of this mishmash? Rather, it seems a bit as though, again, either something here is interfering and it’s not by the power of the Holy One, blessed be He—which would be dualism; it can’t be that something is happening here by another force that is not the Holy One, blessed be He—or alternatively, that it is indeed by the power of the Holy One, blessed be He, but He didn’t manage to create laws that would bring about everything He wants to happen in the world. The fact is, He gets stuck in certain situations and suddenly has to change it. What’s the problem? Why didn’t You arrange the laws in advance?

[Speaker B] The intention was to leave such windows, so that there would be miracles and then a person

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] would recognize that—okay, so that’s already a possible answer maybe, but you’re already assuming something about the nature of miracles. We’ll see. He doesn’t choose that direction, but it’s a possibility that I’ll get to later. Okay? But just as the world—the natural world—has an ordered system, conducted according to its nature, so too miracles also have an order. For miracles exist in the world because the world has connection, attachment, and unity with the separate world, and this too has an ordered structure. For that cleaving exists only in an ordered structure. Yes, these are sentences in that rabbinic style of language: “that cleaving exists only in an ordered structure”—the meaning is that that cleaving exists only in an ordered structure. Right, it doesn’t mean that the cleaving is not in an ordered structure, but rather that the cleaving is nothing other than in an ordered structure, meaning it too is conducted according to order. And because of this, miracles are renewed only at certain times and are not constant, since sometimes there are certain rules governing when there is connection between the separate world and the natural world, and then a miracle occurs, because the separate world has different laws. It isn’t clear whether these are laws of the separate world, or laws of the connection between our world and the separate world. Maybe both have laws, I don’t know. And when God, may He be blessed, gave the manna to Israel, do not say at all that this was not in the proper order of reality, like the last question we saw, and that the order of this world would thereby go outside the reality appropriate for its conduct—thus going against the will of God, which was his last question. Because just as it is fitting for the world to be conducted according to its nature and governance, so too it is fitting for Israel, insofar as they cleave to the separate world, that they should have ordered miracles. In other words, this is part of the new world-order, yes? Besides the laws of nature, there are also laws of miracles, and Israel has laws of connection to the separate realm, and therefore miracles are actually part of the nature of the world, let’s call it that. Thus miracles have an ordered structure from God, may He be blessed, and none of the miracles should be called a change in created things or a change in His will in essence. That, after all, is basically his problem. It is not a change in the will of the Holy One, blessed be He; this too is according to lawfulness. For we say that everything is in ordered structure from God, may He be blessed. Therefore the philosopher erred and did not know this matter at all. For if he had known it, he should have taken to heart, even according to his own belief, that the world is according to the order arranged by God, may He be blessed. Even if you want to say that the world must be conducted according to the laws that the Holy One, blessed be He, arranged in advance, that does not contradict the fact that miracles can occur. They too are part of that same order that the Holy One, blessed be He, arranged in advance. You see, we’re starting to get a bit closer to the direction of Maimonides, right? That there is some order here that the Holy One, blessed be He, arranged in advance, embedded in creation, and miracles are part of that very same order. There is just some difference in terminology here, and I’ll talk about that later. Maimonides calls this part of the law of gravity. And he says, no—the law of gravity is the law of the natural world; besides that, there are laws of the separate world, or of our connection to the separate world—additional laws, the laws of metaphysics, let’s call them.

[Speaker B] To me this actually sounded more like Nachmanides. Huh? To me this actually sounded more like Nachmanides.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I haven’t said anything about Nachmanides yet. We’ll talk about the mutakallimun. Nachmanides we’ll still need to deal with after I lay out the three possibilities here. So it seems to me that what we have here is similar to Maimonides, but not exactly the same thing. On the one hand, he says there are laws fixed in advance, and creation really is conducted according to laws fixed in advance. More than that, it is clear that these laws are not merely regularities, as the mutakallimun say. Why? Because if they were only regularities, then there would be no need to reach the conclusion that there are also laws describing the separate world. The regularity itself includes these deviations too. What’s the problem? The Holy One, blessed be He, decides anew at every moment, and the descriptions are only our descriptions; there is nothing in the world itself that happened. So it is clear from his terminology that he is going in the conceptual world of Maimonides, not of the mutakallimun. That is, the conceptual world that says that behind the laws there are forces. Okay? It’s just that there are two types of these forces. There are natural forces, and there are separate forces, or the connection between the natural and the separate. I once said that there are three severe transgressions: idolatry, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed. And in all three one must be killed rather than transgress. In forbidden sexual relations, it’s a transgression of the body. In idolatry, it’s a transgression of the soul, meaning in one’s conception. And bloodshed is a transgression with a hyphen, meaning between body and soul. Right? Basically I disconnect the soul from the body when I murder a person. So here we have body-hyphen-soul, and each of the three severe transgressions attacks something else in that triad. So here too, basically, it’s the same thing. There are natural laws, there are separate laws, and there are laws of connection between the separate and the natural. And that too is what he says—that among Israel, who are more connected to the separate realm, therefore miracles appear only among them. He already said that the previous time we read. Okay? So he’s talking about… and as for these additional laws, I don’t always understand when he talks about them whether he means laws of the separate realm or laws of the connection with the separate realm. Maybe it doesn’t matter. All of these are laws that are not part of the regular laws of nature. But still, everything is arranged within the order of the Holy One, blessed be He, and everything is in order. Meaning, this is ultimately just the appearance of another system of laws, but it is still a system of laws embedded in advance and operating by its own rules; nothing is being renewed at that moment. In that sense, he answers all the objections he asked earlier—he answers them here. Because the objections saying that no change can occur in the Holy One, blessed be He—indeed, none does. The change that occurs here is also the result of some ancient law from the moment of creation. In that sense he joins the same picture described by Maimonides and the mutakallimun, which says that everything happened back then. Nothing is happening now. Meaning, everything is in the software. Whoever wrote the software determined everything that would happen. The only question is whether there are two software programs, or one software program, or no software at all.

[Speaker E] So if we assume that in fact there used to be more miracles than today—I mean bigger miracles and more frequent ones—and now there is less connection to the separate realm, then would that explain that this too is part of the lawfulness? Meaning that the Holy One, blessed be He, established a lawfulness that over time…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I’ll qualify that the way I qualified earlier. It’s not necessarily a function of time; it can also be a function of circumstances. Since certain things happened, our connection to the separate realm—whatever exactly that means for now—our connection to the separate realm weakened. It’s not certain that it was fixed in advance that as time passes the connection between the separate and the natural grows looser and looser.

[Speaker E] So our actions are what changed it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what changed the lawfulness?

[Speaker E] Maybe yes, exactly. It could be in accordance with the lawfulness.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying it could be a function of circumstances and not of time itself. The same reservation I made earlier. Maybe yes and maybe no; I’m only saying it’s not necessary that it be a function of time.

[Speaker B] If those are the circumstances. And if the circumstances can be explained as the end of prophecy?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but maybe that’s a result. It’s not necessarily dictated in advance. It’s a result of how the world developed—it declined, or it no longer needs that, or however you want to put it.

[Speaker B] Not as a function of time but as a function of circumstances. Yes, of circumstances, right. It’s not that in the past there was… when there was prophecy there were more miracles, when there is no prophecy there aren’t. It’s just that in the past there was prophecy.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like Grace after Meals, it’s the same… So his claim is that this too is basically some order of laws for wonders. Wonders too have a special order from Him, may He be blessed, and this is not a change in what He arranged. In other words, this too is not a change in the will of the Holy One, blessed be He; it is not a change in the Holy One, blessed be He, in His essence—that was his first question. His first question was: surely this would be a change in the essence of the Holy One, blessed be He, because everything emanates from Him. Therefore, this is actually where we see the reason why I said that in the Maharal we will see why Maimonides had to arrive at this seemingly strange conception that basically pushes him in Aristotelian directions, that God abandoned the earth. Because what does it say here, really? What it says here is that there is no providence, no intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, nothing. Look, as far as Jewish thought goes—I mean Maimonides, the Maharal—there is no providence. None. The Holy One, blessed be He, has abandoned the earth. All the slanders they say about Aristotle. Meaning, basically, the Holy One, blessed be He, programmed the whole thing in advance and left. Sent and forgot. Third generation. Okay? What?

[Speaker B] That’s the point, why? Providence stands at a distance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t mean providence in the sense of watching what happens, but of influencing what happens. That’s what I’m talking about. And about that they say: there is none. That’s what they say; there are no tricks here, I’m not adding anything. I’m not talking about looking at what happens—fine, for reward and punishment there is, for other things. But basically there is no providence in the usual sense we are accustomed to, of intervention, of moving things around in the world. Okay? I think I was even more moderate, at the stage when you argued—or some of you argued with me—when I presented some conception that the Holy One, blessed be He, usually does not intervene. Maimonides says no, He does not intervene at all. The Maharal says He does not intervene at all. There is no intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, in the revealed miracles—none at all. Even at the Red Sea He did not intervene. We need to understand what is going on here. Meaning, there is basically some conception here such that if someone said it today, maybe he wouldn’t be included in the prayer quorum.

[Speaker E] According to what you’re saying, then all these people—Maimonides and so on—according to your view also held that prayers don’t really work?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or maybe not. Not exactly.

[Speaker E] Most of the text of prayer is basically requests

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] for the Holy One, blessed be He, to influence the world. We have to distinguish between two things. You can say that prayers work because they are part of the non-natural laws of the Maharal, let’s say. These are not laws of nature. They are part of the laws of the non-natural, yes, of the separate world. Right. And then prayers do work; that’s a different discussion. I’m not speaking right now on the level of whether prayers work or not, but on the question whether the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes here in the world, or whether the whole business is conducted as it is conducted according to laws—with the Maharal only saying, yes, there are also spiritual laws. Fine, but these are still laws that were programmed or embedded in the nature of the world at the moment of its creation. Nothing is happening now. The Holy One, blessed be He, left. Maybe He watches us from afar with binoculars, with a telescope, to see what’s happening—but He left.

[Speaker B] But our time is not… things that happened here all occurred in our time. What does it mean, occurred in our time?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The miracles are not…

[Speaker B] They didn’t happen at every moment, they were determined once. They were determined, yes, but for the Holy One, blessed be He, God’s time is not the time…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s irrelevant to anything. When I say that the Holy One, blessed be He, always exists and always intervenes, I’m speaking in my language, not His. In my language, meaning in my time, at every single moment the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes. What’s the point of talking about His language, which none of us understand? Then let’s be quiet. If you speak in my language, then in my language what comes out here is that the Holy One, blessed be He, has not intervened at all since the moment of creation, even in the most revealed and most wondrous miracles there were. No intervention of the Holy One, blessed be He. Notice: there are some pretty surprising claims here when you uncover them like this. We’re already used to Maimonides being a heretic, but I wouldn’t have expected the Maharal to join that distinguished company.

[Speaker F] That’s not how I was educated.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right. This is a point that it’s very easy to pass over, but understand what is actually written here.

[Speaker B] The accepted view today…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, or in a moment we’ll see whether the mutakallimun… I don’t think they say this.

[Speaker C] The accepted view today, the innocent educational approach of today…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe, I’m not sure; we’ll discuss it further.

[Speaker B] And everything is in deed and it depends on… so what’s the difference between that and…?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said—that’s why I said—in practice there is no difference. In practice there is no difference, because obviously you can say that the laws of the separate realm ensure that someone who prays properly will be answered, and someone who is righteous will have good, and someone who needs the sea split will have the sea split if necessary. Everything happens as it should; there’s no problem in that sense of the righteous person who suffers and the wicked person who prospers. Meaning, in that sense—that what needs to happen according to theological considerations will happen—there’s no problem; that too can be built into this picture. But there is still something here, a certain point… In that sense there really remains no difference between Aristotle and Maimonides and the Maharal. Aristotle says that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world and left. What’s the difference? I’m not talking about whether He looks at us—maybe there there’s a difference. But according to Aristotle are there no prayers? What? No, Aristotle has no prayers. No, that’s the difference. No, according to Maimonides there are prayers? Of course. Well then, why? How can that be? There are laws of nature, after all. What do you mean? You say that the laws of nature… you say Aristotle’s physics was mistaken. Fine, but that’s not such a far-reaching claim; we too, for example, think his physics was mistaken. Okay, that’s not a claim of essentially different theology. So that’s why I said: in practice, as to whether prayers are answered or not answered, there’s no difference. Obviously prayers can be answered even within this picture. That’s not the point. But still the question is: what does it mean that you are standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, when you pray? Think about your experience. You stand before the Holy One, blessed be He, and pray. Nonsense—you are not standing before Him, and He is not interested in what you say. All you are doing is moving gears. You pray, and the gears of the separate world, they…

[Speaker C] It just works indirectly; He cares through the creation of the world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but that conception that you are standing before Him does not exist. He cares about what you do, but there is no dialogue here. There is no such dialogue, where you stand before Him. You are talking to gears. These gears say: when that one speaks, give him money; and when that one speaks, don’t give him, because he’s wicked; and when this one speaks, then send him rain; and when that one speaks, send a flood on him so he’ll choke. Okay? And those are the laws of nature, and you’re only moving gears. A bit like Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin—that’s how he describes prayer, yes? We move spiritual gears and then the flow comes down. And basically this whole dialogical experience of prayer has no foundation whatsoever. There is no dialogue, nothing. You’re talking to robots. It’s like talking to a computer that I programmed in advance, and the computer will give me according to what I ask, it’ll give me; everything is fine. Is that the same as talking to a person? That’s—

[Speaker D] That was the claim made about Leibowitz, what they say—that you might as well speak to the phone book, and that’s his prayer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so he took it even further. But I’m saying, before the question of whether you can do it through the phone book, on the principled level, right?

[Speaker C] Because the claim with the phone book is that it doesn’t receive—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the claim that it doesn’t happen at all, that the result doesn’t occur. That’s why I say: an answer to prayer can fit into this picture too. This picture does not say that there is no answer to prayer, but it does remove the dialogue from the background.

[Speaker C] But if, say, the computer example—for the sake of argument, when I… maybe it’s not dialogue like dialogue between one person and another, but it is like when I, say, read something that someone published in a newspaper. So I’m not meeting him immediately now, but in the end I am encountering his message through the newspaper.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, you encounter his message; all of that is true, but it’s not the same thing. I said, in practice everything is the same, but the basic conception of prayer as standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, as creating contact with Him, as something that is supposed to cause Him to do something—not to cause the gears that He already made long ago to move to the right instead of to the left—there is something problematic here.

[Speaker D] No, but you can also have intention in prayer.

[Speaker B] But the spiritual laws operate according to the deed.

[Speaker D] You also intend in prayer and it still will be answered.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that depends on the laws. No, but the gear says that whoever does not have intention does not receive. No, these are the laws of… that’s what I’m saying, everything can be the same, we’re covered phenomenologically. Meaning, phenomenologically everything is fine, we can arrange it. Only prayer with intention is answered, prayer without intention is not—everything is fine. Everything can be built into this picture. But something essential is still missing. Meaning, the dialogue is not here.

[Speaker F] But does that dialogue really exist in the Torah? That dialogue exists in the Torah? What do you mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Abraham spoke with the Holy One, blessed be He, and influenced Him—really influenced Him. No—then he says, no, what are you talking about? He spoke with some gear that produced sounds, and the Holy One, blessed be He, really, at the creation of the world, created a gear like that so that when Abraham speaks to it, it will produce for him sounds: “Yes, I have known,” and everything is fine, “and I will save Sodom, I won’t save Sodom,” whatever. That’s the picture.

[Speaker E] There is an influence here of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: yes, but an influence embedded in advance in laws determined in advance. That is what is written here. But not in advance—

[Speaker E] I agree

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that it doesn’t fit the plain meaning of the Torah; it also doesn’t fit the plain way we conceive prayer. But this is the conception, and that’s why I’m pointing it out—so that you should notice what we are reading here. So that we know we understand it.

[Speaker F] I don’t know, but I’m saying, apparently this is—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] what is written here. You have to pay attention. Meaning, there is a point here.

[Speaker C] Yes, but it seems to me that assuming we understand this correctly—and I don’t see a reason to assume we don’t—then once there is an interpretation here that the miracles and everything are all fixed in advance by some kind of lawfulness, then his assumption is automatically also his interpretive assumption about the Torah—that this is a dialogue, it’s just—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] an indirect dialogue.

[Speaker C] No, it’s not a dialogue with gears; it’s a dialogue with God that passes along the way through all sorts of gears.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Nothing reaches the Holy One, blessed be He; it remains in the gears, in the system. From the creation of the world, from the creation of the world. Fine, I’m speaking with the Holy One—

[Speaker C] along the path—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] about the way He does it. If that comforts you, then fine. I don’t call such a thing dialogue.

[Speaker B] I mean, okay, well, I’m not exactly sure, I think. Let’s say, by way of analogy, suppose in a city there are nonprofits, and someone comes and says to them, listen, if you submit requests for support to the municipality, you will be answered.

[Speaker E] But—

[Speaker B] it’s not certain. Meaning, it’s not certain there even is a municipality, it’s not certain the municipality will answer, it’s not certain the municipality won’t answer. You don’t… you will send it. Meaning, the expectation that those nonprofits would say, I want to know for sure whether yes or no—in logical terms, part of the point is that we don’t know this for certain. There is no clear knowledge here, knowledge of truth and falsehood, not of faith or that sort of thing. It pulls the ground out—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Pulls the ground out from under what?

[Speaker B] from under this act of miracle, of prayer for a miracle, of request.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why does it pull the ground out? I ask; either it will be answered or it won’t be answered.

[Speaker B] What? No, I’m saying, the substantiality of the thing is that it really exists. Meaning, it needs to be certain at the level of one hundred percent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there is no certainty. Even when it’s dialogue there’s no certainty. What—in the dialogical conception every time I turn to Him I’m answered? There are people who want to say yes, but that’s strange.

[Speaker B] You—

[Speaker D] are answered in some—

[Speaker B] abstract sense.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s what they want to say: I’m answered in some abstract sense.

[Speaker B] Answered in the negative. After all, you want to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, initializes in us—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not initializes. There are more complex rules to His answering.

[Speaker B] Can you know that with certainty?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no, no. We do not know that with certainty. The laws of nature, let’s say theoretically, we know with certainty—though even there not exactly, but let’s say. Here, no, we do not know it with certainty. If you submitted a support request to the municipality, sometimes—

[Speaker C] the municipality supports, sometimes it doesn’t.

[Speaker B] Right, but does it process the requests or not?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you know that it processes them, and that it doesn’t always answer.

[Speaker B] What do you mean? You know with certainty that it processes them? In the State of Israel, not so sure.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, let’s say there are situations where I can know with certainty that it processes them. It comes up in committee, and either it’s approved or it’s not approved.

[Speaker B] But if it comes up, then it definitely comes up. According to the view that there is no intervention and no miracle, then it doesn’t come up. Right. So then it didn’t happen.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I say: what I’m saying has nothing to do with what you’re saying. That’s exactly my point. The question whether there is dialogue here with someone or with gears is one question. The question whether I’m answered with certainty or not answered with certainty is unrelated. I can be in dialogue and not be answered, and I can be—

[Speaker D] with gears and still be answered.

[Speaker B] But it goes up to the committee.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “it goes up to the committee” mean?

[Speaker B] That there definitely is a committee?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, that there is a committee?

[Speaker D] No, he says there is no committee.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, why? There is a committee. There is an automatic committee. Yes, they don’t discuss it now; the committee already discussed it long ago. You just met the criteria now. It already determined the—

[Speaker F] criteria, and it’s already written down.

[Speaker B] But then you don’t know for certain. Why? Why do we activate them? We don’t activate them; it is activated. You know better than I do. Why?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It may be that He activates them all the time. Not that He activated them once; He activates them every moment. That’s what I talked about last time. I said that He gives them the power to operate, okay, but that is not answering. Never mind. So these gears—these gears need electricity. Fine, let’s continue the analogy. They need electricity. Now there is someone who continuously runs the electric company, the turbine, gives them electricity—but that has nothing to do with the decision. The decision is that the gears already determine whether you receive or do not receive. I only supply them with the energy so they can continue to operate. That is still not the dialogue.

[Speaker C] No, but here it’s radical—the gears are already a reality of their own. But here it isn’t that He merely supplies, sustains, moves them; rather their entire existence comes from Him all the time.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter; it’s the same as the electric company. It’s the same thing. Afterwards you went back to full dialogue—they’re not saying that. No, that’s exactly the point. This is part of the created world, these are the laws of the created world; this is not the Holy One, blessed be He, it is something created. Meaning, there is something very surprising here when you read it.

[Speaker E] Why do others think this way?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think—seemingly not. Though again, when you look at earlier thought, at the philosophers, you see that overall this is the direction things go in many cases.

[Speaker G] This somewhat pushes away the front line of the article here, of this… he is referring to miracles that contradict physical laws.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Every miracle contradicts a physical law. What do you mean?

[Speaker G] No? What do you mean? If the Holy One, blessed be He—if I pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, either to give me livelihood or not to give me livelihood—neither this nor that is a miracle.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? Of course it is a miracle. Maybe you just don’t know it. After all, if the world was supposed to… if the world is, say, a physical law—of course it is. There is no answer to prayer that is not a change in a physical law. Because if it was supposed to happen according to physics, then what difference does it make whether you prayed or not?

[Speaker C] Fine, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that’s a modern conception.

[Speaker C] The question is whether even then the position was like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then I’m speaking now in the modern physical conception.

[Speaker C] No, but you’re trying to impose, to connect something said against the background of—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if that’s the case, then we’re all set—we shouldn’t study this at all. So what is there to study? We know it isn’t true.

[Speaker H] Unless the miracle was done by the Holy One, blessed be He, influencing free choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but then again, that’s not my free choice, so it has no meaning whatsoever.

[Speaker H] No, then it’s not intervention, it’s not a change in physics.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, yes, but then it really has no meaning at all anymore. So then not only is there no dialogue with someone, there’s no me either. Basically He acts through me. So we’ve already dropped the other side of the equation in this dialogue too—not only the side of the Holy One, blessed be He, but also ourselves. Because basically what He does is, He both operates us and also operates the gears that answer us. Meaning, now these really are marionettes completely. Yes.

[Speaker B] So bottom line?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? What do you mean, bottom line? The conclusion?

[Speaker B] To really understand what is going on?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what “understand” means—there is no information. You have to get used to it: there is no information. Meaning, there are people who present what they think as though it were information that came down from Sinai.

[Speaker B] There is no information—if so, the fact that there is no information says nothing; that was the whole point of the story.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I said, it is independent of the question I’m discussing. Independent.

[Speaker F] There are people for whom his information is something one-time and sharp.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What information? Information that he invented—if it’s information, it’s information. Fine, information is subjective. Yes. Fine, there are claims, not information. Okay, so in short, this is one of the… the point about “there is no information” and “there is information” is an interesting point, because some of the criticism I received on that article I wrote in Makor Rishon about gentiles was: on what basis do you go against the accepted conception in Jewish thought that says there is some different nature to a Jew and a gentile, and so on? Meaning, aside from the question whether it’s true or not right now, still, there are supposedly many important Jews, the tradition is like this—they present it, of course, as though the whole world thinks this way, as though this is some new invention, but never mind. Yes, but let’s say it really were some broad consensus. Fine—and if it’s a broad consensus, then what? I mean, if it’s a law given to Moses at Sinai, if the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed it to us at Mount Sinai, fine, then I accept it. But here you see—these people are working with their own reasoning, Maimonides, the Maharal, with their conception of reality, with their own reasoning, so why can’t I work with my own reasoning? What’s the difference? Why should I be bound—even if the reasoning of all the medieval authorities, for the sake of argument—and it isn’t true, but let’s say—went in the direction that gentiles have a different nature? They don’t have information about that; it is their conclusion. So if I have a different conclusion, then what? My commitment is not a commitment to people; my commitment is a commitment to what is true. So if he presents me with something—if he brings me something from Sinai, received at Sinai—I believe in the revelation at Sinai. If that is what was given at Sinai, I will accept it. But it wasn’t given. After all, you can see the discussion. How is this discussion conducted? It is a discussion from reasoning; you can see the considerations. It is exposed here. The Maharal writes at length—length in the sense that it is transparent. Meaning, you see the considerations by which he reaches his conclusion, and automatically you can also understand that so long as you do not accept the considerations, then you do not agree with his conclusion. What’s the problem? There is no information here. People treat Jewish thought as some kind of information passed down from Mount Sinai. You cannot dispute such a thing, because that would be denying the faith, being a heretic. Why being a heretic? Because once everyone thought that way? So what if they thought that way? Once everyone also wore robes. So what? Does that mean I have to wear a robe? What does that have to do with anything? Again, I’m not saying this as criticism of them—on the contrary. They really did what one should do: they used their heads and reached conclusions. But that does not mean I too must reach the same conclusions. It’s a very strange conception. And by the way, this is a very great innovation. It is an innovation of the last generation, that these principles of Jewish thought have become part of the Torah given at Sinai. That’s nonsense in tomato juice.

[Speaker C] The Maharal really held that way, didn’t he? Clearly—I mean, not… the Maharal…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the conception that says it’s mandatory—that supposedly it can’t be otherwise, that if you think differently then you’re outside the camp, you’re a heretic, it’s like someone who doesn’t keep the Sabbath.

[Speaker B] Is that—

[Speaker C] what is accepted?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think so. The Maharal has several foundational principles, fine—the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, yes.

[Speaker C] But the details, things beyond that, things beyond—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Netzach Yisrael—

[Speaker C] at the beginning he explains there some dispute about…

[Speaker H] Things in the name of Jewish thought—the Jewish thought of the Chazon Ish or the Jewish thought of Rabbi Kook?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s why I say: this whole principle—after all, in the hesder yeshivot, in the Zionist yeshivot, let’s call them that—this field of study called Jewish thought came in. It wasn’t in the yeshivot until a few decades ago. Even in those yeshivot it wasn’t there until a few decades ago. Now it came in. And the moment it entered the study hall, it suddenly got some kind of aura. You know, it’s like gender studies. Meaning, the moment it enters the university, it becomes a science. Why? Because it’s in the same place. So what, it’s physics—there’s the science of physics and there are gender studies. And now you can spout whatever nonsense you want, it’s science, you publish articles, you become a professor, everything’s fine—and it’s all nonsense. Here too, same thing, you understand? Meaning, there is tradition, we received it from Sinai, of course with interpretation, everything’s fine. But the moment this enters the study hall, it becomes part of the Jewish bookshelf, as is well known. And the Jewish bookshelf is everything. Everything was given at Sinai—its details, its fine points, everything a veteran student is destined to innovate and everything a younger student is destined to innovate, all of it was given at Sinai. So now everything becomes this sort of tradition, where if you don’t say it—if you say otherwise—then you’re a heretic. If you put things like that into your books, okay, fine, put it there. But you inserted it into… no, you inserted it into a kind of study hall where whatever is found there is perceived as tradition from Sinai. So what did you gain? You’re going to bring that into Har Hamor, you understand? Come on, give me a break. Isn’t that Sadducean? Huh? Isn’t that basically a Sadducean outlook? Why? Because they say everything depends on what was fixed and nothing can be changed. The opposite outlook. Yes, I think, I think it has no real basis. You can see these differences, these disputes, from one extreme to the other. You can see the considerations right in front of your eyes. Meaning, I don’t know of a consideration that explains why wool and linen mixtures are forbidden, or why you have to keep the Sabbath. There may be some scriptural rationale, but nobody really reaches a conclusion because of some rationale for the verse. Sabbath observance came down from Sinai; you have to keep the Sabbath. There are details that may be renewed, fine, whatever—but the principle. But concepts of providence—you read the books that deal with that, and you see the considerations that lead people to their conclusions. Everything is transparent. They don’t just say, that’s how it is, period. No, it matters. There is providence, the Holy One, blessed be He, answers—and that’s that. It matters. Maybe more simply? There isn’t one opinion here; there are lots of opinions. So maybe they all can’t be from Sinai? No, there you can say that there is some interpretation of something that was given. In Jewish law too there are multiple opinions. Why isn’t “I am the Lord your God” the basis for all the interpretations? Fine, that is the basis for all the interpretations, but from that point on these are interpretations that depend on the person. So I too will make an interpretation. No, like the Sabbath with all its details. Yes, but still it’s different, okay? It’s a question of how far you lower the resolution. I claim no—that it needs to be like the Sabbath, because the certainty that it has to be like that is the basis here. The certainty is what turns the whole thing into… But we don’t have that level of certainty, what can you do? So it’s necessary, but it isn’t there. Then no. Then no. Fine, you’re pushing at an open door. I said what my opinion is about this field, but really not… My opinion about this field is not that it’s unnecessary, but that people grasp it incorrectly. Meaning, there is room for a person to formulate his own worldview according to his own logic, according to the accumulated knowledge we have, which is much greater than what existed in the past, and that’s all. And we don’t need to be committed to those outlooks that are based on some Aristotelianism and old conceptions that nobody really believes in. The only place where people still study Greek philosophy today—do you know where that is? In the yeshivot. The prohibition against studying Greek wisdom—the prohibition against studying Greek wisdom has become a joke. The only place where Greek wisdom is studied today—who studies Aristotle anymore, for heaven’s sake? Aside from a few pedants in the university, historians, archaeologists, archaeologists of philosophy—people who study the history of philosophy. Fine, he takes some course on Aristotle and then leaves him alone. Fine, and he leaves him alone; all he remembers is the history of philosophy. That’s not philosophy. Who does? Only in the yeshivot. In the yeshivot they study Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, they study Saadia Gaon, and that’s all Aristotle. What is this? What do you mean they study Aristotle there? That’s just Greek wisdom right there, no? So the only people violating the prohibition against studying Greek wisdom are those in the yeshivot. It’s simply ridiculous. Meaning, they keep insisting there is a prohibition against studying Greek wisdom, only Guide for the Perplexed is okay because it underwent conversion, of course—stringently. So that you’re allowed to study. But Kant and German wisdom—that’s forbidden, because no one has converted it yet. So there’s… why? Rabbi Kook also brings a few things from that. Yes, fine, so whatever Rabbi Kook brought is permitted, because it’s Rabbi Kook—they don’t know it’s Kant. A bit of Hegel too. And that’s it, and it doesn’t really enter. But Rabbi… why did the medieval authorities (Rishonim) think that…? What? The medieval authorities also basically thought that this was… Nachmanides, whom the Rabbi mentioned, says something like that—that it’s part of the Torah of Moses. Fine, there are a few basic principles that… Maimonides also established thirteen principles. Fine? But from there to the outlook that anyone who deviates a bit on some detail of how you view a gentile, a woman, I don’t know what—you become a heretic—I’m not saying there is no conceptual infrastructure to the Torah. There is a conceptual infrastructure to the Torah. Part of it is written in the Torah, part of it may be the result of interpretation. But there is interpretation in Jewish law too. I’m not saying everything in Jewish law is fixed and singular and there is no room for opinions. But there is a difference in how these fields are treated. They are simply different fields. We see how the Maharal formulated his worldview—we read the considerations; he has a difficulty and he has answers, and he thinks about what is logical and what isn’t logical, and he reaches a conclusion. But can that not affect basic faith—for example the revelation at Mount Sinai? What do you mean, can it? Of course it can. Why shouldn’t it be able to? So if so, how does he deal with that? Why doesn’t he then go on to the next questions? I don’t understand—what… which next questions? If he is in a situation where he asks all these questions, doesn’t that risk affecting the basic question too? It does risk it, and maybe he asked them too, doesn’t matter, and he answered them as best he could, and the answer he gave… I don’t know what. There is no doubt that when we think, it affects our worldview. That’s obvious. There’s no problem with that. But I’m saying that the fact that the Maharal thought in a certain way doesn’t mean I also have to think in the same way. Right, and that also means I’ll have a different outlook, and my service of God will be different. All true, and that has an effect. It’s not that you can do this because in any case it doesn’t affect anything—that’s not what I meant to say. Obviously it affects things. But fine, what can you do? Not only what can you do—I’m saying ideally, a person should formulate a worldview. That’s the ABC. And how does that fit with this whole notion of Kabbalah? The meaning of the word Kabbalah is that they received it. Kabbalah does indeed look at what arrived as though it came from Sinai. But Maimonides clearly did not know Kabbalah. Yes, Maimonides did not know Kabbalah, and on that there are all kinds of famous apologetics. You know, there’s some letter—I don’t know where they invented it from—that they found that at the end of Maimonides’ life some old man came to him and he retracted: if I had known all this, I wouldn’t have written all that I wrote. There are all kinds of legends like that. They say that about Aristotle too? Could be. About anyone who wasn’t in that direction. Yes. In any case, my daughter—my sister studied at university; among other things she studied criminology. And at the beginning of a great many of the courses there they talked about the question: what is science? Meaning, the definition—what is science? When I finished a degree in physics, nobody talked to us about what science is. Meaning, very often, in a place where they talk too much about something, it means it isn’t there. That’s why you make the effort to talk about it. Okay? When Kabbalah says, “I am Kabbalah,” that’s because there’s a serious concern that it isn’t Kabbalah, that it didn’t come from the source. And fine, I’m saying I don’t belittle it, by the way. These are spiritual intuitions of people that are certainly worth hearing—they enrich, they help, they open interesting angles. But the attempt to present it as Kabbalah in that sense is like the attempt to present criminology as science. It’s about the same thing. But in a minute you’ll deny the Torah too. Heaven forbid. But I’m saying, maybe that too is something. And if I deny it—so what? If we reach the conclusion that there isn’t, then I’ll deny it. But that’s a historical fact. Fine, if we reach the conclusion that it is a historical fact, I won’t deny it. No, Kabbalah—whether it was or wasn’t—is simply a matter of fact. Right, but I don’t know that fact. No, so let’s look in archaeology, not in outlook. No, you’re attacking it through logic. I’m not attacking anything. I’m saying that this is my opinion, and the fact that they call it Kabbalah doesn’t persuade me. On the contrary, if they call it Kabbalah, that only means they too understand there is something shaky here. Huh? Yes. What, Moses didn’t ascend Mount Sinai? Do you believe that? Because this isn’t about archaeology. I’m talking about historical testimony, the testimony of our tradition, because in our tradition Moses is indeed discussed—but Kabbalah is not. From a certain stage onward, it began. There is a big gap in Kabbalah. Some decisive proof? I’m not talking about decisive proof; I’m talking about an overall impression. That’s all. The Yemenites don’t believe in it. Not the Yemenites—there is a group there, a group, not the Yemenites. Yes. No, his grandfather—he himself, that’s already not completely clear. But his grandfather was one of the Dor Daim, as they’re called. In any case, it’s like—you know—one of the most common accusations, if we’re already speaking ill of Har Hamor, one of the most common accusations in Har Hamor is that this deviates from our tradition; we didn’t receive it this way from our rabbis. That’s how they attack all sorts of people who think problematic things. What, they attack others? Yes. Now once I read—it was a memorial book for Rabbi Ra’anan, who was murdered in Hebron—and there, you know, in memorial books from yeshivot, in the yeshiva world, usually there are a few sections. There’s a section with articles by students or rabbis and so on, and there’s a section that’s “treasures of the ancients,” all kinds of manuscripts that haven’t yet been published. It’s an opportunity to bring out some responsum of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, some responsum of the Rashba that they found somewhere, or something like that. Now, the “treasures of the ancients” there were words of Rabbi Charlap. That was the “treasures of the ancients.” Do you understand? Meaning, these are the people who explain to everyone else: you have no tradition, you didn’t study under a rabbi, you didn’t receive it, how can you say such things? A place that is one total invention ex nihilo from beginning to end, with neither root nor branch in our tradition—neither root nor branch. It is all an invention from beginning to end. And this place accuses the entire universe of not following tradition, of not drawing from our rabbis, of not being the great rabbis of the generation, of not having some established tradition. By the way, Brisk is the same. The most common accusation in Brisk against all those who don’t behave according to it or don’t think according to it is that they deviate from tradition. Because we have a tradition from whom? From Rabbi Chaim, at the beginning of the twentieth century. He invented the whole thing. From then on, it’s a tradition that must not be moved. Now, I don’t think there is any group in the Jewish people that talks more about tradition than Brisk and Har Hamor. Hasidim are something else, in a somewhat different sense, I think. They don’t claim that the customs of Slonim came down from Sinai. But Brisk and Har Hamor are convinced that Rabbi Kook’s teachings are simply a translation of the Torah in a white cover. That’s all. Har Hamor, yes. No, Brisk is the translation of Rabbi Chaim. Rabbi Chaim is a translation of Maimonides in a black cover. Okay? That’s it—Moses, Maimonides, Rabbi Chaim. That’s the tradition. There are the Hazon Ish people. No, the Hazon Ish people don’t say that. I know the Hazon Ish people. They don’t say that, absolutely not. It’s really not an outlook that says, wait, you have no tradition. They understand that the Hazon Ish is something different, and they cling to him because they think he was a great man. No problem with that; that’s your right. But here there is some notion—I’m saying this in connection with Kabbalah—there is a kind of notion that when you feel you have no roots, you constantly speak in the name of roots. Because that’s how you fight with yourself, not with the surroundings. Meaning, you convince yourself that you are the most grounded, planted in Mount Sinai, and everyone else is invention—these are all the kinds of things you know, while you yourself are one big invention. And this is a very common phenomenon. But have you already internalized that you… No, inwardly you do know. If it didn’t bother you inwardly, you wouldn’t be talking about it outwardly. We once also talked about Tzemach Atlas, about that book—in connection with the Hazon Ish people—The Battle of the Inclination and Tzemach Atlas by Chaim Grade, where he describes two figures. There is the figure of “the visionary Abraham,” which is the literary name for the Hazon Ish, and Tzemach Atlas, who is this Novardok-style rosh yeshiva, a nineteen- or twenty-year-old guy, I don’t know, who became head of a yeshiva in some village. There were many like that. The Alter of Novardok sent them because he feared the Enlightenment would take the children away, so he sent every nineteen- or twenty-year-old fellow who wasn’t yet fully formed, a young guy—sent him off to some village to be a rosh yeshiva, and he gathered the children and did things to them there, heaven have mercy. In short, we’re talking about a child; he still can’t bear that kind of responsibility. And the beautiful contrast he presents in this book—the Hazon Ish, in connection with the Hazon Ish people, is described as a truly harmonious figure, super impressive. I think it’s one of the strongest ethical works I’ve ever read. Really—you read about the Hazon Ish and you fall in love with him. Such a complete, calm person, willing to hear anything. Was he himself in the Novardok yeshiva? No, he was a boy who had been thrown out—Chaim’ke, that’s him. Meaning, it doesn’t say explicitly that it’s him, but it’s him. And for years he attended the Hazon Ish, and he lived in the Hazon Ish’s house as a child—they threw him out of the yeshiva. So the Hazon Ish was staying there in the village, and he lived in his house. He wasn’t nourished by Sorotzkin posters. Meaning, he lived in his house and knew exactly what happened there, and later he also left the path, so he has no interest in portraying the Hazon Ish as some saint and all that. And his description of the Hazon Ish is simply marvelous. And opposite him stands Tzemach Atlas, this Novardok-style rosh yeshiva. And he burns, he shouts about heresy and sexual immorality and evil inclinations, and he cries out while inwardly he is consumed by all of it. Meaning, he doesn’t know how to deal with the foreign thoughts he has—both heresy and sexual immorality, all the urges, “do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.” And by the way, this is not to condemn him. A person has these things, fine, he needs to deal with them. But the outward zeal very often is a kind of coping with something that is bothering you inside. You aren’t fighting with them; you’re fighting with yourself. And very often that’s how it is. All those who fight in the name of holy ideology—it is very often a fight with yourself. And therefore I say that the fact that Kabbalah is presented, and they are careful to present it all the time as Kabbalah, as something that all came down from Sinai—that is nothing more than the result of the fact that it doesn’t really come from there. Maybe a few initial foundations did come down, fine—but the details, the whole system, and the fact that there are major disputes and radically different approaches from one extreme to the other—because of that I’m not impressed by these labels of Kabbalah or not Kabbalah. If there is a strong inner intuition that this is true. Let’s say even if it began with… I have no problem with that. It could be that it’s all true, by the way; it just didn’t come down from Sinai. Maybe it’s all true—who says it isn’t? But that it came down from Sinai? Who says it came down from Sinai? But there is a very strong intuition about that. An intuition that it came down from Sinai, or an intuition that it is true? If it came down from Sinai—excellent, wonderful—then decide that it came down from Sinai; what’s the problem? But I’m saying that the fact they call it Kabbalah is not supposed to persuade me. On the contrary, the fact they call it Kabbalah means they feel there’s some shaky foundation here, and that’s why they make the effort to call it that. Okay. More or less with the Maharal, I think I’ll still speak about the Maharal, but as for reading him, I think we’ve more or less gotten there. I’ll summarize next time, and then we’ll continue on to the matter of miracles.

The Essence of the Miracle, Lesson 3

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

The dispute between Maimonides and the mutakallimun about nature and miracles

Law, force, and dispute in the philosophy of science

A stipulation in creation, time versus circumstances, and the example of “a positive commandment caused by time”

A map of positions: Maimonides, the mutakallimun, the “standard” view, and a fourth possibility of “there are no miracles”

The Maharal: three difficulties with miracles and his answer of “the order of miracles”

Laws of nature, laws of the separate realm, and laws of connection: comparison to Maimonides and the meaning of “software”

Prayer, dialogue, and providence: gears versus standing before the Holy One, blessed be He

“There is no information”: Jewish thought as reasoning, not a tradition from Sinai

Kabbalah, “kabbalah” as a label, and Greek philosophy in yeshivot

Tradition, institutions, and fighting over tradition as a cover for lack of roots

Full Transcript

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

The dispute between Maimonides and the mutakallimun about nature and miracles

Law, force, and dispute in the philosophy of science

A stipulation in creation, time versus circumstances, and the example of “a positive commandment caused by time”

A map of positions: Maimonides, the mutakallimun, the “standard” view, and a fourth possibility of “there are no miracles”

The Maharal: three difficulties with miracles and his answer of “the order of miracles”

Laws of nature, laws of the separate realm, and laws of connection: comparison to Maimonides and the meaning of “software”

Prayer, dialogue, and providence: gears versus standing before the Holy One, blessed be He

“There is no information”: Jewish thought as reasoning, not a tradition from Sinai

Kabbalah, “kabbalah” as a label, and Greek philosophy in yeshivot

Tradition, institutions, and fighting over tradition as a cover for lack of roots

Full Transcript

שתף

Leave a ReplyCancel reply