Ein Ayah – Berakhot 118

Okay, we’re in Ein Ayah, and I’m sharing section 118. Okay, I’m reading. In the Talmud, after discussing “I will be what I will be” with regard to Moses our teacher and the Holy One, blessed be He, the Talmud then moves, seemingly only associatively, to a discussion of “Answer me, Lord, answer me” said by Elijah at Mount Carmel. And what the Talmud says—I’m reading the top line, which is a quote from the Talmud, I’m marking it—“Why did Elijah say, ‘Answer me, Lord, answer me’ twice? Answer me, that fire should descend from heaven, etc., and answer me, that You should turn their minds away so that they will not say it is an act of sorcery.” Meaning: answer me, do the miracle for me, let fire come down from heaven, and do another miracle for me—turn the minds of the people of Israel away so they won’t give some other interpretation to this miracle and attribute it to sorcery or things like that, and then fail to draw the required lesson. That’s the Talmud.

So let’s read Rabbi Kook’s words for a moment, and afterward I’ll talk about them. “The purpose of true faith is perfection in deeds and character traits that come in its wake.” Meaning, the goal of faith is perfection in deeds and in traits that come in its wake—meaning, by means of it. “And behold, the illumination of the intellect is very lofty, as taught in Duties of the Heart, and it comes even without miracles, but rather through pure recognition of fear of God and the desire for good character traits, and this is the ultimate elevation of souls.” Meaning, the ultimate perfection of faith—I’ll comment on all this later, for now I’m just explaining—the ultimate perfection of faith is perfection of deeds and traits. That itself, in my eyes, is a major novelty; I’m not sure I agree with it. And afterward he says that the illumination of the intellect—that is, reaching that faith and perfection through the intellect—is extremely elevated, the most elevated thing possible. And it also comes without miracles; meaning, it can be achieved without miracles. You use the intellect, “but rather through pure recognition of fear of God and the desire for good traits.” Meaning, intellectual recognition is enough; miracles aren’t needed for that—to arrive at fear of God, good traits, and so on. “And this is the ultimate elevation of souls.” That is the highest level, if one arrives there through intellect and doesn’t need miracles but rather the natural order. The intellect, essentially, rests on nature.

“Therefore divine providence always saw fit”—I’m reading here—“that miracles should occur in their proper time in a manner that would prepare souls to volunteer for the straight path through intellectual illumination.” Divine providence chooses, or prefers, that miracles operate in a way that doesn’t interfere with our arriving at recognition through the intellectual path, which, as stated, is the recommended and more elevated path, rather than following miracles. What does that mean? So now he spells it out.

“Therefore, wherever it would suffice better that the miracle not be in an utterly wondrous manner, but rather in a manner that in some respect is close to nature, so that on its own there would still remain room for the complainer to say that it was done through secret arts and sorcery—secret arts and sorcery, illusions are not secret, secret arts and sorcery and the like—so that intellectual recognition as well should be brought into action to help one choose the good and proper path, which is the path of the Lord, all of whose ways are pleasantness and all of whose paths are peace.” Meaning, he says that even when the Holy One, blessed be He, performs a miracle, He prefers to do it in such a way that it will not be an absolute miracle, a clear and unequivocal miracle, but דווקא a miracle that can also be understood in other ways, like what he writes here, that “the complainer,” the one who doesn’t accept these conceptions, can say that the miracle happened through secret arts and sorcery. I didn’t mute the microphones here, so I’ll do that now.

So when that path is chosen, the risk is that people may not attribute it to a miracle and may not draw the necessary conclusions from it, but instead say that it was some kind of sorcery or illusions and so on. So there is gain and there is loss. Meaning, basically one could say there are three ways to act, or to bring people to faith. One is through a completely natural path—I’ll elaborate later, but for now just a schematic. One is through a completely natural path, one through a completely miraculous path, and one through a kind of miracle that is not unequivocal, that can also be interpreted in other ways—naturalistic, magical, or all kinds of things of that sort.

The advantage of the natural path is that it is the most elevated; here we work with the intellect and don’t need all kinds of magic—“its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace.” The natural and intellectual path is basically a path of pleasantness and peace, and that is really how it should have been done. The Holy One, blessed be He, made nature in the world so that the world would operate naturally. He does not want to have to resort to things beyond nature. Resorting to miracle is powerful, it is strong, but its level is lower. Meaning, you reach your conclusions not through rational consideration but through some impact of the miracle—and again, I’ll elaborate more later.

There is an intermediate path, which has disadvantages and advantages from both sides: some kind of miracle, but not an unequivocal one. So it leaves you the rational option; it doesn’t force on you what the miracle forces on you, but on the other hand it may also be that you won’t draw any conclusions at all, because you’ll attribute it to sorcery and illusions and won’t attribute it at all to the hand of the Holy One, blessed be He. So that is the middle path. But in any case, it is preferable to a total miracle, in the sense that if it works, it is preferable to a total miracle. The risk is that it may not work.

So I continue reading: “Only when necessary, only when necessary, were miracles performed in such a way that there was no room whatsoever to discuss them.” Right? When does the Holy One, blessed be He, perform such an absolute miracle that it cannot be attributed to anything else? Only when there is no choice, meaning no other way will help. “Therefore Elijah, peace be upon him, used this miracle”—the miracle of fire descending from heaven—“even though there was room to say that it was an act of sorcery.” Meaning, from Rabbi Kook’s perspective, this miracle is of the intermediate type: yes, a miracle, but one that can also be interpreted as sorcery and not as the work of the Holy One, blessed be He, “so that Israel too would use the illumination of their intellect to abandon the paths of darkness of idolatry and return to the service of the Lord through inner recognition, which is true perfection and stands forever,” yes, and not through some miracle that imposes itself upon you. So they perform a kind of half-miracle, one that still allows us—or does not block for us—the intellectual and natural path.

“But a return that takes place only because of a sign that cannot be rejected on any grounds—the heart is not joined in its purity; only because of the dry accounting of the compelling intellect, such a thing has no permanence.” Meaning, if there is a return—that is, a repentance of the people of Israel—that happens only because of some miracle that overwhelms them, some unequivocal miracle that cannot be rejected on any grounds, cannot be interpreted in any other way, then that is something cold and alienated, because it is some rational consideration that imposes itself on the heart, and the heart is not a participant in the matter. The heart, in its purity, is not part of it. It is some kind of dry accounting of the intellect. Fine, there is a miracle here, there is someone in charge here—no choice, we have to serve Him. It is not something in which the heart participates, and therefore “such a thing has no permanence.” That is Rabbi Kook’s claim. This sentence is problematic, and I’ll come back to it later as well.

“Therefore he asked that the Lord help them graciously incline their hearts to the love of God and to understand His truth, and only to uproot them from the bad habit of idolatry would the miracle of fire from heaven be effective.” Because it won’t work in a totally natural way, since they already have the habit of idolatry; they already think within that framework. Some shock beyond nature is needed to move them. But he did not want a total shock, because he still wanted to leave them the option of a natural and rational return.

“And consequently, since they would choose the good through inner recognition, evil thoughts would not arise in their minds at all, to think mistakenly and say that they are acts of sorcery, for a thing that accords with goodness and uprightness and the inner sense of justice and straightness is accepted in the heart of every discerning person who seeks knowledge.” So that is basically the move. Again, in broad terms, totally schematically, there are three ways to awaken people and bring them to repentance: the natural path, which works with the intellect; the miraculous path, which somehow imposes itself on us in some way—we’ll talk about that in a moment; and the middle path, which is some kind of miracle but one that can be interpreted in other ways, so it does not block off the path of intellect, though it is not entirely natural. It gives some sort of jolt to those who are used to thinking in terms of idolatry or nature or whatever, and attributing things to other forces, not to the Holy One, blessed be He. And Elijah decided to use this middle path.

And that is the meaning of the Talmud’s statement that Elijah asked the Holy One, blessed be He, “Answer me” twice. “Answer me, that fire should descend from heaven,” because he asked the Holy One, blessed be He, to perform a miracle, “and answer me, that You should turn their minds away so that they will not say it is an act of sorcery”—I’m reading the top line in the Talmud—“so that they will not say it is an act of sorcery,” because a miracle of this kind is a miracle that can also be interpreted in terms of sorcery and illusions, and then it won’t do the job. So he asked the Holy One, blessed be He, for one more thing besides performing the miracle: also to make sure that it would work. If he had asked for an absolute miracle, one “answer me” would have been enough. He would just have had to ask for a total miracle, and then it couldn’t have been attributed to sorcery, and the second request would not have been needed. The second request is there because Elijah chose the middle path here.

All right, now I want to begin with a few comments that are not yet directly connected to his main point. I’ll start perhaps with the first sentence, which I said contains a major novelty and I’m not sure I agree with it. I’m marking it: “The purpose of true faith is perfection in deeds and character traits that come in its wake.” Meaning, Rabbi Kook is basically making a claim here that in my eyes is not at all simple—in other words, very novel—that the purpose of faith is really the correction of deeds and traits. Faith has no value in itself; at least that is what seems to come out of this sentence. It is a means through which one can arrive at refined traits or good deeds, proper behavior, and healthy traits of soul. But faith in itself seems from here to be only an instrument, not a goal. And that is surprising to me, because faith has a double value in my eyes, beyond perhaps being an instrument for good deeds and traits—and even that I’m not one hundred percent sure actually works.

So one could say I have a threefold problem with this statement of Rabbi Kook. First, I’m not sure faith really is an instrument that leads to good deeds and good traits. I don’t know if it works better than other ways of reaching good deeds and good traits. That is one discussion. Second, even if that were true, why does he see in that the whole value of faith? There are at least two more good things in faith that are valuable in themselves, not just instrumentally. One value is first of all truth. Meaning, if there is a God and He created the world and gave the Torah, then first of all recognizing that is something valuable in itself, no less than any other truth. Is engaging in non-applied sciences not something valuable? Is engaging in matters that have only intellectual value not something that has value? I don’t understand why not.

There is certainly value there. Maimonides, in the final chapter of Guide of the Perplexed—a very famous chapter—says the opposite: deeds are some kind of infrastructure that repairs society so that we can then arrive at the true purpose. The true purpose is to know the Holy One, blessed be He, and to engage in intellectual truths, and that is the supreme value from his perspective. So that too seems to me to be a problematic aspect of this sentence.

And a third thing: beyond the fact that it is true that there is a God and there is value in knowing the truth, this specific truth—beyond whatever value any other truth has—I think the straightforward understanding is that it has value in itself. Meaning, a relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He, is something valuable, or recognition of the Holy One, blessed be He, is something valuable beyond the fact that it is true and beyond the fact that it leads to perfection in deeds and traits, even if we accept that it does that optimally. A relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He, is a value in itself. That is to say, it is not just—let’s call it perhaps—a spiritual value, not in the sense of spiritualism of course, but in the literal sense of spirituality, not in the way the term is usually used today. I don’t mean here to get involved in all sorts of obviously “spiritual” matters, but the very consciousness of standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, is something valuable. To be someone who is constantly accompanied by the fact that he stands before the Holy One, blessed be He—that is not only a means for him to behave correctly, with good traits and good deeds, but is itself, it seems to me at least, something of value.

So therefore, as I said, these three aspects all seem problematic to me in Rabbi Kook’s statement. And I would even add another problematic dimension to the sentence, a fourth one. And again, here it is only implied; it is not one hundred percent certain. But simply speaking it seems—and I know this also from other places in Rabbi Kook—that what he means is moral perfection. Now, even if I accept that faith leads to some kind of perfection in traits and behavior or deeds, I think what is being discussed here is not only moral perfection but also religious perfection.

That is, there are parts of the system of commandments that on the face of it do not seem to have any moral purpose. There are parts of the system of commandments that, in my view, even have an anti-moral character. I still think that does not mean there is no justification to command them and do them, because it may be that they come to achieve religious values, and sometimes that justifies harm to moral values in certain cases. But certainly there are commandments in Jewish law that are non-moral—leave aside the anti-moral ones—but non-moral: commandments that do not touch morality at all. Eating milk fats, sacrifices, various dietary prohibitions—trying to find moral reasons for them, people have invented such reasons, but to me it sounds very, very unconvincing. Many commandments, very many commandments, are commandments that are unrelated to the moral plane.

Now even if I accept that faith comes to correct my deeds and traits—or my deeds—I’m not sure it comes to correct only deeds in their moral sense. It comes to correct deeds, to make the deeds the right deeds, both in the moral sense and in the religious sense. And here I say again: he doesn’t write this explicitly. One could have said that “perfection in deeds and traits” means both the religious and the moral. But I also see elsewhere in Rabbi Kook that he has many statements of this sort where it really seems somehow that the ultimate purpose of the Torah is in the end just morality. That is, he identifies Jewish law with morality. I completely disagree with him on that. So that is a fourth aspect that seems problematic to me in this opening sentence. But again, these are only comments because we read that sentence; it is not the main point of the discussion.

So let’s now enter the focus of what he is saying. Rabbi Kook is basically comparing two poles here. Before I get to the middle path of non-total miracles, let’s first speak about the two extremes. On one side there is the absolute miracle, and on the other side there is natural, rational, logical conduct. These are the thesis and antithesis he sets up here.

Now, on one hand he says the natural and intellectual matter comes without miracles. What does that mean? You look at nature, apparently, and arrive at the conclusion that there is someone or something standing behind it, as the midrashim and Maimonides at the beginning of the laws of idolatry describe regarding Abraham our father. Right? How did Abraham discover his Creator? He looked, he saw, he asked himself who turns the sphere. Right? He saw the planets; no matter, they thought in terms of spheres, but that is not materially important for us. He saw the laws of nature; he saw that the whole business was conducted in a certain order. He said to himself: if there is a universe that is run in such a systematic, consistent, orderly way, apparently there is some kind of owner, there is someone who governs the palace—in the language of the palace, this big building or this great complex. Therefore, by looking at nature one can reach the Holy One, blessed be He. That is how Abraham did it. When Maimonides speaks about the path to His love and fear, Maimonides writes in the laws of the foundations of the Torah: “Look at His deeds and His wondrous creations.” Meaning, look at the world and understand from it who stands behind it. So that is the natural path, and Rabbi Kook sees it as the more perfect path—both more perfect and more stable.

On the other hand, miracles are probably stronger in some sense. Meaning, when an open miracle is done for you, you are shaken. You basically say: okay, someone has appeared before my eyes; I cannot remain indifferent to this. What is the drawback of the miracle? Probably two drawbacks. One drawback is that—it’s what he writes here, let me show you—he writes, “such a thing has no permanence.” Meaning, it is not stable. It works very powerfully, but for the short term. The second drawback is probably that it is not intellect, on one hand. In a moment we’ll see a sentence where he writes the opposite, but it is the opposite of the natural path that works with the intellect, or so it seems at least from the beginning of the paragraph. So first, there is an advantage to intellect; and second, intellect also gives some kind of stability. The miracle is some kind of thing that imposes itself on you, does not pass through rational consideration, but it also works only for the short term.

And in this connection, a few comments. There is the well-known statement of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who used to say that miracles never brought anyone to repentance. Meaning, the people of Israel, right after the revelation at Sinai, with all the pyrotechnics that appeared there—the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself, gives the Torah, clouds and fire and columns of smoke and all that—immediately afterward they make the golden calf. Meaning, miracles are really the expression of what Rabbi Kook writes here: miracles are something very strong, but apparently only for the short term. Meaning, they are not something that endures; they are not something internalized by a person. And that is the drawback Rabbi Kook is talking about here.

Maybe one could even say in this context something similar, though not exactly the same: the well-known saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. Right? Soldiers under heavy bombardment who are very, very afraid for their lives, worried for their lives—something common, I think, is all kinds of vows and oaths to repent and begin observing commandments if only the Holy One, blessed be He, saves them. And then the Holy One, blessed be He, saves them, and they say, okay, I’m fine, thanks, and go back to their regular lives. Meaning, there are no atheists in foxholes—but after the battle ends, very few of them, I think, continue living the insights or the vows and oaths that arose in their hearts during the battle. Even if they were saved. Meaning, if they weren’t saved then it’s irrelevant of course, but we’re talking about cases where they were saved. It is as if the miracle happened to them, or as if the Holy One, blessed be He, helped them. Okay, that lasted until the end of the battle. “The day of battle ended and evening came,” as it says, and that was it. In the end they go back to their lives. So one can indeed see, even though at first glance it may seem a bit surprising, that a miracle, despite its intensity, is something that lasts only for the short term. It is not really something that can build a worldview or a way of life for the long term, something stable.

Beyond that, though, I want to argue that there is something even stronger in seeing the Holy One, blessed be He, through nature than in seeing Him through miracle. When a miracle happens, basically—or think of a world in which everything were conducted in a totally chaotic way. The seemingly required interpretation would be that there is no guiding hand here, no owner; basically, random business. When the world is conducted in a very orderly way, everything going according to clear laws and rules, it seems to me that this is the best evidence for the existence of an owner. The owner is evident in that he has control over what happens. Control over what happens means that everything goes according to the laws he established. Meaning, there are fixed laws according to which the business runs.

When miracles happen, that would seem to point to the owner’s control, because He acts against nature. But given what I said earlier—that nature itself is a much stronger indication of the existence of an owner—notice that now the significance of miracle is suddenly reversed. Because if the Holy One, blessed be He, has to perform a miracle, that means that nature apparently is not doing the job as He wants. Someone as absolute as He is, as omnipotent as He is—you would expect Him to succeed in doing everything within the laws of nature. After all, He created the laws of nature; they run the world, so they are supposed to do all the work. If He has to freeze them for a moment, intervene, and perform a miracle, that basically means His control is not so absolute. In a certain sense, it somewhat undermines His omnipotence. That is a not-so-simple theological question, and I’m not going into it right now—how could that really be, why the Holy One, blessed be He, could not do everything through fixed laws. But before the answers and explanations, from the thing itself, from this perspective, everything is reversed.

And miracle is also intellectually weaker, because it basically says that control over nature is not complete. You need to intervene from time to time and manage things. When you build some machine and every so often you have to intervene and fix it so it will work properly, that means something in you is not perfect. You are not such a great omnipotent being as you appear. And therefore the need for miracles is perhaps a necessary compromise when the people of Israel do not draw conclusions—or when people in general, not necessarily Israel—do not draw conclusions from the conduct of nature, which seems very common nowadays. People think that if there is a natural explanation, that probably makes the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, unnecessary—which in my view is complete nonsense. On the contrary: once there are natural explanations, that only strengthens the proof for the existence of a guiding hand behind that nature.

But the fact is that many people, including very smart people, arrive at that conclusion. Therefore sometimes the Holy One, blessed be He, needs to perform a miracle. He has to perform a miracle because, as a matter of fact, people are not awakened by the natural path. So that is what Rabbi Kook writes: wherever possible, the Holy One, blessed be He, acts through the natural path, but where that does not work, where it does not accomplish the task, then He intervenes anyway. Meaning, He freezes nature and performs some miracle—an absolute miracle, let us say—and for the moment we are still speaking only about the two extreme poles. So He performs an absolute miracle to shake people up, but in the end it is definitely something that can work only for the short term. Meaning, if in the end they do not add to that also logic and intellect and understanding, that really the miracle did not do the job—nature did. The miracle only reveals that behind nature there is a divine hand, and that is the important conclusion, not the control that the miracle displays. Because the miracle displays lack of control. The miracle is intended to awaken us, but in the end it sharpens for us that really we should look at the ordinary, natural course—without the miracle, before and after the miracle—and see that in fact there the assumption, or the conclusion, of a guiding hand is far more required. And then it can also be stable. But the miracle in and of itself, if I rely only on it, is something very, very short-term.

As an aside, I’ll just say—yes, I’ve written a lot about this on my website and also in the books, in the trilogy, and it sparked a lot of arguments. So here I’ll say it only in a few sentences, to complete the picture, or this part of the picture. I think this may be one of the reasons that the Holy One, blessed be He, gradually, as history advances and generations pass, slowly withdraws from the world. He withdraws from the world in many senses. Open miracles we no longer see. Miracles—what we are talking about here—unambiguous miracles that do not admit other interpretations. Prophecy also no longer exists, right? There are hidden miracles, claims that there are—that the Holy One, blessed be He, is somehow involved in all kinds of hidden places we don’t notice. I very much doubt that; I don’t know it, I don’t see any indication of such places. But in any case, whether one accepts my radical view or not, it is clear that there is a process here of some kind of divine withdrawal from the world. And the question is why.

The standard conception is that the withdrawal of the Holy One, blessed be He, from the world is some kind of punishment. Right? “I will surely hide My face from you”—it is presented in the Torah as a response to sins. Once we worship idols, the sanction will be that the Holy One, blessed be He, will hide His face. We will operate through the natural order and the Holy One, blessed be He, will not appear; He will not be involved here. But in my claim, these things belong to ancient times. In ancient times, when the Holy One, blessed be He, accompanied us more openly—prophets, open miracles, and so on—there, if people practiced idolatry, the sanction was concealment of the divine face. But as history moves on, there is another process of concealment of the divine face, one that is not a sanction but the opposite.

It is a process that says, okay friends, you were little children. I held your hand, I walked with you, I accompanied you, I fixed everything that needed fixing and did things for you, arranged things for you, straightened the road for you. I helped you walk the way parents do for little children. As the children grow up, the parents gradually let them act on their own—and also fall on their own and take hits on their own. There is no choice; that is part of our maturation and learning process. And when the children are really grown, the parents are no longer involved. Even though they always know better than the children what should be done, of course—at least now that I am on this side of the divide—but they no longer intervene. They no longer intervene, because the child has matured and now is supposed to function independently.

I think by analogy to this process, one can also see the conduct of the Holy One, blessed be He, with us, with the world, with us. In the beginning we were children; He held our hand, accompanied us openly, was present in our lives, helped us all the time. Every time something went wrong He intervened, everything was fine. Then slowly He begins to withdraw—not as punishment for our sins, but the opposite: you have matured, now I can slowly withdraw. You already have tools; you have scientific tools, you have tools to manage in the world, you’ve already learned from the experience of the generations, you already know how this world works, you are no longer children, you are adults. So now manage on your own. I created a world that, all in all, can function with nature even without miracles, because as I said earlier, miracle is a deficiency in the omnipotence of the Holy One, blessed be He. His omnipotence is really expressed in the fact that the natural world operates as He wants even without His intervention.

When we are mature enough to grasp that—that message that only Abraham our father grasped, standing alone on one side of the river while the whole world stood on the other side—it was so hard then to grasp that nature points to the Holy One, blessed be He, and not miracles. Then miracles had to be done, and concealment of the divine face could serve as punishment if needed, and so on. Little by little the world matures, the world understands more, knows better how to draw philosophical and scientific conclusions of different kinds, and the Holy One, blessed be He, withdraws. The Holy One, blessed be He, withdraws because now we are supposed to conduct ourselves in a rational, natural way with our intellect, with the tools we have developed. Of course all these abilities we received from the Holy One, blessed be He. But as the verse says, “For He is the One who gives you the power to achieve.” And you say, “My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth”—that is not true, because “He is the One who gives you the power to achieve.” It is not that He does it; you do it. It’s just that the power to do it was given to you by Him. He created you, He created the world, He created the laws of nature, He made the human being as he is. Now with our powers, which we received from Him, we are supposed to function here.

And therefore, in that sense, I really do think that the natural, rational path that does not require miracles is a more elevated path, a more mature path. It is not a punishment—quite the opposite. It is because we are more mature—mature is what I mean—and wiser, and know better how to draw conclusions, and do not need pyrotechnics and miracles and all kinds of things like that in order to understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, really stands behind things. So He withdraws. Ah, but our eyes see that this does not always work. There are many people, including very smart people as I said earlier, who are unwilling to accept the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, because for them nature is a sufficient alternative. Again, in my opinion that is a serious philosophical mistake, but the fact is that many intelligent people think otherwise. True—that is the risk you take with people who are grown and already have the tools; they can also sometimes fail. Just as—I don’t remember anymore who said it—there are stupid things that can be said only by an intellectual, stupidities so great that only intellectuals can say them. Meaning, there are cases where wisdom becomes a stumbling block to its owner. You are too smart, and you can come up with excuses for everything. But the Holy One, blessed be He, says: if you are already that smart, draw your conclusions for better or worse. I no longer need to be there and put on pyrotechnic shows for you so that you’ll acknowledge My existence.

I think this historical process is also an expression of the superiority Rabbi Kook is talking about here—the superiority of the natural and intellectual path over the miraculous path, which is strong and powerful but short-term, as I said before. Okay, now he says that there is a middle path between these two poles. Up to now I’ve spoken about the two poles; there is also a middle path.

Maybe before the middle path, let’s see—there is another sentence here. I said it was problematic, this sentence: “But a return that takes place only because of a sign that cannot be rejected on any grounds—the heart is not joined in its purity; only because of the dry accounting of the compelling intellect, such a thing has no permanence.” Meaning, it is a dry accounting of intellect, the heart does not participate, and therefore it has no permanence. Now this is strange, because until now I described—and this is also how I read Rabbi Kook’s words—the opposite: that the miraculous path works on the heart, creates some powerful emotional reaction but short-term, and the natural intellectual path is an intellectual path that works through the mind and is long-term.

Now here Rabbi Kook suddenly turns the whole thing upside down. He basically says that a total miracle, an absolute miracle that does not admit interpretation—the heart does not participate in its purity; it is only the dry accounting of a compelling intellect. Your intellect works and says: wait a second, there is a miracle here, so there is someone who did this miracle. There is someone who controls the laws of nature and performs miracles, so apparently there is a God. And so the intellect forces the heart, which basically does not tend to believe in God, through rational consideration. And this is done through the absolute miracle. But earlier he said the opposite—that the intellect works with nature, and the absolute miracle is a short-term emotional reaction. So how does this sentence fit what he said above?

I am not entirely sure I know how to answer that. I’ll suggest something. I’m not sure that this is his intention; there is some contradiction here that is not clear to me. It seems to me that what Rabbi Kook is speaking about here is not emotion versus intellect, but dry intellect—“the compelling intellect,” “the dry accounting of the compelling intellect”—versus “the heart in its purity.” “The heart in its purity” is not emotions. “The heart in its purity” is another wing of the intellect. And let’s see this in the last sentence of the paragraph. Look: “For a thing that accords with goodness and uprightness and the inner feeling of justice and straightness is accepted in the heart of every discerning person who seeks knowledge.” Here he describes the intellectual dimension but uses the language of feeling, of heart, and he speaks here about knowledge and straightness, about the thing that is straight and right. What is this mixture?

It seems to me this sentence perhaps gives a key, if I’m right—I’m not one hundred percent sure, and there is some contradiction here that needs explanation. Perhaps here lies the key. Rabbi Kook is not contrasting emotion and intellect. The miracle works with the intellect, because you see—it is true that the miracle shows less than nature about the existence of God, but assuming you regard nature as an alternative, as I said earlier—once I have a natural explanation I don’t need God. Right? Neo-Darwinism. I have a natural explanation for how the world was formed, so apparently there is no God. So that whole humbug—neo-Darwinism and the like. So here a miracle has to occur. What does the miracle do? The miracle is not just a shock to the heart. It does pass through the head. Because what does it mean? It gives a kind of slap, a jolt, to the assumption that says: wait a second, everything is nature and there is nothing beyond nature. Here we see that there is something with the power to freeze nature, to change it, and to act within it.

From a broad perspective that understands that behind nature—or that nature is a stronger proof of the existence of God—the miracle lowers the effect, because the miracle says He is not so perfect; the fact is, with nature He cannot do the job. But from the perspective of those who see nature as an alternative, who say: if there is nature then there is no God, because we have laws of nature and they explain everything, no need for God—from their perspective, the miracle is a blow aimed at the intellect. Because your intellect has to admit that nature is probably not everything, because the fact is that here there is something that acted against the laws of nature, froze them, blocked them, acted against them. And this is what he calls “compelling intellect.” This is pure logic. That logic tells you that really you cannot—this is a frontal logical contradiction to what you are saying. If everything is nature, explain this miracle to me. I force you to retreat from the conception that everything is nature.

But that is the weakness of this conception. Because pure logic is a weak tool. I’ll tell you why it is a weak tool. In fact it is not really a tool at all—it is an illusion, the tool of logic—because logic ultimately deals mainly with inference. If the premises are true, then the conclusion is also true. Right? But how do you know whether the premises are true, and therefore also whether the conclusion is true? You don’t know—from logic. Right? Logic deals only with if-then. If all human beings are mortal, Socrates is a human being, conclusion: Socrates is mortal. So the logical part here is neither the premises nor the conclusion, but the dependence of the conclusion on the premises, the derivation of the conclusion from the premises. That is the logical part, and that is the necessary part. But you can accept the premises and you can reject them, and accordingly you can accept the conclusion and you can reject it. Or in other words: with logic you can explain anything. Logic is the most flexible tool imaginable. Give me the conclusion you want to reach, and I’ll build for you a set of premises from which, by a valid logical argument, I’ll get the conclusion you want.

There is a foundational story in the yeshiva ethos. The yeshivot of recent generations, whose mode of thought and learning is largely attributed to Rabbi Chaim of Brisk—Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, grandfather of Rabbi Soloveitchik in the United States—he was the rabbi of the city of Brisk, and as such was supposed to answer halakhic questions. Now there was an incident—I don’t know how often this happened—but there was such an incident where he was uncertain about a halakhic question and sent a question to Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan, who was considered the greatest halakhic decisor in that place and time. And he said to him: answer me only yes or no. Because the moment you explain and bring me proofs, for every proof of yours I will bring you three refutations. Because Rabbi Chaim was so sharp on the logical level, it was clear to him that Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan’s proofs would not hold water; he had already thought of those proofs. Precisely for that reason he was uncertain, because he had proofs in this direction and proofs in that direction. So how did he know what the law was? That he asked Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan. And I think this is symbolic, by the way—even in other questions aside from the story of Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan. He would send matters to the city judge, Rabbi Simcha Zelig. He usually would not answer himself. He was a great analyst, not so much a decisor. But that is not accidental. There is something essential here, and anyone familiar with yeshiva learning knows this very well: the analytic capacity, which keeps intensifying through the generations, comes at the expense of the ability to decide—to determine what is correct, what is true, what the Jewish law should be.

Because once I see a dispute between Maimonides and Rashba, I can place each one of them on glorious logical foundations. I present the premises, I have arguments and conclusions and brilliant analytic analysis, and I establish Maimonides perfectly and Rashba perfectly, and no Talmudic passage is difficult for either one, I have resolved everything perfectly. Fine—but now who is right? If everyone is so perfect, then who is right? It is no accident that logic is perceived as a destructive tool; it is not a constructive tool. That is, logic cannot tell you who is right. It can find contradictions. It can knock down an argument in which you found a contradiction. It cannot reveal to you who is right. Because who is right depends on the question of which premises you adopt. Logic will tell you: if these are your premises, these will be your conclusions. But which premises are the correct ones, and therefore which is the correct conclusion—that logic cannot tell you.

Who says that? That is what what the Sages call “understanding of the heart.” I prefer to call it intuition, because “heart” for us is perceived as something connected to emotion. And emotion and intuition are two different things; they have no connection with one another. Emotion, what I call emotion, is an emotional matter—love, fear, depression, whatever, emotional matters. Intuition is an intellectual tool. When I love someone, there is no right or wrong there. I love him; someone else does not love him. This is not a question of truth or falsehood. Therefore emotions are some expression of inner feelings; they are not claims about the world.

When I speak about intuition, intuition is a tool for making claims about the world. Someone asks me how many planets there are, how many stars there are, and I say I don’t know, seems to me ten to the thirtieth. My estimate. I have an intuition like that. It could be I’m wrong, could be I’m right, but that intuition serves me here to make a claim about the world, not to describe my internal feelings. Or I have a strong intuition that the solution to some mathematical equation is seven. Okay, someone can do the calculation and discover in the end whether it is seven—in which case I was right—or six, in which case I was wrong. No one can discover whether I was right or wrong in loving someone. There is no error and no correctness there. I love him. Someone else hates him, someone else is afraid of him. There is no truth and no falsehood there. So emotion and intuition are two things with no connection between them. People often use the word emotion also to describe intuition, but in my opinion that is a terribly confusing term. You can argue about semantics; that is not so interesting. But for our purposes I prefer different concepts so we won’t get confused. So I am now speaking about intuition, not emotion.

And what Rabbi Kook is basically claiming is that as long as the premises are not clear to you through your intuition, through your common sense, through your grasp of them, and you understand that this is what is right, you cannot really hold a worldview consistently. Because with logic I can overturn it for you in seconds. All postmodernism rests on extreme logicism. The multiplicity of narratives—everyone with his own narrative—basically comes from a place that sees logic as everything. That seems a bit opposite to how postmodernism is usually understood, but it’s not. Anyone who knows that world and that genre knows that what is there—in the places where it is nonsense, it is just nonsense. But in those places where there is here and there some logical consistency that actually makes claims, they are empty logical claims. If the premise is such, then the conclusion is such; and if the premise is such, then the conclusion is such. Which premise is correct and which is incorrect? Everyone with his own narrative. Accordingly, which conclusion is correct and which is incorrect? Again, everyone with his own narrative. So with logic you cannot get anywhere. With logic you will know nothing about what is right and what is not right.

You received some contradiction through logical tools—I’m returning to Rabbi Kook. Right? The Holy One, blessed be He, performed a miracle, giving you a contradiction within your logical tools. Now you can no longer say that there is only nature in the world. Okay, but what remains from that? I can explain it in a thousand ways. After I was shaken—“The Lord, He is God!”—I cried out loudly and with tremendous enthusiasm, “The Lord, He is God!” After two minutes I calmed down. I calmed down and said, well, maybe there is another law of nature that I hadn’t thought of. Who says there isn’t? What, do I know everything? There are many phenomena that, when first discovered, looked like miracles, and after they were explained suddenly became part of nature. Electromagnetism, which was not previously known—I’m sure electromagnetic phenomena looked like miracles to people. Not sure—I know they looked like miracles to people. Once we understand them, no problem, they are part of nature. Everything is fine.

What seems to you like a miracle—someone smarter, or someone who lives after you and builds on your science, will come and find the appropriate scientific law, and your miracle becomes nature. Therefore, basically, you get a cold intellectual jolt in the dry accounting, but it does not hold up. In the end, faith has to be grasped in some tools that he calls “understanding of the heart.” But “understanding of the heart” is not emotion, not feeling. It is what is called common sense or intuition. You need to understand that behind nature sits some force that created it, arranged it, planned it and created it, and perhaps also operates it. And that feeling or conception is really a more stable conception. It is a conception that works through nature, a more stable conception, and that is what Rabbi Kook means above, I think—if I’m right—when he says “the illumination of the intellect is very lofty.” And opposed to it stands—not emotion—but what stands opposed to it is “the dry accounting of the compelling intellect,” which is also intellect, but a different kind of intellect. “Compelling intellect” is the intellect that forces something on you. You got a jolt—okay, I retreat from the previous theory. After I calm down, I’ll find a new theory. With logic I cannot really bring someone to clear conclusions or to very innovative conclusions from his perspective. So I think that if I’m right, that is the contrast Rabbi Kook is drawing here.

And indeed, now I come to—up to now I have really described only the two poles. Now what remains is the main thing: the middle. Elijah, after all, asked for something between the absolute miracle and nature and ordinary intellect. It is a miracle such that one can also explain it through sorcery and illusions, and not only attribute it to the Holy One, blessed be He. And then it does not block the path of what I called earlier the illumination of the intellect, or the straight and natural path. But it does also use some of the power of miracle, to give people a jolt. And here it really becomes a question that is not so simple for me personally especially. Because I am a well-known refuser on the website. Every time people come to me with new miracles, and every time I offer natural explanations for these miracles and refuse to see the hand of God in anything. Meaning, I think that for all the things people bring me I can offer natural explanations. Maybe it is the hand of God—I don’t know—but I have no necessary indication that it is so. There is also a natural explanation for everything under the sun, including the return to Zion and victories in such and such wars, including rescues you may want and the missiles that fell and all the miracle books that come out after every event, springing up everywhere. To me, it is all nonsense.

Therefore I find this middle path he offers here very difficult. Because this middle path basically says: I will do some kind of miracle for you, but there will also be a way to explain it naturally. So what do you want? People use their heads and conclude that it is not a miracle but nature. What is this? Why does that partially do the job but not fully? Basically it does not do the job at all. Do you want us to get confused? Do they want to confuse us? Meaning, do they want to tell us: listen—and this is Elijah’s second request, after all, that is what he says. He asked: “Answer me, that fire should descend from heaven,” and “answer me, that You should turn their minds away so that they will not say it is an act of sorcery.” Meaning: confuse them so that they won’t use their intellect and realize there are other interpretations of this, but rather treat it as a total miracle. And if so, then what did he gain at all? Then how is this different from a total miracle that simply gives me the blow? So he performs a double miracle that gives me the blow with a weaker miracle. But still, what is happening here is not to harness understanding of the heart to compelling intellect. You are simply multiplying it for me. What is the gain in this middle path? It is a bit strange.

The only way I can explain it to myself is that really the alternative here is not a natural explanation but an explanation in terms of sorcery and illusions—secret arts and sorcery, right, that is what he writes here. If there is a natural explanatory alternative, then in my eyes it is not a miracle; then it is simply not a miracle, or at least there is no indication that it is a miracle. But here the alternative is different. There is some assumption here that only the Holy One, blessed be He, can do an absolute miracle. But miracles of this lesser sort—even apprentice magicians at Hogwarts can do those; magicians can do that with their secret arts and sorcery. So one can attribute it also to magicians and their illusions. Here I can perhaps understand that this really is some kind of evil inclination, because these are evasive explanations. In the end it is indeed a miracle—you do not have a natural explanation. So what do you want to say? No, it’s not the Holy One, blessed be He, it’s His cousin, who also isn’t called the Holy One, blessed be He. Right? It’s like Shakespeare: the one who wrote Macbeth wasn’t Shakespeare, it was his cousin, who also wasn’t named Shakespeare. That really does look like evasion.

And then the claim is that once you get the jolt—because in the end it is some sort of miracle—maybe you will awaken, use your head, and understand that if it is not nature then it is the Holy One, blessed be He, and not sorcerers and illusions and so on. Though again I say, this is not such a simple explanation, because it also probably depends on disputes among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) regarding how to relate to all these sorceries and illusions. Some of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), with Maimonides foremost among them, see all these things as sleight of hand. Meaning, there are not really powers on the “other side,” in the side that is not that of the Holy One, blessed be He. There are no powers there. “There is none besides Him”; only He possesses powers. All the rest is illusion. And all those prohibitions against divination and soothsaying and “you shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God” and consulting the dead and things like that—according to Maimonides all of that is simply a prohibition against being foolish. Don’t be stupid. Meaning, the whole business does not work; don’t let people fool you.

But there are medieval authorities (Rishonim) who, to varying degrees—Nachmanides, even Sefer HaChinukh in certain places, although he generally follows Maimonides, he deviates from him a bit in some of these places—say no, there are also powers of that sort. They exist in the world. Other powers, not the powers of the Holy One, blessed be He, but other powers that are somehow non-natural, some kind of transcendent forces, above nature, but not of the Holy One, blessed be He, rather of the other side. How do you identify them? The devil knows, if he exists. I don’t know, in any case. But such claims exist.

Now if you accept that, then we are back again to the same issue—then really, who says they didn’t do it? If I assume Maimonides’ premise that there are no other powers, then it is either nature or the Holy One, blessed be He. Then I can understand that even if they do some medium-level miracle for me—some incomplete miracle—I am still required not to attribute it to all sorts of fantasies about demons and sorcery and things of that sort, but to understand that it is really the Holy One, blessed be He, and to use my head. And then to understand that He also stands behind nature. The miracle is supposed to awaken me to the fact that He also stands behind nature. But if I understand that there is such an explanatory option, that behind these medium miracles stand other powers, not the powers of the Holy One, blessed be He, then I don’t really understand how this whole business is supposed to work. Then people are justified in attributing it to other powers as well. Why should they awaken from this to the conclusion that we are dealing here with the Holy One, blessed be He? Therefore on this point I do not fully understand his suggestion—unless, again, one assumes Maimonides, and then perhaps there is some psychological jolt here that says: you see a miracle here, you have an inclination to explain it through sorcery and the like, but use your head. In the end you have to use your head. And that is what he says—that a miracle of this kind does not block the path to the natural and intellectual route of returning to the Holy One, blessed be He.

One final comment I want to make here. I’m going to share another source—Maimonides, wait, no—Maimonides in the laws of repentance speaks here in chapter 6, law 3: “It is possible that a person may commit a great sin or many sins until justice before the Judge of Truth requires that the punishment for this sinner, for these sins he committed willingly and knowingly, is that repentance be prevented from him and he not be allowed the possibility to return from his wickedness, so that he die and be lost in the sin he has committed.” Right? Sometimes the Holy One, blessed be He, hardens the heart of a sinner so that he will commit the sin and be unable to refrain from it, and then be punished. A passage close to this both theologically and logically, in my opinion—but never mind, let’s leave that. The examples Maimonides gives here are, therefore—I’m skipping a bit—“Therefore it is written in the Torah, ‘And I will strengthen Pharaoh’s heart,’ because he sinned on his own at first and harmed Israel, the strangers in his land,” etc. Justice therefore required that repentance be withheld from him until retribution was taken from him. “Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, strengthened his heart.” Fine, etc. That is one example.

Now look at another example: he brings Sihon, another example. And the third example, surprisingly, is: “And similarly Israel in the days of Elijah. Because they multiplied their transgressions, repentance was withheld from those many transgressors, as it is said: ‘And You have turned their hearts backward’—that is, You prevented repentance from them.” Meaning, there is here the example of Pharaoh, the hardening of the heart, and the example of Israel in the days of Elijah, who were sunk in idolatry, and the Holy One, blessed be He, hardened their hearts because they multiplied transgressions. He hardened their hearts, and then it comes out that even if miracles are done for them, they will not be able to recognize that the Holy One, blessed be He, stands behind them.

And this may perhaps explain what I asked earlier: why Elijah asks the Holy One, blessed be He, for the second “answer me.” “Answer me, that You turn their hearts away so that they will not go in the direction of explanations through sorcery and illusions.” Because maybe what the Holy One, blessed be He, is supposed to do is not to make the calculation and the inference in place of the people—otherwise what have we achieved? If the Holy One, blessed be He, brings them back to repentance, that has no value. We expect that they draw the conclusion. What Elijah asks the Holy One, blessed be He, is: remove the hardening of the heart, leave them their faculty of judgment so that they will draw the conclusion. Remove the hardening of the heart. Because there was some hardening of the heart there that they had been sentenced to because of the idolatry, as with Pharaoh. And Elijah had to ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to remove the barriers, but the actual judgment itself, that the people do on their own. Meaning, they are supposed to conclude that the Holy One, blessed be He, stands behind the miracles that were done here, and then return to Him.

And this—and here I’ll finish—may explain the connection made in the Talmud. Because in the Talmud itself, in the previous section, it dealt with “I will be what I will be” regarding Pharaoh, where the Holy One, blessed be He, hardened his heart. And immediately after that it moves to “answer me, answer me,” which again are Elijah’s two requests to the Holy One, blessed be He. And both of them really touch on the fact that there is some hardening of the heart here that needs to be neutralized. And the hardening of the heart—perhaps that is the link between this section in the Talmud and the preceding sections. All right, I’ll stop here. I’ll stop the share and unmute your microphones. I suggest that if there are first of all questions that relate to the lesson itself, we start with those, and afterward we can talk about other matters. Wait, let me just release the microphones. Actually, you know what, no—I’ll leave them muted but just give you control. I’ll give you control. Whoever wants to speak can unmute himself and speak, and the rest, if possible, please keep things muted so we can hear. Okay. So who starts?

I—Rabbi, can you hear me?

Yes, yes.

What the Rabbi said, that he read in Rabbi Kook, that faith is given for the repair of the soul and the repair of traits—that is basically Maimonides in Guide of the Perplexed. He writes that the whole Torah—he doesn’t say faith, he says the giving of the Torah—was given for the repair of the soul and the repair of the body.

But then he says something even more radical. He says: “The final perfection involves neither deeds nor traits, but only opinions.”

Exactly, that’s what we explained in the final chapter of the Guide.

But then what does the word “opinions” mean there, really?

“Opinions” means intellectual truths, that’s the final chapter of the Guide. But then he says that this perfection involves neither traits nor deeds. So basically what does that mean—does it mean you don’t need deeds anymore either?

Not that you don’t need them, but rather that this perfection deals with intellectual perfection, not with perfection in what to do, and not even with good traits, but with intellectual perfection.

Could it be that he is hinting here that a person who reached that perfection—say, the example of Moses our teacher—would no longer need either deeds or traits? Is that what he means?

That I would not infer from him, but maybe—I don’t know. I’m not a great expert in Maimonides’ thought, so I don’t know. Maybe.

Now, what the Rabbi said. The Rabbi said there are things in religion that are basically anti-moral, non-moral or anti-moral. Let’s just take, for example, the issue of the prohibition—or rather the law—of the beautiful captive woman in war. Does the Rabbi see that as something immoral, for example?

That’s not a simple question. I have a short article—number 15 on my site—you can take a look there. It’s not a simple question, because the Sages already tell us that the Torah spoke against the evil inclination. So here it’s clear that this is not some value in itself, it’s not a commandment; it’s a permission where there is no choice. So no, that’s not the kind of thing I meant.

But then what non-moral commandment is there in the Torah? I just don’t—I don’t understand how it could fit that the Holy One, blessed be He, according to your approach—wiping out Amalek.

He would tell you: Amalek opposes my divine plan. What’s the problem?

But the babies of Amalek and his cattle don’t seem to me to oppose the plan. And the fact is there were converts from them.

He could tell you: I, as the creator of souls, am telling you that this baby will grow up to be Hitler. What’s the problem?

I’m telling you, that’s a generation of sheep. As someone who knows a bit of history, I know that’s not true. Because there were descendants of Amalek who converted, and some of their descendants taught Torah in Bnei Brak.

But the Torah says we always go after the majority. The majority decides the matter, doesn’t it?

To follow the majority in such a situation seems to me a very problematic moral thing. Even if you justify that as the purpose of—there are some other examples.

There are other examples. That’s just what came to mind now.

All right, fine. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yes. Anyone else?

Wait a second, okay.

This is Shmuel.

Yes, yes.

I wanted to ask regarding what the Rabbi said, that the natural path strengthens faith in the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, more, whereas miracles do not—they are weaker. But there is something in miracles that there isn’t in faith through nature: it shows that all this order and what you see still doesn’t show you that the whole thing was intended to advance some specific moral plan in the world. It only shows there is someone who arranged it, but maybe He just set it up and forgot about it. But when the laws of nature fold so that the people of Israel cross the Red Sea, or when there is some sort of thing for some righteous person, say, who decrees and the Holy One, blessed be He, fulfills, or something of that sort, then there is here another proof beyond the simple proof of whether there is a God or not—namely, whether this God is also tied to some moral purpose.

I don’t agree. I don’t agree, because again, it depends on what consciousness you are in. I spoke of two kinds of consciousness. There is the more mature consciousness, which sees the Holy One, blessed be He, behind the system of laws. Now from the perspective of that consciousness, of course if the Holy One, blessed be He, created this system of laws and runs the world by it, then apparently it comes to achieve something; otherwise why was it established? So that itself also bears the witness you want to get from the miracle. It shows that the world has some purpose toward which the Holy One, blessed be He, directs it. That too is there.

Someone who is in the lower, more childish consciousness, let’s call it that, who sees nature as an alternative to the Holy One, blessed be He, needs that lesson through miracles. Because one must show him, no, this business does not function blindly; there is something here that is directed toward some purpose. But it seems to me that for mature consciousness this is not needed.

Because you’re saying that since there is another decree here, you’re saying that’s also a necessary decree. There’s one decree: there is order, there is someone who arranged it. And I understand from the Rabbi that he claims that not only is there someone who arranged it, but there is someone who arranged it for a certain purpose.

Correct. Because if something is done, then apparently it is for some purpose.

Okay, thank you very much.

Anyone else?

Yes. Wait a second, okay. My name is Haggai. So the question I wanted to ask is, apropos of Leibowitz: do you see the contrast between lawfulness that shows there is a master of the palace and what Leibowitz maybe called idolatry?

I actually don’t know that distinction in Leibowitz. I don’t see why miracles would be not for their own sake while nature would be for their own sake. One can serve for its own sake through miracles, and one can serve not for its own sake through nature. Meaning, if nature versus miracles are two ways to reach the conclusion that there is a God, that He created the world, that He runs it, or something like that—whether afterward I serve Him in order to receive reward or some benefit from Him or not, that can appear both here and there.

What I do know from Leibowitz is someone who serves in order to get returns from the Holy One, blessed be He—returns from the Holy One, blessed be He. Meaning, he prays in order to be healed or to earn a living. But that does not generally belong to miracles and non-miracles; it belongs specifically to the returns he is supposed to receive as a result of his service. One who serves for those returns serves not for its own sake. So it’s not a dichotomy that is cognitive, but rather something completely emotional, psychological.

No, no, no, it is completely cognitive. It is cognitive, but on another plane. There is one cognitive plane that asks how I arrive at the Holy One, blessed be He—through miracles or through nature. Those are two ways of arriving at the Holy One, blessed be He; that has nothing to do with serving for its own sake or not for its own sake. I called it the mature path and the childish path, but it has nothing to do with serving for its own sake or not for its own sake.

The distinction he was speaking about, if I understood correctly what you meant, is the question of why I perform commandments, not how I reach the conclusion that there is a God. Do I do it because I will benefit from it, no matter in what respect, or do I do it because that is what should be done? Now that too is a distinction—it is a distinction within the cognitive world. Meaning, these are two different cognitive conceptions: serving for its own sake and not for its own sake.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay, so we’ll conclude. Thank you all. We’re recording—this is also on my site, and the recording will also go up in the WhatsApp group. Goodbye. Have a happy Passover, a happy second festival day, and happy Passover as well.

Happy holiday, good night.