Ethics, Faith, and Halakha – Lesson 24 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so we basically have two more lectures, today and next Wednesday. In today’s lecture I want to talk a bit about the problem of evil in the world, which of course is connected to morality and faith, to morality and Jewish law, but really to morality and faith. And in the next lecture I hope we’ll get into one specific moral issue as an example. Fine, so I’ll start maybe with the problem of evil. The basic starting point for this discussion is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good. That’s the assumption. Where does that come from? Because He told us so. You can bring all sorts of philosophical arguments for it, that the perfect being must also be good and things like that, but “צדיק השם בכל דרכיו וחסיד בכל מעשיו” (“The Lord is righteous in all His ways and gracious in all His deeds”), and other verses of that sort. The very fact that He expects moral behavior from us—yes, there are plenty of indications that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good. Now that’s one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that the world is not exactly wonderful, okay? Meaning, it’s hard to say that the world is good in the sense that there is no evil in it, no suffering in it, no—right? That’s not the case. In the end, Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel agree that it would have been preferable for a person not to have been created than to have been created. So the assumption is somehow that this is not exactly a great joy, as they say, to be created. Fine, there’s room to debate that philosophically. But nobody disputes that there is suffering here, that there is evil in the world. What’s the total balance? What’s the bottom line? That can be discussed. But it’s clear that there is suffering here, there is evil here. And the question is how to reconcile that with the goodness of the Holy One, blessed be He. If the Holy One, blessed be He, is good and He—what?

[Speaker B] They’ll tell you there is no evil?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No evil? Fine, good luck to them. What? No, I’ll still get to that—whether it’s at the hands of human beings or not at the hands of human beings, and also not at the hands of human beings. A tsunami isn’t caused by human beings. In any case, the claim is that there is some tension here between these two principles. The Holy One, blessed be He, is good; the world is not, or at least not completely. And the question is how these things fit together. But it’s not only that. There’s also a question about the ongoing conduct of the world. Meaning, okay, God created the world—but now the question is what happens in the ordinary flow of events. You could say that He created the world and everything was perfect, but human beings ruin it. So—fine, then let Him intervene and prevent that. So here the claim is no longer about the world He created, but about His ongoing conduct in the world. With natural evil—I’ll divide this later into natural evil and human evil—natural evil really is more connected to the question of how the world was created. Because once you set the laws, all natural matters follow from that. So there you don’t need ongoing intervention. But with respect to human actions, human evil, yes, you would also need ongoing intervention. Now of course, all this assumes that the Holy One, blessed be He, not only created the world but is also involved in it. That involvement can also be presented on two levels. One level—and perhaps the most extreme conception—is that the Holy One, blessed be He, actually causes everything that happens here. No blade of grass grows below unless an angel above tells it, “Grow.” Okay? Meaning nothing in this world happens unless the Holy One, blessed be He, decided it should happen and caused it to happen. Okay? That’s one conception. That’s the common conception in the religious world, I mean. That’s the common conception in the religious world. If I ask this question directly, many people will hedge, but if you watch how people actually behave in ordinary life, speaking casually, they operate on that assumption. Someone was killed. Someone close to him, I don’t know, in a car accident. People come to comfort him, right? They say, “We do not know the thoughts of the Holy One, blessed be He, or His decisions; we are too small.” What are they assuming? That there are heavenly calculations?

[Speaker C] That the Holy—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —One, blessed be He, did it, first of all. The only question now is why He did it. After all, that’s not okay—He’s moral. Why would He do such a thing? Fine, there are calculations we don’t understand. So there is already an assumption here, before saying there are calculations, that He did it. Because if He didn’t do it, then the question never arises. But that turns it into—

[Speaker D] Something easier. What? What you said is more comforting.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the question is whether you’re saying that only tactically, in order to comfort—then you’re basically lying just to comfort, fine. I think most people, most people want to believe this—I don’t know what that means. Wanting to believe it means it’s true? The fact that I don’t live that way may just be because I’m not on a high enough spiritual level, I don’t experience the Holy One, blessed be He, enough within me, my level isn’t what it ought to be. But my ideal, what I really think is true—yes, of course. True righteous people live with the sense that everything that happens here comes from the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He. So the fact that someone says this just to comfort doesn’t really matter, because even if you don’t live it, you still believe it. Believe it in the theoretical, principled sense. You don’t live that way, you haven’t internalized it, right? It’s “וידעת היום והשבות אל לבבך” (“You shall know today and take it to heart”)—so you know, but you haven’t taken it to heart. But still, in your conception, that is probably the right thing. Otherwise all this comfort-talk would be seen as nonsense. And it wouldn’t even be comforting. The assumption is that it falls on receptive ears. Meaning that the mourner also understands that the Holy One, blessed be He, did it. And they tell him, well, what can you do, none of us can understand His considerations. So that’s why I say that many times all these interpretations we offer—and even when we refrain from offering an interpretation, notice this is the important point—even when we refrain from interpretation, the assumption is that the Holy One, blessed be He, did it. We just can’t understand. Yes, a certain kind of person also immediately offers the interpretation: why did He do it? Because the man desecrated the Sabbath. Or we lost the war because, I don’t know, yeshiva students are being drafted. All those people are the certified commentators of God. And I’m saying: even someone who is not a certified commentator of God usually shares their basic conception. That’s what I want to emphasize. Meaning, he says to them, “How do you know His considerations?” Right? But what does he agree with them about? That it was the Holy One, blessed be He, who did it. He’s just saying, who says your interpretation is correct? Can we know His considerations? But both sides agree here that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the one who did it, right? That’s agreed by both of them. But that’s what the Sages say, no? I don’t know, that’s people’s conception. I don’t think it’s correct. But I’m saying—that is people’s conception. Why do you think it isn’t…? I don’t know, there are rabbinic sources for these things. Yes, like the grass that has an angel standing over it saying, “Grow.”

[Speaker C] The fact that the Jewish people were outside the Land of Israel—for sure we saw that there was involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where did you see that? I didn’t have the privilege of seeing it.

[Speaker C] All the miracles when we were in the wilderness, for example.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re not talking about exile, you’re talking about the Hebrew Bible, in the Bible.

[Speaker C] Okay. So there we saw that there was providence from the Holy One, blessed be He.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but that doesn’t mean He did everything. It means there are things He did. And I’m talking about something much more extreme—that everything that happens here is Him. This thing just beeped now—that’s the Holy One, blessed be He. He arranged the whole thing.

[Speaker C] And there’s also a difference in the religious world between whether He intervenes in important things and—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there is a difference. I’m saying again, you caught me on the first conception I presented. In a moment there’ll be others. The first conception says everything comes from Him. Okay? That’s the first conception. The second conception, more moderate, says: there are many things He does—or there are some things He does—and there are also many things He doesn’t. It isn’t true that everything comes from Him. Now notice that there is an article—I think a good one—by Rabbi Shmuel Ariel, where he talks about this in “Gulot” of Yeshivat Otniel. There’s an article there by Rabbi Shmuel Ariel on this issue. He brings rabbinic sources that basically support this conception—that there are things that are in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He, and things that are not. What does “not in His hands” mean? He can control everything, but He chose not to, not to control certain parts of what happens. You have to notice that according to this conception—which sounds very reasonable, and maybe many people, if you ask them, will tell you yes, yes, we hold by this conception, not the first one, the one that says everything that happens comes from Him—but people don’t actually conduct themselves that way. In practice, they assume that everything that happens is from Him. That’s why all the comforting language I mentioned earlier, and everything else—in other words, the theoretical belief, though they don’t really experience the world that way, they see that as their weakness. Meaning, the full religious conception, that everything is in His hands, and all our efforts are just “human effort,” a commandment of effort, yes? There is an obligation on us to make an effort, but in practice nothing depends on our effort. Meaning the Holy One, blessed be He, will do everything anyway. If you prayed well in the morning, your fever will go down. So why do you need to take acetaminophen? A commandment of effort. It doesn’t lower the fever. What lowers the fever is the Holy One, blessed be He. And there’s a commandment of effort, some kind of scriptural decree, these completely absurd constructions. But everybody recites them. Meaning they are completely absurd, but everyone talks this silly language. I want—

[Speaker B] Let me just say something for a second. If He chooses not to intervene in something, and He knows that that thing will happen, then it’s like our previous discussion about free choice—but it’s not exactly the same because here there is no deterministic body—so what difference does it make? If He chose not to intervene, and He knows what will happen, then He chose that this thing should happen. Not chose that it should happen; He chose—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He chose not to intervene. I didn’t understand—what are you getting at? But He knows what will happen. So what if He knows?

[Speaker B] Then that thing will definitely happen. Who says it will happen? It will either happen or not happen, depending on what I choose. I don’t understand. You’re claiming that God’s non-choice is the choice? Yes. He decided not to intervene, I agree.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said I claimed God has no choice?

[Speaker C] I didn’t understand.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand—what does providence mean? If not providence is providence? These are just words. Practically speaking, there are things He leaves to the world’s own operation. If you call that providence, call it providence. If you call it non-providence, call it non-providence.

[Speaker C] What do I care? It’s words.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end, I’m being clear about what I’m saying and what I’m talking about. What you call it is a semantic question. What difference does it make? I’ll just say this clearly: what’s the difference between the first approach and the second? The first says that everything that happens comes from Him. He causes everything that happens. The second says no, a great deal of what happens He does not cause. He could have intervened; He decided not to intervene. So what? I caused it. I could have caused it, I could have not caused it. He decided to allow me freedom of action. In the end, I decided, I did it, not Him. Okay? That’s the second possibility. The third possibility is to say that He’s not involved at all in anything. The world goes on in its ordinary way. Okay?

[Speaker C] But that third approach only stands in places where we’re already outside the biblical period, if I understand correctly?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Unless you want to say that the miracles in the Bible are allegorical descriptions or something. But yes. Now these three approaches are very important for our discussion. Because if the Holy One, blessed be He, does everything, then the question really is very hard, right? Because He Himself causes things that look evil. And if we assume, according to the first conception, that He causes everything, then He also causes the evil things. According to the second conception, the question is less difficult, because there are things He causes and things He doesn’t. The things He does not cause—if they are evil—they did not come from Him. There is still the question of why He did not intervene to prevent it, but He did not do it.

[Speaker E] I wanted to ask whether within the second conception there are things that no human being can do—natural disasters, for example?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Who said He does that?

[Speaker E] Nature does it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to the second approach, maybe that’s not Him—it happened because of temperature changes, I don’t know, barometric pressure, whatever. The third approach says He is not involved, not involved at all, so there’s nothing to talk about. Now even according to the second approach, since we do not know when the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved and when He is not, you cannot start discussing the question of why so-and-so died in a car accident. You can’t say, who knows the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He. Who told you this was the Holy One, blessed be He? After all, even you agree that there are things not from Him, right? So you have no way of knowing when it is Him and when it isn’t Him. So really, anyone who speaks this language holds the first view, not the second and not the third. Okay? That’s why I say that on the one hand, almost nobody really lives this, really internalizes this conception at the immediate experiential level. People do understand that the world usually behaves according to its own course. But if you ask them consciously what their conception is—not just what sits somewhere inside them—then yes, of course, righteous people are supposed to believe that everything is in His hands, human effort is vanity, and all those kinds of slogans. So when we deal with the problem of evil, we first have to define from which of these three assumptions, these three conceptions I described, we are starting. According to the first conception, the question is hardest, right? But even according to the second and third conceptions, there is still the question: why doesn’t He intervene? Okay? True, He didn’t do it, but He could have prevented it—so maybe it’s a sin of omission rather than commission, but it still doesn’t fit with the goodness of the Holy One, blessed be He. Now, maybe let me say in advance, even though this isn’t the place to expand on it—I think the third conception is the correct one. The Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved. Meaning, there may be sporadic places, times here and there, where He is involved—you can’t know, you can never know. But in the ordinary course, the world runs according to its normal pattern. The world runs according to its normal pattern. If you take acetaminophen, your fever will go down, no matter how you prayed in the morning. It’s not relevant. Acetaminophen lowers fever, chemistry works, physics works, biology works, and all this hanging everything on the idea that underneath it all it’s really God—that’s all nonsense. Meaning, true, you can say that He is the One who keeps things going even when they run according to fixed laws. Fine, because He ensures that the world continues according to those fixed laws. Fine, no problem. But practically speaking, the world operates according to those laws that we are gradually coming to know better and better over time. Okay? I’ll say maybe even more than that: we discussed this in the Sunday series—there are people who think that the Holy One, blessed be He, can intervene in the world within the framework of nature. Not every divine involvement in the world is a miracle; there is involvement within nature. That is nonsense. There is no such thing. Every divine involvement is a miracle. If there is such involvement and if there isn’t, practically speaking it’s all the same—but if there is divine involvement, it is a miracle, period. Meaning, you can’t tell me, “I believe the world runs according to its ordinary course, and nevertheless within nature God arranges for things to work out.” No. You can’t say that. That’s an oxymoron. Okay? You have to choose one of the three options.

[Speaker C] What’s the difference between an open miracle and a hidden miracle?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An open miracle and a hidden miracle are both deviations from the laws of nature. One is a deviation you see, and the other is a deviation that is concealed—you don’t see it—but it is still a deviation from the laws of nature. If it were within the laws of nature, it would not be a hidden miracle; it wouldn’t be a miracle at all. Okay? The fact that the phone is sitting here on the table and keeps sitting on the table—is that a hidden miracle? No, that’s not a miracle at all. Okay? Because that’s nature. If it’s here, why would it move? Okay?

[Speaker B] Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there something like Maimonides says something like this? What? About the splitting of the sea or something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there’s a midrash, a rabbinic midrash that Maimonides brings. The Maharal brings it at the beginning of Gevurot Hashem, and Gersonides and Maimonides as well—Maimonides has a few formulations. Maimonides writes—there are some contradictions in Maimonides—that basically all miracles were a condition that the Holy One, blessed be He, stipulated with creation itself. Meaning, even deviations from nature were already built into the world from the moment of its creation. It wasn’t some intervention that happened later. To me that doesn’t really matter. Because practically speaking it still departs from the laws. What difference does it make whether it happens because God decides now, or because He decided it already during the six days of creation? What difference does that make? Practically speaking, He says that at this stage the laws will be suspended and there will be a deviation from natural behavior. So what difference does it make whether the decision was made then or now? It’s not interesting. This Maimonidean idea comes to solve a theological problem, the problem of changing the divine will. As if, if now God suddenly decides to act differently and depart from nature—what did He think until now? Did He suddenly change His mind? Regret something? So that can’t be accepted theologically, and therefore they say no, no, it was all planned in advance in such-and-such a way. Just as the question isn’t really a question and you don’t need that answer either—but never mind. That’s the policy. Still, it doesn’t really affect our discussion, because our discussion isn’t about theology, whether God changes His mind or not. The question is how we understand the world: does it proceed according to laws or not? Okay? I don’t care whether when it doesn’t go according to laws, that was set at the six days of creation or happened now. What difference does it make? So what I want to say—just to state my personal position—is that I think the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved. Again, there may be specific times and places when He is, and there is no way to know that. But generally, in the ordinary course, He is not involved. And if you ask me, what do you mean, but the Torah describes miracles, as you asked before—more than that, in the paragraph “והיה אם שמוע תשמעו” (“And it shall be, if you will surely listen”), “ונתתי גשמיכם בעתם” (“I will give your rain in its season”), so the Holy One, blessed be He, is bringing rain and withholding rain here. “The keys were given into His hand,” as the Talmud says, “and not into the hand of an agent”—three keys. So I say: that was once true. This reality changes. We see today that not even a weather forecaster can predict when rain will fall and when it won’t. What does he know—whether someone prayed well in the morning? It looks like this whole business runs according to the laws of nature. And true, weather systems are incredibly complicated, and we do not have deterministic models that can tell us exactly when and how much rain will fall. Still, we attribute that to the fact that we simply do not know enough, our computational power is insufficient, we do not know enough of the laws that govern things there—but in principle there are laws there, and if we knew everything, we could calculate when the rain will fall and how much, and so on. And it does not depend on divine involvement or divine decisions.

[Speaker C] What about the claim of prayer?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The claim of prayer—one second—I’ll maybe bracket this a bit, because this whole discussion is only introductory to the problem of evil, but I still want to give this introduction because it’s important for the discussion. Here I’m discussing the question of divine involvement in the world, not the problem of evil. Independently of evil: how involved is the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world? So yes, I claim that no, He is not involved, or almost not involved. Now once you say that there is no such thing as involvement within nature—there just is no such thing. Why do I say there is no such thing? Think of someone praying to the Holy One, blessed be He, to heal him. He is gravely ill and prays to the Holy One, blessed be He, to heal him. What is he expecting? If in any case he would have recovered, that would have happened even without divine involvement. If he would have recovered anyway, then God did nothing; nature simply healed him, right? So what is he praying for? That even though naturally he would die, the Holy One, blessed be He, should change the course of events, save him, and leave him alive, right? Meaning he is praying for divine involvement that lies outside the laws of nature. You cannot pray for divine involvement within the laws of nature. If it’s within nature, you don’t need Him—the natural order will already do its thing. When you ask Him for something, you are asking Him to change the natural course. You are asking Him: I want what is supposed to happen not to happen. And notice, this is true even if the world is not deterministic. Think quantum mechanics, the most extreme interpretation—there are probabilities, not determinism. Still, when I turn to the Holy One, blessed be He, asking Him to heal me, what would have happened without that? What would the probabilities have yielded? If the probabilities would have yielded that I live anyway, fine—then why should God intervene? And if they would have yielded that I die, then I want Him to change that and let me live, right? So even if things are not deterministic, it makes no difference at all. Even if the laws of nature are the laws of quantum mechanics and not the deterministic laws of classical physics, still turning to the Holy One, blessed be He, is always a request to depart from natural functioning. That’s obvious. Now if that’s so, then try to think how much you really believe that things do not happen for natural reasons. There was an accident, and you say, “That was the Holy One, blessed be He, but we do not know Heaven’s calculations.” What do you mean, the Holy One, blessed be He? The driver was negligent or didn’t drive properly, and therefore he crashed into me. That’s why the accident happened. So you say, yes, but why was he negligent? He was negligent because he was negligent. What do you mean, God made him negligent? Then what am I judging him for? I judge him for his negligence, right? Negligence is wrong, okay? You can’t escape that. In other words, you can deny the facts and say no, the Holy One, blessed be He, does everything. But it seems to me that any sober person who looks at the world around us understands: no, the world is conducted according to natural laws, and that’s the secret of the situation. That’s all. And certainly we cannot know whether and when the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved in something—there is no diagnostic way for us to determine when and whether that happens. That’s obvious. So even if it does happen in one case or another—and I can’t know—obviously I have no way of pointing to this case and saying, “Here, this is where it happened.” Okay? All kinds of coincidences people point to are usually just nonsense—people who simply aren’t skilled in statistics. Missiles that didn’t hit, all those stories people tell: “Look what miracles and wonders happened to us.” Really, it’s simply nonsense. Nonsense. I’m saying—even if the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved—you cannot bring proof from there. Maybe I’m wrong; maybe He is involved. But the proofs people try to bring me from statistics—because they say it couldn’t have happened without Him, and that’s the “proof” they’re trying to offer—there is no proof. Okay? You can tell me maybe He’s involved and I don’t understand it. Fine, maybe. But as proof from the facts you present—there isn’t any. Okay? I always use an extreme example in this context. Once I was driving with my family. We were driving from Yeruham in our car, six children, my wife and I. Around one in the morning we started driving back after a trip. We passed through Gedera, on the way south, on the way to Yeruham. Then some young woman came out—later it turned out she had gotten her license that very day, I think—and didn’t stop at a stop sign. The car in front of me braked, and I hit it. The car was done for. Now it’s one in the morning in Gedera, eight people on the way to Yeruham. Where do you even begin? What am I supposed to do now? There’s no Gett taxi, no—it wasn’t that era yet. And even if I get one, I’ll need a second one. So what happens now? Before I even had time to think about it, a large empty vehicle stopped next to us. It belonged to a neighbor of ours from Yeruham. He fit all eight of us—all eight people—into his vehicle and took us to Yeruham. We left the key for the tow truck somewhere and happily went on our way. The second it stopped—I hadn’t even had time to think what kind of mess I was in—and it just stopped immediately. And not only that—the story is only beginning. As we were talking, he told me—he was a politician, a local politician in Yeruham. He often drove to Jerusalem for political matters, knew the route by heart. Fine? He said to me, “Listen, today I lost the turn—I didn’t turn off at Latrun.” Usually you go off at Latrun and head south. Okay? “I missed the turn at Latrun, ended up in Ramle, didn’t understand where I was, it was all unclear. That never happens to me.” Meaning, he drives that route twice a week, Jerusalem-Yeruham. Okay? “I drove through Ramle, here and there”—his wife was with him in the car. He keeps going, and suddenly his wife says to him, “Look, the Abraham family is here.” “The Abraham family is here? Pull over a second.” Okay, “The Abraham family is here”—so what? They still hadn’t seen the accident. Meaning, the accident had just happened. It wasn’t as if we were already standing outside the car with a crowd gathering. Nothing. It was literally that instant. Okay: “The Abraham family.” So what should we do? “No, no, stop. Maybe they need something.” She managed to convince him, he stopped, and we drove on. Okay? Look how many coincidences there were here. When I came back to Yeruham, to the yeshiva, I made a little gathering for the students, and I said to them: so now you’re probably expecting miracle stories about the Holy One, blessed be He, how He redeemed us, some wondrous impossible miracle. To me, it’s statistics. Meaning, what are the odds that something like this happens—that you have an accident and at that exact moment a large empty vehicle stops next to you? I don’t know, one in a million? No idea. Just an example. Okay? How many people got stranded in the middle of the night and no large empty vehicle stopped by, going exactly where they needed? I have no idea; I’ve never checked, but I assume not a few. Right? Fine, one in a million—and it happened. And it happened to me. It has to happen to someone. Now how can you determine that this is a “statistical miracle,” meaning something highly improbable? It’s not enough to say the odds are one in a million. You have to ask how many such cases there were. Because if there were a million such cases, then the odds are that a one-in-a-million case will happen in one of them. Right? It’s like if you roll a die a hundred times and get one-six-six-four-one-five-five-three-six-six-one—a hundred-number sequence like that. What’s the probability of getting that exact sequence? Zero. Six to the minus hundred. Right? Yet some sequence came out.

[Speaker D] Some sequence.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—one time, I threw the die a hundred times and some specific sequence came out. Some sequence. The probability is zero. Right? Any sequence that comes out has essentially zero probability. So what? Does that mean the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened? When you look at the chance that something will happen, that isn’t enough to determine that there was a miracle. The fact that the probability of something happening is low is not enough to determine that there was a departure from nature, that there was a miracle. First you have to assume that this didn’t happen many times, that there weren’t many such trials. Second, you have to assume that the event is not just rare, but anomalous. Meaning, if a die came up six a hundred times, then I think someone intervened. But if some sequence came up—and the odds are exactly the same, because a hundred sixes is also six to the minus hundred, like every other sequence—but any other sequence would not raise any issue, because some sequence had to come out. You throw the die a hundred times, some sequence has to come out, right? And every sequence that comes out has a vanishingly small probability, six to the minus hundred, right? But with six-six-six, when it came up six every time a hundred times, then it is clear to you that something unusual happened. Why? The probability is the same. Because it isn’t only a rare sequence; it’s also a special sequence, an anomalous one. To determine that something is a miracle, it isn’t enough to show that it is rare. You also have to show that it is anomalous. Okay. Why is the six-six-six sequence considered suspicious even—

[Speaker D] Even if there’s a good reason for it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Say that again.

[Speaker D] Why is the six-six-six sequence not considered a miracle, even if—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say it’s a miracle. I said it requires explanation, and that it didn’t happen by chance. Why? For example, maybe the die is loaded. Maybe it always lands on six because it isn’t balanced across its sides. But it requires explanation—that’s what I want to say. It’s an anomaly that requires explanation. Not every rare event requires explanation. You draw numbers from one to one hundred—what’s the probability that thirty-seven comes up? Probably one in a hundred, assuming a uniform distribution, right? Now thirty-seven came up. Amazing—how did that happen? The probability was one in a hundred! But every result has probability one in a hundred. So what does it mean? It means nothing. Statistics mislead us badly. People are sure they see the hand of God everywhere. “A Psalm book stopped the bullet and that’s how my life was saved,” miracles upon miracles, everyone tells miracle stories. It’s all nonsense, simply nonsense, statistical misunderstanding. Yes.

[Speaker F] But even in a case like that you’d still say the blessing of thanksgiving anyway.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’d say it, but don’t bring me proofs that the Holy One, blessed be He, performed a miracle here.

[Speaker C] So what is the argument for the world being created by God—that this is a special sequence?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What sequence? Which sequence?

[Speaker C] The fact that the world exists in this form.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, yes, that’s special—but let’s not get into that minefield now. That isn’t our topic. So what I want to say is that all these little stories in which people “see the hand of God” and “feel the hand of God” are just lack of statistical skill, that’s all. In the end there is no indication that He is involved. I know of no indication that He is involved. Again, you can’t rule it out. Maybe here and there there are interventions. But in the ordinary course, broadly speaking, the world goes according to its normal pattern. Meaning, this is not the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is my own view.

[Speaker C] I don’t know, I don’t remember anything special. So—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What about the miracles in the Torah and so on? There we do see divine involvement. So I have a proposal—I don’t know. Apparently then there was, and today there isn’t. First of all, those are the facts. My proposal is that the Holy One, blessed be He, changed policy. What does that mean? Think about parents raising a child. When the child is little, the parents hold his hands and go everywhere with him, right? They do things for him, take care of him, don’t leave him alone. Okay? As he grows older, more and more things he does independently. Until he really grows up, and then they let go of the rope, so to speak. They put him on his own feet. They still watch him, care about him, everything is fine—but he is already expected to manage on his own. And I claim that God’s relation to humanity is like that of parents to a child. Humanity in its beginnings—when we were small children—the Holy One, blessed be He, had to do everything for us, bring us rain, answer us, heal us, do all sorts of things. Little by little we grew up, we understood more, we have more science, more technology, we get by better. And now the Holy One, blessed be He, says: okay, little by little I’m letting go. “שמים שמים לה’ והארץ נתן לבני אדם” (“The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to human beings”). Meaning, now you are supposed to manage with the tools you have. You have reasonable tools, so manage with them. Okay? And I’ll claim even more than that. Because everyone agrees that there has been some policy change like this, independently of my position. Because prophecy no longer exists. Right? The prophets ended, prophecy ended. Open miracles also no longer exist, right? Clearly the Holy One, blessed be He, is already less involved in the world according to everyone. This has nothing to do with whether you agree with what I said earlier. All I’m claiming is that besides the fact that prophecy and open miracles no longer exist, hidden miracles no longer exist either. Meaning, God’s withdrawal from the world is broader than you thought. And everyone agrees there is such a policy of withdrawal. Nobody disputes that. Okay? So the claim is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is simply withdrawing from the world—and that’s actually a compliment. We usually understand the hiding of the divine face as some kind of punishment: God is hiding His face from us. No—it’s not punishment, the opposite. It’s an expression of trust. He says: you’re grown-up children, manage on your own. I created the world for you to run it, not for Me to run it.

[Speaker G] There’s a very interesting dilemma here with the coming of the Messiah—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The hiding of the face. They say the Messiah will come.

[Speaker G] Does that mean He reached a stage such that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Couldn’t the Holy One, blessed be He, perform a miracle? He could. It could happen naturally. He could perform a miracle and the Messiah could come. He may even now be doing some miracles here and there—I can’t know. Okay? Think, for example, of a plane crash. Okay? They set up a commission of inquiry to investigate what malfunction there was, to improve things, okay? The commission examines every aspect, every angle, and in the end it usually finds something. A crack in the wing, engine failure, I don’t know, something. Pilot error, human error, something. Suppose they find nothing. So what would you say? Well, apparently the passengers were wicked and the Holy One, blessed be He, decided to eliminate them. Who told you…? Why are you assuming there’s a crack in the wing? What does that have to do with a crack in the wing? The plane doesn’t fly because of the wing. The plane flies because of the Holy One, blessed be He; the wing is only human effort. It has nothing to do with the matter. Right? So what is this commission of inquiry doing, basically? Why does it assume in the first place that it will find something? It assumes that if the plane crashed, there was probably some malfunction there, right? That doesn’t just happen by itself. Now this doesn’t bother people—they live in both worlds. It’s a total contradiction. They live in both worlds: yes, it’s all the Holy One, blessed be He, and they probably deserved to die—and at the same time, we have to check the crack in the wing, and not only check it, but check it so we can fix it and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now what does “so it doesn’t happen again” mean? If the next plane is also full of wicked people, then even if there is no crack in the wing, the Holy One, blessed be He, will bring it down. And if they’re righteous, then even if there is a crack in the wing, it won’t fall. So why do you need to investigate at all, even if you did find a crack in the wing? Why does that matter? Nobody really thinks this way. You’ll say, okay, wicked non-Jews don’t believe in the Holy One, blessed be He—but nobody really thinks this way. Right? A doctor studying medicine doesn’t study the laws of prayer. He studies medicine—how to treat a sick body, right? He doesn’t study the laws of prayer. So all these speeches about “human effort” just drive me crazy. It’s just a pile of idiotic chatter.

[Speaker C] What about this idea that there is a physical cause and a spiritual cause?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, obviously not. A cause is a sufficient condition. How can there be two causes that are each sufficient conditions? Logically that is impossible.

[Speaker C] It’s the cause that we see with our simple eyes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why “with our eyes”? What is the real cause? Not what I see with my simple eyes. What is the real cause?

[Speaker C] I’m asking, though—what is it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Give me a proposal. Only the spiritual? Only the physical? Both? Both can’t be right. There cannot be two sufficient conditions. If the apple fell on Newton’s head, then that happened either because the apple was too heavy and the branch couldn’t hold it—gravity, right? Or because yesterday Newton failed to turn the other cheek. Right? And then the Holy One, blessed be He, decided to punish him. So I’m saying those are two causes—the religious cause and the physical cause, right? Now I say: if he sits under the tree, but yesterday he did turn the other cheek, then the apple shouldn’t have to fall on him. But the mass of the apple is such that the branch can’t hold it. Will the apple fall or not? It will probably fall, right? And Newton will get hit even if he didn’t sin yesterday. More than that—let’s reverse it. He did sin yesterday, but the branch holding the apple is very strong and the weight of the apple is not enough to break the branch. Will the apple fall? It won’t fall. That’s all. I rest my case. We’ve become so used to these mantras. We say them automatically. “Intervention within nature,” “there’s also this cause and also that cause”—these are logical contradictions.

[Speaker F] And what about a potential situation where He decided that Newton should sit there, and the whole chain that led him there is somehow under—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that doesn’t help, because now you’re just tracing back the chain that led him to sit there, and that chain too is a scientific chain. Meaning, there are causes that led him to decide to sit under the tree—so how did those causes happen? Did the Holy One, blessed be He, do them, or did biology do them, or neuroscience? I don’t care what. Okay? You’ve just moved one step back, that’s all. It won’t help. Go back as far as you want; at every stage I’ll ask you: is this God or nature? You can’t escape it. Fine. So that’s really a different discussion. Now I want to return to the problem of evil. One could say, okay, His ways are higher than ours, the Holy One, blessed be He, is above logic, so He is good and also does evil things and it’s not a contradiction, and all kinds of statements like that—I don’t even know how to formulate those words. Okay? Think about it… all kinds of sayings. In the religious context you can hear statements that make your hair stand on end, but people say them confidently, as if they are very profound. When you say something and its opposite, it sounds very deep. That’s what all of Hasidism and this attraction to nonsense are built on. That’s the mechanism. The more foolish things you say, and the more profound they sound to people, then surely it’s just that I don’t understand because it’s so deep. In any case, statements like that—don’t force me to get into that silliness, okay? It doesn’t help. If the Holy One, blessed be He, is good, He is supposed to behave well. It’s not that He is good but behaves badly, and yes, that’s a logical contradiction, but there’s no problem because He’s above logic.

[Speaker C] So maybe you can explain that point by comparing the Holy One, blessed be He, to a father—if the child wants to touch electricity, the father gives him a smack. Why can’t you say that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can say that. Why can’t you say that? That’s what I’m saying.

[Speaker C] Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, does something, but it only looks that way to the child. From the father’s perspective, who understands more, the blow to the child—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, wait, that’s the next step. One second. Another possibility—leave aside the whole “He is above logic” business, right? That doesn’t help. The second possibility, what you proposed, is that what we see as evil isn’t really evil. It isn’t really evil. In our eyes it appears evil, but someone who sees more deeply understands that it is actually something good. You have to see the full picture, not just the immediate situation in front of your eyes. Right? Think of a doctor performing surgery. If someone—years ago in Bnei Akiva I think they gave us this as an educational exercise—some dark-skinned man from Africa arrives for the first time in civilization, lands on the roof of a tall building by helicopter, which is already a mistake—what do you mean by helicopter?—he lands on the roof of a tall building and sees inside a bunch of people in white coats cutting a man with knives. He says: I’ve arrived in Sodom and Gomorrah, there’s a pack of lunatics here—what are they doing? Then slowly they explain to him that it’s surgery, that this is how they are saving the man’s life. And once you see the full picture, something that looked horribly immoral or cruel can turn out to be exactly the right action for that situation, the proper action for that situation. Meaning, the perspective is broader. And here I say: I don’t buy that either. I don’t buy it. First of all, what possible situation would make it good that a baby should die in a tsunami? The baby did nothing. What broader perspective could there possibly be that would show me that this is good? Maybe you could show me that there are consequences that positively affect the people who remain, or something like that, I don’t know, some such thing—but then it is still an evil thing. What, you kill that baby so they can benefit? You harm one person so that others can gain?

[Speaker C] And maybe someone gains. Who?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The baby? The baby died.

[Speaker C] What does he gain? There are people who say it’s for his benefit so that he won’t sin.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe yes, maybe no, fine—but so what? He has free choice. What do you mean, so that he won’t sin? Let him live and give him free choice. What, everyone who is about to choose evil gets killed first so that he won’t choose evil? The stubborn and rebellious son is a special law, judged on the basis of his future, and that too is a huge novelty and of course “never was and never will be.” Fine. But in general that isn’t how it works. So you can mumble that maybe there is some hidden good there that none of us sees. But in practice, when tens of thousands of babies, infants in a tsunami who did nothing, are killed—that is evil. Period. Don’t confuse me with explanations that maybe there is some hidden good here and things like that. What hidden good is there here? Why the emphasis on babies?

[Speaker C] Because they didn’t sin, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If someone sinned and deserves punishment, fine, then punishing him is understandable. And they also didn’t have time to do anything before you take away their lives. After all, everyone dies in the end, but when you die at two months old, you haven’t done anything yet.

[Speaker I] So then the question is why God doesn’t intervene and why He does?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or why He does it, or why He doesn’t intervene—it doesn’t matter, either way. I’ll say even more than that: if in order to achieve that supposed good thing you need to kill babies, then that’s already a bug. Why did You create a world in which in order to achieve that thing You have to kill babies? You’re all-powerful. Achieve that thing without killing babies. What’s the problem? You’re all-powerful, aren’t You? So I reject—these explanations won’t help here. The question remains in place.

[Speaker B] And there are theologians—at least from what I understood, not Jewish ones—who say it’s to preserve free choice. You see there is evil and good, and then you can… Let’s say there were only good, and we saw only good, then it would be easy to conclude that there is a God. So what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s why He kills babies? Let Him give a person choice even in a situation where babies aren’t being killed. Let Him create us differently. If we have some defective character, then let Him create us differently so that babies won’t have to die in order for us to have free choice about whether there is a God or not. And I think that usually most people today who do not believe in God don’t fail to believe because babies die. They don’t believe in God because they don’t believe in Him, and that’s all. You don’t need babies to die for that. I wanted good and evil in a less-than-ideal sense—

[Speaker C] Less good, or ideal good?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned, anything less than perfect good is evil, because from the Holy One, blessed be He, I expect perfect goodness. Anything less than that is a bug. You remind me that in a podcast I did not long ago with someone, he asked me—in the name of Dennis Prager, the well-known conservative commentator—he said there cannot be proofs for the existence of God, because then we wouldn’t have the choice whether to believe in Him or not. So I said to him: but if there are no proofs for His existence, then that isn’t a choice, it’s a lottery. So why should one believe in Him at all? What does it mean, “leave us the choice”? Leaving me the choice means: the truth is that one should believe in Him, and there is a way to understand that this is the truth, and now you have a choice whether to go with that or not. Fine, I understand. But if there is no real reason to believe in Him, then deciding whether to believe or not is not a choice, it’s a lottery. What value is there in lotteries? This is that same kind of explanation. Others shouted at me things like, “Who are you to judge the Holy One, blessed be He, whether He is good or not good?” I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with those shouts. But what are you really saying? You’re saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the owner. He can do whatever He wants. Right? He can do whatever He wants—who are you to tell Him what to do? Basically you’re saying He is evil. Right? You’re just saying no one is allowed to complain to Him even though He is evil. That’s basically what you’re saying. Unless you think He is not evil, that there is some explanation of why He is good. So then forget that He is the owner—tell me the explanation for why He is actually good. And if you need to say that in any case He does whatever He wants because He is the owner, like the very first Rashi on the Torah, that He created the earth and gave it to whomever seemed right in His eyes—then that’s a brute-force argument. And that brute-force argument implicitly says that the Holy One, blessed be He, behaves badly, but that it’s His right and no one can claim anything against Him.

[Speaker B] You’re assuming here that we choose your side in the Euthyphro dilemma. Because otherwise, whatever God chooses is good.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, obviously. Right. But then the question doesn’t arise at all. The problem of evil in the world doesn’t arise. Whatever happens in the world is what the Holy One, blessed be He, did, so by definition it is good. Yes, correct. In short, what I want to do now is make the distinction—though maybe before that, all these slogans I’ve brought up here show that when people deal with a problem of this kind, they don’t bother to think. They just don’t bother to think. Because we were educated to believe that everything is fine and everything is perfect, and if there is a problem, then the problem is only with us. So we excuse ourselves from thinking by using some slogan we absorb from the atmosphere: “human effort,” or “God is above logic,” and all kinds of statements like that. We blurt them out without even noticing whether they mean anything or not, and we feel very comfortable, as if we are very deep. There is a kind of moral and logical indifference among believers. Somehow they allow themselves to depart from morality and logic in the name of God’s omnipotence, His transcendence, and the absolute truth of faith. When, say, a secular person asks me: “But tell me, if you think Torah study protects and saves, why do you go to a doctor? Pray instead.” A religious person hearing that question takes it as some kind of cynical challenge. Like, what are you babbling about? Sit down and learn and you’ll see how deep it is. It’s a wonderful question. A wonderful question. Most people don’t think about it at all, because we have developed a kind of logical indifference. Meaning even things that are blatantly irrational seem perfectly fine to us—we throw them into the air and feel great about ourselves. Okay? So let’s at least try to do something. Let’s leave the indifference. There are two types of evil: human evil and natural evil. I want to handle each separately. I’ll start with human evil. So the question is: why is there human evil in the world? Answer: because human beings choose to do evil. That’s my assumption, of course. When human beings do something, the ones doing it are human beings, not the Holy One, blessed be He. They did the evil, not the Holy One, blessed be He. Of course the question can still be raised: why doesn’t He intervene and stop it? Suppose I decide to murder someone—why doesn’t He intervene? In tractate Chagigah, page 5, the Talmud says, “יש נספה בלא משפט” (“There are those who perish without justice”). A person can die even though he did not deserve to die. The Rosh comments there: “יש נספה בלא משפט כגון אדם שהרג את חברו”—“There are those who perish without justice, for example when one person kills another.” What does that mean? It means that if one person decides to kill another, the one who dies may die even though he did not deserve to die. It is not that the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that he should die, or that he was going to die anyway. Why does he die? Because the other person decided to murder him. That’s why he dies, despite not deserving death. So what does the Rosh tell us? That when things are the result of human choice, the one who causes them is the human being who chose, not the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore this person “perishes without justice.” He did not deserve death by divine judgment. The Holy One, blessed be He, did not decide that he deserved death; he died not because of that. He died because someone was negligent, or because someone chose to murder him. That’s why he died, even though he did not deserve death. This is not the realization of the will of the Holy One, blessed be He; we are not the rod of His wrath. We decided to do it. It is our act. Therefore the responsibility is ours. Right? People always ask: wait, if everything comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, why do you judge the person? The responsibility is on God, not on the person. That too is treated like some cynical challenge, and religious people dismiss it. It’s a wonderful question—not only a wonderful question, there is no answer to it either. What is the question? If you think the Holy One, blessed be He, does everything, then why do you judge human beings? A person did something evil, some transgression or another—why judge him? The Holy One, blessed be He, did it, not the person. Ah, it’s a cynical question, it’s both-and, beyond logic—I know all those words. It’s just a pile of nonsense. We’ve become so used to waving around those slogans that people who ask this seem like naive captives or something—“they don’t understand, they ask silly questions.” They ask excellent questions. You give silly answers. The claim is that in the end, if you judge the person, then the person is responsible. If the Holy One, blessed be He, did the Holocaust, then there is no point in judging the Nazis—He did it. If you judge them, then you assume that it was their decision and that they are responsible for what happened there, not the Holy One, blessed be He. So why do you start explaining to me now that the Holocaust happened because they were all Zionists, or because they were all anti-Zionists—it doesn’t matter, everyone with his own explanation. Of course contradiction and self-contradiction are very characteristic of all those who understand God so well.

[Speaker J] Huh? I can’t hear.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Israel is above astrology?

[Speaker J] No, I meant that God decreed that someone should be harmed—for example, with the destruction of the Temple—but the one who did it acted above and beyond that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so He didn’t decree that he act above and beyond, and that’s the claim against him. But for what he did according to the decree, there is no claim against him, right? So why judge him at Nuremberg? What do you want? Put the Holy One, blessed be He, on trial at Nuremberg. What do you want from them? But no—people live in both worlds, and it doesn’t bother them at all. It’s simply a frontal logical contradiction. There is no answer to that question. It’s a logical contradiction. And every answer you’ll hear—there is no answer to that question. Yes, no, “God would have chosen them, but if not them He would have sent someone else”—none of it holds water. In the end, what I want to say is that the Rosh is just an illustration. I claim this even without the Rosh. The point is that actions which are the result of human choice are the responsibility of the human being who chose to do them, not of the Holy One, blessed be He. Fine. But one can raise a difficulty from the Talmud in Makkot, page 10. There the Talmud says: what is the case of accidental killing? Reuben deserves death and Shimon deserves exile. The Holy One, blessed be He, brings them together at one inn—Reuben below and Shimon above. Then the iron slips from the wood—the axe head falls off Shimon’s axe—and kills Reuben, who is below. So Reuben, who deserved death, dies, and Shimon, who deserved exile, now because of unintentional killing goes into exile. Okay? Of course the question is how he incurred exile the first time—that’s an interesting question, because every time you incur exile it’s because you had already incurred exile before, so how did the first obligation of exile arise? But never mind, the Talmud says this. Seemingly, from this Talmud it emerges that whoever dies always dies by judgment, right? If you die, apparently you deserved to die, and the Holy One, blessed be He, simply arranges all the circumstances. How does that fit with the Rosh in Chagigah that one can perish without justice? The answer is that “perishing without justice” speaks about intentional murder, while the Talmud in Makkot speaks about unintentional killing. What’s the difference? When I kill unintentionally, I did not choose to murder. It happened through me. I was negligent, yes, but I didn’t decide to murder him. In such a case it cannot be that he died without judgment. If he died, apparently the Holy One, blessed be He, thought he deserved death and arranged it. But the Rosh is talking about a deliberate decision to kill—intentional murder. If I decide to kill someone, he dies because I decided he would die, even if the Holy One, blessed be He, does not think he deserves to die. So there is no contradiction between those two sources. More proofs could be brought in either direction, but for our purposes what I want to say is that when you speak about human evil, you are really speaking about evil acts generated by human choice. And once it is human choice, there is no complaint to bring against the Holy One, blessed be He. He didn’t do it; human beings did it. The murdered person “perishes without justice” because I decided to murder him, that’s all. But even so, one can still ask: yes, but why doesn’t the Holy One, blessed be He, intervene? Why doesn’t He intervene? If the victim didn’t deserve to die, then stop the intentional murderer—don’t let him do it. So here I think the answer is probably that if every time we wanted to do something evil, the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened, then there would be no value at all to the state in which we do something good. Because we didn’t choose. We wouldn’t really have a choice. Every time we chose evil, it simply wouldn’t be possible. Meaning that all that would remain for us would be to do good all the time, that’s all. But the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us choice because apparently He wants us to act out of choice, out of decision; otherwise our good deeds would also be emptied of content. But for that, He has to allow us to do evil too. Because if every time we want to do evil He blocks it, then de facto we have no choice. Now you may say: fine, but in the Holocaust, in extremely severe cases—with all due respect to the desire to allow human choice—I would still expect Him to intervene. Good question. But where exactly does the line pass? If one individual person is tortured—not six million people—but tortured to death over many years, put through hell, the way they did in the camps but only to one person—then should He intervene there too? Why not? Does that person care that there aren’t another 5,999,999 people suffering alongside him? He himself suffers exactly the same way. So why not there? And if so, then why not intervene even with an ordinary person who suffers, not even in such extreme ways? Where do you stop it? There is nowhere to stop it. Therefore, in principle, the Holy One, blessed be He, makes the decision that if these are actions resulting from human choice, then human beings are responsible for what happens and He does not intervene. “השמים שמים לה’ והארץ נתן לבני אדם” (“The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to human beings”). Therefore, the problem of human evil seems to me to be solved fairly easily. Human evil means that evil occurs because human beings chose to bring it about. Not because of the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore it is not a question about God. And why doesn’t He intervene? That is the whole meaning of His giving us choice. He is essentially saying to us: friends, you have choice. You are responsible to do good and not to do evil. I am not going to intervene every time and save you from yourselves. You are responsible for that, and you will have to manage yourselves properly. That’s all.

[Speaker C] Is that the third approach?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, because I already said in advance that I support the third approach. That’s with regard to human evil. What about natural evil? There things are more complicated. Why? Because natural evil is caused by factors that are not beings with free choice. The ocean has no choice, or the sun, or the rains, or earthquakes. Okay? So that seems to be the work of the Holy One, blessed be He, right? There is no other agent here who did it. He created the laws of nature, and the laws of nature are what generate all these events. What produces the tsunami is the laws of nature. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had created the laws of nature differently, there would be no tsunamis. Here there is a complaint against the Holy One, blessed be He. There is no one else whose freedom He wants to allow, so that this other being is responsible and not He. Here there is a real problem. But here too I want to go along a path quite similar to what I said before. And I’ll make two assumptions. The first assumption is that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants the world to run according to fixed laws. Right? That’s pretty clear. He created the world with fixed natural laws, right? He has some reason for that. I can even speculate why. And that’s speculation. For example, because if it weren’t according to fixed natural laws, how could we function here? You wouldn’t know whether in order to save yourself you should jump into the fire or run away from it. Sometimes it would burn you, sometimes it would save you. There would be no regularity at all. You cannot function in a world without regularity. You have to understand how to conduct yourself in the world, and in order to understand how to conduct yourself in the world, you have to know the laws according to which it operates. Okay? So fine, that’s a conjecture—you may accept it or not—but factually it is clear that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world so that it would run according to fixed laws, for reasons He wanted, okay? Now when you come and say, “Look, I have a complaint against You, God—why is there natural evil?” what are you really saying? You’re really saying: fine, You want fixed laws, I understand, but—actually let me put it like this: if He were to intervene all the time, if every time a tsunami were about to happen He intervened, then the world simply would not have fixed laws. The laws would constantly be violated for theological or moral reasons of one kind or another. Then there would be no laws in the world. You cannot create a world that runs according to fixed laws but also intervene all the time and rearrange things according to considerations completely different from the laws of nature, because then it means the world does not run according to fixed laws of nature. So what will you say? Fine, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is all-powerful—let Him create a world with a different rigid system of laws in which there won’t be… He’s all-powerful, so what’s the problem? Let Him make fixed laws without tsunamis and without plagues and without all these things. I’m talking now about natural evil. So here I want to make the following claim. First, I want to add another assumption. Not only does the Holy One, blessed be He, want fixed laws; if He set the laws as they are, then apparently He also has some interest in these being the laws—not just in there being fixed laws and then tossing a coin as to which fixed laws those will be. If He chose these laws, then He wants the world to operate according to what these laws produce. For example, these laws allow evolution to generate human beings, and the Holy One, blessed be He, created the laws in such a way that evolutionary processes would ultimately generate human beings, because He wants there to be human beings in the world. Just as an example. But more generally, I’m saying: if the Holy One, blessed be He, chose the laws of nature, then apparently He wants the world to operate according to the way those laws direct it. That is what He wanted. Now what are you really saying when you make your suggestion? “Fine, create a system of rigid laws without tsunamis and without plagues and without the death of small children who did nothing, and without all these things”—my claim is that there is no such system of laws. There isn’t. Meaning, if the assumption is that you want to create the world according to a rigid legal system, then the burden of proof is on you, the one asking the question. The burden of proof is on you to show me that there exists some other system of laws that is also rigid, that would do the same work as the current system of laws, but without the tsunamis and the problems of evil and suffering—that is, natural evil and suffering. Who says there is such a system? When you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is all-powerful, we already discussed this: He cannot make a square circle, right? Why not? Because a square circle is a logical contradiction. The question is whether a system of laws that would function like the present one, but without tsunamis, plagues, and all the problems of suffering and evil—is that perhaps just another square circle? There is no such system. It’s a non-existence theorem in mathematics: there is no mathematical system of laws that will do the same job as the laws here but without the aspects of suffering and evil. Maybe there is—I don’t know. What I’m claiming is that the burden of proof is on the one who raises the objection. You’re asking God: why didn’t You make a world with no natural evil? In order to ask that question, you have to show that such a world is even possible, that there is such a system of laws. Because if not, what do you want the Holy One, blessed be He, to do? He can’t do anything. Yes.

[Speaker B] Let’s take the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, where both agree that it would have been preferable for a person not to have been created than to have been created, right? Fine—there’s your system: an empty legal system. Nothing is created, so the moral system exists vacuously, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But He does want—He wants human beings and He wants a world. So I don’t understand.

[Speaker B] But the moral system exists vacuously. You agree?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it doesn’t exist vacuously. What do you mean? He doesn’t want it to exist vacuously; He wants it to exist fully. He could also not have created the world at all and then His desires would exist vacuously. No—He wants it to exist fully, not vacuously. He wants there to be human beings here, wants human beings to conduct themselves here. In other words, that is His goal—I don’t know why, but that is the goal. You can’t propose different goals for Him. You can say to Him: look, within Your own goals, since You are all-powerful, arrange it so that they don’t suffer. Because why do You want them to suffer? You are a good being. Why do You want them to suffer? “No, I don’t want them to suffer—but what can I do? I have no alternative. There is no other system of laws that will realize what I want it to realize without these side effects of suffering.” There is no such system. Now maybe there is and maybe there isn’t. My point is that the burden of proof is on the one raising the objection. When you ask the Holy One, blessed be He, why He made such a system, show me a better alternative system. As long as you haven’t shown that, there is no room for your objection.

[Speaker C] Why couldn’t He have made the human being just a little better? I mean—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Make the human being just a little better? That would prevent a lot—

[Speaker C] Just a little better and a little less—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “A little more” and “a little less” is not the issue. Make him entirely good. And if He had made him a little better, you’d ask why not a little better still. You want him to be good, not “a little better.” But in order for him to be good—again—then there is no choice. The Holy One, blessed be He, wants us to run the world through decisions, not as deterministic programmed creatures. Those are His goals. I’m not arguing with His goals. I’m saying: given that those are the goals, and that He apparently has good reasons for them, within that framework He has no option to create a world with less suffering or less evil. There is no such option. If there were such an option, then you would have an excellent question. But in order to ask the question, you have to show that such an option really exists. Who says it does? I’m not offering an answer. I’m simply saying there is no question. Meaning, you can’t even establish the question until you show there is a better alternative. Assuming someone would find one—

[Speaker B] You said if someone finds—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, such a legal system? No. No. It’s like—you know, in mathematics people sometimes speak about a removable discontinuity. A discontinuity… You have a function, and at one point it jumps, okay? Only at one point. At x equals 1.3, say, it suddenly jumps. Then afterward it continues normally. Such functions can be completed into continuous functions by removing the discontinuity at that point. That’s a removable discontinuity. What this questioner basically wants to say is: make a different system of laws—by the way, one that is continuous, and this one is continuous too—it should be exactly like this one, but different at the points where there is evil. There it should be different. And you assume there is such a rigid, that is, continuous, legal system. There is no chance there is. If you ask me, I have no proof. There is almost no chance that there is such a system. In order to answer this, it’s enough for me to say: look, maybe there is and maybe there isn’t; prove that there is in order to ask the question. But I’m making a stronger claim: there is almost no chance that there is such a system. What is the likelihood of finding two continuous functions, one of which behaves in a certain way everywhere except at a few points, and the other is also continuous but at those few points behaves differently? That is almost a contradiction. It doesn’t—there is no such thing.

[Speaker H] And what if He created a system that doesn’t operate point by point, but by regions—defective regions? What do you mean by defective?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it doesn’t operate the same way, then it doesn’t realize what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. After all, He wants the system because it realizes His goals—I don’t know what those goals are. So I want a system that realizes the same goals, everything exactly the same. The fire should burn, the wind should blow, water should be wet—everything should be as it is today. But there should be no tsunami, and anyone who falls into the fire, if he isn’t guilty he shouldn’t get burned, if he is guilty he should get burned… that’s it. That’s what I want. There is no such thing. If fire burns, then it burns. So I’m saying that natural evil is solved in a way quite similar to human evil. You’re saying that natural evil has free choice?

[Speaker C] What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Does natural evil have choice or not?

[Speaker C] No.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. The laws of nature are not the result of free choice. On the contrary. And that’s exactly why there is a problem. Because the Holy One, blessed be He, made the laws of nature. So if suffering is produced by the laws of nature, then it really is His handiwork. So why didn’t He make different laws of nature, so that there would be no suffering? With free choice, you say no, that’s not Him—the chooser is guilty. But with natural evil, it’s the Holy One, blessed be He’s own work. The question is much harder there.

[Speaker C] So there are people who claim that God is evil, so to speak?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Entirely good. The best good there is—not the best good He is capable of. There is no “capable of” beyond this. Because making a square circle isn’t a capability. No one can make a square circle. The Holy One, blessed be He, can’t make a square circle—that’s not—

[Speaker C] Not—

[Speaker H] A limitation of omnipotence, okay?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. It’s not a limitation. There just is no such thing as a square circle. If there is no alternative system of laws, then it’s not that the Holy One, blessed be He, is incapable of making a world with an alternative system of laws—there simply is none. And why, again, can’t we assume that God is evil? I said—that’s where I started. The tradition tells us no. He Himself tells us no. We learn it from the fact that He also expects moral behavior from us. We have many indications that He is not evil, that He is good. Okay? Now I’m saying: assuming that is the assumption, does it fit with the way the world behaves? Okay? If you do not accept the assumption, then the question doesn’t arise for you. Okay? But we generally do accept that assumption, and I still claim that the question can be addressed. Fine. Now I want to show you an interesting passage in the Talmud. In tractate Bava Kamma, in the chapter “הכונס”, the Talmud brings, regarding the destruction of the Temple: “כי תצא אש ומצאה קוצים”—“If a fire goes out and finds thorns”—“goes out” means goes out on its own. It goes out on its own. “שלם ישלם המבעיר את הבערה”—“the one who kindled the fire shall surely pay.” The Holy One, blessed be He, said: it is upon Me to repay for the fire that I kindled. “I kindled a fire in Zion,” as it says, “ויצת אש בציון ותאכל יסודותיה” (“He kindled a fire in Zion and it devoured its foundations”), “and I will one day rebuild it with fire,” as it says, “ואני אהיה לה חומת אש סביב ולכבוד אהיה בתוכה” (“And I will be for her a wall of fire all around, and I will be glory within her”). So the Holy One, blessed be He, destroyed the Temple, right? “I, the Lord, am responsible, and therefore I also have to repair it.” So here there seems to be a claim that a certain act that caused suffering was the act of the Holy One, blessed be He Himself. Okay? But let’s now look at this passage in context. And maybe let’s begin with the verse from the portion of Mishpatim: “כי תצא אש ומצאה קוצים ונאכל גדיש או הקמה או השדה שלם ישלם המבעיר את הבערה”—“If a fire goes out and finds thorns, and a stack of grain or the standing grain or the field is consumed, the one who kindled the fire shall surely pay.” Right? That’s the verse on which the earlier midrash is based. Now on this verse Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish disagree in Bava Kamma 22. It was stated: Rabbi Yohanan said, “אשו משום חציו”—“his fire is like his arrows”; and Reish Lakish said, “אשו משום ממונו”—“his fire is like his property.” Familiar? Meaning, one of the principal categories of damages is fire. If I light a fire and the fire goes and burns something, I have to pay. Okay? That’s one of the primary categories of damages. Rabbi Yohanan compares it to an arrow. Just as if I shoot an arrow and cause damage—I didn’t damage directly, the arrow damaged—but because I shot the arrow, the responsibility is mine, so too if I lit a fire, the responsibility is mine. Reish Lakish says: his fire is like his property. The fire that goes and causes damage is like my cow going and causing damage. Fine? That’s called property that causes damage, not a person who causes damage. The question is whether this falls under personal damage or property damage. An arrow is more severe, yes—an arrow is really a case of a person causing damage through his own force, whereas an animal is my responsibility because it is my responsibility for what my animal does, but it’s still “property that causes damage.” Now the Talmud says: why did Reish Lakish not say like Rabbi Yohanan? He would say to you: arrows go by his force. Here, the fire does not go by his force. It’s not like arrows, says Reish Lakish. Why? Because with an arrow, when I shoot it, I am the one who put into it the force by which it flies. So when it causes damage in the end, it causes damage by my force. But with fire, I lit it and the wind carries it. It doesn’t move by my force. I only lit it. Right? Therefore, it isn’t “his fire is like his arrows.” You cannot compare fire to an arrow. And Rabbi Yohanan—why didn’t he say like Reish Lakish? Rabbi Yohanan says it is like an arrow. Why? He would say to you: property has substance; this does not have substance. When my cow goes and causes damage, that is property that belongs to me, because it is a thing with substance, something over which ownership can apply. But fire—there is no ownership over it; it is something without substance; it is not an object that is mine. Yet the Torah said that if fire goes out, I have to pay for the damage it causes. How can that be? It cannot be because of “his property.” So it must be compared to “his arrows.” Now let’s look at the Talmud in its context in the chapter “הכונס”. Rav Ami and Rav Asi were sitting before Rabbi Yitzchak Nappaḥa. One said to him: let the master teach a legal teaching. And the other said to him: let the master teach an aggadic teaching. One wanted a lecture in Jewish law, and the other wanted a lecture in aggadah. He opened to say an aggadic teaching, and one of them didn’t let him. He opened to say a legal teaching, and the other didn’t let him. He said to them: I will give you a parable. What is this like? A man who had two wives, one young and one old. The young wife plucked out his white hairs. The old wife plucked out his black hairs so that he would remain with white hairs and look old. And he ended up bald from both sides. Now he was left with no hair at all, neither black nor white. That’s what you are doing to me—you aren’t allowing me to teach either law or aggadah. So he said to them: if that’s the case, I’ll tell you something that suits both of you. You know what? I’ll tell you something good for both of you, both for the one who wants Jewish law and for the one who wants aggadah. “כי תצא אש ומצאה קוצים”—“If a fire goes out and finds thorns”—“goes out” means goes out on its own. It goes out on its own; it’s not that someone took it out. “שלם ישלם המבעיר את הבערה”—“the one who kindled the fire shall surely pay.” The Holy One, blessed be He, said: it is upon Me to repay for the fire that I kindled. “I kindled a fire in Zion,” as it says, “ויצת אש בציון ותאכל יסודותיה”, and I am destined to rebuild it with fire, as it says, “ואני אהיה לה חומת אש סביב ולכבוד אהיה בתוכה”. That’s the aggadah, the aggadic side. And the legal side: the verse begins with damage caused by one’s property and ends with damage caused by one’s own body, to teach you that “אשו משום חציו”—his fire is like his arrows. “If a fire goes out and finds thorns”—that sounds at first like property causing damage, my property goes and causes damage like a cow. “The one who kindled the fire shall surely pay”—that makes it sound as though I myself kindled the fire, not that the wind carried it. So it begins with damage caused by one’s property and ends with damage caused by one’s own body, as if I myself caused the damage. That teaches that “his fire is like his arrows.” Why can’t fire be like one’s animal? Because this is fire we’re talking about. The question is whether fire is like arrows or like property. Here we see that fire is like arrows, not like an animal. Now I ask: what did you gain by this strange exposition? You basically gave them two teachings, one in Jewish law and one in aggadah. Why did that satisfy them? You didn’t give them something equally suited to both. He said: I’ll give you something that will be good for both. No—you gave them two things, one good only for him and one good only for him. They still should have silenced him. When he taught the aggadic point, the other should have silenced him, and when he taught the legal point, the first should have silenced him. So why did they accept this? Why is this called something suited to both? It’s two teachings, not one teaching that is both aggadah and law. So I’ll tell you what I think lies behind this. What does it mean that “his fire is like his arrows”? It means that when the fire goes and causes damage, I am responsible. It is compared to an arrow. Why? Because I am responsible. But in the end, who burned the other person’s stack of grain? The fire, not me. I created a fire, and the fire went and burned the stack. It burned the stack, not me. But the responsibility is mine as if I burned it—“his fire is like his arrows.” And so too the Holy One, blessed be He, says regarding the Temple. He says: “I kindled a fire in Zion.” What does that mean? Suppose I destroyed the Temple—what do you mean? The laws of nature did it. I created a world, and in that world your Temple was destroyed. But “his fire is like his arrows”: I am responsible for it. Because true, I created the world, and from that point the laws of nature proceed on their own. But that is exactly the idea learned from “his fire is like his arrows”: even though the system runs by itself, responsibility remains with the one who created it. The Holy One, blessed be He, says: I created this world, and in this world, the course of events led to the destruction of the Temple. The responsibility lies with Me. I created the world; the responsibility is on Me. Does that mean I did it? Of course not. The laws of nature did it. The laws of nature did it, and the responsibility is on Me. That is the point. It is exactly what I said to you earlier. Even though at first glance what is written here sounds like the Holy One, blessed be He, personally carried it out, once you see it in context, what is written here is exactly the opposite. What happened here was the laws of nature. It had nothing directly to do with the Holy One, blessed be He. The fire burned—not because the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that the Temple must be destroyed. The fire burned. But I am responsible, says the Holy One, blessed be He, because I lit the fire. I created the world—in the analogue, that is. I created the world with all the laws inside it. Everything that happens within it, I am responsible for. True, I am responsible. But that doesn’t mean that I did it. I didn’t do it. Okay? Nature did it. I created nature, and therefore I am responsible. So what this midrash really wants to say—and that’s why when Rabbi Yitzchak Nappaḥa tells them this, it is one teaching, not two. It is one teaching equally suited to both. Both accepted it. Why? Because he shows them that aggadah and Jewish law are really two aspects of the same thing. I am simply showing you an idea that has an aggadic implication and a legal implication, but it is one teaching, not two. He did not give them two teachings; he gave them one. He really solved the problem. One didn’t want law, the other didn’t want aggadah. So he said: come hear something that is both law and aggadah. Not two separate things, as it seems in the Talmud—one law and one aggadah. No, it is one thing that has legal implications and aggadic implications, and that they accepted. But the message here, if I return to what we said earlier, is that nature runs the way nature runs. The world follows its ordinary course. The Holy One, blessed be He, “did” it only in a sense of indirect responsibility. He created the laws of nature, He created the world, and everything that happens comes from His power in the sense of someone who shot arrows. But that does not mean that everything that happens here is a direct present-time decision of the Holy One, blessed be He. No. Nature does it. And the Holy One, blessed be He, is the one who shot those arrows. But the arrows are what act.

[Speaker C] Does the human being interfere with the divine plan? This is the divine plan.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, interfere? This is the divine plan. The divine plan includes human choices and the laws of nature.

[Speaker C] That those choices will lead to failures in the plan.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. The divine plan—no, the divine plan is exactly this: that everything will depend on our choices, and if we don’t choose well, then there will be failures. All of that is the plan. If He wanted to create us programmed so that we would go straight to the goal He wants, He would not have created us this way. He did not create us programmed.

[Speaker C] It’s possible that we will never reach the goal.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is the goal. Again, there is nowhere else to reach. The goal is this—that there be a world run by people with choice, who can choose good and can choose evil. That is the goal. Fine. Let’s stop here.