Answer

Hello Erez. First of all, where did you get the idea that the definition of God is that He knows everything? Second, not all of the future depends on human choices, since there are also natural processes governed by the laws of nature. I think I explained there (in the Newcomb paradox) that knowledge of the future regarding acts done by free choice is a logical contradiction, and just as the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make a square triangle, so too He cannot know what I will choose tomorrow. Omnipotence is the ability to do everything that can be done. But when He cannot do something that is not even coherently defined at all (a logical contradiction), that does not detract from His omnipotence. Can the Holy One, blessed be He, make a bullet that penetrates every wall and also a wall that stops every bullet? Clearly not, because those two objects cannot exist together. Can He turn Himself into a human being? If so—I would shoot Him in the head and kill Him. And if He still would not die, then He was not a human being after all (because a human being who is shot in the head dies). So clearly He cannot turn Himself into a human being. Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed and Rashba (responsa, vol. 4, no. 234) wrote that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do things that involve a logical contradiction (such as a square whose diagonal is shorter than its side). I explained this at the end of my book Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon.
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
Hello, and thank you for the response. Maimonides in Eight Chapters saw a need to reconcile God’s knowledge of the future with free choice. And more than that—we see cases in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), such as God’s promises to Abraham and prophecies of destruction and restoration, in which God reveals to human beings the future that is going to happen. What I meant to say is that even the future of nature depends on man… He has the ability on the one hand to destroy and on the other hand to develop. As I understand it, the entire future depends on choice (as I said—someone could decide to launch an atomic bomb and thereby wipe out some country, so the whole future connected to it becomes vague and unknown, because it may not even exist by then).
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Hello Erez.
In my opinion, not much of the future is determined by our choices. Take into account the law of large numbers. When you add up the influences and choices of all human beings, you will get approximately the expected result.
But this argument is not really important. As I wrote to you, knowledge of what will be chosen in the future is a logical contradiction and therefore impossible. There is nothing to argue about here, since this is a claim for which there is a logical proof.
Therefore, if everything depends on our choice (as you think), the conclusion is that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know the future at all. That’s all.
As for Maimonides finding it necessary to reconcile knowledge with choice (both in the Laws of Repentance 5:5 and also in Eight Chapters), and many other medieval authorities (Rishonim) as well, that stems from their mistake, because they apparently did not understand that this is a logical contradiction. Maimonides, by contrast, probably did understand this, and his answer is that the Holy One, blessed be He, in fact does not know (at least that is how the Shelah interpreted it in the introduction to his book, in the section “Beit HaBechirah”—see there). But even if that interpretation is incorrect, my conclusion would be that Maimonides was also mistaken about this. I do not see any other way out.
In my book on theology I will expand more on this question and on the dilemma regarding the “subordination” of the Holy One, blessed be He, to logical constraints (in the previous message I mentioned Maimonides and Rashba to you on this point).
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
Hello, and thanks again for the response 
I understand the logic of this argument. What was hard for me was the contradiction between it and what is familiar and well known—the consensus.
I have to say I was pretty surprised by the sentence, “My conclusion would be that Maimonides was also mistaken about this.”
Why doesn’t the Rabbi accept Maimonides’ argument that God’s knowledge is not the same kind of knowledge as ours, and therefore we can’t understand it (though that answer is also hard for me)?
Are there other sources that claimed, like the Shelah about Maimonides, that God does not know?
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
The consensus does not really interest me, certainly not on matters like these.
Maimonides’ argument has received several opposite interpretations. Raavad there, for example, thinks Maimonides did not answer at all (and criticizes him for this, while offering his own answer). The Shelah holds that Maimonides did answer: that His knowledge is not like our knowledge. But what does that mean? That our kind of knowledge He does not have. What He has is something else, which for some reason is also not called “knowledge.” Bottom line: He does not have what we call knowledge.
There is also the Or HaChaim on Genesis 6 who wrote that the Holy One, blessed be He, withholds knowledge from Himself. On the face of it, that does not answer the question, because if the information exists, then even if no one knows it, that still contradicts our free choice. Perhaps his intention is to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, withholds knowledge from Himself by giving us free choice (because the fact that we have free will contradicts the information existing before we have chosen, and nonexistent information cannot be known—not even by the Holy One, blessed be He).
But as I wrote to you, I am not really interested in commentators’ opinions on such matters. Even if everyone, including Maimonides, thought otherwise, I would still hold my view. Even if one can speak of authority in halakhic contexts (and even there it is important not to overdo it), regarding facts (such as whether the Holy One, blessed be He, knows or does not know), there is no authority.