Q&A: Divine Providence in Our Times
Divine Providence in Our Times
Question
Hello Rabbi,
As a student who has heard lectures from the Rabbi, and someone who has read a very small amount of his writings, I understood that in your view, generally speaking, nowadays there is no concept of individual divine providence.
I wanted to point the Rabbi to the words of Professor Halivni, who presents a similar position with an interesting explanation. He argues that as long as the people were connected to the Written Torah and drew their Torah and practice from there, there were prophets and providence. From the moment the Torah “descended” to human beings, when “it is not in heaven,” the world returned to being conducted according to human behavior. Of course, this is just a brief summary. See the Wikipedia entry on David Weiss Halivni for a bit more expansion. I wanted to ask what the Rabbi thinks about the analogy Halivni makes between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah?
Answer
I wrote similar things here.