Q&A: Providence in Our Time
Providence in Our Time
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I read several responsa on your site, and what especially caught my eye was your claim that God has abandoned the land.
If you had said that this is how you understand the commentators throughout the generations, or if you had presented some ongoing religious position continuous with the Sages, I would have accepted it.
But I find it very hard to understand why you didn’t fit this into an existing religious model.
There are two accepted conceptions that explain a relatively low level of providence:
Providence that is affected by the degree of divine hiddenness, so that in exile we are in a state of hiddenness, and therefore it is far less dominant.
A second thing: the level of providence according to the level of the person; in Maimonides this is very prominent.
So I’m surprised, and I’d be glad for an explanation.
In the Rabbi’s other articles that I read, I saw a brave attempt not to “break” the position of the Sages, an attempt to show a method that always works, and here it is as though the tools have broken.
After all, one could justify that same claim—that “there is almost no divine influence in nature today”—by means of the two conceptions I laid out, so why not? What flaw did you find in them?
I’d be glad for an answer,
This really is a sensitive topic,
Netanel
Answer
Hello Netanel, usually an answer you like is called “brave.” By the same token, you could say that a brave answer would be to come out against the Sages. Either way, in my view bravery has no value. An answer should be true, not brave.
My impression is that these models generally don’t work. And if there are special people for whom they do work—possibly. But I’m speaking about the ordinary world and ordinary people. What difference does it make if there are exceptional righteous people whose lives are conducted by Heaven? The world is not run that way.
Discussion on Answer
It’s hard to elaborate here, and I already explained this in previous responsa. My claim is that there may occasionally be intervention (indeed it’s hard to know this from experience), but the regular course of things proceeds according to the laws of nature. That is simply a result of our scientific and everyday experience. The fact is that the laws of nature generally work, and when they do a drug trial they don’t check whether the patients prayed in order to verify that only the drug had an effect. And so on.
If this picture fits some model, fine by me. But I have no interest in fitting it in. I don’t trouble myself to fit my words to the Sages or the medieval authorities because in my assessment Maimonides and the Sages didn’t know better than we do whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved or not, and therefore in principle I do not see them as an authority on these matters. And in general, there is no authority in matters of thought and belief, only in Jewish law. So why should what I say have to fit other people’s models?
A. I generally agree that there is no authority in matters of faith and belief, but regarding providence and principles of that kind, I am convinced that there was a tradition, or at least an understanding, of the words of the prophets.
B. Part of the structure of religion is to rely to some degree on the past, to continue and break less; that sounds to me like an important goal, certainly when it does not contradict reason.
C. As I understand it, providence does not purport to operate in deterministic matters, and that is why there is a category of a vain prayer. And I agree that there are things that people once thought were random and therefore attributed to providence, whereas today we see that they are clearly natural. But in things that are not necessarily deterministic? For example, your story about the ride in Gedera—I see no logical reason to be so decisive that providence was not operating there.
D. One of the familiar claims about providence, a claim that speaks about embedding providence within nature, is that God knew in advance what I would choose and accordingly planned His moves so that no law of nature would be broken. Or that He embedded part of reward and punishment within the workings of nature, where mind-body effects in medicine can support this, and differences in people’s happiness sometimes regardless of economic condition and the like provide further reinforcement.
I’m not being decisive. I simply do not accept the decisive position that says there was a miracle there. My claim is that there is no indication of that whatsoever, and no reason to assume that there was a miracle there. It seems to me that whoever claims there was a miracle bears the burden of proof. After all, he is claiming it on statistical grounds (and not because there was a prophet who told him that the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself in Gedera), but as I showed, the statistical consideration does not say that. So why assume it at all?
The fact that religious thinking tends to continue what our rabbis said is known to me. Does that mean it is correct? I do not see why. People also tend to speak slander. Does that make it right to speak slander? See also my reply to you after the column on the law of small numbers, where you asked something similar.
https://mikyab.net/%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A7-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%A9%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%94-%D7%95/#comment-899
It’s not clear to me why the models don’t work.
And in general, what reasonable experiment could disprove that claim?
I’d appreciate more detail, because I really don’t understand where this dismissal is coming from.
It’s true that the trend of every young child asking a million requests is mistaken and exaggerated, but that in times of trouble people should pray? Maimonides sees this as a Torah-level novelty.
If there were a contradiction from reality, fine. But I haven’t heard of one.
Thanks,
Netanel