First of all, thank you for the reply.
Regarding the stone, I didn’t really manage to understand what is invalid about the question.
When you ask about a triangle that is round, the problem is in the question itself, but in the stone question there is nothing illogical about a stone that cannot be lifted.
The question is directed at someone who believes in an omnipotent God in order to show him that the concept of omnipotence creates paradoxes.
It’s not the question that creates the paradox but God’s omnipotence.
A stone that God cannot lift means that even if He very, very much wants to, He will not be able to do it.
And what does the Rabbi think about an answer like this: God can create such a stone by limiting Himself.

And what about an answer like: He can create the stone and He won’t be able to lift it because “omnipotent” is supposed to be capable of being “incapable”

Read it again and you’ll see that I explained all of this.
A stone that the omnipotent one cannot lift is a nonsense expression like a round triangle. I explained this. It is like saying that the concept of a circle creates the paradox of a round triangle and therefore rejecting the existence of the circle as a coherent concept, or rejecting the claim that circles exist.
He cannot limit Himself, just as I showed in the example that He cannot turn Himself into a human being.
You probably didn’t understand the last nonsense sentence either. In any case, I certainly didn’t understand it.

I read it three times and I’m still having trouble.
I think you’re framing the answer for experts in philosophy and not for people who have almost no knowledge of the subject.
So I’ll ask: can God decide that a certain person will get sick and die within ten days, and that He Himself will have no ability to change the matter—is that a logical question?

I can’t understand what is unclear. You can’t formulate a question that contains an expression with a logical contradiction and expect an answer. Such a question is meaningless. Therefore a question that contains the expression “a stone that the omnipotent one cannot lift” is meaningless, and it is impossible—and unnecessary—to answer it. Exactly like the question: can God make a round triangle, or is God blahblahblah. What isn’t clear about that?
As for your question, He can either decide the first thing (that the person will die) or do the second thing (change it), but not both. Exactly as He can make a wall resistant to every shell or a shell that penetrates every wall, but not both.
What isn’t clear here?

Regarding the sick person, I didn’t understand what you meant by “both things”; I meant that the sick person will die *without* any possibility of changing it, and not that he will both die and the Holy One, blessed be He, will change it. That is: can He cancel the potential possibility of healing the sick person?
In addition: is the Rabbi drawing a complete parallel between the question about a round triangle and the stone? Because from what I managed to understand regarding the round triangle, the answer is that God cannot do it, and in parentheses: because it’s not logical—so is that also the answer regarding the stone?
That is: God cannot make such a stone (because it is not logical that the omnipotent one would not be able to).

Meir, are you sure you read what I wrote?
1. I explained in parentheses what “both things” means. Read again.
2. In addition, I also explained your second question. Indeed, I compared a round triangle to the stone. It is completely identical. Read again.
3. And last but not least, which again was already fully explained: I explained that God cannot do it because there is no such thing (not because it is not logical, as you put it). There simply is no thing here to do. What exactly is He supposed to create? “A stone that the omnipotent one cannot lift” is an empty concept like a round triangle. It is like asking whether God can make blahblahblahblah. Can you try to answer that last question? If He can’t, then He’s not omnipotent, right?

I explained all three things well. I see no point in repeating the same thing again and again.

Okay, except for the sick person, I understood.
What you wrote in parentheses are not the two things I wanted God to do (kill the sick person and change it), but rather I wanted Him to kill the sick person and not be able to change it. Can B still be done without A?
And what is flawed in the answer many rabbis give, that God can limit Himself?
As if we imagine that God has a button with which He chooses whether to heal the sick person, then God can break the button and cause it so that even if He wants to, He won’t be able to help the sick person.
And there is no lack of ability in that, because God chose it.

If He limits Himself, then at the end of the day He comes out limited. I gave the example that He cannot turn Himself into a human being (because then it would be possible to shoot Him and kill Him). As I understand it, He cannot limit Himself, because limiting the unlimited is again a logical contradiction. But what difference does all this make? In the case of the stone, He is not limiting Himself, so there it is clear that it is not possible.

Does the position that God cannot limit Himself (which I agree with) not contradict the foundations of Kabbalah and the doctrine of tzimtzum, and also parts of the prayer such as “for the sake of the unification”?

Meir and everyone asking here,
Understand this: the Creator is spiritual. The very fact that He is spiritual shows that He is not limited. He can do everything—but not in our terms! Therefore you have to define terms, just as the Rabbi answered you! But the basic assumption that the Creator is omnipotent means He can do anything without lifting a finger! The Holy One, blessed be He, is like a supernatural magician—but a magician without illusions! The Holy One, blessed be He, has no tools; He is an artisan without tools, so He has no problem doing anything!
When you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot—there is no such thing, because everything depends on His will. And even saying the word “will” about the Creator is problematic, because if He has a will then it sounds as if He needs something. In short, you can’t define our God in simple terms! We can barely grasp that He is omnipotent!
You want us to say that He can limit Himself so that you can say He is Jesus, right? That is a root-level absurdity, because it is written, “For no man shall see Me and live”—so clearly He does not become a human being, because then He would contradict His words. And in any case it cannot be that Jesus “the messiah” stands at the right hand of God as it is written in your books of the apostles! And “besides Me there is no God”—that is what is written in our Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). “You saw no image”; “from heaven I spoke with you”—so there is no way you can think that Jesus is God at all! And if you claim that he is from the seed of David, meaning Messiah son of David, that too is false, because it is written: “Your throne shall be established forever!!!!”
“I have found David My servant; with My holy oil I have anointed him. With whom My hand shall be established; My arm also shall strengthen him. The enemy shall not exact from him, nor shall the son of wickedness afflict him. And I will beat down his adversaries before him and plague those who hate him. But My faithfulness and My mercy shall be with him, and in My name shall his horn be exalted. I will set his hand also in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers.” —–So if he were Jesus the messiah, nobody would have been able to prevail against him, and that is enough!!!! But I’ll add:

“When your days are fulfilled and you lie with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to Me a son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the afflictions of the children of men,

but My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be secure forever before you; your throne shall be established forever.”

In Samuel: “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to Me a son.”

In Psalm 89: “He shall call to Me, You are my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation,

Also I will make him My firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.”

In Samuel: “If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the afflictions of the children of men”

In Psalms: “Then I will punish their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with plagues.”

In Psalms: “His seed shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun before Me. It shall be established forever like the moon; and the witness in the sky is faithful forever. Selah.”

In Jeremiah 33 it is written:

“In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring forth for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah shall be saved and Jerusalem…

For thus says the Lord: David shall never lack a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel…

Thus says the Lord: If you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their proper time, then My covenant also may be broken with David My servant, so that he should not have a son reigning on his throne…” —That is, there is no permission to change the covenant with the Creator, so your so-called new covenant violates the first one, and there is no basis for that because the Torah of God stands forever. And in the covenant of the tablets it is written: “Observe and hear all these words (the ten words written on the two tablets) that I command you, so that it may go well with you and with your children after you” ——-forever————–“because you will do what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord your God.” The covenant cannot be changed.

That is, the messiah will come as we saw in Jeremiah, and we ask three times a day:
“Cause the Branch of David Your servant to flourish speedily, and exalt his horn by Your salvation, for we have hoped and waited all day for Your salvation. Blessed are You… who causes the horn of salvation to flourish.” Amen

Dear Nerya, the Rabbi explains here on the site that he admits that the doctrine of tzimtzum and many other things have no place in the Oral Torah from Sinai. We received only laws, and from them many correct things developed and many things that are not precise.
And regarding “for the sake of the unification…” there are disputes about this. Rabbi Yair Chaim Bacharach, in his responsa book Chavot Yair, wrote: “These matters were stated only for exceptionally great Torah scholars.” He notes there as well that he himself does not understand the meaning of the prayer and its hints, and he wonders whether the other kabbalists do understand it properly.
In any case, personally I didn’t understand what the limitation is in the statement from your perspective.

Hello Nerya.
As for “for the sake of the unification,” I don’t understand the connection. In any case there is a dispute around saying “for the sake of the unification.”
The claim that He cannot contract Himself does not necessarily contradict Kabbalistic tzimtzum, since there is a debate whether the contraction was in the light or in the luminary (in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s terminology), meaning whether the contraction was in God’s light and not in Him Himself. In any event, it seems to me that tzimtzum in the spatial sense could be possible; it is just that not being omnipotent is not possible.

Honorable Rabbi, if I may ask, why does the Rabbi deal with or answer Nerya’s question about tzimtzum as something possible, while others asked about the vision of the dry bones and you said that it is unclear—in other words that the prophecies in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) are not sufficiently clear? What exactly is the difference? How do you make these distinctions?

B. Why would the Holy One, blessed be He, contract His light and not make it so that there would be light in a measure that would not require Him to contract His light in the end?

Moshe, I didn’t understand the question. What is the connection between the possibility of tzimtzum and the interpretation of prophecies?

You can’t make light that would not need to be contracted, because without contraction no room would remain for the world. The contraction is not because there is too little light, but because in a place where there is light, the world cannot exist.

Can God create another god?

I assume not. An essential property of God is that He is one and unique. If another one were created, there would be two, and that contradicts His definition. Beyond that, God is not created (He is the root of everything), and therefore a god that is created is not God.

So in essence one can say that besides being subject to the laws of pure logic in themselves (making it the case that x is true and false at the same time), there is an additional subjection to logic, arising from several basic and principled definitions in divinity (His being necessary existence, His being one, and the like), which cannot be contradicted.
That is interesting, because in principle there was an option to say that He can create another god, and the property of oneness would be pushed aside.

I mean: and the property of oneness would be pushed aside in favor of omnipotence, which is part of perfection.

Logic never stands on its own. Once you adopt some definition, you have to remain consistent with it. That too is a logical requirement. If part of God’s definition is uniqueness, then it is impossible to create another god. Unless you assume that this property is not essential to Him. That is why I was careful and wrote, “I assume not,” because my assumption is that the property of uniqueness is essential to Him.
The claim that the property of uniqueness should be pushed aside for the sake of perfection is irrelevant for two reasons: 1. There is no impairment of perfection here at all (an inability to deviate from logic is not a lack of perfection). 2. In any case, you will not succeed in achieving perfection in your broader sense, because there will always remain things that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do (such as kill Himself, or even turn Himself into a mortal human being who can be killed). So there is no point in giving up uniqueness in order to achieve an all-capacity that in any case will not be attained that way.

What I meant was that the very fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, is bound by being one, and cannot depart from that and do the opposite, is a deficiency, and therefore it is preferable to minimize the number of His uniquely defining properties.
What you wrote—that “the inability to depart from logic is not a lack of perfection”—applies in a case where a certain action necessarily requires departing from logic. But in a case where there is no such necessity, as here where one can say that He can create an additional god (because this is not an essential property), there is a slight deficiency in that. Why must He be one?
And regarding the second point: true, we won’t reach absolute perfection, but if it is possible to reduce deficiencies, why not do so?

I explained the matter. If uniqueness is an essential property of His, then this is a departure from logic in every sense. And there is no reason to reduce “deficiencies” that are not deficiencies.

Hello Rabbi,
In my opinion, this question is also really trying to raise the problem that God created us (beings with free choice).
I assume you know the thought experiment that says that in order to predict our choices deterministically (let’s say there were a way), the knowledge of the future would have to be hidden from us.
Because the very knowledge can change the choice. Theoretically it may be possible to predict the actions I will do and choose to do with complete accuracy, but if they tell me in advance what they are, I can choose differently. For example, if a prophet (or a sophisticated computer) tells me before lunch what I will eat for lunch from the available options, I can deliberately choose differently and thereby “ruin” any forecast he gives.
So the question that I think arises from the stone issue is whether God has absolute control. If so, how could He create me? A creature that cannot be controlled, a creature with control of its own?
Doesn’t it come out logically that God and I are two definitely distinct entities? That His power over me is limited? Or as was discussed in the previous comments, God who created another god?

I don’t understand the question. First, I see no logical problem in our existing as beings with free choice. God is omnipotent and could have taken away our choice (and therefore His power over us is not limited), but He chose not to take it away. Is He not omnipotent because He cannot choose what He did not choose, or not choose what He did choose?
You are right that this is the same answer as to the stone question, and I have written that here more than once. To know in advance information that does not exist is like creating a round triangle or a stone that the omnipotent one cannot lift.
I also do not see the connection to the question whether knowledge of the future can change it.

Is our future also “non-existent information” for God?

See the columns on knowledge and choice. In my opinion, yes.

From what I understood, the fact that God cannot create a god is simply because the second creation will not be God, right? Why is there a logical contradiction in the stone question? I couldn’t understand.

You didn’t answer regarding tzimtzum (or I didn’t understand), and the inability to self-limit. Can you address that again, please?

I explained it in detail. I don’t see what could be unclear. Who was talking about God creating a god?
I don’t remember what the question about tzimtzum was. Formulate it again.

There was someone here in the thread who spoke about God not being able to create a god.

How can there be tzimtzum, since that basically means God limits Himself?

From here we see that He can limit Himself. Of course He has control over this, and He can always return and take control over everything again, so this is actually simple enough. This enters into the issue of whether tzimtzum is to be understood literally or not, which is exactly what is currently being discussed in the Thursday lecture series (this evening).

Is God omnipotent? Where does this nonsense come from?

Can He pee?
Can He not exist?

Obviously not.
Conclusion: “omnipotent” is a human verbal fiction, and the whole question collapses.
The concept of “ability” is a fiction.
Things do not “can.” Things either exist or do not exist.

Of course God can create something that cannot be conceived!
For example, the world of souls..

Is there a source in the Five Books of the Torah for God’s being omnipotent? If not, is there a problem of faith in assuming that perhaps God is not omnipotent (but still created the heavens and the earth, performed miracles, etc.)?

I seem to remember that this question already came up in the past. I think that if someone reached that conclusion, he could reconcile it with the verses. There is “Is anything too wondrous for the Lord?” and the like, but one can always reconcile that by saying the intention is very great abilities, but not necessarily every ability. By reasoning, it seems to me that if the Holy One, blessed be He, stands at the basis of all reality, it is not plausible that He should have a finite ability, for the fact that He has ability at level X calls for explanation (why specifically X?). Total ability is the more natural state. But that is just my own reasoning, of course.

Hello Rabbi,
In your book and here on the site, you list several examples—the stone that cannot be lifted, the sorcerer, the shell, etc.—in order to illustrate the logical failure, the meaninglessness, and therefore these are objections completely devoid of significance.
On the other hand, in the series “The Holy One, blessed be He, and the World,” you explicitly say that these examples (unlike the example of the round triangle!) point to a limitation of God, to a deficiency in Him because of His perfection.
How does something that was an argument against the questioner and a reason to reject his objection now become a kind of proof of God’s deficiency, of His limitation????
What is the meaning of this turnabout?!

No turnabout at all.
A round triangle is an empty concept. Therefore saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make a round triangle is not a limitation of His. The same applies to a stone that the omnipotent one cannot lift. In contrast, saying that He cannot perfect Himself (because He is perfect) is a limitation of His. There is something well-defined that He cannot do and I can.

I’m sorry, but again you’re repeating the explanation you give on the site and in the book.
The question is why in the series “The Holy One, blessed be He, and the World” you did not define them as a logical failure, lacking meaning and definition, but rather explicitly connected them to the Holy One, blessed be He, as meaningful and arising from His deficiency?
I refer you to lesson 10, from minute 30:45 onward.

I’m sorry that you’re sorry. You are again repeating the same thing without any basis for it. I listened again and didn’t see anything like that there (on the contrary, I explicitly contrast there between limitations that arise from His omnipotence and contradictions). But enough with the pilpul. I wrote my position here. This is my position and I have not retracted it.

Haha… weird…
I can’t understand why evade it. The things are clear as the sun and were said by your own mouth.
Well, okay, apparently it really is a waste of energy. Let the listeners judge.
Thanks.

Omnipotent is a concept human beings invented. So of course God is not omnipotent.
God cannot have a property that is a creation of human imagination.

The rule is simple. Imagine a property X.
God cannot have property X.

Erez, I also just listened because of all the fuss. It says there clearly exactly what was explained here in all the answers. Instead of insisting, listen again. (I can’t manage to send a message with the link to the video at the relevant point. Weird.)

I can’t understand what is so hard to grasp here.
In the lesson, the Rabbi divides the limitations into 2 categories:
1. Limitations that arise from His perfection, because of His omnipotence.
Examples: the stone that cannot be lifted, the shell, the sorcerer. They are meaningful. They are not devoid of sense.
2. Limitations despite perfection. Round triangle. This is a category of logical failure. Devoid of sense. Meaningless.

In the book and on the site, the examples of the stone, the shell, and also the round triangle are all under one category. They are presented and explained as logical failure. Devoid of sense.
What else needs to be explained here?!?!!!!