Where is the Tosafot?

Doesn’t it bother the Rabbi to be called a heretic because of what he says here?!?
Surely if God is above time, that solves the problem. After all, the answer in other words says that indeed the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know before we choose, but rather knows Following our choice. That is, on the logical level, the choice comes before the knowledge.
But on the chronological level, the knowledge comes before the choice. And this is the famous answer of Tosafot Yom Tov, if I remember correctly.

And there is also the well-known answer that we have no idea what God’s knowledge means, so one cannot ask questions about a concept that is not understood. One must always begin by defining the concept, and only then can questions be asked about it. But since the concept by its very nature is undefined, questions cannot be asked about it.

But for some reason the Rabbi does not accept these answers. A syndrome like this is typical of people driven by lusts, not of married and older rabbis.

To our offended rabbi.
First, I suggest that anyone worried about the dangers of secular education should not come in here.
The solution that God is above time does not solve the problem in any way. It is empty verbiage, nothing more. At best it answers the question of how the Holy One, blessed be He, obtains the information about the future choice, but the question of knowledge and free choice is the opposite: assuming He has obtained the information, how can it be that we still have free choice?
These matters are clarified in my book The Science of Freedom, and you can see a brief version here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%A9%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%A8%D7%91/
The solution that God’s knowledge is not understandable to us also does not solve the problem. If I say that God knows, I mean the term “knows” as I use it. If I do not understand the term, I will not use it. Therefore, when you say that God knows, it means that He knows in the usual sense familiar to us. And if you mean some different kind of knowledge, then He does not have knowledge in our sense, and once again we return to the conclusion that prior knowledge of a free act is impossible.

I do not know whether I am “carried” or married, and I do know that I am fairly old. But what can I do—I indeed do not accept these answers. Maybe that is characteristic of people driven by lusts, and maybe I really am such a person. But even if you tell me that I am driven by lust, that does not answer my arguments. On the contrary, prove to me that I am just a lustful person by explaining where I am wrong.

As for the question whether I will be called a heretic—that is the last thing that bothers me. See here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%95%D7%93%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%95-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A1/

Y,
Yevamot 50a, s.v. “You should know.”

Wikipedia says: “Regarding prophecy, Leibowitz argued that if prophecies determined in a factual sense what would happen in the future, they would be devoid of religious value, just as all history is devoid of religious value. In his view, prophecies are not promises but demands presented to a person regarding the future, even though they are stated in the style of a description of what is going to happen. Following the passage in Tosafot: ‘A prophet prophesies only what ought to be if he had not sinned,’ Leibowitz would say that ‘a prophet prophesies only what ought to be.’ Therefore, in his view, even if certain prophecies in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) were not fulfilled, that does not mean that the prophets of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) were not true prophets.”

Are his words identical to those of Tosafot, or is there some change here?

There is much more here than some slight change. Leibowitz, as was his way, uses sources only as illustration. He does not intend to rely on Tosafot. Tosafot says that prophecies are not promises but assessments, whereas Leibowitz says they are only a whip for promoting values.

Do people still answer questions here?
As for the matter itself—it seems to me there is a misunderstanding here of Tosafot in Yevamot, and I assume of the other sources as well.
At least from Tosafot it is clear that he intends to answer the question: “If he had not sinned, would the prophecy not have been fulfilled? That cannot be possible, can it?”
In other words, he starts with the assumption that it is absolutely obvious that prophecies are fulfilled.
And his answer is that this specific prophecy is a prophecy about “what would have happened if he had not sinned”—but definitely what would have happened in that case. Not an “assessment” or anything like that, but a special prophecy in which God tells in advance what will happen under a certain condition. (“A prophet prophesies only…” means the specific prophet in the story, who is unnamed and whom the Talmud calls “a prophet”—not every prophet and every prophecy. Of course, to make a paraphrase out of it is just a dirty trick.)

If so, in my opinion Tosafot proves exactly the opposite.
It really is neat that Tosafot gets tangled up here with free choice, but the assumption that is obvious to Tosafot is that God knows what will happen and that prophecy must be fulfilled. Absolutely must. And if so, he has to work this out together with free choice, which would ostensibly cause the prophecy not to happen—so he gives a convoluted answer, that this prophecy is special and it spoke about what would happen in the future if Hezekiah did not sin.
But it is obvious to Tosafot beyond any doubt that God knows what will happen—whether he sins or not, and whether he will sin. Rather, the prophecy itself—what He told the prophet—was in this case “if he does not sin,” but in the end he sinned and prayed and “by chance” it came out that the prophecy was fulfilled even though it was not speaking about this case.

It is obvious that Tosafot’s answer is poor. But on the other hand, it is obvious that Tosafot thought that God knows the future, and His prophecies are always fulfilled. He did not succeed in giving a good answer to the contradiction, but he believed in both sides.

And in any case, your answer is not clear—what do you mean by “assessments”? After all, the number of choices—not including the specific sin discussed by Tosafot—that were made from that prophet until Josiah is enormous (who would marry whom, names, and countless other parameters that affect the future). Are you saying that God did not know all that, but merely “estimated” it, just extremely, extremely well? And likewise all the other prophecies that were fulfilled (according to the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh))?

I disagree. First, the same argument could be raised with respect to any prophecy about a person’s free act. If so, even if Tosafot is speaking specifically about this case, he should say the same thing regarding any prophecy about a free act. Second, Tosafot’s wording seems to me more like the wording of a sweeping rule: “A prophet prophesies only what ought to have been if he had not sinned.” He is speaking about any prophecy involving free choice, and as stated, even if not, clearly he would have to say the same thing regarding any such prophecy.
And therefore Tosafot implies that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know the future insofar as it depends on free choice.

You cannot infer from that Tosafot that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know, only that He does not prophesy to a person about a free act without there being an implicit condition dependent on future choice. And perhaps one might argue that prophecy is given for the knowledge of the *person*, and it cannot conflict with free choice, and that is where Tosafot’s constraint comes from. (And that seems to be implied by Maimonides, who on the one hand gives answer X to the question of knowledge and free choice, and answer Y to the question of free choice and the prophecy “and they shall enslave them and afflict them.”)

But the points themselves are of course correct, regardless of Tosafot.

It is not at all clear why this topic has aroused so much opposition here over the years, when in truth the dispute is not about content. For someone who answers that His knowledge is above time, or that His knowledge is not like our knowledge—whatever that means—agrees that He does not know *now* (a term that exists only within time) what *will* be, in the usual sense of the word “knowledge.” So what exactly are people arguing about?

I never understood what Leibowitz found in this Tosafot. It is known and agreed by everyone that prophecies of doom can be canceled as a result of repentance. Only prophecies of good are fixed, and only by them can true prophets be tested. (There are nearly explicit sources for this in the verses in Jeremiah 28:7–9, though there are also contradictions and forced readings, such as Jeremiah 18:7–10.)
Tosafot there is simply saying that that prophecy—“Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and he shall sacrifice upon you the priests of the high places”—is of the type of prophecies that can be canceled, and the meaning is that the main thrust of the prophecy is not for the good of people (but rather for the harm of the priests of the high places), and even though as a side effect there are good things for a certain person (that Hezekiah will continue to live), this still does not establish the prophecy as a “prophecy of good” that cannot be canceled. Exactly like Jonah’s prophecy about Nineveh, which was evil for the sinners and was canceled because they repented. A very slight innovation on the part of Tosafot. And the whole innovation is only according to Rabbi Akiva, but according to the Rabbis, on the contrary, it is proven in the Talmudic passage there that this prophecy really could not have been canceled even if he sinned. Are we going to hang great claims about prophecy on the dispute between Rabbi Akiva and the Rabbis? No. They merely disagreed about this particular shade of prophecy—whether it counts as a prophecy of doom or a prophecy of good.)

By the way, one can learn that the prophet does not actually see the future, but only what is likely to happen, from the fact that sometimes the prophet presents two options: if you do this, this will happen; if you do otherwise, something else will happen. That is, the future is not determined but in human hands, and it is possible to prophesy even about a future that will not happen at all. Jeremiah chapter 38, verses 17–23, says to Zedekiah: if you surrender to the Chaldeans, it will go well for you and your life will be spared; but if you refuse to go out, such-and-such will happen to you. In other words, he cannot see the future itself, only what is going to happen. And then, on reflection, if at the moment Zedekiah has two possibilities—that is, the capacity to choose—then why should Nebuchadnezzar not have the capacity to choose too? And if so, how can one prophesy with certainty? Rather, all prophecy is no more than very high statistical probability.