Q&A: Providence, etc.
Providence, etc.
Question
Hello Rabbi, this topic has been discussed on the site to exhaustion, and I tried to go through all the questions that had already been asked. Even so, I still have one question about individual providence.
The Rabbi wrote that the world went through a process of maturation and no longer needed reinforcement of faith in the form of miracles.
A person who argued with me about this raised an interesting claim that I found hard to answer. He argues that the Holy One, blessed be He, watches over us constantly and even frequently intervenes in what happens in the world and with us, but not in the sense of open miracles or anything close to that. Rather, His intent is specifically to do everything in concealment so that we will not base our faith on it. In other words, the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes in a way that cannot be felt, for example at points where a person cannot predict and identify divine intervention (in chaos theory, for example, where the process is supposed to be deterministic but a person has no ability to calculate it). Of course, the question is why should we accept that theory and prefer it over the theory that says there is no frequent intervention? His answer is that this is what emerges from the Torah and the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and of course from almost all our sages ever since. He says that to go against the grain based only on reasoning and nothing more is absurd.
He did not convince me, but he certainly did raise doubts for me. I would be happy to hear the Rabbi’s opinion, and I hope I haven’t troubled you too much.
Answer
If He intervenes in a way that cannot be felt, then it is not felt. People recover because of Acamol, not because of the Holy One, blessed be He; they get sick because of bacteria, not because of the Holy One, blessed be He. So He is not intervening.
Beyond that, this is a thesis that cannot be falsified. Everyone understands that things happen because of the laws of nature, so it is self-deception to say otherwise. The possibility of explaining that reality has changed sounds more reasonable.
Discussion on Answer
To Noam – greetings,
True, Rabbi Michael Abraham is a doctor, but not a physician; a physicist, but not a clinician. Anyone who works in medicine, or Heaven forbid needs it, knows how far from simple these things are. The causes of illness struggle fiercely on one side, the immune system and the healing processes struggle fiercely on the other, and even the best of doctors cannot know who will win.
Acamol does not heal; it only calms the fever and the pain, the awareness of the state of the hard struggle. And that too has healing value, so that a person will not go out of his mind from the pain and the terror. Concealing the intervention also has a calming effect, so that a person will not go out of his mind from fear of punishment and the severity of judgment. Awareness that there is providence over every detail and deed spurs a person on the one hand to take responsibility, but on the other hand can also paralyze him with fear. Therefore there is patience, a delaying of intervention, in order to give a person an opportunity for repair, whether out of fear or out of love.
Best regards, Shatz Levenger
In the Exodus from Egypt and the forty years in the wilderness, when miracles were daily occurrences, they ate manna and were protected by clouds of glory. But once they entered the Land, the people were required to rely on natural means, to plow and sow and expect God’s help in giving rains of blessing. If at Jericho the wall fell by miracle, at Ai the Lord teaches Joshua to use military tactics: “Set an ambush against the city behind it” (and as Rabbi Medan says, they would bless: “Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to set an ambush” 🙂 ). The people did what was incumbent upon them, and God helped bring things to a good conclusion in what lay beyond natural power.
And as Rabbi Herzog said in his speech to the National Committee after Kristallnacht, the miracle of the cruse of oil required a bit of natural oil on which the miracle could take effect. So too, although by the natural course of things what power do we have to act against mighty empires, we still need to do the little that is in our hands, and God in His kindness will help with what is beyond our power.
With blessings for a peaceful Sabbath, Shatz Levenger
Noam, it all begins and ends with the question of how you perceive the world. If you think it is not run according to the laws of nature, but rather that the Holy One, blessed be He, causes everything and makes the effort to hide it (that is, it is not the Acamol that lowers the fever but the prayer) – fine. But if you think otherwise (like I do), then you need to look for a way to reconcile that with the verses. That’s all. Decide what you think, and that’s it. My assessment is that all believing Jews think like I do, and they live in denial and repression. But that is of course my thesis, and about that too you should decide for yourself.
I will only note that for me, the way the world operates becomes clear through observation, scientific tools, and common sense, not through verses in the Torah. I do not impose the Torah’s laws on reality, even if it is possible to do so with some strain. Exactly as Maimonides also writes in the Guide for the Perplexed (regarding eternity and corporeality). But you need to decide what your own position is on the matter.
This is essentially a “theological” argument in the sense of the fourth notebook.
Thank you very much, Rabbi.
It is certainly possible to think that the world runs according to the laws of nature and still assume that there is individual providence.
There are several planes on which the laws of nature do not dictate the outcome.
For example:
1. Human choices. If we accept that a person has free choice and is not deterministic, then it is possible that sometimes a person’s decision is not in his own hands but in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He. (Of course, decisions that have moral value are in the hands of the person.)
2. Here I lack knowledge: is it certain that the randomness governing the quantum realm has no effect on large numbers?
1. These points have already come up here many times. Regarding choice, there is no difference between intervening in choice and intervening in the laws of nature. Involvement in choice means there is no choice, just as involvement in the laws of nature means there is no natural behavior. Decisions that are not moral are in any case not entrusted to the person, so involvement in them is like involvement in the laws of nature.
2. Quantum phenomena get smeared out on large scales. But even if not, the involvement would still violate the laws of quantum theory. See The Science of Freedom, chapters eight-nine.
Intervention in the laws of nature seems strange to us because we observe that the laws of nature are upheld. By contrast, with choice we do feel that sometimes a person does something without having made a voluntary choice, everything on the scale between inadvertence and coercion.
When that happens (an action without choice), then once again there is natural causality here, governed by the laws of nature. Intervention in that is intervention in nature.
Why are “decisions that are not moral in any case not entrusted to the person”?!?!?
Clearly, anyone who says there is free choice is claiming that almost always a person has choice.
Unless he is under coercion, or unaware, by inadvertence, and the like,
a person is always forewarned.
“A person is always forewarned” was said about an act with value-laden consequences (damage). What I meant was the saying: “Everything is in the hands of Heaven except fear of Heaven.” The deterministic laws of nature determine all our actions except those that involve choice. Only moral acts involve choice. See The Science of Freedom on Libet’s experiment, where I distinguished between picking and choosing. I think it also appears in an article here on the site:
There may indeed be an unfalsifiable thesis here, but that does not make it any less acceptable. The claim is that the status quo was that there was intervention in biblical times, and since then the Holy One, blessed be He, gradually disappeared from our sight and made the intervention imperceptible (perhaps also because the world matured). Your claim is that it seems more likely to you that He simply stopped intervening (except on rare occasions), but in order to claim a substantive change in the status quo you need proof beyond mere reasoning and nothing more. Especially since if the whole rule begins and ends with your own reasoning, one could say that we cannot guess the thoughts of the Holy One, blessed be He (“For My thoughts are not your thoughts”).