1. So I’ll define it: I’m talking about the set of all logically possible worlds, that is, all the worlds a person can think of. Some of them are presumably built like ours and some are not.
2. And then I return and ask: in one of those worlds, could there be a different Torah (from the Torah’s own point of view)?
3. Your servant is the last person who would try to teach you logic, but your claim that it is somehow "strange" to derive an answer to such a question from the Torah (and that instead it should be handled with "logical tools") seems to me a bit puzzling, with all due respect.
4. Of course the logical derivation has to be done with logical tools. So what? The instruments of derivation are logical, but the object they are directed at is the text. Isn’t that what you and I are doing all the time? Trying to understand what is logically implicit in a given text. So I think that from the text of the Torah too one can derive claims/ideas by using logical tools.
5. The Torah itself tries to validate itself (within what is called the witness argument). I thought then, and still think now, that this attempt at validation is connected to the question I raised here.

I already explained why your question is meaningless. If in another world a different Torah is given, then it doesn’t really care what our Torah says about that (since it is different from it). At most, you could infer from here that the Torah (ours) wants us to think that in all worlds there must be only this Torah.
By the way, in Moses’ dialogue with the angels in the midrash, he asks them whether they have a father and mother, or whether they have property, and by this he explains why honoring parents and the prohibition of theft are not relevant to them. Is that a different Torah? Or perhaps a different application of the same Torah under different circumstances?

I completely disagree with your claim that my question is meaningless. On the contrary, I think the following sentence (which you said above) does not sit well with that determination.

Your sentence was:

"At most, you could infer from here that the Torah (ours) wants us to think that in all worlds there must be only this Torah."

What I’m trying to do here is understand the logical status of the Torah we have in our hands. If, as you half-admit, our Torah wants us to think that in all worlds there must be only one Torah, then a first-rate theological problem is created here.

For if that is its will—that is, if that is a central message for it—then it denies God the freedom to create other Torahs.
If I’m right, it follows that God is contingent on the Torah (or at the very least on the same level as it).
That is the claim I raised in our debate in the past, and I don’t see any escape from it here either.

I’m not admitting it even with a quarter of a mouth. I explained what I had to explain.

Michi, in light of your latest explanation, I have no choice but to fall silent and humbly accept your opinion.

That said, after admitting my error and retracting completely, I allow myself, again, to take the liberty of appealing to the readers of this discussion and asking: can anyone explain to me why I reached the flawed conclusion above (that if the Torah is, from its own point of view, necessary in all possible worlds, then God is contingent on it)? If someone manages to explain to me how such an error befell me, I can presumably avoid in the future its sisters as well, those wicked errors lurking at my door further down the road.

Your mistake is in the following sentence:
"If, as you half-admit, our Torah wants us to think that in all worlds there must be only one Torah,"
Rabbi Michi did not admit that. The Torah is the best one in this world. It says nothing about other worlds.

Of course, if the Torah claims that it is a necessary existent, then God is contingent on it. How do you know that’s what it claims, and even if it does, why does it matter?

Dear and wise Y.D. (I say this both because I’m a great devotee of the art of flattery and because you usually write deep and enlightening things).

First, it’s important for me to clarify that the discussion in the background is the one we had the previous times, in which I argued that it is implicit in the Torah that God is contingent on it, and that this is, of course, a very serious philosophical and theological problem.

But within this discussion I am not dealing with that question.

So we are left with two other questions: one secondary and one important.

The secondary question is whether Michi did or did not admit openly, or half-openly, or not even by a per mille of his mouth, that the Torah is necessary in all possible worlds and from this it is logically imposed on God.
In my poor opinion, there is a pretty decent basis for interpreting the sentence he said above ("At most, you could infer from here that the Torah (ours) wants us to think that in all worlds there must be only this Torah") in that way.
But maybe I’m mistaken on this point.

But the second question is much more interesting to me and, with all due respect, also more important:
What is the logical status of a body of knowledge (any body of knowledge) that really regards itself as necessary in all possible worlds (regardless of whether Michi, Y.D., Doron, or any other person believes this)?

Here my answer has not changed. In my opinion, such a body of knowledge—especially if it is a body of knowledge that attributes its own source to God—by definition demands a status equal to God, at the very least.
If such a body of knowledge exists, then it turns God into a kind of "coerced one" of it (like our ancestors, the forced converts of Spain, and the like).

And again, it may be that I’ll be convinced that the Torah of Israel is not like this at all, but that is not my question right now. At this stage I’m asking you only this: do you agree that there is a logical problem with a body of knowledge that testifies about itself that it was given by God, but at the same time holds that it is necessary in all possible worlds?

Dear B,

I’m referring only to the last part of your question: if you can live rationally with a concept of God who is contingent on a text/body of knowledge that He created and gave, good for you.
In the world I live in, such a concept of God is completely empty… It is a God who is only a fiction of a text created by human beings. Philosophically, such a claim is a scandal.

Doron,
Where is there any reference in the Torah to all possible worlds?

To the best of my knowledge there is no such reference….

In light of that, our philosophical task is to extract such a position from between the lines. My methodological assumption is that in a text like this, and in my opinion even in texts of a completely different kind, this can be done.

The kind of philosophical extraction required here has to begin with the question of the medium through which God chose to create a "relationship" with us. For although God can choose whatever medium He wishes, philosophical (rational) judgment assumes that some media will be more reasonable than others. Such a view also receives support from the reports we encounter in history (for example, we tend to dismiss easily stories of people reporting to us that God revealed Himself to them in the form of an otter or a ladder, and prefer the reports accepted in conventional sacred books).

The a priori condition required of such a medium is that it be contingent on God (I hope there’s no need to explain why, and I also hope you agree with this condition).

Since I believe that at the center of cognition stands the capacity for intellectual contemplation, whatever form it may take, I expect that medium to establish a norm that places this capacity at the heart of the connection between us and God, or at the very least leaves that possibility open (does not rule it out in advance).

In the Torah’s eyes, that medium is of course itself—a text (the Five Books).

The difficulty: this text not only does not place intellectual contemplation at the center of what it demands of a person. Worse than that, in a case of contradiction between an insight we arrive at with the aid of intellectual contemplation (of each one of us) and the text, the Torah insists that we obey the text—that is, itself. In light of this, it prevents us (or at least aspires to prevent us) from turning "outward" and necessarily channels us back to itself. The text places itself at the center, not the God who created it and not even the most reliable path of connection to God. From this it follows that from its point of view (even if this is deeply implicit within it), God is contingent on it. In the formulation with which I framed the discussion from the outset: the text is necessary in all possible worlds.
And in a somewhat paradoxical formulation: our Torah is a Torah of life, not a Torah of God (and here, in my dwarf-like humility, giants of spirit like Rabbi Kook and the like failed, because they did not notice this).

This is easy to understand if one compares the status of the text and its relation to itself in Judaism as opposed to Christianity. In Christianity the text (the Old and New Testaments) is not really sacred, at least not in the same way that it is sacred in Judaism (and therefore too, Judaism has no parallel in terms of the centrality of engagement with the text and with language in general). Paul says explicitly that "the letter kills, but the spirit gives life." So he is aware that even this sentence itself, important as it may be, is nothing more than a means to higher modes of cognition.