I understand the question a bit differently:
Isn’t it reasonable to assume that if God wants people to believe in Him and in His Torah, then why did He make it so hard?
And if it’s really that hard, then that’s a sign that the Torah is not fro….

It’s not all that hard. Someone who receives a religious education usually understands it well. True, there are people who are like “captured infants.” In any case, even if it is hard, He is not the one who made it so hard; rather, reality and the way people conduct themselves did that.

I didn’t mean that it’s hard to keep the commandments or to be able to believe.
I meant: why is it so hard to know “what the truth is”? The fact is that the Rabbi had to write many notebooks and books to prove faith. And just go and see how many atheists there are, and opposite them polytheistic idol worshippers, and so on and so on! If Judaism is true, then not even a tiny fraction of the world is aware of that at all.
Doesn’t it sound strange that a God who desires that people believe in Him almost does nothing for that?

Books and notebooks are needed because people are confused and biased. As I wrote to you, this is not the work of the Holy One, blessed be He, but our doing. The fact that the world is left to us and is not run by Him has, in my opinion, good explanations. And in any case, the world does not need to be aware of this. Only the Jews in it do.
But beyond all that, even if you do not understand the way the Holy One, blessed be He, thinks, that has no bearing on faith in Him.

With all due respect, Rabbi, I think the point is being missed.
Our inability to prove God is a philosophically stable claim, which as best I understand stems from our inability to understand being as it is in itself (but only to perceive it in a limited way).
As for probability, I have difficulty with that — probability is a form of uncertainty. A collection of probable conclusions (meaning conclusions that are not correct with some probability) can always lead some person to conclusions that are not the truth — because if a person could not arrive at other assumptions or conclusions, then they would be certain — or the conclusion would be certain.
In addition, one can argue against the degree of probability — since if many within Judaism itself do not hold that some given thing is plausible at all (Judaism as a religion without an agreed philosophy), it is reasonable to assume that those principles you regard as probable are not such; and even if they are, you still cannot move from probable assumptions to one single probable conclusion. (continued in the next message)

Therefore, the question returns: if we are not capable of arriving at the truth through certainty, and the truth (which is presumably singular) is different for so many different Jews, and the world that was created is such that it leaves room for conclusions that are not the truth — how does that fit with a God who wants / needs / otherwise expects from us to worship Him wholeheartedly and in a specific way (each stream in its own form), and to believe that He exists? If so, He should have provided us with one certain path to the truth.

I think the question connects more deeply to the old question of an imperfect world — why would God create such a thing? And if we say that God created us imperfect so that we could improve ourselves (Rabbi Kook), then why limit our intellect so that we cannot understand our need to improve and the correct way to do so? There is no apparent reason why the capacity for improvement itself could not be perfect.

I did not understand the sentence, “But beyond all that, even if you do not understand the way the Holy One, blessed be He, thinks, that has no bearing on faith in Him.” The claim in the question was raised as a difficulty for the hypothesis of a Creator who created us with a purpose. The sentence does not solve or soften the argument; it only dismisses it as irrelevant (which does not seem right to me).

There is a whole collection of questions here. About certainty I already wrote. In science too we have only probability, and there I assume you do not challenge someone who accepts the conclusions. That is how we are built.
The fact that we are built in such a way that we do not have certainty is not a difficulty against the existence of the Creator, but against His mode of action and thought. About that I wrote that it does not refute His very existence, regarding which there are good arguments and evidence.
As for the possibility of choosing evil, I have already written here several times in the past that without it there would be no meaning to choosing good, and therefore there would also be no possibility of self-improvement (because improvement exists only in what is done by choice). A person without an evil inclination cannot improve, and without the option to do evil there is no meaning to the evil inclination.
As for the intellectual framework, there is room for disputes, because your specific position within the framework of faith is not all that important. As long as you believe in God, in the giving of the Torah, and in halakhic obligation, everything else is marginal. Why should we have certainty or one truth regarding everything else, when it is not necessary for the service of God?

Thank you very much for the answer.
I’ll try to be brief, because I’m amazed as it is that the Rabbi manages to answer so many questions on the site so quickly.
“In science too we have only probability” — true, but certainty in science is a pragmatic statement, not certainty in the broader sense. We accept conclusions as certain because only that way can we move forward (until they are refuted). In addition, I don’t think the example of science really fits here — I am not judged on my belief that quantum field theory or M-theory is correct, and nature has no interest in being discovered. If that were the case, my argument would be the same argument.

Regarding your point that lack of certainty is not a difficulty for belief in a Creator — I completely agree. The claim does not challenge the existence of the Creator; it challenges the hypothesis of a Creator who demands that we believe in Him and act according to His commandments (out of belief in Him), and also the hypothesis of God’s “need” for our worship.

‘Choosing good…’ — again, I agree, but that is not exactly the point. Choosing good requires knowing what the good is. I do not think the problem is that God gave us choice, but that He did not give us all the tools to know with certainty
what that “good” is and what that “evil” is.

“As for the intellectual framework” — my original intent was to refer, for example, to those who called the Rabbi a heretic, but it would be more accurate to refer to Jews who became nonreligious (among whom there are people with broad education in philosophy and in the world of Jewish thought). I think it would be excessive to claim that all of them did so out of “evil inclination” and not because they simply arrived at a different truth — a truth that is entirely fair and reasonable, and which according to our hypothesis God allowed.

For me, the conclusions in science and in faith are accepted in the same way and have the same significance (not merely pragmatic at all). In both cases I make decisions about what is true (and not only in a pragmatic sense) under conditions of uncertainty, and I do so with the tools I have. It makes no difference to our issue whether I am held accountable for it or not. If these are my tools and I trust them, then I must use them in all contexts. And if I trust those tools, then I have no complaints against the One who gave them to me. They are sufficient tools for making a decision.

Part of choosing good is deciding what the good is. After that there is an additional choice whether to do it. On both of those levels we have judgment and choice, and on both we make considered decisions. Someone who did not do something because of his evil inclination can still be mistaken. And indeed he would be exempt as someone acting under compulsion. I do not see why this is a difficulty against the Holy One, blessed be He (I might perhaps see in it a question, but not a difficulty).

Bottom line, we are repeating ourselves. I do not really understand the difficulty (and again, perhaps there is a question here), and certainly not the claim that it challenges the conception that the world was created on the assumption that we are to observe the commandments.