Some people prove the truth of the Torah from the fulfillment of prophecies.
I would like to ask: specifically from a straightforward reading of the covenant of the Torah, it seems that history deviates from it quite a lot. For example: before the fact, we would never have imagined that the rebukes and calamities for our people would come even at a time when most or all of them were observant Jews, as in the period of the Crusades in the days of the medieval authorities. And similarly in many other periods, where it is hard to attribute it to the sins mentioned in the Torah, since we do not find that that generation committed them. And there are many more such cases. (The same can be asked about the Holocaust, because even though terrible sins were committed by the people as a whole, still it is not just that when the Haredim and Hasidim stood with all their might to separate themselves from the Enlighteners in every possible way and did not regard them as part of the people, they too should perish for their sin. The justification that the entire people is punished for the wicked can only be understood when they are indeed one identity, and not in such a bloody struggle, where day and night they are fighting to separate from them—so why should they perish for their sin? Of course one can explain and answer, but to say that one can read this straightforwardly into the covenant of the Torah is difficult.)
And the question that surpasses all of them is the matter of our return to our land, which contradicts the rules of the covenant of the Torah in the crudest way imaginable. The Torah explicitly says that they will return to the land only after they repent, and the fact that we have now returned with no repentance at all, indeed the opposite, in rebellion—this is not some small detail that contradicts the covenant, but the destruction of the whole covenant from the ground up. For the covenant of the Torah was made concerning the Land of Israel: when they keep the commandments they will be there, and the reverse, Heaven forbid.
And some answer that since there was a Holocaust, and the verse says that God “would not destroy Israel until there was neither bond nor free,” therefore He gave us the land for free. But it seems that no one would have thought that a return to the land in as good a state as ours would be included in that verse. And if it is included, then this destroys the entire covenant and its seriousness.
Likewise, it does not make sense to say that Ezekiel came and prophesied that despite the covenant of the Torah there is another track, by which God will return Israel even without repentance. Where then is the covenant? And in general it is hard to see the return to the land as the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s verses, which say that God will do it for His name’s sake. Was the return of secular Jews to the land for His name’s sake? And if we gained some Christians who acknowledged the Jewish people, is that for His name’s sake? After all, this return here was also a machine of spiritual destruction.
Now, there are good grounds to point to the wonder of Israel’s return to its land after an exile of seventy years, but apparently they did not remember that there is such a prophecy about Egypt’s return to its land—explicit and clear in Ezekiel 29 regarding Egypt, that no human or animal foot would pass through it for forty years and it would be desolate and waste: “And I will scatter Egypt among the nations and disperse them through the countries. And at the end of forty years I will gather Egypt from the peoples among whom they were scattered, and I will return them to the land of Egypt.” It sounds familiar, exactly like the Torah’s wording about the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. (Similarly in Jeremiah 46: “Prepare yourself baggage for exile, O daughter dwelling in Egypt, for Noph shall become a waste, laid waste, without inhabitant,” and afterward it says, “And afterward it shall be inhabited as in the days of old.”) If this was fulfilled, then there is nothing especially remarkable about the Jewish people’s return in the Second Temple period, since it turns out that this was simply the pattern in those days. And if not—and as far as is known indeed it was not fulfilled—then there is no proof from prophecies. Many people and seers have said many things, and some of them were fulfilled even against logic. The test is only when everything is fulfilled. Or perhaps one might answer that they repented and the calamity was canceled, which is impossible to suggest regarding Egypt.
One can also prove this from the common prophetic wording about the destruction of a nation and then God restoring them, as written regarding Ammon and Moab and Elam in Jeremiah 48. Again we see that this is standard language, and someone who says this about many nations—that they will go into exile and that God will return them to their land—it is no wonder if once it happens that a people returns after seventy years, especially since that same matter of return after seventy years is said in Isaiah 23 about Tyre: “And it shall come to pass at the end of seventy years that the Lord will visit Tyre, and she shall return to her hire.”
(I am not speaking about our current return to our land after two thousand years of exile, because that contradicts the covenant as stated above. And one should also note that regarding the second exile there was no promise at all that the enemies would be appalled at the land’s desolation. That is stated only in Leviticus, and there it is explicitly explained that before they dwell there they will repent. So the fact that the land remained desolate for two thousand years was not promised in the covenant.)
I further ask from what is said in Isaiah 34 about Edom: “And its land shall become burning pitch; it shall not be quenched night or day; its smoke shall go up forever; from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever… and it shall become a habitation of jackals.” And in Jeremiah 49: “I have sworn by Myself, says the Lord, that Bozrah shall become a horror, a reproach, a waste, and a curse; and all its cities shall become perpetual wastes.” And later there, regarding Hazor: “And Hazor shall become a haunt of jackals, a desolation forever; no man shall dwell there, and no human being shall sojourn in it.” (And see Zephaniah 2, where something similar is said about Ammon.) Can anyone get up today and say that this is in fact the case and that it was fulfilled? If it was not fulfilled, for whatever answer one may give, then whatever did succeed we will attribute to a thousand other reasons, all the more so. And one can no longer bring the destruction of Babylon as proof.
In general one should ask why we do not find explicitly in the period of the Judges the straightforward fulfillment of the covenant in the Torah, where it says that the essence of the covenant is that God will stop up the heavens, as a unique feature of the Land of Israel, which depends on God’s word—and yet their main suffering was only from neighbors. Also, even in the time of the wicked kings we do not find many who suffered from withheld rain; some of them had it good in every respect. On the other hand, even in David’s time there was withheld rain.
And regarding what people are accustomed to marvel at—the hatred of the gentiles toward our people—surely this is exactly what would happen, and perhaps for another reason as well: when there is separation and an aspiration for a wholly different kind of life, and a message of contempt for people immersed in this-worldly reality, and the soul of the Jew (even the secular Jew) wants and aspires to things that are not under the sun, then necessarily he will never get along with the nations of the land, and from underground the hatred will sprout.

And moving to a different topic, I would like to ask whether, according to the plain meaning of the verses, one can interpret that only the commandments about which it is explicitly said that they are an eternal statute—like the Sabbath, Yom Kippur, and the like—are indeed obligatory forever, whereas things in which this is not mentioned were obligatory only for their own time, when entering the land.
And apparently with the commandment of orlah one can interpret it that way: “When you come into the land, then you shall count its fruit as forbidden,” etc., meaning only at the time of entering the land.
And perhaps the same with the Sabbatical year: “When you come into the land… then the land shall keep a Sabbath”; it is not stated as a simple general law that every seven years there is a Sabbatical year, but rather the law is mainly about the time of entry, that then they must observe the Sabbatical year until the Jubilee. (And likewise, “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity” refers to the time of entry, that they not violate the inheritances at the outset. And from what is said in Mishpatim regarding the law of Shemitah in general one cannot prove otherwise, since it is not repeated in Ki Tisa, implying that it no longer applied after the sin of the golden calf and the covenant of the second tablets.) But this applies only at the time of entry, so that there will be an expression of God’s rule in the land; it is not said about this that it is an eternal statute.
Now, on the plain level it is hard to say that the Jewish people in the generation of the Judges observed the commandments of the Sabbatical year and tithes and heave-offerings, for if they had observed them it is almost impossible that they would have worshiped idolatry, and certainly not with such complete seriousness as the people of Gideon’s city, and the like. Perhaps they held as above, that this is not a commandment for future generations.

It is worth adding regarding the question at the beginning: one may always claim that the situation changed and that this is not the people or the situation to which the covenant referred. Whoever makes that claim should note that one can keep radicalizing that claim until uprooting everything and saying that since the people are not united and do not understand the Torah’s will regarding the repair of reality, the Torah does not speak to their situation; they are abandoned to nature; the covenant does not address such a state. In such a state, sometimes they will suffer greatly and at other times succeed, as in the return to the land. Or one could say that since the world took independence into its own hands and invented antibiotics and no longer lifts its eyes to heaven, God too lets them do what they want and manage on their own, whether that means a Holocaust or returning to the land by themselves. Very nice, and all is well with Israel. And then the Torah, Heaven forbid, would fade away.
Of course, if we want to see in the Torah a people of covenant throughout the generations, we must cling to the center of the covenant, whose essence is undoubtedly faithfulness and devotion to the word of God. And then all my questions above arise, because we have not at all seen, from the time we have orderly history in detail (roughly the Second Temple period), that when the people kept the Torah things went well for them, and when not, they were punished.
One can of course point to a few instances here and there, as is said about the time of Shimon ben Shetach, but it seems there were other such good periods and even stronger covenant-keeping, and there were terrible troubles.
And it should be emphasized that although it is clear that God is slow to anger, and it is more fitting for punishment to come in a state of “when you have long been in the land,” still that was not so, at least from the destruction of the Temple onward. One cannot find that punishment came specifically at such a time; at times it came in the very best periods spiritually.
Let us note: we did not see that the people did some repentance because of which they returned in the Second Temple period. There were many periods of terrible decline in Second Temple times, yet no famine or persecution by enemies is mentioned. After that, in the time of the Tannaim and Amoraim, there were periods of flourishing in devotion to God’s word unlike any other, and on the other hand terrible troubles unlike any other.
And so too in the time of the medieval authorities, and down to this day. Precisely today, when each person does what is right in his own eyes and in general we do not see much devotion—among Hasidic courts this is felt more strongly; just go and see the enormous difference between a Hasidic Jew before the Holocaust and today, not to mention the gap and abyss between the rebbes before the Holocaust and today—
So true, today there is more mercy, and more people understand that one cannot pray before God while at the same time shouting and quarreling and making disputes, and in earthly reality too we see less contradiction to God’s word. But it does not seem that God is so harsh that all the punishments, or the lack of providential help against the persecutors, came because of that lack of progress—which was not achieved specifically from a spiritual standpoint. (It is progress of the whole world and other external causes.)
It is very, very hard to think that such severe punishments came because of internal lack of understanding and disputes and quarrels that stemmed, at root, from holiness. I have even seen one writer go so far as to say that since they were exiled because of baseless hatred, and that sin was corrected by the early Zionist leaders who united for the sake of the land, therefore they merited our holy land. This approach contradicts the entire content of the Torah and chops off the verses; it reads “Love your neighbor as yourself” without the end of the verse, “I am the Lord.”
And again, one also cannot say that there was no punishment, only that God did not help them when they were not united, because there is no hint of such an approach in the Torah.

I do not prove anything from the fulfillment of prophecies. At most it is a small layer in addition to a complete picture. See the Fifth Notebook.

Some have pointed to the prophecy and the wonder of Israel’s return to its land after an exile of seventy years, but apparently they did not remember that there is such a prophecy about Egypt’s return to its land—explicit and clear in Ezekiel 29 regarding Egypt, that no human or animal foot would pass through it for forty years and it would be desolate and waste: “And I will scatter Egypt among the nations and disperse them through the countries. And at the end of forty years I will gather Egypt from the peoples among whom they were scattered, and I will return them to the land of Egypt.” It sounds familiar, exactly like the Torah’s wording about the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. (Similarly in Jeremiah 46: “Prepare yourself baggage for exile, O daughter dwelling in Egypt, for Noph shall become a waste, laid waste, without inhabitant,” and afterward it says, “And afterward it shall be inhabited as in the days of old.”) Was this prophecy also fulfilled? As far as is known, indeed it was not fulfilled, and if so then there is no proof from prophecies. Many people and seers have said many things, and some of them were fulfilled even against logic. The test is only when everything is fulfilled. Or perhaps one might answer that they repented and the calamity was canceled, which is impossible to suggest regarding Egypt.

Likewise, some pointed to the fulfillment of the prophecy about Babylon, that it would be destroyed forever. And I ask from what is said in Isaiah 34 about Edom: “And its land shall become burning pitch; it shall not be quenched night or day; its smoke shall go up forever; from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it… and it shall become a habitation of jackals.” And in Jeremiah 49: “I have sworn by Myself, says the Lord, that Bozrah shall become a horror, a reproach, a waste, and a curse; and all its cities shall become perpetual wastes.” And later there, regarding Hazor: “And Hazor shall become a haunt of jackals, a desolation forever; no man shall dwell there, and no human being shall sojourn in it.” (And see Zephaniah 2, where something similar is said about Ammon.) Can anyone get up today and say that this is in fact the case and that it was fulfilled? If it was not fulfilled, for whatever answer one may give, then whatever did succeed we will attribute to a thousand other reasons, all the more so. And one can no longer bring the destruction of Babylon as proof.

I will ask another question, regarding the claim by some who wanted to explain Elijah’s miracle on Mount Carmel by saying that the water he poured there was actually petroleum found there, and that through divine inspiration he discovered this fact, unknown in his time. Therefore, when he ignited a little fire, everything burned including the water-petroleum.

Is it possible to think such a thing? That is, was it possible in reality in those days to get such a quantity of petroleum without drilling and machinery, which certainly did not exist then?

I am also still waiting for an answer to the question about the fulfillment of the prophecies of Edom’s desolation.

Hello.
I already wrote to you that I do not usually bring proof from fulfilled prophecies, and there is a discussion of this on my site. Ask whoever brings those proofs.
As for the petroleum speculations, that seems like a strange question to me. If you think he had a drilling company, then fine.

That is exactly what I asked—was it not possible to obtain petroleum in those days without drilling, for example if he found some oil field?

Rabbi Y.,
Please let me go with these bizarre questions.

I would like to ask and clarify a few details.
A. There is the famous story of the locust miracle in Komemiyut, that the locusts did not enter the moshav. Is this something that completely contradicts nature, with no possible way to explain it except that God sent an angel to move them away, or is it perhaps the sort of thing that could happen because locusts shift their route a bit? After all, certainly when there are locusts they do not eat absolutely everything, but travel and eat what comes along their path, and perhaps sometimes they move to all sorts of places. In short, is this a story of providence where God’s hand was evident, or was it an outright miracle that cannot be explained in any conceivable way?
B. I would like to ask the very same question regarding the second story in Komemiyut, where cows ate poison that had been spread in the wheat field because of a worm infestation, and the cows got sick. It was Simchat Torah and they could not call a doctor, and the rabbi said that in the merit of the Sabbath they would recover, and the next day they were healthy. Is this, likewise, something impossible within the laws of nature, or perhaps just as there are some sick people who swallow poison and recover—the body overcomes the poison—so too it could have happened there? It is indeed remarkable, but it does not completely contradict nature.

C. There are many stories about increased yield for those who observe the seventh year, sometimes threefold as the Torah promises. About this too I ask: is producing three times as much something that completely contradicts nature, or does it sometimes happen, even in other years?
D. There are some who receive this blessing of threefold produce in the eighth year after observing the Sabbatical year, and here all the more one should ask whether the blessed growth is close to the natural course, since after the field rested a year it had more strength and therefore produced a lot.

I would be glad if you could direct me to someone who understands what the natural mechanisms are in this matter.

Hello.
Two general remarks:
1. The nature of such stories is that until you check, you cannot know whether the details are correct and accurate. Usually there is exaggeration in them.
2. Even if the story is accurate, that still does not necessarily mean there was a miracle. To check whether there was a miracle, one has to do a controlled experiment: check what happens in other areas and at other times, with large groups. That has not been done in any case I have heard about, and therefore I have no trust in all these stories and in their implications.
There are several discussions about this on my site, for example here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A7-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%A9%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%94-%D7%95/

Mr. Y., recently someone in the U.S. experienced clinical death and saw Jesus. Another one joining the countless Christian near-death stories. Just so you know.

Recently the Flying Spaghetti Monster revealed itself to me, and informed me unequivocally that it does not exist.
Scary!!!

I wonder whether Descartes’ cogito can be applied to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Reply to Y.:
Why are you looking for support for faith from such phenomena (maybe because they are tangible and do not require intellectual effort or inward reflection)? I suggest that if you have doubt about a certain religious issue, you should focus on it rather than look for a “proof of the truth of the entire Torah.”
What does the expression “the truth of the Torah” even mean? Which part of the Torah?

Hello and blessings,

I have the privilege of having a study partner who reads a lot of stories about righteous figures and all kinds of tales. Some of them are also current and recent, events that happened very recently and involve well-known people and rabbis.

Again and again, “proofs” are brought in favor of Judaism and the great Torah sages from this.
“How did Rabbi Chaim know?” “How did the Hazon Ish know?”
Or there is a kabbalist (Hasidic) whom my study partner goes to, and he sees actual wonders there, and the fellow (the kabbalist) knows things he was never told.

I myself prefer to stick with the basic assumption that the laws of nature as they are known hold in every case, or alternatively that probabilistically the chance that the laws of nature departed from their usual course is smaller than the chance that people imagined things, etc.

Is there any comprehensive explanation for all these wonder stories?

Thank you

I don’t have one comprehensive explanation. If I weren’t afraid, I would say that the one comprehensive explanation is people’s stupidity, except that it appears in different and varied forms. But that’s just the Litvak in me.

Extracting information from people is a skill. I myself did it in the past. You have no idea how much information people give about themselves without even noticing. Add a few successful guesses (the unsuccessful ones nobody remembers) and you’ve got a wonder-worker.

Beyond that, there is also the use of insider information. Here is an example:
A Kia car dealer comes to “our rabbi” and asks for a blessing because the cars are not selling and customers are complaining about problems. “Our rabbi” gives a blessing and makes a note to himself that Kia cars are terrible. Later, another person comes for advice and tells “our rabbi” that he is thinking of buying a Kia. “Our rabbi” tells him not to buy a Kia. Some time later there is a chain of accidents involving Kia cars, and the media, as usual, turns it into a news story. The people around “our rabbi” are full of amazement—”our rabbi” foresaw through divine inspiration the problems with Kia cars. In reality, “our rabbi” foresaw nothing. He had insider information that he made use of. The use came at the expense of the one who supplied the information—in this case, the car dealer—but who cares? Suckers, as is known, do not die. They just get replaced…
Just a leftover exercise for me—are there halakhic prohibitions that “our rabbi” violated, aside from the legal offense of using insider information?