Regarding section 2 — on what basis is it determined that God’s intervention has value דווקא only if there is someone to interpret and explain it? God can certainly intervene if that is His will, even if nobody understands the reason. His intervention stems from His choice, and so there is no necessity at all to say that this is subject to our understanding.

Regarding section 7 — the claims about national miracles and the realization of the prophets’ vision come from the match between reality and the step-by-step details we learned in the tradition. We have various details that appear in the Sages, and there are also the words of the Vilna Gaon (which Rabbi Cherki brings up again and again). It seems fair to say that the miracles are obvious to one who assumes these are prophecies.

Michi, thanks for this! Much appreciated! Convincing.

To Yos: I didn’t understand why you’re so happy with what Michi wrote, because even though he’s more right than Moshe, over things like this one ought to cry that woe to us that this is what has been revealed to us.

Asher, it’s simple reasoning. Anyone claiming otherwise bears the burden of proof. No line of reasoning is absolutely necessary,
and even so, reasoning is Torah-level.
Prophecies do not necessarily indicate the hand of God. They can also be fulfilled by national character.

David, I couldn’t understand what there is to cry about when it comes to the truth. Do you cry because you finally understood that you had been living in error? If you do not like the truth, think again and see that this is the correct state of affairs, since the Holy One, blessed be He, created it. Then cry over the error you lived in until now.

To Rabbi Michi, there are echoes of your words in what the grandson of the Rosh of blessed memory wrote in his book Paths of Faith regarding prayer: that it does not change what happens in the world, but rather influences the one praying to change himself, as he proves there (end of Path 1) quite clearly. (A fairly rare view among the medieval authorities.)
But if one accepts the overall conception you are proposing, why not sift through the rest of the commandments too? Maybe they also contain parts that are no longer relevant, especially according to Maimonides’ view of the reasons for the commandments. (At the end of Part III of his Guide for the Perplexed he gives reasons for most of the non-obvious commandments, and he explains a large portion of them as due to God’s desire that we distance ourselves from pagan idol worshippers who no longer exist, and another portion of the commandments, such as forbidden foods, he explains through ancient medical views that are also no longer relevant today.) If so, then one could censor half of Judaism, on the claim that the commandments were indeed relevant in the past in order to distinguish us from the ideological outlooks of the pagan peoples of the region, but today, when rationality rules, there is no longer any point in not shaving around the corners of the head and the like.

The opposite: the simple reasoning is that since our acquaintance with God is very limited, His choice to intervene in reality does not depend on the presence of someone to interpret it.

Regarding the prophecies, I didn’t understand the answer.
The prophecies were said through the prophets, and in order to realize them God oversees reality. Laws of nature, both material and spiritual, can explain things, but since we have learned that people’s behavior has an effect on what happens in the world, it follows that there is a need to know that God intervenes in order to advance His world according to His will.

David,
Are you crying because God doesn’t work for us but we work for Him? Are you crying because God doesn’t intervene in our lives?

Haim,
Maimonides’ reasons for the commandments are among the more dubious things in my view. Cheap apologetics. After all, if today we know that those remedies do not work, then you have to explain why the Torah commanded them then. Did the Holy One, blessed be He, not know that those remedies do not work? From here it is clear that this was not the reason for the command.
When you come to argue in favor of change, you need to present a picture that justifies it. For example, a change in reality that justifies it. To explain why the Sages did think so, and why today the situation is different. Assuming you did that, then yes, of course. But if you disagree with the Sages—then in Jewish law they have authority, and that cannot be done.

Asher,
I don’t understand this insistence. You see around you that there is no sign of involvement. There is a reasonable explanation for why there is no reason to intervene, and yet you insist that He does intervene secretly (playing hide-and-seek with us). Suit yourself.
Our acquaintance with the Holy One, blessed be He, really is not limited, since He Himself explains to us His modes of action, and He Himself taught us that “from my flesh I behold God,” meaning that we are to understand Him according to our own reasoning (except in certain cases that are apparently difficult to understand).

And about this it was said that at the end of the exile the hardest commandment will be the commandment of faith… that even rabbis who studied science will cast doubt on the basic belief in an all-powerful Creator, capable in a single moment of turning the world upside down, and that our actions and prayers have enormous significance…
Without the foundational belief that there is a Creator of the world who oversees it, and that there is reward and punishment, one can erase the whole Torah. The entire essence of the Torah is based on absolute faith in these three parts.
And since we’ve already mentioned Maimonides, who in practice founded the thirteen principles of faith based on these three basic ones, according to his approach if you cannot prove it to yourself then you do not believe—he certainly himself believed in the Creator’s providence over His creatures. And it is true that according to him most providence is general and not individual, but that depends on a person’s level of attachment to his Creator—how great the degree of providence over him will be.
And even the generation of the wilderness, who saw open miracles, at times denied the existence of the Creator as one who oversees and gives reward and punishment. And even in the time of the prophets, when they knew that the prophet receives prophecy from the Creator, they denied it and preferred false prophets….
And so the cycle continues, and in our generation, when simple, innocent faith belongs to the common folk, the “wise men” who studied science and spent some time in academia have become less believing… And if there is no individual providence, then each person will do what is right in his own eyes. And as is known, the central sin in the generation of the wilderness was in order to permit forbidden sexual relations, and in our generation confusion and temptations are running wild, so in order to permit sexual immorality in public one first has to prepare the ground and say that there is no providence, and praying is in practice like talking to a rock, and automatically everything is permitted, because if the Creator does not oversee and is not interested in human actions, then why would He care what is on my plate or with whom I have sexual relations….
It is no coincidence that the Sages said one may investigate only up to a certain point—more than the level of understanding a person is capable of, and if he investigates there he will discover lack of understanding… and then everything collapses, and if there is no providence then there is no reward and punishment… so all the great sages of Israel and all those who keep the commandments are fools, and this of course includes past generations…..
Therefore, “What is too wondrous for you, do not investigate.” No matter how smart I am, apparently the human mind is limited, and I am allowed to sleep with questions even if I have no answers. But I will still believe in the reality of individual providence, and I will prefer to hear a story from a Holocaust survivor who saw the Holy One, blessed be He, with him at every step, even though there are hundreds of others who also went through the Holocaust and became heretics asking where He was during the Holocaust.
The Jewish people have gone through everything. Throughout history there were “wise men” who were wiser than the Sages and tried everything; there is not one kind of test that was not tried on this people. Yet it remained steadfast and strong throughout all the generations thanks to the promise that “it shall not be forgotten from the mouth of his seed.” The very same phylacteries that were put on a thousand years ago we put on today—that itself is tremendous providence, that the Creator gave a promise that without His intervention in nature Judaism would long ago have been burned away, and this is certainly providence like no other… certainly not visible to the eye, precisely because the final clarification before redemption is that smart rabbis will lose their faith…
By the way, Maimonides, who is responsible for the startup of the thirteen principles of faith, claims that they are all one whole and you cannot believe only part of them. Therefore, to claim there is no providence is complete heresy in the Creator according to Maimonides….

And it is no coincidence that Habakkuk came and reduced them to one: “the righteous shall live by his faith.” Faith will be hard, the concealment will be immense, rabbis will speak against it, but the true righteous person shall live by his faith…..
May you be sealed for a good year.

If God claims that He intervenes but the person does not see it, then the problem is with the person. The blindness is his.
What is more, in general phenomena we certainly do see providence, and only regarding the details is it harder for us.
And even that is experienced many times by people, for example in medical miracles, surviving accidents, terror attacks, and the like.
It’s complex — yes. Completely absent — no.

Hello Rabbi.
Regarding the quote, “Any unusual event can occur naturally, and in order to prove the hand of God one would have to conduct a controlled study on large groups with control groups.”
One could make that claim, for example, against fine-tuning or in general against the argument from the laws of nature (according to your formulation in your notebooks): if anything unusual can happen, then for example the constants required to create the universe as it is today can also be explained that way, and it seems that in the notebooks, books, and elsewhere you do not see this as a sufficient excuse to dismiss the arguments entirely.
Or as you wrote: “The critical point here is the distinction between an argument that is within the laws and an argument that is outside them. There is a process whose a priori probability of occurring is negligible…” How many universes have we seen with control groups, for example?
Best,
Elad

Elad, what you are asking is precisely the anthropic argument. But in order to make that claim, one has to show that there were many attempts and one of them succeeded. In that case, indeed, the success proves nothing. In the case of Israel’s return to its land, what I argued is that there were many unusual cases among many peoples, so there is not necessarily a statistical miracle here. Beyond that, this return has pretty good historical explanations, whereas the formation of the laws of nature does not have such explanations (unless you know of mechanisms for the spontaneous formation of systems of laws of nature).

Maybe there is no statistical necessity, but it is still a completely reasonable conclusion.
(As an aside, today the multiverse theory is gaining a lot of momentum.)

In the fifth notebook it seemed that the Rabbi thought this was reasonable.
"
Add to this the realization of the return to the Land and the vision of the prophets after thousands of years of exile, the revival of language and nationality out of nothing, and the creation of the only democracy in the Middle East (I think we are the only democratic state established in the world since 1948). All these are unique events in the history of the world and of the peoples in it, and in particular one must remember that all this is happening directly out of a history of insane persecutions lasting thousands of years, culminating in the Holocaust of the twentieth century. In addition, one can see the unique weight that Jews have in world culture, art, ideologies, and science (their prominence even in IQ measures compared to other groups), and more and more. All these indicate that there is a very unique group here that plays a leading role in the history and culture of the world. Is it not reasonable to wonder what the root of this uniqueness is?!"

What made the Rabbi change his mind?
Thanks in advance

I didn’t change my mind. I wrote there that this could be a result of the uniqueness of the people and not divine involvement.

And the prophecies in the entire Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)—what is to become of them?

The prophecies in the Hebrew Bible are for the Second Temple period, and they were fulfilled.
There are no prophecies in the Hebrew Bible for after that. The interpretations are just inventions meant to encourage the people after the destruction of the Second Temple.

What about the prophecies in the Hebrew Bible?

Hello Rabbi, hope the fast went easily (I assume that for you most of what people pray for is of no use but is just vanity 😛 )

I’ll sharpen my earlier question.
When I brought the quote from the fifth notebook, my emphasis (which I didn’t explain well) was that you learned something (the uniqueness of the Jewish people for one reason or another) from the return of the people of Israel to their land (“All these are unique events in the history of the world and of the peoples in it”).
But now it seems that you are saying that nothing can be learned from it, since things happen to peoples and we have no control group, etc.
The question is: why is it possible to claim that the return of the people of Israel to the land is a unique event? After all, for the same reasons you mentioned, nothing can be learned from it, or at least no strong claim that is supposed to lead to any theological conclusion at all (after all, there the argument is within the framework of the move from deism to theism).
Best,
Elad

It is unique as a historical phenomenon and requires a historical explanation. A kind of uniqueness that convinces me that a higher power is involved is a different kind of uniqueness, and that is not what I see here. Every unique historical phenomenon requires an explanation. But the very existence of uniqueness does not mean there is no explanation (and therefore that one must arrive at a higher power).

The main thing people pray for on Yom Kippur is that we should be forgiven. The practical requests are a very small minority. I assume that even for me the Holy One, blessed be He, has quite a bit to forgive, and therefore this is very relevant for me. Someone who sees Yom Kippur and its prayers as a means of generating resources for the coming year is seeing it incorrectly, in my humble opinion. The Torah itself cries out and says: “For on this day He shall atone for you from all your sins.” It does not say: on this day means of livelihood for the coming year will be created for you.
May we all have a good year.