Q&A: The Revelation at Mount Sinai — Was It Sorcery?
The Revelation at Mount Sinai — Was It Sorcery?
Question
To the honor of Rabbi Michael Abraham,
In the past I sent you a question about the revelation at Mount Sinai, and you referred me to the fifth booklet.
I read it very carefully, but I wasn’t able to find an answer there to my question.
The question is about the revelation at Mount Sinai: who says it wasn’t sorcery?
But I’m not asking this casually, and to explain my question I’ll give an example:
The family members of the number one magician in the world are already used to the fact that he surprises them.
One time he goes into a closed box and suddenly they discover him on the other side of the room, and another time he floats in the air. They have no idea how he does it, and every time it looks supernatural to them, except that they know it’s only magic tricks, and they’re no longer impressed because they’re used to him surprising them again and again.
One day their father came and suddenly did something he had never done before: in the middle of dinner he told them to tie him tightly inside a closed box and burn the box in fire. They did so and waited until the burning was over, and when it ended they suddenly saw their father peeking out from under the ashes.
Until now they had never seen him do magic on such a scale, but my question is: should they now begin to believe that their father acquired supernatural powers, or should they believe that this too is just magic, and all in all their father simply became a bit more skilled in the “art of magic”?
As I understand it, it would really not be rational to see this magic trick as proof that he has supernatural powers, because they also don’t understand how he did the rest of his tricks, except that they know it’s only magic and that in magician school they teach how to do them. If so, it is far more plausible that the last trick too is just a trick, and merely one that only expert magicians know how to do.
The same applies to Moses our teacher—
We know that in his time there was sorcery, and we know that people did supernatural things with it [for example, the plagues of blood and frogs, which Pharaoh’s magicians managed to do on their own]. We also know that Moses grew up in the house of Pharaoh, king of the sorcerers, and the most natural and logical thing is that the child learned how to perform sorcery. Afterwards he went out for quite a few years to other places, and was even close to Jethro, priest of Midian, so it makes sense that during those years he became even more expert in sorcery and also learned from other peoples.
A person like that—even if I have no information that he actually understands sorcery—I still wouldn’t believe him when he shows me how he does something supernatural, just as if the son of the world champion in magic tricks, who grew up in a house where magicians are walking around all day, came and did something supernatural in front of me, I would immediately attribute it to magic tricks.
And yet when Moses comes and performs wonders for us, we attribute them to the Holy One, blessed be He, instead of to sorcery, and in my opinion that is the least rational thing in the world.
And if you try to answer me that even the sorcerers could not perform sorcery on such a scale as splitting the sea in two—I don’t think that’s an answer, because such an answer can only be given by someone who understands sorcery and knows the “wisdom of sorcery,” and then he can claim that a certain supernatural thing is already outside the framework of sorcery and proves divine intervention. But a person like me, who doesn’t understand sorcery and also has no idea how the magicians produced frogs, I don’t think it makes sense that I should see a sorcerer doing something supernatural and claim that it’s not sorcery but divine intervention—just as the family members of the magician, who don’t understand how he does the tricks, cannot claim about a greater trick that it is real and not magic.
[And it should be clarified that with a magician I do understand that there are supernatural things about which one can still say that they are outside the realm of magic tricks, because they cannot be sleight of hand—such as a magician who slaughters a person and then brings him back to life. But with sorcery, which does not come through sleight of hand, it is much more complicated for a person like me to express an opinion about when it is sorcery and when it is real, because I have no grasp of it at all.]
Sorry for the length, but only this way do I feel that I expressed myself properly.
Answer
First, at least in the conventional description, Pharaoh’s sorcerers also expressed a connection to supernatural powers. It wasn’t mere sleight of hand. So I too would give them credit. The magician example is not a good one.
Since you and I do not understand sorcery, it is hard to judge. Those who were there got the impression that this was not the kind of magic they knew. Pharaoh too was impressed that way. Therefore I see no logic in bringing my own views into a matter that I do not understand and did not experience.
And if the greatest magician were to tell me that this time he did not perform a trick but that this was the real thing, why shouldn’t I believe him?
This joins the other considerations in the booklet, as I wrote there that all of them together constitute an argument, and not each one on its own.
Discussion on Answer
And I again join the answer I gave him.
If there was someone there who knew how to perform sorcery on the level of voices from heaven, he was apparently in possession of extraordinary technologies, far beyond the people of his generation. So I worship him.
This reminds me that in many arguments one side says to the other, “I know the data better than you, and you simply don’t know enough about it,” and supposedly by that considers his own position one hundred percent correct and thereby shuts down the other person’s claims. But I argue in response that there is a high probability that even if I knew the exact data, I would remain in exactly the same position. That is, it may be that I have no right to keep arguing and insisting, but that certainly does not cancel out my side and certainly does not justify his position. ..
In order to validate the event of the giving of the Torah, don’t we need a higher and more certain probability to obligate us to such a specific way of life? Is it enough for us that we have no understanding of sorcery and of the feelings of those who witnessed miracles, in order to dismiss the scenario of tricks at the giving of the Torah, which on the face of it sounds most reasonable?
This is one of the essential questions for which I feel I have not received a clear answer, and therefore I keep pestering you with it… In my view, the giving of the Torah from God ought to be a near certainty (our rabbi taught us that there is no absolute certainty…) in order to believe in mountains of commandments and such a meticulous worldview, and I really don’t understand what it is that I’m not understanding here.
You are again repeating the same difficulty, which in my understanding has already been answered.
That’s the point. To this very day, many good and intelligent people believe that they saw David Copperfield split his body into two pieces on the stage. They believed one hundred percent that it was a supernatural power or sorcery. But after the field developed and the technologies were exposed, they understood (some of them) that what they saw was an illusion. And with that I join Eli’s question: how do we know that back then too this wasn’t an illusion that was interpreted as sorcery? Maybe in that period—and that is also quite likely—people were less critical and tended to attribute everything to higher powers and not to natural explanations (like the Indians’ rain dance and thousands of other examples of naivete that ruled the world until not so long ago regarding the simple laws of physics).