Take a look at this video at 14:35. Amnon Levy testifies that Nir Ben Artzi told him very surprising things about his sons and family:

I also heard similar stories about him from a close friend.

Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that his abilities are real. Is it also forbidden for him himself to use them for his own purposes?
Best regards,

There are plenty of stories. If he has abilities, I would expect him not to make mistakes. But as I said, none of that is important. Simply speaking, it is forbidden to make use of things like this.

Even a weather forecaster is sometimes wrong, and he certainly has abilities. That is, apparently his “vision” is a vague kind of vision, so he does not always know how to distinguish truth from imagination. Also, it’s unlikely that so many people would testify that he has abilities and seek his advice, including Michael and Raya Strauss, Galia Albin, Yaakov Neeman, and others.

A weather forecaster has scientific knowledge that can be replicated by others, according to the criterion of scientific replicability. By contrast, someone who claims esoteric knowledge bears the burden of proof, so if he makes mistakes that raises much greater suspicion. It is always possible that he has statistical abilities (meaning that he is right more often than an ordinary person, but not always), but he has to convince me that this is so.
The “testimonies” that are received about his abilities do not impress me at all. I have already heard so many such “testimonies” that can be refuted just by hearing them out (that is, by offering an interpretation showing that there is no special ability here), and I am sure that in a systematic examination many more of them would be refuted. Experience has taught me that most people are not intelligent and/or are desperate and need exalted knowledge to help them, and so they can be fooled quite easily.

As for the prohibition, there is a lot to say about it. Seemingly, the matter depends on a dispute among medieval authorities. According to Maimonides, the “powers” from the evil side that one should not resort to are nonsense fantasies, meaning that there is a prohibition against being foolish. From this it follows that if there is something that actually works, it is permissible to resort to it. On his view, all that is needed is good evidence that it really works. But according to many other medieval authorities, it is forbidden to resort to such powers even if they are real. Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (head of the Ahavat Shalom yeshiva of kabbalists in Jerusalem) discussed this at great length in his responsa Vayeshev HaYam.

What do you think about meeting with him, for academic purposes, and seeing for yourself?

According to Maimonides, if it works then it is permitted?
But mediums and necromancers are executed, and we are not concerned that “maybe it works.”
According to Maimonides, there simply is no such thing as it working. The reason Maimonides thinks it is forbidden because it is a bluff is because Maimonides holds that it is always a bluff.
Unless we are talking about a prophet, in which case there are instances where he can perform miracles; beyond that, nothing “works.”

Oren, I do not see any value in that. At most it would turn out that he has such powers, which of course I greatly doubt. So what? Beyond that, there is apparently a prohibition here.

Itai, there is a logical flaw in what you are saying. If you define mediums and necromancers as mechanisms that do not work, then indeed there is no such thing as a medium that works. That is a tautology. But if what you are saying is a claim and not a definition, then you must offer a definition of a medium and a necromancer independent of the question whether it works or not. And after you offer that definition, you will have to bring clear evidence that it does not work.
In other words, explain to me why radio or WhatsApp is not a medium or necromancer in Maimonides’ eyes. Maimonides could not have explained how it works. It is literally magic. So either in his view it does not work (but it does), or it is not a medium or necromancer. In other words, anything that works is not a medium or necromancer. QED.
The reason one executes a medium or necromancer according to Maimonides is because those things do not work. Therefore your question of why we are not concerned that maybe it works makes no sense. We checked, and it doesn’t. If it really did work, we would not execute them, just as according to Maimonides we do not execute users of radio or WhatsApp.

Is there a prohibition even in the very act of checking whether these powers exist or not? After all, the inquiry would be made not in order to use the power, but to understand whether it is real (and that has a practical halakhic implication according to what you wrote above).

I’m not sure about that. It is possible (perhaps by virtue of “and you shall not stray,” Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry 2:3). In any case, it does not seem interesting enough to invest effort in. There are many charlatans who claim to have powers. Should I now go around like a peddler checking them all?!

What do you mean “we checked and it doesn’t work”? How exactly do you check—do you conduct a controlled experiment? Is that a halakhic requirement according to Maimonides? Why is no such thing mentioned in Jewish law?
As I understand it, Maimonides holds that it cannot work because nature operates according to laws and not by magical forces.
What is the difference between WhatsApp and a medium? WhatsApp operates according to nature, and a medium, even though he also operates according to nature, pretends to be supernatural. According to Maimonides the problem is introducing false beliefs and ideas into the minds of the masses, but we have no reason to think it actually helps, for the simple reason that the supernatural does not exist.
(You don’t need clear evidence that it doesn’t work, because Maimonides understands a priori that nature has rigid laws and there is no room for deviations from them, and that is built on causality, which we know a priori.)

Itai, I already explained to you that there is a logical flaw in what you are saying. It does not disappear by magic wand just because you repeat it.

There is no logical flaw at all, and I defined it clearly. The definition of a medium and necromancer is not “something that doesn’t work.”
The fact that it doesn’t work is something Maimonides understands a priori.
The definition of a medium and necromancer is someone who performs a natural act while pretending it is supernatural.
And the sin is misleading the masses and generating error and foolishness.
(I only implicitly assumed that the reason Maimonides needed to say that it doesn’t work and that he is executed because of the deception is not because Maimonides thought that if it did work there would be no reason to forbid it, and it is unlikely that Maimonides would decide such things on his own and limit Torah law just because it didn’t seem to him that the Torah would forbid such a thing. Rather, Maimonides assumed that it is impossible for such things to work, because as stated, nature is law-governed.)
In short, the argument is that it cannot work—not because of evidence, but because of an a priori understanding of nature (just as you and David Hume do not need evidence for causality), and the definition of a medium is someone who performs a natural action that pretends to work in a supernatural way—for example, Uri Geller.
(As opposed to something whose mode of operation cannot be explained, but we understand that there is some natural mechanism operating it.)
– If you mean to say that a medium or necromancer “works” in a natural way, then it is no longer a medium or necromancer; it is just WhatsApp, which really is not forbidden. But that is not the definition of a medium or necromancer, which clearly in everyone’s eyes is a supernatural act. The only difference is that for those who disagree with Maimonides it is genuinely supernatural, whereas for Maimonides it is fake supernatural.
(Sorry for the length; I simply did not understand where the logical flaw was, and I tried to clarify as best I could.)

Now all that remains is for you to define what counts as natural and what counts as supernatural—without appealing to whether it works or not.

Natural means a static law, and therefore fixed.
Supernatural means something that operates through local intervention, and therefore it is also not fixed.

And therefore it is possible to repeat the same action, and sometimes it will work and sometimes it won’t.
If I hold a spoon and stare at it hard, it will not bend, whereas Uri Geller’s will.
(The assumption is of course that Uri Geller’s eyes are not part of the powers of nature. It doesn’t matter why that cannot be; the fact is that people assume they are not, and they understand that Uri Geller has powers outside nature by which he can manipulate nature at will.)

[I don’t think Maimonides needs to define this. You can ask anyone speaking about the supernatural what he means and why he doesn’t call it natural. The fact is that even those who think a medium or necromancer works do not call it natural, and they assume it operates differently.]

That is exactly what I’m asking you. How will you distinguish between what works only sometimes and what works constantly? When an airplane flies in the air, you do not say that gravity is supernatural; you look for an explanation or assume there is one. And when a person undergoes provocation and sometimes reacts violently and sometimes not—is the violence supernatural? And when a die lands sometimes on 5 and sometimes on 1, is that supernatural? One can ask the same about every phenomenon. It seems to me that I remarked on all this in my book God Plays with Dice, in connection with Dawkins’s statement that he does not believe in the supernatural (he simply assumes that whatever works is natural).

And if Nir Ben Artzi were always accurate, would that be natural? Would it then be permitted?

First of all, for the prohibition of a medium and necromancer, you do not need to know; what people think is enough. If someone presents himself as operating by supernatural power, that is enough. As long as people assume that it does not work naturally, that is already enough for the prohibition.
But how one actually diagnoses this, I do not know. However, the Rabbi has already pointed out in several places (in the first book of the trilogy, and I believe I also read about it in Asher Yeshno VeAsher Einenu or in God Plays with Dice) that every search for a law assumes, by some intuition, the direction of the explanation, because otherwise there are endless possibilities for where to investigate. And since no law has been tested—perhaps it operates specifically in the vicinity of Nir Ben Artzi—apparently our intuition tells us that Nir Ben Artzi is not a natural explanation, and therefore at best he can operate by supernatural power. In that case, in a process of scientific inquiry, we have nothing to do with that information.

According to your approach, if only Steph Curry manages to sink three-pointers at those percentages and from those distances, then he probably has a supernatural ability. According to my approach, it is an extraordinary natural ability.
It seems to me that the point is now understood and we’ve exhausted it.

Be that as it may, there are three Babas that every pious person should turn to: namely Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia, and Bava Batra. For one who wishes to become pious must fulfill the teachings of Avot, the teachings of Berakhot, and the teachings of damages, as explained in the “trilogy” of those three Babas. Whoever learns from the three Babas how to be careful in all his dealings with another’s money is assured that God will guard him like the pupil of His eye.

With abundant regards,
Shatz

(Please, if possible, let me squeeze in one more word.)
The difference is that Steph Curry is not a law of nature. The laws of nature are known; Steph Curry is a contingent realization of known laws, and therefore he is explained according to the existing laws of nature.
Nir Ben Artzi is a case that does not instantiate any known law of nature, and therefore the assumption is that the action is outside the known legal framework.

I’m a bit surprised at the Rabbi. It is apparently quite clear that Maimonides was not right in this case. (His philosophy mostly led him astray.) The plain straightforward reading is that from the Torah’s perspective, an enchanter, diviner, sorcerer, augur, etc., was a real phenomenon. It is not likely that the Torah forbade something imaginary, and moreover divided it into many prohibitions and imposed the death penalty by religious court on them. Maimonides was pushed into this by his conception of reality, in which there are no demons and the like, which after Kabbalah became unnecessary (like the ether for Maxwell’s equations and the constancy of the speed of light). Rabbi Ovadia, following the Shulchan Arukh, which ruled like Maimonides, ruled that it is forbidden to hold a magic show (just inviting a magician to a children’s birthday party) משום “מעונן” (and according to Rashi’s interpretation of whom the Sages call an augur). That does not seem reasonable to me, to forbid such a magician who is doing nothing, and the Radbaz also wondered at this. And I would guess from my cup that in the case of our magician too, the Rabbi’s opinion is like mine. If so, there is no room to distinguish between that and Nir Ben Artzi (whose case, in principle, I agree with the Rabbi about). The Rabbi’s rationalism mostly led him astray…

Ailon, I once thought as you do. But set against your interpretive consideration is the implausibility that such phenomena really exist and that there are such powers. So I do not have a clear position on this. The matter connects to the last two columns (267-8) about mystical intuitions.

Fine. To that the explanation is simple: reality has changed. That is not just an excuse. It went together with the disappearance of prophecy. There is much discussion throughout the literature of the medieval authorities and Kabbalah about the decline of the generations in spirituality and in spiritual vision (people are coarser, thicker, more materialistic). The decline of synthetic capacity, in the Rabbi’s terminology. These prohibitions are not relevant today, and it is roughly like the laws of slavery today. That is no less plausible than “the implausibility that such phenomena really exist and that there are such powers,” which exists only in the present (at least from the standpoint of the classical Torah position). In other words, for me, extrapolating from the present to the past on this issue is not only unnecessary, but probably incorrect. At least for someone who believes in prophecy, which today stands at the same level of implausibility as the existence of “such phenomena and powers.”

Regarding what you wrote above—“There are many charlatans who claim to have powers. Should I now go around like a peddler checking them all?!”
If someone has acquired enough of a reputation as possessing supernatural powers, there is sufficient justification to check whether things are really as claimed. Besides, it could make for a very interesting post 🙂

Oren, I don’t know what the point would be. It just does not interest me enough to invest time in it. By the way, they also tell many stories about Oren Zarif, and about many others. Besides, I once already saw that he was proven wrong, so I do not see any special potential for investigation here, even if it were interesting to me.
I think no special halakhic or other knowledge is required here, and you too have healthy logic and common sense. If it interests you, you can check it yourself.

There is a Talmudic passage at the end of the fourth chapter of Sanhedrin from which it seems there is value in investigating these areas:
Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 68a
Once he and I were walking on the road. He said to me: Rabbi, teach me about planting cucumbers. I said one thing, and the entire field filled with cucumbers. He said to me: Rabbi, you taught me how to plant them—teach me how to uproot them. I said one thing, and they all gathered into one place. … How could he do that? But didn’t we learn: One who performs an act is liable! — Learning in order to understand is different. As the Master said: “You shall not learn to do” — you may not learn in order to do, but you may learn in order to understand and to teach.

In addition, testimony affirming these powers would be accepted from you, but not from me.
As for Oren Zarif, I do not think he reached the level of renown of Nir Ben Artzi. For example, Wikipedia wrote this about him:
“In 2012, Forbes estimated that his institutions were worth about 100 million NIS. His close circle included figures such as Raya Strauss, Galia Albin, and Professor Yaakov Neeman.”

I am not impressed at all. The fact that people are rich does not necessarily mean they are intelligent. On the contrary, sometimes loneliness and responsibility lead them to rely on charlatans like “Rabbi” Pinto and his colleagues and many others.

The very fact that he reached such a valuation from nothing, without being a descendant of a great rabbi (like sons of rebbes who inherit their status) and without special Torah talent and not even special charisma, is quite telling.

Not at all. You need nothing but the nerve to enter that charlatan swamp. Put on black clothes and do whatever your heart desires. The fools will already come. There are dozens and hundreds of such cases.
And again, I am not saying that he necessarily has no unusual abilities, only that the data proves absolutely nothing about that.

The fact is that among all the charlatans in this field, he reached an astronomical valuation that almost no one else even came close to (except rebbes and sons of rebbes). Besides, assuming the Torah was speaking about a possible reality, what kind of data would you expect to have before you in order to believe in such a phenomenon?

I haven’t made comparisons, but you are rather surprising me. There are masses of millionaires in this field. A simple explanation is that his clients, whom you listed, are very wealthy. The explanation here is marketing, not substance. Therefore, as I said before, in my opinion the sums say nothing at all about the issue itself. Simply nothing, except about his marketing abilities.
I am not sure that the Torah was speaking about a possible reality (I commented about that above). And even if it was—I do not know what the criterion is. It is possible that testing could prove it, or at least substantiate it, but I have no interest in doing that. Why should it interest me? It is also possible that this reality has passed from the world, like prophecy and open miracles (and perhaps hidden miracles as well). In short, I have no interest in it.