It seems to me that it was right to remove this article from the Kikar HaShabbat site.
I’m not in favor of holy lies.
On the other hand, there’s no need to expose Haredi yeshiva students who believe very strongly in their prayer and in providence, to the content of the books.

Heaven forbid, I do not think the Rabbi is a heretic, but I do think that a situation in which a person moves from a state of belief in providence and prayer to a state of thinking that there is no providence and that prayer is usually meaningless, counts as a decline in faith.
If someone is harmed by reading the Rabbi’s words (even though I think these cases are very rare), that also doesn’t mean his faith wasn’t well grounded beforehand. It could simply be that there are things he never thought about before, and suddenly he gets punched in the face in the form of a rabbi with considerable Torah knowledge who thinks there is no providence over the world and that prayer is usually meaningless, etc., and that really can affect him negatively.
Again, even though these are extremely rare cases of harm, it’s better not to endanger even a single soul.

In my opinion, the trilogy is intended for three kinds of people:
1. Complete deadbeats. For them the book can be an upgrade.
2. Those who are on the way to losing faith, or who already feel disconnected from the whole issue of prayer and providence — in that case, at least they’ll remain with some degree of faith thanks to the books.
3. People who believe in providence and prayer, and know in advance that the likelihood of being harmed by reading the book is minimal, and for them the reading is purely out of interest or at least an attempt to deal with the arguments.

This is the link to the article mentioned above — Kikar HaShabbat

https://www.kikar.co.il/348091.html

I can assure the Rabbi that even the “good things” of his are forbidden for Haredi yeshiva students to read.

You need to congratulate the Rabbi. There’s no such thing as bad publicity (the truth is I was already waiting for articles like this. Though I expected they’d appear on Religious Zionist sites first.)

If they’re not burning your books somewhere, in most cases that means you didn’t do something right.

There’s another group the trilogy is suitable for: people who want to strive for truth and understand reality without fear and without marking out the boundaries of the discussion and its conclusions in advance.

David,
There’s no need for Rabbi Michi’s “thin theology.”
Rabbi Michi works with a Less Is More approach, and that’s fine. He does it for good purposes of course, to fight, for example, the phenomenon of spiritual emptiness (pamphlets in synagogues) or people leaving religion.

On the other hand, like any new scientific theory that comes out in place of an existing theory, the new theory will be accepted only if it answers more questions than the previous theory answered.
In my opinion, Rabbi Michi’s theology does not provide answers to the questions and difficulties that exist today in Judaism.
In addition, it creates new difficulties (and that’s where it fails). Here are examples of things it falls down on:

1. According to Rabbi Michi’s theology, God almost never intervenes in the world. That means that if a baby is born with severe genetic problems (which causes enormous suffering to him and his family), according to Rabbi Michi that’s just nature.
What’s the problem here?
It intensifies the problem of evil against “a good and perfect God.”
By contrast, in the accepted Jewish theology today (you could say across Orthodox Judaism as a whole), this is a reincarnation, a purposeful rectification directed by God. Then we’re in a better position.

2. The intuition and rational recognition that there is individual providence (and of course general providence) among many, many people. Endless stories about one miracle or another, and of course intuition.
Rabbi Michi himself writes in The Science of Freedom (to the best of my memory) that intuition is something stronger than any empirical study, and on that basis, in his opinion, there is free choice, even though the current scientific trend shows there isn’t.
So why not continue with that approach here?
How can one deny the intuition of so many people, which is also backed by actual evidence of providence?

3. To think that all the rabbis and great Torah leaders of Israel who spoke about prayer as effective over the last hundreds of years (during which the Holy One, blessed be He, was not providentially overseeing), all of them were wrong, and Rabbi Michi uncovered the truth in a resounding trilogy at the end of 2019. Amazing.

Besides, sorry, the thin theology didn’t really innovate very much. The proofs and arguments for the existence of God or for the revelation at Mount Sinai were known beforehand too, and I didn’t fall off my chair when I read Rabbi Michi’s philosophizing in The First Existent or God Plays Dice. I didn’t see atheists lining up to repent after reading the Rabbi’s words (and quite a few have been exposed to them). Quite the opposite. I saw tons of objections.

Bottom line, I’m also in favor of exposing things and striving toward the truth, but Rabbi Michi really isn’t the direction. And just as there’s no need for the “average believing Jew” to search for the truth in some weird religion in South America, so too it’s a shame to invest time in reading Rabbi Michi’s books. Usually it won’t affect people at all; in very, very rare cases it will harm them in matters of faith.

To Ehud.

I, as someone who thinks the Rabbi is mistaken in his approach to providence (and even regarding the proofs for God I think there’s no need for that whole section, though the Rabbi managed to draw water from a rock there), think you are mistaken and, worse than that, not serious. When striving for truth, you don’t mark the target in advance and you don’t try to achieve sociological goals (bringing people back to repentance, etc.). The value in the Rabbi’s books is in his new arguments even if they are mistaken. These are study books, and their value is in deepening understanding as people engaged in Jewish thought (which, contrary to his opinion and mine, certainly does exist). He addressed the issues of intuition in relation to providence and prayer, and he has arguments that need to be taken seriously and answered seriously if you think he’s wrong. He invested thought in these issues (not enough) before reaching his conclusions, and in light of your claims against him it’s clear that you didn’t read his books carefully. What, do you think he didn’t notice that all the great Torah leaders of Israel (of the last centuries) have spoken until today about prayer as effective? So I’m telling you that that does not necessarily mean anything. In matters of Jewish thought, most of those called “great Torah leaders of Israel” today and over the past two hundred years (who are great in Jewish law — apart from the kabbalists and Rabbi Kook and the like) understand nothing. Their capacity for criticism (thought) in these matters is limited. Unless they have personal experience that prayer helps (they themselves know how to pray, and saw with their own eyes that their prayer was answered), their words are worth nothing. And if they do have that, they could have taught the masses how to pray — and if the prayer of the masses is not accepted because they are not righteous enough, then why do they tell them that the masses’ own prayer does help?

So the argument from numbers is not a sufficient argument, and one must address the arguments themselves (for someone who is genuinely interested in truth. If you’re just looking to rely on someone, you can certainly rely on true kabbalists, but then you won’t be genuine, and in any case how will you pray genuinely?). And so too with your other arguments. We need to deal with Rabbi Michi’s arguments directly and explain why they are wrong if we are convinced that they are (and I indeed am convinced that they are). The way we deal with them will deepen our understanding of these matters, and they will stop being religious and Haredi slogans in people’s mouths and instead become a living, breathing reality. And in that there is great value to the Rabbi’s books. I’ll say, figuratively, that the Rabbi’s mistakes are worth far more than the signaling of people like you and other rabbis who quote without understanding (so that the donkey-like students will keep pulling the wagon of leadership).

Hello Ayalon,

“What, do you think he didn’t notice that all the great Torah leaders of Israel have spoken until today about prayer as effective?”

I’m sure he noticed, and I’m sure that intellectually + emotionally + spiritually, at certain points it seemed completely bizarre to him. I remember the chapter where he wrote that he felt punched in the case of Nachshon Waxman, etc.
But that still doesn’t mean his conclusion isn’t absurd.
Think about flat-earthers — some of them are sure the truth is with them, and from their point of view they have rational proofs etc. (from their point of view). But does the fact that they hold that all the physics professors in the world are wrong not make it absurd?
As a person with no scientific education at all, I assume they’re probably wrong just because of the absurdity they generate, especially in a field that is the top of the exact sciences.

I repeat: his conclusion about prayer is completely genuine from his perspective, and he examined it as critically as possible, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t produce a bizarre result — all the Jews who truly felt the Holy One, blessed be He, in their prayer, all of them are mistaken in their intuition, in their experience, in the “empirical” test (of prayer being answered), and almost all of them lack sufficient scientific and philosophical understanding to realize that a “miracle within nature,” for example, is impossible.
Only Rabbi Michi (and his supporters) reached the correct conclusion, and it is even proven in his books.
I ask you, Ayalon: is that absurd or not?

“The value in the Rabbi’s books is in his new arguments even if they are mistaken”

The spiritual problems of our generation (leaving religion + people coerced into outward religiosity + religious people with spiritual problems) are known. There are countless questions from religious people like the Rabbi raises in his book. I’d be happy if you’d give me an example of one new argument that hasn’t been raised before. I’m waiting for a response with one new argument. And please, no responses like “the Rabbi thinks a miracle within nature isn’t possible.” That, for example, is not a new argument of the Rabbi’s; Jews raise that question many times.
My problem, as stated, is not with raising the arguments themselves, but with the solution (“there’s not really much point to prayer, etc.”).

“In matters of Jewish thought most of those called ‘great Torah leaders of Israel’ today and over the past two hundred years (who are great in Jewish law, apart from kabbalists and Rabbi Kook and the like) understand nothing.”

I’d be happy if you could show me someone who “understands nothing.” I’m really asking you to be precise. You claimed there are great Torah leaders of Israel who “understand nothing,” and I ask that you show me someone like that.

“We need to deal with Rabbi Michi’s arguments directly and explain why they are wrong if we are convinced they are”

There are people who deal with these arguments; I too wrote things here against his conclusions, and I feel fairly comfortable with that. It’s a bit hard to lay it all out here in this comment (I’ve already written too much as it is).

“When striving for truth, you don’t mark the target in advance”
I don’t think that someone who says there’s no point for the average believing Jew (and on rare occasions it’s even dangerous) to read the Rabbi’s words is marking the target in advance.
It’s exactly like when Rabbi Michi says there’s no point in going to wonder-working rabbis. He examined the issue, checked it out, and came to the conclusion that there’s no point in trying it.
So for the average believing Jew, I’m saying the same thing, only regarding the Rabbi’s books.
What’s the difference between me and him?

The fact that you decided that I didn’t understand the Rabbi’s words properly, and therefore I have no right to recommend not reading his books, while the Rabbi did properly investigate the issue of wonder-working rabbis, and therefore he is doing something legitimate when he recommends not going to them — that is already your assumption. …

Ayalon, like the blabbermouth before you, you also didn’t present convincing reasons for the Rabbi’s claims. You just tossed out that he’s wrong. Bottom line, you’re exactly like a fan tossing slogans into a compartment meant for convincing arguments.

To Ehud and Sakranon

Regarding the flat earth: in order to be convinced, you really shouldn’t take into account only the fact that all the physicists hold that it’s round, unlike the other fools. You’re supposed to ask them what the evidence is that it’s round and what their answers are to the counterarguments of flat-earth people. (Already when the Greeks discovered the earth’s roundness — Pythagoras, I think — there were 3 proofs for it.) That’s how a thinking person works. If you don’t have the energy to think, then indeed you can believe the physicists, but then you have no business entering the discussion and saying the other side is wrong, simply because you don’t really know that it’s wrong. You can believe and follow experts, but then you can’t enter the discussion and claim someone is wrong.

As for what Jews felt in their prayer, etc. — that can convince those same Jews themselves, but not the Rabbi or people of his kind (people with a critical sense). Most human beings don’t know how to distinguish between correct intuition (self-evidence, evidence) and imagination. In general, most people live in fantasies, and someone like him cannot rely on their testimony (even though they themselves can, because that’s all they have). Fantasies among the public are an everyday occurrence, and there is nothing absurd here. Albert Einstein uncovered a structure of spacetime that all physicists of previous generations and the masses “disagreed with” because it contradicted simple intuition. So what? Does that make it false? The experiments decided that it was true.

As for the value of the arguments in the Rabbi’s books: the Rabbi dealt with problems that troubled him and felt that the solutions offered until now were not serious in his view, and he reached his own solutions. And he published the book for those whom these problems trouble. The value of his arguments lies in their originality, even if they are not correct. Because now whoever thinks they are incorrect needs to explain why. There’s no point giving examples here. The whole site and the notebooks on the site (I haven’t read the books) are full of this, and I won’t go peddling a list. Even the example you gave — “the Rabbi thinks a miracle within nature is impossible” — I suspect you don’t fully understand what he meant by that (he did not mean that in light of today’s science miracles cannot happen, but rather to argue that if there is behavior that falls within the laws of nature, then necessarily the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved in it. Meaning that if the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes in reality, it is necessarily a miracle — that is, a breaking of the laws of nature. And a miracle within nature is an oxymoron). In any case, I too think the Rabbi’s solutions are too easy and not successful, and this is not the place here to explain why (I can only do that orally, not in writing. My comments are already longer than the Rabbi’s columns as it is).

As for the great Torah leaders of Israel, out of respect for Torah scholars I won’t mention names. In any case, there is an article by Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (the greatest kabbalist in the twentieth century apart from Rabbi Kook) to his son in which he warns him that the people he most needs to stay away from in order to merit becoming a servant of God are the Haredim. He writes that the secular are the least harmful, after them a bit more harmful are the Religious Zionists, but from the Haredim he must be most careful and beware, because they know nothing about God but pretend that they do (they want to be “pretty Jews” — in his words). You are also invited to read his opinion about the kabbalists of Yeshivat Beit El when he met them after coming to the Land of Israel (from Poland).

As I said, what you call dealing with the Rabbi’s words does not count as serious in my eyes. And neither do the responses of those before the Rabbi (and in his opinion too — otherwise he wouldn’t have written the book). To answer that some things are a sin from a previous reincarnation is not serious. Not just not true, but worse — not serious. The whole idea of understanding why you were punished is so that you can correct the sin and remove the punishment from yourself. So only in a case where someone can tell me what I did in a previous reincarnation, what I sinned in, and what I can do now to correct the sin and remove the punishment from me — only then can such a claim be treated seriously. And if in that case it works, and more than once, then indeed that would be the correct explanation. Before that, it is an empty excuse. Are you yourself a kabbalist? Quoting others is not serious.

Indeed, it is your right to recommend whatever comes into your head. And if the average believing Jew is a calf lacking understanding and critical sense, I agree with you there’s no point in his reading the books. But there’s also no point in his reading or learning anything else at all. Fools will always distort whatever they learn. Let them go play soccer in the yard until they mature and go to school. The Rabbi wrote these books because of something that bothered him, and the books are intended, like any other book, for someone bothered by these things.

And to Sakranon

Did you really think I’d lay out my position on these issues here? This is a serious topic (providence and prayer) and in my opinion it cannot be taught in writing or in lectures, but only in apprenticeship and hands-on training. Go attach yourself to a prophet or a kabbalist and then you can know what the answers are. Maybe I (I’m not a kabbalist) can talk about it orally, but certainly not in writing. I have good explanations for most of the Rabbi’s claims, but ones that would themselves require lots of preliminaries. These are things I’ve thought about for years — even before the Rabbi published Two Wagons. For a small part of the Rabbi’s claims I have no answers, but I have a strong intuition that he is wrong (a sense for truth that has been refined and sharpened over the years), and maybe it’s possible that I’m wrong; and for a third part there are explanations still in the stages of construction and development. (A good, true, and beautiful explanation is like a craftsman’s product — it goes through many stages before it reaches completion: mining raw material, initial shaping, removing extra material, testing strength and rigidity and hardness, further sculpting (a second shaping), tempering at high temperatures, and finally grinding, polishing, and one last smoothing — finishing.)

Besides that, there are a few things of mine scattered around the site. If it interests you, you can look for them.

I’m a Haredi yeshiva student. The book they found was God Plays Dice. The rosh yeshiva and the mashgiach came into his room in the student’s presence and confiscated the book. By the way, the mashgiach told the rosh yeshiva that the book deals with evolution; he also had to explain to him that the meaning is that man was created from the ape, according to the view of the wicked heretics, may the Merciful One save us.

That reminds me of a story that happened to me personally. When we were in Yeruham, the son of some Haredi friends of ours who studied there in the yeshiva was caught reading a book by Joseph Heller (author of Catch-22 and other works) that he had borrowed from me, and they confiscated it from him. I told him to tell the mashgiach that if he d o e s n ’ t return my book to me, I’ll sue him in a rabbinical court. The mashgiach said the book was no longer in his possession (I didn’t make him swear so as to verify that he wasn’t lying), and I told him he would have to pay me its value. And indeed he paid me, cash on the barrelhead, the full listed price of the book.
That student who was thrown out of the yeshiva — I recommend that he at least sue the mashgiach for the value of the book.

“***You can believe and follow experts, but then you can’t enter the discussion and claim someone is wrong… Einstein uncovered a structure of spacetime that all physicists of previous generations and the masses ‘disagreed with’ because it contradicted simple intuition. So what? Does that make it false? The experiments decided that it was true.***”

I assume Einstein also created absurdity in his time (just as quantum mechanics creates absurdity today).
Only in Einstein’s case, what can you do — as you wrote, there was no other option, and empirically it was discovered, and is still being discovered even in our day, that he was right.
Rabbi Michi, by contrast, proved nothing. Not scientifically, and not philosophically, and certainly not spiritually / in terms of faith.
Besides, I don’t think Rabbi Michi is wrong *only* because of the absurdity he creates, but because of other things as well.

Two questions, and I’d be happy for your answer:

1. Aside from a few mathematicians in the world (even senior mathematics professors), no one can understand the solution to “Fermat’s Last Theorem” (Andrew Wiles solved it).
Do you think you can say “Fermat’s Last Theorem was solved,” even though you have no idea about the solution?
From what I understand from you, if someone asks you “Was Fermat’s Last Theorem solved,” your answer would be “I don’t know. It’s not clear to me.”

2. Do you think Rabbi Michi’s claim that all human beings who truly feel and see providence in practice are imagining things does not create absurdity (regardless of whether or not you think that absurdity itself can serve as an argument against Rabbi Michi’s words)?

“***The value of his arguments lies in their originality, even if they are not correct…. There’s no point giving examples here. The whole site and the notebooks on the site (I haven’t read the books) are full of this***”

Excuse me, Ayalon, you wrote that the Rabbi brings new arguments, and even now you repeat that they are original. And I repeat my request, especially in light of the fact that you claim the notebooks are packed with original / new arguments — please, present me with just one that is original / new. That’s not a big effort.

“***Even the example you gave — ‘the Rabbi thinks a miracle within nature is impossible’ — I suspect you don’t fully understand what he meant by that (he did not mean that in light of today’s science miracles cannot happen, but rather to argue that if there is behavior that falls within the laws of nature, then necessarily the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved in it. Meaning that if the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes in reality, it is necessarily a miracle — that is, a breaking of the laws of nature. And a miracle within nature is an oxymoron).***”

I’ll explain what I mean.
There is a “will” in reality that governs it together with deterministic “nature” and together with human will.
That will is the divine will.
When the Rabbi gives the example in his book that flight-crash investigation committees always find a natural cause — “a loose bolt” or “human error,” etc. — I agree with him completely.
No one thinks that some black hand came out of heaven and, against the laws of nature, gave some slap that caused the plane to crash.
But the question is: who created the pilot’s first thought (which might have begun from some tiny pulse in the brain) that caused him to “start the chain of errors” that led to the crash —
here we are talking about a “miracle within the laws of nature.”
How does that tiny pulse in the brain that started it all work technically? I don’t know. I think there is a will that leads reality, just as you and I have a will that leads us.
Rabbi Michi himself also says that technically there is no problem with the Holy One, blessed be He, intervening in nature.
Call it a “miracle within the laws of nature” or “supernatural” or “God hiding behind nature.” However you want. That’s semantics.
What matters is that reality is led by a certain will + us, who help that will be realized through our free choice.
You can look at an article Rabbi Moshe Rat recently wrote on his website.

So I didn’t understand what kind of “supernatural” explanations Rabbi Michi expects to find when they investigate a crashed airplane. What kind of “plane crash” would make him think that God intervened here?

By the way, even when we don’t know the circumstances regarding certain events (anomalies), for example a “medical miracle,” Rabbi Michi thinks that’s because we didn’t investigate enough, etc.
So the Rabbi also supports his arguments with a nice tautology, so that everything also works out according to his view.

“***As for the great Torah leaders of Israel, out of respect for Torah scholars I won’t mention names. In any case there is an article by Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag… he warns him that the people he most needs to stay away from in order to merit becoming a servant of God are the Haredim… from the Haredim he must be most careful and beware, because they know nothing about God but pretend that they do (they want to be ‘pretty Jews’ in his words).***”

1. I’d be happy for a reference to the article. I looked on Wikipedia and didn’t see any mention there that he spoke disparagingly about the Haredim.
2. I’m not familiar with the laws of forbidden speech and gossip, so I’d be happy to know — you refrained from speaking forbidden speech about specific people, but by bringing Rabbi Ashlag’s words, didn’t you in fact commit forbidden speech (or gossip) about an entire public? Is there no “forbidden speech about a public”?
I really don’t mean to jab at you, but to understand the mode of thinking, and along the way to learn more Jewish law.
Just by the way, I didn’t understand why you call them “Torah scholars” if they understand nothing whatsoever in matters of faith. Because they know a lot of Tosafot and Rashi?
3. In any event, your claim that there are great Torah leaders of Israel who “understand nothing” is not accepted.

“***To answer that some things are a sin from a previous reincarnation is not serious… The whole idea of understanding why you were punished is so that you can correct the sin and remove the punishment from yourself. So only in a case where someone can tell me what I did in a previous reincarnation, what I sinned in, and what I can do now***”

Our lives in this world are the rectification. For example, for a person born with severe disabilities, the suffering itself is the rectification. The attribute of justice. As painful and sorrowful as it is to say such a hard thing.
A person with a very strong attraction to engaging in X — it’s probably that by engaging in that same X he will, along the way, rectify what he came to rectify (of course he has free choice and will have to return again until he fully rectifies it). Someone who believes that reality as a whole is being led for the good by a divine will has no problem accepting that too, even if he can’t understand the rectification down to the bit-and-byte level.

“***If the average believing Jew is a calf lacking understanding and critical sense, I agree with you there’s no point in his reading the books.***”

The average believing Jew is not a calf.
As I wrote, Rabbi Michi’s percentages of influence are really very low.
What is worth preventing is the very slight chance that good Jews will get confused by Rabbi Michi. That has nothing to do with a person’s intellectual level.
Therefore I think it was right that Kikar HaShabbat did not post this article.

It’s hard for me to write, so please forgive the brevity of my words.

It is not correct to use the word absurd with respect to general relativity, nor with respect to quantum mechanics. They are simply not intuitive. But both Einstein and the discoverers of quantum mechanics took the trouble to explain why reality did not look then (and still does not look, to ordinary eyes) like the reality these theories describe. This is called the correspondence principle. At the limits of low speeds or large scales (great distances), these theories take on the form of Newtonian mechanics, which describes the visible reality. Even before the experiment they were not absurd. In the same way, there is no absurdity in the fact that the Rabbi ignores reports of the experiences of many people. Granted, he (in my opinion) really does need to explain the words of the kabbalists (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, the Vilna Gaon, etc.), or more precisely, it is wrong for him to ignore their words; with respect to the rest of the people there is no need for an explanation. Personally, I cannot accept their words as evidence (though I do feel these things), because even if I believe the stories, people always tell you about the successes and not about the failures. It’s like product advertising: they tell only the advantages. Or about the successes of some craftsman. I also want to know about the failures (and how he learned from them); only from the full picture can one learn something. But in any case my opinion indeed is that lack of providence is not a solution. Torah (or God) without providence is like a product without a warranty, and therefore one who truly believes in Torah and God believes in providence even if he is not aware of it. The entire main discussion about God is about providence. Who even needs to care about a First Existent?

Fermat’s Last Theorem is not relevant. I trust mathematicians and I believe them that it was solved. But it doesn’t matter at all if I don’t understand the solution. There is no significance to my trust in mathematicians from the standpoint of my own knowledge of mathematics. If I haven’t read and understood the proof, then I know nothing. My knowledge that the theorem was proved is empty of content. (There is a mathematician named Perelman who refused to accept a million-dollar prize for a problem he solved (in topology) because he claimed that the committee that decided he was entitled to it did not really understand his work and had no authority to award him prizes. From his point of view, the prize is that people understand his work, not money!)

As for originality, please forgive my laziness. But when I speak about originality, I mainly mean that the Rabbi is the first Torah scholar of his kind (that is, more of a Torah scholar than 80% of the heads of yeshivot in the country, let’s say, off the cuff) who says explicitly that he is not willing to deny the obvious. In our generation his approach (as a Torah scholar in the league he is in, not just some young rabbi of a liberal community) is original. (Even though that has also been my approach since I came to my senses, but I’m not a rabbi and I don’t make a living from it.) And as a result, his conclusions are also original (though not too much), such as the idea that once there was providence and today there isn’t, let’s say. That is of course not a new and brilliant solution, but he is the only one of his kind willing to declare it if he feels forced by his assumptions to conclude that way, and he’s not afraid they’ll call him a heretic and an apikores. Another example is his explanation regarding prayer for changing the sex of the fetus and the Sages’ conception of the deterministic nature of the natural world (I disagree with him on almost everything, but this is an original argument).

As for miracles, this is not the place to discuss it, though it is also my opinion that every free choice (for good and not for evil, and in the depth of the matter also for evil) of every person whatsoever is a mini-miracle (a breaking of the laws of nature), and indeed the Holy One, blessed be He, is revealed and intervenes most of the time in nature through human choices. But that’s not a discussion for here, and the Rabbi has a non-simple argument against this (connected to taking divine contraction literally, etc.).

As for Rabbi Ashlag, see his article “The Influence of the Environment on a Person” (it’s in a book called Kabbalah for the Beginner, p. 140, published by Bnei Baruch. Ignore the fact that they publish the book. The article is an original article to his son, Rabbi Baruch Ashlag). The story about the kabbalists of Yeshivat Beit El is somewhat well known and appears at the end of the introduction to his book Pi Chacham (in the book I mentioned above, p. 270). Also see the introduction of Rabbi Chaim Vital to Etz Chaim, and there is also a letter of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto to his teacher Rabbi Yeshaya Bassan about most of the Torah scholars of his generation.

In short, I’m not a righteous man, but this forbidden speech is about the whole human species, and in particular also about the Haredi public (and also the Religious Zionist public). In other words, this is a world of falsehood. It seems to me that if you learn something from it, that is considered forbidden speech for a constructive purpose.

As for reincarnations: I’m sorry to say, but what you are saying is unbearable. If you try to comfort someone with such a disability with statements of this kind, you become like Job’s companions. And you may get punished for it yourself. The bit-and-byte level is exactly what makes the whole business serious. “God is in the small details.” I am not interested in naive faith in God. I am interested in knowledge of God.

Rabbi Michi is not occupied with percentages of influence. He published a book intended for people bothered by these problems, and even if it does not change their minds, it has value in itself as a book of wisdom (I haven’t read it, but if it contains original arguments then it should be judged as a book of wisdom by the wisdom it contains, and nothing more than that). In general, intelligent people are repelled by persuasion, by preaching, by attempts to bring them back to repentance; they are drawn instead to understanding and study.

It’s impossible to keep trying all the time to protect people from becoming confused. No one is forcing them to read if it doesn’t interest them. It’s part of reality that one discovers the truth after confusion. Whoever doesn’t understand that is like a small child afraid to grow up.

How did the Rabbi sue for the value of the book? Seemingly, that student was a borrower, who is liable even in unavoidable accident. So the student is liable to the Rabbi and not the mashgiach? Unless we say that the confiscation of the book by Joseph Gehinnomer (may his name testify to his sins) falls under the category of “it died through its normal use” — meaning that by force of the use a yeshiva student makes of a book, the “death” comes to the book, namely the mashgiach’s confiscation — and therefore the student is exempt. But the mashgiach is liable to the Rabbi because the borrower stands in place of the owner. And in the case of “it died through its normal use,” he is exempt. But here, where the death actually occurred through another person (though with respect to the borrower, the death stems from the use, since that is the present Haredi educational-legal situation), the Rabbi therefore has a right of claim against the mashgiach, since in “it died through its normal use” the borrower does not stand in place of the owner, and therefore it died in the Rabbi’s domain, and by the mashgiach’s hand.
But what did the Rabbi think at the time?

You can engage in Talmudic hairsplitting here about Rabbi Nathan’s lien and about one who does business with his fellow’s cow, but it’s unnecessary. There is the law of the kingdom.

Whoever believes is not afraid of losing the faith.
The Haredim are afraid of losing the faith.
Conclusion —
The Haredim do not believe.