Thank you.
Can I have a link to purchase the book?

A question: meaning, even if you sat with Tzvi Yanai in your house for a whole day, say—you still wouldn't manage to shake his belief and force common sense to conclude that yes, there is? And if it were someone uneducated, unlike Tzvi Yanai? Does your very knowledge cause a left-wing person in a one-on-one conversation to admit you're right?

The approach that has taken shape for me, after quite a few Jews came closer through me, is that there is a spiritual force in a person that prevents him from accepting the matter (a shell, as the kabbalists call it).
I've seen with my own eyes people who dealt with Kabbalah for years, or people who held certain views, and then in one moment (within themselves) suddenly understood the Chabad point, for example…. And then I ask myself—what happened up to that point?
Meaning, there are different parts of the soul, and at each level one can contain a higher faith—the books of the Mitteler Rebbe of Chabad, you've surely seen them… speak about this. It also depends on the spiritual level of the writer, and how connected that righteous person is to you in Heaven and whether he will pray for you. And who the person is in general in the treasury of souls.
What bothers me is why I can't prove anything to left-wing people! An intellectual proof of the kind used in court! Like the Rebbe writes in the proof for students in the book Gates of Faith (it appears on HebrewBooks).

Thank you.
Happy holiday.

Hello.
This is the link:
https://shop100313.istores.co.il/
Usually not, at least not immediately. The effect is mainly effective before a view has fully formed (among religious people who are undecided, and sometimes secular people who are undecided). When a person has a formed opinion, it's very hard to change it, and perhaps with some justice.
By the way, I usually don't deal with leftism but with religiosity. You're conflating the two, but they are really not the same thing.
And another conflation you're making is between Chabadism and Judaism. That too is really not the same thing (I don't mean Rabbi Shach's statements, but the very identification that feels so natural to you and is so typical of Chabadniks in general).
I'm also generally not impressed by the psychologistic-spiritual analysis of shells and the like. This is fairly simple psychology, and there is no need for all that. Moreover, religious people also have resistances to accepting secular arguments, just as secular people have resistances to accepting religious arguments. I don't know who is more open. As stated, it's hard for a person to change an opinion once it has become formed. Is that resistance too (of the religious) a shell in your view? Unless you're speaking about the translucent shell, where good and evil are mixed.
And finally, talk about "courtroom proofs" is naïve and not serious. This isn't mathematics, and there are serious arguments for and against. You shouldn't feel as if you are certainly right and everyone else is wrong or stupid. As I said, there are wise people and fools on all sides. There are biased and objective people in varying degrees on all sides too. One should try to persuade, and that's all, without getting into psychologistic and judgmental questions. Believe me, the atheists ask exactly the same thing about you (and about me).

You mentioned Rabbi Yaakov Elitzur from Arachim.

I have to share an anecdote I had with him, the memory of which still pains me.

A few years ago I began to formulate an atheist position (deist, to be more precise). A family member of mine turned to him, and he put us in touch.
Rabbi Elitzur came to me voluntarily (to the far north), sat with me, and showed me his presentation and slides (by the way, I got the impression that this material came from the "creationists" in the U.S., after being adapted and translated).

At the same time, he was in contact with my family member, and claimed to him that the change I had undergone stemmed from "desires."

I approached Rabbi Elitzur and asked him why he said that to him. And he answered me:

"Simple reason and healthy logic show and easily prove that there is a Creator of the world and that the Torah is true. Anyone who denies that, despite having been presented with the 'proofs,' is one of two things: either an extreme idiot, or a pleasure-seeker.
Since it's clear to me that you are a very intelligent person, you'll agree with me that no choice remains but to determine that desires led you astray"—end quote.

That sentence really grated on me, and after that I no longer agreed to meet with him.

There are two problems with the statement.
First, it's very offensive, of course. No one enjoys hearing such "compliments," even if they are true.

Second, it shows a difficulty—or a total inability—to understand the other position. You can't discuss things with a person and argue with him if he comes into the argument with absolute confidence that reason says his own position is one hundred percent true and the other side's position is one hundred percent stupid.

That is not a fruitful discussion, but preaching.

From my acquaintance with Rabbi Elitzur, I know that his intentions are good and his heart is warm. But in my opinion, his approach is completely mistaken, both essentially and tactically.

Aharon, beyond the insult, I'll just say that as far as the substance is concerned, it shouldn't matter to you whether he listens and is open or not. Obviously the people from Arachim don't come to discuss with you but to persuade you. The question is whether you're willing to hear their arguments for the sake of forming your own position. If they won't hear you—that's their loss. Of course, if in your estimation they have nothing new to offer, then there's no point in talking, but that's true even if they were attentive.

Thank you, Rabbi. I'll try to phrase it perhaps in a different way:

In arguments of this sort, the claims are not black and white. When discussing issues of biblical criticism, for example, there are things that fit better with the religious faith, and there are things that fit with the position of the biblical critics.
How do you make a decision? According to an overall impression. According to which approach things fit better.
Now, when people sit together with open thinking, and are prepared to reexamine everything, they give proper weight to each piece of evidence. Clearly the weight is a subjective matter, and still, when one side raises a claim, his counterpart understands its significance.
When you sit with a person who sees one position as clear as the sun and the other as wrong on a level that every little child rejects, there is a problem in the discussion.
The problem is not in the arguments themselves. It may be that each side raises good arguments according to its own method. The problem is in the atmosphere that accompanies the conversation.
The rabbi who does outreach raises arguments that in his eyes are unequivocal and solid as a rock. He simply doesn't understand how one could fail to be impressed by them. I raise an argument, and the rabbi gives it the weight of a garlic peel.
At the end of the conversation, the rabbi's conclusion is (not always verbally): "I explained everything to him; he just doesn't want to understand."

Maybe one could think this is only an emotional matter. But I think it also has to do with the quality of the argument:
When you have a good counterpart, who knows how to be properly impressed by one of your good arguments and to dismiss a shaky one, you crystallize your thinking and learn to clarify your positions and formulate them precisely.
When the attitude toward every argument is the same, and every secular argument is not convincing at all, you don't get feedback, and you succeed less in weighing your arguments properly.

Aharon, I don't think that's the right distinction; I think it's connected merely to rhetoric.
It may specifically be that your feeling of aversion is what causes you from the outset to regard the rabbi's arguments as weaker… In my opinion that's fairly subjective and depends on your interaction with that other person and with yourself.

A very interesting discussion.
First of all, it's obvious that God and the Jewish tradition are not a fact in the same sense that the sun rises in the morning, such that one could claim to prove it in court.
Faith is based on common sense and logical conclusions, and after that a final leap of intuition. I don't see how it's possible to base stable faith on anything other than rationality and common sense. Talk about mystical experiences and receiving a soul is certainly fascinating, and I'm not here to dismiss spiritual attainments that are beyond reason, which perhaps the author of the Tanya or the Ari had—but it is beyond me how one could expect ordinary Jews like me, who did not merit divine inspiration like those righteous giants, to base my faith on such stories. For experiences of revelation of that kind you can find—and really forgive the comparison—also among Indian gurus, Muslim Sufis, and messianic preachers, for example. Or worse, among people like Ohad Ezrahi, who describes mass sexual events as an experience of mystical revelation.

Regarding the psychologizing of one's opponent: like Michi and like Aharon, I oppose all these childish sermons that every heretic and atheist is such because he wants to sleep with a few women, or simply because he is an agent of the other side, a reincarnation of the mixed multitude, or all kinds of things like that. That said, many atheists, just like many believers, base their unbelief on a certain emotion. For example, they find the Torah and Judaism unsuited to their whole world of values, or they simply feel that it's not for them (as Michi wrote years ago in his column about the phenomenon of leaving religion). Something that happened with one of my good friends: he told me that he was born to a secular home, became religious, went to a yeshiva in a moderate Haredi style, and after a year and a half decided to go off religion. When asked why, he answered that he simply felt that every day he was putting on a mask, and that this wasn't who he was and didn't feel like his role in the world.
With such a claim it's impossible to argue, because he isn't speaking at all about facts and logical arguments, and not even about moral difficulties, but about an inner experience in which he simply "doesn't connect."

Likewise, there are atheist intellectual positions according to which, as long as there is no unequivocal proof of something—like the proof that the sun rises in the morning—belief in God will be worth exactly the same to them as belief in Greek gods. People with that kind of mindset would be very hard to persuade.

In my humble opinion, the only people you might succeed in bringing to repentance are those who do believe but have certain difficulties of one sort or another that prevent them from going all the way (such as the age of the world, evolution, a moral problem in one Torah passage or another, and the like).

Greek gods*
prevent them from going all the way*
their world of values*
mass sexual events*

Prevent*
Annoying keyboard

Moderate Haredi style*

Aharon, I accept that you may get less out of the discussion if he doesn't take your arguments seriously. Still, if hearing his arguments can have value for you, I don't see a reason to avoid it because of his attitude toward you.