Right, I used the common way of speaking used by part of the public.
Is a traditionalist not in the category of a child taken captive? Maybe it depends?
By the way, the question comes up because I encounter people like Peace Now secretary-general Yariv Oppenheimer, and I wonder whether it’s possible to “help him.”

Thanks again!

In the context of the force of the arguments, I read in one of the responsa that this also relates to his intention (whether his intention is pure or not, meaning whether he “lied to himself” or not)

“The opposite view,” that a traditionalist is preferable to an atheist, relates to commandments and transgressions as natural things—someone who is “traditional” in being careful about health will be healthier than someone who is “atheist” toward health-consciousness (that is, completely indifferent to it). “The opposite view” says that in the World to Come even the greatest atheist will be judged carefully for every four cubits he walked without ritual handwashing. And therefore a traditionalist is preferable.

You simply are not measuring reward and punishment in the World to Come, but rather making some kind of direct judgment of your own about “what is better,” and therefore someone who chose his own path and acts according to his principles gets points from you (even if the principles are bad and mistaken). Or perhaps you do measure reward and punishment in the World to Come (if that day you got up on the leg that does believe in reward and punishment), but then you would say that an atheist will not receive any punishment at all in the World to Come because he acted in good faith according to his own principles, whereas a traditionalist will receive punishment because every day he fails in transgressions even though in his heart he knows they are forbidden.

But there is nothing at all strange about “the opposite view.” They simply relate to the whole mechanism of commandment and reward and punishment in a more “realistic” way.

Yaakov,
I think a traditionalist usually is not a child taken captive. But of course there are some who are. I’m talking about the type, not a specific individual. I didn’t understand how Yariv Oppenheimer is connected to the discussion. Is he active in the religious sphere too? (By the way, he’s already a former secretary-general.)

Straight Thinking,
You are completely right in your distinction. Except that this itself is exactly the outlook that seems puzzling and strange to me. By the way, you are not necessarily right regarding reward and punishment in the World to Come, because in my view these too, even if they exist, would be given according to the value of the deed and not according to a count of how many deeds were done (see Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 3:2).

That “by the way, you are not necessarily right,” etc.—I suggested that too when I wrote “or perhaps you do measure reward and punishment in the World to Come.”

I didn’t understand what you meant to bring from one who regrets his former deeds. Whether there is an evaluative judgment of the deed or whether the deed stands as it is, in any case there is a special novelty in one who regrets his former deeds. Do you think that one who regrets his former deeds fits comfortably into your worldview and is connected, in your opinion, to your general view of reward and punishment or the judging of people?

I don’t remember talking about one who regrets his former deeds, and I don’t understand what you’re asking.

I accidentally looked at Maimonides chapter 3, law 3 instead of law 2 (where it says “one who regrets his former deeds”), so indeed everything I wrote afterward was based on a mistake (and on errors it was founded).

To Rabbi Michael,
I don’t know whether he is active in the religious sphere, but he seems to me like an established secular person, so I mentioned him as an example.
For the sake of the discussion, let us bring an example: suppose there is a simple secular person, with firmly established secular views. If you say that he does not have the “option” of repenting, it would be puzzling if he were punished in the World to Come.

Something I want to add:
I saw a video about a near-death experience, of a person who seems like the type that characterizes perfect rationality.
Here is the story:

These stories, generally speaking, for someone who believes in the World to Come, raise the question of “what exactly caused his brain to contain this memory, after all the experience was out of body”; the emerging answer is a miracle.

In any case, another question raised by various stories comes up when one makes the “blind assumption” that the person knew of God’s existence (perhaps while being in denial) and nevertheless denied Him. For if not, how is a person judged if he did not know of the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He?

Why is the traditionalist worse than the atheist? He commits transgressions because of temptation, not out of an ideal of denial. How is that worse than the atheist? His deeds are better.

I’ll quote part of your message:
Why is the traditionalist worse than the atheist? He commits transgressions because of temptation, not out of an ideal of denial.

Traditionalist is an undefined term. A traditionalist can also be an atheist who observes some of the commandments because of folklore. He can also be someone who does not believe in formal Jewish law, or even a neo-Karaite. I have seen quite a few people in various forums who define themselves as traditionalists and claim that they do not believe in Jewish law, or do not believe in rabbinic Jewish law, or are complete atheists.

There are many more stories of near-death experiences of Christians who saw Jesus, and even of people who did not undergo clinical death but had an out-of-body experience and saw Jesus coming to save them from Satan. There are videos about this and entire books that were written and are used by Christian missionaries.

I think that if you look at the “long range,” a traditionalist is preferable to an atheist: there is a greater chance that the son or grandson of the traditionalist will repent (because he is familiar with the prayers, Sabbath, holidays, etc.) than the son or grandson of the atheist.
But all that is if you look from a systemic perspective. If you look at a specific person, then certainly a traditionalist is worse, because he knows God and His commandments and nevertheless denies Him.
(Of course, the term “traditionalist” includes many different kinds of people within it, as several comments above mine noted, and therefore in discussions like these one must make sure that everyone is referring to the same concept.)

Can a person who believes with complete faith be capable of committing transgressions?
The assumption that seems likely to me is that a person who sinned did so because of lack of faith, which caused lack of fear.
Maybe that’s not so? I’d be glad for an explanation.

I came across a video of Aviv Geffen, in which he says, “My biggest dream is to feel that there is a God.”
This is the video: https://youtu.be/qFrLw1NoHjg

And indeed one might infer from this that there are people who dream of feeling that there is a God. How can one judge such a person?

“A,” regarding clinical death, I understood that this is a subjective interpretation by the person after the event.
That is, it could be that he saw a figure whom he thought (probably afterward) was someone, and it turned out to be someone else.

They claimed they saw Jesus or Muhammad. Are you claiming they saw someone else? Maybe. But they too can claim the same thing regarding the believing Jew and that their religion is correct. The process also matched exactly the religion they believed in; it wasn’t only that the figure was from their religion.
In my opinion, the reasonable explanation is that this was a hallucination.

I’m not claiming what they saw; I’m claiming that their testimony in general, and especially their interpretation of their experiences, should be taken with a grain of salt.
On this subject I relate less to the religious interpretation and more to the experience itself. But it’s true that they could claim that their religion is correct. It’s interesting that you point out that the process matched their religion. In any case, the cases themselves too should be taken with a grain of salt, because it is possible that there is a mixture of phenomena (a real out-of-body experience or a hallucination).
In any case, the argument that they experienced things that their own senses are themselves incapable of experiencing is interesting. (Descriptions of the place where they were while they were dying, descriptions of events that happened, etc.).