Since a large part of the fear of you and the opposition to you stems from your opposition to holy lies, I can only feel that this is so deeply embedded in our nation. And based on the proofs I brought, I do not understand why one should think that such lies were invented only in recent generations, when our history is full of such lies, including sources from Scripture and Rabbi Dessler’s well-known explanation of what “truth” is and what “falsehood” is. (And even Tosafot—whom I learned from you—that from Abraham we learn that there are many stars; and I see that the approach is to give up on reality and rely absolutely on the Torah.)

With a quick internet search I came across a certain site that brought sources from the Ben Ish Chai, Rabbi Elyashiv, and an explicit Jerusalem Talmud passage that reinforce the matter.

So what difference does it make to me that you oppose these lies? That is, I believe you wholeheartedly, but when for hundreds of years or more this has been the leading outlook in Judaism, how can I believe all the generations until now?

By the way, I didn’t see elaboration on this specific issue in the trilogy, and if you expand on this in your book Truth and Unstable on this topic, please tell me.

1. I added my opposition only as an aside.
2. I do not agree that this is the general policy of our nation (to use your wording). On the contrary, it seems that in the Talmud everything is brought up for open discussion.
3. You argue that if there had been an instruction to lie, everyone would have lied. Even if you were right, how do you know there was such an instruction?
4. Even if you were right, there is still prior belief in Moses that caused them to adopt his instruction to lie. What is that belief itself based on?
5. In both books I explained why the traditional option is preferable, and therefore the witness argument is valid in my view.

3. That’s why I asked: between the two options (as of the day, if I remember correctly), what is more logical—a miracle or an instruction from Moses to lie?

4. Moses told them some story, like many false prophets whom people believed in during that period (Jesus, Pharaoh, Muhammad); they believed in Moses. And after they believed in him, he instructed them to lie.

Regarding 3–4, could you please sharpen for me where my mistake is?

3. I answered. The traditional option is more plausible in my view. I explained it in both books.

The validity of the Torah does not stem from a revelation to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, because there was no such revelation.

This has nothing to do with holy faith, because there was no faith.
The generation of the wilderness, which saw signs and wonders and God’s revelation at Mount Sinai, did not believe in God and in Moses His servant.
The evidence for this is scattered abundantly all the way to the end of Deuteronomy:
from the sin of the Golden Calf, through the sin of the spies, their repeated complaints against Moses and their desire to return to Egypt on the one hand, and God’s wish to destroy them in the wilderness more than once and raise up offspring from Moses on the other,
to Moses’ concluding words: “A vile and unwise people,” “you have been rebellious against the Lord from the day I knew you.”
“For I know your rebellion and your stiff neck; behold, while I am still alive with you today, you have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death.”
Also every week in welcoming the Sabbath we say: “They are a people who err in heart, and they have not known My ways.”

So what holy faith are we talking about here?

Now, since there was no faith here, then the revelation is certainly true.
When the starting point is lack of faith, and yet the story of the revelation was passed on from generation to generation—then surely the revelation really happened!

Translation: because everyone passed on the story even though they did not believe it, then apparently it happened. A strange argument…

Christians also claim that there were people who did not believe even though they saw signs and wonders. Muslims say the same thing too. Every religion has to justify how there can be other religions, atheists, and unbelievers despite there being proofs for their religion.

Also, if they did not believe despite seeing signs and wonders, that only weakens the claim that there were signs and wonders and a revelation that could not be denied. I don’t understand how this bizarre argument proves anything.

There are 4 possibilities:

1. To see—and believe
2. To see—and not believe
3. Not to see—and believe
4. Not to see—and not believe

The traditional position is position 1—that the generation of the wilderness saw a revelation and believed in God and in Moses His servant.
But that position can be weakened by the claim raised by the person who opened the discussion—which is position 3:
perhaps the generation of the wilderness did not see a revelation, and Moses convinced them to lie that they had seen one (a holy lie).

I claim that position 2 is the correct one (based on the Torah’s words): they saw, and did not believe.
That claim can supposedly be weakened by claim 4,
but that is not really a claim—because if they neither saw nor believed, then how was the tradition passed down generation after generation?
How is the Torah in our hands?

The comparison to Christianity and Islam is irrelevant, because there there was no public event,
in the presence of the masses, but rather holy lies spread by a few individuals.

Translation: they saw and did not believe what they saw (they thought it was mass hypnosis), and therefore it clearly happened and one should believe it. As I said, a very strange argument (I did not understand what this explanation added to what you wrote before).
Of course you are mistaken. When it says that they did not believe or sinned, that does not mean they did not believe in the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, or in His revelation (hypnosis?). They saw and believed, but they had an evil inclination and therefore did not act according to His commandments.

I did not say that they saw and did not believe what they saw.
I said that they saw and did not believe in God and in Moses His servant!
The revelation did not bring them to faith. Literally. You just have to read the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh).

To come and claim that they believed in God but sinned because of the evil inclination, as if the evil inclination
were some foreign force that takes over a person—that is a very strange argument.

Binyamin,
In Islam, Muhammad split the moon in two, and in Christianity too there were mass miracles. They may not have received their Torah in a mass revelation, but there certainly were claims of mass miracles. Here perhaps the difference between Judaism and most other religions is not in the claim of a mass miracle, since even today there are people who claim such miracles.

What you wrote proves nothing. If people saw and believed without doubts, that would prove something. If they had doubts, that weakens the claim that there were unequivocal things there.
If people see a natural phenomenon, or a historical event, everyone believes it happened, and there are no people who will not believe it. Maybe some people will see it as a miracle and others as a natural event, but that is the person’s internal interpretation and not an unquestionable fact.

I don’t understand how your claim proves anything.

Two people witnessed a miraculous / non-natural event.
One will think that it happened through a higher power that revealed itself to him.
The second, although he will not be able to explain what his eyes saw, still will not attribute it to some higher power that intervened in nature and revealed itself to him, but rather to something natural that he simply does not know.

These two people pass on what they saw to others.
Who is more likely to describe the event in a more objective and reliable way?
In my opinion, the second.

Because the first—it is possible that he will also exaggerate in describing things because of the mystical, faith-based significance that he attributes to the event.
And on the other hand, one might perhaps also suspect him of a ‘holy lie.’

I am not claiming that I have some certain proof for my argument (this is not a formula in mathematics).
It just seems more reasonable that דווקא the ‘non-believer’ would describe things as they really were.