Even though it’s documented?

To Danny,

Rabbi Michi is not the address for questions like these. He doesn’t understand anything about these matters. Even if it stood right in front of his face, he wouldn’t recognize it (among many other things). Even though he wasn’t always like this, today, in practice, he is an empty rationalist.

First of all, you need to ask yourself what this divine inspiration they talk about actually is. After all, it isn’t the divine inspiration with which the books of the Writings were written. Nor is it the divine inspiration of the Sages, which is another name for prophecy. Presumably they mean to say that he had spiritual attainment (spiritual sight that Kabbalists have), and then do the research yourself.

What’s documented? I didn’t refer here to anything specific. I have no idea what the “famous” video is. But in principle, yes, even documented things are presumed to be nonsense.

What is that “presumption” based on? What is it built on?

And what about the story of the locust that Rabbi Zilberstein testified to firsthand?
And there are endless stories like this firsthand—you just have to not ignore them. It reminds me of the discussion here about the Gra lottery of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, where people only talked about it without the minimum courage to check the facts.

What the Rabbi wrote just reminded me of his story from yeshiva with his parents about what rationality is. If it happened, and it’s documented, why assume that so many people are idiots (including Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein, as was mentioned here with the locust), instead of assuming that maybe some of these things really did happen and do point to something beyond the ordinary nature that you and I know?
It seems very logical to me.
I personally know a firsthand story of a completely open miracle from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Why not check each thing on its own merits? Why a presumption? Because the Haredim are retarded? That sounds arrogant to me and not rational at all.

Of course, by “documented” I also mean firsthand testimony from a reliable person, not necessarily a video.

Who said not to check? Check. A presumption deals with what you should assume as long as you haven’t checked. It’s built on rich experience with all kinds of Haredi and religious tales and fabrications.
In these contexts, the presumption is based on the fact that the Haredim (and the religious people) who tell such stories are divided into two groups: fools and liars. The fools don’t understand that what they saw is not a miracle, and the liars tell holy lies in order to increase fear of Heaven, and sometimes their memory and interpretation betray them because of their strong desire to see miracles and because of their faith in the sages. I myself have encountered plenty of both. That is what the presumption is based on.
I wrote about things like this in my columns on the law of small numbers and much more.
I just remembered that only now someone showed me what Rabbi Zilberstein said about Rabbi Kanievsky—that according to him he saved the State of Israel / the Jewish people by promising (during the Gulf War) that missiles would not fall on Bnei Brak. Beyond the question of whether this is factually true, and beyond the question of whether this is really a miracle or just statistics, and beyond the question of whether it has anything to do with his promises, even if it were true and even if he himself brought it about with his own holy mouth, the claim that this constitutes saving the Jewish people is demagogic nonsense. And Rabbi Zilberstein is far from being a fool (though I have already encountered statements of his that really are absurd on extreme levels).
And so it goes with many more fairy tales for retarded children that are paraded openly among our Haredi cousins, who get very excited about them. So maybe there is one story that really is a genuine miracle, but the presumption exists, and as long as some story has not been thoroughly checked and proven, there is nothing to it.

One has to remember that Rabbi Kanievsky did not study the laws of locusts for only one day, and it could be that he encountered that poor locust after a month during which he had been busy clarifying those Jewish laws.
Actually, as far as I know, Rabbi Zilberstein is considered even in the Haredi public to be a foolish person, and even his halakhic rulings are often beside the point.

There’s a video in which he promises that whoever votes for Gimel won’t get sick with corona…
He himself got sick…

So what are these stories worth?

It reminds me that there’s some place in Eastern Europe with a rickety structure where they say there’s the grave of some rebbe or other… and whoever prays there has a special virtue that his house will never burn down…
And even today that’s also the nickname of that rebbe… I don’t remember the exact name.

Bottom line, one day I’m opening B’Hadrei Haredim or Kikar and I see something awful…
People lit candles and weren’t careful, and the whole place burned down…
I wrote a comment there under the name Chelbena.
If he can’t save himself from fire, how is he going to save the people praying to him?

Google comments under the name Chelbena…
The responses to my comment were, as expected, that I’m a heretic and so on…
And since then I understood that for grave-prayer people, someone who sells nonsense and empty talk is wise and righteous, and someone who holds up a mirror to their face is an idiot and a heretic…