Q&A: Nasrallah Events and “Predicting the Future”
Nasrallah Events and “Predicting the Future”
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi,
as always, after big events happen, lots of people like to “prove” that these things were already written in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), or in the Zohar, and so on.
I noticed online that what has really gained traction is videos of Rabbi Pinto, who gave a Torah lesson two days before the incident with Nasrallah, and people are claiming that he told everyone Nasrallah was going to die on Friday.
So:
- Regarding events that happened and are supposedly “written” beforehand, I assume this is just coincidence, because tons of events are written about and tons of events happen every day, so it makes sense that an event that was written about would also happen, more or less in the same way it was written.
- As for Rabbi Pinto’s prediction, I always avoid believing people’s stories and experiences, since they can be biased (confirmation bias and so on).
But here it sounds like the rabbi really did say it. Do you know of a reasonable explanation for that? Could a person’s ability to know something like this be connected to intuition? - Also, in a similar context, I hear about cases from people close to me who claim that rabbis or blind people were able to tell them about events that happened to them, and bring up the names of people and friends they know without being told a word. Again, I usually tend not to believe stories like these, but there are cases that sound a bit unnatural, and the person telling them has no apparent interest in lying. What do you think?
Answer
To check this systematically, you need to see with your own eyes exactly what he said and not believe anyone. After that, you should examine his other predictions and see whether all of them came true and how many there were. If the result is statistically significant, then maybe he has powers. It’s not necessarily a concern about outright lies, but rather exaggerations, misunderstandings, and retrospective embellishment, and so on. For example, one of the ministers said that an atomic bomb should be dropped on Gaza, and when you listen to his words he didn’t actually say that, even though that sentence came out of his mouth. By the same token, it could be that this Pinto told his listeners that Nasrallah could die at any moment, maybe even tomorrow or the day after, and after it happened they immediately burst into joyful cheers over the fulfillment of the prophecy.
In any case, since we are talking about an evil, corrupt person, and not a particularly great mind, I find it hard to believe that such powers, if it should indeed turn out that he has them, were given to him by the Holy One, blessed be He.
Discussion on Answer
I saw this video of the person claiming that Rabbi Pinto predicted the event several days in advance. It’s not clear to me what interest he would have in lying, especially since he swore that what he said was true, given that he believes in God and is involved in Torah classes. In addition, as Rabbi Michi suggested, a systematic examination of the predictions has not been carried out and probably will not be, so we won’t be able to know how many of those predictions were correct and how many were wrong. When something happens, they claim he knew the future, even though many of the other predictions probably did not come true.
Here is the link to the video: https://www.tiktok.com/@refaelshilonyofficial/video/7419805876061621511
Why am I not surprised?
Shmuel, all kinds of followers have interests in glorifying their rabbi. And even swearing can, in their eyes, be a sin committed for a higher purpose. If the rabbi is like that, then his students and followers can do anything.
The video of his that’s been circulating online is from Saturday night; only in the title did someone write that it was from two days earlier (it’s really obvious from the video—he says, for example, “Friday, yesterday…”)