Sorry, this sounds like playing innocent. “What would be wiser about it?” For example, you’d expect an accurate description of creation, or at least not one that flatly contradicts what we know today (six days). For example, that it wouldn’t go on at length with whole verses listing the chiefs of Esau, or the section of the tribal princes. And then Hazal go and derive things from every letter and decorative crown, which is just crazy. And in general there’s nothing wise there. You’d expect a book that God wrote to have some insight, some novelty, something, anything — zero, nada. Of course the gates of excuses have not been locked. But common sense doesn’t buy them.

All of that has nothing to do with wisdom, but with truth. Those are two different claims. A wise text is supposed to contain wise ideas — something a person would not have thought of or known. The points you raised concern whether it is true and whether it is efficient (or contains unnecessary parts). Those are different claims. Regarding them, I raise the argument of the broken clock and the clockmaker. See, for example, column 690.

A — Fine and good with the “broken clock,” agreed. I’m just asking whether you have any explanation that settles the mind as to why the Creator gave us a broken clock at Mount Sinai, while Rabbi Michael Abraham produces more functional teachings.

B — Another thing: actually, I was speaking from a different angle. What does He, the Creator, have to do with these strange commandments that fill our lives — “forbidden foods,” the ashes of the red heifer (and in general all these laws of impurity and purity, with all their complexity and complication, leprosy, etc.), tying straps with a protruding square object on the arm and head? It simply does not fit at all, for me, with such a brilliant Creator of the universe. It’s not even like you suddenly writing an article on the level of “The Dibrot” or giving a lecture like Amnon Yitzhak. I wish it were even on that level — I’d keep quiet. That might fit the definition of a “broken clock.” But this looks like a stupid clock, one that doesn’t show that it was once good and somehow broke, but rather a clock that suggests its maker was apparently defective?

So I didn’t understand your surprise at “What exactly is supposed to be wiser about it?”

Maybe write a post about such an important topic, or perhaps, like us, you too are perplexed about it. If so, then all the more so — “If there is anxiety in a man’s heart, let him speak of it to others and not just distract himself from it,” and maybe some commenter or another will offer some halfway, third-way, quarter-way decent resolution we haven’t heard.

Just don’t tell us the worn-out excuse “for the sake of free choice” — meaning, if God forbid there were something that actually displayed the Creator’s infinite wisdom, then of course everyone would believe in Him. And apparently the matter of free choice is just that sweet to Him that He abandoned the whole world for its sake, and in the end they inherit Gehinnom (if there’s even anything after death?), since “I have seen believers, and they are few.” And apparently the matter of free choice is so sweet to Him that He even gave up foreknowledge because of it. So fine, if He gives such bizarre tests, to the point that one truly no longer knows whether I’m really being tested or simply abandoned to a cruel world (whose Creator does not intervene in it, of course for the sake of free choice) — because after all, nobody really knows whether there is even an examiner, and whether after the test (death) there are grades. It really looks as though the matter of free choice is so sweet to Him that, as they say, “let the world go to ruin” and let everyone go to Azazel (Gehinnom), which is indeed what it looks like.

Rabbi Michi, by now it no longer looks like the clock is broken, but — dust to my mouth — that the clockmaker is broken. What on earth does He want from us? Hasn’t He gone too far? Or perhaps, God forbid, He lost control of the situation — “And He regretted that He had made what He had made… and every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all day” — and it is no longer in His hands. It looks like He didn’t foresee that this is what would happen in the world through the power of free choice He gave human beings, and He doesn’t know what to do. Did the statistical mathematics fail Him in predicting it correctly?
And probably He already created enough worlds and destroyed them, saying “this one pleases Me and this one does not please Me,” until He sees no point in destroying even this last experiment, the least successful one? So really, “Give strength to God,” and “in all their suffering, He suffers,” and truly, for Your sake do it, if not for ours.

Rabbi Michi, I have spoken until now out of the abundance of my complaint and anger — in my name, and in the name of the whole world and the silent majority.

Please open some post on this matter (and while you’re at it, attach a few related topics that belong to the same general issue).
Thanks.

A — If I had such an explanation, the clock wouldn’t be broken.
B — That I recommend asking Him. As far as I’m concerned, the commandments were not given to achieve something in our world, because for that we have morality. Their purpose is spiritual, and I cannot say what it is.
I’ve written this dozens of times about religious values as opposed to moral values.

B — (Believe me, I asked Him that for years and didn’t understand why He wasn’t answering, until I got to your site, and especially your latest post.)
In any case, do your words imply that there’s some chance that the teachings of the Ari (or another kabbalist) are correct (Heaven forbid)?

Definitely. Why not? Even if not in every detail, the very assumption that there are spiritual aspects to reality and that our worship is directed toward them sounds logical to me.

Why not?
A — How could that be? After all, almost all of his teaching is built on the Zohar (which he mistakenly thought was by Rashbi), and it is really from Moses de Leon (who also forged a lot, including from the responsa of the Geonim and “Responsa from Heaven”) or from the generation before him.
And the whole teaching of the Ari is built from imagined spiritual experiences full of errors — whether in things he said in Jewish law and their connection to the esoteric, if you want examples… or in plain “attainments,” such as when he said that Jehoiada the father of Benaiah is buried in Safed, and based on that they made a grave there, whereas it says explicitly in 2 Chronicles 24:15–16: “And Jehoiada grew old and was full of days, and he died, being a hundred and thirty years old at his death. And they buried him in the city of David among the kings…” (and there are many more examples; I was actually a former kabbalist, so I know pretty well what I’m talking about).

It doesn’t make sense that a teaching full of mistakes would be correct on this point. And if so, then the whole thing falls into the pit — because how would we know what is correct, in matters he brings without proof, only from his ‘attainment’? As is known from logic, whatever cannot be refuted…

B — Why does this have to be secret? Why didn’t the Creator say it? What’s so complicated about it? After all, all the students of this teaching throughout history were not among the greatest Torah scholars, just as we see today that even the teachers of this teaching are, at present, rather ignorant.

And by the way, after many twists and turns I definitely understand Maimonides’ view that the Account of Creation and the Chariot are philosophical matters — like the secrets / riddles of the universe and all the topics on your site (such as foreknowledge and free choice and the latest post and so on), which the eyes of the whole world are raised toward solving — more than the view of the Vilna Gaon, who got angry at Maimonides.

C — Maybe you only meant the Ari’s general approach, namely that these strange commandments repair spiritual sefirot that were broken.
But all the other details of the Ari’s teaching — what, who, what exactly, why, how did he know, who revealed this secret to him? After all, he didn’t even grasp the simple fact that the Zohar has nothing to do with Rashbi.
Maybe you also liked the secret of tzimtzum that the Ari invented? Maybe also the shattering of the vessels?

Please elaborate more on what you meant.

A — I’ve already explained my view of Kabbalah; you can find it through the search.
B — I don’t know.