Probably the most common
counter-argument that people respond with, is that maybe the people who retell
such stories are not reliable. The problem with that argument is that it isn’t
true.
History, in the sense of
what actually happened in previous times, is very black and transparent – either
something happened or it did not. It is not as if we can come to a gentlemen’s
agreement, where one of us will decide that something did happen, while the
other will decide that it didn’t, and both of us would be correct. So whatever
conclusion you reach, if it is true, has to be valid for me as well, and vice
versa.
The problem that I am
faced with, is that I personally know many of the people that relate these
stories, and they are reliable people. Let’s take, for example, my father, who
personally experienced a number of miracles involving the Rebbe, although I
haven’t mentioned them here. I know my father as an adult for many years by
now, and if I want to be honest with myself, I must concede that he is not
making it up. A similar situation exists with the first nine stories I linked
to above – with the exception of the third story – where I either know the
people themselves, or my father knows the people themselves, or they are
family-related – and in each of those cases I know with certainty that the
story they retell is reliable.
If I were to decide to
reject their stories nevertheless, wouldn’t that make me intellectually
dishonest? Wouldn’t I be violating the principle that ‘one must always base
their conclusions on reality, and not base reality on their conclusions’?
A second counter-argument
is a statistical one – that if we would accumulate all of the stories regarding
the Rebbe, then the miracle stories would be explainable by statistical chance.
Again, this isn’t true for at least three reasons:
1. I have looked into
this at length, with a then skeptical acquaintance, and the numbers are simply
unexplainable. Even when only considering “positive” stories of dire
one-in-a-hundred cases where the Rebbe was right, which should mean that there
are many other “negative” stories where the Rebbe was wrong, the ratio that we
managed to come to was so miniscule that it is simply not statistically
explainable. (To be specific, in contrast to the 500 and more positive stories
that I know of, our combined knowledge of negative stories only totaled about
12. In the specific study mentioned above, where we kept the threshold of
acceptable positive stories on a very high level [i.e. personal interview, dire
cases, no other realistic explanation etc.], we only found 4 comparably
negative stories, instead of the many tens, if not hundreds, that we should
have found.)
2. On a micro level,
there are some people who do have the
full picture of the positive and negative stories, and they are the rabbis of
various Lubavitcher communities. As being the son of a rabbi, I have noticed
just how much congregants confide in their rabbi – including very confidential
information that they don’t share with anyone else. So the rabbi would know if
a person in their community had a problem; if they wrote to the Rebbe about it;
if, and what, the Rebbe answered; if that person followed the Rebbe’s advice;
and if the problem was resolved. The problem I am faced with, is that I personally
know three Lubavitcher rabbis who are truthful people and internally consistent
– if they were to come to the conclusion that this was all statistically
explainable, and that the Rebbe was not able to perform miracles, then they
would tell their congregants exactly that. I cannot explain why these three
rabbis are still certain in their belief that the Rebbe was able to perform
miracles, if not that it is actually true.
3. There are some stories
involving the Rebbe that have a practical
statistical chance of zero. For example, my father has a (reliable) friend who
told him that he once had a private audience with the Rebbe, and instead of
giving the Rebbe a list detailing his questions that he wanted the Rebbe to
answer, he accidently gave the Rebbe a blank sheet of paper instead. The Rebbe
nevertheless answered all of his questions. Similar stories have occurred with
other people as well, and I have seen that JEM has published at least two of
them:
A third counter-argument
is to say that maybe the community involved has a mentality where people overly
embellish the stories, and the like. Again, I know that this cannot be the
explanation, as I have lived within Lubavitcher communities throughout my life,
and this argument simply does not measure up with reality. This is in addition
to the fact that many of the people who had these interactions with the Rebbe, do
not come from a Lubavitcher background.
Finally, there is a
fourth counter-argument made from the writings of David Hume, who argues that
logically we should never accept testimony in support of the supernatural. His
arguments can be found here: http://www.davidhume.org/texts/ehu.php#E10
Hume first presents a
general argument against the supernatural, and then four specific ones, which I
think can be summarized as follows:
Any piece of evidence in
support of the supernatural goes against the large body of evidence that we
already have to the contrary, that attests to the sole existence of the natural.
One can give an analogy to this, from the Indian prince who, while in his
homeland never came across the phenomenon of water turning into ice, but then
comes across a piece of ice on a world travel and rejects its existence because
it goes against all of his previous experiences.
In addition, a) the
people who retell miraculous occurrences are generally not reliable, b) they
take great pleasure in retelling such wondrous stories, making them even more
unreliable, c) the miraculous events usually happened to primitive, naïve and
barbaric peoples and d) there is a logical contradiction if two religions
report claims of their leaders performing miracles, as is often the case, as
most religions make the claim that they are exclusively true and all other
religions are false.
In response to the
general argument, I might understand if our Indian prince would not accept the
reality that water turns into ice at certain temperatures, if he only came
across one instance of ice in all of
his travels. If, however, the prince came across more than 500 instances of
ice, and still did not believe in its existence, then that is, frankly, indefensible.
As for the objections
made in a, b and c, they clearly do not apply to our case, as these people are
reliable, they often do not take great pleasure in recounting their stories,
although some of them do, and they are neither primitive nor naïve. They are
not barbarians either.
About the fourth point,
Judaism has a very interesting answer:
If it were only true that
Tzaddikim were able to perform miracles, then that would prevent people from
having free choice, as people would be forced to only go to Tzaddikim if they
wished to find respite for their problems. Therefore G-d allows other people to
use the power of magic to override nature, in order to restore free choice.
Before I continue, I
should clarify something about the Rambam’s opinion, as many
people will immediately object by pointing out that the Rambam writes very
strongly against the existence of magic.
I will respond by pointing out that firstly,
despite what he writes about magic, the Rambam certainly believed in the
existence of miracles, and secondly, it would seem that even the Rambam holds
that in certain circumstances, magic can exist. I base that on what he writes
in chapter eight of the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, where he explains
that the giving of the Torah is the sole proof of the truth of our religion. He
writes (8:1): “The Jews
did not believe in Moses, our teacher, because of the wonders that he
performed. Whenever anyone's belief is based on wonders, [the commitment of]
his heart has shortcomings, because it is possible to perform a wonder through
magic or sorcery.
All the wonders performed by Moses in the desert were not
intended to serve as proof [of the legitimacy] of his prophecy, but rather were
performed for a purpose. It was necessary to drown the Egyptians, so he split
the sea and sank them in it. We needed food, so he provided us with manna.
We were thirsty, so he split the rock [providing us with water]. Korach's
band mutinied against him, so the earth swallowed them up. The same applies to
the other wonders.
What is the source of our belief in him? The [revelation] at
Mount Sinai. Our eyes saw, and not a stranger's. Our ears heard, and not
another's. There was fire, thunder, and lightning. He entered the thick clouds;
the Voice spoke to him and we heard, ‘Moses, Moses, go tell them the
following:....’”
If it were true that
magic can only create an illusion, as the Rambam writes elsewhere, how can it
be claimed that the splitting of the sea, where the people walked through on
dry land, was performed through magic? That definitely wasn’t an illusion.
Furthermore, why does the
Rambam have to devote this whole chapter to explaining the proof of G-d’s
revelation at Sinai, and to explaining that a proof from miraculous events is
insufficient, as one could always argue that they could have been performed
through magic, if he could have given a much simpler argument: since magic can
only create an illusion, and Moses split the sea which wasn’t an illusion,
therefore that must mean that our religion is true, because only a servant of
G-d would be able to perform a true miracle. It would seem that the Rambam evidently
held that in certain circumstances magic can exist.
The above explains why in
Tanach, as well as Mishnah/Gemara, there are many references to witchcraft, as
in those times people were able to perform magic. However, after that time,
such stories disappeared until the times of the Ba’al Shem Tov, who again
started making many great miracles.
This would also explain
why the possibility of other religious people performing supernatural feats is
not a contradiction to our religion, as our religion specifically allows for
that to occur, in order to retain free choice.
At this point, I usually
get the counter-argument that maybe the people I consider to be Tzaddikim, are
really performing witchcraft, and therefore maybe Judaism isn’t the correct
religion after all.
In response, I’ll point
out that if one concedes the existence of magic, that also must confirm my
first conclusion, that G-d, in a general sense, must exist. In addition, the
truth of our religion can be proven from a) the additional logical proof that I
am about to discuss, the Kuzari proof, b) the argument of the Tzemach Tzedek in
his Sefer Hachakira (pg. 128) that magic isn’t completely identical to the
powers that Tzaddikim have, as there are some miracles, such as Joshua’s
stopping of the sun, that cannot be performed through magic, and c) the
argument made based on Tefillin and Mezuzos which was mentioned above, which
are not contingent on the abilities of Tzaddikim. There are stories where
similar things happened to people, and their problems were resolved after
fixing their Tefillin, even though they didn’t ask the Rebbe at all.
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