With God's help
25 Adar 5721
Brooklyn, NY
Mr. Chona Zvi Gorman
28 Lingwood Rd.
Clapton
London, E.5
Greetings and blessings,
I received your letter, which is in reply to mine. I was pleased to read in it about your classes, and I hope that you will make additional efforts from time to time, in accordance with the precept of our sages that all things of holiness should increase.
Regarding the discussions and debates you write about, it's not the right approach to engage in these kinds of pointless, endless, and useless arguments. A discussion is only appropriate among people studying together, and if a question arises repeatedly, even then it should be given little consideration.
Generally speaking, all the questions you mention have already been answered in our holy books, and those who continue to argue about them do so mostly out of ignorance or malice. Some simply fear that if they fully accept the Torah and the mitzvot, they will be forced to compromise their daily lives and conduct, and give up certain pleasures and so forth. So, they try to justify their erroneous views with futile arguments.
As an example, I will take a question you mention in your letter, which apparently seemed somewhat complicated to you, but in reality, the matter was discussed and resolved simply by our sacred literature. I am referring to the question of how man can have free will if God knows beforehand what he is going to do? The answer to this question is very simple, as can be seen from the following two illustrations:
1) Suppose there is a human being who can predict the future of what will happen to a person. This does not mean that this knowledge deprives the person of acting freely as before. It only means that the predictor's knowledge is such that it consists of knowing how that person will choose freely and of their own free will. Similarly, God's knowledge of human actions is such that it does not deprive the human being of their freedom of action; it only means that God knows how the person will choose in a given situation. To formulate this in scientific terms, we can say that the opposite of free will is not prior knowledge, but compulsion, because there is such a thing as knowledge that does not involve compulsion (such as, for example, knowledge of the past).
2) Every believer in God, not only Jews, believes that for God, the past, present, and future are the same, since He is above time and space. Just as in human affairs: the fact that Mr. X knows everything that happened to Mr. Y in the past, and this knowledge did not affect Mr. Y's actions in the past, in the same way, God's knowledge of the future, which is the same as His knowledge of the past, does not affect the free will of human action.
From the simple solution to the question mentioned, you can draw an analogy regarding all similar questions and be certain that there is an answer for them, and very often a simple one. But the proper Jewish way is to observe the Torah and the Mitzvot without questioning, and then try to find out whatever you want about the Torah and the Mitzvot, but not, God forbid, make human understanding a condition for observing God's commandments.
I trust that you participated in a Purim farbrengen, and I hope that the inspiration and joy will last throughout the year.
Hoping to hear good news from you,
With blessing,
[the Rebbe's signature]