Is G-d Letting Us See Behind the Curtain?

It is a tenet of the Torah that man has Free Will (with the one sort-of exception of Pharaoh).

But if mankind has Free Will, then how does G-d influence our world? I think the answer is being shown to us, right now, in real time.

Consider: In the Holocaust and on October 7, and countless times in history, Bad Guys get to do Bad Things. They do them up close and personal, attacker-to-victim. G-d does not seem to intervene much, if at all. If Ahmed wants to whip out a knife and start stabbing schoolchildren, G-d does not stop him.

But look at the incredible miracles of the last year. After virtually no interceptions of incoming ballistic missiles, Israel has stopped over a hundred in a single night. Twice. Somehow the targeting systems are on the money. And then the missiles that get through only manage to find empty ground to blast. Time and again they slam into places where casualties are low or non-existent. A single missile, had it hit a populated building, could have killed hundreds. But none did. Not one.

Here is my theory: G-d does not block our free will. But He absolutely meddles once free will is no longer in play. Ahmed can launch the missile. But once Ahmed pushes the launch button, Ahmed is no longer the prime mover. The missile can self-destruct, or become an easy target, or fail in some way or, if it gets that far, end up landing in a place and time where nobody gets hurt.

Bad Guys get to be Bad Guys, but the more they rely on probabilities, the more G-d blocks their intentions.

That is where G-d is found. Or as Rabbi Sachs put it: Judaism is the defeat of probability by the power of possibility. Which actually seems to help explain quite a lot of Jewish history beyond just recent events.

I’d welcome your feedback on this thought.

But I am also thinking of all the implications. How, for example, might we see our own lives through this prism?

After all, if G-d’s unrestrained power is readily found in the cascading effects of errant electrons, then it means that the power of every person could also be found primarily in the littlest of things: the way we carry ourselves, the way we speak to and about others, the way we choose to use our bodies and souls.

At the very least, if we take care of the little things, the above theory (and the events of the last year) suggests that G-d is willing to help us in a similar way: save our lives through manipulating the quantum world, even as free will is left untouched.