Q&A- Is it Heretical to Say God Needs Us - Rabbi Simon Jacobson

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Yitzchak Botton’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

let us now go to this question which is does God need us I've heard some rabbis say that God needs us while other rabbis vehemently disagree arguing that this statement is sacrilegious can you please clarify the issue so let me share a story that happened with myself and then we'll clarify his best to my ability a number of years ago I was invited to a seminar on affluence and uh and uh and religion and different rabbis distinguished rabbis were invited Cambridge University we all delivered our papers and then there was one um prominent Rabbi that was asked to conclude and say some inspiring words and he did and he talked a lot about does God need us yes how much God needs us there was another one of the rabbis without mentioning names who felt it was his role to rebut this Rabbi because when we delivered the papers that's what you did you delivered a paper then there were the these are the advisors or the listeners or others that were able to ask questions and challenge that's how it's done in these type of seminars or so here he went and began to rebut and say that God doesn't need God is complete in every perfect way the concept of God needing us is psychobabble it's uh it doesn't make any sense not from a maimonidian point of view not from a Torah point of view God doesn't need anything we need God God doesn't need us that was the Justice the moderator felt that the

Jump to a moment

1. 0:04let us now go to this question which is does God need us I've heard some…
2. 1:37second Rabbi had somewhat humiliated the first Rabbi who had said God needs us so he…
3. 3:40discusses it and actually reconciles between the two anyway afterwards that Rabbi came over to me…
4. 5:12very clear in other words it's not just talks about this it's not just for us…
5. 7:23which is so he says like this that contradict that and he explains that what it…
6. 9:32there he says it's foreign so drawing down the dimension of the Divine that's Transcendent into…
7. 11:05because he explains this is a sad desire but let's take this further because it doesn't…
8. 13:07yet and and higher than that seals there's no need because God is beyond need there…
9. 14:46um both are true they don't contradict one another the image because there explains that there's…
10. 16:54I hope this helped clarify and above all the most important thing what what's the difference…

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