Reply To: chazaka meiikara

Arvah, thanks again for your reply. Admittedly I did get a bit lost in middle of the paragraph, but you seemed to be quoting the nefesh hachaim that the world, though dependent on Hashem, will stay unless its base–Hashem–“moves”. You didn’t provide the exact source, so it’s hard to look up, but that seems contradictory to everything I always heard about chiddush haolam–that Hashem is constantly creating the world, and it’s not at all steady-but-dependent; it is nothing save for the command of Hashem.

Daas yochid and catch yourself, I understand that Hashem commanded us to do mitzvos even though in reality our actions are futile and it’s Hashem that allows the action to happen (or more accurately, performs the action himself). My question is why Hashem specifically wants us to act as though all is to be taken for granted, that we should apply a logical–or logic-related–assumption that everything should be staying the same unless we see proof that it changed.

I’ll illustrate the point further. The gemara (gittin and other places) discusses chezkas chai–we can assume that he who was alive yesterday is alive today. Is that not antithetical to our core beliefs? Are we supposed to have such an attitude, “we’re here to stay by default, unless some change happens”? Don’t we make a bracha every day amplifying that point exactly that our life was given to us by Hashem and that if not for his kindness we wouldn’t be here?

To reiterate, I’m 100% aware that this is a Torah-ordained doctrine. The question is WHY it is so.