The rules for comparing God to anything
Comparing God to a computer is risky. The Torah has rules for comparisons, and this page follows them.
Nothing is like Him. "To whom will you compare Me, that I should be equal? says the Holy One" (Yeshayahu 40:25). Any picture, including this one, is only a way into the idea.
Only what He does, never what He is. The Rambam (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, Egypt, 1100s) writes in the Moreh Nevuchim (Guide for the Perplexed) that every description of God is a description of His actions (1:54). So this page describes how the world is run. It does not describe God.
Never imagine the world running without Him. That is the one mistake a computer picture invites, and section 2 is about exactly that.
Use the picture, then let go of it. Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook (the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, 1900s) warns that holding on to any one definition of God turns into a kind of idol.
Rav Kook finishes that line: these words lead to denial only if we forget that they are "sparks" pointing to something beyond any definition. That is how to read everything below. The computer is a spark, not a definition.
God looked into the Torah and made the world
The Midrash (the Sages' teachings on the Torah; here Bereishit Rabbah, the early collection on Bereishit) already uses a technology picture, the best one it had: a building and its plans. A king who builds a palace does not build it out of his head. He hires a builder, and the builder works from plans.
Today we would say: the Torah is the source code of the world. The Mishnah agrees that we were given that code. Rabbi Akiva calls the Torah "the precious tool with which the world was created" (Pirkei Avot 3:14). The Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, Spain, 1200s) adds a detail any programmer would recognize: a Torah scroll with one letter missing or extra is not kosher, even when the meaning does not change (introduction to his commentary on the Torah).
But the Zohar (the central book of the Kabbalah, Judaism's teachings on the hidden side of the Torah) adds a warning right away. Code does not run itself.
Letters are the code
Sefer Yetzirah (the "Book of Formation," one of the oldest books of Kabbalah) says God made everything out of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. He "carved them, weighed them, swapped them and combined them" (2:2). It even does the math of combining them. It calls letters "stones" and the words they make "houses." Slide to add letters and watch the number of words grow.
Tanya (by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, 1700s, the founder of Chabad) takes this down to a single rock. The word אֶבֶן, "stone," never appears in the Ten Utterances of creation ("Let there be light," and the rest). Even so, the letters of those Utterances are swapped and combined, step by step, until the combination that spells "stone" comes out. That combination is the stone's life (Sha'ar HaYichud VehaEmunah ch. 1). The Hebrew name of a thing is not a label someone picked. It is what keeps the thing in existence.
Pull the power
Here is where a computer picture can go badly wrong. A programmer writes an app, then goes home, and the app keeps running. If the world worked like that, God would be like a programmer who finished His work long ago.
Tanya says that idea is the root mistake behind denying that God watches over the world. Tanya's own example is a silversmith. Once he makes a cup, the cup does not need him anymore. But he only changed the shape of silver that already existed. God made the world out of nothing at all, so it needs Him every moment. Try all three.
A picture of the sky, the sea and the land, with the words "Let there be a sky" inside the sky.
The Baal Shem Tov (Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer, Ukraine, 1700s, the founder of Chassidut) is quoted there. Tanya adds the splitting of the sea. The Torah says God moved the water back "with a strong east wind all night" (Shemot 14:21). Why all night? Because if the wind had stopped for a moment, the water would have flowed right back. Making something out of nothing is an even bigger wonder than that, so it needs God even more:
So if you want a computer picture, use a better one. The world is not an app saved on a drive. It is closer to a live stream, where even the screen itself is being streamed. Cut the signal and there is nothing left, not even a black screen. We say this every morning before Shema: God "in His goodness renews the work of creation every day, constantly."
Four worlds, one Power
Software is built in layers. The source at the core, system services on top of it, small functions on top of those, and the screen you touch. The Kabbalah also describes layers, called the four worlds. The Kabbalists, like the Ramak (Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, Tzfat, 1500s), read the names of three of them in one verse, Yeshayahu 43:7: "I created him, I formed him, I also made him" (Pardes Rimonim 16:1).
But watch the little squares. They show how much each world hides God. Tanya says the worlds are not closer or farther from God. He fills them all equally. They differ only in how much is covered up. Tap a layer.
= how much the layer hides God's light
Rav Chaim of Volozhin (the leading student of the Vilna Gaon, 1700s-1800s) says it in his book Nefesh HaChaim. God gave every force the power to run the level below it. That is a real chain of command, like a stack. And yet none of the forces has any power of its own. He says it first about the forces of impurity, and then about every force and every world:
Angels: one job each
In Parshat Vayera three "men" come to Avraham's tent. Why three? Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, France, 1000s, the classic commentary on the Torah) answers from the Midrash: there were three jobs, and "one angel does not do two missions."
In computer terms, an angel is like a function: a small piece of code with one job. The Rambam goes further. He says the Sages call every force of nature an angel, and that each force has one action (Moreh Nevuchim 2:6). Tap a card.
The Nefesh HaChaim says the same thing in almost these words: an angel is "one single, specific power." That is why the prophet calls angels "the ones who stand" (Zechariah 3:7). They stay at their level. Only a person "walks," grows, and connects all the worlds together (Nefesh HaChaim 1:10).
A function is lifeless code. Angels are not. The Rambam says they "are alive and know their Creator with a very great knowledge" (Yesodei HaTorah 2:8). They sing, and the Gemara even has them objecting when Moshe goes up to receive the Torah (Shabbat 88b). So the picture is about one thing only: who holds the power. An angel has none of its own.
How avodah zarah crept in
Avodah zarah means "foreign worship," the Torah's word for idol worship. Most people imagine idol worshippers thought a statue made the world. The Rambam says that is not how it started. It started with a smart-sounding idea about God's servants. In code terms: people started calling the sub-process directly and forgot who runs it. Step through it.
The King at the top, five stars below Him, and people at the bottom.
Notice what they never said. They never said there is no God. The Ramban says the first idol worship was of angels, and the worshippers still admitted that "the great power and complete ability belong to God Above" (Ramban on Shemot 20:3). The Rambam says the same about every idol: people served it as a go-between, "between them and God" (Moreh Nevuchim 1:36).
Where does a request go?
So here is the rule, in computer terms: every request goes to the top. You do not call the sub-process. Try sending one.
Choose where to send your request.
Rav Chaim of Volozhin calls this thought "a wonderful segulah" (a spiritual protection). A person who fixes in his heart that no other power exists, and pays no attention to any other power, is protected from them, because they really have nothing of their own.
The world is a mask
If God's word is inside everything, why can't we see it? Because the world is built to hide it. The Hebrew word for world, עוֹלָם (olam), comes from הֶעְלֵם (he'elem), "hiding." Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi explains: the world hides the light that lives inside it, so that the world looks like something that exists on its own (Likkutei Torah, Shabbat Shuvah).
The Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, Tzfat, 1500s, the great teacher of Kabbalah) calls this tzimtzum, "contraction": God "made room" for a world. Both Tanya and the Nefesh HaChaim say this does not mean God left. "It is impossible to take tzimtzum literally" (Tanya, Sha'ar HaYichud ch. 7). It means God is hidden.
The Gemara asks where Queen Esther is hinted in the Torah, and answers with this verse: הַסְתֵּר אַסְתִּיר, haster astir (Chullin 139b). Megillat Esther is the book where God's name never appears, and He is running every line of it.
In that verse the hiding comes because of sin. The Ramchal adds a deeper reason for hiding in general: hiding is what makes choice possible. The Ramchal (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Italy, 1700s) says God wants to give us good that we earn, because good that is simply handed to you is not really yours (Derech Hashem 1:2-3). Slide to reveal more or less.
And what about the old question: if God knows what I will choose, how am I free? The Rambam says God wanted people to have free choice in the same way He wanted fire to go up and water to go down. It is a law of creation. As for how His knowing fits with our choosing, God's knowledge is not separate from Him the way ours is from us, and so it is as far beyond us as He is (Hilchot Teshuvah 5:4-5).
No computer program can truly choose. Its output is either fixed by the code or random. The Rambam says "no one forces him and no one pulls him" (Teshuvah 5:2), and that this is why a person can be judged for what he does (5:4). A random outcome could not be judged either. Free will is the one thing in this picture that is not "just code."
The only move from below
Everything in the stack runs from the top down. Angels carry out orders. Only one thing in creation moves from the bottom up: a person's choice. The Zohar puts it this way: "an action below wakes up an action above" (Zohar III:31b, Tzav).
The Nefesh HaChaim reads a verse in Tehillim this way: "Hashem is your shadow" (121:5). A shadow moves exactly the way you move. So, "so to speak," God joins in moving the worlds the way a person moves below (Nefesh HaChaim 1:7). It quotes a midrash: if you smile at your shadow, it smiles back. Try it.
That is why the whole system exists. "When God created the world, He desired to have a dwelling place in the lower realms" (Midrash Tanchuma, Nasso 16). The bottom layer, the one with the most hiding, is where the point of it all happens. It is also why the Mishnah says that every single person must say "the world was created for me" (Sanhedrin 4:5).
"Write access" from below does not mean people hack God. The Nefesh HaChaim keeps saying "so to speak," and says God chose to put man in charge of the worlds (1:3). It even warns that the Kabbalists' line "man is the soul of the worlds" is not to be taken literally (1:6). God set up the system to respond to us. Nothing below moves Him.
Editing the record
There is one more power from below that no angel has: teshuvah, returning to God. Reish Lakish says it can change what past sins count as. Choose a kind of teshuvah.
One rule first: for wrongs against other people, teshuvah does not work until you make it right with them (Mishnah Yoma 8:9). And this is not "undo." The past is not deleted. It is put to work for the good. Rav Kook describes the person who does teshuvah as "created anew," and says "the whole world and all the worlds have been renewed with him, and everything sings" (Orot HaTeshuvah 3:5).
Five places the computer picture breaks
Rule 4 said: use the picture, then let it go. Here is what to keep, and what to drop.
There is no hardware without Him. A program runs on a machine its programmer did not make. The world, down to the ground, is spoken into being every moment (Tanya, Sha'ar HaYichud 1-2).
The layers are hiding, not distance. God fills every world equally. The worlds differ only in how much they cover (Tanya ch. 36).
Angels are alive. They know their Creator. They are not code. They just have no power of their own (Rambam, Yesodei HaTorah 2:8).
Choice is not code. No program chooses. People do, because God wanted it that way (Rambam, Teshuvah 5:4).
He is not part of the system. Not the top layer, not the programmer down the hall. "You run them, and no one runs You" (Tikkunei Zohar 17a).
Common questions
Short answers, with sources.
Is it allowed to compare God to a computer?
As a picture of how He runs the world, yes, with limits. The prophet Hoshea compares God to a lion "to let the ear hear what it can" (Rashi on Shemot 19:18), and the Midrash compares creation to a builder with plans (Bereishit Rabbah 1:1). The limits: it describes His actions, not Him (Moreh Nevuchim 1:54), and it must never suggest the world runs without Him (Tanya, Sha'ar HaYichud 2).
Is this the same as the idea that we live in a simulation?
No. A simulation is fake, and it runs on someone else's machine. In the Torah's picture the world is completely real. It is real because God keeps it in existence every moment, and it exists for a purpose: that people would choose good and make it a home for Him (Midrash Tanchuma, Nasso 16).
Do angels have free will?
No. Tanya says their love and fear of God are natural to them because they have no free choice (Likkutei Amarim 39), and the Nefesh HaChaim calls an angel "one single, specific power" (1:10). That is why a person, who can choose and grow, can rise higher than an angel.
Can I pray to an angel?
Prayer goes to God alone. That is the fifth of the Rambam's Thirteen Principles: not to angels, stars or any other creation, "even as go-betweens." The Yerushalmi says: "Do not cry out to Michael or Gavriel. Cry out to Me" (Berachot 9:1). Some well-known prayers and songs speak to angels, and the poskim discuss how to understand them. Ask your rav.
Why did three angels come to Avraham?
Because there were three jobs, and "one angel does not do two missions" (Bereishit Rabbah 50:2; Rashi on Bereishit 18:2). The Gemara names them: Michael told Sarah about her son, Refael healed Avraham, and Gavriel overturned Sedom (Bava Metzia 86b).
What is tzimtzum?
The Arizal teaches that before creation God's light filled everything, and God "contracted Himself" to make room for worlds (Etz Chaim, Sha'ar 1). Tanya and the Nefesh HaChaim both explain that this does not mean God moved away. It means He is hidden (Tanya, Sha'ar HaYichud 7; Nefesh HaChaim 3:7).
Did Rav Kook compare the world to a machine?
No. The computer picture is ours. Rav Kook gives the rules for using it: any definition of God, held on to, becomes a kind of idol (Orot, Yissurim Memarkim 3). He calls the fullest understanding of God a soul and a body: God's relationship to the world is like a soul's relationship to the body it gives life to (Orot HaTechiyah 1).
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