Aton Holzer
One of the thorniest problems in philosophy is that of free will.
In a materialist accounting of the universe, every outcome is necessarily predictable, given comprehensive knowledge of the substrates and understanding of the scientific laws that guide their interactions. For hard determinists, if human behavior and even thought is entirely biologically mediated and therefore predictable – given knowledge of all its prior conditioning and external and internal stimuli – if it is no exception to the materialist account of the universe, then free will can be nothing but an illusion, and moral responsibility a fallacy; moral praise, blame, and punishment are rendered absurd. Libertarians, increasingly more beleaguered, argue that there is some indeterminacy in the mix – quantum mechanics is often cited – such that the conventional views of human agency are sustainable.
One would expect for theisms to come down decisively on the side of libertarianism, since most seem to take for granted a body-soul dualism, an open system in which God is free to intervene, and moral responsibility. And indeed, Maimonides raises free will to the level of “a fundamental concept and a pillar of the Torah and mitzvot” (Laws of Repentance 5:3); the possibility of a nomos and reward or punishment depends upon it. In this accounting, repentance is the most vivid manifestation of free will, in which one is empowered to jettison her entire persona and alter her trajectory vis-à-vis Divine intimacy.
But we all know that the real world is more complicated than that. Circumstances of birth, genetics, personality traits, and disorders all diminish our choices; and so indeed, Musar sages such as R. Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler[1] write about more restricted parameters of human choice.
And in the realm of theory, more totalizing approaches to theism run into the same issues as scientism. Some understand that 14th century Catalan Rabbi Hasdai Crescas argued for ‘hard’ determinism,[2] citing Divine omnipotence and omniscience; for some, even Maimonides himself (based on Guide II:48) secretly held this view.[3] The Kabbalists added omnipresence, arguing that God is more than Aristotle’s prime mover but, rather, that Divine unity implies that nothing truly exists outside of God. The effect of this is to render free will, again, an illusion. R. Zadok Ha-Kohen of Lublin describes the view of repentance that emerges from this understanding:
The essence of teshuvah is such that God enlightens [the penitent’s] eyes, that the wanton transgressions be as merits, meaning to say that [the penitent] recognizes and understands that all that he has sinned was also in accordance with the will of the blessed God.
Teshuvah is that which returns (meishiv) that very matter to the blessed God, meaning to understand that all is the act of the blessed God and His power, even though before it is formed in the heart of a person… it turns out that the blessed God is giving [the sinner] power also then during the transgression, and in this manner, after the complete teshuvah [the penitent] merits that the wanton transgressions be as merits, for this too was the will of the blessed God to be such.[4] (Tzidkat Ha-Tzaddik 40, 100)
In his masterful exposition of approaches to repentance, Shuvi Nafshi,[5] R. Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (R. Shagar) elaborates that for R. Zadok’s hard deterministic approach, developed most fully in the Izbica Hasidic line, true repentance is stepping out of the illusion of free will – if only for a brief moment – and embracing the fatalism of a world in which every detail and event enacts God’s will, accepting oneself as one truly, honestly is.
And then, having achieved teshuvah, one sacrifices that perspective and re-enters the structures of normativity – what God told us that He wants, as opposed to what He really wants – so as to be able to function within the illusory ‘reality.’
The liturgy of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is at first blush quite consonant with the Maimonidean approach. Selihot, prayers asking Divine forgiveness, bracket the day and are the centerpiece of both the Ma’ariv and Ne’ilah prayers, and were prominent in the three other prayers until they ‘fell out’ of the mahzor in early modern times. Vidui, confession, is appended to every amidah and its repetition, for a total of ten litanies. Each ashamnu, confession paragraph, culminates in the recitation: “Surely You are in the right with respect to all that has come upon us, for You have acted faithfully, and we have been wicked” (Nehemiah 9:33), an unambiguous admission of personal responsibility.
And yet, there is a strong whiff of determinism. The central Temple service of the day involves the casting of lots, relegating to God to determine which sacrificial goat – ostensibly proxies for the humans that offer them – will be brought on the altar to God, and which will be banished to Azazel. God ultimately decides who is close to Him and who ends up in the desolate realm of the wicked fallen angels, Azazel as the late midrashic literature[6] understands it.
Divine majesty is contrasted with human frailty and insignificance in the piyyutim, liturgical poems, of the Shaharit and Musaf amidah repetitions, divesting our sins – any human activity, really, which are “as vanity before Him” – of meaningful import.
The principle of Divine omniscience, enumerated explicitly in the Rosh Hashanah zikhronot section – “All is revealed and known before you, O Lord our God, who sees and scrutinizes (tzofeh u-mabit) until the end of all generations” – is again referenced in the Vidui itself: “Atah yodei’a razei olam,” “You know every secret since the world began, and what is hidden deep inside every living thing.”
And the ultimate selihah of the Ma’ariv prayer, Ki hinei ka-homer, uses a series of allegories to illustrate Divine omnipotence and stewardship over Jewish destiny. Some seem particularly suggestive of Divine control of human actions, for instance: “like the helm in the sea captain’s hands.” The very ritualization of the service – the choreography, the rehearsed prayers, and the “mi-sinai” or “skarbove”[7] niggunim, the knowledge that we have recited the same selihot and litanies last year, and will do so again next year, knowing that we will certainly sin and require repentance – arouses a palpable sense of fatalism.
One of the most salient issues in Israeli society today is that of national unity. The people are riven by questions of momentous consequence. What should be done to secure the release, and prevent the imminent deaths, of our hostages? What needs to be done to safeguard national security in the longer term? Where is there leeway? Which of our leaders are arguing in good faith? Who is posturing for political gain, and who is weighing the values appropriately? The questions are important, and the arguments on both sides are cogent.
And lives depend on these questions in a way that is immediately apparent. Hostages are executed. Soldiers fall. Both sides feel an urgency to act. Demonstrators fill the streets.
The sense of human freedom is wonderful, noble, and a pillar of Torah and mitzvot. But taken to an extreme, the idea that we as individuals have control, that we can determine outcomes, that no situations are really beyond our control – nourished by the superhero film fantasy subgenre, which dominates popular culture – can lead down a dark path. When you have exhausted all that can be done within the bounds of civility, and there are lives on the line, then it becomes imperative to push just a bit beyond those bounds, and then a bit more to get that outcome – and the same with legality. In short order, the gossamer threads that structure civil society are rent asunder. Fisticuffs in the street, op-eds are poison pen letters brimming with vitriol, professional group chats devolve into flame wars, families are torn apart.
This sense of freedom leads one to regret. If only I had the foresight, if only I had worked a bit harder, seen the obvious, things could be different. If I had done more, I could have saved them.
Finally, it leads to blame. Why aren’t they listening to me? Why won’t they agree? If they would just join us, we would be able to save them. Can’t they see that? They should be ashamed of themselves.
The libertarian worldview that insists that we take full responsibility, that we examine our actions, our thoughts, our ways of life, and make the changes that would prevent such harm in the future, all crucial activities – is of no help in ameliorating our own pain over what our choices have wrought upon others, and others’ on ourselves, in the past, and drives a wedge between us and others in the present and future.
R. Akiva says: Happy are you, Israel! Before Whom are you purified, and Who purifies you [of your transgressions]? Your Father Who is in heaven. For it is said, “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean”; and it is also said, “The ritual bath [lit. hope] (mikveh) of Israel is the Lord”; even as a ritual bath purifies the unclean, so does the Holy One, Blessed be He, purify Israel. (Mishnah Yoma 8:9, translation by Sefaria)
Rabbi Akiva is the mishnaic sage who is uniquely gifted with seeing the world through God’s eyes. In Pirkei Avot (3:16) he teaches that “all is foreseen (tzafui), yet freedom is granted,” which, as Tzvi Novick argues,[8] indeed refers to Divine foreknowledge. Rabbi Akiva is able to look upon the recently destroyed Temple, the desolate mount with its foxes, and laugh (Makkot 24b); he lives at the time of the Bar Kochba revolt, when the last ember of Jewish sovereignty and resistance is extinguished, and is undeterred, continuing to teach Torah in prison; he is even able to celebrate his own execution (Berakhot 61b). And he is also the one who teaches us, “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself: this is an all-embracing principle in the Torah” (Sifra Kedoshim 4:12). Here he reveals his secret: the perspective of Yom Kippur, ‘immersion’ in the Omnipresent. On the day that the high priest enters God’s room, we can loosen our grip on ‘reality’ and see the view from His room.
Yom Kippur keeps alive – in a very limited, circumscribed way – the deterministic view; for a brief moment, it immerses us in God’s perspective, from which all is as it ought to be, as it had to be. It could not have been different. The thought is purifying, cleansing: it is not your fault.
Iris Haim, a secular Jew, the mother of hostage Yotam Haim – tragically mistakenly shot by IDF soldiers while escaping from his captors, on the cusp of freedom and return to his family – captured the moral power of the Divine view in her recorded statement to the soldiers:
I am Yotam’s mother. I wanted to tell you that I love you very much, and I hug you here from afar. I know that everything that happened is absolutely not your fault, and nobody’s fault except that of Hamas, may their name be wiped out and their memory erased from the earth. I want you to look after yourselves and to think all the time that you are doing the best thing in the world… Nobody’s going to judge you or be angry. Not me, and not my husband Raviv. Not my daughter Noya. And not Yotam, may his memory be blessed. And not Tuval, Yotam’s brother. We love you very much. And that is all.[9]
This horrific, hideous situation is not our fault. We don’t deserve it. We are an extraordinary people doing the best we know how, under inhuman circumstances. We are being cruelly manipulated by the most savage of foes. We are a people who love each other. All of us love the hostages; all of us love the soldiers; all of us love the State and its people. We care so very much, and in that crucial sense, we are a bright light in the dark world around us, one which accommodates the atrocious and excuses barbarity. We are in terrible pain, mourning the ones we have lost as well as the sense of control, of safety, of freedom.
In swallowing a heavy dose of humility, we are afforded the comfort of knowing that not only our omnipotence, but our very agency, is but an illusion. We can live without regret, forgive ourselves and forgive others, and understand that when we reach the limits of civil discourse, we have permission to stop.
We are not exempt from doing our best, but when Yom Kippur draws to a close, we cease our supplications, blow the shofar, and go home. We have played the role asked of us. God is in control. His will will be done.
[1] Mikhtav Me-Eliyahu, vol. 1, Kuntres ha-Behira, chs. 2-3. See the classic discussion of this and other sources in David Shatz, “Is Matter all that Matters? Judaism, Free Will, and the Genetic and Neuroscientific Revolutions,” in Yitzhak Berger and David Shatz, eds., Judaism, Science, and Moral Responsibility (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 54-103.
[2] Tamar M. Rudavsky, “The Impact of Scholasticism upon Jewish Philosophy in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 350-355.
[3] Shlomo Pines, “Studies in Abul-Barakat al-Baghdadi’s Poetics and Metaphysics,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 4 (1960): 120-198 (excursus on pages 192‒198) and Alexander Altmann, “Free Will and Predestination in Saadia Bahya and Maimonides,” in Essays in Jewish Intellectual History, ed. A. Altmann (Brandeis University Press, 1981), 35‒64; see discussion in Moshe Sokol, “Maimonides on Freedom of the Will and Moral Responsibility,” in Judaism Examined: Essays in Jewish Philosophy and Ethics (Academic Studies Press, 2019), 140-157.
[4] All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
[5] Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, Shuvi Nafshi – Hesed o Herut (Yeshivat Si’ah Yitzhak, 2003), 126-129.
[6] The figure Azazel, either as Asa’el in some versions, or as Azazel grouped with Uzzah and Azael, first emerges as a fallen angel-cum-demonic being in Second Temple pseudepigraphic literature (1 Enoch, Apocalypse of Abraham) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (e.g., 4Q180 1.7); the legend surfaces in an oblique reference in Yoma 67b and in the legend of Shemhazai and Aza’el in the late medieval midrash Bereshit Rabbati, as well as in Yalkut Shimoni Bereishit 6, 44, and Pirkei De-Rabbi Eliezer 46. (This is not necessarily the intent of the Torah text, which spells Azazel differently, and may well denote “eiz azal,” “the goat that went away,” as the Septuagint and Vulgate have it, or a place, as Sifra (2:8) and Targum pseudo-Jonathan understand it. See, however, Hayim Tawil, “Azazel the Prince of the Steepe [sic]: A Comparative Study,” ZAW 92 (1980) 43-59.)
[7] The term chazzanim use for “sacred” melodies that are not permitted to be changed, derived from the Polish “skarb,” treasure.
[8] Tzvi Novick, “Free Will, Section IV: Judaism,” in Dale C. Allison, Jr. et al., eds., Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception 9 (de Gruyter, 2014). See there for a discussion of earlier scholars who interpret tzafui differently, and his evidence to the contrary.
[9] TOI Staff, “‘Not your fault’: Mother sends love, support to troops who killed son in tragic error,” December 20, 2023, archived at https://www.timesofisrael.com/not-your-fault-mother-sends-love-support-to-troops-who-killed-son-in-tragic-error/
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