Only the Servant of God Is Free: 1. On the Basic Problem (Column 126)
With God’s help
On Passover we left Egypt. The Maharal explains that the stay in Egypt was analogous to pregnancy, and the Exodus was the birth of the Jewish collective. There the Jewish people were formed. Fifty days later we arrived at Mount Sinai and received the Torah.
This process casts significant doubt on the meaning of the liberty that we celebrate on Passover, in at least two respects: 1. True, we went from slavery to Pharaoh to freedom, but in the end we arrived at Mount Sinai, where we once again entered into servitude—this time to God and the Torah. All in all, we merely changed bosses. 2. With the Exodus from Egypt, each of us entered a collective framework (the Jewish people), which in itself diminished the freedom we previously had as individuals (and as the saying goes: "Being free means being completely alone").
Later we will see that there is a connection between these two aspects, and also between them and the question of secular Jewish identity. I have already addressed these topics in oral lectures in several forums, and have also written about them partially in various places in books and articles,[1] but because of the importance of the subject I thought the time had come to present the matter in an orderly and complete way. This is the first column in a Passover series that will deal with the concepts of freedom and liberty and with the relationship between them, as well as with quite a few implications of that distinction in a variety of different fields.
Two Sources as the Basis for the Discussion
The basis for the discussion consists of two essays that present these difficulties very sharply: Amos Oz’s essay, A Full Wagon and an Empty Wagon?, in Kol HaTikvot – Thoughts on Israeli Identity.[2] The second is a short essay dealing with Ari Elon’s distinction, which repeats this idea in several places (chiefly in his book Alma Di).
I must begin by saying that both of these writers are endowed with a very impressive power of expression. From my experience, one must be careful with people who write well, because sometimes that conceals a logical and rational vacuum. We are captivated by the magic of the phrasing and the words, and forget to examine the quality of the arguments. I suggest that the reader invest the time and read these two sources now, form an impression, and then try to criticize them and formulate an independent position on these two issues: the issue of freedom and servitude and their value in the religious context, and the question of Jewish identity (secular or otherwise). As noted, in the coming columns we will see that there is a close connection between these two matters.
The Basic Difficulty
The fundamental difficulty is whether one can really say that on Passover we went from slavery to freedom. In the end, we accepted upon ourselves a far from simple yoke (“We are still servants of Ahasuerus.” — "we are still servants of Ahasuerus"). Jewish law tells us what to do and what not to do, what to think and what not to think, and imposes restrictions on almost every step of our lives. Can one honestly say of such a situation that we are free people? Did we really go from slavery to freedom even when viewed from the perspective of two months after the Exodus?
In several places in his writings, Ari Elon draws a distinction between what he calls a "rabbinic Jew" (= the religious Jew) and a "sovereign Jew" (the secular Jew). In his description, the rabbinic person is run by external authorities—God, halakhic decisors and rabbis, books of Jewish law, and the like. By contrast, the sovereign person conducts his own life. He legislates his own laws and determines his own path and worldview. In his view, the sovereign person is the pinnacle of creation (?) and its crowning glory, whereas the rabbinic person is a human low point, anti-humanist. One gets the impression that this is essentially an animal in human form, led out to pasture by a variety of shepherds that he creates for himself (imaginary friends) in order to escape the need to decide. Ari Elon describes the path he himself took out of religious commitment as an exodus from slavery to freedom, exactly the opposite of the religious description, which sees entry into a world of commandments and commitment as an exodus from slavery to freedom.
At first glance he is right. After all, Jewish law subjugates us and ties our hands in very many ways. It is difficult to accept the claim that one who is committed to Jewish law is freer than his secular counterpart (not for nothing was the latter once called "free").
Rabbi Judah Halevi and George Orwell
Very well—so perhaps we really are not free in the ordinary sense? On Passover we emerged into some kind of freedom, but this was only a temporary stage on the way to Torah-religious-halakhic servitude. And there is nothing wrong with our being subjugated, so long as the subjugation is to good and positive values and to the proper, just, and correct authority (God’s).
Rabbi Judah Halevi, in his poem "Avdei HaZman" ("Servants of Time"), argues otherwise:
| Those who are servants of time are servants of servants—
Only the servant of the Lord is truly free; Therefore let every person seek his portion. “The Lord is my portion!” my soul declared.
|
Rabbi Judah Halevi is trying to persuade us that we, the servants of God, are the truly free ones, and that it is precisely the secular person who is a slave of slaves.
This poem has always irritated me. My feeling was that this is an Orwellian statement, that is, a statement meant to comfort the oppressed through brainwashing that tries to convince them that their condition is actually excellent. George Orwell, in his book 1984, written as a parody of Communist rule, describes how the authorities brainwash their oppressed subjects with the ceaseless mantra: "War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength." The hope is that if we persist in this brainwashing, everyone will be convinced despite the absurdity of it. Thus in the Soviet Union they tried to convince the citizens that they were the freest, the most just, that our workers had the highest levels of productivity and output in the world, that our combines were the most sophisticated, and so on and so forth, while the truth was of course exactly the opposite. Are Rabbi Judah Halevi’s words not trying to do the same thing to us? We, those who live under the burdensome yoke of the commandments, are the truly free ones, whereas those who are not subjugated are actually slaves of slaves. Quite literally: freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.
Rabbi Kook’s Solution: Service of God as an Expression of True Freedom
When this question is asked in the religious world—in yeshivot, ulpanot, midrashot, and schools—the answer is almost automatic: Torah subjugation is not subjugation but true freedom. Subjugation to God reveals our true nature, and conduct in accordance with it is genuinely autonomous conduct, not conduct enslaved to our passions and impulses.
Thus, for example, Rav Kook writes in Olat Re’iyah vol. 2, pp. 288–89:
The matzah is a memorial to freedom, whose foundation is the recognition that every way of God in the Torah is a faithful outgrowth, precisely suited to the truth of our general nature, on the level of the collective of the Jewish people. Therefore true freedom is to develop in accordance with our inner nature, without the admixture of foreign elements that oppress it. This is indeed so from the standpoint of the essential nature of the soul. But there are also dross elements that have attached themselves to us, and they do not allow the pure Israelite nature to emerge into actuality. Therefore, from that standpoint, we also need to accept the pleasant servitude—the service of a servant to the Lord, God of Israel, “my Maker from the womb to be His servant”—for this capacity too was acquired by us through the servitude of Egypt. For after all the evil aspects of servitude are removed from us, its good aspect will remain: through it, a person can lovingly endure even that which runs contrary to his will and inclination. This is the foundation of the bitter herbs: to accept the bitterness of life with love, when one knows that a supreme and exalted moral goal lies ahead. Therefore the bitter herbs come after the matzah.
That is, our feeling of enslavement stems from unnecessary remnants in the soul that have not yet internalized that service of God is the true freedom, and therefore there are parts of the soul that still do not identify with it. Because of these remnants and this dross, we still need the dimension of servitude in the service of God (the obligation to act without identification), so that we can continue to serve Him despite not yet fully understanding that this is the true freedom. In the ideal state, no servitude would be required at all, because we would clearly understand that the commandments and Jewish law are indeed what we ourselves want to do and think.
It hardly needs saying that I find these statements no less irritating. In this way one can justify any oppression and any subjugation. After all, that is what the Communists did too (with the necessary distinctions, at least a little). You feel enslaved? Those are merely irrational remnants that have not yet understood and internalized that you are truly free. In the end you will understand that slavery is freedom and ignorance is strength.
I must say that, in my assessment, there is no difference here between the various ideological camps. The liberals and the modernists, no less than the Hardalim, will all explain to you that this is the true freedom. Perhaps genuine Haredim would dare to say—and educate accordingly—that we really are not free with respect to God, but that there is no value in being free of God. This is indeed servitude, but it is the right servitude. The problem lies not in servitude as such, but in servitude to an unworthy authority and system.
These ideas are tied to the Talmudic passage in Kiddushin 22b, brought by Rashi on Exodus 21:6, about a slave who does not want to go free and therefore has his ear pierced:
And why was the ear singled out to be pierced more than all the other limbs of the body? Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai said (Kiddushin 22b): This ear, which heard at Mount Sinai, “You shall not steal,” yet went and stole—let it be pierced. And if he sold himself, then this ear, which heard at Mount Sinai (Leviticus 25:55), “For the children of Israel are servants to Me,” yet went and acquired a master for itself—let it be pierced. Rabbi Shimon would expound this verse like a symbolic interpretation: Why were the door and the doorpost different from all the other objects in the house? The Holy One, blessed be He, said: The door and the doorpost, which were witnesses in Egypt when I passed over the lintel and the two doorposts, and I said, “For the children of Israel are servants to Me”—they are My servants, and not servants to servants—and yet this one went and acquired a master for himself, let him be pierced before them.
This is the essence of the Haredi approach, and ostensibly it is the one firmly grounded in the sources and in the halakhic-Torah conception. Rav Kook, in his characteristic way, turns the question into the answer and the difficulty into an ideology, apparently in a thoroughly Orwellian manner. Those who follow in his footsteps repeat this again and again as a kind of slogan, and my sense is that they do so quite blindly. It is no wonder that my feelings toward these answers resemble those I described with respect to Rabbi Judah Halevi’s words.
An Implicit Assumption in Rabbi Judah Halevi and Rav Kook
Even if we adopt an Orwellian interpretation of Rabbi Judah Halevi and Rav Kook, one still cannot ignore the fact that their subtext contains a non-trivial assumption: freedom is a positive value.
To sharpen the point, think of a case in which someone complains that Jewish law does not allow him to speak slander or desecrate the Sabbath. Rabbi Judah Halevi and Rav Kook would answer that indeed it does not allow this, and rightly so. They would call on him to overcome his evil inclination and subject himself to Jewish law. If so, I would expect that if someone complained to Rabbi Judah Halevi that he had an evil inclination to be free, Rabbi Judah Halevi (and Rav Kook as well) would answer that this is an evil inclination and that he must overcome it. But neither of them chooses that answer. Instead, they try to persuade him, even if in an Orwellian way, that he is in fact truly free. That means that they do not regard the aspiration to freedom and liberty the way they regard the aspiration to speak slander. Apparently, in their eyes, this is not an inclination that must be overcome, but a legitimate value that they accept. That is why it is important to them to persuade us that we are indeed free, rather than to fight this "inclination." If so, even if one adopts an Orwellian interpretation of their words, it is in any case clear that Rabbi Judah Halevi and Rav Kook see freedom as a positive aspiration, not as an evil inclination that must be overcome.
Beyond that, even if one regards such a value as positive, there would still be room to say that freedom is indeed something worthy and positive, but that there are opposing values that override it. For example, when there is a conflict between saving a life and observing the Sabbath, Jewish law rules that the value of saving life prevails. Does that mean there is no recognition of the value of Sabbath observance? Certainly not. It is set aside in the face of the value of life. If so, in our case too Rabbi Judah Halevi and Rav Kook could have explained that this is indeed a positive value, but that the value of serving God overrides it. But that is not what they say either. They explain to us (not very convincingly) that this value is in fact realized in our case. The conclusion is that not only is this a legitimate value in their eyes, but it is a supreme value, one that even commitment to Jewish law and to God does not override. That is why they do not tell us to set this value aside, but instead try to persuade us that we are really there.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that even if one adopts an Orwellian interpretation of Rabbi Judah Halevi and Rav Kook, one still cannot escape the conclusion that in their eyes this is a worthy and positive value, perhaps even a supreme value. What remains for us now is to understand how freedom can be seen as a supreme value, one that overrides almost every other value, and yet still understand that there is an obligation to serve God. This seems possible only if service of God really is the true freedom, as they themselves write. But as I explained, that sounds like an Orwellian sleight of hand.
We are left with the following difficulty: if these are indeed their underlying value assumptions, how can one answer the difficulty in a way that is not Orwellian? Anyone who, like them, sees freedom as a supreme value must look for an explanation of this difficulty—whether it be an explanation of their own words, or whether we find for them an alternative explanation of our own.
[1] See, for example, Column 72 on this site, where I discuss the meaning of the giving of the Torah.
[2] An interesting anecdote. The first time I presented the kernel of the ideas brought here was in a lecture as part of "Closing the Week in the Desert," in whose framework friends from all over the southern region (from Yeruham, Beersheba, and the surrounding kibbutzim) would gather once a month to hear a lecture on the weekly Torah portion. The lecturers were well-known people from all over the country—writers, politicians, artists, academics, and so on. On one occasion Amos Oz was supposed to appear and canceled at the last minute for some reason. I was asked to fill in for him, and I decided there to respond to the above-mentioned essay of his. Since it is obvious that he follows this site with great interest, this is an opportunity to let him read and hear these things for himself.
Discussion
And Rabbi Ra’am HaKohen already said: “Slaves of time are slaves of slaves; the free man is he alone who is a servant of God.”
I didn’t understand the difficulty. After all, Alon also agrees that there is obligation, except that the autonomous person arrives at it on his own. Of course this is also true of a person who sees it as his duty to serve God. The only question that can arise is how the value of freedom can be reconciled with coercion, but that question is true of any coercion in the name of values. Here, it seems to me that the answer is that they are not reconcilable, but that a society needs some measure of coercion, and the wisdom is to know how to balance freedom and coercion. I don’t think Yehuda Halevi objected to coercion regarding the commandments within his political framework, and that really can be challenged.
An important and fascinating topic!
I have not seen any discussion of the difference between ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty.’ It seems to me that here, and at this point, lies the key.
We will wait patiently for the upcoming column, perhaps it will address the essential difference between the two terms.
He is speaking about a person who legislates his own values. That is not called arriving at them on his own. If there are given values that obligate you, then again you are not the legislator. You merely uncover them. That is true for the religious person as well. I’ll discuss this more later on.
Indeed.
Can you legislate laws and values for yourself? Aren’t they necessarily external?
A completely free world becomes meaningless and nihilistic.
A person needs values in order for life to have meaning, and that gives weight and meaning to his liberty; otherwise liberty is empty.
Another point – the Torah is something a person has to accept upon himself (at least nowadays); the situation was less pleasant for a subject of the USSR who decided it didn’t suit him.
Indeed. Everything will be discussed below.
In my humble opinion, the answer is that in Judaism freedom is the infinite richness of endless possibilities and expressions of will. We find that only in the Infinite. In order to return to it, we must surrender ourselves. Not pleasant, but that is the way. Supreme freedom is the fullest being imaginable, not release into a void. It is the most lawful thing and also the most voluntary at once. And if my return to the Infinite is a return to the source of my will, a connection to and realization of the depth of my free will, free in the sense that it emanated from the Infinite, then there is no Orwellian enslavement here but self-realization. So I would say, happy are Israel, who established for themselves as common slogans concise expressions of the deepest depths of ultimate truth.
Rabbi Michi, why don’t you see this דווקא as charming? I would even say very much so. There will always be “ordinary folk,” and for them to be like our “ordinary folk” is nothing less than the realization of a good dream.
And thank you for your words.
Since I didn’t understand what is written here (and I doubt that you understood it either. It seems to me a bit like the product of a random text generator), I suggest we wait for my definition and then we can discuss it.
I agree that the words of Yehuda Halevi and Rav Kook can be used, and are sometimes actually used, in an Orwellian way, but that does not contradict the fact that they are correct in this case. If the assumption is that God is the source of the will, then deepening one’s knowledge of Him and walking in His ways will lead me to my true self-realization. From personal experience I can definitely identify with Rav Kook’s description. In my mind I understand the correctness of the way of Torah, and I feel a longing for a life of holiness and purity, but this clashes with various lower desires, lusts of different kinds, which really make it difficult to realize those aspirations.
The evolution of reading an article by Rabbi Michael Abraham:
1. Cool! There’s something to this! It turns the tables! A fresh perspective.
2. Oops, this doesn’t make me happy; I actually liked Yehuda Halevi’s poem, it gives me peace of mind. What good is an opinion that causes me harm?
3. Well, maybe it isn’t right. Rethinking my beliefs in light of the article. How do I reconcile them? Maybe I’ll find a new and refreshing answer. And maybe I’ll leave it alone because right now it doesn’t suit me.
So now I’m at stage 3. 🙂
A few points
A feeling of freedom is a feeling of choice. Most actions during the day stem from habit and not from choice.
The choice is, in principle, to fulfill the word of God. Once I’ve decided, then there are many rules.
Just as there is a choice to be a good or polite person or a family person, and then there are many rules. Does that make you a slave?
You can always throw everything away, and that is free choice. Despite the warnings in the Torah, we do not see that the world always operates that way, so that does not negate choice. Like communist Russia that would only warn about the terrible life in the West, but the gates would be wide open
When one faces the possibility of sinning or not, one usually doesn’t feel that the choice is between freedom and slavery, but perhaps between two kinds of slavery.
Freedom is responsibility, and it is not always so pleasant.
A servant of God learns to become free of his impulses, and thus can gain a perspective that will allow him even more choice.
Thank you
And of course not every religious person is a servant of God
It is a level to aspire to
Sometimes he is a slave to society, or to comfort, or habit, etc.
I suggest waiting. The explanation I’ll give later will come somewhat close to this. In general, I am not speaking about deepening one’s understanding of the path and will of the Holy One, blessed be He, through which you discover what you want. Each person has his own process of discovery. In the end, you do things because in your view this is truly the right thing to do and this is what you want to do. The same applies to someone who discovers his true will in Kant or in Tchipopo’s books. But for someone who is not there, repeating these slogans to him is Orwellian, and after all they are addressed precisely to the one who is not there (because he is the one in distress).
Hello Rachel.
A. I still haven’t finished, so I suggest suspending judgment until after reading.
B. Feelings and peace of mind are moods, not positions. If you adopt positions based on peace of mind and the pleasure you get from them, then indeed it seems to me there is no point in discussing things (perhaps that itself is your stage 3, but even there you wrote that this is a clash between the article and your views. I would not phrase it that way. These are feelings, not views).
C. As for your other comments, the discussion of them will come later.
Regarding your point B – of course there is no point in discussing that part – I was sharing my own process.
As for the clash between the article and my views – I meant my prior views, not my feelings about them, which play a part in the process of accepting them, but not the only part and not in contradiction to reason. (When there is an option to choose between two uncertain possibilities, I will give good feeling a place in the choice.)
Basically, I meant to thank you for opening my mind
I’ll read the second part
Hello Rabbi Michi.
Regarding the criticism of the Orwellian aspect:
The basic claim is that a person can be driven by his free will or by impulses and/or external pressures.
Even if the claim itself is not sufficiently grounded, why does the factual claim annoy you?
We are all witnesses that there are people who are addicted and/or have been brainwashed and do things out of their “free will.”
And we are all witnesses that there are people who brainwash others with the argument that this is our free will.
Is this not reality in your opinion, or should we not discuss it because at the first stage it cannot be proven?
Why is the argument unacceptable in your eyes?
(In my view the argument is acceptable, though not especially persuasive when standing alone, for the reasons you mentioned.)
Let me just warn you that the second one also isn’t the end. There will be more.
The factual claim does not annoy me. What annoys me is the repetition of oxymoronic slogans in the hope that they will calm my doubts.
But I will return to these arguments after I lay out my alternative and also discuss why they are annoying and what may be correct in them.
With God’s help, 11 Nisan 5778
A ‘slave of time’—I am before the approaching Passover, and the matters discussed here require careful and fundamental examination, and with God’s help, ‘the vision is yet for an appointed time’—after the holiday.
I will ask only one question:
One who believes that the world, and he within it, are nothing but the result of a chain of random events—is he ‘sovereign’? One who believes that all his thoughts and choices are nothing but the outcome of chemical and electrical processes—what sovereignty does he have? No wonder he lives in constant frustration, which brings him to a feeling of limitation and helplessness.
By contrast, one who believes that there is a Creator and Governor of the palace, who created His world, and he within it, and set for him a purpose and destiny; the believing person who knows that he is placed in the world on a mission, and that this mission is what gives meaning to his life, and its fulfillment is the pinnacle of his happiness—what does he lack? He understands that what was not given to him by his Creator was not intended for him—and he does not lack it! Faith brings freedom!
With a blessing of complete freedom, from the leaven in the dough and from subjugation to the kingdoms, S. Z. Levinger
It is certainly possible to wait for your definition in order to discuss it; the only problem is that it’s a lot of work now to read three long articles. It’s just a shame about the contempt for a style of discourse that is probably a bit less familiar to you. Your verbal richness allows you to elaborate in detail and clarify ideas—good for you. But I recommend that you recognize that someone who does not express himself in your style may still express deep and true things. And apparently deep intuitions cannot be written out expansively in your style, and it takes time to understand them. So please do not be dismissive. I estimate that the Arizal would not have responded to your article in your style.
The style is completely familiar to me; the problem, however, is not the style but the content. To the best of my understanding, nothing was said here that holds water. For example, what does the sentence mean: freedom is an infinite richness of possibilities and expressions of will, etc.? Perhaps you meant to say that freedom is the ability to choose among those possibilities, and even that is not correct. The number of possibilities is a given that has no connection to freedom in any way. One who freely chooses one of them may express freedom (by now the next column has already been written; see there). But in any case, even if there had been a meaningful claim here, I see no reason to bring infinity into it and use Kabbalistic terminology. What is wrong with saying this in ordinary terms that deal with our familiar world? There is richness of possibilities in Judaism. Fine. Why infinity? What did you gain by introducing this vague concept? What was unclear without it? That is why I wrote what I wrote, and I fully stand behind my words.
By the way, Rabbi Chaim of Brisk taught us that poor formulation is usually an expression of conceptual vagueness. If I make the effort to write long columns that are hard for you to read, I would expect that when you write a few sentences, you would try to make them clear in a way that would enable me (and you) to understand what is written there.
And one more recommendation: when you resort to Kabbalistic terminology, that only means that you are fleeing definition and meaningful content. In my experience, there is no solution to a problem stated in Kabbalistic terms that cannot be translated into ordinary language. And if it cannot be translated, then apparently there is no solution there. See here:
Hello Rabbi Michi, and thank you for your response. I assumed you had a deep familiarity with the term Ein Sof, in such a way that I thought my words would be understood. Apparently there is a need to explain more. Overall I was briefly pointing to a conception of divinity as containing all the possibilities of all good. In this I was pointing to freedom not as the possibility of choice, as a margin, an empty space that allows movement in several directions, but as surrender to that which contains everything—the Infinite. Freedom is cleaving to the source of being, to that which is the most fully “existent” thing possible. And indeed, out of surrender to the Infinite there is liberation, not bondage and servitude, because there is in it a self-realization that empowers us in an ongoing and endless way, containing everything except limitation. The engraving of the laws on the tablets is revealed as freedom. The insights I wrote here are deep, and can be understood precisely only if we speak of divinity according to the definition I mentioned here, that is, if we speak of the concept of the Infinite.
Even if here my way of expressing myself is not clear enough for your taste, that should not undermine the possibility that the insights themselves are deep and clear to me. I am trying to express and share them, and it seems to me that with the addition of what I wrote here it should not be too complicated for you to understand the point I am trying to convey. Inductive thinking is related to verbal abilities, but deductive thinking is not. The deeper and more significant insights are independent of the ability to express them clearly, though of course it is recommended to make an effort to express them clearly so that they leave a meaningful imprint in reality.
Happy holiday, and thank you for the articles
Hello Yonatan.
This is too deep for me. I see no need to resort to the concept of the Infinite in order to explain that there are several possibilities in serving God or in morality. There are also several ways to play soccer. Does that mean FIFA is infinite?
And how is this connected to freedom? After all, the existence of possibilities says nothing at all about freedom. The question is whether you make use of them and how: from your environment? by yourself? And as I explained in the next column, the more constraints there are, the more room there is for expressions of freedom.
As stated, definitions of divinity are unrelated here, and Kabbalistic terminology usually contributes nothing at all to the discussion.
And again, this is not a question of clarity and formulation but of content.
Happy holiday, gladly.
Regarding your words, “I must preface by saying that both of these writers are endowed with a very impressive power of expression. In my experience one should be wary of people with good expressive ability, because sometimes it hides a logical and rational vacuum behind it. We are captivated by the magic of the formulation and the words, and forget to examine the quality of the arguments.”
Here is a quotation from Oz’s introduction to his essay collection In the Fierce Blue Light (1978):
Without special difficulty one can find in the collection lines of thought that are incomplete or inconsistent. And perhaps contradictions as well.
It takes only reading two or three paragraphs to notice that the book was not written by a thinker with a systematic doctrine, but by a person who is easily stirred and inclined to react emotionally to various matters: one of those feverish people who, if they do not contradict themselves, repeat themselves, and when they do not repeat and do not contradict, they get tangled in their own logic and touch in a non-analytical way matters that perhaps require a distinctly analytical touch.”
Hello!
Regarding the end of your remarks: I think Rav Kook is not trying to place freedom at the highest level of preference and then somehow arrange it with the Torah. On the contrary, he writes that there are cases in which a person does not stand at the Torah’s standard, and then the quality and feeling of servitude are required, even if that means negating his personal freedom. What emerges from this is that he explicitly says there is such a concept as servitude and it is even necessary; there is no denial of it here or any attempt to blur it and say that this is man’s true freedom. (I’ll just say that I think very highly of the slogans you mentioned, maybe because I study in yeshiva so I have no choice. I think that beyond the feeling of servitude, about which there is no denial that it exists, there is the aspect of whether a person is doing what he truly wants according to his inner soulful place, that will which exists even if we cannot uncover it in every matter and at all times in this world, and there are external barriers limiting its expression, which we can look at as shackles. Things connected to Rav Kook’s general outlook, as explained in Tefillat HaNeshama and in many other passages. When a person succeeds in rising above his barriers and “breaking” the shackles by fulfilling his inner will, he is essentially liberated. I don’t know how much you connect to soulful conceptions, but based on that approach in any case, this is not some stale explanation and slogans but a complex view whose principles you may disagree with, and that is your right.)
And regarding Rav Kook’s overall approach on this subject, the matter is explained more in a passage in Middot HaRa’ayah (and in many other passages); see section 6: “In matters that reason itself obligates, there is room for explaining fear of punishment only in the sick state of the soul. In a healthy state there is no need for fear of punishment for them, and since this protection is not needed, its imagery is sometimes harmful. However, regarding the revealed commandments, it is needed to a certain degree. And one should become wise in the reasons of the Torah, expound them and publicize them, until the revealed commandments too come to be aligned with reason, both in their generality and in their particulars, like the rational commandments; then the path of serving God will become open and advance over the whole Torah entirely, and we will not be so dependent on drawing upon fear of punishment, which is external, but rather on love and awe of exaltedness.”
Servitude in this context, which Rav Kook speaks about in the passage you cited, means the feeling of burden in doing something contrary to my will; there there is a contradiction between the personal will and the divine will, and then coercion is required—servitude—fear of punishment. But there is another kind of service, namely the service of a son, service born of inner identification. That identification has to be created by understanding the reasons for the commandments and internalizing them (without discussing the place of reasons for commandments and the force that may be attributed to them), and thereby creating a will and inner connection that can bypass the trait of servitude and the coercive feeling it creates in the human soul, even if Rav Kook calls it “pleasant.” We coerce a person when there is a contradiction between his will and the divine will, coercion that in general is rooted in the view that man is evil and must be compelled in order to conduct himself along the path of good, all the more so since this often creates a negative feeling in a person toward himself.
After we see things this way, I think the words of Yehuda Halevi can also be explained. Yehuda Halevi wrote his personal feelings (after all, it is a poem): that he feels so connected to the Torah and its commandments, its guidance and its ideas, that in his eyes he feels so liberated from the chains of time, its demands and pressures, and lower desires and aspirations. A servant of God is above time; he lives an eternal life and feels connected to the divine ideals that appear in the world through the generations and in all the worlds. There is no greater feeling of breadth and liberation than that. I think we know this a bit from moments when we are “in the lights,” coming from a pure and tranquil place, one that inspires a sense of security and genuine closeness to the Master of the Universe.
Everything I wrote was written in a substantive way regarding your claims about the words of Yehuda Halevi and Rav Kook, and in truth I do not see a great need on this platform to justify the words of great men; if it doesn’t work for you, that’s your issue. But the truth is that in general I was not comfortable with the formulations against greats of the world, geniuses and genuine men of spirit. Your irritation with them, attributing to them a forced attempt to give some stale explanation to a deep question, and the accusation that serving God is lower in value than personal freedom—this is a very, very grave accusation in my eyes, which in my opinion fails to grasp the greatness of these people and the purity of their hearts (not that I knew them from kindergarten or anything, just my impression from their words and from the way I was educated to look at them, and I am indeed impressed that it is more justified) Take your shoes off your feet.
I took them off (my shoes). Thanks.
Shoham wrote:
Last night I responded to the article you wrote on the subject that a servant of God alone is free. I was debating whether your response was serious or whether you didn’t like my response because at the end I attacked your phrasing and your attitude toward Rav Kook and Yehuda Halevi, and therefore you responded sarcastically. I would be glad to know what you meant.
My response:
What do you think: serious or sarcastic? I am checking my feet right now and they have shoes on them. When I’m told, “Take your shoes off,” what I have to say is that I have removed them. This is not a claim but a rebuke, and therefore I have nothing to answer to it.
As for your actual arguments, I described my feelings regarding these rationalizations and those who use them automatically. In the continuation of the columns you will see that I write roughly what you wrote here: a servant of God alone is a free man (ben chorin) (and not he alone is free (chofshi), because that is not true). And as for my shoes, pardon me, but I still prefer to leave them on my feet.
Hello Rabbi! I greatly enjoyed reading your article. As a student in a hesder yeshiva, I attended a class in which the rabbi mentioned the well-known phrase “A servant of God alone is free” in connection with the question raised about the rabbinic statement, “the word of God—*freedom* engraved on the tablets.” Naturally this answer annoyed me, and I felt complete identification with your article. I wanted to ask: even if we assume that indeed the people of Israel willingly accepted the Torah at that event, how does that obligate later generations? Especially after the departure of prophecy and down to our own generation, in which we believe in the event only because of the sacred writings that were preserved, or because of the logical proof for the correctness of tradition (which always seemed puzzling to me. And besides, our generation denies everything connected to the value of tradition, and each person chooses his obligations according to his free will and not according to his father’s will…) How does God expect in such a generation that same level of faith, divine cleaving, and service of Him when we were not present at the moment of commitment! And there is no way back either! After all, even a sinner of Israel is still Israel, and as long as he is aware of the law of the Torah he will supposedly be punished in the World to Come! I imagine you’ve dealt with this in the past… Still, I would be glad for an answer. Thank you very much!
I too have more than once been present at such irritating statements. That is why I wrote.
The question why commitments from the past obligate us is similar to the question why the law obligates us. What you committed yourself to in the past obligates you today, and you cannot retract it. That is the meaning of a commitment. Admittedly, in our case this is a commitment made by other people (those who were present at Mount Sinai, if we ignore the nonsense from kindergarten teachers that we were all there), but that too is not a sufficient reason to undermine the obligation. Think of a situation where there is a law enacted two hundred years ago; as long as it has not been changed it obligates us, even though we were not there and did not choose those who enacted it. The one bound by such a law is a collective and not private individuals, and therefore it obligates everyone who belongs to the collective (in the Rogatchover’s formulation: a collective/public does not die).
The departure of prophecy is unrelated to the matter. If you believe in the event, then fulfill it; and if you do not believe, then don’t fulfill it. The question whether you will observe it or not is unrelated to the question whether it is binding. The first is a factual-historical question and the second is a normative one. Even if you do not believe in the event, if you are mistaken and the truth is that it did happen, it obligates you. Except that you are under compulsion.
See my book The First Existing (the first in the trilogy), where I discussed the reasons that I think are reasonable for belief and obligation.
What God expects or does not expect in our generation—you should ask Him. I don’t know. I’m also not sure that it is the same expectation as in previous generations. Each generation has its own tasks and expectations.
One who does not believe will of course not be punished, for he is under compulsion, and “the Merciful One exempts one who is compelled.” But he still does not observe what is true and binding. And if he did not examine the matter sufficiently, then there is also fault in his path and perhaps he will be punished. But one who did his best and reached a mistaken conclusion should not be punished at all.
Thank you, Rabbi! Indeed, a collective does not die, but what can we do when in our generation each individual lives his own life to the point of cosmopolitanism, and the world has developed global values that cross cultures (or really one culture that dominates the world). And at every moment, how do we persuade the individual to choose a certain collective? Does freedom not belong to the individual? His very subjugation to a collective contradicts his freedom… And true, even in our developed world a person is still influenced by his surroundings, but one could say that at least each individual should be allowed to choose, and then the collective would be formed—just as seemingly happened only at that event for one generation of people…
Without: “and at every moment”*
As happened at Mount Sinai, for one generation*
In fact, my question is whether it would not be more moral for every generation to ask whether it accepts the Torah? What is the use of an event whose historical force has faded?
It should be remembered that they are basing themselves on a rabbinic saying: “The word of God was engraved on the tablets. Do not read ‘engraved’ (charut) but ‘freedom’ (cherut).” From this it follows that Hazal did indeed see the acceptance of the yoke of mitzvot as a person’s freedom, as Yehuda Halevi says. One should also remember Maimonides’ famous statement on the matter: “We compel him until he says, ‘I want to.’” If freedom is doing what I truly want, the simple question arises: “What do you truly want?”
It does not seem far-fetched to me to say that our will is דווקא to serve God, except that “the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” And perhaps one should ask whether the evil inclination is an essential and intrinsic part of man, or whether it is something incidental and transient. (As I recall, according to all views in the World to Come we will be rid of the evil inclination, whether according to the view that it—the World to Come—is physical, or according to the view that it is metaphysical.)
I’ll repeat once again. The individual has two hats: he is an individual and also part of a collective. Freedom is defined with respect to both of those hats. There is freedom for the individual and for the collective. It is not for nothing that nations fight to gain independence, which is collective freedom. The commitment to Torah and mitzvot is collective, and it obligates every individual within that framework.
If the value of that obligation lies in its long-term nature, and if every generation can cancel it, then everything the previous generations did goes down the drain. In such a situation it is reasonable not to allow choice anew each time. It is like not allowing a private individual a choice at every moment whether to keep a commitment he took upon himself.
That’s it. I think we’ve exhausted the matter.
“Rav Kook, as was his way, turns the question into an excuse and the difficulty into an ideology” — what does that mean?
Here I meant to allude to the idea of the “unity of opposites” attributed to him, that is, accepting contradictions as legitimate claims about the Holy One, blessed be He.
Thank you for the fascinating column; I’m already waiting for the continuation.
It seems to me that it would help to focus on the question in what sense a person can be free (and should be free). Or in other words: what is freedom?
Under different definitions, the concept of freedom does not at all contradict commitment to external systems of rules, and I believe that this is precisely the concept of freedom that Yehuda Halevi and Rav Kook had in mind.
For example, one can argue (in the spirit of Spinoza) that freedom is in fact liberation from the influences of our desires. And that only in this sense is it a positive value. Similarly, like Kant, one can describe a free act as an act not done for the sake of some inclination. Even under such a definition, serving God does not contradict the concept of freedom in the least (except that, apparently, according to this definition, serving God is also neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for freedom; it is simply unrelated to the issue.)
And an incidental remark: the fact that the Communists made similar claims does not exempt us from discussing the issue on its merits – I’m quite convinced you’ll agree with me about that.