Question

Hello Rabbi,
the master of the subject of free choice—I’ll begin with the well-known Or HaChaim:
“There is no good except Torah, for if people were to feel the sweetness and pleasantness of the good of Torah, they would go out of their minds and burn with passion for it, and all the silver and gold in the world would seem to them as nothing, for Torah includes all the good things in the world” [Or HaChaim, Deuteronomy ch. 26].
I would like to clarify the issue of freedom and its ideal. My question concerns addiction, in which a person sells his freedom and becomes dependent on obtaining pleasure or benefit from objects external to him. This is considered objectionable. The common example is addiction to smoking—which indeed begins with a conscious free choice, but the more one continues, it takes over some part of the person and internally compels his mind to want more and more smoking—even if he no longer achieves the benefit he originally sought. I once asked a smoker: the buzz (a mild, pleasurable intoxicated feeling) that beginning smokers may feel quickly disappears in habitual smokers, and they no longer experience it—so what’s the point of smoking more and more? He answered that there is always that hope that maybe, just maybe, it will happen again. Another answered that this is no longer the reason, and smoking is meant to release tension that builds up when one doesn’t smoke, and there are other answers. Others say there is no reason anymore, and even though they don’t want to smoke, they find themselves drawn to it. (Here is a quote from Alice’s Diary, cited in an article by Shalom Rosenberg in the Sabbath supplement, illustrating the feelings of both wanting and not wanting in a drug addict: “I felt that the air was starting to become nauseating, but part of my head wanted it. I didn’t know whether to run away or stay, or what to do. I turned around, and then someone handed me a cigarette and that was it.” Alice tries again to quit. She lives for another period without drugs, time passes, and then we read: “Damn! Stupid, stupid, stupid, it’s going to happen again! I don’t know whether I should scream with happiness, or put on mourning clothes, with all that that implies. Anyone who says you don’t get addicted to drugs is stupid and foolish, an idiot, crazy, ignorant and unlearned.”)
Now, my main question is whether every addiction is morally, ethically, or humanly bad, such that the moment you define someone as addicted you automatically define a person who is not free, someone who has ‘sold’ his freedom—or whether everything depends on the result. That is, whether the addiction is harmful (smoking) or beneficial to health (sports), or more precisely, whether the addiction intensifies or weakens the simple experience of life. (In his book Stumbling on Happiness, the psychologist Dan Gilbert shows, for example, that a person who is used to enjoying smoking a cigar, and sits peacefully on vacation facing the sunset but is not smoking at that moment—enjoys the sunset less than he would have in that same situation before discovering the quality of smoking. In fact this is true of everything: a person of refined tastes no longer enjoys the same things he used to enjoy before, whether in wine, art, and so on. Returning to addiction: it may be that addiction to a product without which life’s experience is diminished—like the cigar example—is bad, because it seriously harms the simple ability to enjoy the ‘natural’ experience of life. (And even here one should distinguish whether that product is available or not—because if it is always available, and not harmful, then one could argue that the addict will not be harmed because he will always have the cigar available when facing one sunset or another.) In the view of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto in Mesillat Yesharim, there is a moral deficiency in becoming accustomed to a high standard of living itself: “For there is no worldly pleasure that does not draw some sin in its wake. For example: food and drink, once all forbidden foods have been removed, are permitted. However… when a person accustoms himself to be satiated with eating and drinking, then if one time his habit is lacking, it pains him and he feels it keenly, and because of this he places himself under the great burden of business toil and the exertion of acquisition so that his table may be set as he wishes, and from there one is drawn to injustice and theft, and from there to oaths and all the other sins that follow, and removes himself from service, from Torah, and from prayer—whereas he would have been spared all this had he not from the outset drawn himself after these pleasures.”)
Accordingly, an addiction that harms a person in some way—on the moral / Torah / ethical / health plane—is bad. But it is quite possible that the reverse kind of addiction—one whose results are positive—would be desirable and perhaps even necessary. Even though by this a person chooses to limit his own choice when he gets used to being addicted to something positive. (This is a perspective suited to viewing the person as a tabula rasa, who must be shaped and changed from the natural state.) An example would be addiction to sports—until the body feels a need and stimulus to exercise every single day, and the like. Likewise in the Torah world, regarding addiction to Torah study at every spare moment—as is found among all the great sages of Israel. There is a midrash that says everything is included in the prohibition of “do not covet” except Torah. That one should covet and become addicted to. And indeed, we find in the lives of Torah scholars that they become addicted to Torah, sometimes even to the point of compulsion (which is admired in certain circles, while others have written about its less positive side).
An illustration from the great figures of the last generations (who were already reflective about the issue of free choice in the modern world): Rabbi Dessler’s view in the name of the Vilna Gaon is that the purpose of choice is the nullification of choice—when a person has no evil inclination at all to choose evil. This is an addiction not only to Torah study, as found among scholars, but an addiction to commandment observance and character refinement—as found among the ethical self-discipline movement, at least on the ideal level. In contrast, the view of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto and even more so Rabbi Kook is well known: that the ideal of the human being is דווקא in being a being of choice—always: “The aspect of choice… is the creative power in the supernal image, to act through choice and considered judgment.” And more.
There are theoretical parallels in Eastern teachings: in the Buddhist world there is an idea of always being aware of every sensation and impulse that arises and choosing how to respond to it. To always be aware. Otherwise a person is in a state of being driven by his desires or fears. There it is intolerable for a person not to choose at every single moment, and therefore every addiction is forbidden (drinking wine as only one example—completely forbidden, as Maimonides also thought regarding wine). However, just as the prohibition of “do not covet” was limited in the face of coveting Torah, so too among them there is talk that every longing is forbidden except one: the longing that longs to abolish longing. According to this perspective, every addiction is bad, even if functionally it benefits the person—like sports—but one exception alone is allowed: addiction to meditation that abolishes longing. This is the one addiction to the spiritual instrument meant to purify the natural state of the human being. (However, just as we find a dispute between Rabbi Kook and Rabbi Dessler over whether the goal is always to choose (the good)—while the option of evil always exists—or to abolish the option of choosing (evil)—so that in practice you are addicted to the good—so too in Buddhism we find limitations that abolish the option of longing even for the sake of abolishing it, as above. A famous example is the Zen Buddhist stream, which abolished the pursuit of attaining enlightenment because that is precisely what causes one to miss it, and satori = sudden enlightenment usually comes without prior preparation, while performing some simple act of gardening or preparing tea (provided that the person is a suitable vessel for it through practice and training). In other words—the spiritual seeker must release his addiction in order to attain its results. Similarly, the scholar Alan Watts wrote about the Taoist stream: “The superior man is as one who has no desires, although the Taoists describe him as one whose ‘joy and sorrow occur naturally like the four seasons’; here there may be a hint toward solving the problem. For is it even possible not to desire? The attempt to get rid of desire is, without a doubt, the desire not to desire, as the Buddhists discovered very quickly. (Not many understand that Buddhism, more than being a doctrine, is a dialogue conducted by means of a series of experiments. The Buddha did not teach some specific dogma according to which the solution to suffering lies in abolishing desire. He simply proposed this as a preliminary experiment, which would lead people, according to his clear intention, to see that they desire not to desire, and are therefore caught in a vicious cycle.) … one should roll along with the experiences and feelings as they come and go… this is what is called ‘flowing with the moment'” (Tao: The Watercourse Way, p. 112).
A summary of the possibilities:
A. Every addiction is bad, and the human ideal is one of constant choice and awareness, as much as possible. (Buddhism)
B. Option A is also not ideal, because striving for choice is itself a kind of addiction to constant awareness, and therefore the ideal is to “go with the flow,” meaning not to become addicted to anything—not even to the attempt not to be addicted. “Rejoice, young man”; smoke in moderation, eat in moderation, study Torah in moderation, etc. (Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Ecclesiastes)
C. Whether an addiction is good or bad depends on its results—if it benefits health (sports) or quality of life (meditation), it is an addiction but a desirable one, and if it harms health (smoking) or quality of life (workaholism, addiction to work, or to a smartphone—WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.) it is negative. (Maimonides’ middle path?)
D. Similarly, one can define it by way of negation: addiction is good as long as it helps a person escape life’s suffering, provided that it does not create health problems or a noticeable decline in quality of life. Friedrich Nietzsche defined this well: “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how’.” If we look at it this way, it would greatly broaden the desirable addictions that help a person escape the oppressive torrent of life—such as Torah study, academic research, work, ambitious creativity, and more—as long as it does not really harm the normal course of life like drugs and alcohol.
What is your opinion? What is the ideal of freedom and what is its relation to addiction of any kind? And in particular, in light of all this, what is the correct attitude toward people addicted to Torah study? Here this is an addiction to a cultural value, and not to something that necessarily benefits health (like sports) or the experience of life (like meditation. Though it can improve a person’s relations with others, it can also do the opposite and isolate the Talmudist from his family and community). If addiction is measured by its pragmatic results (as William James maintained in The Varieties of Religious Experience), then we would say that addiction to Torah study is good only so long as it makes the person more sensitive to society and to his own life experience (section C above), whereas if addiction can be considered positive so long as it helps a person bear the burden of life, then addiction to Torah would be considered a virtue.
 
Happy festival days and a happy Festival of Freedom