Q&A: Kabbalistic Ideas Undermine Free Will
Kabbalistic Ideas Undermine Free Will
Question
I’m not religious, but I study in a state religious high school. One of the rabbis commented that there is an idea in Judaism (in Kabbalah, I think) that a person’s seed can somehow become “sanctified,” and then his child will be righteous if he himself is righteous, or something like that. The point was that the seed can become sanctified, and that basically raises the likelihood that the child will be righteous.
Just that in my opinion this is very problematic, because it contradicts free will. It can’t be that one person gets a higher probability of being righteous than another person just because of what his father did or because of his father’s level of righteousness.
So now I’d be glad to ask your opinion. Do you think I’m right in this case? And if so, when I run into claims like these in the future, which in some sense undermine free will, should they be rejected outright? I really don’t understand how it could be that someone benefits from a higher chance of being righteous because of something he didn’t choose. And I know that free will is a very basic principle in Judaism that one must believe in…
Answer
Everyone has free will, but it is not true that everyone has the same conditions within which he operates. One person is born into a wealthy home and another is not. One is born healthy and another is not. One is born with certain character traits and another with different ones. There is no equality in the conditions. Therefore, quite apart from the righteousness of the seed and the other nonsense they’re stuffing you with at school, your assumption is incorrect.
Clearly, when a person is judged, the conditions within which he acted are taken into account. Therefore his spiritual standing is determined not only by his actions themselves, but also by the conditions in which he acted.
Discussion on Answer
Indeed. Absolutely.
I understand. So theoretically, even if someone was born into a Nazi education and still showed even slight revulsion toward it, it’s possible that he is equal in stature to the leading sage of the generation, who was born into a lineage of the greatest sages of the generation and was educated that way from the moment he was born? Just a theoretical example, of course. I’m only making sure I understood.