Is Change Possible? Jewish Conceptions of Free Will and Transformation

Topics in Hashkafa - Lesson 2 Free Will (2) Rav Assaf Bednarsh

https://etzion.org.il/en/philosophy/issues-jewish-thought/issues-mussar-and-faith/free-will-2

R. Chasdai Crescas [c. 1340 in Barcelona, Catalonia – 1410 Zaragoza, Aragon] says that we have complete free will to do what we want, but what we want to do is completely determined. It is determined not by our free will, but rather by nature and nurture. Chazal meant only that God doesn't force our hand; He lets the rules of physics and the nature of the universe determine our behavior. The Tanakh encourages us to make the right choices in order to affect our environment. Although we feel that we have free will, that is only insofar as we are free to do what we want, but what we want to do is determined. R. Chasdai believes that reward and punishment are natural consequences and not artificially imposed, and natural consequences don't have to be fair.

Eliyahu E. Dessler, Strive for Truth: The Selected Writings of Rabbi E.E. Dessler, Part Two, translated into English and annotated by Aryeh Carmell (Jerusalem: Feldheim Publishers, 1988), pp. 52-57.

When two armies are locked in battle, the place where the struggle takes place is called the front line. This line is drawn at the place where the two forces meet. On either side, there is territory that belongs to that side and is thus not the location of battle. The front line moves and changes, but battle, generally speaking, occurs only where the two sides meet. Our moral choices can be thought of in a similar way. There are decisions that we have made in our lives so many times that they are no longer decisions. It is obvious to us that we will respond in particular ways to particular events. Those choices are within our territory. There are also choices we have never had to make and likely will never have to make. They are beyond the realm of our experience. They are firmly out of our territory. The place where these territories meet is the place of choice – bechirah. On the spectrum of what we know to be ethical and what we know to be unethical, we make choices only at the bechirah point. This is the point where our values come into conflict and thus the choices are not obvious. Each individual’s bechirah point is unique, and it moves as we grow and change. By recognizing the bechirah points in our lives, we are able to set our sights on expanding our moral territory and thus becoming better people.

Eric Fromm

Pharaoh’s heart hardens because he keeps on doing evil. It hardens to a point where no more change or repentance is possible.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man

The essence of man’s freedom is in his ability to surpass himself. To a certain extent man is enslaved by his environment, society, and character, but man can think, will, and make decisions beyond these limitations... Everyone has the potentiality for freedom, but only rarely achieves it.

Jonathan Sacks, Essays on Ethics, pp. 88-89

We lose our freedom gradually often without noticing it... Enslaving others, Pharoah himself had become enslaved. He became a prisoner of the values he himself had espoused. Freedom in the deepest sense, freedom to do the right and the good, is not a given. We acquire it, or lose it, gradually. In the end tyrants bring about their own destruction, whereas those with willpower, courage, and the willingness to go against the consensus acquire a monumental freedom. This is what Judaism is: an invitation to freedom by resisting the idols and siren calls of the age.

Soul Murder Revisited: Thoughts About Therapy, Hate, Love, and Memory By Leonard Shengold

The most destructive effect of child abuse is perhaps the need to hold onto the abusing parent or parent figure by identifying with the abuser; this becomes part of a compulsion to repeat the experiences of abuse—as tormentor (enhancing sadism) and simultaneously as victim (enhancing masochism). The child who is abused quite regularly takes on the guilt of the crime—which the abuser may or may not have felt. This guilt, frequently manifested by a need for punishment, is augmented by the rage involved in the child's identifying with the aggressor and feeling and sometimes acting on sadistic and vengeful impulses. The pathological compulsion to repeat traumatic events results in the passing down of child abuse from one generation to the next—the sins of the parents are visited on the children. So abused children, when they grow up and become parents, tend to abuse their own children, frequently in spite of conscious resolutions not to do so; the impulses at least are there, and frequently the actions too.

Attempts at the soul murder of children commonly have profound distorting and inhibiting effects on the victim's fantasy life and, especially, emotional life (part of Ibsen's definition of soul murder is killing the capacity for joy in another human being). They can cause a suffusion of sadomasochistic feeling and impulses (perverse sexual excitement and murderous wishes) that must be guarded against by massive inhibitory defenses, which do not always function consistently, and brainwashing—effecting many kinds of defenses including autohypnosis and a split functioning in the mind that makes possible what Orwell calls "doublethink" and "loving Big Brother." These effects appear in different varieties and combinations.