You shall choose life. (Devarim 30:19)
People think that free choice, bechirah, is a matter of choosing between yes and no. For instance, should I learn Torah right now, or should I go do something empty and unimportant? This is indeed part of the concept of free choice. But there is a lot more depth to it than that. In the Seforim Hakedoshim, free choice is called daas or hachra’ah.
There is a choice to be made that is much deeper than just deciding between yes and no, and that deeper point is the true bechirah.
In the blessing over the Haftarah we recite אשר בחר בנביאים טובים – “He chose good prophets....” The word “chose” is employed. What does it mean that Hashem “chose” good prophets?
Of course it doesn’t mean that Hashem was in doubt whether to place His Shechinah upon good prophets or bad prophets, and in the end, He chose the good ones. Similarly, it says in our Yom Tov prayers: אתה בחרתנו מכל העמים – “You chose us from among all the nations.” This doesn’t mean that Hashem was deliberating whether to choose the Jews or the Chinese, and in the end, He decided to take the Jews. Rather, Hashem chose good prophets, and He chose Yisrael, absolutely and resolutely. It’s a different kind of choice.
In the same way, a human being has the power of free choice. He can choose absolutely what he is and what he wants in life. We will explain.
Nowadays, if a child exhibits violent behavior, the mother hurries to take him for psychological evaluation and perhaps treatment. She wants the psychologist to diagnose why her child behaves that way. What do modern psychologists often say? “The child is not to blame. When he was young, he was treated in a manner that caused him to develop a violent personality. The emotional damage that was done to him in his earlier childhood is exhibiting itself in his present behavior.”
Then the mother says, “So I am to blame?” The psychologist replies, “No, you are not to blame, either. It’s your parents....”
According to this approach, no one is ever to blame, because a person’s behavior is just a link in a chain of reactions, and every reaction has a cause, and every cause has another cause that preceded it, and the buck stops nowhere. Accordingly, a person is not responsible for his actions and cannot be blamed for them. Human beings are like computers whose output is determined by the data that was fed in.
This is the prevalent approach today. It is part of the outlook that human beings are animals with greater intelligence.
What does the Torah say?
There is such a thing as a chain reaction in human behavior, but there is a starting point of absolute free choice that has no prior cause. This starting point is a totally fresh beginning that is not determined by prior conditions.
Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives us the ability to choose, and we choose between good and evil. We cannot conceptualize this or understand it, because this starting point of absolute choice is a Divine point. A person makes this choice without a prior cause. It is a kind of yesh me’ayin. It is not a chain reaction but rather the point where we make a true choice.
And we have two options to choose between: We can choose Hashem, or we can choose the alternative, which is avodah zarah. We know what it means to choose Hashem. But what does it mean to choose avodah zarah? How is idolatry even relevant in our day and age?
Let’s ask a simple person what life is all about. What does he want in life? He is likely to say that he wants a comfortable life, pain-free, no suffering or unpleasant financial pressures. He wants satisfaction from the children. He wants to live a good and peaceful life. What’s wrong with that? Is he asking for anything asur?
However, Chazal say:
לֹא יִהְיֶה בְךָ אֵל זָר וְלֹא תִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה לְאֵל נֵכָר – “There shall not be in you a strange god, and you shall not prostrate yourself to a foreign god.”
What is the “strange god” that is inside a person? It is the Yetzer Hara.
In other words, if a person’s life is all about seeking pleasures, even if they are kosher pleasures, this is avodah zarah. He is worshipping a “strange god.” This is because the person’s “I” is his Yetzer. If he is seeking pleasure in life, he is actually worshipping himself.
The proper choice to make is attachment to Hashem. Deveikus. And the point that is responsible for making this choice is up in the head, in the brain, which is the place that tefillin rest on. The tefillin are placed high up on a person’s head, where his brain is. This hints that a person’s essence is attachment to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. [Because the essence of a human being is his fundamental power of choice, and this choice takes place in the brain. The tefillin, which rest above the brain, represent connection to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.]
This is a person’s essence: to connect this fundamental point, his fundamental life-choice, to Hashem.
