Fourth Reading: Exercising Freedom of Choice
“When Jacob came home from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You are to sleep with me, for I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” And he lay with her that night.”
The Senses of the Months
In the Torah, each of the 12 months has what is usually translated as a “sense” (חוש) associated with it. These senses are the spiritual faculties of our soul, and like the five well-known senses we are familiar with—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—they also have a particular organ in the body corresponding to them. In addition, the months correspond to myriad other models that also include 12 elements (the tribes, the constellations, the 12 simple letters of the Aleph-Bet). We have written a great deal about these senses in other contexts. For our purposes let us simply write out the months with a few of their corresponding models in chart form:
MonthSenseTribeLetterNisanspeechJudahהIyarthoughtYissacharוSivanprogressZebulunזTamuzsightReubenחAvhearingShimonטElulactionGadיTishreitouchEphraimלCheshvansmellMenashehנKislevsleepBenjaminסTevetindignationDanעShevatconsumptionAsherצAdarhumorNaftaliקFreedom of Choice and the Calendar
One of the most famous statements of Rabbi Akiva dealing with free will or free choice is “Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted; The world is judged with goodness, and everything is in accordance with the preponderance of actions” (הַכֹּל צָפוּי וְהָרְשׁוּת נְתוּנָה וּבְטוּב הָעוֹלָם נִדּוֹן וְהַכֹּל לְפִי רֹב הַמַּעֲשֶׂה). There are four parts to this statement, and they correspond to the four letters of God’s essential Name, Havayah. According to this correspondence, the second part, “yet freedom of choice is granted” corresponds to the first hei of Havayah, or to the sefirah of understanding. To draw a correspondence between this statement and the 12 psychological senses that correspond to the months, we need to find the equivalent of “understanding.” Indeed, it is the the sense of thought associated with the month of Iyar.
Iyar: The Month of Free Will
How can we understand the parallel between “freedom of choice is granted” and the month of Iyar and its associated tribe, Yissachar. Yissachar is noted in the Bible as the tribe possessing a special ability to understand measures of time, which is why they had a special expertise in organizing the calendar, a role that they played on the high court. The verse describing this is, “And from the sons of Yissachar, those who understand time.” In Hebrew, the relationship between thought and the calendar is much clearer than in English because both “computation” or “mathematics” (חֶשְׁבּוֹן) and “thought” (מַחֲשָׁבָה) stem from the same verb (חשב). The idiom used to denote preparing a calendar is “computation of time” (חֶשְׁבּוֹן תְּקוּפוֹת). There are many types of thought. The type of thought needed to compute the calendar (which depends on observing nature with a mathematical eye) is the analytical type of thought associated with the sefirah of understanding.
We can now identify the month of Iyar as the month of free will. As such, Iyar is the month of awakening from below, because as we see in a moment, freedom of choice represents an awakening of the mundane to change its course. We can capture the essence of this point as: Initiative begins with the sense of free thinking.
Leah’s Free Will and Initiative
Of all of Jacob’s children, Yissachar was the one whose conception involved the most initiative. His mother, Leah, out of her tremendous desire to increase the number of Jacob’s offspring (and the number of tribes), gave her maidservant, Zilpah, to her husband as his fourth wife. For a woman, to consciously introduce another woman into her house is a very difficult thing, even more so when until then, Zilpah had been Leah’s maidservant. Now, Zilpah had become equal to her former mistress.
Leah, who now had trouble of her own conceiving was given mandrakes by her son Reuben. Mandrakes are known to increase fertility, and Leah gave them to her sister Rachel, her husband’s most beloved wife, who until then had had no children, in order that that night she send Jacob to her. Shortly thereafter, Yissachar was born, and Leah called him by this name which means, “there is a reward,” expressing her thanksgiving to God for having rewarded her for her initiative.
Leah herself is considered the archetypal soul related to the sefirah of understanding.
Free Will and Yissachar
This sentiment is found later in relation to the tribe of Yissachar, the tribe associated with the month of Iyar. When the Jewish people went out of Egypt, the leader or prince of the tribe was Netanel ben Tzu’ar. Netanel, means “God gave,” or “Godsend.” His father’s name Tzu’ar comes from the word meaning pain or hardship. Thus, the full name, Netanel ben Tzu’ar, relates to the sages’ saying that, “the reward is according to the pains taken....” (לְפוּם צַעֲרָא אַגְרָא). In other words, God gives (Netanel) reward (Yissachar) based on the pain (Tzu’ar) that was endured in achieving that goal.
Finally, let us add that every month also has a permutation of God’s essential four-letter Name, Havayah, associated with it. Since Havayah has four letters, they can be permuted 24 ways. But because one of the letters, the hei, repeats, only 12 permutations are unique. These 12 permutations of Havayah correspond to the 12 months.
