by Rabbi Lavey Derby
Va’yera
Genesis 18:1-22:24
II Kings 4:1-37
Free will or God’s will? That is exactly God’s dilemma as the stories of Genesis progress. As I wrote three weeks ago, “Without free will, we would not be in the image of God; with free will, God’s equation of perfect harmony is destroyed.”
We can imagine, as it were, the abject frustration, disappointment and outrage God must feel at discovering that the free will so necessary for human beings to be Godly is exactly that which corrupts everything. This is not unlike parents who desire their children to be strong and independent, then rue the day when they act that way.
It is possible to read all of the Torah as God’s attempt to solve this quandary. Destroying the world in a flood of anger is untenable. Excising human free will is unthinkable. What other possible solution is there?
Any parent knows the answer to this question. If free will is both our defining characteristic and the cause of so much self-inflicted wrongdoing and suffering, the only recourse is to teach people how to use their freedom properly.
Education, specifically, moral education, is the corrective to rampaging freedom. This notion becomes the essence of a second brit, never intended to replace the first covenant with humanity but to augment it with Abraham and Sarah, and ultimately with the people of Israel, at Sinai.
In this week’s parshah, God again experiences outrage tinged with sadness at the corruption of Sodom and Gomorrah. This time, however, God turns to Abraham for help and, in passing, reveals the real meaning of the brit: “I have singled [Abraham] out, that he may teach his children and his posterity to keep the way of Adonai by doing what is right and just.”
A fundamental purpose of God’s covenant with Abraham, and with us, is that we must learn to become people who model justice and righteousness, tzedakah u’mishpat. God needs us to be partners in this endeavor. This is why, unlike with Noah, God turns to Abraham specifically so that Abraham can explore if God’s intention is truly just.
It is worth noting that the covenantal duty to “do what is right and just” implies that human free will can be shaped and molded to serve holy purposes — that how to be a just and righteous person is teachable. The content of the brit — the Torah itself — is the curriculum.
The Torah can, in fact, be read as a long training manual for learning to be “just and right,” replete with moral principles, laws to train behavior and aid in establishing ethical societies — moral teaching stories that focus on right action and times when our ancestors acted wrongly so that we might learn how to do better.
Remarkably, however, our sages were not willing to treat the Torah as carved in stone. With a deep understanding of and a passionate commitment to the Torah’s ethical project, the sages radically reinterpreted passages from the Torah where they felt a higher ethic could be established.
The famous “eye for an eye” was interpreted to imply the payment of damages rather than physical brutality.
Toraitic laws of capital punishment were interpreted to require a legal standard of near impossible absolute proof. And while acknowledging the Torah’s consent to slavery, Maimonides gives voice to the sages’ opinion that “it is the quality of piety and wisdom that a man be compassionate and pursue justice” and not engage in slavery.
How audacious of the sages to realize that, if the Torah is designed to teach us how to be “right and just,” the Torah itself must develop ethically.
True to the nature of spiritual paradox, the Torah demands both God’s will and free will, properly trained. How audacious of the Torah to believe that humankind might become righteous and compassionate. How necessary, for God’s sake and the world’s, for us to learn how.
Rabbi Lavey Derby is the senior rabbi of Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon. This is his last column before a year-long sabbatical.
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