Feb 4/06 - Shabbat Bo: Stubborn Beyond Redemption

Commentary by Rabbi Lawrence Pinsker

For many years I was an avid listener to Garrison Keillor's Public Broadcasting System radio program “Prairie Home Companion,” which introduced me to his stories about Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Life in Lake Wobegon is permanently becalmed and stagnant. It’s been years since I last heard Lake Wobegon stories, but Garrison Keillor’s chocolate-voiced storytelling remains a vivid memory.

Yet for all the laughter from his live audiences, there was a rather disturbing aspect to Lake Wobegon stories. It's clear that a person born in Lake Wobegon has his or her life determined: there are only so many places to go, only certain occupations open, only one principal world-view accessible to the inhabitants. Keillor makes fun of the feeling of resignation to one's fate that accompanies life in Lake Wobegon. Lake Wobegon’s citizens are trapped in tedious, repetitive lives, in which the only choices they make are illusion.

Not surprisingly, Garrison Keillor grew up in small-town Minnesota and left it behind; his stories are often focused on the moment when a resident of Lake Wobegon discovers an unavoidable truth about life or escapes from the claustrophobic small-town life.

Whether we are from Lake Wobegon, Toronto, Winnipeg, Chicago or New York City, many of us know the feeling of being trapped. Our tradition tends to reinforce this philosophy. There is a midrash that tells us that when we are born, three questions are decided: whether we will be wise or foolish, whether we will be tall or short, and whether we will live a long time or have a brief life. These comments seem to suggest some level of predetermination, whether because of Divine mandate or genetic predisposition. To cap off this picture, behavioural psychologists and socio-biologists tell us that social environment also influences individual behaviour.

Historically, Jewish thinkers have offered a different perspective. Genetics and environment may control some aspects of our lives, but Everything is not predestined or fated. In Judaism, virtually every narrative we read—beginning with Eve and Adam’s decision to eat forbidden fruit in the Garden—contends that every person has the power to choose whether to be good or evil.

The simplest formulation of this important principle is found in Pirke Avot (3:19): "Ha-kol tsafui v'ha-kol ratzui.” “Everything is foreseen, yet free will is given.” Divine knowledge of the forces that shape us does NOT mean we have no freedom when we make our choices. Human beings are not puppets whose every action is fixed and predictable.

In this week’s Torah portion, we see the puzzle of free will versus determinism in the text stating that God “hardened” Pharaoh’s heart. In ancient times, the heart was viewed as the center of intellect. “Hardening the heart”—committing someone to an already-existing course of action—was a didactic process. Because the God of Israel repeatedly challenges the god-king Pharaoh’s authority, Pharaoh will feel obligated to demonstrate his control of the situation. But it is not God blocking Pharaoh’s course of action—the phrase can be readily understood as God’s very existence causing Pharaoh to lock himself into a collision with God over who is Sovereign and Master.

And so we have a text that causes many an eight-year-old who reads it to think of God as “mean.” How can Pharaoh be held responsible for his situation if God is in charge? Poor Pharaoh, a helpless puppet as mean, manipulative God pulls his strings! But the Biblical text, while concerned with God's power, is also sensitive to the indisputable evidence of repeated human folly. Rabbinic Midrash suggests that Pharaoh has already sinned so extensively by ordering the deaths of thousands of infants—that his refusals to yield to God are punishment for his genocidal plans. So what is happening is deserved from the beginning.

And when we examine the text closely, we do note that God “hardens” Pharaoh's heart only after five plagues have occurred. Perhaps the message is that when we continue to act destructively, we eventually reach a point at which everything proceeds without any possibility of our stopping it, like a car with no brakes. Beginning with infanticide and stretching through the acceptable price of the first five plagues—Pharaoh has rendered himself incapable of changing.

Is this an unrealistic portrait of human nature? The famous editor and essayist Edgar Watson Howe once wrote, “A man will do more for his stubbornness than for his religion or his country.” Just take a look at the history of our own—or any other—time. The human past is littered with stories about people staying upon disastrous courses of action, indifferent to the consequences of their own actions. Apparently this is one aspect of our behaviour in which we cling to the illusion that we are more powerful than God—at least until it kills us.