I am very excited for the opportunity to share words of Torah with you. Each week, in this spot, I look to share an idea I've found that speaks to me and that I think will resonate with you as well. This week, I share an excerpt from an article by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks entitled 'Free Will: Use it or Lose it', which speaks about how Pharaoh's decisions during the plagues can be a strong lesson for us.
[... W]e now have a scientific way of explaining the hardening taking place in Pharaoh's heart. Having established a pattern of response to the first five plagues, he would find it progressively more difficult at every level - neuro-scientifically, psychologically and politically - to change. The same is true of every bad habit and political decision. Almost all our structures, mental and social, tend to reinforce previous patterns of behaviour. So our freedom diminishes every time we fail to exercise it.
If so, then today's parsha and contemporary science tell the same story: that freedom is not a given, nor is it an absolute. We have to work for it. We acquire it slowly in stages, and we can lose it, as Pharaoh lost his, and as drug addicts, workaholics, and people addicted to computer games lose theirs. [...]
We are not born free. We have to work hard to achieve freedom. That takes rituals, whose repeated performance creates new neural pathways and new rapid-response behaviour. It requires a certain calibrated distance from the surrounding culture, if we are not to be swept away by social fads and fashions that seem liberating now but destructive in retrospect. It needs a mental mindset that pauses before any significant action and asks, "Should I do this? May I do this? What rules of conduct should I bring to bear?" It involves an internalized narrative of identity, so that we can ask of any course of action, "Is this who I am and what I stand for?"
It is no accident that the elements listed in the previous paragraph are all prominent features of Judaism, which turns out to be an ongoing seminar in willpower and impulse control. Now that we are beginning to understand the plasticity of the brain, we know at least a little of the neuroscience that lies behind the ability to overcome bad habits and addictions. [...]
Freedom is less a gift than an achievement. Even a Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the ancient world, could lose it. Even a nation of slaves could, with the help of God, acquire it. Never take freedom for granted. It needs a hundred small acts of self-control daily, which is what halakhah, Jewish law, is all about.
Freedom is a muscle that needs to be exercised: use it or lose it. That is a life-transforming idea.
Have a Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Davies
Rabbi@SOICherryHill.org
