Free Will - Rabbi Akiva Tatz

so let's talk about free will this is the most probably the most important subject most fundamental subject in the whole spiritual arena if you like the fun characteristic of the human being so it pays to understand this in depth i'll try to make it as clear as i can please feel free to ask questions but give me a chance first to build a picture of the subject i'm very happy to answer if i can hard subject to understand first of all we live in a world where free will is really being denied you know that we live at a time when the pendulum is swinging towards a position that understands that humans are really just mechanical systems animal biological systems we don't really have a spiritual component and therefore all our acts are really simply outputs due to the inputs biochemical genetic and so forth that makes it difficult and secondly it's a very deeply mysterious and mystical subject so not easy to understand but let's see if we can try and get a feel for this subject first of all i'm sure you're aware you should be aware that the central defining characteristic of the human being is free will the way the torah puts it is is that it says that the human is created in a divine image right we call that selena that means that the human being is created in an image of god and the capitalists ask the question what does the image of god mean i mean do we look like god what is the image of god and the deepest understanding we have of the image of god is free will meaning that he's free and we are free god does whatever he wants right completely unconstrained nothing forces him to do anything at all and similarly creates us free in other words if you make a picture of the spiritual system you have let's say god as the point of origin and then many worlds devolving from him down to the material world and humans are pitched at exactly that position that reflects him in other words god is free and we are free there's nothing else in the universe that is free nothing below us no animal no molecule no planet nothing material has free will never moves not no cockroach no alicat no molecule nothing ever moves out of its uh rules program rules and above us angelic beings don't have free will either angels are too high and animals are too low right angels have free will like you have free will to walk into a fire do you have free will to step into a fire yes well technically speaking you could but you know you wouldn't right you see the result do you have free will to jump off a tall building you could but you see yourself becoming part of the scenery right so clearly that you wouldn't do it right and angel sees so clearly that moving a hair's breath out of line out of the definition of what he's said to do would mean disappearance so he doesn't have free will and below us the animals don't have free will either because an animal sees only the immediate sensual material reality and therefore an animal doesn't have free will so amazingly we are pitched exactly at the interface between the spiritual world above us and an animal we feel the pull of the angelic and the spiritual and the noble we feel the pull of the earthy and the material and the sensual and in that zone of tension we operate and that's why humans are unique we occupy exactly that zone that has free will because we can respond to both there's a very beautiful expression of this you know the madrid says the torah says that when god created a human being he started with the words let us create a human what's wrong with that phrase let us create man who's us if there's one thing we've focused on in judaism it is that god is one so why would he express himself as us one very beautiful one is this the major says that when god created the human being he consulted the angels who would construct put every value character trade to man in other words he consulted charity and truth and justice right all the characteristics that would make the human being some said don't create men and some say do some said do truth said the right truth said do not create men and be full of lies charity it's like i said create more he'll give charity and while these forces became locked in a cosmic unresolvable argument while they were arguing god created the movie the wrong way to understand that statement is that since they couldn't resolve the issue god ignored them and created a human being the right way is this he asked for their advice and he took it what was their advice an incredible cosmic unresolved argument and that's what he created is that beautiful and that's what the human being is an amazing unresolved argument between motivations right you feel pulled in one direction spiritual to do what's right you feel pulled in another direction take chances do something absolutely moral i don't know not you but you know normal people not jsl students but normal people sometimes tended to do something that is wrong and in that zone of tension when you feel both pulls that's what gives you freedom but the more important than that i think is this that our free world is extremely limited and this is worth tremendous clarity getting this clear our free will is very limited i would say horizontally and vertically right horizontally i mean that if you look at all the areas of your life your marital situation your finances your health your academic situation right all areas of your life jewish teaching is that you free in only one area there's only one zone in which you operate that you have freedom where would you say that is the only zone you have free will is in the moral or ethical zone only in the battle between your higher self and your lower self right your highest self meaning the side of you that responds to the conscience and the spiritual and doing what's right the lower self that responds to the childish the immature the sensual only in that zone you have free will right for example let's take money so it's axiomatic and jewish thinking that your money is predetermined you cannot earn one cent more than is predetermined the first day of rosh hashanah every year first morning of rosh hashanah is predetermined the last cent you will earn that year and there's nothing you can do that will earn you one cent more than that i don't think you need me to tell you this if you look around the world you'll see people are really smart well educated make all the right decisions never earn any money and others who are total idiots and very rich i happen to know a few in that category need to be smart or clever to earn money and i saw an interview with a canadian jew called mr brunson any canadians here he's a fabulously wealthy billionaire candidate in the interview they said how did you become so rich and he said when i was 10 years old i bought an apple for one cent and i sold it for two cents then i bought two apples and i sold them for four cents then i bought a box of apples and sold them for a dollar then my grandfather died and left me 61 million dollars and that's how i became a child i think that's an authentic jewish perspective in other words you make your effort but not necessarily connected to the results so money really is not in your free will you can damage yourself financially without limit there's no limit to how you can ruin yourself financially and the reason is that's an immoral thing to do failure of character right in judaism you have an obligation to take care of your finances and your assets and there's no limit on what mess you can make of yourself financially but you cannot guarantee income no matter what you do take help for example right i happen to be a doctor but you don't need to be a doctor to know that you cannot control your health you can do exactly all the right health moves the right kind exercise and become disastrously it happens all the time you can mess up your health without limit you could kill yourself you can there's no limit to how much you can damage your life that's an immoral thing to do right it's a torrent transgression to damage your your health but no matter what you do you cannot guarantee of also you cannot guarantee how long you live but according to cannibalistic thinking you're born with a case that means when you're born there's a certain has breadth endpoint that you cannot live beyond we never know what that is so it makes no practical difference and nothing you do can give you one second of life longer than you were destined to do you can lose it you can kill yourself you can do very unhealthy stuff you can do spiritual health and lose love and once you've lost life you can add life backwards certain mitzvahs by doing children but you can never live longer than the time you were given that's not amenable to free will there's many other areas let's say choosing a suitable marriage victim i'm amino married choosing you know there are limits to the amount of people you can meet a young man cannot possibly explore a relationship with every woman on earth even though many young men seriously tried beside you know there's limits to the opportunities i've presented you and therefore when it comes to health finances right opportunities we do not believe that you have free will in those areas you have free will in terms of how you handle those areas the moral approach you take to those situations how do you deal with what's given to your life that's where you have freedom and therefore when we talk about which means freedom of will we're talking about the moral spiritual inner battle that that mortal battle between your higher self and your lower self that's what we mean when we talk about frequency we're also not talking about technical choices when you choose which flavor of dessert you're going to eat or which pair of socks you're going to wear in the morning like animals also make selections like that machines can be programmed to make selections right that's not what we mean when we talk about freeway we're talking about the moral challenges that's what you're created for but more important is that on a vertical scale your free will is limited and this is an absolutely classic idea probably the most classic idea in all of jewish philosophical thinking of this of this kind and that is on a vertical scale your freedom of will is limited now this is this is worth tremendous concentration for example imagine a vertical skull let's take an area like stevie so there's a vertical scalar refinement on the bottom he's a person who hangs out on the street violently mugging little old ladies that's what he does hits him on the head with a brick takes their money runs off down the street right where is that person's freedom of will being expressed that the next time he attacks a little old lady on the street if he decides that instead of killing her he's only going to crack her skull he's made a tremendous moral advance when that person dies and goes up to the next world he's going to be spiritually rewarded for that why is he operating down there we have to think about that but he is when you die any of you and you go up to the next world and god says what did you achieve on earth and you say you say god i never hit a little ladies over there with a brick you think he's going to say amazing wow no i'm look i mean i don't know personally but i presume that most days you're not out on the street and therefore that's not where you're operating but that's where he's operating you are being tested you're expressing your free world at your level of refinement this is very scary this means that everyone sitting in this room right now is guilty of stealing so you're thinking to yourself what does it mean i don't break into people's houses at night with a black mask i mean at your level for example who in this room has ever had a job working for someone else okay you're sitting there at work and while you're working you make a private phone call two counts of stealing against you your employer pays for the call and the 10 minutes you spend speaking to your mother you're being paid a salary to work whatever you don't steal if you don't hit all the ladies over the head with a brick but that's not where you've been judged if you work in a place where it's tacitly accepted that you can make occasional calls that's fine but how about long distance how about 20 minutes on the phone how about coming a little late to work or leaving a little early that's the there's no limit you know that do you know that every word you say has a jewish standard every word you say there's no limit to the refinement every word you say has to be completely true completely kind and completely necessary anyone here can say that every word they ever say is completely true completely kind completely necessary but if you're operating at that level that's when you're being judged and there's no limit take for example theft you have a thing called the neighbors dies never stars means that you mislead someone let's say you you say something to somebody that's not true and you don't harm them at all but it's untrue it's called theft of the mind you're sitting down to dinner you have an expensive bottle of wine you're about to open with your dinner unexpectedly a friend of yours walks in so you said to your friend you know what i'm going to open this wine in your honor you liked your teeth you didn't do them any harm on the country your honor but it's a torah transgression there's theft of the mind you visit someone in hospital and on your way heart you see someone else's you know that you didn't realize was sick so you walk into the room and you say to them i came especially to visit you you lie there's a mitzvah as well that's a different story but there's a torah transgression because it's called theft of the mind right now that's way more refined than mugging people on the street and taking their money but if you're a person operating in this level that's where you've been judged can i give you a homework exercise public the fella walked into a bank this question was put to one of the great rabbis some time ago when i walked into a bank in new york and he said to the manager i'd like to take out a bank loan so the manager said okay how much do you want the guy said i want 200 i'm going abroad for three months i want two hundred dollars the manager said are you serious that's a tiny line you're gonna pay twenty percent just is this for real the guy said yeah yeah you advertise loans so they started filling out their forms when they got to collateral the manager said to you what are you going to leave us as security the guy said i'm going abroad i don't need my cards outside of your pocket here the keys impound the cards worth a great deal more than two hundred dollars if i fail to pay the loan you sell the car manager said fine and trina the government overboard overseas came back three months later and walked into the bank paid 240 dollars and left manager called me back and said what was it all about what did they'll meet the guy said where else could i get parking for forty dollars for three months the question is is that is that geneva's diaries is that deception or not on the one hand total deception another hand he took a loan he paid interest he left value but that moral question that you have to think about is a question at this level of refinement if you told the story to the fellow down there bugging people on the street you think i was too wonderful so why did i think of that do you understand you are being held accountable and the person who's grappling with that moral issue is punished more severely spiritually for that fault than he is for his violence because the higher you are the more you be you are being judged at your level of employment and that's where your test is and therefore you can't compare yourself to anybody else do you know that for example in a jewish school we never read out grades in a classroom because when the teacher reads out the grades on a test and one kid got a better grade another kid got less the second kid feels like a failure but maybe you tried hard maybe he did better in terms of his effort and his capacity than the other child do you understand we can't of course when children are 15 and 16 and 17 you can be brutally unfair because life's not fair they have to learn but not when they're seven years old don't understand that the talmud says that when you die you are not compared to anyone else someone says when you die you live permanently you never see anyone else in that world actually it's not 100 true because husband and wife are permanently bonded into each other forever it's good news for some of us all distressing for others but it just means you better marry somebody you like okay because you know you're going to be stuck with it for a long time but the point is that what you see in that world is who you are stripped of all illusion and facade and what you could have been your ecstasy is how much of yourself you constructed and your agony is how much you could have done and did not do but you don't see anybody else that's irrelevant to you what's relevant to you is what your potential was and that's the level of judgment right that is made about you and this is perfectly logical now right logical yes the standard you have to live up to is the standard of your own your own challenge and that is where you are the succeed offer a fundamental question you have to ask at this point is why is your level where it's at why is this fellow working on mugging people on the street a little less violently and you working on something much more refined and answers it might not be your fault but it's somebody's fault and this is very scary very scary right that fellow may be operating down there and it may be someone else for example imagine imagine a man talking to his friend on the phone his four-year-old son playing under the table ben says to his friend well it's not 100 accurate but let it go little boy hears his father say you can take liberties with the truth and black distortion he founds all his friendships and all his marriage and all his business activities and for all of those transgressions and distortions for the rest of his life the father takes the rap the father is punished spiritually because that's where the distortion was made is this scary i'll give you an example you know it says that i know shawn and your kipper every year the books of the living and the dead are opened right beginning of the year all souls are judged including those who died so the capitalists ask an obvious question why would god judge the souls of people who died by definition they couldn't be any different than they were the year before right imagine a person who lives a person has a life right they're born here they die at this point so they get judged spiritually a year later hashem god judges them again and your later judges them again why by definition they can't be any different there than they were here they've been dead they've got nobody with which to operate could could you say that maybe um they you know some some people on the living people said kaddish for them absolutely but it goes further than that stay stay with us absolutely yeah so here's how it works imagine during this year the person's been dead no mitzvahs no no transgressions nothing good just coasting with the momentum they built up but during this year many things have happened that are the consequences of something they did back here when they were alive but only now playing themselves out back here the person had a child the child had children the children had children now there's 3768 great great grandchildren and all that all of them are doing recruits to the credit on the person who began the process is this scary you do something in the world that it ripples on and amplifies and amplifies if it's good you get the credit to the extent and if it's bad of course you you get the you get the pain to the extent that it's momentum that you generated in the world if you bring up a child right imagine you bring up a child morally privileged especially sensitive jewishly educated and the child operates at this level kid gets no reward you do the child only gets spiritual reward for increasing what it is that they do at their level of challenge now if you bring a child into the world abused spiritually morally abused jewishly uneducated morally uneducated the child begins at that level he doesn't get punished for that you do for damaging the world like that the child is only rewarded in time so to speak for the improvement the damage or success that he makes in his level of challenge and sometimes you see a person do an action and you see a dribble i'll give an example one year in south africa i met a man a hasidic jew from brooklyn who came to buy diamonds in south africa and this is a personal story i'm telling you a firsthand story this man's mother was pregnant in the warsaw ghetto just before the german skill that remained upon him just before all the jews were killed she was pregnant that she needed to see a doctor she managed to escape from the ghetto and she went to see a lady doctor a christian a catholic woman from an old polish aristocracy a gynecologist in the city of warsaw this christian woman treated a jewish patient and when she was about to leave the office the doctor said to her if you go back into the ghetto do you know what's going to happen to you so she said yes so she said come and stay with me so the jewish woman said well i can't leave my husband so she said bring him to so she said well i can't leave my family so she said bring him as well. so the woman went back into the ghetto and told her husband that this christian lady was offering to save their lives and the husband said but i can't leave my family so they took them as well and they arrived at her house for 13 people she put them in the attic of our home for 22 months including a time during which the german bestop are occupied the house and under the nurses of the germans she kept them fed and cleaned there was no bathroom up there there was no water and no food she fed them every day and carried away their waste without hands and all 13 of them survived despite the germans being there 22 months later she managed to get them out all 13 survived they crossed the border all 13 ended up in new york city about 10 years ago in new york there was a wedding of one of the grandchildren one of those 13 people and in that wedding in new york there were 200 people present descended from the 13 people that she saved 75 years children grandchildren and they went back to poland and they found him old old lady they brought her to be present at a jewish wedding to see 200 people dancing around her there were three generations coming out of the people that she said and during the meal someone walked up and they said why did you risk your life to save jews did dress jesus because i read the bible so in genesis that when god was about to wipe out sodom abraham negotiated with god and he said if you can find 50 righteous people there will you save the city and god said yes 45 righteous people answered god said yes and she said and i hope there are enough of us to say poland and i was wrong now that is something to end because they want her children and their children's children are her children now four years ago connecticut i told the story and a fellow got up at the back and he said i'm a grandchild i was at that wedding wow so you do an action and it dribbles on in the world and it goes on and on and on and it's yours that's the way it looks and therefore you can't judge a person in terms of where they're at you can only judge them in terms of how they're coping with where it is that they operate that is the that is the concept that's called the kudas the point of freedom that's where the conflict is being felt above that there's no conflict when you're operating this moral level below this are things that are so vulgar and crude that you don't have to deal with it you wouldn't rub desolate teachers this subject says that all of you sitting in this room right now are being rewarded spiritually for not running into the street and stabbing people to death how much reward very i mean again i don't know you personally but i presume the temptation to do that is mine so for coping with things below your level there's no growth and no reward and failing things above your level right is really no failure you're not operating there right does anyone here play tennis tennis tennis is meaningful only against an opponent who's more or less on your level that's terrible if you play somebody weaker than you let's say you're a good club player and one day you walk out on the court and you find you challenged by a three-year-old kid walks out with his diaper and his record so let's say you let's say you play and you win right is that tennis no your name goes up on the other hand let's say you play the world champion and during the entire match you never see the ball once would you go home and tell your mom you lost no you didn't lose you didn't play that's not tennis is that clear when you lose to an opponent way above you there's no there's no failure in it and when you're victorious over somebody way beneath you right a warrior whose skills are far beneath yours there's no victory there yeah oh so my question is but usually you started and what i've learned is that if you play sports if someone is better than you significant better thing for example you do learn even though you lose you learn things absolutely incorporate into your practice that's right so let's say you're operating at this level you play somebody better than you right and you stretch and you grow that's excellent but if you lose you're not held accountable on the country may be rewarded for the effort and by the way if it's if it's a real battle let's say it's a lethal battle you have to be real careful who you choose if you introduce japanese samurai fighting right and you think you'll gain a lot from fighting the world champion you know when i was a student at university i used to do martial arts i know it looks hard to believe but you know there was a ton and one day i was training with a world champion like a fourth dan amazing amazing martial art you know like a world champion karate a thin skinny wiry guy looked like he couldn't you know injure a fly but he was like a world champion so we were like training and he was being very nice to me you know he wasn't hurting me and then i made a fatal error set to look could you just fight me just for two minutes for real he said are you sure i said yeah like i can take it you know and he said you sure want me to do that i said yeah the next second i found myself in the corner of the gym like semi-conscious you know like a broken jaw i know what hit me i didn't even see it i think it hit me when i blinked and i was like yeah it's come away so you're gonna be real careful when you choose you know that battle right and it's forbidden actually jewishly to wade into danger jewishly you may not choose ordeals because when you wage when you choose a battle that you you needn't have chosen again talmud says like this man's walking down the street he comes to a road the right forks now one road takes him safely home the other road takes him past a river where women are washing they're like not modestly covered and he knows he shouldn't be looking at that sort of thing i mean who knows that he shouldn't look at that sort of thing not a man who thinks that sort of thing so the man says to himself look i shouldn't be looking at women do not properly come so let me take what should i do she says himself like this if i take the safe road home what do i get i simply get home let me take the road where the women are and not look after all you're created to use your free will right to withstand ordeals the talmud says if he takes the road where the women are and does not look he's an evil man because he failed the test because the test wasn't going to look or not the test was which road would you take not only did he fail the test he failed even to realize he was being tested think about it you come to a fork in the road one road is safe the other road has a poisonous code request to strike so you say let's take the wrong with a snake and see if we can remember an idiot so let's let's put the poison on the table next to the wine to see if we can remember to drink the point jerk throw it up lock it up you don't play with fire but if you take the safe road you don't grow but it's sonic a righteous person says god just keep the keep the test and keep the reward just don't let me do any damage in your world that's why every morning we pray not to be tested and by the way if you take the road with your dailies there's no way you can win either you look at the women that fall into tiver which means lust or you look away then you fall into guy with pride there's no way to win that but yeah but if you're not attached to them what is the point of voting the point is that you fight like a tiger in the tests that you get given not ones that you choose unnecessarily believe me you'll be tested many times in life with moral ordeal thinking and each one of those will come with a guarantee that you can succeed because he matches up his tests to the people that they handle and what you choose once is not telling if you choose appropriate so that's the principle of operating at your level of reading and one final point about this is that the point is not scaling because when you operate right at one level yeah when you pick up weights in the gym you build muscle right then you have to pick up heavier weights so when you exercise your spiritual world and you grow spiritually then your next test is more difficult than the previous one otherwise you outgrow a free will right imagine for example a young man goes out for lunch crosses the street into the local seafood deli shrimp crab lobster boiled alive but good snails these days you can get fairy carrick ants frogs legs not good but he likes that kind of food next door's a culture daddy doesn't like cat food but for some reason he stands there thinking about a jewish boy you know kosher food unconscious who desensitizes you spiritually stands there shaking and sweating for half an hour and eats a kosher lunch tremendous growth a value has overcome a sensual desire next day the battle doesn't last as long two or three weeks later finds himself eating costume food out of habit no more reward no more battle it's outgrown that test now god sends him a honor test when you play the people in your tennis club and you can beat them easily then you've got to play the national people when you beat the national people you're going to play international circuit because you've outgrown yesterday's test and therefore you're not standing now modestler says that the battle for the point of freedom is like the front in the war when two countries are at war although the entire countries are at war the plane and conflict is only felt on the front line and as one country advances conquer territory becomes quiet to not be tested there anymore and as you become more mature spiritually things that tempted you when you're a teenager right are no longer speaking to you because you're grappling with more refined sophisticated spiritual tests so if you get to like a point where you're like like tennis for example when you work your way up yeah let's say in the spiritual sense become the highest level you can make yes it's limited i guess your question is what happens when you outgrow free will all together when you get to the level when you get to that level then let me know okay there's no limit there's no limit because no matter how great you are you being tested that's why in judaism the greats of torah history are slammed and criticized so harshly when they failed because although they fell a millionth of a degree at their level that's do you understand yeah all right there is a technical point here and that is technically speaking you could grow out of free will altogether one of the great commentaries the messenger says that moses mushroom blew out the top completely he lost his freedom he raised himself so high on the scale he no longer could sin that is possible you know i think there was three people in the torah that never committed a sin in there that's true so that does not mean they had no free will and could not sin that just means they managed not to four people the torment says there were four people who never sinned ever when moses loses his free will is does he essentially like move in between that liminality between spirituality and animal he moves into the angelic zone and is ender for homework you can figure out how did you sin after that he hit the rock instead of speaking to it did you make that mistake he lost his free will not going to go to that now but that is a possibility and of course on the bottom there's also no free will a child is no free will child right not legally accountable a person in temple of epilepsy a person at gunpoint a person kills at gunpoint somebody puts a gun to you and says kill him or i'll kill you so jewish you're not allowed to kill the person you have to die but if you do kill him says there are you don't get punished yet it doesn't help your hand so there are areas certain levels of addiction could be take you out of free will let me show you how violently this disagrees with modern with modern thought are you too tired to you still got energy yeah yeah sure show you how this disagrees with the modern with the world around us okay few moments stay with me give an example stay with me this is worth understanding i'll give you an example i have a friend who's a psychiatrist some time ago i said can you please discuss one of these patients with me why do you want to talk to me i'm not a psychiatrist here's the problem he has a 21 year old jewish girl that he's dealing with who has a tremendous compulsion to steal candy in a supermarket she's a rich girl she has all the candy she wants to love her but she has a tremendous compulsion right cut the money was in the supermarket sees the candy tremendous urges thank you why is my friend speaking to me because she's now in court for the tenth time and the judge is asking my friend to testify about her sanity if he tells the judge that she's legally insane she will be sent for psychiatric treatment if he tells the judge that she's legally sane this is a 10th offense she's got to go to jail and she may die there talking about a sweet naive girl in the south african jail very dangerous very rough and he says to me i cannot tell the judge that she's insane legal insanity means you psychotically detached from reality you know she knows what she's doing she knows what's wrong she's going for treatment she often controls what i'm going to say think about this for a moment if you say the girl is exempt and should be acquitted because she has kleptomania meaning she has a tremendous compulsion then who's accountable for any crime if you find me doing something that you regard as immoral you say that's why you're doing that so you don't understand my urges i get compulsions and if you say that that makes sense she's 100 guilty her kleptomania is irrelevant that's ridiculous obviously it's relevant the reason you don't hang out in the supermarket first day still you can't do it no it's because you don't take domain how are we gonna judge this listen carefully do we allow all the coercive psychological variables all the compulsions all that makes your mind operate do we say those things are relevant or not if you say they're relevant forget about free will forget about responsibility forget about legal responsibility if you say they're irrelevant you're being a fool you can see obviously those things are over do you see the level another example about 10 years ago a young girl was jogging through central park in new york city five or six young men from harlem attacked her okay from the ghetto long they almost killed it broke every bone in her body although they never stole anything when the police found them they told the police they did it for fun sunday afternoon nothing else to do so they beat up the school almost killed her okay the case came to trial in new york and it caused a national upload because the lawyers for the defense argued that these young men should be acquitted because they were brought up in a ghetto environment they were so abandoned and brutalized and poverty-stricken and uneducated with no role models that what they did was appropriate to their sociological circumstances think about that if you say right they're not guilty they were brought up in a ghetto in such horrendous backgrounds they're not guilty then who's guilty for anything any any criminal you find doing something you'll say it could be due to you you see this and if you say right right that's completely wrong they're 100 guilty they get us your element that's stupid obviously it's relevant the reason you don't hang out in the park is because you were brought up did you see the problem so here's the question in judaism do we say that all the coercive psychological variables that make you work make you operate your genes your biochemistry your social influences are they relevant or not if you say they're relevant forget about free will and responsibility and how can you deny that they're open do you see the question listen to the jewish answer because it is so clear and in such conflict with the non-jewish and secular model around us and here it is according to jewish thinking all of those variables your genes your chemistry your background what you did when you were three and what your mother said when you were four all those are 100 relevant you know what they do they set the point of freedom if you brought up in the ghetto then instead of thinking like this you think like that when it comes to violence and that's not your fault but what you do at that point girl walks into the store sees the candy right doesn't know the cctv is watching her right is this her fault the situation she has come to mania but when she takes the candy and walks out she's guilty what do you do at your point of volume is this cleveland fellow stands in the park right harlem guys girl joke one guy says no one hey dude or whatever they're saying another guy says yeah man let's go beat that girl and kill our guy says yeah cool is that their fault no that's how you think when you're brought up in such violent circumstances but when they walk over and do it knowing they wouldn't like having their bones broken with a piece of lead vibing they're 100 guilty is it slip what you're dealing with is not your fault but how you deal with it is up to you yeah like earlier you refer to like addictions as uh like certain instances of addiction because they don't have free will well why would addictions like this let's say that a person is not addicted to zero and smoking is functioning here right a person with an addiction has his point of ordeal shifted he's dealing with something i'm not dealing with i might not even understand his difficulty in that area but he's grappling with that issue provided remains within the zone of free will right he has an addiction which means there's tremendous compulsion addiction doesn't mean by the way that you have no addiction doesn't mean the cigarette does this and you can't get out of its way addiction just means that you have more of an urge and it's more difficult to resist does i've seen people resist heroin and almost die as much of us and cigarettes doesn't mean they lose their free will but of course it may get so bad that you lose your free will in which case you wouldn't be accountable you may be accountable getting into that situation in the first place and sometimes an external judgment cannot be made you don't have difficulties for that person the clearer point is whether you give like the last hit on the head yeah and that you so can you hold the problem where do you how do you know how accountable you have to hold up that's a good question how do you not hurt the other person accountable in a legal sense very often it's impossible give me an example a couple of years ago in england two children killed a baby two boys 10 and 11 year old boys killed the baby the court had a very difficult time trying to decide whether those children were old enough to be accountable or not how old do you have to be to be accountable for your actions in judaism 13 if you're a boy 12 year old how do you have to be in judaism if you're a non-jew what does jewish law say about the age of responsibility for non-jews no no when you're old enough how old is that question of judgment it's not easy and very often courts have a very difficult time making that call but the principle is clear right even though not only that sometimes you don't even know what you're capable of sometimes only the pressure of a test shows you what you came or if you weren't even aware about that before up to now what i said is i think logical no you can see that but here's where it gets difficult let's put the microscope on the point of freedom let's ask why do people choose what they choose here's the girl in the store where the candy cctv watching the managers watching the screen next to him sits the psychologist the girl looks around eventually takes the candidate walks out manager says to his friend why did she do that why did she make that choice what's the answer why do you choose what you choose that's why you allowed yourself to do it curious why did you do it there's no answer to that question any answer is the denial of free will she stole the candy because when she was three years old her mother it's her mother's fault the answer is she chows and that's very mysterious it's something that is not caused by anything else according to kabbalah will i mention yeah according to this is where free will sits you know when a child is born the skull is open you know that when a baby's born you can feel the brain pulsate when i examine a newborn child the first thing i feel is the brain where there's no bone right you know that the fontanelle this is where a man where's philly is to reopen that connection right to reopen that connection that the board has closed this place here in hebrew in kabbalah is called ratson means will the place of will desire free will will the word rat son in hebrew is the same numerical equivalent as the word makura meaning a source shem's name god's name as well a source is a point of origin you can never ask for the point of origin of a point of origin it doesn't make is this ken imagine a river flowing right why is the water flowing yet because it flowed from here why is the water flowing from your flow but you can never ask that about the source that's where it begins free will is where you begin you can never ask me why did you choose that because if you could answer that question i wouldn't be free that would be the reason free will means you decide because you decide it's a very mysterious thing and let me finish with this this means that very weird things come out of this place total paradoxes without going into all the kabbalistic background i'll just give you one free will means that you can face an ordeal in which one option attracts you very powerfully and one option attracts you very weakly and free will means you will choose which one you know metal objects strong magnets weak magnet metal object towards a strong magnet human being strong motivation weak motivation human being moves towards thee you choose if you always move towards a strong motivation that would be denial of free will can you see that which means weirdly you can have a very powerful attraction in one direction a pathetic childish trivial one in the other direction and you can move towards the childish attraction is that weird i see doubtful phases let me prove it to you i will give you a scenario where a person faces a very powerful attraction something ridiculously childish and i'll show you people taking the trivial attraction are you ready ever tried dieting here's how it works on the one hand you have the motivation of how you want to be how you want to look next summer on the kosher beach like relationships and self-image would you call that a powerful motivation which yes on the other hand you've got this little chocolate wedge thing with a bit of cream and like a cherry 10 seconds of pleasure during which you'll feel like an idiot you're talking about a massive life motivation against 10 seconds of ridiculous pleasure and a minute later you're looking at a plate that is liquid clean there's like not even a lick of chocolate how do people do how do people do you're talking about seconds of pleasure during which you'll feel like an idiot against a life goal but how how how thick can you be you know when i was when i was a junior intern in surgery once i had a patient with burgers disease in the hospital where i was working you know that burger's disease is a exquisite genetic susceptibility to nicotine in cigarette smoke people have this disease they smoke their blood vessels close down first their fingers fall off then their hands fall off okay multiple amputations there's not one recorded case in the non-smoker they stopped smoking the disease stopped so carrier smoking their body falls apart this man was a 45 year old highly intelligent engineer he came into our ward with a blue leg the archery supplying his leg had been closing down he had four black ties we had to cut off that day and the man knew that he carried on smoking we'd cut his leg off he knew more about the disease that we he carried on smoking and three weeks later we did an above knee amputation the next time i swim was a senior internment surgery and i noticed them weeding him down the hospital corridor in a wheelchair with no legs smoking on his way to losing him you know i have a colleague in new york he has a vascular surgeon he had a patient like this but he doesn't really lost his second arm he had them rig up some wire on the wheelchair so you could carry on smoking wow so let's just get the choice clear man stands there with a cigarette and a neck and he says to himself cigarette you know this is your choice clear right cigarette leg cigarette leg don't wear the cigarette live leg man husband father walk or 30 seconds of pleasure during which you'll feel the call the end of day how could you get that no answers you choose it's up to you that i give an example i'll finish with this you know you go swimming in south africa where i come from there's one beach which is ridiculously cold but it came down to two beaches the one the water is like dangerously cold you go for a swim you walk in you put your foot in two toes fall off right away that's ridiculous but you turn around all your friends are watching you you came a long way for the swim you keep going like an ankle cracks you know eventually kneecap disintegrates you know that feeling eventually you get to a point where the water is more or less around here and after that there's no going slow just do pain so you say to yourself i'm just going to go under that water and then you say i'm just getting out of here because what happens in free will is you sit in this position and both sides make their presentations and during the battle of presentations they answered the the responses paralysis the one side says try me and you fantasize another side how about me and it can take a long time and eventually you open the gate to whichever one you choose and when it gets in you stand then you say just go under that water you probably won't die and then you say just get out of here. and the the response is for it'll go up and down after that you're starting to take a long time and sooner or later you just go down and people can commit suicide does it matter what you choose it's up to you if you choose the right one you let it in if you choose the wrong one you allow yourself an instant of temporary insanity that's what the tongue would cause reactions and in that moment of insanity you do it and the second layer the smoke clears and the dust settles and you say what have i done how could i do that can't believe it did it again but you did you