TBC - Day 22 - 'Do we have free choice' - Rabbi Alon Anava | Atzmut.org

[Music] [Applause] [Music] so imagine you're looking at a maze and you put a mouse in the maze and you're looking it from above so you know where the entrance is and you know where the exits and you from above you see all the structure of the maze now wherever the let's say just hypothetically wherever the mouse goes to the wrong way there'll be some type of a system that shocks him right now your main goal is for the mouse to go from point a to point to from the beginning from the entrance to the exit you're not looking to torture the mouse because if you would look to torture the mouse you would put him straight away in the electrical field and let him fly yeah right but the little z zaps that he gets is to make him understand that's the wrong way i have to go that way and you're looking from above and you're waiting and you know that eventually there's a good chance that he will find his way out and there's also a good chance that he's not going to find his way out and we have to start the game all over again so we do have a 100 free choice but hashem placed in the dead ends like a zapper that if i'm going into a dead end that will cause me to lose my round then he zaps me so i can go out of that dead end but hashem has the view from above and beyond our understanding since hashem was is will be so he sees a very broad picture of the beginning and the end so he already knows what's going to be but it doesn't mean that we don't have the free choice like a satellite when you go on a 300 mile highway you start the drive you know you punch into the gps the gps tells you you'll be there in x amount of minutes how does the gps know because it looks from above and it calculates your speed and the distance and then when it sees an obstacle an object or traffic then it will calculate oh here you're going to stop so the gps is uh so to say a profit right because it sees what's going to happen but it's not a prophecy it's just from such a high level that it can look from above and tell you oh by the way in half an hour you're going to run into traffic so it's going to slow you down and it's going to take you an extra 20 minutes so hashem is just looking from above in his godly abilities of seeing the past present and future so he knows already what's going to happen it's that's that the game is sold he just has a bird eye view and he kind of like gives you these hints on the way you do something wrong this is a little zap don't go there you do something good ding ding ding ding really it's kind of like a weird game that hashem is having with us only because we say every day is what does it mean hashem wants us to give us so much more reward therefore he gave us a lot of torah and a lot of it's about to do it's almost like me telling to my son listen i want to give you a million dollars but in my mind i'm saying i don't want to just give it to him i want him to feel that he earned it so i tell him okay clean this paint that do this pick that because don't say to give rather to er to purify hashem wants our souls to be more clean more pure more holy so we can get closer to him so we can receive a greater godly revelation so he cleans us he says i'm gonna wash you clean you and and purify you so you can become closer to me how with torah mitzvot and believe it or not even when we sin and we get punished for that how do you clean something that is dirty you will scrub it and you might have to put a chemical or in some cases you know burn it but it ends up clean it's the process of cleaning so even the the system of sinning and being cleaned it's another way of refining us and therefore the kaloshvuku says these are the rules you choose when you choose good you get a reward when you choose bad you'll get a slap to your face and these are my words but really the kadosh book who's giving us a hundred percent you choose what to do now one can completely turn it around and argue and say no hashem knows what's going to happen he already blocked our options he already gave us options really we're just going on some type of a conveyor belt and hashem wants to see how we react so another way of approaching it is that yes we are going on some type of a conveyor belt which is our life and every now and then hashem will throw something in our way either an opportunity to do good or an opportunity to do bad and he says okay now let's see what you're going to choose but nevertheless the conveyor belt doesn't change your path is predestined you're going to go on this path just that you have been thrown constantly these surprises now what are you going to choose good or bad you choose bad and you lost the point choose good thing you got the reward but the path you go on that will not change and needless to say this we can be more philosophized and argue and explain and i choose to not even get into that direction by saying who cares if i have free choice or not let me finish my period in this world my 60 70 80 years here do as many as mitzvot listen to what the torah says i'll figure out if i had free choice or not when i get to shamayim let me just pass this test successfully and not to ask too many questions you ask too many questions you get confused with too many answers [Music] you