The Laws of Tshuvah (Hilchos Tshuva Series 12) (Rabbi Dovid Gottleib) (Jewish Philosophy)

I'm now just reviewing what we did yesterday and see whether you have any questions what we did was not easy material and then we can move on to the next chapter we're talking about the problem of forns and free will God knows the future how do we have Free Will and the Ramba makes it very clear that the problem is if in fact I do a today and therefore yesterday God knew that I was going to do a then it would be impossible for me to do B the problem is ruling out the alternative that I didn't take which would mean that when I made a choice and I thought I had two Alternatives in front of me I thought it was in my power to do either one that wasn't true really there was only one alternative the other one was impossible because it would have contradicted God's knowledge esday what I'm going to do that's why Ram sets up the problem now there is a solution to the problem which ramam doesn't use and I explained I will Recall why why the r doesn't use it but there is a solution to the problem and so the problem works like this we're really trying to describe two tracks running side by side one is the real world the real world I did a and yesterday God knew that I was going to do a and they were asking about an unreal World a virtual world something that didn't happen would it have been possible for me to do B which I didn't do and then in running that real world we say well we're imagining a virtual world which I to be but God knew I was going to do a and that would be a contradiction and the solution says why when you move from The Real World in which you did a and God knew you were going to do a when you move from that world to the virtual world where you do be why would you transfer over that God knew you were going to do away leave that open or suggest that in a world in which I actually do be God knows I'm going to do be there's no problem at all what gave you the right to transfer over the God God's knowledge yesterday from our world to the god to God's know yesterday in the virtual world now the normal re response is look the past is the past it's unreachable it's something that you have no influence over so of course what we're really talking about is choices for today choices for today given the past that we have well maybe that's not true maybe indeed God's knowledge yesterday is a result of what I do today if you want a an intuitive model for that ber and Russell supplied it how does God get his knowledge of the future nobody talks about that we just assume he's God so he knows but let's fill in a scenario God gets his knowledge about the future by in the past taking a sneak peek at what the future will be so how did God know yesterday that today I would do a because God yesterday took a sneak preview of today and saw that I do a that's how we knew it yesterday well if someone's watching somebody else act it's the person who's acting that causes the Observer to know The Observer gets his knowledge by watching the person do the action so here my choosing a today would be the cause of God's knowing it yesterday if that's the case when you move over to the virtual world in which we suppose I do be yesterday in the virtual world God will know that I do be because it's my doing it that causes him to know and then there's no contradiction at all so the the idea that doing be is impossible because what God contradict God's knowledge yesterday is based on an extra premise which could be debated that God's knowledge in the past stays the same and when I change the action I have to deal with the same knowledge in the past who says so and that is indeed a a solution that we have in many Jewish sources including and the and the r and others that's a solution to the problem the problem was someone claims he has a proof that Free Will is impossible on the basis of forign knowledge the solution is your argument showing the impossibility is a mistake you slipped in an extra premise and people are logically Justified to deny your premise and therefore deny the argument now the R by the way this shows you that the problem and the solution have nothing to do with God's being in time or outside of time they has nothing to do with that because even if you picture God outside of time so we don't say he knew yesterday we don't date his knowledge at all still the exact same problem can be raised if God's knowledge is absolute independent self-determined he just knows because he's God then we have exactly the same problem what does he know well in the real world I do a and he knows a and that knowledge has nothing to do with me it's because he's God he knows now I asked could I have done B now I'm in trouble because in his knowledge is a so if I imagine myself doing e be I'd be contradicting his knowledge and that's impossible that's if his knowledge is independent if his knowledge externally outside of time is dependent he knows what happens because it happens then the solution is there in the real world God knows a because a happen in the virtual world that I'm considering where we substitute B for a in that world he knows B because he knows what happens in that case there's no contradiction the same argumentation goes through rever points this out same argumentation goes through whether you think God is inside of time or outside of time before after or detached makes absolutely no difference the only crucial thing is does our knowledge affect God's does our action affect God's knowledge or not that's the way that solution works but the r doesn't adopt that solution now he doesn't say why I think I have an explanation why first of all in the guide of the perplex part 37 chapter 17 he just makes a remark about certain Arabic philosophers they believe that God has complete knowledge including knowledge of the future and they believe in Free Will and he says the little thought will revealed to you that that's a contradiction so he's definitely not solving that contradiction he criticizes them for having been responsible for a contradiction but in the first part of the guide he says at least six times that God now it's in the Hebrew is not Mis Mis means is not affected by nothing causes anything about God nothing influences God nothing changes anything in God or creates anything in God he's not affected by anything outside himself Well the description that we just gave for the solution is that my action causes God's knowledge that's a very substantial effect on God Ra is not going to tolerate that so he's left without the ability to use that solution and his way of dealing with the problem is entirely different he says first of all God's Essence is impossible for us to understand while alive and we're doing all this talking while we're alive I suppose you notice that um and God's knowledge is just as impossible to understand as its Essence because in a certain sense it's got to be identical to its Essence so we cannot understand God's knowledge and therefore we can't understand how he knows what he knows and that's what the ra gives as his approach to the problem and I will just add words I don't think I'm adding any more content just add some words to it if you tell me that you don't understand X then it means you can't describe it we don't describe God's Essence at all the r rejects all descriptions of God's essence he even rejects saying that God is one he even rejects saying that God exists in the guide something that's beyond your comprehension you can't talk about and that will be true of God's knowledge also can't talk about it well calling it knowledge k and o w l e d g e is describing it it's using a human word to designated what right do we have to do that if we don't understand it to say that it's knowledge in the same sense that we have knowledge he denies word for word so what the is telling us is this what we call Knowledge he definitely doesn't have he has the ability to do everything that could be done with knowledge but he doesn't do it by using knowledge he does it some other way some way that we can't comprehend let me give you an analogy to this but make the the words comprehensible perhaps imagine going going back in time 200 years you take with you with you a uh MP3 player and some speakers these little speakers and you say to the people uh I'm want to show you something you turn on let's say some violin music they look at the boxes they look at you and they say what's going on how did you get how did you get a person and a violin into that box how did you do that and you say there's no person in the Box there's no violin in the box and they say come on you can't fool us we know what that sound is that's the sound of a person playing a violin we just want know how you got him in the box so you say look there's nobody in the Box we can open it up I'll show you it's violent music but that's not how it's being made and they say what are you talking about that's how you make violent music you play a violin that's how it's done and you say well not with my machine that's I it's done um and you open it up there no person in there and say well what's going on on said well listen if you have three years of full-time schooling maybe I could introduce enough Concepts to you to understand what's going on in the meantime you can't understand this I can make violin music with no violin and no person and they look at you in disbelief and say well we hear the sound but boy oh boy we know what makes that and he says no you don't know what made it this time you know what it makes usually but not this time this time it's made in an entirely different way electronic circuits and chips and all the rest a little bit like that we say God does and God God's actions are appropriately related to every other fact in the past present and future just the way we would relate the action with our knowledge of the past present and future but he doesn't do it by having knowledge of PR the future does it some other way which is a knowledge that being the case the avoids the problem doesn't solve the problem he avoids the problem the problem was the contradiction between forign knowledge and Free Will we're canceling the knowledge we're not we're saying we don't describe God as having knowledge now as I said yesterday that doesn't mean we're describing as being ignorant he doesn't have knowledge and he doesn't he's not ignorant even either something else is going on which escapes that dichotomy and it's some other reality which Beyond us to understand but gives it all the powers of knowledge that being the case r avoids the problem and all of this depends on a lot of other premises and elaboration which he does at length in in the guide of the perlex that's why he says there's a gigantic amount of material here it's broader than the sea he just giving you the headlines to show you how he would relate to the problem that's what we did yesterday are we are we together on that questions on that yeah so I'm going back a little bit but um what about with a person who is for instance um let's say he's not keeping kosher right and each day he's not keeping kosher but he's he's toiling with it like he's trying to fight not eat kosher trying to eat kosher right and then you know so Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday is not even kosher and then Wednesday is like all right fine like I've been fighting with this for a long time I'm going to not um I'm going to stop it now right I'm gonna beat only kosher and that day he decides to eat kosher so how would this um concept be working with that like this person goes on and on fighting and fighting but then one day he just really just pushes it aside and goes and keeps go I'm not sure what the while he's fighting it he's wait while he's fighting it he is is still eating shfe yeah okay so he's Gathering his energy he's trying to work himself up to make the decision okay so what's the problem so my problem is like in terms of God knowing that that's going to happen obviously he knows that it's going to happen but um you're you're saying a point where somebody will choose to do a right and then they decide to do b instead so this person going into that day was probably thinking okay I'm probably going to up end up eating tra but then decided to eat kosher yeah so um in terms of like God's knowledge and way that he would you know how like is it any different doing that than saying that somebody decides to do choose b instead of a on see you're you're it's it's sort of like someone saying look I hear the music coming out of the box but could it be a trumpet I have a very little trumpet should we put the little trumpet in the box that would that would that do it you know uh or you say but my my message to you was is not being done with a trumpet it's not being done with a person at all no trumpet and no person at all so I can get trumpet music out of it but not that way I'm not going to do it that way so you're asking but how would God's knowledge work and how would it relate but we're not talking about knowledge we've given up talking about knowledge we're not going to talk about God's knowledge at all because he doesn't have what we call Knowledge so there's no question of working it out with his knowledge we we've given up that talk that's the that's the the depth in what the Rah was doing okay so that that's what we did yesterday now that was chapter five and the this is the beginning of this is chapter six where he deals with a different type of problem oh what happened here oh this is okay I'm I'm just using the English the English side I realized I was putting on something that has Hebrew on the other side [Music] H somebody put papers in there that I didn't put in okay the Hebrew has nothing to do with what we're doing [Music] one okay there's another one that's it okay now the r having dealt with some of the philosophical questions about free will now wants to deal with some textual problems there are things that are written in the tanak in various places which seem to cause difficulties for this idea of free will there are many verses in the Torah and the words of the prophets so here the word Torah means the five books of Moses which appear to contradict this fundamental principle and because of that the majority of people error and think that the Holy One Blessed Be he does decree that a person commit evil or good and the person's heart is not given over to him to direct it towards any path he desires so although the r did quote verses before showing that the Torah says we do have free will there are other verses which seem to show that we don't a free will which is definitely a problem it would be a contradiction in the sources behold I will explain a great and fundamental principle of faith on the basis of which the interpretation of these verses can be understood so first of all he makes an observation when an individual or the people of the country sin The Sinner consciously and willfully committing that sin so you start with Free Will and full responsibility then it is proper to exact retribution as explained that punishment is appropriate to him and punishment is varied and detailed in ways that we don't understand the holy Blessed Be he knows how to exact punishment there are certain sins for which pun Justice determined retribution exacted this world on the sin's person possessions children children are considered as property I'm not going to comment on this and and and deal with this there are other sins for which Justice determines that retribution be exapted in the world to come with no damages coming to this regression in this world there are other sins for which retribution is taken and in this world and in the world to come so there's a wide variety of types of punishment for different types of transgressions and as we said in chapter 3 different types can include not only the legal infraction that's involved but also the psychology of the person what his struggles were what his what his Inspirations were and how much he effort he put into resisting now all of this the idea that when a person commits evil and a certain type of punishment is a is relevant to him when does the B apply when the transgression does not repent however if he repents his Chua is a shield against retribution that means chuva alone rules out any punishment as we have mentioned in the past if you look at chapter one where he says that for certain sins Chua isn't enough to avoid suffering you have to understand that that suffering isn't punishment what could The Suffering be if it isn't punishment it could be that through doing the sin the person has injured himself and he needs repair and the repair for the for the injury is a painful repair like surgery person steals a motorbike and drives it recklessly and then crashes and breaks his bones and then regrets having done it and pays the owner for the damage and Promises never to do it again so and so on okay terrific He restored his moral balance and his spiritual Direction but he has broken bones the pain of the surgery isn't punishment for what he did it's simply the result of what he did it had an effect a delerious effect on himself which has to be overcome so that's the background a person does commit crimes uh punishment is is is appropriate unless he does sh however a person may commit a great sin or many sins causing the Judgment rendered before the true judge to be that the retribution to this transgressor for these sins which he willfully and consciously committed is that Hua will be held back he will not be allowed the chance to repent from his wickedness so that he will be D and be wiped out because of the sin that he committed H so let's see this transgression there punishment the usual rule is well I would say not the usual rule the absolute rule is Du Chua there's no punishment what if the judgment is his sin is so serious that he shouldn't be afforded the possibility of avoiding the punishment Justice requires that he not be given that opportunity to escape punishment through chuva well theoretically there are two ways out one way out would be to say okay let him do Chua and punish him anyway cha has a certain amount of strength when you get when you you build up a liability of 62 Cha's strength is 60 the two is not helped and the two is left over and the person get punished for the two that's one way you could make sure the person gets punished even in in oration and if he does cha the cha won't help won't help in total help only in part the other ways that describes and that is to prevent it from doing chuva now think what that implies if the way out is to prevent from doing Chua what you're saying is chuva always works always that can't be that can't be compromised and since Chua always works so to speak the only way out is to stop him from Chua because if he did Chua it would be over now what does it mean to say chuba always works it means set it up that way it means his commitment to Chua is absolute and Universal and if anything else requires punishment there got to be another way out that Chua works perfectly is built into the very foundation of the creation so when we say Loosely speaking then has to do it this way because there's no other choice what we mean is given that he made the choice to make chuva absolute then it follows that if he wants to have someone be punished he got to stop him from doing chuva it's not as if he he's not all powerful he's living out his own decision he could have decided to do it the other way he just didn't but that's we we're being told here that the commitment to Chua is so powerful and so absolute that some people can reach a level of depravity that they'll be denied the ability to do je and he has a number of verses which illustrate this idea this is implied by the Holy One blessed be his statement in Isaiah make the heart of this people fat and their ears heavy smear over their eyes lest they see with their eyes understand with their hearts repent and be healed that's quite remarkable verse prevent them for realizing what what's happening to them because if they realize it and they do chuva they're going to be healed so prevent them don't let them and by the way this is the Jewish people no this differentiation here between Jews and non-jews similarly says they mocked The Messengers of God means the prophets and the word shouldn't be Messengers the word should be agents this is a standard weak translation that often and even angels are translated sometimes Messengers and really should be asan they mocked The Messengers of God the Agents of God scorned his words scoffed At His prophets until the anger of God mounted up against his people until there was no remedy there was no remedy what does that mean it means the way the ram is explaining it that they're not going to be allowed to do Chua and you see how the dynamic works here there's Crime After Crime After Crime and at a certain point the remedy that really would work if you had it isn't available to them anymore it's not that if they they can have it it won't work that's not possible no but that won't be available to that anymore implied by these verses is that they willingly sinned multiplying their iniquity until it was obliged to hold back their Chua which is referred to as the remedy for these reasons it was written in the Torah I will harden Pharaoh's heart you're probably all familiar with that in the sixth seventh and Ninth plagues when God sends Moses to pharaoh and says tell pharaoh to let the people go God says to Moses I'm telling you to go I'm telling you to tell them to let them go I'm just letting you know it's not going to work because I'm hardening his heart and he can't say yes you could ask what is this theater of the Absurd why go and ask him why do it this way just give up on him you know let him let him hang he'll explain that since he began to sin on his own initiative if you take the verse Dr doesn't explain in detail what he means but if you look at the verses literally the first five plagues it says he hardened his heart on his own doesn't say the god hardened his heart starts with plake six so in addition to enslaving them and persecuting them from before in addition to all of that he also resisted the first five plagues on his own so ra says that's enough cause hardships to the Israelites that dwelt in his land come let us deal wisely with them that's when he initiated the slavery judgment obligated that he be prevented from rep repenting so he would suffer retribution therefore the Holy One Blessed Be he hardened his heart now when I first came across this many years ago before your grandparents were born um it struck me that there may be a problem here isn't the whole purpose of our existence Free Will isn't that what makes us different from whole of the creation whether you talk about squirrels or Angels We Have this feature which gives us a certain superiority over everything else and that we have free will wouldn't taking Free Will away from a person just contradict his existence as a person would contradict his purpose as a person isn't it problematic to think of God removing someone's Free Will has bothered me and I worked on it hard I thought up a pretty elaborate clever philosophical answer to the question and I taught her it for years until I figured out it's really not a question so as you can imagine I don't teach it anymore because the question is not is not a serious question let's ask this we are created with Free Will and Free Will is so to speak our Glory it's our it's our essential uh value how big is God's commitment to our free will quantitatively how much commitment does he have is there any limit to how big his commitment is there's one feature of human existence an absolute feature that sets an absolute limit to God's Comm the Free Will it's called Death after you die there's no more free will everyone's lifetime is going to be finite so this commitment to our Free Will is limited by death it's also limited by Sleep you may have noticed that you spend about 30% of your life asleep you don't make free decisions while you're asleep so there are absolute objective limits to how much free will God is giving us so one way to show the incorrectness of the question is this here's Pharaoh after the fifth plague they were enslaved and then at a certain point decreed all the newborn males should be murdered and then Moses comes and he performs these plagues that each time he tells them he should let them go and he says he will get him they change his mind right guy's a bum guy's a criminal so so to speak God's attitude is and that could be the end of his life no one would have any complaints if he dropped dead after the fifth Blade no one would think there was anything unfair about that surely God doesn't owe him more than five chances so God say right right your life as a life for an individual person has no significance anymore I don't owe you anything there be no Injustice Simply Having You Dro dead now I have a purpose for keeping you alive I have my purposes and I'm going to keep you alive but you have no right to avoid punishment for those cative crimes that I'm not going to let you have that I'm going to take away so it since he could have died if he had died that would the end of his Free Will so now he's kept alive and it's the end of his free will there's no no greater crime of cutting off his Free Will by death or cutting off his Free Will by making him a robot either way he cut off the Free Will and either way Everybody's Free Will is finite so there's no essential essential philosophical problem here how can you have a person alive with with no free will yeah is he punished for the for the crimes that he does while not under his own control so um it's a tricky question it's a tricky question because on the one hand you say well he didn't make those decisions not to let them go he was he wasn't making any free decisions at all God hardened his heart but we spoke about this a few days ago when we talk about the the necessity of of free Free Will for person to be responsible I made the point of saying that it's not for each action it would be very simple to say look did you choose to do it then you're responsible you didn't choose to do it you're not responsible it would be easy simple clear and wrong because there are times when you didn't choose to do something and you're still responsible how could that be because you chose a and when you did a that took away weigh your free bill later and then later you did B without choosing B but only because you didn't have free will that's why you did B and you didn't have free will because of the a that you did so the consequence of one free will choice is when you make a free will Choice sometimes the consequences you're responsible for even though you didn't choose them this is the person who drives when he's drunk when he's drunk and he's driving and he smashes into something he didn't choose to smash into it he was blind drunk but he got drunk and he didn't give his keys to his friends that's how he got into the car to drive drunk then he's going to be responsible for the the destruction that he causes when he's driving drunk because earlier he could have and should have made a decision to prevent that so it's not it's not one by one now the question will be this let's see he Pharaoh accumulated such a record of evil that he has to be punished and the punishment appropriate is to take away his Free Will so that he can't escape well now it's his freely acquired cumul accumulation of evil that makes that the right outcome for him then he could be responsible for that also I'm not sure that's right but it could be it's not it's not it's not open and shut I'm not sure that it's exactly like the drunken case or isn't like a drunken case it be part of his punishment thatd like you just said able to go and make the get thear or anything like that at that point maybe he wanted to you know speculating but yeah no I think that I think that's right it is part of the punishment when you deny something from someone which otherwise would be good for him that's got to be a punishment well I'm sorry I shouldn't say it's got to be a punishment but one of the reasons that can be punishment and he got into this situation by accumulating a record of evil freely so then it fits as as being a punishment I'm saying this in a hesitant tone of voice because I didn't see the RM of discuss it directly so I'm surmising and I can't say it authoritatively but uh but it's a it's a natural it's a natural thing to say so this idea that he's being preserved for some other purpose is explicitly in the verses R quotes the verses for this alone I preserve you so that my name will be spoken about through the earth that is says to make known to all the inhabitants of the world that when the Holy One Blessed Be he withholds repentance from a sinner he cannot repent but he will die in the wickedness that initially committed willfully so God wants this piece of information to be communicated to the world it means let me see if I can put this this way a person may be in good health and strong and not very old and he thinks in terms of having a lot of time in front of him but the time might be dead time can't think well the f is open don't worry there always time and so and so on the time could be dead time so so he should still worry now here he's speaking of pharaoh now he's going to to show you that this isn't this applies more broadly I mean in the history of the world with millions of people he has about five examples so one shouldn't think oh yeah it happened to me you know July and August of last year and soth and so on but it is something which is which knows no specific limits SE was held liable for repentance to be withheld from him s was the non-jewish king whom the Jewish people conquered on the way into the land of Israel there it says the same thing God your lord hardened his spirit and strengthened his heart so that he would make war with you now for those who aren't aware the r holds generally accepted when you make war first you offer peace and it says explicitly that Moses sent Messengers to C to offer him peace and S refused it and raised his army to fight and that's why he was conquered and destroyed so the verse here is saying the reason he did that is because God hardened his heart and that because of the prior sins that he had committed that he didn't deserve be able to change his mind and save himself also the Canaanites he held back from repenting because of their abominable acts so that they would wage war against Israel and here again the Canaanites the Seven Nations also were offered peace and they could have agreed to have peace and they wouldn't have been conquered and destroyed but the verse says in Joshua this was inspired by God to harden their hearts so they should come against Israel in battle in order to utterly destroy them now many people aren't aware of this they think that we have a mandate to wipe out certain Nations um the says in chapter six of the laws of Kings you don't make war against any person not a single person without offering him peace only after the person refuses peace is there a war and then the consequences of the war depending upon who they are are applied to them so there's no such thing as having a responsibility to kill uh people just because of their DNA or just because of their National affiliation even aik even aik mentions there by name and says that that peace has to be offered them first and one one scriptural expression of this in very dramatic terms is that God says to Moses go and attack seon and conquer him and take his land and having been told to go and attack him and conquer him and and and and battle him and take his land then he sends the messenges for peace so the na reader says hey wait a minute God told you to make war so why are you sending Messengers for peace the answer is Moses knows that's how God told us to make war that's how you do it that's how you make war make war by offering peace and if they don't agree to peace then you carry out the war very similar to Moses being a midan and marrying the daughter of ISRO and God says to to Moses go home go go home go back to Egypt and uh and be my agent for The Exodus so what did Moses do he goes to his father-in-law and asks permission and the naiv reader says asks permission what's going on the creator of the universe told him to go he's just go maybe he can send an SMS to his father yeah I'm leaving he's nice guy to ask them to ask him no that's how you do it you don't walk out on your father go and you ask if he says no Then pres presumably you'll descri describe to him what the circumstances are explain that you have a an assignment from God and maybe if bottom if if push came to shove Moses would say well I'm sorry that that this hurts you and I'm sorry that I can't do what you wish of me but I have to go but that's much different from just leaving behind so when you see that kind of adding in a stage which God didn't say the way you understand it is Moses knew that that's the way God wanted it to be done and it's written down for us to know that we should know that we should do it also similarly the Israelites during the eure of Elijah committed many iniquities repentance was held back from those who committed those many sins as it says you have turned your heart their heart backwards H repentance back for them so this is something which applies to Jews and non-jews so the ra says in conclusion the almighty did not decree that Pharaoh should harm the Israelites initially and accumulate his record of of evil or that seon should sit in his land the Canaanites should perform abominable Acts or the Israelites in later generations should worship idols they all sended their own initiative and they were obligated to have chuba held back from them okay we clear now I've been teaching this for a long time maybe 25 years ago I had an occasion to look at the ranman reads the same verses and comes to the opposite conclusion and this was a great lesson for me one of many that reading and interpreting verses is not obvious and even if you hear an interpretation which seems convincing and clear and must be true it might not be might it might not be that it must be true be interpreted otherwise raan explains it as follows let's picture Pharaoh after five plagues comes to the sixth plague endures the the sixth plague and now Moses is saying let them go maybe the cumulative effect of the six plague overwhelmed him he went into a state of panic he couldn't think clearly he was frozen and he would have said yes simp L as without without making a choice at all when United States sent soldiers to Europe in the second world war because they had not there hadn't been a war in a generation because there had never been a war on American soil not not by by far by Vader when they first faced uh enemy fire in Europe I read that 10% froze even froze standing up which made them very good targets for the Germans H look at that scarecrow bang what happened they froze they froze the Panic of hearing the bullets and the bangs around them they just they just couldn't move so says ran maybe Pharaoh the cumulative effect of all the plagues up until then was so great that he lost his free will strengthening his heart means to restore his ability to resist that pressure so that he will have his res Free Will restored so that he can continue to make free decisions who says whether hardening his heart was taking away his free will or hardening his heart was restoring his Free Will from a panic by the way after a while in the second world World War the American Army sent psychological officers with the troops to try to talk to them and prepare them and encourage them so they won't freeze and just get shot by the Germans you see this if you I don't recommend it but boxing matches for example other types of athletic combat where one person is clearly disadvantage especially in boxing where he gets hit as the end of the seventh round and there's a minute between rounds he goes back to his stool over there he says to the to the to the coach it's over so I can't go back out there again I just can't do it now usually the job of the coach is to talk him into going back out there that means saying something to restore his courage to keep fighting so that talk that he gives him is to recover his free when otherwise it would have been lost so that means you you don't have this illustration that that the ram is is bringing at least from the case of pharaoh you don't have that as a proof of the principle that he is that he is um is illustrating now um I think that Ran's explanation fits the experience of pharaoh pretty well the other cases we have very much less information about I don't know whether s suffered so many reverses on the basis of his evil behavior that this would just be another accumulated evil that would have taken away his Free Will and then he needed to have it restored since we're ignorant of the exact circumstances ran is free to say that all that the way he explains it in Farah is typical of all the cases so this principle that's that explaining in the ramb shouldn't be taken as a an absolute principle on the other hand I don't hear where now I'm just telling you my own intuition now that someone could object to the the r on principal grounds I think the principal grounds we've we've described they he feel that the explanation of the verses is is better suit more suited the way the ran explains it but I don't see that uh that should be rejected on on on philosophical grounds so that's his explanation of all these verses where the the Torah says that God does according to Ram take away free will but that shouldn't influence someone to say oh well The Jig Is up no one has free will we're really squirrels no this happens only in the rare case that a person's accumulation of evil is so great that he loses the the value of of continuing to have free will so it won't be an objection to the proposition that almost everything that almost everyone does is a result of Free Will okay okay tomorrow afternoon is Q&A I think Tuesday I'll give you an introduction to rashash and we'll pick up the laws of of CHA next week you know we have we have a whole week session