I’ve written this week’s piece with great apprehension, touching as it does upon what is, according to the Rambam (Maimonides), “the fundamental concept and a pillar of the Torah.” That is, free will. Yet, at least according to the Ramban (Nachmanides) – who in many ways stood as the Rambam’s philosophical counterpart, illuminating an entirely different worldview – this week’s Torah portion seems to highlight the limits of free will as well, the boundaries of this “fundamental concept.”
Let me explain. Pulsating under the many episodes of this week's sedra is the inevitable tension inbuilt in human life: this clash between our free choice, on the one hand, and our preordained destiny or the Divine plan, on the other. As the Ramban writes:
“The divine decree is real… The Holy One, blessed be He, arranged Yosef to meet a guide without his knowledge in order to bring him into his brother’s hands… ‘It is the counsel of the Eternal that shall stand’” (Bereshit, 37:15).
Regarding the names of Tamar’s children, the Ramban further comments that “the names bestowed upon children indicate their future.” One’s fate, it seems, is fixed.
One doesn’t need to study the commentators to pick up on this theme. The verses themselves weave together a gripping story of pre-ordained destinies. No matter how surprising or twisted the path they take, Yosef; Tamar; the Butler and the Baker all seem to have an inevitable future in store for them. For some, their fate was even divinely revealed to them, prophetically projected by dreams they envisioned decades earlier.
On the other hand, as we’ve said, pre-ordained fate is not the only force pulling the strings behind these stories. There is a contradictory force as well: their free will. Their actions and agency also seem to drive their futures. The brothers’ scheming to be rid of their brother Yosef, Reuven and Yehuda’s defiant suggestions to the other brothers, trying to stop them from murdering Yosef, Er and Onan’s deplorable acts, Tamar’s deception of Yehuda, Yehuda’s admittance that he was the owner of the belongings Tamar had kept, and Yosef’s noble fleeing from the advances of Potiphar’s wife are all free choices, often made at the very last moment and against their natural instincts. Their futures, it seems, were dictated not just by fate (the preordained prophecies and dreams) but by their free will; the choices they made at critical crossroads they faced.
This relationship, between free will and its limits, between what is in our hands and what has been divinely preordained, is a very real tension, reflected perhaps by the two titans of medieval Jewish Philosophy themselves. In his writings, the Ramban consistently emphasises the Divine’s control over human destiny, advising man to act humbly and place his trust in God. The Rambam, on the other hand, starkly stresses human free will and agency, the power we have over our freely chosen lives; advocating not so much trust in God, but a quest for man to actively know Him (although it is, of course, more complicated).
To a certain extent, perhaps there will always be this tension between God’s plan and our free will, between quietism and activism (a fusion of the Ramban and the Rambam, as it were). Yosef himself perhaps reflects this very tension. Despite the prophetic dreams of his youth forecasting his future, he nevertheless acts to orchestrate their fulfilment himself, exercising his free will to try and make them come true. Later, however, perhaps a more passive, trusting stance emerges as he recognises the Divine hand in all that he endured. He declares to his brothers, “be not distressed nor reproach yourselves for having sold me, for God sent me ahead of you to act as a provider… Am I instead of God? Although you intended to harm me, God intended it for good, in order to keep a great nation alive.” As Yaakov makes clear on his deathbed, Yosef was guided not by his own initiative but by “the hands of the mighty Power of Jacob,” God.
This issue, of free will versus God’s plan, the clash between our decisions and the destiny allocated to us, is a knotty one; certainly unsolved here! Yet, perhaps that is precisely the point. Our sedra seems filled this tension and it perhaps exists within all our lives: When do we clamour to exercise our free will and when do we utter the refrain, like Yosef, that “all that the Merciful One does, is for the good?”
Whilst we indeed have control over many of our choices and free reign over our lives; we nevertheless remain somewhat bound by our upbringing, environment, and the responsibilities we are committed to – the divine plan allocated for us, where “God has sent us.” Each of us “according to his own dreams and according to its interpretation.”
Gavriel Cohn works in The PR Office, a London-based Public Relations and Public Affairs firm. Thoughts? Please get in touch! gavcohn@gmail.com or on LinkedIn.