Shabbat Shalom. It’s great to be back in Lakeview this Shabbat. To be honest, being in Miami last Shabbat was also pretty great. The weather was great. The company was great – there were over 400 runners who had raised money for Chai Lifeline, including quite a few members of ASBI and ASBI “alumni.” On the course, we were joined by over 200 runners who had raised money for the OU’s NCSY Yachad program, and dozens raising money for Chabad’s Friendship Circle. I also noticed runners who were collecting money for FIDF.
Somehow – and I don’t really know why, there is something about long-distance running that is conducive to fundraising and the Jewish community is at the forefront of this form of tzedakah.
It was so very inspiring last Sunday morning to be surrounded by so many others who were doing so much good even as we were having fun. I was filled with pride that so many members of this community had dedicated so very much of their time on behalf of a worthy tzedakah project, and I was filled with gratitude, and I remain so very grateful, to the dozens of members of this community who sponsored Team Cara and have made such a decisive difference for Chai Lifeline and the crucial, life sustaining work they do on behalf of very sick children and their families.
And I also made a discovery. I discovered that I’m an athlete! I’ve now completed two half-marathons. Admittedly, my time was not very impressive – but my times are getting better, and my competitiveness has been aroused along with my curiosity about how much faster I could get.
Running is a perfect sport for me – because no skill is needed. Certainly the way I run requires no skill – just the willingness to put one foot in front of the other and the decision to practice putting one foot in front of the other.
In this way, running can be seen as a philosophical sport – there is no element of luck, no special talent, just the outcome of the choices that runners have made to train – or not to train.
But that philosophical perfection makes running a boring sport to watch. Sports are exciting, both as a player and as a spectator when the outcome of the game is the result of an unpredictable mixture of training, and skill, and luck. The uncertainty, and the way that those factors combine in unpredictable ways make sports exciting and entertaining. The same is true, by the way, of board games. Nate Silver’s website recently analyzed the best board games in the world and identified those games which have elements of chance, but that also have elements of skill, where the choices that players make will impact the outcome of the game.
We see in this week’s parasha, once again and for the last time, the theme of free choices and the indispensability of free choices for ethically meaningful life, in the Torah’s troubling description of God’s intervention, to harden Pharaoh’s heart, to take away his freedom and lead him to a disastrous pursuit of the escaping Hebrew slaves.
וְחִזַקתִּ֣י אֶת־לֵב־פַרעֹה֮ וְרד֣ף אַחֲריהֶם֒ וְאִכָבְד֤ה בְפַרעֹה֙ ובְכָל־חֵיל֔ו וְיָדע֥ו מִצְר֖יִם כִּי־אֲנִ֣י ה׳ וַיַּֽעֲשו־כֵֽן׃
Rambam, Maimonides, so emphatically explained, and explained again, all of moral life, our stance as beings who are held accountable to moral standards, is predicated on the assertion that human beings make free choices about our actions and about our characters. Rambam was troubled by God denying Pharaoh the dignity of choice when his heart was hardened throughout the exodus process.
I’ve discussed, on more than one occasion, Rambam’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s lack of freedom. His heart was hardened as a punishment. Of his own free will he had committed so many wicked acts, acts of violence and oppression against his Hebrew slaves, that he was denied the opportunity to have his problem solved for him in an easy and elegant way. God punished Pharaoh by hardening his heart and the doctrine of perfect human freedom is preserved.
For philosophers, miracles are an embarrassment. God’s glory is revealed in the ordered conduct of the universe. The existence of natural laws and the cycles of nature that work so well without the need for Divine intervention is the greatest testimony concerning the wisdom and splendor of the Creator. Miracles, for Jewish philosophers, need to be severely limited to specific situations where they do not undermine our appreciation of the God who created an orderly and functional universe.
And so there is a conflict between Rambam’s understanding of God’s punishment of Pharaoh and his philosophical reluctance to credit miraculous interventions whenever a plausible non-miraculous explanation can be proposed. Rambam is quite clear that the list of circumstances in which miracles may occur does not include interventions on behalf of a wicked person. God does not intervene into the affairs of the wicked. They do not deserve that degree of hasghacha, divine supervision, of their lives. With this understanding, how could God have punished Pharaoh by taking away Pharaoh’s freedom?
The simplest explanation is that the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, although not voluntary, is nonetheless the product of natural and normal human psychological processes. If we act in a certain way, if we cultivate certain feelings, if we make ourselves insensitive to suffering that surrounds us, if we get used to all of the advantages of exploited labor, then we lose our ability to choose differently. God didn’t have to miraculously harden Pharaoh’s heart. Hearts become hard all on their own under those circumstances.
The drama of life lies in the interstices of choice and compulsion. There are factors beyond our control, there are choices that are ours to make, and as we habituate ourselves to behaviors and thoughts, we sometimes acquire greater moral freedom, and sometimes squander our free will and have it fade away as happened to Pharaoh, with tragic results.
The appeal of baseball, I believe, comes from the combination of skill, training, a thousands choices each player makes in every game, and a lot of luck. An individual player can play very well, and yet still lose a game. A player can make poor choices on the ball field and still accrue a winning record because of the performance of his teammates, or because of the even worse performance of the opposing team.
Ernie Banks, the great Chicago Cubs first-baseman, who died just last week, is a perfect example of this dynamic. Banks, considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, never won a championship. Banks was inducted into the baseball hall of fame the very first year that he was eligible and yet he played a record number of games, 2528, without ever making it to the post-season.
Baseball can be like that. There are things beyond our control that determine whether or not we win the game. But we can control our attitude. Banks was called “Mr. Sunshine” because of his good attitude and his love of the game. This is called good sportsmanship, but it can also be called stoicism – the philosophical recognition that we always retain the ability to chose how we will respond to the reality that confronts us.
Rav Aharon Lichtenstein has written:
“There is no question that within the essentially trivial world of sports, real moral greatness and real moral degradation can be seen.”
That’s true of our performance as players and it’s true in our capacity as fans – how we enjoy sports and which sports we follow.
Sports are not important and winning and losing is, as Rav Lichtenstein writes, essentially trivial. But so many of our trials and tribulations, our victories and defeats, are essentially trivial in the broad sweep of history. And, like a baseball player, we never have full control over the outcome of the games that we play. But we do have control over our attitude and we have the ability to choose how we respond to all that we encounter. Those choices are what enable moral greatness to be seen.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 