Is "Choose Life" Really A Choice?

Deut: 30:19: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.”

It’s your birthday, and I’m giving you two presents. One of them is horrible; something no one would want. So I’m telling you to pick the other one! But why then did I put two down in the first place – why not just give the nice one? Isn’t that a kind of unpleasant mind game? And what if you want the horrible one, will I give it to you?

And seriously: what is the point of giving someone a choice and then commanding them to pick only one, thereby removing that choice?

But is it indeed a commandment, or just a strong recommendation? That’s the difficulty in the Torah, that some things that are worded so they sound like commands are not actually so, e.g. “six days you shall work and on the seventh day is for rest” (I did hear one opinion that this is in fact a mitzvah to work!).

I hear in our verse not a command, but a heartfelt request and strong encouragement. We are allowed to choose the path of life or the path of death, that is how the world is structured. The way I hear G-d’s voice is—so to speak—imploring us, saying:

I have put terrible things into the world I have created. Enough of them that you can choose to focus on them all day every day, and become suffused with feelings of anger, disgust, and despair. I will not take away your free will; you get to decide where to put your eyes. But please, for the sake of this grand experiment I have called Life, please make dozens of tiny choices every day and every week to look at the good. ‘For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it.’” (Deut: 30:14)

Something in human nature pulls us constantly into the negative. I find that the only way to remain in the positive place, the “choosing life” place, is to constantly make endless small good choices.
Rambam (Hilchot Teshuva 3:4) notes we should behold ourselves as evenly balanced between innocence and guilt, and see the entire world similarly…. “if he performs one good deed, behold, he will overbalance himself and the whole world to the side of virtue, and bring about his own and their salvation and escape..." Every time we choose the good, we tip the scales, we move into the realm of good, we face the right direction. And we will receive help to keep going there. As the Sages say, “The way in which a person wishes to go, they are led.”

Once a year, we read these words “Choose Life”. But we should really hear them every day, every hour and every moment.

Points of Choice

In three of the five megillahs we find a central moment that contains a weighty choice by a woman, which is the pivot for the entire narrative and its moral messages. Two of these choices are positive ones, and one is not.

I -  In the Book of Ruth, it is that moment in which Naomi urges her daughters-in-law to return to Moab. Ruth refuses to do so (1:14):

And they lifted up their voice, and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but Ruth held fast to her

This choice, and Ruth's subsequent famous speech, leads to her marriage with Boaz and the subsequent birth of the Davidic lineage.

II -   In the Scroll of Esther, Mordechai sends Queen Esther the terrifying instruction that she must go to the King although she has not been called - which carries a penalty of death.  

Mordechai says (4:14):

For if you remain silent at this time, then shall relief and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but you and your father’s house shall be destroyed. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

Esther replies in verse 16:

Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day; I also and my girls will fast likewise; and so will I go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.

This fateful and heroic choice leads to the salvation of the Jews of the Persian Empire.

III -  In the Song of Songs, we see a different kind of moment. The two lovers have been seeking each other. He has finally arrived at her abode and knocks at the door. Instead of eagerly answering it, she is suddenly attacked by a moment of torpor and apathy, and makes a strange choice not to arise (5:3):

I have taken off my robe; how could I put it on? I have bathed my feet; how could I soil them?

Although a moment later, she realises her folly and jumps up, he has already gone. They do not meet.

The Song of Songs is traditionally symbolic of the relationship between God and the Jewish people. In this verse are encapsulated all those moments in which the Jewish people did not leap up to answer God's call, in whatever way that was manifest - often with disastrous consequences.

This is the negative. But fortunately, we have Ruth's shining example and later that of Esther.

Fascinating, though, is a strong textual link between the Esther and the Song of Songs narratives. We find Esther explaining to King Ahasuerus:

For how can I endure to see the evil that shall come to my people? or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred? (Esther 8:6)

The Hebrew word here for "how" is איככה. This is the very same word used by the female lover in the Song of Songs for "how could I put it on?" The word איככה appears nowhere else in the Tanach, and clearly signals a connection between the two stories.

Esther's איככה, her realisation of "I could not possibly (abandon my people)"shows that she has heard and answered the knock of destiny on her door. In doing so, she atones for and recitifies the moment of wooden-heartedness and sluggishness on the part of the lover who cannot possibly don her robe right now.

Choose Life!

"Choose Life!" Some thoughts on the inner workings of Free Will. Video dvar Torah.