Hanukah begins just as Shabbat is going out.  This reminds me of what rabbi Aaron, the rabbi of a shul I prayed at when I was in Jerusalem, said a few years back.  He shared how Hanukah is a time of juxtaposition between the individual and the community.  I want to take it a step further; I want to talk about the juxtaposition of free will and fate.  Now before anyone asks about free will versus haShem (God) being all knowing, I want to say that is a different enough topic that I want to save it for another time. 🙂

So, we all know the dilemma here:  Either I can choose what I want, or my choices are all planned out.  This way of looking at the problem is very black and white.  The Jewish perspective is not this or that, rather it is this AND that.  Free will exists AND fate exists.  How is this possible and what does this have to do with this week’s Torah portion (parsha)?

According to Jewish tradition, haShem created the world for a specific purpose.  For haShem, the end result is what is important.  He told Avraham that his people will be slaves in Egypt.  This part is fated.  What he doesn’t say is how they will get there.  How they get there is up to them; it is their free will.

Let us see how this plays out in the parsha.  First, as we said above, we have fate that says the family of Yaakov (Jacob) is going to Egypt.  From the parsha, it is clear that Yoseph (Joseph) is to go there first to establish a haven for the family of Yaakov, and his brothers are instrumental in getting him there.  This is fated.  What is not fated is how Yoseph is to come to Egypt.  According to the parsha, Yoseph starts off as a clueless brat.  He is constantly tattling on his brothers, which  is not a way to endear him to his siblings.  He also cannot keep his mouth shut, as evidenced from his telling everyone about his dreams:  “Your sheafs of wheat will bow down to my sheaf of wheat,” and, “11 stars, the sun, and the moon, will all bow down to the star that is me.”  He needs to grow up.  So his father sends him from Emek Hebron (which means the depth of community) to Schem (which has been freshly destroyed by the family – see last week’s parsha) to look for his brothers.  A mystery man finds him fumbling around there and directs him to where his brothers are (another case of fate:  Yoseph’s brothers are the instrument that sends him to Egypt, and Yoseph is such a bumbler at this point in his life, he can’t find them).  When he finally finds his brothers, they throw him into a pit, and then sell him to Midianites/Ishmayelites who sells him as a slave to the royal butcher of Egypt and he eventually gets thrown into prison.  As was noted above, it is a given that Yoseph’s brothers were to help him get to Egypt.  The question is could it have happened in a different way?

I think so.  I think that if Yoseph had started out with better character traits, his brothers would have sent him to Egypt in style.  It was Yoseph’s choice in how he acted.  It was also his brother’s choice in deciding how he was to go to Egypt.

Ok.  I can see people saying that I am going on pure speculation.  So, let’s see what else is going on in the parsha.  Yehuda (Judah) gets married and has 3 sons: Er, Onan, and Shaleh.  Er marries a woman named Tamar and dies because he was evil in haShem’s eyes.  In Jewish law, if a man dies before his wife gives birth, and he has a brother, the brother can marry his sister-in-law so she can produce children in her original husband’s name.  Yehuda tells Onan to do this, but Onan refuses to get Tamar pregnant (by spilling his seed on the ground), and so haShem kills him.  Why the harsh penalty?  Because haShem has fated that King David will come from Tamar and be descended from Yehudah.  haShem leaves it to free will as to who the father will be.  Both Er and Onan die as a result of their choices.  Yehuda than chooses not to give Tamar to his final son, Shaleh.  The result of this choice is that Yehuda is the one that gets Tamar pregnant.

So, what we see here is that certain events are determined by fate.  However, how we get to these events is our free choice.  We can listen to haShem whisper his desires into our ears and follow them, or we can wait until he hits us with a baseball bat.  The choice is ours.

As we sit in the darkest time of year, I pray that all of us can see the spark of light shining in the darkness, and that we choose to take the steps whispered to us by the light and not wait for the baseball bat.

Happy Hanukah,

About the Author

Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.