The day before my birthday, I had a furious fight with my husband Leib. In truth, we rarely argue, thanks to his calm and patient disposition. Leib is as tranquil as I am volatile, as mellow as I am quick-tempered. That day, however, realizing that our burgeoning overdraft allowed no money for him to take me out to dinner for my birthday, I found myself irately blaming him for our financial problems. I fired hurtful accusations that I never intended to utter. I was out of control.
It took an hour of working on myself to calm down, to change the inner tape, to realize the damage I had inflicted on the person I most love, and to ask forgiveness. Leib readily forgave me. We hugged and made up, but the distance I had created with my invectives hung between us like a foul smell. Despite Leib's loving birthday card and sweet homemade gift, it was a miserable evening.
The next day, like every year, we planned to celebrate my birthday by going on a family excursion to see the wildflowers. This year we planned to make the hour and a half drive across Israel to a hilltop near Rishon LeTzion where the rare argamon iris was in full bloom. As a special birthday dispensation, I asked Leib and my teenage daughter Pliyah to prepare the picnic lunch, so I would have extra time to pray my morning prayers at the Kotel (the Western Wall).
I was still despondent about my outburst the previous day. I felt both trapped in a place I didn't want to be and helpless to break out. Tshuva (repentance) in Judaism entails five steps, one of which is to take upon oneself not to repeat the sin. But how could I resolve not to lash out like that again when my hurtful words had tumbled out reflexively, without my conscious choice, almost beyond my control?
As I stood there praying beside the holy Wall, an idea occurred to me. From now on, whenever I was about to say anything charged to my husband, I would take the ring I wear on my right hand, transfer it to my left hand, then transfer it back to my right hand. During the time it would take me to do this, I would ask myself the question: Will what I am about to say distance me from my husband or draw me closer? Since I never want to be distant from my beloved husband, if the answer is, "distance," I would choose not to say it… even if it's true, even if it's justified. I would simply choose closeness.
Revitalized and happy with this new tactic, I left the Kotel and jumped into our car as Leib and the children drove past the Kotel plaza. We were off to see the wildflowers.
Not having eaten breakfast, I was hungry. "What food did you pack?" I asked them.
"I don't know," Leib responded. "You asked Pliyah to pack the lunch."
Pliyah was taken aback. "I only packed tuna sandwiches. I thought Abba was supposed to pack the rest -- the fruit and potato chips and cookies."
"Well, nobody told me anything about food," Leib answered dismissively.
I was about to say: "What? I certainly did tell you. I even told you where you could find the potato chips. Why don't you ever listen to me? Now what are we supposed to do with only half a lunch and no money to buy snacks? We'll all get hungry and cranky!"
As I sat there in my self-chosen silence, I experienced a feeling of exaltation and freedom.
That's what I wanted to say. Instead, I transferred my ring from my right hand to my left and back to my right while asking myself, "Will saying this distance me from my husband or draw us closer?" Clearly it would distance us, as mutual recriminations would give way to guilt and defensiveness and sweeping condemnations. So I kept my mouth shut.
That's when it happened. As I sat there in my self-chosen silence, I experienced a feeling of exaltation and freedom. I could do it! I could choose which course I wanted to follow according to where I wanted to end up. I was in control. I was free.
WHAT IS FREEDOM?
On Passover, every Jew is obligated to see himself or herself as if s/he personally had gone out of Egypt. This strains the imaginative powers of even the most imaginative of us. Back-breaking labor, massive bricks, the crack of the whip of the Egyptian taskmaster, the humiliations and torture of slavery are all so remote from our experience that, try as we may, the empirical sense of being enslaved eludes us. How, then, can each of us personally experience liberation from slavery? If we look carefully at the Torah's account of the Exodus, we see that slavery to Pharaoh is juxtaposed to service of God. To give one of many examples: "God said to Moses: 'Come to Pharaoh and speak to him, "So says God, the Lord of the Hebrews: 'Send out My people that they may serve Me.'" [Ex. 9:1]
The opposite of Egyptian bondage was not a libertine free-for-all. The objective and culmination of the Exodus was the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. God makes this clear the very first time He reveals Himself to Moses at the burning bush. "When you take the people out of Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain." [Ex. 3:12]
The essential connection between freedom and Divine service is evident in the Hebrew calendar. From the second day of Passover, Jews begin counting 49 days until Shavuot, the holiday which commemorates the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Shavuot is considered the culmination of Passover. Ultimate freedom, by the Torah's definition, means serving God.
This is surprising. The 613 commandments of the Torah are often regarded from the outside as 613 restrictions. How can they be synonymous with freedom?
TWO VOICES
According to cognitive psychology, all human actions are in response to an "inner tape" which plays non-stop in the human brain. This tape is most often recorded by heredity and environment. It tells us what to do, and, like automatons, we obey: "That person just insulted you. Insult him back!" "That driver just cut you off. Get angry!"
This is the Torah's definition of slavery. This is the voice of Pharaoh; it brooks no disobedience, nor does it even occur to us to disobey. There is no such thing as a bad slave, because a slave has no viable choices. For most of our waking hours, it does not even occur to us to disobey or change our inner tape.
In a world driven by the survival instinct and the pleasure principle, the Torah mandated an alternative way of life driven by holiness and spiritual values. The ethics of the Torah have become so imbued in Western civilization that we may not realize what a radical alternative they offered to ancient man -- and continue to offer to us today. As historian Paul Johnson notes:
Most law codes of the ancient Near East are property-oriented, people themselves being forms of property whose value can be assessed. The Mosaic code is God-oriented… In Mosaic theology, man is made in God's image, and so his life is not just valuable, it is sacred… Whereas other codes provided the death penalty for offences against property, such as looting during a fire, breaking into a house … , in the Mosaic law no property offence is capital. Human life is too sacred where the rights of property alone are violated…
The Mosaic laws were very strict in sexual matters. For instance, the Ugaritic laws, revealed in the Ras Shamra tablets, permitted fornication, adultery, bestiality and incest in certain circumstances. The Hittites would allow some forms of bestiality (though not incest). The Egyptians regarded consanguinity as relatively unimportant. The Israelites, by contrast, banned all irregular forms of sex, and they had a list of forbidden degrees of marriage, including affinity as well as consanguinity. [A History of the Jews, pp. 33-36]
With the giving of the Torah, a human being was no longer a slave to the imperatives of his/her sexual desires. A second voice -- the Divine voice -- mandated a different, sacred course of action. The human being was free to choose. The exercise of choice itself is freedom.
That freedom entails choice is obvious when we observe the elections held in countries ruled by dictators. All the accoutrements of free elections are there, such as voting booths and secret ballots. But if only one candidate is running, the election is clearly not “free.” Freedom requires choice.
When God gave the Jewish people the Torah, He gave us 613 choices. Observe Shabbat or not. Love your neighbor or not. Gossip or not. Unlike Pharaoh, God, as you might have noticed, brooks a great deal of disobedience. That's why a person who violates a Divine commandment is not struck by lightening. Immediate punishment would limit our freedom of choice. The ability to make moral choices is a Divine gift. It's the only true freedom humans have.
The key phrase here is "moral choice." Your decision whether to go to the movies or a ballet tonight, or whether to eat vanilla or chocolate ice cream is not an exercise of free will. Since there is no moral element present, they are mere preferences, not choices.
The very act of choosing between your knee-jerk response and the Divine imperative to be kind is freedom.
Only in the moral realm do you have free choice. When your inner tape says to give tit for tat, to respond to an insult with an even more lethal barb, you have the power to change the tape. You have the power to ask yourself, "Is this who I really want to be?" The very act of choosing between your knee-jerk response and the Divine imperative to be kind is freedom.
Each of us at every moment is heeding the voice of Pharaoh or the voice of God. The voice of Pharaoh commands us to do what is instinctive, automatic, reflexive. "Doing what comes naturally," is ultimate bondage because we exercise no power of choice.
The voice of God, on the other hand, offers an alternative to instinct. For example, by commanding us not to take revenge [Lev. 19:18], God in effect is saying: "Your instinct is to hurt those who hurt you. By commanding you to act otherwise, I'm offering you the ability to choose a different course."
The exercise of choice is the essence of freedom. Forget the taskmaster's whip and the massive bricks. Each of us is enslaved every time we act on automatic pilot, every time we react according to our instinctual programming.
To experience liberation this Passover, we need only to break the bonds of instinct, to learn to deliberate and decide what we shall do or what we shall say, based on who we want to become -- a slave of Pharaoh or a servant of God.
(28) James Grant, March 29, 2007 1:59 PM
Refreshing and Insightful Jorney
Thank you for such a blessing!
It's so freshing when you can find youself reading a passage of writing on spiritual matters, and sence the inner trust to "let go" and to let the words take you to the place where you know that "you are beside still waters." Thank you for this refreshing in my soul, I felt healed within my spirit and ministered to. Man-made relationships can be so difficult to maintain (its the slavery), but God-made relationships is such a rest! I know that living daily in the Holy City can be a challenge but I bless you for it...Please enjoy our God there as much as you can...I bless both you and yours. Amen.
(27) Anonymous, March 23, 2007 11:01 AM
Thank you so much for this wonderful article it is one of the most amazing explanations i ever heard on slavery, and freedom. I really gained a lot from reading it. I would also like to thank you for always describing realistic scenarios and saying it like it is. I guess it just makes the rest of us feel normal. Thanks again and have a Chag Kasher Vsameach.
(26) Anonymous, March 22, 2007 10:48 PM
Great lesson
Sometimes I want to do something that someone did to me and then I remember that it's an aveirah to take revenge and I stop myself
(25) Mansfielder rebbe, March 22, 2007 11:46 AM
Terrific, touching and emes! Happy Birthday ad meah v'esrim (free)years!
(24) Anonymous, March 20, 2007 1:13 PM
Free will or mere preferences
Your article is very good. I have one thing to add. When you stated that your decision over vanilla or chocolate ice cream or movies or ballet is just a preference and not a choice, I differ. When you read the Torah and the commandments you realize that every decision is hinged directly on the Torah. Chocolate has a stimulant;is the movie wicked or uplifting,is the ballet full of explicit sexual scenes? Do you allow evil before your eyes? Do you allow the stimulant to effect your behavior towards others? Such questions are based on Torah, and are not just mere preferences, but do have a moral element. If you know what Torah says, and the meaning behind the words, then every choice you make should be prayerfully thought through, and you should ask yourself how it will effect your relationship with God. We are commanded not to set evil before our eyes, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, therefore mere preferences should not exist. As the taking off the ring to one finger and then to the other gave you the time to reflect on your relationship with your husband, so too should time be taken to reflect on how your 'preferences' will effect the relationship that we all should cherish above all others and that is the relationship with the Father.
(23) Freda Goldman, March 18, 2007 5:47 PM
I love reading Rigler's and Rosenbloom's works.
We are fortunate that Rigler and Rosenbloom found Yiddishkeit and shared their extraordiary spirituality, wisdom, and talents with us. Rigler's Holy Woman is a wonderful,inspiring read.
(22) Helen, March 18, 2007 2:43 PM
supported by twin studies
Your idea that "doing what comes naturally" is less "free" than making a reasoned choice is supported by observations of identical twins separated at birth and reared apart, often not even knowing they had a twin. When they meet as adults, it is spooky how much they have in common: many have had the same kinds of pets and given them the same names; one pair of twin sisters showed up each wearing 4 bracelets and a ring on one hand and a watch, three bracelets and two rings on the other; one set of twin brothers who lived on different continents each had the habit of flushing the toilet twice before using it and each had built a circular white bench around a tree in his front yard. There are scores of such observations. When people just act on a whim, the result is often apparently something whose roots are programmed in their genes. It is the deliberate, reasoned choices that allow us to go beyond those impulses and constraints and do something truly free.
(21) Anonymous, March 18, 2007 2:15 PM
That was great. I love the honesty with which you tell stories and how quickly you learn from them and change yourself...you're amazing!
(20) Ashira, March 18, 2007 11:07 AM
Wonderful!!
Hi Sara,
Thank you for another terrific article that we can use to make such a difference in our lives! I hope to get to see you again in the near future to visit more at length! Much love!
(19) Toby, April 11, 2005 12:00 AM
Sara You Are Great
Sara, Hi from NY. Your example and story was very fitting I appreciate your depths as always. Regards to everyone at Reb. Heller's Group. I miss Israel terribly.
(18) Braha Shore, April 10, 2004 12:00 AM
I love the line about 613 choices. Juicy, satisfying, and delicious. *Big smile.* Thank you so very much.
(17) David Bedford, April 6, 2004 12:00 AM
Your clarity seems to give me comfort
I am not a Jew, but by had great curiosity as to why Jews were so hated around the world. I could not understand the origins, or why a people who contributed so much had to endure this animosity. So, after a Google search I came upon www.aish.com and began to read the history of the Jews. I have just finished number six on Issac and will continue on until I have read them all.
Having been a protestant all my life, without a great attendance record in church, I find myself at 64 seeking knowledge about spiritual things. I find that this web site makes me want to learn more about the Jewish faith. I will be disappointed when I have read all of your articles.
I would like to learn more when I have completed this website, is there another source of knowledge that I can go to...
Thanks so much, and keep up the good works...
(16) Amber Baker, April 5, 2004 12:00 AM
Thank you for ring transfer story.
I was definitley in need of this example. I will be employing the ring transfer from now on. Sometimes it's hard to pause and think before you speak, this will definitly help me, both in my marriage, family and other situations.God bless you.
(15) Chaim B. Colen, M.D., April 4, 2004 12:00 AM
empowerment
The concept that Sarah brings out by this story even applies to the physician-patient relationship, EMPOWER the patiet with knowledge, then let them deliberate to make a morally correct CHOICE (our divine gift).
Chaim B. Colen, M.D.
(14) Beverly Kurtin, April 2, 2004 12:00 AM
Yes!
Apart from the very gift of life itself, the freedom to choose is the most liberating gift of all. I'm happy most of the time; not because I'm necessarily well off or in great health, but because I CHOOSE to be happy. Being able to CHOOSE what mood I will be in, what I will say when someone says something negative to me, when a bad driver cuts me off on the Interstate (why DOES Hawaii have an Interstate?), etc. is the single most liberating feeling in the world.
Where is it written that we have to be in a bad mood because it is raining? And for that matter, why do people say it is raining OUTSIDE? Where ELSE would it rain? When I remind them that the sun is still shining they look at me as though I came in from another planet. I remind them that their thoughts are too low...go flying and see the sun!
As I was recovering from my latest heart attack last December, I had fun entertaining the staff by putting on a clown's nose or Grocho Marx glasses. Yes, even in a hospital bed one is allowed to have fun! Am I not aware of my mortality? Of course I am, but since I plan to live to be over 100, why worry?
The lessons of Pesach aren't just for Pesach, they are meant to be appreciated year 'round. We've been free for a few thousand years; let's rejoice in that freedom every single day.
I wish for a wonderful Pesach for all!
(13) daniel, April 1, 2004 12:00 AM
super aish
The more I read at aish.com the more interested I become in the wonderful world of Judaism. Hag Sameach everyone.
(12) petr, March 31, 2004 12:00 AM
Freedom of mind
Sometimes it is a hard fight to break free from the bonds which in fact only exist in one's own mind. Getting anger under control is one of my ultimate goals. The sense of freedom and peace of mind it brings is just great. Thank you Sarah.
(11) Anonymous, March 30, 2004 12:00 AM
Free Will is true freedom. The freedom to make different choices than our old tapes would have us do
This article was very inspiring as are all of Sarah Rigler's writings. I will absolutely practice exercising my freedom of choice in relationships in a new and more creative way now. Thank you Sarah
(10) Michael Thompson, March 30, 2004 12:00 AM
Very Nice Essay
Everybody else has already written what I wanted to say, so I'll just echo their comments and say good job Sarah!
(9) Michelle, March 30, 2004 12:00 AM
An Inspiration
Dear Rebbetzin Rigler,
Before reading this Pesach article, I read the article you wrote in 'Jewish Women Speak about Jewish Matters'. You are truly an inspiration. The distance that you have traveled to reach the point when you can write such a wonderful piece on freedom is very far, thus making it very inspirational to read your articles. Isn't Hashem amazing? Thanks to Hashem, you are Jewish and have the talent to write effectively enough to help other people understand mitzvot better and become better Jews. You're great!
Thank you for having so much confidence in my ability to change my tape...
Have a wonderful and free Pesach!
-Michelle
(8) raye, March 30, 2004 12:00 AM
Count to ten or 100 if necessary
What a wonderful example, the author shares with us on how she gained perspective over what was, after all, a very trivial matter. No potato chips - less cholesterol!! Serenity maintained.
(7) jennifer, March 30, 2004 12:00 AM
leaving Egypt
I think i might be a slave to my temper, and it never takes me to where I want to be.
(6) Tara Kieschnick, March 29, 2004 12:00 AM
Article "Born Free"
Wow...what revelation! Freedom...the ability to choose what is RIGHT, not to simply choose what I WANT! Thanks for such an insightful article!
(5) Anonymous, March 29, 2004 12:00 AM
Incredible insight!
This article has great implications for understanding teenagers. Parents spend all of the earlier childhood years basically grooming their kids to be ready for when "instinct" tries to take over - What a great way of looking at it!
(4) Paulo Chvaicer (Peretz ben Tuba, ben Yaacov), March 29, 2004 12:00 AM
Very good, sensitive, deep. Direct to our souls!
(3) Anonymous, March 29, 2004 12:00 AM
Born Free
What a beautiful thought. Stop and think, 'what will result in my doing/ saying this'. It is such a lesson...
Thank you vey much for this story and all the others.
(2) Bracha, March 29, 2004 12:00 AM
Dear Rebbetzin Rigler,
I love your articles and pearls of wisdom. You are my role model in every way- you write so beautifully and eloquently- your words just flow...! I always especially admire the way you learn from life situations- for example your situation with your temper, (and the rat in your kitchen!) - and even more, you dont just notice these things, but you do something about it- to correct areas that need fixing. You know what I mean? There are so many aspects of my life that need to be worked on - and I am aware of them, yet it is so tremendously hard for me to do something about it. Whenever I read your stories and articles (online and in books!) I gain chizuk and immediately look to strengthen some area in my life that needs to be worked on. Thank you so much again- I always look for your name when aish sends me these articles! You are mamash the best! Have a chag kasher v'sameach, love, bracha
(1) Caroline Schechter, March 28, 2004 12:00 AM
Sarah Yocheved Rigler
I would just like to say how much I thoroughly enjoy each and every article written by Sara Yocheved Rigler. She speaks strait to my heart and soul. She is tremendously inspiring and a very talented writer. Thankyou to both Aish and Mrs. Rigler. Yasher Koach.