Shabbat Parshat Vayeshev - 5763
G-d’s Foreknowledge and the Free Choice of Human Beings

At the beginning of Parshat VaYeshev, Yosef discloses two of his dreams to his brothers and his father. In the second of the dreams, the sun and the moon, and eleven “kochavim” bow to Yosef. The usual translation of “kochavim” is stars; however, its meaning here may be planets, and Yosef’s dream may have meant that the entire solar system was bowing to Yosef. Although many of us learned as children that there are only nine planets, recently scientists announced that they’d found another, a tenth planet, and that there may be more.

In any case, in my student days at Yeshiva University, one of my rebbes, Rav Aharon Soloveitchik, ZT”L, used to speak on the Parshah once a week. He said that it was most difficult to speak about Parshat VaYeshev, because there were no heroes in the Parshah, or at least no heroic behavior. Yaakov violated a basic rule of parenting by disclosing that he loved Yosef more than his other sons by giving him a “kesonet pasim,” a many-colored coat. Yosef in turn sinned by speaking “lashon hara,” evil speech, about his brothers to their father, and boasting to them about his dreams. This triggered within the brothers a “sinah,” a hatred, itself a great sin, so intense that they initially intended to kill him with their bare hands, later (at the instigation of Reuven who, the Torah tells us, had pure motives), decided only to throw him into a pit populated by serpents and scorpions, and finally sold him as a slave to Yishmealim who in turn sold him again to Egypt. That latter sale would turn out in the end to be a positive factor in the redemption of the Jewish People from their first Exile.

Towards the beginning of the Parshah, Yaakov makes what seems to be a major parenting mistake by sending Yosef to visit his brothers, despite the fact that he should have been aware of the dangerous level of hostility that prevailed between his brothers and Yosef. This decision could be seen as an unfortunate combination of wishful thinking and denial, as RASHI comments on the opening verse in the Parshah, “Yaakov wanted finally to find a bit of tranquility; but the tragedy of Yosef befell him.”

The verse says (Bereshit 37:14), “So he sent him from the Valley of Chevron...” RASHI asks why does the Chumash refer to Chevron as a valley, when it was in fact on a mountain? And he cites the Midrashic answer (Bereshit Rabbah 84:13) that the reference to “Emek Chevron” hints at the “Eitzah Amukah,” the deep theme that was communicated to the righteous one buried in Chevron; namely Avraham, to whom HaShem said at the time of the “Brit bein HaBetarim,” “Your descendants will be strangers in a strange land.” (Bereshit 15:13) Thus, Yaakov was unconsciously setting the stage for the great drama of Jewish History, one act of which would be the period of slavery that his descendants endured in the “Beit Avadim,” the House of Bondage, Egypt.

This seems to imply that HaShem, Who is said to “watch over and gaze to the end of all the generations,” Who knows the entirety of history, actually controls the decisions, in this case by manipulating the wishful thinking and the denial mentioned above, as well as the events, as we see in the encounter of Yosef, wandering lost in Shechem, with a “man,” described in Bereshit (37:15-17), said by the Midrash to have been the angel Gavriel, to direct him to Dotan for his fateful encounter with his brothers.

But that notion is in sharp contrast with the opinion of Rabbi Akiva in Pirkei Avot (3:19), “Everything is foreseen, yet permission is granted...” that states that although all events: past, present and future, are “known” to HaShem, yet free choice is granted to the human being. Or, as the Talmud says in Berachot 33b and as we find in the Zohar (1:59), “Everything is in the hands of Heaven, with the exception of the fear of Heaven.”

Thus, although HaShem has full “knowledge” of the events that make up all of time, including what decisions I will make at any given time, my freedom to make those decisions: whether I will use my time productively or not, whether I will marry a given person or not, whether I will report all my income to the IRS or not; in general, whether I will be a “mentsch” or not, is not compromised at all by His “knowledge.”

This is one of the central paradoxes of faith; namely, the conflict between “freedom of choice” and G-d’s foreknowledge. And it can only be resolved, if only to a small extent, by recognizing, as the RAMBAM says in Hilchot Teshuvah (5:5), “...as the human being is unable to imagine, or conceptualize, or to identify in any way the essence of the Creator (although we are commanded to emulate His “midot,” His characteristics, such as mercy and compassion – editor), as it says in Shemot 33:20, ‘For a human being cannot see me and live,’ so also is the human being unable to understand the nature of HaShem’s knowledge. This is what the Prophet meant (Yeshayahu 55:8) by, “For My thoughts are not as your thoughts, and My ways are not as your ways.”

And by also accepting what the RAMBAM says in Hilchot Teshuvah (5:1), “Permission is granted to every human being; if he wishes to incline himself towards the path of goodness, and to be righteous, he has permission to do so. But if he wishes to incline himself towards the path of evil, and to be wicked, he is permitted likewise to act in this manner...”

Basically, we have just restated the paradox, but also explained that it is not solvable, because the manner in which the eternal and infinite Creator “knows” cannot be understood by his mortal and finite creatures.

Rabbi Pinchas Frankel

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