Guardrail on the Roof

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Jordan has done a wonderful job this morning showing us how one verse in the Torah, can be expanded in the halachah to provide guidance in a whole realm of human experience and can be applied to modern circumstances far beyond the anticipation of anyone who lived in Biblical or even Rabbinic times.

He talked about the verse:

When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your home, if anyone should fall from it.

This verse has a parallel in Parashat Mishpatim, the Torah portion in Exodus which like Ki Tezei is also jam packed with mitzvoth. There the commandment concerns an uncovered pit, which similarly could cause harm to an innocent person or animal. The general principle, built from both these verses, is that we are responsible and cannot blame the victim. This is discussed in Jewish law in terms of faulty ladders and vicious dogs, harmful food and drink, and even, in more contemporary responsa, our responsibility for second hand smoke.

Accidentally this week I happened upon another discussion of this same verse in the writings of Rav Kook, that takes it in a totally other direction. Rav Kook, Israel’s first chief rabbi who served during the days of British Mandate Palestine, was an very interesting person. Though extremely observant in his own life, he was raised a Hasid in Latvia in the late 19th century, and was a Talmudic ilui, a genius who became a rabbi at a very young age, still he championed the cause of the secular Israeli pioneers. He was a gentle vegetarian who believed that in Messianic times we would all be vegetarians living at peace with each other and with all sentient beings, but his mystical writings about the ties of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, became the basis of the militant settler movement, Gush Emunim.

In writing about this verse Rav Kook picks up on a peculiarity of the Hebrew discussed in the Talmud. The last phrase of the verse, if anyone should fall from it, is worded in an unusual way in the Hebrew, ki yipol hanofel mimenu-literally for when or if the faller falls from it. Why is he called a faller? Discussing this verse in the Talmud, the school of Rabbi Ishmael taught, “ki yipol hanofel means that this man is predestined to fall since the six days of Creation.” If the one who fell was supposed to fall, the rabbis ask, why should I bother with the guardrail? He would have fallen anyway!

There then ensues over the generations a discussion about the extent to which events are predetermined and to what extent we have free will. Now this sort of predestination is couched in the language of earlier generations, but I think the issue is still with us today.

As we learn more about genetics, we tend to see our genes as much more responsible for who we are, not only physically, but also emotionally and in terms of our character. MRI’s can show different areas of our brain, lighting up in response to different stimuli, and we are gaining more biological explanations of our behavior. Economists and other social scientists are discovering that though we may think we are acting rationally, we are often responding to social cues of which we are unaware. In one trivial but revealing experiment, they found that people given containers of popcorn at the movies, even if they are not hungry, and even if the popcorn is so stale that it squeaks when you eat it, will eat much more if the container is large than if it is small. In many more significant ways too, we respond to circumstances while thinking we are making choices.

Rav Kook teaches that the extent to which the faller may have been predestined to fall, must be detached from our responsibility to provide a guard rail. Today we might understand this to mean, that while there may be many causes of our behavior, this does not free us from responsibility for that which we do.

During this month of Elul, a time of introspection and self-examination, as do the work of chesbon hanefesh, of providing an accounting for our lives, it may be tempting to excuse ourselves by looking for the causes of our behavior. After all everything we do is caused by something, so couldn’t we say we have no choice but to be the people that we are. Fortunately, modern science while providing us with more explanations for our behavior, has also provided us with evidence that exceptional ability is more that product of highly concentrated effort than of a mysterious inborn superior talent. As the rabbis say in Pirke Avot, everything may have its cause, but still free will is given. Let us chose well, even with the constraints with which we live, in deciding the kind of people we would like to become.