פרשת בא
This week’s Parsha opens with the verse, “And God commanded Moshe to go in front of Pharaoh because God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart”. This verse seems to be lacking in confluence. The fact that Hashem had hardened Pharaoh’s heart would be a reason for Moshe to specifically stay away from pharaoh. Why then does Hashem tell Moshe to go to ask him to let the Jewish people go because He had hardened his heart? Furthermore, the very fact that Hashem could harden anyone’s heart seems puzzling. Would Hashem take away a person’s free will and limit their ability to perform good in this world?
R’ Dessler in his famous work “Michtav Meliyahu” dwells on these difficulties. He begins by explaining at length how a human being is made up of two basic elements. The first is his knowledge of what is good in this world and his strong desire to always follow the path of righteousness. And the second is a person’s tendency for evil which constantly attempts to persuade him to follow his desires and passions. R’ Dessler explains that these two forces in a person are in a constant battle, each one trying valiantly to convince the person to adopt its lifestyle. But a person must know that he has a specific commandment in the Torah to always choose the good and righteous choice during every moment of his life as the verse says, “One must choose life”. This is free will. This commandment applies every moment individually and it will not suffice to merely make the decision to keep the Torah once. R’ Dessler goes on to explain that truthfully, if a person were aware of the ultimate outcome of their actions, they would always choose the good, but the evil has a way of convincing a person to focus only on the immediate benefit of a sin and ignore the long term damage that it causes him and that not too much harm will come from just one sin. In modern terms, we would say that the Yetzer Hara pays in cash, and the Yetzer Tov can only pay by check.
However, one must be aware that the battlefront in which this skirmish is taking place constantly changes. When a person falls and gives in to his evil inclination, it now becomes easier to sin again and much harder to do the right thing, so the battlefront moves backward. On the other hand, when a person performs many good deeds, it becomes easier to do the right thing and his challenge is no longer on the “big things”, but rather on the minutia of Mitzva performance. For example, one who has been keeping Shabbos for many years, no longer has much of a desire to drive to the ball game on Shabbos, but maybe he finds it difficult to refrain from moving small Muktze items on Shabbos, rationalizing that he has come so far in his life. But a person must know that wherever his personal battle is, it is critical that he utilize his free will in that area or he will rapidly fall backward and have to re-fight many of his old battles.
R’ Dessler would go on to explain what the sages say, “As a person grows, his evil inclination grows with him”. This means that when a person becomes greater, his challenges need to be greater and furthermore, God will actually increase his evil inclination in order to make these situations realistic tests for him. This system allows for a person to never stop growing.
With this principle, we can now answer our two questions that we asked about Pharaoh. At first, Pharaoh’s battle was with his belief in God. Pharaoh says to Moshe, “Who is this God of yours that I have never heard of”. That was Pharaoh’s free will at that time. But when God brought the plagues upon Egypt, He made it very difficult to realistically test Pharaoh, because how can you test someone who has seen the hand of God so blatantly? The only way is to harden their heart which means Hashem needed to increase his evil inclination in order to artificially move the battle forward. So regarding the question that we asked, “Did Hashem remove Pharaoh’s free-will”? Absolutely not! In fact He specifically enabled it by hardening Pharaohs heart. And secondly, this was specifically why Hashem asked Moshe to go tell Pharaoh to let the Jewish people go immediately after He hardened his heart – to give him the opportunity to utilize his free will and do the right thing!
What we need to cull from R’ Dessler’s powerful words is a very important lesson. We need to be constantly aware that there are no slow or dull moments in our lives, but rather every moment is a unique opportunity to do the right thing and utilize our free will to serve God. However, this may be a bit trickier then on might think at first glance. For most of us who have been performing Mitzvos for many years, our test may not be in the “big things” anymore, but perhaps for many of us, this battle is taking place over the more subtle points in our lives. And although this battle seems like a battle over minutia, the Yetzer Hara is working just as hard and perhaps even harder then he was when he was fighting us for the “big points” that we have taken on in the past. For example, many of us would never go out and blatantly embarrass our friend in public, but maybe we would make a subtle remark which has a negative connotation. Or perhaps we would leave the Beis Midrash a bit earlier then we should. Although these points seem petty, if this is where our free will lies, there is no question about it that for us, these are the biggest points in the world!
I would just like to conclude with a positive point that we can focus on. Our sages teach us that when one wishes to contaminate himself, he is permitted to travel on that route, but when one wishes to purify himself, he is offered great aid in that purification. We see from this statement that when one wishes to purify himself, not only is he allowed to pursue that path, but he is actually offered a special heavenly assistance so that it becomes much easier to follow the path of righteousness. This is very encouraging for a person who wants to utilize his free will on a more consistent basis. There is a verse in Psalmes (64) which says, “God performs kindness and pays a person back for what he does”. This verse seems contradictory. If Hashem pays us for the good that we have done, then we deserve our retribution. Why then does the verse say that God does kindness for us? The Sefas Emes offers a beautiful explanation which coincides perfectly with all that we have said. He says that all a person has to do is make the decision to do good and after that, Hashem does the rest. But the wonderful thing about it is, that Hashem rewards us as if we did it all on our own. This is the “kindness” that Hashem does for us.
May we all choose to make the right decisions on the choices that are constantly before us, and through these decisions, merit heavenly aid far beyond our efforts!