In Devarim 30:19 God said, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.”

Rabbis tend to affirm that man is free in his decisions, but without denying that there is a divine presence. Rabbi Akiba said in Pirkei Avoth, “Everything is foreseen, but the freedom to choose is given. Rashi comments: Everything that happens to man is in God’s hands, for example, whether he is tall or short, rich or poor, intelligent or not, white or black, but whether he is a good or bad person is not in God’s hands, for He has entrusted this into the hands of man and set before him two paths, so that he may choose the path of fear of God.”

Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah writes: “Every human being has been given the freedom of choice. If he wishes to lean toward the good path and be a virtuous man, he is free to do so, and if he wishes to lean toward the evil path and be a wicked man, he is also free to do so….Every individual is capable of being virtuous like Moses or wicked like Jeroboam… and there is no power that can force him, that can decree him, or that can pull him toward one path or the other; he himself, of his own free will, will choose the path that he desires…..And this is a basic principle and a fundamental premise of the Torah and its commandments.”

An impressive testimony to Judaism’s affirmation of the reality of free will, the freedom to choose, is what Victor Frankl, psychologist and Holocaust survivor, writes: “The experiences in the concentration camp demonstrate that man can always choose which path to take. There were many examples, some of them heroic in nature, which proved that apathy can be overcome, that irritability can be suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of thought, even under such terrible conditions of physical and mental stress. We who lived in concentration camps can remember those men who walked between the barracks comforting others, giving them their last piece of bread. They may have been a few, but they were sufficient proof that almost everything can be taken from a person except one thing: the last of man’s freedoms, the power to choose what attitude to take in given circumstances, the power to choose one’s own path.”

By: Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Jewish People, their history and their religion, by David J. Goldberg and John D. Rayner.