Reflecting on Judaism

On Prayer, Predetermination & Freewill

We are taught that among the fundamental principles of Judaism is the belief both in Petitional Prayer and in Man’s Freewill.  I find these beliefs irreconcilable and that I am not alone.  A Jewish Encyclopaedia states “the notion that man’s actions are determined by his Freewill and that he is, therefore, morally responsible for them, becomes a religious and philosophical problem in the light of the belief in Divine Omniscience, Predestination and Providence."?

Reading comments by various Jewish philosophers whilst I sought clarification and guidance, I found that they appear not to have analysed adequately the specific problem just mentioned.  My difficulty may well lie in my own ignorance.  If there is a person who, having read this essay, can resolve my difficulty, either by pointing out the fallacy of my reasoning or by explanation, and show that Petitional Prayer and Freewill can be reconciled, I should be most grateful.  I find, alas, that as time goes by, I am increasingly less able to believe in the efficacy of Petitional Prayer.

The concept of Prayer is that it consists of two essential elements, namely supplication and petition on the one hand; praise  and thanks-giving on the other.  Predetermination goes hand in hand with Petitional prayer; prayer sustains the belief that God predetermines our future and petitions that He should either provide for our good or reverse an adverse decision to our advantage.  Two prayers which demonstrate this belief dramatically are the “B’Rosh Hashanah"? and “Avinu Malkenu"? prayers; there are many others.  I quote extracts from both:-

B’Rosh Hashanah

On the first day of the year it is inscribed

and on the Day of Atonement it is sealed and determined

how many shall pass away

and how many shall be born

who shall live and who die

who shall finish his allotted time and who shall not

who is to perish by water and who by fire

who by the sword and who by the wild beast

who by hunger and who by thirst

who by an earthquake and who by a plague

who by strangling or who by stoning

who shall be at rest and who shall wander

who shall remain tranquil and who shall be disturbed

who shall reap enjoyment and who shall be painfully afflicted

who shall become poor and who shall grow rich

who shall be cast down and who shall be exalted.

Avinu Malkenu (extract)

Our Father our king, let a happy year begin for us

Our Father our king, nullify all evil decrees against us

Our Father our king, send a perfect healing to the sick of thy people

Our Father our king, inscribe us in the Book of Maintenance and Sustenance.

Our Father our king, fill our storehouse with plenty.

Our Father our king, have compassion upon us and upon our children and our infants.

When a believing Jew leaves Synagogue after the Yom Kippur services, he believes that the forthcoming year has been determined and his fate for that year sealed.  I am, of course, aware that “B’Rosh Hashanah" concludes with the declaration “But penitence, prayer and charity can avert the evil decree", but I understand this to refer to penitence, prayer and charity only during the Ten days of Penitence for, at the Ni’Elah service our future is sealed.

A Jewish Encyclopaedia states “according to the Mishna, the first day of Tishri is the Day of Judgment.  The Talmud explains that on this day, final Judgment is passed only on the “perfectly righteous" and the “utterly wicked", whereas Judgment on the intermediate categories is suspended until the Day of Atonement.  As a result, the entire ten day period becomes one of penitence in anticipation of that final Judgment.

The Jewish belief in man’s Freewill is equally fundamental.  Maimonides stated that “Freewill is granted to every man.   If he desires to incline towards the good life and be righteous, he has the power to do so; and if he desires to incline towards the unrighteous way and be a wicked man, he has also the power to do so.  Since this power of doing good or evil is in our own hands, and since all the wicked deeds we have committed have been committed with our full consciousness, it befits us to turn in penitence and forsake our evil deeds; the power of doing so being still in our hands.  Now this is a very important principle; nay it is the pillar of the law and of the Commandments."

Having acknowledged the principle of man’s Freewill, some Rabbis and Philosophers have the greatest difficulty in reconciling it to their belief in God’s omnipotence and omniscience.  In order to try to reconcile them, some say:

1.  “God knows beforehand, from all eternity, how a given man will act at a given moment, but His knowledge is merely a mirror of man’s actual decision and not the determining cause thereof."

      Others say:  “God’s omniscience extends only to the universal and its consequences; the contingent (an undetermined decision) is by definition not subject to fore-knowledge, and hence it argues no defect in God’s knowledge if it does not extend to the undetermined decision of the will."

3.  Yet others say: “Events which are the result of man’s freedom or chance are no more known beforehand to God than they are to man."  These Philosophers try to avoid the criticism of attributing imperfections to God by insisting that, not to be able to foretell the contingent is not ignorance and hence not an imperfection.

The following situations illustrate the conflict between prayer or predetermination on the one hand, and freewill on the other.  Mr.A. is killed by Mr. N.  If Mr.A. had been sealed in the Book of Life, then God’s predetermination has not helped him.  If it is argued that A. would not have been killed if it had been so determined, that suggests that B’s freewill has been removed by God to protect A.

If, on the other hand, A had been sealed in the Book of Death, then, in the case of an unpremeditated killing such as in a Crime of Passion, or, as a result of a car accident, B must have been programmed by God to effect the predetermined action, so again B. has been deprived of his freewill.   In the case of a premeditated killing, it could be argued that God had foreknowledge of B’s intention but this would then assume that God was certain that B would not exercise his Freewill and change his mind.  (How would a Religious Court react if a defendant in a murder case pleaded that A’s death had been determined during the course of the previous Ten Days of Penitence?)

Another situation arose concerning a bus accident several years ago.  Some twenty children from Petach Tikva were killed on a level crossing when a train ploughed through them.  If even one of those children had been predetermined to live, then such determination was of no avail.  If it is argued that they would not have been killed had they been sealed in the Book of Life, then this would imply not only the removal of the driver’s Freewill in her decision to try to dash across the railway line, but also the removal of Freewill of all the children and their parents, who, for a variety of reasons, freely decided whether or not these particular children would join the day’s outing.  Or put another way, if the children were predetermined to die, then the driver was not exercising her freewill; was programmed to err in her judgment of the train’s speed and, therefore, should not be blamed.

Some years ago, in the Ilford area, a boy aged 12 asked his father to give him a lift to school.  The father declined for the very unprofound reason that he thought the walk to school would do the boy no harm.  The boy walked towards his school, crossed the road, walked under a van and was killed.  All witnesses, the bereaved parents and the police accepted and agreed that the driver was in no way to blame.  Was the boy predetermined to die?  If so, then the parents must have been predetermined to live a life of remorse and anguish for their prayer “Our father our king, inscribe us in the Book of Happy Life" was not granted and also it was decided “who shall remain tranquil and who shall be disturbed."

Again, if this fatal accident was predetermined, then the boy had no freewill choice of place and time for crossing the road; the father had no freewill choice as to whether or not he drives his child to school; the driver had no freewill choice of time and route for his journey.  But since our Rabbis insist that “Freewill" is paramount, then none of this could have been predetermined and if not predetermined, then Penitence, Prayer and Charity could not have averted the “evil decree".

There are a significant number of women who are barren as a result of their surgeons’ negligence or carelessness in allowing a germ to enter their bodies during the course of abdominal operations which took place when they were still infants.  Were these women and their husbands all predetermined to remain childless?  If so, there could have been no Freewill in the couple’s decision to marry.  But this cannot be so.  Maimonides said “Men are, however, very often prone to err in supposing that many of their actions, in reality the result of their own freewill, are forced upon them, as, for instance, marrying a certain woman or acquiring a certain amount of money.  Such a supposition is untrue.  If a man espouses and marries a woman legally, then she becomes his lawful wife and, by marrying her, he has fulfilled the Divine command to increase and multiply.  God, however, does not decree the fulfilment of a Commandment."

Since, therefore, the couples married as the result of each party exercising their Freewill and, as Freewill is also exercised by surgeons, all of whom want to carry out “clean operations", without causing future complications, what purpose could prayer have served in its supplication to prevent or reverse the delayed “evil decree."

In 1933, Europe housed some six million Jews of whom probably many hundreds of thousands were pious Jews.  Between 1933 and 1945 the vast majority of these Jews suffered humiliation, deprivation, incarceration and eventual death.  During the course of these twelve years, one assumes that the pious Jews would have prayed with sincere devotion, joined unexpectedly by a large proportion of those who would have been considered “irreligious" Jews.  It becomes difficult to accept that, each year, on the Day of Atonement, God considered each individual person’s prayer and determined that person’s future on his own merit, for the vast majority were tortured and martyred, relentlessly and continuously throughout the twelve years.  Prayers appear to have been of no avail.  The Freewill of the Nazis tends to support the view that power resides in humans no less effectively than predetermination in their God.

Similar situations abound!!  The massacre of the Yeshiva students in 1929 in Hebron by the Arabs; “The Herald of Free Enterprise" where an assistant boson fell asleep; Chernobyl where engineers were negligent for experimental purposes; in India where poison gas escaped either through negligence or sabotage and caused death and sickness in addition to bereavement and economic loss.  The instances multiply.  Were all these happenings predetermined by God or were they the result of man’s Freewill?

In each of the situations outlined above, it is not only the victims of those who caused the “incident" who suffered, but also close relatives and friends.  Those who believe in predetermination must also believe that these innocent by-standers were also predetermined to suffer anguish, possibly for the rest of their lives.  Are we to believe that in all these tragedies, individual or even collective prayer would have acted as a preventative?

Mediaeval Jewish philosophers set down Principles of Faith (Dogmas).  Maimonides’s 13 principles of faith were reduced by Crescas to eight.  Albo reduced these 8 to 3; namely, belief in Divine creation; in Divine revelations and in Reward and Punishment.  These three Dogmas are common to all.  To believe in Reward & Punishment, one must believe in freewill axiomatically for it is stated “Reward & Punishment would be unjust if man had not the freedom to will and to act."  None of the lists include the Dogma of prayer as applied to personal supplication and petition.  Indeed Crescas considered the efficacy of prayer as a mere belief and not a principle.  It could, therefore, be argued that Petitional Prayer, in many of its current forms, was introduced for a reason other than the belief that it can influence God.  Perhaps prayer serves as a morale booster or as social cement.  Perhaps prayer should consist only of “praise & thanksgiving" to the Divine will.  Many Rabbis have stated that Moral and Ethical behaviour are far more important than prayer; some say they are of primary importance.

In our early history, the “Shema" and the “18 Benedictions" and, sometimes the first and last three Benedictions only, constituted the core of the service.  Did our ancestors have a more realistic and sensible (reasonable, rational) attitude to, and expectation of, Prayer than pertains today?

This leads to the consideration of another aspect of Prayer.  If we believe that our fate for the Year is sealed at the end of Yom Kippur, then we must accept that the sealing is final.  The whole tenor of our prayers leads to this conclusion. For example, from the first day of Rosh Hashanah until the afternoon service on Yom Kippur, we pray to be “inscribed".  It is not until the Ne’ilah service that we pray to be “sealed".  If, therefore, we believe that our fate is sealed and predetermined for the coming year, what is achieved if, during the course of that year, we pray to God to alter his predetermination?  A dramatic example of such a prayer is said on the Sabbath before the new moon.  What effect can this prayer have on the predetermined future?

“May it be Thy Will, O Lord our God and God of our Fathers, to renew unto us this coming month for good and for blessing. Oh grant us long life, a life of peace, of good, of blessing, happiness, of bodily vigour, a life marked by the fear of Heaven and the dread of sin, a life free from shame and reproach, a life of prosperity and honour, a life of which the love of the law and the fear of Heaven shall cling to us, a life in which the desires of our heart shall be fulfilled for good."

Even our great Rabbis differ in their faith in God and their belief in His predetermination.  Rabbis in Europe had blind faith and both stayed put and advised their followers to do likewise.  They were exterminated in the Holocaust.  Others appear to have lacked such faith.  Maimonides for example, left his home in Cordova and travelled to Egypt via North Africa and Palestine.  Had he believed that God had predetermined his future during the previous ten days of Penitence, why did he not stay put and confront the Moslem pogrom.

Maimonides had great reverence for human intellect which he also applied to his conception of the power of God.  He held that “logical absurdities are outside the range of Divine omnipotence.  God cannot square a circle or make a thing to exist and not exist at one and the same time."  This same logic would apply to the question of Prayer, Predetermination and Freewill.  Either God determines our life and well-being so that when something happens to us as the result of an action of another person, then either that person is acting as God’s programmed causer, in which case he is not exercising his Freewill or else the causer affects our life and/or well-being by his own freewill actions, in which case, God, for the reasons set out above, would not have been aware of the causer’s actions beforehand, or, at least, not have known for certain that he would act and, therefore, could not have predetermined the outcome.

I have sent this essay to a number of Rabbis; many of them friends or acquaintances; some friends or acquaintances of friends of mine.  A small number were kind enough to reply and some took the trouble of meeting me in order to discuss the problem.  I had expected a strong critical reaction but it was not to be.  Not one Rabbi suggested an acceptable explanation of the paradox and, indeed, I felt that some were sympathetic.  The paradox, repeated briefly is as follows:-

There is no doubt that the Torah promises Reward & Punishment; sometimes these promises could be understood to refer to the Hereafter, but more often, they refer to the Here & Now.

Our Rabbis rightly state that, if a person is to be Rewarded or Punished, then it should only be if he is entirely responsible for his Actions; if he were not responsible for his Actions, then Punishment would be unjust, which is unthinkable in the case of a Just God.

If a person is entirely responsible for his own actions, i.e. if he is not influenced or manipulated by God to act in a certain way, then his actions any given time are not predetermined; neither actions towards others nor decisions concerning himself, i.e. God does not predetermine that he should defraud a third party nor does God tell him to be on a bridge in San Francisco on a certain date/time when the bridge collapsed.

If, therefore, a person does defraud a third party and reduces the third party to poverty, this result cannot be a punishment of that third party nor can the death of the person who happened to be in San Francisco when the road bridge collapsed as it did in 1987, be the recipient of Punishment either.

It would, therefore, appear to follow that things that happen to people for good or bad are not as a result of God’s predetermination and, therefore, Petitional Prayer is not influential.

January 1995