“Life and death I have put before you, the blessing and the curse; and you shall choose life, in order that you and your descendents shall live” (D’varim 30:19). The ability to choose between “life and death,” between right and wrong (or, more precisely, between long-term benefit and short-term benefit) is one of the cornerstones of our religion. Framed as a choice between “life or death,” or even between being “blessed or cursed,” the choice seems simple; simple enough that Moshe’s advice/admonition to “choose life” seems almost superfluous. Why would anyone consider choosing otherwise? Yet, poor choices abound, perhaps because when actually faced with making a choice, we don’t consider it as choosing between “life” and “death.” (If we did, we wouldn’t need the motivation of “blessings” and “curses” to help us make the right choices.)

When it comes to our own poor choices, we are given the option to make amends through repentance. What about the poor choices of others? We may be directly responsible for teaching our children and students what is right and what is wrong, and indirectly responsible (through the concept of “areivus,” see Sanhedrin 27b and Rashi on 29:28) for everyone else, but all we can really “control” is ourselves. It can be very difficult to accept others despite their faults while considering our own deficiencies unacceptable. There are self-esteem issues at stake as well, as not correcting perceived personal flaws can (and perhaps should) lead to a poor perception of self. Nevertheless, when one is cognizant that an area needs improvement, it is usually within his or her ability to make that improvement. As far as others, though, how can I fully accept a flaw in someone else if I can’t (and shouldn’t) accept in in myself?

This issue was discussed a couple of months ago by Rabbi Dr. Gidon Rothstein (http://tinyurl.com/odbrctk), focusing on how the frum (religious) community perceives, or should perceive, the non-frum community. Typically, this issue is skirted by classifying those who were not raised in a frum home as “tinokos shenishb’u,” infants who were taken captive before they were exposed to a religious lifestyle, and therefore not responsible for not being religious. Those of us who grew up frum, on the other hand, are fully responsible to maintain our religious lifestyle. As Rabbi Dr. Rothstein pointed out, this approach would not be relevant to those who grew up frum but are not frum anymore. How are we to perceive them?

I have never been comfortable with the “tinok shenishba” concept being applied to those who didn’t grow up in a frum home, primarily because although they didn’t have the benefit of a religious education, they weren’t raised in a vacuum either, and at some point became fully aware that there is a religious community — and could have/should have looked into what it’s about. The myriad of Ba’alay T’shuva, who became frum later in life, prove that growing up in a non-frum home is ultimately not an excuse for not being frum. The issue therefore applies not only regarding those who abandoned the ways of their parents when they stopped being frum, but to anyone who is not frum. (There is obviously a difference in degree between the two, but the basic issue is the same.) Not only that, but even among those who are frum, there are degrees of “frumkeit,” and figuring out how to accept someone who does things that you find unacceptable (or doesn’t do things that you deem necessary) falls into the same category.

On numerous occasions (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/nuxor5r) I have discussed Rav Dessler’s concept of “n’kudas hab’chira,” the “point” at which free will operates. There are things that are beyond our (current) capabilities, choices we cannot make, so there is no internal battle as to whether or not to do (or not do) them. For example, most frum people would never even consider eating a cheeseburger. If a co-worker is ordering food and offers to buy pork ribs, declining the offer is not usually the result of a choice made then and there, but of a previously-made decision to keep kosher. That earlier choice may have been a function of free will, but once that commitment was made, unless there is a temptation to renege on that decision, following through is not considered using “free will.” Similarly, a non-frum person going to a ballgame rather than a shiur is usually not a function of his or her free will, as even though no outside factor is forcing him or her to watch the game instead of studying Torah, there is usually no possibility of choosing the latter. Free will and freedom are not the same thing; just because I am “free” to choose between options doesn’t mean that I am using my “free will” when I make that “choice.”

Rav Dessler defines free will as the point at which there is recognition that one choice is “good” (or “true”) while the other is “bad” (or “false”) and an internal battle ensues as to which one to choose. For example, choosing to put yellow mustard on my hot dog instead of spicy brown mustard because I prefer the former is not a function of free will. Choosing to take someone else’s mustard because I like it better than the mustard I own would be (provided I recognized that taking something from someone else is wrong). Similarly, choosing not to take someone else’s mustard even though it will make the hot dog taste better can also be a function of free will (if I might have considered stealing the mustard) but might not be (if I would never have considered doing so).

One of the examples Rav Dessler gives (Michtav Mei’Eliyahu I, pg. 114) is of a child who was raised by thieves. For him, stealing is the norm; the notion that he shouldn’t steal never even enters his mind. Killing someone in order to steal, though, was not ingrained in him, and when faced with a situation where he must kill in order to complete the theft, there might be an internal battle, recognizing that killing might be wrong. Refraining from stealing is outside his “n’kudas hab’chira,” as there is no possibility (at that point) that he wouldn‘t do it, but murder is within it, and a choice, based on free will, can be made. Once that choice is made, his “n’kudas hab’chira” is affected, so that things that until then would not have been considered might now be a possibility, and things that until now were within his “n’kudas hab’chira” (allowing him to make a choice based on free will) might now be outside of it. In this example, choosing not to kill might open up the possibility that he would consider not stealing either, while killing someone despite having an internal struggle about it might lead to no longer having that internal struggle. This, Rav Dessler says, is what is meant by “mitzvah goreres mitzvah” and “aveirah goreres aveirah,” that doing one positive act leads to further positive acts while committing one sin leads to more sinning, as each choice (those that involve free will, anyway) moves a person’s “n’kudas hab’chira” to a place that now encompasses situations that it hadn’t and that no longer includes situations that it had.

The bottom line is that not all “choices” are the result of “free will,” as any option not within our “n’kudas hab’chira” is not really an option. We are, in a manner of speaking, “forced” to choose between options that are within our “n’kuda.” (Several years ago I used this concept to explain why we ask G-d to forgive us for sins we were “forced” to do, as we were the cause of being “forced” to do them based on how we affected our “n’kudas hab’chira,” see page 2 of http://tinyurl.com/q87dq9f.)

Everyone has a “n‘kudas hab‘chira,” and the internal struggles are just as fierce no matter which “choices“ fall within it. Where those struggles are, though depends on our nature (according to a  recent study, see http://tinyurl.com/nzx4n6u, we are born with a “dispositional attitude” that affects how we respond to things) and our nurture. One of the main purposes of “chinuch,” properly educating our children, is to improve the “starting point” of our children’s “n’kudas hab’chira.” For example, because we prefer that their struggles not be about whether or not to keep Shabbos, we try to raise them in a way that violating the Sabbath is not considered an option. But that doesn’t mean it can’t become an option, nor does it mean that it becoming an option is necessarily a result of free will.

Are we religious because we choose (or chose) to be, or because this was our starting point, and our “n’kudas hab’chira” never moved to a point where being religious was a choice? As I alluded to, we are all born with different personality traits, which are part of the starting point of our “n’kudas hab’chira.” Rav Dessler (Michtav Mei’Eliyahu V, pg. 458) discusses how different the starting points of Yaakov and Eisav were, and how they affected what their missions in life were. Although it is certainly true that we have the ability to change which options we will have, no one has the same starting point, and not every “choice” made is made by utilizing the free will bestowed upon us by our Creator. As a matter of fact, it seems pretty clear that the overwhelming majority of “choices” made are made by our physical bodies (including our brains), without giving our souls a chance to reconsider the “choice” using a “right/wrong” or “truth/falsehood” scale.

After telling us that sinners will suffer the consequences of the curses (D’varim 29:19-27), Moshe adds that “the hidden things are for G-d” (29:28), we only need to be concerned with things that are “revealed.” Rashi explains the “hidden things” to be sins unknown to others, which those others can’t be responsible to try and correct. Ramban understands them to be things hidden from the sinner himself. This can be extended to things the sinner doesn’t realize is a sin because it’s outside his “n’kudas hab’chira”; it is quite unusual for someone to realize that something is wrong and not even struggle to overcome it.

There is no way for anyone to know whether a sin was within the sinner’s “n’kudas hab’chira”; only G-d knows for sure. Although we must protest the sin itself (and educate the sinner), we cannot pass judgment on the person who committed it. This is true whether discussing someone who never progressed from a non-religious background, someone who regressed despite having a religious background (especially if we don’t know all the circumstances, or how we would react if faced with those same circumstances), or just one seemingly deficient area of a person’s religious life. That doesn’t mean they aren’t responsible to move their “n’kudas hab’chira” to a point where they can improve in those areas, it just means that we can’t know how responsible they are (at this time) for the choices they are making, whether they are even within the realm of their “free will” or not.

Although we can’t know whether a sinner could have prevented him or herself from sinning, if they really could have, they will certainly be held accountable (by G-d). And even though we shouldn’t pass judgment on others who sin, this shouldn’t adversely affect how successful we are with our own struggles. After all, we may not be able to know where someone else’s internal battles lie, but we are responsible to win every internal battle we have, whether it’s the same struggle others face or not.