BO 1997-1

In the Torah portion Bo we learn about the first mitzvahs that were given to the Jewish people as a whole.  The first mitzvah was to declare a new month.  "This month should be the head of the months, the first it should be to you for the months of the year."  This was given to the Sanhedrin, that the rabbis have the right to declare when the new month is.  They have a right to set up the calendar.  Afterwards, we learn about the commandment that was given to every Jewish household to take a lamb and to slaughter it and to puts its blood on their door, and then to eat it in a seder meal.  We see from here that the first commandments that were given to the Jewish people do not seem to have anything to do with freedom, but, yet, the rabbis tell us, these mitzvahs have a lot to do with freedom.

You know that in the west there have been two conflicting views as to what freedom is and how much freedom a human being has.  One view holds that we are free to do anything we want and we must be given the opportunity to be free to choose any way we like to live, that we have complete and absolute freedom, and anything that tramples on our freedom is a terrible thing.  On the other hand, there is another view, which is based really on philosophical material, that man is subject to forces, just as a steel beam in a bridge is subject to forces, and you can always predict what a man is going to do by just knowing the forces acting upon him.  In fact, there is a very famous man named Skinner at Harvard, who has postulated this view that man has no freedom whatsoever.  Everything is really just biologically determined.

Judaism disagrees with both these views.  The reason the rabbis tell us the commandment of the calendar was given to us was not just because a slave has no time, was not just because a slave had to follow the orders of his master and if he did not follow the orders of his master and try to conserve some time for himself, he would be beaten, but also that in declaring the calendar we assert what the Jewish concept of freedom is.  The Jewish concept of freedom is not that man is free to do anything he wants, because we are not free to do anything we want, and, at the same time, we also do not believe that we are completely regimented, that we have no freedom whatsoever.  The way that we set up the calendar shows the type of freedom that we have.  After all, there are really only 365 and a quarter days in the solar calendar and in the lunar month there is only 29 and a half days.  We are taught by the Torah that the Jewish calendar must be a lunar calendar, must be based on the moon, that every new month must be at the beginning of a new lunar cycle.  However, the lunar calendar must be brought into harmony with the solar calendars This happens once every 19 years.  This means that in some Jewish years we have 353 days and in some years we have 385 days, a great discrepancy.  That's why Rosh Hashonna sometimes begins in September and this coming year will begin in Octobers The rabbis have the opportunity to play with the calendar.  Because months can be 29 or 30 days, we can arrange a calendar so that Yom Kippur will never come out on a Friday or Sunday.  We do have freedom.  We have freedom to play with the months, so that if it is a particularly harsh winter, we can arrange for Pesach to come a month later than it would normally come.  We are not just bound by the signs of the stars and the seasons and so forth.  Of course, there can only be seven out of every 19 years can be a leap year, but we can play with us, so our freedom is that there is freedom within order.  Judaism believes we have freedom but we do not have absolute freedom, and we all know that we are bound by biological forces.  There is no doubt about it.  All of us are really nothing more than a hormonal time clock.  When we are born, certain hormones shoot off and then we grow 4 or 5 inches, and then more hormones shoot off and then we become sexually active, and then a few more hormones shoot off and we become sexually active and we age and so forth.  Everything is dependent basically upon the activation of these hormones at different times of our life, and we know, with all respect to doctors, that doctors have never ever saved anyone forever.  All doctors are basically failures in the sense that all of us are going to die.  No matter what we do, when it comes to 120 years we are not going to be around.  However, we can make sure that we are around to 70 or 80 years old.  I can assure you that even if you eat cholesterol food and even if you exercise every day, you will still not be around when 120 years comes, but if you follow a doctor's advice and eat sensibly and exercise, you may be here for 80 years or more, so we all know that it helps, that we can make choice, that instead of just living 50 years we can live 70 or 80 years if we follow the doctor's advice.  This know this is true in many other areas of life, too.  We can make choices that make a difference in our lives and, therefore, that is why the rabbis say you have to live in a town with a doctor.  A Jew is prohibited from living in a town with no doctor because we have to make the adequate and correct health choices.  It applies in other areas, too.  This is in conformity with the new science, which also speaks about the fact that all scientific laws are probabilities and not cut and dry so that we do not know what the individual atom is going to do, that scientific laws are very similar to the weather.  They really talk about a continuum.  In Houston on January 18th it could be anywhere from 15 degrees to 80 degrees, and it is all within the bounds of nature.  We know that we are limited.  We know that we cannot do everything we want, that as we age, we lose certain physical properties.  You don't find any ball players that are in their 60's.  On the other hand, you do not find any youngsters of 10 or 12 playing professional ball either because they are not mature enough, so we know that we are all bound by rules of nature, and we are all bound by many rules of interpersonal relationships and psychology, but we can make a difference.  We can make choices within these limits, just as the rabbis can make choices within the calendar to determine when Rosh Hashonna and Yom Kippur are.  Of course, they can never decide that Yom Kippur will come in the spring or Pesach in the fall, but there is an element of choice.  We have freedom within order.

We have just recently noticed that the Israeli army has had to reploy from Hebron and that, of course, was a decision that had to be made, given the given circumstances.  Some people may rail against it and say how can we do such a thing, but Israel has a limited amount of freedom, too.  Notice, too, that the second commandment given to the Jewish people had to do with taking a lamb and slaughtering it and eating it in their home and putting the blood on the door.  Notice that the Jewish people had to take special precautions for the last plague which were different than all the other plagues.  In all the other plagues, they did not have to be confined to their homes.  They could roam around.  Why in this last plague were they confined to their homes?  The rabbis answer because in all the other plagues the purpose of the plague was not to kill but just to warn the Egyptians.  Some people may have died, but that was not the purpose of the plague.  When the river turned to blood, it may have been unpleasant but it did not kill people.  When there were frogs going in people's houses and in their beds and ovens, it would not kill anybody.  Even when a person had boils, it was very unpleasant but would not kill you necessarily unless you were weakened from another condition, but the whole purpose of the killing of the firstborn was to kill people, and the Jewish people had to be very careful because once you release the destroyer, the rabbis say, it strikes the righteous as well as the wicked, so the Jewish people had to sit in their homes and make sure they were not out and about so the destroyer would hurt them, too.  Of course, we have to be very careful when you release the destroyer, when you release war, when you release destruction, when you release devastation because you do not know exactly what is going to happen.  Therefore, in this particular instance Israel had to make sure that she maintained the backing of the United States, she was under a lot of pressure from a lot of areas, and we all know that this was a good deal, that this government, especially the people knew, would stand for security as well as for peace.  It pledged to continue the peace process, but to make sure that Israel has security, and this government did ensure that the settlers are going to remain in Hebron.  Of course, if Arafat is not sincere then, of course, they would be the objects of an attack, but the Israeli army is there to protect them.  We have to be careful that we do not release the destroyer.  This is very important in all interpersonal relationships as well.  It is very easy to start a fight and then a war, but it is pretty hard to stop it, and we have to make sure that unless conditions become intolerable, that we try our best to make peace.  Of course, if by making peace we also release the destroyer, then it is terrible.  We all know that in our homes with abused women and children and sometimes husbands, unless you make a stand it is going to get worse, but in this particular instance we know that the Israeli army is strong and the government is looking out for the interests of the people.  This current Israeli government really believes that Israel has a right to stay in Israel and in this land and not, as I talked about last week, where there are some in Israel who believe that Israel is really nothing more than a colonial power and itself should probably disappear.  We know that the Jews of Israel do not believe, at least the overwhelming majority whether on the left or right, and we know that when it comes to freedom, our freedom is limited, and we have to make sure that we exercise our freedom in the correct way because our freedom is not unbridled.  We cannot do anything we want, but, on the other hand, we cannot just buckle down to forces around us either.  We have the ability to make choices, and these choices are very important because these choices can determine whether we as a people will live or shrivel and suffer, and whether as an individual human being we can have the choice of whether or not we are going to be healthy and live a longer life or we are going to be sick and live a shorter life.  It is our hope and prayer that the right decisions were made today.  As I learned on my trip, there is a great consensus in Israel.  Rabbi Riskin told us about it, that everyone wants the peace process to continue and they also want to keep the settlements because the Arabs should start the peace process from where they wanted to start it, not to make things retroactive.  Things have to start from where they are, and there is hope that there may be peace.  Let's all hope that there will be peace, and this is, of course, a test case.  If Arafat keeps his agreement in Hebron, then perhaps he will keep other agreements as well.

I am reminded of the story they tell about a real estate agent who was very honest and always told his clients the good and bad points of a sale.  One day he told his client, "I am selling you this house, but I want you to know the bad points."  The client said, "Okay, tell me the bad points."  The agent said, "Well, two blocks north of this house is a chemical factory and two blocks south is a tannery."  The man said, "Yes, I understand those are the bad points.  What are the good points?" The agent replied, "Well, you can always tell which way the wind is blowing."  The two will learn from this agreement which way the wind blows.  Do the Arabs really want peace?  Will they keep it?  Will the settlers in Hebron be safe, or will they attack, which will show that they are not sincere and that they can never be trusted?  Let's all hope that they are sincere so that peace will truly come to the Middle East so the Mashiach will come quickly in our day.  Amen.