Discussion on free will

[Hrvatski Noahid]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bklSvQeIyDk&lc=UgyKyWgfPh_EBClNK4x4AaABAg

Yehonatan repost: The "removal of the foreskin of the heart" mentioned in Deuteronomy 30, is very literally the removal of free will . That is exactly what is prophecied in Ezekiel 36:26 "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will place inside of you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh. And My spirit I shall place within you and I WILL CAUSE that you shall go in My commandments and observe My laws and perform them ". Literally open two bibles and open to Deuteronomy 30 and to Ezekiel 36 and compare. This is the very same thing prophecied in Jeremiah 31. Its all the same end of day prophecy through different prophets. All your doubt, will make the fruition of these prophecies that much more sweet when we see the eternal shame that will be on the faces of you and people like you. "Nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might-they shall place a hand upon their mouth; their ears shall become deaf. They shall lick the dust as a snake, as those who crawl on the earth...of haShem our God will they be terrified, they will fear You." Micha 7. You will have no excuses when that time comes. You won't be able to tell "Hashem your God" that you didn't know or that no one told you, He will say "you didn't want to know, and I did tell you and send you people to show you, but you went after the lies of your heart and attempted to make My loyal ones stray, I am not your God, and you will drink for all of eternity the poison you wished to feed My loyal servants".

[Hrvatski Noahid]

I have two questions. In chapter 10 of the book “Their Hollow Inheritance,” by Michoel Drazin, he explains that Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 mean in the Messianic Era the covenant will be “new” and different in that it will be unbreakable, owing to the tremendous Godly revelations the Jewish people will experience. If you believe this implies the removal of free will, how do we square that with the eternal and immutable nature of the Torah? Maimonides writes in Laws of Kings 12:2 that all these and similar matters cannot be definitely known by man until they occur for these matters are undefined in the prophets' words and even the wise men have no established tradition regarding these matters except their own interpretation of the verses. Would you agree this means that all discussions about the specific details regarding the Messianic age come down to speculation?

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Yehonatan repost: Hello my dear brother ❤. Yes and No. On the one hand, it is well known that the Rambam did not receive or have the tradition from his rabbi's of the mystical layers of the oral and written Torah. The Ramban (Nachmonides, rav moshe ben nachman) did have this tradition from his teachers, going back from student to rabbi student to rabbi back to the Tana'im. [Just to note, the Ramban didn't have the Zohar]. The Ramban in his commentary to the verse Deuteronomy 30:6 wrote: "...This following subject is very apparent from Scripture: Since the time of Creation, man has had the power to do as he pleased, to be righteous or wicked. This [grant of free will] applies likewise to the entire Torah-period, so that people can gain merit upon choosing the good and punishment for preferring evil. But in the days of the Messiah, the choice of their [genuine] good will be natural; the heart will not desire the improper and it will have no craving whatever for it. This is the “circumcision” mentioned here, for lust and desire are the “foreskin” of the heart, and circumcision of the heart means that it will not covet or desire evil. Man will return at that time to what he was before the sin of Adam, when by his nature he did what should properly be done, and there were no conflicting desires in his will, as I have explained in Seder Bereshith (2:9). It is this which Scripture states in [the Book of] Jeremiah, "Behold, the days come, saith the Eternal, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers etc. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Eternal, I will put my Law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it." This is a reference to the annulment of the evil instinct and to the natural performance by the heart of its proper function. Therefore Jeremiah said further, "and I will be their G-d, and they shall be My people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying: ‘Know the Eternal;’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them." Now, it is known that "the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21) and it is necessary to instruct them, but at that time it will not be necessary to instruct them [to avoid evil] for their evil instinct will then be completely abolished. And so it is declared by Ezekiel, "A new heart will I also give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will cause you to walk in My statutes". The new heart alludes to man’s nature, and the [new] spirit to the desire and will. It is this which our Rabbis have said (Talmud Tractate Shabbat page 151) on the verse “And the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say: ‘I have no desire in them’ (Ecclesiastes 12:1) "these are the days of the Messiah, as they will offer opportunity neither for merit nor for guilt,” for in the days of the Messiah there will be no [evil] desire in man but he will naturally perform the proper deeds and therefore there will be neither merit nor guilt in them, for merit and guilt are dependent upon desire." On the other hand, even knowing these concepts and accepting them as true, does not mean we have any clue what this experience would actually be like first hand, and in that sense, (i think) the Rambam is also right.

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Yehonatan repost: To add onto what the Ramban wrote, we have the tradition on the verse Deut 10:16 "remove the foreskin of your hearts" that one of the names of the Evil Inclination is "ערלה" foreskin, and that the meaning of this verse means to overcome/subjugate or uproot the evil inclination from within us, because listening to that voice is as if idolatry and not the voice of Hashem. And so if in Deut 30 it says that at that time "Hashem (Himself) will circumsize your hearts to love and serve Him with all your heart and soul" it would seem to imply the uprooting of all evil and any desires not in line with desiring God, from existence, which might explain why at that time everyone will live forever,

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Yehonatan repost: And so if in Deut 30 it says that at that time "Hashem (Himself) will circumsize your hearts to love and serve Him with all your heart and soul" it would seem to imply the uprooting of all evil and any desires not in line with desiring just God, from existence, which might explain why at that time everyone will live forever,

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Thank you very much for giving me information I don't have access to. From my limited perspective, I'm not sure I agree. Tremendous Godly revelations don't necessarily imply the removal of free will, which is a fundamental principle of the Torah of Moses. Removing a fundamental principle of the Torah may create more problems than it solves. Also, if we follow Ramban's interpretation, free will would be removed only from Jews because all the new covenant prophecies are speaking about the covenant God made with the Jews.

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Yehonatan repost: My pleasure ❤. I think the Rambam is right in the sense that we have no clue what things will be like. However, even though I do not understand it, I do believe the words of the Ramban, as these concepts are also found in midrashic and kabbalistic literature. I think that just like Angels do not have free will because of the level of awareness of truth that they have, so too at that time, the process of all of remaining man kind becoming "angelic" begins, including non-jews, in that the very fact that God will pour His spirit on all the earth, the level of awareness of truth, in it of itself, will uproot foreign desires from us and all we will crave is doing His will, where all nations too will go to Jerusalem to seek Hashem "and let Him teach us of His ways, and we will go in His paths," for out of Zion shall the Torah come forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." But, only Hashem knows. What will be, will be, and the reality of those matters, truthfully no one knows but Him, as it says "...no eye has seen except for you alone God, what He will do for those who wait for it" Isaiah 64:3.

[Hrvatski Noahid]

I wish to add something. I note you believe the words of the Ramban as these concepts are also found in midrashic and kabbalistic literature. According to Rabbi Dr. Michael Schulman, Midrash are homiletic stories within the Torah tradition. As such, Midrashic stories themselves are never to be used as sources from which it is correct to derive decisions for what should or should not be done in practice. Certainly, established / accepted Torah Laws for practical observance (halacha) can never be overturned by a homiletic story that's found in Midrash. That is because the earlier Sages who ruled on and accepted the halacha certainly also knew the Midrash stories, and in fact understood them much more correctly and deeply than we imagine to understand them in our small way. Therefore we are obligated (and held accountable in God's judgment) to practice what halacha requires, and not what we imagine that a Midrashic story implies. It's very important to understand that Midrash is not Torah Law. The Midrash is telling you about a moral equivalency, not a Torah-Law equivalency. And many statements in the Midrash are actually metaphorical, for the purpose of teaching some lesson, and are not meant to be taken literally.

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Yehonatan repost: Yes, all true, but in Judaism there is a differentiation between different types of Midrash, when I used the word midrash i didn't mean that type of Midrash where they bring many parables and stories which in our tradition we know are allegorical. Also often when we say midrashic literature it encompasses also texts that aren't midrashic in that previously mentioned nature, but they're called midrash simply because in them there are "Drashot" (expounding) of verses, that aren't found in the talmud, so for example "Sefer haBahir" attributed to the Tanna Rabbi Nechunia ben Hakana, one of our ancient kabbalistic texts dating very early, in the rishonim it was called simply "the midrash of rebbe nechunia ben hakana", even tho its not similar in any way to the classic "midrashic" literature of allegorical nature. It is strictly kabbalistic tradition in that book. Similarly the zohar, which is totally different than classic midrash, was originally just called "the midrash of rebbi shimon bar yochai". So when we find in any ancient text of ours that isnt the talmud, even if its not the allegorical midrash type, its still called "midrash" bc from the word Drasha, verses are expounded in it with teachings and traditions. And so in many of these texts they simply spell out traditions on concepts such as these of what will be at the end of days, or the style in which the end of day wars unfold, and in what order they will unfold, etc. Even within classical midrashic literature  within the text itself, its easy to distinguish between what is straight information being passed over VS cryptic esoteric allegory, which we know isn't to be taken literally. So these concepts are mentioned in the talmud and also in "outside of talmud" torah tradition.

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Yehonatan repost: Also, to all of these different midrashic literature too, there are commentaries, like for example the Gra (Ga'on from Vilna) has a commentary on the entire Zohar. And in them they also bring a lot of things from tradition and expound traditions on different midrashim from all over our literature. So i meant, from the totality of our tradition (of what I was taught and have studied) from that, is why i do believe the Rambans commentary, even if i don't grasp at all what that reality would be like.

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Hello dear brother. I believe I found a good explanation that agrees with Ramban's annulment of the evil instinct AND preserves free will and the immutability of the Torah. From "Will We Still Have Free Choice When Moshiach Comes?" at the Chabad website: "good versus evil is not the only decision we make in life. There's another sort of free choice too—one that will even apply even when Moshiach comes: Good versus better. Today, the question is often whether or not we do a certain good deed. When Moshiach comes, it will be to what extent we do that Mitzvah. Will we push ourselves to the max or just be satisfied with a regular job. Today, we choose between using our talents for good things or bad things. When Moshiach comes, we will choose between nurturing those talents even further or just letting them be. Today, our battle is between good and bad. With evil working against us, we make the right decisions and propel ourselves forward. But when Moshiach comes, we'll leave this atmosphere. Evil will become a no-brainer. We will need our own rockets - the challenge of good versus better. And we will use freedom of choice to decide just how high we want to soar."

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Yehonatan repost: Wow, truly beautiful, thank you so much for sharing that with me! I thought about you over shabbat. Not that you need to hear this from anyone, but i truly hope you continue in your growing in knowledge and purity and truly become like a highpriest in Gods eyes for all the noahides, may Hashem guide you in the ways of truth purity and humility and may His Name and Torah be sanctified by you and through you, a true kidush Hashem to all who see you and know you, all the days of your life and forever, iyH amen. Thanks so much for sharing with me brother!!! There's a prayer written by Rabbi Nechunia ben Hakana where the 3rd line reads "Please Mighty One, those who seek Your Oneness/Sovereignty, protect them like the pupil of the eye" Amen.

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Amen! Obviously, I was thinking about you too and the apparent contradiction we discussed. I am so glad we influence each other in a way that improves our understanding of God's Torah. Thank you so much for providing a unique Jewish perspective. Please continue to do so! May God bless you in this world and the next!

[Hrvatski Noahid]

Yehonatan repost: Amen my brother! 😍😍😍