Are people born good or bad?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau answers with the Rambam: “You are not born good, you’re not born bad. You are not smart, stupid, pure, corrupted. You become what your surroundings influence.”
That is what makes human beings different from animals, he explains. An eagle gets no credit for flying high; “it’s instinct.” But a person is “the only creature that can start as a pigeon and end up as an eagle.” In his words, “You were not born as an eagle, you were born changeable.”
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that, according to the Rambam, “no one is born an eagle and no one is born a pigeon. A person is born able to change,” and that this ability is what makes a human being greater than every other creature.
Related concepts: Growth · Personaldevelopment
In A Soul at Peace: Carried on Eagles’ Wings
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
No one is born good or bad; a person becomes what shapes him.
Deepest human truth
A human being is born changeable, and that ability is his greatness.
More questions from this teaching
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