Choose Life

The Torah says: “I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, so that you and your children may live.” Opening The Torah says: “See, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil… Choose life.” My dear fellow Jew, stop for a moment at the word “See.” In the Hebrew, it is spoken to one person. Hashem turns to each and every one of us on our own and says: See. See what I have set before you. Exactly you. Exactly now. But we need to understand something. When a person is sunk deep in trouble, how can we even talk about choice? He may be struggling to earn a living. There may be tension inside the walls of his home. His son may have left the right path. He feels he has nothing to choose from. The situation is “too big for him,” and he is trapped inside it. This is exactly the question of this essay: What is the choice the Torah is asking of him? The First Path: The Victim Modern culture offers him one path: the path of the victim. It goes like this: If you are hurting, find who is to blame. Who did this to you? Whose fault is it that you are where you are? “The system,” your wife, fate, circumstances. There will always be someone else whose fault it is that he is stuck here. This approach wants to give comfort. But all it gives is poison. As long as his eyes are fixed backward, asking “Who did this to me?”, he is standing with his face turned the wrong way. You cannot walk forward when your face is turned back. The very first model of this approach is Cain, the son of Adam. The Torah tells us that he was told: “Why are you angry…? If you do better, you will be lifted up.” Hashem Himself said to him: There is something you can do. But Cain did not listen. He looked for someone to blame, and he found him in his brother. That is how the first murder was born, out of the victim’s way of thinking. The same is true of the spies who were sent to scout the Land of Israel. They said: “We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes.” These were great men, every one of them a leader of his tribe. But the moment they declared themselves “grasshoppers,” the story was over. They became victims of their own picture of themselves. And that is what sealed the decree that the people would wander in the desert. The Second Path: Ownership The Torah teaches a completely different path. Not “Who is to blame?” but “What can I do now?” And it is important to understand: taking ownership is not the same as guilt. Someone who confuses the two loses twice. He loses once in the trouble itself, and a second time when he beats himself up for having failed. That is not serving Hashem. The ownership the Torah asks for is not “It’s my fault.” It is “I act.” Not turning toward the past, but turning toward the future. This is the inner meaning of “Choose life.” Choose to be someone full of life, full of strength, full of ability. Do not turn yourself into a broken vessel, waiting for someone else to come and glue its pieces back together. Look at Caleb and Joshua, the two faithful spies. In the very same situation, they said: “Let us go up at once… for we can surely do it.” The same land, the same giants. But a different choice. And that choice made the difference for them between life and death. A Note on Serving Hashem: Every Situation Is a Mission Here we touch on a deep foundation from the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, about Hashem’s personal providence. Every single detail that happens to a person, and to every created thing, is guided personally by Hashem. If so, then the situation you are in, with its pressure, its difficulty, its test, is not random. It is aimed at you. Exactly you. Exactly now. It is a mission. And since that is so, here is a great rule. Our Sages teach: “Hashem does not make impossible demands of His creatures.” If a test has been laid at your door, that is a sign that you have been given the strength you need to face it. The question “What can I do?” now becomes a spiritual question: “What does Hashem want from me right now?” And this is the meaning of the word “See” in the verse. See that this test is yours, and only yours. And so the strength to stand up to it is inside you. Hashem Blesses the Doing Our Sages teach: “If you have worked hard and found, believe it.” “Believe it” means this is a matter of faith: the faith that if you put in the effort, you will find. Hashem does not bless excuses. He blesses effort. Even one small step of “What can I do?” already turns a person from a captive into a liberator. It turns him from an object being pushed around into a person with a will who acts. And when a person takes ownership, even the smallest bit, he becomes a partner. And where there are partners, Hashem is with them.