The Power of Choice: Making Hashem Our King
Opening Here is a simple question. Yet it touches the very depths of the soul: What is real power? Think of a rich and capable man. He can give his wife a home, money and security. He can give her everything. He can say the right words and make the right gestures. But there is one thing he cannot buy: her choice to be with him. And if she stays only because she has no other option, is there anything real here? Is this love? Is this a true bond? Only when she has the full power to leave, and still chooses to stay, does her choice have real and endless worth. No King Without a People The holy Zohar, the classic mystical work, teaches a basic truth: “There is no king without a people.” The crown, the palace and the army are only outer garments. Kingship is not something the king has on his own. It is created and revealed when the people accept him as their king. The Zohar’s words are precise: it is the people who make the king a king. Without their acceptance there is no king and no kingdom. The crown can still be there, but it is empty. Here the sharpest question of all comes up, from a clear passage in the Talmud. The Talmud says that at Mount Sinai, “He held the mountain over them like a barrel.” Hashem Himself forced the Torah on the Jewish people. If so, where is the choice? What happened to “there is no king without a people”? If the Torah was given by force, what is it worth? The Talmud itself says there that this is a serious problem: a promise made under force is a weaker promise. And it answers: “They accepted it again in the days of King Ahasuerus.” The real and deep acceptance came in the days of Esther and Mordecai. There was no mountain then, no noise, no pressure from outside. And it was exactly then that the Jewish people chose, from a pure inner will, to accept Hashem as their King. That is the acceptance that counts. Not the force, but the choice. The Real Power We Give Here is the new idea: Hashem can do anything. He could have created a world of angels who would obey Him perfectly, with no questions, no doubts and no choice. But He chose to create a world with free choice. And He chose the Jew in particular, as the Book of Psalms says: “For Hashem has chosen Zion.” He chose a people that can, at any moment, choose otherwise. Why? The famous Hasidic discourse “I Have Come into My Garden” explains that the whole purpose of creation is for Hashem to have a home in this lower world. He wants His presence to dwell right here below, in a world of matter, choice and doubt. And this home cannot be built by force from above. It is built by an awakening from below, through the free choice of a Jew down here. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, writes in one of his letters that there is a special and tremendous quality in the service that rises “from below to above.” And because we have the power to leave, our choice to stay is what builds the kingdom. This is the opposite of how we usually think about power. Power is not what you can take. Real power is what someone gives you freely. And Hashem, so to speak, “asks” us for this power: our choice.
Putting It into Practice
Do you know that question that sometimes rises in your heart? “What difference can my one small good deed really make?” Now you understand. You have the full choice not to do it. So the moment you do choose to act, whether you say the prayer “Hear, O Israel,” give charity or keep the Sabbath, you are bringing kingship into being. You are the “people” who crown the King. No commandment is passive obedience. Each one is an act of crowning: active, precious, and impossible to replace. The crown can be there without you. The kingdom cannot.
Questions and answers
Q: What is real power, if a rich man can give his wife everything but cannot buy her choice?
Rabbi Landau answers: Think of a rich and capable man. He can give his wife a home, money and security. He can give her everything. He can say the right words and make the right gestures. But there is one thing he cannot buy: her choice to be with him. And if she stays only because she has no other option, is there anything real here? Is this love? Is this a true bond? Only when she has the full power to leave, and still chooses to stay, does her choice have real and endless worth.
Q: What does the Zohar mean by “There is no king without a people”?
Rabbi Landau answers: The holy Zohar, the classic mystical work, teaches a basic truth: “There is no king without a people.” The crown, the palace and the army are only outer garments. Kingship is not something the king has on his own. It is created and revealed when the people accept him as their king. The Zohar’s words are precise: it is the people who make the king a king. Without their acceptance there is no king and no kingdom. The crown can still be there, but it is empty. Here the sharpest question of all comes up, from a clear passage in the Talmud.
Q: Why did Hashem create a world with free choice instead of a world of obedient angels?
Rabbi Landau answers: Hashem can do anything. He could have created a world of angels who would obey Him perfectly, with no questions, no doubts and no choice. But He chose to create a world with free choice. And He chose the Jew in particular, as the Book of Psalms says: “For Hashem has chosen Zion.” He chose a people that can, at any moment, choose otherwise. Why? The famous Hasidic discourse “I Have Come into My Garden” explains that the whole purpose of creation is for Hashem to have a home in this lower world. He wants His presence to dwell right here below, in a world of matter, choice and doubt. And this home cannot be built by force from above.
Q: What can a rich and capable husband do for his wife, and what can he not buy?
Rabbi Landau answers: He can say the right words and make the right gestures.
Q: What difference can my one small good deed really make?
Rabbi Landau answers: Do you know that question that sometimes rises in your heart? “What difference can my one small good deed really make?” Now you understand. You have the full choice not to do it. So the moment you do choose to act, whether you say the prayer “Hear, O Israel,” give charity or keep the Sabbath, you are bringing kingship into being. You are the “people” who crown the King. No commandment is passive obedience. Each one is an act of crowning: active, precious, and impossible to replace. The crown can be there without you. The kingdom cannot.
Concepts: mission