 |
Weekly Jewish Wisdom: The Moral Battlefield
by Dr. Erica Brown
"The ultimate aim of all of our service is to graduate from freedom to compulsion. We do not want to remain in that confused state in which truth and falsehood seem equally valid alternatives.”
Eliyahu Dessler, Strive for Truth
Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler was born in 1892; he was the scion of a rabbinic family and a contributor to the Mussar Movement, an influential trend for spiritual and self-improvement. Rabbi Dessler founded the Gateshead Yeshiva in the north of England and in 1947, moved to Bnei Brak to learn and teach in Israel. His students wrote notes of his lectures that formed the basis of Strive for Truth, prepared by one of his disciples, Aryeh Carmell.
One of Rabbi Dessler’s most noted contributions to the world of Jewish self-improvement lies in his observations on the behira point. Behira is the Hebrew term for choice but specifically refers to choices made of one’s free will. Rabbi Dessler compared our moral choices to life on the battlefield. He writes that “When two armies are locked in battle, fighting takes place only at the battlefront.” Any territory behind the lines of either army is assumed to be in the possession of that army. If one army pushes the other back, then that territory, too, becomes the assumed possession of that particular army. He compares this notion of the point where the troops meet to choices that individuals make.
The situation is very similar with regard to behira. Everyone has free choice – at the point where truth meets falsehood. In other words, behira takes place at the point where the truth as the person sees it confronts the illusion produced in him by the power of falsehood. But the majority of a person’s actions are undertaken without any clash between truth and falsehood taking place.
Most decisions we make, Rabbi Dessler argues, are not a struggle for us. We may have been raised with certain values that operate within us naturally. For example, a person raised within a framework of kashrut observance will not think twice about whether or not to eat something non-kosher. There is no struggle for that individual; therefore, the behira point is not activated. Rabbi Dessler believes that “any behavior a person adopts as a result of training or by copying others is not counted as his own…”
The choice for such observant individuals may be in the area of speaking badly of others, which some may not even “realize is a grave sin. Yet these same people would not dream of transgressing the laws of Shabbat…” There is choice in some behaviors; others are a function of hereditary, environmental or educational forces at play. These determine the location of the “battle.” Despite these factors, we all have a point of choice. In Rabbi Dessler’s words, “Behira comes into play only when one is tempted to go against the truth as one sees it and the forces on either side are more or less equally balanced.”
The moral battlefield is one that we create and one that we largely control. We do not control what we are up against, only how we respond to it. When we battle the forces against us and make good choices, we can get to the point that Rabbi Dessler calls compulsion. We feel utterly compelled to make good decisions; we have so integrated good choices that it would not occur to us to make poor ones. Thus, we have changed the battlefield.
Our quote above describes a moral goal: to get beyond the freedom that everything – both good and bad – seem to be equal choices to a place of compulsion to do good because it is right. Imagine a person who battles everyday with a weight problem. Every time he or she takes food, the battle wages within. After extensive dieting and overcoming recurring health problems, this individual no longer faces the same battlefield because he or she has integrated more healthful eating habits. When this individual looks at a photograph of a former self, he or she do not even recognize the person in the picture. It is a past self. Rabbi Dessler calls this “higher unfreedom.”
There is even a higher level on the battleground. Compulsion is still an active force, a decision, even if it is a decision for good. At a certain point of commitment, individuals do good for the sake of goodness; there is no compulsion at all. Doing right is simply natural. “Compulsion only applies where there is resistance. One cannot speak of compulsion to do something one loves.”
Rabbi Dessler helps us consider the humanity of the moral struggle and our place within it. The point of choice on a battleground is the place where forces equally compelling are pulling us in different directions and where an active choice is required. The more our capacity to make doing good instinctive, the more able we are to move the lines on the battlefield so that we posses more moral territory. For those who are able with constancy and regularity to conquer the forces working against them through active choice, freedom turns into compulsion. That compulsion turns into love. At that point, the individual has achieved Rabbi Dessler’s goal: “The man of the spirit is the truly liberated man.”
Shabbat Shalom
|
