Jeremy Rosen
Sin and Free Will
Summary
Jeremy Rosen engages in a layered and fascinating conversation on the relationship between free will and sin and where God fits in the mix.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
What the Torah says, and what says indeed in reading throughout this week is this idea that … God wants a relationship with us, and we want a relationship with God, but the trouble is, we keep on pushing ourselves apart, so it’s the relationship that we want, it’s true that we can’t know God, in the sense of knowing another person, in the sense of knowing how to perform a particular task, but we can engage with this additional dimension, and that’s why the Torah says, “When we push God away, God will hide from us.” In a sense, he’s so upset, that he moves away. Now, that’s a metaphor, of course it’s a metaphor, but it’s rather like saying ‘with love’, love has to go both ways, you can love somebody, unrequited love, but real love involves a two-way interaction, and I love my interaction with God, it’s an experience, but God doesn’t give me messages saying, “Invest in this stock, and not in that stock.” It’s an experience of something, it’s an emotion, it’s a passion, and that’s something that the longer I’m away from it, the more alienated I am, and the closer I am to it, the nearer I am to it, and the more I feel it. And in a sense, this is the metaphor, “You feel alienated from God? Think what God feels if you don’t love God, and he feels alienated from you. Cause and effect between this tournament says your mind talk, then comes effect.”
Well yes, I mean, I don’t think we should act out of fear, I think we should act out of respect, and the term Yirah, ‘awe’ does not mean fear, the days of awe are not days of frightened, being frightened in Hebrew means ‘Lafahed’, but it means respect, respecting God, respecting values, respecting barriers. So, I think that the threat of punishment, ought not to be there, I think it’s there because so many people react that way, after all, you and I know we’re more likely to abide by the law if there’s a police car tailing us as we drive, we’re less likely to do something wrong if we think somebody’s watching us. So, human beings, what we are, maybe we do need deterrents, and deterrents work. And so, this is a former deterrent, but I don’t think it’s a very noble basis to act simply because you’re frightened, I’d rather act because it’s the right thing to do.
Well, no. What the Torah says, what the Torah says, you can atone any day of the year, the whole system of sacrifices was based on the idea you could atone any time you wanted to, and you could atone any time you wanted to, to another person, what the Torah says is, “Yom Kippur atones sins between you and God.” This is a God time, you’ve got to put everything you’ve done wrong to another human being right before you even get to Yom Kippur. So, Yom Kippur is basically for you on a spiritual level, you in relation to God, not to any other person, but otherwise, we can atone every day of the year, and we can atone to God every day of the year, but this is not saying … This is a concentrated time, you might not have time, you might get carried away, so I’m giving you a special time to focus on it, and really put your mind to this relationship with God.