Good morning, everybody. It’s good to see everybody again. Today is Question Thursday. Someone sent me a question yesterday. They asked not to be named, but you can choose for yourself whether you want to be named or not. The question was: Can a person really change? Specifically, can an angry person really change? Is that possible? And along with that question: Is learning Torah going to make a difference in changing a person’s character?
There are really a lot of questions in that question. To answer it, I’d first like to share with you a very nice, very interesting Gemara in Masechet Bava Batra. The Gemara there brings a conversation that took place between Iyov and Hashem. We mentioned Iyov a few times, maybe last week.
It says there that Iyov, from his kind heart, wanted to defend humanity when people go to the Day of Judgment. Again, the Day of Judgment is when a person leaves this world, and there is going to be din (judgment). They’re going to go over the person’s whole life, the person’s accomplishments, or the opposite. There will be din v’cheshbon—judgment; they will take account. That’s obviously a pretty scary situation. Who knows how we will be able to come out of that din? Iyov volunteered to help all of us, all of humanity, so that we should come out of that din, that we should come out of that court in a positive manner.
So what was his argument? He went to Hashem as a lawyer on our behalf, and his argument was, “Hashem, you created an ox, you created a donkey, you created tzaddikim, righteous people, and you created resha’im, wicked people. Who could change your creation?” Basically, what Iyov was saying was that, just as when a donkey goes to Shamayim (heaven), after one twenty, they’re not going to ask Hashem, “How come you weren’t an ox?” That’s not a question. Donkeys aren’t expected to be oxen. And if an ox goes to Shamayim, they’re not going to ask Hashem, “How come you didn’t act like a donkey?”
Iyov says that, just as you created donkeys and oxen, you created righteous people. They are people whom, when you look at them, you see are pure and only want to do what’s right. And then you have people who are resha’im. Just as you don’t expect an ox to be a donkey, you can’t expect a Rasha to be a tzaddik. That was Iyov’s argument on behalf of humanity. Somebody goes to Shamayim and lives a life of anger, putting people down because of that, hatred, and tum’ah (impurity). “That’s how you made him, Hashem. It’s not like he made himself. You made people with these desires, and therefore, what do you want from him? That’s how you made him. You made him lazy, you made him angry, you gave him these desires for things that may not be good for him.” Again, this was Iyov’s argument to the Creator. Hashem’s answer to Iyov is, “I hear you, but you should know that I gave them a Torah, and the Torah is able to change the things I created them with.”
It’s important to understand this conversation because, when you hear it, it doesn’t make any sense. It seems from Iyov’s question—or, excuse me, from his defense—that he didn’t know about free choice. He’s comparing the actions of an ox, which has no choice and is programmed like a robot, to the actions of a human, who has free choice. It sounds from the question like Iyov wasn’t aware of free choice. He didn’t know that humans actually make a decision to become righteous or a decision to become evil. From his discussion with the Creator, it sounds like Iyov understood that a tzaddik was preprogrammed, born with these characteristics of righteousness, and a Rasha was also born with these characteristics of evil. So what do you want from him? That’s the way you made him.
It’s very hard to understand. Iyov didn’t know that humans have free choice? It’s impossible that Iyov didn’t know such an elementary piece of knowledge: that humans are free to choose their destiny. The entire world knows this. Every country and every city in the world has a court. What is a court? It’s a judge. What’s the purpose of the court system in this country and in any country? Someone does something wrong; they murder, they get very mad and angry at someone, so they eliminate them. They come to court, and the judge says, “Guilty.” Wait, why is he guilty? What did he do? Well, you killed somebody. “But did I have a choice? That’s the way I am. That’s what I do. I steal, I kill, I curse,” and on and on and on. What does the court have on the guy if he’s only a robot? Obviously, if there’s a court system, that clearly shows that we believe you had a choice not to do it. We couldn’t punish someone if they had no choice but to do something. If someone takes you and throws you against somebody else, and that person dies, they can’t take you to court for that. “What do you want me to do? They picked me up and threw me against that guy, and that guy died. That wasn’t a free choice. I didn’t do it.” So when the court says “guilty” or “not guilty,” that’s a clear outcome of free choice. The court system in every country is testimony that all of humanity believes in free choice. It’s obvious Iyov didn’t know that.
By the way, this understanding of free choice is so clear that even Nazis are tried in a court of law and put in jail or put to death. Now, that might be obvious to us. Of course, if you’re not going to put a Nazi away, who are you going to put away? But rethink that. Don’t think it’s so obvious that Nazis should be put in jail or put on trial. Didn’t they commit horrible acts of murder and torture? Of course they would be the first people we’d put away. But that’s not true, because if you think about these Nazis and the way they grew up, they didn’t grow up like you and me. They didn’t go to school in Germany and get taught to love their neighbor and the strangers who live in their country. This was not their education.
One of Hitler’s weapons was the way he educated people. When these Nazis went to school, they were taught about hatred of Jews, among others. The Nazis had a whole ideology. They didn’t just wake up one day and start murdering people. Hitler convinced a civilized nation that they had a real problem and needed to get rid of that problem. This was taught to children, in colleges and high schools. It was part of the curriculum in Germany: humanity has a problem, and we’ve got to get rid of that problem.
So now you take a boy who went through that system, who grew up in that environment, and all he did was follow the rules. That’s all he did. He was actually a good citizen. He was taught something, and now he’s going to do it. Don’t we teach our children? Don’t they go to schools? Don’t they feel fulfilled when they do what they’re supposed to be doing? So how is it that we can take a Nazi, Yimach Shemo (may his name be erased), and put him on trial? Where is the fairness in that?
The same question could be asked about a terrorist who went ahead and murdered people. That’s what he’s been taught since he was three years old. When he read the cartoons, they showed someone who was a martyr who killed himself or killed others on behalf of his religion. That’s what he was taught. Do you think these people who go and murder and blow themselves up woke up one morning like that? It’s a whole system of education. So now you’re going to put that guy on trial? What did he do? He’s only following what he was taught.
So how do we do that? The answer is, again, that free choice is so obvious that even if you went to school and were taught to murder, ultimately you’re responsible because you know better than that. We believe the human conscience understands basic right and wrong. Your conscience may not tell you how to keep Shabbat, but you know that murdering innocent people is wrong. It doesn’t matter if you went to school for 25 years and they taught you otherwise. Otherwise, how could you try any of these people? Free choice is very deep. It’s very real. It’s actually so powerful that it can ignore 20 years of education. So yes, we can take a Nazi and put him on trial. It’s not an argument to say, “This is what I was told or what I was taught.” It’s not an argument, because you have free choice. You know better than that. You could have chosen differently.
So Iyov didn’t know that. When Iyov came to Hashem, he didn’t know that humans had free choice. That’s his argument. He’s comparing an ox and a donkey to a Rasha and a tzaddik. What kind of question is that? And what’s even more baffling and shocking is that when God answers him, He doesn’t say, “Iyov, are you nuts? Did you forget about free choice?” He doesn’t say that. Hashem tells him, “Iyov, Iyov, I hear you, but there’s a Torah. The Torah is able to fix the person. You’re right, the Rasha is the Rasha. You’re right, but Torah can fix him.” It sounds like Hashem actually agrees with the question. He just gives him an answer. He gives him the solution, but He accepts the question. How can God accept the question? What’s going on with this conversation? What are we missing?
I’m going to share with you something very important that’s relevant to all of us. A good lawyer knows how to get a positive verdict, a positive judgment. What is considered a positive judgment? If they say “not guilty.” If a person is on trial and could go to jail for the rest of his life, a good lawyer knows how to get the judge to say “not guilty.” That’s a great lawyer. If, God forbid, a person is in court and there are issues, whether financial or whatever, a good lawyer’s purpose is to get you free.
Now let’s say the situation is such that there’s no way you’re going free. It’s not happening. What you did is so clear that it’s not even imaginable to get the person free. So is there room for a good lawyer, or is there no room for a good lawyer because there’s no point? There’s nobody in the world who’s going to get you free. It’s not possible. But there’s still room for a good lawyer. What would a good lawyer do in that situation? The answer is that he may not be able to get a verdict of not guilty. That’s true. It’s not possible. But a good lawyer may be able to take a sentence of 50 years in jail and lower it to 5 years in jail. That would be a great lawyer. Now you’re not going to be found not guilty. You’re still going to jail. But wait, instead of 50 years, you got 5 years. That’s huge. So a good lawyer isn’t only someone who can get a not-guilty judgment. A person who lowers the sentence is important too.
Here Iyov was battling for understanding on our behalf. He was not trying to get a not-guilty verdict. That wasn’t his argument. Let me tell you what his argument was. When a person is young, they have free choice in many, many areas of their life. Let’s take an example. It’s an example I hate to use, but it’s an obvious example, and it can be used for so many things. Say you have a 14-year-old boy and he has a choice to make. When he’s 14, somebody offers him something inappropriate to smoke. At that point in his life, he’s already heard enough to know that it’s not a good thing to do. It’s not the right decision. He knows it’s not a question for him. He made a good choice. He accepted the offer from one of his good friends. Okay, now he starts to smoke. The second day, he gets offered again. Again, he’s struggling: yes, no, maybe. The next day he doesn’t do it. The third day, he struggles again. Let’s say that day he doesn’t do it, and let’s say he keeps making bad choices and struggling with this decision for about a month. For a month straight, he’s struggling: Should I? Should I not? Should I really smoke? I shouldn’t smoke. It’s not good for me, but, you know, my friends. It’s sharp, whatever craziness is going on in his head. And let’s say that for a few months straight he made bad decisions. What happens after about six months? I don’t think it takes six months, but let’s use it as an example. What happens after six months of smoking? What happens at some point? It’s no longer your choice. At some point, we call that addiction. Addiction is basically when a person had free choice at one time in his life.
What’s the difference between a guy who drinks and is addicted to drinking and a guy who drinks but isn’t addicted? The difference is that the one who drinks without an addiction still has a choice not to drink. He chose to drink, but he didn’t have to. But an addicted person basically has no choice. He’s addicted. He can’t say no, as much as he wants to, as much as he knows it’s not good for him, as much as he sees with his own eyes that it’s destroying his life. He can’t do anything. He’s addicted. I’m sure many people here have had relationships with someone who’s addicted, or maybe someone who is addicted themselves.
I had the privilege years back of teaching a little to alcoholics for a few months. What an experience. What an experience. What an experience for me to see such wonderful, intelligent, kind people who couldn’t live a normal life. Their marriage was shaky at best. They couldn’t be consistently good fathers. Many of them struggled with a job, depending on their level. It was so terrible to see intelligent, bright, good-looking people who couldn’t do it. They know this is bad for them, but they can’t stop. We call that an addiction. But the word addiction basically means you lost your free choice. You can’t stop. You’re addicted. You can’t stop.
Now, you can be addicted to drugs, alcohol, gambling, or anger. That’s right, you can be addicted to anger. You’ve made so many decisions out of anger for the past 10, 20, 30 years of your life. It’s no longer free choice. You’re addicted. We’re addicted to mindsets. We have a certain mindset. We develop that mindset, but at some point we do it so often that it becomes an addiction. We’re addicted to lifestyle. You can be addicted to a lifestyle. You can’t change. When you were younger, you were, you know, asking yourself, “Should I be a person who looks for honor, or should I run away from honor?” You’re struggling with that. But guess what? If you keep making the wrong choice, then at some point your whole life is about honor, and you can’t even change it, even if you’re staring at it with your eyes and you know it’s destroying you, it’s hurting you, but you can’t stop. You’re addicted to honor.
So basically, an addict is someone who lost their free choice. Iyov was giving a great argument to the Borei Olam (creator of the world). He wasn’t there to say this guy is not guilty. Of course he’s guilty. When he was 14 and 15, he made a very bad choice, many bad choices. And you know what? For those bad choices, he needs to be punished. Great. I can’t argue with that. You can’t argue with the Creator of the World, who sees everything clearly. So we’ll get him for two years of smoking. We’ll get him for that. 100%. He had free choice every time, and he messed up. But guess what? At some point he became addicted. And when you become an addict, now you’re not choosing anymore.
So now the guy is 28 and he’s smoking. What are you going to punish him for? What are you punishing him for? At that point, he no longer has free choice. He’s now like the ox. You want the ox to be a donkey? He can’t do it. Anybody who’s ever worked with alcoholics or drug addicts understands exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t want to say it’s impossible to change, but it’s extremely difficult to change. It’s not like the 14-year-old who’s making that balanced decision. It’s not like that anymore. It’s a whole different situation. There are organizations out there that work day and night to try to help people change an addict to be normal, and their success rate is very small. Not because they’re not trying, but because it’s very hard to change your nature.
So Iyov says to Borei Olam, “The guy did aveirot (sins) for 100 years. You’re going to give him a 100-year sentence? He messed up, really, for the rest—the 99 years—there’s no more free choice. So get him for the one year. Don’t get him for 100 years. It’s not fair.” That’s a good argument. It’s a great argument. He had free choice for that. You should get him again.
I gave you an example of drugs, drinking, and smoking, but obviously it applies to everything you can imagine. It applies to our characteristics. It applies to our Shemirat Shabbat (Shabbat observance). It applies to our tzniut (modesty). It applies to everything. Once we become habituated to something, it’s very hard to change. We know that this was what Iyov was coming to help all of us with: telling Borei Olam, “Lower the sentence. It’s not fair.” Hashem agrees with him: “I hear you, Iyov, but I did give my people the Torah. The Torah can change a person.” Let me explain exactly how that works.
It says that when Hashem came down to give us the Torah at Har Sinai, the Torah reports to us that Hashem came down in a fire. Now, that’s significant. If Hashem came down—whatever that means—He came down. He could have come down with water, clouds, or wind, or He could have come down in any way. We don’t have to know about it. But the fact that it says He came down with fire and it’s reported to us is significant. Hashem doesn’t just do things. Maybe we do random things. God’s not like that, especially if He’s reporting to us, “By the way, I came down with fire.” What does that mean? What am I supposed to learn from that? What does it mean to Esh, fire—in what way? What is the comparison between fire and Torah? What does that mean practically? So we can understand it: Oh yeah, Torah is like a fire. What does that mean?
It’s interesting that in the world we live in, we see different elements with overpowering abilities over other elements. For example, water is very powerful. God forbid, water can come and flood an entire city and destroy every home in that city. God forbid you get a flood in your basement—gone, you need a new basement. Water has the ability to destroy. Wind has the ability to destroy. Wind can knock a building down, or take a car, lift it, and move it hundreds of feet. Fire can destroy. We all know about that. We hear all the time about forest fires: thousands of acres, millions of acres. Fire goes right through and destroys them all.
But there’s something very unique about fire that none of the other destructive forces have. Unlike water and wind, when they destroy, they destroy what’s there. But fire, when it destroys, makes what it destroys into fire. So when fire, lo alenu (God forbid), hits a building, what happens to the building? It becomes fire. It turns it into fire. Wind, when it destroys a building, doesn’t turn it into a piece of wind. It just knocks it down. Water doesn’t turn it into a piece of water. It destroys it. But fire destroys by taking whatever it is that it’s destroying and turning it into fire.
Torah is like a fire. When Torah goes inside a person, it has the ability to change the person. It’s a new person. It’s the fire of Torah. A person who studies Torah has the ability to change who they are, no matter what kind of habit they were in, whether it was smoking, anger, or whatever it might be. Torah has that koach, that strength; it can change a person’s nature, even though he’s been doing something for so long. We’ve seen it so many times. It’s like a fire. I’ve seen it—I’ve seen it. I could say at least hundreds of times, maybe thousands, that you take a young man or a young lady, sometimes even an older person, and they start learning Torah, and that Torah is literally able to transform them.
Now you’ll tell me, “Is everyone learning Torah, everyone going to classes, going to have beautiful middot (character traits) all of a sudden? Be calm, be humble? Is that how it works?” I think we would argue that it’s not necessarily so. So yes, there are some prerequisites. It’s not like you go to a class and all of a sudden your life changes. It’s not like that. When we speak about learning Torah, we mean really learning, being committed to it. It’s not just listening to a class. It’s beautiful to have this class where everyone is listening and learning in the morning. It’s a commitment. It refers to a commitment to learn the wisdom of the Creator. A commitment could be a half hour a day, an hour a day, or three hours a day, depending on the person. But it’s learning with a commitment to understand. It’s not just, “Okay, I’m checking in now, I’m checking out.” No, it’s a commitment. A commitment means that when you learn, you actually care about what you’re learning. When you learn, you actually review what you learn.
I know this may sound obvious to some, and to others it may sound like, “Review what I learn?” Yeah. If something is important, you review it. Even your bank account: because it’s so important to you, you keep looking at it. You looked at it five hours ago. What are you looking at again? Well, it didn’t happen, but it’s important to you, so you keep reviewing it. Of course, something that’s important to you, you treat differently. If you found a letter from your great-grandpa that he wrote to you, and it had been in a capsule until now, and they opened it only today, you’d read every word. “So I can’t—what’s he saying? What do you mean by that?” You take it very seriously.
Torah learning can only give—it’s fire when it’s given the respect of fire. So when you learn Torah with a schedule, when you learn Torah with a pen and paper next to you, writing notes so you can remember what you learned, when you learn Torah with a desire to really understand, that’s called real learning. You can do it in this class too, by the way. You can take this class in many ways. You can listen while you’re walking. That’s nice, definitely very helpful. You can listen while you’re driving. That’s also helpful. You can do it sitting down, having coffee. Helpful. But the most helpful thing is the amount of value you attach to what you’re learning. Listening alone doesn’t create a huge bonfire. It’s a little fire. Even a little fire is good. But if you want to make a real fire of this class, listen intently. Write notes. If there’s something you heard that might be applicable in your life but you might forget it, after it’s over, take three minutes or two minutes just to review: “What did I just learn?” How often does that happen to you? You go to a class and you love it, and then you’re all excited about it, and somebody asks you, “So what did you learn?” “I’m not sure if I can say it.” If you can’t say it, it means you don’t really have it. So what does it take after a class? One or two minutes to think, “What did I just learn, and why is it important?”
So, a piece of paper, a pen, your mind is thinking. If you don’t do that, you’re not taking it as seriously as you could. It doesn’t mean I’m benefiting. Everyone’s benefiting because fire, even a little bit, works. I see someone just texted me all the notes from this class. He has pages. Thank you for that. Again, on every level, Torah is going to help a person, but the more respect you give to Torah, the more it can give you. A person who dedicates himself to learning, taking the messages, and connecting to it in a real way—huge. It could change a person’s life.
There’s a lot more on this subject, but I think we did a little bit today to answer the question. I bet there are women right now who are thinking, “But what does that apply to me? I don’t have the mitzvah (commandment) of learning Torah the same as men. Women are not sitting over a Gemara and learning, but they can participate in classes like this, and they have many classes that are important to them. Is it the same for a woman? Can we say that, in the same way that Torah is a fire that could change a man, Torah could change a woman as well? Is that the same? Was it? Is there a difference?” So maybe we’ll discuss that the following week, in next week’s question. Gentlemen, wishing you all—and ladies, I always forget—wishing you all a wonderful day. Hatzlacha Rabba. Take care.