Avot203

15:
The world is judged benignly: coming after two ideas of such monumental import – man in the divine image and possessed of free will – the next clause might seem to be rather lame. Yet it is at the bedrock of Jewish morality. When reading this clause we tend to concentrate on the idea of benign judgement rather than on the central concept of judgement itself. Man – every man and woman – is indeed free to determine his own behaviour and God will not interfere; but that does not mean that God is disinterested in man's choices. It is Judaism's firm belief that God is aware of man's behaviour choices and reacts to them: that is why we have the terms righteousness and sin. Rambam included this concept in his "Thirteen Principles"; in the poetic form with which people are more familiar – the hymn 'Yigdal' – it is formulated thus:

16:
And all is according to the majority of the deeds: the immediate import of this last clause in our present mishnah is not clear. There are two classical interpretations of the words of Rabbi Akiva.

17:
Rambam associates this teaching with a central theme of his theory of human psychology. He develops his theory throughout his works. Basically we may say that according to Rambam each of us is born with innate tendencies towards certain psychological trends: it is our duty to cultivate those trends which comply with divine law (such as honesty, kindness, generosity) and to cultivate even more the antitheses of those trends which go against divine law. Thus we must practice great kindness as a counterbalance to a tendency towards cruelty; we must exercise great generosity to overcome a tendency towards miserliness, and so forth. However, teaches Rambam, one good deed will not create in us immunity from its opposite. In order to overcome any tendency towards – say – miserliness we must perform acts of generosity and charity again and again, so that gradually they will become almost 'second nature'. Thus he understands Rabbi Akiva as warning us that man's success or failure in meeting the standards set by divine judgement are dependent on "the majority of the deeds"; that is to say that success is more likely the more we practice good deeds (and avoid bad ones).

18:
Rabbi Ovadya of Bertinoro in his commentary on our present mishnah takes a different tack: when God comes to judge man He ways our deeds in a balance, as it were. If our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds we are deemed righteous; if the opposite is the case we are deemed wicked. Thus "all is according to the majority of the deeds".

In Avot 199 I referred those interested to an essay I wrote on Theodicy – or the problem of evil in the world. In that essay I suggested that most of the world's evil comes from man himself and that God does not interfere even in order to prevent the most repugnant of evils; only in this way can man's completely free moral choice preserved.

Joel Wiesen writes:

How do you square the main thesis of your essay with the daily siddur which, in so many places, takes positions diametrically opposed to yours? Do you pray the daily prayers that speak of divine retribution, divine provider of peace, divine protector, divine provider of sustenance, etc. Do you recite the parts of the siddur that chastise God for inaction in the face of injustice, while at the same time pleading for such action. If so, why. If not, do you omit the offending parts of the Amida and the Shema and the Psalms? Is our religion elastic enough to encompass both the siddur and your essay? Are there any limits to its elasticity? Questions are easy. I have no answers. Perhaps you have some.

I respond:

Jewish theology develops over the centuries and is never static. Sometimes these changes are very subtile and involve several minute shifts which taken together after several centuries of development amount to a great paradigm shift. Our prayers reflect the theology prevalent at the time they were created. When there is a clash between prayer and belief the usual – almost instinctive – Jewish resolution is 'interpretation'.

But in the examples that Joel cites I do not see any such clash: the concept of divine retribution in no way negates man's absolute free will (as hinted at in today's shiur); God's ideal is peace between individuals and groups and it is man who vitiates that ideal, not God; God provides ample sustenance for the whole world and it is man who frustrates that design by unequal distribution of those provisions. And so forth. When we ask God to punish the wicked that does not preclude the fact that we too have a duty to prevent and punish wickedness.

As Rambam wrote in a slightly different context: 'the gates of interpretation are not closed'. One of my teachers of blessed memory always used to tell us when confronted by a text: "do not tell me what he says; tell me what he means to say". The same applies to our prayers: it is the meaning the heart gives to them that makes them live and gives them their true meaning.

This subject is 'longer than the earth and broader than the sea [Job 11:9], and I cannot deal with it appropriately in the small space afforded by the framework of 'discussion'. I hope I have given some hints for further thought.