Free will, confirmation bias and miracles

The importance which Judaism attaches to the notion of human free will is the focus of several chapters of Judaism Reclaimed. We note how Rambam describes it as

“a great foundation and a pillar of the Torah…Were God to decree on any person to be righteous or wicked, or were there to be a matter that pulled a person’s heart…towards one of these paths…with what justice could God punish the wicked and reward the righteous?”

Yet at the same time we examine several challenges to this doctrine, both in terms of how to reconcile it with God’s foreknowledge, and from various passages of the Torah itself. One such challenge presents itself at the start of this week’s portion, with God declaring that he has “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” in order to arrange for him to be subject to miraculous punishments. What has happened to Pharaoh’s free will?

Rambam responds that sometimes God can withhold free will from a person as a punishment for an earlier sin. Pharaoh in this instance is being punished for refusing to obey God’s prior commands to release the Israelites. Ramban proposes a very different solution, suggesting that Pharaoh’s decision-making had already been skewed by the miraculous intervention of prior plagues. God’s hardening of his heart merely restored his ability to choose freely whether or not to obey.

In this guest post, Yael Shahar presents a fascinating alternative answer based on the psychological realities of the path taken by Pharaoh. In the process she also engages a fundamental question of how we can sense the miraculous within apparently natural causation – particularly with regard to the Torah’s miracles.

FREE WILL, CONFIRMATION BIAS AND MIRACLES

By Yael Shahar

One of the more perplexing aspects of the Exodus story is the repeated “hardening” of Pharaoh’s heart. This phrase—together with another that is equally mysterious—is the key to understanding the true miracle of the Exodus.

Variations on this enigmatic phrase appear nine times in the story of the Exodus; at times, Pharaoh is said to harden his own heart, while at others, God is the one “strengthening” the monarch’s resolve. Does this mean that Pharaoh has no free will? And if he does not, then why is he, his household, and the entire Egyptian society punished by plague after plague?

When Moshe and Aaron first approached Pharaoh, they didn’t request an end to the enslavement of the Israelites. Instead, they requested that the slaves be given time off for a religious festival—a seemingly modest request. Pharaoh’s answer was a firm “no”: “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not listen to them.”

Pharaoh compounded this first mistake by becoming further entrenched in his determination not to let the slaves go free, even for a brief holiday. Each escalation led him to harden his resolve; his mindset had become his own prison. The fact that Aharon and Moshe started out with easily replicated tricks played into this entrenchment: once assured that his own magicians could reproduce their “signs and wonders”, Pharaoh had no reason to believe that anything unusual was afoot. The challenge to the status quo could be reasoned away.

Even when things escalated to a plague of lice, which Pharaoh’s court wizards were unable to reproduce, Pharaoh continued to “strengthen his heart”—habits of thought are hard to break. Only when a plague struck which the court wizards not only couldn’t reproduce, but from which they couldn’t even save themselves are we told that God strengthened Pharaoh’s heart.

"And the necromancers could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were upon the necromancers and upon all Egypt.But God strengthened the heart of Pharaoh, and he would not heed them, just as God had told Moses."

Midrash Rabbah, noting the change of language, says:

When God saw that Pharaoh did not relent after the first five plagues, He said: Even if Pharaoh now wished to repent, I shall harden his heart, in order to exact full punishment from him.

Pharaoh’s problem is known as confirmation bias: once a way of thinking becomes habituated, each time we resist change we further lose our ability to see contradictory facts. Or, in the words of our sages: “In the way that a person wants to walk, he is led.” (Makkot 12a)

Pharaoh’s dismissal of the evidence at hand, at first a conscious act, was now out of his hands; he had become a slave of his own stubbornness and could no longer see what was obvious to everyone else. There is a lesson here about how those in power can rationalize their decisions—even disastrous decisions—in order to avoid acknowledging past mistakes. Pharaoh continues to resist even to the extent where, with the court magicians themselves suffering from the plagues, his servants implore him:

"How long will this be a stumbling block to us? Let the people go and they will worship their God. Don't you yet know that Egypt is lost?"

So, returning to our initial question of whether Pharaoh did or did not have free will, we find that the answer is both “yes” and “no”. Pharaoh and his society were caught up in a process in which each ill-conceived decision bred another calamity, and yet they could find no way out of the cycle. Again and again, God “strengthens the hearts” of the Egyptians—first, so that they would refuse to free the slaves, and later so that they would pursue them to bring them back. The impression throughout is that no one was really acting from free will.

But how do we reconcile this seeming lack of free will with the Torah’s usual insistence that humans are free to choose? I think an answer is to be found in the Torah’s depiction of miraculous events. Consider how the Torah describes the splitting of the Reed Sea in next week’s parashah: Even though the text pictures the waters standing on either side like a wall, we are also told that God performed the miracle via a strong east wind that blew all night. The miracle might easily be ascribed to a natural—if freakish—occurrence.

So too, with the stiffening of the hearts of Pharaoh; had we not been told that God is “stiffening his heart”, we would see his disastrous decisions simply as spectacularly bad leadership brought about by confirmation bias and an arrogant nature incapable of admitting mistakes. However if we choose to see God’s hand in causality, including within the laws of psychology, then we can appreciate that confirmation bias was God’s method of actively leading Pharaoh.

In giving us the “inside scoop” the Torah is teaching us another way of seeing things: the same event can be viewed through more than one lens. We can see it as a natural phenomenon, which of course it is working within. Or we can see it “from the inside” as part of a larger plan. Both views are true; they each represent one aspect of a world whose Creator names Himself as “I will be as I will be”.

Yael Shahar has spent most of her career working in counter-terrorism and intelligence, with brief forays into teaching physics and astronomy. She now divides her time between writing, off-road trekking, and learning Talmud with anyone who will sit still long enough. She is the author of Returning, a haunting exploration of Jewish memory, betrayal, and redemption. You can find more of her writings at www.yaelshahar.com.

First posted on Facebook 21 January 2021, here.

Pesach Messianic musings: do the Jews really await a "Mashiach"?

Growing up in North West London, I was extremely fortunate to have been part of a very special community – the Bridge Lane Beth Hamidrash – whose members spanned a broad range of backgrounds and levels of observance. One custom which falls to mind at this time of year was the annual “Mashiach Feast” which was held, with the encouragement of Chabad members, on the eighth day of Pesach. The custom, which traces back to the Baal Shem Tov, is connected to the Messianic theme of the Haftarah of the final day, which is understood to convey a thematic link between the redemption from Egypt and the final awaited Redemption.

While two decades of 7-day Pesachs in Jerusalem may have weakened memories of this custom, the global upheaval to our lives and religious practices caused by the Coronavirus pandemic has led to whispers of Messianic machinations and preparations well beyond the usual confines of Chabad houses and farbrengens. I will therefore mention some brief ideas on the subject that are touched upon in Judaism Reclaimed.

The chapter of Judaism Reclaimed which addresses the Messianic era examines it in the context of the desirability of miracles and their role within Judaism. We note that while for Ramban and Rabbi Yehudah Halevi miracles, and the Divine experience they entail, represent the pinnacle of religious aspiration, this is firmly rejected by thinkers such as Rambam who idealise an intellectual relationship with God through the divinely-ordained natural order. This dichotomy is played out in their contrasting approaches to the Messianic era. While for Ramban the Messianic era is a setting in which God’s wonders need no longer be concealed, Rambam strongly endorses the position of the Talmudic sage Shmuel that “there is no difference between today’s world and the days of Mashiach except for [freedom from] oppression of the nations”. After all, why would God choose to perform miracles which serve to conceal rather than reveal the great wisdom inherent in his Creation?

What might such a Messianic era look like within Rambam’s worldview and what benefits could it be expected to yield?

I recently heard a fascinating idea on a YouTube lecture (on Isaiah chap. 2 about 30 mins in) from Rabbi Tovia Singer. R’ Singer highlights the fact that the term “Mashiach” is never used in the biblical texts in the context of the Messianic era. This is not just a linguistic observation but reflects a far more fundamental point: the biblical texts focus primarily on the societal utopia of the “Acharit Hayamim” (End of Days), with the Messianic King relegated to a facilitatory role. This got me wondering how much of our own Messianic conceptions might have been infiltrated by teachings of Christianity’s Messiah with their almost-exclusive focus on the role of their ‘Saviour’. From reading the conclusion of Rambam’s Hilchot Melachim, the message is clear:

The Sages and the prophets did not yearn for the Messianic era in order to have dominion over the entire world, to rule over the gentiles, to be exalted by the nations, or to eat, drink, and celebrate. Rather, they desired to be free to involve themselves in Torah and wisdom without any pressures or disturbances, so that they would merit the world to come... In that era, there will be neither famine or war, envy or competition, for good will flow in abundance and all the delights will be freely available as dust. The occupation of the entire world will be solely to know God. Therefore, the Jews will be great sages and know the hidden matters, grasping the knowledge of their Creator according to the full extent of human potential, as Isaiah states: "The world will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the ocean bed”.

By the time we reach Moreh Nevuchim (3:11), the message is even more pronounced with the Messianic king not even gaining a single mention:

For through awareness of the truth, enmity and hatred are removed and the inflicting of harm by people on one another is abolished. It [Tanach] holds out this promise, saying “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb…”. Then it gives the reason for this, saying that the cause of the abolition of these enmities, these discords and these tyrannies, will be humanity’s knowledge of God…

The primary and perhaps exclusive causes of warfare and misery are obsession with and competition over material possessions, power and pride. Once humanity is taught or becomes aware of this folly, its energies and capabilities will be channelled towards achieving universal happiness, thus “they will beat their swords into ploughshares…” and “your sons and daughters will prophesy”.

While we may at times look at the world and despair of such a destiny ever being achieved, Jewish tradition teaches that we must always be anticipating and working towards the fulfilment of these biblical promises. On this note, my wife Rivka Phillips pointed out how humanity’s predicament over the past year or so – which saw huge number of people under total lockdown and jobs, travel, schools, leisure and sports brought to a total standstill – would have been totally unthinkable only a few months before. Yet when we look back we can appreciate how all of this occurred in a perfectly rational and natural manner. So too we must maintain our firm belief – even within Rambam’s more naturalistic Messianic depiction – that humanity’s follies and misplaced focus can be reversed more speedily than we can ever imagine allowing us to progress towards the prophesied “world will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the ocean bed” .

First posted to Facebook 13 April 2020, here.

Who knows ten? Critical claims and counting one's plagues

By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips

In just a few nights time, the readership of this group will find themselves sitting around their respective Seder tables, gently dabbing ten drops of wine from the glass in front of them to commemorate the ten plagues which God inflicted upon the ill-fated Egyptians. The notion of the plagues as a set of ten features prominently in the traditional liturgy and festive songs recited by celebrants throughout the generations. Those approaching from a scholarly perspective, however, are confronted by a competing claim: that the account of Exodus 7-12 is in fact a combination of several original versions of the plagues which emanated from different sources (known as “E”, “J” and “P”). Such claims sometimes also draw upon references to the plagues in the book of Psalms (78, 105) which present only some of the plagues and do so in a different order.

The main thrust of these critical claims is that each original source contained only a smaller number of plagues, and that they were later fused into a single narrative by some unknown redactor who produced the Torah as we have it today. This post will attempt to demonstrate that a close examination of the text shows these claims to be unfounded.

Though source critics themselves dispute as to how the text should be divided, we will focus primarily on the version advanced by Richard Elliot Friedman (The Bible with Sources Revealed, 2005), which assigns half of the plague of Blood to “E” and half to “P”. Frogs are also half “E” and half “P”. Lice and Boils are “P”. Wild beasts (or flies), Pestilence, Boils, Hail, and Locusts are “E”. Friedman’s primary support for this division is linguistic – for example the various usages of terms such as “kaved” and “chazak” – while a narrative mentioning Aaron performing the plague is assumed to relate to the “P” (or Priestly) source.

In opposition to such attempts to divide the Torah’s account of the plagues in Egypt, other scholars have presented powerful evidence from the text to support the literary unity of the plagues narrative. The analysis by these scholars reveals several underlying patterns and parallels that run through the entire passage. If the narrative of the plagues had been cobbled together from disparate original sources, as Friedman claims, it is scarcely believable that they would produce such clear and consistent patterns in their combined form.

Placing the plagues into groups of three, we see plagues 1-3 are performed by Aaron and implemented by means of a staff. Moses performs plagues 4-6 with no mention of either hands or staff. Plagues 7-9 are also initiated by Moses, this time through the agency of his hands. These three groups of plagues share other sets of features. Plagues 1-3 involve the water and the lower regions, plagues 4-6 affect higher life forms (humans, cattle, then both humans and cattle). Plagues 7-9 invoke the sky.

This is by no means the only manner in which the Torah groups plagues in threes. In plagues 1, 4, and 7, Pharaoh receives a prior warning on his morning visit to the Nile. In plagues 2, 5, and 8 Moses is commanded “Go to Pharaoh” and delivers only a general warning. For plagues 3, 6, and 9 no warning is given at all.

Beneath the level of triplets, another pattern emerges this time based on pairs. Plagues 1 and 2 involve the Nile, 3 and 4 feature insects, 5 and 6 inflict disease, 7 and 8 arrive from the sky, while 9 and 10 deal with darkness – the 10th plague actually arrives at midnight.

These elegant, complex patterns within the plagues indicate that the entire passage was composed by a single author, who paid careful attention to detail and to the gradual development of the nature and impact of the plagues. For those who instead attribute the ten-plague narrative to a hastily arranged work of disparate sources which was somehow synthesized serendipitously, these patterns represent a set of uncomfortable yet undeniable coincidences.

A further blow to source critics’ suggestion that divisions of the text reflect distinct original sources is their inability to agree on some of the most basic, foundational aspects of these alleged sources. To highlight some of the key examples, Friedman criticizes his colleague Joel Baden, writing:

“On the positive side, Baden defends the existence of the E source against those who have denied it. On the negative side, Baden reverses much of the source identification of J and E in the section treated here and in the entire plagues text that follows. The evidence of language collected in The Hidden Book in the Bible is contrary to Baden’s re-identification of E texts as J, but Baden does not cite or deal with this evidence. The E texts that he calls J are entirely lacking all fifty of the terms that are characteristic of the J source and its related texts."

[The Exodus, 2017]

Meanwhile, David Carr, who also advocates for dividing the plagues up according to multiple authorship, attacks the above approaches of Friedman and Baden arguing that:

“By the end of the 1990s, few specialists in Pentateuchal studies continued to affirm the existence of a separate, identifiable, “Elohist” document.” He adds, “in his The Hidden Book in the Bible…pp.353-58, Friedman presents a brief summary of the traditional case for dividing J and E without an engagement of the critiques of that hypothesis, particularly in Europe.”

[The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction, 2011]

A completely different theory was proposed by the biblical scholar S. R. Driver, who understood the plagues as having originated from three distinct sources: J, P and E.

As biblical scholar Gary Rendsburg aptly summises:

“if the source critics themselves cannot agree in the main, then perhaps an entirely new approach is worthy of consideration…To my mind, a far simpler and less complicated approach is to discard the entire source-critical method and to assume an intentional ordering of the plagues in the manner described above…Once more, it is better to posit a single, unified authorial voce than to reconstruct hypothetical source that in truth are only the constructs of scholars, unattested in the actual record.”

[How the Bible is Written, 2019]

Kenneth Kitchen concludes similarly:

“The account of the plagues in Exod. 7-12 is a well-formulated unity; and (as some traditional critics already admit) it cannot meaningfully be split up between imaginary sources such J, E, P (for which no physical MSS actually exist!), without making a nonsense of the account of the plagues that only works as a unity…This kind of formulation is created ab initio, from the start—not by fiddling with fragments as with a jigsaw puzzle.".”

[On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 2006]

We conclude by addressing another argument advanced by those who challenge the cohesiveness of the Torah’s account of the plagues, this time on the basis of external rather than internal evidence. Two chapters of Psalms (78 and 105) provide descriptions of the divine punishments inflicted upon Egypt, but neither enumerate all of the plagues described in Exodus – and those which are recorded are presented in a different order. This omission and ordering is viewed by some scholars (cited in Kugel, How to Read the Bible) as being indicative of contradictory traditions and sources. Psalm 78 orders the plagues as 1,4, 2, 8, 7, 5, 10 (omitting 3, 6, and 9) while Psalm 105 lists them as 9,1,2,4, 3, 7, 8, 10 (omitting 5, and 6).

While the agenda of these chapters of Psalms certainly warrants a proper explanation, the very suggestion that a work of poetic praise can pose a challenge to the descriptive prose of Exodus is tenuous from the outset. As Kitchen explains:

“This illustrates a basic literary phenomenon endemic to the ancient Near East, yet one constantly abused by biblicists. When prose and poetry accounts coexist, it is prose that is the primary source and poetry that is the secondary celebration.”

In the case of Psalm 105, the author’s stated agenda, which is repeated throughout the introductory section of the chapter, is to proclaim and publicise the mighty wonders of God. In this context one can understand why he opens his list of plagues with what appear to be the most stunning miracles – sudden darkness and water turning to blood – before concluding with the more superficially nature-driven events such as hailstorms, locusts and death of the firstborns. Pestilence and boils, which do not feature in Psalm 105, are the two least conspicuous and arguably least severe miracles (they are the only two that Pharaoh does not beg Moses to remove).

Regarding Psalms 78, the American professor of Hebrew studies Robert Alter is not convinced by the source-critics’ claims writing:

"There are only seven plagues mentioned in the psalm, and they are not entirely in the same order as the ones reported in Exodus, though, as in Exodus, turning the Nile into blood is at the beginning and the killing of the firstborn is at the end. The scholarly inference that these lines reflect a different "tradition" from the one registered in Exodus is by no means necessary. That is, a poetic recapitulation of the familiar Plague narrative from Exodus would not have been obliged to repeat all the material from Exodus, or to follow the identical order."

[The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, 2018]

Much like the ten spilled wine drops on the Pesach Seder plate, the ten plagues may contain certain unique properties that may be taken to indicate independent existence. Yet one who observes them in their full context recognizes that they unmistakably originate from a single author.

First posted to Facebook 2 April 2021, here.