Is our Free Choice Really Free?
To Donate and Support our Kiruv work please visit us at www.BeEzratHaShem.org. If you'd like to invite Rabbi Yaron Reuven or Rabbi Efraim Kachlon to give a lecture at your synagogue, home or office please email Yaron@BeEzratHaShem.org to see availability and make arrangements. Rabbi Yaron Reuven is based out of Florida, but travels around the world to give lectures to different groups. Click here https://soundcloud.com/yaronreuven/sets/daily-chidush To Listen to our very popular "Daily Chidush" short audio series on soundcloud.com Join one of our interactive "Interesting Torah" Whatsapp groups to get daily messages of short Torah clips that can uplift your day by texting the number above. Please join our Facebook page Be'Ezrat HaShem page and join our group "Torah Lessons To Help Our Lives". This Group is solely about publicizing HaShem's holy Torah from my lectures as well as great Rabbi's such as Rabbi Efraim Kachlon, Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, Rabbi Zamir Cohen, Rabbi Pinto, and anyone else that is teaching interesting and relevant Torah. We will also bring you some brand new lectures directly from a Kollel in Jerusalem you won't find anywhere else. Torah posts will be in Hebrew and English. There are plenty of places to find entertaining stories that sound great, but this group is about showing you Torah that can impact your life, hence the name Torah Lessons To Help Our Lives. If it's not impactful, then it won't fit in. I watch and read all that I personally post, so I promise to do my best to bring you only the best quality of Hashem's amazing Torah. The Torah is the only thing in the world that you can learn and have an outcome that makes you SMARTER, WISER, And a BETTER Human Being. If the Torah you're learning is no longer impacting your life in a positive way, than its time for a change. If you haven't learned Torah in a long time or ever, then its time to start friend. I guarantee you will enjoy the journey and life will never be the same, if you just give it a real chance. Kiruv and Kiddush Hashem is our #1 goal. So please feel free to contact me if you are interested in getting more FREE material. We would be have to send you Torach lecture DVDs, CD's and a Book for FREE to anyone that is serious about learning them. If you are far from Hashem and His Torah, our goal is to get help you get closer. Thank you for the opportunity and May Hashem bless you with a life full of Torah 00:00:00 Intoduction 00:01:31 Torah Observance: Not Really a Choice 00:02:28 Choice vs. Free Choice: Consequences 00:02:56 Mount Sinai and Accepting the Torah 00:03:27 No Credit for Learning Torah 00:03:58 Torah's Purpose and Meaning of Life 00:04:25 The Source of Wisdom: Beyond Nature
Transcript
1:31we don't accept them, we have nothing. No Shabbat, no Torah, nothing, no purpose. So, from here, we learn not only from Rabban Yochanan but also from some of his students, that in reality, whether it is Shabbat, or Torah, or any of the mitzvot, it's not really a choice, like we think it is. Yes, you have free choice; you can do what you want. You can eat pig, or you can eat a kosher cow. You can be honest, or you can be a liar. You can be an angry person, or you can be someone who's trying to work on his middot. You can do what you want. That's free choice. But that's not exactly what we have. Because what we learn from this Gemara is that we really have choice. Not free choice. Meaning, we have consequences. Free choice in our minds means that I can do whatever I want and nothing will happen. If I go to work, I get paid $100. If I don't go to work, I don't get paid anything. That's free choice in our mind. What we have is choice. Meaning, I go to work, I get paid $100. If I don't go to work, the boss sends people to my house and they beat me up all day. That's what we have.
2:56We got to Mount Sinai with choice. We accept the Torah, Hashem fulfills the promise to the angel that runs the earth, Hashem fulfills the promise to the rest of the angels, Hashem fulfills the promise to the souls that were in creation before He put us into bodies. If we don't, Mount Sinai becomes a burial ground. So, Rebbe Yochanan is telling us here that, first and foremost, You need to understand that there's no reason whatsoever for you to ever take any credit for your learning Torah, because that's the only reason you exist. It's for the Torah that you can learn and for the Torah that you can fulfill. Meaning that if you have no plan on fulfilling the Torah, then you're fulfilling the verse that says that even resha'im (wicked people) are called dead in their own life. During their life, they're called dead.
3:58There's no point to your life. Even an animal has more purpose than you do, because at least we can eat the animal. We can make something out of it. You came here, you don't want to learn Torah, you don't want to fulfill Torah. You're losing your purpose. Now, why do we say this now, only a little over an hour after the lecture started, versus right in the beginning? Because if I said to everyone right away, "Listen, if you don't learn Torah, you're meaningless," people would take it offensively. But once you learn, it didn't come from me. It came from Rabban Yochanan. It came from Hashem Yitbarach. It came from people that were beyond nature. It came from the Creator that created nature. Then you could just eliminate my picture and listen to them. Doesn't matter who said it. I'm just a voice. There's no credit due to me. It's the same book; you read it, you'll get the same thing. Just that most people didn't read it. So, Baruch Hashem, we did the work for you.
