Dear TBZ Community,
This week, as I was offering pastoral care to one of our members during a difficult moment, I found myself returning to this teaching from Rabbi Akiva in Pirkei Avot:
הַכֹּל צָפוּי, וְהָרְשׁוּת נְתוּנָה
Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted (Pirkei Avot 3:15).
This teaching can be confusing, yet it often resonates in moments of uncertainty, grief, illness, or loss. It speaks to one of the deepest tensions of being human.
On the one hand, the rabbis tell us that everything is foreseen. There is a reality beyond our control. Life unfolds in ways we do not choose. We do not control illness. We do not control loss. We do not control the actions of others. We do not control so much of what happens in the world around us. Everything is foreseen: הַכֹּל צָפוּי.
And yet, in the very same breath, the rabbis insist: וְהָרְשׁוּת נְתוּנָה – freedom of choice is granted.
At first glance, these two statements seem to contradict one another. If everything is foreseen, what room is left for choice? If there is a larger plan unfolding, one that we do not know, where is our agency? Why does it matter which choices we make?
Perhaps Rabbi Akiva is teaching us that while we do not control the circumstances of our lives, we do have choices about how we respond to them. We do not choose every chapter of our story, but we do choose how we will walk through it. We cannot always determine what happens to us, but we can determine the values we bring, the courage we summon, the hope we hold onto, and the ways we show up for one another.
Much of our suffering comes from trying to control what cannot be controlled. We spend enormous energy wishing reality were different, trying to bend circumstances to our will, resisting what already is. Yet the truth is that so much of life lies beyond our grasp.
What remains in our hands are the choices we make along the journey. That is what we have control over.
Perhaps this teaching can help us understand this week’s Torah portion, Sh’lach Lecha.
In this week’s Torah portion, Moses sends twelve scouts into the Promised Land. Their mission is straightforward: see the land and bring back a report on the terrain, the fruit of the land, and the local military, so Moses would know if they should proceed. After forty days, they return. Two say yes. Ten say no.
What is remarkable is that they all see the same reality. The story is often told as if they experienced something different, but they didn’t. They saw the same land and brought back essentially the same report.
The land is fertile. The cities are fortified. The inhabitants are powerful.
The difference lies in how they understand themselves in relation to what they see, and in the choice they make when they come back.
Yehoshua and Caleb, two of the scouts, acknowledge the challenges. They do not deny the strength of the people living there. They do not pretend the road ahead will be easy. Yet they also see possibility. They see promise. They see a land flowing with milk and honey. They see a future worth striving toward.
The other ten scouts see the very same reality but arrive at a very different conclusion.
They declare:
וַנְּהִי בְעֵינֵינוּ כַּחֲגָבִים וְכֵן הָיִינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶם
We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them (Numbers 13:33).
The problem is not what the scouts saw. The problem is how they saw themselves.
They viewed themselves as small, powerless, incapable. The challenges before them felt so overwhelming that they could not imagine a path forward. Before they were defeated by their enemies, they were defeated by their own fear. They were defeated by the choice they made.
Yehoshua and Caleb see the same obstacles. They simply refuse to let those obstacles define the future. They choose courage over despair. They choose possibility over paralysis. They choose hope.
Rabbi Akiva’s teaching reminds us that while we may not control the circumstances before us, we retain the freedom to choose how we will meet them.
We cannot always choose the landscape.
But we can choose whether we see ourselves as grasshoppers or as people capable of crossing into a promised future.
This is not an easy choice in the present time. We wake up each day to wars that continue, to political divisions that deepen, to acts of hatred and violence, to uncertainty about the future, and to personal struggles that can feel overwhelming.
The question before us is not whether these realities exist. They do.
The question is how we will respond to them.
Do we meet the reality of our present times with curiosity, hope, and kindness? Or do we meet it guided by fear, cynicism, and despair?
Do we assume that nothing can change, or do we believe that our choices still matter?
Do we see ourselves as powerless in the face of the challenges before us, or do we recognize our capacity to bring compassion, courage, and healing into a broken world?
May we have the wisdom to accept what is beyond our control.
May we have the courage to choose hope when fear would be easier.
May we remember that even when we cannot determine the circumstances of our lives, we can still determine the kind of people we will be.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia