Freedom of choice and lined writing paper

One of the most discussed statements in Avot is Rabbi Akiva’s apothegm (Avot 3:19):

הַכֹּל צָפוּי, וְהָרְשׁוּת נְתוּנָה

In English: “Everything is foreseen, but free will is given”.

Some commentators take it to refer to the apparent contradiction between God’s control of everything that happens in the world He created and the exercise by every human being of a free, uncontrolled and unfettered discretion to make their own decisions in life.  Others take it less seriously: Maharam Shik speculates that it is just a device to attract the attention of talmidim at the beginning of a shiur. All sorts of philosophical issues demand our attention. For example, is God’s foresight of what will happen tantamount to His control of it, or are there outcomes that He can foresee without the need for any intervention or control on His part? And is freedom of choice no more than an illusion, given that everything in the physical world can be traced back to an event that generates or determines it? And is Rabbi Akiva really telling us that, in order to accept both the omniscience and omnipotence of God and His role in guiding and subsequently evaluating our behaviour, we have to accept both propositions as true even though, at our level of understanding, it is impossible to reconcile the truth of them both?

There are other ways of looking at this teaching that do not depend on our view of an all-controlling God. For example, “everything is foreseen” can be taken as a nod to collective human conduct. A clue to the basis for this approach comes from the word “foresee” itself: the verb is formed from two elements: “fore”, meaning “in advance” or “ahead”, and “see”.  English has another word that splits the same way, one that comes from the Latin, and that is the verb “provide”.

We make advance provision for human conduct in so many aspects of communal life. Thus, in every civilised country, traffic proceeds on the same side of the road. It doesn’t matter if that side is the left or the right, so long as everyone does the same thing. No driver or pedestrian is deprived of the choice of which side of the road to occupy and, while laws may criminalise travel on the wrong side of the road, there is no physical or metaphysical barrier to the exercise of personal choice. In 2020 no fewer than 6% of road accidents in India resulted from traffic travelling on the wrong side of the road; the same practice causes an average of 355 deaths annually in the United States.

Life in human society furnishes countless further examples of provision that is made for others, not just through laws but also through customary behaviour, but which is somehow trumped by individual choice. Any parent who has thoughtfully laid out cutlery for a child who snubs the knife and fork provided in favour of fingers will know what this means. The desire to rebel against the foresight of others exists in Torah scholars too. In Visions of the Fathers (at Avot 1:6), Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski tells a story of Rabbi Shimon Shkop. The renowned Rosh Yeshiva once requested a sheet of writing paper so that he could write a letter. When handed a piece of lined paper, he is said to have quipped: “Why must I allow someone else to dictate where I should do my writing?”* The point is well made. Every part of a blank piece of paper can be written on, but the mere existence of lines will limit most people’s choice of where to place their pen.

So, literally speaking, Rabbi Akiva’s problematic mishnah can be stripped of its apparent conundrum and made to apply in even the most prosaic of circumstances. If we accept this view, we can contextualise it within Rabbi Akiva’s own life under the Roman occupation: even though the Romans provided for the banning of Jewish education, one still has a choice as to whether to comply or not—as Rabbi Akiva did, at the cost of his life. But this interpretation raises a fresh question: why would this teaching appear in Avot in the midst of other teachings from the same rabbi that appear to address humankind’s relationship with God and not with one another?

* For the benefit of members of Generation Alpha, I should explain: there was a time when emails did not yet exist and most personal correspondence was written by hand, on paper, using a pen. Stationers sold a choice of plain and lined writing paper, the latter for the benefit of purchasers like me who found it difficult to write straight across the width of the page. The same principle is used in the writing of gittin, Jewish religious divorces, where lines are scored on to the paper before the scribe writes the Hebrew text.