The Nature of Free Will

Part 3: Choice or Fate?

“A person’s life and his sustenance is not dependent upon his own merits but rather on his ‘mazal’”.¹

This statement of the Gemara needs some explanation — first of all, what exactly is “mazal,” and second, what does it mean that our lives and our sustenance are dependent upon it?

 Mazal, often translated as luck, actually has nothing to do with luck or chance at all! The Ramchal² explains, “it refers to what each person needs in order to complete his part of creation, and so Chazal called it ‘mazal’ because it is simply decreed [from Hashem] and is not connected to a person’s choices and merits.”

The word “mazal” itself means flow (from the root word “nozel” meaning “to drip”) from Heaven of the various circumstances and things we need to do in order to fulfill our unique mission on earth. This was decided before we even came down to Earth, so it cannot possibly be connected to what we choose.

Mazal, often translated as luck, actually has nothing to do with luck or chance at all! The Ramchal explains, “it refers to what each person needs in order to complete his part of creation, and so Chazal called it ‘mazal’ because it is simply decreed [from Hashem] and is not connected to a person’s choices and merits.”

Rav Chaim Friedlander³ asks: why is our mazal — our unique role and what we are meant to receive to fulfill it — so hidden from us? It is not something we can access, no one gives us a personal guidebook or job description when we come of age. Why?

Rav Chaim stresses that this would defeat the entire system of free will! If we knew exactly what was going on “up there” and exactly what we get throughout our lives, what traits we will be born with, who we are going to marry, how many kids we will have, how wealthy we will or will not be, how long we will live — we would essentially have a panoramic view of our lives and why everything has to happen the way it does. This, says Rav Chaim, would mean we completely forfeit our freedom of choice.

The Ramchal⁴ explains that our mission and our avodah, our service of Hashem on earth, is intrinsically linked to the fact that we don’t know all the details of what Hashem has in store for us. This is what blurs the lines of choice, what makes us sweat over a decision, what forces us to stretch and find truth when it is obscured.

“All is in the hands of Heaven except for fear of Heaven.” We previously explained (in the second part of this series) that this means that we do not choose much in our lives, but the choice to act according to Hashem’s will, that is ours. The fact that we do not know what our mission is and what we will be given in life does not change the reality that we have free choice. The Ran⁵ elaborates on this concept: Mazal gives you the tools — your money, your family, even your personality traits. But what you do with that is entirely up to you.

And yet still we may wonder — is there nothing we can do to affect the tools we are given? Are we destined to certain tools and circumstances regardless of our choices?

The Gemara⁶ tells us that in fact, there is a dispute among the Sages as to how the Jewish nation is affected by mazal. In one opinion: “Mazal determines your intelligence, your wealth, and Yisrael goes according to Mazal.” But further on another opinion states, “From where do we know that there is no mazal for Yisrael? It says ‘He took him out’…Hashem said to Avraham, ‘go out of your astrological calculations, because there is no power of mazal over Yisrael”.

Avraham had seen in the arrangement of the stars that he was not destined to have a child. But Hashem corrected him and then actually changed his mazal so that he could be a father.

The Ran gives us some insight into this dispute. He says that this discussion is about the specific area of mazal related to the length of a person’s life and his sustenance. Those who say “Yisrael goes according to Mazal” are in effect telling us that our actions cannot change these things, they are inherently connected to what we are meant to accomplish here. And then those who disagree — there is no such thing as mazal when it comes to Yisrael — would say that Bnei Yisrael can change what is coming to them through good actions such as teshuva, tefillah, and tzedaka.

And still, says the Ran, there is no dispute whatsoever that when it comes to my traits, my behaviors and tendencies which may be an outgrowth of the environment where I was raised or the life circumstances Hashem determined for me — those can always be changed! We can never relegate our actions, our performance of mitzvot, and our choices to do bad, good, or better to the realm of destiny and predetermination.

It is incumbent upon us to understand our traits, to look at how we were raised and what tools we are given — not so we can fight it, and not so we can fall back on it. Rather so that within that framework, we can be empowered to use our free choice and choose well.

¹ Moed Katan 28a

² Daat Tevunot pg. 190

³ Siftei Chaim, Emunah v’Hashgacha 1, “Gezeira and Mazal”

⁴ קל״ח פתחי חכמה

⁵ Drishot HaRan, eighth drasha, page 136

⁶ Shabbat 156