EXOD115 [Continued from [[EXOD130]] Exodus 10:7 realise SACKS 86] A third approach calls into question the very meaning of the phrase, "God hardened Pharaoh's heart." In a profound sense, God, author of history, is behind every event, every act, every gust of wind that blows, every drop of rain that falls. Normally, however, we do not attribute human action to God. We are what we are because that is how we have chosen to be, even if this was written long before in the divine script for human kind. What do we attribute to an act of God? Something that is unusual, falling so far outside the norms of human behavior that we find it hard to explain in any other way then to say that surely this happen for a purpose. God Himself says about Pharaoh's obstinacy that it allowed Him to demonstrate to all humanity that even the greatest empire is powerless against the hand of Heaven [this verse, Exodus 14:18]. Pharaoh acted freely, but his last refusals were so strange that it was obvious to everyone that God had anticipated this. It was predictable, part of the script. God had disclosed this to Abraham centuries earlier when He told him in a fearful vision that his descendants would be strangers in the land not theirs (Gen 15:13-14). These are all interesting and plausible interpretations. It seems to me, though, that the Torah is telling a deeper story, one that never loses its relevance. Philosophers and scientists have tended to think in terms of abstractions and universals. Some have concluded that we have free will, others that we do not. There is no conceptual space in between. In life, however, that is not the way freedom works at all. Consider addiction: the first few times you smoke a cigarette or drink alcohol or take drugs, you do so freely. You know the risks and you ignore them. As time goes on, your dependency increases until the craving is so intense that you are almost powerless to resist it. At that point you may have to go into rehabilitation. You no longer, on your own, have the ability to stop. As the Talmud says, "A prisoner cannot release himself from prison" (Berakhot 5b). Addiction is a physical phenomenon. But there are moral equivalents. For example, suppose on one significant occasion, you tell a lie. People now believe something about you that is not true. As they question you about it, or it comes up in conversation, you find yourself having to tell more lies to support the first. "Oh what a tangled web we weave," Sir Walter Scott famously said, "when first we practice to deceive." That is as far as individuals are concerned. When it comes to organizations, the risk is even greater. ... Within nations, especially non-democratic ones, the risk is higher still. ... [lengthy discussion omitted] That is what the Torah means when it says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Insulating others, Pharaoh himself became enslaved. He became a prisoner of the values he himself had espoused. Freedom in the deepest sense, the freedom to do the right and the good, is not a given. We acquire it, or lose it, gradually. In the end, tyrants about their own destruction, whereas those with willpower, courage, and the willingness to go against the consensus acquire a monumental freedom. This is what Judaism is: an invitation to freedom by resisting the idols and siren calls of the age.