Are we leading or being led?

This week’s Torah portion is Beshallach, which means, when he sent. When Pharaoh sends the Israelites out of Egypt, God leads them, with a pillar of cloud, away from the coast of the Mediterranean: not North but South. Hemmed in by the Sea of reeds ahead of them and the pursuing Egyptians behind them, the people despair that their lives are over. They cry out of God, who urges them to go forward. And you know the rest. God splits the water. They travel through the sea in safety, but the pursing Egyptian chariots and horsemen drown: the Divine retribution for throwing all male Israelite babies into the Nile. Then the people sing a song of gratitude to God. The beginning verse of this portion reads: “God did not lead them by way of the Philistines, though it was near, for God said, perhaps they will be led, when they see war, to return to Egypt.” And later it says, “God went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to have them led along the way.” And in the song of the Sea, the people sing, “With your kindness you have led this people that you redeemed. You led with your might to your Holy abode.” We can see that being led: God leading us, is prominently featured in this portion. It also says that God took the people around toward the Sea of Reeds. The word around, ya-save, connotes a circle, and in fact, we originated in Canaan and eventually returned to Canaan. The question is, how does all this leading fit in with our conception of Free Will? Are we really choosing or are we being led? We know that we do have free will. We can choose what to say and what to do. We change our reality every day by our choices. The Torah, even at the very beginning of Genesis, takes a stand for the beginning of history and linear progress over the passive acceptance of the ancient idea of the wheel of life: that nothing ever changes and we are merely repeating lives that have been and will ever be the same. There is a story in Midrash about “a king who had a son to whom he wished to bequeath an inheritance, but he argued: ' If I give it to him now that he is small, he will not know how to take care of it; I will therefore wait until my son learns how to write and can understand the value, then I will bequeath it unto him.’ This is what God said: … I had better give them the Torah first and then bring them into the Land.” Midrash Rabbah - Exodus XX:15 This passage speaks about learning and future choice. The Talmud (Er 53b) talks about this too. It says, “I was once on a journey when I noticed a child sitting at a cross-road. By what road, I asked the child, can we go to the town? This one, he replied, is a short way that is long and that one is a long way that is short. I proceeded along the short but long road. When I approached the town I discovered that it was hedged in by gardens and orchards. Turning back I said to him, ‘My child, did you not tell me that this road was short?’ — ‘And’, he replied: ‘did I not also tell you: that it was also long?’ The statement “there is a long way that is short and a short way that is long.” leads us to believe that the destination is the same, but that there are two ways to get there; and choice is at the heart of the difference. The seemingly easy way out of a situation may, at first look more promising than a scrupulously moral, ethical decision. And yet, though we may think it’s the easy way, we are really being led, like pharaoh, to our doom; or like the Israelites who could have gone North, to an insurmountable barrier. In a Biblical sense, we could ask, are we choosing life or choosing death? Perhaps what we are being taught is that certain of our choices are pro-life and lead to progress, while other choices will send us circling back on ourselves so that we end up stuck: unable to make that freeing forward movement that feels good and right. I’ve been speaking about choice seen through a personal lens, but it can also be seen through a collective lens. Martin Luther King said, “On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but we must do it because Conscience tells us it is right.” Heschl spoke about choice in two essays quoted in the collection Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity. He says, “the tragedy of man is that he is so great and that he fails to recognize his greatness. Jean-Paul Sartre has said ‘Man is condemned to be free.’ God has given us choice, the greatest obligation of freedom. God is waiting for us to exercise that choice. (P 218) …This is the decision we have to make: whether our life is to be a pursuit of pleasure or an engagement for service. The world cannot remain a vacuum. Unless we make it an altar to God, it is invaded by demons. This is no time for neutrality (P. 75).”
What is true of the aggregate is also true of the individual. How are we to decide which choices will propel us forward and not back? When the Israelites were paralyzed with fear of the past, represented by Pharaoh’s pursuing army, and also of the future, represented by the Sea of Reeds, they cried out to God, the correct response in this situation. God’s answer was, “let them journey forth.” Choose the future, not the past: not old patterns or going backward. Choose with courage! The Rimanover Rebbe said, “Belief and trust are linked. One who firmly believes also trusts.” We are being led, but how soon we get there and in what way is up to us. Free will determines how our life feels. Does it feel free with the freedom of forward movement, or does it feel like the slavery of being stuck in old patterns and the hopelessness of the repeating wheel of life? The Torah tells us that we are being led toward movement and progress, out of our metaphoric Egypt. The details, the scenery, and the comfort of the journey are in our hands. We are on the way. How long will it take us to get there?