How do you make the right choice when you can’t know how it’ll turn out?

Who Gets Your Vote?

We all face decisions that don’t have obvious answers, both in our personal lives and in the life of our community. Think of an election: you weigh the arguments for one candidate against the arguments for another and try to decide how to vote. It’s a gray area, with no clear answer in the Code of Jewish Law, and you don’t always know what to do.

The Talmud (Berachot 28b) tells a story about Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, one of the great sages of the Mishnah. During his final illness, his students came to visit him. When he saw them, he began to cry.

His students were puzzled. They knew him as Israel’s guiding light, a pillar of strength and a great scholar. Why was he crying?

He explained that he would be afraid even if he were about to stand before a human king, someone alive today and in the grave tomorrow. How much more afraid should he be of standing before G-d, who lives forever?

He saw two paths ahead of him, one to heaven and one to hell, and he didn’t know which one he would be taken along. How could he not cry?

But what did a man like Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai have to fear? He had spent forty years studying Torah and forty years teaching it. He was said never to engage in idle talk, or even to walk a few steps without studying Torah and wearing tefillin. Could someone like that really be afraid of hell?

One explanation points to another story in the Talmud, in Gittin (56b).

Jerusalem was under siege, and the Second Temple was about to be destroyed. When there seemed to be no hope of saving either the city or the Temple, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s devoted students helped him out of Jerusalem. He appeared before Vespasian, who offered to grant him a request.

His answer was immediate:

“Give me Yavneh and its sages.”

The Talmud records a criticism of that choice by Rav Yosef, or, according to another version, Rabbi Akiva. He asked why Rabbi Yochanan hadn’t requested that Jerusalem and the Temple be spared. The Talmud also explains Rabbi Yochanan’s concern. If he asked for the entire city to be spared, Vespasian might refuse, and he could lose his chance to save even the sages of Yavneh. The Jewish people would lose both.

He had only a moment to decide. Who could know how Vespasian would respond? This may have been one of the most consequential decisions in Jewish history, and he had to make it on the spot, without consulting his fellow sages.

He was never sure he had made the right choice. Perhaps he could have persuaded Vespasian to save Jerusalem, as Rav Yosef or Rabbi Akiva suggested. The thought that he hadn’t even asked weighed heavily on him.

Yet could he risk the sages of Yavneh and the entire tradition of the Oral Torah? The Jewish people could survive without the Temple. Without Torah, they could not survive at all.

That was the uncertainty that troubled him at the end of his life and brought him to tears.

In Noach’s Defense

This week we read the story of Noach. Rashi notes that some interpret the Torah’s description of him as praise, while others read it as criticism. We’ve heard plenty of criticism of Noach lately. I think it’s time to put ourselves in his shoes and consider the choice he faced.

At the end of Bereishit, the Torah tells us that G-d saw how wicked humanity had become and regretted having created it. He declared that He would wipe out the people He had created, along with the animals, creeping creatures, and birds. He had decided to destroy the world.

He made that clear to Noach: the earth was filled with violence, and He was going to destroy its inhabitants. A flood would wipe out every living creature under the heavens. Everything on earth would perish.

Noach would be saved so that life could continue. He was to bring two of every kind of living creature into the ark and keep them alive. His task was to build an ark that would preserve the world’s future, far beyond his own survival.

So what should he do? Should he give G-d an ultimatum, as Moses later did after the sin of the Golden Calf? Moses asked G-d to forgive the Jewish people. If He would not, Moses added:

“Erase me from Your book.”

Even Moses couldn’t know how that would end. He was taking an enormous risk: G-d might destroy everyone, including Moses, leaving no one.

Or should Noach take the approach Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai would later take: save what he could, so that there would at least be a future?

Noach wasn’t simply looking out for himself and forgetting everyone else. Throughout the year in the ark, he and his family endured tremendous hardship to keep the animals alive and ensure that life would continue.

On the words “Only Noach remained” (Genesis 7:23), Rashi cites a Midrash describing him groaning and coughing up blood from the strain of caring for the animals.

Midrash Tanchuma explains that neither Noach nor his sons got any proper sleep during those twelve months. They had to feed the animals and birds around the clock. One needed food two hours into the night, another three hours into the night, and so on.

Noach devoted himself to preserving the world. We see the same concern when he leaves the ark, begins working the land, and plants a vineyard. Where did he get anything to plant? Rashi explains that he had brought grapevine cuttings and fig shoots into the ark. Before he even entered, he was already planning for life after the flood.

If he had cared only about himself, he could have gone up to the ark’s third deck, gone to sleep, and told everyone to wake him when the flood was over.

Instead, he devoted himself to the world’s future. That was precisely why he wasn’t willing to risk giving G-d an ultimatum as Moses did. He couldn’t be sure how it would end.

May We Get It Right

We face these kinds of dilemmas in our own lives. You want your family to observe more mitzvot, so you’re tempted to push a little. But you worry that if you push too hard, they may turn away from everything.

Your son doesn’t want to come to the Sunday morning minyan. You could make him go, but would that be the right thing to do? Could it end up driving him away? We face versions of that question at many different points in our lives.

At a farbrengen, a Chassidic gathering, Chassidim would say “L’chaim” and wish one another:

“M’zol zoche zein mechaven zein tzu di kavana elyonah, May our choices be in keeping with G-d’s will.”

They were wishing one another the ability to do what was truly right. Again and again, we find ourselves facing two paths. We pray for the judgment to choose wisely and to act on that choice.

May we do what G-d wants of us.