Arbitrariness
Shabbat Thought Nitzavim 2025 (adapted from previous versions)
This week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim (“Stand up and be counted”), contains stark language. Choose – life or death, blessing or curse. In my words, choose the laws of the moral and spiritual order or flout them. Blessing if you align yourself, catastrophe if you don’t. Who wouldn’t listen?
One type of person is described in Deuteronomy 29:18. Here is my paraphrase:
When a scofflaw hears this teaching, he blesses himself in his heart and says to himself, “I will be fine, and I will do whatever I want!” leading himself to destruction everywhere he goes.
The Hebrew term for “stubbornly doing whatever you want” is shrirut lev, a stubborn heart.” Shrirut lev (shrirut is from the same Hebrew root as shrir – muscle) has the sense of flouting the law because you can, a kind of nonchalance. “Nothing bad will happen to me.”
I am sorry to say that often people do bad things and do get away with it, for one reason or another. The foundational reason people act badly is because, in their mind at least, they can; there won’t be consequences. Gladly, I’ve lived long enough to see some of these people proven wrong, but not enough.
How about the word “lev”, heart? Here we have another example that the biblical metaphor of lev, heart, is quite different from “heart” in English. (I should say that the biblical meaning of lev gives way over time to a meaning closer to how we use it in English – our moral and spiritual center).
We are told in English, “follow your heart.” In the Torah, however, we are told in Numbers 15:39, “Don’t follow your heart.”
This admonishment not to follow your heart is found in the Torah because in biblical lHebrew, lev/heart means something more like the “ego self.” The ego self is the realm of thoughts, feelings, emotions, drive, impulses, imagination, sensations and intuitions that are not guided by the values of the higher self. The ego self does not care much about objectivity, rationality or truth. The lev/ego self must be guided by the spirit/higher self. The will of the ego self must be bridled to the soul.
In modern Hebrew, the term shriruti is translated as “arbitrary” – doing something without apparent reason or thought, ultimately because you have the power to do so. Of course, “arbitrary” just means that we are not aware of the calculations of the ego self. Nothing we do or say is truly arbitrary. The fact that we can’t explain ourselves to ourselves and others does not mean that there are not motivations and goals hidden from us.
In fact, the word “arbitrary” comes from the same word root “arbitration” – settling an issue in the presence of a judge. Somehow, this word root in English came to mean “acting as your own judge”, or better put, letting your ego self be the judge.
In essence, when the ego self is the judge, we first say or do what we feel like, and then come up with the reasons, or no reason at all. How do we transform from being driven by the ego-self to being guided by our values?
I’ve often spoken about several realms of reflection. The first realm is “I must be right.” We often misremember events, change words, and think in a confused way so that we remain right in our own eyes.
The second realm is “I made a mistake, but I have reasons.” In other words, we automatically justify ourselves.
The deeper realm is authenticity and truth. We are able to see the hidden realms, under our deeper motivations, unconscious goals. We don’t jump immediately to “I am right” (though you might actually be right), or “I have an excuse” (even though you actually have a valid excuse). A person of truth at least pauses and asks, “what is really going on inside of me?”
The “shrirut lev”, the powerful grip of the ego self, is weakened when we develop the habit of entering the realm of truth.
We go from being “arbitrary” to becoming our own “arbiter” – a wise judge of our inner lives, trying to find the just, the true and good.
