Image: Seven identical doors, all of them shut. Which will I choose? (quimono/pixabay)
News Flash: every Jew on the planet makes choices about which mitzvot, which commandments they will prioritize.
We each make choices about precisely how to observe those mitzvot. There are huge disagreements about nearly every one of the 613 commandments. Yes, even among those who call themselves Orthodox.
Every day, every Jew faces those choices anew.
So the question boils down to: (1) what do I choose? and perhaps (2) why?
Elul is a month when we consider our past choices and consider future choices.
Harvey Cox, a Christian theologian who married a Jew and raised their son as a Jew, once said, “Not to decide is to decide.”
What are my choices? What will I decide to choose?
If I don’t decide, what am I choosing?
This view has also heavily influenced my book coming out this fall. In the branch of Christianity I was raised in, I constantly observed choosing harsh commands for others and ignoring any that affected our own lives. I must choose which I will follow to be better and to allow others lives to be better, not which to throw at my neighbors!
First and always, I love starting my day with your blog posts. Next, I’m a graduate of a much-maligned self-discovery workshop that happened to be transformational for me in which I learned to distinguish “decision” from “choice.” The former being defined as “killing off other options” and the latter being still in the domain of options. Over the decades I’ve used this to contemplate when, why, and how I move from choices to decisions, as well as how to actually make decisions worth making.
Oh I like that distiction! Thank you!