Thirty years ago I had the following conversation with a student who was estranged from Judaism. He was a devotee of the current trend of the era: free choice free thinking — in fact “free” everything. But especially freedom from Judaism which he in his ignorance believed to be a faith that held its adherents in shackles.

“I don’t fast on Yom Kippur” he declared.

“Why not?”

“I don’t believe in all that… in all that stuff. I am a good honest person period. Fasting on Yom Kippur is a purely religious act and I am not religious. I define myself as a free person who determines his own way of thinking and his own actions. A person who forms his opinions independently who plans his own fate in any given situation. I am accountable only to myself. I answer only to my own conscience. Do I make myself clear?”

“Certainly. But permit me to ask you one question: when do you think?”

“What do you mean when do I think?”

“I mean just what the words say. When do you think your thoughts?”

“Excuse me. I think when I need to think. I’m an intelligent Homo sapien.”

“Yes my dear Mr. Homo sapien. But you didn’t understand my question. Let me rephrase it: when do you feel you are a thinker that you are thinking freely?”

“When am I not thinking freely? I don’t share my brain with anyone do I? Of course I think my own thoughts!”

“What for example?”

“What do you mean what for example? Like any other human being I think about every issue that I face from the moment I wake up in the morning until I fall asleep at night. Of course useless thoughts go through my head as well but on the whole my brain does a good job. Modern life is complicated and challenging. You’re faced with a thousand and one decisions every day concerning your own personal affairs and many other things. Maybe this is what you’re talking about: it’s true that my mind is preoccupied with a lot of situations that aren’t of my own making. I’m concerned with the crumbling morals of our society. I have to think about the big question we’re all facing today: should we give land in exchange for peace or peace in exchange for peace? I try to reach an independent decision about who to vote for. Should we go for economic growth in times of crisis or not? Peace Now war tomorrow Khomeini and terror running rampant all over the world…”

“And all these thoughts are yours?”

“Why do you keep asking me that? Who else’s could they be if not mine?”

“Your partners my friend. The ones you share your brain with.”

“What?”

“That’s right — your partners. Your instincts your emotions all the juices and glands at work in your body. They are full partners in every one of your thoughts. They strike a hard blow at your independent thinking. They have their own interests. The sensory stimuli that come at you from the world outside your brain are also powerful partners in your thoughts. And what about the TV you watch? Doesn’t it also ‘help’ you with your thinking? This is something worth paying attention to: somebody ‘out there’ is dictating to you what to think how to think and how to respond to current events. Even habits have been planted within you without your knowledge or even against your will and they have a voice in your thoughts too. In short you’re not alone. Your thoughts and decisions are in good hands.”

“You’re insulting me!”

“Perhaps. But that’s the reality. You can test it for yourself. Let’s start with something simple even something silly… noodles let’s say. I don’t know if you like noodles or not. But clearly you’re not the one who decided to like them or not to. Maybe your father is from Italy and he influenced you with his love of spaghetti. Or let’s say your mother forced you to eat lokshen when you were little and that’s why you’re revolted by it to this day. That’s legitimate but it’s worthwhile knowing that your love or hate of noodles was impressed upon you; it wasn’t your personal decision. Our feelings with all their varied shades have a lot to say about our opinions. The advertising industry knows this very well. How many cigarettes have been sold by the image of the tough ‘Marlborough Man’ that took hold in the minds of generations of American males? Such propaganda even has the power to change your values. All of a sudden a ‘real man’ is a fellow who rides around on a horse with a carcinogenic cigarette dangling from his lips.”

“I don’t let that kind of cheap propaganda influence me.”

“All right fine I know you aim to be above such things. But the truth is you only think it’s not influencing you. The big advertising experts and social psychologists too take a less positive view of your independent spirit and freedom of thought. They claim that we all respond to such propaganda whether we know it or not. Try reading The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. It’s a book about the advertising industry and the American consumer. You’ll be astonished to see just how much advertising toys with your mind. These advertising wizards also know how to delude you into thinking that you’re the one who decides what you want to eat how you want to sleep and what presidential candidate you want to vote for. Tell me the truth do you dress exactly the way you want without any thought for the fashions that someone else decided upon?”

“You’re getting caught up in trivialities. What does it matter if this or that kind of shirt is in style? But when it comes to the important decisions the things that really affect my life I think I’m the one who decides.”

“What for example? Decisions like where you’re going to live? Your choice of career? Politics? Love? Let’s say you’re a doctor. Are you a hundred percent sure that you became a doctor only as a result of pure rational thought? Because you truly desire to practice that profession? Did your mother’s dream of seeing her precious son in a white coat play any role in the decision? Or the aura of status around the profession? Or the earning potential? Is that called deciding freely? And that’s only one example.”

“So you want me to fast on Yom Kippur and hocus pocus suddenly I’ll have total freedom of thought just like that?”

“Yes that’s right. Because to fast is to think.”

“Oh come on! To fast is to be hungry.”

“No — try to understand the concept. On Yom Kippur you have to think because everything else is taken away from you. By Divine command you are deprived of every human activity that could be a stimulus that could interfere with your thought processes. In order to be removed on a deep level from the outside world all the sensory pleasures are prohibited. That way you’re released from every activity that’s liable to limit your spirit. You are completely free to think.”

“Isn’t that a contrived explanation? I was taught that the fast is a form of affliction to atone for sins.”

“There is something in that. But the Torah’s main purpose  is to create one day in the year that’s different from all other days. The Rambam says so: ‘There is one positive mitzvah on Yom HaKippurim and that is to refrain from eating and drinking.’ It’s refraining holding back from something not afflicting. The Rambam actually uses the verb lishbos to cease. On Yom Kippur we cease all labor just as we do on Shabbos and we also add cessation from eating and drinking. That is the underlying concept; all the rest is derived from that.”

“So then what happens next?”

“Suddenly you stand alone facing yourself. You see yourself from a whole new angle. Not through the eyes of your profession or any of your social connections just yourself as you really are and with your thoughts free of all stimuli from within or constraint from without you examine yourself thoroughly. Believe me it’s an astounding encounter. And then you begin to feel real thoughts bubbling up thoughts about your true self. Suddenly you realize that all year you’ve been doing things motivated by other forces by outside influences.”

“And then when the fast is over you’re a free man in the cosmos?”

“To the extent that each person experiences the fast and the day yes! At any rate the fast and the direct unencumbered encounter with yourself give you a renewed desire to fight for your freedom of thought. There’s an increased desire to put the conscious mind in control of the emotions and the influences of all the advertising and other stimuli that lie in ambush for you everywhere. In fact if you look at it this way Yom Kippur is really like a bolt of lightning in the darkness.  A person is lost in a thick dark forest. Suddenly lightning illuminates the scene for a few seconds. That is sufficient to help him find his way out of the maze. Yom Kippur is like lightning in the darkness of the year.”

“Well to tell you the truth I don’t feel any need for this kind of freedom that you’re so enthusiastic about.”

“I don’t believe you. As a child of the twentieth century I don’t believe you. In the book Future Shock Alvin Toffler tells about a show that was a big success on Broadway called Stop the World I Want to Get Off. Toffler attributed the show’s dizzying success to the fact that in our times man aspires to break free of the sophisticated shackles of modern society with its modes and mores that are so effective at subjugating the individual alienating him from himself and from others and blurring his sense of identity. Tell me hand on heart do you never feel the desire to ‘find yourself’?”

“I don’t deny it.”

“Well then what we actually do every Shabbos is ‘stop the world and get off.’ We detach ourselves from the world and establish a fresh healthy balanced attitude toward it. On Yom Kippur though we ‘get off the world’ in the most decisive way possible. We cut off contact with all its sensory stimuli; we send all human activity away on a one-day vacation. We silence all our instincts. And all this is in order to remove the shackles from our thoughts to enable us to have that critical crucial encounter with our true self. Ask anyone who’s had a proper experience of Yom Kippur.

“And what about you my friend? For the sake of yourself of your freedom — when are you going to ‘get off the world?’”