Most of us have probably heard the following rhetorical question or some variation of it from a non-observant friend acquaintance or relative: “What is this business of asking a rabbi about everything? Don’t you believe in being in charge of your own life? Don’t you have any intellectual autonomy? Shouldn’t you be making your own life choices? You don’t feel that it’s demeaning to your self-esteem to have a rabbi always telling you what to do? Even when it comes to voting in a democratic election you have to ask whether you should vote and whom to vote for? Isn’t that an insult to your intelligence?”

A good question. I’ve heard it often and like a good Jew I regularly answer it with a question:

“Well how do you go about making a decision?”

“How? I consider the issue rationally. I analyze it carefully looking at all the angles and then I decide what seems best to do. I don’t go running to rabbis asking them to decide for me.”

Actually the average person “consults with the rabbis” and “lets them decide for him” far more than he’s aware of. The advertising industry is based on this subconscious weakness. With the sleaziest kind of ingenuity it appeals to the most primitive level of the human mind stimulating the desire to buy things that people may not even need or want. A massive propaganda machine controls their “independent thinking ” and it is so sophisticated that it allows them to believe they have made their decision freely. Here is a short list of the “rabbis” of the proud enlightened Jew who believes in his freedom of decision: newspapers and magazines TV and the trend-setters commentators and pundits self-appointed or otherwise who set the tone of public opinion on every aspect of life. All of these factors take away a person’s ability to think for himself.

This is a topic both broad and deep and it would take a research paper to delve into the issue of how dependent the average “independent thinker” really is on the information media that engulf him. The bottom line is that everyone has his own “Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah” shaping his opinions and directing his actions. Rare is the person who makes a clean decision on his own.

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One of the most glaring examples of the fallacy of autonomous thinking emerged recently in the form of conservative political consultant and image-maker Arthur Finkelstein one of the behind-the-scenes “rebbes” of our prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Like a faithful chassid consulting his Admor Netanyahu takes advice from Finkelstein on nearly every public matter despite the fact that Netanyahu’s own brilliant intellect is recognized by all. He has proven himself as a man of many talents and as a certain pop vocalist sang to him in a campaign promotion “Bibi atah totoch!” (Loosely translated “You’re the top gun.”) Perhaps she meant a gun that shoots at distant targets or a self-propelled cannon that zigzags in all directions shooting even at his closest allies — people like rising political star and major Likud threat Naftali Bennett.

Finkelstein the mastermind behind Mitt Romney’s failed presidential run and more recently between the Likud-Yisrael Beitenu merger disclosed in a rare interview with Israel’s Channel 2 that the new merger is likely to garner up to 45 seats. “I have believed for several years that such a union is a good move ” Finkelstein said in the interview. “… Together they are much more powerful.”

But with two weeks to the elections it looks like Finkelstein gave Netanyahu an atzas Achitophel. According to the newest polls the merged list looks like it will only garner 34 mandates and so however much of a “cannonball” he may be the prime minister behaves just like us — he too takes advice from a higher  authority. But there is one major difference: we consult with the elders of the generation on all our issues and in doing so we merit fulfilling Chazal’s dictum “One who takes counsel from the elders does not stumble.” In contrast Netanyahu’s “rebbe” is sending him down a slippery political slope. Arthur Finkelstein the chief rabbi of political strategy for Binyamin Netanyahu for all his professionalism has been giving bad counsel to his talmid time after time from his advice to unite with Avigdor Lieberman (error: political mergers generally put both parties’ field workers to sleep losing votes at both ends) to his recent strategy – to take aim at his natural future ally and partner Bayit Yehudi’s Naftali Bennett. And meanwhile the unwieldy mass that’s been formed out of the merger is shaking off votes left and right.

We who follow the path of our rabbis know that it takes much siyata d’Shmaya to choose someone who will lead us in the right direction. And that “help from Above” is a gift for those with humility.

Food for Thought

It is a great thing to hear music from a holy person playing on an instrument for the sake of heaven. Because through this false fantasies are dismissed the spirit of depression is dispelled and the person merits happiness.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov