The Will to Believe

Considering the events that followed his medical school graduation in 1869, it was neither evident nor imaginable that the career of William James would turn out the way it did. One of, if not the most, important intellectuals of nineteenth-century America, William James founded the philosophical school of Pragmatism. His lectures, essays and books, blending psychology, philosophy and theology continue to shape American discourse to this day. Having been introduced to his writings at a critical stage of my own religious and intellectual development, I am acutely aware of the ongoing role he has in influencing my thinking on matters of God, faith and, frankly, pretty much everything else.

But when James graduated from medical school, his bright future was anything but certain. As a young man he had suffered from a variety of ailments. After he entered medical school, his condition grew progressively worse, as he fought eyestrain, back problems and bouts of suicidal depression. A bad situation turned worse when, upon being awarded his MD from Harvard in 1869, James experienced a total collapse and breakdown. Louis Menand describes his diary from this period as “a record of misery and self-loathing.” (Metaphysical Club, 218) For the next three years, James lived at home facing a “crisis of meaning.” His breakthrough and eventual recovery came by way of reading an essay by the French philosopher Charles Renouvier, which, in a nutshell, affirmed the role of free will in human psychology. Having been granted the gift of choice, as human beings we must choose. Not only are we empowered, but we are obligated to take the initiative to determine the circumstances of our existence. Neither James’ depression, nor the psychosomatic disorders that incapacitated him would disappear overnight, but from that moment on, James understood the critical role his personal resolve played in addressing his melancholy existence. To put it plainly, he admitted that it was up to him to bring himself out of his funk. Despite the fact that life is filled with daunting unknowns, the hovering “mights,” “maybes,” and “what ifs” of existence that can immobilize even the most resilient soul, James realized that it was in his power to choose to alter his psychological state. In his own words, “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”

Not surprisingly, there is a direct line that can be traced from his personal recuperation to the philosophy he would write in the decades to come. The title of his most famous collection of essays, The Will to Believe, says it all. “Believe that life is worth living,” James wrote, “and your belief will help create the fact.” Pessimism, James explains, is a religious disease. Our social and biological circumstances may or may not be in our control, but our “will to believe” – in God, in ourselves, and in the future – most assuredly is.

The failings of the Israelites in this week’s Torah reading are as numerous as they are varied, but at the root of it all, I believe, is the toxic and self-defeating sentiment of pessimism that James understood to exist at every stalled or stillborn life journey. The trip to the Promised Land was not intended to last forty years. Like going to Wisconsin, the plan was to zip into the desert, pick up the Ten Commandments, and zip right out again. But as we know from the Torah readings of these weeks, very little ends up going according to plan. Last week the rumblings began with a challenge to Moses’ leadership and then the bitter murmurings of Israelites. “We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt,” they cried, “the cucumbers, the leeks, the onions and the garlic.” Succumbing to the tricks of memory, the Israelites somehow elide and smooth over the pain and horror of their past enslavement. A insidious and destabilizing disquiet starts to spread through the people.

The bottom falls out in this week’s parashah. Twelve spies are sent to scout out the land. Find out, Moses asks, if the country is good or bad. Are the towns open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? For forty days they scouted the land, and ten of the spies returned with a gloom-filled report. “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we ... The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours it settlers.” (Numbers 13:31-32) In the midst of the mutinous calumny, Joshua and Caleb counter, “Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it.” But by then it was too late. The sin of the spies was not that they lied; nobody ever said this was going to be easy. Their sin, rather, was their pessimism; that having been appointed to a leadership position, they responded with a crisis of confidence. “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” This is the essence of their failure, that they were so convinced of their own inadequacies – the “mights,” “maybes” and “what ifs” of their uncertain moment – that they froze up. They were asked how to conquer the land, not if it should be conquered. The outcome was actually already foretold; they just needed to execute the plan. But they couldn’t. As Professor Adriane Leveen explains, it is precisely because the memories of their Egyptian past had colonized their present, that they failed to grab hold of their future. (Memory and Tradition, 84). As they were mired in their past, their loss of resolve obfuscated their vision forward, and whatever momentum they had was for naught.

The hammer comes down and their fate is sealed. Forty years of wilderness wandering corresponding to the forty-day scouting mission. Having failed to demonstrate faith in God, faith in the future, faith in themselves, the Exodus generation sealed their fate. Their destiny was to die in the desert. The saddest part is that it was all avoidable. They could have opted to be bold, to be courageous and to press forward with hope. But they didn’t; they chose otherwise. Their misguided and corrosive sentimentality for the past, their despondency regarding their present, all leading to a perceived loss of free will regarding their future. The problem was not insurmountable obstacles; the task was altogether doable. The problem was that Israel lacked the spiritual pugilism the moment called for. It is no wonder they lost the fight.

Ever since the generation of the desert, it is by way of their missteps that we measure our own journeys. By any metric, this year coming to a close has been a difficult one for our people. The news on the home front has not been good. The emergent narrative is of an uninspired and disengaged American Jewish community – flagging numbers, apathetic Jews and unresponsive, tone-deaf institutions. The data has led to a lot of head scratching, a fair amount of finger pointing, and an all-consuming mood of doom and gloom. And the news from Israel is not any better. A Jewish year that began with announcements of peace initiatives has devolved into a vicious cycle of posturing, recriminations, and unilateral assertions of power all of which seems to be leading to a renewed cycle of violence. Most sad, as I have said on more than one occasion, is the fraying of the bonds between the two centers of world Jewry. A small people whose historic strength comes from a feeling of arevut – Jews being responsible one for another – is now being subdivided into left and right, here and there, secular and religious. Like a person given the diagnosis of a chronic condition, the Jewish people faces more “mights, “maybes,” and “what ifs” than we know what to do with. It is all very overwhelming. Not surprisingly, there are those who seek to turn back and return to the days of old, trying to recapture glory days that never actually existed. There are those who respond in anger, who, in the face of uncertainty, are angry with God and each other. And there are those who, given the odds, have lost the will to press forward. They sit nervously on the sidelines waiting for the storm to pass. “What can I do?” they mutter. The fight has long left their soul. None of us need look far to see such people. Their negativity is around us, not so different from the mood of the failed desert generation.

To which I say to you today: Not me, not us; not here, not ever.

The late Maya Angelou reminded us that “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently.” As a people, our faith is directed not just towards God or each other. Our faith is a combination of courage and hope wrought from within that impels us to work feverishly towards a bright Jewish future. Long before William James, as Jews we understood that the choice between life and death is always before us, and we always “choose life.” It is not that we are unaware of the hurdles we face or the possibility of failure. If anything, we demand that our eyes be wide open to the challenges and we be as vigilant and responsive to the landscape as humanly possible. But it is because we know that each one of us is the author of a narrative yet to be written, that we also know that the possibility of hope exists. This belief in the hope of possibility and the possibility of hope is not just the essence of courage, not just the essence of faith, but the essence of our people. For two thousand years and change, as long as a Jewish soul yearns, our hope, tikvah, is never lost. Yes, the problems are daunting; yes, the future is uncertain; and no, I don’t have all the answers. But that’s the way it’s always been, and our challenges must be seen equally as opportunities. As Shakespeare wrote, “Sweet are the uses of adversity.” Our mood must be one of creativity and collaboration, and most of all, courage. We must be pugilists of the spirit. That will be the difference between success and failure.

The story is told of a rabbi who asked his students to name the greatest moment of Jewish history. The students argued amongst themselves – one insisting it was the splitting of the sea, another claiming that it was the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai. Upon hearing all their answers, the rabbi let the room settle down and quietly responded, “No, the greatest moment in Jewish history is right now.”

This answer is the one and only response that we dare articulate. We must be, as Heschel once wrote, “optimists against our better judgment.” We have free will, we have the choice, and no matter how hard, we must always find some reason to believe. Our appreciation for the Jewish past need not interfere with our obligations to the Jewish future. The path forward is anything but certain, and unlike the desert journey of the Israelites of old, neither its duration nor its destination is altogether clear. But our moment has blessings and opportunities about which past generations could only dream. It is incumbent upon us to identify these gifts and leverage them towards the future. After all, it was for us that past generations toiled, and so too, it is the generations to come whom we serve today.

William James concluded his most famous essay, “The Will to Believe,” with these words: “We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we may be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ‘Be strong, and of good courage.’ Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.”

I am not sure how well James knew his Bible, but with all due to respect, we said the same thing a whole lot earlier and a bit better. Luleh he’emanti lirot b’tuv Adonai b’eretz hayim. Kaveh el Adonai, hazak v’ya'ametz libekha v’kaveh el Adonai. “Mine is the faith that I shall surely see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. Hope in the Lord and be strong. Take courage, hope in the Lord!” (Psalm 27:13-14) Or  better yet, just say what Caleb and Joshua said: Aloh na’aleh v’rashnu otah, ki yakhol nukhal lah, “Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it. We are well able to do it.” (Numbers 13:30)

The choice is ours. Let us choose to greet our future with courage, and in doing so, step boldly towards the Promised Land.