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Coercion is not Chinuch

by Rabbi Yonasan Rosenblum

In his Kuntras HaBechirah, Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler makes a truly frightening statement. No matter how elevated one’s actions, if those actions are only the result of one’s training, then they confer no merit upon the one performing them. Only those actions that result from the exercise of one’s free will are attributed to a person.

Most of us experience a certain puzzlement upon first confronting this Rashi. After all, isn’t it more meritorious for Rivka to have formed herself into tzadekes, despite having no models to emulate? One possible answer is that we do not fully appreciate what it means that Yitzchak was a tzaddik.

Yitzchak was the son of Avraham Avinu, the greatest man who had ever lived, the one who discovered Hashem through the power of his own reason, and proclaimed His existence to the world. With such an overwhelming image in front of him, the natural thing would have been for Yitzchak to emulate his father’s derech avodah (path of Divine service). Had he done so, however, Yitzchak Avinu might have been an exemplary person, but he would not have merited the title tzaddik.