Riddle Me a Riddle

Stretching across the intellectual highways called “philosophy,” “theology,” and “cerebral gymnastics,” one finds riddles and intellectual imponderables aplenty, the contemplation of which can provide the best - and occasionally most frustrating - forms of mental, moral and ethical gymnastics. Two of my favorites - neither of which I have come even close to solving - are the following:

Question: if G-d is omnipotent, is it possible for Co* (a divine pronoun I invented 40+ years ago meaning “He/She) to create an object so large and heavy that Co cannot lift it?

Answer: Of course not. If G-d could create such an object, that would wipe out Co’s omnipotence, because there would be something beyond Co’s physical ability.

Question: But if the omnipotent G-d were incapable of creating such an object, wouldn’t that then mean that there is something beyond that very omnipotence . . . namely the inability to create something too large and heavy to lift?

Answer: You’ve given me a migraine . . . better check back later . . . much, much later.

Then there’s imponderable #2, which comes from an early rabbinic work known as Pirke Avot . . . a book of wisdom whose title is roughly translated as The Ethics of the Fathers. In Hebrew it goes:

הַכֹּל צָפוּי, וְהָרְשׁוּת נְתוּנָה,

(ha-kohl tza-fuey, v’ha-r’shoot n’tunah) Roughly translated this enigmatic bit of wisdom states “All things are foreseen, but nonetheless there is free will.”

There’s an obvious paradox at work here: If G-d knows the future and every act we will do for the rest of our lives, do we truly have free will? Do we truly have a choice how we will behave? It is already known, so to speak, that I will sin at a particular time and place. And if so, there is no possible way I can avoid it! I am going to do it! G-d knows it already! There is no humanly possible way for me to alter my predetermined future! And so, isn’t my life merely a meaningless exercise — a futile performance of an already-written and predetermined script?

I have always been intrigued by this sentence (which is ascribed to the great Rabbi Akiba). I really love it, perhaps because it is an enigma to me, spiritual and intriguing. Every once in awhile the sentence pops up in my mind. And for the longest time, I said “Not yet, I still don’t understand its meaning.”

Talk about an imponderable riddle! Talk about yet another migraine!!

Annie asked me a question the other day that brought this omniscience- versus-free-will conundrum to mind. Annie, as many of you know, has taught for years at Broward College in the Ft. Lauderdale area. She teaches English as a Second Language (ESL) to adult immigrants, refugees and asylees. Her students come from places as diverse as Haiti, Cuba and the Caribbean to South and Central America and the Middle East. Many received next to no education prior to their arrival in the U.S.; some were college-educated doctors, accountants and engineers. The latter find it next to impossible to resume their professions; once skilled surgeons become registered nurses; engineers turn to the building trades and accountants become bookkeepers.

Recently, the college offered a cash incentive ($250.00) for any and all students who agreed to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and another $250.00 for receiving a booster shot. Annie contacted each and every one of her students to make sure they were aware of this program and answer any questions they might have. Of necessity, she asked each student whether or not they had already been vaccinated and/or received a booster injection. Hauntingly, a fair number of her students - including the doctors and other professionals - had not, but refused to give a reason why.

“How’s it possible for a doctor to be against getting a COVID vaccine?” she asked. Indeed, how is it possible for anyone (save those whose religion refuses medical attention or those with compromised immune systems) to willingly refuse a potentially life-saving vaccine? Or fight tooth and nail against being compelled to wear a mask . . . or compare any mandate concerning COVID protection to the Nazis forcing Jews to wear a Yellow Star? Do they have any brains? Do they really, truly believe all the conspiracy theorists who likely have been vaccinated behind closed doors? Amazingly, just the other day fringe factions of the right wing erupted in anger after both former POTUS Trump and former FAUX News commentator Bill O’Reilly urged people to get vaccinated and boosted. Anti-vax conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones and Ali Alexander swiftly rebuked Trump over his pro-vaccine stance. Members of QAnon-linked Telegram channels said they felt betrayed after Trump said to get the shot. Ultra-conservative millennial commentator Candace Owens hit back hard at Trump for telling the truth about vaccines, explaining to her growing legion of fans that he's "too old" to find the "obscure websites" where people do their own research on the vaccines. "People oftentimes forget that, like, how old Trump is," Owens said on an Instagram Live post last Thursday night. "He comes from a generation — I've seen other people that are older have the exact same perspective, like, they came from a time before TV, before internet, before being able to conduct their independent research."

(It should be noted that Trump, who famously had his own reality TV show, never lived in "a time before TV." Then again, he reportedly doesn't use a computer.)

In the Luddite-larded world of antivaxxers, one finds such utterly ludicrous beliefs as: urging - if not mandating - vaccinations, masks and rigorous hand-washing during a time of mutating pandemia is a “human rights” violation; that according to Fox commentator Tucker Carlson (who, after all, knows everything) the nation’s leading expert in infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci created the Covid virus (and is making a fortune off of it); and that COVID-19 is a plot by big pharma to make a fortune. And for those who haven’t been paying a lot of attention, one of the loudest anti-Fauci voices in the country is attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a mainstay in the vaccines-cause autism brigade whose newest book is entitled The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, which just about says it all.

Truth to tell, some of those peddling these - and other ridiculous notions have stock holdings in many of the companies manufacturing the very vaccines which are saving tens of millions of lives. (One of these is loud-mouthed Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene who, in addition to recently saying on Steve Bannon’s podcast that "vaccine Nazis [are] "ruining our country," holds stock in AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson.) In fact, according Business Insider’s “Conflicted Congress” project, at least 13 senators and 35 US representatives held shares in Johnson & Johnson, 11 senators and 34 representatives held shares in Pfizer, and two representatives or their spouses held shares of Moderna.

In their drive to monetize the COVID pandemic, hardcore right-wing conspirators who insist (and will sell you) that Ivermectin, herbal “cures,” tons of vitamin C and Hydroxychloroquine will cure what ails you are - either knowingly or not - are endangering the lives of the very people they need to “Make America Great Again.” According to a recent report on National Public Radio, "Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden.” Recent polling shows that partisanship is now this single strongest identifying predictor of whether someone is vaccinated. Polling also shows that mistrust in official sources of information and exposure to misinformation, about both COVID-19 and the vaccines, runs high among Republicans. According to Liz Hamel, vice president of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, (a nonpartisan health policy think tank), "An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat . . . . If I wanted to guess if somebody was vaccinated or not and I could only know one thing about them, I would probably ask what their party affiliation is."

It would take a heartless fool to cheer on those Trump acolytes who are killing the future of their movement by potentially killing themselves. But it has gotten to a point where they won’t even listen to their leader, who now tells them that getting vaccinated and boosted is a good thing.

In the words of Puck, perhaps Shakespeare’s most endearing creation: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Sorry to say, but when push comes to shove, I haven’t got an answer to Annie’s question about how in the world doctors and otherwise educated people - let alone those who are not - can bury their heads in the sand and their feet in concrete when it comes to saving their lives and the lives of their families and friends. It will have to remain an unsolvable riddle . . . perhaps even to the G-d who, despite being both omnipotent and omniscient, grants each of us free will . . .