We’re working with Chaim Potok’s translation today, or rather the version that he puts into the mouth of Reb Saunders in The Chosen. The tzaddik is notionally speaking Yiddish, and might be quoting the verse in Hebrew, but the book is in English, so that’s what we get.
Do His will as if it were thy will, that He may do thy will as if it were His will. Nullify thy will before His will that He may nullify the will of others before thy will.
There seem to be two major strands of rabbinic interpretation. One is fairly straightforward, and says that if you want a pony (of whatever kind’I don’t actually want a pony, but I would like half-a-dozen nice waistcoats), rather than praying for it directly, or even working toward it directly, you should seek to accomplish the Divine Will instead, and then in reward, the Divine Will provides the pony.
Joseph ben Judah ibn Aknin speaks for this interpretation when he says "If you have carried out the commandments of the Torah and acquired wisdom—know in truth that Gd exists, walk in His ways so that you may be like Him—and if you have delighted in and yearned for these just as you yearn for the fulfillment of your bodily needs and pleasures; then the Holy One, blessed be He, will grand you your wishes and desires, He will carry them out as you have carried out His will.
Only, of course, the Divine Will doesn’t always provide the pony. Which means that either you wanted the wrong pony (which is no help, because that’s the pony you wanted) or you carried out the Divine Will insufficiently to be rewarded. I hate that shit. My feeling is that when we try to push that reward-for-service idea too hard, and people don’t get their ponies, we get broken people, bitter atheists (as opposed to the happy atheists, who don’t cause as much trouble), guilt-ridden prigs, and mean-spirited, envious Grundyists. Note to children reading this: You don’t get the pony! Even if you get one pony, there will always be another pony you don’t get! Now get off my blawn.
Rabbi Jonah ben Abraham takes a different view. He says “There should be no distinction between the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, and one’s own will. Both should be the same. That is to say, a man should have no wish except that which is in accordance with what is pleasing to Gd.” This strikes me as almost Buddhist in temperament: remove your own desire, and you will not have unfulfilled desires. My own problem is that (a) we do have desires and will (or at least we perceive ourselves to have them), so saying we should also risks self-recrimination when we don’t get our ponies, and (2) the verse itself clearly draws a distinction between your will and His will, and never identifies them with each other. Rabban Gamliel (son of Judah the Prince) could have said Make thy will His will, that He may do thy will and His will together. He didn’t. So that’s a stretch, for me, as an interpretation of the verse.
Something between them? Something that allows for some sort of distinction between the Divine Will and individual will, while recognizing that the Divine does not always fulfill human will?
I think—for me, the point of the verse is to struggle with the attempt to find that something between them. For me, it’s in a sense a koan, in that the value lies in your struggle with the text. Thinking about the discrepancy between my will and the Divine Will, or even thinking about the overlap between them, helps with the whole project of study and faith. My own struggles with my own missing ponies (corn chips! an outdoor electrical outlet! the ungrudging respect of honest men!) are made easier, somewhat, by the contemplation of Rabban Gamliel (son of Judah the Prince) and his verse. It’s not an answer, though. I don’t know what the sage meant, and I don’t know if I would agree with it if I did.
Reb Saunders (in The Chosen, do you remember we were talking about The Chosen?) has a terrifying certainty that he imparts to the two boys and to his congregation of followers. He raises his boy in silence, to teach him to subsume his will to the Divine Will, to take upon himself (as, in Reb Saunders’ mind, the tzaddik must) the sufferings of his congregation, of the People Israel throughout time, and even of the world. Ultimately, Daniel chooses a different understanding of the Divine Will, one that does not utterly subsume his individual will, but that compels a life of study and service outside the synagogue. Chaim Potok approves of that choice, I think, as do I (although of course it is fiction, and Mr. Potok’s invention, which makes a difference).
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.