In the 16th century, an innocent Jew was thrown into prison by a feudal baron who gave him a life sentence, with one exception: one day a year he was free to return to his family.

The prisoner was conflicted: which day should he choose, Yom Kippur, Passover, Shabbat? He sought advice from the Radbaz, who responded: “Choose the very first available day.”

This story helps explain a curious biblical reference to ear piercing.

Immediately after recounting the events surrounding the giving of the Torah, the verse states: “If you buy a Jewish servant, he shall work [for] six years, and in the seventh [year], he shall go free.”

“But if the servant says, ‘I love my master, I will not go free…’ His master… shall bring him to the doorpost and pierce his ear.”

“Why the ear?” asks the Talmud. Because “the ear heard at Mount Sinai, ‘For the children of Israel are My servants’ — yet this person went and acquired a [human] master for himself — therefore the ear should be pierced”.

Amazingly, of all the important things God told the Jewish people at Sinai, including the Ten Commandments, the only statement whose violation elicits such a harsh response is the one enshrining the sanctity of human freedom and personal agency.

As if to say, if you didn’t internalise this one overarching teaching, you missed the point of the entire exercise.

The importance of exercising free will and taking responsibility for our decisions and destiny — all of which the slave voluntarily surrendered to his master — has become increasingly vital in our era where a culture of abdication has taken hold.

“It’s not my fault, I’m not in control, it’s my genes, my life circumstances and experiences that define and confine me,” is a sentiment underlying the victimhood culture which has handicapped an entire generation.

Judaism is an elaborate counterargument to determinism, and constantly reminds us that we are always capable of asserting our divine ability to choose differently, to chart a new course for our lives free from the shackles of genetics and grievances, vices and victimhood, and become our the masters of our own life and destiny.