madlik

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My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish
text or tradition.

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Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast
platform and now on YouTube and Substack.

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We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

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This week’s parsha is Vayera.

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We’ll begin with Abraham and Sarah running and rushing to welcome their guests.

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And follow that urgency through the Mussar tradition and into Franklin’s art of
self-improvement.

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So join us: Abraham, Master of Mussar and Industry.

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Well, Rabbi, another week brings another surprise.

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I had never known that Franklin was involved with the Mussar movement, and we are going to
find that trail, and it’s pretty, pretty, pretty strong.

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But anyway, let’s go to the parsha.

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We are in Vayera. We’re in Genesis 18:1, and it says, “And God appeared,” Vayera, which is
why the parsha is named Vayera.

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It comes from the word to see.

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Vayera: “He appeared to him in the terebinths of Mamre.”

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He, meaning Abraham, was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot.

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Looking up, he saw three figures standing near him.

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As soon as he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them, and bowing to
the ground, he said, “My lords, if it please you, do not go on past your servant.”

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Let a little water be brought, bathe your feet, and recline under the tree.

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“Let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves.”

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Then go on, seeing that you have come your servant’s way.

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They replied, “Do as you have said.”

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Verse six.

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Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, “Quick, three seahs of choice flour! Knead
and make cakes.”

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So we’re going to focus on—there’s a lot of activity here.

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He’s sitting, it’s calm, it’s quiet, he’s observing, he’s looking.

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All of a sudden he stands up like a new customer is coming into his booth.

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And he runs out, he bows down, he greets them, but then the real word is “Vayemaher
Avraham.”

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He hastened to the tent and he says to Sarah, “Vayemaher, vayomer mahari.” He says, “Quick,
bring these cakes.”

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So instead of going through all the classical commentaries, we are going to start at the end
first.

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So the second I read this, I said, somewhere in my mind, there’s

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gotta be some Mussar scholar who looks at this and says, “The lesson here is about zerizut,
zerizim makdimim.”

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Get up early in the morning and go get them.

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Because I knew that that was the kind of thing, as I said in the intro, that we would spend
a month on in the yeshiva.

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We used to have va’adim. They were at midnight with Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, and we would work on
one simple thing, and it could be

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just a concept as simple as zerizut, as zealousness.

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It had to be at midnight!

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So because you need focus and quiet outside.

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So the first scholar that we’re going to read is Rav Yerucham Halevi.

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This actually, if you go to Wikipedia, it has a nice list of students.

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One of the students is Shlomo Wolbe.

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So I might have actually heard this through the mouth

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of Rav Yerucham’s student himself, Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, but he looks at these verses the way
a mussarnik would look.

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And he says, quoting the verse, “He lifted his eyes and saw, and he ran.”

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Says Rav Yerucham, “Abraham hurried to the tent of Sarah and said, ‘Quick, three measures of
fine flour.'”

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Then Abraham ran to the cattle and so on.

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He gave the food to the servant who hurried to prepare it.

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This is the real point, says Rav Yerucham.

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“He hurried” is the most important part.

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“Quick, three measures of fine flour.”

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The “quick” matters more than the three measures of flour, says Rav Yerucham.

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Now, quoting another great mussarnik, the Saba of Kelm, of blessed memory, used to make a
point about the blessing to engage in words of Torah.

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La’asok bedivrei Torah.

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Torah should become

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for a person, an esek, a business, a serious occupation like a business.

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In business, says Yerucham, when a customer comes into a shop, especially a valued customer
who brings in a lot of profit, everybody gets to their feet to welcome him, serves

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him, and do what he wants.

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In Abraham’s house, whenever a guest came in, everyone in the household got to their feet.

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They all ran around with him because they understood the great opportunity

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the guest brought with him.

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This is the secret of running and returning, running toward God.

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He goes on.

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Rabbi Eliezer said, and this is a quote from the Talmud, “In all my days no one ever arrived
at the study hall before me.”

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Yet once I got up early and found the dung carriers and straw gatherers already there.

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I said, “If you seek her like silver and search for her like hidden treasures, then you will
understand the fear of the Lord.”

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We are not even dung carriers or straw gatherers.

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He’s looking at the lowest of the low menial laborers, and he’s saying they have more
gumption, they have more zeal than me.

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I thought I was getting up early, I was the first clocking in to work.

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But here we have these menial laborers are there already.

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He says no one knows how to measure the importance of getting an early start on a mitzvah.

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Getting up a little earlier to go into the synagogue for prayer, or arriving a few minutes
before the study session begins.

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Perhaps all a person’s happiness and success come more from getting there early than from
the act itself.

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A person may perform many very great deeds yet lose the whole dynamic of r”unning and
returning”, he says in quotations, which is the condition and the purpose of all divine

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service.

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So I was struck by, first of all, the two business associations.

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When he talks about the Saba of Kelm, he talks about a businessman in his shop.

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When he brings from Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Eliezer is looking at these menial laborers.

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And then when he says at the end, perhaps all a person’s happiness and success, Rabbi, this
sounds more like self-help.

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This sounds more like a business

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journal, like, you know, influence people and make friends, and Fast and Slow.

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These are advices from being observant, from looking around, and yes, bringing them into how
we study Torah.

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But from the second I read it, I felt a taste of the Mussar movement.

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And we’re going to explore these analogies that seem to crop up all the time to business, to
esek.

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We’re also going to focus a little bit on—it’s bigger than just Torah.

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It’s happiness and success comes more.

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What is your experience with Mussar?

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Have you had this type of experience studying Mussar in this way before?

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So, first of all,

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there was a huge debate whether Mussar should be incorporated into the regular study.

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So you went to a yeshiva where really the main rabbinic character in the yeshiva was a
mussarnik.

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So Mussar played a very important role.

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The other tradition, the kind of more Lithuanian tradition, they always said that Mussar was
like medicine.

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If you’re sick.

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It makes you better.

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But if you’re better, it makes you sick!

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So, first of all, that’s interesting about Mussar.

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But there’s no question that for those who embraced, like Rabbi Wolbe, who embraced Mussar,
Mussar became really the foundation stone upon which everything else was based.

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And what they always wanted to do is go back to the stories in the Torah and see if you
could

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find a basis for these Mussar traditions.

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So what you’ve chosen is very traditional in the Mussar world, which makes it fantastic.

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Great.

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So what we’re gonna do, we started with a very late mussarnik, and now we’re gonna go back
because it’s kind of like BC and AC.

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There’s before Rabbi Israel Salanter.

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And after, because he did not invent these texts.

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In fact, everybody who studies Mussar is studying older texts, Mesilat Yesharim and others
that Rabbi Israel recommended, but they came way before.

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So we’re going to take this trip that I promised.

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We’re going to start in Middle Age Germany, a book called Orchot Tzadikim.

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and in that it says as follows.

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And again, we’re diving deep into this concept of zeal.

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So, Sha’ar ha-Chamishah Asar, Sha’ar ha-Zerizut.

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We are looking in the 15th chapter on zeal.

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And this is the type of things that a Mussar book would do.

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Zeal for the Torah and the commandments is a great quality.

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And so is zeal that aims to make a better world.

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I love that.

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It’s both Torah and a better world.

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And it is a quality of the righteous in the service of the Creator, may He be blessed.

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Our sages of blessed memory said, the zealous are early to perform their religious duties.

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That comes from the Talmud: “Zerizim makdimim lemitzvot.”

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That is a key operating phrase here.

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Concerning Abraham, our father, in the account of the sacrifice of Isaac—so they don’t
use—the first proof text does not come from our parsha.

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It comes from the famous parsha of the sacrifice of Isaac.

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And Abraham rose in the morning.

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Even though it was difficult for him to offer up his only son, he nevertheless did the will
of the Creator with zeal, with zerizut, arising early in the morning.

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He who performs his deeds with zeal demonstrates convincingly that he loves his Creator as a
servant who loves his master and hastens to do his will.

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Now we’re gonna dive just a little bit deeper.

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For zeal depends upon the heart of a man as when a man cleanses his heart of all other
thoughts.

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So when you get zealous about something, when you jump to action, you automatically cleanse
your heart of other intentionality.

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The adrenaline begins.

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And clings to one thought only, then he makes himself alert and will no doubt succeed.

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Now he’s even gonna make the argument that it was zerizut that helped Abraham get through
this test,

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because it made him focus on the challenge at hand and not think about his relationship with
his son, his family, and all that.

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But I want to stop here because again, it’s typical of the mussarniks that they will now
spend a day on thinking about how zealousness clarifies one’s thoughts, how zealousness

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focuses one’s attention.

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He goes on.

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Now you ought to remember the things that men tend to be lazy about.

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So the opposite thing of zealousness is laziness.

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And if you must look up something in a book and you do not know where to find it, you must
be quick to go and to ask someone who is familiar with the subject.

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If a poor man comes to your house to ask for bread, do not say I cannot go and get the
bread, but go quickly and bring it.

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So here now it’s seizing the opportunity.

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If I’m reading a book and I have a question, I’ll say, you know what, I’m gonna see Adam
tomorrow, I’ll ask him then.

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That doesn’t cut it.

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The idea of being zealous is to grab it when it is fresh and go for it.

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Again, another aspect of what zerizut can mean.

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So the next chapter, he goes, “The general rule in this matter is that a man should examine
himself and ask himself which sin he does customarily.”

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Again, he’s starting to focus the difference between zerizut and atzlut, which is laziness,
but also custom, because when you do something with zeal, you’re outside of your custom

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zone.

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and he should hasten to set up fences in order to take care to cease committing that
particular transgression.

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He should also examine himself as to which commandment of God he is lax in.

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For example, an idler, adam batlan.

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So we always think of bittul Torah as not studying Torah.

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Here we’re looking at the Batlan from a different perspective.

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Someone who’s not doing anything.

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He’s not moving in any direction.

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He should understand right off that his idleness is a result of his being concerned with
idle things.

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He who attaches himself to idle things will obviously reject Torah and prayer and all that
is good.

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Again, Mussar doesn’t focus directly on Torah and prayer.

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It’s focusing on the human being who is expected to read, study Torah and do prayer.

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It’s trying to change the essence of our behavior.

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Such a man should depart from people who waste time in idle talk, and he should not be their
companion.

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This will be a cure for his illness.

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And he says, and for all these zeal is required.

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For if he is too lazy to root out these evil qualities, then they will become fixed in his
heart so firmly that he will be unable to uproot them.

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He should be alert to seek peace and to pursue it.

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Rodef shalom.

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Again, it’s this running, it’s running after.

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So again, this idea of zeal is not always just to do something.

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It’s, as we saw with the Akedah, to cleanse one’s thought, to focus.

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It’s as we see here, not to be idle, to be moving, to be energized, to be constantly
reacting.

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Your thoughts till now, Rabbi?

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So I’m most interested in the idea of being an adam batlan.

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Because you talked about bittul Torah.

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Bittul Torah is in the moment.

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You don’t study Torah.

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Adam batlan—batlan is a description of the person.

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He’s an idler.

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He’s batel all the time.

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He doesn’t do anything.

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In the eyes of Jewish tradition, of the mussarniks, but of Jewish tradition, there’s nothing
worse than being idle.

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In a weird way, Geoffrey, it’s better to do bad things than it is to do nothing.

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Interesting.

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Interesting.

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And we’re gonna touch upon that too.

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And now a word from our sponsor.

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Thanks.

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And now back to our podcast.

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00:17:53,292 –> 00:17:57,024
So let’s continue with this older text, Orchot Tzadikim.

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He says, Rabbi Yehuda, the son of Tema, said, Be bold as a lion, light as an eagle, fast as
a deer, mighty as a lion, to do the will of your father in heaven.

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That comes from Pirkei Avot.

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See how they warn, meaning the rabbis, that one make himself light and strong in order to
fulfill the commandments.

210
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So this is not only act, but building up the muscle memory

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to act.

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00:18:21,343 –> 00:18:26,105
Thus did David say, I made haste and delayed not to observe thy commandments.

213
00:18:26,105 –> 00:18:30,768
Thus did our rabbis expound, and ye shall observe the matzot.

214
00:18:30,768 –> 00:18:32,529
That’s what it says in Exodus.

215
00:18:32,529 –> 00:18:39,592
The rabbis said, “Do not read it as matzot, unleavened bread, but read it as mitzvot.”

216
00:18:39,592 –> 00:18:43,106
So it says, you shall observe the mitzvot.

217
00:18:43,106 –> 00:18:47,309
That they shouldn’t become chametz, that they shouldn’t sour.

218
00:18:47,309 –> 00:18:49,971
That gets back to what we were saying before.

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00:18:49,971 –> 00:18:55,335
You’ve got to have the clock running and ticking, as when we make matzot.

220
00:18:55,335 –> 00:19:02,219
Meaning, if an opportunity comes to you to do a good deed, do not let it grow stale, but do
it at once.

221
00:19:02,219 –> 00:19:06,682
And this comes from the Rabbi Ishmael.

222
00:19:06,682 –> 00:19:12,232
So he goes on and he says as follows, in twelve:

223
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Even though zeal is a very good quality, one must be careful not to work too quickly.

224
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For one who rides quickly is liable to stumble, and one who runs quickly may fall.

225
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It is not wise to attempt to repair anything in haste, but rather with deliberation.

226
00:19:29,652 –> 00:19:32,193
So now he’s turning it and turning it.

227
00:19:32,193 –> 00:19:36,476
He’s looking at zeal can be good, but it can also be bad.

228
00:19:36,476 –> 00:19:40,608
And thus said our teachers: be deliberate in judgment.

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00:19:40,608 –> 00:19:42,679
So it’s nuanced.

230
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And zeal means that one’s heart must be stirred and one’s thoughts aroused and one’s limbs
must be light for one’s work, but one ought not to be hasty in any manner.

231
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All of these matters require great wisdom as to when to hurry and when to tarry.

232
00:20:01,030 –> 00:20:08,810
So again, he’s nuancing zeal. The way I look at it is a runner

233
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who’s focused.

234
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The adrenaline is going.

235
00:20:11,042 –> 00:20:12,333
He’s in the starting block.

236
00:20:12,333 –> 00:20:15,395
He’s not doing anything without thought.

237
00:20:15,395 –> 00:20:17,417
All of his activities are thoughtful.

238
00:20:17,417 –> 00:20:25,883
Do not confuse zeal with being not deliberate, without being focused and conscious.

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00:20:25,883 –> 00:20:28,044
You can see it’s growing.

240
00:20:28,044 –> 00:20:32,848
We’re getting deeper and deeper into it. Well, that’s the way they always do it, right?

241
00:20:32,848 –> 00:20:35,129
It gets, in a sense, more complex.

242
00:20:35,129 –> 00:20:36,530
Okay, this is great.

243
00:20:36,736 –> 00:20:48,137
And finally he ends up, because I am gonna go and make a big deal, starting with Yerucham,
they all seem to bring this into our everyday life, not just Torah and prayer.

244
00:20:48,137 –> 00:20:57,804
And it says in 13, just as a man must be quick in the matter of the Torah, so should he be
quick in the matters of this world and be alert in his work.

245
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Great success is in store for him who does his work with alertness.

246
00:21:02,217 –> 00:21:12,134
Therefore, son of man, be alert in what concerns both worlds, and be quick in your work
which is needed for this world, in order that you will soon be free to do the work of

247
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heaven.

248
00:21:12,745 –> 00:21:14,636
So again, it’s important.

249
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That this affects every aspect of your life.

250
00:21:17,827 –> 00:21:26,970
And Rabbi, one of the things that I thought to myself is, what does an unemployed yeshiva
student who knows nothing about business, how does he read all these texts?

251
00:21:26,970 –> 00:21:37,580
Because at the end of the day, all of their nimshal, all of their analogues are in the
business world of commerce, of building things, of makers.

252
00:21:37,580 –> 00:21:44,037
You should be involved in the elections in Israel, because this is what they’re arguing
about, whether the yeshiva boy should go to work or not.

253
00:21:44,037 –> 00:21:44,727
So here you go.

254
00:21:44,727 –> 00:21:45,418
Okay.

255
00:21:45,418 –> 00:21:50,964
So now we’re moving from the 1400s to the 1700s, the 18th century.

256
00:21:50,964 –> 00:21:58,692
And this is a very famous tract that is recommended by Rabbi Israel Salanter.

257
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It’s called Mesilat Yesharim,

258
00:22:00,806 –> 00:22:16,834
The Path of the Just, and it was written by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto. And we are going to read a
little bit of it, and it starts as follows. It’s in chapter seven:

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00:22:16,834 –> 00:22:25,100
There are two divisions of zeal. One applies before beginning a deed, and the other one
after beginning a deed.

260
00:22:25,100 –> 00:22:32,176
Before beginning a deed: that one not allow a mitzvah to become delayed, like chametz. He
uses the same proof text.

261
00:22:32,497 –> 00:22:42,305
Rather, when the time of its performance comes, or when it happens to present itself to him,
or when the thought of performing it enters his mind, he should hurry and hasten to

262
00:22:42,305 –> 00:22:52,436
seize hold of it and to perform it, and not allow time to go by in between, for there is no
danger like its danger.

263
00:22:52,436 –> 00:22:57,169
Okay, it’s the chapter on zerizut, we get it, but I think he means it.

264
00:22:57,169 –> 00:23:04,773
Since behold, each new second that arises can bring with it a new impediment to the good
deed.

265
00:23:04,773 –> 00:23:09,356
You know, there’s a great saying in the Talmud for someone who stops learning.

266
00:23:09,356 –> 00:23:12,558
And it says, “Yom, yomayim e’ezveka.”

267
00:23:12,558 –> 00:23:16,851
Every day I stop learning, it’s the opportunity cost of not learning.

268
00:23:16,851 –> 00:23:19,296
It’s like instead of I stop for one day.

269
00:23:19,296 –> 00:23:24,729
Now I’m back two days because I missed the day I would have learned, and I missed the Torah
that I could have learnt.

270
00:23:24,729 –> 00:23:26,690
This is similar.

271
00:23:26,690 –> 00:23:31,953
He really sees that every second lost is almost doubled.

272
00:23:31,953 –> 00:23:37,256
Therefore, the sages of blessed memory exhorted us, and you shall watch over the matzot.

273
00:23:37,256 –> 00:23:42,900
If a mitzvah comes to your hand, do not delay its performance, allow it to get chametz.

274
00:23:42,900 –> 00:23:45,221
and he uses the same proof text.

275
00:23:45,221 –> 00:23:47,550
And then he goes, and they said,

276
00:23:47,550 –> 00:23:50,852
Zealous people do mitzvot as early as possible.

277
00:23:50,852 –> 00:23:59,318
Likewise they said, and that’s where we have this zerizim makdimim, kedem, in the morning,
do it the first thing.

278
00:23:59,318 –> 00:24:05,423
Likewise, they said, a person should always run to perform a mitzvah, even on the Sabbath.

279
00:24:05,423 –> 00:24:11,767
So on the Sabbath, you’re not allowed to take a pesiah gasah, you’re not allowed to jog or
run.

280
00:24:11,767 –> 00:24:16,098
When it comes to a mitzvah, it’s docheh Shabbat, if you will.

281
00:24:16,098 –> 00:24:19,160
That’s how important zerizut is.

282
00:24:19,280 –> 00:24:30,168
For the trait of zeal is a very high spiritual level of shleimut, of perfection, which a
person’s nature impedes him from attaining at the current time.

283
00:24:30,168 –> 00:24:38,634
But he who strengthens himself and takes hold of it as much as he can will in the future
world merit to truly attain it.

284
00:24:38,634 –> 00:24:43,960
The creator, may his name be blessed, will bestow it to him as a reward for his striving.

285
00:24:43,960 –> 00:24:46,112
For it during the time of his service.

286
00:24:46,112 –> 00:24:51,476
Rabbi, you can imagine during this one-month period that we’re working on zerizut.

287
00:24:51,476 –> 00:24:55,360
The person who is working on zerizut is trying to train himself.

288
00:24:55,360 –> 00:25:00,624
If someone calls his name, instead of waiting for a second, he turns immediately.

289
00:25:00,624 –> 00:25:01,965
He runs to the bus.

290
00:25:01,965 –> 00:25:05,168
It changes the way you think for that period.

291
00:25:05,168 –> 00:25:09,892
You’re focused on this one trait.

292
00:25:09,892 –> 00:25:13,068
And then he goes on to talking about after the deed.

293
00:25:13,068 –> 00:25:16,239
The division of zeal after the deed is as follows.

294
00:25:16,239 –> 00:25:20,620
Since one took hold of a mitzvah, he should hasten to complete it.

295
00:25:20,620 –> 00:25:29,803
This is not in order to lighten on himself like one who desires to cast a burden off, but
rather out of the fear lest he not merit to complete it.

296
00:25:29,803 –> 00:25:32,764
So there’s something in finishing the act.

297
00:25:32,764 –> 00:25:37,765
Again, very interesting, but you can see we’re going down in levels.

298
00:25:37,765 –> 00:25:42,006
He quotes Bereshit Rabbah that says,

299
00:25:42,294 –> 00:25:47,016
“One who begins a mitzvah but does not complete it buries his wife and sons.”

300
00:25:47,016 –> 00:25:53,809
So they’re using proof texts, but they’re clearly going to places that—this was—they were
breaking ground.

301
00:25:53,809 –> 00:25:57,781
They were really going into physical traits.

302
00:25:57,781 –> 00:26:07,085
And in 16, he says, Likewise you will observe that all the deeds of the tzadikim of the
righteous are always performed with haste.

303
00:26:07,085 –> 00:26:09,356
He quotes our parsha.

304
00:26:09,356 –> 00:26:18,493
By Abraham it is written, and Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, Make ready
quickly three measures of fine meal.

305
00:26:18,493 –> 00:26:22,216
And he gave it to the lad, and he hastened to prepare it.

306
00:26:22,216 –> 00:26:25,359
So it uses our parsha as proof text.

307
00:26:25,359 –> 00:26:29,602
So no big surprise that Rav Yerucham brought that in

308
00:26:29,602 –> 00:26:31,983
to his commentary.

309
00:26:31,983 –> 00:26:40,805
He goes, “You can see that a man whose soul is afire in the service of his Creator certainly
will not become lazy in doing the mitzvot.”

310
00:26:40,805 –> 00:26:50,828
Rather, his movements will be like the quick movements of fire, for he will not rest nor be
still until he has finished completing the deed.

311
00:26:50,828 –> 00:26:58,402
Now, I am sure that there are other character traits that will create this “bren”, this fire
within you.

312
00:26:58,402 –> 00:27:04,287
But we’re focused on zerizut and how you would polish that muscle, so to speak.

313
00:27:04,287 –> 00:27:08,850
It’s kind of just fascinating, this focusing on one trait, is it not?

314
00:27:08,850 –> 00:27:10,111
Yeah, that’s fantastic.

315
00:27:10,111 –> 00:27:11,132
I agree with you.

316
00:27:11,132 –> 00:27:17,577
I mean, and that’s what the mussarniks did. They believe that people kind of—they lose
focus.

317
00:27:17,577 –> 00:27:20,659
And then you become a batlan if you lose focus.

318
00:27:20,659 –> 00:27:25,352
So therefore focus on this and make sure that you get this right.

319
00:27:25,696 –> 00:27:28,948
And so now he’s going even further, he’s getting practical.

320
00:27:28,948 –> 00:27:32,270
And he’s saying, How do you build this feeling within you?

321
00:27:32,270 –> 00:27:40,634
So he says, “Reflect further that just like an inner fieriness of soul leads one to act with
zeal, so too the opposite.”

322
00:27:40,634 –> 00:27:44,756
Outwardly acting with zeal leads to an inner fieriness of the soul.

323
00:27:44,756 –> 00:27:48,204
Outward actions affect inner being, namely:

324
00:27:48,204 –> 00:27:59,990
When one feels himself performing a mitzvah with great swiftness, this will move his inner
being to kindle a flame also, and the desire and want will increasingly intensify within

325
00:27:59,990 –> 00:28:00,501
him.

326
00:28:00,501 –> 00:28:08,205
If he acts in a sluggish manner in the movement of his limbs, so too the movement of his
spirit will die down and extinguish.

327
00:28:08,205 –> 00:28:11,607
This is something experience can testify to.

328
00:28:11,607 –> 00:28:17,822
It’s kind of like, Rabbi, when we tell our son who’s going on an interview, ‘Sit up, look
alert.’

329
00:28:17,822 –> 00:28:19,763
Look at them in the eyes.

330
00:28:19,763 –> 00:28:22,624
And ultimately, I know I do this all the time.

331
00:28:22,624 –> 00:28:25,845
You only have to be coached once in sales.

332
00:28:25,845 –> 00:28:28,305
If you’re on the phone with somebody, smile.

333
00:28:28,305 –> 00:28:28,715
Why?

334
00:28:28,715 –> 00:28:29,886
They can’t see me.

335
00:28:29,886 –> 00:28:30,746
Smile.

336
00:28:30,746 –> 00:28:32,727
They can talk differently, right?

337
00:28:32,727 –> 00:28:33,467
Yes.

338
00:28:33,467 –> 00:28:37,168
So this is what the Mesilat Yesharim is doing.

339
00:28:37,168 –> 00:28:43,050
So we did two texts that were pre-Rabbi Israel Salanter,

340
00:28:43,080 –> 00:28:47,073
and now I want to go a little bit into Rabbi Israel Salanter.

341
00:28:47,073 –> 00:28:51,296
And the next quotes are basically from an iconic book.

342
00:28:51,296 –> 00:28:57,921
It’s by Immanuel Etkes, and it’s called Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Mussar Movement.

343
00:28:57,921 –> 00:29:10,690
And he says as follows: “The message implicit in the ideas that Salanter began to
disseminate among the Jews of Vilna in the mid-1840s contains several components.”

344
00:29:10,690 –> 00:29:19,793
The first of these was that the religio-ethical improvement of the Jew demanded an
investment of time, attention, and spiritual energy.

345
00:29:19,793 –> 00:29:27,555
In order to exemplify the impossibility of this widespread attitude towards yir’ah and
Mussar—people didn’t focus on it.

346
00:29:27,555 –> 00:29:28,896
They go, Am I saying my prayers?

347
00:29:28,896 –> 00:29:29,936
Am I reading the Torah?

348
00:29:29,936 –> 00:29:30,896
That’s all.

349
00:29:30,896 –> 00:29:35,357
Salanter used a parable closest to his audience’s experience:

350
00:29:35,598 –> 00:29:36,962
How much thought

351
00:29:36,962 –> 00:29:45,713
does the merchant with wares engage in before concluding a given business deal, to decide
whether to carry it out or to refrain from it?

352
00:29:45,713 –> 00:29:49,237
He will think it over within himself and consult with his friends.

353
00:29:49,237 –> 00:29:53,824
He will examine the details, seek out possible errors until the matter is clear.

354
00:29:53,824 –> 00:30:02,162
So, in the study of our holy Torah, each one on his own level will study and examine it to
uncover its hidden treasures.

355
00:30:02,162 –> 00:30:09,749
He’s saying, just like a businessman evaluates a deal, asks for consultations, thinks about
it, the same thing.

356
00:30:09,749 –> 00:30:15,774
I just love the fact that he’s bringing an example from a business.

357
00:30:16,335 –> 00:30:19,456
and the trivial mentality of business.

358
00:30:19,456 –> 00:30:29,984
The second major component of his message is implicit in the very system of ethical
education expressed in another homily, once again taken from the realm of commercial life.

359
00:30:29,984 –> 00:30:33,686
A person who is troubled will do badly wherever he turns.

360
00:30:33,686 –> 00:30:39,938
His business will do poorly, his power and his intellect will be confused, held back by his
worries and confusion.

361
00:30:39,938 –> 00:30:49,404
And if a person comes and says to him, I see a light for you, if you do such and such a
thing according to the proper estimate, you will be able to profit a thousand, thousand

362
00:30:49,404 –> 00:30:55,828
gold dinars, he will summon all his powers of concentration until that matter becomes
enrooted in his heart.

363
00:30:55,828 –> 00:30:58,150
So he’s really saying, you need self-help.

364
00:30:58,150 –> 00:31:05,484
You need, we need, just as in business, we would reach out if somebody said, I can be your
guide, I can give you guidance.

365
00:31:05,484 –> 00:31:13,298
The same with regard to living a Jewish life, an ethical life, a life of good.

366
00:31:13,298 –> 00:31:17,581
And there were many times that Israel Salanter seemed like he was depressed.

367
00:31:17,581 –> 00:31:21,442
But here he has an optimistic tone.

368
00:31:21,442 –> 00:31:28,967
So what happened is one of the books that Israel Salanter recommended was called Cheshbon
HaNefesh.

369
00:31:28,967 –> 00:31:32,909
And it was written by a rabbi, Menachem Mendel Lefin.

370
00:31:33,389 –> 00:31:34,670
And in it,

371
00:31:34,760 –> 00:31:37,611
it gets into great detail.

372
00:31:37,611 –> 00:31:45,665
It was written in about 1808 in Vilna, and this Lefin was actually quite a maskil.

373
00:31:45,665 –> 00:31:49,937
He had met Mendelssohn, he had written books on medicine.

374
00:31:49,937 –> 00:31:54,519
The heart of the book is the following device, referred to in the title page.

375
00:31:54,519 –> 00:32:01,766
The one engaged in training himself is to prepare a list of 13 attributes, midot, that he
wishes to improve.

376
00:32:01,766 –> 00:32:05,748
He then prepares a brief maxim for each of these 13 traits.

377
00:32:05,748 –> 00:32:09,510
Each one is directed toward one of the traits requiring improvement.

378
00:32:09,510 –> 00:32:15,993
The student is then to divide the year into seasons, devoting a week to the improvement of
each attribute.

379
00:32:15,993 –> 00:32:26,016
During that week, he is to use the appropriate Mussar maxim in order to focus his attention
upon the attribute requiring improvement.

380
00:32:26,016 –> 00:32:32,049
At the end of the first 13 weeks, the student returns to the beginning of the process,
rinse, and repeat.

381
00:32:32,049 –> 00:32:37,351
Thus, over the course of a year, each attribute receives four weeks of attention.

382
00:32:37,351 –> 00:32:48,096
Now, as Etkes says, there are many people who found this same theory published 10 years
earlier in the writings of Benjamin Franklin.

383
00:32:48,096 –> 00:32:53,750
And I share for you, those of you who are looking at this on video,

384
00:32:53,750 –> 00:33:00,555
This is the chart that Benjamin Franklin has in his book.

385
00:33:00,555 –> 00:33:05,658
And if you can see the one that’s about the fifth one down is industry.

386
00:33:05,658 –> 00:33:12,223
First of all, he says, “Lose no time, be always employed in something useful, cut off all
unnecessary actions.”

387
00:33:12,223 –> 00:33:13,864
That’s what Franklin says.

388
00:33:13,864 –> 00:33:20,109
Now let’s look at the Jewish version of this published in Cheshbon HaNefesh.

389
00:33:20,109 –> 00:33:22,710
So now we look at zerizut.

390
00:33:22,864 –> 00:33:24,235
What is zerizut?

391
00:33:24,235 –> 00:33:31,170
Always find something to do for yourself or for a friend, and don’t allow a moment of your
life to be wasted.

392
00:33:31,170 –> 00:33:36,283
It is clear that Lefin also says, “I read this somewhere.”

393
00:33:36,283 –> 00:33:37,915
He doesn’t say the name Franklin.

394
00:33:37,915 –> 00:33:40,607
Probably if he did, no one would have read the book.

395
00:33:40,607 –> 00:33:41,457
Absolutely.

396
00:33:41,457 –> 00:33:51,574
But here he has a man who, clearly, we all know: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man
wealthy, healthy, and wise.”

397
00:33:51,574 –> 00:34:01,761
This was a man who not only was an inventor, but was someone who tried to figure out maxims
and ways that could make people better.

398
00:34:01,761 –> 00:34:03,843
Clearly, he was frugal.

399
00:34:03,843 –> 00:34:13,770
Clearly, he believed in focusing one’s attention on living an industrious life of creating
things, of building things.

400
00:34:13,770 –> 00:34:20,236
But it is just amazing that the Mussar movement was able to take

401
00:34:20,236 –> 00:34:25,849
this thought process and this program and use it in the way they did.

402
00:34:25,849 –> 00:34:34,033
And I will just finish up by leaving us with the thought that I think it goes both ways.

403
00:34:34,033 –> 00:34:43,317
That truly the mussarniks understood they were doing more than just Torah and tefillah. They
were changing how you comport yourself

404
00:34:43,317 –> 00:34:45,298
and how you have to stay active.

405
00:34:45,298 –> 00:34:53,420
And it truly was a book about getting fulfillment, getting happiness, and being a successful
human being.

406
00:34:53,420 –> 00:35:05,417
And I think from that perspective, it is just amazing how these two traditions kind of
focused and folded over each other, and the Mussar movement still lives on to today.

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00:35:05,417 –> 00:35:12,286
I would be surprised if many of them knew that in fact they were carrying out Ben Franklin’s
regimen.

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00:35:12,286 –> 00:35:12,962
Love it.

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00:35:12,962 –> 00:35:14,342
This is fantastic.

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00:35:14,342 –> 00:35:19,494
Everybody, this is Vayera, one of the most famous parshiot, the parsha of Akedat Yitzchak.

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00:35:19,494 –> 00:35:22,625
You talk about zerizut and you talk about focus.

412
00:35:22,625 –> 00:35:25,186
So we should all take these lessons to heart.

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00:35:25,186 –> 00:35:29,707
And maybe this should be the beginning of our 30 days to focus on the way we should act.

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00:35:29,707 –> 00:35:31,888
Have a great trip to Israel.

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00:35:31,888 –> 00:35:33,598
Look forward to continuing next week.

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00:35:33,598 –> 00:35:38,410
I guess transatlantic parsha next week for Chayei Sarah.

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00:35:38,410 –> 00:35:39,590
Looking forward to everybody.

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00:35:39,590 –> 00:35:40,700
Shabbat Shalom.

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00:35:40,770 –> 00:35:41,813
Shabbat shalom.

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00:35:41,813 –> 00:35:43,948
Let’s all get up and do something now.

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00:35:43,948 –> 00:35:44,760
zerizut.

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00:35:44,760 –> 00:35:46,325
Shabbat Shalom.

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00:35:46,325 –> 00:35:48,150
See you all next week.

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00:35:48,150 –> 00:35:50,164
Rabbi Wolbe would be very proud.

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00:35:52,756 –> 00:36:00,272
Zeal, zerizut, can serve holiness or enterprise. It can affect attitude and condition our
responses.

426
00:36:00,272 –> 00:36:03,194
By itself, it’s morally neutral.

427
00:36:03,294 –> 00:36:08,598
What other basic dispositions in your life might you focus on for 30 days?

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00:36:08,779 –> 00:36:11,420
Ben Franklin and I want to know.

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00:00:55,450 –> 00:00:56,671
Welcome to Madlik.

10
00:00:56,671 –> 00:01:02,614
My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light
on a Jewish text or tradition.

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00:01:02,614 –> 00:01:10,919
Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite
podcast platform, and now on YouTube and Substack.

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00:01:10,919 –> 00:01:16,181
We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show
notes.

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00:01:16,181 –> 00:01:27,847
This week’s parsha is Lech Lecha, and we explore the many Abrahams imagined by
the Bible, the Midrash, the Book of Jubilees, Philo, Maimonides, and later
commentators.

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00:01:27,908 –> 00:01:32,244
Every generation created its own revolutionary Abraham.

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00:01:32,244 –> 00:01:45,351
Each theologian celebrated him for challenging the prevailing orthodoxy and
remarkably for discovering an unquestionable truth that looked suspiciously
like the orthodoxy of the

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00:01:45,351 –> 00:01:47,482
theologian’s own day.

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00:01:47,542 –> 00:01:52,665
Even the nature of his rebellion changed, depending on who was telling the
story.

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00:01:52,665 –> 00:02:01,834
Abraham was a satirist, a provocateur, a philosopher, a heretic, or a migrant
crossing borders and engaging with other cultures.

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00:02:01,834 –> 00:02:08,957
So join Rabbi Mintz and me as we ask what made Abraham the original outlier.

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00:02:08,957 –> 00:02:12,399
Well, Rabbi, if there’s ever a Rorschach block, it’s Abraham.

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00:02:12,399 –> 00:02:15,400
All we know is that he got up and went: Lech Lecha.

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00:02:15,400 –> 00:02:20,342
But what his revolution was, who he was, we don’t know.

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00:02:20,780 –> 00:02:24,193
And of course, that’s the mystery that the Torah wants to give you.

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00:02:24,193 –> 00:02:28,147
So that in every generation and every year we can ask the same question.

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00:02:28,147 –> 00:02:29,659
Because that’s the question.

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00:02:29,659 –> 00:02:31,650
What does it mean to be an outlier, right?

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00:02:31,650 –> 00:02:34,063
Each one of us is outliers in our own way.

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00:02:34,063 –> 00:02:36,405
What made Abraham the first outlier?

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00:02:36,405 –> 00:02:38,326
The Avraham HaIvri.

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00:02:38,527 –> 00:02:41,000
Not only the first, but kind of powerful.

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00:02:41,000 –> 00:02:45,826
I mean, if you think of the Abrahamic religions, we’re talking billions of
people.

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00:02:45,826 –> 00:02:54,315
That were impacted by this journey that started one foot at a time, Lech
Lecha.

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00:02:54,315 –> 00:03:06,387
So the parsha takes its name after the first verse, and it says, God said to
Abraham, Lech Lecha, go forth from your native land and from your father’s
house to the land that I

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00:03:06,387 –> 00:03:07,628
will show you.

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00:03:07,689 –> 00:03:09,080
I will make of you a

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00:03:09,080 –> 00:03:14,754
Great nation, and I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you shall
be a blessing.

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00:03:14,754 –> 00:03:18,196
So that’s the story.

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00:03:18,196 –> 00:03:24,141
But the pre-story is actually included at the end of last week’s parsha.

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00:03:24,141 –> 00:03:26,472
And I was so delighted.

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00:03:26,472 –> 00:03:34,684
To find some really important little baggage and breadcrumbs in what occurs
before.

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00:03:34,684 –> 00:03:36,665
So let’s go back a few Psukim.

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00:03:36,665 –> 00:03:39,722
We’re gonna be in Genesis 11:22.

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00:03:39,722 –> 00:03:43,367
and it says something that seems pretty innocuous.

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00:03:43,367 –> 00:03:45,367
And it’s talking about the genealogies.

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00:03:45,367 –> 00:03:48,948
There were 10 generations between Noah and Abraham.

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00:03:48,948 –> 00:03:54,880
So it says, when Serug had lived 30 years, he begot a person named Nahor.

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00:03:55,054 –> 00:03:59,916
After the birth of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and begot sons and daughters.

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00:03:59,956 –> 00:04:04,098
When Nahor had lived 29 years, he begot Terah.

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00:04:04,278 –> 00:04:09,940
After the birth of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and begot sons and daughters.

50
00:04:09,940 –> 00:04:16,463
When Terah had lived 70 years, he begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

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00:04:17,003 –> 00:04:24,136
And my first surprise this week that I had never thought of was brought by our
friend Cassuto.

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00:04:24,194 –> 00:04:27,016
Cassuto says, Abram.

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00:04:27,016 –> 00:04:31,239
It is not explicitly stated that he was the firstborn.

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00:04:31,239 –> 00:04:44,689
However, since the biblical text contains no indication to the contrary, we
should understand the text as intending to convey that Abraham was the
firstborn, and that he was

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00:04:44,689 –> 00:04:48,352
born when his father Terach was 70 years old.

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00:04:48,352 –> 00:04:50,133
I had never thought about that.

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00:04:50,133 –> 00:04:52,034
I mean, if you think about it, Rabbi.

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00:04:52,034 –> 00:05:00,619
There’s a case to be made that the whole book of Genesis is not about Oedipal
complexes, it’s about sibling rivalry.

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00:05:00,619 –> 00:05:01,879
And guess what?

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00:05:01,879 –> 00:05:09,163
The son, the second son, always gets to the top, and the firstborn is always
thrown away.

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00:05:09,163 –> 00:05:12,766
I had never thought … that started already with Cain and Abel.

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00:05:12,766 –> 00:05:13,726
So we got it.

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00:05:13,726 –> 00:05:15,337
We got it now, right?

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00:05:15,337 –> 00:05:16,307
Okay.

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00:05:16,388 –> 00:05:21,350
But now what the Cassuto is saying is if the verse says

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00:05:21,498 –> 00:05:27,482
Abram, and then it says Terah lived 70 years, he begot Abram Nahor and Haran.

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So unless we have a compelling reason to see it otherwise, Abraham was the
firstborn.

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00:05:34,567 –> 00:05:41,051
Already that makes him an outlier in our tradition, but maybe it makes him
foundational.

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00:05:41,051 –> 00:05:46,028
And what Cassuto goes on to say is even more interesting.

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00:05:46,028 –> 00:05:49,919
The fact that Nahor was named after his grandfather, right?

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The grandfather was Nahor.

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00:05:51,960 –> 00:06:05,385
He had Terah, and then his second-born grandson was called Nahor, following
the practice of papponymy; naming a child after his grandfather does not imply
that he was the

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00:06:05,385 –> 00:06:06,166
firstborn.

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00:06:06,166 –> 00:06:07,298
So he’s still at it.

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00:06:07,298 –> 00:06:09,049
Cassuto has this on his mind.

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00:06:09,049 –> 00:06:10,949
You could say that’s not true.

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00:06:10,949 –> 00:06:15,021
You could say that maybe it was the firstborn who’s named after the
grandfather.

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00:06:15,021 –> 00:06:22,843
But if of course you know here that it’s not clear whether it was after the
grandfather who was alive or the grandfather who was dead.

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You know, the Sephardic tradition is to name after the grandfather who’s
alive.

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00:06:26,784 –> 00:06:30,425
The Ashkenazic tradition is to name after the grandfather who’s dead.

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00:06:30,425 –> 00:06:32,756
So that’s just kind of interesting also.

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And the third tradition is what Cassuto is talking about, is we’re not so
interested in what really happened.

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We’re interested in what the tradition did.

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Because clearly, when they were born, rabbi, we knew nothing about any of
that.

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It didn’t make any difference, correct.

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00:06:47,552 –> 00:06:48,761
Look what he says.

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00:06:48,761 –> 00:07:02,356
On the contrary, perhaps the tradition intended to suggest that it was the
second son rather than the first who perpetuated the inheritance of idolatrous
family.

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00:07:02,370 –> 00:07:12,214
The second son, who bore the same name as his grandfather, resembled his
grandfather and did not free himself from his spiritual inheritance.

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00:07:12,214 –> 00:07:27,841
The first son, Abraham, however, introduced a momentous and exalted innovation
into the life of the family and became an av-ram, an exalted father to a new
humanity.

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00:07:27,841 –> 00:07:31,648
I love it when Cassuto waxes poetic.

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00:07:31,648 –> 00:07:36,102
I mean it’s very creative of Cassuto, cause he makes that up.

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00:07:36,102 –> 00:07:40,666
It’s really a dvar Torah that he makes up, which is fantastic, right?

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00:07:40,666 –> 00:07:47,111
Well, again, if you look at it the way he does, which is this is a tradition
that was formed.

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00:07:47,111 –> 00:07:50,934
This was passed down from generation to generation.

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00:07:50,996 –> 00:07:57,329
It gives you a little bit more wiggle room to say this was the
remembered tradition.

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00:07:57,329 –> 00:08:07,132
And it might very well be that Abraham was so iconoclast that he might have
been the firstborn, which was kind of interesting.

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00:08:07,272 –> 00:08:16,617
But I love that he says this was a חידש חידוש חשוב ונשגב בחיי המשפחה … לאנושות חדשה
.

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He’s creating a new humanity.

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00:08:19,078 –> 00:08:20,178
So that

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00:08:20,280 –> 00:08:23,711
Thread is going to run through today’s interpretations.

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00:08:23,711 –> 00:08:30,573
Everybody saw or projected onto Abraham this man who is changing humanity.

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00:08:30,573 –> 00:08:39,416
And clearly in the book of Genesis, he is now standing out as a firstborn who
changed the rules.

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00:08:39,416 –> 00:08:42,677
And the question is: what was the rule change?

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00:08:42,677 –> 00:08:45,130
And that’s what we’re going to be talking about.

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00:08:45,130 –> 00:08:50,033
Another interesting little diyuk that I found was the Kli Yakar.

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00:08:50,033 –> 00:09:04,863
We all know when Abraham’s name was changed to Avraham, it meant av hamon
goyim, that he was the father, the progenitor of many nations.

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00:09:04,863 –> 00:09:08,105
But what does his original name mean?

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00:09:08,105 –> 00:09:09,544
He was called.

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00:09:09,544 –> 00:09:15,178
Abram, says the Kli Yakar, as he was the father of Aram.

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00:09:15,178 –> 00:09:17,360
Remember our friends, the Arameans?

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00:09:17,360 –> 00:09:25,005
so he was either a leader or he was born into this location.

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00:09:25,005 –> 00:09:26,787
And what did he become?

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00:09:26,787 –> 00:09:29,114
He became a man of the world.

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00:09:29,114 –> 00:09:37,324
I love that too, that it kind of parallels or contrasts what he became to
where he was born.

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00:09:37,324 –> 00:09:49,374
So anyway, last week in discussing the Netziv, and we’re going to stay with
the Netziv a little bit today, I quoted Rabbi Sacks, and you were pleasantly
surprised.

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00:09:49,374 –> 00:09:52,107
So I quoted a little bit more here.

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00:09:52,107 –> 00:10:05,632
But what Rabbi Sacks says is this Tower of Babel story is right before the
birth of Abraham, in the same way as the story of [Moses] Egypt is before the Exodus.

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00:10:05,632 –> 00:10:14,286
And in both of them, we can now define the programmatic theology, the politics
of theology in the Bible.

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00:10:14,286 –> 00:10:16,587
What are both of them critiquing?

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00:10:16,587 –> 00:10:20,068
They’re critiquing the empire and imperialism.

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00:10:20,068 –> 00:10:28,332
So, in terms of Abraham, remember last week how he was thrown into the same
furnace as the bricks of the Tower of Babel?

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00:10:28,332 –> 00:10:31,593
He was rejecting that imperialism.

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00:10:31,593 –> 00:10:34,434
So too, Moses was

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00:10:34,434 –> 00:10:38,297
The one who broke away from the same thing in Egypt.

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00:10:38,297 –> 00:10:43,240
And then Sacks makes another point, which I think we all too forget.

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00:10:43,240 –> 00:10:56,169
We sometimes forget, says Sacks, because Judaism is quite old, that the Bible
presents Judaism or Abrahamic faith as a late comer, not as the original faith
of humanity.

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00:10:56,169 –> 00:11:03,134
So what he’s saying is: we are watching in real-time a revolutionary, maybe a
young revolutionary.

128
00:11:03,134 –> 00:11:09,518
Somebody who is taking all the accepted orthodoxy of the past and throwing it
out the door.

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00:11:09,518 –> 00:11:14,242
A freedom fighter, if you will, a rebel with a cause.

130
00:11:14,242 –> 00:11:26,010
This is the birth of a young tradition because it was in a world that for
thousands of years had done things primarily in the same way, just with
different local names for the

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00:11:26,010 –> 00:11:27,290
same old gods.

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00:11:27,290 –> 00:11:31,453
So I love that insertion of the new here.

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00:11:31,453 –> 00:11:32,524
But I think.

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00:11:32,524 –> 00:11:36,118
That you have to go back to the Haamek Davar last week.

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00:11:36,118 –> 00:11:37,759
And I’m gonna review it quickly.

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00:11:37,759 –> 00:11:41,343
The Haamek Davar says at the beginning of Babel.

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00:11:41,343 –> 00:11:52,290
By the Netziv, the first thing he says is that clearly they moved and settled
in this valley of Babel and they wanted to stay there.

138
00:11:52,290 –> 00:11:54,791
They were against migration.

139
00:11:54,791 –> 00:12:10,336
And the Haamek Davar says that’s against a principle, a basic principle of the
Bible, which is that God says, fill the land and replenish it, walk to all its
places.

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00:12:10,336 –> 00:12:17,158
If you hear in the word lehit’ha”lech” the word lech from Lech Lecha, you are on
the mark.

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00:12:17,158 –> 00:12:18,648
So already.

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00:12:18,648 –> 00:12:32,828
The Netziv is talking that the most important thing that we can say about our
tradition is we acclaim movement, migration, moving from place to place, being
dynamic.

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00:12:32,828 –> 00:12:46,338
And then, of course, he says that this burning kivshan, which Abraham was
thrown into, they were trying to burn that wanderlust inside of Abraham as
much as

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00:12:46,338 –> 00:12:49,759
The unanimity of thought that they were trying to impose.

145
00:12:49,759 –> 00:13:03,085
And of course, the main point that I want to bring from the Netziv is where
the Netziv is different than every other commentary on the Tower of Babel, is
he’s saying it’s

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00:13:03,085 –> 00:13:10,668
not the message that God objected to, not the ideology, but they believed in
only one ideology.

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00:13:10,668 –> 00:13:15,944
And I’m gonna suggest today, Rabbi, that it’s not so much what

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00:13:15,944 –> 00:13:22,858
Abraham’s message was because we’re going to see at least five or six
different versions of his message.

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00:13:22,858 –> 00:13:33,625
But clearly what made him iconoclast was that he left, was that he moved, that
he rejected the orthodoxy of the day.

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00:13:33,625 –> 00:13:37,487
and so I think that’s really important.

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00:13:37,487 –> 00:13:42,706
And if you want to talk about modern day philosophy, what

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00:13:42,706 –> 00:13:52,529
Abraham was basically arguing, especially in the mouth of Rabbi Sacks and the
Netziv, is what’s called the tradition of liberalism.

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00:13:52,529 –> 00:13:56,090
And I don’t mean liberalism being a liberal or progressive.

154
00:13:56,090 –> 00:14:09,664
I mean liberalism in the sense that our human society has to be designed to
support the expression of different opinions, different ideas, and support
citizens from

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00:14:09,664 –> 00:14:10,104
different

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00:14:10,104 –> 00:14:11,155
Places.

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00:14:11,155 –> 00:14:20,739
This is what in Rabbi Sacks’s view was the most important introduction of the
Torah at this point, and it was personified with Abraham.

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00:14:20,839 –> 00:14:24,181
And he had to live somewhere else.

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00:14:24,181 –> 00:14:24,541
Right?

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00:14:24,541 –> 00:14:34,536
I think, I mean, that’s what we’re going to develop here in all these sources,
but the fact that he moved somewhere else identifies what you call that
liberalism.

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00:14:34,866 –> 00:14:35,747
Absolutely.

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00:14:35,747 –> 00:14:47,533
So I’m not gonna go into all of these midrashim and these viewpoints of
Abraham in the same depth because some of them are so well known and we’ve
covered them already in the

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00:14:47,533 –> 00:14:48,173
past.

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00:14:48,173 –> 00:14:51,395
But what I want to point out is what makes them unique.

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00:14:51,395 –> 00:15:01,441
So in Bereshit Rabbah, we all know the story of Abraham tending his father’s
shop, which again would lead us to believe he might have been the firstborn.

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00:15:01,441 –> 00:15:04,296
But let’s put that to the side for a second.

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00:15:04,296 –> 00:15:11,109
And a person comes in, a 50 or 60 year old, and wants to buy an idol.

168
00:15:11,109 –> 00:15:23,795
And make a long story short, Abraham would say to him, Woe to this man who is
60 years old and seeks to prostrate himself before something that is one day
old.

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00:15:23,895 –> 00:15:27,117
And he would shame that person to leave.

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00:15:27,117 –> 00:15:30,058
So clearly he’s a provocateur.

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00:15:30,136 –> 00:15:36,189
Clearly, if you’re a shop owner, he’s not the guy who’s gonna take over the
family business.

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00:15:36,630 –> 00:15:42,013
This is someone that the Midrash is injecting great personality into.

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00:15:42,013 –> 00:15:46,235
oh He has a sense of humor, he’s a satirist.

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00:15:46,235 –> 00:15:55,360
The next story or sub-story in the Midrash is where the woman comes in and
wants to give food to the idols.

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00:15:55,360 –> 00:15:58,474
So Abraham, after she

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00:15:58,474 –> 00:16:02,755
leaves, goes ahead and takes out a bat and destroys the idols.

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00:16:02,755 –> 00:16:05,976
His father comes in and says, What happened here?

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00:16:05,976 –> 00:16:07,387
Abraham tells him a story.

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00:16:07,387 –> 00:16:09,077
The woman brought in some food.

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00:16:09,077 –> 00:16:12,848
All the idols started fighting each other, and this is what happened.

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00:16:12,848 –> 00:16:15,759
And his father says, Are you mocking me?

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00:16:15,759 –> 00:16:17,754
Are they sentient at all?

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00:16:17,754 –> 00:16:23,981
And Abraham said to him, Do your ears not hear what your mouth is saying?

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00:16:24,382 –> 00:16:25,742
so here too.

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00:16:25,792 –> 00:16:38,509
He is the one who holds the mirror up in front of those married to the status
quo, those just repeating the mantras of the past, and says, listen to what
you’re saying.

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00:16:38,509 –> 00:16:43,231
He’s the kind of son that we love to have after he gets through his growing
pains.

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but it’s a tough haul.

188
00:16:45,273 –> 00:16:50,215
He’s really focused on the hypocrisy of the generation before.

189
00:16:50,215 –> 00:16:55,500
And then the third part of the same Midrash is his father takes him to the
authorities.

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00:16:55,500 –> 00:17:02,650
His father takes him to King Nimrod, and King Nimrod says to him, Bow down.

191
00:17:02,650 –> 00:17:06,097
And the young Abraham says, Who should I bow down to?

192
00:17:06,097 –> 00:17:08,798
And he goes through this whole causality.

193
00:17:08,798 –> 00:17:10,940
Should I bow to the stone?

194
00:17:10,940 –> 00:17:12,581
But who created this stone?

195
00:17:12,581 –> 00:17:15,142
And should I go to the light and the stars?

196
00:17:15,142 –> 00:17:19,788
So here he almost sounds like a philosopher.

197
00:17:19,788 –> 00:17:30,084
But he also stands up for what he believes in, and Nimrod throws him into that
famous kivshan shel esh, into the furnace.

198
00:17:30,084 –> 00:17:35,357
So I think it, as much as anything else, Rabbi, shows his personality.

199
00:17:35,357 –> 00:17:38,069
This is not a tight philosophical argument.

200
00:17:38,069 –> 00:17:39,449
What do you think?

201
00:17:39,550 –> 00:17:46,764
Yeah, I mean, what they want to point out is that the creator,

202
00:17:46,764 –> 00:17:52,417
the outsider, what you call the outlier, it’s in his personality.

203
00:17:52,417 –> 00:17:58,241
Being an outlier means that he doesn’t sit around and just take orders.

204
00:17:58,241 –> 00:18:00,782
I want to go back to that idea of Nahor.

205
00:18:00,782 –> 00:18:08,607
I think Cassuto hit it on the head by pointing out the fact that the other
brother has the name of the grandfather.

206
00:18:08,607 –> 00:18:14,880
Avraham, even in his name, is someone who breaks with the tradition.

207
00:18:14,880 –> 00:18:18,533
And if you’re gonna break with the tradition, you’re gonna be a provocateur.

208
00:18:18,533 –> 00:18:21,775
That’s just part of what breaking with the tradition means.

209
00:18:21,775 –> 00:18:25,897
We would call it in simple language, Geoffrey, a troublemaker.

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00:18:25,978 –> 00:18:26,658
You got it.

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00:18:26,658 –> 00:18:28,599
You hit the nail on that head.

212
00:18:30,121 –> 00:18:33,723
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224
00:19:31,861 –> 00:19:34,452
And now back to our podcast.

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00:19:36,920 –> 00:19:41,193
So another midrash that again maybe is a little bit less known.

226
00:19:41,193 –> 00:19:48,777
We have covered it in the past, and I really learned about it from Shai Held’s
book, Judaism Is About Love.

227
00:19:48,897 –> 00:19:55,761
and it starts by quoting a rabbi Yitzhak who says, Forget your people and your
father’s house, quoting Psalms.

228
00:19:55,761 –> 00:20:04,352
So clearly they understood that baked into Lech Lecha was leaving your parents
and your father’s house.

229
00:20:04,352 –> 00:20:15,528
And it starts by a person who’s passing from place to place, and he passes by
a house, and either there’s a candle in the window, or if you believe Shai
Held’s interpretation, the

230
00:20:15,528 –> 00:20:17,529
house is beginning to burn down.

231
00:20:17,529 –> 00:20:21,531
And Abraham says, Is there a master of this house?

232
00:20:21,531 –> 00:20:26,637
And finally, God comes out and says to him, I am the owner of the world.

233
00:20:26,637 –> 00:20:28,544
I am the owner of the house.

234
00:20:28,544 –> 00:20:34,879
Now Shai Held interprets this following the Radal as saying this was
different.

235
00:20:34,879 –> 00:20:36,821
This was a moral argument.

236
00:20:36,821 –> 00:20:41,354
What Abraham was actually saying was, does anybody care?

237
00:20:41,354 –> 00:20:44,147
I’m not here to preach a God.

238
00:20:44,147 –> 00:20:46,689
I’m preaching a God that cares.

239
00:20:46,689 –> 00:20:48,716
And that’s what he discovered.

240
00:20:48,716 –> 00:20:57,328
Believe it or not, Rabbi, what I take from this midrash is unlike the one
before that happened in his hometown, here he’s traveling already.

241
00:20:57,328 –> 00:21:00,694
He’s already passing from place to place.

242
00:21:00,694 –> 00:21:09,978
So it’s almost as though the notion of becoming Abraham was only after he
left.

243
00:21:09,978 –> 00:21:14,360
And that’s going to be an ongoing theme of today’s discussion.

244
00:21:14,360 –> 00:21:15,561
But what did he do?

245
00:21:15,561 –> 00:21:27,437
He left home and started observing, looking around and saying that if you’re
in the desert and you see a house, it probably did not fall

246
00:21:27,437 –> 00:21:28,747
there by itself.

247
00:21:28,747 –> 00:21:30,648
You might not think that in a city.

248
00:21:30,648 –> 00:21:31,708
Full of buildings.

249
00:21:31,708 –> 00:21:34,028
But when you’re traveling, you notice things differently.

250
00:21:34,028 –> 00:21:35,789
You recognize that.

251
00:21:35,789 –> 00:21:36,179
Yes.

252
00:21:36,179 –> 00:21:37,270
That’s fantastic.

253
00:21:37,270 –> 00:21:40,770
That’s great to pick up on from passing from place to place.

254
00:21:40,770 –> 00:21:42,811
That’s the whole trick here.

255
00:21:42,811 –> 00:21:43,451
Yep.

256
00:21:43,451 –> 00:21:46,791
So now we’re gonna fly forward to Maimonides.

257
00:21:46,791 –> 00:21:50,593
And I said everybody saw it in their own eyes.

258
00:21:50,593 –> 00:21:54,664
So Maimonides is clearly an Aristotelian philosopher.

259
00:21:54,664 –> 00:21:57,224
I love the way he introduced.

260
00:21:58,135 –> 00:22:05,118
He calls him the pillar of the world, amudo shel olam.

261
00:22:05,139 –> 00:22:09,001
Clearly, this is not just another patriarch.

262
00:22:09,001 –> 00:22:13,403
I would say we’re looking at an Abraham and we’re looking at a Moses.

263
00:22:13,403 –> 00:22:16,905
That’s how pivotal these personalities are.

264
00:22:16,905 –> 00:22:20,227
And he says, look how he describes his Abraham.

265
00:22:20,227 –> 00:22:25,089
He says, after this mighty man was weaned, he began to explore and think.

266
00:22:25,089 –> 00:22:26,700
Though he was a child,

267
00:22:26,700 –> 00:22:40,034
He began to think, the translator says “incessantly” through the day and night,
wondering how is it possible for the sphere to continue to revolve around
without having anyone

268
00:22:40,034 –> 00:22:41,194
controlling it?

269
00:22:41,194 –> 00:22:44,295
Who is causing it to revolve?

270
00:22:44,295 –> 00:22:48,756
Ergo, surely it does not cause itself to revolve.

271
00:22:48,756 –> 00:22:51,137
This is a logical philosopher.

272
00:22:51,137 –> 00:22:56,098
He’s looking at cause and effect, and he’s looking for the First Cause.

273
00:22:56,730 –> 00:23:01,974
Obviously, Rambam sees Abraham like he imagines himself.

274
00:23:01,974 –> 00:23:05,397
This is what Rambam would have thought about as a philosopher.

275
00:23:05,397 –> 00:23:06,618
Absolutely.

276
00:23:06,618 –> 00:23:13,513
And I love the fact that he says he had no teacher, nor was there anyone to
inform him.

277
00:23:13,513 –> 00:23:19,427
This is truly a person who came up with this all his own.

278
00:23:19,427 –> 00:23:23,610
He knew that the entire world was making a mistake.

279
00:23:23,662 –> 00:23:29,668
What caused them to err was their service of the stars and images, which made
them lose awareness of the truth.

280
00:23:29,668 –> 00:23:32,912
Well, everybody else saw a star and a moon.

281
00:23:32,912 –> 00:23:40,039
The young Abraham says, I see something and I want to know what caused it,
what was behind it.

282
00:23:40,099 –> 00:23:43,523
And then he began to formulate replies.

283
00:23:43,523 –> 00:23:46,798
And in Ur Kasdim, he started to debate.

284
00:23:46,798 –> 00:23:49,139
and then he started to teach.

285
00:23:49,139 –> 00:23:56,402
So truly this is someone, original thinker, discovers the truth and needs to
share it.

286
00:23:56,402 –> 00:24:01,144
And then again, Maimonides cannot get away from Lech Lecha.

287
00:24:01,144 –> 00:24:07,127
And he says at the end, he was saved though, a miracle and left for Haran.

288
00:24:07,127 –> 00:24:09,887
He got the hell out of that place.

289
00:24:10,228 –> 00:24:15,490
Now it’s important that Abraham was forty years old when he became aware of
his creator.

290
00:24:15,490 –> 00:24:17,081
He’s not a kid, right?

291
00:24:17,081 –> 00:24:20,253
He’s already a seasoned philosopher.

292
00:24:20,414 –> 00:24:25,317
But again, even that seasoned philosopher, and we know Maimonides traveled.

293
00:24:25,317 –> 00:24:29,920
We know that his brother died, was a merchant who died on a ship.

294
00:24:29,920 –> 00:24:34,003
But I was in Morocco, and they said this is where he went to school.

295
00:24:34,003 –> 00:24:38,686
And then in Egypt, we know that he lived in Cairo, in Fustat.

296
00:24:38,686 –> 00:24:43,570
He clearly in his own life could look back and say, Thank God I moved from
there.

297
00:24:43,570 –> 00:24:44,174
But

298
00:24:44,174 –> 00:24:53,917
Clearly, he understands that as much as he could formulate replies and debate
and teach these people in Haran, he had to go.

299
00:24:53,917 –> 00:24:57,818
He had a following, true, but he had to move on.

300
00:24:57,818 –> 00:25:03,420
So all of them understand the importance of this movement.

301
00:25:03,420 –> 00:25:06,301
So I had known about Maimonides.

302
00:25:06,301 –> 00:25:09,058
The next source I had known nothing about.

303
00:25:09,058 –> 00:25:11,079
It’s the Book of Jubilees.

304
00:25:11,079 –> 00:25:12,910
It’s actually fairly old.

305
00:25:12,910 –> 00:25:16,022
It was composed in the second century BCE.

306
00:25:16,022 –> 00:25:19,401
I’m not sure we have it in the original Hebrew.

307
00:25:19,401 –> 00:25:21,255
We probably do.

308
00:25:21,255 –> 00:25:23,767
We have it in translation.

309
00:25:23,767 –> 00:25:26,068
Greek or something, right?

310
00:25:26,068 –> 00:25:26,948
Yep.

311
00:25:26,948 –> 00:25:32,151
So, so this is how it, or I should say, the people who wrote it.

312
00:25:32,151 –> 00:25:37,386
And it was probably written over many years, they looked upon Abraham.

313
00:25:37,386 –> 00:25:42,591
And it’s a fascinating kind of a change in this story.

314
00:25:42,591 –> 00:25:54,280
So in the book of Jubilees, book twelve it says, And in the sixtieth year of
the life of Abram, that is, in the fourth week in the fourth year thereof,
Abram rose by night and

315
00:25:54,280 –> 00:26:01,266
burned the house of the idols, and he burned all that was in the house, and no
man knew it.

316
00:26:01,266 –> 00:26:06,240
And they arose in the night and sought to save their gods from the midst of
the fire.

317
00:26:06,240 –> 00:26:08,491
And Haran haste to save them.

318
00:26:08,491 –> 00:26:13,113
But the fire flamed over him, and he was burned in the fire.

319
00:26:13,113 –> 00:26:19,976
And he died in Ur of the Chaldees before Terah his father, and they buried him
in Ur of the Chaldees.

320
00:26:19,976 –> 00:26:28,820
Boy, now we have a combination of the fire and the house burning down, and we
have a combination, and this is probably before the Midrashim.

321
00:26:28,820 –> 00:26:33,240
So we have all of these stories circulating, but it’s amazing.

322
00:26:33,240 –> 00:26:36,231
How radical this Abraham becomes.

323
00:26:36,231 –> 00:26:40,963
I want to tell you the Book of Jubilees is really an early midrash.

324
00:26:40,963 –> 00:26:44,674
I mean, they don’t look at it that way, but that’s the way we would look at
it.

325
00:26:44,674 –> 00:26:48,195
It’s an early version of these stories.

326
00:26:48,675 –> 00:26:57,000
But clearly it’s reshuffling the ingredients, or I should say, the
ingredients that we come across later.

327
00:26:57,000 –> 00:26:59,881
Are presented in a totally different manner here.

328
00:26:59,881 –> 00:27:08,553
It’s his brother Haran who gets burned in the fire, in the burning house.

329
00:27:08,553 –> 00:27:10,824
But clearly Abraham is a radical here.

330
00:27:10,824 –> 00:27:13,595
and then it goes on.

331
00:27:13,595 –> 00:27:22,057
And in the sixth week, in the fifth year thereof, Abraham sat up throughout
the night on the new moon of the seventh month.

332
00:27:22,057 –> 00:27:24,206
So this is Rosh Hashanah, I guess.

333
00:27:24,206 –> 00:27:33,889
To observe the stars from the evening to the morning in order to see what
would be the character of the year with regard to the rains.

334
00:27:33,889 –> 00:27:35,389
No philosopher here.

335
00:27:35,389 –> 00:27:37,120
He’s the guy who writes the almanac.

336
00:27:37,120 –> 00:27:41,751
He’s the guy who’s trying to determine when to plant and what to plant.

337
00:27:41,751 –> 00:27:48,813
He’s doing the time-honored tradition of gazing to the stars and trying to
figure out what kind of a [agricultural] year they’re gonna have.

338
00:27:48,813 –> 00:27:53,174
He’s not a philosopher, but he is observing and he sees.

339
00:27:53,174 –> 00:27:56,755
And he was alone as he sat and observed.

340
00:27:56,755 –> 00:27:58,716
And a word came into his heart.

341
00:27:58,716 –> 00:28:00,776
Now he’s having a revelation.

342
00:28:00,776 –> 00:28:07,278
And he said, All the signs of the stars and the signs of the moon, of the sun,
are all in the hand of the Lord.

343
00:28:07,278 –> 00:28:09,259
Why do I search them out?

344
00:28:09,259 –> 00:28:13,180
If he desired, he caused it to rain, morning and evening.

345
00:28:13,180 –> 00:28:15,881
And if he desireth, he will withhold it.

346
00:28:15,881 –> 00:28:18,681
And all things are in his hand.

347
00:28:18,681 –> 00:28:21,208
So first he’s meditating.

348
00:28:21,208 –> 00:28:31,983
Then he comes up internally with an observation that you don’t read the stars,
you try to access the power behind the stars, and that’s God.

349
00:28:31,983 –> 00:28:41,927
And then it says, and he prayed that night and said, My God, God most high,
thou alone art my God, and thee and thy dominion have I chosen.

350
00:28:41,927 –> 00:28:47,489
And thou hast created all things and all things that are the work of thy
hands.

351
00:28:47,489 –> 00:28:49,592
Now he says, Deliver me.

352
00:28:49,592 –> 00:28:59,890
From the hands of evil spirits who have sway over the thoughts of men’s
hearts, and let them not lead me astray from thee, my God.

353
00:28:59,890 –> 00:29:06,775
And I want to say at this point, Dayenu, if Jubilees had ended there, it would
have been pretty fascinating.

354
00:29:06,775 –> 00:29:10,497
But look what it says in 31.

355
00:29:10,677 –> 00:29:17,302
And the Lord God said, Open his mouth and his ears that he may hear and speak
with his mouth

356
00:29:17,302 –> 00:29:20,063
with the language which hath been revealed.

357
00:29:20,063 –> 00:29:31,828
For it had ceased from the mouths of all the children of men from the days of
the overthrow of Babel, and I opened his mouth and his ears and his lips, and
I began to speak

358
00:29:31,828 –> 00:29:35,270
with him in Hebrew in the tongue of the creation.

359
00:29:35,270 –> 00:29:45,144
So believe it or not, the Book of Jubilees is connecting this to the Tower of
Babel, where in a sense they weren’t only unifying language, Rabbi,

360
00:29:45,144 –> 00:29:48,275
They were destroying that language called Hebrew.

361
00:29:48,476 –> 00:29:55,180
And now Abraham leaves, has to leave, and he’s speaking a different language.

362
00:29:55,180 –> 00:30:02,724
And it’s a language that was the individualized language [Hebrew], not the universal
language [Aramaic], of creation.

363
00:30:02,744 –> 00:30:09,488
So we’re gonna finish before we just open this up to discussion with Philo of
Alexandria.

364
00:30:09,488 –> 00:30:13,614
And Philo of Alexandria says, we have a very

365
00:30:13,614 –> 00:30:23,940
Clear proof of the mind’s “migration” from astrology and the Chaldean Creed in
the words which follow at once the story of the “departure” of the sage.

366
00:30:23,940 –> 00:30:26,461
God, it says, was seen by Abraham.

367
00:30:26,461 –> 00:30:38,548
This shows that God was not manifested to him before, when is he in his
Chaldean way he was fixing his thoughts on the choric movement of the stars
with no apprehension at all of

368
00:30:38,548 –> 00:30:42,670
its harmonious and intelligent order of things outside.

369
00:30:42,690 –> 00:30:55,163
But then when he had “departed and changed his habitation”, he could not help
but know that the world is not sovereign but dependent, not governing, but
governed by its maker and

370
00:30:55,163 –> 00:30:56,314
first cause.

371
00:30:56,314 –> 00:31:01,775
And this his mind then saw for the first time with its recovered light.

372
00:31:01,775 –> 00:31:03,866
You know, Rabbi, it just dawned on me.

373
00:31:03,866 –> 00:31:12,398
I have a cousin who’s a retired pilot from El Al, and he works with troubled
kids and they go camping.

374
00:31:12,398 –> 00:31:15,461
Kind of like a survival thing.

375
00:31:15,461 –> 00:31:19,145
And by learning to camp, they learn self-esteem.

376
00:31:19,145 –> 00:31:22,032
They learn to rely on each other.

377
00:31:22,032 –> 00:31:25,204
It’s like the wilderness program that they send troubled kids on, you know.

378
00:31:25,204 –> 00:31:25,791
Of course.

379
00:31:25,791 –> 00:31:36,598
And I just thought when I was reading this, that Philo, too is saying it
wasn’t until he left and departed that he could start questioning what

380
00:31:36,618 –> 00:31:38,880
Is the maker and who is the maker?

381
00:31:38,880 –> 00:31:50,493
Who are the governed? It seems so amazing that no matter where they come from,
because clearly Philo is coming from a different environment than

382
00:31:50,493 –> 00:31:55,428
others, but ultimately they see the power of travel.

383
00:31:55,428 –> 00:31:58,761
just amazing to me.

384
00:31:58,772 –> 00:32:05,564
And the last—I thought I had finished, but I have one more explanation.

385
00:32:05,564 –> 00:32:14,127
In Bereshit Rabbah, it says Rabbi Berekhiah began: By the fragrance of your
oils, your name is poured-out oil.

386
00:32:14,127 –> 00:32:24,308
Rabbi Berekhiah said, To what was Abraham our patriarch compared? To a flask
of balsam oil surrounded with a fastened cover that was placed

387
00:32:24,308 –> 00:32:30,041
in a static corner—I added the word static—and its fragrance did not diffuse.

388
00:32:30,041 –> 00:32:33,623
When it was moved, its fragrance diffused.

389
00:32:33,623 –> 00:32:45,840
So the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Abraham our patriarch: Move yourself
from one place to another, and your name will be exalted in the world.

390
00:32:45,840 –> 00:32:46,961
Fantastic.

391
00:32:46,961 –> 00:32:49,733
It’s a celebration of this movement.

392
00:32:49,733 –> 00:32:51,954
They get into the name Ivri.

393
00:32:52,386 –> 00:32:56,527
and Abraham calls himself an Ivri later on.

394
00:32:56,527 –> 00:33:04,590
Rabbi Yehuda says the entire world was on one side and he was on the other
side, ever.

395
00:33:04,590 –> 00:33:10,132
Rabbi Nehemiah said, because he was among the descendants of Ever.

396
00:33:10,132 –> 00:33:12,346
And here’s here’s the third one.

397
00:33:12,346 –> 00:33:17,036
It is because he is from the other side of the river, and he spoke.

398
00:33:17,036 –> 00:33:21,509
the Hebrew language [Ivrit]. We kind of have it all together.

399
00:33:21,509 –> 00:33:27,114
He brought this singular language that had been tried to be destroyed at
Babel.

400
00:33:27,114 –> 00:33:28,304
He just moved.

401
00:33:28,304 –> 00:33:34,079
It’s one of those days, Rabbi, where we start by saying, What’s the deep
meaning of Lech Lecha?

402
00:33:34,079 –> 00:33:37,341
And we end up saying, It’s just Lech Lecha.

403
00:33:37,341 –> 00:33:42,275
The message is you gotta move, you gotta travel, you gotta do what you do
every Pesach.

404
00:33:42,275 –> 00:33:44,034
Experience the world.

405
00:33:44,034 –> 00:33:46,396
You have to experience the world.

406
00:33:46,396 –> 00:33:50,600
And that, my friends, is the message of Lech Lecha.

407
00:33:50,600 –> 00:33:51,081
Good.

408
00:33:51,081 –> 00:33:51,962
This was a good one.

409
00:33:51,962 –> 00:33:53,043
Really good one again.

410
00:33:53,043 –> 00:33:54,604
Thank you so much, Geoffrey.

411
00:33:54,604 –> 00:33:56,526
Look forward, Shabbat Shalom, everybody.

412
00:33:56,526 –> 00:33:59,209
Look forward next week to Parshat Vayera.

413
00:33:59,209 –> 00:34:01,431
Each Parsha is better than the one before.

414
00:34:01,431 –> 00:34:02,652
Be well, everybody.

415
00:34:02,652 –> 00:34:05,084
Who knows where our travels will take us?

416
00:34:05,084 –> 00:34:07,967
Shabbat Shalom and enjoy Lech Lecha.

417
00:34:07,967 –> 00:34:09,458
See you all next week.

418
00:34:12,373 –> 00:34:15,976
So I want to leave you with one simple question.

419
00:34:15,976 –> 00:34:21,350
The kind of question we ask after we’ve exhausted all the usual small talk.

420
00:34:21,350 –> 00:34:23,122
How are you feeling?

421
00:34:23,122 –> 00:34:24,382
Anything new?

422
00:34:24,443 –> 00:34:25,723
Anything good?

423
00:34:25,984 –> 00:34:27,465
Here’s my question.

424
00:34:27,666 –> 00:34:29,206
What’s your next trip?

425
00:34:29,267 –> 00:34:30,367
Let me know.

7
00:00:58,486 –> 00:00:59,586
Welcome to Madlik.

8
00:00:59,586 –> 00:01:01,287
My name is Geoffrey Stern.

9
00:01:01,287 –> 00:01:06,068
And at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition.

10
00:01:06,068 –> 00:01:14,331
Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast
platform and now on YouTube and Substack.

11
00:01:14,331 –> 00:01:20,112
We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

12
00:01:20,212 –> 00:01:26,804
This week we read Parshat Noach, which concludes with the enigmatic story of the Tower of
Babel.

13
00:01:26,946 –> 00:01:32,211
We are not going to survey the traditional explanations of what its builders did wrong.
Instead,

14
00:01:32,211 –> 00:01:43,540
we will bring two religious thinkers into conversation: the Netziv of Volozhin, addressing
ideological conformity, Jewish division, and the return to Zion in the nineteenth century,

15
00:01:43,540 –> 00:01:52,347
and Pope Leo addressing artificial intelligence and the concentration of technological
power in our own day.

16
00:01:52,688 –> 00:01:54,932
Both see Babel as a warning

17
00:01:54,932 –> 00:02:03,344
against imposed uniformity, and both turn to the return from Babylonian exile and the
rebuilding of Jerusalem as an alternative.

18
00:02:03,344 –> 00:02:07,986
People with different backgrounds, opinions, and roles joining together.

19
00:02:07,986 –> 00:02:13,307
Not because they have become identical, but because they have found a common purpose.

20
00:02:13,307 –> 00:02:17,028
So perhaps the opposite of Babel is not division.

21
00:02:17,028 –> 00:02:22,610
Perhaps it is unity strong enough to preserve difference.

22
00:02:22,610 –> 00:02:24,394
Join us for “A Rabbi,

23
00:02:24,394 –> 00:02:26,075
a Pope, and Babel.”

24
00:02:26,075 –> 00:02:30,315
Kind of like a rabbi and a Pope walk into a bar, right?

25
00:02:32,016 –> 00:02:37,558
So we’re just going to go over the verses themselves.

26
00:02:37,558 –> 00:02:42,899
And then what I would love you to do, Adam, is introduce us to who the Netziv was.

27
00:02:42,899 –> 00:02:48,561
In the second part of the discussion, we know who the Pope is and the era that
he lives in.

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00:02:48,561 –> 00:02:53,332
What we really need, to engage them in conversation, is to understand the same

29
00:02:53,332 –> 00:02:54,823
about the Netziv.

30
00:02:54,823 –> 00:03:04,510
So here we are in Genesis 11, and it says as follows: Everyone on earth had the same
language and the same words.

31
00:03:04,510 –> 00:03:07,827
Safa achat u’devarim achadim.

32
00:03:07,827 –> 00:03:10,113
It uses the word “one” twice.

33
00:03:10,113 –> 00:03:16,938
And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and
settled there.

34
00:03:16,938 –> 00:03:23,242
They said to one another, Come, let us make bricks, Levanim, and burn them hard.

35
00:03:23,266 –> 00:03:28,168
Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar.

36
00:03:28,168 –> 00:03:36,150
And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower with its top in the sky to make “a”
name for ourselves.

37
00:03:36,150 –> 00:03:39,510
Else we shall be “scattered” all over the world.

38
00:03:39,510 –> 00:03:44,372
See how I put a name as a single thing and scattered as the opposite?

39
00:03:44,372 –> 00:03:50,014
Everything is going towards concentration of ideas, power.

40
00:03:50,050 –> 00:04:03,117
God came down to look at the city and tower that the mortals had built, and God said, if,
as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing

41
00:04:03,117 –> 00:04:07,940
that they may propose to do will be out of their reach.

42
00:04:07,940 –> 00:04:19,734
Let us, talking to the heavenly tribunal, then go down and confound their language there,
so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.

43
00:04:19,734 –> 00:04:35,594
So I think, Rabbi, the reflex is that the problem with the Tower of Babel was
somehow that they were ganging up on God, that they were trying to dislocate God.

44
00:04:35,594 –> 00:04:44,241
But the thinkers that we’re going to focus on today come at it with a totally
different approach, as I said in the intro.

45
00:04:44,241 –> 00:04:48,184
So before we get into the Ha’amek Davar, the

46
00:04:48,184 –> 00:04:50,081
commentary of the Netziv,

47
00:04:50,081 –> 00:04:52,136
Tell us a little bit about him.

48
00:04:52,684 –> 00:05:01,158
The Netziv, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, was born in 1816 in Belarus.

49
00:05:01,219 –> 00:05:04,921
He died in 1893 in Warsaw, Poland.

50
00:05:04,921 –> 00:05:16,007
He lived during the premier period of the Lithuanian
yeshiva movement.

51
00:05:16,007 –> 00:05:21,462
And he was the head of the most famous Lithuanian yeshiva.

52
00:05:21,462 –> 00:05:24,884
Which was called the Volozhin Yeshiva.

53
00:05:24,884 –> 00:05:33,630
But at the same time, the Jewish enlightenment was very strong in Poland and Lithuania.

54
00:05:33,630 –> 00:05:51,102
That included people, both Orthodox and secular, who believed in Jewish literature, in Hebrew
literature, and by extension, the creation of a Jewish homeland.

55
00:05:51,102 –> 00:05:52,643
In Israel.

56
00:05:52,643 –> 00:05:56,206
Theodor Herzl comes from this period.

57
00:05:56,206 –> 00:05:58,828
Ahad Ha’am comes from this period.

58
00:05:58,828 –> 00:06:08,476
So the arguments over the Land of Israel as a Jewish homeland
played themselves out during this period.

59
00:06:08,476 –> 00:06:14,701
And Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin was on the side of Zionism, on the side of
Israel.

60
00:06:14,701 –> 00:06:20,826
One last point: we’re going to study the Ha’amek Davar, the Netziv’s commentary

61
00:06:20,826 –> 00:06:28,131
on Chumash. Every morning after davening, the Netziv used to give a class on the parsha.

62
00:06:28,131 –> 00:06:32,935
And that became the commentary that we study today.

63
00:06:32,935 –> 00:06:49,906
So it’s pretty remarkable to think that this conversation was probably shared on a weekday
before they read Parshat Noach, sometime in the middle of the 1800s in Volozhin, Lithuania.

64
00:06:50,658 –> 00:07:02,825
I’ve had this one commentary in my mind since I discovered
it maybe two or three years ago, trying to figure out what lay behind it, because he did

65
00:07:02,825 –> 00:07:04,826
fight the Reform Movement.

66
00:07:04,826 –> 00:07:18,253
If you Google him, you will see a very traditional Jew from
Central Casting, and the Volozhin Yeshiva was the Harvard of the traditional

67
00:07:18,253 –> 00:07:19,296
yeshivot.

68
00:07:19,296 –> 00:07:23,028
So it’s really fascinating that he walked a line.

69
00:07:23,028 –> 00:07:38,327
I also did a little research, and there was a Soloveitchik who was his vice rosh
yeshiva. They had some diversity of opinion because I think the

70
00:07:38,327 –> 00:07:46,590
Netziv was very much into understanding, as we’ll see today, what lay underneath the
text.

71
00:07:46,590 –> 00:08:01,121
And the Soloveitchik was Chaim Soloveitchik, who
ultimately went to Brisk and developed this highfalutin Brisker Torah, which is much more

72
00:08:01,182 –> 00:08:02,863
theatrical/theoretical.

73
00:08:02,863 –> 00:08:03,186
Yeah.

74
00:08:03,186 –> 00:08:03,990
Right.

75
00:08:04,134 –> 00:08:06,235
But anyway, a fascinating guy.

76
00:08:06,235 –> 00:08:06,986
So

77
00:08:07,156 –> 00:08:20,819
By the way, this relates to the Stern family. His son was Meir Berlin, and when he moved
to Israel, he changed his name and became a great Zionist leader.

78
00:08:20,819 –> 00:08:28,646
He called himself Meir Bar-Ilan, and Bar-Ilan University was named after the son of the
Netziv, Meir Bar-Ilan.

79
00:08:28,920 –> 00:08:29,750
Yep.

80
00:08:30,211 –> 00:08:31,631
This is an important person.

81
00:08:31,631 –> 00:08:34,523
So we’re going to go through the commentary.

82
00:08:34,523 –> 00:08:41,727
As with typical rabbinic commentaries, it has a tagline: it takes from the pasuk and
then it gives an explanation.

83
00:08:41,727 –> 00:08:45,279
And we’re both going to jump in when we have something to say.

84
00:08:45,279 –> 00:08:52,453
So the Ha’amek Davar says this one language that I emphasized, that is what caused the first
sin.

85
00:08:52,453 –> 00:08:54,844
He actually says aveira aleph.

86
00:08:54,844 –> 00:08:58,238
So you could say it’s the first or it’s the big sin.

87
00:08:58,238 –> 00:09:04,623
This is that they agreed to stop in one single place, b’kibbutz echad.

88
00:09:04,623 –> 00:09:11,508
So I couldn’t escape the delicious irony of him saying they wanted to be all in one
kibbutz.

89
00:09:11,508 –> 00:09:14,630
But of course, the word kibbutz means one gathering.

90
00:09:14,630 –> 00:09:20,706
So the Ha’amek Davar is drilling down and saying, even before we get to the language part,

91
00:09:20,706 –> 00:09:26,948
we have a migration, and they come to a central location and say, “We don’t want to move
from here.”

92
00:09:26,948 –> 00:09:29,529
This is going to be The Capital.

93
00:09:29,529 –> 00:09:34,891
And this is against the will of God that said to fill the land and replenish it.

94
00:09:34,891 –> 00:09:40,373
That is, to walk to all its places since the land was created to be settled.

95
00:09:40,373 –> 00:09:41,033
I love this.

96
00:09:41,033 –> 00:09:44,734
From the get-go, he’s saying you shouldn’t even

97
00:09:44,754 –> 00:09:47,247
have people gathered in only one place.

98
00:09:47,247 –> 00:09:52,822
There’s not only one place to be, let alone one language to speak, or one thought to have.

99
00:09:53,634 –> 00:09:54,984
Which is fantastic.

100
00:09:54,984 –> 00:09:57,026
It’s against ghettoism.

101
00:09:57,026 –> 00:09:57,807
It is.

102
00:09:57,807 –> 00:10:00,068
And the next thing is the same words.

103
00:10:00,068 –> 00:10:04,331
The text did not explain what those words were.

104
00:10:04,331 –> 00:10:08,935
Rather, it leaves as a hint, as explained in Midrashim.

105
00:10:08,935 –> 00:10:12,277
But the words themselves are not explained by the text.

106
00:10:12,277 –> 00:10:23,665
It just told us that they were the same words to teach us that it wasn’t because of the
content of the words themselves that the Holy One, blessed be he, was distressed.

107
00:10:23,665 –> 00:10:24,716
They were what

108
00:10:24,716 –> 00:10:28,139
They were, and in its simplicity, there is no sin.

109
00:10:28,139 –> 00:10:30,411
On the contrary, all appears well.

110
00:10:30,411 –> 00:10:36,876
But the problem was that they all thought the same thing.

111
00:10:36,876 –> 00:10:40,479
And this came to be the problem of the settlement.

112
00:10:40,479 –> 00:10:41,319
Groupthink.

113
00:10:41,319 –> 00:10:42,991
So it’s amazing.

114
00:10:42,991 –> 00:10:49,910
He says it’s not even what they said. It’s not the content; it’s the form. They wanted
groupthink.

115
00:10:49,910 –> 00:10:57,646
They wanted everybody to have the same words, the same language, and the
same ideas.

116
00:10:58,562 –> 00:11:02,389
Right. That is the Netziv’s explanation.

117
00:11:02,389 –> 00:11:05,073
That’s not obvious from the text.

118
00:11:05,073 –> 00:11:13,576
The fact that the same language means that everyone will believe the same thing, that’s
really a very modern kind of explanation.

119
00:11:14,356 –> 00:11:19,248
And he was on the cusp of modernity.

120
00:11:19,248 –> 00:11:29,871
But again, when I read the text, you can see that once he came up with this
explanation, he focused on the key word throughout all of this:

121
00:11:29,871 –> 00:11:32,826
word echad, one, single, only.

122
00:11:32,826 –> 00:11:34,652
“Burn them thoroughly.”

123
00:11:34,652 –> 00:11:40,694
So now he’s picking up the innocuous fact of burning those levanim, those bricks.

124
00:11:40,694 –> 00:11:46,118
And he says there’s no place in the text where something is told that has no impact on the
story.

125
00:11:46,118 –> 00:11:53,322
So he’s saying every piece of literature here—and now he sounds like a literary
critic, it’s put there for a reason.

126
00:11:53,322 –> 00:12:02,328
And it appears that here there is a hint regarding our sages’ tradition that Avraham
Avinu was thrown into the fiery furnace.

127
00:12:02,328 –> 00:12:06,054
So he’s trying to make a linguistic,

128
00:12:06,054 –> 00:12:17,926
a metaphorical connection that the reader, the listener, would
appreciate, between when Abraham, the founder of our religion, was thrown into a fiery

129
00:12:17,926 –> 00:12:18,924
furnace,

130
00:12:18,924 –> 00:12:25,958
with these levanim, these bricks that were cured, that were made in the fiery furnace.

131
00:12:25,958 –> 00:12:30,921
The text is informing that this furnace was for the need of the city and the tower.

132
00:12:30,921 –> 00:12:34,243
And from this we understand how big and deep the furnace was.

133
00:12:34,243 –> 00:12:36,704
From that furnace, Avraham Avinu was saved.

134
00:12:36,704 –> 00:12:38,765
I don’t think he goes far enough.

135
00:12:38,765 –> 00:12:47,532
What he’s trying to do, I think, by connecting it to Avraham Avinu, is say that this is a
critical moment for us.

136
00:12:47,532 –> 00:12:54,528
Just as Abraham was thrown into the fiery furnace because he had a different idea, these
bricks were also.

137
00:12:54,528 –> 00:12:58,731
Now Rashi, whom we’re not going to quote, asks: why does it say levanim?

138
00:12:58,731 –> 00:13:04,065
Because in this area they didn’t have hewn stones, which are all different from each
other.

139
00:13:04,065 –> 00:13:17,182
This is an embrace of industrialization, of sending something through an extrusion and
coming out with the same bricks, and levanim clearly means from the word white.

140
00:13:17,182 –> 00:13:21,601
Everything has to be the same color, so to speak.

141
00:13:21,601 –> 00:13:22,994
And I am embellishing here.

142
00:13:22,994 –> 00:13:32,859
Right. I would just add one little piece, and that is that Abraham was the correction
of the Tower of Babel.

143
00:13:33,040 –> 00:13:41,325
Because the Tower of Babel wanted groupthink, and Abraham said, “I’m going to think
differently than everybody else.”

144
00:13:41,325 –> 00:13:44,686
So it’s not just a random connection.

145
00:13:44,686 –> 00:13:51,420
The problem of groupthink was solved by Abraham, who broke from it.

146
00:13:52,312 –> 00:13:57,872
(Rabbi Sacks says) This pivotal story comes before the birth of Abraham, just as the Exodus comes before Sinai.

147
00:13:57,872 –> 00:14:01,138
And both of them are saying that you have to be different.

148
00:14:01,138 –> 00:14:03,254
We do not believe in groupthink.

149
00:14:03,254 –> 00:14:03,975
That’s brilliant.

150
00:14:03,975 –> 00:14:05,537
That’s what he (Rabbi Sacks) says.

151
00:14:05,578 –> 00:14:06,420
Fantastic.

152
00:14:06,420 –> 00:14:07,280
Okay.

153
00:14:07,423 –> 00:14:12,184
So now, “and its top is in the sky,” it says of the tower.

154
00:14:12,184 –> 00:14:18,906
The Netziv says it is obvious that you should not think this would be one city for the
whole world.

155
00:14:18,906 –> 00:14:25,208
Rather, they thought that the nearby cities would be subject to this city that had
a tower.

156
00:14:25,208 –> 00:14:30,789
Now we think of the tower in terms of its watching over them — Big Brother.

157
00:14:30,789 –> 00:14:33,368
And they would be able to see

158
00:14:33,368 –> 00:14:42,686
from it into the distance, over all their settlements, so that no one would be able to separate
themselves and go to another land.

159
00:14:42,686 –> 00:14:45,869
That’s why they needed its top reaching the sky.

160
00:14:45,869 –> 00:14:50,554
So it is not only an observation tower; it becomes a prison.

161
00:14:50,554 –> 00:14:53,226
And they’re stopping the movement of people.

162
00:14:53,226 –> 00:14:56,218
They move to this place not to move again.

163
00:14:56,218 –> 00:15:00,172
The imagery almost makes you wonder whether the Netziv

164
00:15:00,172 –> 00:15:02,798
was talking about communism or socialism.

165
00:15:02,798 –> 00:15:03,470
I think this was before that.

166
00:15:03,470 –> 00:15:11,714
Well, that’s an interesting thing: to guarantee groupthink, you can’t let people
move around.

167
00:15:11,714 –> 00:15:22,620
You can’t let people read different newspapers, because the minute they’re
introduced to new thought, they’re going to break from that groupthink.

168
00:15:23,000 –> 00:15:25,432
The Netziv almost sounds like George Orwell.

169
00:15:25,432 –> 00:15:26,653
We go on.

170
00:15:26,653 –> 00:15:29,795
And we will make a name, a name for ourselves.

171
00:15:29,795 –> 00:15:33,717
People were set up to watch—anashim mashgichim.

172
00:15:33,717 –> 00:15:44,254
Again, I couldn’t get away from the delightful word mashgiach here:
somebody looking over other people’s thoughts and put in charge of the matter.

173
00:15:44,254 –> 00:15:52,938
And there were army chiefs in charge of punishing those who transgressed, since otherwise
there would be no need for the tower.

174
00:15:52,938 –> 00:15:56,544
And all of this was due to fear and suspicion.

175
00:15:56,544 –> 00:15:59,749
The word that he uses in Hebrew is chashash.

176
00:15:59,749 –> 00:16:00,460
Right.

177
00:16:00,460 –> 00:16:02,541
That’s also interesting.

178
00:16:02,541 –> 00:16:05,383
Why do you want groupthink?

179
00:16:05,383 –> 00:16:12,356
Because you’re afraid that if people think their own thoughts, they’re going to break away.

180
00:16:12,356 –> 00:16:15,758
That’s related, by the way, to the Haredim in Israel.

181
00:16:15,758 –> 00:16:21,201
There’s an insistence that everybody think the same thing.

182
00:16:21,201 –> 00:16:25,974
The minute somebody is different, and that’s our friend Rabbi Bombach, right?

183
00:16:25,974 –> 00:16:30,306
Rabbi Bombach believes that the education should be different. That

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goes back to the Tower of Babel—that difference is scary.

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He is definitely talking to his audience, what we would call the
ultra-Orthodox haredim of his day.

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Clearly, there were differences.

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And now back to our podcast.

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He goes on, lest we be scattered over all the face of the earth.

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However, he writes, we must understand why they feared that someone might leave to another
land.

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And it is understood that this was related to the uniformity that was among them.

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And since people’s opinions are not identical, they feared that people might abandon
this philosophy and adopt another.

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So he is saying it’s human nature to have different ideas, and they were fighting
that.

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Therefore, they sought to ensure that no one would leave their society.

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And one who veered from this uniformity among them was judged with burning, just as they
did to our forefather Abraham.

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So he connects the dots.

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And the same words can be seen as the fact that they would kill whoever did not think like
them.

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And more is explained on verse 6.

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They are one people.

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The explanation of “people” is that they all follow one custom.

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He uses the word minhag here, as it is written later in Genesis 28.

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And we’ll give that quote in a second.

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This is but the beginning of the transgression.

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They want to remain in one place.

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He says it all started by saying people can’t move freely.

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You have to stay in the ghetto.

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“And now nothing will be withheld from them which they propose to do.”

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If they finish the tower, they will proceed to a second thought: forcibly preventing ideas
other than

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this one.

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00:19:28,979 –> 00:19:34,165
And this brings killing and violent destruction of civilization.

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And it does not help that at this moment they are together with one opinion.

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It might be nice once in a while that we agree on things, but in this case,

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since force is involved and it’s a regime, it’s not a good thing.

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00:19:51,098 –> 00:19:59,418
He references a later commentary that he gives when the tribes of Jacob
are formed.

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00:19:59,418 –> 00:20:06,230
In Genesis 28, the Ha’amek Davar says, “And you shall become an assembly of
peoples.”

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What does he say that means?

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An assembly, kahal, consists of ten, as it says in Ketubot.

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00:20:13,794 –> 00:20:25,643
The word peoples refers to groups distinguished from one another by their different ways
of life, so that each is considered a people unto itself, even though they are all

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governed by a single authority.

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He does not let up.

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God therefore told Jacob that his descendants would become ten peoples, that is,

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Each tribe would possess its own customs and constitute a people unto itself.

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This sounds like the Federalist episode that we did.

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Although they would all share one Torah and one king, they would nevertheless differ in
their ways of conducting worldly life.

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This was a major key to what he believed in.

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And we’re now going to visit his introduction.

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This is a very famous introduction.

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Great.

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00:21:12,070 –> 00:21:20,215
And in the introduction, he says Genesis is referred to as Sefer HaYashar, the
book of the upright.

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And he wants to know why.

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And he starts by quoting the song of Haazinu.

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You see, we end Devarim, and now we get into Genesis, and they’re all connected.

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It says, “The Rock, perfect is His work, for all His paths are justice; a faithful God
without injustice, righteous and yashar is He.”

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He is speaking of God.

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00:21:41,186 –> 00:21:53,043
By praising God as yashar—which means straight, or upright—the Torah
acknowledges the Holy One, blessed be He, and His judgment against

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a generation such as the one that lived during the destruction of the Second Temple,
who are described as perverse and twisted.

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00:22:02,559 –> 00:22:08,834
The opposite of Yashar, which means straight and upright, is perverse and twisted.

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00:22:08,834 –> 00:22:22,938
We explained: though they were religious and pious—now he’s talking to his crowd — toiling
in Torah study, they were not upright in their societal behavior, and so due to the

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00:22:22,938 –> 00:22:34,221
baseless hatred, the sinat chinam for one another residing within their hearts, they
suspected anyone—here’s the word chashash—who was not religious in accordance with their

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00:22:34,221 –> 00:22:38,272
worldview to be a Sadducee or a heretic.

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An Apikoros.

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00:22:39,623 –> 00:22:49,967
He is describing an insular, ultra-Orthodox community where everybody
who is not like them is suspect.

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This deficiency in the Torah scholars’ character led to rampant murder, along with the
transgression of all the other evils in the world, causing the temple’s destruction.

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This is how the Torah presents the acknowledgment of God’s justice.

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00:23:04,013 –> 00:23:07,994
So he really doubles down in his introduction.

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00:23:08,066 –> 00:23:15,233
And he says this applies to Torah scholars even when their actions are performed
for the sake of heaven.

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Intention does not let you off the hook.

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So now he says, so what is Yashar about Genesis?

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If you look at our forefathers, if you look at Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they were civil
with the other nations of the world, despite the latter being detestable idol worshippers.

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Our forefathers nevertheless extended them love and concern for their welfare, as this
fortifies God’s creation.

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00:23:39,574 –> 00:23:52,151
So he’s not only critical of the insular ghetto, where my way is the only way; he is saying
that the reason Genesis is called Yashar is because our forefathers showed the way that

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Abraham, who was pushed into the kivshan ha’esh, nevertheless accepted the people of Sodom.

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He argued for them.

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So it’s really

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00:24:01,474 –> 00:24:08,337
amazing, this Netziv, and I’m so glad that we could read it pretty much in its
fullness.

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It’s in the source sheet.

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00:24:10,318 –> 00:24:12,719
But we’re now going to go to the Pope.

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And I wanted a segue to the Pope because you’ll see that the Pope sounds like Sacks.

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Well, I’ll tell you how that came about.

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(Allen Brill) He hangs out with Catholics; he’s a scholar of mysticism.

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00:24:25,464 –> 00:24:26,844
Seton Hall. Give him credit.

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00:24:26,844 –> 00:24:29,185
Oh, okay.

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So I sent him a text.

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00:24:30,880 –> 00:24:33,911
And I said, Did the Pope read the Netziv?

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He says, Don’t go look at the Netziv, look at Rabbi Sacks.

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00:24:38,552 –> 00:24:43,914
So I did just that because you’ll see in a second how the Pope sounds so close.

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And here’s a quote from Rabbi Sacks.

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It’s in a lecture delivered.

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00:24:50,096 –> 00:24:55,097
The subject is called “Making Space: A Jewish Theology of the Other.”

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00:24:55,097 –> 00:24:58,708
And the first lecture was titled “After Babel.”

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00:24:58,772 –> 00:25:05,626
It was at Oxford and was attended by people from different
religions.

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00:25:05,626 –> 00:25:06,347
Who knows

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00:25:06,347 –> 00:25:10,229
whether the Pope was there or not? We need to find out.

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00:25:10,229 –> 00:25:18,338
So here Rabbi Sacks says as follows: “Genesis 11, the story of the Tower of Babel, is a
story rooted in the fact

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00:25:18,338 –> 00:25:23,482
that the one language is not some utopian harmony and some golden age.

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00:25:23,482 –> 00:25:33,991
It is, in fact, what the 19th-century Jewish commentator, the Netziv, intuited when he said that Babel
is the first totalitarianism.

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00:25:33,991 –> 00:25:39,115
This is not an ideal harmony; it is an imposed uniformity.

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00:25:39,115 –> 00:25:41,817
Babel is cosmopolis.”

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00:25:41,817 –> 00:25:44,760
So he cites the Netziv.

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00:25:44,760 –> 00:25:47,566
But now we are going

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00:25:47,566 –> 00:25:49,368
to the Pope.

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00:25:49,368 –> 00:25:55,893
And we’re going to have to read it quickly, but all of this is in the
source sheet.

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00:25:55,893 –> 00:25:59,316
So I found it in the Wall Street Journal on May twenty-fifth.

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00:25:59,316 –> 00:26:07,272
The title of the Wall Street Journal article was Pope Leo Compares AI Threat to Biblical
Tower of Babel.

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00:26:07,288 –> 00:26:18,471
Pope Leo XIV warned that artificial intelligence threatens to normalize an anti-human
vision, and said that the concentration of immense digital power in the hands of a few

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00:26:18,471 –> 00:26:20,522
private actors must be countered.

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00:26:20,522 –> 00:26:32,265
The pontiff’s encyclical letter, a text poised to define Leo’s papacy, reads like
a sharp warning to Silicon Valley executives and, more broadly, to humanity about the future

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00:26:32,265 –> 00:26:36,236
of civilization as new technologies rapidly advance.

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00:26:36,236 –> 00:26:43,911
The risk, he said, is that humans will be reduced to mere cogs in a system driven toward
ever greater efficiency.

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00:26:43,911 –> 00:26:49,234
Leo used two biblical images to describe the choice humanity faces.

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00:26:49,234 –> 00:26:57,779
The primary choice is not between a yes or no to technology, but rather constructing Babel or
rebuilding Jerusalem, he wrote.

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00:26:57,779 –> 00:27:03,064
In the Bible, the Tower of Babel symbolizes a top-down, grandiose project.

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00:27:03,064 –> 00:27:08,957
where decisions are driven by pride, profit, and a push for homogenization.

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00:27:08,957 –> 00:27:19,563
In the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the Pope suggests, diverse people work
together to rebuild the walls and establish fraternal coexistence within them.

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00:27:19,563 –> 00:27:22,624
So this is called Magnifica Humanitas.

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00:27:22,624 –> 00:27:26,498
I really suggest that you read not only the article,

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00:27:26,498 –> 00:27:34,190
but also the full encyclical, which is linked in the Sefaria source sheet.

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00:27:34,190 –> 00:27:34,772
Now

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00:27:34,772 –> 00:27:37,063
I’m going to quote just a few things.

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00:27:37,063 –> 00:27:47,776
He says, “The power and prevalence of emerging technologies are interwoven into the
fabric of daily life, shaping decision-making processes and deeply affecting the collective

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00:27:47,776 –> 00:27:48,986
imagination.

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00:27:48,986 –> 00:27:52,327
Never has humanity had such power over itself.”

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00:27:52,327 –> 00:28:01,560
He goes on to say, “Most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar
and merely hoping for the best.

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00:28:01,560 –> 00:28:07,232
For this very reason, crucial questions impose themselves on our conscience and can no
longer be avoided.

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00:28:07,232 –> 00:28:11,193
Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves?

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00:28:11,193 –> 00:28:15,034
What direction should we choose as a people and as a humanity?”

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00:28:15,034 –> 00:28:17,595
So now he has the images.

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00:28:17,595 –> 00:28:27,180
He says, “In order to answer these questions and discern how to navigate
responsibly the era of AI, I would like to bring to mind two scenes from the Bible.

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00:28:27,180 –> 00:28:33,474
The construction of the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem in
Nehemiah 2 through 6.”

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00:28:33,474 –> 00:28:43,360
The story of Babel appears in the book of Genesis at the origins of humanity, immediately
after the genealogies of Noah’s sons, after settling in a plain in the land of Shinar,

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00:28:43,360 –> 00:28:47,843
the people decided to build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens.

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00:28:47,843 –> 00:28:53,566
Fearing being scattered across the earth, they sought to guarantee stability and power.

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00:28:53,954 –> 00:28:57,815
for themselves, and above all, to make a name for themselves.

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00:28:57,815 –> 00:29:03,958
“It was an impressive feat: a single language, a single technology, a single
direction,” writes the Pope.

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00:29:03,958 –> 00:29:06,799
However, the project concealed a profound danger.

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00:29:06,799 –> 00:29:15,778
It was a project conceived without reference to God, supported by a uniformity that
eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion.

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00:29:15,778 –> 00:29:25,801
When a city is built on pride and the claim to self-sufficiency, communication breaks
down, languages are confused, and people no longer understand each other.

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00:29:25,801 –> 00:29:28,461
The result is not unity but dispersion.

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00:29:28,461 –> 00:29:39,544
Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from
self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency, and aspires to reach

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00:29:39,544 –> 00:29:41,565
heaven without God’s blessing.

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00:29:41,565 –> 00:29:45,366
There’s more there, but I want to finish with

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00:29:45,366 –> 00:29:53,174
the other part, because this does not appear so far in the Netziv, and it’s
fascinating.

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00:29:53,174 –> 00:29:57,998
In the book of Nehemiah, this is the other choice that we have according to the Pope.

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00:29:57,998 –> 00:30:02,923
It opens at a time of great vulnerability in the history of ancient Israel.

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00:30:02,923 –> 00:30:11,062
After the Babylonian exile, a portion of the people returned to Jerusalem, but the city
was still in ruins, the walls collapsed and the gates burned.

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00:30:11,062 –> 00:30:18,644
Nehemiah, a Jew in the service of the Persian king Artaxerxes, received news of the disastrous
state of his ancestral city.

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00:30:18,644 –> 00:30:22,295
Before taking action, he fasted, prayed, and interceded for the people.

341
00:30:22,295 –> 00:30:28,867
He then asked the king for permission to return to Jerusalem, and upon arriving, examined
the destroyed areas in silence.

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00:30:28,867 –> 00:30:31,528
He did not impose solutions from above.

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00:30:31,528 –> 00:30:40,780
He convened the families, assigned each of them a section of the wall to rebuild, listened
to their concerns, coordinated their efforts, and addressed any opposition.

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00:30:40,780 –> 00:30:48,156
The narrative shows how the city is reborn not through the initiative of one man, but
through the shared responsibility of all.

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00:30:48,156 –> 00:30:53,400
Men, women, priests, artisans, heads of households, and young people all play a part.

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00:30:53,400 –> 00:31:01,240
It is an undertaking with God at the center which “rebuilds relationships before rebuilding
with stones”.

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00:31:01,240 –> 00:31:11,874
Thus, ancient Jerusalem rediscovers a common language, not of uniformity but of
communion: the harmony that arises when all persons assume their own role and

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00:31:11,874 –> 00:31:14,556
recognize that their strength comes from the Lord.

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00:31:14,556 –> 00:31:16,676
That is what the Pope wrote.

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00:31:16,676 –> 00:31:20,538
And I’m racking my brain: did the Netziv say the same thing?

351
00:31:20,538 –> 00:31:22,139
And guess what, Rabbi?

352
00:31:22,139 –> 00:31:22,669
He did.

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00:31:22,669 –> 00:31:30,802
He wrote two letters discussing his Zionism, because he was, as you say, an outlier.

354
00:31:30,910 –> 00:31:34,133
And as an outlier, he had to defend himself.

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00:31:34,133 –> 00:31:46,583
The first letter, by the way, was originally entered in the register
of the Volozhin branch of Chovevei Zion in Kislev 5646, late 1885.

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00:31:46,583 –> 00:31:59,233
The Netziv calls supporting settlement a mitzvah and an obligation, and
insists that the undertaking involve b’khol sugei Bnei Yisrael, every kind and class of Jew.

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00:31:59,233 –> 00:32:00,714
Then he goes on.

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00:32:00,822 –> 00:32:12,462
Just as in the days of Ezra the Scribe, who gathered several thousand people
in Babylonia from every kind of human being, great Torah scholars, and those who feared

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00:32:12,462 –> 00:32:23,251
God, but also people married to foreign women, who were accustomed to desecrating the
Sabbath and knew no Torah at all, all of these were gathered together and prepared the

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00:32:23,251 –> 00:32:28,790
settlement of the Land in its cities until afterward the Land became filled with its
children.

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00:32:28,790 –> 00:32:33,734
So he is saying the same thing in the service of Zionism.

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00:32:33,734 –> 00:32:45,172
In the second letter, he says, the second precious quality is the unifying of many
different opinions around one common center, a focus toward which all the dispersed of

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00:32:45,172 –> 00:32:51,146
God’s people may turn, dispersed both geographically and in opinions that differ.

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00:32:51,212 –> 00:32:55,084
radically regarding the conduct of Jewish life.

365
00:32:55,084 –> 00:33:02,327
He is talking about the heterogeneity of the chalutzim who started
the settlements.

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00:33:02,327 –> 00:33:11,561
We have merited in this matter, the settling of the land has become the central bar
extending through Israel from one end of the world to the other, uniting them in one

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00:33:11,561 –> 00:33:13,792
shared understanding regarding this matter.

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00:33:13,792 –> 00:33:18,770
And when all Israel are united, they are all called chaverim.

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00:33:18,770 –> 00:33:21,094
I would say, mamash.

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00:33:21,094 –> 00:33:23,602
So Rabbi, isn’t this amazing?

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00:33:23,602 –> 00:33:35,100
By the way, the fact that you connect the Netziv on the Tower of Babel with
Babylon and the letters about Zionism is absolutely remarkable.

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00:33:35,892 –> 00:33:41,667
Anyway, it’s just amazing to read these two thinkers together because we understand what
the Pope is talking about.

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00:33:41,667 –> 00:33:51,495
We’re living it, but we can therefore look at the Netziv and say that
ultimately he was making the same point for a different time and different issues.

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00:33:51,495 –> 00:34:00,522
But a powerful thinker against groupthink, an outlier, a truly amazing person.

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00:34:01,166 –> 00:34:01,927
Amazing.

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00:34:01,927 –> 00:34:02,938
This is great.

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00:34:02,938 –> 00:34:05,071
Everybody enjoy Parshat Noach.

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00:34:05,071 –> 00:34:06,573
We’ll see you next week.

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00:34:06,573 –> 00:34:08,476
And there’s a lot to think about here.

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00:34:08,476 –> 00:34:12,381
Let’s hear it for the Netziv, Rabbi Sacks, and the Pope.

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00:34:12,381 –> 00:34:13,682
Shabbat Shalom.

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00:34:13,728 –> 00:34:14,230
Amen.

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00:34:14,230 –> 00:34:15,195
Shabbat Shalom.

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See you all next week.

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My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish
text or tradition.

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Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast
platform and now on YouTube and Substack.

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We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

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This week we read Parshat Bereshit, the very first parsha of the Torah.

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Join us as we travel from Genesis to Plato and Aristotle from Plotinus to Maimonides, Al
Farabi and Crescas from the Kabbalah and the Tanya, all the way to that great Jewish

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heretic and God-intoxicated man, Baruch Spinoza.

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And so, what does it mean to create?

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Well, that’s a mouthful.

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We’re gonna have to talk like New Yorkers really quickly today.

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Okay, I mean the word bara is interesting.

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Good, let’s go.

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Let’s start.

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So, you know, last week we focused on where was God.

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but this week we’re gonna focus on the world, the creation itself.

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And if you recall last week, Rashi and Ibn Ezra both favored a translation which was When
God was creating, which kind of took the focus over where this all started.

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But we’re gonna follow a bunch of commentators and philosophers.

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Who say, no, the way you heard it the first time, “In the beginning” was the right way.

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And therefore it begs the question: what was the beginning?

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What happened?

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And to start that, we’re gonna start with Ramban; Nachmanides, who says as follows: In the
beginning, God created.

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It was indeed very necessary to begin the Torah with the chapter of In the Beginning God
Created, for this is the root of faith.

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And he who does not believe in this and thinks the world was eternal denies the essential
principle of the Judaic religion and has no Torah at all.

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He says, now listen to the correct and clear explanation of the verse in its simplicity.

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The Holy One, blessed be he, created all things from absolute nonexistence.

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Now we have no expression in the sacred language in lashon kodesh for bringing forth
something from nothing.

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Other than the word bara, created.

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Everything that exists under the sun or above was not made from nonexistence at the
outset.

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Instead, he brought forth from total and absolute nothing, a very thin substance devoid
of corporeality, but having a power of potency.

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Fit to assume form and to proceed from the potentiality into reality.

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This was the primary matter created by God.

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It is called by the Greeks hyly; matter.

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After the hhyly, he did not create anything, but he formed and made things with it.

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So it’s an interesting thing.

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First of all, we learned from the Ramban, and I think this is how I kind of grew up.

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That yesh me’ayin creation ex nihilo was almost a major tenet of our religion.

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Correct.

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That you have to believe in this miracle that God created something from nothing.

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Now, what but what’s interesting is he adds an additional piece, and that’s what the word
bara means.

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You started by saying that bara the word bara is so significant.

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bara means yesh me’ayin creation ex nihilo.

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And what he also does is he adds a step.

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So he says, What did God create ex nihilo?

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We don’t have a word for this in Hebrew, only in Greek.

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He created this kind of thin substance devoid of corporeality, but having the
potential for all of matter.

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And then he says, bara possibly also can mean formed and made things with it.

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So you create the Play-Doh, and then from the Play-Doh you create everything that follows.

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So it does seem that there is a sensitivity, Rabbi, to kind of breaching this gulf between
nothing and something.

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And he does it in a way that we’ll see that Plato might have done, at least according to
the rabbinic understanding, was that he created this intermediary substance.

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And yes, you’re correct that bara then becomes.

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creating something from nothing, but he also forms into it, making things with it.

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So the Ibn Ezra says as follows.

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He says, Rov Hamforshim Amu Shahabriya Lahoze yesh me’ayin.

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He says most of the commentaries say that it means ex nihilo.

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He uses this word yeshme ayan, which is kind of also very interesting.

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It’s a very simple way of saying this.

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Yesh means yesh li bbayit, yeshli kadur.

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I have something, yesh and me’ayin, ayin means nothing.

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So creating something from nothing.

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But

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The Ibn Ezra says the meaning of bara is to cut or to set a boundary.

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if you recall, again, we did an episode three, two years ago about Splitting The
Adam, where he focused on this concept of mavdil.

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He divides between light and darkness, between the water and the earth.

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So even in bara, there are those commentaries like

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the Ibn Ezra who says it is to create a boundary.

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Now, the Ibn Ezra actually comes off and says that bara does NOT mean something from
nothing, because he brings a bunch of different verses where the word bara is used and it

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was not something from nothing.

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So he brings, for instance, Genesis 1: 21, that God created the sea monsters.

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And three times the word is used in one verse, where God created man in his own image, in
the image of God created Bara, male and female, he created him.

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So there clearly God was taking from the

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Biological building-blocks of the universe and creating man.

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He had created the animals.

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So Ibn Ezra is making a case that no, it doesn’t have to be something from nothing.

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But really, the only reason we quote this, and I would say even modern scholars also
believe that the original meaning has more to do with shaping things, with

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dividing things, they quote.

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verses like in Psalms where it says, Fashion a pure heart for me, O God, create in me a
steadfast spirit.

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So the word create can mean pretty much like you and I use it in the nomenclature.

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You know, we create something.

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Do we have to create it out of nothing?

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This radical leap?

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Not so much.

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But we are going to spend most of the time today.

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trying to just determine number one where this idea came from, and then to see how
Jewish, non-Jewish, and Jewish thinkers who were influenced by the non-Jewish world

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kind of navigated what it means, how it affects us, how we can I would say
square the circle in terms of philosophy and

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What we read in the Bible.

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but this is so we are going less in terms of trying to understand the exact text
because I think the consensus is for many that the text doesn’t even talk or care about,

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and that was the purpose of yes, last week’s discussion.

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It’s not interested in these issues of cosmology.

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Here we are now going.

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Diving deep into medieval Jewish and general philosophy, where we ask all of these
questions that could cross a rabbi’s eye, Diddle D, Diddle Do.

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I think the way I would say it in Gemara language, you would say there are two issues.

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One is what the word bara means.

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That’s a disagreement between Ramban and Ibn Ezra.

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Ramban says bara means creation ex nihlo.

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Ibn Ezra says the word bara doesn’t necessarily mean creation, Yesh M’Ayin, because there
are many, there are many examples where the word bara means yesh M’Yesh, means something

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from something.

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Then what you’re pointing out is there’s a second issue, and that is what you say the
Medieval issue.

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And that is what did creation look like?

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What actually happened?

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And I would even add to that, the other issue is why does it matter?

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Why does Ramban say that this is a major tenet of our faith?

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You know, why is it so important?

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And that is also going to come up in our discussion.

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So if we go to the sources, believe it or not, I have not be successfully found
in any early sources in the Mishnah, in the Talmud, any reference to this so-called tenant

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of faith that the world was created from nothing.

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The earliest seems to be in the book of Maccabees, which isn’t even included.

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In our canon.

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And I don’t actually believe we have it in Hebrew.

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We probably have it only in Greek.

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But in any case, in the book of Maccabees II, 7:33, it says, and it’s a mother talking to
her children.

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I ask you, child, to look at heaven and earth, see everything that is in them, and know
that God made these things from nothing and created humankind in the same way.

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So it’s striking that this is the first reference.

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It’s also striking that it is written probably in Greek first.

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And so what it does is it raises a flag, Rabbi.

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It says that probably this whole issue came up when the Jews were confronted with
Hellenism.

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And all of a sudden they had to start thinking about these issues.

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A hundred years after

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the book of Maccabees, we have Philo of Alexandria, the great Philo.

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And he says, Moses, who had early reached the very summits of philosophy.

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So now we’re already dipped in the pond.

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Now we’re saying that Moses not only was a Hacham, not only was he a Torah scholar, not
only was he a Navi, but he was “epis” a philosopher.

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And now, once he’s a philosopher, we have to start squaring the circle.

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And he says that he was well aware that it is indispensable that in all existing things
there must be an active cause and a passive subject, and that the active cause is the

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intellect of the universe.

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So now we have Philo kind of feeding us.

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the thought of the day, which is that this active cause therefore became molded and
molded onto our God.

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And the passive subject is the universe.

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It is interesting.

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It’s called the intellect of the universe.

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That’s going to be of interest when we get all the way to the end of the story at
Spinoza.

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The passive subject is sometimes inanimate and incapable of motion by any intrinsic power
of its own, but having been set in motion and fashioned and endowed with the life of by

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the intellect, became transformed into that most perfect work, this world.

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So what he sees is a creator, a God who gives inanimate objects motion, dynamism, life,
if you will.

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And then, as I said before.

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The other part of the question is why?

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Why is this so important?

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So Nachmanides already said it’s a tenet of our faith.

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What does Philo do?

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He says, because this is important, because these qualities tend to produce piety, namely
providence.

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The reason proves that the Father and Creator has care for that which he has created.

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If you don’t have a universe and a world that is created by God, you don’t have a caring
God.

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For a father is anxious for the life of his children, and the workman aims at the duration
of his works, and he employs every device imaginable to ward off everything that is

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pernicious or injurious.

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This is clay in the hands of the potter.

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It’s not only paternal, it’s when you create something, you kind of own it.

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You have an association with it.

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and he says the same thing is with the created worth.

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So Philo not only says I wanna put this on strong philosophical ground, but he also
says it’s important to have a God who creates, because without that there’s no providence.

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And we’re gonna hear that from a few of our thinkers.

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Maimonides in the Guide lays out what he believes to be three different perspectives on
this.

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He says the first is ours, which is those who follow the law of Moses, our teacher, hold
that the whole universe, everything except God, has been brought by him into existence out

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of non-existence.

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In the beginning, God alone existed, and nothing else, neither angels nor spheres, nor the
things that are constrained within the spheres existed.

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He then produced them from nothing, all existing things such as they are by his will and
desire.

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And Maimonides again goes on echoing the other thinkers.

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This is the first theory, and it is undoubtedly a fundamental principle of the law of our
teachers, Moses.

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It is next in importance to the principle of God’s unity.

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Do not follow any other theory and

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Abraham, our father, was the first that taught it after he had established it by
philosophical means.

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So again, they are doubling down on this, even though you don’t necessarily have to read
it into the verse.

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It could be while God was creating and not Bing Bang from the creation of the beginning.

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He says it’s a fundamental principle.

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The second theory, and this is going to echo a little bit of what Ramban said, is the
theory of Plato.

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and there he created from a preexisting substance.

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if you recall, Nachmanides actually used a Greek word.

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And he said that this is a theory of all philosophers whose opinion and works are known to
us in this.

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It is impossible to assume that God produced anything from nothing or that he reduces
anything to nothing.

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That is to say, it is impossible that an object consisting of matter and form.

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Should be produced when that matter is absolutely absent.

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So I don’t know, Rabbi.

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To me, the whole issue is you they’re trying to make the leap.

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And a lot of them say, let’s take small steps.

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And if you slice it and dice it, somehow it becomes more palpable.

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And what he is saying is: on the one hand, while it’s impossible to say something
from nothing, you can do something that has the potential.

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For something, but isn’t quite yet something.

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And so you kind of have a solution.

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he says the people to say that God can produce a thing from nothing.

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So here’s an interesting argument.

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He says the reason why they argue you can’t have God produce something from nothing, it’s
like saying two plus two equals five.

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And it’s like saying a triangle has four sides.

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It just doesn’t fit into it.

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Nothing by definition.

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Nothing by definition means no thing.

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But again, at least Maimonides says this is an acceptable position.

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And Aristotle, who normally is Maimonides’ go-to guy, in this case believes that the earth
is eternal, that everything is eternal, that matter doesn’t change, and therefore there

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is stasis.

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And so he says.

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this is a position that the universe is in totality, never been different, nor will
it ever be.

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And that’s the three positions.

215
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He goes on to say that the foundation of our religion has to be that there is a God
who cares, who is involved.

216
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He said we should necessarily be in opposition to the foundations of our religion to
believe in the eternity of the universe, because it would reject all hope and fears

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derived from Scripture.

218
00:19:37,760 –> 00:19:39,941
In other words, you can’t punish somebody.

219
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You can’t have God cannot have any control over us if everything is eternal.

220
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Accepting the creation, we find that miracles are possible, that revelation is possible.

221
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And that every difficulty in this question is removed.

222
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We might be asked: why has God inspired a certain person and not another?

223
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Why has he revealed the law to one another?

224
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Once you promise you predicate that God can create the world, he can do anything.

225
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And he or she can have desires and wishes and commands over us.

226
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And that’s again why Maimonides feels that believing in this is so important.

227
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228
00:20:19,946 –> 00:20:22,469
And what he says is fascinating.

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He says, owing to the absence of all proof, we reject the theory of the eternity of the
universe.

230
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So what he says is, you can’t prove any of these.

231
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So as long as we can’t prove any of these, it’s best to have a theory.

232
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That guides us and makes the world meaningful and makes our Torah meaningful and makes
revelation and miracles meaningful.

233
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It’s in a sense, it’s kind of interesting because it’s saying that maybe there are
different parallel paths between belief and science.

234
00:20:54,499 –> 00:21:04,586
But what he’s definitely saying is until science can prove something, we have the option
of picking the theory that fits our mold best.

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Let me just say, I mean, what you’re saying, of course, is fascinating.

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Let me just take a step back to say, you know, it’s interesting that Maimonides in the
Guide quotes Plato and Aristotle.

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We’ve got to take that for granted now.

238
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But today, if the greatest rabbi in the world quoted Plato and Aristotle, you’d wonder,
right, about whether they really were the greatest rabbi of you know of all time.

239
00:21:30,320 –> 00:21:34,658
And Maimonides quotes Plato and Aristotle, and it’s totally.

240
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That’s part of his understanding of what creation is all about.

241
00:21:39,283 –> 00:21:51,975
So even that is interesting that Maimonides tries to understand and he appreciates the fact that the understanding about what the world is and how it came up

242
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came how it came about, that sometimes the non-Jews have you know have
insight that the Jews never had.

243
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I couldn’t agree more.

244
00:22:02,817 –> 00:22:08,271
I mean, in a sense, he was not quoting other religious thinkers.

245
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He’s quoting what he believes to be the best practices of the day in terms of
cosmology, understanding the world.

246
00:22:16,156 –> 00:22:20,759
But I think what you’re saying is an amazing segue to where I want to go.

247
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Because I want to introduce our listeners to a scholar who has made a great impression on
me.

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his name is Harry Wolfson.

249
00:22:31,080 –> 00:22:38,295
And he basically, as you say rabbi, you look at the modern rabbis, he came out of the
Slobotka yeshiva.

250
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And then he became the head of the first Judaic Studies program
in the United States at Harvard.

251
00:22:46,250 –> 00:22:51,050
and the person who followed him was Isidore Twersky, who I took a course from.

252
00:22:51,050 –> 00:22:53,442
And he says that

253
00:22:53,442 –> 00:23:01,007
Wolfson heard the last Shiur of Yitzhak Blazer, who was a Mussurnik who studied under Rabbi
Yisrael Salanter.

254
00:23:01,007 –> 00:23:11,914
And then he went on to write, talk about books and listening and learning and
dissecting the works of the non-Jew.

255
00:23:12,016 –> 00:23:24,685
basically what Wolfson did is he took Philo as the beginning of medieval philosophy, and
he took Spinoza as the end of medieval philosophy, and he studied in between the church

256
00:23:24,685 –> 00:23:32,860
fathers, the Kalam, which was the Islamic school of philosophy, and he did it all as a
Talmud Hacham.

257
00:23:32,860 –> 00:23:37,464
He learnt all of the languages necessary, Greek and Arabic.

258
00:23:37,464 –> 00:23:41,126
and what he basically argued.

259
00:23:41,126 –> 00:23:53,574
was that the medieval philosophy began with the premise that philosophy which
knew not scripture.

260
00:23:53,574 –> 00:24:01,058
So if you look at Aristotle and Plato, they didn’t know anything about Judaism or
revelation.

261
00:24:01,058 –> 00:24:07,512
So it starts with Philo introducing Aristotle and Plato and us to

262
00:24:07,512 –> 00:24:13,545
Plato and Aristotle, and it ends with a philosophy which tries to free us from scripture.

263
00:24:13,545 –> 00:24:25,630
So it starts with trying to bring the Torah into the world of Greek philosophy, and it
ends with Spinoza, according to Wolfson, where we try to leave the world of scripture and

264
00:24:25,630 –> 00:24:28,411
revelation and philosophy.

265
00:24:28,411 –> 00:24:36,674
And the most exciting thing that he tracks is the introduction of somebody called
Plotinus.

266
00:24:36,722 –> 00:24:43,287
And Plotinus, if you know anything about Plato, Plato believed in forms.

267
00:24:43,287 –> 00:24:57,356
So there was a form of a table up in the Himmel; in the shamayam
in the heavens, just like we have a Mikdash Sel Ma’ala and a mikdash shel mata, and

268
00:24:57,356 –> 00:25:03,601
then down below was a physical parallel of that.

269
00:25:03,601 –> 00:25:06,006
Plotinus did something amazing.

270
00:25:06,006 –> 00:25:18,752
He says that not only are there pure images and forms of everything that ends up being
physical in the theoretical world, but that is a correlation and

271
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relationship between them.

272
00:25:21,013 –> 00:25:33,218
So that if you will, that if there is a theory or an ideal of sun, there is a
correspondence not only to a real sun.

273
00:25:33,218 –> 00:25:42,887
But that idea of the sun actually maintains and powers and emanates power to the sun.

274
00:25:42,887 –> 00:25:51,174
So what he does is it is now conceived as being eternally generated or emanated from the
essence of God.

275
00:25:51,175 –> 00:25:59,138
And this was an amazingly exciting and evocative idea.

276
00:25:59,138 –> 00:26:12,506
That now we can have something in the heaven, something in the world of theoretics that
could actually have an impact, an ongoing impact on the world, the created world.

277
00:26:12,506 –> 00:26:17,629
And so creation almost becomes something that happens on an ongoing basis.

278
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It’s something that’s regular.

279
00:26:19,350 –> 00:26:24,853
And so he traces this through all of the medieval philosophers.

280
00:26:24,853 –> 00:26:26,776
And yes, Rabbi, he goes.

281
00:26:26,776 –> 00:26:44,461
To the church fathers, he finds someone called John Scotus Erigena, who maintains that
when we say creation from nothing, when we say creatio ex nihilo, nothing is God.

282
00:26:44,461 –> 00:26:56,010
And he says it beautifully the nothing from which the world was created means God, to whom
alone may be applied the negation of all that can be spoken or thought of.

283
00:26:56,010 –> 00:27:05,173
So since God is the one that has no physical attributes, he is nothing and the world
emanates from him.

284
00:27:05,173 –> 00:27:11,770
Then we go to al-Fārābī, who was a Muslim philosopher.

285
00:27:11,770 –> 00:27:24,450
by the way, when Maimonides talked to Ibn Tibon to translate the Mora Nevuchim, he says
if you want to go to look at somebody who you can use as a guide.

286
00:27:24,450 –> 00:27:25,821
Go to al-Fārābī.

287
00:27:25,821 –> 00:27:29,865
he really looked up to this al-Fārābī.

288
00:27:29,865 –> 00:27:36,842
he regarded him, and many of the philosophers regarded him as the second teacher,
second to Aristotle.

289
00:27:36,842 –> 00:27:45,922
So we’re living in a world where Christian and Jewish and Muslim philosophers are
talking one.

290
00:27:45,922 –> 00:27:50,105
to the other, whether physically or through their writings.

291
00:27:50,105 –> 00:28:01,133
And al-Fārābī was the first one to say that this idea of Plotinus did not contradict
creation ex nielo, creation Yesh Me’Ayin.

292
00:28:01,133 –> 00:28:14,542
Because if God actually can emanate the world, on the one hand, you can say that it was
created from nothing, from God or from these emanations.

293
00:28:14,542 –> 00:28:19,125
but on the other hand, it can jive with Greek philosophy.

294
00:28:19,125 –> 00:28:22,968
So this was an amazing bridge that they came up with.

295
00:28:22,968 –> 00:28:33,715
And later a thinker named Hasdai Crescas picked up on the al-Fārābī and was able to say,
actually, he gave it like a Hershey.

296
00:28:33,715 –> 00:28:36,997
He says, You can now believe in emanation.

297
00:28:36,997 –> 00:28:38,568
So, what is emanation?

298
00:28:38,568 –> 00:28:44,032
Emanation, to make it very simple, is like if you have a candle of light.

299
00:28:44,032 –> 00:28:48,786
And it gives me light, the light that I get does not detract from the candle.

300
00:28:48,786 –> 00:28:54,071
The sun can give light, and we can get light from the sun without it detracting.

301
00:28:54,071 –> 00:29:09,364
So, in that sense, you can have the power of God and God’s essence emanating on the world
without it detracting or impugning God Himself or herself with physicality.

302
00:29:09,364 –> 00:29:12,266
It was the perfect kind of highway.

303
00:29:12,370 –> 00:29:24,237
but what I want to do in the time that remains is talk about what the ramifications of
these medieval scholars discussing this stuff were.

304
00:29:24,237 –> 00:29:27,739
And one of them is something that we know from the Kabbalah.

305
00:29:27,739 –> 00:29:39,008
We know in the Kabbalah there was a school of Isaac Loria where he talked about God
emanating himself in a unique way.

306
00:29:39,008 –> 00:29:51,025
In the Sefer Etz Chaim, which is Chaim Vital, giving the notes, the transcript of the
discussions of Isaac Luria, he says, know that before the emanation were emanated and the

307
00:29:51,025 –> 00:29:56,188
creation were created, there was a supernatural light that filled all of existence.

308
00:29:56,188 –> 00:30:06,703
And he goes, and then what happened is, behold, God contracted himself, may he be blessed,
in the middle point, precisely at the point where his light was in its most absolute

309
00:30:06,703 –> 00:30:07,534
stage.

310
00:30:07,534 –> 00:30:08,476
So what

311
00:30:08,476 –> 00:30:17,471
getting back to this concept of nothing, instead of emanating out, God was able to
contract in and give space for something.

312
00:30:17,471 –> 00:30:21,934
but what does that do to us in terms of creativity?

313
00:30:21,934 –> 00:30:31,038
Think of the pedagogic lesson there, that you can give, you can create the next generation
by pulling back.

314
00:30:31,038 –> 00:30:37,842
the Tanya, the and the Hasidim looked at our prayer book and says.

315
00:30:37,842 –> 00:30:49,671
we say in the prayer book every every day we continuously, the work of
creation is renewed. הַמְ֒חַדֵּשׁ בְּטוּבוֹ בְּכָל־יוֹם תָּמִיד מַעֲשֵׂה בְרֵאשִׁית

316
00:30:49,671 –> 00:31:04,121
In the Tanya, he uses our philosophical language of efes mamesh, of nothing, to say that
God, on a regular daily basis, is responsible for the world staying alive.

317
00:31:04,121 –> 00:31:06,070
There is no disconnect.

318
00:31:06,070 –> 00:31:08,651
Between the world and God.

319
00:31:08,651 –> 00:31:13,523
We are constantly emanated from God.

320
00:31:13,523 –> 00:31:17,665
God re-creates, means it’s a set.

321
00:31:17,665 –> 00:31:19,916
We get a new start every morning.

322
00:31:19,916 –> 00:31:23,297
That’s by the way, the reason we watch Negel wasser, right?

323
00:31:23,297 –> 00:31:25,918
It’s a new start every morning.

324
00:31:26,079 –> 00:31:34,166
And to take it to the farthest extreme, which is where Wolfson goes, is then Spinoza comes
about.

325
00:31:34,166 –> 00:31:41,649
And I had never realized Spinoza was excommunicated by the Amsterdam community at age, I
think it was 23.

326
00:31:41,649 –> 00:31:43,690
It’s absolutely crazy.

327
00:31:43,690 –> 00:31:46,191
But this is what Spinoza said.

328
00:31:46,191 –> 00:31:50,994
Spinoza said, you know, this emanation thing, you’re just kicking the can down the road.

329
00:31:50,994 –> 00:31:54,895
There is no difference between God and that which is created.

330
00:31:54,895 –> 00:32:01,570
Whatever is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God.

331
00:32:01,570 –> 00:32:05,932
God is the immanent, not the transitive cause of all things.

332
00:32:05,932 –> 00:32:10,194
So he understands there are things, but God is all of those things.

333
00:32:10,194 –> 00:32:14,816
The human mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God.

334
00:32:14,816 –> 00:32:18,317
There is also in God an idea of the human mind.

335
00:32:18,317 –> 00:32:28,714
So all of a sudden, you can understand why a great German romantic poet said that Spinoza
was a Gott-trunkener Mensch

336
00:32:28,714 –> 00:32:34,519
Spinoza is a God-intoxicated man because he saw everything as God.

337
00:32:34,519 –> 00:32:36,060
He said, You’re making a mistake.

338
00:32:36,060 –> 00:32:37,882
Don’t make the distinction.

339
00:32:37,882 –> 00:32:45,208
If you go to the extreme of emanation or tzimtzum, it is ultimately that God is the mind of
everything.

340
00:32:45,208 –> 00:32:49,692
We are living in God’s mind, and God’s mind is in us.

341
00:32:49,692 –> 00:32:54,116
And this, according to Wolfson, was the beginning of modern philosophy.

342
00:32:54,116 –> 00:32:57,258
And so it’s a wonderful trip.

343
00:32:57,602 –> 00:33:12,081
But it all started because they decided they had to reconcile Greek philosophy with
Judaism, some people call that approach as making philosophy

344
00:33:12,081 –> 00:33:14,392
the handmaiden of religion.

345
00:33:14,392 –> 00:33:24,460
But I look at it in terms of look at all this creative thinking that it created that gives
us new modalities for thinking about creation itself.

346
00:33:24,460 –> 00:33:26,791
how we create and who we are.

347
00:33:26,791 –> 00:33:28,732
I think it’s wonderful.

348
00:33:28,892 –> 00:33:29,492
Amazing.

349
00:33:29,492 –> 00:33:30,973
This is really, really good.

350
00:33:30,973 –> 00:33:33,754
What a good way to start this year in the Torah.

351
00:33:33,754 –> 00:33:36,595
Welcome to Parshat Bereshit everybody.

352
00:33:36,795 –> 00:33:39,676
Shabbat Shalom, welcome to Parshat Bereshit.

353
00:33:39,676 –> 00:33:42,638
And next week we’ll start with Noah.

354
00:33:42,638 –> 00:33:43,998
See you all there.

355
00:33:46,510 –> 00:33:48,512
So here’s my question for you.

356
00:33:48,512 –> 00:33:51,916
Were we just counting angels on the head of a pin today?

357
00:33:51,916 –> 00:34:01,587
Or is there something valuable about watching great minds wrestle with difficult
questions, even when those questions may be problems of their own making?

358
00:34:01,587 –> 00:34:02,709
I’d love to hear from you.

359
00:34:02,709 –> 00:34:04,250
Look forward to your comments.

360
00:34:04,250 –> 00:34:05,231
Thanks.360
00:34:04,250 –> 00:34:05,231
Thanks.

6
00:00:34,198 –> 00:00:39,641
My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik we like to light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish
text or tradition.

7
00:00:39,641 –> 00:00:47,505
Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast
platform and now on YouTube and Substack.

8
00:00:47,505 –> 00:00:53,349
We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

9
00:00:53,349 –> 00:00:54,950
This week is a little different.

10
00:00:54,950 –> 00:01:03,276
On Simchat Torah, we will hear the very last parsha of the Torah, V’zot HaBracha, and then
almost without taking a breath.

11
00:01:03,276 –> 00:01:06,629
We will take out another Torah and begin Bereshit.

12
00:01:06,629 –> 00:01:19,399
We will hear the Torah’s final words, Asher asah Moshe, l’einei kol Yisrael, which Moses did
to the eyes or before the eyes of all Israel, and then immediately go to Bereshit Bara

13
00:01:19,399 –> 00:01:23,222
Elohim, when God began to create.

14
00:01:23,262 –> 00:01:26,945
I want to suggest that we don’t put a period after Yisrael.

15
00:01:26,945 –> 00:01:28,364
Let’s just keep reading.

16
00:01:28,364 –> 00:01:37,818
Because maybe there is something that Moses did to the eyes of Israel, something that
changed the way Israel saw the world, that made it possible for Israel to hear those next

17
00:01:37,818 –> 00:01:42,900
words, Bereshit bara Elohim, in an entirely new way.

18
00:01:43,141 –> 00:01:46,954
The Gospel of John famously begins: In the beginning was the IDEA.

19
00:01:46,954 –> 00:01:50,484
I want to suggest in the beginning was a new idea.

20
00:01:50,484 –> 00:01:53,385
So, Adam, that’s what I want to talk about today.

21
00:01:53,385 –> 00:01:55,830
What was the new idea?

22
00:01:55,830 –> 00:01:59,592
What was so radical about the way Genesis imagined God?

23
00:01:59,592 –> 00:02:03,392
And what does that new idea ultimately tell us about ourselves?

24
00:02:03,392 –> 00:02:05,995
We’re gonna spend the whole day on one pasuk.

25
00:02:06,076 –> 00:02:07,156
That’s amazing.

26
00:02:07,156 –> 00:02:13,940
And it’s a great yeah, we would call it a yeshiva, a great khap to connect the end of the
Torah to the beginning of the Torah.

27
00:02:13,940 –> 00:02:23,485
Well, you will hear that I found that there was a whole genre of interpretations,
including the Sefat Emet who builds mountains and hills on that.

28
00:02:23,485 –> 00:02:25,708
But what I’m gonna don’t tell them Torah Vodaath.

29
00:02:25,708 –> 00:02:27,259
But you’re becoming a chassid.

30
00:02:27,259 –> 00:02:35,062
But before I give that away, what I’m really saying is that the Torah that we read was
meant to be read and it was meant to be heard.

31
00:02:35,062 –> 00:02:42,306
And it was heard by people who knew what was coming and had read all the way till the end
of Devarim and were reading over again.

32
00:02:42,306 –> 00:02:51,750
So it’s not quite as cute as it sounds, because what we’re going to say is how
revolutionary this was, but to the people who heard it,

33
00:02:51,776 –> 00:02:53,567
It didn’t sound revolutionary at all.

34
00:02:53,567 –> 00:02:55,228
It was what they expected.

35
00:02:55,228 –> 00:02:58,230
And that is as radical as it gets.

36
00:02:58,251 –> 00:03:00,632
So here we go, Genesis 1:1.

37
00:03:00,632 –> 00:03:08,746
“When God began to create the heaven and earth”, in contrast to other people who say “In the
beginning God created”, which is how you and I grew up.

38
00:03:08,746 –> 00:03:15,382
But that is the way the moderns, whether it’s Robert Alter or the JPS Tanakh,
translate it.

39
00:03:15,382 –> 00:03:19,465
And fascinating, that’s the way Rashi and the Ibn Ezra go.

40
00:03:19,465 –> 00:03:21,146
So Rashi says.

41
00:03:21,230 –> 00:03:23,831
In the beginning God created.

42
00:03:23,831 –> 00:03:33,716
Wherever the word Reishit occurs in scripture, it is in the construct state, meaning in
the beginning of the reign of Yehoyakim.

43
00:03:33,716 –> 00:03:44,201
So the Bereshit comes before the reign, the beginning of his kingdom, Reishit Mamlachto,
the first fruits of the corn, Reishit degancha.

44
00:03:44,201 –> 00:03:47,798
So he says this is the beginning of creation.

45
00:03:47,798 –> 00:03:49,659
We’re not even talking about matter.

46
00:03:49,659 –> 00:03:52,180
We’re not even talking about the creation of the world.

47
00:03:52,180 –> 00:03:54,961
It’s all starting in mid sentence.

48
00:03:54,961 –> 00:04:05,286
Similarly, here you must translate Bereshit bara, Elohim, as though it is read
Bereshit bero at the beginning of God’s creating.

49
00:04:05,286 –> 00:04:15,020
So I’m even adding to the fact that not only is the writer assuming that the
listener knows that God is there already and God has no history.

50
00:04:15,020 –> 00:04:19,113
But they also kind of know that the world… it’s not about cosmology.

51
00:04:19,113 –> 00:04:20,834
It’s not about creating matter.

52
00:04:20,834 –> 00:04:23,276
The Ibn Ezra says as follows.

53
00:04:23,376 –> 00:04:26,939
Others say that the bet of Bereshit is a preposition.

54
00:04:26,939 –> 00:04:33,464
They explain that scripture intends to preclude the thought that heaven and earth were
preexisting.

55
00:04:33,464 –> 00:04:41,050
Hence it states, in the beginning, I believe that Bereshit is in the construct in the
beginning of the reign of Jehoukam.

56
00:04:41,050 –> 00:04:41,770
So what

57
00:04:41,770 –> 00:04:44,771
Ibn Ezra does is says this is not just wordplay.

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00:04:44,771 –> 00:04:47,773
There’s actually a philosophical nuance here.

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00:04:47,773 –> 00:04:58,357
That if you say Bereshit bara in the beginning God created, you really are, in a sense,
telling the story of the creation of matter and that before God created, there was

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00:04:58,357 –> 00:04:58,977
nothing.

61
00:04:58,977 –> 00:05:03,199
In Latin, that means creatio ex nihilo, there was nothing there.

62
00:05:03,199 –> 00:05:07,141
In Hebrew, it’s yesh me’ayin, something from nothing.

63
00:05:07,141 –> 00:05:10,102
But if you take this interpretation,

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00:05:10,410 –> 00:05:12,033
You don’t have to go for that.

65
00:05:12,033 –> 00:05:17,762
In the beginning of his creation, he took the sun, he took the moon, he took pre-existing
matter.

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00:05:17,762 –> 00:05:23,361
So it really is fascinating if you just read this in a very kind of normal way.

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00:05:23,361 –> 00:05:25,048
What it

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00:05:25,048 –> 00:05:27,420
presupposes and what is not there.

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00:05:27,420 –> 00:05:33,564
So I’m going to read a little bit of Nahum Sarna because we are reading the Torah for
the first time.

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00:05:33,564 –> 00:05:36,146
And he has Understanding Genesis.

71
00:05:36,146 –> 00:05:40,619
And we’re also going to do a little Cassuto today because we’re really setting the stage,
okay.

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00:05:40,619 –> 00:05:42,810
Cassuto is great on Bereshit.

73
00:05:42,810 –> 00:05:45,913
We are setting the stage for all that follows.

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00:05:45,913 –> 00:05:50,416
So why not reach out to the giants on whose shoulders we stand at?

75
00:05:50,416 –> 00:05:53,908
So Sarna says as follows: To be sure any work

76
00:05:53,908 –> 00:05:57,521
of hoary antiquity is bound to prove difficult reading.

77
00:05:57,521 –> 00:06:00,242
Problems of text and language are unavoidable.

78
00:06:00,242 –> 00:06:04,125
The modes of literary expression will be strange to your ears.

79
00:06:04,125 –> 00:06:12,411
The historic allusions to events of local, national, international importance that lie
behind the text, [requires] scholarly commentary to make intelligible.

80
00:06:12,411 –> 00:06:13,512
We’ve heard that before.

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00:06:13,512 –> 00:06:17,394
We have to know the context in the ancient Near East.

82
00:06:17,434 –> 00:06:23,212
Even to the religiously oriented, some of the religious concepts and values

83
00:06:23,212 –> 00:06:26,264
Will hardly be palatable today.

84
00:06:26,264 –> 00:06:31,728
Of course, that’s where Madlik gets its juice from, when we find out what, how they thought
differently.

85
00:06:31,728 –> 00:06:37,292
So he says this situation actually didn’t come only in contemporary modern minds.

86
00:06:37,292 –> 00:06:43,636
It existed as soon as the ancient Near Eastern world succumbed to the flood tides of
Hellenism.

87
00:06:43,722 –> 00:06:50,872
A Hellenist would open up a book on creation and they would want to know cosmology, they
would want to know the history of the cosmos.

88
00:06:50,872 –> 00:06:52,584
They would want to know ontology.

89
00:06:52,584 –> 00:06:55,846
When did matter existence begin?

90
00:06:55,846 –> 00:07:01,911
The old culture from which the Hebrew Bible had issued disintegrated and became radically
transformed.

91
00:07:01,911 –> 00:07:06,895
We forgot what the context was of the original people that listened to.

92
00:07:06,895 –> 00:07:08,316
Very good, yeah.

93
00:07:08,316 –> 00:07:15,338
So he says, and this is what we’re going to argue: that if you can, as best you can, put
yourself into the shoes

94
00:07:15,338 –> 00:07:23,866
Of someone pre-Hellenism, someone before we started looking at these texts differently.

95
00:07:23,866 –> 00:07:35,787
The Hebrew cosmology represents a revolutionary break with the contemporary world in which
it lived, a parting of the spiritual ways that involve the undermining of the entire

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00:07:35,787 –> 00:07:38,259
prevailing mythological worldview.

97
00:07:38,259 –> 00:07:41,964
So now he’s talking about the [Ancient] Near East, where you have stories of

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00:07:41,964 –> 00:07:49,999
Gods fighting with each other, gods giving birth to each other, gods taking domains, one
took the sea, one took the earth.

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00:07:50,039 –> 00:07:57,264
Nowhere else in the contemporary world did it become the regnant idea, obsessive and
historically significant.

100
00:07:57,264 –> 00:08:06,109
Israel’s monotheism constituted a new creation, a revolution in in religion, a sudden
transformation.

101
00:08:06,109 –> 00:08:08,330
Because of the things it doesn’t say.

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00:08:08,396 –> 00:08:18,150
The extraordinary consciousness of difference which characterized ancient Israel was
superimposed itself upon the awareness of a common background.

103
00:08:18,150 –> 00:08:22,412
Israel actually saw itself developed and its fate was unique.

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00:08:22,412 –> 00:08:27,735
If you read this, you start to look at Israel as the chosen people slightly differently.

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00:08:27,735 –> 00:08:35,786
When I the Israelites in Exodus 33 say that we are distinguished from every people on
the face of the earth.

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00:08:35,786 –> 00:08:40,651
Or in Leviticus, we are set apart from other peoples, they’re just saying a fact.

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00:08:40,651 –> 00:08:43,793
They’re saying our worldview is totally different.

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00:08:43,793 –> 00:08:49,339
There is not someone in the Ancient Near East who could read our text and even understand
what we’re talking about.

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00:08:49,339 –> 00:08:52,042
So here’s what was different.

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00:08:52,042 –> 00:09:00,770
The outstanding peculiarity of the biblical account is the complete absence of mythology
in the classic pagan sense of the term.

111
00:09:00,770 –> 00:09:10,526
The religion of Israel is essentially non-mythological, there being no suggestion of any
theobiography, any biography of God doesn’t exist.

112
00:09:10,526 –> 00:09:12,073
And that’s what everybody would have been.

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00:09:12,073 –> 00:09:14,879
Another great phrase, theobiography.

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00:09:14,879 –> 00:09:22,474
You know, there’s a phrase in the yeshiva that says, I came to see a movie about creation,
and it nothing was there.

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00:09:22,474 –> 00:09:25,184
Ha’ikar chaser min hasefer {the main subject matter is missing from the book].

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00:09:25,184 –> 00:09:26,735
This is a story of creation.

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00:09:26,735 –> 00:09:31,379
It doesn’t talk about creation the way the ancient Near East would have talked about it.

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00:09:31,379 –> 00:09:37,384
Scripture themselves do not openly betray a true understanding of a mythological paganism.

119
00:09:37,384 –> 00:09:45,931
In fact, as a result of their thoroughgoing monotheism, the picture they paint of the
religion of the contemporaries of Israel is really a distortion.

120
00:09:45,931 –> 00:09:54,860
So, Rabbi, we can’t help but look at this not only from the idea of the text and
what the text is saying, but from the idea of the listeners.

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00:09:54,860 –> 00:10:04,603
And it was so clear that the listeners were so comfortable with what they were reading and
seeing that they didn’t understand what a pagan who would have walked in who would have

122
00:10:04,603 –> 00:10:06,024
said, it’s missing.

123
00:10:06,024 –> 00:10:07,514
The whole story is missing.

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00:10:07,514 –> 00:10:11,435
We are absolutely working in parallel universes here.

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00:10:11,435 –> 00:10:20,138
And that’s what becomes so absolutely different and radical about this text.

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00:10:20,684 –> 00:10:21,745
That’s fantastic.

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00:10:21,745 –> 00:10:28,177
This is really a good, this is kind of a summary of everything included in this whole
discussion.

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00:10:28,737 –> 00:10:29,138
Yeah.

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00:10:29,138 –> 00:10:33,650
And again, because we’ve spent so many times doing this, we can actually understand it.

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00:10:33,650 –> 00:10:40,704
So for instance, and this is all based, even though I’m using the words of Nahum Sarna,
it’s based on the words of Yehezkel Kaufmann.

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00:10:40,704 –> 00:10:46,296
And what he said, that if you read the rest of the Bible, not only creation.

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00:10:46,296 –> 00:10:53,009
But if you read the rest of the Bible, the picture they paint of the religion of the
contemporaries of Israel is a distortion.

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00:10:53,009 –> 00:10:54,770
It’s a caricature, rabbi.

134
00:10:54,770 –> 00:10:56,191
It’s almost a comic book.

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00:10:56,191 –> 00:11:01,873
How many times do you have to say, How can you bow down to a statue that you made that
morning?

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00:11:01,873 –> 00:11:03,074
I get it already.

137
00:11:03,074 –> 00:11:05,035
But that was as far as it got.

138
00:11:05,035 –> 00:11:06,556
It was fetishism.

139
00:11:06,556 –> 00:11:12,264
They didn’t understand the the whole world view of paganism.

140
00:11:12,264 –> 00:11:19,741
So remote are the biblical writers from the religious atmosphere of the pagan world that
they are unable to present a true picture of it.

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00:11:19,741 –> 00:11:21,973
So, we’re looking at both sides.

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00:11:21,973 –> 00:11:29,730
We’re looking at something radical as it is, as it’s written, something radical that the
listener felt very comfortable with hearing.

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00:11:29,730 –> 00:11:34,584
And therefore, we can make this argument that this is truly a paradigm shift.

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00:11:34,584 –> 00:11:38,882
it’s a paradigm, it’s a shift in the grammar that is used.

145
00:11:38,882 –> 00:11:42,403
The notion of the birth of God, no biography of God.

146
00:11:42,403 –> 00:11:46,784
It doesn’t even begin with a statement about the existence of God.

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00:11:46,784 –> 00:11:49,025
That of course talks to us as moderns.

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00:11:49,025 –> 00:11:54,286
You know, we would start by saying if you’re writing a theology, say, and God exists.

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00:11:54,286 –> 00:12:00,908
So, it really is fascinating what’s not in this story.

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00:12:00,908 –> 00:12:06,874
You know, the Torah does not begin by saying, in the beginning was God.

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00:12:06,874 –> 00:12:09,475
It doesn’t talk about God’s existence.

152
00:12:09,475 –> 00:12:11,274
It says God created.

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00:12:11,274 –> 00:12:18,718
And almost even with the creation, you can say that it doesn’t even talk about the
creation of matter.

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00:12:18,718 –> 00:12:22,319
It’s in the grammar of the words that we’re looking at.

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00:12:22,319 –> 00:12:31,781
So, what I’d like to do is look at Cassuto, who says something very similar, but I
think he adds even some more nuance to it.

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00:12:31,781 –> 00:12:34,476
So he talks about.

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00:12:34,476 –> 00:12:36,748
the rest of the Ancient Near East.

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00:12:36,748 –> 00:12:40,530
And he says they began as a rule with a theogony.

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00:12:40,530 –> 00:12:46,254
We’ve heard of the word progeny and it’s the history of God.

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00:12:46,254 –> 00:12:53,059
That is with the origin of the gods, the genealogy of the deities who preceded the birth
of the world and mankind.

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00:12:53,059 –> 00:13:03,570
And they told of the antagonism between this god and that god of frictions that arose from
those classes of will and of mighty wars that were waged by the gods.

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00:13:03,570 –> 00:13:07,202
They connected the genesis of the world with the genesis of the gods.

163
00:13:07,202 –> 00:13:08,473
You couldn’t separate them.

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00:13:08,473 –> 00:13:09,874
There were hostilities.

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00:13:09,874 –> 00:13:22,160
And of course, all of these great biblical scholars say if you read the texts, which we’re
not going to get into today, when it says tohu va-vohu, yes, maybe it echoes Tiamat and

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00:13:22,160 –> 00:13:24,502
other gods that were there.

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00:13:24,502 –> 00:13:30,365
It makes reference to it, but what it leaves out is just absolutely amazing.

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00:13:30,405 –> 00:13:32,506
And then it

169
00:13:32,536 –> 00:13:33,647
Goes on.

170
00:13:33,647 –> 00:13:41,821
He says, Then came the Torah and soared aloft as on eagles’ wings above all of these
notions.

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00:13:41,821 –> 00:13:45,473
in the source sheet, you can see Cassuto saying that in Hebrew.

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00:13:45,473 –> 00:13:56,234
He’s clearly taking a word out of creation of God hovering over the planet as saying that
the Torah’s account of creation hovered over everything.

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Are not many gods but one God, not theogony, a history of God, for a God has no family
tree, no wars, nor strife, nor the class of wills, but only one will, which rules over

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00:14:07,204 –> 00:14:09,946
everything without the slightest let or hindrance.

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00:14:09,946 –> 00:14:18,273
Not a deity associated with nature and identified with it wholly or in part, but a god who
stands absolutely above nature outside of it.

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00:14:18,273 –> 00:14:23,990
And nature and all of its constituent elements, even the sun and all the other entities,
be

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00:14:23,990 –> 00:14:27,112
They never so exalted are only his creatures.

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00:14:27,112 –> 00:14:30,635
So this is a highfalutin biblical scholar saying this.

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00:14:30,635 –> 00:14:41,002
But what I want to argue is that in those words and in that context, even the simplest
Israelite listening to it would have known what is missing.

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00:14:41,002 –> 00:14:50,829
And he would have known starkly what is being shown here, a God who is in charge of the
world and manifesting it and manipulating it.

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00:14:50,829 –> 00:14:52,150
It’s profound.

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00:14:52,182 –> 00:14:54,223
That’s that that is really profound.

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00:14:54,223 –> 00:15:01,385
So it’s you have to appreciate the background to understand how the Jew is reading this
story.

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00:15:01,385 –> 00:15:06,046
That’s really what both Sarna and Cassuto are getting to.

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00:15:07,846 –> 00:15:11,427
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188
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190
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191
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195
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196
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197
00:16:09,583 –> 00:16:12,284
And now back to our podcast.

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00:16:13,684 –> 00:16:20,846
And you know, one of the things that I was thinking about, and in Sarna’s introduction,
he kind of gets into this.

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00:16:21,120 –> 00:16:30,053
Here we have this crazy tiny little country that never had a major empire between the
superpowers of Babylonia and Egypt.

200
00:16:30,053 –> 00:16:36,554
In the promised land, we have found artifacts and things from Babylonia and from
Egypt.

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00:16:36,554 –> 00:16:41,536
But you will never find a piece of the Torah in Egypt or in Babylonia.

202
00:16:41,536 –> 00:16:42,576
It wasn’t read.

203
00:16:42,576 –> 00:16:43,596
It was ignored.

204
00:16:43,596 –> 00:16:44,937
It was not heard of.

205
00:16:44,937 –> 00:16:49,516
It was so different than what.

206
00:16:49,516 –> 00:16:53,189
The reader would have expected that it had no readership.

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00:16:53,189 –> 00:16:58,433
That struck me again this year, that this was so different.

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00:16:58,433 –> 00:17:05,679
But I want to get back a little bit to the fact that my main point here is about the
reader and the listener.

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00:17:05,679 –> 00:17:10,132
That the reader and the listener found this so completely obvious.

210
00:17:10,132 –> 00:17:19,284
And I can’t stress enough Yehezkel Kaufmann’s point of view, which is that we really
do have.

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00:17:19,284 –> 00:17:29,754
A book that is so isolated, so talking in a different grammar and a different context
than everything around it, that one didn’t understand the other.

212
00:17:29,754 –> 00:17:36,828
The way that the Torah portrays polytheism and paganism is childish.

213
00:17:37,069 –> 00:17:46,397
And the way it describes creation is diametrically different, on a different plane than
anyone would have expected.

214
00:17:46,397 –> 00:17:47,538
And it’s not.

215
00:17:47,538 –> 00:17:50,060
here, but it’s very loudly here.

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00:17:50,060 –> 00:17:56,083
And I want to focus a little bit on the fact, I said this in the intro, that this was a
text that was meant to be read.

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00:17:56,083 –> 00:18:05,189
And so in in prior episodes, at one point, we were reading the story of Jacob stealing
the blessing and how he was doing all these bad things.

218
00:18:05,189 –> 00:18:07,290
And then finally he succeeded.

219
00:18:07,290 –> 00:18:14,390
And we talked about how is it possible or why would a sacred script have all these
things inside of it?

220
00:18:14,390 –> 00:18:22,279
And one of the things we said, and the example I gave was Megillat Esther and Purim, is
the people that heard these stories had heard them before.

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00:18:22,279 –> 00:18:24,342
They had heard them multiple of times.

222
00:18:24,342 –> 00:18:29,288
They knew when to cheer when Mordechai was mentioned and boo when Haman was mentioned.

223
00:18:29,288 –> 00:18:34,708
They knew that Jacob went through a tough stretch and had to cut a few corners in the
beginning.

224
00:18:34,708 –> 00:18:44,207
That’s what you really have to understand as we begin this journey all over again this
year, when we read this, and we’re doing it for the first verse.

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00:18:44,207 –> 00:18:53,446
That we’re trying to get into the head of the listener who listened to this and knew what
he was hearing and knew what he expected and knew what wasn’t there.

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00:18:53,446 –> 00:18:58,841
Robert Alter talks about something called Type Scenes.

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00:18:58,841 –> 00:19:00,672
He says, What I’m suggesting.

228
00:19:00,672 –> 00:19:10,089
Is that the contemporary audience of these tales, being perfectly familiar with the
convention, took particular pleasure in seeing how in each instance the convention could

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00:19:10,089 –> 00:19:19,296
be through the narrator’s art both faithfully followed and renewed for the specific needs
of the hero under consideration, or in this case, the subject matter.

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00:19:19,296 –> 00:19:27,192
In some cases, moreover, the biblical authors counted on their audience’s familiarity with
the features and function of the type scene.

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00:19:27,192 –> 00:19:32,146
Could merely allude to the type scene or present a transfigured version of it.

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00:19:32,146 –> 00:19:40,053
And that’s why when you read the modern scholars and they start to draw parallels to the
Babylonian mythology, it’s just a little hint here and there.

233
00:19:40,053 –> 00:19:40,627
Go on, Adam.

234
00:19:40,627 –> 00:19:40,787
Right.

235
00:19:40,787 –> 00:19:42,745
Well, I want to say that’s brilliant.

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00:19:42,745 –> 00:19:45,678
You were talking before about being a sophisticated audience.

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00:19:45,678 –> 00:19:54,565
You know, what Alter is saying is that the Torah is written for a sophisticated audience,
for an audience that knows Torah.

238
00:19:54,565 –> 00:19:55,768
And therefore you could refer.

239
00:19:55,768 –> 00:19:58,601
Refer to something and people should understand it.

240
00:19:58,601 –> 00:20:07,509
So when Laban says to Jacob, here we don’t give the younger before the older, it doesn’t
tell you what it refers to.

241
00:20:07,509 –> 00:20:14,615
But you need to be sophisticated enough to know but you younger, you took you took over
for the older.

242
00:20:14,615 –> 00:20:17,858
And it’s a criticism, it’s a veiled criticism.

243
00:20:17,858 –> 00:20:20,519
So that’s a brilliant point by Alter.

244
00:20:20,700 –> 00:20:23,148
And it makes us read the text differently.

245
00:20:23,148 –> 00:20:29,621
Because we’re reading, even reading a play is always gonna be different than
reading prose.

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00:20:29,671 –> 00:20:40,956
but this is a live audible text that was read over and over again to an audience,
which of course brings us to Simchat Torah and brings us to the unique way that we are

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going to be hearing V’zot HaBracha, which doesn’t get its own Shabbat.

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It is only read in conjunction.

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a breath away from starting the Torah all over again.

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00:20:53,473 –> 00:20:58,618
So we know that is the minhag, the custom that we have now.

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That’s why we call the last day Simchat Torah.

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We have a Chatan Torah, we have a Chatan Bereshit, and we have a Chatan Devarim.

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And they’re married together.

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There is this continuation.

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And as I said in the beginning, it kind of struck me.

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I said to myself,

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Was there anyone who therefore, because the law says that you have to go directly from
this is V’zot HaBracha to Bereshit, who tried to connect them the way you and I, rabbi, would do

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between connecting Bereshit to Noach or connecting Noach to Lech L’cha

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00:21:35,144 –> 00:21:41,510
And so sure enough, if you read the text, it has potential.

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The last pasuk in the Torah says, and we quoted it before, for all the great might and
awesome power that Moses displayed before all Israel.

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So it says…

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You can read Asher asah Moshe l’einei kol Yisrael as what Moses did to the eyes of all Israel.

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And then you read this parsha.

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So now I’m saying to myself, is there a classical commentary who actually misread or read
the way I did?

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Which is Moses says, You’ve read the whole book now.

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You’ve read the whole Five Books, your eyes have changed.

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You see the world differently, you have a different Weltanschauung.

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Now let’s start reading Bereshit all over again.

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It’s gonna be different this time.

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So sure enough, I did find in the Sefat Emet.

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And the Sefat Emet says every individual Israelite has a unique mode of perception through
which he is able to see and apprehend something particular in the world that no one else

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can see, and to them was given an opening of the eye.

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So in the Hebrew, he says,

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He combines l’einei kol Yisrael, Bereshit bara.

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He does exactly what I’m suggesting we should do.

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And he says it’s pekichat ayin.

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It opens up the eye.

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00:23:02,890 –> 00:23:14,588
So, in a way, and he does a whole lot of other things, he does recognize that we see our
texts differently, we see the world differently, we are a people that have gone

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through.

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This paradigm shift.

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Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh actually wrote, Moshe tiken et bechinat ha-re’iyah.

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Moshe actually fixed the ability, the faculty of sight, as in which Moses did to
the eyes of all Israel.

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00:23:34,093 –> 00:23:41,259
so I have company here that at least there is another scholar that said this
connection.

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And so what I’m arguing today, rabbi, is the unique.

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condition that we have on Simchat Torah of reading the end of the Torah with the
beginning, on a much higher scale without going to pesukim is demonstrating something.

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00:23:56,599 –> 00:24:05,944
It’s demonstrating that if you read this whole book and then reread this whole book and
reread it again, and if you heard it from your father and from your grandfather and you

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00:24:05,944 –> 00:24:11,266
told it over to your children, you are creating a universe of grammar that’s going to
enable you

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00:24:11,266 –> 00:24:12,927
To hear it read differently.

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00:24:12,927 –> 00:24:17,201
Maybe sometimes it’ll preclude you from understanding some other cultures.

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But this is a different grammer.

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00:24:19,193 –> 00:24:21,074
But that’s okay also.

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That’s that’s true.

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It is okay.

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00:24:23,016 –> 00:24:35,096
But if you go down from 60,000 feet, you can make a drash and say that Moshe really ends
the Torah by saying, I’ve changed the way you see, and starts by saying Bereshit bara,

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uh-huh.

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00:24:35,672 –> 00:24:37,263
Did you see what I didn’t say there?

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You see what was missing?

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00:24:38,842 –> 00:24:51,059
It’s I think it’s a nice, it’s a nice way to think and remind ourselves how important
this reading of the Torah is, because that is actually what we’re celebrating on Simchat

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Torah anyway.

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As much as celebrating the Torah, we’re celebrating the cycle of reading the Torah and
hearing the Torah.

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And um I just wanted to pause for a second.

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To focus on the Simchat Torah aspect of this and this concept of reading this cycle and
reinforcing ideas that we have and then re laying them over the texts every year newly.

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00:25:18,521 –> 00:25:20,923
So I just want to say, of course, this is fantastic.

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00:25:20,923 –> 00:25:28,822
The tradition to finish the Torah on Simchat Torah and begin it the same day is a very old
tradition.

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00:25:28,822 –> 00:25:31,823
That might go back, you know, 1500 years.

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00:25:31,823 –> 00:25:35,524
So it’s not something they invented in Poland a hundred years ago.

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00:25:35,524 –> 00:25:47,257
This is kind of part and parcel of the experience of reading the Torah is to go
front to back, which is basically what we’re starting to do next week, which is to go from

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00:25:47,257 –> 00:25:51,309
Bereshit bara to the end, but also back to front.

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00:25:51,309 –> 00:25:56,500
Now you know that when we finish the Talmud, we go on.

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But what you know we go like dafyomi.

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00:25:59,310 –> 00:26:02,923
You finish one tractate, you go on to the next one.

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00:26:02,923 –> 00:26:09,789
But when you finished one tractate, the prayer that you say is Hadran alach.

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00:26:09,949 –> 00:26:13,532
The word Hadran means we should repeat it.

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00:26:13,532 –> 00:26:17,356
So we don’t actually do it, but at least we say it.

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00:26:17,356 –> 00:26:21,379
You finish learning Bava Kamma, you spend months learning Bava Kamma.

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00:26:21,379 –> 00:26:25,258
And the first thing you say is, I want to do it all over again.

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00:26:25,258 –> 00:26:33,865
So even so it’s so interesting, Geoffrey, that your point about finishing and going back
and forwards and backwards and backwards and forwards is actually something that has it’s

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00:26:33,865 –> 00:26:40,149
so much part of our tradition that it’s it’s even made its way into the oral tradition,
into the Talmud.

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Fantastic.

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00:26:41,209 –> 00:26:42,331
I love that.

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00:26:42,431 –> 00:26:51,926
So if it’s not talking about cosmology, and if it’s not talking about ontology and the
history of God, what are we supposed to take?

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00:26:51,926 –> 00:26:58,268
And I went back to something that I think anyway is something that every kid hears when
they start the Bereshit.

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00:26:58,268 –> 00:27:07,150
It’s a piece of Talmud, a piece of Midrash that says, why was the Torah started with
the letter bet and not the letter Aleph, I assume?

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00:27:07,150 –> 00:27:12,712
So Rabbi Yonah said in the name of Rabbi Levi, why was the world created with the letter
bet?

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00:27:12,712 –> 00:27:21,610
It is because just as the bet is closed on all three of its sides, but open in its front,
so you do not have permission to ask.

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00:27:21,610 –> 00:27:29,574
what is below, what is above, what was before, and what is after, but only from the day
when the world created and onward.

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00:27:29,574 –> 00:27:42,902
So I have to say before we get into it, when it says what was before and what is after,
what it means is prehistory and after history, the eschatology, the end of days.

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00:27:42,902 –> 00:27:51,698
What it is permissible to discuss is how we live a better life, how we make our pathway,
how we follow the path of Torah.

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00:27:51,698 –> 00:28:01,487
and I think if you wanted to get a very crude message of the Torah is not about
cosmology, it would be here.

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00:28:01,487 –> 00:28:03,569
It’s not about what came before us.

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00:28:03,569 –> 00:28:04,910
It’s not about the heavens.

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00:28:04,910 –> 00:28:07,673
You want to study astronomy, go somewhere else.

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00:28:07,673 –> 00:28:14,980
You wanna try to parallel the texts of the six days of creation to the Big Bang Theory,
you’re wasting your time.

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00:28:14,980 –> 00:28:16,721
It’s not what the book is about.

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00:28:16,721 –> 00:28:17,900
And I love that.

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00:28:17,900 –> 00:28:28,253
The other thing that it says, it goes on, Rabbi Acha bar Chanina said in the name of Rabbi Acha, for
twenty-six generations the Aleph complained before the throne of the Holy One, blessed be.

337
00:28:28,253 –> 00:28:34,155
It said to him, Master of the universe, I am the first of the letters, but you did not
create your world with me.

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00:28:34,155 –> 00:28:36,535
The Holy One, blessed be, he said to it.

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00:28:36,535 –> 00:28:41,957
And he ends by saying, The Ten Commandments begin with an Aleph, Anochi.

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00:28:41,957 –> 00:28:46,530
So again, I think, .. I’m taking a little poetic license.

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00:28:46,530 –> 00:28:50,712
But what I’m saying is what preceded the bet was the Aleph.

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00:28:50,712 –> 00:28:56,496
And what preceded the Aleph meant was the assumptions that the
reader has.

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00:28:56,496 –> 00:28:59,337
That we already assumed that God was never created.

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00:28:59,337 –> 00:29:02,379
He was not birthed, that matter was.

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00:29:02,379 –> 00:29:10,570
So in a sense, what it’s saying is we begin with a bet because the Aleph is the
assumptions, the unwritten assumptions that we learnt as we go through the Torah.

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It’s just start in the middle.

347
00:29:12,224 –> 00:29:14,885
It’s all about starting in the middle.

348
00:29:15,350 –> 00:29:22,514
And then, as we have in the past, you start to look at that what is the really the crux of
the story.

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00:29:22,514 –> 00:29:26,226
So the crux of the story is God creates through speaking.

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00:29:26,226 –> 00:29:29,097
Vayomer, God speaks.

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00:29:29,188 –> 00:29:30,469
Vayavdel.

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00:29:30,469 –> 00:29:35,531
I think two years ago the name of our subject matter for the podcast was Splitting the
Adam.

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00:29:35,531 –> 00:29:39,924
Because we went into all the times that God divides.

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00:29:39,924 –> 00:29:43,702
Dividing is another way of understanding.

355
00:29:43,702 –> 00:29:48,124
Vayavdel is to distinguish between two things.

356
00:29:48,174 –> 00:29:52,366
then it goes on and it has words like Vayikra.

357
00:29:52,366 –> 00:29:55,187
He gave names, he tried to theorize.

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00:29:55,187 –> 00:30:01,170
These are all things that the text is giving us permission or an obligation to do.

359
00:30:01,170 –> 00:30:08,753
And finally, Vayar Elohim ki tov to evaluate, to give value and to give and to
evaluate things.

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00:30:08,753 –> 00:30:11,622
So once you get beyond bara.

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00:30:12,446 –> 00:30:23,075
All of the verbs that are used are verbs that we are encouraged to use ourselves as we
come into a world that we’ve been given, that pre-exists, and we have to learn how to

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00:30:23,075 –> 00:30:29,040
discern and distinguish between light and dark, between hard and soft, between rich and
poor.

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00:30:29,040 –> 00:30:33,363
We have to learn to call things as they are, to give value judgments.

364
00:30:33,363 –> 00:30:36,948
We need to give our own names and structure things.

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00:30:36,948 –> 00:30:39,779
It to me it changes the whole Genesis story.

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00:30:39,779 –> 00:30:46,981
But again, you can only do that and understand that and value that when you see what we’ve
left behind and what it’s fantastic.

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00:30:46,981 –> 00:30:48,161
That’s really good.

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00:30:48,161 –> 00:30:49,241
Really, really good.

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00:30:49,241 –> 00:30:54,423
A good way to end the Torah and to begin the Torah, which is really the challenge for this
week.

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00:30:54,423 –> 00:30:55,303
Fantastic.

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00:30:55,303 –> 00:30:59,184
So let’s wish our all of ourselves a Simchat Torah.

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00:30:59,184 –> 00:31:02,925
And we’re looking forward to an amazing year in Madlik.

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00:31:03,045 –> 00:31:03,835
Unbelievable.

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00:31:03,835 –> 00:31:05,626
See you all next week.

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00:31:05,626 –> 00:31:06,686
Be well.

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00:31:07,462 –> 00:31:08,733
Mm-hmm.

4
00:00:26,128 –> 00:00:27,199
Welcome to Madlik.

5
00:00:27,199 –> 00:00:32,928
My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish
text or tradition.

6
00:00:32,928 –> 00:00:41,165
Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast
platform and now on YouTube and Substack.

7
00:00:41,165 –> 00:00:47,070
We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

8
00:00:47,070 –> 00:00:51,674
This week we read Parshat Ha’Azinu, Moses’ final song.

9
00:00:51,674 –> 00:01:02,122
It begins by calling upon heaven and earth, retells the creation of Israel in language
that echoes the creation of the world, and ends with three deeply

10
00:01:02,122 –> 00:01:13,085
ambiguous words, ve-khiper admato amo, and he will cleanse his people’s ground, or perhaps
he will cleanse the ground of his people.

11
00:01:13,405 –> 00:01:19,527
Ha’Azinu suggests that Israel’s story recapitulates humanity’s story.

12
00:01:19,527 –> 00:01:25,349
Adam was placed in Eden to serve and protect it, as was Israel placed in the promised
land.

13
00:01:25,349 –> 00:01:30,124
Neither humanity nor Israel possesses its home unconditionally.

14
00:01:30,124 –> 00:01:36,718
Both are stewards and both are subject to eviction when they betray what was entrusted to
them.

15
00:01:36,718 –> 00:01:43,341
As we approach Yom Kippur, the day of kapparah, we generally ask whether God will cleanse us.

16
00:01:43,341 –> 00:01:46,903
Ha’Azinu poses a much more unsettling question.

17
00:01:46,903 –> 00:01:50,625
What if the earth must be cleansed from us?

18
00:01:50,625 –> 00:01:59,710
So join us as we discuss and the earth will be cleansed, Ha’Azinu, Yom Kippur, and the point
of no return.

19
00:01:59,754 –> 00:02:10,123
And if Madlik lights a spark for you, please subscribe on YouTube, Substack, or your
favorite podcast platform, and share this episode with someone who enjoys looking at the

20
00:02:10,123 –> 00:02:12,505
Torah from a different angle.

21
00:02:12,505 –> 00:02:15,677
Rabbi, Rosh Hashanah is over, and here we are.

22
00:02:15,677 –> 00:02:19,090
Today is Tzom Gedaliah, and we’re back to Devarim.

23
00:02:19,090 –> 00:02:21,652
how are you, Shanah tovah?

24
00:02:21,652 –> 00:02:28,930
Shanah tovah, this is a big one because of course this Shabbat is the last, the last
portion that’ll be read on a Shabbat.

25
00:02:28,930 –> 00:02:32,634
The last portion of V’Zot HaBracha is read, of course, on Simchat Torah.

26
00:02:32,634 –> 00:02:34,235
So this is a big one, everybody.

27
00:02:34,235 –> 00:02:35,656
Let’s get going.

28
00:02:35,677 –> 00:02:37,739
And this is a song.

29
00:02:37,739 –> 00:02:45,706
And most of us will know in the morning liturgy we sing the Shirat HaYam, the song of the
Red Sea.

30
00:02:45,706 –> 00:02:54,304
Maybe some of us know the song of Devorah, but this is a big deal when the Torah puts
inside of itself

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00:02:54,304 –> 00:02:55,154
A song.

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00:02:55,154 –> 00:03:06,421
So I’m gonna backtrack just a few pesukim before our portion begins, because the
introduction to it actually is contained at the end of last week’s parsha.

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00:03:06,421 –> 00:03:15,847
So in Devarim 31:19, it says, Therefore, write down this poem, this Shira, and teach it to
the people of Israel.

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00:03:15,847 –> 00:03:22,410
Put it in their mouths in order that this poem may be my witness against the people of
Israel.

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00:03:22,818 –> 00:03:27,119
Ha-shirah ha-zot le’ed bivnei Yisrael.

36
00:03:27,119 –> 00:03:36,582
When I bring them into the land flowing with milk and honey that I promised an oath to
their fathers, and they eat their fill and grow fat and turn to other gods and serve them,

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00:03:36,582 –> 00:03:48,475
spurning me and breaking my covenant, and the many evils and troubles befall them, then
this poem, this Shira, shall confront them as a witness, since it will never be lost from

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00:03:48,475 –> 00:03:50,406
the mouth of their offspring.

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00:03:50,406 –> 00:03:51,598
For I know what

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00:03:51,598 –> 00:03:57,461
plans they are devising even now before I bring them into the land that I promised an
oath.

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00:03:57,461 –> 00:04:00,603
This was truly one literary unit.

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00:04:00,603 –> 00:04:02,064
It was a song.

43
00:04:02,064 –> 00:04:08,988
And Moses had the confidence to say that you’re gonna remember this song.

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00:04:08,988 –> 00:04:11,139
Forget about everything else that I’ve said.

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00:04:11,139 –> 00:04:15,452
Somehow you’re gonna take this piece of poetry with you.

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00:04:15,452 –> 00:04:20,034
And most of us will recognize the beginning of it at least.

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00:04:20,092 –> 00:04:24,633
but it is a beautiful, but as I learnt this year, it’s a powerful song.

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00:04:24,633 –> 00:04:28,684
But shirah is important when it has one of these literary units.

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00:04:28,684 –> 00:04:37,227
Of course, now if we know that there are only two poems of the Torah, this and Oz
Yashir, when the Jews cross the sea.

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00:04:37,227 –> 00:04:40,748
So that just highlights the fact that this is special.

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00:04:40,748 –> 00:04:49,802
And in the Torah scroll itself, the only two places where it’s not written just as
paragraph form, but it’s actually written in two columns as

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00:04:49,802 –> 00:04:53,304
As a poem is again Oz Yashir and here it has.

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00:04:53,304 –> 00:05:00,027
So if you get called to the Torah, this Shabbat, you will see that the Torah it looks
different in the scroll, which is amazing.

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00:05:00,068 –> 00:05:00,888
Perfect.

55
00:05:00,888 –> 00:05:10,473
So it starts Ha’Azinu, Hashamayam V’adabera, give ear, O heavens, let me speak, let the earth
hear the words I utter.

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00:05:10,473 –> 00:05:19,830
May my discourse come down as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like showers on your
growth, like droplets on the grass.

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00:05:19,830 –> 00:05:32,405
For the name of the Eternal I proclaim, give glory to your God, the rock, the
Selah, whose deeds are perfect, yea, all of whose ways are just, a faithful God never

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false, true and upright indeed.

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00:05:34,736 –> 00:05:41,239
So he’s really called the celestial powers, the whole earth, as a witness.

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And then he begins really what he’s going after, which is this is a warning to take with
you, as we saw in the introductory verses.

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Unworthy children, that crooked, perverse generation, their baseness has played God false.

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00:05:55,507 –> 00:05:59,469
Do you thus requit God or dull and witless people?

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00:05:59,490 –> 00:06:04,933
Is not this the Father who created you, fashioned you, and made you endure?

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00:06:04,933 –> 00:06:12,839
So we’re getting many touch points, as I said in the intro, that will kind of make us feel
that we’re playing with creation.

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00:06:12,839 –> 00:06:16,930
When you bring heaven and earth to bear on you.

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00:06:16,930 –> 00:06:31,474
When you talk about rain and dew falling on new growth and grass, he says, remember the
days of old, consider the years of ages past, ask your parent who will inform you, your

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elders who will tell you.

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00:06:32,866 –> 00:06:36,129
So it’s paternal and maternal also.

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When the Most High gave nations their inheritance, at his dividing the human race,

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He stationed boundaries for peoples by the number of gods.

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In our Masoretic Text, it says that by the number of the children of Israel, we’re going to see
that in other versions it says the children of gods.

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But now he’s hearkening back to what we’ll be reading in a few weeks when the earth was
divided into different languages.

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And there was a tradition that there were angels that took.

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care of every nation.

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in verse 9, it continues for the eternal’s portion is this people, Jacob, God’s own
allotment.

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God found them in a desert region, in an empty, howling waste.

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When he refers to this howling waste of the desert, it says, b’tohu, which again, those
of us who are preparing for two weeks from now, we refer to Genesis, where—

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in the beginning—God created the world—it was tohu va-vohu.

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So he’s really talking about creating the world, but also creating the Jewish people out
of nothing in the desert, then engirded them, watched over them, guarded them as the pupil

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of one’s eye, like an eagle who rouses its nest, gliding down to its young.

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We’ll see that Ibn Ezra says “yerachef” recalls “merachefet”, that God’s spirit hovered
over the planet and its young.

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God spread wings and took them, bore them along on pinions.

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So there’s a lot of imagery here that harkens back to the big story, the big story of
creation.

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It’s really powerful.

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Amazing.

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I just want to say, Uve-tohu yelel yeshimon, that the word tohu has not been used since
the first chapter of Bereishit, which is really remarkable.

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Wow.

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That makes it that much more powerful for sure.

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So I based a lot.

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Of my readings on the JPS commentary of Jeffrey Tigay, a real scholar.

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And he makes note that this poem is different than the rest of Deuteronomy,
and it should be because it’s a Shirah, it’s a different format.

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he says that the theme of covenant is not which is central to Deuteronomy, is not
mentioned here.

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He’s hearkening back to creation more than covenant.

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the frequent Deuteronomic references to Exodus and the patriarchs and the fact that
God promised the land has no echo here.

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The conception of the punishment is also different.

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We’re going to get to that in a second.

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In Ha’Azinu it’s limited to war and natural disasters in the land, whereas elsewhere in
Deuteronomy there is exile and return.

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And the point that he’s trying to make is not only is Ha’Azinu independent in its
composition, he feels it’s older than the rest of Deuteronomy.

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We’ve come across this concept before.

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Shirat HaYam is considered older because it’s brought into the text.

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The Bikkurim that we visited a few weeks ago, it’s considered older because again, it’s a
formula that you’re reciting.

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he says the concluding description, which we haven’t gotten to yet, about Israel’s
deliverance implies it was probably composed after a particular disaster to offer an

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explanation of hope and deliverance.

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Quite likely it was adopted by Deuteronomy because it explained a disaster in theologically meaningful terms.

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He says that the poem is older than Deuteronomy, is also suggested by its affinities with
several other books in the Bible.

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Among them parallels in the book of Hosea.

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00:10:26,368 –> 00:10:34,395
So he brings down a bunch of prophets that also talk about I bring to witness the heaven
and the earth and all that.

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And what he argues is several prophets and psalmists were influenced by one classic poem.

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Since they’re all saying something similar, you can make the case they all
saw the Mona Lisa because all of their art kind of reflects a different variation on what

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they all saw together.

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Correct.

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That’s really good.

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Okay, very, very good.

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So this is something old and it’s something that stands on its own.

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Even Josephus says that Moses read them a poetic song which was composed in hexameter
verse and left it to them in the holy book.

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He goes on to say he delivered these books to the priests with the ark into which he also
put the Ten Commandments written on two tablets.

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He delivered them to the tabernacle.

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So we have a tradition that this Shira was almost housed in its own scroll, that it was
set beside the Ten Commandments, and I would say the fragments of the Ten Commandments

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that were in the tabernacle.

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It really did have an independent power to it.

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And Tigay says something that struck me.

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He talks about how this was used in later times and he does reference Josephus, but he goes
on to say that rabbinic sources report that the Levites read parts of the poem in the

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temple while the additional Musaf offering was made on Shabbat.

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They completed it over a six week cycle and then began again.

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This is something that I was not aware of, that this really on its own.

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Yeah, that’s yeah, that’s great.

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Okay.

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And then he goes on to say that in one of the Qumran manuscripts that they found with the
Essenes, it apparently contained only this Shira, only this poem, and was not part of a

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longer Torah scroll.

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So it really was independent.

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Well, I didn’t know that.

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So that this stood on its own for the people in Qumran.

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That’s fantastic.

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Yep.

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Perhaps it was used for the reading the poem on some similar occasion.

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And then he goes on, nowadays Ha’Azinu or the preceding Torah portion, Vayelech is read on the
Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and this I did not know.

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00:12:52,362 –> 00:13:03,554
In the Sephardic liturgy, it is read on the ninth of Av during the morning service in
place of Shirat HaYam, in place of the song of the sea, and

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That I did not ever realize.

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I didn’t know that either.

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That’s amazing.

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00:13:07,666 –> 00:13:10,518
So we learn a lot from Edot HaMizrach.

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we did last week and we’re learning this week as well.

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What that means is that number one, they inherently understood it stood on the same level
as Shirat HaYam, but it had a different function.

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And when you are talking about Tisha B’Av and the destruction of the temple, and you wanna
say this is what happens, it’s not time for Shirat HaYam, where we

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see the manifestation of God and miracles.

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It’s for this song, which we will see, was very humbling, very profoundly unsettling.

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but I love that they absolutely replaced Shirat HaYam with Ha’Azinu on Tisha B’Av.

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Yeah, that is fantastic.

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Okay.

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00:13:54,094 –> 00:13:56,949
Yeah, I mean and you see that it’s the two songs.

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They’re very familiar with it.

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One replaces the other because they’re both the songs of the Torah.

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Okay, let’s take it away and let’s see about exile.

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00:14:06,976 –> 00:14:10,509
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And now back to our podcast.

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00:15:12,858 –> 00:15:24,264
So we’re not going to quote the whole shirah, but we’re gonna pick up at verse 15, pasuk 15,
it says, and then Yeshurun grew fat and kicked, you grew fat and gross and coarse.

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So really, this is according to those that say this was very old.

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It was before.

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The Israelites were even exiled.

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But that doesn’t mean that they weren’t rebelling.

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And it doesn’t mean that they weren’t suffering military defeats or natural disasters and
they were trying to make sense of them.

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You guys got too comfortable.

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You were fat and gross and coarse, you forsook God, spurned the Rock, the rock of your
support.

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You kindled wrath with alien things, provoked anger with abominations.

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They sacrificed to demons, no-gods, gods they had never known, new ones who came but
lately, who stirred not your father’s fears.

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You neglected the rock who begot you, forgot the God who labored to bring you forth again,
these kind of creation and birthing metaphors.

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God saw and was vexed and spurned these sons and daughters.

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God says, I will hide My countenance from them.

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And see how they fare in the end, for they are a treacherous breed, talking about the
Israelites, children with no loyalty in them.

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They incensed me with no-gods, b’lo El, vexed me with their futilities.

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00:16:34,454 –> 00:16:38,795
I’ll incense them with a no-folk, b’lo am.

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Very poetic and very kind of almost modern and contemporary in the languages.

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You want a no god, I’m gonna give you a no nation.

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00:16:48,582 –> 00:16:59,857
vex them with a nation of fools, for a fire has flared from my wrath and burned to the
bottom of Sheol, the pit’s consumed the earth and increased, eaten down the base of the

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hills, will sweep misfortune upon them, use up my arrows on them.

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00:17:05,439 –> 00:17:11,342
and so really this is a hard message that Moshe is giving.

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This Shira is not a song to dance to.

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00:17:16,247 –> 00:17:23,341
and then it goes on towards the end and it says, See then that I, I am He.

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00:17:23,341 –> 00:17:25,522
There is no God beside me.

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00:17:25,523 –> 00:17:28,144
I deal death and give life.

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00:17:28,144 –> 00:17:31,866
Sounds a little bit like what we’ve been doing over the last few days.

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00:17:31,866 –> 00:17:34,048
Ani amit va-achayeh.

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00:17:34,048 –> 00:17:36,109
I wounded and I will heal.

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00:17:36,109 –> 00:17:38,254
No one can deliver from my hand.

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00:17:38,254 –> 00:17:44,096
It fits perfectly that the cycle of reading the Torah comes right between Rosh Hashanah and
Yom Kippur.

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And we hear God speaking in this manner.

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I raise my hand to heaven and I say, as I live forever, when I wet my flashing blade and
my hands lay hold on judgment, vengeance will I wreak on My foes, will I deal to those

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00:17:58,650 –> 00:17:59,440
who reject me?

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00:17:59,440 –> 00:18:01,431
I will make my arrows drunk with blood.

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this is real strong language of taking.

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00:18:05,222 –> 00:18:08,165
revenge for those misdeeds.

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00:18:08,165 –> 00:18:17,593
It’s not a hundred percent clear if it’s our enemies or if it’s us, as my sword devours
flesh, blood of the slain and the captive from the long haired enemy chiefs.

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00:18:17,593 –> 00:18:19,914
O nations, acclaim His people.

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00:18:19,914 –> 00:18:30,733
Now he’s clearly talking about the nations of the world who will learn the lesson, for God
will avenge the bloods of those servants, wreak vengeance on opponents, and this is where

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it ends.

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00:18:31,344 –> 00:18:33,826
The punchline is in our text

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00:18:33,826 –> 00:18:52,181
Ve-khiper admato amo and cleanse this people’s land or cleanse the land of the people, or we
will see all of the various different interpretations because it’s not clear who the

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subject is and who the object is here.

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00:18:55,965 –> 00:18:56,645
Correct.

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00:18:56,645 –> 00:19:02,850
And you know that we use that verse every Shabbat in the prayer of Av HaRachamim.

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00:19:02,850 –> 00:19:08,792
Which is the memorial prayer for those who were killed in the crusades, the kiper
admato.

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00:19:08,792 –> 00:19:16,376
Somehow the death, the suffering of the Jewish people is in itself a form of atonement.

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00:19:16,376 –> 00:19:22,368
And of course, we have to mention kiper comes from the same root as the word we use on Yom Kippur.

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00:19:22,368 –> 00:19:23,338
Correct.

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00:19:23,338 –> 00:19:32,362
So it can mean cleanse, and it can mean the day of a judgment, it can be

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00:19:32,566 –> 00:19:34,767
to get forgiveness.

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00:19:34,817 –> 00:19:38,209
it’s a profound word that affects us all in these days.

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00:19:38,209 –> 00:19:44,313
so Rabbi Zev Farber writes an article in TheTorah.com.

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It’s called Ha’Azinu the Song’s Enigmatic Climax.

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00:19:48,415 –> 00:19:53,278
And he brings all of the different texts.

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00:19:53,278 –> 00:19:59,852
He says the Torah, the text that we have ends with the phrase, Ve-khiper admato amo

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00:19:59,852 –> 00:20:03,804
This final phrase is doubly ambiguous.

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00:20:03,804 –> 00:20:12,369
Both the subject and the object of the verb kaper, which means to atone or
cleanse, is unclear.

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Who exactly will be cleansing what?

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00:20:15,891 –> 00:20:19,082
He says it as succinctly as you can.

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00:20:19,082 –> 00:20:23,815
he says we need to consider three possible subjects here.

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It could be God that is cleansing the land and the people.

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And true enough, he claims that Onkelos, this is the interpretation that he gives, he
combines the two of them.

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And he says, God atones or cleanses his people and his land, or his land and his people.

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But it’s not clear from the language itself if that’s the case.

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00:20:49,154 –> 00:20:58,740
a variant reading is in the Samaritan Pentateuch and in the version found in Qumran.

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In the Dead Sea scrolls, it says “me-amo”, he will cleanse the land of his people.

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Rabbi, that is revolutionary.

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Right, that’s a whole peshat, correct.

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That is totally different.

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And in the Septuagint, which is what our Christian brothers and sisters base their thing
on, it says, and the Lord shall purge the land of his people.

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Really something that should to use biblical language should set our teeth on edge.

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And that’s what the scholar before said.

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It doesn’t talk of exile, but it talks of expunging the Israelites from the land.

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Very, very powerful and unnerving.

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00:21:45,878 –> 00:21:53,002
So my argument is going to be that Ha’Azinu in a brilliant manner.

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marries the creation of the world and God creating the world for humankind and the
creation of the Jewish people and God creating the promised land for them.

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And in both cases, what he’s arguing on a macro and a micro level is if we don’t clean up
our act, if we don’t act in accordance with his desire when he created us,

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We should not think that everything revolves around us.

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he created the world and he put us in there to watch over it.

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And if we don’t watch over it properly, we will get lost.

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the world might continue, but it will be without us.

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Without us, right.

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00:22:37,501 –> 00:22:40,743
Which is a fascinating, I would say, paradigm shift.

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00:22:40,743 –> 00:22:49,280
So what I wanted to go through is quickly go through some of the commentaries who really
pick up on the I would say, hints.

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That the beginning is talking about creation.

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When it says “esev” that God put his presence down like dew and watered the land, a single
stalk is called “esev”, says Rashi.

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00:23:02,467 –> 00:23:06,960
similarly, each species of herbs by itself is called “esev”.

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00:23:06,960 –> 00:23:18,146
And he compares, at least the translator compares us to look at Rashi on Genesis 1:11,
where it talks about the vegetation on the face of the earth.

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Ibn Ezra, when it describes God hovering like an eagle over its young, says that “yerachef” is related to the word

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“merachefet” in Genesis 1:2. The cloud of glory did likewise when Israel journeyed.

259
00:23:39,951 –> 00:23:46,216
He makes an exact parallel between God creating in the desert and protecting.

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And the creation story.

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And finally, you know, I will say that even the word create, it says God found
him in the wilderness, yimtza’ehu be’eretz midbar, uve-tohu yelel yeshimon, yesovevenhu yevonenehu, yitzrenhu ke-ishon

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eino.

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He guarded him as the pupil of his eye and surrounded him.

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This “yitzrenhu”—“formed him”— evokes the formation of Adam.

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So clearly the beginning of this thing is putting us all on notice, whether as a human
being or as an Israelite, that we were all created by God.

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He protected us, he watered the earth upon which we live.

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and that’s who is talking to us.

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we are being addressed by the creator.

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So I’ll just say that this idea.

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That there this connection to creation is really the idea that the purpose of creation is
for the Jews to enter the land of Israel.

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So we use all of the verbs from creation here to say that God created the world in order
that the Jews should come to the land of Israel.

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In the Yom Kippur davening, there’s a part of the Yom Kippur davening in the afternoon in the
Musaf.

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Which is a which is a very hard part.

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It’s the poetic part.

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It talks about the service of the high priest in the Holy of Holies.

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Yom Kippur was the one day a year where the high priest actually went into the Holy of
Holies and asked God to forgive the Jewish people.

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And in as an introductory paragraph that actually was written about a thousand years ago,
what talks about this service.

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And it does an amazing thing, Geoffrey.

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It starts by talking about creation, Adam and Eve.

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And it goes to the story of creation.

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And it gives you the impression that the reason that God created the world was so that
the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur.

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So that literary technique of connecting things to creation, giving the impression that
the entire purpose of creation is this.

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Whether it’s the Jews entering the land or the high priests entering the
holy of holies, it’s a very it’s a similar strategy, which is amazing.

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A strategy that’s used by the Torah and later on used by the rabbis.

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And I think that it’s amazing and I can’t wait to focus on that piyyut or
that argument.

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But what it does, rabbi, is it also raises the stakes.

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Because that means that if we don’t fulfill our promise and we don’t live up to our
tafkid,

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our role—what we’re supposed to be doing, we can lose it all.

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We can lose the land of Israel and we can lose the earth.

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It raises the stakes.

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And I want to make an argument that this sense of the land being cleansed of the people
because they didn’t live up to their potential and actually did damage is actually a very

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strong thread in in the Torah.

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We all know obviously about Adam and Eve and God in the Garden of Eden and being expelled.

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and we can talk about in search of Eden and back to Eden, but the truth is it was a
one-way street.

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We were expelled, mortality was created.

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It was.. you’ve lost it.

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And I wanna say that there’s a strong thread, even in the halakhah, that if we don’t treat
the land properly, we will be expunged.

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So the most obvious one is in Leviticus 25, and it’s talking about the laws of the
sabbatical, the Shemitah.

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And it says, But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is mine.

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you are but strangers resident with me.

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and then you know it says ki li ha’aretz, and then it says that speak to the
Israelite children.

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and say to them, When you enter the land that I assign you, the land shall observe a
Sabbath day.

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We could easily make this a turn of phrase, something poetry.

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But I want to give ourselves the humility here that we all think the world is created for
us.

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Sometimes we have to think the world was created and we were given the obligation to be
stewards of it.

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and in this case, if you read the peshat, it says the land.

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Has to keep its Shabbat.

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And it goes on to say that when I scatter you among the nations, in Leviticus 26, it says,
and I will unsheath the sword against you, your land shall become a desolation and your

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cities a ruin.

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Here’s the punchline.

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Then shall the land make up for its Sabbath years through the time that it is desolate,
and you are in the land of your enemies.

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Then shall the land rest and make up.

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For its Sabbath years.

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It really does focus on the power and the principle of the land itself in these laws.

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In Leviticus eighteen, again it says, Thus the land became defiled, and I called it to
account for its iniquity, and the land spewed out its inhabitants.

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Va-taki ha’aretz et yoshveha, and it goes on in verse 27.

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For all those abhorrent things were done by the people who were in the land before you,
and the land became defiled, so let not the land spew you out for defiling it, as it

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spewed out the nation that came before you.

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This really connects it in a way that Exodus story does not to the Canaanites.

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The Canaanites—you only had a right to take the land from the Canaanites because
they are doing what you’re doing now.

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They didn’t live up.

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To the promise of the land.

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it’s really powerful and fascinating.

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And in numbers it actually uses our language.

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You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land and the land
can have no expiation.

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It says “lo yekhappar”.

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For blood that is shed on it, except for the blood of the one who shed it, you shall not
defile the land in which you live, in which I myself abide, for I, God, abide among the

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Israelite people.

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It’s a powerful way of looking at the creation, but also of the world, but also creation
of the land of Israel.

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That we are stewards, and if we don’t live up to our promise, we’re out.

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Amazing.

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This is such a good topic and such a good way to wrap up the Torah or to get to the last
the last chapter, which will get ready for Simchat Torah.

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So Yekhuppar, kipper, kippurim, the purpose of creation is us.

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Really beautiful Yom Kippur ideas.

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And one of the Midrashim that I came across was fascinating.

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In Kohelet Rabbah, it says, see the work of God for who can mend what He has warped.

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Re’eh et ma’aseh ha-Elohim, ki mi yukhal letakken et asher ivveto.

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It says, See the works of God.

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When the holy one, blessed be he, created Adam the first man, he took him and showed him
all the trees in the Garden of Eden, and he said to him, See my creations, how beautiful

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and exemplary they are.

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Everything I created, I created for you.

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Make certain that you do not ruin and destroy my world.

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For if you destroy it, there will be no one to mend it after you.

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I kind of think the end of Ha’Azinu, Rabbi, is almost like a mic drop.

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It’s almost like, and the earth will cleanse itself of you; full stop.

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This is the moment.

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This is the moment of Ne’ilah.

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Ne’ilah—we have to fix it.

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We look around the world we live in and there are so many things that need our fixing,
global things.

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I don’t know if it’s… whatever the issue, because I don’t want to be stuck in
environmentalism.

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It’s much bigger than that.

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It’s the way we’re acting.

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It’s almost as if Ha’Azinu is making this move from the individual to the many.

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From the people of Israel writ small for what the humanity is writ large.

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And it makes a wonderful parallel that if we fail, there is no recourse.

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There’s no next year, there’s no return from exile.

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And that makes it so unique and special.

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And I think that’s what gives it such an edge, and it makes it so fascinating that it

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comes right before Yom Kippur.

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It uses the word kapparah of cleansing, but guess what?

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It’s not cleansing us.

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It’s cleansing the world of us.

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And that has to be a powerful mirror to look at.

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And we have to say, are we gonna fix ourselves or is there no one left to fix it?

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And that’s powerful.

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Amazing.

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Shabbat shalom everybody.

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G’mar chatimah tovah have an easy and meaningful fast.

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And we look forward to circling back to you after the fast.

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This was a perfect pre-Parshat Ha’Azinu, pre-Yom Kippur learning together.

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We’ll see you all next time when we finish the book of Devarim.

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So have an easy fast, a meaningful fast, and we’ll all see you.

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Is it next week?

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Do we have No, I think next week is before Sukkot.

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It’ll be in two weeks before Simchat Torah will finish up the Torah.

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Amazing.

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Shabbat shalom and tzom tov.

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So let me ask you personally, what do you think is the existential issue facing us today,
as human beings or as Jews?

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What will determine whether we can still change and be cleansed, or whether we’ve waited
too long and the earth needs to be cleansed of us?

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I’d really love to hear what you think.

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So please share your answers in the comments.

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And have a shanah tovah.