Life comes first

0:39 – GS:

Okay, Rabbi, welcome back from Italia.

0:55 – AM:

Welcome back from California and welcome back to all our listeners. It’s nice to be back to the weekly parasha.

1:02 – GS:

You know, they do say there are a bunch of new years and Nisan and Pesach is one of them and I really feel like this is a new start. I told you before, I was like, you know, out of practice and setting up [the equipment for the podcast] and doing everything. It’s like we are starting all over. It’s exciting. It is. So, you know, as I said in the intro, the name of the portion is Achrei Mot. And in Leviticus 16.1, it says, God spoke to Moses after the death, Achrei Mot, of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of God.

1:42 – GS:

Mot sh’nei b’nei Aaron b’keirav’tem lefnei Hashem v’yarmutu. The keravtem, as you know, means get close, but it also has the same shoresh as karban. So clearly, they were sacrificed. And you don’t really get a sense at all in this that maybe there was anything wrong with what they did. It just is a matter of fact. The Torah Temimah quotes the classical commentaries and says that since the portion goes right into the rules of the Day of the Atonement, it says it comes to teach you that just as the Day of Atonement atones for Israel, so the death of righteous people atones for Israel.

2:33 – GS:

So Rabbi, this is not going to be the focus of our discussion, but clearly you could make a case that it wasn’t simply the two sons of Aaron who were otherwise very righteous but failed in this regard that we can make a statement like that about (them.. regarding the death of the righteous), but you can go in whole hock and say, you know, the death of the righteous. This is a story about Aaron’s two sons, who just become overwhelmed with a need to sacrifice themselves, and here we are. This is the beginning of the portion of this week.

3:10 – GS:

It’s not altogether clear that they had sinned, is it, at least from this pasuk?

3:15 – AM:

No, it’s for sure not.

3:17 – AM:

And the Torah Temimah quoting that Yerushalmi, what does it mean that the death of righteous people atones for Israel? Right? It makes it seem like it makes sense, right? Just like Yom Kippur atones, so too the death of righteous people atones. That’s pretty harsh.

3:36 – GS:

It’s pretty harsh, but again, what we always try to do at Madlik is to take away all the preconceptions that we have and just look at it freshly as we are today. And here we have the Torah Temimah, the Jerusalem Talmud in Yoma, who brings this as an example of the death of the righteous. And this wasn’t simply any death. This was a death that they orchestrated, in a sense. You could make a case. It’s almost celebrating, must I say, martyrdom. They gave their lives for God. And in that Jerusalem Talmud, it brings other examples, and it does go on to say that Yudan bar Shalom said, why did the death of Aaron follow the breaking of the Ten Commandments to teach that the death of the just is as hard for the Holy One, praise be He, as the breaking of the tablets.

4:43 – GS:

So you have this paragraph in the Jerusalem Talmud that links the death of the righteous to atonement. Kind of modulated a little bit by saying, maybe God isn’t all that happy about it, or it hurts him. But I think if you just looked at these verses, you could easily make a case that Judaism, along with many other religions, understands that if you really believe in a God, and if you want to dedicate your life to God, you sometimes need to give your life for God, and in a sense, celebrate martyrdom would almost be the knee-jerk interpretation of this linkage between the death of Aaron’s sons and the high holidays;  Yom Kippur.

5:33 – AM:

Yes, I think that’s right. And you know, it’s interesting you say we have a new beginning. So, we go back to how we work in Madlik. It’s nice to say that idea that we need a fresh view. So, I say it’s harsh. Yeah, sure. It’s harsh. But you know, but let’s leave that aside. Let’s leave our judgment aside. But they say it is a fact. So, we need to evaluate it.

5:55 – GS:

So, I just really quoted chapter 16 and the namesake of the Parsha to create a little bit of context. But what I really, really want to discuss tonight is much later on in the Parsha, and it is Leviticus 18, where there is a critical term, phrase, in rabbinic Judaism, and later Judaism, called v’chai behem, and you shall live by these laws (Meaning you should live and not die for the Torah). And we’re going to visit it and kind of walk down a road about how it treats life, because at the end of the day, Ahare Mot and how we put it into context, is how do we either celebrate life or the adverse, celebrate the end of life or death.

6:45 – GS:

So, in Leviticus 18, you know, it begins, here’s another beginning of a chapter, God spoke to Moses saying, speak to the Israelite people and say to them, I God am your God. Nothing really out of the ordinary here. You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you, nor shall you follow their laws.” Again, we’ve heard this a hundred times before. My rules alone shall you observe and faithfully follow my laws. I, God, am your God.

7:19 – GS:

You shall keep my laws and my rules by the pursuit of which human beings shall live. I am God. There is really nothing new here. If you think about it, even if you read it in the Hebrew and it says, Ve’et mishpatai asher yase’otam ha’adam v’chai b’hem ani hashem. If you go to the Koran translation, it modulates v’chai b’hem slightly. It says, You shall therefore keep my statutes and my commandments, which, if a man do, he shall live in them. I am the Lord. So, we know, wink wink, that vechai bahem became a bumper sticker, a tag phrase for saying what we all think we know about Judaism, which is we embrace life. (over death)

8:06 – GS:

There’s nothing in Judaism that comes more before life. But before we get there, let’s continue reading it and reading the commentaries the way it naturally reads. If you look at Rashi, Rashi says, he says, you shall live in them in the world to come. Eternal life in parentheses, the translator says. For if you say it means that he shall live in this world, is it not a fact that in the end he must die? So even Rashi is going along with the mold, which is, yes, you have to live in them… eternal life.

8:44 – GS:

We’re saying; you follow the laws of the Torah, of God, and you will live forever. Ibn Ezra, it says, Why does it say, therefore keep my statutes, my ordinance, to make it clear that they are a source of life in both worlds to those who observe them. God will give eternal life to the person who understands their secret. He will never die. These two commentaries of and by themselves are missing the point or even intentionally sticking to the way it was written and meant to be understood, which is you keep God’s commandments, you’ll live forever.

9:27 – GS:

You’ll have this blessed life. You’ll have this charmed life of eternity. They are not making any case here about Judaism loves the life that we have on the four cubits of this earth. Am I right? Am I missing something?

9:47 – AM:

No, you are right. That’s correct. I mean, it is interesting the idea, I mean, you know, let’s go back to the Rashi for a second. For the world to come. Shem tomar v’olam hazeh v’lo sofa humeit. Right? Meaning that it’s a funny argument because you could say v’chai bahem means that you should enjoy this world. But Rashi doesn’t like that idea because the idea that it’s finite, that, you know, that means that you can’t really have a perfect world because this world is finite. That’s not obvious to me.

10:28 – GS:

They’re almost resisting the message that we know ultimately took root.

10:35 – AM:

Right, that’s what I’m worried about. Correct, that’s exactly what I’m worried about.

10:40 – GS:

Maybe that’s what they were worried about, and maybe what I’m doing is projecting into them, and they’re not actually reading it as we would say pashut pashat. They are reading it from the context of too many people are thinking about Vachai Bahem as human, physical, temporal life. I want to bring something more spiritual into it, but nonetheless, it is surprising when you read it from the context of how later Jewish tradition took those two words, v’chai b’hem, and that was fascinating to me this year as I read it over again.

11:16 – AM:

I agree with that.

11:17 – AM:

I think that is fascinating. I don’t know what the answer is, and I think you’re right, but I mean, you know, but it is fascinating.

11:25 – GS:

So, the direction I want to take it now is to say, and I said this kind of in the intro, which is, we all know that Judaism loves life. And I said, was it always so? And was it so obvious? So, and of course, I’m kind of contrasting this, I guess, stereotypical belief that we have that Jews just love life against the alternative, which is that at the end of the day, we are living for a world to come, we are living for eternal life, this life is fleeting, this life is meaningless, trivial, temporal, and all that.

12:09 – GS:

And I think we would be doing a disservice if we didn’t follow Rashi and the Ibn Ezra and the other traditional commentaries who see in veha’i Bahem as a celebration of exactly that type of eternal life, to look at our our scripture, our prayers (our liturgy). I mean, here we are talking about Yom Kippur, and on Yom Kippur, we have the Ten Martyrs. It’s a major, major part of the service. Elu Azkara. And I’ve quoted it in the source sheet. I hope you look at the source sheet, but if not, you know, in a few months you’ll be in synagogue, you’ll have plenty of time, you could look up the Ten Martyrs.

12:55 – GS:

And if you were coming to synagogue only once a year, and unfortunately there are people who do just that, you could easily make the case that ours is a religion that celebrates martyrdom. In the translation that I brought from Sefaria, it really elaborates, Rabbi. I’ve never seen that before.

13:15 – AM:

Yeah, this is really amazing, this Sefaria point here.

13:19 – GS:

But what it does is it talks about, you know, some cooked up charge that the Caesar made against the Jews about the kidnapping of Joseph that was never paid for, and therefore the Jewish people had to pay for the crime that was done so many years earlier. I mean, this is the kind of – whether it’s deicide or fratricide or whatever, we get blamed for things that happened long times ago. And he goes up, they send Rabbi Yishmael up to heaven. And it talks about what he does before he goes up, if you read the embellishment, and you know, he dresses in white, he goes to the mikvah, he puts on the tefillin, he comes down when God and the angels tell him, yes, this is true, you have to martyr yourselves.

14:04 – GS:

And it really goes through a whole, I don’t know if I’m right to say celebration, but certainly at the most holy day of the year, at Musaf, which you could argue is the height of the service, here we are reading about Nadav and Avihu, two children and here ten children of God martyred themselves. We also read about the Akedah (The binding/sacrifice of Isaac) on the high holidays. You could easily make a case that Judaism, along with a whole slew of other religions, asks for the ultimate sacrifice.

14:38 – AM:

I think that is absolutely a fair read, right? And you talk about the Akedah, right? I mean, that is its own complication. But what does it mean, right? How do you explain it? And, you know, it seems to be that we are a religion of martyrdom. Now, you have to say that it’s very important to look at this in light of Christianity, because Christianity is a religion of martyrdom. Right? So, you know, how is this—are we responding to Christianity? Are we trying to be like Christians somehow?

15:13 – GS:

I mean, and if you think about it, if I was to say to any Jew on the street, what is the most important blessing; liturgy that we have, it would be the Shema. Maybe the Alenu is up there. These are traditionally prayers of martyrdom. So, again, and I’ve read books who have talked about we’re kind of out of touch with that whole aspect of Judaism, (see: Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages Paperback – August 19, 2008 by Israel Jacob Yuval) and maybe this b’chai b’hem, love of life, Fiddler on the Roof, To Life, To Life, L’chaim, maybe this is a recent interpretation of us Jews. I’m going to argue not so much, but again, you have to be honest when you look at the sources, and I think it’s important because it also means that when you look at the sources as we’re going to do from here on, and they do celebrate life in contradistinction to giving up life and to another life in another world, it comes not only out of a context of an ancient Near East, a Middle Ages. It comes out of the context of our own religion, and we always love looking at different pathways that could have been or that are. Clearly, our own religion had a very solid footing in that notion of this life is a Prusdor, it’s just a passageway to a bigger world, a more important world, and it’s almost meaningless.

Pikei Avot 4: 16

רַבִּי יַעֲקֹב אוֹמֵר, הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה דּוֹמֶה לִפְרוֹזְדוֹר בִּפְנֵי הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. הַתְקֵן עַצְמְךָ בַפְּרוֹזְדוֹר, כְּדֵי שֶׁתִּכָּנֵס לַטְּרַקְלִין:

Rabbi Jacob said: this world is like a vestibule before the world to come; prepare yourself in the vestibule, so that you may enter the banqueting-hall.

16:44 – AM:

I think that’s important to say. I think that’s very important to say. You know, and that’s its own discussion, right? That you learned from Yeshiva, that the whole purpose of this world is to get us to the next world.

17:01 – GS:

So what I love about where we’re going to go from here is we are still going to stay in the realm of interpretation as opposed to maybe what’s intrinsically in the text. So, we go to Deuteronomy 30: 19. And it says:

(19) I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live— (20) by loving your God ה’, heeding God’s commands, and holding fast to [God]. For thereby you shall have life and shall long endure upon the soil that ה’ swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them.

So here we have that iconic choose life, and giving the text a little bit of credit, you cannot but interpret this either on a personal level in terms of the soil that you’re living on, it’s clearly a temporal physical life, or from a national perspective as the Jewish people living on our land in our homeland.

18:14 – GS:

But clearly, וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּחַיִּ֔ים became that bumper sticker, but it does say in the text itself, in no unmistakable terms, that we’re not talking about some eternal life, some afterlife, some other life. We’re talking about living upon l’shevet al ha’adamah asher nishbah Hashem l’avotecha. So, I think we’re not going to be proving any points here, but what we can say is this is where that other context went that said that somehow we Jews fell in love with temporal, timely, physical life and saw that as a worthy goal of existence.

18:57 – AM:

Yeah, now, how did that happen, right? What you’re arguing is that there was a movement, there was a transition somehow, right?

19:07 – GS:

Either a transition, or there were multiple traditions, or it was like everything else. You know, we’ve discussed this so many times. You know, you can find any opinion in the texts or in Judaism,

Pirke Avot 5: 22

בֶּן בַּג בַּג אוֹמֵר, הֲפֹךְ בָּהּ וַהֲפֹךְ בָּהּ, דְּכֹלָּא בָהּ.

Ben Bag Bag said: Turn it over, and [again] turn it over, for all is therein.

and this is one that clearly, I mean, we went around our Seder table, and we said, v’hi she’amda, we raise our cup, and we talk about how in every generation they’ve tried to destroy us, and then we go v’hi she’amda, and this is what saved us. And I said to everyone at the table, what is that secret sauce that has saved us?

19:47 – GS:

And I’d love to know if you’ve asked that question or around your table….

19:51 – AM:

I’ll tell you what we said. Obviously, we asked that question. And I’ll tell you what we said. What we said is you pick up the cup. You know what is that saves us? What saves us is the Seder. The Seder is the most practiced ritual in America. Ninety percent of Jews in America have some form of a Seder. That’s what keeps us going. The you know, the idea of continued ritual.

20:17 – GS:

So, I love that. Some of the answers that we got was the fact that the Jews stay together. We might be the smallest nation, but we’re the biggest family. My son Daniel said that even though we argue and we have different opinions… we embrace different opinions, we stay at the same table, and that’s what the Seder is. That’s kind of a variation of what you just said. Around the table at differing people and we’re still together. Some people said it was humor. Some people said it was lifting up that glass to l’chaim.

20:53 – AM:

That’s funny. See, I’m just struck by the fact that we lift up the glass. Why is it, you know, that we lift up the glass? Somehow there has to be some symbolism in that.

21:07 – GS:

So, that was the segue I was looking for and the reason we lift up the glass is what do we say? We say l’chaim. We say To Life. So, that clearly was one answer that our secret sauce is that we are just infatuated with life. And that is, again, you know, is it in that verse, b’chartem b’chayim? I’m not sure, but I do believe that it does talk about – can’t reinterpret it the way Rashi and the Ibn Ezra did to b’chai b’hem. Here we’re talking about temporal life. And it’s an embracement of it. So let me just explain how b’chai b’hem in our verses, in our parasha, how it was interpreted.

21:56 – GS:

And you know, we’ve been talking at the level of midrash, of allegory, of commentary, but now we’re going to talk halacha (Jewish Law). The Mishnah Torah written by Maimonides in the laws of the Shabbat says, the laws of the Shabbat are suspended in the face of a danger to life, as are the obligations of the other mitzvot. So, in a sense, what he’s saying is from a legal perspective, all of our ritual, all of our religion doesn’t ever, ever compete with something that puts life in peril. And he goes on to give many, many examples of that.

22:50 – GS:

And then finally he says that these list of things that I tell you you can do on the Shabbat In Mishnah Torah Shabbat 2.3, says, when such treatment is administered, it should not be administered by Gentiles, by children, by servants, or by women…. excuse the women part. What he’s saying is, don’t put this off to whatever in your time is considered the lesser members of society. So that they will not view the Shabbat flippantly. Instead, the treatment should be administered by the leaders of Israel and the wise.

23:35 – GS:

It is forbidden to hesitate before transgressing the Sabbath laws on behalf of a person who is legally ill. It says, when a person shall perform to live through them, he quotes our verse as the proof text. He says, how do we know that not only are you overriding the ritual law, but you are actually—you should have the most saintly person do it—you are actually embodying the ritual law? It’s because it says in Leviticus which a person shall perform b’chai b’hem. And he goes on to really get into so many ways that the rabbis have gone out of their way to say, even in a situation where normally we follow the “rov”, the majority, in a case of Pekuach Nefesh (when life is at stake), you save the life.

24:34 – GS:

Normally you have to consult with a higher authority…. just do it. It’s really fascinating, if you recall a few weeks ago I had an interview with Daniel Polisar of Shalem College and he was talking about raising funds to buy protective gear for soldiers and he realized the need on Friday afternoon. He called his rabbi and he says, can I continue working on this spreadsheet and sending out the emails over Shabbat and the rabbi said you have to do it. These are live situations and really we’re stretching it.

25:10 – GS:

We’re not talking about someone who’s on life support. We’re talking about anything that can remotely be associated with life, overrides not only Shabbat but every mitzvah. This is rather remarkable and it’s remarkable that the only verse that Maimonides brings is from our parsha that didn’t have to be interpreted that way.

25:33 – AM:

Yeah, that is absolutely right. And again, that’s what’s interesting to me is the fact it didn’t have to be interpreted that way. That’s why it’s so interesting.

25:43 – GS:

And so, to me, Rabbi, what that means is, and this is why I love our texts and I love our Torah so much, is number one, we don’t necessarily hide the making of the salami, so to speak. We take a verse, we reinterpret it, we put it into law, and it’s fascinating if you think of the history of this. We’re going to go, I know it’s just Passover, I know we were talking about Yom Kippur, But believe it or not, we’re going to go to the book of the Maccabees and Hanukkah time, because we are going to see that this law that pikuach nefesh overrides, that a life at risk overrides everything, was not necessarily always the law.

26:33 – GS:

Now, the book of Maccabees, I don’t believe we have in the original Hebrew. We only have in Greek, even though there is a translation into Hebrew or Aramaic, in the Sefaria. Here’s a situation where we’re reading it in translation and we’re doing just fine. And it says in the Book of Maccabees 1.9 that there was a battle. Now when Bacchides heard hereof, he came on the sabbath day unto the banks of Jordan with a great power. Then Jonathan said to his people, let us go now and fight for our lives.

27:09 – GS:

And what happened is, and this is if you read it in the text, and I encourage you all to look at the source notes, it almost sounds at this point in the story as though we’re talking about Moses and Nachshon Ben Aminadav on the banks of the Reed Sea. And they’re on one side, and they go, wherefore cry ye now into heaven that ye may be delivered from the hand of your enemies? So, with that, they went to the other side of the river. And then later on, what happened is their enemy made war against them on the Sabbath day.

27:48 – GS:

And they said, we will not come forth, neither will we do the king’s commandment to profane the Sabbath a day. They said, let us die, these are the Jews speaking, let us die all in our innocency. Heaven and earth will testify for us that ye put us to death wrongfully. So, they rose up against them in battle on the Sabbath and they slew them with their wives and children and their cattle to the number of a thousand people. So, the first thing we have to note is things have not changed. We always get attacked on our holidays.

28:21 – GS:

Number two, in this particular case, they paid the price of not even leaving their caves. We’re talking about a Chumrah (Strict interpretation of Jewish Law against changing domains) here, and they were killed and slaughtered. And this is where Judah Maccabee rose and was an innovator and initiator. At that time, therefore, they decreed, saying, Whosoever shall come to make battle with us on the Sabbath day, we will fight against him, neither we will die, all as our brethren that were murdered in this secret place. So here it’s as close as you get. Rabbi, you ask, how did they learn this?

28:57 – GS:

When did this happen? As close as you get as of a documentary of how you see the halacha changing in front of your eyes, or at least the practice of Jewish law changes in front of your eyes. And this is as much what we celebrate on Hanukkah, I think, as anything else. It’s a fascinating story, isn’t it?

29:19 – AM:

It is a fascinating story. I mean, when it comes to Hanukkah, the question is why? That story is better than the story of the miracle of the oil. It’s interesting that we choose to celebrate the miracle of the oil even though this story is better.

29:36 – GS:

So, we are running out of time, and you just got back from Italy, so there’s a time difference here. But what I want to end with, and I really encourage all of you to look at the notes, but more importantly, to watch a movie. It’s available on Amazon. It’s called Precious Life by Shlomi Eldar. I heard a presentation by him and a guy named Yuval Biton at our local Westport library. And what both of them have in common is Yuval Biton was a doctor in an Israeli prison and he actually cured Yahya Sinwar when he was gravely sick.

30:18 – GS:

He saved the person who became our enemy. And the movie is about taking a woman from Gaza who has a child. Two of her children have already died of a rare disease. This child is brought to Israel’s hospital. He gets a bone marrow donor. And a contribution from an anonymous Israeli of $50,000. It turns out that the contributor lost his son in battle. It’s a powerful, powerful story of the relationship between Israel and Gaza, but the part that I put in the notes, a video, is a point where the mother is starting to talk and they’re talking about Jerusalem and the temple and the willingness of people in Gaza to sacrifice their lives.

31:14 – GS:

And I’m going to pick up the narrative where the doctor says, “like Arafat said, a million shahids for Jerusalem.” And she answers, more than a million. All of us are for Jerusalem. All of our people. Jerusalem is ours. You’re angry, right? And he says, why? She says, because of what I said. No, no, I just think the whole concept of Shahid is silly, he says. She says, all of us, not just a million, we’re all for Jerusalem. All of us. Jerusalem is ours. Do you understand? Death is a natural thing for us.

31:53 – GS:

We’re not afraid to die. From the smallest infant, even younger than Mohammed, (my son), to the oldest person, we’d all sacrifice ourselves for Jerusalem. We feel we have the right. You can be angry. I am, he says. So be it. I can’t be, it’s a religious thing. It’s heresy to say that Jerusalem isn’t ours. Death is normal for you? Totally normal, she says. Then how come you’re fighting over (your son) Muhammad’s life if you say that death is a normal thing? And then she describes how she had lost two daughters, she mourned in the moment, but then she got over it.

32:31 – GS:

And they conclude the conversation as follows. She: you don’t believe in death? He: no, to us life is precious. She: life is precious but not to us. We feel that life is nothing. Life isn’t worth a thing, (laughing). That’s why we have suicide bombers. They’re not afraid to die. It’s natural. None of us fear death, even our children. It’s natural to us.

33:00 – GS:

He says, I asked you before, after Muhammad recovers, would you let him become a shaheed? Absolutely, she says. For what purpose? If it’s for the sake of Jerusalem, it’s nothing to me. I know it’s hard for you. Our people die. You kill people in Gaza by the dozens, right? When there’s an attack in Gaza, right? Do you deny that? He says: no, I don’t deny that. Our people get killed dozens at a time. When one of yours gets killed, it shakes up your entire world. For us, it’s normal. We cry out in joy and celebrate when someone becomes a shahid. To us, a shahid is a big thing. To you, when someone gets killed, the world turns upside down. You take it very hard. He asks, what’s preferable? She, what do you mean? Him, what’s better, that life is precious or that it’s not precious? She says, life isn’t precious, smiling. No, life isn’t precious.

33:40 – GS:

You have to watch the movie. Afterwards, the movie director claims, that she said all that because she was being criticized in Gaza for collaborating with the Jews. But my takeaway is, whether she believed it or not, she represented a belief.

34:29 – GS:

And at the end of the day, we could make a case that that’s what we’re fighting. And this isn’t a war between colonialists and freedom fighters. It’s a war between people who love life and people who don’t. It’s just a chilling movie, and this part of it is a chilling narrative where it really gets to the crux of what we’ve been discussing tonight, Ahare Mot.

34:57 – AM: That’s amazing.

34:58 – AM:

I mean, everybody should watch the movie. I look forward, Sharon, I look forward to watching it as well. I mean, look forward. It’s very important to see it. And this was a great topic. Welcome back, everybody. We should enjoy this world so that we’re worthy to enjoy the world to come. Shabbat shalom to everybody.

35:20 – GS:

Shabbat shalom, and it is on Amazon so you can rent the movie A Precious Life. Shlomi Eldar is the director. Shabbat shalom. See you all next week. Let the hostages be free and let there be peace.

35:33 – AM:

Be well. Amen. Be well. Bye-bye.

35:36 – GS:

Hello, Loren. How are you tonight?

35:38 – Loren Davis

I’m great. Thank you, Geoffrey. I was just wondering; you talked this evening about the death of Aaron’s sons and that there may be a link there to a celebration of life and then afterlife. Is there other documentation that you can point us to that would maybe go a little bit further into that concept, because I think it’s a reasonable conclusion, because it’s a difficult passage to read and make sense of most of the time when you read it. And then you also tied it, you also discussed the issue of the lack in this movie of the lack of the dearness of life that the people from Gaza feel.

36:32 – LD:

Is there any correlation between that feeling and the story of Aaron’s sons in terms of the fact that they accept that death is something that’s part of their journey?

36:44 – GS:

You know, Lauren, I’m a big student of religion, and one of the reasons I’m a student of religion is that I think all of our religions always express us, humanity. And there’s good things and bad things in humanity, and therefore there were good things and bad things in religion, and there were things that have expiration dates also. And I think that there’s no question, and there’s a book by John Levinson, I think it’s called The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity  August 30, 1995 by Jon D. Levenson, and he talks about, he’s a scholar, a Jewish scholar at Yale and he talks about the sacrifice of Jesus.

37:27 – GS:

Of Isaac, we Jews typically call it Akedat Yitzchak, the binding of Isaac, because we have an issue with thinking that Isaac was actually killed and resurrected. But there are Midrashim that he points out where, in fact, Isaac dies and is resurrected. There is definitely—these are shared traditions that come from shared, deep-seated needs and desires and wants for us to beat this mortality race and to believe in a world to-come and to believe in a resurrection and to believe in an afterlife.

38:09 – GS:

And so, it is in Islam for sure. It is in Judaism and it is certainly in Christianity, and of course with Christianity and Judaism, you have the sibling rivalry where they went in one direction and we retracted. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t within us, and I think that what I was trying to say about this woman (in the movie) was whether she believed it or she was echoing things that she heard by people who were radicals and she didn’t believe, there’s no question when they talk about Hamas is an idea, part of these ideas that are shared with the Muslim Brotherhood and others are crazy ideas within the Islamic religion and we have plenty of our own crazy ideas and it’s the obligation of those of us who are students of religion to police and to explore and bring to the light of day that there are these texts, there are these traditions, and there are alternatives.

39:12 – GS:

And I think ultimately, because Hamas is an idea that makes it extremely hard to flesh out, but like other ideas, ideas can change and ideas can be subjected to the light of day. And so, yeah, I mean, I do think that you have to listen to it as hard as it is. And when you see this woman smiling, saying it, it’s chilling. But we have to know that there are pathways of thought, mostly driven by religion, that can think in those terms. You know, I think Thomas Friedman once said that when the Cold War was upon us and it was the U.S. against the U.S.S.R., we had mutual assured destruction, MAD. And he said, you know, with Iran and these types of eschatological end-of-day types of religions, mutual assured destruction is an invitation to the party. It’s not a threat! I mean, these are societies that are built upon this end of days. We have our own messianists in Jerusalem today. So, I don’t know, it’s very scary, it’s very depressing that these ideas can still take root today, but yes, they’re in our tradition, they’re in Christianity, and they’re certainly in Islam today, and they’re playing out in front of us.

40:47 – LD

Yeah, it is scary. It’s a perversion, I think, of what the religions may have originally been created to perpetuate, but that’s editorial on my part.

41:00 – GS:

Well, I mean, I think at the end of the day, if you believe in a created world, and you were created by the divine, life is the greatest gift that you have, and you have to nurture it in yourself and in your fellow creations.