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From Moses to Modern Populism

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If you think your flaws and failures automatically make you a better, more “authentic” leader, you’ve completely misunderstood the lesson of Moses.

Most civilizations turned their founders into saints. The Hebrew Bible does the opposite. Abraham falters. Jacob deceives. David sins. Moses—the greatest prophet in Judaism—is denied entry into the Promised Land.

This isn’t a bug in the Torah. It’s one of its most revolutionary ideas.

In this episode of Madlik, Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz explore why Judaism insists that greatness and imperfection can coexist—but never confuses failure with virtue. Along the way they examine the Torah’s portrait of Moses, the Beatitudes, Isaiah, Jonathan Sacks, Nahum Sarna, David Flusser, Martin Luther, Bret Stephens, and the surprising connection between biblical leadership and today’s culture of authenticity, victimhood, and populism.

Can a society acknowledge human weakness without celebrating it?

That question may be as relevant today as it was in the wilderness.

Key Takeaways

  1. The Torah Tells the Truth About Greatness

Unlike most ancient cultures, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t turn its heroes into flawless saints. Moses, Abraham, Jacob, and David are remembered in all their greatness—and all their humanity. Their failures don’t diminish them; they make their greatness credible.

  1. Flaws Are Lessons, Not Credentials

Judaism teaches us to acknowledge weakness, learn from it, and overcome it. There is a profound difference between recognizing imperfection and celebrating it. The Torah preserves failure to cultivate humility—not to make failure itself a virtue.

  1. Leadership Is Measured by Character, Not Victimhood

Moses never reaches the Promised Land, yet he remains Judaism’s greatest leader because of his faithfulness, courage, and willingness to serve a mission larger than himself. In an age that often confuses authenticity with virtue and grievance with authority, the Torah reminds us that true leadership is earned by responsibility, not by imperfection alone.

Timestamps

[00:00] Flawed Heroes Thesis

[01:14] Parsha Setup and Welcome

[02:07] Moses Pleads to Enter

[04:37] Rav Lachem Midrash

[06:49] Vetchanan and Human Limits

[07:43] Mythic Moses Rejected

[11:02] Sacks on Mortality and Mistakes

[18:31] Flaws Versus Virtue

[19:11] Beatitudes and Isaiah

[25:58] Essenes and Poverty Ideal

[31:09] Modern Populism and Privilege

[32:58] Closing Shabbat Shalom

Links & Learnings

Sign up for free and get more from our weekly newsletter https://madlik.com/

Sefaria Source Sheet: https://voices.sefaria.org/sheets/739882

Transcript here: https://madlik.substack.com/

00:00:05.166 –> 00:00:08.797 What if the Hebrew Bible’s greatest innovation isn’t 2 00:00:08.797 –> 00:00:12.060 monotheism, but its refusal to create 3 00:00:12.286 –> 00:00:16.107 perfect heroes? Every civilization celebrates its 4 00:00:16.172 –> 00:00:19.961 founders. Most polish away their flaws. The Torah does the 5 00:00:20.042 –> 00:00:23.811 opposite. It tells us that Abraham faltered, Jacob deceived, 6 00:00:23.892 –> 00:00:27.370 David sinned, and Moses, the greatest prophet who ever 7 00:00:27.499 –> 00:00:31.233 lived, was denied entry into the Promised Land. The 8 00:00:31.233 –> 00:00:35.081 Torah doesn’t hide greatness behind perfection, but neither does it 9 00:00:35.081 –> 00:00:38.593 turn failure into a virtue. That 10 00:00:38.674 –> 00:00:41.817 ancient balance feels surprisingly relevant today. 11 00:00:42.538 –> 00:00:45.473 We live in a culture that increasingly prizes 12 00:00:45.649 –> 00:00:49.466 authenticity over excellence, where victimhood can become 13 00:00:49.594 –> 00:00:53.443 moral authority, flaws become credentials, and success 14 00:00:53.587 –> 00:00:56.987 itself is sometimes viewed with suspicion. 15 00:00:57.616 –> 00:01:01.013 This week, we’ll ask what the Torah’s radically honest 16 00:01:01.013 –> 00:01:04.621 portrait of Moses teaches us about leadership, humility, 17 00:01:04.977 –> 00:01:08.411 accountability, and why recognizing human weakness 18 00:01:08.784 –> 00:01:11.216 is very different from celebrating it.
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Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik,

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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

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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

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in the show notes. This week's Parsha is V'yetchanan.

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Join us as we explore the Torah's revolutionary portrait of

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flawed leadership and ask what happens when a culture moves

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from acknowledging human weakness to celebrating it.

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Why does Judaism preserve the failures of its greatest heroes

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without ever turning failure into a virtue? And

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what might that teach us about leadership, morality,

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and ourselves? So another— that was a mouthful. That's another week. That's it.

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What a great topic. Here we go. Let's go.

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So Va'etchanan means that Moses

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was pleading with God in Deuteronomy 3:23. He

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pleaded, O my sovereign God, you who let your servants see the first

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works of your greatness and your mighty hand, who has

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power whose deeds no God in heaven or earth can equal. So he's laying

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on the praise. Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good

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land on the other side of the Jordan. This is his on-the-mountaintop

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moment. That good hill country and the Lebanon.

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But God was wrathful with me on your account. Now he's

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turning to the children of Israel. It's because of you guys. And would not

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listen to me. God said to me, enough. Never speak to

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me of this matter again.

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It's too much.

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Don't speak to me of this matter again. Go up to the

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summit of Pisgah and gaze to the west, the north, the

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south, the east. Look at it well, for you

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shall not go across yonder Jordan. Give

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Joshua his instructions, imbue him with strength and courage,

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for he shall go across as the head of this people, and he

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shall allot to them the land that you may only

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see. God definitely rubs it in. You're only

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gonna see it. This is as good as it gets. But really, this is a

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question of Moses's mortality,

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Moses finishing his life's mission,

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and Moses confronting the fact that he's not

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perfect, that he did something wrong. I mean, you even sense in it he's still

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blaming the Jewish people. It's still— he's a little bitter.

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It's all there. It's sad.

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But on the other hand, We're not taking away,

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as we'll see with the rabbis, from the greatness of Moses. But

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it is what it is. Right. Well, that's for sure. And you

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have to remember that it wasn't the people's fault that he

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hit the rock. That was his own decision. So he blames the

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people. That's just what frustrated people do, is they blame

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others rather than taking responsibility for themselves, on themselves.

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So that's not such a good It's not. The

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flaws are still there. We are who we are. You know, they say it's

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hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I guess that

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applies to all of us, even if we are Ein Moshe

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Kemoshe. I mean, he was the greatest, but nonetheless. So

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in Bamidbar Rabbah, it says, Rav l'chem b'nei Levi,

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it's too much for you, the son of Levi. That is a quote from

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Numbers. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, you struck with a rod,

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and with you struck you are stricken, he

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said, it is too much for you. Rav Lachem, tomorrow you will

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hear. So again, the Midrash picks up

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on this Rav Lachem, it's too much, and it

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focuses on 2 instances. One was with

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the sons of Levi. This was Korach's rebellion. And

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it says, just as Bnei Korach, the Levi,

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overreached, you're also overreaching. In Sotah, Rabbi

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Levi says, Moses proclaimed to the Jewish people when

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rebuking them with the term rav, and therefore it was

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proclaimed to him with the term rav that he would not

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enter the land of Israel. The Gemara explains he proclaimed with the

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term rav when speaking with the congregation of Korach, you take too

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much upon yourselves. So it's even interesting

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that they're not totally focused on which

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crime that Moses committed that

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was responsible for him not seeing his

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life's mission fulfilled. Was it actually hitting the rock,

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or was it the way he talked to the children of Israel? Which is

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interesting, right? Means his frustration with the people

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may have ultimately been his downfall.

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But clearly, I love the fact that it says rav lachem.

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Rav, I guess most people would listen to it and say it means rabbi.

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But rav is like rov. It means like many. You're

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taking too much. Too much, right? Right.

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And I would say the word here is overreach. We're

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humans at the end of the day, and we can't necessarily— we'll

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see Rav Sacks in a second— we can't necessarily fulfill our life's mission.

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We can't necessarily do it all ourselves in one generation,

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and we are not perfect. So let's focus a little bit

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on some of the other rabbinic material. In Devarim Rabbah,

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it says, I pleaded with the Lord at that time, saying—

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Rabbi Yochanan said, from here you learn that no creature has

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any claim on its Creator, as Moses, the master

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of all the prophets, came only with an expression of plea.

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So he's focused on the word Va'etchanan. And what he's

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saying is, this is the real difference between us humans,

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even the greatest prophet who ever lived, the greatest leader who

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ever lived, we are not gods. And at the end of the day,

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we can only get down on our knees, as the case may be,

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and plead with God. But I think this is what he's saying, the way

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my takeaway is, this is the boundary between

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humans, creations of God, and God, him

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or herself. Right. There's no question that that's right. Okay,

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great. Let's see why. Great Midrash right here. So here's a

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fascinating Midrash. So God is figuring out how

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is he going to give the bad news to Moses and who's going to

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deliver the— who's going to give him the death kiss, so to speak.

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And what I found in it, in one of the dialogues, and I'm taking this

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just a little moment, is something

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fascinating. So I believe it was Shmuel who was

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sent; the prophet Samuel. And Samuel says to Moses, I

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came to take your soul. He, meaning Moses, said to him, who sent you?

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He said to him, the one who created all creations. He said to him, meaning

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Moses said to Samuel, you will not take my soul. He said to him,

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anyone who comes into the world, their souls are given to me. Moses

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said to him, I have greater strength than anyone

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else who comes into the world. Wow. He said to him, what is your

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strength? He said to him, and this could have been

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the myth of Moses, and that's why I'm quoting it.

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Moses says, I am the son of Amram. I

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emerged circumcised from my mother's womb.

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There was no need to circumcise me. So if getting

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circumcised is kind of a fix, fixing the mold,

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Moses says, I was born pure, complete.

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On the day that I was born, I was able to speak. I walked on

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my feet. I spoke with my father and my mother, and I did not

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even suck milk. This almost sounds like a typical

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Near Eastern myth of a deity being born,

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a perfect human being. When I was 3 months old, I

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prophesied, said Moses, and said that I was destined to

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receive the Torah from fiery flames. When

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I was walking outside, I entered the king's palace. He goes

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on and on and talks about everything that he did. I received the

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Torah from the right hand of the Holy One, blessed be he. I taught it to

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Israel. He says, I caused the sun and the moon

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to stand still in the heights, and I struck with the staff in my hand

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and I killed them. Who is there among those who come

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into the world who can do that? So if you want to talk

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about a flawed personality, in this particular

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Midrash where Moses is addressing Samuel, he's saying,

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I'm not that guy. I was as close to perfection as you

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get. Go from here, wicked one. You must not say that.

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Go flee from me. I will not give my soul to you. And so what

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was the takeaway? That God himself had to come

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and take Moses away, which on the one hand is a

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great honor, the kiss of death, so to speak. But

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on the other hand, you have this vignette and you realize how

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this story could have gone. And it makes, I think,

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The absolute unanimity

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amongst our commentators, and I would say

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the legend of the street, that we look at our

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most famous, our most quote-unquote perfect

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leader, and we find the imperfections. We don't shun away

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from them. We don't varnish it. It is what it is, and

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it makes it that much more profound, I believe.

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Fantastic. I mean, that's it. To recognize their

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failings is to appreciate them as human leaders.

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So Jonathan Sacks wrote a book on leadership. I have a link to

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an article that he wrote. He goes, for us as Jews, and by the way,

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I quote Jonathan Sacks, but I think you will agree with me, Adam,

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that there is kind of unanimity about the

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failure of our leaders. There is no one who takes the

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crash course from you to becoming a Jew,

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who probably doesn't hear from you to explain that, unlike maybe other

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religions whose founders or leaders

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are perfect, we do not shellac, we do not

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varnish our leaders. So that's a very important

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point about the need to have your leaders be

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perfect. You say, like, Christianity has that.

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The leader needs to be perfect. Judaism never had it.

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Recently, obviously, the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox,

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are in the headlines. The

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ultra-Orthodox tend to deify

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their leaders. They follow their leaders.

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They don't ask any questions. Whatever the leader says, that's

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what they do. The leader cannot be wrong. We know

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that Hasidic sects are like that. And I think, Geoffrey, it's a

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very important point to say that that's not really

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the Jewish way. That's a much more

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modern phenomenon because they feel as if they were

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being attacked by secular culture. So they

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need to fall into themselves and make their

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leaders perfect. But I think that's a critical point,

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especially now, to keep in mind about what's happened

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in certain sectors of Judaism. I love it. You heard it first here

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on Madlik from Rabbi Adam Mintz himself.

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Thanks. And now back to our podcast.

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So now we continue with Jonathan Sacks and his

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rendering of this, but it's not unique. For us as Jews,

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humanity at its highest is still human. We are mortal. We are creatures

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Of flesh and blood. We are born, we grow, we learn, we mature,

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we make our way in the world. If we are lucky, we

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find love. If we are blessed, we have children. but we

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also age. The body grows old, even if the spirit stays

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young. We know that this gift of life does not last forever,

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because in this physical universe, nothing lasts forever, not

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even planets or stars. Now he's focused on the mortality

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aspect of what's going on in Moses's mind. For each of

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us, therefore, there is a a river we will not cross,

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a promised land we will not enter, and a

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destination we will not reach. Even the greatest

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life is an unfinished symphony. Moses's death on the

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far side of the Jordan is a consolation for all of us.

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None of us should feel guilty or frustrated or angry or

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defeated that there are things we hope to achieve

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but did not. This is what it is to be

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human. Okay, so now he has the second thing. It's you can't

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finish it all in your one generation. Nor should we

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be haunted by our mistakes. That, I believe,

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is why the Torah tells us that Moses sinned. Did it

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really have to include the episode of the water, the stick, the rock, and

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Moses's anger? It happened. But did the Torah have to

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tell us it happened? It passes over 38 of

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the 40 years in the wilderness in silence. It does

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not report every incident, only those that

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have lessons for posterity. Why

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not then pass over this too in silence, sparing

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Moses's good name? What other religious literature

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has ever been so candid about the

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failings of even the greatest of its heroes? That's, by

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the way, a good question. I mean, you'll never hear the traditional

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commentators ask that question, because if the Torah has it, the Torah

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wants to have it. But that's his question. And that is, why

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bother? What do you need to hear about Moses's failings for?

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Wouldn't it be a better picture of Moses not to have those

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failings? Even the greatest human being made mistakes,

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failed as often as they succeeded, and had moments of black

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despair. What made them great was not that they

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were perfect, but that they kept going. They learned from every error,

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refused to give up hope, and eventually accepted the great gift that

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only failure can grant. Namely humility. They understood

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that life is about falling 100 times and getting up again.

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It is about never losing your ideals, even when you know how hard

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it is to change the world. It's about getting up every morning and walking

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one more day toward the promised land, even though you know you may

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never get there, but knowing also that you helped

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others get there. I think about what's going on in

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this moment, but again, I want to focus on today's

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episode less on the mortality aspect, which is

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critical, less on the intergenerational aspect, which

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is you can't do it all. We all need to create our own Joshua,

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but focus on the flawed part of it, that there is a

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profound Jewish benchmark lesson

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that we learn. If we— you asked, why does it have to

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mention it? And by the way, the Abarbanel asks the same thing. It's

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because the lesson is too important to miss, that even if it

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detracts a little bit from Moses' kavod, the lesson takes precedence. Right.

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Which is remarkable. Let's say it. That's remarkable. And you

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notice that Rabbi Sacks, that Jonathan Sacks, wrote this in a dvar

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Torah for Vezot HaBerachah, which is about the mortality of

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Moses, the fact that he died. So you understand why he's focusing on

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mortality, even though we're interested in something else. Yeah.

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And I'll just add, Nahum Sarna is another one. In his book on

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Genesis, he talks about Abraham and Isaac and all their

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failures, passing their wives off as sisters

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and all of that. Really does say that if you compare this to

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other mythologies in the ancient Near East,

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it is striking how different it is. This was

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something that was very unique. But now I want to talk about the

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flawed part, because the argument that I'm going to

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take today is that it's a very nuanced

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argument, and there's a big difference between

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recognizing failure in our leaders and

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idealizing failures. There's a difference between

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saying that our leaders have flaws and

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saying that a flaw is their ultimate credential.

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And I think I want to do is compare it to the Sermon on the

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Mount, and not necessarily the pashat of the Sermon on the

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Mount, but certainly a way that it has been taken

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or mis-taken. So let's just read the Sermon on the Mount a little bit.

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And of course, Jesus goes up onto the mountain. And he says what they call

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the Beatitudes. It's really, blessed are the poor in spirit.

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Think of blessed as ashrei. Ashrei ha'ish shelo yish

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gachecha. So happy are those who are poor

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in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed

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are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the

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meek, for they will inherit the land. So

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it's almost as though, Rabbi, you could take it to mean that the

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poor in spirit are going to go to the head of the line. Yes.

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Those who mourn will go again ahead of those who

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simply are living a normal life. And those that

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are meek, they will be the ones. They become

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almost the ideal. Blessed are those who hunger and

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thirst for righteousness. Now, I must say that if you ask the

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typical man on the street, they're going to forget about poor

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in spirit and think it's poor. They will think less about

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those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and think of those who are hunger—hungry,

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right? Right. Blessed are those

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who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is

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the kingdom of heaven. Again, the argument that I will be

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making is there are those who believe that something like this is

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teaching us that if you're persecuted, by right you

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must be better. You must— it's almost a

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badge of entitlement, if you will.

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And now what we're going to see is how

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this has been interpreted, because I think the first

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thing that we have to understand is in one aspect, it comes

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right out of Judaism, and it's really a nuance. So if you

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look at Isaiah 61, the Spirit of God is upon

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me because God has anointed me. He says, I have been

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sent as a herald of joy to the humble,

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levasar anavim shalchini,

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to bind up the wounded of the heart, to proclaim release of

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the captives. But as a Jew reading this, you know what

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it means. If you find somebody poor, make him less poor. If you

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find somebody who's captured, release him. It doesn't

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mean to say when it says that I am celebrating these

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people that they have more inherent worth. In

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Isaiah 61:1-3, it says,

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I have been sent as a herald of joy to the humble, to bind up

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the wounded of the heart, to proclaim release to the captives, to

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comfort all who mourn, to give them a turban

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instead of ashes, the festive anointment instead of mourning,

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a garment of splendor instead of a drooping spirit. They

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shall be called oaks of victory. You could

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really interpret this as saying that they go to the head of the

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line. But as a Jew, when we read it, we know what it means.

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It's to pick them up and bring them into the

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community, to give them the same tabernacle of victory

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that all of us are entitled to. But it is a nuance, Rabbi.

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Yes. Now, this is obviously, you know,

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that the Sermon on the Mount is based on these

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verses in Isaiah. It's not that it just happens to be

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similar. What they did is they took the verses in Isaiah

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and they reformulated them as the

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fundamental principles, tenets of

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Christianity. So the point that you're making isn't

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just an interesting point. Yeah. It actually is the difference

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between Judaism and Christianity back to the origins of

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Christianity. And exactly. And

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if in fact the reading of those who

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argue that the Sermon on the Mount is the

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celebration and the idealization of those

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who are today's, who are suffering, shall today

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be the leaders. It comes from a change, a

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slight change of, I would say, emphasis. So in

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Psalms it says, but the lowly shall inherit the land.

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You and I would read this and we would say they get a plot of

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land along with everybody else. It doesn't mean that they will

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inherit the land as opposed to everybody else. Correct.

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It's so fascinating because you're right, Jesus was speaking

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to fellow Jews, and whether he made this

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paradigm shift or it was made— it's what they

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heard, there's no question that there was this shift

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in the Hebrew Bible, the poor are

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blessed because God hears their cry and society must

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restore them, not because deprivation itself is

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inherently superior. The goal of the Exodus is not

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permanent marginality. It's freedom, land,

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abundance, national flourishes. If you read the

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Bible, there are 2 things that I want to bring out. Number one, in

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Devarim, the book that we're in, it says, there shall be no needy among

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you. And then a few verses later, it says, for there will never

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cease to be needy ones in your land. And that's not a contradiction.

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It just means that the obligation is on us to

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make sure that those who fall through the cracks are pulled up and

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brought with us. It wasn't a

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transformation. And then the other thing

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is the Bible celebrates success. The

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Bible celebrates prosperity. It never

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idealizes poverty. So in Deuteronomy 8:10, it

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says, when you have eaten your fill,

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Give thanks to the Eternal your God for the good land given to you. You

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have to be thankful for the good. You never put it down. When you have

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eaten your fill and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and

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flocks have multiplied, it says in Deuteronomy 8, and your silver

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and gold have increased and everything you own has prospered. It doesn't say

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give it away. It doesn't say it's going to blind you. It says,

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beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God. That's right.

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forget God who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.

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Beware that you don't look and appreciate

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those people who don't have it as good as you. It's really

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a nuance of a change, but it is connected to this thing of

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flaws. Flaws are important. They will always exist, and they

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are there for us to learn from, as Rabbi Sacks says, and

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it's there for us to tweak and fix, not

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disappear. But they are never there for us to

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absolutely laud. what I am going to share

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with you is an amazing scholar that I discovered this

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week named David Flusser. He was an

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immigrant from Czechoslovakia.

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He studied at Charles University. He was taken

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under the wing of a professor. He was fascinated in religion

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and a professor of Christianity, and he fell in love with Christianity.

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He comes to Israel, he makes Aliyah, and he actually

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becomes an Orthodox Jew, and he's teaching at the Hebrew University.

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And one of his main motivations in life

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is to show that Jesus was like Hillel in a sense. He was a

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great leader. He was a great thought leader. And so he

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connects what Jesus says to strands within

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Judaism. Listen to what he does with the Sermon on the

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Mount. He connects it to the Essenes,

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the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the desert.

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He says, contrite of spirit, ani ruach,

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the Sons of Light called themselves evionei

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chaschesed, paupers of grace. So

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he's taking the word that said, you who are poor of spirit.

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These appellations are characterized by a paradoxical

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combination of a term depicting the abject state of

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the sect in the present with a second one which proclaims

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triumphantly the plenty of God's grace bestowed on his

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elect. So Rabbi, if we had a sect in Judaism

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that celebrated poverty, that celebrated living in the

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desert without everything, with giving away possessions, it was

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the Essenes. And what he's showing is that this

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paradoxical contrast between the present plight and

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persecution of the blessed and their future glory

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in the kingdom of heaven is also the main burdens of

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what Jesus was saying on that mount. Right.

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What he is saying is that these aniim, these poor,

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poor of spirit, I should say, are endowed with the

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supreme gift of divine bliss with the Holy Spirit.

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He says, I have tried to show that one of the central doctrines of the

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sect was that only the elect, the members

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of the sect, have the Holy Spirit bestowed upon them. It is

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the Spirit, that Spirit, that makes them different from

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others. So it was in the Essenes, according to this

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scholar, that all of a sudden, All right. All of a sudden, being poor,

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being persecuted, being downtrodden

452
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became an entitlement. They were special.

453
00:28:42.436 --> 00:28:46.238
They were the children of light. The notion that the poor endowed with

454
00:28:46.286 --> 00:28:48.949
the Spirit are participants in the true

455
00:28:49.253 --> 00:28:52.911
eschatological community therefore fits.

456
00:28:53.424 --> 00:28:57.242
It is well known that Jesus and our community of purpose saw in

457
00:28:57.339 --> 00:29:01.126
poverty a way to attain salvation. So the

458
00:29:01.126 --> 00:29:04.485
truth is those who read into this a

459
00:29:04.501 --> 00:29:07.746
radical statement that having

460
00:29:07.859 --> 00:29:11.410
flaws actually gains you a seat at the

461
00:29:11.410 --> 00:29:14.704
table were not far from the source.

462
00:29:15.170 --> 00:29:18.319
Wow. Now, I will say that

463
00:29:18.785 --> 00:29:22.272
Martin Luther actually read the text in a

464
00:29:22.272 --> 00:29:25.678
similar fashion. And what Martin Luther says

465
00:29:26.016 --> 00:29:29.422
that the poor in spirit are those who know and feel their

466
00:29:29.422 --> 00:29:32.972
spiritual poverty, that they have nothing of their own before

467
00:29:33.085 --> 00:29:36.684
God. So if Christianity believes that you can only get redemption

468
00:29:36.796 --> 00:29:40.636
through God, you have to feel that you've lost every other chance.

469
00:29:41.294 --> 00:29:44.700
The more flawed you feel you are, the more you

470
00:29:44.813 --> 00:29:48.395
realize, as in Va'etchanan, that Moses says, I have

471
00:29:48.508 --> 00:29:52.074
no chance. I have to pray to God. Right. He took

472
00:29:52.123 --> 00:29:55.811
this to the extreme. A man will find out that he is so

473
00:29:55.811 --> 00:29:59.562
depraved that no strength, no works, no merit of his own

474
00:29:59.594 --> 00:30:03.089
will ever deliver him from his guilt. Therefore, he must utterly

475
00:30:03.121 --> 00:30:06.920
despair of himself and seek outside of himself the righteousness

476
00:30:07.112 --> 00:30:10.703
of Jesus. So the point is that whether this was

477
00:30:11.056 --> 00:30:14.021
the only reading of the Sermon on the Mount or not,

478
00:30:14.326 --> 00:30:17.644
certainly there were those, and I will say Christian

479
00:30:17.708 --> 00:30:21.491
socialists later on, read it this way, that

480
00:30:21.556 --> 00:30:25.327
they said that the New Testament Jesus identifies himself with the

481
00:30:25.327 --> 00:30:29.167
hungry, the poor, the sick, and the prisoners. This is the source of

482
00:30:29.506 --> 00:30:33.217
what we call populism today, that the masses know

483
00:30:33.314 --> 00:30:36.938
more than the leaders because the masses are more flawed than the

484
00:30:36.938 --> 00:30:40.706
leaders. They don't excel at anything. To the contrary, the less

485
00:30:40.706 --> 00:30:43.878
they excel, the more they are entitled. It's a

486
00:30:43.878 --> 00:30:47.236
fascinating switch. And it's a

487
00:30:47.236 --> 00:30:51.012
Christian switch. I mean, they don't think of

488
00:30:51.012 --> 00:30:54.532
it that way, but that's where it finds its source. This is

489
00:30:54.564 --> 00:30:57.898
part of what they call the Judeo-Christian tradition,

490
00:30:59.053 --> 00:31:02.531
that these political ideas of today are

491
00:31:02.739 --> 00:31:06.138
based on these religious

492
00:31:06.266 --> 00:31:08.719
ideas from the beginning of Christianity.

493
00:31:09.857 --> 00:31:13.528
So one of the young political, and

494
00:31:13.704 --> 00:31:16.862
I would say Jewish people who were

495
00:31:16.926 --> 00:31:20.693
behind -Graham Platner; Rebecca Katz says, the era

496
00:31:20.693 --> 00:31:24.508
of the perfect candidate is over. People are flawed and they not only

497
00:31:24.541 --> 00:31:28.099
forgive politicians who aren't perfect, but they relate more to them.

498
00:31:28.468 --> 00:31:31.530
That being flawed becomes the—

499
00:31:31.898 --> 00:31:35.201
it's not a glitch in the software, it is the

500
00:31:35.201 --> 00:31:38.743
software. It's fascinating, the world that we have

501
00:31:38.807 --> 00:31:42.190
moved into. And as Bret Stephens, and I'm going to

502
00:31:42.238 --> 00:31:46.069
finish with him, he says, a progressive movement ceases

503
00:31:46.181 --> 00:31:49.740
to be progressive when it becomes embarrassed by progress.

504
00:31:50.413 --> 00:31:54.084
When achievement is treated as exploitation,

505
00:31:54.437 --> 00:31:57.931
prosperity as moral compromise, resilience as

506
00:31:58.108 --> 00:32:01.458
privilege, and excellence as exclusion. A moral

507
00:32:01.570 --> 00:32:05.385
conviction of our time, especially prevalent on the cultural left,

508
00:32:05.674 --> 00:32:09.136
is that the powerful are presumptively bad while

509
00:32:09.345 --> 00:32:12.599
the powerless are presumptively good. These

510
00:32:12.695 --> 00:32:16.238
categories aren't just political, they are also social, economic,

511
00:32:16.382 --> 00:32:20.037
ethnic, and racial. It's why so many conversations today

512
00:32:20.229 --> 00:32:23.740
revolve around the concept of privilege, a striking

513
00:32:23.836 --> 00:32:27.331
redefinition of success that removes the presumption of

514
00:32:27.395 --> 00:32:30.715
merit from those who have it and the stigma of

515
00:32:30.747 --> 00:32:34.518
failure from those who don't. Rabbi, I

516
00:32:34.518 --> 00:32:38.016
believe that he's hitting the nail on the head. And the distinction

517
00:32:38.129 --> 00:32:41.306
between accepting flaws,

518
00:32:41.900 --> 00:32:45.495
accepting flaws in our leaders is one thing, and

519
00:32:45.495 --> 00:32:48.704
taking it to the extreme of making that a

520
00:32:48.945 --> 00:32:52.234
qualifier is something that has been a total

521
00:32:52.250 --> 00:32:55.588
misunderstanding of what you said a second ago is our

522
00:32:55.845 --> 00:32:59.120
Judio-Christian traditon. This is

523
00:32:59.168 --> 00:33:02.859
amazingly important. And this week we observe

524
00:33:02.908 --> 00:33:06.375
the fast day of Tisha B'Av, also as a time to think

525
00:33:06.375 --> 00:33:09.601
about humility and what that means and how we

526
00:33:09.826 --> 00:33:13.662
balance all those things. So we want to wish everybody a Shabbat Shalom. You should

527
00:33:13.662 --> 00:33:17.225
have a meaningful Tisha B'Av, and we look forward to seeing you next week where

528
00:33:17.225 --> 00:33:20.885
we will talk about Parashat Eikev. Thank you, Geoffrey. This is an amazing topic.

529
00:33:21.479 --> 00:33:25.296
Shabbat Shalom, and celebrate your flaws—but not too

530
00:33:25.329 --> 00:33:28.657
much. Shabbat shalom, and see you all next week.

531
00:33:30.334 --> 00:33:32.065
Shabbat

532
00:33:35.575 --> 00:33:36.627
shalom.
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