Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Welcome to Madlik.

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My name is Geoffrey Stern.

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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 Noach, which concludes with the enigmatic story of the Tower of
Babel.

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We are not going to survey the traditional explanations of what its builders did wrong.
Instead,

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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,

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and Pope Leo addressing artificial intelligence and the concentration of technological
power in our own day.

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Both see Babel as a warning

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against imposed uniformity, and both turn to the return from Babylonian exile and the
rebuilding of Jerusalem as an alternative.

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People with different backgrounds, opinions, and roles joining together.

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Not because they have become identical, but because they have found a common purpose.

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So perhaps the opposite of Babel is not division.

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Perhaps it is unity strong enough to preserve difference.

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Join us for “A Rabbi,

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a Pope, and Babel.”

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Kind of like a rabbi and a Pope walk into a bar, right?

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So we’re just going to go over the verses themselves.

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And then what I would love you to do, Adam, is introduce us to who the Netziv was.

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In the second part of the discussion, we know who the Pope is and the era that
he lives in.

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What we really need, to engage them in conversation, is to understand the same

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about the Netziv.

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So here we are in Genesis 11, and it says as follows: Everyone on earth had the same
language and the same words.

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Safa achat u’devarim achadim.

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It uses the word “one” twice.

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And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and
settled there.

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They said to one another, Come, let us make bricks, Levanim, and burn them hard.

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Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar.

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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.

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Else we shall be “scattered” all over the world.

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See how I put a name as a single thing and scattered as the opposite?

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Everything is going towards concentration of ideas, power.

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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

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that they may propose to do will be out of their reach.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So before we get into the Ha’amek Davar, the

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commentary of the Netziv,

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Tell us a little bit about him.

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The Netziv, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, was born in 1816 in Belarus.

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He died in 1893 in Warsaw, Poland.

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He lived during the premier period of the Lithuanian
yeshiva movement.

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And he was the head of the most famous Lithuanian yeshiva.

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Which was called the Volozhin Yeshiva.

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But at the same time, the Jewish enlightenment was very strong in Poland and Lithuania.

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That included people, both Orthodox and secular, who believed in Jewish literature, in Hebrew
literature, and by extension, the creation of a Jewish homeland.

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In Israel.

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Theodor Herzl comes from this period.

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Ahad Ha’am comes from this period.

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So the arguments over the Land of Israel as a Jewish homeland
played themselves out during this period.

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And Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin was on the side of Zionism, on the side of
Israel.

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One last point: we’re going to study the Ha’amek Davar, the Netziv’s commentary

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on Chumash. Every morning after davening, the Netziv used to give a class on the parsha.

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And that became the commentary that we study today.

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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.

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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

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fight the Reform Movement.

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If you Google him, you will see a very traditional Jew from
Central Casting, and the Volozhin Yeshiva was the Harvard of the traditional

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yeshivot.

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So it’s really fascinating that he walked a line.

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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

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Netziv was very much into understanding, as we’ll see today, what lay underneath the
text.

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And the Soloveitchik was Chaim Soloveitchik, who
ultimately went to Brisk and developed this highfalutin Brisker Torah, which is much more

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theatrical/theoretical.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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But anyway, a fascinating guy.

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So

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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.

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He called himself Meir Bar-Ilan, and Bar-Ilan University was named after the son of the
Netziv, Meir Bar-Ilan.

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Yep.

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This is an important person.

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So we’re going to go through the commentary.

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As with typical rabbinic commentaries, it has a tagline: it takes from the pasuk and
then it gives an explanation.

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And we’re both going to jump in when we have something to say.

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So the Ha’amek Davar says this one language that I emphasized, that is what caused the first
sin.

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He actually says aveira aleph.

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So you could say it’s the first or it’s the big sin.

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This is that they agreed to stop in one single place, b’kibbutz echad.

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So I couldn’t escape the delicious irony of him saying they wanted to be all in one
kibbutz.

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But of course, the word kibbutz means one gathering.

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So the Ha’amek Davar is drilling down and saying, even before we get to the language part,

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we have a migration, and they come to a central location and say, “We don’t want to move
from here.”

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This is going to be The Capital.

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And this is against the will of God that said to fill the land and replenish it.

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That is, to walk to all its places since the land was created to be settled.

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I love this.

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From the get-go, he’s saying you shouldn’t even

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have people gathered in only one place.

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There’s not only one place to be, let alone one language to speak, or one thought to have.

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Which is fantastic.

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It’s against ghettoism.

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It is.

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And the next thing is the same words.

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The text did not explain what those words were.

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Rather, it leaves as a hint, as explained in Midrashim.

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But the words themselves are not explained by the text.

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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.

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They were what

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They were, and in its simplicity, there is no sin.

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On the contrary, all appears well.

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But the problem was that they all thought the same thing.

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And this came to be the problem of the settlement.

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Groupthink.

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So it’s amazing.

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He says it’s not even what they said. It’s not the content; it’s the form. They wanted
groupthink.

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They wanted everybody to have the same words, the same language, and the
same ideas.

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Right. That is the Netziv’s explanation.

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That’s not obvious from the text.

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The fact that the same language means that everyone will believe the same thing, that’s
really a very modern kind of explanation.

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And he was on the cusp of modernity.

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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:

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word echad, one, single, only.

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“Burn them thoroughly.”

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So now he’s picking up the innocuous fact of burning those levanim, those bricks.

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And he says there’s no place in the text where something is told that has no impact on the
story.

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So he’s saying every piece of literature here—and now he sounds like a literary
critic, it’s put there for a reason.

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And it appears that here there is a hint regarding our sages’ tradition that Avraham
Avinu was thrown into the fiery furnace.

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So he’s trying to make a linguistic,

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a metaphorical connection that the reader, the listener, would
appreciate, between when Abraham, the founder of our religion, was thrown into a fiery

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furnace,

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with these levanim, these bricks that were cured, that were made in the fiery furnace.

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The text is informing that this furnace was for the need of the city and the tower.

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And from this we understand how big and deep the furnace was.

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From that furnace, Avraham Avinu was saved.

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I don’t think he goes far enough.

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What he’s trying to do, I think, by connecting it to Avraham Avinu, is say that this is a
critical moment for us.

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Just as Abraham was thrown into the fiery furnace because he had a different idea, these
bricks were also.

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Now Rashi, whom we’re not going to quote, asks: why does it say levanim?

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Because in this area they didn’t have hewn stones, which are all different from each
other.

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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.

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Everything has to be the same color, so to speak.

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And I am embellishing here.

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Right. I would just add one little piece, and that is that Abraham was the correction
of the Tower of Babel.

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Because the Tower of Babel wanted groupthink, and Abraham said, “I’m going to think
differently than everybody else.”

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So it’s not just a random connection.

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The problem of groupthink was solved by Abraham, who broke from it.

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(Rabbi Sacks says) This pivotal story comes before the birth of Abraham, just as the Exodus comes before Sinai.

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And both of them are saying that you have to be different.

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We do not believe in groupthink.

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That’s brilliant.

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That’s what he (Rabbi Sacks) says.

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Fantastic.

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Okay.

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So now, “and its top is in the sky,” it says of the tower.

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The Netziv says it is obvious that you should not think this would be one city for the
whole world.

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Rather, they thought that the nearby cities would be subject to this city that had
a tower.

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Now we think of the tower in terms of its watching over them — Big Brother.

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And they would be able to see

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from it into the distance, over all their settlements, so that no one would be able to separate
themselves and go to another land.

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That’s why they needed its top reaching the sky.

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So it is not only an observation tower; it becomes a prison.

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And they’re stopping the movement of people.

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They move to this place not to move again.

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The imagery almost makes you wonder whether the Netziv

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was talking about communism or socialism.

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I think this was before that.

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Well, that’s an interesting thing: to guarantee groupthink, you can’t let people
move around.

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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.

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The Netziv almost sounds like George Orwell.

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We go on.

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And we will make a name, a name for ourselves.

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People were set up to watch—anashim mashgichim.

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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.

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And there were army chiefs in charge of punishing those who transgressed, since otherwise
there would be no need for the tower.

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And all of this was due to fear and suspicion.

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The word that he uses in Hebrew is chashash.

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Right.

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That’s also interesting.

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Why do you want groupthink?

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Because you’re afraid that if people think their own thoughts, they’re going to break away.

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That’s related, by the way, to the Haredim in Israel.

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There’s an insistence that everybody think the same thing.

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The minute somebody is different, and that’s our friend Rabbi Bombach, right?

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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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00:18:49,685 –> 00:18:51,607
They are one people.

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00:18:51,607 –> 00:18:57,421
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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00:19:02,735 –> 00:19:06,700
And we’ll give that quote in a second.

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00:19:06,700 –> 00:19:09,631
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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00:19:17,354 –> 00:19:21,416
“And now nothing will be withheld from them which they propose to do.”

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00:19:21,416 –> 00:19:28,268
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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00:19:34,165 –> 00:19:39,592
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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00:20:06,230 –> 00:20:08,611
What does he say that means?

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00:20:08,611 –> 00:20:13,794
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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00:20:27,785 –> 00:20:29,426
He does not let up.

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00:20:29,426 –> 00:20:35,350
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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00:20:41,382 –> 00:20:45,125
This sounds like the Federalist episode that we did.

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00:20:45,125 –> 00:20:54,711
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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00:20:59,975 –> 00:21:04,338
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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00:21:21,930 –> 00:21:25,218
And he starts by quoting the song of Haazinu.

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00:21:25,218 –> 00:21:30,250
You see, we end Devarim, and now we get into Genesis, and they’re all connected.

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00:21:30,250 –> 00:21:39,265
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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00:21:39,265 –> 00:21:41,186
He is speaking of God.

248
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.

251
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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00:22:38,272 –> 00:22:39,623
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.

256
00:22:49,967 –> 00:22:59,891
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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00:23:15,233 –> 00:23:18,196
Intention does not let you off the hook.

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00:23:18,196 –> 00:23:21,560
So now he says, so what is Yashar about Genesis?

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00:23:21,560 –> 00:23:32,020
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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00:23:52,151 –> 00:23:57,024
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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00:23:58,524 –> 00:24:01,474
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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00:24:08,337 –> 00:24:10,318
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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00:24:12,719 –> 00:24:17,800
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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00:24:20,862 –> 00:24:25,414
(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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00:24:29,185 –> 00:24:30,880
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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00:24:33,911 –> 00:24:38,552
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.

291
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.

305
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.

308
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.

315
00:27:48,986 –> 00:27:52,327
Never has humanity had such power over itself.”

316
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.

317
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.

318
00:28:07,232 –> 00:28:11,193
Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves?

319
00:28:11,193 –> 00:28:15,034
What direction should we choose as a people and as a humanity?”

320
00:28:15,034 –> 00:28:17,595
So now he has the images.

321
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.”

323
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.

325
00:28:47,843 –> 00:28:53,566
Fearing being scattered across the earth, they sought to guarantee stability and power.

326
00:28:53,954 –> 00:28:57,815
for themselves, and above all, to make a name for themselves.

327
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.

328
00:29:03,958 –> 00:29:06,799
However, the project concealed a profound danger.

329
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.

330
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.

332
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.

337
00:29:57,998 –> 00:30:02,923
It opens at a time of great vulnerability in the history of ancient Israel.

338
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.

339
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.

340
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.

342
00:30:28,867 –> 00:30:31,528
He did not impose solutions from above.

343
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.

344
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.

346
00:30:53,400 –> 00:31:01,240
It is an undertaking with God at the center which “rebuilds relationships before rebuilding
with stones”.

347
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

348
00:31:11,874 –> 00:31:14,556
recognize that their strength comes from the Lord.

349
00:31:14,556 –> 00:31:16,676
That is what the Pope wrote.

350
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.

353
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.

355
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.

356
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.

357
00:31:59,233 –> 00:32:00,714
Then he goes on.

358
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

359
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

360
00:32:23,251 –> 00:32:28,790
settlement of the Land in its cities until afterward the Land became filled with its
children.

361
00:32:28,790 –> 00:32:33,734
So he is saying the same thing in the service of Zionism.

362
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.

364
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.

366
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

367
00:33:11,561 –> 00:33:13,792
shared understanding regarding this matter.

368
00:33:13,792 –> 00:33:18,770
And when all Israel are united, they are all called chaverim.

369
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?

371
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.

372
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.

376
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.

381
00:34:12,381 –> 00:34:13,682
Shabbat Shalom.

382
00:34:13,728 –> 00:34:14,230
Amen.

383
00:34:14,230 –> 00:34:15,195
Shabbat Shalom.

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00:34:15,195 –> 00:34:17,314
See you all next week.

14
00:01:03,574 –> 00:01:09,880
My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish
text or tradition.

15
00:01:09,880 –> 00:01:17,869
Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast
platform and now on YouTube and Substack.

16
00:01:17,869 –> 00:01:23,094
We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

17
00:01:23,094 –> 00:01:27,746
This week we read Parshat Bereshit, the very first parsha of the Torah.

18
00:01:27,746 –> 00:01:39,429
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

19
00:01:39,429 –> 00:01:44,471
heretic and God-intoxicated man, Baruch Spinoza.

20
00:01:44,471 –> 00:01:47,492
And so, what does it mean to create?

21
00:01:47,492 –> 00:01:48,812
Well, that’s a mouthful.

22
00:01:48,812 –> 00:01:52,773
We’re gonna have to talk like New Yorkers really quickly today.

23
00:01:53,093 –> 00:01:55,134
Okay, I mean the word bara is interesting.

24
00:01:55,134 –> 00:01:55,734
Good, let’s go.

25
00:01:55,734 –> 00:01:57,064
Let’s start.

26
00:01:57,336 –> 00:02:00,826
So, you know, last week we focused on where was God.

27
00:02:00,826 –> 00:02:07,350
but this week we’re gonna focus on the world, the creation itself.

28
00:02:07,350 –> 00:02:19,676
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.

29
00:02:19,676 –> 00:02:24,450
But we’re gonna follow a bunch of commentators and philosophers.

30
00:02:24,450 –> 00:02:29,912
Who say, no, the way you heard it the first time, “In the beginning” was the right way.

31
00:02:29,912 –> 00:02:33,814
And therefore it begs the question: what was the beginning?

32
00:02:33,814 –> 00:02:34,834
What happened?

33
00:02:34,834 –> 00:02:43,850
And to start that, we’re gonna start with Ramban; Nachmanides, who says as follows: In the
beginning, God created.

34
00:02:43,850 –> 00:02:53,174
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.

35
00:02:53,174 –> 00:03:04,060
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.

36
00:03:04,060 –> 00:03:08,963
He says, now listen to the correct and clear explanation of the verse in its simplicity.

37
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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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00:03:52,757 –> 00:03:57,701
After the hhyly, he did not create anything, but he formed and made things with it.

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00:03:57,701 –> 00:03:59,293
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.

49
00:04:09,540 –> 00:04:09,960
Correct.

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00:04:09,960 –> 00:04:15,073
That you have to believe in this miracle that God created something from nothing.

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00:04:15,433 –> 00:04:22,137
Now, what but what’s interesting is he adds an additional piece, and that’s what the word
bara means.

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00:04:22,137 –> 00:04:26,020
You started by saying that bara the word bara is so significant.

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00:04:26,020 –> 00:04:30,462
bara means yesh me’ayin creation ex nihilo.

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00:04:31,318 –> 00:04:34,320
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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00:12:13,126 –> 00:12:19,601
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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00:12:39,418 –> 00:12:42,361
And so what it does is it raises a flag, Rabbi.

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00:12:42,361 –> 00:12:48,227
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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00:13:02,047 –> 00:13:07,152
And he says, Moses, who had early reached the very summits of philosophy.

145
00:13:07,152 –> 00:13:10,054
So now we’re already dipped in the pond.

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00:13:10,054 –> 00:13:20,384
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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00:13:25,278 –> 00:13:37,026
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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00:13:38,707 –> 00:13:42,766
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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00:13:55,125 –> 00:13:56,456
It is interesting.

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00:13:56,456 –> 00:13:58,837
It’s called the intellect of the universe.

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00:13:58,837 –> 00:14:04,972
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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00:14:04,972 –> 00:14:15,648
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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00:14:20,151 –> 00:14:30,216
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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00:14:37,440 –> 00:14:41,461
So Nachmanides already said it’s a tenet of our faith.

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What does Philo do?

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00:14:44,322 –> 00:14:51,884
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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00:15:49,460 –> 00:15:56,436
Maimonides in the Guide lays out what he believes to be three different perspectives on
this.

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00:15:56,436 –> 00:16:08,666
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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00:16:48,845 –> 00:16:55,469
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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00:17:01,072 –> 00:17:04,014
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.

191
00:17:22,019 –> 00:17:28,584
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.

193
00:17:35,350 –> 00:17:40,076
That is to say, it is impossible that an object consisting of matter and form.

194
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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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00:17:59,497 –> 00:18:09,538
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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00:18:12,480 –> 00:18:15,381
And so you kind of have a solution.

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00:18:15,381 –> 00:18:21,845
he says the people to say that God can produce a thing from nothing.

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00:18:21,845 –> 00:18:23,746
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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00:18:31,850 –> 00:18:35,152
And it’s like saying a triangle has four sides.

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00:18:35,152 –> 00:18:37,113
It just doesn’t fit into it.

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Nothing by definition.

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00:18:39,114 –> 00:18:41,716
Nothing by definition means no thing.

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00:18:41,716 –> 00:18:48,960
But again, at least Maimonides says this is an acceptable position.

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00:18:48,960 –> 00:19:01,569
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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00:19:02,429 –> 00:19:03,870
And so he says.

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00:19:03,870 –> 00:19:11,419
this is a position that the universe is in totality, never been different, nor will
it ever be.

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00:19:11,419 –> 00:19:13,861
And that’s the three positions.

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00:19:13,861 –> 00:19:25,484
He goes on to say that the foundation of our religion has to be that there is a God
who cares, who is involved.

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00:19:25,484 –> 00:19:35,759
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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00:19:35,759 –> 00:19:37,559
derived from Scripture.

218
00:19:37,760 –> 00:19:39,941
In other words, you can’t punish somebody.

219
00:19:39,941 –> 00:19:47,004
You can’t have God cannot have any control over us if everything is eternal.

220
00:19:47,004 –> 00:19:52,086
Accepting the creation, we find that miracles are possible, that revelation is possible.

221
00:19:52,086 –> 00:19:55,507
And that every difficulty in this question is removed.

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00:19:55,507 –> 00:19:59,688
We might be asked: why has God inspired a certain person and not another?

223
00:19:59,688 –> 00:20:02,489
Why has he revealed the law to one another?

224
00:20:02,489 –> 00:20:07,651
Once you promise you predicate that God can create the world, he can do anything.

225
00:20:07,651 –> 00:20:11,892
And he or she can have desires and wishes and commands over us.

226
00:20:11,892 –> 00:20:19,134
And that’s again why Maimonides feels that believing in this is so important.

227
00:20:19,134 –> 00:20:19,946

228
00:20:19,946 –> 00:20:22,469
And what he says is fascinating.

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00:20:22,469 –> 00:20:28,694
He says, owing to the absence of all proof, we reject the theory of the eternity of the
universe.

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00:20:28,694 –> 00:20:32,058
So what he says is, you can’t prove any of these.

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00:20:32,058 –> 00:20:36,876
So as long as we can’t prove any of these, it’s best to have a theory.

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00:20:36,876 –> 00:20:44,692
That guides us and makes the world meaningful and makes our Torah meaningful and makes
revelation and miracles meaningful.

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00:20:44,692 –> 00:20:54,499
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.

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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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00:21:08,191 –> 00:21:16,295
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.

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And Maimonides quotes Plato and Aristotle, and it’s totally.

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That’s part of his understanding of what creation is all about.

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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

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came how it came about, that sometimes the non-Jews have you know have
insight that the Jews never had.

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I couldn’t agree more.

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I mean, in a sense, he was not quoting other religious thinkers.

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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.

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But I think what you’re saying is an amazing segue to where I want to go.

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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.

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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.

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and the person who followed him was Isidore Twersky, who I took a course from.

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And he says that

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Wolfson heard the last Shiur of Yitzhak Blazer, who was a Mussurnik who studied under Rabbi
Yisrael Salanter.

254
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And then he went on to write, talk about books and listening and learning and
dissecting the works of the non-Jew.

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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
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fathers, the Kalam, which was the Islamic school of philosophy, and he did it all as a
Talmud Hacham.

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He learnt all of the languages necessary, Greek and Arabic.

258
00:23:37,464 –> 00:23:41,126
and what he basically argued.

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00:23:41,126 –> 00:23:53,574
was that the medieval philosophy began with the premise that philosophy which
knew not scripture.

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So if you look at Aristotle and Plato, they didn’t know anything about Judaism or
revelation.

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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

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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.

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00:24:36,722 –> 00:24:43,287
And Plotinus, if you know anything about Plato, Plato believed in forms.

267
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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
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then down below was a physical parallel of that.

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Plotinus did something amazing.

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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

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relationship between them.

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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.

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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.

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And this was an amazingly exciting and evocative idea.

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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.

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And so creation almost becomes something that happens on an ongoing basis.

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It’s something that’s regular.

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And so he traces this through all of the medieval philosophers.

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And yes, Rabbi, he goes.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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00:30:06,703 –> 00:30:07,534
stage.

310
00:30:07,534 –> 00:30:08,476
So what

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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.

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00:31:04,121 –> 00:31:06,070
There is no disconnect.

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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.

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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.

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00:33:42,638 –> 00:33:43,998
See you all there.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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00:05:50,416 –> 00:05:53,908
So Sarna says as follows: To be sure any work

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00:05:53,908 –> 00:05:57,521
of hoary antiquity is bound to prove difficult reading.

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00:05:57,521 –> 00:06:00,242
Problems of text and language are unavoidable.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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00:07:01,911 –> 00:07:06,895
We forgot what the context was of the original people that listened to.

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00:07:06,895 –> 00:07:08,316
Very good, yeah.

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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

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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.

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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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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.

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00:07:57,264 –> 00:08:06,109
Israel’s monotheism constituted a new creation, a revolution in in religion, a sudden
transformation.

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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.

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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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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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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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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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

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said, it’s missing.

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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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And that’s what becomes so absolutely different and radical about this text.

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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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And what he said, that if you read the rest of the Bible, not only creation.

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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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It’s a caricature, rabbi.

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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.

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00:11:03,074 –> 00:11:05,035
But that was as far as it got.

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00:11:05,035 –> 00:11:06,556
It was fetishism.

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00:11:06,556 –> 00:11:12,264
They didn’t understand the the whole world view of paganism.

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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.

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00:11:38,882 –> 00:11:42,403
The notion of the birth of God, no biography of God.

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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.

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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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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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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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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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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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They connected the genesis of the world with the genesis of the gods.

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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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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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And then it

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Goes on.

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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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in the source sheet, you can see Cassuto saying that in Hebrew.

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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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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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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.

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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.

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It wasn’t read.

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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.

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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.

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00:17:29,754 –> 00:17:36,828
The way that the Torah portrays polytheism and paganism is childish.

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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.

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00:17:46,397 –> 00:17:47,538
And it’s not.

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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?

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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.

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00:18:24,342 –> 00:18:29,288
They knew when to cheer when Mordechai was mentioned and boo when Haman was mentioned.

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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.

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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.

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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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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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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.

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Go on, Adam.

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00:19:40,627 –> 00:19:40,787
Right.

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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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You know, what Alter is saying is that the Torah is written for a sophisticated audience,
for an audience that knows Torah.

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00:19:54,565 –> 00:19:55,768
And therefore you could refer.

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00:19:55,768 –> 00:19:58,601
Refer to something and people should understand it.

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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.

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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.

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00:20:14,615 –> 00:20:17,858
And it’s a criticism, it’s a veiled criticism.

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00:20:17,858 –> 00:20:20,519
So that’s a brilliant point by Alter.

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00:20:20,700 –> 00:20:23,148
And it makes us read the text differently.

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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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00:20:40,956 –> 00:20:45,988
going to be hearing V’zot HaBracha, which doesn’t get its own Shabbat.

248
00:20:45,988 –> 00:20:49,910
It is only read in conjunction.

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00:20:50,331 –> 00:20:53,473
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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00:20:58,618 –> 00:21:01,060
That’s why we call the last day Simchat Torah.

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00:21:01,060 –> 00:21:06,645
We have a Chatan Torah, we have a Chatan Bereshit, and we have a Chatan Devarim.

253
00:21:06,645 –> 00:21:09,130
And they’re married together.

254
00:21:09,130 –> 00:21:11,950
There is this continuation.

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00:21:11,950 –> 00:21:15,433
And as I said in the beginning, it kind of struck me.

256
00:21:15,433 –> 00:21:16,916
I said to myself,

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00:21:16,916 –> 00:21:29,095
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

258
00:21:29,095 –> 00:21:33,798
between connecting Bereshit to Noach or connecting Noach to Lech L’cha

259
00:21:35,144 –> 00:21:41,510
And so sure enough, if you read the text, it has potential.

260
00:21:41,510 –> 00:21:51,450
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.

261
00:21:51,450 –> 00:21:57,576
So it says…

262
00:21:57,576 –> 00:22:05,572
You can read Asher asah Moshe l’einei kol Yisrael as what Moses did to the eyes of all Israel.

263
00:22:05,572 –> 00:22:07,374
And then you read this parsha.

264
00:22:07,374 –> 00:22:15,741
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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00:22:15,741 –> 00:22:19,484
Which is Moses says, You’ve read the whole book now.

266
00:22:19,484 –> 00:22:23,327
You’ve read the whole Five Books, your eyes have changed.

267
00:22:23,327 –> 00:22:27,124
You see the world differently, you have a different Weltanschauung.

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00:22:27,124 –> 00:22:29,515
Now let’s start reading Bereshit all over again.

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It’s gonna be different this time.

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00:22:31,415 –> 00:22:35,097
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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00:22:45,200 –> 00:22:49,041
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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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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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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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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told it over to your children, you are creating a universe of grammar that’s going to
enable you

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To hear it read differently.

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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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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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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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Did you see what I didn’t say there?

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You see what was missing?

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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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So I just want to say, of course, this is fantastic.

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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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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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Bereshit bara to the end, but also back to front.

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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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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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I love that.

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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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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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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.

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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.

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00:29:12,224 –> 00:29:14,885
It’s all about starting in the middle.

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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.

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00:29:43,702 –> 00:29:48,124
Vayavdel is to distinguish between two things.

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00:29:48,174 –> 00:29:52,366
then it goes on and it has words like Vayikra.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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00:01:13,405 –> 00:01:19,527
Ha’Azinu suggests that Israel’s story recapitulates humanity’s story.

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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.

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00:01:25,349 –> 00:01:30,124
Neither humanity nor Israel possesses its home unconditionally.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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00:02:35,677 –> 00:02:37,739
And this is a song.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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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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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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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When you bring heaven and earth to bear on you.

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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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00:06:45,676 –> 00:06:56,301
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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00:07:08,701 –> 00:07:15,517
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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00:07:36,844 –> 00:07:47,862
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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00:08:08,362 –> 00:08:16,208
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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00:08:32,021 –> 00:08:33,921
So I based a lot.

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00:08:33,921 –> 00:08:41,782
Of my readings on the JPS commentary of Jeffrey Tigay, a real scholar.

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00:08:41,782 –> 00:08:52,327
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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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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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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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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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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And now back to our podcast.

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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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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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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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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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and then it goes on towards the end and it says, See then that I, I am He.

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There is no God beside me.

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I deal death and give life.

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Sounds a little bit like what we’ve been doing over the last few days.

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Ani amit va-achayeh.

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I wounded and I will heal.

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No one can deliver from my hand.

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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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who reject me?

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I will make my arrows drunk with blood.

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this is real strong language of taking.

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revenge for those misdeeds.

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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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O nations, acclaim His people.

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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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The punchline is in our text

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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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Correct.

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And you know that we use that verse every Shabbat in the prayer of Av HaRachamim.

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Which is the memorial prayer for those who were killed in the crusades, the kiper
admato.

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Somehow the death, the suffering of the Jewish people is in itself a form of atonement.

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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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Correct.

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So it can mean cleanse, and it can mean the day of a judgment, it can be

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to get forgiveness.

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it’s a profound word that affects us all in these days.

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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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And he brings all of the different texts.

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He says the Torah, the text that we have ends with the phrase, Ve-khiper admato amo

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This final phrase is doubly ambiguous.

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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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He says it as succinctly as you can.

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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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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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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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Which is a fascinating, I would say, paradigm shift.

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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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similarly, each species of herbs by itself is called “esev”.

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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.

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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,

288
00:26:33,478 –> 00:26:37,061
our role—what we’re supposed to be doing, we can lose it all.

289
00:26:37,061 –> 00:26:40,063
We can lose the land of Israel and we can lose the earth.

290
00:26:40,063 –> 00:26:42,245
It raises the stakes.

291
00:26:42,245 –> 00:26:57,196
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

292
00:26:57,196 –> 00:26:59,968
strong thread in in the Torah.

293
00:26:59,968 –> 00:27:06,410
We all know obviously about Adam and Eve and God in the Garden of Eden and being expelled.

294
00:27:06,410 –> 00:27:14,142
and we can talk about in search of Eden and back to Eden, but the truth is it was a
one-way street.

295
00:27:14,142 –> 00:27:18,218
We were expelled, mortality was created.

296
00:27:18,218 –> 00:27:20,104
It was.. you’ve lost it.

297
00:27:20,104 –> 00:27:28,926
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.

298
00:27:28,926 –> 00:27:37,253
So the most obvious one is in Leviticus 25, and it’s talking about the laws of the
sabbatical, the Shemitah.

299
00:27:37,253 –> 00:27:42,506
And it says, But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is mine.

300
00:27:42,506 –> 00:27:46,266
you are but strangers resident with me.

301
00:27:46,266 –> 00:27:56,786
and then you know it says ki li ha’aretz, and then it says that speak to the
Israelite children.

302
00:27:56,786 –> 00:28:03,269
and say to them, When you enter the land that I assign you, the land shall observe a
Sabbath day.

303
00:28:03,269 –> 00:28:07,431
We could easily make this a turn of phrase, something poetry.

304
00:28:07,431 –> 00:28:12,493
But I want to give ourselves the humility here that we all think the world is created for
us.

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00:28:12,493 –> 00:28:20,036
Sometimes we have to think the world was created and we were given the obligation to be
stewards of it.

306
00:28:20,046 –> 00:28:25,090
and in this case, if you read the peshat, it says the land.

307
00:28:25,090 –> 00:28:27,151
Has to keep its Shabbat.

308
00:28:27,351 –> 00:28:40,159
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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00:28:40,159 –> 00:28:41,120
cities a ruin.

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00:28:41,120 –> 00:28:42,540
Here’s the punchline.

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00:28:42,540 –> 00:28:49,665
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.

312
00:28:49,665 –> 00:28:52,162
Then shall the land rest and make up.

313
00:28:52,162 –> 00:28:53,984
For its Sabbath years.

314
00:28:53,984 –> 00:29:02,171
It really does focus on the power and the principle of the land itself in these laws.

315
00:29:02,171 –> 00:29:12,641
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.

316
00:29:12,641 –> 00:29:18,616
Va-taki ha’aretz et yoshveha, and it goes on in verse 27.

317
00:29:18,616 –> 00:29:30,236
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

318
00:29:30,236 –> 00:29:32,718
spewed out the nation that came before you.

319
00:29:32,718 –> 00:29:38,182
This really connects it in a way that Exodus story does not to the Canaanites.

320
00:29:38,182 –> 00:29:45,849
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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00:29:45,849 –> 00:29:47,886
They didn’t live up.

322
00:29:47,886 –> 00:29:50,128
To the promise of the land.

323
00:29:50,128 –> 00:29:54,972
it’s really powerful and fascinating.

324
00:29:54,972 –> 00:29:58,174
And in numbers it actually uses our language.

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00:29:58,174 –> 00:30:05,580
You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land and the land
can have no expiation.

326
00:30:05,580 –> 00:30:07,621
It says “lo yekhappar”.

327
00:30:08,108 –> 00:30:17,691
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

328
00:30:17,691 –> 00:30:18,721
Israelite people.

329
00:30:18,721 –> 00:30:27,984
It’s a powerful way of looking at the creation, but also of the world, but also creation
of the land of Israel.

330
00:30:27,984 –> 00:30:32,025
That we are stewards, and if we don’t live up to our promise, we’re out.

331
00:30:32,786 –> 00:30:33,730
Amazing.

332
00:30:33,730 –> 00:30:42,555
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.

333
00:30:42,555 –> 00:30:49,279
So Yekhuppar, kipper, kippurim, the purpose of creation is us.

334
00:30:49,279 –> 00:30:51,980
Really beautiful Yom Kippur ideas.

335
00:30:52,280 –> 00:30:56,803
And one of the Midrashim that I came across was fascinating.

336
00:30:56,803 –> 00:31:03,156
In Kohelet Rabbah, it says, see the work of God for who can mend what He has warped.

337
00:31:03,156 –> 00:31:09,092
Re’eh et ma’aseh ha-Elohim, ki mi yukhal letakken et asher ivveto.

338
00:31:09,092 –> 00:31:10,794
It says, See the works of God.

339
00:31:10,794 –> 00:31:21,204
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

340
00:31:21,204 –> 00:31:22,890
and exemplary they are.

341
00:31:22,890 –> 00:31:25,411
Everything I created, I created for you.

342
00:31:25,411 –> 00:31:29,373
Make certain that you do not ruin and destroy my world.

343
00:31:29,373 –> 00:31:33,850
For if you destroy it, there will be no one to mend it after you.

344
00:31:33,850 –> 00:31:39,277
I kind of think the end of Ha’Azinu, Rabbi, is almost like a mic drop.

345
00:31:39,277 –> 00:31:47,341
It’s almost like, and the earth will cleanse itself of you; full stop.

346
00:31:47,341 –> 00:31:48,401
This is the moment.

347
00:31:48,401 –> 00:31:50,104
This is the moment of Ne’ilah.

348
00:31:50,104 –> 00:31:51,785
Ne’ilah—we have to fix it.

349
00:31:51,785 –> 00:31:57,789
We look around the world we live in and there are so many things that need our fixing,
global things.

350
00:31:57,789 –> 00:32:03,684
I don’t know if it’s… whatever the issue, because I don’t want to be stuck in
environmentalism.

351
00:32:03,684 –> 00:32:05,125
It’s much bigger than that.

352
00:32:05,125 –> 00:32:08,287
It’s the way we’re acting.

353
00:32:08,287 –> 00:32:18,456
It’s almost as if Ha’Azinu is making this move from the individual to the many.

354
00:32:18,456 –> 00:32:26,313
From the people of Israel writ small for what the humanity is writ large.

355
00:32:26,313 –> 00:32:31,778
And it makes a wonderful parallel that if we fail, there is no recourse.

356
00:32:31,778 –> 00:32:36,022
There’s no next year, there’s no return from exile.

357
00:32:36,022 –> 00:32:38,964
And that makes it so unique and special.

358
00:32:38,964 –> 00:32:45,550
And I think that’s what gives it such an edge, and it makes it so fascinating that it

359
00:32:45,550 –> 00:32:47,631
comes right before Yom Kippur.

360
00:32:47,631 –> 00:32:51,192
It uses the word kapparah of cleansing, but guess what?

361
00:32:51,192 –> 00:32:53,372
It’s not cleansing us.

362
00:32:53,372 –> 00:32:55,893
It’s cleansing the world of us.

363
00:32:55,893 –> 00:32:59,214
And that has to be a powerful mirror to look at.

364
00:32:59,214 –> 00:33:04,936
And we have to say, are we gonna fix ourselves or is there no one left to fix it?

365
00:33:04,936 –> 00:33:06,556
And that’s powerful.

366
00:33:06,596 –> 00:33:07,716
Amazing.

367
00:33:07,716 –> 00:33:09,517
Shabbat shalom everybody.

368
00:33:09,517 –> 00:33:13,110
G’mar chatimah tovah have an easy and meaningful fast.

369
00:33:13,110 –> 00:33:15,692
And we look forward to circling back to you after the fast.

370
00:33:15,692 –> 00:33:21,897
This was a perfect pre-Parshat Ha’Azinu, pre-Yom Kippur learning together.

371
00:33:21,897 –> 00:33:25,741
We’ll see you all next time when we finish the book of Devarim.

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00:33:25,741 –> 00:33:30,905
So have an easy fast, a meaningful fast, and we’ll all see you.

373
00:33:30,905 –> 00:33:31,875
Is it next week?

374
00:33:31,875 –> 00:33:35,108
Do we have No, I think next week is before Sukkot.

375
00:33:35,108 –> 00:33:38,991
It’ll be in two weeks before Simchat Torah will finish up the Torah.

376
00:33:38,991 –> 00:33:39,702
Amazing.

377
00:33:39,702 –> 00:33:42,644
Shabbat shalom and tzom tov.

378
00:33:45,582 –> 00:33:54,567
So let me ask you personally, what do you think is the existential issue facing us today,
as human beings or as Jews?

379
00:33:54,627 –> 00:34:03,892
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?

380
00:34:04,112 –> 00:34:06,313
I’d really love to hear what you think.

381
00:34:06,313 –> 00:34:10,135
So please share your answers in the comments.

382
00:34:10,156 –> 00:34:12,657
And have a shanah tovah.

9
00:01:03,116 --> 00:01:04,327
Welcome to Madlik.

10
00:01:04,327 --> 00:01:10,633
My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish
text or tradition.

11
00:01:10,633 --> 00:01:18,060
Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast
platform and now on YouTube and Substack.

12
00:01:18,060 --> 00:01:23,785
We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria and a link is included in the show notes.

13
00:01:23,785 --> 00:01:29,780
If you enjoy this podcast, be sure to subscribe and feel free to give us a star or two.

14
00:01:29,794 --> 00:01:43,706
This week we read Parshat Ki Tavo and encounter Mikra Bikkurim, a first-person script that
begins the Exodus before Pharaoh and carries it forward into every generation.

15
00:01:43,706 --> 00:01:48,871
So join us for liberation, personal, and recurring.

16
00:01:48,871 --> 00:01:53,364
Well, Rabbi, it's almost Rosh Hashanah, and we're talking about Passover, as usual.

17
00:01:53,486 --> 00:01:54,019
Perfect.

18
00:01:54,019 --> 00:01:54,552
You know what?

19
00:01:54,552 --> 00:01:58,189
That just shows the Jewish calendar goes round and round.

20
00:01:59,272 --> 00:02:02,775
And I think maybe at the end we'll tie it into Rosh Hashanah.

21
00:02:02,775 --> 00:02:06,928
So if you're in a Rosh Hashanah state of mind, stick with us.

22
00:02:06,928 --> 00:02:18,285
So as I said, in Deuteronomy 26:1, it says, When you enter the land that the eternal your
God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle it.

23
00:02:18,285 --> 00:02:20,337
I mean, that's what Deuteronomy is all about.

24
00:02:20,337 --> 00:02:24,080
Instructions for when you actually get into the land.

25
00:02:24,080 --> 00:02:27,564
You shall take some of your first fruit of the soil.

26
00:02:27,564 --> 00:02:39,147
Which you harvest from the land that the Eternal Your God is giving you, put it in a
basket, and go to the place where the Eternal Your God will choose to establish the divine

27
00:02:39,147 --> 00:02:39,918
name.

28
00:02:39,918 --> 00:02:53,351
You shall go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, "I acknowledge this day
before the Eternal Your God, that I have entered the land that God swore to our fathers to

29
00:02:53,351 --> 00:02:54,742
assign us."

30
00:02:55,234 --> 00:03:01,836
The priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down in front of the altar of
the eternal your God.

31
00:03:01,836 --> 00:03:06,257
You shall then recite as follows before the eternal your God.

32
00:03:06,257 --> 00:03:09,178
"My father was a fugitive Aramean.

33
00:03:09,178 --> 00:03:13,459
He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there.

34
00:03:13,579 --> 00:03:17,380
But there he became a great and very populous nation.

35
00:03:17,380 --> 00:03:20,581
The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us.

36
00:03:20,581 --> 00:03:23,702
They imposed heavy labor upon us.

37
00:03:23,702 --> 00:03:31,929
We cried to the Eternal, the God of our ancestors, and the Eternal heard our plea and saw
our plight, our misery and our oppression.

38
00:03:31,929 --> 00:03:42,577
God freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power and by
signs and portents, bringing us to this place and giving us this land, a land flowing with

39
00:03:42,577 --> 00:03:43,798
milk and honey.

40
00:03:43,798 --> 00:03:49,642
And so I now bring the first fruits of the soil that You, O Eternal, have given me."

41
00:03:49,702 --> 00:03:59,575
You shall leave the basket before the eternal your God and bow low before the eternal your
God, and you shall enjoy together with the Levite and the stranger in your midst all the

42
00:03:59,575 --> 00:04:04,706
bounty that the Eternal Your God has bestowed upon you and your household.

43
00:04:04,706 --> 00:04:16,579
So the reason I say that this is I'd say iconic, but also an outlier, and I try to
emphasize the "I" is because it really is a formula.

44
00:04:16,579 --> 00:04:18,690
Gerhard von Rad,

45
00:04:18,690 --> 00:04:22,352
Was a great biblical critical scholar.

46
00:04:22,352 --> 00:04:30,317
And he called this a little historical creed, or as he said in German, kleines geschichtliches Credo.

47
00:04:30,317 --> 00:04:39,302
He believed it was an exceptionally early liturgical formula, subsequently incorporated
into Deuteronomy.

48
00:04:39,302 --> 00:04:42,624
His argument rests on several observations.

49
00:04:42,624 --> 00:04:46,018
It has the compact form of an oral formula.

50
00:04:46,018 --> 00:04:53,442
Now, if you weren't following the screen, even in our translation, it puts the two
statements in it in quotation marks.

51
00:04:53,442 --> 00:04:58,515
Rabbi, it really is a formula, kind of like a berakhah that you would do today.

52
00:04:58,515 --> 00:05:04,168
You would hold up your berakhah card in front of you or your siddur and you would read from
it.

53
00:05:04,168 --> 00:05:06,369
It's a quote.

54
00:05:06,369 --> 00:05:07,630
It's compact.

55
00:05:07,630 --> 00:05:14,840
The declaration reduces Israel's foundational story to a short sequence: an Aramean
ancestor.

56
00:05:14,840 --> 00:05:23,232
Descent into Egypt, multiplication into a nation, Egyptian oppression, Israel's cry, God's
deliverance, entrance into the land.

57
00:05:23,232 --> 00:05:34,035
And for those of you who are knowledgeable with the Haggadah, if I had read it in
Hebrew, you would have recognized it from the Haggadah, where every phrase becomes a touch

58
00:05:34,035 --> 00:05:36,596
point for a comment.

59
00:05:36,596 --> 00:05:43,882
It maintains no names, no dates, no genealogies, or narrative details.

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00:05:43,882 --> 00:05:55,816
says von Rad, because it's compressed, it has a rhythmical character, as typical of
something memorized and repeatedly recited in worship, rather than composed as ordinary

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00:05:55,816 --> 00:05:57,566
historical prose.

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00:05:57,566 --> 00:05:59,847
It is also attached to a ritual.

63
00:05:59,847 --> 00:06:08,716
So these are all reasons that this scholar said there's something unique about this and he
thought it made it very old.

64
00:06:08,716 --> 00:06:19,590
And of course, we do have in the Torah, such as, correct me if I'm wrong, Rabbi, Az Yashir
Moshe, which is the Song of the Sea, that scholars will say.

65
00:06:19,590 --> 00:06:21,240
It seems to be older.

66
00:06:21,240 --> 00:06:23,511
It's a text that was brought in.

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00:06:23,511 --> 00:06:29,593
And of course the Torah itself makes references to Sefer Milhamot, Sefer Melakhim.

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00:06:29,593 --> 00:06:40,956
There is an understanding within even the Torah, even if you don't buy into biblical
criticism and the fact that some editor came along, clearly it does reference

69
00:06:40,956 --> 00:06:44,077
pre-existing phrases, formulas.

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00:06:44,077 --> 00:06:46,817
And I think that's what he's kind of saying here.

71
00:06:46,817 --> 00:06:48,838
He thought this was very old.

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00:06:48,910 --> 00:06:49,280
Also

73
00:06:49,280 --> 00:06:50,811
that's for sure right.

74
00:06:50,811 --> 00:06:53,314
Az Yashir is like this recitation.

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00:06:53,314 --> 00:06:55,396
It's not part of the story.

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00:06:55,396 --> 00:06:57,057
It's not part of the narrative.

77
00:06:57,057 --> 00:06:58,649
It's separate from the narrative.

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00:06:58,649 --> 00:07:00,621
Az Yashir comes in the middle.

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00:07:00,621 --> 00:07:03,473
Here also it's a recitation.

80
00:07:03,473 --> 00:07:04,444
Where does that come from?

81
00:07:04,444 --> 00:07:07,196
So that's kind of separate from the story.

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00:07:07,878 --> 00:07:08,599
Absolutely.

83
00:07:08,599 --> 00:07:10,321
It's like Az Yashir Moshe.

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00:07:10,321 --> 00:07:13,244
They make it sound like this was a pre-existing song.

85
00:07:13,244 --> 00:07:15,667
Here it's a pre-existing formula.

86
00:07:15,667 --> 00:07:28,240
But the other things that become fascinating as we'll see is it's written for the future
because it's a formula that Moses is giving to the people that they will say in the future

87
00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:30,732
and they will recite themselves.

88
00:07:30,732 --> 00:07:42,529
The farmer is explicitly instructed to say these words while presenting the first fruits
at the sanctuary, because first fruit offerings were presumed to be very old, von Rad

89
00:07:42,529 --> 00:07:43,449
reasoned.

90
00:07:43,449 --> 00:07:48,192
That the accompanying recitation might also preserve an early cultic tradition.

91
00:07:48,192 --> 00:07:59,200
You know, clearly, if in an agrarian society, the most basic thing that you do if you believe that God is responsible for any sort of

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00:07:59,738 --> 00:08:04,900
success on your end is you thank God with your first fruits.

93
00:08:04,900 --> 00:08:08,742
It seems like it's a very seminal moment.

94
00:08:08,742 --> 00:08:19,907
He conceded that there was no objective chronological marker, but argued that the
formula's concise, simple form and its connection to an ancient ritual brought it close to

95
00:08:19,907 --> 00:08:23,408
Israel's earliest formulations of its history.

96
00:08:23,609 --> 00:08:26,890
What makes it interesting is the formula moves from

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00:08:26,890 --> 00:08:34,657
Exodus directly toward the land without mentioning Sinai, the covenant at Horeb, and
without mentioning Moses.

98
00:08:34,657 --> 00:08:38,200
Sounds like when we talk about the Haggadah and we say what's missing.

99
00:08:38,200 --> 00:08:42,124
Clearly in the Haggadah we say doesn't mention Moses.

100
00:08:42,124 --> 00:08:49,480
I think this kind of sensitized me to say, hmm, it actually in the Haggadah doesn't
mention giving the Torah at Mount Sinai either.

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00:08:49,742 --> 00:08:57,967
I think it's more significant that it doesn't mention Sinai because we know that the book
of Deuteronomy is basically first person Moses.

102
00:08:57,967 --> 00:09:00,849
So he's the one who's telling them what to do.

103
00:09:00,849 --> 00:09:03,831
So it's not so surprising that Moses isn't there.

104
00:09:03,831 --> 00:09:08,734
But the fact that Sinai's not there, that's a good dvar Torah for everybody's Seder.

105
00:09:08,898 --> 00:09:09,438
Yeah.

106
00:09:09,438 --> 00:09:21,653
And of course, because Von Rad was a biblical critic, meaning to say that he felt that the
Torah was comprised of edited documents put together at a later time, his argument was why

107
00:09:21,653 --> 00:09:23,764
was it not mentioning Sinai?

108
00:09:23,764 --> 00:09:34,349
He argued that the Exodus land tradition, was one group of texts, and the Sinai
tradition were circulated separately and were combined only later.

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00:09:34,349 --> 00:09:38,082
You can buy it and you can you can take it or you can leave it.

110
00:09:38,082 --> 00:09:43,066
But the point was that he clearly identified that Sinai was missing.

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00:09:43,066 --> 00:09:54,786
And then he says, this thing about my father was an Aramean seems to preserve an unusual
ancestral memory, which rings true because every year we twist our heads and our

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00:09:54,786 --> 00:09:56,797
minds to know what's going on here.

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00:09:56,797 --> 00:09:58,799
Who is this Aramean?

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00:09:58,799 --> 00:10:00,440
It it's old.

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00:10:00,440 --> 00:10:07,458
The other commentaries, and I'm gonna quote a little bit from Jeffrey Tigay.

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00:10:07,458 --> 00:10:10,640
Who wrote the JPS commentary on Devarim?

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He says the Hebrew Arami Oved Avi is alliterative.

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What does that mean?

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It has a repetition with the same starting sounds in a group of nearby words, which would
facilitate memorization of this phrase.

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I've seen explanations before that say we use this because people knew it, because farmers
used it.

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Everything had to be memorized because, as Sharon will be happy to tell you, there were no
books.

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And so you had to write it on, you know, on parchment and that was too expensive.

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So something like Arami oved avi had to be known.

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And of course, that's why it's chosen for the Haggadah, because they didn't have Haggadot
in those days.

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These things had to be known to the people.

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And the idea was that you were talking about your old, old ancestors that maybe
you have forgotten.

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They were vulnerable migrants.

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They were poor people, and here you were celebrating the shefa, the richness of the
moment.

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makes perfect sense.

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He adds something else.

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He says that not only would

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This keep the memory of Israel's landless beginnings fresh in the farmer's mind, but he
continues: this clause of saying that your forefather was an Aramean probably was very

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ancient, for it is unlikely that Israelite tradition would have chosen to describe
Israel's ancestors as Arameans once Arameans of Damascus became aggressive toward Israel

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in the 9th century BCE.

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So again,

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There are many scholars, both critical, or in the case of Jeffrey Tigay, more classical,
more traditional, who are arguing that there's something unique about this and it's

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possibly old.

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So let's look at

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about the historical point about what the role of the Arameans was.

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Okay.

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So let's look at the classical rabbinic commentaries and who they say this wandering
Aramean was.

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The Ibn Ezra says that it refers to Jacob.

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I think that's typically what we think of in the Haggadah because we see him fleeing from
Laban.

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So he says that he was poor and had no money.

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So again, echoing what I said a second ago, that we will find later the Mishnah talks
about going from Gnut to

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From maybe embarrassment to shevach, to being very successful.

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Here it's very simple.

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He was poor and had no money, and here you're bringing this basket of rich first crop.

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And it says its import is I did not inherit the land from my father, for my father was
poor when he came to Aram.

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He was also a stranger in Egypt, he was few in number.

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The Rashbam says, Arami oved avi.

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he says it means my father Avraham, who was an Aramite, lost in exile from his
birthplace, Aram.

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We dealt with this a lot in a very popular segment where we talked about the use of
Aramaic.

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and everybody comes from Aram.

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The meaning of the word Oved here is similar.

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the root used to describe wandering without specific objective, almost like walking
because one is lost.

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We also find the word in this connection in Jeremiah.

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My people were lost sheep, their shepherd led them astray.

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עמי רועיהם התעום

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I find the reference to Jeremiah important because remember that Jeremiah is a prophet in
the future of exile and return.

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And so just as our forefathers were lost.

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exile wandering, so too when we bring up that basket of first fruits, we're referring
in the instance where sometime in the future will be again refugees.

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We come from refugees.

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Don't, don't worry about it.

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You can get over it.

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and then of course I love the Shadal.

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By the way, that the word, my father was a wandering Aramean.

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So we always focus on the word Aramean, but the word wandering is a very interesting term,
right?

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That my father was a wanderer.

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That's what you say.

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We're always refugees.

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And we're always referring to that in good times and bad.

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And I think that's powerful.

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Shadal says, My father, this includes all the patriarchs as one, for they wandered from
nation to nation.

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And he says, the Rashbam, who said it was Abraham, was on the right track.

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What I'm trying to get to, Rabbi, very similar to what we did last week with Isaiah, where
he tried to broaden our history.

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To Noah, to Adam and Eve, to Abraham and Sarah.

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Here it's becoming irrelevant who we're referring to with this ambiguous term Aramean,
because its import is that it could be any one of our relatives.

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It could be any one of our patriarchs and ancestors.

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And that's why I love that Shadal says it's all of them.

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It takes away the historic.

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historical antecedents of one Exodus, of one leader of Moses, and it broadens it out.

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And I think that too makes it much more important.

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Fantastic.

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And now back to our podcast.

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So the Exodus prototype precedes Egypt.

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it doesn't e start with Egypt, it goes farther back.

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and I think that if you argue with those who argue that this is an older text, even
as some who say that the present declaration

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belongs to the late monarchic or exilic Deuteronomic period, or others who propose reading
it in relation to returning exiles and those who had remained in the land, it makes

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perfect sense.

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I love the fact that almost the rabbis and the biblical critics are saying this
statement

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becomes so useful because it's not relational to one particular period.

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It could be very old or it could be literally at the moment that Isaiah, who we were
reading last week, was talking.

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Well and of course and we use it every year at the Seder.

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So it kind of—it's above time.

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It is.

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And I love that you brought that up because I'm going to segue now into the Seder because
I'm going to argue today, and we do this many times at Madlik, where we say, you know, the

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biblical critics and the rabbis definitely recognize the same problems.

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And in this particular case, they came out with the same solution.

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So the rabbis of the Haggadah are writing a document.

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Most of us would agree it was made for exile.

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It certainly was made for a post-temple time.

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They didn't need a Haggadah when you were bringing your Passover sacrifice, but they
wrote it for transitional periods, and they went and picked this same ceremonial

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formulaic statement that a farmer says when he brings his crops, and they modeled the
whole Haggadah after it.

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So this is what they say in the Mishnah in Pesachim.

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He begins, matchil b'genut u'mesayem b'shevach—he begins with the Jewish people's disgrace.

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I would say better, humble beginnings.

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I don't know why we say disgrace, and concludes with their glory.

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He expounds from the passage, an Aramean tried to destroy my father.

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That's Deuteronomy 26, 5.

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And here the Mishnah is telling us what to do at the Seder at the moment of Maggid, that we
are required to tell the story.

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The declaration one recites when presenting the first fruits in the temple, until he
concludes explaining the entire section.

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So that's why we are discussing.

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Passover today because it is literally our paragraph in the Torah portion of this week
that provides the basis, the proof text that we use in the Haggadah.

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In terms of the traditional Talmudic explanations of what it means to begin with genut,
with what I call our humble beginnings.

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Rav says it's idolatry and Shmuel says it's slavery.

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But again, if you look at the context, it's clear as any entrepreneur who is successful
and talks back to his humble beginnings that this is part of this wonderful formula.

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I started, my dad had nothing, and this is what God gave me and created this wonderful shefa.

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I'll just say that Jewish tradition teaches us always to go back to our humble beginnings.

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I wonder if that comes from the Haggadah.

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That's just part of our DNA, that that's our tradition, that you always you start
from our humility.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And it's and it's very powerful, but we think of it so many times as something it's kind
of the right thing to do.

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But I think what we're going to take away today is, but it's a powerful, empowering
thing to do.

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Because if your beginnings are humble and you were a wanderer, guess what?

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If you're a wanderer again, you're going to take solace from that.

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You're going to say, I've been here before.

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I've seen this movie, and I know we can get out of it.

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so again, the key question is why not go to the book of Exodus to base the Haggadah on?

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Why go to Deuteronomy?

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And the answer seems to be that Exodus contains all the details of the events.

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But Deuteronomy contains a speech in which an Israelite is commanded to retell those
events.

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Exodus is third-person narrative.

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The Israelites were enslaved, God heard them, God brought them.

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but here it's first-person.

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He saw us—and look, it comes right from the Haggadah.

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Vayare'u otanu ha-Mitzrim, va-nitzak, va-yotzieinu, va-y'vieinu.

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It happened to me, says this farmer.

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It brings it

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into the present.

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And that's of course what the next Mishnah says.

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B'khol dor va-dor chayav adam lir'ot et atzmo k'ilu hu yatza mi-Mitzrayim.

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Therefore, each person, and they took that right from the farmer, because the farmer is
standing there reciting a formula that Moses provided in the book of Deuteronomy on the

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banks of Moab, that he was to say in the future to relive the moment.

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I think it's magical.

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It's fantastic.

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Well, that's the most famous line of all, right?

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We have to imagine that we left Egypt.

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We have to imagine ourselves as slaves and we have to imagine ourselves as achieving our
freedom.

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Yes.

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And of course, it therefore tells the next most famous thing, which is that therefore we
need to look upon ourselves as if we went out.

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And then it goes on to learn from Laban, and it says therefore we went down to
Egypt and resided there just a handful of souls, and there we became a nation large and

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plenty.

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It feeds right into the story of

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The Haggadah.

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And I would say that it becomes now very similar to what we were stretching for last
week.

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And this becomes, therefore, an outlier for another reason.

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If you recall, last week we said you'll never find Moses talking about Abraham.

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You'll never find Moses talking besides the covenant.

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You'll never find him talking or referencing Noah.

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You'll never find him talking or reference Adam and Eve.

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But here by using this word Aramean, which is in the book of Deuteronomy, it opens up
permission for us to say this story goes way back.

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And as a result, and this is key, it goes way forward, that it will be with us all the
time.

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And that's why we can say, V'hi She'amda, that it is in every generation.

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That they stand up against us.

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That's literally what it's saying.

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It's saying that the Exodus story was not a one-off.

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The Exodus story was a model, a template, that we can repurpose going forward.

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So it's, I think, fascinating to look at this in the context of what we were discussing
last week with regard to Isaiah.

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That's that is actually fantastic, right?

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To look forward, to look backwards.

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yeah, I mean, the question to me is why is it that we need to see it as if we left
Egypt?

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What do we gain by acting as if we were slaves and we were free?

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I think it means that we appreciate Jewish history.

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And that's what Isaiah is, right?

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That if we understand that experience of going from slavery to freedom, then we are we fit
into every period of Jewish history.

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B'khol dor va-dor—in every generation.

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I totally agree.

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And what I'm trying to say, I guess, is we know when Isaiah lived.

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Isaiah lived at, you know, some of what he wrote, he might have written even in Babylon,
and some when he came back to Israel and was hoping that others would follow him.

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The rabbis, we know when they wrote the Haggadah.

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It was after the temple was destroyed, probably even after the Jews were exiled from the
land.

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So imagine the audacity.

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Of picking a paragraph that a farmer who farms the Holy Land, the Promised Land, says, and
you're asking a community that is no longer in that land to take power from it.

299
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But again, what it shows is that the power of this, these phrases were literally not for
when we saw the liberation or were living the liberation.

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But when we were backsliding into some sort of golah or exile.

301
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And I think that's therefore—I would even say—that almost gives a little bit of
strength to the argument that this might have been written at the same time as Isaiah or

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edited and brought in at the same time as Isaiah.

303
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That supports that idea.

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But certainly, whether you buy into that or not, it becomes powerful in those
instances.

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And I think that is what makes it l'dor va-dor.

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It makes it something that transcends a particular moment or a particular time.

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And of course, what that means is that the rabbis take it from the temple to the home,
from the pilgrim's basket to the Seder table, from possession of the land to life in

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dispersion.

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00:26:32,989 --> 00:26:34,962
it makes it

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so much more powerful going forward.

311
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And I think that it to me, this convergence of criticism, biblical criticism, and the
rabbinic interpretation really proves to me that there aren't really any

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conflicts here, that we can look at these timeless texts and we can look at them ha
hafokh bah va-hafokh bah, from every different perspective, and we come out many times

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with the same language.

314
00:27:05,287 --> 00:27:10,148
but at the end of the day, all of these texts give us a grammar.

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00:27:10,148 --> 00:27:13,289
And the grammar has two components to it.

316
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On the one hand, it's personal.

317
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I emphasized when I read the text how it says I, I, I.

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It is a single individual farmer.

319
00:27:22,892 --> 00:27:29,154
and the other part is because it separates it from a particular exodus.

320
00:27:29,154 --> 00:27:35,960
From a particular Moses or a Jacob or an Isaac or an Abraham, it means that it's a
recurring pattern.

321
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:44,487
It doesn't really matter who the key players are, because in every generation it has
meaning for us.

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00:27:44,487 --> 00:27:51,332
So this first person script is something that we started by saying makes it unique, but it
becomes very important.

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And the recurring pattern, I think this idea of Bikurim too is important.

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It wasn't done on a particular holiday.

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There's an open season, so to speak, for bringing bikkurim.

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This wasn't the kind of bikkurim that we think of on Shavuot.

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It is bikkurim that was brought whenever you got those new crops.

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You were empowered then to come to the place that God chose and present these
gifts.

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So I think it's a wonderful, wonderful message.

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A fantastic message.

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It's really, really good.

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00:28:25,708 --> 00:28:30,852
And connecting it to Isaiah and what we've done the past two weeks is also wonderful.

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This is week number six of the seven haftarot.

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Yes.

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00:28:34,683 --> 00:28:41,127
So now I want to get back to the open question that Von Rad opened, which is what about
Sinai?

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Why do we not mention Sinai, therefore, in the Haggadah?

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00:28:44,570 --> 00:28:50,454
Why do we not mention Sinai in the Bikurim formula?

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00:28:50,454 --> 00:28:55,918
Sinai is so important, even in the Haggadah.

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00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:58,371
You might say we do mention it in Dayenu.

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We say, had you not given us the Torah, would it have been enough?

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But ultimately, there is an article in TheTorah.com that literally asks this question.

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and it comes up with numerous answers, none of which I find particularly appealing.

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It seems to me, Rabbi, and this I'm gonna go out on a limb and I want to know what you
think.

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I think that while Exodus repeats itself over and over again, this kind of revelation at
Sinai might have been a one-off.

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In other words, we don't want prophets coming and making new laws.

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The law was given at Sinai once.

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Yes, we re-listened to that law, but that moment where we had this kind of public
opening up of heaven and getting God's opinion, getting God's laws.

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It happens only once.

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It happens once, and it's unlike Exodus, where we can make the case that it can become
very personal.

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I, we argue against private epiphany.

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We don't want a Paul walking on the way somewhere and saying, Hey, I just got this great text from God.

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It's gonna change.

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And I think that the rabbis understood that in the famous Talmud of

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the Oven of Akhnai.

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They said, “Lo ba-shamayim hi,” quoting Deuteronomy: the Torah is not in heaven.

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They said, Rabbi Yirmiyah says, since the Torah was already given at Mount Sinai, we do not
regard any divine voices anymore.

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It's nitnah livnei adam.

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So maybe, maybe that is the answer of why Sinai is not connected.

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And I'll go one step further because I did promise to tie things into Rosh Hashanah.

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On Rosh Hashanah, right after we recite this iconic paragraph that's used to get to teshuvah,
that's get that gets us absolved.

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“Adonai, Adonai.”

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In the Selichot, we say, “We have all sinned—aval anachnu va'avoteinu chatanu.” [We and our fathers]

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00:31:08,551 --> 00:31:17,356
Again, there we're using this same tool, which is to say that we've been sinning from time
immemorial.

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We were sinning before, we're sinning today, and we're going to sin in the future, and we know
how to deal with this.

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We were given tools to deal with this.

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I think it's the same type of comforting context where we connect ourselves with the past
that gives us power into the future.

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Think that's great.

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00:31:37,987 --> 00:31:44,812
I just say that you know, this declaration is very much tied into bringing us to the land.

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00:31:44,812 --> 00:31:51,716
You know, Sinai is important, but Sinai is like a parallel train track to going into the
land.

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00:31:51,716 --> 00:31:56,860
Sinai is independent, you're obligated to keep the law even outside the land.

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Going into the land is something else.

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00:31:58,771 --> 00:32:02,184
So I think also, in light of what you said, I think we understand that.

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Sinai is something else.

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This is about getting into the land.

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perfect.

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00:32:07,727 --> 00:32:21,216
So anyway, another Shabbat as we get ready for Rosh Hashanah and Passover, but one
which really teaches us these timeless tools that the Torah provides or people, in order

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to repurpose stories from the past, traditions from the past, laws and truths from the
past to give us strength today and into the future.

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00:32:31,608 --> 00:32:32,271
Fantastic.

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Shabbat Shalom, everybody.

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We'll see you next week.

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We're getting close to the end of the Torah.

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00:32:36,780 --> 00:32:37,820
Be well, everyone.

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00:32:41,336 --> 00:32:47,429
Do you agree that the Exodus repeats itself while Sinai happened only once?

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00:32:47,489 --> 00:32:52,252
Or do you believe that revelation can also occur in our personal lives?

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00:32:52,492 --> 00:32:56,975
I'd love to hear your thoughts, disagreements, and questions in the comments section.

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00:32:56,975 --> 00:33:05,139
Please also share other questions about Jewish texts and traditions that you'd like us to
explore in future Madlik deep dives.

00:02:10,999 –> 00:02:12,280
Welcome to Madlik.

23
00:02:12,280 –> 00:02:18,784
My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish
text or tradition.

24
00:02:18,784 –> 00:02:27,554
Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast
platform and now on YouTube and Substack.

25
00:02:27,554 –> 00:02:35,479
We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

26
00:02:35,660 –> 00:02:47,999
Join us for Sing Without a Song as we explore how Isaiah reintroduced Genesis into the
Jewish imagination, how the rabbis made consolation grow progressively more joyous as Rosh

27
00:02:47,999 –> 00:02:49,580
Hashanah approaches.

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And why the Pesikta de-Rav Kahana hears in one barren woman’s voice the voices of Sarah,
Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Hannah, and Zion herself.

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Sometimes we sing because redemption has arrived, and sometimes we sing to make room for
it.

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So, Rabbi, usually I don’t sing the haftarah, but it is my parashah.

31
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So I’m gonna look straight into the camera and say, “Rani akarah lo yaladah, pitzchi rinah
v’tzahali.”

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I am not known for doing the tunes correctly, but that line I can do.

33
00:03:29,641 –> 00:03:32,362
So here we have repurposing.

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So, as I said, this week is, what, the fifth week of the consolation haftarot.

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And it says, Sing, O barren one, thou that didst not bear, break forth into singing and
cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child.

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For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, says the
Lord.

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00:04:01,302 –> 00:04:08,806
I mean, that sentence is just—I was too young at 13 to appreciate the power of that
sentence.

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I mean, it’s basically telling someone who, in the biblical tradition, a woman who was
barren and could not have children, that was like about the worst thing that could happen

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to someone.

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And it’s asking that woman to sing, and that woman to believe that she is luckier than the
children of the married wife.

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It’s really radical.

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00:04:30,368 –> 00:04:33,388
In terms of what Isaiah, the hope

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That he’s trying to convey to these children of Zion.

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00:04:38,059 –> 00:04:46,172
It goes on: Enlarge the site of your tent, extend the size of your dwelling, do not stint;
lengthen the ropes and drive the pegs firm.

45
00:04:46,172 –> 00:04:53,384
So he’s saying, Come on, build up the temple, build up the land, for you shall spread out
to the right and to the left.

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00:04:53,384 –> 00:04:58,165
Here we go again with Lecha Dodi: “Yamin u’smol tifrotzi.”

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00:04:58,165 –> 00:05:01,740
Your offspring shall dispossess nations and shall

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00:05:01,740 –> 00:05:08,454
People the desolate towns, fear not, you shall not be shamed, do not cringe.

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00:05:08,454 –> 00:05:20,920
“Ki lo tevoshi v’al tikalmi”—again in the Lecha Dodi—you shall not be disgraced, for you
shall not forget the reproach of your youth, and remember no more the shame of your

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00:05:20,920 –> 00:05:26,023
widowhood, for the one who made you whose name is God of hosts.

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00:05:26,023 –> 00:05:31,636
So, again, and then it goes on to say—and we’re using now the grammar

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00:05:31,636 –> 00:05:33,026
of marriage.

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00:05:33,057 –> 00:05:36,329
the God of hosts will say, I will espouse you.

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00:05:36,329 –> 00:05:40,511
The Holy One of Israel who is called the God of all the earth will redeem you.

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00:05:40,511 –> 00:05:48,616
So it’s basically talking about redemption and God reuniting maritally with His
people.

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00:05:48,616 –> 00:05:53,098
God has called you back as a wife forlorn and forsaken.

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00:05:53,098 –> 00:06:00,514
Can one cast off the wife of his youth, said your God, For a little while I forsook you

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00:06:00,514 –> 00:06:03,938
But with vast love I will bring you back.

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00:06:03,938 –> 00:06:12,867
In slight anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with kindness everlasting I will
take you back in love, said God your Redeemer.

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00:06:12,867 –> 00:06:23,400
And now in verse 9 it says, For this to me is like the waters of Noah, as I swore that the
waters of Noah nevermore would flood the earth.

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So I swear that I will not be angry with you or rebuke you, for the mountains may move and
the hills be shaken, but my loyalty shall never move from you, nor my covenant of

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friendship be shaken, said God, who takes you back in love.

63
00:06:38,821 –> 00:06:51,628
And I think it’s so appropriate that we’re reading this combined with Deuteronomy because
what occurred to me, Rabbi, was the four books of Moses, meaning if you take away Genesis.

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00:06:51,628 –> 00:06:54,999
How many times is there a reference to Adam and Eve?

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00:06:54,999 –> 00:06:58,120
How many times is there a reference to Noah?

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00:06:58,120 –> 00:07:05,922
Even when there’s a reference to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, it’s not about the stories
of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

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00:07:05,922 –> 00:07:09,963
It’s about the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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00:07:10,064 –> 00:07:18,246
By reading this combined with the fifth book of Moses, we really have an aha moment and
said yes.

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00:07:18,262 –> 00:07:26,475
This is the first time that we are getting references to those wonderful foundational
stories in Genesis.

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00:07:26,475 –> 00:07:29,288
It really just hit me between the eyes this year.

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00:07:29,518 –> 00:07:43,552
So the fact is that the haftarah is both for Noach and for Ki Tetze, but it’s
for different reasons, meaning it’s for Ki Tetze because of the beginning of the haftarah, and

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00:07:43,552 –> 00:07:46,423
it’s for Noach because of the end of the haftarah.

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00:07:46,423 –> 00:07:50,184
So you’re right, you know, it’s used in both ways.

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00:07:50,184 –> 00:07:58,546
And the fact that it tells the story, but that’s really independent of the Deuteronomy,
and that’s interesting how you connect both pieces together.

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00:07:59,266 –> 00:08:06,208
And I have to say, I was lockstep with you until I started thinking a little bit more
about it.

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00:08:06,208 –> 00:08:16,631
Because we’re gonna find, if I am successful with my argument, that Noah is not the only
isolated case of a reference to Genesis.

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And, you know, the modern biblical scholars will say that the book of Genesis was just
being edited in the fifth century BC when Isaiah was written.

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00:08:25,953 –> 00:08:28,428
That doesn’t interest me so much.

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00:08:28,428 –> 00:08:41,119
What interests me is that Isaiah is the first one of the Nevi’im who is referencing our own
books and referencing our own traditions and referencing our own stories and doing what we

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00:08:41,119 –> 00:08:51,528
do with Midrash every week, which is bring the story of Noah up to speed with now, with a
people that is waiting for a God to keep his promise.

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00:08:51,528 –> 00:08:59,561
Or Adam and Eve, who are in the Garden of Eden, and he’s trying to promise the people
that you are going to return to a new Eden.

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00:08:59,561 –> 00:09:03,283
It’s just amazing to me that we haven’t realized it.

83
00:09:03,283 –> 00:09:18,079
But from Isaiah, we’re going to see that not only does rani akarah have a reference in the eyes of
the rabbis to the barren women of our tradition who gave birth, and that’s all in Genesis

84
00:09:18,079 –> 00:09:20,822
pretty much, but also mei Noach.

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00:09:20,822 –> 00:09:27,518
So again, I would be remiss if I didn’t quote Genesis 8:1, which says, “Vayizkor Elohim et
Noach.”

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00:09:27,518 –> 00:09:37,196
Now, when we, in a few weeks, are in synagogue and we are going through the Zikhronot, we will
have 10 verses that prove that God remembers.

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00:09:37,196 –> 00:09:39,948
And correct me if I’m wrong, Rabbi, this is the first one.

88
00:09:39,948 –> 00:09:49,046
The earliest verse of God remembering a promise that He made, a commitment that He has,
is to Noah.

89
00:09:49,046 –> 00:10:02,628
And I feel that comes directly out of the fact that Isaiah was able to contemporize Noah
for his day and age, and the services on Rosh Hashanah are contemporizing it

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00:10:02,628 –> 00:10:04,680
for our day as well.

91
00:10:05,196 –> 00:10:21,357
So, the fact that you said about how Isaiah contemporizes the story of Noah—when you
think about it, remembering Noah is even more important than

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00:10:21,357 –> 00:10:23,708
remembering Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

93
00:10:23,708 –> 00:10:30,152
Because Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a covenant, but Noah actually means to save the
world.

94
00:10:30,522 –> 00:10:32,103
I absolutely love it.

95
00:10:32,103 –> 00:10:32,693
It’s both.

96
00:10:32,693 –> 00:10:35,564
No, people talk about Isaiah as universal.

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00:10:35,564 –> 00:10:38,684
You know, he’s the one who has the big picture, the ideas.

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00:10:38,684 –> 00:10:44,346
Let’s look at a little bit of this modern scholarship, because it’s really contemporary.

99
00:10:45,765 –> 00:10:49,367
And now a word from our sponsor.

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Thanks.

110
00:11:47,508 –> 00:11:50,170
And now back to our podcast.

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00:11:51,854 –> 00:12:01,640
So there’s a book that came out in 1998 by Benjamin Sommer, and the book’s title
is A Prophet Reads Scripture.

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00:12:01,640 –> 00:12:09,614
It’s an allusion to Isaiah reading Bereshit, reading his own Torah, so to speak, our own
Torah.

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00:12:09,614 –> 00:12:19,230
There’s another scholar that I quote in the Sefaria source notes, and it’s called—it’s
by Richard Schultz, Building on the Beginnings of

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00:12:19,230 –> 00:12:30,518
Isaiah’s diverse use of Genesis, and it explores the ways in which Isaiah reuses various
traditions and reinterprets various texts of Genesis.

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00:12:30,518 –> 00:12:42,506
And then finally, I’ll quote Klaus Westermann, who says, Isaiah looks back into the past
in search of a turning point comparable with the one which confronted Israel.

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00:12:42,506 –> 00:12:48,034
He has to go further back to the turning point in primeval times, which marked the end of

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00:12:48,034 –> 00:12:52,018
catastrophic events involving the whole human race!

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00:12:52,018 –> 00:12:57,163
He puts an exclamation after the whole human race, as you said a second ago.

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00:12:57,163 –> 00:13:00,005
Several contextual comments are pertinent.

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00:13:00,005 –> 00:13:08,914
As with God’s promise with regard to the waters of Noah, the divine promise here has
implications that extend beyond national Israel.

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00:13:08,914 –> 00:13:13,398
The covenant of peace announced in Isaiah 54:10.

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00:13:13,398 –> 00:13:18,162
corresponds to the covenant made with Noah and all living creatures.

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00:13:18,223 –> 00:13:33,807
And he goes on and talks about how he is taking this story which predates Abraham and
the birth of our people and uses that along with marriage, which again is a universal

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00:13:33,807 –> 00:13:38,774
example of taking one’s estranged wife back.

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00:13:38,774 –> 00:13:41,776
Now let’s look a little bit at Abraham and Sarah.

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00:13:41,776 –> 00:13:53,045
In last week’s reading, a few verses before the reading began, in Isaiah 51, it says,
Listen to me, you who pursue justice, you who seek God.

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00:13:53,045 –> 00:13:59,730
Look to the rock you have hewn from, to the quarry you were dug from.

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00:13:59,730 –> 00:14:05,206
Look back to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who brought you forth.

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00:14:05,206 –> 00:14:12,472
For he was only one when I called him, meaning Abraham, but I blessed him and made him
many.

130
00:14:12,472 –> 00:14:18,216
Again, this is Isaiah doing something that Moses never does, but we never realized it.

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00:14:18,216 –> 00:14:22,239
Does Moses ever say to the Jewish people, Why are you so upset?

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00:14:22,239 –> 00:14:23,800
What about Abraham?

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00:14:23,800 –> 00:14:26,162
He went through similar type things.

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00:14:26,162 –> 00:14:31,486
He doesn’t, but Isaiah does, which is absolutely fascinating.

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00:14:31,592 –> 00:14:45,730
In Isaiah 51:3, it says, Truly God has comforted Zion, comforted all her ruins, made
her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of God.

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00:14:45,730 –> 00:14:48,411
Again, you would never have Moses doing this.

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00:14:48,411 –> 00:14:53,974
He’s reading those texts that we’re gonna start all over again in a month and a half.

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00:14:54,170 –> 00:14:58,554
And he is rounding the circle, so to speak, rounding the square.

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00:14:58,554 –> 00:15:07,623
It’s just unbelievable because we take it so for granted that we kind of missed the
references in the last four books of Moses.

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00:15:07,623 –> 00:15:10,015
I was just blown away, I think, with that thought.

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00:15:10,015 –> 00:15:11,402
Okay.

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00:15:11,402 –> 00:15:15,645
So you know, this is a perspective.

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00:15:15,645 –> 00:15:22,591
The Isaiah from so many hundred years later is able to have a perspective.

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00:15:22,591 –> 00:15:27,855
And see things from perspective, you have a whole different view.

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00:15:27,855 –> 00:15:29,379
I’ll just I’ll

146
00:15:29,379 –> 00:15:32,138
veer a little bit to say the following.

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00:15:32,138 –> 00:15:34,202
That’s what we do in the Haggadah.

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00:15:34,202 –> 00:15:37,440
You know, in the Haggadah, the book of Exodus.

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00:15:37,440 –> 00:15:40,972
In the Haggadah, we tell the story from the book of Deuteronomy.

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00:15:40,972 –> 00:15:45,655
Because when you look back on something, you remember it differently.

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Right?

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Even little things.

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Like you think about the Knicks winning the championship.

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So you know you live those games.

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And now you think back.

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I was just watching the last couple of minutes, a couple of nights ago, and
you remember differently a few months later.

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Even a few months makes such a difference in terms of perspective.

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Absolutely.

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And and again, that’s what, in a sense, repurposing is when you take something you saw
once and you’re using it slightly different, or it means slightly different things to you

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when you see it again.

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But again, getting back to our haftarah of rani akarah, when these modern-day
commentaries talk about Abraham, they only refer to

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to this one verse that actually talks about Abraham.

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But if you look at it through these lenses—and we’re gonna get to the Pesikta in a
second—they actually saw in rani akarah: God finally brought life from what seemed to be

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two sterile bodies.

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They look back at the whole magic of Genesis because you could read Genesis from Adam
and Eve until Joseph and his blessing Manasseh and Ephraim as a struggle to give birth.

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As a struggle to continue your line, so to speak.

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And that’s what rani akarah is doing.

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It’s saying to these people then and now that this is what we’ve always been up against,
and we have survived.

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so let’s go.

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the thing that I struck in this week, and I couldn’t pull myself away from looking
at this whole, what you call, this Haggadah

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of reading the haftarot in kind of as a commentary as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah.

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So, there is a Tosafot, which is a commentary on Rashi and the Talmud, that actually
talks about, and it’s in Megillah, and it actually talks about these seven haftarot that

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we say after Tisha B’Av.

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and it says we get this.

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From the Pesikta—we follow the Pesikta.

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It argues with people that change the order because it says that it is the nature of
these consolations to become progressively greater and more praiseworthy.

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So if every week we step

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Up another level.

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This week we’re talking about using Genesis.

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It’s because they’re supposed to grow dramatically.

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just like in the Haggadah, they have Detzach Adash Be’achav to help us memorize the ten plagues.

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There is a similar mnemonic for remembering these seven haftarot.

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And it says this practice, established according to the Pesikta, should never be

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Altered.

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Now, I have to tell you, Rabbi, and this is kind of an interesting story.

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When I was young, I guess I was a yeshiva bocher, and my parents were visited by the head
of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

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actually, he wasn’t the head then, but he was like the main fundraiser.

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And his name was Bernard Mandelbaum.

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And he must have heard that I was a yeshiva bocher because he gave me his two volume highly scientific.

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textual emendation of the Pesikta, and it’s based on an Oxford manuscript, which he argues
is the best one.

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Did he actually translate it?

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He wrote it, he did it, and he gave it to me.

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And I have it sitting here.

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And I pulled it out of my library because in his introduction, he says the following.

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Well, first of all, I have to say the Pesikta is a relatively early collection.

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it was written in the fifth or sixth century AD, which is early.

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we have Midrash [Rabba] on Genesis.

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many, this is an early one.

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And what it does, exactly as you say, Rabbi, is it works on each haftarah of the seven
weeks up to Rosh Hashanah, and it gives a running commentary.

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And hopefully we’ll have time to look at one or two of its commentaries.

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But he has a strange question.

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Ha-she’elah ha-ikrit.

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And the question is the place of the last two chapters, which are the repentance chapters.

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After the consolation, we get to the repentance chapters.

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And there’s a big problem because the problem is the Pesikta actually begins like you
would expect with Rosh Hashanah.

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It’s already covered Rosh Hashanah in the beginning.

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So why, when it ends the year, would it come back to Rosh Hashanah?

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00:20:30,020 –> 00:20:37,862
So what he says is—and this might be a little bit too much in the weeds for some of
our listeners, but he says the chapter.

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of Dirshu, which is the first haftarah of repentance, is completely missing from the
Oxford manuscript.

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And Shuvah is in its proper order between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

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So what he argues is that they were later additions, which actually gives a lot more power
to my argument from last week, which is: if you want to prepare for Rosh Hashanah, forget

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about Teshuva.

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Think about the consolation, the joy, the radical joy of being a wife who gets returned to
her husband.

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So I

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That’s great.

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00:21:14,186 –> 00:21:17,749
I’m gonna support you with the following.

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00:21:17,749 –> 00:21:23,703
The haftarah of Dirshu is actually not a haftarah from a Shabbat.

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The

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Dirshu—the day after Rosh Hashanah is a fast day, you know.

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It’s called Tzom Gedaliah.

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In the afternoon of Tzom Gedaliah, we read the haftarah of Dirshu, which is about
repentance.

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But it’s not, Geoffrey, connected directly to this whole thing.

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I’m surprised that it even comes up.

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I guess the Pesikta is talking about all the different haftarot.

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If you ask me, that’s just by chance that there’s a fast day.

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By the way, that has nothing to do with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

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So I think that just strengthens your point.

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And it’s not the Pesikta; it’s different versions of the Pesikta.

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The Oxford Pesikta doesn’t have it.

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So now let’s go back to our two haftarot, because we’ve begun a journey together.

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If you think about Isaiah 51, it has Abraham and Sarah, the barren couple, become a
multitude.

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Isaiah 51:3: Eden—the wasteland becomes a garden.

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Isaiah 54:1: The barren woman is ordered to sing.

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That’s our haftarah.

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And Isaiah 54, the catastrophe ends with an everlasting promise.

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We’re taking them all together.

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Isaiah is using the whole book of Genesis to teach Zion how to begin again.

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But now let’s read the Pesikta for our parashah.

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And again, try to think of it as if we’re reading the Haggadah.

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So it says, “Sing, O barren woman.”

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It establishes the barren woman in a home as a joyful mother of children.

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00:23:02,292 –> 00:23:12,051
It quotes Psalms and then it says, There are seven barren women: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel,
Leah, the wife of Manoah, Hannah, and Zion.

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What it is saying is this is not an

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isolated, trivial reference.

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This is the core of our narrative.

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00:23:21,338 –> 00:23:25,520
And it says, “He establishes the barren woman in a home.”

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This refers to our mother Sarah.

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Now, Sarah was barren—exactly like the Haggadah would do it.

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It brings a prooftext.

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As a joyful mother of children, as it is written, Sarah has nursed the children.

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It goes on and talks about Rebecca.

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Again, Rebecca is joyful.

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It talks and it gives verses for Rachel, but Rachel was barren.

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And then it says, as a joyful mother of children, as it is written, but you shall conceive
and bear a son.

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And it goes all the way from these individual women to Zion.

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And it says, when it gets to Zion—it says, quoting our verse—

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And it says another interpretation.

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He establishes the barren woman in a home.

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This refers to Zion, as it is written, “Sing, O barren woman who has not given birth.”

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So it’s taking another midrash and it’s bringing it to our pasuk.

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But now we get really interesting because now, in the next Pesikta, it says Rabbi
Reuben interpreted, “Sing, O barren woman.”

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And it says he read the word rani, sing, as the Greek word eirene, meaning peace.

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He’s quoting Greek, and it’s universal—it’s peace.

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Peace will come to you, O barren woman.

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00:24:48,029 –> 00:24:54,012
Rabbi Meir said, “Do not read akarah, barren, but akurah, uprooted.”

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She is the nation whom the nations of the world uprooted.

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Which is what Scripture says in Psalms Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of
Jerusalem’s fall, how they would raze it, raze it down to its foundations.

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And now we get to Abba bar Kahana, who said the principal guests, the most prominent
descendants, came from Leah, yet Rachel was regarded as the principal one, ikar.

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So now he’s taking akarah, which normally would mean barren, and he’s slightly changing it
to ikar, the most important.

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But Rachel was barren. Rabbi Isaac said Rachel was the mainstay, the ikarah of the
household, as it is written.

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But Rachel was barren, akarah.

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00:25:41,996 –> 00:25:43,737
Read it instead as:

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Rachel was the mainstay.

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00:25:45,948 –> 00:25:50,049
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai taught: Because everything depended on Rachel,

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The children of Israel were called by her name.

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Rachel weeps for her children.

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What they are literally doing is, Rabbi, in a few weeks, when we read Bereshit and we
start talking about the major themes in Bereshit, and we start talking about the theme of

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the barren woman, Isaiah is giving us a pedestal to stand on.

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He is saying that’s the way he read it, and that’s the way he read it to a people that
felt that they had been deserted.

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00:26:19,761 –> 00:26:34,146
And it’s just, to me, it’s just amazing, and I think it really does tie together the fact
that these same parshiyot, these same words from the prophets, can be read in the context

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of Genesis.

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00:26:35,266 –> 00:26:40,869
But they can also be read in the context of the haftarot of consolation.

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Because in a sense, he’s using Genesis and the stories of Genesis and the stories of our
past.

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We haven’t even touched on when he talks about Rosh Hashanah and the New Year and the
narratives of creation.

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Maybe we’ll get that next week.

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I don’t know.

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00:26:58,306 –> 00:27:00,522
We have a few more weeks to go before we get there.

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We’ll be good.

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00:27:01,994 –> 00:27:10,289
Anyway, I just found it so unbelievable, this year’s reading of these haftarot,
because it’s really a book.

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00:27:10,289 –> 00:27:14,184
The haftarot are being quoted in sequence.

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00:27:14,184 –> 00:27:17,956
And they’re using it to build a case, I believe, for Rosh Hashanah.

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00:27:17,956 –> 00:27:25,219
And now we know where it comes from, whether it came from the Pesikta or whether the
Pesikta was the first to codify it.

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This is an ancient tradition.

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00:27:27,570 –> 00:27:34,603
And we are fortunate to be following in those footsteps as we prepare for Rosh
Hashanah.

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Fantastic.

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00:27:35,433 –> 00:27:39,025
Thank you so much, everybody, and have a great week.

25
00:01:43,062 --> 00:01:46,224
Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey
Stern,

26
00:01:46,224 --> 00:01:51,326
and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed
some light on a Jewish text or tradition.

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00:01:51,326 --> 00:01:54,968
Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host
Madlik Disruptive Torah

28
00:01:54,968 --> 00:01:59,251
on your favorite podcast platform and now
on YouTube and Substack.

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00:01:59,251 --> 00:02:02,252
We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria,

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00:02:02,252 --> 00:02:04,934
and a link is included in the show notes.

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00:02:04,934 --> 00:02:09,716
This week we read Parshat Shoftim and we
read the fourth haftarah

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00:02:09,716 --> 00:02:12,678
of Consolation leading up to the high
holidays.

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00:02:13,196 --> 00:02:19,113
So join us for Wake Up and Rejoice as we
discover a Jewish wake up call that
invites

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00:02:19,113 --> 00:02:22,438
us not simply to rise up, but to dance.

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00:02:22,438 --> 00:02:29,345
Rabbi, it's gonna be Rosh Chodesh Elul by
the time this podcast airs,

36
00:02:29,345 --> 00:02:32,090
so I guess we're getting into the spirit
of the holidays.

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00:02:32,674 --> 00:02:36,150
That's exciting. There's nothing better
than getting into the spirit

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00:02:36,150 --> 00:02:39,396
of the High Holidays. So let's take this
haftarah and let's see how

39
00:02:39,396 --> 00:02:41,420
it connects to the upcoming High Holidays.

40
00:02:42,272 --> 00:02:46,346
And it's also a little bit of new
territory for us because normally we focus

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00:02:46,346 --> 00:02:49,459
on the parsha itself in the five books of
Moses.

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00:02:49,459 --> 00:02:52,672
And today we're going to look at the
haftorot,

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00:02:52,672 --> 00:02:58,238
which were sections from the prophets that
were linked thematically

44
00:02:58,338 --> 00:03:02,562
or calendar-wise with the parsha.

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00:03:02,562 --> 00:03:06,366
So this week's haftarah is by Isaiah.

46
00:03:06,786 --> 00:03:08,557
It's the fifth book of the prophets,

47
00:03:08,557 --> 00:03:12,408
and it's known for its visions of
universal peace and renewal.

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00:03:12,408 --> 00:03:15,849
It was written during the period of the
first temple,

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00:03:15,849 --> 00:03:21,611
so this is BC, against the backdrop of
rising Assyrian Empire and Israel

50
00:03:21,611 --> 00:03:24,602
on the decline. Of course, the temple had
been destroyed.

51
00:03:24,602 --> 00:03:28,754
Isaiah rebukes Israel for abandoning God
and pursuing corruption.

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00:03:29,016 --> 00:03:33,510
He calls for change and warns the nations of
their ultimate downfall.

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00:03:33,510 --> 00:03:38,175
But more importantly to us, the third of
the book contains comforting prophecies

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00:03:38,315 --> 00:03:40,837
about returning to Jerusalem and
redemption.

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00:03:40,837 --> 00:03:47,643
And that's why it's used a lot in these
haftarot of consolation,

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00:03:47,643 --> 00:03:50,046
which starts with Nachamu Nachamu,

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00:03:50,046 --> 00:03:52,488
which comes from Isaiah itself.

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00:03:52,488 --> 00:03:54,360
So these haftarot.

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00:03:54,602 --> 00:03:59,793
are linked less to the parsha, but more to
the time of year that we're in.

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00:03:59,793 --> 00:04:00,793
Is that correct?

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00:04:01,014 --> 00:04:02,895
That is absolutely right. Right.

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00:04:02,895 --> 00:04:08,939
So you know, since the last ten weeks of
the year have haftarot that

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00:04:08,939 --> 00:04:11,060
are linked to the calendar.

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00:04:11,060 --> 00:04:13,141
The three weeks before Tisha B'Av,

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00:04:13,141 --> 00:04:15,502
we have three Haftarot of destruction.

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00:04:15,502 --> 00:04:17,803
And then the seven weeks after Tisha B'Av,

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00:04:17,803 --> 00:04:21,005
we have seven Haftarot of consolation.

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00:04:21,005 --> 00:04:25,688
So even though usually the haftarah is
linked to the weekly portion,

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00:04:25,688 --> 00:04:27,969
but these last ten weeks of the year,

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00:04:27,969 --> 00:04:29,150
they're linked to the calendar.

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00:04:30,538 --> 00:04:33,961
Okay, so it is just poetic and lyrical.

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00:04:33,961 --> 00:04:36,983
We are in Isaiah 51, twelve,

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00:04:36,983 --> 00:04:40,241
and this is how the haftarah begins.

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00:04:40,241 --> 00:04:44,209
We're gonna see there's a lot of
repetition of two words.

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00:04:44,209 --> 00:04:47,951
We've already focused on a few in the
intro.

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00:04:47,951 --> 00:04:51,114
It says, Anochi, Anochi,

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00:04:51,114 --> 00:04:56,338
hu menachemchem. I am the one emphatically
who comforts you.

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00:04:56,630 --> 00:04:59,552
What ails you that you fear man who must
die?

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00:04:59,552 --> 00:05:03,435
Mortals who fare like grass.

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00:05:03,435 --> 00:05:07,127
so just as grass is fleeting,

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00:05:07,127 --> 00:05:09,109
it grows and it disappears.

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00:05:09,109 --> 00:05:12,121
it already is talking about the
mortality,

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00:05:12,121 --> 00:05:14,933
but it's also talking about Menachem.

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00:05:14,933 --> 00:05:18,666
It says in the fourth word that he's come
to comfort us,

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00:05:18,666 --> 00:05:22,639
to console us. and it has this emphasis of
saying,

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00:05:22,639 --> 00:05:24,660
I, I, this relationship.

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00:05:25,314 --> 00:05:31,078
with God then we go to Isaiah 51 the
same chapter

88
00:05:31,078 --> 00:05:37,122
16 through seventeen and there it says the famous words that I quoted

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00:05:37,362 --> 00:05:44,087
it says I have said to Zion you are my
people rouse rouse yourself

90
00:05:44,087 --> 00:05:48,530
it says rouse yourselves rouse Jerusalem

91
00:05:48,530 --> 00:05:54,674
"Tzion, ami atah. Hit'oreri, hit'oreri,
kumi Yerushalayim."

92
00:05:55,362 --> 00:06:00,043
You who from God's hand have drunk God's
wrath filled cup,

93
00:06:00,043 --> 00:06:02,824
you who have drained to the dregs the
bowl,

94
00:06:02,824 --> 00:06:06,275
the cup of reeling. So it's not ignoring
the past,

95
00:06:06,275 --> 00:06:09,886
it's not ignoring the tough times that
preceded,

96
00:06:09,886 --> 00:06:14,897
but it is emphatically saying that number one,

97
00:06:14,897 --> 00:06:18,528
God has a relationship with this people,

98
00:06:18,528 --> 00:06:24,470
and two, you are my people, and this is
a moment to get up.

99
00:06:24,672 --> 00:06:27,714
And to arise. But hit'oreri,

100
00:06:27,714 --> 00:06:31,127
hit'oreri is is just beautiful.

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00:06:31,127 --> 00:06:35,550
We'll see for those of you who don't know
it from the Kabbalat Shabbat

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00:06:35,650 --> 00:06:39,813
how this should resonate with so
many of us.

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00:06:39,813 --> 00:06:42,855
Let's just continue a little bit more.

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00:06:42,855 --> 00:06:49,600
then it goes to Isaiah 52 1 through 2,

105
00:06:49,600 --> 00:06:52,722
and it says, awake, awake, O Zion.

106
00:06:53,070 --> 00:06:56,173
Clothe yourself in splendor.

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00:06:56,173 --> 00:07:01,698
In Hebrew, that is uri uri livshi
uzechotzon.

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00:07:01,698 --> 00:07:05,541
And then it goes on with other words
that will be familiar

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00:07:05,541 --> 00:07:08,984
to us hitna'ari me'afar kumi.

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00:07:08,984 --> 00:07:12,107
So it says, Awake, awake,

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00:07:12,107 --> 00:07:14,890
O Zion, clothe yourself in splendor.

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00:07:14,890 --> 00:07:18,463
Put on your robes of majesty, Jerusalem,

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00:07:18,463 --> 00:07:19,463
holy city.

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00:07:19,566 --> 00:07:23,389
For the uncircumcised and the impure shall
never enter you again.

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00:07:23,389 --> 00:07:26,461
This was a moment where they had been
conquered.

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00:07:26,461 --> 00:07:30,053
Arise, shake off the dust,

117
00:07:30,053 --> 00:07:32,615
sit on your throne, Jerusalem,

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00:07:32,615 --> 00:07:34,957
loose the bonds from your neck,

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00:07:34,957 --> 00:07:41,791
O captive ones, fair Zion. It's you can
almost feel the tremors of emphasis here.

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00:07:41,791 --> 00:07:46,945
it's really coming out you. in Isaiah
52 7,

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00:07:46,945 --> 00:07:48,386
it says, How welcome?

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00:07:48,840 --> 00:07:51,802
On the mountains are the footsteps of the
herald,

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00:07:51,802 --> 00:07:54,534
announcing happiness, hearing good
fortune,

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00:07:54,534 --> 00:07:57,756
announcing victory. Tell Zion your God
reigns.

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00:07:57,756 --> 00:08:01,279
And so here too, as it finishes,

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00:08:01,279 --> 00:08:06,663
it's talking about come back to the
mountaintops of Judah

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00:08:07,043 --> 00:08:13,768
and your God reigns. You almost feel as
if you have to say again or anew,

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00:08:13,768 --> 00:08:17,010
or He's back, so to speak.

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00:08:17,344 --> 00:08:20,797
And then finally in 52:11,

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00:08:20,797 --> 00:08:24,230
it says, Suru, suru, again for emphasis,

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00:08:24,230 --> 00:08:28,924
turn away, turn away, touch nothing impure as
you depart from there,

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00:08:28,924 --> 00:08:31,906
keep pure as you go forth from there,

133
00:08:31,906 --> 00:08:33,967
you who bare the vessels of God.

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00:08:33,967 --> 00:08:38,792
So now he's talking to those who are still
in exile in Babylonia,

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00:08:38,792 --> 00:08:44,917
and he's asking them to come back and to
leave all of that which

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00:08:44,997 --> 00:08:46,078
is impure.

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00:08:46,498 --> 00:08:50,079
behind. and as I mentioned before,

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00:08:50,079 --> 00:08:55,241
we would remiss, we'd be remiss if we
didn't have Isaiah's line of Nachamu,

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00:08:55,241 --> 00:08:57,602
Nachamu, nachamu ami, yomar Eloheichem,

140
00:08:57,602 --> 00:09:02,283
the first of the Haftarot of
Consolation.

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00:09:02,283 --> 00:09:07,485
There's a lot of emphasis, there's a lot
of waking up

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00:09:07,485 --> 00:09:09,716
and shocking the people awake.

143
00:09:10,152 --> 00:09:15,239
to where they are. Just kind of
remarkable words on their own,

144
00:09:15,239 --> 00:09:17,386
but especially if you know our liturgy.

145
00:09:18,306 --> 00:09:21,110
Yeah, I mean that's amazing and obviously
we'll talk about this.

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00:09:21,110 --> 00:09:24,495
The word nachamu, the idea of comforting,

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00:09:24,495 --> 00:09:26,028
is a Torah word.

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00:09:26,284 --> 00:09:30,556
in a number of contexts the
Torah uses the word Nachamu.

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00:09:30,556 --> 00:09:34,178
So that's really that's really the you
know the powerful word

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00:09:34,278 --> 00:09:40,001
of these seven haftarot. And actually the
Shabbat after Tisha B'Av

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00:09:40,041 --> 00:09:43,582
has a special name and it's called Shabbat
Nachamu,

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00:09:43,582 --> 00:09:46,694
the Shabbat of Consolation based on the
Haftarah.

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00:09:46,694 --> 00:09:50,786
So clearly that's the word that you know
everything centers around that word.

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00:09:52,258 --> 00:09:54,129
And it would seem that from that,

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00:09:54,129 --> 00:09:59,460
because I think that's probably the only
haftarah that gets first billing

156
00:09:59,460 --> 00:10:04,537
throughout the year, that Shabbat is
the beginning of reading

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00:10:04,537 --> 00:10:07,149
these haftarot of consolation.

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00:10:07,149 --> 00:10:13,714
So I just want to quote a few of the
contemporary commentaries who are trying
to put

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00:10:13,994 --> 00:10:17,175
These verses that I just read into
context.

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00:10:17,175 --> 00:10:19,716
The first is the Etz Hayim Chumash,

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00:10:19,716 --> 00:10:23,158
that's the Chumash used mostly by the
Conservative movement.

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00:10:23,158 --> 00:10:25,769
It says each part of this haftara,

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00:10:25,769 --> 00:10:29,241
a divine pronouncement of comfort to Zion
and the nation,

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00:10:29,241 --> 00:10:32,362
features a pattern of double proclamation.

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00:10:32,820 --> 00:10:37,653
After God tells the people at the outset
that I am he who comforts you,

166
00:10:37,653 --> 00:10:41,295
remember we said I, I am he who comforts
you,

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00:10:41,295 --> 00:10:43,497
Jerusalem, also known as Zion,

168
00:10:43,497 --> 00:10:49,460
is exhorted to rouse, rouse herself from
travail of sorrow and to awake,

169
00:10:49,460 --> 00:10:52,242
awake to her new destiny of splendor.

170
00:10:52,536 --> 00:10:57,330
Finally, the exiles are called on to turn
turn away from Babylon

171
00:10:57,430 --> 00:10:59,411
and begin the journey to the homeland.

172
00:10:59,411 --> 00:11:04,055
These repetitions intensify the divine
commands and spotlight

173
00:11:04,055 --> 00:11:07,918
the haftara's three themes of divine
presence,

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00:11:07,918 --> 00:11:13,622
national transformation, and return from Zion,

175
00:11:13,622 --> 00:11:18,326
or I should say return from exile to
Zion.

176
00:11:18,886 --> 00:11:22,207
And then in some of the other
commentaries,

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00:11:22,207 --> 00:11:27,369
this one is from the Anchor Yale Bible by
Joseph Blenkinsopp.

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00:11:27,369 --> 00:11:33,801
He said the repeated verb or uri, hit'oreri
can signify a call to battle.

179
00:11:33,801 --> 00:11:37,312
and he brings a reference to Deborah the
judge,

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00:11:37,312 --> 00:11:39,753
a summons to a special mission,

181
00:11:39,753 --> 00:11:43,814
such as when God aroused the spirit of
Cyrus.

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00:11:44,200 --> 00:11:48,732
Or to a prophetic calling, and of course
he's bringing verses for all of these,

183
00:11:48,732 --> 00:11:54,094
or finally a gathering up of spiritual and
physical energies

184
00:11:54,214 --> 00:11:58,836
for decisive action. So I think that's
kind of echoes what I was saying before

185
00:11:58,836 --> 00:12:02,277
is you can get a sense almost that this is
a moment.

186
00:12:02,277 --> 00:12:05,199
and he's trying to seize the moment.

187
00:12:05,199 --> 00:12:10,841
The repetition itself indicates a sense of
urgency and conveys the impression that

188
00:12:10,841 --> 00:12:12,882
a critical point has been reached.

189
00:12:13,306 --> 00:12:16,898
And he says again, the repetition
further along,

190
00:12:16,898 --> 00:12:20,310
urging departure, presumably from
Babylonia,

191
00:12:20,310 --> 00:12:25,913
connects structurally with the first
passage which is Nachamu Nachamu.

192
00:12:25,913 --> 00:12:28,895
another modern commentary,

193
00:12:28,895 --> 00:12:33,091
J. Alec Motyer says, awake, awake is an
example of

194
00:12:33,091 --> 00:12:37,039
reduplication for emotional intensity.

195
00:12:37,039 --> 00:12:40,481
In the rich anthropomorphism of the Bible,

196
00:12:40,481 --> 00:12:42,162
and he references Exodus.

197
00:12:42,442 --> 00:12:47,964
Suggests sudden divine recollection after
a prolonged lapse of memory.

198
00:12:47,964 --> 00:12:50,645
I'm not quite sure who's being woken up
here.

199
00:12:50,645 --> 00:12:55,888
So here to the human eye, it seems as if
the Lord has gone to sleep over

200
00:12:55,888 --> 00:13:01,430
his promises. In other words, the
anthropomorphism calls on God to act with

201
00:13:01,430 --> 00:13:05,012
the same dispatch and urgency that would
follow if,

202
00:13:05,012 --> 00:13:10,594
in our experience, we woke to the sudden
recollection of a forgotten duty.

203
00:13:11,075 --> 00:13:16,847
it's just fascinating how rich this
repetition is,

204
00:13:16,847 --> 00:13:21,428
and of course especially so because you
have it so many times one after the other.

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00:13:21,742 --> 00:13:23,353
Right. So let's just say that,

206
00:13:23,353 --> 00:13:26,134
you know, we you pointed out at the
beginning that we're doing something

207
00:13:26,134 --> 00:13:28,925
different this week. We're looking at the
haftarah,

208
00:13:28,925 --> 00:13:35,288
and the style of the prophets is very much
different than the style of the Torah.

209
00:13:35,288 --> 00:13:38,770
You don't have this kind of repetition in
the Torah.

210
00:13:38,770 --> 00:13:42,962
So he's really making a point that the
prophet uses repetition,

211
00:13:42,962 --> 00:13:47,964
it's kind of poetry, but uses repetition
in order to emphasize,

212
00:13:47,964 --> 00:13:48,964
you know.

213
00:13:48,544 --> 00:13:51,516
to emphasize the point. And of
course,

214
00:13:51,516 --> 00:13:53,617
you know, the idea of arise, arise,

215
00:13:53,617 --> 00:13:57,339
that's good. But it starts with nachamu
nachamu.

216
00:13:57,339 --> 00:13:59,780
You think about it, the first
haftarah,

217
00:13:59,780 --> 00:14:02,041
why does it have to say nachamu twice?

218
00:14:02,041 --> 00:14:03,352
Just say comfort.

219
00:14:03,586 --> 00:14:06,007
Right, be comforted. Nachamu, Nachamu ami.

220
00:14:06,007 --> 00:14:09,348
My people be comforted. But the fact that
it says it twice,

221
00:14:09,348 --> 00:14:14,580
Nachamu, Nachamu Ami, is clearly for
emphasis and it almost sets

222
00:14:14,580 --> 00:14:18,792
up the subsequent six weeks are gonna be
repetition.

223
00:14:18,792 --> 00:14:21,313
It almost like highlights
for us.

224
00:14:21,313 --> 00:14:23,074
Look for the repetition.

225
00:14:23,234 --> 00:14:25,347
Cause that's gonna be the key of all the
haftarot.

226
00:14:25,347 --> 00:14:27,820
And I think that that's the idea of arise,

227
00:14:27,820 --> 00:14:31,264
arise. And of course, Shlomo Alkabetz in
Lecha Dodi,

228
00:14:31,264 --> 00:14:35,789
he picks that up also. He understands
that's the that's the call to action.

229
00:14:35,789 --> 00:14:39,474
And of course, what better way to begin
Shabbat than with that call to act?

230
00:14:41,106 --> 00:14:43,708
And I will say we do have some repetition.

231
00:14:43,708 --> 00:14:45,989
We have tzedek, tzedek tirdof.

232
00:14:45,989 --> 00:14:49,811
Yeah, that's just yeah. We also have,

233
00:14:49,811 --> 00:14:51,522
and this comes up in the High Holidays,

234
00:14:51,522 --> 00:14:55,294
Adonai, Adonai, El rachum v’chanun.

235
00:14:55,294 --> 00:15:01,098
So what really is striking is it's not as
if they're creating a new grammar,

236
00:15:01,098 --> 00:15:04,189
but the fact that they're using it so
much,

237
00:15:04,189 --> 00:15:06,831
you really get a sense of intensity.

238
00:15:06,831 --> 00:15:08,482
and I think

239
00:15:08,914 --> 00:15:11,697
before we start with the Lecha Dodi,

240
00:15:11,697 --> 00:15:18,153
in some of the kind of the commentaries or
treatments of Jewish liturgy that I've

241
00:15:18,383 --> 00:15:21,907
come across, they all point to the
Lecha Dodi as almost the peak,

242
00:15:21,907 --> 00:15:26,351
as almost the climax of the Friday night service.

243
00:15:26,351 --> 00:15:28,834
and there is this sense

244
00:15:29,174 --> 00:15:35,062
of great emphasis. lacha dodi likrat kala pane shabbat nekabla.

245
00:15:35,062 --> 00:15:40,669
That just means welcome your bride to
create to welcome the bride

246
00:15:40,889 --> 00:15:47,638
of shabbat the face of the shabbat
we welcome

247
00:15:48,162 --> 00:15:49,883
Let's just explain for a minute.

248
00:15:49,883 --> 00:15:52,925
Shabbat is seen as the bride.

249
00:15:52,925 --> 00:15:57,249
Shabbat is seen as a queen. Shabbat is
seen as the feminine.

250
00:15:57,249 --> 00:16:02,813
So we go out to greet the same way that
the groom goes to greet the bride.

251
00:16:02,813 --> 00:16:05,835
We go out to greet the Shabbat.

252
00:16:05,835 --> 00:16:08,549
And of course, in Tzfat, they used to go
out to the,

253
00:16:08,549 --> 00:16:10,248
you know, they used to go out on the
mountains,

254
00:16:10,248 --> 00:16:11,720
they used to go out into the fields,

255
00:16:11,720 --> 00:16:14,922
and they used to actually bring in the
Shabbat.

256
00:16:15,042 --> 00:16:18,513
And that's what
the image is.

257
00:16:19,640 --> 00:16:21,091
So I'm gonna go to the English,

258
00:16:21,091 --> 00:16:25,974
but when appropriate, you or I will throw
in the Hebrew so that everybody recognizes

259
00:16:25,974 --> 00:16:28,455
it. But clearly, as you were saying,

260
00:16:28,455 --> 00:16:33,318
we have Talmudic times where Rabbi
Chanina used to robe himself

261
00:16:33,558 --> 00:16:37,221
and stood at sunset on the eve of the
Sabbath and exclaimed,

262
00:16:37,221 --> 00:16:40,242
Come let us go forth to welcome the
Shabbat Queen.

263
00:16:40,242 --> 00:16:44,655
Rabbi Yannai garbed himself in festive
attire on Shabbat and exclaimed,

264
00:16:44,655 --> 00:16:46,046
Come, bride, come, bride.

265
00:16:46,356 --> 00:16:48,967
And this is in the tractate of Shabbat.

266
00:16:48,967 --> 00:16:54,188
So this is not new. What the author of
this piyyut that was then

267
00:16:54,468 --> 00:17:00,210
put to multiple tunes did was he made it
into a liturgy and into a song.

268
00:17:00,210 --> 00:17:05,692
And what he starts by saying is Shamor
v'Zachor b'dibur achat,

269
00:17:05,692 --> 00:17:08,193
preserve and remember in a single
utterance.

270
00:17:08,193 --> 00:17:12,503
we will see, depending on how much of
the material we get to.

271
00:17:12,972 --> 00:17:16,463
That in the Isaiah text that we're
reading,

272
00:17:16,463 --> 00:17:19,615
it's not quite clear who's speaking when.

273
00:17:19,615 --> 00:17:23,597
Sometimes the verbs are in the female
singular,

274
00:17:23,597 --> 00:17:28,949
sometimes male. What I take, preserve and
remember in a single utterance based

275
00:17:28,949 --> 00:17:33,701
on the Midrash, that Zachor v'Shamor are
in the two renderings

276
00:17:33,701 --> 00:17:36,042
of the Ten Commandments, is we don't,

277
00:17:36,042 --> 00:17:39,734
there are so many people that could be
speaking here.

278
00:17:39,734 --> 00:17:40,734
It could be very

279
00:17:40,814 --> 00:17:42,636
personal welcoming the Shabbat.

280
00:17:42,636 --> 00:17:45,719
It could be welcoming the Shabbat as a
nation,

281
00:17:45,719 --> 00:17:50,324
as a world. I think that kind of greets
into it.

282
00:17:50,324 --> 00:17:54,889
Then it goes Mikdash melech, ir meluchah.

283
00:17:54,889 --> 00:17:58,954
all of a sudden it goes from something
very personal

284
00:17:59,214 --> 00:18:02,515
To the sanctuary of the king royal city
arise.

285
00:18:02,515 --> 00:18:07,078
And this clearly comes right out of the
verses in Isaiah that we've just been

286
00:18:07,078 --> 00:18:11,580
talking about. too long have you dwelt
in the valley of weeping.

287
00:18:11,580 --> 00:18:14,831
You are going to be will show you,

288
00:18:14,831 --> 00:18:17,142
he's going to be good to you.

289
00:18:17,142 --> 00:18:20,123
And then in the next stanza it says,

290
00:18:20,123 --> 00:18:25,656
Hit'oreri take the dust off
of yourself.

291
00:18:25,918 --> 00:18:28,620
Arise, dress up in your garments of glory,

292
00:18:28,620 --> 00:18:32,032
literally quotes from Isaiah here.

293
00:18:32,032 --> 00:18:37,246
And it says, My people, though the sons of
Yeshai the Bethlehemeth draw near

294
00:18:37,246 --> 00:18:42,128
my soul and redeem it. So it's talking now
the national story.

295
00:18:42,128 --> 00:18:45,972
And then it says, Hit'oreri, Hit'oreri,

296
00:18:45,972 --> 00:18:48,433
wake up, wake up, for your light has come.

297
00:18:48,433 --> 00:18:49,433
Kumi

298
00:18:49,556 --> 00:18:54,269
Or get up and shine. I realized reading
this that rise and shine,

299
00:18:54,269 --> 00:18:58,172
that that that song that we sing to our
kids to wake them up in

300
00:18:58,172 --> 00:19:01,775
the morning probably comes from this in
Isaiah:

301
00:19:01,775 --> 00:19:06,858
awaken, awaken, utter a song, the glory of
God is revealed upon you.

302
00:19:06,858 --> 00:19:12,742
So, in a song, the paytan is saying that
we need

303
00:19:12,742 --> 00:19:17,726
to break into song. That is how wonderful.

304
00:19:18,086 --> 00:19:23,730
this moment is getting back to this
consolation it says feel

305
00:19:23,730 --> 00:19:29,525
not ashamed or humiliated why are you
bowed down why do you moan in

306
00:19:29,525 --> 00:19:33,498
you will take refuge the poor of my people
the city will be rebuilt

307
00:19:33,750 --> 00:19:40,134
As in ancient times, they will be ravaged
those

308
00:19:40,134 --> 00:19:44,096
who ravaged you. They will be cast off
while you devour.

309
00:19:44,096 --> 00:19:49,979
Your God will rejoice over you as a bridegroom
rejoices in the bride.

310
00:19:49,979 --> 00:19:56,203
And then it goes to the final climax
where

311
00:19:56,203 --> 00:20:02,036
we all stand up and we turn around as if
physically welcoming the Shabbat.

312
00:20:02,146 --> 00:20:07,430
bride. And this is where I saw in the
Sephardic siddur that I

313
00:20:07,430 --> 00:20:10,592
took the Sefaria translation.

314
00:20:10,592 --> 00:20:16,416
It says, "Bo'i V'shalom ye'amar adam
b'simcha atzumah ad me'od."

315
00:20:16,736 --> 00:20:21,139
That "Bo'i V'shalom" has to be said in
exceedingly great joy.

316
00:20:21,339 --> 00:20:24,822
Even more.

317
00:20:24,822 --> 00:20:30,986
he can't find the adjectives
to describe the joy.

318
00:20:31,266 --> 00:20:36,809
That is the uplifting sense of how
this is said.

319
00:20:36,809 --> 00:20:42,201
And what I'm trying to do in emphasizing
this feeling of Lecha Dodi is

320
00:20:42,201 --> 00:20:44,182
I'm going to make an argument today,

321
00:20:44,182 --> 00:20:49,235
as I said in the intro, that you can
easily transfer the same message

322
00:20:49,355 --> 00:20:54,147
to the High Holidays. And while many
people would totally agree with

323
00:20:54,147 --> 00:20:55,878
me and understand that the

324
00:20:56,622 --> 00:21:03,236
Overwhelming emotion on a Friday night
when you welcome in the Shabbat is this
joy,

325
00:21:03,236 --> 00:21:06,538
this uplifting, casting off your garments,

326
00:21:06,538 --> 00:21:08,410
the old garments, putting on the new.

327
00:21:08,410 --> 00:21:11,712
I am gonna make an argument that this
parsha,

328
00:21:11,712 --> 00:21:16,755
this haftarah, and using Isaiah is going in
the same direction for the High Holidays.

329
00:21:16,755 --> 00:21:19,717
I have to work on proving my
case,

330
00:21:19,717 --> 00:21:21,278
but that's the direction.

331
00:21:21,570 --> 00:21:27,815
that I'm going and that's why I really
want to focus on simcha atzumah ad me'od.

332
00:21:27,815 --> 00:21:31,308
This has to be just unbounded joy.

333
00:21:33,824 --> 00:21:36,876
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349
00:22:37,737 --> 00:22:43,078
Let's talk about some of the elements that
we find in

350
00:22:43,078 --> 00:22:48,881
Lecha Dodi that maybe didn't come up in
our specific haftarah.

351
00:22:48,881 --> 00:22:52,642
So in Isaiah sixty two it says

352
00:22:53,082 --> 00:22:56,605
that you never shall be called forsaken,

353
00:22:56,605 --> 00:22:59,187
nor shall your land be called desolate,

354
00:22:59,187 --> 00:23:04,752
but you shall be called a delight in her
and your land espoused.

355
00:23:04,752 --> 00:23:09,796
in Isaiah 62, it literally uses the
language

356
00:23:10,197 --> 00:23:14,060
of a deserted woman, of a woman who is
cast off.

357
00:23:14,060 --> 00:23:18,543
Lo ye'amer lach, it will no longer be said to
you in the feminine,

358
00:23:18,543 --> 00:23:21,586
od azuvah, that you are a

359
00:23:22,116 --> 00:23:27,093
a rejected woman, lo od shemamah, ki lach yikarei
Cheftzi-Vah,

360
00:23:27,093 --> 00:23:30,338
my desire will be you,

361
00:23:30,338 --> 00:23:37,067
ul'artzeich be'ulah and the land will be
your engagement,

362
00:23:37,067 --> 00:23:38,770
will be our marriage.

363
00:23:39,040 --> 00:23:40,811
And then it goes on to finish,

364
00:23:40,811 --> 00:23:45,012
your land shall be espoused, using the
language of marriage.

365
00:23:45,012 --> 00:23:50,093
As a youth espouses a maiden, your son
shall espouse you.

366
00:23:50,093 --> 00:23:54,695
So now we're talking about both God and
Zion and the homeland.

367
00:23:54,695 --> 00:23:58,076
And as a bridegroom rejoices over his
bride,

368
00:23:58,076 --> 00:24:02,367
so will God rejoice over you. So it
says,

369
00:24:02,367 --> 00:24:04,577
u'mesos chatan al kallah, yasis alayich Elohayich.

370
00:24:06,950 --> 00:24:09,063
again, I was at a wedding last night,

371
00:24:09,063 --> 00:24:12,468
they sang Lecha Dodi. it's all
connected,

372
00:24:12,468 --> 00:24:18,477
but you can see again how the paytan took
inspiration to merge

373
00:24:18,477 --> 00:24:21,641
all of this imagery and this sense of
Lecha Dodi.

374
00:24:21,641 --> 00:24:23,444
It's quite wonderful, is it not?

375
00:24:23,980 --> 00:24:29,012
Well, so let me just say that you quoted
from the Sephardic siddur that this needs

376
00:24:29,012 --> 00:24:34,314
to be said bit b'simcha atzumah ad me'od
with total happiness.

377
00:24:34,314 --> 00:24:38,196
And of course that's the image
of the bride and the groom.

378
00:24:38,196 --> 00:24:42,058
Because when you want to think of what's
the ultimate happiness.

379
00:24:42,410 --> 00:24:46,453
It's a bride and a groom. So it's all it's
all connected.

380
00:24:46,453 --> 00:24:51,076
And that's so they take the image of
the bride and groom from Isaiah,

381
00:24:51,076 --> 00:24:56,090
they apply it to Shabbat, and they take
the image of the happiness of

382
00:24:56,090 --> 00:24:59,422
the bride and the groom, and they apply
that to Shabbat as well.

383
00:25:00,408 --> 00:25:05,981
So I think that is a pretty good anchor
for where Lecha Dodi takes this sense

384
00:25:06,221 --> 00:25:09,213
of a bride and groom as a metaphor,

385
00:25:09,213 --> 00:25:13,245
motif. The other one that I want to focus
on a little bit is this idea

386
00:25:13,245 --> 00:25:17,507
of taking off the old clothing and putting
on the new clothing.

387
00:25:17,507 --> 00:25:20,139
In Isaiah 51, six through eight.

388
00:25:20,139 --> 00:25:25,812
So that is a few lines before I believe
our haftorah actually begins.

389
00:25:25,812 --> 00:25:29,094
It says, Raise your eyes to the heavens
and look upon the earth beneath.

390
00:25:29,304 --> 00:25:31,285
Though the heaven should melt away like
smoke,

391
00:25:31,285 --> 00:25:34,298
and the earth wear out like a garment,

392
00:25:34,298 --> 00:25:36,781
and its inhabitants die out as well.

393
00:25:36,781 --> 00:25:39,013
My victory shall stand forever,

394
00:25:39,013 --> 00:25:41,215
my triumph shall remain unbroken.

395
00:25:41,215 --> 00:25:45,588
he says, Listen to me, for you who care
for the right,

396
00:25:45,588 --> 00:25:47,990
or people who lay my instructions to
heart.

397
00:25:47,990 --> 00:25:50,453
Isaiah is talking to the believers,

398
00:25:50,453 --> 00:25:52,955
the followers, the people that follow him,

399
00:25:52,955 --> 00:25:56,498
and he's talking about taking away the

400
00:25:56,770 --> 00:26:03,072
Old clothing, which kind of it strikes
us of the dead,

401
00:26:03,072 --> 00:26:05,673
the worn out, the moth-eaten.

402
00:26:05,673 --> 00:26:09,274
In verse eight, he says, for the moth shall
eat them up like a garment,

403
00:26:09,274 --> 00:26:11,555
the worm shall eat them up like wool,

404
00:26:11,555 --> 00:26:14,235
but my triumph shall endure forever.

405
00:26:14,235 --> 00:26:17,846
So again, this sense of taking off the
garment and putting on a

406
00:26:17,846 --> 00:26:22,638
new garment for Shabbat or for the
redemption is very strong.

407
00:26:23,050 --> 00:26:28,474
And then the way he ends this whole
thing is

408
00:26:28,474 --> 00:26:33,759
to say sason v'simcha yimatzei vah, todah v'kol zimrah

409
00:26:33,759 --> 00:26:38,673
he says God has comforted Zion,

410
00:26:38,673 --> 00:26:40,564
gladness and joy shall abide there,

411
00:26:40,564 --> 00:26:43,647
the thanksgiving and the sound of music.

412
00:26:43,647 --> 00:26:49,612
So you can clearly see how this was an
inspiration for the paytan.

413
00:26:49,612 --> 00:26:52,134
and we see

414
00:26:52,544 --> 00:26:58,677
I'm gonna quote a little bit from a
commentary on Lecha Dodi written

415
00:26:58,677 --> 00:27:04,269
by Reuven Hammer, who I believe became the Minister of Education for a while

416
00:27:04,269 --> 00:27:09,021
in Israel. and he talks about how even
in Lecha Dodi,

417
00:27:09,021 --> 00:27:12,603
we go from the individual in the beginning
and the end,

418
00:27:12,603 --> 00:27:17,125
and then we go to the national.

419
00:27:17,125 --> 00:27:18,826
but he says

420
00:27:19,138 --> 00:27:21,780
The prophets utilize the language of
marriage,

421
00:27:21,780 --> 00:27:25,952
love, and faithfulness to describe
exclusive relationship God's demands

422
00:27:25,952 --> 00:27:29,624
of the people. and it as shown in the
Shema,

423
00:27:29,624 --> 00:27:33,066
love the Lord your God v'ahafta et
hashem elohecha.

424
00:27:33,066 --> 00:27:39,250
And he talks about how this merging of
the national

425
00:27:39,370 --> 00:27:43,492
and the personal became so important.

426
00:27:43,492 --> 00:27:46,714
So I wanna end by going.

427
00:27:46,934 --> 00:27:49,555
To Unetaneh Tokef of all things.

428
00:27:49,555 --> 00:27:54,246
Unetaneh Tokef is the famous kind

429
00:27:54,246 --> 00:28:00,978
of emotion-laden moment where the chazan
talks about we're

430
00:28:00,978 --> 00:28:05,119
all passing in front of God to be judged
like sheep.

431
00:28:05,119 --> 00:28:09,800
And in it he talks about we come from dust
and return to dust.

432
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:14,942
Remember the dust in the vision of Isaiah
that was being

433
00:28:15,352 --> 00:28:18,785
thrown off from us. I see that here.

434
00:28:18,785 --> 00:28:21,067
We labor by our lives for bread.

435
00:28:21,067 --> 00:28:24,691
We are like broken shards, like dry grass.

436
00:28:24,691 --> 00:28:30,156
That same sense that what in the world is
passing passes like grass

437
00:28:30,156 --> 00:28:35,481
or a withered flower, or beautifully like
a passing shadow and a vanishing cloud.

438
00:28:35,481 --> 00:28:40,146
He's not saying that to talk to us
about

439
00:28:40,426 --> 00:28:43,648
The the finitude of mortality,

440
00:28:43,648 --> 00:28:48,090
I think what he's trying to do is lift us
up to cast off that stuff,

441
00:28:48,090 --> 00:28:52,252
as Isaiah was saying, about cast off the
withered grass.

442
00:28:52,252 --> 00:28:54,253
That's what will happen to your enemies.

443
00:28:54,253 --> 00:28:58,485
but you will have your eternal king.

444
00:28:58,485 --> 00:29:04,118
the idea of taking on God and the
eternity of our history.

445
00:29:04,448 --> 00:29:09,862
And of our narrative and of our journey as
something that uplifts you

446
00:29:10,183 --> 00:29:13,385
and makes you want to shout and dance,

447
00:29:13,385 --> 00:29:16,968
I think, is what clearly comes here.

448
00:29:16,968 --> 00:29:19,871
And as we know, in Nehemiah,

449
00:29:19,871 --> 00:29:24,494
the people are very sad on the beginning
of Tishrei.

450
00:29:24,494 --> 00:29:27,627
And he tells them not to mourn or weep.

451
00:29:27,627 --> 00:29:30,679
He says, 'Go eat choice foods and drink
sweet drinks,

452
00:29:30,679 --> 00:29:33,742
and send portions to whoever has nothing
prepared.'

453
00:29:33,954 --> 00:29:36,009
For the day is holy to our sovereign.

454
00:29:36,009 --> 00:29:40,610
Do not be sad, for your rejoicing in God
is the source of your strength.

455
00:29:41,042 --> 00:29:44,315
And then all the people went and ate and
drank and sent portions

456
00:29:44,315 --> 00:29:48,848
and made great merriment. You would never
think this is a description of Rosh Hashanah.

457
00:29:48,848 --> 00:29:53,091
You'd think it was Purim, for they
understood the things that they were told.

458
00:29:53,091 --> 00:29:57,775
You know, we quote the Mishnah in Ta'anit
about the fifteenth of Av to show

459
00:29:57,835 --> 00:30:01,387
how the daughters got back. But what the
Mishnah really says is there

460
00:30:01,387 --> 00:30:04,059
are two times of the year that are the
happiest.

461
00:30:04,059 --> 00:30:07,542
One is the fifteenth of Av, but Yom Kippur
is the other.

462
00:30:07,786 --> 00:30:10,689
Again, most people would not associate
that.

463
00:30:10,689 --> 00:30:14,812
And I think what I'd like to finish on is
how does that resonate with

464
00:30:14,812 --> 00:30:17,665
you and your experience with your
congregation?

465
00:30:17,665 --> 00:30:23,320
you know, many congregations finish Yom
Kippur and they're dancing the hora,

466
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:25,542
and there's this sense, I think,

467
00:30:25,542 --> 00:30:29,285
of we survive judgment. But I think this
is more than that.

468
00:30:29,285 --> 00:30:34,290
This is really about the fact that
Hit'oreri Hit'oreri.

469
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:38,112
It's God who's asking us to rise up and in
rejoice.

470
00:30:38,112 --> 00:30:42,424
The way I'm gonna focus this year is when
I say my Rosh Hashanah prayers,

471
00:30:42,424 --> 00:30:45,916
I'm gonna say, How would it sound if it
was Friday night and

472
00:30:45,916 --> 00:30:48,517
I was standing welcoming the Shabbat
bride?

473
00:30:48,517 --> 00:30:50,738
That's my takeaway this year.

474
00:30:50,744 --> 00:30:52,855
That's fantastic. I add one word,

475
00:30:52,855 --> 00:30:56,216
and that is happiness and the sense of
confidence.

476
00:30:56,216 --> 00:30:58,507
You know, you stand up to judgment.

477
00:30:58,507 --> 00:31:00,978
Someone who goes before a judge,

478
00:31:00,978 --> 00:31:05,400
you could either be insecure or you could
be confident that you're gonna win.

479
00:31:05,400 --> 00:31:07,140
And we all know that, you know,

480
00:31:07,140 --> 00:31:11,803
the judge can read you. And sometimes when
he sees insecurity,

481
00:31:11,803 --> 00:31:15,584
he or she sees insecurity, so they play on
that insecurity.

482
00:31:15,584 --> 00:31:18,649
But if they see confidence, if you're
confident,

483
00:31:18,649 --> 00:31:20,096
then they believe that you're right.

484
00:31:20,406 --> 00:31:25,289
And that's the way I always understood the
the verses in Nehemiah.

485
00:31:25,289 --> 00:31:30,033
Be confident means you know you may have
sinned when nobody's perfect,

486
00:31:30,033 --> 00:31:33,235
but be confident that God is gonna be good
to us.

487
00:31:33,235 --> 00:31:35,496
And if we're confident, then we're happy.

488
00:31:35,496 --> 00:31:39,599
Because the confidence leads to a
confidence that God is gonna forgive us.

489
00:31:39,599 --> 00:31:42,561
So I agree with you that idea Friday
night.

490
00:31:42,561 --> 00:31:45,814
I'm not sure that on Shabbat it's so much
confidence.

491
00:31:45,814 --> 00:31:49,056
I think on Shabbat it's more in a sense of
bride and groom.

492
00:31:49,398 --> 00:31:52,483
I think on Rosh Hashanah, in addition
to that,

493
00:31:52,483 --> 00:31:57,883
we have a feeling or we kind of a
charge that we should be confident that
things

494
00:31:57,883 --> 00:31:58,883
are going to work out.

495
00:31:59,402 --> 00:32:04,617
I, I love it. the only tweak that I would
make is I think you wanna have GIVE

496
00:32:04,617 --> 00:32:08,480
confidence, meaning to say that on Friday
night after a tough week

497
00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:10,171
of being battered and bruised,

498
00:32:10,171 --> 00:32:14,035
you have confidence like a bride does that
her husband loves her.

499
00:32:14,035 --> 00:32:17,738
And I think that's the idea here that you
get

500
00:32:17,902 --> 00:32:23,762
confidence from the very exercise and
liturgy and

501
00:32:23,885 --> 00:32:25,925
the holiness and happiness of the day.

502
00:32:25,925 --> 00:32:30,227
But either way, it's a very refreshing
message,

503
00:32:30,227 --> 00:32:33,229
which it should be because it starts with
Hit'oreri,

504
00:32:33,229 --> 00:32:36,300
Hit'oreri, wake up, wake up and be refreshed.

505
00:32:36,738 --> 00:32:41,560
Fantastic. Okay, great. So the haftarah
plays on the images,

506
00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:45,562
is borrowed by Shlomo Alkabetz for
Shabbat,

507
00:32:45,562 --> 00:32:50,765
and now we take it one step further that
it really is a lead-in

508
00:32:50,865 --> 00:32:52,896
to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I love

509
00:32:54,070 --> 00:32:56,044
Amen. Well, we'll see you all next week,

510
00:32:56,044 --> 00:32:57,938
Rabbi. Have a safe trip back from Israel.

511
00:32:57,944 --> 00:33:01,182
See you back in North
America looking forward.

512
00:33:02,132 --> 00:33:03,827
Okay, Shabbat shalom. Bye-bye.

513
00:33:07,714 --> 00:33:13,349
And now a question for you. What if we
modeled the high holiday services

514
00:33:13,349 --> 00:33:16,341
on Kabbalat Shabbat? Not only in joy,

515
00:33:16,341 --> 00:33:20,344
song, and celebration, but also in length!

516
00:33:20,344 --> 00:33:22,036
Something to think about.

517
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:28,960
Yeah.

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube and Substack. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Parsha is Ra’eh. Is Judaism really a religion of reward and punishment, or is it something far more profound? A religion about becoming. Join us for Becoming Good. Rabbi, you’re in Eretz Yisrael, in Jerusalem, the holy city of Jerusalem. How are you today or this evening?

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:01:50 – 00:02:03]

I’m great. Jerusalem is great. It’s a wonderful— it was a hot day today. today, but a wonderful, cool evening. And we had sushi because what more Jewish food could you have than sushi for dinner? So let’s get down to Becoming Good.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:05 – 00:02:20]

Sounds great. The Rabbi and I were davening in the same Beit Knesset, Beit Chaverim, in the holy city of Westport, Connecticut, this last Shabbat. So it’s rare that we’re in the same room, let alone the same shul together. But that was a lot of fun.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:02:20 – 00:02:21]

That was a treat.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:22 – 00:02:50]

It was. So we’re in Deuteronomy 11:26, and it says, see, this day I set before you blessing and curse. Blessing if you obey the commandments. We’ll get to that in a second because it’s not quite “if”. Of the Eternal your God that I enjoin upon you this day.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:02:50 – 00:02:51]

Verse 28.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:51 – 00:03:58]

And curse If you do not obey. Here, when it gets to the curse, it says the word we’re expecting to hear. Vahakalalah im lo tishma’u. If you do not obey the commandments of the Eternal, your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin you this day and follow other gods whom you have not experienced. So it’s a big moment. We’re going to end up looking at 2 different mountains. You’re going to be given a choice between good and bad, blessing and curse. But as I said, the word for the blessing is strange. Everett Fox says, the blessing that you hearken to. So he has to add in parentheses, the blessing provided that you hearken to. We are expecting on both sides of the coin this conditional if, but we don’t find it in the Hebrew. It sounds as if asher tishma’u, that you will, keep. It’s very positive leaning, but it’s not what we expect.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:03:59 – 00:04:08]

It’s interesting that Everett Fox wants to add the word “provided” that, because, again, that’s not what you would expect, but that’s not the impression you get from the text itself.

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:10 – 00:04:55]

But by putting it in parentheses, at least he lets us read it true to the text. The blessing that you hearken to, it’s just descriptive, not prescriptive, not contingent at all. Rashi says, Et ha bracha al manat asher tishma’u. He is not pulling any punches. He is saying, on condition that you should obey. The translator says that’s— he’s translating asher tishma’u. But I think the translator is not off the mark. Rashi is really trying to explain what it means. But no one seems to focus on the fact that it actually says it when it comes to the Klalah (curse).

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:04:55 – 00:04:55]

Yeah.

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:57 – 00:05:48]

Shema’u. So now we get to our friend the Ibn Ezra. And the Ibn Ezra says as follows, the blessing, if ye shall hearken. For if you hearken, behold, you are blessed. A blessing means an addition of the good. A curse means a diminution. The word klala, curse, is related to the word kala, light. So he almost sees it as an additive, as a progression. The klalah, the curse, is you’re going to be— there’s going to be mass taken away from you. And on the other hand, a blessing means that you have an addition, a hosafa, if you will.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:05:48 – 00:06:04]

Isn’t it interesting that the Ibn Ezra sees it in mathematical terms, right? That you’ll add or you’ll subtract. And the word Klalah from the word Kala, which means to decrease in number. That’s a fantastic explanation.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:04 – 00:06:52]

I think so. But also the Hebrew is great because it says, ki b’shma’chem, in the listening, hinei atem mevorachim, you are blessed. We heard the sermon in the synagogue we were at this Shabbat talked about how many times, and we’ve talked about this too, the word Shmiyah, the word listening, is mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy But what I love here is, what’s the expression about that? It’s not the proof is in the pudding or the truth is in the eating. The point is, ki b’shmachem, with listening, hinei atem mevorachim, you are blessed. He does try to finesse the fact that it’s not conditional, but it’s actually kind of, it’s organic, if you will.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:06:52 – 00:07:51]

You know, I just want to tell you, based on the sermon that we heard, Sharon asked me a question. She said, shouldn’t the Torah rabbis than focusing on listening, focus on action? Why is listening good enough? Shouldn’t it say, if you do, this is the blessing, with the condition that you shall obey, but not listen, but actually obey? What’s interesting in the translation of Rashi that I just noticed now is that Rashi is sensitive to Sharon’s question because it says, with the condition that you should obey. That’s not what Rashi says. Rashi says, asher tishma’u, with the condition that you should listen. But Rashi doesn’t like that, you should listen, because listen is not enough. Rashi makes it— well, the translation of Rashi makes its own interpretation, which is listening is not enough. Listening is only helpful if it’s the first step towards obeying. That’s great. Sharon’s going to love this.

Geoffrey Stern [00:07:52 – 00:09:55]

Okay. And I think maybe some of the material that we’re going to get to later are going to get into this concept of praxis as opposed to doxis, as opposed to listening and belief, this concept of actually doing and the effect that it has. But let’s move on with our wonderful texts. So, of course, this concept that Ibn Ezra is hinting at, and I think that the Hebrew naturally intones this And that is the blessing, goes to— reminds me of Ben Azai in Pirkei Avot 4:2. He says, be quick in performing a minor commandment as in the case of a major one, and flee from transgression. For one commandment leads to another commandment, and transgression leads to another transgression. For the reward for performing a commandment is another commandment. Or in Hebrew, it comes off much better. The reward for performing a mitzvah, a good deed, deed of doing good is to do more good. And the reward for committing a transgression, doing an aveira, is another transgression. That, to me, resonated a little bit. What the Ibn Ezra was saying was that it’s not as though the blessing is external to the activity. It is the activity. And the reward is, again, not external. It is doing more of the same thing. I did note that similar to Ekev, where Rashi starts talking about using your heel to go over minor commandments, we do have this sense of be careful of the small acts. The small acts are like that drop of water in a puddle. They make ripples and they have an effect. But I do believe that this Pirkei Avot, Ben Azai text is relevant. Don’t you think so?

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:09:55 – 00:09:57]

Yeah, there’s no question. That’s a great text.

Geoffrey Stern [00:10:00 – 00:11:19]

So there’s one more in Pirkei Avot that I was thinking of, and that’s in Pirkei Avot 1:3. It says, Antigonos, a man of Socho, received the tradition from Shimon the Righteous. He used to say, do not be like servants who serve the master in the expectation of receiving a reward. אלא הווי כעבדים ושמשים את הרב שלא על מנת לקבל פרס, but rather be like servants who serve the master without the expectation of receiving an award, and let the heaven be upon you. There is definitely a very strong thread in our tradition, Rabbi, that goes against this whole concept of reward and punishment, and there’s a very strong thread that the reward. is the reward, and the punishment is the punishment. You pick your tale, you make the bed that you sleep in type of thing. But it’s not a quid pro quo. It is what it is. And you shouldn’t be doing these commandments in order to receive that award. And so the reading of our parsha should actually be not im, because im implies unconditioned.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:11:19 – 00:11:19]

Right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:20 – 00:11:35]

If it really should be in asher, that. And that’s where I’m sensing this resonance, both in terms of the interpretation of the verse, but also in the rabbinic tradition.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:11:35 – 00:12:04]

Yeah, well, that’s interesting about what your reason for fulfilling the commandment should be. Should you have an ulterior motive? We all have ulterior motives, right? We go to work so we can make a lot of money. We go to school so we can be smart. We get married because we want a big family. Everything’s with an ulterior motive. It’s really surprising to say that you should serve God without an ulterior motive. I just want to point out how surprising that is, how out of the ordinary that is.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:04 – 00:12:11]

Maybe the word you’re looking for is radical. Clearly, in the world of religion—

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:12:11 – 00:12:17]

What do you mean, Geoffrey? Disruptive is the word you want. Radical.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:17 – 00:12:48]

We’re all on the same page. Yes, it is absolutely radical. But I think to read it back into our “asher” is the most exciting part. But nonetheless, to recognize, because let’s not fool ourselves, Rabbi, there are plenty of rabbis in the rabbinic tradition that talk about tzchar and onesh, about (reward and) punishment. You know, some of them will say, why do bad things happen to tzaddikim in this world? Because they’re going to get their rewards in the world to come.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:12:48 – 00:12:49]

In the world to come.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:49 – 00:13:27]

And vice versa. There’s plenty of that. But what I was focusing on, whether we call it radical or disruptive, is this very strong sense that for some of them anyway, it wasn’t about brownie points and it wasn’t about getting a frask in panim, a slap on the face. It was doing it for no ulterior motives, as you said a second ago. So let’s go to the Mishnah Torah, Maimonides’ Rules of Repentance 5:4. And this, of course, is very apropos as we start now traversing into the holidays.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:13:27 – 00:13:28]

Right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:13:29 – 00:15:32]

Yes. So he writes, if God would decree for a person to be righteous or wicked, or if something existed in a person’s nature that would pull him in a certain path, or to a certain opinion, or to a certain characteristic, or to certain action, like the stupid astrologers make up. In other words, you’re predestined. predestined, how could God command us through the prophets, do this and don’t do that, improve your ways and do not follow your wickedness, when from the beginning of his creation, it was already decreed for him, or his nature pulls him towards something that he cannot escape? And what place would there be for the entire Torah? Good question. So what Maimonides comes out to say is that virtues we acquire by first having actually practiced them. This is what’s going to resonate with Sharon. It’s about how you act. Just as we do the arts, we learn an art or craft by doing the things that we shall have to do when we have learned it. For instance, men become builders by building houses, harpers by playing on the harp. Similarly, we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. So this I just quoted from Aristotle, actually. But if I go back to Maimonides, he says, therefore, we judge a person according to his action. If he did good, we will do good by him. And if he did evil, we do poorly by him. As the prophet says in Isaiah, this is from your Malachi, this is your own doing, and they have chosen their own ways. So Maimonides, a true Aristotelian, believes that it is praxa, it is what you do that That basically makes who you are. And I think that is a very, very strong Jewish belief, is it not?

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:15:32 – 00:15:54]

It sure is. And again, that requires some analysis that we’re going to do in terms of what’s the relationship between listening and practice. Now, the Rambam is aware of this question, as we’ll see in a minute. The Rambam believes that you can’t do if you don’t first listen. Right. You can’t be a good doer if you’re not a good listener.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:55 – 00:17:26]

Correct. Absolutely. So let’s look at Mishnah Torah in repentance. In 3:4, he says, therefore, a person needs to see himself all year long as if he is half innocent and half guilty, and also see the whole world half innocent and half guilty. If he sins one sin, he has tilted herself and the whole world to the side of guilt and caused its destruction. If he does one mitzvah, he has tilted herself and the whole world to the side of innocence and caused redemption and rescue, as it says. So we talked a second ago about the small little acts, even the small commandments that somehow or other the commentaries seem to be focused on week in and week out. I think it comes from this aspect as well, that if it is actions that aaffect who our character ends up being, then even the smallest action can become a tipping point. And I think that is amazing about this concept of being— how you be is how you will become. And therefore, you have to watch even the small things. I love this concept that the whole world could be on the tipping point. And I am using Sefaria’s translation. And I love the fact that It’s in the feminine. It says herself.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:17:26 – 00:18:18]

Yeah, I hadn’t realized. When you were reading the feminine, I was sure that this was some liberal Connecticut thing. But it turns out that you’re following Sefaria. That’s very funny. Now, let me just say, of course, that this Maimonides is based on a famous mishnah in the Tractate of Sanhedrin that says that’s why human beings were created as one, that everybody comes from Adam. Where everybody comes from Adam and Eve. That if you save the whole— if you save one person, it’s as if you saved the whole world. And if you kill one person, it’s as if you killed the whole world. And if you do one good act, then you save the whole world. Means it’s an amazing thing to think of 8 billion people in the world and then to think about the fact that the world was started by one person. So therefore, we need to take— we need to look at each individual person and each individual act as if they are the entire world.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:18 – 00:18:18]

Yeah.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:18:18 – 00:18:24]

That’s an absolutely remarkable idea.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:24 – 00:19:00]

It is. And again, getting back to this gender issue, if you read the Hebrew, the Hebrew is written gender neutral, which is unbelievable that the person who made the translation picked up on that. Chita echad, one person sins, harei hachuya et atsmo ve’et kol ha’olam. So this is an example of a small little action, how you translate a word, can change generations, can make us look at the Rambam and read him in the Hebrew text all over again. I just love it.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:19:00 – 00:19:07]

Geoffrey, the next Sefaria dinner, we’re going to have to make a point about how that— what they changed with that little translation. That’s fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:08 – 00:20:10]

You got it. And now a word from our sponsor. If there’s one thing we value at Madlik Podcast, it’s reading texts and talking about them. That’s why I’m excited to share something I created called VoiceGift PLAY. It fits in the palm of your hand like a remote control and clips onto any book. It’s inspired by those old-school museum audio guides, but this is personal. VoiceGift PLAY stores up to 10 hours of audio across 999 numbered recordings. You simply enter a number to record a comment, memory, or explanation, and enter the same number to play it back. It’s perfect for B’nai Mitzvah practicing their laining, capturing Grandpa’s favorite tune, or recording Chad GadYa in a voice that matters. Go to voice.gift, that’s http://www.voice.gift, and use code MADLIK for 15% off.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:20:11 – 00:20:12]

Thanks.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:12 – 00:23:08]

And now back to our podcast. So anyway, this concept of small little things is brought up again in the Talmud in Yuma, which comes from Yom Kippur. That is the tractate that deals with the high holidays of Yom Kippur. And the sages taught the following with regard to the verse, and do not impurify yourselves with them so that they should not thereby become impurified. A person who impurifies himself a bit, they impurify him greatly. There is, getting back to these small little acts, there is a multiplier effect. You take a little step and the rest of the step is taken for you, with you, supportive of you. If a person purifies himself by his own volition below on earth, they purify him all the more so in heaven. I love this idea that not only is doing a small act of good or bad capable of tipping the scale, but it is also— it’s a trigger, and it’s a trigger for other forces. And all of these concepts These concepts, I believe, and I’m arguing, are concepts that create the velocity and the movement and the progression of doing good without a quid pro quo. It’s this sense of maximizing. It’s the sense of naturally moving a little and it becomes a tipping point, moving a little and it becomes taken to the next power. But of course, Of all the sources that I found today, the one that most surprised me and blew me away was from the Sefer HaChinuch. And the Sefer HaChinuch, I’ve talked about it before, is written by a dad to his son who moved away from home. And basically what he does, he goes through the parshiot, the readings of the week, and he identifies every commandment of the 613 commandments for his son. That’s his lens that he looks at each parsha. So we get to the 16th commandment, which is, do not break a bone for the Passover sacrifice. And the author of the Sefer HaChinuch takes this to mean, again, small little actions have profound effects. He says, it is fitting for us to do acts that show within us the great stature which we achieved at that time. And in the act and reenactment that we do, this thing is placed in souls for eternity. So kind of as the opposite of what maybe Lenin said about to make breakfast, you have to break a few eggs. Here we’re saying is—

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:23:08 – 00:23:10]

Is Lenin the one who made that up?

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:10 – 00:23:14]

I think it was Lenin or Trotsky or one of those guys.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:23:14 – 00:23:19]

That’s pretty funny. Now they call it Elon Musk who says that. Okay, that’s okay.

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:19 – 00:25:21]

Good. No, it definitely wasn’t Elon So, so the idea of not breaking the bones, of dealing with this delicately, we’re eating our revolutionary meal called the Paschal Sacrifice. And he says, because the act, a reenactment of what we do, is placed in our souls for eternity. He goes on a few paragraphs later. You must know, he says to his son, that a man is acted upon according to his And his heart and all his thoughts always follow after the actions that he does, whether good or bad. And even he who in his heart is a complete sinner, and all the desires of his heart are only for evil, if his spirit shall be enlightened and he will pull his efforts and actions to persist in Torah and commandments, even if not for the sake of heaven, he shall immediately incline towards good. Good. And from that which is not for its own sake comes that which is for its own sake, for the hearts are drawn after the actions. So this is the answer to Sharon’s question, I believe. But there is no question that this is clearly not a quid pro quo. This is clearly not paying one’s penance to get redemption. There is a natural organic process that happens when we start doing things in the right way. You know, there are people that look at Israel today and they see how open they are to the LGBTQ community. And some people have the audacity to call that pinkwashing. In other words, they’re pretending as if they’re open to the gay community to get their liberal progressive brownie points. And to that, I always respond, maybe the rest of the Muslim and Arab world should pinkwash for a generation or two. Because if they did it for a generation or two, it would be true.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:25:21 – 00:25:22]

Right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:22 – 00:25:45]

There’s nothing wrong with aspirationally acting above your class, aspirationally trying to act as though you could be better than you are. And that’s what this is all about. And that’s, I think, what this Asher is. It’s a beautiful Sefer HaChinuch. What can you tell us about him? Had you known this one before? I had never seen this.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:25:45 – 00:26:57]

Yes. So let me just first tell you what you said, of course, is that he wrote it for his son. He lived in northern Spain in the 1200s, and he had a son the way we all have children, and he wanted to make sure that he stayed connected to Judaism. So what he did was he tried to make the parsha something that was interesting to him. And that’s an amazing idea that after the action our hearts will move. For the hearts are drawn after the actions. And that’s what he tells his son. That’s what each generation tells the next generation, that do good things, even if you don’t mean it, do good things because our hearts are drawn after the actions. Sometimes our kids say, I don’t want to do that. I don’t really believe in it. I don’t want to to do it. Don’t do it. Go to shul, study some Torah, study the weekly portion. Watch Madlik every single week. What’s it going to mean? I don’t know. But the Chinuch thought that after the hearts are drawn, the hearts are drawn after the actions.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:57 – 00:28:10]

I just think the way that the text itself is worth visiting. If you’re listening to this and you have access to the Sefaria notes to see this in the original, especially if you’re a Hebrew reader, as the rabbi quoted from it, is just beautiful. And of course, we’re touching upon behavioral psychology, if you will. But what I wanna do is to to now take it into the present in terms of contemporary philosophy of ethics. There is an amazing concept of something called dispositional ethics, dispositional understanding of reality. And to explain that to you, there’s something called conditional. We all know that if Newton taught us, and David Hume, the great empiricist, taught us, you know, if A hits B, then B will follow that force. Everything is conditional. There is a train of thought in philosophy called dispositional. So to put it into the language of our discussion, conditional would say, if you obey, then God will bless you.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:28:10 – 00:28:10]

Right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:11 – 00:28:50]

That’s the im. Dispositional would mean listening is itself the disposition that constitutes and generates blessing. So one of the contemporary, the early contemporary proponents of dispositional thinking was someone called Gilbert Ryle. And he says, to possess a dispositional property is not to be in a particular state or to undergo a particular change. It is to be bound or likely to be in a particular state or undergo a particular change when a particular condition is realized. You’re ready. You have the potential.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:28:50 – 00:28:50]

Right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:50 – 00:29:44]

To say that glass is brittle is not to describe something presently occurring in the glass. You’ll only know glass is brittle if you break it. But it has that disposition in it. It is to say what it would do under certain conditions. Another one of these thinkers, Brian Ellis, said the essential properties of things are dispositional. So classic science will say as follows. Classic science will say A causes B, so there is an external sequence. A dispositional view is different. Things possess powers, tendency, or dispositions. A seed is disposed toward becoming a tree. A magnet is disposed to attract iron. A knife is disposed to being sharp when our finger touches it.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:29:44 – 00:29:44]

Right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:46 – 00:30:09]

sandpaper is rough. It’s only rough in the instance that something smooth is scratched on it. So modern philosophy has increasingly challenged Hume’s thought of the world as a chain of external causes and effects. This kind of reminds you of the Maimonides that he was talking about. Are we born bad or are we born good?

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:30:09 – 00:30:09]

That’s funny.

Geoffrey Stern [00:30:10 – 00:32:34]

So philosophers from Gilbert Ryle to Elizabeth Anscombe and Brian Ellis have argued that the deepest features of reality are not merely events, but dispositions, virtues, and powers. So that is so similar to some of the texts that we looked at. And the Torah’s grammar in this asher hints at something richer. Blessing is not merely conditional, it is generative. A mitzvah does not simply earn blessing, it creates the kind of person for whom blessing becomes natural. Modern philosophers could call this a dispositional account of reality. Ben Azai said it centuries earlier, schar mitzvah, mitzvah. And I always knew about this dispositional philosophy, but I was reminded of it when I was reading Shai Held’s book about Judaism is about Love. So to give you an example, because we’re talking about hearing, he’s talking about how can you command somebody to love his fellow? V’ahaftah re’acha kamocha. And so he says, notice that we’re not seeing two passages from Maimonides, whereas the first holds that love your neighbor refers to concrete kindness we perform for others. Okay, so Maimonides in that position says you can’t command love, but you command actions of love. The second position of Maimonides maintains that his concern is with what we wish for others. In one place, then, Maimonides seems to belong to the positive action school, but in the other, he appears to belong to the emotional school. Which one is it? asks Shai Held. Does he think love your neighbor refers to emotions or to actions? asks Shai Held. And Shai answers, my sense is that he thinks it refers to both. For Maimonides, love is a disposition, a quality of character, and as such, it is both emotional and actional dimensions. I want only good for my neighbor and I act accordingly. And I think that sums up my read of what asher means. It’s not conditional. It is behavioral. It is dispositional. You create the conditions for doing another mitzvah and for listening to the mitzvot.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:32:36 – 00:33:13]

And actually, you were clearly walking home with us on Shabbat afternoon because that would have answered Sharon’s question. And that’s what it means. Asher tishnu’u vehaya im shamoa. That’s not the end. That’s just creating the situation that will set up the next mitzvah. And once you have the next mitzvah, then skar mitzvah, mitzvah. The reward of doing one mitzvah is performing another mitzvah. This is great. Parashat Re’eh, each one of these weeks, Geoffrey in the dvarim, one is better than the next. And this one is really, really good today.

Geoffrey Stern [00:33:13 – 00:33:26]

Well, Shabbat Shalom. Let us all wish that we shall all be disposed to having a Shabbat Shalom and to making of ourselves what we want Shabbat shalom, and we’ll see you next week.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:33:26 – 00:33:29]

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem. See you next week. Be well.

Geoffrey Stern [00:33:33 – 00:33:55]

The Torah’s question isn’t only whether we’re doing the right thing today, it’s whether today’s actions are creating the person we’ll be tomorrow. So here’s my question for you: what is one habit in your life that isn’t just changing what you do, but is changing who you are. I’d love to hear from you.

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Sacks. Welcome to Madlik. My

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name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark and shed some light

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on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we

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host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform

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and now on YouTube and Substack. We also publish a

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source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show

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notes. This week’s parsha is Eikev, and we’ll explore how

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the Jewish story is neither a circle nor

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a straight line. It is history that rhymes.

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Somehow, Rabbi, I feel like we’ve touched on this before, but

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I couldn’t resist. It’s a good topic.

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I don’t know if we have or we haven’t, but it’s a really good topic. Let’s take it away.

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And it’s rare that I stop on the second word of the parsha and go,

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“That’s it. That’s what we’re going to talk about.”

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The parsha is called Eikev because it usually gets named after one of

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the early words in the parsha. And our parsha

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begins, “V’haya eikev.”

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V’haya has a

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sense of future focus, and eikev is

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enigmatic. So the Metsudah Publications

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translation translates it as follows:

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“In the future, as a consequence of your heeding

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these laws and your guarding and fulfilling them, Hashem,

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your God, will guard for you the covenant and the kindness

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that He swore to your forefathers.”

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Everett Fox translates it,

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“Now it shall be…”

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Again, it’s a word that speaks about the future,

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because that’s how he translates eikev—

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“because of your

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hearkening to these regulations by keeping and observing them,

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Hashem will keep for you the covenant of loyalty

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that He swore to your fathers.”

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So if you look at

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Targum Yonatan, the Aramaic translation

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of the Torah,

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it says, “V’haya halaf”—

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“in the future,” “as a consequence,”

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“in exchange for.”

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Rabbi, I think when I sell my chametz,

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or when I got married and wanted to transfer the value of my ring,

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there’s something called chalifin, is there not?

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Yes. That is correct. You learned about that in yeshiva.

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It’s an exchange.

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You hold up a token or a handkerchief,

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and you make a symbolic exchange.

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I’ll explain how chalifin works.

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It’s an exchange, but not an equal exchange.

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You give me your chametz and I give you my pen.

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Your chametz could be worth $10,000. The pen is worth fifty cents.

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But symbolically it shows that we’re serious,

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because we’ve exchanged the pen.

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So chalifin means to exchange.

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Targum Yonatan therefore understands

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the verse as a consequence or exchange for

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your heeding these laws.

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There really is a sense of quid pro quo,

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of causal relationships.

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Rashi says…

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“If you will hear the heel.” Eikev

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also means “heel,” the bottom of your

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foot. If even the lighter commandments, which a

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person usually treads on with his heels,

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which a person is inclined to treat lightly, you will hearken to

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them. So now the plot thickens,

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because there’s another problem besides the first two words

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of this verse. The other problem is

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that it says mishpatim. It doesn’t say mishpatim v’chukkim.

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So they’re trying to figure out: What is this consequence?

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And Rashi goes—you know you have an enigmatic word

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when we go out of the lane, so to speak,

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and say, “No, no, no. Eikev has nothing to do with quid pro quo or

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causal relationships or a

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trade. It has to do with a body part—your heel—and

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it has to do with, as a consequence of your

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keeping even the lowly commandments, which you

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might tread upon.” We’re really—I don’t know if you can call

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this peshat or midrash—but definitely it’s an inkblot test.

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People are coming at it with different theories.

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Yeah, well, I mean, it’s so great because it’s the first word.

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It’s the word after which the parsha is named. We

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have no idea what it means, and that

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means it’s going to get fun. So Ibn Ezra

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says eikev, “because,” has the same meaning as

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eikev, “reward forever.” He brings a

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verse from Psalms that says, “Natiti libi

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la’asot chukecha le’olam eikev.” I am

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resolved to follow Your laws to the

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utmost, forever. And in the translation that

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Sefaria gives, it’s uncertain. The Hebrew is uncertain.

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So now it means

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some sort of reward, but kind of a

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destiny—a kind of reward

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clearly in the future. You know, the Psalm that

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he quotes is translated as “the utmost” or “forever.”

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Very, very interesting that all of this baggage

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or nuance is being piled onto this

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one word. It’s fantastic. This is a

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fantastic word. So in

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Sefaria, you can click on any word and a dictionary comes up.

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So in that dictionary, eikev means consequence,

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gain, reward, end; as an adverb, as a

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consequence, because, consequently. So there clearly is

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this causal relationship, this reward

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for proper behavior. It’s

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future-oriented. When you say a causal relationship, it’s

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something that goes from now to the future. Clearly,

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there’s a lot in this one word. And now we’re going to

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go to a Ramban, Nachmanides, that

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I found to be just a

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kind of journey through this word, connecting all of

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these different meanings that started me thinking:

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What is history? What is Jewish history? And I think, as we read through

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it, maybe you’ll also have that same feeling. So

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Ramban says eikev means “because.” So also,

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“Eikev—because of the fact that Abraham hearkened to

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My voice.” So he quotes a use of the word

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in Genesis with Abraham. Rashi says, “If you will hearken

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even to the lighter commandments, which a person usually treads

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upon with his heels, those commandments which a

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person is inclined to treat lightly, then God will

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keep His promise to you.” And the commentators have said that the meaning of the

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word eikev is that, in the end, there will be a

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reward. So that was kind of like the last, Ibn Ezra.

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Similarly, “In keeping the ordinances of God,

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eikev rav, there is great reward.” So he

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quotes another verse. The verse here is thus stating:

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“And the end, the ultimate consequence of your hearkening to the

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ordinances and of your observing them, is that God shall keep the

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covenant and the mercy, and He will love you.”

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So I love this “ultimate consequence.” We are looking at

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the arc of history. And so Ramban now says, “This is

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correct, for in the sacred language, the beginning of anything is

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called rosh, ‘head.'” As it is said, rosh,

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the beginning. Rosh Hashanah is now around the corner.

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That’s the head of the year. So also, the leader of the

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generation is called the head of the people. The head of the

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yeshiva is called the Rosh Yeshiva. That was—I

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put that in; Ramban did not. Similarly, the

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conclusion of any matter is called eikev, “heel,”

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as the sacred language adopts these figurative expressions

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from the human body. And thus, the head of the people—

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That’s very interesting. And the heel is the end,

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right? That actually is fantastic, isn’t it? So now

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he is linking what Rashi said, which I said was taking

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a left turn off the highway. And

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Ramban is saying, “No, no, no. There is something there”—that the

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heel is a body part that is used for the

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end. So we do have this kind of time

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element to eikev. Scripture also speaks, says

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Ramban, of the head and the tail. Of course, we all know that

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from Pirkei Avot. And Onkelos rendered the word

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eikev as chalaf, “in exchange for,” like

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chalef, “in return for your service.” Onkelos

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thus made it an expression of something roundabout—the

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end result of a series of events—derived from the

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verse, “V’haya he’akov lemishor—the crooked shall be

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made straight.” That is, the circuitous road that goes

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roundabout will become a straight, level path. So

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before we get to that unbelievably profound

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verse in Isaiah, because we already mentioned Rosh

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Hashanah, now we’re going to have to mention Simchat Torah—

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hakafot, when we dance around. So

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what our rabbi is taking from chalifin is not

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simply an exchange. It’s a circle

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through which it flows. Right. It’s a perpetual

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exchange. It’s like the—what is one of the

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Newtonian laws? That energy is conserved.

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The metaphors are just piling

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in, each becoming more fascinating than the other. But

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yes, let’s get back to the verse in

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Isaiah: “The crooked shall be made straight.”

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Again, this is a wonderful short story by

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Agnon that you all have to read. But basically,

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what it’s saying is that, at the end of days, all

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these circuitous pathways that we’ve taken, all

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these detours that we’ve taken, all these compromises that we

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might have made—everything will be straightened out.

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Again, Isaiah is talking about the end of days. So

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now you can see why I’m reading history, and I’m

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reading an insight into Jewish history from here.

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Ramban continues. He uses other

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metaphors for hakafah, eikev, and being

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surrounded. He says, “The verse here is thus stating, according

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to Onkelos, ‘And it shall come to pass that the

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effect caused by your hearkening to the ordinances

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and your performing them will be that God will keep His covenant with

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you.'” “He has explained it well,” says Ramban about Onkelos.

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A similar expression is biglal, “for the sake of this thing,”

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which means “on account of,” from the word v’galelu,

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“and they rolled the stone.” If you hear the word gilgal (reincarnation) in

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there, you’re not off the mark. And he

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says these are expressions of rolling and circling.

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Therefore, they called Jacob Yeshurun, from the root

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yashar, “straight” and “upright,” because the

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opposite of the deceitful one is he who is upright.

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So now we’re getting into the moral arc of

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history. Right. It’s different. A circle is

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different from being upright. You said a circle is more

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about this perpetual movement.

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Upright is more about there being a direction—and this is

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upright. I’ll go one step further.

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We started by talking in the introduction about the

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Greeks, who thought everything was cyclical. Everything just

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repeats itself. And maybe the rationalists, like Descartes and others,

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who looked at history and said everything was a straight line.

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Here I am going to take a little bit of liberty

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with “deceitful” being the opposite of

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yashar, in the sense that it’s not straight—

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that it wiggles. It goes serpentine, if you will, from

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that great movie called The In-Laws. It’s not

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direct. It can be deceitful, but it can also

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be the ugly truth of the way

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we plod through life. And that, I think, is the dichotomy

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that Ramban is now adding to the baggage. Similarly,

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the end part of the foot is called eikev, as it is said, “And his

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hand seized b’eikev, the heel of Esau.” So now we’re bringing it

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back home. Jacob grabbed

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Esau’s heel, and that’s why he got his name. But his name

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is also, in a sense, because he was

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deceitful—he bought the birthright, and so forth and so on.

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Yeah, I mean, that heel—and Ramban is always well known

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for that. What’s the connection between

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“V’haya eikev tishme’un,” the beginning of this week’s

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Torah portion, and the story of Esau and

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Jacob, and holding on to the heel? It’s the same

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Torah. It’s the same story.

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Thanks. And now, back to our podcast.

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So I’m going to make an argument that all of these

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words and concepts are being thrown

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into the cholent of Jewish historiography.

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In other words, what appears straight can sometimes

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be crooked. What appears aimless is going toward some

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future.

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What seems unintentional is intentional.

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He’s bringing a lot into this.

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And I do believe, though, that he feels that

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eikev, if you look at it even in our verse, is

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saying: Because, through better or worse, through thick or

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thin, through direct or indirect progress, you have kept those

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commandments and have reached this point in history, God will be

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loyal to you. Right. So he says, “So

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also is the expression, ‘They came upon him ba’akifin,'”

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meaning with circuitous and subtle arguments. The word

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akeivin—as these two letters, the bet and the peh, were considered

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interchangeable. So he’s really bringing it full circle. If you think that the

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arc of history has a morality to it, what

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ultimately he is, I think, intoning is the fact

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that you get to the end. It’s not quite “the ends justify the means,”

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but it is the fact that, to get to the end,

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it’s not always a straight path. And the straight path might

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not get you to the end, but the circuitous route

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that is the history of the Jewish people will get you

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there. I just find it a totally amazing

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Ramban. Well, I’d say—and of course, it’s true—

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Ramban lived through a very difficult period in

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Spain, when the Jews were challenged.

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He participated in a famous disputation with a Christian in

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1263. He understood the

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circuitousness of Jewish history. And

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we’re not going to get into it—we’ve covered it so many times before—but

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Ramban is the one who also championed ma’aseh avot

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siman la-banim—that what happens to previous

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generations gets repeated later.

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Rabbi, you and I heard a lecture from Shai Held

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this past Erev Pesach, and he said something

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from Tehillim (Hallel) that really had my mind spinning. In

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Tehillim, we say, “Mah lecha hayam ki tanus, haYarden

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tisov le’achor?” What is with you, sea,

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that you flee? That means the splitting of the Red Sea. And the Yarden, the

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Jordan, turned backward when the Jews were entering the Promised Land.

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So even the splitting of the Red Sea was a kind

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of prequel to the splitting of the Jordan. So really,

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Jewish history does repeat itself. But each

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time, it’s a different and unique situation. Yeah, very good. And I

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think that’s what he meant by ma’aseh avot siman

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la-banim. So, I mean, to give you that

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60,000-foot review of history in

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terms of what I think the consensus is, the Greeks—especially

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Plato, the Stoics, and Polybius—held a cyclical

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view of history, while the Hebrew Bible is distinctive in insisting

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that history moves forward toward a goal: creation,

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covenant, redemption. What is unique about the Torah is not simply

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that it combines linear and cyclical time, but that

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recurring historical patterns occur within a purposeful

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historical journey. And I am going to be

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arguing that, in this one Ramban, you kind of find

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it all. Yeah, well, that’s why Ramban is so great. You know, he

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is kind of a collector of material, but he also

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has a strong point of view himself. So

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recently I’ve been rediscovering—or discovering—Jonathan Sacks,

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because I think that we on Madlik tend to bring in

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contemporary thinkers and such, and I think Sacks does as well.

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This is what he writes in his introduction to

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Covenant and Conversation: Genesis. He says, “According to

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many anthropologists and historians, a quite new and

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different form of time was born in ancient Israel. Often this is

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called linear time. I prefer the phrase covenantal

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time. The Hebrew Bible is the first document to see time

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as an arena of change. Tomorrow need not be the same as

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yesterday. There is nothing given, eternal, and immutable

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about the way we construct societies and live our lives together.

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Time is not a series of moments traced on the face of a watch,

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always moving, yet always the same. Instead, it is a

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journey with a starting point and a destination, or a story with a

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beginning, middle, and end. Each moment has meaning, which can

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only be grasped if we understand where we have come from

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and where we are going. This is time, not as in

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nature, but as in history.” So

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this is a thought very similar to Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi:

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that the Jews, because they saw time

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differently, actually made history differently.

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It was a living history. History was a

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part of memory and really

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a part of our ritual. Another example

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that is brought—I saw something by Ismar Schorsch—and he says:

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Take mo’ed. Ohel Mo’ed is a Tent of Meeting.

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But what he says is that Judaism

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replaced nature with history. So mo’adim used to be

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agricultural holidays based, in fact,

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in nature, in the material world, and Jews

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made them into history. So Passover

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became the Exodus story. Shavuot, which is the first

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grain harvest, became the giving of the Torah. It’s a

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fascinating way of looking at how we treat history.

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Of course. But it’s history as memory. It doesn’t

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matter whether the sea split. That’s not what it’s about.

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It’s about the fact that we remember that the sea split.

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And as I said in the beginning, we use that as a

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paradigm and a lens to understand what’s happening to

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us in the present. And it becomes a

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part of our present

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vocabulary. And I think that’s a little bit of what happens at the Seder, when we

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have to say that we must see ourselves as though we

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left Egypt. But we are still “we” — So I want to

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introduce our listeners to a thinker from the

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1700s called Giambattista Vico,

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whom I came across through Isaiah Berlin. And

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he saw history not as a straight line of progress,

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but as a dynamic, spiraling journey. What he called it

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was corsi e ricorsi, a dance of

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rise and fall, creation and decay. And he

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really was unlike the Enlightenment thinkers, who believed

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in inevitable progress. Vico thought history

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advances through recurring patterns—not circles,

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but spirals. And what intrigued

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Isaiah Berlin was, first of

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all, that every age has its own way

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of evolving. You never go back to where you started at the

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beginning, even though there is this cycle, and that’s what makes it

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a spiral. And then the other thing that

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is fascinating—as an aside—he (Vico) said all of this

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applies to everybody except the Hebrews. And most

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people think that he (Vico) was protecting himself from the Roman Catholic Church.

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It was such a radical idea that, of all the people he

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spared from history as a spiral, it was the Jews. And

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I’m arguing that that’s exactly who he was talking about.

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That’s amazing. But anyway, what Isaiah

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Berlin loved about it was that it

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challenged monism—

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the idea that there is only one single objective truth or perfect

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system for how human beings should live. Isaiah

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Berlin was terrified of monism because he believed it

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inevitably led to authoritarianism and utopias

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that justify violence. So there’s a little bit of

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00:25:22.362 –> 00:25:25.776
relativism here, but what it’s saying is that every nation

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goes through its own corso e ricorso. In

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the case of the Jewish people, we have

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Creation, we have Genesis, we have

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the Exodus. We take these concepts, these

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benchmarks, and we recycle them and recycle them,

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and we move forward without leaving them

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behind. And he found that to be

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extremely insightful. But what I could

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not really believe were the

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00:25:59.630 –> 00:26:02.868
two kinds of theories that Vico had.

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One was called the verum factum principle. It says

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that humans can truly understand society and history

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because we made them ourselves, whereas only God

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can fully understand the natural, physical world.

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Isaiah Berlin felt that he really was creating

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00:26:21.351 –> 00:26:25.038
sociology, economics—the human sciences, so to

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00:26:25.038 –> 00:26:28.693
speak. And what Vico was arguing is

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00:26:28.725 –> 00:26:32.300
that, through verum factum, we humans

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00:26:32.572 –> 00:26:36.355
can understand human history better than anything else. Yeah, that’s

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00:26:36.355 –> 00:26:39.914
right, because we live it and we make it. It is truly

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ours. And I think that takes that eikev

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concept, where it’s a part of the human body, but

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00:26:46.663 –> 00:26:50.446
it’s something through which we can truly understand how we

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00:26:50.446 –> 00:26:54.245
meander through history, taking a left turn and a right turn. The

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00:26:54.373 –> 00:26:58.221
other thing he argued for was fantasia. Vico argued

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00:26:58.221 –> 00:27:01.892
that, to understand the past, we cannot use mathematical formulas.

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00:27:02.228 –> 00:27:05.915
We must use active, empathetic imagination—fantasia—

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00:27:06.220 –> 00:27:09.810
to enter the minds of past cultures. Berlin saw this as

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00:27:09.923 –> 00:27:13.642
the true birth of modern social science, cultural

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anthropology, and genuine historical sympathy.

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00:27:18.002 –> 00:27:21.320
It’s just truly amazing. The second thinker that

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00:27:21.769 –> 00:27:25.440
Berlin loved was Herder, and Herder did talk about the Jews.

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00:27:25.937 –> 00:27:29.784
Herder was a Lutheran minister and

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00:27:29.784 –> 00:27:33.503
was German. He argued for the emancipation of the Jews, but he

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00:27:33.631 –> 00:27:37.478
also argued for the return of the Jews to their promised homeland. Because,

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00:27:37.478 –> 00:27:40.989
again, he saw that every society does not need to become

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00:27:41.230 –> 00:27:44.788
universal. It needs to find that which is particular

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00:27:44.788 –> 00:27:47.962
about it—those prisms,

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00:27:48.475 –> 00:27:52.130
that mythology—and build upon it. And

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00:27:52.867 –> 00:27:56.266
language was very important to

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00:27:56.394 –> 00:28:00.225
Herder. And if we’ve proved anything today by using one

444
00:28:00.321 –> 00:28:03.511
word, eikev, and looking at all the baggage that it has,

445
00:28:03.944 –> 00:28:07.471
we’ve proven the point that different words can trigger

446
00:28:07.471 –> 00:28:10.885
different results. But I think, really,

447
00:28:11.222 –> 00:28:14.684
there is something unique about the Jewish

448
00:28:14.845 –> 00:28:17.890
vantage point on history. And I think it’s

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00:28:17.890 –> 00:28:21.177
self-fulfilling. It truly is our best

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00:28:21.177 –> 00:28:24.671
guarantee that, as our verse says,

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00:28:25.248 –> 00:28:28.807
eikev—because we have remained

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00:28:28.855 –> 00:28:31.484
loyal to this evolving

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00:28:32.077 –> 00:28:35.331
historical narrative—we will survive.

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Right. God will keep His promise to us.

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I just love this insight that humans can

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00:28:43.202 –> 00:28:46.841
understand history better than anything else because we live it. I

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00:28:46.841 –> 00:28:50.672
mean, it’s fantastic. I mean, you really end here

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00:28:50.672 –> 00:28:54.167
with Yerushalmi again. It’s really Yerushalmi’s notion

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00:28:54.439 –> 00:28:58.094
that history is what you live. It’s not what happens

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00:28:58.206 –> 00:29:01.957
to you, but how you live it. And it gives

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00:29:01.957 –> 00:29:05.708
us a whole new, I think, toolkit for when

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00:29:05.885 –> 00:29:09.427
we study our texts—how we go through that

463
00:29:09.427 –> 00:29:13.034
layered approach of commentary and commentary and commentary. We’re

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00:29:13.178 –> 00:29:16.801
actually looking at concepts that were

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00:29:16.930 –> 00:29:20.546
created and meant something in one age, and will mean

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00:29:20.643 –> 00:29:24.324
something else in another age, and will mean something

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00:29:24.661 –> 00:29:28.261
still more for our children’s children. And we need

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00:29:28.293 –> 00:29:32.053
to take the time, as Vico argued and Herder

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00:29:32.133 –> 00:29:35.975
argued, to understand what it meant in all of those different periods,

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00:29:36.313 –> 00:29:39.646
to be able to process it,

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00:29:40.097 –> 00:29:43.881
to be inspired by it, and to be guided by it. And that,

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00:29:43.897 –> 00:29:46.826
at the end of the day, is this kind of chalifin

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00:29:46.843 –> 00:29:50.560
and these hakafot and all

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00:29:50.560 –> 00:29:54.200
of these wonderful words and language that we came

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00:29:54.200 –> 00:29:57.560
across today. Fantastic. This is really, really

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00:29:57.560 –> 00:30:01.120
good. We’re ready for Eikev in Westport. We’re ready

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00:30:01.120 –> 00:30:04.720
for Eikev. We’re ready for Rosh Hashanah, for Simchat Torah. We

478
00:30:04.720 –> 00:30:08.520
can go on vacation. What do you mean? We’re ready to sell

479
00:30:08.520 –> 00:30:12.260
our chametz. Fantastic. Shabbat shalom, everybody. This is

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00:30:12.260 –> 00:30:14.960
great. I look forward to next week. Shana tovah.

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00:30:16.299 –> 00:30:18.933
Shabbat shalom. See you all next week.

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Here’s a question I invite you to consider: If

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00:30:25.153 –> 00:30:28.676
history truly does rhyme and is created by people

484
00:30:28.869 –> 00:30:32.445
rather than impersonal forces, what role does each of us

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00:30:32.558 –> 00:30:36.296
play in writing the next chapter? I’d love to hear from you.