madlik

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, we read Parashat Noach. We are also honored to be joined by Yigal Carmon, founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute. Welcome to Madlik, Yigal.

Yigal Carmon [2:22 – 2:29]: Thank you. Thank you so much, Geoffrey. And thank you, Adam. Rabbi Adam, thank you.

Geoffrey Stern [2:29 – 4:07]: So I’m going to ask you to tell us a little bit about yourself, but because I’m afraid you might be a little bit humble, first I’m going to give your bio bio and then you can tell us about your personal journey. So you are the president and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute called MEMRI. You combine four different areas of expertise: intelligence, counterterrorism, diplomacy, and research.

Carmon is a colonel, retired in the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps. He was a counter-terrorism advisor to two Israeli prime ministers, heading governments for both Likud and Labor, overseeing the national deployment against terrorism. He participated in the 1991-92 peace talks in Madrid and Washington. As deputy head of the Israeli delegation negotiating with Syria in 1998, you founded MEMRI, which bridges the language gap between the Middle East and the West by monitoring, translating, and analyzing the media of the Arab and Muslim world in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Dari, Turkish, Russian, and Chinese media.

You have briefed Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice, in addition to the FBI, the NSC, and the Library of Congress. You’ve briefed the European Union, European Parliament, the UK Parliament, OSCE, and NATO, and participated in conferences on counterterrorism and diplomacy. It is an absolute honor and pleasure to have you. And now that I’ve given the official bio, Yigal, why don’t you tell us your personal story?

Yigal Carmon [4:09 – 4:42]: Thank you so much, Geoffrey, for inviting me and for giving me the chance. In fact, and this has to do a lot with what we will be talking about. I’m a child of Holocaust victims. I’m not calling it survivors but victims, although part of the family survived from Hungary, Transylvania. And my family, my grandparents perished in Auschwitz. My aunt, who was a beautiful woman, was not killed; she was used. And later on, she came to Israel and she actually took her life.

Yigal Carmon [4:42 – 5:13]: We were three kids in a village near the sea—Givat Olga. Some ministers came from there, but anyway. It was the 50s, and there were no hospitals for mental problems. So my aunt, she grew. We grew with her at home. There was no food. So my parents sent my older brother to a kibbutz. He went to Kibbutz Gesher. He went to the army with his girlfriend. Together they were already in a home. And he was in the air force. In April 62, he crashed.

Yigal Carmon [5:44 – 6:15]: They thought about the worst idea, that whenever he’s in the air, she will be in the control tower. Including that horrible day. So this is my background. I went to the army. I studied Arabic at the university and then the history of the Middle East. And from there in the military, it was the route to intelligence. And there I occupied several positions, also partially in the territories. I was an instructor in our National Defense College, teaching about the Arab and Muslim world.

Yigal Carmon [6:15 – 6:47]: My last office job was as an advisor to Shamir and to Rabin on countering terrorism, which I can say in two words, and everybody will understand what it is. The targets of terrorists are countless and in every country, in every place, including Israel, while the number of those who are fighting it, police, military, and intelligence, everything is minuscule. And how do you bridge this huge gap? This is the story of countering terrorism. So I go back to our. This is my brief story.

Yigal Carmon [7:19 – 7:27]: If you want to ask something about it, I’m ready to answer. If not, I will move to our Parasha.

Geoffrey Stern [7:28 – 10:13]: So I think you give a wonderful background to the Parasha because we are going to talk, as I said in the introduction, about the origin myth of language. And I think when you say that the enemies against us are infinite and our tools to fight the enemies are very finite and small, I think language is ultimately the tool that you found that enables us to understand. Understanding our enemies and potential friends is more important than any weapon.

So, as we all know, the story of the Tower of Babel, what we might forget is because we focus so much on the tower that the tower is only a sideshow. The real story is language. It says “Vayehi kol ha’aretz devarim achadim,” that the whole land was one language. And “devarim achadim,” they were just single ideas, you might even say, and they were combining to create this tower because when you can pretend to be all one, you can do good, but you can also do terrible things. God felt threatened by this, and what he did, we’re not gonna get into the details, but he confused them by creating multiple languages.

And one of the commentaries that Adam and I discovered in a previous episode is the Netziv. And the Netziv writes that really what the participants wanted to do was to give the impression that they spoke in one voice and they actually wished to repress any difference of opinion and knowledge of individual ulterior motives. When I was telling you that we were going to have this discussion, you shared with me a screenshot. And the screenshot, because I said we had no video on our podcast, it says it has a talking head, maybe an anchor of an Arabic news show. And it says, “How can I say in English the same things that I say in Arabic?” And I think that’s the essence of your discovery and insight.

And maybe you can tell me the importance of piercing the veil that us outsiders believe exists, that the whole Arab world speaks in one voice. And they ultimately say what we want to hear. And how that group think can lead to all sorts of problems. In fact, the most important tool that we have is to open the hood and to give our enemies and potential friends the benefit of listening to what they really think and what they really say.

Talk to us a little bit about the power of language.

Yigal Carmon [10:15 – 13:05]: Thank you. Because you opened the door for what I wanted to say. You know, we began our long travel with the idea of breaching the language gap. The idea was that if we only provide the information that is there in the Arab world into languages that people understand, then everything will be fine. We just have to give it in that language that they know. Little did we know.

I will relate to history and to the present time. It is not enough for people to understand what is being said, and it’s said in deceiving ways. One in Arabic, one in English. But even when they get it right in their language, from the Arabic, do they listen? This is actually. It will turn to be a discussion of the limitation of language to impact people’s minds.

I want to begin with something that the late renowned authority on the Arab and Muslim world, Professor Bernard Lewis, told me once: if only MEMRI existed when Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf, things would have been different. And this sentence could be also regarding other examples. And I’ll bring them in a moment. And he was wrong. He was wrong. Even when you give it to people into their face, they don’t listen.

I want to move from our mission to history, but also to others. Four months before the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin wrote an essay himself. 4,000 words. We translated it in which he said, Ukraine is a historical fiction. There is no such thing as Ukraine. The kingdom of Russia in the 9th century was in Kyiv. So it’s nothing. Anyone in his right mind would understand what’s coming. Indeed, in four months, it came an invasion. If Ukraine is a historical fiction, this is what’s coming. No one listened, no one looked at it, no one wanted to.

Geoffrey Stern [13:06 – 13:32]: Let’s fast forward for a second. I believe that I read in the press that Hamas published their plans and actually were practicing the ultimate attack in plain sight. And I believe there was a great scholar from MEMRI who published an article a month before the attack, pretty much predicting it. His name was Yigal Carmon.

Why don’t we talk about present time? Because I don’t think we need to go back that far.

Yigal Carmon [13:33 – 15:18]: Well, because had I known the past at the time, I would have done much more. But I did issue an early warning. On August 31, 2023, I published an early warning titled Sign of Possible War. In September and October, I was faced with attacks by colleagues, former colleagues, who told me, Yigal, stop with this racism. You cannot be defended anymore.

When we did school books, we analyzed, translated, and analyzed school books in the Muslim world. People told me, is this. What nonsense are you dealing with? This is what you do in MEMRI. You know, I want to say, Geoff, we tend to think, and this is what I thought in ’98 when we began, that the only thing you need to do is to provide it. We provided for years all the information about the planning in 2018. They provided a map with the routes to the settlement—not settlement, the communities—with the number of minutes to each one of them. They showed various videos of their training and how they attack communities. And those who didn’t want to listen simply closed their eyes and their ears and wouldn’t see anything.

Geoffrey Stern [15:18 – 15:40]: So, Yigal, is there a solution? You say that sometimes we see the writing on the wall right in front of us, and even if we translate, which is what you guys do, it still doesn’t help. Or we just have to learn the lessons of history and get the word out. Or is there a solution for this?

Yigal Carmon [15:42 – 16:00]: Well, I think that the problem is political or ideological in reason and not the problem of language. In my naiveté at the time, I thought it’s a problem of language, and if only we provided.

Adam Mintz [16:00 – 16:26]: Can I ask a question? Why is it that our enemy—who will be the enemy in each of these situations, why would they give these signs? If I was preparing for October 7, I would think that I would try to keep it a secret. Why would Hamas give these signs? I know you’re saying that Israel missed them, but I want to know what was Hamas thinking?

Yigal Carmon [16:27 – 19:24]: Yes. Well, on the one hand, they thought that by doing so, they are deceiving; there was a huge deception plan. And that they are saying, well, the Israelis, the Jews, that’s the case. The Jews would think if we do that, it’s not serious, it won’t happen. That’s one idea. They had this deceptive plan, but also because this is their ideology, because this is what they believe in, because they thought that this is the time to move ahead.

And the idea that they are like anybody else, namely modern, Westernized, they would not launch something that has no hope to succeed. They don’t have an interest in it. I will quote our former head of military intelligence. On October 7, it was already in the inside. He said there is no need for signs, early signs. It’s enough to look at the interests. Well, and you were head of intelligence. Your life is signs. Early signs. But the interest.

Let’s go back to the interest because this is what you are asking about. Their interests are different than our interests. Who told you that it’s one interest for all human beings? No, it’s not the same interest. Who told you that it’s the same situation for them and for us, and that all that they want is to flourish?

You know, there is a big, huge, huge, huge line about Gaza before October 7, and we published it in abundance, that there was a humanitarian crisis. There’s hardly a bigger lie than that Gaza was flourishing. We showed it in videos, BBC, Al Jazeera, influencer. The son of Haniya said, and Gaza was the most beautiful city. You couldn’t believe this is Gaza; that’s the son of Haniya. But our people said, oh, all they want is a good life, good life, because this is what we want. Well, there is a difference. And for that, you have to take in a different ideology, a different set of beliefs. And if you don’t do that, you don’t understand that no translation will help.

Geoffrey Stern [19:24 – 22:24]: I think what you’re saying, Yigal, is it’s not enough to listen to language, even if it’s the language spoken in its original. You have to look at the context. You have to look at the contents of the culture, of the religion, the whole person. You have to look at the tics, you have to look at their expressions. And that actually is how you and I talk. We’re looking at each other now. It’s not the same as if I was reading a transcript of this conversation.

So I think it really means that we have to look deeper. We can’t say that translation by itself is worthless, but it is only the beginning of a window into the other. And I think at the end of the day, another way of saying what you’re saying is for those who will really are concerned about the Palestinians and about our neighbors, to give them due respect, you have to listen to them first. And projecting our Western values on them is the ultimate crime. You could even call it colonialism. If we project our own Western ideas, we have to listen to them.

And I was looking through your site. I want to segue into something a little bit more positive now. I saw on your website where you had recent snippets that were on TV around the Arab world, where the interviewer would say to somebody from Hamas, do you regret what happened two years ago on October 7? Do you feel that the casualties that were incurred are your fault? And you run the whole clip. In one of them, the Hamas spokesman says, this is the end of the interview. Turn off the camera. Have you no respect? In another, he mumbles something.

And I think probably the intent of these clips is to show that Hamas is really bankrupt, as if we didn’t know it. But what interested me was the way the questions were asked by the reporters.

They were saying, the Arab street is asking. We are asking, was this worth it? And I’m wondering if there is any silver lining that you can find and uncover as you listen to broadcasts and social media where the Arab world is looking at 70 years of conflict with Israel that has produced nothing except death and resources thrown away that could be spent on their own people. Do you find the beginning of a sentiment where they’re starting to ask these types of questions of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood? Is there any light at the end of the tunnel?

Yigal Carmon [22:26 – 22:56]: Of course there is, Geoff. And it is with those who are moving to Westernization. Take the Emirates. The Emirates have established in Abu Dhabi a compound with a mosque and a church and a synagogue. I spoke to this synagogue. This is in total contradiction to Islam. Muhammad said, no two religions,

Yigal Carmon [22:56 – 23:27]: and then they put three, not two. There are liberals and reformists. We are exposing all the, quote, unquote, bad guys, but we are exposing all the good guys. And there are many. And they live more safely in Abu Dhabi and in Saudi Arabia than in Paris or Berlin or any country in the West. London, which is Londonistan,

Yigal Carmon [23:27 – 23:59]: which is ruled by the Islamists. So there are people, there are voices. Unfortunately, the west gives more voice, more importance, more legitimacy to those who pretend to represent the Palestinians more than they do themselves. Look, Hamas took over by force on June 2007 in

Yigal Carmon [23:59 – 24:31]: a coup. They threw people from the windows. Now I want to say something about the difficulty in accepting Israel. The problem is huge. This was our land, and this was the kingdoms and the Temple and its Temple Mount to this very day. The name and even the Mufti. Haj Amin al Husseini, in 25 did a

Yigal Carmon [24:31 – 25:01]: tourist publication and he said, this is the place of Haikal Suleiman, the Temple of Suleiman, that is Shlomo, King Solomon. So it is a situation that it was what it was. And then we went to the Diaspora and other people came, and gradually, and especially in the

Yigal Carmon [25:01 – 25:27]: last hundred years, 150 years, many came from many places. It’s obvious by their names that relate to the city or country where they came from and this became their homeland. So it’s very difficult for them, as much as it is difficult for us to give it up.

Geoffrey Stern [25:28 – 26:08]: Does it work both ways? Do our neighbors get to see Israeli TV or Israeli media? Do they get to see, with all its imperfections, our democracy in action? The debates held in the Knesset? Do they need a MEMRI as well? And is there in, but behind closed doors, do they ultimately respect the fact that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and the only really functioning government with elections and all of the other dirty parts of being a democracy, but nonetheless a democracy, well, they.

Yigal Carmon [26:08 – 26:47]: See it and they learn it. And the Arabs in Israel, who know very well what is Israel and how it can impact their life. We have to mention that they did not take part in the big celebration of Palestine from the river to the sea. There were no demonstrations, there was no violence. There were those who are connected to the jihadis or others in the Arab world who wrote in the social media, but there were no demonstrations.

Geoffrey Stern [26:47 – 27:23]: I think that’s the story that doesn’t get told. I think we talk about translation. What didn’t happen amongst Arab Israelis during the last two years is one of the stories that does not get told. I want to close with some quick questions. Iran. We always hear that the people of Iran have a deep history of the West and of democracy. Is there any chance of regime change? Or is this just another example of us Westerners projecting our hopes and aspirations on another culture?

Yigal Carmon [27:24 – 27:56]: The story of Iran is complicated. Iran is made up of 50%, 52% of Farsis Persians and 48%, almost 50% are of different ethnic minorities. Baluchis in the east, Arabs, Ahwazis south of with all the oil resources. Then

Yigal Carmon [27:56 – 28:27]: you have the Kurds in the west, and then in the north, the Azeris. And they make up 48% or more, a little more so. And they are looking, the first three are looking for their own autonomy, even independence, even they want to have their own life as a call it minority, call it an ethnic group, especially the

Yigal Carmon [28:27 – 29:00]: Kurds that have others in Iraq and in Syria and in Turkey. Now the hope, our hope would only be if these minorities, ethnic groups are given their rights and diminish the dreams of the Persians that are now covered with Islamism, with Shia to take

Yigal Carmon [29:00 – 29:30]: over their place in the world. The way they perceive it, the Persians are the problem. You know, some Persians in America, they are for democracy in Iran, but not for those ethnic minorities. They are for freedom from the Ayatollahs. But these ethnic groups should stay with us, even if they don’t want to.

Yigal Carmon [29:30 – 30:01]: It’s very complicated, Geoff, extremely complicated. But for Israel the best and for America the best solution is to grant these ethnic group support and have the Farsis, the Persians, struggle with the status of not an empire. From the time of Cyrus, where he controlled

Yigal Carmon [30:01 – 30:32]: also Yehuda and the land of the Jews and gave them the permission which we celebrate to go back, this is over. They have to adapt to being like all the empires of the West. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, who wasn’t an empire, the Austro-Hungarian, they were all empires. They gave it up. They simply gave it up to be their

Yigal Carmon [30:32 – 30:53]: own home culture, nationality. Then they united as a the European Union, but voluntarily and with benefits. This should be the fate of Iran and only through this we will have peace.

Geoffrey Stern [30:54 – 31:22]: In terms of Lebanon, there’s obviously been a sea change there. With Hezbollah seemingly not in control and the potential for the great society that existed beforehand. It used to be Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East. Are you monitoring? I’m sure you’re monitoring their media and their press too. Are they finding their old voice again or again? Am I projecting?

Yigal Carmon [31:22 – 31:53]: No. When the colonial powers left, they created an impossible political structure. In 1911, the Italians united Tripoli and Benghazi and Fezzan. You cannot unite them. You could through a dictatorship, the King, Sanusi, and then Gaddafi. It doesn’t work anymore. They are

Yigal Carmon [31:53 – 32:23]: split and nothing can unite them. In Iraq, at the time of the Ottoman Empire, there were three vilayets, three main districts, Basra for Shiites, Baghdad for Sunnis and Mosul for the Kurds. But the British united them by force. What happened? All crumbled down. Except at the time

Yigal Carmon [32:23 – 32:54]: of Saddam Hussein, he held them with fire and blood and sword, and they held as long as they could. And then it crumbled down. The Iranians helped and it became, whatever it is, a non-entity political nonentity. Now in Lebanon, they brought together Shiites and Christians and Sunnis into a mishmash of one state.

Yigal Carmon [32:54 – 33:25]: It crumbled down. There was the war in 75, and now. And of course, the Shiites got support from Iran and became the strongest power. Now, because there is an Israel that fights Hezbollah, they have to adapt somehow to a different structure where they are not the power. And it seems

Yigal Carmon [33:25 – 33:56]: to be working, but it doesn’t really work. And the American ambassador in Turkey and in Lebanon, Tom Barak, is trying his best to appease Hezbollah, just to have a situation that the President will not have to struggle with an insagration of violence. This doesn’t help.

Speaker A: Hezbollah has to be finished off. Otherwise, there will be no Lebanon, no Lebanon of the others, of the Christians, and the Shiites, the Hezbollah. The Shiites will not come together because they feel they have the support of Iran, and they will have it one way or another, back like it was in ’82. So you don’t see what you hope to see. Unfortunately, Job,

Yigal Carmon [34:27 – 34:59]: you don’t see it. It’s a situation on fire. Sometimes it blows up against Israel, sometimes against, well, the Syrian terrorist is trying to enter. Sometimes this thing that the colonialists did, the French, to bring together, like the Italians in Libya, like the British in Iraq,

Yigal Carmon [34:59 – 35:02]: it is forced on people and it cannot work.

Geoffrey Stern [35:03 – 35:41]: So you don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. I guess we just live in a very bad neighborhood that was really, I guess, ruined, as you have it, by the colonialists who sliced and diced it in a way that every country almost was divided by different ethnic groups to ensure that there would be no stability. It was almost designed like the Tower of Babel to fall from the get-go. And that. That’s a very, I think, depressing picture. Is there any hope at the end?

Yigal Carmon [35:42 – 37:37]: There is hope. Europe a few centuries ago was all battling each other. Were there any better? All tribes, all empires, they were fighting each other. The Germans, the French, who didn’t fight internally and between each other. This was the face of Europe. And then after World War II, they decided that enough is enough. The culture allowed for it. The Christian situation, the role of the Pope, who at some point in the past was sending armies to the Holy Land. Armies? No, not anymore. There are soldiers there to protect, and they are assured that tourists are watching and no more. Europe was in no better situation. It was enough fighting. Look at France, all kinds of galleys. Every country, Italy, is divided between so many elements, and yet they are together. They prefer now life and good life over anything else. And the religion helps them.

In our case, the religion of Islam doesn’t help. To the contrary, it is fighting. So they have to go through a process of Westernization, of giving less importance to religion. It is tough, but it will happen. We just have to live and see 200, 300 years.

Geoffrey Stern [37:38 – 38:19]: Okay, well, at least we’ll be on record. They’ll look up the podcast and they’ll say that you were right, and please God, it’ll come sooner rather than later. But thank you for joining us and thanks for the important work that you do. You know, sometimes the truth doesn’t sound so good, but it has to be said. And I think that you, like the ancient prophets, are telling, have a message that might not be that optimistic in the short run and is sobering, but is important to hear. And thank you for sharing it with us and keep up your important work.

Yigal Carmon [38:19 – 38:20]: Thank you, Geoffrey.

Welcome to Madlik. I am praying and hoping that by the time we publish this podcast that the hostages are free. But I think if the Semel, the image of the hostage has been the guiding element of the last two years, it comes back in a very strong way to Tselem Elokim, to the image of God. And I think that we are with them. And it’s a wonderful metaphor for the whole community to be in the individual. And we hope and pray they come back. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at the 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, we start the Torah all over again and read Parashat Bereshit. We are also honored to be joined by Tomer Persico, author of “In God’s Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea,” published by NYU Press in July of this year. Dr. Persico is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and a senior research scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Welcome, Tomer. Thanks for joining us.

Tomer Persico [2:43 – 2:44]: Thank you for having me.

Geoffrey Stern [2:45 – 3:01]: It’s wonderful to have you here and especially on the first episode of the new reading cycle of the Torah. What I would love to know is what caused you to pick this subject and write this book, and how many years did it take you to write it?

Tomer Persico [3:02 – 5:07]: Oh, Okay. I mean, I wrote it in about three years, but the research for it took me over a decade. I’ve been collecting material and researching this really for a long time. Because what I was interested in is a few questions. I’m answering a few questions first. Why do we now live in a world in which it is logical and moral for privileged or for the powerful to share their power or to give up their privilege? And a lot of contemporary voices answer that question by saying, well, privileged persons or powers will not give up their power unless you take it by force. And I thought that the answer was different. The answer was connected to morals and ethics and ideas.

Another question I wanted to answer was this super interesting but scandalous question, why the West? Why is the West today the hegemonic, most powerful cultural civilization in the world? And what I found out is that the thread that connects these two questions is connected itself with that idea, with that unbelievably revolutionary idea that happens to be mentioned in one verse in chapter I of Genesis. And that’s the idea that all persons were created in the image of God. And so I began to research it. I actually, when I began writing, I couldn’t believe such a book was not written, because you would think such an obvious, basic, fundamental idea. People must have written about it. But actually, no. And so I went to work. I wrote what I thought I wrote as an intellectual and cultural history of the West hinging on the seminal place of that idea. And the more I researched, the more I found out how much this idea is fundamental to the world we live in today.

Geoffrey Stern [5:07 – 6:26]: So, I mean, having read the book, it might be not only the most radical idea in the Torah itself. I think the knee-jerk reaction of most people would say it’s monotheism. That’s what Judaism gave to the world, that there’s one God. And here we are. This idea of the image of God, you trace in this amazing. It’s really a history of ideas book. That’s the genre. And there are too few books like that. It’s almost like a James Mitchner novel called “The Source.” You’re digging down. You’re starting at the very beginning, and you trace this idea all the way up to the present. It reads like a novel.

And I think many of the podcasts that you’ve been on or the articles written about the book focus on the ending about secularism. How do you attach secularism to a biblical text? But I enjoyed the journey so much that what we’re going to do today, with your permission, is we’re going to look at a few revelations that occur along the way that I think are as profound as the end destination. And maybe we’ll have you back, as there’s so much to talk about in this book. Rabbi, you read the book, what, in one sitting over the weekend?

Adam Mintz [6:26 – 7:11]: So it’s an amazing book. And I agree that we don’t have enough books on the history of ideas. I like the fact that you choose the image of God, which is not actually a Jewish idea. Or maybe it is. It’s something found in the Hebrew Bible. But it’s talking about the creation of humankind. And I felt that tension also. I mean, you say, Geoffrey, you said, what did Judaism give to the world? Judaism gave monotheism, but this is something that Judaism gives to the world through the Torah. Even though it’s talking not specifically about Jews versus other people.

Geoffrey Stern [7:12 – 7:13]: Absolutely.

Tomer Persico [7:13 – 7:38]: I just wanted to say, as I show in the book, Judaism or ancient Hebrew culture didn’t actually invent the actual idea of the image of God. But what the Bible does is that it implements this idea for everybody, for all people. Because until the Bible, the pharaoh was the image of God or some mythological hero was the image of God. And the Bible says everybody is the image of God. And that, of course, changes everything.

Geoffrey Stern [7:39 – 8:21]: Okay, well, what changed everything when I started reading the book. Cause I didn’t know really what to expect is this, as I said in the intro, where you make the point that actually we have no reason to believe that ancient Israelites thought that God did not have a body. Body was infinite. And all of the stuff that Greek philosophy fed us, and that it is actually very primary to the power of the concept that we take these words very literally. Could you explain that? Because I think that would be novel to a lot of people. We all think of the image of God as a metaphor. And you don’t take it as a metaphor in the eyes of the ancient Israelites that heard it for the first time?

Tomer Persico [8:22 – 10:36]: Yeah. I mean, I simply think that the Bible didn’t think it was a metaphor and that our sages Chazal didn’t think it was a metaphor. There is no place in the Bible that mentions that God doesn’t have a body or even mentions that you cannot see God. We learn from the Bible that it’s dangerous to see God. You can see God and die. It’s dangerous. But it’s actually possible to see God. And quite a few instances within the Bible, people see God, Moses on the mountain, and later, you know, in chapter 24, Moses and 70 of the elders of Israel see God, it says that and you know, in different places. So apparently God has a form that you can see. And what for the Bible and for our sages, the image of God was, was the form, the actual contours of the form of God.

Geoffrey Stern [0:00 – 10:37]: Now that has, on one hand, you know, it’s upsetting to us. We are, I would say, simply after the Maimonidean revolution. Maimonides really entrenched in Judaism the view that any thought about a body for God or a form of God is idolatry. That’s all nonsense, of course. God is infinite and totally abstract.

But before Maimonides and even in Maimonides’ time, people argued with that, didn’t think that was obvious. So we are already after that revolution. And for us, it’s strange, but what it does in a significant way is it changes the meaning of idolatry. Idolatry isn’t the foolish belief that some two foot statue of a, I don’t know, an elephant or a camel or whatever is God. Idolatry is substituting a two-foot statue as the idol of God for the real Tselem, the real presence of God, which is the human person.

That’s the idea. If you are an idolater, you’re missing out on the real presence of God which is in your interlocutor, in the person you meet in every human being. And you’re instead of that worshiping some stone or wooden statue.

Adam Mintz [10:37 – 11:07]: So Geoffrey, at the risk of, I know we’re having the conversation before we get to the sources, so obviously what you said is brilliant. I was bothered when I read the book by the following. So, we’re created in the image of God. Humans are created in the image of God. If that’s true, that if humans see God, they’re gonna die, why should there be such a, you know, a fear of seeing the image that we became?

Tomer Persico [11:10 – 12:01]: Yeah, interesting question. I think, you know, God has His wish of privacy and sort of transcendence. It’s undignified towards God if you simply are too close to Him, like a king. You know, in the past also, kings were not simply seen by commoners, right. I think it’s more of a distance thing than a metaphysical impossibility. And so, God wants us to keep our distance, except for, you know, special occasions. If there’s a prophet, sometimes He reveals Himself.

Ezekiel or Isaiah, they saw a certain, you know, a certain form of God, right? And of course Moses sees God, etc. So, it’s possible it’s simply kept for very special people in very special occasions.

Adam Mintz [12:01 – 12:29]: I’d just say one last thing, and that is, you know, in Anim Zemirot, we take that idea and we say kesher, Tefillin, hera, leannav, which means that Moses saw only the knot of God’s Tefillin on His head. He saw just the back of His head. And I always thought that’s like, you know, King Charles, that you only see King Charles when he’s dressed, you know, in his royal clothing, that God is only seen when He’s wearing His Tefillin.

Tomer Persico [12:30 – 12:30]: Yeah.

Geoffrey Stern [12:31 – 13:59]: So let me jump in for a second. You know, I’m trained in the philosophy of science and when you look at theories, you weigh two theories. It seems to me that the theory that we use, we moderns, is that God has no body, He’s infinite, He’s omnipotent and all that. And those are wonderful words, but as a being governed by the four, five senses that I have, they’re really meaningless words.

Do I really know what infinite is when I live in a finite world? So there are problems with that theory and there are few benefits. Then you have Tomer’s new way of looking at it, which is God is physical and God is identical to us. And it’s equally as problematic because how could this God, universal—and I wouldn’t even say, I’m not going to say universal—how could this all-powerful God be like me? I’m mortal, He’s not.

But you look at the theory and what are the takeaways? The takeaways are, and you bring this verse, Genesis 9:6: Whoever sheds human blood, by human hand shall that one’s blood be shed. For in the image of God was human created. Now we’re not talking about idolatry anymore, we’re not talking about metaphysics anymore. We are saying that God physical and making every human being identical to God means that human rights is born. And that’s one of the messages of this book.

Tomer Persico [13:59 – 15:59]: Exactly. What I try to convey through all through this book is that the way we think about a human person influences how we organize our society and how we legislate our laws. So the Bible is explicitly arguing with other lists of laws, other systems of legislation within ancient Mesopotamia and even Greece and Rome, who for them, substituting a person to be punished for another person’s crime was something that was done matter of factly.

Sometimes it was done in a way that was a sort of a measure for measure, logical within the legislative system. So if I kill your son, you kill my son. This sort of thing. Now, my son, of course, didn’t do anything wrong, but that’s logical if you don’t think that each and every person is a world unto themselves, special, unique, and dignified with the image of God. If so, yes, you can substitute people, or sometimes my son, or my wife, et cetera, are considered simply organs of my extended body.

So if you pluck out my eye, I pluck out your eye. If you kill my son, I kill your son. Simply organs of a whole organism. The Bible explicitly argues with that and says sons will not be punished for the sins of their fathers, nor fathers for the sins of their sons. Each will be punished for their own sin. Or the verse that you read right: Whoever spills a man’s blood, by man, their blood will be spilled. Because in the image of God, man was created. Their blood will be spilled and not anyone else’s, why? Because each and every person was created in the image of God.

Geoffrey Stern [16:01 – 17:27]: And it doesn’t stop there. We’re gonna move on to other subjects in the book, but here when we talk about the physicality of God’s image, is this human being. You quote rules about when you kill a convict for murder and you have to hang his body in public; you can’t leave it overnight. Why? Because it is an insult to God. And the Talmud explains because it is God hanging there. That’s almost a line from a book by Elie Wiesel in Auschwitz where he looked at that child hanging and he said, God is there hanging.

This goes back to our midrashim It becomes very, very powerful. And I will say later in the book, you start talking about philosophers like Saint Anselm and Descartes, and they prove that God exists because of the way we think of God. And the truth is, you and I and Rabbi know all they proved is that God exists in their mind. They didn’t prove he exists outside of their mind. But that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a leap that changes the discussion from God and what’s out there to man becomes the Godhead. It’s a book by Erich Fromm, ‘You Shall Be as Gods.’ This is a very, very powerful, I think, paradigm shift.

Tomer Persico [17:28 – 17:59]: What happens is the minute Christianity is formed and basically adopts the Bible as its foundational text, of course it adds the New Testament, it also adopts the idea of the image of God. But it does something with it. Christianity has a trajectory of individualization and internalization; things become more individualized and more internalized. And the image of God also becomes internalized. It becomes for different Christian thinkers in different Christian times…

Tomer Persico [17:59 – 18:30]: It becomes the conscience or reason or the soul or the will, etc. Different things. In any way, it becomes an internal ability. So when it becomes reason, suddenly the image of God is our ability to think straight, to think in an orderly way, to think in a rational way, not to believe in anything, but to check things. And it gives us the certainty that if we think straight, we…

Tomer Persico [18:30 – 19:00]: Can actually discover what the world is about. We can actually. There’s some correspondence between what we think and the world. This is already the seeds of science.

Because if we didn’t have that understanding, why would we think that our investigation or examination of the world can discover anything real? We trust that God gave us reason. Reason is the image of God, and so we can discover the world. And what you mentioned before about secularism, what I show in the book, and this is many people are attached to that because there’s an ironic twist here.

What I show in the book is that the image of God at the end had an immense influence on the secularization process. Because if we believe that we are special, autonomous, conscious beings because we are made in the image of God, we can at first, of course, thank God, worship God, et cetera. But there is a way, there is a vector, in which that turns into our consecration of our autonomy.

We take a lot of interest and importance in our autonomy. This leads on one direction, to rights discourse. Please allow me to think what I want, to say what I want, to believe what I want. Allow me the freedom of movement and property, et cetera, et cetera. But in another trajectory, it leads to secularization because we say, my autonomy is so important to me. I don’t want anybody to interfere with it, including some divine judge or father up there.

If my autonomy is the most sacred thing, perhaps it’s even the image of God in me. I cannot have anyone boss over me, Lord over me. And so I will reject God for the sake of my autonomy. And that’s the way the image of God, in a way, twists. You know, it twists itself up and rejects God and rejects, of course, its own divinity. And we come into a secular world in which, you know, secular humanism basically posits that the most important thing for you is to, you know, protect your autonomy and your feelings and rationality and reject anything that is above you.

You know, it’s fascinating, in the Parsha, it says that God was afraid that man was going to usurp him. In Genesis 3:22, it says now that humankind has become like any of us. It was almost recognizing that the potential of making this being in the image of God was a threat to God itself. It all packed into the original idea.

I want to go back and I’m sure Rabbi Adam was as struck as I was the amount of time and pages spent on Christianity. And I thought in terms of, on the one hand, I’ve heard you in interviews, Tomer, saying that those right wingers, those religious nationalists who don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about Selim Elokim and human rights and all that, they need to know that it’s part of our tradition. And I assume the argument is based on. Because the original idea comes from us.

And you say they might argue that it’s a foreign idea, but certainly in your book itself, the fact that Christianity ran with this idea is very impressive. I think we can be chauvinistic about it and we can say like the father in Big Fat Greek Wedding, look what we created every idea, this amazing idea was invented by Jews, but we Jews didn’t run with it. Is that the implicit assumption that you make by spending so much time on Christianity?

I mean, in a way, yes. I mean, we have to admit first of all that we live today in a Christian world. We live in a world formed by Christianity. The West was formed by Christianity. And these are simple facts. I mean, the fact is that Christianity is the biggest religion in terms of numbers in the world. Obviously, it has influenced and indeed based whatever is built the West as it is.

So, of course, if my book wants to understand how the West was constructed according to a series of ideas developed from the image of God, Christianity has to play a very prominent part in it. But I will say I don’t think it’s totally a mistake to say that Judaism, first of all, of course, Judaism is at the root of this, right?

And I think Judaism not only contributed along the way, but something of its spirit is transcendent or given to Christianity. I think there really is a Jewish Christian tradition or a Judeo-Christian tradition, as sometimes it’s called. I know many people don’t like that expression and think it’s used manipulatively, etc. But I think it’s true.

There is a set of characteristics that characterizes Judaism and Christianity and differentiates them from Islam on one side and from the Eastern religions on the other. It concerns individuality, an emphasis on autonomy, it concerns a dialogical relationship with the divine. It even concerns a sort of rebelliousness against divine law and perhaps even against God itself. Remember, it’s already in the Bible that there’s fraught relations between man and God, and man sometimes rebels.

And Christianity itself, if you look at the history of Christianity, there is this dynamic, there is this spiral dynamics that always stresses more and more spirituality at the expense of divine law and institutions. So since Jesus and Paul, yeah, you know, they reject Jewish law in an effort to become more spiritual, more religious. And you can see it all through the Catholic Church’s history and of course, in the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation, what are they saying?

We don’t need the Church’s hierarchy and the Pope and the councils and all the credo, and we need only to read the Bible ourselves and to be autonomous in how we interpret God’s word. That’s what they’re saying. And that also, of course, develops and culminates in secularism. Secularism basically says we don’t even need Protestant churches or institutions and we don’t even need Jesus to be really spiritual. This is the whole contemporary spirituality, new age scene. Right. That’s what they’re saying. We can be spiritual by connecting to the God within.

So, and obviously, as you show in the book, it did affect Judaism. It affected Reformed Judaism, which was very influenced. But I would argue, and I’d love to know what Adam thinks about this, that it also affected the Mussar movement in terms of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, who focused on the internal life of the Jew. It focused on the Hasidic movement, where you have so many stories of arguing with God and rejecting the monopolization of our texts to the intelligentsia, that we all own it, like Luther said.

So these were ideas, I think, that reverberated throughout the culture. And I was not off put. I just noticed, and I think we live in a golden age. Many times in this podcast, we will quote a Christian scholar because they read our text and they come with it with their own insights. And if we can forget some of the baggage that we have with Christianity and Islam, we live in a golden age.

Today, people like Sy Held are writing books about Judaism as love, and they’re reclaiming ideas that Christianity ran with. And maybe part of what your book is doing is reclaiming this to its source.

Yes, yes. So, I mean, obviously I agree with Geoffrey. See what I find interesting, Tomer, to use a term that I think that the historian Jacob Katz introduced about neutral society, he said in the 1800s. So, of course, Protestantism led to secularism. Led to the reform movement. But what was interesting is once you came to that period in the 1800s, what was remarkable was that everybody interacted. Geoffrey. See, that was never true. It used to be that if you lived in. If you lived in Muncie or Bnei Brak, that you didn’t have any. You didn’t have any interaction with communities that were different than you were different religions. But starting in the 1800s, all the different religions interacted in what we call a neutral society. And I just wonder, Tomer, see, there you.

The autonomy reaches its ultimate because not only are you autonomous within your own religion, but you’re autonomous in a neutral society. You have to deal with other people from other religions who’ve chosen to be autonomous on their own for different reasons.

Tomer Persico [28:07 – 29:30]: Right? This is connected to the whole separation of church and state. At some point, Europeans realized that if they continue to force religion on each other, they’re going to exhaust themselves in wars and simply ruin themselves. This was the pragmatic reason for separating church and state. But there was also a principal reason, which was that the conscience, which became for many the image of God, needed to be free. If we are serious believers, we need to respect the image of God in others, right? In the person in front of us. Whatever they actually believe should be left to their own wishes.

We constructed this neutral society by giving importance and freedom to each and everyone’s autonomy—autonomy to believe as they wanted or not to believe. This is the process, right? And yes, because of that, of course, we live in a golden age in which we can argue and even share ideas with Christians without getting expelled or burned at a stake, et cetera.

Geoffrey Stern [29:30 – 31:47]: The last idea I want to discuss, given the time, is this idea that when we say the image of God, following your book, it’s not only the image of God, it’s also the mind of God. That, of course, affected science and discovery and curiosity. One of the thinkers, Marsilio Ficino, said worshiping the divine is as natural to men almost as neighing to horses or barking to dogs.

What he said is an idea that I’ve kind of come to on my own, where I believe—and that’s why I find religious texts, and in our case, Jewish religious texts, so fascinating—is that just as the human mind has a facility for music (and you can’t say, do I believe in music or do I not believe in music?), it’s something that we have a hush. We have an idea for the same about art. We have built into our DNA religion, and I would argue that even an atheist has the religion that he’s rejecting. Otherwise, we couldn’t “f” the ineffable.

The idea is that, as you bring it out in a whole section of the book, these thinkers started to look at this internalized mind of God that we have, and it has within it this ability, like Luther was saying, to come up with our own spiritual and religious ideas. But I will go so far as to say, Rabbi and Tomer, that as a result, there is this ability to look back at the history of religious ideas as something that is truly valid. That’s what your book is doing. What I mean to say is if we have built into our categories of our mind this concept of something transcending us, then the history of how man deals, is affected, and channels these ideas becomes a very important aspect of our humanity. That’s where the humanism of this original idea comes home.

Tomer Persico [31:48 – 33:02]: That’s amazing, Geoffrey. This is the first time we’re talking, and you use the word hush. This is exactly the word I use for the religious element in our life. I say this is a hush, like the sense of humor, like a musical sense, like an aesthetic sense. Some people have more of it than others, but everybody has some of it. You can appreciate something that is aesthetic, and in exactly that way, you can appreciate something that is holy, that has some presence. It’s there, and you just need to be sensitive enough to appreciate it.

And so, indeed, like you say, my book elaborates on different manifestations of that sense, on how people interpreted that sense at different times in different ways. It starts from Judaism to Christianity to the secular world today, even, in which we know there are instances of spirituality which is not connected to any religion, but simply as an expression of that wellspring inside us, that, like a dog barks, we do God, right?

Geoffrey Stern [33:02 – 33:02]: Yeah.

Tomer Persico [33:03 – 33:06]: And perhaps this is the real image of God inside us.

Geoffrey Stern [33:08 – 34:22]: Absolutely. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure. I am praying and hoping that by the time we publish this podcast, the hostages are free. If the Semel, the image of the hostage, has been the guiding element of the last two years, it comes back in a very strong way to Tselem Elokim, to the image of God. I think that we are with them, and it’s a wonderful metaphor for the whole community to be in the individual. We hope and pray they come back. Tomer, I hope you’ll come visit us again, and we can continue this discussion. I hope all of you will run out and buy this book. I’m going to put a link to the book in the show notes. It’s a fascinating resource. The sources in it are themselves amazing in God’s image. And as we start reading the Torah all over again, we’re really reading a book not so much about God, but about ourselves. I think that’s the takeaway. Hopefully, that makes it interesting to you as well as to Adam and I and Tomer, Shabbat Shalom.

Adam Mintz [34:22 – 34:24]: Thank you so much. Tomer, Shabbat Shalom.

Tomer Persico [34:24 – 34:26]: Thank you so much for having me. Yes, thank you.

So why bolt the Exodus onto a farm festival? Join us as we follow the breadcrumbs from Rashi’s clouds to Rashbam’s simple huts, from Deuteronomy’s tents to Isaiah’s canopy, to ask a bigger question: why does the Exodus seep into almost every Jewish practice? What happens when an event becomes the operating system of a people? 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 we transition from the High Holidays to the third pilgrimage festival of Sukkot, or booths. Ancient agricultural holidays were repurposed by the Israelite religion to commemorate the Exodus, and Sukkot appears to be the most natural. The Torah itself connects the temporary booths of the fall harvest with the temporary booths of the migrating Israelite tribes. Or not. Join us as we question this common assumption and explore what Sukkot means for us.

So, Rabbi, we just finished Yom Kippur. What are you supposed to do after you break the fast? You’re supposed to take a nail and a hammer and start building your Sukkah. It never ends.

Adam Mintz [2:01 – 2:04]: It never, ever ends, from one to the next.

Geoffrey Stern [2:04 – 3:58]: So I actually was kind of thinking about this because there are two different kinds of cycles. There are the pilgrimage holidays, which start with Passover, go to Shavuot, and then to Sukkot, and they’re all linked to different agricultural milestones. And then there are the High Holidays, which have more to do with the New Year. It’s the time the world was created, maybe when man was created. Not that involved with history, but as we’re going to say and as we see today.

As I was davening, I was blown away at one point when I was reading the prayers about Rosh Hashanah, and it said zecher l’Yitziyat Mitzrayim. And I go, where did that come from? What does Rosh Hashanah have to do with Yitziyat Mitzrayim? So as I said in the introduction, Yitziyat Mitzrayim, leaving Egypt, actually became the overwhelming motif of the whole Torah. And that’s the real connection, Rabbi, to the fact that we’re finishing the Torah this week too. It’s a wonderful way to look at what’s the bumper sticker message of this whole journey that starts with Creation and ends up with Moses. So we’re gonna make a stab at it. We’re gonna try to understand how Yitziyat Mitzrayim, leaving Egypt, became so seminal.

So, first of all, let’s look at Sukkot in Shemot. In Exodus 23, it says: “And the festival, the Feast of the Harvest, of the first fruits of your work, of what you sow in the field, that’s Shavuot. And the Feast of Ingathering, Chag HaAsif, at the end of the year when you gather in the results of your work from the field.” Just a very straightforward rendering of the last two pilgrimage festivals. The same thing goes for Exodus 34.

Adam Mintz [3:58 – 4:10]: Interesting. By the way, the Chag HaAsif B’Tzeit HaShana, at the end of the year, they knew somehow that the cycle started with Rosh Hashanah. So Sukkot is the beginning of the year and the end of the year.

Geoffrey Stern [4:11 – 4:42]: They really are connected. I always thought they were kind of like ships passing in the night. But there is a reason we’re moving from the end-of-the-year or the beginning-of-the-year festival right into this Thanksgiving holiday, gathering the crop that needs to last you through the winter.

In Exodus 34, it says: “You shall observe the Feast of Weeks of the first fruits of the wheat harvest,” that is Shavuot, which later became associated with the giving of the Torah. But it never says that in the Torah itself.

Adam Mintz [4:42 – 4:43]: Correct? That’s rabbinic.

Geoffrey Stern [4:43 – 5:26]: Yeah. And the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year, again, not so much at the end of the year, KufaT HaShana, the season of the end of the year. In Deuteronomy, it says, “After the ingathering from your threshing floor and your vat, you shall hold the Feast of Booths for seven days. You shall rejoice in your festival with your son and daughter, your male and female slave, the family of the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, living in your communities.” So, as an aside, Sukkot is a happy, very happy holiday. And the idea was that happiness should permeate for all of the citizens of Israel.

Adam Mintz [5:27 – 5:39]: And again, the happiness is because it’s the end of the agricultural cycle. So it’s a celebration of success. It’s like, you know, you went through a whole year, your investments were successful.

Geoffrey Stern [5:39 – 6:49]: Now you celebrate very naturally. No need for any embellishment or explanation. “You shall hold a festival for your God, seven days, in the place that God will choose for you,” that means where the temple was, which means this is a pilgrimage festival. God will bless all your crops and all your undertakings, and you shall have nothing but joy. V’Hayita ach sameach. A beautiful, beautiful holiday.

And now we get to Leviticus 23. And in Leviticus 23, it does something rather radical. “You shall live in booths seven days. All citizens in Israel shall live in the booths.” In 23:43, it says, “in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am your God.” L’ma’an yed’u doroteichem ki baSukkot hoshavti et Bene Yisrael b’hotzi otam me’eretz Mitzrayim; ani Hashem Elokeichem.

So it’s not that many times in general that the Torah goes out of its way to give, I guess, a commentary, the background, the context.

Adam Mintz [6:49 – 6:53]: It’s the only holiday where there’s an explanation like this.

Geoffrey Stern [6:54 – 9:18]: And in a sense, if we say that the agricultural holidays were, I would say, adopted or morphed into cultural historical holidays like Shavuot for the Torah, here’s an example of the Torah doing it itself. And that makes this rather interesting.

So, Rashi on that verse says, this does not mean literally booths but the Ananei haKavod, the clouds of glory. And he quotes a bunch of rabbinic sources, classic rabbinic sources. So we will see. There is one tradition that takes this metaphorically and it refers, or I wouldn’t say metaphorically, it takes it to describe not some four-wall booth with making sure that you had three complete sides and maybe a tefach on the fourth and that you have your s’chach on top. No, no, no, no, no.

In the desert, it was the Ananei haKavod, the clouds of glory. And then we, through the halacha, create a commemoration of that. So it’s not metaphorical. It just does not say that the Israelites were in tents. The Rashbam says the plain meaning of the text is in agreement with the view expressed in Sukkah 11, according to which the word sukkah is understood literally. The meaning of the verse then would be constructing for yourselves the festival of huts. When you gather in your grapes, you are to do this at the time you gather the produce of the earth, and your houses are filled with all the things the earth produces, such as grain, wine, and oil. This is to be done in order that you will remember in the desert for a period of 40 years when they neither owned land nor found themselves in a cultivated part of the earth. So, the Rashbam is doing a lot of maneuvers here, right? He’s saying if this is.

He’s thinking in the back of his head, we can hear the gears turning. If this is to commemorate the Jews leaving Egypt and being in tabernacles, why don’t we celebrate it at Passover time? Can you imagine what a wonderful seder it would be? We’d be sitting in a sukkah, we’d be having our matzah. It would be wonderful. It would also save us. We’d be able to go to work this week.

Adam Mintz [9:18 – 9:20]: We save a holiday. Correct.

Geoffrey Stern [9:21 – 10:34]: So what he says is, no, the reason why it’s this time of year, and of course, we noted that the verses, two of the verses associated with the end of the year, is because that’s actually when you gather the produce of the earth. The message from this, how does he connect it to agriculture? He says because the people neither owned land nor found themselves in a cultivated part of the earth, and still they were given all the crops. So it’s kind of a soft connection, Rabbi, but a very nice one. This is kind of like a Rorschach test. Everybody is reading something else into this. And he says, you must not fall into the trap of thinking that all this success is due to your own efforts. So at that time of year, Rabbi, that we are most inclined to say, kochi v’otzem yadi, I created my whole. Think back to the Israelites in the desert who didn’t have a harvest and were dependent on God. We need to learn the lesson that our success also comes only by depending on God.

Adam Mintz [10:34 – 11:01]: So let me just make a point, and that is, you know, today we very much connect Sukkot to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but the Rashbam is not interested in that. The Rashbam tries to locate Sukkot in the autumn, in the fall, but the fact that it comes right after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as far as the Rashbam is concerned, that’s completely by chance.

Geoffrey Stern [11:02 – 12:34]: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the only connection you could make is the end of the year is the fall, and that’s when you gather the crops. But you’re absolutely correct. There’s a lot of thought that went into this. I will say something that occurred to me that I kind of liked is when he said that they neither owned land nor found themselves in the cultivated part of the earth. All of a sudden, this makes Sukkot something that can resonate and can be a profound lesson to urban dwellers, to people who are no longer involved with farming and agriculture. I kind of love that, that he is saying that the Jews or the Israelites in the desert celebrated a harvest festival without a harvest. Right. I think that’s kind of nice. People are learning lessons from this because they’re given a license by the text of the Torah that says ‘L’maan’ (in order that). In order that what? That you learn the lesson that the Israelites were somehow protected in the desert. Here we are bringing in our bounty. I think it’s a beautiful idea and it does fit in with other Thanksgiving type of holidays. It’s the time that you really have to be thankful when you are kind of gathering the produce. Hazorim Bedima, Barina Yiktzoru. You harvest in joy, you work hard, and now you could very well say, I did this. And this is a beautiful lesson.

Adam Mintz [12:34 – 12:37]: Good. So it’s about humility is really what he says.

Geoffrey Stern [12:37 – 12:42]: And Hakarat Hatov, recognizing the good God.

Adam Mintz [12:42 – 12:47]: Gratitude to God and humility are really flip sides of the same coin.

Geoffrey Stern [12:48 – 14:43]: I would go out even further, and I would say, because again, I am just infatuated with the comment that he made—that they neither owned land nor found themselves in a cultivated part of the earth—that this gives license to us today that we are not part of the supply chain, that we eat meat, we eat eggs, we eat crops, so we get them at the grocery store. And there is no connection to the growing of it. We still need to learn the lessons of the farmer. I love that. And I love the fact that he said the first people to do this were the Israelites, because guess what? They weren’t farming for 40 years in the desert, but they celebrated a harvest festival. So the Ibn Ezra says the Israelites made booths after they crossed the Sea of Reeds. This is going to be an important statement when we come to what modern academics have to say about this. But then he goes on, they certainly did so in the wilderness of Sinai. In other words, whether they created booths after they crossed the Sea of Reeds is one question, but they certainly did in the wilderness of Sinai, where they dwelt close to a year. This is the manner of all camps. This festival too, like Passover, is thus in memory of the Exodus, even though it is not observed in the month of Nisan. So Ibn Ezra again is struggling with the same question that the Rashbam was having. If this is truly recognizing or remembering, commemorating, leaving Egypt, should someone ask why is this commandment to be observed in the month of Tishrei, not the month Israel left Egypt? They can answer: God’s cloud was over the camp during the day and the sun did not strike them. However, they started to make Sukkot from the days of Tishrei onward because of the cold. So we have to look up where Ibn Ezra lived, right?

Adam Mintz [14:45 – 14:47]: He lived in Toledo, in Spain.

Geoffrey Stern [14:47 – 17:37]: It was never cold. Okay, but what he’s saying is this has more to do with the weather changing. And he is almost a hybrid approach. He is saying that whether they were protected by the clouds of Glory or actual huts depends on the time of year it was. But clearly, we can celebrate and commemorate those booths because they would make them in the fall, and that occurred in Tishrei. I said a second ago that the first line of Ibn Ezra is kind of interesting. It says the Israelite made booths after they crossed the Sea of Reeds. He breaks it up, if you recall, Rabbi, and this is based on a wonderful article in TheTorah.com but it’s really based on a commentary that was in Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Bible, the Torah, into German. The rabbi is named Naftali Herz Wessely, and he says he connects the Sukkot to a place called Sukkot. In Exodus 12:37 it says the Israelites journeyed from Ramses to Sukkot, about 600,000 fighting men on foot, aside from the non-combatants. In Exodus 13, it says they set out from Sukkot and encamped in Etam at the edge of the wilderness. And then finally in Numbers 33, it says the Israelites set out from Ramses and encamped at or in Sukkot. I added ‘or in’ because the Yachanu b’Sukkot literally means they, they dwelt in Sukkot. Right. So the argument that some of the academics are giving is, and by the way, Mendelssohn’s famous translation was called the Biur, which consisted of a German translation plus a Hebrew commentary. Rabbi Wessely suggests that the place was called Sukkot because God miraculously covered the Israelites with booths on the way out of Egypt. We’ve seen that many times before. Rabbi Be’er Sheva is called Beer Sheva because they made oaths there. The name is given to it because of what was done there. And so he takes this to be a more logical explanation for doing this. I don’t think that anyone will argue how the tradition took it. I think it’s pretty safe to say when our kids and grandkids go to Hebrew school and they are taught why we go into booths, they are probably told because the Israelites dwelled in booths. Absolutely. In the desert.

Adam Mintz [17:37 – 17:38]: Exactly.

Geoffrey Stern [17:38 – 18:12]: Right. But this is simply trying to understand where this all comes from. If you’re interested in exploring this further, I suggest you look at the Sefaria notes and the link to TheTorah.com. But there is another practical issue that comes up. Where did they get the supplies? And remember, Rabbi, these rabbinic scholars are looking at this. When they talk about a sukkah, they’re talking about specifications.

Geoffrey Stern [18:12 – 18:35]: It has to have four corners. It has to have live crops on the top, right?

Adam Mintz [18:12 – 18:13]: Yeah.

Geoffrey Stern [18:13 – 18:35]: So Rabbeinu Bechaya says one must suppose that they had regular commercial contact with traders from far off who brought to them the various necessities of life, including plants. So now not only are they disconnected from agriculture, but they actually are going to Whole Foods and picking up their S’Chach.

Adam Mintz [18:35 – 18:43]: You know, these comments are more a reflection of the fact that Rabbeinu Bechaya comes from Spain and he probably didn’t have access to all these things.

Geoffrey Stern [18:44 – 19:15]: Interesting. I like that context. The point is, when I post these podcasts on YouTube, I have to come up with images for the thumbnail. I go to ChatGPT and say, ChatGPT, make me an image. This week I have an image of Moses constructing a prefab sukkah. There’s a box on the side, and it says, “Family Sukkah.” And he’s looking at the instructions. It’s not that far from what Rabbeinu Bechaya and Vayechulu U’re’einu, which our grandmothers and great-grandmothers read. Their explanation is that merchants from foreign lands bought the Israelites everything they needed.

Geoffrey Stern [19:15 – 19:46]: So there really was this. We do project backward, Rabbi, into our text and imagine it’s not only the Hasidim that I assume must imagine that Moshe Rabbeinu was wearing a long black kapote and a fur hat, but we imagined if we’re building a sukkah. They must have built a sukkah too. Where’d they get it from? They must have ordered it from the local merchants who were stopping by. It is fascinating how pop-up sukkah brings these commandments and laws to life. I think it’s fascinating and a little bit humorous.

Geoffrey Stern [19:46 – 20:17]: I think what it does is it touches upon the process that is not so humorous, identifying what is important in the texts, what is important to us in our day, and how do we make it relevant now? The same academics who are saying it can’t be actual Sukkot or huts in the Bible have a very easy case to make. In Numbers 11, Moses heard the people weeping, every clan apart, at the entrance of each tent. When the miraglim, when the spies came back, everybody at the entrance of their tent. Rabbi, not at the entrance of their hut, of their sukkah.

Geoffrey Stern [20:17 – 20:47]: And when Balaam looked out at the children of Israel, he said, it’s clear that they were in tents, and they weren’t saying, we need some branches to put on the top so that we can see more. Less sun and more sky or whatever the halacha is. So I think we’re talking about the lessons that we learn. There’s no question that the sukkah itself, this kind of protective quality of it, is almost a magnet for us looking for meaning.

Geoffrey Stern [20:47 – 21:18]: If you look at Isaiah, Isaiah 4:5-6 says, God will create over the whole shrine and meeting place on Mount Zion a cloud by day and smoke with a glow of flaming fire by night. Indeed, over all the glory, a canopy shall serve as a pavilion for shade from heat by day and as a shelter for protection against drenching rain. So here we have Isaiah himself conflating the two concepts. The anane ha’kavod, these clouds of glory that protected the Israelites, and the sukkah itself. Here he mentions both.

Adam Mintz [22:15 – 22:18]: Very interesting rain, right?

Geoffrey Stern [22:18 – 24:04]: And it was the rainy season, so things are coming together, there’s no question. But he, of course, does not bring anything to talk about leaving Egypt. So I’d like to read a little bit about what this thetorah.com Rabbi Professor David Frankel writes. What he is going to say is that it didn’t have to be this way, that everything related back to Yitziyat Mitzrayim. He says the Exodus tradition was not always the central story or myth of ancient Israel concerning the formation of the nation that it eventually became. This centrality was achieved gradually as some traditions were silenced or marginalized and others became interpreted in relation to the Exodus.

Geoffrey Stern [24:04 – 24:08]: So in this verse about Sukkot, that it says, and therefore you should remember that you left Egypt, he finds the kernel of this whole strategy that we will see goes to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Everything is Zecher L’tziyat Mitzrayim.

Geoffrey Stern [24:08 – 24:32]: He talks about other types of narratives, and I will even say that we even find them in our own obvious texts. If you think of the Haggadah, Rabbi. And if you think of the Bikurim, when we hold up the crops and say that our ancestors were traveling Arameans, we don’t mention leaving Egypt at that point. There’s no question there were traditions where we were not simply coming out of Egypt, but we were people that were just stragglers, foreigners coming all together.

Adam Mintz [24:32 – 24:35]: We didn’t have a victory story necessarily.

Geoffrey Stern [24:35 – 26:40]: Absolutely, absolutely. So what I want to do is start looking at how widespread this sense of Yetziat Mitzrayim ultimately became. What started with this verse in the Torah itself proliferated into every aspect of Judaism. And I said before, I’m reading the Machzor and looking at the Kiddush, and it says, blessed are you, God, King of the universe, who chose us from among all the people, exalted us amongst all tongues. And then on Shabbos, you add: a remembrance day with love, day of holy assembly, commemorating the exodus from Egypt.

Geoffrey Stern [26:40 – 27:22]: So here we are, we say it is a day of remembrance, a sounding of the shofar. And then it says, commemorating the exodus from Mitzrayim. Rabbi, I will argue that it is no more strange than saying that the Israelites lived in Sukkot that they magically created. We are connecting everything to leaving Egypt. Even on Yom Kippur, it says, Mikra Kodesh Zecher L’tziyat Mitzrayim. And there is no connection that you or I can think of between the New Year festival and leaving Egypt.

Adam Mintz [27:22 – 27:56]: In Rosh Hashanah, the Talmud says, on Rosh Hashanah, our forefathers slavery in Egypt ceased. In Nisan, the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt. And in Tishrei, in the future, the Jewish people will be redeemed in the final redemption from the coming of the Messiah. So the rabbis were also challenged by this. What they argued was that somehow, magically, Rosh Hashanah was the day that slavery in Egypt ceased. They had to try to connect it. As the scholar said before, they were trying to make this the preeminent tradition, the origin myth of our people.

Geoffrey Stern [27:56 – 28:22]: And we have also on Shabbat. This is kind of interesting. Every Shabbos, we say, after we make the blessing over the wine, we say that Shabbos is holy, that it is a commemoration of the creation of the world. Tehila le Mikrei Kodesh, the first of our holidays. We say that every Friday night. We breathe.

Adam Mintz [28:22 – 28:56]: I just want to say, when it comes to Shabbat, the commandment of Shabbat is mentioned twice. It’s mentioned many times in the Torah, but it’s in both of the Luchot, right? It’s on both of the tablets. The tablets that are described in Exodus and the tablets that are described in Deuteronomy. In Exodus, the reason for Shabbat is because God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. In Deuteronomy, the reason for Shabbat is that God took us out of Egypt so that we could worship God. So actually, when it comes to Shabbat, Zecher L’tziyat Mitzrayim is actually explicit.

Geoffrey Stern [28:56 – 29:22]: I totally agree. And I think we can find it’s not as though they created this connection to the Exodus from Egypt out of nothing. There is a connection. It is the primal moment in our lives. But this concept that it is a commemoration for leaving Egypt is something that struck me.

And I might be totally off here, but even on Passover, when we say “at Yom Chag HaMatzot Hazeh,” on this day of the Matzos, “Z’man Cheruteinu,” the day of our freedom, “Mikra Kodesh,” a holy convocation. We even say about Pesach, that it’s not the holiday of leaving Egypt, Mitzrayim. I think it became a tag phrase. And it was almost stamped on pretty much everything.

Adam Mintz [28:23 – 28:24]: Everything, right?

Geoffrey Stern [28:24 – 31:17]: The Gemara in Bava Metzia says, Rabba says, why do I need the mention of the Exodus from Egypt that the Merciful wrote in the context of the Halachot, of the prohibition against interest and the mention of the Exodus from Egypt with regard to the mitzvah of wearing the Tzitziot, the fringes, and the mention of the Exodus from Egypt in the context of the prohibition concerning weights. So this is not an original question from Madlik. This is a valid question. Why are we always focused on Yetziat Mitzrayim?

And I want to end by saying that it became this orienting event which sets in motion and guides the Jewish way toward a promised land. You can draw any conclusion that you want. But basically, when we finish the Torah today, if from this lens, if you were to ask Moses, what is the narrative that goes all the way from the first page of Bereshit until the end, you would almost have to say Z. It was a narrative that started. It has exile in it, it has return in it. It defines redemption. And I think this is key as being redeemed from a place as a community, and that became very Israelite.

I think all of those lessons one cannot ignore. And we see it right here in this verse that ties the Sukkot to the booths when they left Egypt. I want to end by saying that one of the things that really surprised me this year when I went to the Yom Kippur service at Mincha and we read Jonah, I had never noticed before. We all know the story of the whale. Jonah didn’t want to save the people of Nineveh. He went on a boat from Jaffa. It got stormy. He was thrown into the water. The whale swallowed him, spit him out. At Nineveh, he had to go. He told them, do teshuvah. They did better teshuvah than Israelites have ever done. They put sackcloth on their animals. Their animals couldn’t eat for the whole day. This was a Yom Kippur to speak of.

And then it says, now Jonah had left the city and found a place east of the city. He made a booth there. It says “Vayas Lo Sham Sukka.” And he sat under it in the shade until he should see what happened to the city. I love this concept of him leaving the city and going into this booth and just saying, what’s going to happen? What’s going to be the end of this story?

Adam Mintz [31:18 – 31:37]: Of course, it’s temporary. That’s where you look at the city. This identifies temporary. It’s out of the city, it’s outside, it’s in our backyard. It’s temporary. That’s a great connection between Yom Kippur and Sukkot. You know, the Torah doesn’t make that connection, but clearly that connection is there to be made.

Geoffrey Stern [31:38 – 32:50]: To me, what it means is that the Sukkah, on the most organic level, when we either leave our house or we leave our non-agricultural existence, or when we finish the Torah of Moses, we go outside, outside of the base Midrash, outside of the synagogue, outside of everything. And we see how is this all going to turn out. I think it’s a wonderful picture.

I’m hoping that by the time this podcast publishes, the hostages are out of Egypt just like our forebearers, and that we can all watch how this all turns out. But that is, I think, the secret sauce that was created in these five books of Moses. This idea of being able to go out and watch how it happens as an outsider but also as an insider to understand that you are not dependent only on yourself. All of the beautiful messages that we went through that the commentary saw, it’s a wonderful thing that when you sit in that sukkah, you feel them all.

Adam Mintz [32:51 – 33:07]: It’s fantastic. What a great lesson and what a great verse from Yonah to wrap it all up. Chag Sameach everybody. Enjoy and don’t miss it. Next week we’re starting from the beginning. The book of B’reishit, the book of Genesis. Chag Sameach everybody.

Geoffrey Stern [33:08 – 33:10]: Chag Sameach. See you all next.

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik we light a spark, shed some light on a Jewish text or traditional. 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 parasha is Ha’azinu. If they are anything. The High Holidays are days of prayer and liturgy. We are struck that the introduction to Moses Penultimate Swan Song begin with terms and verses that have been adopted to introduce our prayer. And so we explore the dilemma of prayer. Rabbi I must have the High Holidays on my mind. I’m reading these last four or five parshiot and there always seems to be a tie in. But this week when I got to the words Imre Pi. I just said this is part of what we talk about when we ask God permission to pray. And then when it gets down to kashem hashem, ekro havu gedola elokenu, also used in either the introduction to the Amidah or after. So I decided we have to keep at it. We’re going to talk about our prayer.

Adam Mintz [2:10 – 2:12]: The holidays are everywhere, you know that.

Geoffrey Stern [2:13 – 3:47]: Absolutely. So we are in Deuteronomy 32, and it says, Ha’azinu hashem v’ adebra Give ear O heavens, that I may speak. So this is God, or this is Moses, I guess, actually asking permission to speak. And it says, hear, O earth, the utterance of my mouth. Imre Pi, let my teaching drip like rain. Let my words flow like dew, like droplets on new growth, like showers on grass. For the name of God I proclaim, give greatness to our God. And as I said in it, as we will explore today, are certain taglines that are used either at the beginning or at the end of the penultimate prayer. The shmona esreich, otherwise known as the silent meditation. So let’s just cut to the chase. In the Jerusalem Talmud, in Brachot it says, Rabbi Yosi from Sidon, in the name of Rabbi Yohanan, before one’s prayer, one says, quoting Psalms, master, open my lips, that my mouth may proclaim your praise. Hashem shifothai tiftach upi yagid tehilatecha. After one’s prayer, one says, again, quoting Psalms, may the sayings of my mouth be agreeable and the thoughts of my heart before you, my God and my redeemer. It says, ye’hu l’ratzon imrei PI. That’s that word that I saw at the beginning.

Adam Mintz [3:52 – 4:02]: So you have both pi and libi. You have your mouth and your heart. The prayer is connected to both the mouth and the heart.

Geoffrey Stern [4:02 – 6:01]: Absolutely. And we’re going to. As we explore today, we’re going to find some prayers that should be said quietly, almost to your heart, and others that need to be enunciated and said out loud. It’s an important part of prayer. Prayer kind of goes between cycles, between lips moving and talking out loud. And just thought in your heart. Again, you find in Tehillim, in Psalms, an amazing background for this. The word that I said before was hashem shifatai tiftach, God, let my lips be opened and my mouth shall say your praise. It’s actually from Psalm 51, which is a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had sinned with Batsheba. So it’s part of this amazing story. But the point is that when we go to the prayer book, we start. There are some that say a little bit more of a kind of a personal meditation, I would say more a personal request. We start by saying, kishem hashem ekro ha vu gadoleinu, that I will. This is coming from the verse that we just said. And then it says, God, open up my lips that I may sing your praise. And then you go right into the first paragraph of the Shmona esrei, where you bless God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God who is great One Big and Gibor hael hagadol hagibor v hanua, and off you go. So you have this kind of personal request that uses terminology from the beginning of Moses today.

Adam Mintz [6:01 – 6:14]: By the way, it’s interesting, there are two verses there, right? Yeshaya b’ shem ekra and then hashem svatai tiftach, right? They both more or less Say the same thing. One’s from Deuteronomy and one’s from Psalms.

Geoffrey Stern [6:15 – 8:32]: And both of them, though, are in the singular. And I think last week you were profound when you said the difference between saying to God, don’t reject me when I am old, and what we do in the liturgy, don’t reject us when you are. You really have to be sensitive to this change in number (person). So Judith Hauptman, a great scholar in the Talmud, in my People’s Prayer Book, which is a wonderful series for any of you trying to understand our prayers, it says all the supplements to the Amida, and that’s what we’re talking about here, are written in the first person singular and not the first person plural, the mode of most paragraphs in the amida itself. They thus add a personal dimension to the Amida, allowing the practitioner to feel more immediately involved in prayer. But you do go to this transition, and it kind of parallels to the Ha’Azinu, where we start by Moses talking about who he’s talking to, requesting permission, talking to the forces of nature. The interesting thing is the verse that comes literally from our Parasha that says that for the name of God I proclaim, give greatness to our God. In the interpretation that is in the machzor that I read, it says as follows. It says, the verse is taken from Moses, final speech to the children of Israel. It was probably originally inserted as an instructional phrase to be recited by the leader asking the congregation to respond by answering amen to the barakot that follow. Thus, this is how you would read the verse. Rabbi, when I proclaim God’s name, Adonai, you should respond by acknowledging God as well. We took the verse from Ha’azinu and we made it into instructional.

Adam Mintz [8:33 – 8:39]: That’s what’s great. Instead of writing instructions in English, they write instructions using a verse.

Geoffrey Stern [8:41 – 11:00]: Yes, absolutely. But again, it just struck me that we are using the verses from Ha’azinu and we’re going right to these kind of personal introductions, supplements you could call them, or permissions that go before the penultimate prayer, the Amidah. And what’s interesting is if you look into Tehilim (Psalms) and it uses the word imre pi, it kind of uses it in conjunction with the tephila (prayer). So I wasn’t off the mark when it resonated with me In Psalms 54, it says, O God, hear my prayer. Give ear to the words of my mouth. Elokim, shemat, philati, haazina, le, imre PI. And the Radak says, there are two ways to interpret this. Either it’s just repeating itself. In other words, imre pi and tephila are synonyms, one for the other, or in line with what you were saying a second ago. Rabbi Prayer is in the heart and the words of my mouth are in speech. So it’s kind of identifying these two elements that we have in. In prayer. Of course, all of us who were paying attention to the Haftarah on, I believe, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, that it has Chana’s prayer, we are already sensitized to this concept that one of maybe the innovations of Chana and of Jewish prayer was to prayer silently. So if you recall, it says in Samuel 1 now, Chana was praying in her heart. Only her lips moved, but her voice could not be heard. So Eli thought she was drunk. So it seems like it was an innovation. Rabbi it certainly was a. Well, we almost have three different ways of looking at prayer. One is praying in your heart to yourself. The other is praying out loud. And I guess the in between is how most people pray today when they do the Shmona esrei. You can see their lips moving, but the sound is not coming out.

Adam Mintz [11:01 – 11:13]: Well, that’s what Eli says to Chana Rak Sephate. Her lips were moving, but her voice could not be heard, and therefore he thought she was drunk.

Geoffrey Stern [11:14 – 12:56]: And of course, the Talmud in Barakot says, I might have thought that one may make his voice heard in his Amida prayer. It has already been articulated by Chana in her prayer as it is stated, and Chana spoke in her heart. So the rabbis truly learn from Chana that that is the reason why we say the Amidah, the shmona esre, the 18 blessings silently. It’s interesting that it also has another explanation. And the other explanation is if, especially on Yom Kippur, you are admitting to your shortcomings, you want to say it quietly, that you say it in a whisper so as not to embarrass transgressors who can confess their transgressions during their prayer. So, Rabbi I think what this adds to is the intimacy of silent prayer. And it kind of, if we bundle all of these kinds of feelings and kind of interjections that we’re dealing with, there’s this sense before coming to prayer that one, it’s very intimate. You almost ask personal permission that your prayers will be accepted, or that maybe I’ll radically say that you’re permitted to pray. And then it’s intimate. It’s in the first person. It’s in the personal. Even though our prayers are in the plural. I think that the different explanations don’t conflict with each other. They give us a kind of a very nuanced and a multidimensional sense of prayer.

Adam Mintz [12:56 – 13:02]: Right. These different opinions are all true. They’re different aspects of prayer.

Geoffrey Stern [13:03 – 14:09]: And, you know. And again, there is this sense of hesitation also. And coming to it personally, it just becomes rather fascinating now to say that all prayer is quiet. I think we should mention the Shema. The Shema is typically said out loud. And I actually find it interesting. In most synagogues that I go to, they might chant the first paragraph, and then everybody goes silent. It’s almost as though the chana and the rabbis were so successful in making prayer prayers of the heart and prayers of silence that we’ve lost that ability. To say it out loud? The Gemara asks, but according to Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi as well, isn’t the word here in this Shema written? The Gemara answers, he requires that for the Halakha that you must have your ears hear that which comes out of your mouth. So there’s a discussion as to whether when you say the Shema, it has to be audible enough that you can hear it.

Adam Mintz [14:09 – 14:35]: Right. I mean, I wonder what that’s about. That’s that unless you say the words, it’s not considered speaking. And Shema needs to be spoken. That’s the one prayer that’s spoken. The Amida does not like that. The Amidah is private. But Shema seems to be a statement of belief that needs to be said out loud.

Geoffrey Stern [14:35 – 15:32]: And I’ve probably told you before, but in my youth I was very influenced by a Rav Shmuel Dishon, who. Who was a Stulinar Karliner Hasid. And when you. One thing that has never happened in a stolener Kaliner Stiebel is for the rabbi to say quiet. I can’t hear myself praying. Because what they do is they scream all the prayers. They actually hold their hand up to their ear. They cup their hand over their ear so that they can hear themselves praying, because the guy next to them is screaming as loud as they are. And I have to say that there’s a silence in everybody screaming. This cacophony of sounds. It’s just this kind of noise or cold Torah, call it what you will, There is something beautiful of it, and I think we’re lacking it in many of our synagogues today.

Adam Mintz [15:32 – 15:36]: That’s funny. That’s still your yeshiva background. You enjoy that.

Geoffrey Stern [15:36 – 17:33]: I enjoy it because it really. Because everybody is screaming at the time. Let’s forget about the screaming, people are saying the prayers out loud. The guy next to you does, doesn’t in any way distract you. And I do think that there are different volumes that our rabbis intended our prayers to be set out. But again, I think there is a concept that maybe of us, some of us are not aware of, and those of us who are aware of it might not take it to the same I think conclusion that I do. And that is this question. Rabbi of Abraham, in other words, you are not allowed to say a blessing on something that doesn’t require a blessing. So the go to explanation is, Rabbi, when my potential son in law comes into the room, I put out different foods in front of him and I want to see whether he makes hamotsi first because then he can’t say borei pri hagefen or borei pri ha’adama. You have to go from the particular to the general. You can’t start with the general. And if you do, since you’ve said hamotzi lechem, which covers everything you’re making a bracha l’vatala But I think what lies behind the bracha l’vatala comes out in the following discussion. Again, in the Talmud, Yerushalmi, it says if one was praying and remembered that he had already prayed, Rav says he cuts short, he stops and Shmuel says he does not cut short. Shimon bab haben, the name of Rabbi Yochanan said, if only one would pray the day long. What’s so bad, Rabbi, if you said mincha and then you’re walking along and you went into another shteibel and you said mincha all over again, wouldn’t it be great if we could pray all day?

Adam Mintz [17:34 – 17:46]: By the way, that’s not so clear that that’s good. I don’t think we believe you should pray all day. We might believe you should study Torah all day, but I don’t know that we believe you should pray all day.

Geoffrey Stern [17:47 – 18:47]: And I think that is the argument between these rabbis and the Talmud, whether sתְּפִילָּה מַפְסֶדֶת or in other words, they are literally arguing not about simply making a blessing in vain, but whether it is a good thing to pray all day. Or to put it in another way of looking, whether we even have permission, Rabbi, to pray all day. I am going to make the argument today, Rabbi, that you can take these introductory prayers or some supplemental prayers more as a request for permission to pray. More of a way of framing prayer as not a right, but a privilege, not something that we can just do. We can just pick up the phone and talk to God anytime we want. But something that we actually have to be thoughtful about and wonder whether we have the right to pray.

Adam Mintz [18:48 – 19:28]: Yeah, I think that’s good, right? I mean, that’s the idea. Do we have the right? Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik used to like that idea that we don’t necessarily have the right to pray. Who gives us the right to pray? That’s actually, Geoffrey, a Yom Kippur idea. What right do we have to say to God, forgive us. Who do we think we are? It’s like, go to our parent and say, forgive us. We can beg for forgiveness, but there are paragraphs on Yom Kippur in which we actually demand forgiveness. Rabbi Soloveitchik always said, yom Kippur gives us the permission to do that. Only on Yom Kippur can we demand forgiveness.

Geoffrey Stern [19:29 – 21:26]: And I’ll go even further. It’s one thing to demand something, but who are we to praise God? We are gonna find sages in the Talmud who say, like, who are you to say God is great. So let’s start slow. We’re still in these supplemental prrayers Here is how one of the rabbis took this request for prayer. It says, when Mar, son of Ravina would conclude his prayer, he said the following. My God, guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking deceit. So again, we’re talking about using the lips, not so much for prayer, but what you say to those who curse me, let my soul, soul be silent, and may my soul be like dust to all. Open my heart to your Torah, and may my soul pursue your mitzvot and save me from a bad mishap, from the evil inclination, from all the evils that suddenly come upon the world. And all who plan evil against me swiftly thwart their counsel and frustrate their plans. And then he says, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart find favor before you. Yehilu ratzon imrei PI vehegyonli bilifanecha hashem tsuri vagoalim. So he kind of mashes this, requesting God that the words that I’m about to say, or in this case, that I have said, he mashes that with other times where we are affected by words said about us, said against us, maybe words that we would say. I think the takeaway from Mar son of Ravina is if prayer teaches us anything, it’s that words matter. That would be his takeaway, that words engaging in prayer is the ultimate buy in that words actually matter.

Adam Mintz [21:27 – 21:44]: Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting that this is the prayer that we choose to say at the conclusion of our Amidah. So obviously your point, Geoffrey, is something that they want us to say every single day at the end of our amita.

Geoffrey Stern [21:44 – 24:02]: Yeah. But it ties into, again, these verses that are either before or after. But it’s this Yehirat liratzon, may it be your will that these words are accepted. And I love the fact that he kind of takes it in a very expansive way and just talks about words in general. But ultimately, prayer. Prayer is a statement about the power of words. So now we’re going to read a piece of Talmud that I think is just absolutely radical. And it gets to what we were saying before, when you were saying almost the audacity of prayer in Yom Kippur, when we almost demand forgiveness. And I said, the audacity that we even praise who God is. So here is the story in Brachot 33 be with regard to additions to prayers formulated by the sages. The Gemara relates that a particular individual descended before the ark. As prayer leader, he was the Shliach Tzibor. In the presence of Rabbi Chanina, he extended his prayer, and he said, God, the great, the mighty, the awesome God, haggad al hakiba vahanoah. And then he went on the power powerful, the mighty, the awe inspiring, the strong, the fearless, the steadfast, the honored. Rabbi Chaninna waited for him until he completed his prayer. When he finished, Rabbi Chanin asked him, have you concluded all the praises of your master? Why do I need all of this superfluous praise? Even those three words that we recite, Hael, hagadal, hagiba vahanoah. Had Moses, our teacher, not said them in the Torah, and had the members of the great assembly not come and incorporated them into the Amida prayer, we would not be permitted to recite them. And he went on and he recited all of these, Are you meshuga? Are you crazy? So I love the fact that he says, had the words themselves not been found in our texts, and had the Sanhedrin in the great assembly not so chosen to use that we would not have been permitted to say these things about God.

Adam Mintz [24:02 – 24:12]: That’s exactly the same idea. The idea of the permission to pray prayer is Chutzpedik. We need permission to pray.

Geoffrey Stern [24:13 – 26:59]: So Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed says as follows, about this piece of Talmud, you must surely know the following celebrated passage in the Talmud, referring to what we just Read, read. Would that all passages in the Talmud were like that. That’s pretty astounding in and in itself. For Maimonides, he says, consider first how repulsive and annoying the accumulation of all these positive attributes was to him. Next, how he showed, if we had only to follow our reason, we should never have composed these prayers and we should not have uttered any of them. Maimonides saying, not only would it not be permitted pray, but if you and I were sitting around the table, Rabbi, thinking, what are we going to tell people to do on Yom Kippur? We would not have composed any prayers. Who are we to write these prayers? We should rather not do anything. And he goes on. He says, it has, however, become necessary to address men in words that should leave some idea in their minds and accordance with the saying of our sages, lo diba Torah, Ela balashem b’ ne Adam, the Torah speak in the language of men. And he says, and this is common to Maimonides, he talks about how we had to give people something that they need. But what he ends up saying to me is the most important. He quotes the verse in Psalm that says, silence is praise to you, O God, in Zion, and to you a vow is painful paid. And he says, the idea is best expressed in the book of Psalms. Silence is praise to thee. Maimonides is saying the best prayer would be to zip it, to not say anything. And he says, it is therefore more becoming to be silent. And he quotes another piece of Psalms that says, so tremble and sin no more. Ponder it on your bed and be still. He says, says it would be better to be silent and to be still. It’s really a radical notion. And I started by saying, Rabbi, that we’re on Yom Kippur, we have five services instead of the normal three. We are praying. We’re listening to the repetition of our praise. There has to be a sense of rebellion in us, or at least a questioning. And I think what Maimonides he’s saying is that’s valid. And we really do have to understand the dilemma of prayer.

Adam Mintz [27:00 – 27:20]: Good. I mean, this is fantastic. We have today the dilemma of prayer, the chutzpah of prayer, which you translate in English as being the audacity of prayer. This is not usually the way we think about prayer, but I think as we prepare for Yom Kippur, these are all ideas that are really central to Yom Yom Kippur.

Geoffrey Stern [27:21 – 30:36]: Absolutely. So around this time of year, Rabbi, there are a few songs by Leonard Cohen that everybody thinks of I quoted one last week, and it was who by fire, who by water. And that obviously goes back to his youth in the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. And then his most famous song is Hallelujah. And that relates to the psalm we talked about a little bit bit before today, which is about David sinning with Batshebaa. But there is a song that I believe, and literally I’ve googled everywhere on the Internet and no one has made this connection. But I think after the introduction that we just had, you will see that Leonard Cohen literally was referring to Yehu l’ratzon imrei pi. May it be your will that the words of my mouth are accepted in his song. And it’s called if it be your will. And if you Google it, some people say, yeah, that’s from Ken Yehirazon. It’s not from Ken Yehi ratzon. It’s from יִהְיוּ לְרָצוֹן. It says, if it be your will that I speak no more. He literally is coming right out of Maimonides. And my voice, voice, be still as it was before. What will I do? I will speak no more. I shall abide until I am spoken for. If it be your will if it be your will. And then he goes on, and what he you will notice. And I draw all of you to listen to the song. He starts moving from the personal, from the individual to the plural. And he says, let your mercy spill on all these burning hearts in hell if it be your will to make us well and to draw us near and bind us tight all your children here in their rags of light in our rags of light all dressed to kill and end this night if it be your will if it be your will. There’s a little bit of the last song that he wrote, which is, if you like it darker, where he was literally saying it’s not only be quiet but also almost to die, to disappear. But the one commentary that I read about where Leonard Cohen actually introduced this song, it says that he was in front of an audience in England, and he said that the song was a sort of a prayer written a while ago when he was facing some obstacles. And this commentary says Cohen asks God if he is supposed to be silent, to stop singing. If so, Cohen will comply. But as the song proceeds, Cohen’s prayer stops being personal. It is almost as if he senses that his prayer is gaining him divine favor and his words are being accepted. Instead of focusing on his own issues, he ends up by praying for healing for the whole of humanity. And this was a guy just talking about the song, Rabbi? Nothing to do with Judaism.

Adam Mintz [30:37 – 30:37]: That’s correct.

Geoffrey Stern [30:37 – 31:19]: But there really is. I think it’s amazing when you can look at a song like this and understand it totally differently. And he really, if I’m correct and I think it comes right from the words he’s talking about the prayers we discussed today. And he’s drawing some of the same conclusions. Mainly that, number one, we have to ask permission to pray in his case, to sing in any way, to talk about out things that transcend us. And on the other hand, if we do get permission, it’s because we come together as that community that we were describing last week and we do it amongst ourselves. I just love it.

Adam Mintz [31:19 – 31:22]: That’s great. That little paragraph is great. Okay, thank you.

Geoffrey Stern [31:23 – 31:40]: Okay, so I’m sure by the time you listen to that, you will have Yom Kippur under your belt. You can listen to the podcast and then you have to go out and put the first nails into your Sukkah. And we will be back next week, I believe. Are we operating on Sukkot?

Adam Mintz [31:40 – 32:02]: We will Sukkot and everything. Fantastic. Everybody have an easy, meaningful Yom Kippur where our prayers should be answered, should be listened to and answered by God and we should listen to one another’s prayers and pray together and enjoy Yom Kippur together. Shanah Tovah, Gemarchatima Tovah, and we will see you all next week. Be well.

Geoffrey Stern [32:02 – 32:03]: See you all next week.

Why does the Bible’s famous quartet of the vulnerable—the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor—not include the elderly? Did ancient Jewish society simply assume the old would be cared for in ways we’ve forgotten? This week on Madlik, we explore how the high holidays themselves become a radical communal ritual for confronting aging and mortality.

Together, we are privileged to be joined by Yossi Heimann, Director of JDC Eshel and the visionary behind Muni100, an ambitious program working with municipalities throughout Israel to promote optimal aging and to increase the presence and participation of older adults in the public space for 100 years of life. 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. 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 Vayelech. Moshe describes the debilitating infirmities of old age, and we explore care for the elderly in the Rabbinic texts and modern Israel, and even in our high holiday liturgy. Well, welcome, Adam. And welcome, Yossi. This is the last podcast of the year, very special to have you. As I said, I was reading the Parasha I was preparing, and when it said that Moshe could not get up and go outside, I thought of you. Because what you’re doing, working with municipalities is changing the architecture and the structure of cities around Israel to get people out. I’m wondering if you can tell a little bit about yourself and a little bit about Muni100 before we dive into details.

Yossi Heymann [2:37 – 3:08]: Hello and thank you very much for having me here. My name is Yossi Heimann. I served in the IDF in the military for 28 years, from simple soldier in the infantry to division commander. In my last duty, I was the head of the Strategic Division. I retired 15 years ago from the military and became the CEO of Jerusalem Municipality.

Yossi Heymann [3:08 – 3:40]: For the last 11 years, I’ve been the director of JDC Eshel. JDC Eshel deals with promoting optimal aging in Israel. We help the government. JDC is a very special organization. On the one hand, we are an NGO, but on the other hand, we work with the government. We help them—the government, the ministries, the municipalities, and most of the organizations in Israel—to promote optimal aging.

Yossi Heymann [3:40 – 4:11]: What does optimal aging mean? One thing we can be sure we all know is that at the end of the day, we are going to die when we are 80, 90, 100, or 120. The big question is how we are going to live during our last 20, 15, 10, or 5 years. We try to help the older adults in Israel improve the way they live their lives—not just to add years to life, but even to add life to years.

Yossi Heymann [4:11 – 4:42]: We know from researchers all over the world that if the ministries, municipalities, and individuals themselves do the right thing, we can add many better years to life in good health versus moderate or bad health. This is the idea we try to achieve—to postpone the dependency of a person on others. When a person becomes dependent, in a nursing situation, on their family, caregivers, or others, their life is less and less good.

Yossi Heymann [4:42 – 5:12]: The ambiguity all over the world is that life expectancy has increased during the last 50 years by, let’s say, 20 or 25 years. But the age of 65 to retire, 65 or 67, when people usually retire from the workplace, doesn’t change. This is ambiguous because when a person still has 20 or 25 years of living after 65 and becomes more dependent on others, it goes against the idea of optimal aging.

Geoffrey Stern [5:57 – 7:41]: So you can imagine how I was reading the Psukim, and lately, I haven’t been getting very far into the parsha before the bells start to go off. It says that Moses went and spoke these words. The first thing I notice is it says we’re going to say in a second that Moses can’t go, and he can’t come back. But it says vayelech.

He went and spoke these words to all of Israel. He says, I’m 120 years old, which of course is the iconic age of living a full life. He says I am no longer able to go out and come in. You know, being able to dictate one’s own ability to move, mobility is such a key item in aging, Rabbi, that I said we have to just touch upon this. As I said in the intro, later on in Devarim, it actually gives a different picture. It says in Deuteronomy 34, now, Moses was 120 years old at his death. His eye had not grown dim, his vigor had not fled him.

So I was curious how we, how the rabbis round that square. And Rashi says one might think that this was because his physical strength failed him. Scripture, however, states his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. Rabbi, I think it was almost embarrassing to think that Moses could not have his mobility. And so he starts to bring in midrashim about what this means.

Adam Mintz [7:42 – 7:45]: Moshe needing a walker is not something he could imagine, right?

Geoffrey Stern [7:46 – 8:26]: Absolutely. But again, we’re diving right into the weeds here about perceptions and biases. So Rashi says, what then is the meaning of I cannot? Rashi says, I am not permitted because the power of leadership has been taken from me and given to Joshua. So again, the bias against Moses, as you say, being in a walker was so strong that he says, no, we’re talking, we’re taking it metaphorically. Another explanation Rashi gives: I am no more able to take the lead in the matter of the law. This teaches us that the traditions and the wellsprings of wisdom were stopped up from him.

Adam Mintz [8:27 – 8:52]: Let me just say one second. You know, people in Chumash don’t get sick. The only person we know who’s sick is Jacob. At the end of his life, it says, your father is sick. It’s interesting to notice that the idea of being sick or getting old doesn’t happen much. Yitzchak goes blind. But we don’t see it very often, which is interesting.

Geoffrey Stern [8:52 – 9:10]: And I wonder if, and we’ve discussed this kind of before, what you once said, I believe, that when you got sick, you didn’t last long, that most sickness was critical, chronic (terminal), whatever the term is. Maybe that’s the reason, I don’t know.

Adam Mintz [9:11 – 9:23]: I mean, that’s the pre-Penicillin Dvar Torah—you know, the idea that you’re sick for a long time that we have today didn’t exist before there was medicine. So if you got old or you got sick, that was the end.

Geoffrey Stern [9:24 – 9:32]: But I do think there are enough psalms, for instance, where we cry out to God to heal us.

Adam Mintz [9:33 – 9:42]: On Yom Kippur, we say, don’t throw us to old age. So there has to be an idea like that.

Geoffrey Stern [9:43 – 12:07]: But it is interesting that as we think about it, we have to pull straws. It’s not so obvious. And I think that’s part of the issue that partially we’re dealing with in modern society. Things have changed.

Maybe it was Rabbi, especially with regard to the elderly, that we took better care of our elderly. Maybe we had multi-generational living under the same roof. Who knows? But let’s explore the texts. In the Talmud in Sotah, the word that he says is, I cannot go out and in. But he says, I am 120 today. So, the Talmud in Sotah focuses on that. He says, on this day, my days and years have been completed to be precisely 120. This is to teach you that the Holy One, blessed be He, completes the years of the righteous from day to day, from month to month, as it is written, the number of your days I will fill. This gets into the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy because what we’re asking for is God, give us the allotted days and let us live our allotted days. There’s almost this sense of destiny that we live each day to the fullest.

Here, this sense of our mortality, the fact that we start to decline, is mixed into the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It’s a new year, and the whole congregation, young and old, is together. I must say, when I go to synagogue, I think back to whe people (whose parents are still living) used to go out for Yizkor. I started to realize as my father got older that I was one of the oldest guys still going outside. It just meant that being part of Rosh Hashanah, you see the generational cycle. Besides beseeching God and praying, we come into direct contact with our mortality, but also the frailty of aging.

Yossi, you were telling us that you went from the army to working with the elderly. Tell us a little bit about what Muni100 is and what you’re trying to achieve.

Yossi Heymann [12:08 – 12:39]: So what is Muni100? Muni100 is a program with the municipality that tries to promote optimal aging. It means how the municipality can influence a person’s life in their old age to be better, and at the end of the day, transfer years from moderate and bad health to good health of a person in his 20, 15 years at the end of his life. We study from many researches that the municipality can affect the older adult by two main things. Muni100 has two goals. The first is at the individual level. We want to increase the presence and participation.

Yossi Heymann [13:10 – 13:41]: Of the older adult in the public space, physically, socially, and financially. This is one goal. The second goal is that professionals in the municipality prepare the municipality for 100 years of living with advanced optimal aging. I can tell you that from my experience in Jerusalem municipality, but I can say about other municipalities, this is not in the high priority of the municipality to promote optimal aging, because municipalities think about families, young children, education, sports, and other things, but not about optimal aging.

Yossi Heymann [14:12 – 14:43]: Today, when life expectancy increases so much, the municipality should prepare itself for 100 years of living. You have to understand that today every third child who is born is going to live 100 years. This is something I think is happening all over the world, but specifically in Israel. The government of Israel is not prepared for that, and the municipalities are not prepared for that. What are the main indicators that we think can influence the individual and the municipality as an organization? In Muni100, we

Yossi Heymann [14:43 – 15:13]: want to promote three individual indicators. The first one is mobility. We want the person to get out of his home, with a goal of doing so at least once a day. The second indicator we want to promote at the individual level is walking outside. Walking is the easiest way to promote optimal aging. This is known from many researchers. The goal for walking outside is 150 minutes a week. This is something recommended by the World Health Organization, the WHO—150 minutes a week of physical fitness at medium or high intensity.

Yossi Heymann [15:44 – 16:15]: The third and last individual indicator is participation. We want the person to take part in social activities with others, not through the internet or via Zoom, but by meeting each other and doing things together. The goal for this indicator is two to four times a week. If we want the person to go out from his home, walk outside, and participate in social activities, the municipality should improve its physical accessibility, financial accessibility, access to information, and inclusiveness. This means that the older adult would feel better and be part of the environment, preventing ageism at the level of the municipality, and so on. So, this is Muni100.

Yossi Heymann [16:45 – 17:16]: Anka said that Muni100 is happening today in 20 municipalities and clusters all over Israel. This includes seven of the large cities in Israel, with more than 150,000 people, which are Jerusalem, Ashdod, Beersheba, Netanyah, Holon, Ramat Gan, and Tel Aviv. In three medium cities, Bat Yam, Beit Shemesh, and Lod. In four small cities: Ofakim, Kiryat Malachi, Kiryat Bialik, and Ramat HaSharon. In three Arab cities, Sakhnin, Rahat, and Shefa-‘Amr, and in three regional councils and clusters: Negev Ma’aravi around Gaza, Soreq, and Upper Galilee. This means that today, almost 40% of all adults in Israel are part of the municipality. Muni100 is taking part in their municipality.

Yossi Heymann [17:48 – 18:19]: One last thing before maybe you ask questions. I want to mention that part of the program is the policy that the older adults would be part of the leaders who decide what would happen in the city, in the municipality. From that reason, we initiated a leadership of older adults, and we trained in all those 20 municipalities and clusters a group of leaders in each municipality who are partners in advancing optimal aging.

Geoffrey Stern [18:33 – 20:07]: Rabbi, it’s like eerie that when it describes Moses’ infirmity, it says he can’t go out. The first indicator Yossi mentioned was to go out of the house. “La vo” means to have activities outside. I just loved it. Then, of course, there’s this social aspect.

You know, I’ve heard that McDonald’s, for instance, has an issue with the elderly coming in, sitting at a table, and staying there for three or four hours. People need that social ability. I’ll argue that maybe one of the reasons, and I’d love to know your input on this, that the elderly are not included in the typical at-risk populations that the Torah always addresses—which are the orphan, the widow, the poor, and the stranger—is because the elderly had those social institutions. I think back to my grandfather, who would go to shul on a regular basis. There’s a joke that goes, you know, Shimon goes to talk to Ruven and Ruven goes to talk to God. The social element of congregating is so important. Even in secular society, you can get rid of the talking to God part, but you can never, God forbid, give up that social part. That’s why we call them a Beit Knesset, a house of gathering.

Adam Mintz [20:08 – 21:06]: I like the word camaraderie. We go to shul for camaraderie. We see the same people, and that’s our community, for sure. So, what you’re pointing out is important. Let’s just review what we have here since we listened to Yossi for a minute. The problem is that there seems to be a contradiction at the end of the Torah. On one hand, it says that Moses couldn’t go out and come in, but in the next chapter, it says that Moses remained vigorous. How can you remain vigorous but not be able to go in and go out? So, Rashi, like you said, gives a drash that he wasn’t allowed to go in and go out.

But what we’re suggesting is that with old age, you have trouble going in and going out, even if you’re vigorous. That’s what Yossi said. You can go, you can walk for 150 hours, but you have trouble. You have to be encouraged to do it. It’s hard to go in and to go out.

Geoffrey Stern [21:06 – 23:13]: And it’s fascinating that, you know, you and I, a knee-jerk reaction would be, if you want to help the elderly, create a one-to-one relationship, call on Mrs. Shapiro once a week, make sure that she has everything she needs. But what he’s working on is the larger picture, the way our towns, our villages, and our cities enable them. Just the simplest thing is to get outside, to spend X amount of hours outside. It’s really kind of interesting that the solutions can be so material and that embedded into them, where you have, I know in my town here in Connecticut, they’re building sidewalks like crazy because you get to the suburbs, and you assume everybody is outside, but the truth is everybody’s in their car, and you don’t get outside enough.

You know, I was looking really hard, scratching my head about does our society really honor the elderly? And of course, the first thing that I thought about is what it says in the Torah, that for “mipnei seivah takum,” in front of the elderly, you should get up. And the fascinating thing, Rabbi, is that there’s a real disagreement between our sages. Some of them say, yes, it is the elderly, and others say it’s in front of the wise, in front of… We revere old sages and wisdom so much that sometimes we forget about the infirmity part of it. In Mishnah Torah, Positive Commandment 209 is to honor the sages. Where does it get that? So, I do think that we, you know, Yossi is fighting, or I’d say, working with municipalities. I think we have to be a little more focused in our society, whether we’re secular or whether we’re religious and understand whether, as Yossi said, we’re living to a much larger age. What did he give? The statistics are that if you’re being born today, the chances are you’ll live to 100.

Adam Mintz [23:13 – 23:16]: This is a big problem, isn’t it?

Geoffrey Stern [23:16 – 23:18]: Yes, it absolutely is.

Adam Mintz [23:19 – 23:43]: Let me just say one thing about honoring the smart people. You know, of course, the sages. Of course, the idea in Jewish tradition is that you get smarter as you get older. And so therefore honoring the sages means honoring the sages who are going to be older. Because the sages, to get so smart, you need to be older. They didn’t know about child prodigies.

Geoffrey Stern [23:44 – 26:26]: They didn’t. But what I found kind of fascinating in all of these rabbis trying to understand the verses that we talked about is, for instance, I mentioned Ramban, but he says this was a miraculous event in order that Moses should not be troubled. In other words, that God took away some of his clarity so that he did not recognize what was happening around him. He did not recognize that the torch was being passed on. I mean, they are addressing the issues that all of us face. And as you and I get older, we’re facing them every Rosh Hashanah. It’s not them, it’s starting to be us. I just find this fascinating that we don’t spend enough time talking about aging and that in fact a lot of the crumbs are being sprinkled right in front of us that can elicit these kinds of conversations.

The other thing that I was thinking about is yes, we do talk about in Tehillim, it says, “Do not forsake me when I get old.” That is a key part of the Yom Kippur liturgy. And I really do think it’s a key part. I mean, it’s the kind of thing that when you say it, you get a little choked up. You start thinking about the elderly in your life and you do think about yourself as you’re getting older and you look to your children. It is a moment. Yossi is back. But what I’d like to discuss a little bit is what is the communal response to initiatives to help the elderly.

I was saying, Yossi, that in our traditional society, my guess is a hundred years ago, the elderly lived with the family. There was multi-generational living. And it’s only in the so-called modern era that we have the issues of the elderly being alone, unattached, and we have to address this. I think in Israel, you have something fascinating also. The original chalutzim, the survivors of the Holocaust, they came without parents. And so there’s a learning curve as well in Israeli society to how we deal with this. We have all of this coming at the same time. So, Yossi, if you could talk about how difficult it is in Israel to get the governments, the municipalities, and people in general to focus on the issue of aging.

Yossi Heymann [26:26 – 28:57]: First of all, to say that this is something that we have to give a compliment to the State of Israel for two reasons. First of all, Israel is a small country and is very family-oriented, meaning that most of the time when older adults and most of them are not neglected by their family, the situation is good. And most of the families in Israel take care of the older adult during the holidays and Shabbatot and weekends. Second, in Israel, much better than all the other Western countries, the percentage of people who are 65 and above who live in an institution, and when I say institution, it means a geriatric center or nursing home, is the lowest in the OECD. Just 2% of the people are living in an institution.

And why I think it’s good is because we know from all the researchers that all the idea of “Al tashlicheni l’zikna,” and the fact that the family and the society have to take responsibility for the old adult during his last few years when he needs others to take care of him. It’s always better to live at home. What the world understood during the ’60s, the terminology of aging in place means as much as you can, live at home and stay in your community and so on. That’s why in Israel, just 2% of the older adults live in an institution. This is something that we can say that in Israel, the situation is in good order, still there are 7% who are neglected by their family. That we know from research in Israel. And we try to focus part of our program to identify those people and to try to take care of them. But I think that if we compare it to other nations in the OECD, the situation in Israel is not bad.

Geoffrey Stern [28:59 – 30:50]: You know, I was thinking culturally and I mentioned this before, that when we talk about the at-risk populations in the Bible, we talk about the Almana, the Yatom, the Ger, and the Ani. We don’t normally include the Zaken. And I think maybe one you kind of touched upon it and you said that Israel and I always love the fact that Israel is really a Jewish state and has kind of baked into itself the deeply DNA of taking care of their elderly whether it’s living at home. Whether it’s, as you say, Shabbat and the Hagim. You know, there is a secular organization called Yisrael Chofsheet and they want bus service on Friday night and Saturday so that kids can visit their parents and their grandparents. It’s that important in our structural dynamics.

So I do think that the answer to the question of why the elderly are not included in what we would call the at-risk community in the Bible is they probably were taken care of. But as you said, society is changing, modernity is changing, the length of our years is changing. And we can’t take this for granted. We have to be proactive. And I think that’s what I love about what Muni 100 is doing, it’s trying to ensure that. And I love the very variables that are important. Getting outside, spending time with each other, and activity, that’s more important than anything. What sort of results are you getting? I know you’re doing pilots right now. What is the status?

Yossi Heymann [30:51 – 33:26]: First of all, we made the research when we started the Muni 100 a year and a half ago, we made a research in all the 20 municipalities.

And we asked more than 12,000 people about those indicators: how many times you get out from your home on a weekly basis, how much you walk outside, how many times every week you meet with others and participate in social activities. We know exactly, first of all, what the average at the national level of those indicators is. Second, in each of those municipalities, which I mentioned before, we assess the situation and how far they are from the national average. Each municipality has its own data and should set a goal for where they want to be in three years from now. During the program, they have to prepare a specific program tailored for each municipality. You cannot compare one municipality to the other in how they promote those indicators.

At the beginning of 2026, in four to five months from now, we are going to measure again. We will conduct another research, what we call T1. The previous one was T0. We are going to conduct the T1 research, which will provide perspective to them. For each of those municipalities, do Muni 100 promote their goals that they want to achieve? By the way, this is the only thing that we haven’t decided for the municipality. Every municipality decided on each of those indicators what their goal for the next three years is. And by the way, we asked the older adults in this survey what should happen so that they get out more from their homes, walk more, and participate more in social activity. This forms the basis for those municipalities to plan their three-year plan to promote optimal aging in Muni 100.

Geoffrey Stern [33:27 – 34:41]: So it’s not a cookie cutter. Every community has to decide for themselves. What I was struck by is that we live in a world where every month, every day is Grandpa’s Day, is Hispanic Month, Afro-American Women’s Month. I think, in terms of elderly, you can really look at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as the only holidays in a religion where people confront aging. In a sense, if you take away all the God and all the Teshuvah and all of that stuff, ultimately having people confront, as Leonard Cohen said, “who by fire and who by water,” how, where we stand today, look back at our predecessors, how they lived their lives, look to our children – it becomes kind of a fascinating rite of passage every year that our religion has created for addressing the birthday of the world, yet another year under the bridge. Rabbi, what do you think of that perspective? I think it becomes natural when you start looking at the liturgy a little bit.

Adam Mintz [34:41 – 35:48]: I think that’s absolutely right. And, you know, that verse, I just wanted to say it’s interesting. Yossi and Geoffrey, that verse in Psalms is in the singular, “don’t throw me to old age.” In the liturgy, we change it to the plural. And I think, Geoffrey, that’s exactly your point. It’s not just worrying about me; I’m worried about everybody. I realize that aging is an issue that needs to be dealt with on a communal, national level. And therefore, it’s “altashlikhenu.” That’s the jump. Tehillim Aleph says “altashlikheni,” but what we do is we say “altashlikhenu” in the plural. That, I think, really summarizes exactly, Geoffrey, what you’re talking about and all the amazing initiatives of Yossi. I’m going to let you guys continue this conversation. I’m going to wish everybody a Shanah Tovah. Happy New Year. Looking forward to 5786. Geoffrey, it’s going to be a good year. Shanah Tovah, everybody.

Geoffrey Stern [35:49 – 36:04]: But I do love what the rabbi just said, we have to do this as a community. And that’s what you were saying about the municipalities, that every community has to determine what’s necessary for it in order to address its needs.

Yossi Heymann [36:04 – 37:16]: I totally agree with the rabbi, and I think that the face of any society is the way they treat the older adults. You know, poor people, you have 10%, 20% of the population; people with disabilities, you have 15% of the population. Each of us is going to be an older adult one day, and that’s why it’s so important. Because 100% of the population, or those who reach 65, are going to live many years as older adults. And the way that society and family, of course, treat them, this is the face of the society. That’s why I think that “kabed et avicha ve’et imecha” (honoring your parents) is one of the important mitzvot in the Torah. And it’s even said “lema’an ya’arichun yamecha” (for a longer life). The “lema’an ya’arichun yamecha” is just written on two mitzvot: “kabed et avicha ve’et imecha” and “shiluach haken.” (sending away the mother bird) But this is another story.

Geoffrey Stern [37:17 – 37:36]: I love that. But maybe “shiluach haken” has to do also with intergenerational respect for the intergenerational. Yossi, your background in Talmud comes through. You can’t hide from it. Once you and I studied in the yeshiva once, it never goes away.

Yossi Heymann [37:36 – 37:47]: Yeah, I don’t try to hide it. I’m proud of it. And really, really, really. Yeah. So, Shanah Tovah, dear Geoffrey, Yossi, thank you so much.

Geoffrey Stern [37:47 – 37:48]: Shanah Tovah.

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 parasha is Nitzavim. As the Israelites renew their covenant, the spectrum of those entering this treaty with God is broadened to include the woodchopper and water carrier. And to those here and those yet to come, we explore the radical significance of this original Sermon on the Mount to the ancient Israelites and to us today. Well, Rabbi, we’re back in real-time. Last week, we took a parsha off because we did two on the previous parsha. But here we are. Devarim never ceases to attract us, to make us think afresh anew. And you’re in D.C. so why wouldn’t we talk about “We the People”?

Adam Mintz [2:26 – 2:36]: This is the perfect topic. You know, we’re getting to the end of the Torah, so it’s the climax of the entire Torah. It’s really interesting. So we have four to go. Let’s take it away.

Geoffrey Stern [2:37 – 5:34]: And I have to say I’m seeing connections between what we read in Devarim and this Elul that we’re in as we prepare for the High Holidays, as I mentioned in the intro. And we’ll see potentially more of that as we proceed. So we are in Deuteronomy 29:9. And it says, you are stationed today, all of you, before the presence of Hashem. Your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officials. All the men of Israel. Nothing really surprising yet. Your little ones, your wives, your sojourners, who is amid your encampments. And then it goes from your woodchopper to your water hauler. And Everett Fox says, what is a woodchopper? It’s equivalent to every man Jack amongst us. It’s everybody. This is the complete spectrum, the complete gamut for you to cross over into the covenant of Hashem, your God, and into his oath of fealty that Hashem, your God, is cutting with you today. So really, Rabbi, this is using all the language of cutting a covenant. This is a new covenant above and beyond what was done at Sinai. This is right before the Israelites enter the land of Israel, and they are cutting a new covenant in order that he may establish you today for him as a people, with him being for you as God, as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Not with you alone do I cut this covenant and this oath. But with the one who is here standing with us today before the presence of Hashem, our God, and with the one who is not here with us today, this is our covenant forever. It’s a movement, Rabbi. We are really creating a movement here. This isn’t just a group of people forming a little union to get through the day. Indeed, you yourselves know how we were settled in the land of Egypt and how we crossed amid the nations that you crossed. So there’s a play on words in terms of crossing over into the covenant of God and crossing among the nations. I will be arguing, Rabbi, that this is really a movement, a social movement, a religious movement, a political movement. And as the people of Israel moved out of Egypt and moved into the land of Canaan, they were gathering people; people were joining the movement. And that is why it is so, I think, timely that they should make a new covenant just before they come into Israel. But there is a lot of stuff in these, what, five pesukim.

Adam Mintz [5:35 – 5:48]: I’ll just say that the fact that it’s a movement is not surprising because they’re about to enter the land. You enter the land with more energy if you enter it as part of a movement. So it actually makes perfect sense.

Geoffrey Stern [5:49 – 7:14]: Agreed? Agreed. And I have to say, we talk about different sects within Judaism as movements. Sometimes we forget that they have to move, that there has to be some dynamism to them. But anyway, that’s an aside. Rashi says, from the woodcutter. This teaches that some of the Canaanites came in Moses’ day to become proselytes. Just as the Gibeonites came in the day of Joshua, we’re going to go to that text in Joshua. This is the meaning of what is stated of the Gibeonites. And they also acted cunningly, meaning to say this wasn’t the first time, and Moses made them woodcutters and drawers of water. So Rabbi, there is this ongoing tradition that there were people who were joining the movement. Some of them cunningly, some of them maybe not so cunningly, some of them for total buy-in and some of them for other reasons. But this was an amalgam, there’s no question about it. And if you had to pick a few verses that really touch upon that, I don’t think we could pick better ones. And that’s, I think, ultimately what it means when it includes even the woodchoppers and the water carriers. It was everybody.

Adam Mintz [7:15 – 7:36]: I mean, that’s where Rashi gets it from. How does Rashi know that some of the Canaanites came in Moses’ day? Because to be a successful movement, you need the outsiders coming. A movement is not just your own group. A movement needs others from the outside to join your group. That’s what makes the movement successful.

Geoffrey Stern [7:36 – 8:30]: And I will argue, Rabbi, and I made a little bit of an allusion to this Sermon on the Mount, but I think people and commentators that we are going to see are going to read themselves. It’s almost like a Rorschach test. Everybody will see in these woodchoppers and water carriers their own prism of what they want to see in terms of inclusion. The Sforno is a great example. The Sforno says, what are woodchoppers and water carriers? People who normally require the consent of their husbands or fathers to do what they do. So they’re talking about people that normally are not 100% free to make their own decisions. But I think the takeaway is, in this particular moment, they did have agency and they could make their own decision.

Adam Mintz [8:31 – 8:45]: Well, they can’t make their own decisions on regular things. But in terms of covenant with God, they can make their own decisions. That’s what Sforno means. This moment, this moment of covenant, they have agency.

Geoffrey Stern [8:45 – 9:43]: Okay, I like it, I like it. But again, this is a pivotal seminal moment. The Sforno says the leader of the woodchopper to the most lowly of the water carriers. The construction here parallels comparisons in Samuel, infants as well as sucklings. The examples that the Sforno brings is when they totally destroy another nation where they kill them from the kings down to the animals. And I think what’s important to say is, this was a reverse. This was a paradigm shift. God was saying, or Moses, the spokesperson was saying, that the covenant, therefore, goes to the highest, to the most low. Whatever your commentary is, you can’t get away from the radical inclusion of everybody who was listening to this message. I think that’s the main takeaway.

Adam Mintz [9:44 – 9:59]: Right? That’s great.

Okay, good. I mean, again, the idea of a movement, it’s almost as if the medieval commentators are aware of that and trying to enslave each piece here as part of that creation of the movement.

Geoffrey Stern [10:00 – 10:53]: So again, getting into each one, each is reading their own thing. The Ibn Ezra says, and also with him that is not here with us means with him that is not here with us but will come after us. It is not to be interpreted as those who say that the spirits of the covenanting generations were there. So Ibn Ezra is going against the kabbalists, against the ideology that says, you know, we met at Sinai, that every Jewish soul was actually at Mount Sinai. He goes, no, I’m not talking about that. I am literally saying that we are creating a movement here, and these people that are joining this movement are buying into it, and their children will buy into it, and their children’s children will buy into it. I just love the practicality that Ibn Ezra brings to it and kind of shoo-shoos away the mystical tradition.

Adam Mintz [10:53 – 10:54]: Right?

Geoffrey Stern [10:55 – 13:20]: So the Ramban says a bunch of things here, but what is interesting is he says he brings in the mixed multitude, the erev rav. Rabbi, we all know that when the Jews left Egypt, the tradition believes that there were those there who joined the movement. They saw that the plagues were happening to the Egyptians, and that the Israelites were unscathed. This sounds like a good bet. Let’s leave with them. Many of the terrible things that happen, whether it’s the golden calf or whatever, are sometimes blamed on the erev rav.

The word “erev” is when you take a string and you put it around a city and you make it all together. It’s the ultimate mashup. That’s what they are. But here, the Ramban is bringing that tradition of the erev rav into this tradition of the water carriers and the wood choppers. And he is saying that they were all brought in. And he quotes, the rabbis have said, some Canaanites came in Moses’ day, just as they came in Joshua’s day. And he said, you know, ultimately, they came to make peace.

This wasn’t necessarily a religious movement. This was joining the movement of the Israelites that was coming in. Ultimately, the argument or the tension amongst the rabbis is, we will read about Joshua in a few minutes, but in Moses’ time, the question is, was Moses also fleeced the way Joshua was, or did Moses know what was happening and accept these Canaanites or accept these people that were joining? And I think that’s a little bit of a tension here.

And then the other thing that comes through, Rabbi, is what did Moses do with that? There’s this thing that he made them hewers of stone and drawers of water for the temple. Now, I don’t know, in a lot of the commentaries, it appears that’s almost like the lowest form of service that you can have. To me, it doesn’t sound so bad that these people are the ones who are the janitors who are making sure that the temple worked. There’s a lot of mixed messaging going on, right?

Adam Mintz [13:20 – 13:47]: I mean, I think that’s also a tension, right? The Ramban is sensitive to that, and he says, “May they be the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation unto the tabernacle of God.” But that’s not explicit in the Torah. That’s a rabbinic interpretation, and, you know, he’s clearly taking a position that they’re not just everyday Jacks, that they’re special people. Actually, there’s a disagreement between the Ramban and Everett Fox.

Geoffrey Stern [13:48 – 15:19]: I like that. I like that. I mean, you know, that’s quite a compliment to Everett Fox. But in any case, yes, in the Midrash Tanchuma, it talks about other lessons that we can learn from. Here it says, another interpretation: All of you are responsible for each other, kol arevim zeh lezeh. Even though there is only one righteous person amongst you, you all shall survive through the merit, like it says in Proverbs, but a righteous person is the foundation for the world. And also, it shows that there can be an evil person who can bring the whole world down. Rabbi, this comes right out of the kind of Musar that we study before the High Holidays, where we say the whole world is in a balance, and one mitzvah can tip it one way and one aveira can tip it another. Here, too, what the Midrash is trying to learn from this is the importance of every member of the society. It goes on to say that God is not like us. He doesn’t have favorites. His mercy is upon all his works, upon males and upon females, upon the righteous and upon the wicked. As it is said, from one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water. So literally, they’re all learning the same thing with different variations, that this is a radical statement of God’s love for all of humanity.

Adam Mintz [15:20 – 15:39]: Now, my question is, do you think these commentators are disagreeing with one another? No, I think they’re just coming at it from a different place. Right. They’re all ending up in the same place, which is the creation of this movement. But it’s interesting that each one of them has their kind of twist or their own goal on how to create that.

Geoffrey Stern [15:40 – 15:50]: I think. I think. And again, what it shows is that not only do people join a movement for different reasons, but people interpret how people join a movement.

Adam Mintz [15:51 – 15:52]: Right. That’s very good.

Geoffrey Stern [15:52 – 17:17]: So, you know, every week I always say, I learned something. This week I really learned something. Cool. So one of the sources. And by the way, of course, there is an article in TheTorah.com that talks about the water carriers and the woodchoppers, and they reference Kings 1, where Solomon had 70,000 porters and 80,000 quarriers in the hills. Kind of similar, a parallel to this. And Rashi says, 70,000 men who carried loads to bring the stones from the mountain to the city, and 50,000 workers. And they were all proselytes who were drawn. Rabbi, I had never heard the expression gerim gururim. I’ve always heard ger tzedek, converts out of righteousness. Gerim gururim seems to mean proselytes who were drawn. The translation here is that gerurim means they rolled in. They had other reasons for joining. I think the reason that TheTorah.com’s article brings this in is, again, to show us that there were different gradations of people who joined this movement. But I had never heard of gerim gururim. And there’s an…

Adam Mintz [17:17 – 17:22]: It’s a little bit of an alliteration. Right? Gerim, gerurim, they sound similar.

Geoffrey Stern [17:23 – 18:53]: So there is in the source notes, an article from the Hartman Institute in Hebrew. But Google does a nice translation of literally what this gerim gururim means, I think. And maybe we could dedicate another podcast to it. It’s really talking about people who joined the people, people who joined the nation for whatever reason. I think today we would call it converts out of convenience. And we always question that, whether they’re getting converted only because they’re getting married or because their children are Jewish. But it was here. This is the parsha for it. Jeffrey Tigay, who wrote a commentary on Devarim, he says that there is one thing that seems pretty clear, that it cannot be referring to Israelite menial labors. In other words, when it says cut water carriers and wood choppers, it can’t be talking about Israelite water carriers and wood choppers because it comes right after the word gerim. Since all categories of Israelite have already been listed, this phrase must refer to aliens that serve as menial laborers. And I think that’s a critical mark here that even the classical commentaries are playing with. None of them are saying, no, no, no, it’s just repeating itself as the Torah does many times.

Adam Mintz [18:54 – 19:14]: Good.

Geoffrey Stern [19:14 – 21:24]: I mean, that right now if you notice the gerim gerurim, the verse tells us that they’re gerim gerurim because they hear about how great King Solomon is. You know, that’s an important piece of it. You know they’re drawn, but, you know, it’s a social consideration. I want to be part of this.

People political, social, economic, call it what you may, but they’re certainly gerimimum, I think cannot but be taken as in reference to gere Tzedek, those that buy in 100%. So Joshua has been referenced a few times. Let’s go to Joshua 9, which obviously happened after Devarim.

In Joshua 9, it says, but when the inhabitants of Gibeon learnt how Joshua had treated Jericho and Ai, they for their part also resorted to cunning. So the word “also” is the key here. And that’s where it harkens back to Moses. They set out in disguise. So these Canaanites disguised themselves. They took worn-out sacks for their donkeys and worn-out water skins that were cracked and patched, and had worn-out patched sandals on their feet, threadbare clothes on their bodies, and all the bread they took as provision was dry and crumbly.

And so they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal, and in a conversation said to him, and to the rest of Israel’s side, we come from a distant land. We propose that you make a pact with us. Israel’s side replied to the Hivites, but perhaps you live among us. How then can we make a pact with you? They said to Joshua, we will be subjects. But Joshua asked them, who are you and where do you come from? So later it says, and the chieftains declared concerning them, they shall live. And they became hewers of wood and drawers of water for the whole community, as the chieftains had decreed concerning them.

Joshua summoned them and spoke to them thus, why did you deceive us? So what happened was they went for the ruse. They accepted them. They said they could be hewers of wood and drawers of water. So, similar to the commentaries that we are seeing here. They weren’t—I can’t say they weren’t full members because the covenant was with them as well. But they were certainly on the lower stratum of society.

Adam Mintz [21:24 – 21:37]: Now, clearly this is not what the Ramban means, because he said it’s hewers of wood and drawers of water for the tabernacle. That is not what these people want to do. They want to be. That’s. They want even be. Wasn’t even be lower class.

Geoffrey Stern [21:38 – 23:37]: Yes, but I think what Ramban is saying is that the ones that happened in Moses’ day were made for hues. This is the second. This is the second one. And Joshua summoned them and spoke to them thus, why did you deceive us and tell us you lived very far from us when in fact you live among us? Therefore, you be accursed. Never shall your descendants cease to be slave hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.

So, again, a lot of different mixed messages here. Is it a punishment? It’s kind of. It reminds me of when Adam is cursed after leaving the Garden of Eden, that he shall work by the toil of his brow. Is that a curse? Or that is his lot. In any case, this is part of the history. That day Joshua made them hewers of wood and drawers of water, as they still are for the community and for God’s altar in the place that God will choose.

And I just haven’t found any of the commentaries that would say, are you kidding me? For the altar? I mean, how bad is that? There must be something holy about them if they were for the altar. But in any case, there is only one commentary, a Sephardic or Mizrachi commentary that thetorah.com brings in that combines the Moses story with the Joshua story. And it says, it teaches that the Holy One, blessed be he, showed Moses at that point that the people of Gibeon were eventually to take refuge under the wings of the Divine Presence and become the wood choppers and water drawers for the whole community.

So once they came to Joshua and agreed to be wood choppers and water drawers, Joshua accepted them immediately. And Joshua made them hewers of water and drawers of water for the community. So again, if you’re a higher biblical critic, you say that Deuteronomy was simply rehashing and projecting back in time something.

Adam Mintz [23:37 – 23:51]: That happened, meaning that it’s the same story. Right? If you’re a Critic. It’s the same story. Because how can there be woodchoppers and water drawers twice? Obviously, there’s one story about them and they reflect backwards and forwards.

Geoffrey Stern [23:51 – 25:34]: But. And if you’re a traditional commentary, you say that Moses perceived it in the future. The bottom line, Rabbi, is I don’t think there’s any way that you can read this where you cannot but say that we, the Jewish people, are an amalgam of others that have joined. We’re not a pure race. Probably no one left Egypt, Rabbi, with your blue eyes or my blue eyes or freckles, we are a movement at the end of the day. And what you’re involved with with Project Ruth, in terms of bringing people in, is as old as the hills of Moab. And this has been part of our, I guess, magic, but also both part of the mission.

The coolest. Before we get into, I think, the bigger message here, we said that this was kind of a litmus test, a Rorschach block for everybody to see in it what they want. I think the award, the Academy Award, goes to Maimonides. Maimonides, in Mishneh Torah, says the greatest sages of Israel included woodchoppers, water drawers and blind men. Despite these difficulties, they were occupied with Torah study day and night and were included among those hands transmitted the Torah’s teaching from masters to student. Rabbi Maimonides believes that if you learn Torah, you have to make a living. And he found in the wood choppers and the water drawers examples of our great sages that are quoted in the Talmud, who actually had very menial labor that they earned a living with, and then they went to study.

Adam Mintz [25:34 – 26:03]: So talk about, you see what the Rambam is saying, he says, and nevertheless they study Torah. To the Rambam, being a wood chopper or a water drawer or blind people, that’s something that’s very time-consuming. And even though they had a time-consuming job, nevertheless they studied Torah. We would say it today, even though you’re a lawyer or an investment banker, you still find time to study Torah.

Geoffrey Stern [26:04 – 26:35]: So it really is all inclusive. But now I want to get to the bigger message here. And we have quoted Joshua Berman’s book called Created Equal, how the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought. And what he writes is that there is no question that in the late Bronze Age, the 15th to 13th centuries BCE, there were these treaties and covenant narratives that were being created. People were making kind of coalitions.

A movement was being formed. And what Israel did, the ancient Israelites did, is they took these treaties that were typically made between one king and another, and they made them between God and the woodchopper, God and all the way down to the woodchopper. And that was radical. Not its king, not its retinue, not the priests bears the status of a subordinate king entered into the treaty, but the people. And what Joshua Berman maintains

Geoffrey Stern [27:07 – 27:38]: is that this is the magic of the covenant, the covenant properly conceived, that we may discern a radically new understanding of the cosmic role of the common man within the thought system of the ancient Near East, one that constituted the basis of an egalitarian social order. I mean, Rabbi, you can’t read these words that start as we would expect it to start from the princes of Israel and goes to woodchoppers without

Geoffrey Stern [27:38 – 28:09]: saying, this is not a stretch. This is what it is. Thus we may posit that to some degree the subordinate king with whom God forms a political treaty is in fact the common man of Israel.

That every man in Israel is to view himself as having the status of a king, conferred on him a subordinate king who serves under the protection of and in gratitude to a divine sovereign. If much of biblical writing reveals an ambivalent attitude toward the notion of monarchy, I would suggest it is not because of a fear of the Almighty being marginalized. Rather, these texts reflect a fear that a strong monarchy would result in the marginalizing of the common man.

This concept of a covenant between the common man, as really personified by the wood chopper and the water carrier, and God is right out of our verses. And it is truly, truly radical. And I think, ultimately, Rabbi, that when we pray over the High Holidays and we say that God is king, to many of us moderns, we don’t really associate with this concept of king. And we certainly don’t find it particularly wonderful to say that someone is king.

But you have to understand it from its context, and what it was saying was that God is king and no man is king, that God is making a covenant with us and not with another king. And I think Erich Fromm really characterizes this the best. He writes in a book called “You Shall Be as Gods,” a radical interpretation of the Old Testament and its tradition. The principle that man should not be the servant of man is clearly established in the Talmud.

In the rabbinical comment to the law that says that a Hebrew slave’s ear must be pierced if he refuses to be liberated after seven years, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai explained to his disciples, the ear had heard on Mount Sinai, “For unto me the children of Israel are servants.” And yet this man went and acquired another master. Therefore, let his ear be bored through, because he observed not that which his ear had heard. The same reasoning has also been used by the leaders of the Zealots, the most radical nationalistic group in the fight against Rome.

The idea of serfdom to God was, in the Jewish tradition, transformed into the basis for the freedom of man from man. God’s authority thus guaranteed man’s independence from human authority. Rabbi, this is ultimately this message from the Mount of Moab that Moses is delivering: from the highest prince to the lowest water carrier and wood chopper, you make a covenant only with me, and therefore you serve no one else.

And ultimately, at the end of Yom Kippur, when we say that “Avinu Malkeinu, ein lanu melech ella atah,” we are saying that the only boss that we listen to is God, and that goes from the highest to the lowest. I think it’s a beautiful message. And yes, Rabbi Sacks, I took a look at him, and he was the one who gave me the idea of calling this “we the people.” He says it’s a politics of collective responsibility. The parties to the covenant are, said Moses, your leaders, your tribes, your elders, and officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your wives, the strangers in your camp, from woodcutter to water drawer. This is what is meant in the preamble to the American Constitution by the phrase “we the people.”

Speaker B: Great. What a good way to end and to, you know, to understand the importance of this parasha as we get ready to enter the land of Israel. Shabbat shalom, everybody. I look forward to seeing you all next week.

Speaker A: Shabbat shalom. See you all next week.

It was electrifying. Welcome to Madlik, recorded live at the Shtiebel at the JCC of Manhattan. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark and 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. The Parasha is Ki Teitzei. In our previous episode, we highlighted three Mitzvot in the Parasha which articulate a message through their actual observance.

In this bonus episode of Madlik, we showcase the fact that the Mitzvot are actually a cultural language that we need to listen to as much as observe. So join us for Halakha as a language. Rabbi, we had a real ball this Shabbat. There were over 100 people there.

You had moved the shul and this is going to be your new home. Is that correct?

Adam Mintz [1:33 – 1:59]: It is so exciting. It was such a good way to launch and to inaugurate the Shtiebel at the JCC, and it’s fun to do it again because you know, Geoffrey, that it is said that the Talmud states that when you study something 101 times, it shouldn’t be like you studied it a hundred times. It means every time you have to have a new angle.

So this is our chance. This is the second time, and therefore we’re going to find something new and interesting here.

Geoffrey Stern [1:59 – 3:13]: Perfect. So we are in Deuteronomy 21, and it contains the iconic law of the Ben Sorer u’Moreh, the rebellious son. It says if a householder has a wayward and defiant son who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, it goes on through a few rituals that have to be held.

Ultimately, what happens if he is identified as a rebellious son? In verse 21, it says, “Thereupon his town’s council shall stone him to death. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst. All Israel will hear and be afraid.” I mean, Rabbi, there are many laws in the Torah that are a little hard to process, to digest. For a modern person, any law that ends with the death penalty is by nature going to be tough.

But here certainly we have the question of a rebellious son. Just reading it, it is an iconic law. Yeah.

Adam Mintz [3:13 – 3:30]: I mean, the rabbis have been struggling to understand this for at least 2000 years. How can it be that you can put a child to death, even a troublemaking child, how can you possibly put him to death? So now we’ll see what the Talmud has to say about this.

Geoffrey Stern [3:30 – 4:42]: So rather than mince words, the Talmud cuts right to the chase. In Sanhedrin 71a, it says, “There has never been a stubborn and rebellious son, and there will never be one in the future.” Ben Sorer u’Moreh lo hayah v’lo atid l’hiyot. And then it asks, “Therefore you can ask, why do we have the text in the Torah?”

And it says, “Lama nichtav? Drosh v’kabel schar.” Why was it written? The translation here says, “So that you may expound upon new understandings of the Torah and receive reward for your learning.” This being an aspect of the Torah that has only theoretical value. Putting it shortly, Rabbi, it’s a legal fiction. That’s what it is.

And it is the iconic legal fiction. I think if you ask people about the Ben Sorer u’Moreh, we are going to see other instances in the Talmud where they use a similar strategy, but this is the most famous one.

Adam Mintz [4:42 – 5:13]: Yeah. Now, simply, and I know this is what we’re going to analyze, but simply, Drosh v’kabel schar means just study it. It’s part of the Torah. You know, as we’re going to talk about, there are many laws in the Torah that can’t be observed. Nevertheless, we study them. Drosh, study them.

But this is no different than the laws of the Temple, which we can’t relate to, which have no relevance to us. This also is not relevant and never happened.

Geoffrey Stern [5:14 – 6:08]: So I totally agree. I think that in some of the other instances that we are going to see, it’s going to be even more difficult to make this case. But here, at least, it says, when it says stone him, it says, “And all of Israel will hear and be afraid.”

So it is almost baking into it, Rabbi, that it has a pedagogic value to it, that it is a learning moment, so to speak. So you can kind of see how the rabbis were able to make this maneuver, because if it wasn’t the actual corporal punishment of the victim that was to be a learning moment, at least hearing and seeing the law itself would have a pedagogic value.

So I think they did have kind of a leg to stand on.

Adam Mintz [6:09 – 6:33]: I mean, I think that that’s really good. Generally speaking, anytime that you have a death penalty, the whole Yisrael yishma’u vi’yira, that there’s a piece of it that is to teach people or to encourage people not to do what will get them the death penalty. But it’s absolutely for sure that’s right.

Geoffrey Stern [6:34 – 7:17]: I mean, I think even in modern scholarship, when they talk about the death penalty, they question, is it punitive or will this stop people from committing the crime? So that is a deep-seated argument. But I think that, for instance, the Stone Chumash, which they use in your synagogue, it literally correlates it to pedagogy, because after all, it is talking about a rebellious child living at home.

So this is exactly the kind of thing. It’s kind of like some of those fairy tales that we read that we cringe at. They’re so scary. But there was a time where they believed in terms of a pedagogic tool. Scare the bejesus out of somebody and he won’t sin.

Adam Mintz [7:19 – 7:21]: I mean, and we know it works.

Geoffrey Stern [7:23 – 8:44]: I guess spare the rod and just scare them. But anyway, I did mention that there were other examples of this same strategy. In Sanhedrin 71, just a few pages from where we have the rebellious son, it talks about an Ir Hanidachat that is an idolatrous city.

And it says there has never been an idolatrous city and there never will be in the future. It’s virtually impossible to fulfill all the requirements that must be met in order to apply this halacha. This is the translator speaking. And why then was the passage relating to an idolatrous city written in the Torah? So that you may expound upon new understandings of the Torah and receive reward for your learning.

So here too, correct me if I’m wrong, Rabbi, we’re talking about a city almost like a Sodom, that is so, so evil it should be destroyed. And again, the rabbis are saying it never will happen. But here, of course, the psukim do not say, and therefore this is a teaching moment. So I think they really are taking this concept of Drosh v’kabel schar, that some of the legislation, some of the mitzvot in the Torah, are there not so much to observe, but to learn from.

Adam Mintz [8:45 – 9:09]: Yeah, I mean, that’s right. So the fact that it’s not just one, but there are several of these laws makes it seem like that was a strategy in the Torah, right? That there are certain laws in the Torah which are only Drosh v’kabel schar.

Now, that’s kind of surprising in a legal book, that they have laws that are not applicable. But that seems to be a strategy in the Torah.

Geoffrey Stern [9:10 – 10:56]: And of course, three is a charm. In a few paragraphs later in Sanhedrin, it brings another example. We’re all familiar in Leviticus about the law of a house that has leprosy, and it says that there has never been a house afflicted with leprosy, and there never will be, Drosh v’kabel schar.

So whether these are unique instances or whether they can give us, Rabbi, an insight into other commandments too, that whether they’re practiced or not, have an element of Drosh v’kabel schar. That’s actually the subject of our talk today.

But before we go there, let’s talk a second about that word “schar.” You don’t get a reward for it, or your reward is that you study it. There’s a famous Mishnah in Pirkei Avot in Ethics of the Fathers that says, and there, I think we translate it as the reward for a good deed, a mitzvah is a mitzvah. So if you go to the trouble to keep Shabbat, what is your ultimate reward? You have the beauty, the oneg of Shabbat, and the s’char mitzvah.

The reward now here, it’s more like a payment for doing a sin, is you’re a sinner, you’re going to have to live with yourself. You don’t feel actually very good after doing a sin. So I think even in this iconic piece of Mishnah, you get a sense that it doesn’t necessarily mean reward because it doesn’t read that well.

Adam Mintz [10:57 – 11:11]: It’s causative. If you do one mitzvah, you’ll do another mitzvah. If you commit one aveira, that’ll lead you to commit other aveirot. Okay, we can argue about the psychology of that.

Geoffrey Stern [11:11 – 12:02]: Yeah. And I think it also means kind of the outcome, as you said, the benefit, the takeaway. I mean, a shomer sachar is someone who watches, is a caretaker, but gets paid for it. So it’s really a payment, more of a reward.

And I will argue that what the rabbis are really saying when it comes to these three commandments, but maybe to many, many more, is that there is a benefit just in studying the law above and beyond observing the law, so that there are commandments, that there is no observance, and there’s still validation for having them on the books. And that’s my point, and I think to make it even stronger, there is a beautiful, it sounds like a verse from Tehillim, Rabbi, but I could not find it in Tehillim.

Adam Mintz [12:02 – 12:04]: It is not. It’s from the Davening.

Geoffrey Stern [12:04 – 12:38]: It’s a piece of our liturgy that we say after reading the Shema every morning. It says, happy is the person who the translation is observes your commandments. But I’m taking it literally. I’m saying happy is the person who has the ability to hear the commandments. Because ultimately, Rabbi, I believe the commandments are a language in and of themselves. And that’s the limb I’m going to stand on today.

Adam Mintz [12:39 – 12:55]: Good. I mean, and you know, “Ashrei” is a good word. Praise be the person that’s famous. Ashrei yoshvei veitecha. That’s one of those words that we use in the davening to express the ultimate praise of that person.

Geoffrey Stern [12:56 – 13:27]: Yep. And it almost makes, they want it to sound biblical. They want it to sound like this was Tehillim, whether it was an innovation or not. So now I want to just expand the horizon of commandments that were written and were never fulfilled.

One commandment I didn’t put in the source sheet is about a mamzer, a bastard who cannot marry into the people of Israel. The rabbis in the Talmud said, ein Mamzerim ba Yisrael, there are and never will be a mamzer in Israel. Meaning to say, Rabbi, that it’s so complicated to comply with all the requirements of being a mamzer. It’ll never happen. The rabbis made sure it would never happen.

Geoffrey Stern [13:27 – 13:58]: I think there are certain rabbis around who should hear that, because they certainly hold things like that as a cudgel against people. But no, that’s not the case. Another famous one is corporal punishment in the Mishnah. In Makot, it says a Sanhedrin that executes someone once in seven years is characterized as a destructive court. It actually says Chavlanit—it’s like a murder. It’s. It’s a terrible thing.

And Rabba Gamliel says this applies to a Sanhedrin that executes once in 70 years. And I think that’s the famous takeaway. But I looked at the source and it even goes further. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva said, being members of the Sanhedrin, we would have conducted trials in a manner whereby no person would have ever been executed.

Geoffrey Stern [14:29 – 14:59]: So, Rabbi, all the times in the Torah that we read Moti yamut, you shall die, you shall certainly die. What? According to Tarfon and Akiva, it never happened. Never happened. So this universe of laws that are simply legal fictions is growing by the minute.

I want to finish by something that I discovered in my research that I absolutely fell in love with. And this is that Maimonides, as you know, wrote a book and started actually a whole tradition based on the concept that there are 613 commandments, Taryag Mitzvot, of which 365 are negative commandments and the balance are positive commandments.

Geoffrey Stern [15:30 – 16:01]: He went ahead, and he illuminated, elucidated, categorized every commandment. And at the end of his book, he says, and when you now examine all these commandments that were previously mentioned, you will find among them commandments that are an obligation on the community, not on each and every individual, like the building of the temple or the establishment of the king, the cutting off of the seed of Amalek.

And he’s starting to list things that don’t apply to you and me, Rabbi. Just simple Jews who are looking at the commandments and thinking that there are 200 odd positive commandments.

Geoffrey Stern [16:01 – 16:32]: He goes on, there are also among them commandments that are obligatory on an individual if he did a certain act or something happens to him, such as a sacrifice or an inadvertent violation sin, such as the law of a Hebrew slave and a Hebrew manservant, the law of a Canaanite slave, an unpaid guardian, the laws of borrowers. And he says it is possible that an individual will live all of his life and not deal with all of these situations, and so not be obligated in this commandment.

Geoffrey Stern [17:02 – 17:33]: And also among them are commandments that are only practiced when the temple is in existence, such as the festival offering. And among them, there are also those that are only practiced by somebody with property, such as tithes, priests, and things like that. And sometimes one will not have these possessions, so he will not be obligated in these commandments. A man may live his whole life, and he will not become obligated by any of the commandments of this type.

But there are some that are obligatory on everybody, and he lists those. And he says, and the commandments that are of this type are called definite commandments, because they are definitely obligated for every Jewish man. Interesting that reaches that age at any time, any place, and whatever the circumstances.

Geoffrey Stern [17:33 – 18:03]: So he says, when you examine the 248 positive commandments, you will find that the definite commandments are 60. Rabbi. He went from 248 to 60 and that this is with the stipulation that his situation is the situation of most people, that is, he lives in a house in a city, eats the foods associated with the human species, meaning to say bread and meat, engages in commerce with people, marries and fathers children. There are 46 commandments that women are also obliged to and 14 that women are not obliged to.

Geoffrey Stern [18:03 – 18:34]: So now, and I didn’t say this when we were live, but if you’re a woman and you start to look at mitzvot shehaz’man grama, you can come down to only 48 commandments that are positive. And it’s absolutely amazing because I think what he’s saying is not to say that all the other commandments are irrelevant, Rabbi.

What I am arguing today is they remain relevant, but they become something else than touch points of that we have to observe. They are things we need to listen to. Ashrei ishi ishma mitzvotav, right?

Adam Mintz [18:50 – 19:07]: I mean, we’re really dividing the laws of the Torah from those laws that are only observed and that you listen and you observe and those laws that you only listen to. But there was never an intention that you should observe that.

Geoffrey Stern [19:08 – 21:03]: And therefore, it becomes of interest, especially if you learn in a yeshiva like you and I did, or you go to shul every Shabbat and you listen to these laws. What do they mean for me? What am I to take away from the Halachot? So, I had recently listened to a podcast by Shai Held on Hadar, and they actually were talking about Rabbi Soloveitchik. So, I picked up this book; it’s called Halachic Man, and Soloveitchik in this book and in another makes a radical point. I think it’s radical to most of us. He says that there is only a single source from which a Jewish philosophical weltanschauung could emerge—the objective order, the Halakha.

What he argues, Rabbi, is if you want to understand what the essence of Judaism is, don’t go looking at beautiful Midrashim. Don’t go looking at wonderful flowing commentaries and theology, biblical narratives, and story. He is arguing, and it’s radical, that you have to look at the halacha. And it is in the halacha that you will find the essence of Judaism. It was, I think, radical when he wrote it. It’s a very difficult book to read because it’s from its time; it’s based on dialectic and German and French philosophy. But in the end, what he argues is that modern Jewish philosophy must be nurtured on the historical religious consciousness that has been projected onto fixed objectives.

So, the material actions are the sources of a halacha. A new world awaits this formulation. It was a challenge, I think, Rabbi, to look at halacha differently, and it really was a talking point. Do you remember reading it, discussing it, and coming in contact with it?

Adam Mintz [21:03 – 22:10]: It was always difficult. When I was a yeshiva student, it was difficult, and now it’s really difficult. What Rabbi Soloveitchik is really saying is that the building blocks of everything Jewish are the halacha. If you want to understand what makes a Jew tick, you need to look at the halacha. Now, from Rabbi Soloveitchik’s perspective, a very Lithuanian perspective, they were anti-Hasidim, and therefore they didn’t focus on connection to God in a spiritual way. They thought that the answer to everything was in the formulation of the halacha.

You said it’s a little dated. I mean, most people don’t think that way anymore. I think, Geoffrey, that’s a reflection historically about the fact that Hasidism and especially Chabad have really made a tremendous impact, so that nobody thinks of halacha alone anymore. It’s always halakha plus something else.

Geoffrey Stern [22:10 – 22:41]: Fascinating, fascinating. I mean, I think the arguments he makes in this lengthy book are very dated, but the argument and the challenge that he puts to us are still a challenge. And I think last week, in the first part of this series, when we talked about those three commandments, for instance, we talked about shichacha, leaving the wheat when you pick up the harvest, and when you pick up the grain. We compared that to shichacha lefnei kisei kavod, that on Yom Kippur, on Rosh Hashanah, we say that God doesn’t forget anything.

Geoffrey Stern [22:41 – 23:12]: But we’d really like God to act like us when we’re following God’s commandments, and we have selective collective memory. I do think that comes through in the halacha itself. And so, what I’m saying is he really did get me thinking. I think there is something there—that the halacha is not only a language, but, according to Soloveitchik, a language that projects and embeds the essence of our traditions.

Geoffrey Stern [23:12 – 23:42]: Now, the example he gives—the first example he gives—is kind of timely. He kind of compares Maimonides of the Moreh Nevuchim, the Guide for the Perplexed, who is busy giving historical anecdotes and reasons for things, to the Maimonides of the Mishneh Torah. And he says in Mishneh Torah, Maimonides says even though sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is a decree, it is a chok—well, he calls it a gezerat hakatuv—we know it only because it is commanded.

Geoffrey Stern [23:42 – 24:13]: He says it contains an allusion; it contains a remez. And what Soloveitchik learns from this is: Wake up, you sleepy ones, from the sleep you slumber. When I discussed this in your, in the shul, I said it’s kind of like a baby’s cry. That’s a universal sound that no one can hear without perking up, listening, even feeling emotional, that there’s something in need. I think what he was saying here is that without commentary and without embellishment, Maimonides is saying there is in this language of halacha something that tells you to wake up, something that tells you to forget the truth of the vanities of the time.

Geoffrey Stern [24:43 – 25:13]: And throughout the year, focus. I do think that Soloveitchik is onto something, and I think it’s an approach that is worth listening to. And as I said before, I really do believe it’s important to listen to the commandments. I also quoted the fact that Heschel, I called it a hot mic moment. One of the students of Heschel, after Heschel passed away, said that when he heard Heschel once say there never was, there never will be a halachic man.

Geoffrey Stern [25:13 – 25:44]: There are authors that talk about Heschel as the aggadic man because we all know Heschel writes The Sabbath, Heschel writes The Earth Is the Lord’s. He talks about the people, he talks about the stories, and the midrashim. And you really have this conflict between aggadic man, the aggadah that we have, and the halacha. I’m saying today, if we’re going to look at halacha as a language, why don’t we look at a poet? Why don’t we look at a sofer, a writer?

Geoffrey Stern [25:44 – 26:15]: And as long as we’re on the subject, Rabbi, why don’t we look at a rebellious son? So, there was a rebellious son, and his name was Chaim Nachman Bialik. He lost his father at a young age. He was raised by his Orthodox grandfather. He was obviously a very smart, talented young man. He went to the yeshiva in Volozhin, and he studied there. But while he was studying tractates of Talmud, he also was becoming a maskil and a child of the Enlightenment.

Geoffrey Stern [26:15 – 26:46]: And finally, the Enlightenment pulled him too strongly. According to Wikipedia, it says when he was kicked out of the yeshiva or agreed to leave, he was taken by Chaim Soloveitchik, who was the grandfather of Joseph Soloveitchik, who has Ish Halacha. He was taken to the outskirts of the yeshiva. As Rabbi Chaim was escorting him out, Bialik asked why. In response, the Rabbi said he had spent the time convincing Bialik not to use his writing talents against the yeshiva world or Torah.

Geoffrey Stern [27:18 – 27:49]: So we are going to end today’s podcast by reading directly from an amazing monograph that Bialik wrote called Halacha and Aggadah. It is in the Sefaria, so I really tell you all to read it in its original form from beginning to end. But this is what he writes, and he’s talking about this argument between which is more important—the aggadah or the halacha. On these opposite appellations which contrast halakha and aggadah, I could add more infinitely.

Geoffrey Stern [27:49 – 28:19]: And it is obvious that each of them has a bit of truth. But is there nothing to learn from this? The popular singular position that halakha and the aggadah are enemies, one thing and its reverse—those who say this are confusing fundamental nature with outside appearance. To whom are they similar? To the one who decides that rivers, ice, and water are two distinct materials. He compares halakha to water in ice form or liquid form. They are two of the same. The halacha and the aggadah are not, in fact, anything except two halves of the same whole, two faces of the same creature.

The connection between the two of them is like that from speech to thought and feeling, or from action and tangible form to speech. The Halacha is the crystallization, the final and inevitable result of the Agada. The Agada is the core of the Halacha. This is amazing, Rabbi, to hear from

Geoffrey Stern [28:50 – 29:00]: a quote, unquote, secular Jew, a child, I would say a patriarch of the enlightened. And he goes on, by the way.

Adam Mintz [29:00 – 29:15]: I didn’t say this on Shabbos, but of course, you know, he started in yeshiva and he became the patriarch of the Enlightenment. He’s talking about himself. Without the yeshiva, he never could have done what he did.

Geoffrey Stern [29:15 – 29:46]: I love it. He goes on. Halacha, however, is no less a work of art than Agada. It’s art is the greatest in the world. The art of life and the paths of life. Its material is the living person with all the impulses of his heart. Its methods are personal, communal and national education, and its fruits are a continuum of days, of proper deeds and lives, the paving of a way of life through the twists and turns

Geoffrey Stern [29:46 – 30:17]: of the individual and the group, a proper way for a person in the world and a refined path in life. The creations of Halacha’s hands are not like the creations of the hands of other arts, such as sculpture, drawing, architecture, song and poetry, which are concentrated and unified in matter, space and time. Rather, they join together little by little, point by point, from all of the flow of a man’s life and deeds. In the end, give over the final

Geoffrey Stern [30:17 – 30:47]: product. One form, whether complete or damaged. Halacha is the guiding art and the teaching art of an entire nation. Likewise, the Cathedral of Cologne, the Cathedral of Milan and Notre Dame in Paris were perfect in their beauty and because what they became by the efforts of the world-class artists for hundreds of years, each of whom in this gave his life and the best creative powers exclusively to this holy

Geoffrey Stern [30:47 – 31:18]: work. And here’s where he gets into the absolutely boring pedantic pages of the Talmud itself. In a way that blew me away. He says, the Children of Israel has its own magnificent creation, a lofty holy day queen Shabbat, Shabbat Hamalkah. In the imagination of the nation it has developed into a living being with a body and the figure of a body, all radiance and beauty. Is she not a creature

Geoffrey Stern [31:18 – 31:49]: all of Agada, of legend, of tale? Is she not herself a source of life and sanctity to an entire nation, and a wellspring flowing with divine inspirations for poets and liturgists? And even so, who will say, who will ascertain by whose hand she was crafted and who made her into what she is by the hand of Halacha law or by the hand of Agada legend? Tractate Shabbat has 157 double

Geoffrey Stern [31:49 – 32:20]: pages, and Tractate Eravin has 105. And they are almost entirely devoid of aggada they mostly comprise examinations and precise legal analyses into the 39 law labors and their subcategories and the fixing of domains with one. What does one light? With what does an animal go out? How does one communalize a domain? How exhausting to the spirit, how much acuity

Geoffrey Stern [32:20 – 32:50]: wasted on every little serif. And when I traverse among those pages and see groups upon groups of sages and scholars at work, I say, indeed, artists of life. I see before me artists of life in the workshop and at the potter’s wheel. Tremendous spiritual work like this, at the same time, like an ant and like a giant, works for its own sake, and born of love and faith without bounds, is impossible without divine

Geoffrey Stern [32:50 – 33:22]: inspiration. Each of these individuals did their part according to their character and their soul’s inclinations. And all of them together were beholden to an exalted will that ruled over them. This is nothing but a single lofty ideal, a single elevated image of Shabbat floating before the eyes of these exceptional people. And her spirit is what gathered them here from all the generations and made them into collaborators in

Geoffrey Stern [33:22 – 33:35]: her creation and enhancement. And what is the fruit of all these laborious works of Halacha, of Lord, a day that is all Agada, all legend. Shabbat Shalom.

Adam Mintz [33:36 – 33:46]: Fantastic. And that is the life of Chaim Nachman Bialik. Thank you, Geoffrey. Shabbat Shalom, everybody. We look forward to seeing you all next week.

Geoffrey Stern [33:46 – 33:48]: See you all next week. Shabbat Shalom.

Suddenly, the Torah suggests something different. Sometimes the holiest act is precisely when you lose focus, forget, or let go. Holiness can be found in both deliberate action and unintended accident, from recognizing the mitzvah in the sheaf you forgot, from admitting the slip-ups you never intended. Holiness is not only in what we hold onto with intention; it is also in what we release at the end of the day when we pray to the God of remembrance. What we pray for is that God, like humans, will sometimes remember selectively.

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 Parasha is Ki Teitzei. We are commanded when to regard and when to disregard lost objects, the gleanings of the threshing floor we are to leave, and the mother bird, we are told to let go when we take her fledglings. Are we to conclude that which is unintentional is as important as the intentional? Join us for intentional and unintentional holiness. Well, welcome Rabbi from Ita, Italy. You’re in Pisa, I’m in Lucca tonight.

Adam Mintz [2:09 – 2:23]: The wedding is in Lucca tomorrow. And this is such an amazing topic and it really brings together the whole world and so many different generations. Intentional and unintentional holiness. Let’s run with it. Our first one of the month of Elul.

Geoffrey Stern [2:23 – 5:15]: And before we do, just a few short announcements. Rabbi, this is a very special week for us because, Rabbi, your synagogue is making aliyah. You’re moving to the JCC of the West Side of Manhattan on 76th and Amsterdam. And for the inauguration, we are having Madlik live. We will be there in person. I will be there this coming Shabbat. And for you listeners who can make it, rest assured we are going to do different material than we are doing now. Although I will give you a little tease. We are going to be talking about the language of Halachah and we are going to be discussing a few Halachot today. And if we’re successful, you yourself will see that Halachot are literally a language, and we just have to listen.

So with that, let’s begin. We are in Deuteronomy 22, and it says if you see your fellow Israelite’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it. Everett Fox says do not hide yourself from them. You must take it back to your peer. If your fellow Israelite does not live near you or you do not know who the owner is, you shall bring it home, and it shall remain with you until your peer claims it; then you shall give it back. You shall do the same with that person’s ass, you shall do the same with that person’s garment, and so too shall you do with anything that your fellow Israelite loses and you find you must not remain indifferent. Or as Fox says, you are not allowed to hide yourself. So we have this amazing halacha. In the Hebrew, it says, you shall not hide yourself. You shall not ignore it. You shall not disappear. It’s all about returning something that is lost but also not losing yourself, not hiding from yourself. The Hebrew word of the root עָלַם (halam) can mean to hide oneself. Usually, hiding the eyes from it can mean to disregard, take one’s attention away. It can mean to turn a deaf ear, practicing concealment. And so you could see how it started me thinking, Rabbi, about presence when we need to be present when we have to let go of our presence. And Rashi comes up and says immediately, you shall not see any of your brother’s herd go astray and hide yourself from them, says Rashi, close his eyes tight, as though one does not see it.

Adam Mintz [5:15 – 5:17]: That’s a great Rashi, right?

Geoffrey Stern [5:17 – 5:33]: And you know, it’s kind of like a few weeks ago when we were talking about, or last week when we were talking about Shokhad, and you commented on the literary nature that it says because it blinds your eyes. Here too, Rashi adds that little essence of you can’t close your eyes.

Adam Mintz [5:34 – 6:04]: I just want to say all New Yorkers are very familiar with this because everybody is taught by their parents when they’re a kid and they ride the New York City subways, don’t see anything, right? If something happens on the subway, make it as if you don’t see. That’s exactly what the Torah means. Rashi didn’t have a subway in France in the 11th century. That’s exactly the same idea. We do it today. Make it as if you don’t see.

Geoffrey Stern [6:04 – 7:37]: The opposite of see something, say something. And the other part of that is don’t look anybody in the eye. You know, if you see somebody who looks a little weird, don’t look them in the eye. Don’t establish eye contact. So, Rabbi, there couldn’t be a more simple, straightforward commandment than this. You’ve got to return somebody’s lost object. You cannot hide your eyes. But the second Rashi brings up what the rabbis do here. It says this is the plain sense of the verse. Our rabbis, however, said that the omission of the particle lo before the verb hitalamta suggests that there are times when you may hide yourself from it. In other words, it should have said v’lo hitalamta me’hem because it doesn’t. There are exceptions to the rule. Of course, we know that’s what the rabbis are famous for, finding the exceptions, the nuances to the rule. And it kind of reminds me of this thing of not passing over another commandment. Here you are, you have to do a mitzvah. You’re walking along and you have to return something. The rabbis seem to be saying, but there are instances where you don’t have to do this mitzvah. And again, everything that we’re going to be talking about today is never 100% clear when you have to hide your eyes and when you don’t hide your eyes.

Adam Mintz [7:37 – 8:27]: Let me just explain what that case is of passing over a mitzvah. You’re in shul. You know, many people just go to shul on Shabbat, so this doesn’t happen. But for people who go to services during the week, very often there are poor people who come by, and they ask for charity during services. Do you have the right to not give them charity because you are in the middle of your services, you’re in the middle of davening? Do not pass over a commandment. The fact that you’re involved in one commandment doesn’t exempt you from another commandment. That’s a really good question, Geoffrey, because it’s easy to say, I don’t have to give charity. I have such intention in my prayers, I don’t have to give charity. But it says, no, don’t pass over a commandment.

Geoffrey Stern [8:28 – 8:47]: I mean, if I remember correctly, when you put away your tefillin, you have to make sure you know where the tefillin shel rosh is and the shel yad is. Because God forbid you should reach for the rosh before the yad. Then how can you put it back? You’ve already grabbed a mitzvah. You can’t be ma’avirin al ha-mitzvot.

Adam Mintz [8:47 – 8:54]: You’re making the shel rosh feel bad, which is also amazing. You personify the stone, which is great.

Geoffrey Stern [8:55 – 10:58]: So we’re going to be talking about the language of mitzvot, but here we are, deep into the weeds, Rabbi. All of these things have lessons for life, too. So here we are. The Sifre comes and explains why, in fact, there are times where you don’t have to not hide your eyes. Where you can hide your eyes. So it says as follows.

Speaker A: Sometimes the Sifrei says you do ignore them, and sometimes you do not ignore them. How so? If he was a Kohen and it were in the cemetery—so you’re a Kohen, you’re passing by a cemetery, you see a lost object. You’re not allowed to go in there. Here, we add the additional thing of it’s a lo ta’aseh, a prohibitive commandment. Or if he were an elder, older, and were it beneath his dignity. So now what happens if you’re an elderly person and you see something to return? Is this within your purview or not?

Or, and this is interesting, if his labor were greater than that of his neighbor—in other words, if the finder was to return the item, reimbursing him for his lost wages would cost more than the value of the item. In all of these three cases, he is exempt, it being written. And you ignore. Sometimes you do ignore, sometimes you do not. So again, the language of the halacha is telling us that, first of all, nothing is simple. And we have a verse that says, you cannot hide your eyes. Sure enough, the rabbis come in and say, there are times when you can hide your eyes. And then the nuance is, yes, there are times, as your parents would say, when you’re on the subway, or otherwise, there are times you don’t look, and there are times that you have to look.

I love the nuance, but I also love the fact that this is not black and white. We live in a world of nuance, and the rabbis are even advertising it, showcasing it.

Adam Mintz [10:58 – 11:21]: I’ll just say, you know, how do the rabbis know that? Because the word that you should hide your eyes, it suggests the fact that that’s a real. That’s something to do. Not always, but, you know, why do they say it in that way? It makes it seem as if that’s a reasonable reaction to things. And we have to decide one is that appropriate and one that’s not appropriate.

Geoffrey Stern [11:21 – 14:07]: I love it. And then the second time, Rashi comments, he goes even further. When at the end of the verse, it says, thou may not hide thyself. He says, you must not cover your eyes, pretending not to see it—Ki ilu ein chava o’ e oto. So now we’re talking about two different levels. When you’re supposed to hide your eyes, when you’re not. And do you pretend as though you don’t see other people looking upon you? I just love how they can complicate such an obvious, straightforward thing. But again, it shows that everything is complicated. There are no straight and true laws.

So now we get to the second halacha that talks about intentionality, oversight. And this is what we call Shichecha, where you forget. And it’s in Deuteronomy 24:19. And it says, when you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it. It shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, in order that your God may bless you in all of your undertakings. I love this word Shichecha, which… And you forget it. So here we are almost commanding somebody. And you can imagine, Rabbi, I started by saying during Elul, we focus on Kavanah, we focus on doing everything just perfectly. I can assume that there are psychological types, maybe very anal people. Maybe we all have this part of ourselves that we have to do everything just right. And for those people, Elul and the High Holidays is like a godsend. That’s how they would love to live, where everything finds its place.

And boom, out of left field, literally the field, we get this law that says when you bring up your harvest and things drop, you have to let them go, you have to leave them for the poor. And I just love the fact that when we refer to the trilogy of laws in this kind of context, there’s Leket, Shichecha, and Peah—the gleanings, the forgotten produce, and the corners of the field. These are all laws, Rabbi, that teach us, in a sense, to let go. And if you believe, Rabbi, that we do the commandments to kind of copy God, ‘Le’hadmot imitatio Dei,’ then in a sense, are we not saying that this is a godly trait to sometimes just let go?

Adam Mintz [14:08 – 14:31]: Yeah, well, for sure. I thought you were gonna point out, of course, also true, that we call this one Shichecha; we name it after the fact that you forgot it. Right. Leket means gleanings and Peah, means the corners. But Shichecha, can you imagine referring to a law, an agricultural law, as the thing that you forgot? It shows the centrality of forgetting.

Geoffrey Stern [14:32 – 15:03]: It does. And because we are in the High Holidays, I said to myself, I’ve heard that word Shichecha before. And in the Siddur, when we talk about Zichronot, Malchiyot, and Shofarot, we talk about the trilogy of remembering, of shofar, and the kingship. There is this beautiful saying that says, Ki ein shichecha lifnei kisei kevodecha, that there is no forgetting before God’s holy throne. And we call Rosh Hashanah Yom Hazikaron. It is the day of remembrance.

Geoffrey Stern [15:03 – 15:33]: And so what I wanted to explore here is, do we want. Are we truly trying to imitate God, or are we trying to project onto God and say, you know, even on Yom Hazikaron, we want you to do what you tell us to do, which is to sometimes let go and be a little selective in your memory? If you’re picking, if you’re harvesting, and a few sheaves escape from you, that is the mitzvah of Shichecha. And again, we say in the Zichronot, there is no forgetfulness before the throne of glory. And in the Sefaria notes, I have it quoted in full.

And then, Rabbi, we do something amazing. We start to list all of the things we want God to remember. And big surprise, Rabbi, in that list is not the golden calf. In that list is not Korach. In that list is not the bitter waters. We say to God, you remember everything that has been forgiven. But then we get very selective in our memory. And I found a beautiful commentary in TheTorah.com that says as follows. Although we ask God to remember in this Zichronot blessing, we are not actually asking God to remember everything, both the good and the bad. The Mishnah is explicit about this. The Mishnah says, ein mas kirin zikron malchus v’ shofar shel paraniot. We don’t remember anything that we got punished for. We are asking God to be selective. When we say God never forgets, we are holding up our fingers as quotation marks.

Rabbi, I think there is—and I’m not, I don’t think I’m creating this as a drash—I really do think that there is a dialogue between this law of Shichecha and what we want God to remember, too. We’re teaching ourselves that memory should be selective, that you don’t have to remember every sheaf, not every grain has to be harvested. You can leave things for the poor. You can have a little rachmanus. Is it drash? Maybe.

Adam Mintz [17:43 – 18:32]: That’s amazing. And I’ll just say another drash that on Rosh Hashanah, you know, each holiday has its name in this, in the prayer service. And Rosh Hashanah is not called Rosh Hashanah in the service. It’s called Yom Hazikaron, the day of remembrance. That is our obsession on Rosh Hashanah. And exactly like you said, Geoffrey, it’s the balance between. Between the fact and shichechat lifnei kisei, that’s scary. God doesn’t forget anything is scary. But if God didn’t remember anything, we also would be sunk. So you see that, right, Geoffrey? That’s a very delicate balance. He can’t remember everything, but he has to remember something. And that’s the challenge of Rosh Hashanah, of finding the sweet spot.

Geoffrey Stern [18:32 – 19:55]: Absolutely. So the professor Mark Zvi Brettler has an article in TheTorah.com, it’s Zichronot, asking an omniscient God to remember. Do we really want God to remember all that we did? And he writes, instead, we are asking God to use selective memory, a feature that is well-documented in scientific literature, where it is sometimes called selective forgetting.

Speaker A: We ask, for example, God to recall our outcry in Egypt, the ancestral covenant, His compassion, Israel’s early loyalty to God itself, a very selective presentation of the wilderness period, and many other positive things in the past. By implication, we are asking God not to remember Israel’s past misdeeds, such as the golden calf, the sin of the scouts, and our own personal sins. The depiction of God as remembering selectively is very striking. Usually, we think of religion as claiming that people must be godlike. But this prayer insists that God be human-like; God, like a loving parent, should remember the good and overlook or even forget the bad. He’s literally. He’s not tying into Shichacha, but he is saying this should be a mitzvah where God is copying us. It is indeed much easier.

Adam Mintz [19:55 – 20:05]: That’s brilliant, right? That’s absolutely brilliant that on Rosh Hashanah all year long we try to be like God, but on Rosh Hashanah, we ask God to be like us.

Geoffrey Stern [20:06 – 20:44]: Be like us. Following God’s command, be like us when we harvest the wheat and God told us, you can let go of a few grains. It is indeed much easier to change our ways if we imagine that God, like us, engages in selective memory and might be convinced to forget the wrongs we have done in the previous year. So, quite ironically, on one level, the real message of the festival’s early name of Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembrance, is that we hope that God will indeed forget. I just thought that was wonderful. And again, especially in the life of Professor Bretton.

Adam Mintz [20:44 – 20:52]: Was fantastic, and he really identifies, you know, such a. Such a. Such a fundamental point in Rosh Hashanah.

Geoffrey Stern [20:53 – 21:44]: So. And again, I will argue that the mitzvah of Shichacha for every one of us, but there are clearly those of us who want to put every peg into every hole and want. It must be different, difficult to go to the harvest and to let those grains drop. It must be difficult to plow your field and leave the corners. And I do think that the Halacha itself has a language that if we listen to it, it’s teaching us something. And I think this might very well be the primary lesson that we all need to be a little understanding and a little forgiving. And that’s why it goes right to the poor and the widow and those who are less fortunate for love, just for the love of God. That could be you walking there. I think it is in the message.

Adam Mintz [21:45 – 22:11]: I think there’s no question. We’ll take it back to the beginning. And it’s in human nature that if you see somebody having trouble on, you know, on. On West End Avenue, you tend to look away. You tend to say, I don’t want to get involved. It requires a special effort to say, I’m gonna get involved. So in both cases, the Torah comes to tell you that you need to fight the inclination to do what’s right.

Geoffrey Stern [22:12 – 23:55]: And there are no easy answers. You’ve got to make that decision each time. So now we’re getting to a third Halacha in our Parasha. And this is in Deuteronomy 22:6. It says, if along the road you chance upon a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground with fledglings or eggs, and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life. So there are two things going on here. Number one, if you chance upon a bird’s nest, is intriguing. The serendipity of this commandment, this happenstance. And then what is the lesson here, ? Is it similar to the lesson of leaving the sheaves? We are leaving something. If you’re a hunter, Rabbi, the idea is you get it all. You had a good day. I got the mother, I got the birds, I got the whole harvest. So Rashi says, if a bird’s nest chances to be before thee, he writes, if it chances to be, this excludes that which is already at hand in thy court. So in other words, what exactly that means, I’m not sure of. Rabbi. Maybe if you’re a farmer. But the idea is that this chance, this serendipitous part of this commandment, is intrinsic to it. And I love that too, because if we’re learning anything about intentionality or lack thereof, the one thing that ruins every unintentional is an unintentional situation when it comes to you from left field, I just want to say, what.

Adam Mintz [23:55 – 24:17]: Does it mean by chance? By chance means that, you know, if it’s in your backyard and you can have a family meeting about how to handle it, that’s not what the Torah is talking about. The Torah is talking about by chance. You have to make a decision on the spur of the moment. That’s what you said. That’s about, you know, turning your eyes away from something that goes wrong on West End Avenue.

Geoffrey Stern [24:17 – 24:48]: I love it. I love it. The Ibn Ezra says the word yikar chance is similar to nikro nikrete as it happened by chance. These words have the meaning of chance. It is close in meaning to meet. A mikra can also be a meeting between two people. And I love that too, because most of what we learn in life is not what we intended to learn. It’s that chance meeting, whether it’s interpersonal or whether

Geoffrey Stern [24:48 – 25:18]: it’s preparing for a podcast and you stumble across a commentary that you’ve never heard of before. We have to be open to those experiences. And then we have a very long and famous Ramban. We’re not going to quote it in full. For those of you who are interested in the whole concept of Ta’amei HaMitzvot, that there are meanings and reasons for our commandments, I suggest that you read it.

Geoffrey Stern [25:18 – 25:49]: But he gets into a number of lessons here, and the first thing that he says is an environmental one. He says, now, he who kills the dam and the young in one day, or takes them when they are free to fly, as though he cuts off that species. So I love that we have a medieval environmentalist here. He also talks about the moral lesson for us. You should not

Geoffrey Stern [25:49 – 26:19]: have a cruel heart and be dispassionate, even if what you’re doing is right, even if it is within your rights. We shouldn’t do things like destroy a whole family. That could make our soul tough and unfeeling. And again, to Rabbi, we’re going to be discussing it this Shabbat, but what he’s talking about is the language of the mitzvot that the mitzvah is teaching us something. We learn it by seeing it, by doing it. It’s almost. It’s not something that you have to find in a commentary. And he says it is for our good. And what he is really, I think, teaching us is the lesson of all of the commandments that we’ve looked at today, which is that there is a language there. There are things that we can learn from them in a meeting as we meet them by bim mikra. We can learn. In

Geoffrey Stern [26:50 – 27:21]: this particular case, what we’re learning is about the serendipity of life. What we’re learning about is the letting go. We’re not in total control. And we are taught to be not in total control by a God who plays the game as if he’s not in total control. He says he’s all-knowing. He says he’s all-remembering. And he chooses to remember selectively. This is the lesson that we are getting from God and

Geoffrey Stern [27:21 – 27:52]: that we then can teach and learn for those who are dependent on us, whether it’s the widow, whether then it’s the poor. I think grouping these commandments together gives us so much to think about in terms of that which is unintentional. And so I’ll finish with the Al Cheit. There are many Al Cheitz that we say on Yom Kippur about things that we’ve done. We haven’t honored our parents, we haven’t spoken the truth. But in terms of what we discussed today,

Geoffrey Stern [27:52 – 28:23]: Al Cheit shechatanu lefanecha bezadon u be’ shgaga for those things that we did intentionally and unintentionally. And I think both of them can be flipped.

There are also mitzvot that we need to do that are based on the unintentionality of the moment and the opportunities that arise from there. I think it’s a wonderful way to look at the season that we’re in, Elul, and to open it up so that it’s not simply putting a round peg into a round hole.

Geoffrey Stern [28:23 – 28:26]: A round peg into a round hole.

Adam Mintz [28:26 – 28:44]: I think it’s fantastic. And, of course, the idea of sinning unintentionally, of committing a crime unintentionally, that we understand the difference between murder and manslaughter and all those things, but the idea that in Judaism, the commandment, a positive commandment, can also be intentional, unintentional. That’s brilliant.

Geoffrey Stern [28:45 – 29:06]: Fantastic. Well, I hope all of you will join us if you’re in New York City. This coming Shabbat, 344 Amsterdam Ave, 76th in Amsterdam, Kehilat Rehim Ahuvim. Services start at 9:30, and we will have Madlik live at 11:15. Hope to see you all there. Shabbat Shalom.

Adam Mintz [29:06 – 29:08]: Shabbat Shalom.

As we enter the month of Elul and prepare for the High Holidays, let’s not forget that on the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur, a goat is sent into the wilderness, a ritual described by the rabbis as a shochad, a bribe to Satan. And later, Kapparot, where we offer a chicken or money to charity to offset our sins, or Tashlich, rituals that look suspiciously like cosmic payoffs. So what’s really going on here? Are these acts of devotion or bribes in disguise? And what are we to make of the fact that in Deuteronomy, there is absolutely no mention of Yom Kippur?

Join us as we imagine a different Yom Kippur. 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 Parasha is Shoftim. We admire the biblical abhorrence of bribery in administering justice and against favoritism in interpersonal relationships. But sacrifice and worship found throughout Leviticus and Numbers, and so prevalent in our religion, can be taken as attempts to influence and curry favor, even gain advantage with God. How do we square this circle?

Rabbi, Rosh Chodesh Tov. We are recording on Chodesh Elul. And of course, when Elul begins, we start thinking about the High Holidays. We start thinking about those kinds of thoughts that one does during the High Holidays. And I just did a search quickly as I was finishing up my preparation, and is Yom Kippur mentioned in Devarim? And I had never realized that it’s not.

Adam Mintz [2:28 – 2:29]: That is fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [2:29 – 2:31]: Okay, a big surprise.

Adam Mintz [2:32 – 2:38]: And the other holidays are mentioned, so it makes you wonder, in other words.

Geoffrey Stern [2:38 – 2:41]: The Regalim, the right, correct.

Adam Mintz [2:41 – 2:47]: Rosh Hashanah is not mentioned, but the Regalim in last week’s Parasha and Re’eh, the Regalim are mentioned.

Geoffrey Stern [2:47 – 4:23]: Pilgrimage festivals are mentioned, but not the High Holidays. So anyway, let’s start. We’re gonna launch talking about what Deuteronomy says about Shochad, about a bribe. And then hopefully, in a natural manner, we’ll segue into the bigger picture of Elul and Yom Kippur. So in Deuteronomy 16:18, it says, you shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes in all the settlements that your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. You shall not judge unfairly. You shall show no partiality. You shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just.

Justice, shall you pursue; Tzedek Tirdof, famous phrase, that you may thrive and occupy the land God is giving you. So really, I do believe that equanimity and justice are mentioned throughout the Bible. But clearly, it is that bumper sticker line of Tzedek that you have in Deuteronomy. And this is a very forceful statement about trying to elicit favor no matter what you do. When you give something of material benefit to the person whom you are supplicating, maybe even to a friend whom you are trying to befriend, there’s no question it blinds the eyes and it upsets the scales. And that’s a pretty forceful statement.

Adam Mintz [4:24 – 4:39]: Very forceful. I mean, it’s interesting because it has a visual to it, right? It blinds the eyes. That’s an interesting way to say it. You could just say, don’t take a bribe because you’re not gonna give proper justice. But it says it blinds your eyes.

Geoffrey Stern [4:40 – 5:35]: Absolutely. And so I looked up in Sefaria, you can also do word searches, and I just looked up the meaning of shochad. And no big surprises here. It’s usually used to pervert justice. It’s used in that manner in a whole bunch of verses. It talks about the abode, a place of bribe givers. It talks about bribing kings to take sides. But then something struck my eye. It brings another word. Kofer is hush money or legal compensation. And it uses a verse in Mishlei, in Proverbs. And the verse in Proverbs kind of uses this kofer and shochad as synonyms as many times you find in especially the Nevi’im.

Adam Mintz [5:35 – 5:35]: Mm.

Geoffrey Stern [5:35 – 6:20]: And it says in Proverbs 6:35, he will not have regard for any ransom. Lo yisa penei kol kofer. He will refuse your bribe, however great. Lo yehavet ki tavet shochad. So shochad is bribe, but kofer. And in that, of course, is the word for Yom Kippur. Ultimately, what is ransom? Ransom is redemption money. When I want to redeem a slave, when I want to redeem a hostage, I give ransom. And that is literally the same source as the redemption from sin that we are looking for on Yom Kippur.

Adam Mintz [6:20 – 6:28]: And of course, redemption from sin has its own word. That word is atonement. And so that’s what atonement means, redemption from sin.

Geoffrey Stern [6:28 – 7:48]: But it started me thinking, Rabbi, that so many of our rites involve doing something to gain that redemption. And that’s kind of, as I said in the intro, the focus of our discussion. The Rashi on this verse in Proverbs says he will not have regard for any money to expiate for his denial of him, meaning God and his cleaving to idolatry. And our rabbis expounded in the Tosefta, they will not despise a thief. This is one who steals from his friend and goes to the study hall and engages in Torah. The example that he gives of a ransom money that blinds you to the negativity of a situation. They use literally for that kind of quintessential hypocrisy of the person who steals from a friend and then goes into the study hall or the synagogue and feels that somehow the religion will expiate him from his crimes. It was amazing to me that they bring this Tosefta. But we are already in the thick of things because now we’re talking about using this type of ransom strategy, this type of bribery strategy to get oneself out of spiritual trouble.

Adam Mintz [7:49 – 8:05]: Right? I mean, so. Right. I mean, I guess that’s not surprising. The idea of bribery, the idea of redemption, the idea of atonement, it’s both monetary and it’s spiritual. And the question is what the connection is between all of them. Fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [8:05 – 8:35]: Absolutely, absolutely. So we’re on the trail, we have the scent. So the famous Ramban that I bring is a discussion of the quintessential moment of Yom Kippur, when the so-called scapegoat, the Seir LaAzazel, is basically, there are two goats that are presented at the door to the tabernacle, and one goat is to God and the other goat gets sent away to Azazel. And if there is a sense in our religion of this expiation of giving a gift to the Satan, so to speak, it would be here. But this actually enters into the discussion of the rabbis.

Geoffrey Stern [8:35 – 9:06]: So in Ramban on Leviticus 16:8, Ramban quotes Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra. So what Ibn Ezra talks about and what the focus is on is that when it comes to giving the goat for God, it says “To Hashem,” to the name of God, and the other one is to Azazel. And it smacks, Rabbi, it smacks of some sort of engagement in idolatry, in or bribing the powers that be. And Ramban says that Ibn Ezra kind of conceals the manner, and he’s gonna play the role of the talebearer who revealed his secret. One of these use of language of the rabbis that always makes you smile. And it goes on.

He says that in the chapters of the Great Rabbi, Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, the reason why they give Samael, that’s the saw conciliatory gift, which is translated as a Shochad LeSatan, a bribe to the Satan on the Day of Atonement, was that so he would not annul the effect of their offerings, as it is said. So the

Geoffrey Stern [10:08 – 10:39]: idea is the Jews would be engaged, the Israelites would be engaged in all of the rituals of Yom Kippur, and they wanted to keep the Satan. There are situations where we distract the Satan. I think once we discussed this, and you reminded us that all the days of Elul, one blows the shofar, but on the day before Yom Kippur, one doesn’t blow the shofar to trick the Satan. To trick the Satan. Here we’re actually giving a bribe to the Satan to

Geoffrey Stern [10:39 – 11:10]: keep him from getting involved with all the pure efforts that the Jewish people are bringing. Ramban continues. Onkelos rendered the expression “one lot for the Eternal and one lot for Azazel” as “one lot for the name of the Eternal and one lot for Azazel.” Thus, he did not translate one lot for the name of Azazel, because this was for the name of the Eternal and not for him. Rabbi. All of the classical commentaries are

Geoffrey Stern [11:10 – 11:41]: trying to distance the bribe that is given to Satan from the bribe that is given to God. But it is clear that it’s, in a sense, the same thing. And I’m focusing this year not so much on the bribe to Satan, which obviously is very remarkable, but on the fact that even when we give sacrifices, supplications, prayers to God, you could take it to say as though we’re trying to bribe God. We’re trying to elicit and nurture favor. We’re

Geoffrey Stern [11:41 – 11:46]: saying, God, have mercy on your people. It is kind of striking, is it not?

Adam Mintz [11:46 – 11:48]: Very, very striking. This is a great Ramban.

Geoffrey Stern [11:49 – 13:12]: So it goes on and says Ramban is very sensitive to the fact that this is a sensitive issue. And it says, for this reason, says the Ramban, that our rabbis have interpreted “and my statutes” (you shall keep) chukim, are always those statutes, like shatnez, like the parah adumah, the red heifer, that the non-Jews question us about. These are matters against which the evil inclination raises accusations and the idolaters likewise bring charges. Now, these idolaters have not accused us in connection with the offerings. So they haven’t said anything about our standard services that we do in the Beit Hamikdash. For these are the fire offerings unto the Eternal. But they accuse us in connection with the goat that is sent away to Azazel because they think that we act as they do. Wow. So what the rabbis are very sensitive about is, is what we do on an everyday basis the same at the end of the day, Rabbi, as what the pagans are doing? Only we try to find favor with the only God of the universe, and the pagans are doing it to the local tributaries and gods. But this act as they do kind of puts the hammer on the head of the nail.

Adam Mintz [13:13 – 13:25]: Yes. I mean, that’s a great Ramban insight, right. Act as they do. I mean, you see that around, but it’s interesting that he uses this in this context. Good, let’s look at this. The same word. Here we go again.

Geoffrey Stern [13:25 – 14:38]: Right. So I just. I’m going out of my way to say that in the rest of the four books of Moses, but particularly in the book of Leviticus, the priestly code, and in Numbers, Yom Kippur is a biggie. And the basis of our service on Yom Kippur that we will have in 40 odd days is “ki bayom haze yechaper aleichem letaher etchem,” that the day itself will be an atonement and will purify you. Using the language that we are using today in terms of bribery and ransom, it says that this day will be your bribe, this day will be your ransom to purify you from all the sins that you have committed pure before God. So however we take this, and even if we say no, the Ramban is absolutely correct, it might look as though the Seir LaAzazel is identical to the Seir LaShem to God. Ultimately, the outcome is the same. You want to redeem, you want to get a new bill of health, you want to get a clean slate.

Adam Mintz [14:39 – 15:03]: Right? Yeah. I mean, it is noteworthy that the Torah calls the day Yom Kippur. There are a lot of different pieces to Yom Kippur. It’s a fast day, you know, and there are a lot of things you could highlight, but they choose to call the day Yom Kippur, “ki bayom haze yechaper aleichem” that this whole idea actually becomes the central idea of Yom Kippur.

Geoffrey Stern [15:04 – 17:41]: And I would say, if I wanted to be cynical, I would say that the whole day we’re not eating, we’re just praying, we’re acting like angels as our offering. On the other hand, I would say, no, no, no. We’re saying to God, we’re not bribing you. We’re showing you what we’re capable of. We’re showing you our potential. We’re showing you where our core is. So I think the verdict is still out. But it is fascinating that in Deuteronomy there is no mention of Yom Kippur. So let’s go to TheTorah.com, and we’re going to listen to a scholar named Rabbi David Frankel in TheTorah.com for his take on that. And he says the book of Deuteronomy makes no reference at all to the 10th of Tishrei or the various rites associated with that day. From a theological perspective, this silence accords well with Deuteronomy’s overall orientation. Priestly ritual matters are often de-emphasized or given a more abstract or concept significance. In this book, Deuteronomy calls upon Israel to make a spiritual effort to purify the heart. And obedience and loyalty are not beyond reach but are very close to one’s heart. All a person needs is to educate diligently and to place the law upon your heart and spirit. And if Israel goes into exile due to sin, they will find their God anew when they seek God out and return in sincerity. So, and he quotes a bunch, he’s just not throwing out verbiage here. Clearly, in Deuteronomy this is more of an internal day and less a day based on ritual sacrifices and all of the things that we might mistakenly take our eye off the ball and say, that’s the quote. I think it’s a wonderful elul message for those of us who are looking for a track to follow. He goes on, in short, according to Deuteronomy, though the temptation to sin is real, Israel’s ability to be loyal or to successfully repent and wholeheartedly return is sufficiently strong to make priestly rituals of atonement of secondary importance at best. Actually, the lack of emphasis on priestly rituals focusing on the sanctuary may well reflect a sense of their spiritual danger. If the priest can guarantee divine absolution of sins on a regular basis, then a feeling of complacency is likely to set in and no true improvement will come about.

Adam Mintz [17:42 – 17:47]: That’s pretty revolutionary. If you said that in yeshiva, they wouldn’t like that.

Geoffrey Stern [17:47 – 19:46]: Lastly, and I have to say that this article is not on our parasha. This article is found in Leviticus, where the mention of Yom Kippur is. And it makes a survey of how Yom Kippur changed throughout the different books. And so, based on our discussion, it does become fascinating because it does talk about the challenges of the ritualistic Yom Kippur, which is depending on the atonement offered by the priests. It weakens the urgency of improvement and repentance. He says. So I just thought that that was wonderful. And again, it was almost an afterthought that I did a quick Google search because it occurred to me, is actually Yom Kippur mentioned in Deuteronomy. So there is. If you Google the ransom theory of atonement, you will come up with a theory in Christian theology as to how the process of atonement in Christianity had happened. It therefore accounted for the meaning and effect of the death of Jesus. It was one of a number of historical theories and was mostly popular between the 4th and 11th century.

Speaker A: That’s a pretty big time with little support in recent days. It originated in the early church, particularly in the work of Origen. The theory teaches that the death of Jesus was a ransom sacrifice, usually said to have been paid to Satan in satisfaction for the bondage and depth of the souls of humanity as a result of inherited sin. I think looking at this ransom theory of atonement, number one, it’s a thing, you know, when you get sick, I always say to my friend, is there a name for what you have? Once you have a name, at least you can understand. People have discussed it. But there’s no question that what Ramban is talking about, Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, is talking about this concept of a shochatl. The Satan was not unique. It was a concept, it was a thing.

Adam Mintz [19:46 – 20:30]: Well, say it even better here. You quoted from Wikipedia and of course it’s right. But what he says is particularly in the works of Origen. But where did he get it from? This is a Jewish concept. I mean, Ramban is much later than Jesus. But Ramban is telling you this is a Jewish concept. They didn’t make this up. And what’s interesting, it says that it was very popular between the 4th and the 11th century. Now, Ramban lives in the 13th century, but, you know, obviously he’s aware of this. It may not have been popular in Christianity, he was aware of this. And I wonder, when Ramban talks about this, whether he knows that this is the way they explain Jesus’s death. And he’s saying, you know what? We had it first.

Geoffrey Stern [20:31 – 22:15]: I think to go even one step further. And of course, what you say is amazingly true. It also could help explain why it was then repressed within Judaism. Once the Christians took it over and they offered Jesus as that ransom, atonement, sacrifice, you can imagine, we would run for the hills and we would say none of that in our religion.

In a sense, Ramban is saying that he identifies it, and he says, listen, if you read the whole Ramban, he says, look, ultimately what we’re doing here is very strange, but God commands us to do it. So God asks us to go through the motions. Who are we to question? But I think you’re absolutely right. It’s not as though we are making this up. You definitely could look at the whole world of both sacrifices and the whole world of priests, of clergy, of the clerics officiating at absolution of sin and say, that’s ultimately what we do on Yom Kippur.

But I think, and we’re going to end with this, is the Deuteronomic approach gives us a different pathway. And it’s important to know the two pathways to know what you take. And I also think it’s worth noting, Rabbi, that there’s something very human about this. I mean, let’s. We’re all as sophisticated as we’d like to be. Rabbi. We all feel we do something wrong to somebody, we want to make it better. We somehow feel that we can get on their good side. It’s very natural.

So let’s look at the other. More other rituals that we do on Yom Kippur that relate to the Seir La’Azazel, the kapparot. I don’t know whether our listeners have ever seen this, but especially the Hasidim, they take a pigeon and. And before. Is it before Rosh Hashanah or before Yom Kippur?

Adam Mintz [22:15 – 22:18]: Before Yom Kippur. Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, they.

Geoffrey Stern [22:18 – 23:51]: Do it and they shake it over the heads of every one of their family members. Some people substitute money for the chicken. And basically what they’re doing is then. And then they kill the chicken and they give it away to charity. You know, every time we get an aliyah, when we get a Mishebeirach in synagogue, Rabbi, if you look at the fine print, it always says, and Geoffrey Shlomo Ben Yehuda Leibel give such and such for tzedakah. There is that strong aspect here.

The Ashkenazi tradition, this is a practice with either money is waved over a person’s head to try and transfer the sins of the person and then donate it to charity, or else a chicken is waved over the head, transfer is paid of a person’s sins and donated to the hungry. It is important to clarify that this is not a sacrifice, as it is not even an offering. It can be eaten just as any other chicken. So again, we’re walking a fine line here. But I would like to say if we did have a modern-day ritual that survived or was initiated similar to Seir La’Azazel, this comes pretty close.

He does talk about how the later rabbis discussed it. It’s not mentioned in the Torah, the Talmud. The first reference, according to this scholar, appears in the 9th century in a responsa, a kind of question and answer. The scholar is Amram Ben Sheshnut, the head of a revered Babylonian. He wrote the first siddur. Interesting. I always thought it was Hai Gaon.

Adam Mintz [23:52 – 23:54]: No, Amram Gaon is the first siddur.

Geoffrey Stern [23:55 – 23:56]: Okay, okay.

Adam Mintz [23:56 – 24:03]: And what’s interesting is that his siddur is very similar to our siddur. In a thousand years, the siddur hasn’t changed much. That’s cool.

Geoffrey Stern [24:03 – 24:33]: So Amram, okay, so this is Amram Gaon. And he says, we don’t know where this comes from. But it did go back that far, to the 9th century. Historians believe it probably began several centuries before Sheshna’s commentary became a widespread concept, widespread tradition, requiring the rabbis divine to provide ex post facto explanation. Sheshna said it derived from practice in the ancient temple where a goat bearing the sins of the people was sent into the wilderness to die.

But after the destruction of the temple, Jews were prohibited from carrying out this practice. Interesting. You know, you read the newspaper. I read an article in the New York Times and it was talking about all the bribery going on in, not only with Mayor Adams, everybody working about him. And the complaint, it said, is in Tammany Hall. In the old days, there were real bribes. Here we’re talking about upgrades on airlines. We’re talking about putting $100 into a red envelope.

The article in the New York Times complained about the pettiness of this bribing. And I couldn’t take out of my mind this concept of pettiness. And that’s ultimately, at the end of the day, what we’re discussing today. We’re saying that go forbid anything in Elul or Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah should become petty in terms of thinking that somehow you can go through the motions and check a box and by doing so, abracadabra, you have gotten your redemption.

We’re not talking about major bribes here, but it is this kind of, I would say, mentality. It’s a mentality that they have in Israel. It’s called proteksia. You don’t do anything unless you think that you have an in, as if you have. What they call vitamin P is proteksia in Hebrew. That’s a true thing. It’s well-known in Israel. It’s often referred to as vitamin P. It describes the use of connections to get things done efficiently by leveraging military or political ties. This, this really idea of cutting the corners and using religion in this trivial petty way, I think is what we need to be concerned about.

It’s not the rituals. The rituals can be in different manners. I think the best example of a ritual that can be taken in different manners is Tashlich. On the one hand, you could definitely put Tashlich into the same category as kapparot and Seir La’Azazel, that somehow we’re taking our sins and we’re throwing them out. But the big difference is there’s no recipient here. We’re not giving tzedakah we’re just focusing on the releasing part of it.

And there’s a beautiful article that I quote that talks about it in terms of cathartic therapy, this idea of releasing, of going over one’s past and then letting go of it.

And I think that the Tashlich ceremony, more than anything else, provides us with a bridge between a Leviticus Yom Kippur and a Deuteronomy Yom Kippur. In the Deuteronomy Yom Kippur, it’s all about the heart. It’s about cleansing the heart. Yes, there is this part of it that we need to let go, and we need to cast away.

Geoffrey Stern [27:38 – 28:10]: But I don’t think we need to do it from the perspective of gaining an advantage or gaming the cosmic system. I just think that it’s so fascinating that it’s missing from a Deuteronomy. It is so fascinating that the same words are used for bribe and ransom, “Sochad” and “Kapur,” as are used for this sense of redemption, redeeming oneself and enabling oneself to move on; that it gives us wonderful tools to use in the weeks ahead.

Adam Mintz [28:21 – 28:30]: A great topic and perfect for Elul. Chodesh tov to everybody. Shabbat shalom. And we can’t wait to continue this next week with all of you.

Geoffrey Stern [28:30 – 28:33]: Shabbat shalom. See you all next week.

And then something odd happens. By narrowing the ritual, it widens the reach. God is no longer a resident deity with a mailing address. Holiness migrates from cultic temples into kitchens and markets and fields. It’s the religious equivalent of moving from hardware to software. The sacred isn’t where you go; it’s what you do and everywhere.

So begins the challenge. In a world built on colonizing and blending, Deuteronomy proposes a third path, a covenant that refuses both and, in doing so, invents transcendence. 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.

We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Parasha is Re’eh. The Deuteronomist approach to Israelite religion is radical. It restricts the temple cult to a single location and forbids the importation of local practices. It creates a way of life and belief system that is borderless with a God who is not local. It creates something that transcends the local cult and raises the question, now what?

So, Rabbi, I gotta say, I had always been aware of what happens in this week’s Parsha, which is the centralization of the tabernacle. It comes at a period where it either already exists, with many different tabernacles around the country, or it envisions that. But in any way, everything is brought to the centrality of Jerusalem. And in a sense, that’s a contraction.

But what I had never combined that with is on the one hand contracting our religion and on the other hand saying, you can’t import anything from outside, which creates kind of a vacuum. It’s kind of fascinating. It’s like nothing from inside, no growth. Instead, we reverse trends of expansion, and we can’t import from anything from outside. And that’s the premise of my kind of exploration, our exploration today. Had you ever thought in those terms?

Adam Mintz [2:53 – 3:32]: It’s a great topic. No, the answer is, I never thought in those terms, but obviously, that’s the issue. You say, what are the issues of the book of Deuteronomy? And that is one of the issues, the idea of centralized worship and how we feel about centralized worship. Now, the truth of the matter is, Geoffrey, we don’t have centralized worship today.

We have synagogues in Westport. I don’t think there’s a synagogue in Newtown, but there are plenty of synagogues in the area here; every community has their own synagogue. We don’t have centralized worship, even though the Torah basically tells you that you’re going to get in trouble unless you have centralized worship. So isn’t that interesting, just the way that’s evolved over the centuries?

Geoffrey Stern [3:32 – 4:29]: We went into a diversified virtual model, if you will, where even every home—forget about synagogues—every home was considered a mikdash m’at, a small tabernacle. So we went into a distributed model. But here’s where it gets interesting. In Deuteronomy 12:30, it says, “Beware of being lured into their ways after they have been wiped out. Before you do not inquire about their gods, saying, how did these nations worship their gods? I will follow those practices.”

What struck me between the eyes, Rabbi, is it would be one thing if you kind of reached a rapprochement, the kind of deal we hope that Russia and Ukraine have. But here it says after you’ve destroyed, wiped them out, before you don’t go after them. I mean, that would be—isn’t that kind of crazy? After you’ve broken their model, don’t follow their model.

Adam Mintz [4:29 – 4:43]: Right, right. That is crazy. And I think that’s an interesting question generally about how we, what we do with their model. Do we wipe it out, or do we actually ultimately follow it just with our God?

Geoffrey Stern [4:43 – 7:21]: So most of the classic commentaries come in and they say as follows: You have destroyed their gods. Now don’t pick up the ways they gave honor to their gods and import it into Judaism. And I guess sometimes I’m kind of guilty of that. I look around at other religions; I see how maybe they use body movements, and I say, why don’t we do that in Judaism? So it’s not looking at their gods.

Most of the classical commentaries kind of answer this blatant question of why would you ever want to import practices of a culture that you’ve just destroyed? But the answer is, no, no, no. You might look around and you say, we’ve destroyed Canaanites and their gods are no longer potent. But we want to import some of the wonderful ways that they worshiped.

I think another approach could be, you know, maybe we didn’t actually destroy them the way we said. You know, sometimes you declare victory, and the Canaanites are still there. That would be another approach—that actually they look down the street, and they did see a Canaanite temple still standing. And they go, I like the way they’re shaking those palms or they’re bowing or they’re prostrating.

But I think, nonetheless, I was surprised that the standard classical commentaries were not struck the way I was with the most basic question: Why, for heaven’s sake, would you want to copy a culture, a tradition, a military that you’ve just destroyed? In the Sifrei, it says, lest you are drawn after them, or lest you emulate them, or lest you do as they do and they become a stumbling block before you.

So the next focus is in our verse. It uses an interesting verb. It says, “pen tinakesh,” I think, is related to the serpent a little bit. I mean, it’s this kind of primal attraction. Don’t be attracted to them. And the Sifrei uses two words: It says, “tis’mach achereihem,” kind of like be drawn to them, “suma tid’ma lehem.” Maybe you’re gonna want to copy, to emulate.

So it’s talking about, again, I think it’s aware of my issue, which is why, for heaven’s sake, would you ever want to copy somebody you destroyed? But it does have a little bit of acculturation. You might have destroyed Rome or you might have destroyed Greece, but you look around and you go, I like those frescoes, right?

Adam Mintz [7:21 – 7:40]: Now, of course, the Talmud says that in those days, there was a tremendous Yetzar Hara. There was a tremendous evil inclination to want to worship idols. The Talmud says that that doesn’t exist anymore. But that was very much a part of the issue, was the fact that people were drawn to worship idols.

Geoffrey Stern [7:40 – 9:27]: You know, and the Sifrei goes on, and it says, even without getting to the magic that you imply from the Talmud, which is as, guess what? You guys don’t understand this, but in the day, Avodah Zarah was something that attracted people like nothing else. The Sifrei goes and says, lest you inquire about their gods, saying, since they go out in a toga, I will go out in a toga. Since they go out in purple, I will go out in purple too.

I think, Rabbi, what the Sifrei interprets this to mean is, sure, you did destroy them, but you might look at them. There might be this natural inquisitiveness. But I think it also starts you thinking in terms of what happens, the mentality of what happens if you’re kidnapped, the Stockholm syndrome. There is this relationship always between the victor and the vanquished, and I think that plays out here.

So my question, I still believe, is very strong, but nonetheless, there are other things going on here that the traditional sources kind of understand. And, of course, there’s always this thing of taking trophies. You know, you want to constantly remind yourself that we’ve stolen their trophy. We’ve stolen this column that you see here in our temple. We took that from their temple. So there’s a little bit of triumphalism too. There are a lot of things going on here. But I think the question still becomes a little bit of, it’s kind of the cart in front of the horse. It would make a lot more sense before you vanquish them, to say, don’t copy them after. It raises as many questions as it answers, right?

Adam Mintz [9:27 – 9:42]: There’s no question. That’s true. That’s such an interesting word, Tina‘keh, right in the way that Midrash. Because Tina‘keh is a… it’s not a familiar word. What it means is you want to, you know, replicate them; you want to imitate them. Such an interesting idea. Very good.

Geoffrey Stern [9:42 – 12:38]: And the Ibn Ezra again, along with the lines of myself, many times with comparative religion, he says, look, you will want to do likewise in the service of the Lord. They did these rituals, these beautiful dramatic moments to their gods. You destroyed their gods. But maybe you will want to take some of the best. It’s like you and I talk about when we go to Europe, and we go into churches, and we see the beauty of the music, we see the beauty of the imagery, and we cannot not be inspired.

So, again, that’s what I feel they are coming with here and they’re saying, you still can’t do it. There’s another commentary, the Reggio, on the Torah. He says, after they have been wiped out, and when you see the judgment that has been pronounced upon them, you will know without a doubt that their gods are false and their faith is false, and therefore they were destroyed. So he really does acknowledge my question. Therefore, I do not warn you not to worship their God, for I have warned about this elsewhere. But perhaps you will think their way of worship is correct. So, that seems to be the consensus in the classical commentaries.

The Abarbanel quotes Maimonides from the Guide for the Perplexed. And what he talks about is more of this issue of adding to the commandments: when God, may He be blessed, cut off those nations from before you in the name of idolatry, will be forgotten from earth. Do not think in your heart that God, may He be blessed, cut off the worshipers of other gods, not account of the worship being evil. And so what he continues to say, and this kind of fits into Maimonides’ whole approach to ritual, which is less is more. He’s saying, don’t add to the rituals that you have. We already built the temple with sacrifices, because that’s kind of what you were used to.

Therefore, he ends beautifully where he says, everything that I’m commanding you, be careful to fulfill it, do not add to it, do not take away from it. Meaning to say, it is enough with you what the Torah commanded; you should take care to do all the commandments that I commanded you, and you should not add to them. For anyone who adds is taking away. That’s just a beautiful variation on less is more. But again, now already it starts to complement the other trend in our parsha, which is contracting Judaism. So the idea is if less is more if anyone who adds is taking away, that’s another reason not to start importing more rituals. We are trying to contract the cult, so to speak, not to expand upon it.

Adam Mintz [12:38 – 13:15]: So, and it’s very important to say here that they’re about to enter the land. So in terms of territory, they’re expanding. So the reason they want to contract Judaism is because they’re afraid that people are spreading out and they’re going to lose the Judaism unless they contract it. That, of course, Geoffrey, is the story from the end of the Book of Numbers where the tribe of Reuben and Gad want to go on the east side of the Jordan and Moses is against it. Because when you expand, when you broaden or expand the territory, there’s a huge risk that you’re going to lose everything.

Geoffrey Stern [13:16 – 13:47]: There’s definitely, as everything else in Deuteronomy, it’s all about coming into the land. And now I want to provide another example that I found in a book called Created Equal by Joshua Berman. And he says also when it comes to appointing kings, in Deuteronomy 17, it says, if after you have entered the land that your God has assigned to you and taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, I will set a king…

Geoffrey Stern [13:47 – 14:17]: …over me, as do all the other nations; you shall be free. And we all know that there’s a bias against taking kings. But what this author says is, this is fascinating. The highly ritualized prelude to battle is performed with no mention of the king. Notice what it said, Rabbi. It says, after you’ve conquered the land, if you want to appoint a king again, it’s the same type of question that I about if you were going to copy the non…

Geoffrey Stern [14:17 – 14:47]: …Jews, you would do it before you destroy them. So he says none of these depictions before the war mentions the king. Most striking, however, is the section that addresses the appointment of the king and the occasion at which such an appointment will be made when you arrive in the land. He makes the same point that I made. A king may be requested only after the conquest has been completed. And so, Rabbi, what I’m trying to see is a trend that I…

Geoffrey Stern [14:47 – 15:18]: …started by contrasting on the one hand, contracting the temple rites to just one place, and on the other hand, not filling that void with rituals, idol worship. And here the monarchy that surrounded you, it really becomes a fascinating tipping point in the Israelite experiment, so to speak. You have a movement, you come into the land and all of a sudden I say, not something that’s…

Geoffrey Stern [15:18 – 15:48]: …obvious, contract our cult. And then I say something that’s also not obvious, and don’t fill it with institutions, whether the monarchy, whether the priesthood, whether the idolatrous practices of the non-Jews. So that’s why I said, what now? What happens now? We’ve kind of. There was that movie that we referred to in the past called Filling the Void. You are really making a void here. It becomes seems very radical. What this particular author, Joshua Berman…

Geoffrey Stern [15:48 – 16:19]: …suggests is in biblical scholarship, the amalgamation of the tribes into a federated whole is usually addressed with reference to the formation of the monarchy. On Saul, he says what they were doing even in Deuteronomy was that each citizen is called to recognize a socio-religious identity that transcends kinship, underlies the laws of Deuteronomy. What he’s saying is the radical nature of what we are watching right now is where the local cult, where a…

Geoffrey Stern [16:19 – 16:41]: …God who was localized, where religion and institutions like the monarchy were replaced by something so radical you can’t even put your finger on it. It was this confederation of tribes, all held together by both belief in God and Mitzvot, commandments, things that you do one with the other. Fascinating.

Adam Mintz [16:41 – 16:45]: Absolutely fascinating. He’s a great scholar, Josh Berman. So that’s great.

Geoffrey Stern [16:45 – 18:50]: Okay, so getting back to what you were saying before about what happens when they come into the land in the beginning of our Parasha, it says, these are the laws and the commandments that you shall observe Ba’ Aretz in the land that God of your ancestors is giving you to possess as long as you live on the land of call. Hayyamim, Asheratem, Chayim, al ha Adama. It doesn’t say al Haaretz. And what the rabbis, some rabbis, try to learn from here is that…

And the one in particular that I’m going to quote is that the Bechor Shor says, whether in the land or abroad, according to what I said above, in the land which the Lord gave you to possess. I could think that he would not practice except in therefore we learn all the days that you live. What he is saying, Rabbi, is part of the revolution that I described before, which is that in the old days, every god was a local god, every cult was a local cult. So you could understand the Israelites coming in and actually saying, what are the indigenous traditions here? We’re now part of Canaan. Let’s see what their traditions are.

And what this pasuk in the hands of the Bechor Shor is saying is that you might think that the whole religion of the Israelites was only to be practiced in the land of Israel. Like other religions. If you’re a Babylonian, you worship the Babylonian gods in Babylon, when you go somewhere else, as the New Testament said, do unto Caesar as Caesar, you know, you change your rules because Zeus becomes called by a different name. So what he is saying is that there is a revolution here. That what, what is coming in to fill that void transcends the boundaries of the land itself.

Adam Mintz [18:50 – 19:41]: By the way, that’s not so clear. Ramban Nachmanides, another one of the medieval biblical commentators, here in the book of Devarim in several places says that actually the law outside the land is just practice because the law, it’s only in the land that the law reaches its fulfillment. But what you’re pointing out for Bechor Shor, is that that itself is a tension. And that’s also part of this contracting versus expansion. How do we look at it? Once they move into the land, what’s the role of diaspora? And it’s funny. It’s funny or it’s not so funny that today we still argue about the same thing. What role did Diaspora Jews have? Are they allowed an opinion on what’s going on in Israel? Right. It’s not all that far from what we discussed here in Deuteronomy.

Geoffrey Stern [19:41 – 20:12]: Yeah, I love it that, that Ramban quotes. I think it’s the Sifre who says that the mitzvot are tziunim. They’re just signs outside. You watch it, it’s just brilliant. But I think what they’re saying is whether the laws are only actually practiced in the land, they nonetheless transcend the land. This is not a God of just the land of Israel. No one, even those most radical ones who would say that practicing the laws outside

Geoffrey Stern [20:12 – 20:42]: of Israel were literally practiced, would not say, and it was because God didn’t serve. God didn’t rule outside of the land of Israel. There is no question that there is. The third leg that we’re standing on after we say, contract the Judaism into the cult into one place, don’t emulate and copy the non-Jews. That which kind of begins to fill the void is that this is a God of this land,

Geoffrey Stern [20:42 – 21:13]: but he is the God of adama, of everywhere. And I think that becomes fascinating. And so what I’d like to do as we finish up is talk about how biblical scholars had looked at this move. And there’s a wonderful article that I quote from thetorah.com, and it talks about Moshe Weinfeld and others, these early biblical scholars at the Hebrew University, and what they saw, Rabbi, when they looked at this

Geoffrey Stern [21:13 – 21:44]: contraction of the cult to only one place and not taking the new cults and the new traditions and rituals of the pagans around you was secularization. That’s what secularization is. You put God into a box in Jerusalem and you say, and don’t fill it with anything else. And what they do is to his credit, now that the central cult is not the focus of the book’s religious program, meaning my Deuteronomy, which

Geoffrey Stern [21:44 – 22:15]: is rather observance of the divine commandments. So what he does say in line with rabbinic tradition is you fill the void not with other things, pagan things, but with mitzvot. And we become then a people of the law, that the law guides everything. And I think that’s kind of fascinating. There are others. And he quotes a German Catholic theologian named Norbert Lohfink, who says it’s not secularization,

Geoffrey Stern [22:15 – 22:42]: it’s sacralization. In other words, what used to be in the temple, only that holiness is now b’tochem, is now everywhere, amongst every person, in every town, in every village. And I love the fact that it could be either secularization or sacralization. They both work the same way. It’s just fascinating how he could go either way here.

Adam Mintz [22:43 – 22:48]: Fantastic. That is a great phrase, sacralization. Okay, let’s hear it for Professor Lohfink.

Geoffrey Stern [22:49 – 23:23]: So what he says is again, if you look at the book of Deuteronomy, all of a sudden the Levites, not only the temple cult, but also the Levites are kind of minimized. They are now put. We all think of the famous statement that you make when you bring the bikurim and you say, and this shall go for the priests and for the strangers. All of a sudden the priests start to look a lot more like Tibetan monks who go around begging for leftovers.

Adam Mintz [23:23 – 23:36]: Which is much more the reality than the description of the Levites in the earlier books of the Torah. That’s also important. Deuteronomy tends to be more realistic because for the first time they’re actually living the law.

Geoffrey Stern [23:37 – 24:48]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again there it’s really the tipping point here is you have this kind of movement form coming in a crucible. 40 years, everything is controlled, it’s a petri dish. And now they come into the land of Israel and all of a sudden they have all these new moving parts. And what the argument is about the sacralization of everyday life is by emphasizing law over cult, average Israelites find themselves governed by the commandments in their day-to-day existence. Instead of just the temple being sacred and only the Levite priest serving God, the entire God-given land becomes sacred and all of Israel serves God. This process of sacralization and laicization, that’s a nice word. The laity becomes now the pashat, the simple Jew. Highlight two important aspects of Deuteronomic thought. The push forward the individual Israelites enhanced status at the expense of the priests. God’s covenant is with the nation as a whole, not only with its leaders. And then Israeli scholar Joshua.

Adam Mintz [24:48 – 24:50]: And then they go back to Josh Berman. Yeah.

Geoffrey Stern [24:50 – 26:37]: Yes. Who I quoted before, has shown this convincingly regarding the book’s political view. But this is true as we have seen regarding religion as well. And he says second, this process highlights the significance of obedience to God and observance of commandment as opposed to ritual or cultic practices. Since according to Deuteronomy, performance of mitzvot is primary, then the sacred space in which God will be served is the Holy Land as a whole. He really combines all of these different things that are in our parasha. It talks about the Holy Land, the whole land. It really becomes very fascinating. And I think it really focuses a little bit up into the present. You know, we are living now at a time where everything is falling apart, everything is falling down, institutions are being kind of destroyed and there’s going to be, please God, a moment after the judicial, whether it’s in Israel or in the US or some of these other guardrails are destroyed, that we are going to have to fill the void. And especially in Israel that never has had a constitution. It’s almost the moment where they come into the promised land. And I don’t think that religious leadership has served them so well. I don’t think there’s a lot of voids cross created. And they’re going to have to figure out how in every village and town, how every mitzvah or commandment between interpersonal, between each other, ourselves. We’re going to have to pick up the pieces.

And I think I was having a coffee yesterday with an academic, and I said, “What is your specialty?” He’s an anthropologist of migration. I said, “Well, that must be a hot button.”

Adam Mintz [26:37 – 26:38]: That’s pretty fancy.

Geoffrey Stern [26:38 – 27:54]: Yeah, I mean, well, colonization is a subtext of migration. And what he said is, you know, when I told him about this strange kind of reflex that we discovered of conquering a people and then taking over their institutions, he goes, “Well, that’s what the Romans did to a large degree; it’s what the Greeks tried to do. There’s one place it didn’t work out—was in Palestine.”

But the point is, we are really in the mix of things. This was a migration with everything that is included in the migration. And I think what we do if we read this week’s parsha carefully is we find a new model for how migrants come to a place and try to create a new model. They’re not colonizing—that would be looking through a very flat lens. They are not necessarily mixing into what was there. But in this particular case, they’re creating a constitutional congress or a society between the tribes, whatever model you want to fit. There are enigmas that need to be addressed, and I just think that it becomes a fascinating part of the discussion that is very timely today.

Adam Mintz [27:54 – 28:04]: Amazing topic. Wowee. Okay, Shabbat Shalom, everybody. Enjoy this week’s parsha and some of these really important ideas. I will look forward to seeing you next week, everybody.

Geoffrey Stern [28:05 – 28:07]: Shabbat Shalom. See you all next week.

Adam Mintz [28:09 – 28:09]: It.