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Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and on 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 sort sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show Notes. This week we read Parashat Chayei Sara. Join us for a conversation with Professor Rabbi Wendy Zierler, a scholar dedicated to the enterprise of feminist midrash, who has recently published a book on Hebrew poetry. We’re excited to explore a feminist midrashic approach to Sarah and to get a taste of what Hebrew poetry has to teach us about our matriarchs. Wendy, thank you so much for joining us. We’re real excited.

Wendy Zierler [00:02:10]:
Such a pleasure.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:12]:
And as I said in the intro last week, we were talking about Sarah’s laugh and how God or somebody accused her. Did you laugh? And she said no. And we looked at The Torah Commentary of Women in Sefaria, and we were blown away by a totally new approach. So we’re excited to start looking at the Torah all over again through the eyes of our women who have so much to add and have been kind of behind that veil, standing by the doorway, ready to laugh, incite, and contribute. So I want to start because I kind of discovered you in a TheTorah.com article. At Madlik, we love TheTorah.com and it talks literally about our Parasha, and it asks some interesting questions. But let’s start with the parsha itself. It says, now Sarah’s life was 100 years old and 20 years and 7 years, thus years of Sarah’s life. So the interesting thing is that it talks about her death, even though the parsha itself is called Chaye Sarah (The Life of Sarah). And in your article, you says it gives us very little insight into Sarah’s internal religious life. Isn’t it kind of ironic and maybe representative of how women are represented in the Torah that we have a Parasha called Chayei Sarah and we talk about her death?

Wendy Zierler [00:03:46]:
Certainly this opening to the Parasha is a real provocation to try and tease out from whatever we do have of Sarah’s life, whatever detail we do have in the text, to find out something about her and to imagine, to fill in the gaps of her text. I will say, apropos of your teaser, where you talked about discovering Sarah’s laughter, I mean, we know that Abraham laughed and then she laughs, and she sort of gets slammed for it by God. But later, it’s as though her laugh gets approved and endorsed. She gets the last word on laughing because when Yitzchak is born, she names him and basically creates a liturgy for his birth, a celebratory liturgy. God made laughter for me. Anyone who hears will laugh along with me and then recite the poem herself. So we know that there’s a lot there to Sarah. We know there has to be more than what this kind of dismissing her off stage in Parashat Chayei Sara seems to imply. We know that there has to be more because God insists that she has to be the progenitor of the next generation. Moreover, we’ve got this loud pronouncement by God in Genesis 21. Kol asher Tomar, Elecha, Sara, shema, bekola. “Anything that Sarah says to you, listen to her”, be obedient to her. So my question is, of course, what is it about Sarah’s life that we want to emulate? Why is it that she is held out as this matriarch? And so I try to both call attention to what’s there in the biblical text, but then imagine the empty spots in different ways.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:34]:
I mean, there’s so much. Like in the Akedah last week we were kind of reading between the lines. There’s, you know, the midrash that says the Torah was written in balck ink and on white parchment. And I think the endeavor that you’re involved with, with your peers is to coax out what’s in between the lines. Sarah is the only matriarch who tells us how long she lived. Everett Fox points out. And then the next mystery that comes up is in the next verse. And Sarah died in Kiriat Abba, that is Hebron in the land of Canaan. And Abraham CAME to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Talk to us about what is the question that all the commentaries are asking here.

Wendy Zierler [00:06:22]:
Okay, so what is glaring and calls out for comment here is the idea that at the end of the Akedah in Genesis 22, Avraham is described as going to Beersheva. And then we find out later that Sarah dies in Kiryat Arba. So it seems that at her death they’re not living together. And this is something that the commentaries can’t suffer, that idea. Whereas I actually believe, and here I think that the text is telling us something very directly that the Torah is very honest to us about what the Akedah exercise, what kind of effect it has on the family. I don’t think that it’s an accident that Genesis 22 begins with under the sign of love. And it’s the first time that the verb ahavah (love) appears in the Bible, Ahavta et Yitzhak (loved Isaac), the first time we ever hear that verb. And that by the end of that parak, at the end of that chapter, love disappears out of the text. When God says, you’ve done this thing, I now know you’re a God fearer. Kilo chasachta et bin cha et Yechibcha, that you didn’t withhold your son, your only son. And it doesn’t say Asher ahafda (that you loved). And my reading, I mean, what lurks behind my torah.com article is a kind of pre existent reading that asks the question where the rabbis ask, where was Sarah and Akeidah, why is she absent? And they supply different answers. My understanding is she’s there to represent another alternative. If Avraham shows and succeeds in a test of God, awe of God, fear, then Sarah is reserved. Her absence reserves another option, which is the option of love. And that’s why theverb Ahahve (love) . The second time the verb ahavah appears is at the end of Genesis 24, where we hear that Yitzhak took Rivkah into his mother’s tent and loved her. I see the Torah being very honest about what it means that Avram was willing so utterly to. To obey God and detach from all earthly commitments. That’s why at the end of the Akedah when it says the word yachdav (together) is not used in relation to Yitzchak and Avraham, but it’s Avraham and N’arav (the youths), that’s a very loud rhyme. So my argument is that there’s a breakdown in the relationship between Avraham and Yitzhak at the end of the Akedah. There’s a breakdown in the relationship between Avraham and Sarah at the end of the Akedah. And dare I say there’s a breakdown in the relationship between Avraham and God at the end of the Akedah, because never does God speak to Avraham directly again. In fact, at the end of Genesis 22, he only speaks to him through an angel. And in order to the next thing we know is Avraham needs to get a match for his son, and he’s doing it through the agency of somebody else, not himself. There’s a lack of that. That attachment is broke down and so broken down. And so attachment has to be reconstituted elsewhere through Sarah. And so she represents that model. Her absence is actually a very loud presence in my view.

Adam Mintz [00:09:42]:
And is that why at the end of this week’s Parusha that Rivka replaces Sara, that that’s an important piece?

Wendy Zierler [00:09:50]:
Yes, that Rebecca comes. Rebecca and Sarah are identified with one another. Now, on the one hand, Rebecca continues Abraham’s model in that she’s someone who left Haran, she is a leave taker, and yet she’s right away signaled as an object of love. And so she, in my view, marks the reinsertion of Ahava (love) into the text and in fact, the possibility of family continuity. Because if you’re going to kill your son on a mountaintop, that son is not going to be available to be your successor and your descendant on the most basic level. And so what I wrote in TheTorah.com is kind of a sequel to that, or it’s the backstory. How is it that Sarah was able to exercise some agency even though she wasn’t there on that mountaintop?

Geoffrey Stern [00:10:42]:
What I want to kind of focus on is in the rabbinical commentaries that you cite Rashi, Ramban and others, it’s almost painful to watch them try to figure out why Abraham was not with Sarah. It is so beyond them to believe that Sarah could be independently living on her own, not like Hagar, that she was exiled, she didn’t go back to her father’s house, she’s an independent woman, living by herself. Rashi says, you know what, Abraham was doing chores or something, and it was on his way home, and he got caught away from home when he got that call. Ramban. It’s a very, very long. Ramban talks about also that it must be that he was just doing some errands while he was in Hebron. It seems to me that because they couldn’t imagine that Sarah was by living by herself, it affected their commentary. And I think that the most basic, I guess, trivial level, the fact that you, a woman is willing to look at it and say they were separated, opens up, first of all to throw out a lot of kind of splitting hairs and going in the wrong direction, but also enables us to focus on why they were living alone and why Isaac was not with his father either, and why he (Abraham) was by himself. But I want to focus on Sarah and not on Abraham so much. And you spoke a little bit about this concept that love was missing, and I love that as well. But then why don’t you talk about the Midrash that we now are kind of given license to write now that we say that no, they were separated, they were living alone. What then can you understand and fill in the blanks about Sarah that we now have license to imagine?

Wendy Zierler [00:12:50]:
Yeah, yeah. So look, I think that the rabbis in the Middle Ages also, they elevated the Akedah spiritual exercise in ways that I don’t think I share that same conviction. And maybe because they were living in a world of common martyrdoms. But getting to your question, I mean, once you imagine the possibility that there was a real rift or that there was a difference of opinion, different spiritual directions, instead of imagining that Sarah got wind of the Akedah and dropped dead on the spot out of the shock of it, or instead of imagining, as the Midrash and Tanchuma does, that Abraham resorts to all kinds of stratagems to deceive her. You know, he says there’s no way that she’s ever going to agree to this Akedah exercise. I better pretend that I’m taking Yitzhak out to like an Outward Bound trip, that I’m taking him, like off to Cheder or so on, because otherwise if she hears about this, she’ll kill herself. I’m imagining that she heard about this and knowing that the initial news that she would give birth, that she would have a child, happened in Elonay Mamre, which is just a few paces away from Kiriat Arba, she went back to the place of that original prophecy, that original visitation from the three angels and waited for them to come again, because she couldn’t imagine theologically that this God who had directed their lives and brought her this beneficence, this great, like embodied laughter known as Yitzhak, that would ever ask for that, for that joy to be destroyed just for the sake of some kind of test. And that she would wait for these angels to show. She would laugh when, you know, in gratitude when they showed up. And then she would say, please do me a favor, go one of you to Har Moriah and tell him whatever you need to tell him to get him to feel that he’s still okay even if he doesn’t do this thing. In other words, that’s why we have one malach (angel). We have two. Then it repeated, stop, stop him from his sense, his conviction that unless he does this thing, he’s fallen short. And once she does that, once she knows that Yitzhak is safe and that he’s going to survive, given how old she is, she is able to meet, you know, to meet her end. And that’s why she lives in Kiryat Arba, because she’s returning to that original scene. In my Torah.com article, I talk about how Avram is perennially restless. He goes from place to place to place to place to place. And that most of the time we see Sara just being taken with, as if a passive agent. And I wanted to suggest that there has to be something more than that passivity to justify her being such a linchpin in the history of this first stage of our founding family.

Geoffrey Stern [00:16:05]:
You know, it’s interesting, one of the commentaries you bring told Toldot Yitzchak actually asked two questions. The first question is why they’re not living together. But the second question is, and this kind of relates to the book that you wrote, and we’ll get to in a second. Why did Abraham not do any long term planning? Why didn’t he buy a plot? Asks the Toldot Yitzchak. And what he answers is that Sarah knew that she had to be buried in Canaan. And when she felt that she was losing her health, she went there. But I think that’s another way of saying that Sarah determined where the Ma’arat HaMachpelah (Cave of the Patriarchs) was. Sarah determined that they were not only going to be patriarchs, they were going to be matriarchs. And in a sense, it was Sarah who determined that this was going to be the anchor of the Jewish people, that in this place, she was coming back to that place where the three angels came she was waiting for angels that never came to tell her about the Akedah. But in a sense, it wasn’t a foreseen conclusion that we were going to have three Avot and Arba Imahot, that we were going to have strong Matriarchs. And here she really determined the architecture and the geography of the Jewish people. And that’s how profound she was, both in life and in death. I mean, I just wonder. You say that, you know, she determines it. You know, Wendy, from the fact that God changes her name, also that she’s a player, that she’s part of the covenant. You know, it would have been very easy for God to change Abraham’s name, and Sarah would have remained Sarai. And the covenant is through Abraham, it’s through Isaac and through Jacob. And the wives are the wives. But the Torah from the very beginning goes out of its way to say that Sarah’s part of the covenant. I wonder how that plays out in the Chayei Sara story.

Wendy Zierler [00:18:12]:
Well, I’ll tell you how I think it plays out. I think it’s extremely important to note that Sarah has her name changed because she’s the only matriarch that we have who experiences a name change. And the next person to experience a name change is Yaakov, who goes from Yaakov to Yisrael. And I make an argument in my article and elsewhere that in effect, what that means is that Yaakov is named after Sarah because it says Kisarita em im Elohim va Adam (I struggled with God and Man). That word Sarita, is an evocation of Sarah. Right? So Yisrael has that root. And so we’re seeing in that naming that, you know, he becomes the eponymous hero of the whole of Genesis in being Yisrael. For us, that is bringing Sarah back into the center of the action. And that her struggles, whatever it is that she went through, in having to assert her position, both vis a vis Hagar, but also with Avraham, that that is something that gets echoed and developed in the personality of Yaakov turned Yisrael.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:29]:
I love that. I mean, last week we read into her laughter. Exactly that. Arguing, struggling with God, wrestling with God that you just brought out, that was a very strong laugh. But I want to segue now into your book, which I read cover to cover in the last 24 hours. I absolutely love. You might not know this, but on Madlik, we love to go back to the Yahadut Yisraelite, the Israeli Judaism, in the kibbutzim and we look at kibbutzim, haggadot, and we just love going back because they look at Judaism totally differently. You have done the same thing with Hebrew poetry. And this book is so many things. One of it, as I alluded to before it occurred, because you lost your parents, your father tragically, then your mother, then your mother in law. You were in multiple years of mourning and teaching this Hebrew poetry was what kind of enabled you to move from the different moments and tragedies that you were. But what I’d like to do is to now go into that poetry. And what I’ve done, with your permission, is pick three poems. I don’t know whether we’ll have a chance to get to all three of them, but the first one deals with Al Shelosha Dvarim (On Three Things), and it is written by Leah Goldberg. And it’s a kind of rumination on three things. The world stands al haTorah v’al’ha’avoda v’al gemilot Hasidim. But it puts a new twist on it. Give us a sense of what Leah Golderg is doing in this poem. Teach it like you would on a Tuesday morning.

Wendy Zierler [00:21:20]:
Oh, I probably need a little bit more time, but I’ll say it over as quickly as I can. So what we know from Pirkei Avot is that there were two versions of the three cardinal things that the world stands on. There’s the Mishnah that comes in the second Mishnah. In the first parak of Pirkei Avot, which comes in the name of Simon Hazadik, one of the last elders of the Knesset, hagedola, he says the world stands on Torah avudah u’gemilut hasadim (Torah, Service and Good Deeds). Before that, that first chapter of Pirkei Avot ends. We’ve got another rendition of that in the 18th Mishnah, where Shimon Ben Gamliel rewrites it and says that the world stands on Din Emet and Shalom (Justice, Truth and Peace). Between the time of Shimon Ha Tzadik and Shimon Ben Ganliel, the Temple had been destroyed. The possibility of a kind of more parochial or particularistic list of cardinal threes was no longer possible. And so the list had to become more universalistic. And what Leah Goldberg is registering in writing her poem in 1949 as part of a series of children’s poems is the need in 1949 to recognize the epoch making event of the establishment of the State of Israel and the need to establish a new set of three. And that in every major Edan, every major epoch, we’re going to have to go through this exercise. And the rabbis have taught us it’s a traditional thing to negotiate a new list. Now, what Leah Goldberg does in the poem, it’s called Al Shalosha Devarim, and she has three different versions of workers of a sort, who assert their three important things. I will note that all of their things are work. So, like, if we were to sing the song, it would be “al HaOvoadah, Al HaAvodah, AlHaovodah” because that’s what mattered in the beginning of the state of Israel, to assert productive labor. But Leah Goldberg, as a person who understood the legacy of the spirit, first of all, she includes the artist among her workers. She has a fisherman, a farmer, and an artist. So you need the sea, the land, and also the mind, the heart, the spirit. And then she goes to the fourth principle. So she busts up the rule of three, which we can say is, you know, shalosh Avot, she says, arba imahot. She gives us the human being, the Adam, and we know from Breshit Aleph (Genesis 1) that the Adam is created. So the human being ha Adam is an egalitarian construction, and that Ha’Adam is not limited by three things, nor is that Adam limited to one sphere of activity. The Adam is interconnected and makes allusions and references to what matters to the farmer and what matters to the fisherman and what matters to the artist, and also alludes to other matters of the spirit and Jewish culture, hagim and Hulin, holidays and weekdays. That human being is Ha’ poeah Eaynav (opens the eyes), which makes us think of the brachot in the Birkota HaShahar. Now, what of course she’s noting, and we can’t ignore it, is she’s offering a secular list that is nevertheless informed and inspired by Judaism, by Jewish culture.

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:58]:
And what I love, and you say this later in the book, is, as you correctly say, man was created male and female, androgynous, possibly. She almost transcends gender by being a woman. She not only can take us to look at things as a woman, but can also say, just get rid of the whole gender thing. Look at the “rainbow palette”, this is how you translate, opens it up. And I think what I think about when I think of On Three is a tripod. And there’s nothing sturdier and more set than a tripod. And we’re just giving you a taste, dear listener, of Madlik, of what’s in this book. Because every one of these poems is a gem. I read it in Kindle. And in the subnotes, there’s a hyperlink to songs where Arik Einstein is singing a poem. It just makes you so proud of our culture that we have pop singers singing poetry. But the next thing you go to is Yehuda Amichai. And he talks about men, women and children. And he talks about this tripod and how he wants to be a part of this tripod. He’s almost jealous that he’s not included with. On the one hand, he goes Jews, Christians and Muslims. But he also talks about blood, sweat and tears. He talks about. Does he say; Hersh Shotah v’Katan ( a deaf person a dumb person and a minor). He says widows, orphans and bereaved parents. There are so many threesomes there that are packed that he almost wants to be a part of this rowdy crew. But it’s kind of. There’s a tension there because he’s acknowledging that some of them are at the bottom of the pile.

Wendy Zierler [00:26:42]:
Yeah. This is a poem written from the point of view of someone who feels like such a super outsider. If only he could have belonged to some trio. And we think about triangles, this stability of the triangle. It’s the geometric metric form that has the least number of lines, yet still closed. Right. It’s that stable form. And he wishes that he could be part of some sort of stable form, even if it would mean being part of that category of the disenfranchised or the bereaved, those who actually are not considered halachically responsible or to be disabled in some manner, just to be part of something. And yet I note in my analysis of this poem that he keeps on saying ani rotze l’hiot, you know, I want to belong to something. And when you say “I” so many times, then you’re asserting that individuality, the very same idiosyncratic outsider, you know, not quite fitting into, like the square peg in a round hole sensibility that gets him into this situation to begin with, where he doesn’t feel like he belongs to anything. And, you know, and he makes clear what he’s looking for in this three is something permanent. In the same way that Al shelosha dvarim haolam omed is a sense of permanence. I note in my book that I read this as an explicit allusion to Leah Goldberg, who of course is explicitly alluding to the sages, because we know that Leah Goldberg was a major mentor for Yehudah Amichai, which is an extraordinary historical fact, because until then we do not have an example of a single woman poet who was a mentor or a model for an important male writer. It just didn’t exist in the Hebrew language.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:34]:
That’s fascinating.

Wendy Zierler [00:28:36]:
Well, look, my whole career has been dedicated to exploring this one big question, which is what happens when women enter into a Hebrew literary tradition that’s been going on since the Bible, where women have been absent since the Bible, with the exception of a few, a handful of poems, there is nothing, there is no book, full book written in the Hebrew language by a woman since the closing of the biblical canon. It isn’t until the 19th century, the end, the very end of the 19th century, that women enter into the Hebrew literary tradition. And so it has to be different if after all this time, women finally can actually represent their own lives and represent their own experiences. And this idea of a woman being the dedication page is an earth shattering, like a seismic shift. I wrote a book about the first Hebrew woman, short story writer Chava Shapiro, and she dedicated her book in 1908 to her mother, Mukdash l”imi. It’s the first time that we have a dedication by a woman to a woman of that sort. And so these are just among the many, many incredible historical shifts that we’ve been experiencing over the past century.

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:55]:
I love the way you weave Yehuda Amichai and the woman that he was inspired by in that narrative. And then the book itself weaves the narrative of those two, three years you went through during Covid together with your congregation every Tuesday morning reading of these poems and making it kind of talk to our situation, your situation. I just love that what your book shows, number one. And I totally recommend it if you’re interested in Hebrew poetry. The book is just full of both the Hebrew and the English with the links to the song sung by pop stars in Israel. And then there’s the backstory. One of the earliest women who actually was writing poetry was a niece of Shmuel David Lezzatto. The Shadowlah commentary that we love that comes through weaving the stories behind it. We’re not going to get a chance to get to the third poem, but I think that’s totally in line with where we need to go from here. This is the first chapter, not the last chapter in looking at these new voices and the way that these poems who are writing in Hebrew. And I’ll finish with this. It’s the language itself that has within it the ability to carry thoughts that started 2,000 years ago and went through commentaries and through seder tables and through family histories and land here with all that baggage and all that nuance and give us totally new sense of what it is our tradition is and makes it sure that it’s going to stay alive and have the dynamism that it had at the very beginning. It’s a wonderful contribution. I hope you’ll come back.

Wendy Zierler [00:31:51]:
WENDY well, I’ll just say that part of my goal, my whole career has been to argue that modern Jewish literature can serve as an important layer of commentary on our traditional sources, that just because it doesn’t come delivered to us in that conventional form of the hardback burgundy or navy cover with the gold lettering and the marbleized leaf, that it doesn’t mean that it isn’t part of unfolding canon and a very important layer of parshanut. And in the same way that the rabbis often felt the need to fill in gaps and they used their creativity and their subjectivity to try to bridge the gap between their time and the time of the Tanakh, they taught us, they teach us how we can, through creative interpretation and through creativity, do that in our own day to day.

Adam Mintz [00:32:43]:
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Wendy .

Wendy Zierler [00:32:46]:
Thank you so much for inviting me.

Geoffrey Stern [00:32:48]:
So run out and get Going out with Knots My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry by Wendy Zierla. And truly, I hope we’ll have you back again. But thank you so much for joining us. Shabbat Shalom to everyone and enjoy Chayei Sarah thank you.

Welcome to Maudlik. My name is Jeffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a sparkler, 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 Sepharia, and a link is included in the show Notes. This week we read Parshad Vayera. We explore the overt and covert friction and conflict in the narratives of the prediction of a child to Sarah, the trial of Sodom, and the binding of Isaac. We view it through the lens of texts and a tradition which embraces dispute. So join us for argument’s sake.

Adam Mintz [00:02:53]:
And this is an amazing topic today, so let’s get going.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:57]:
So if I achieve nothing else, Rabbi, you’re gonna see the whole two series of Nobody wants that. A person like you who’s INV involved with conversion, you just have to see It. I can’t believe you hadn’t really. You’ve heard about it, but you hadn’t actually seen it.

Adam Mintz [00:03:13]:
I told Sharon after you mentioned it, we’re gonna see it. So you did it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:18]:
What’s amazing is it is won amazing awards. And the sites that rate our series, I think it’s at 95. I mean, people. It must be a broad audience is interested in its comic, its love, but it’s ethnic, It’s. It’s about religion. I just find it fascinating, not only that it was produced and got a second season, but that people are watching it and enjoying it. And so I thought, why not tie it into this week’s parsha? Now, the dialogue that I want to start with comes after Noah. The rabbi is doing his foray into couples therapy, but he’s only talking to the husband. And after a while, he stops preaching and he starts listening. And that’s where he realizes that there are no answers. So the dialogue picks up then, and he says, this is Rabbi Noah speaking: “Honestly, it was one of my proudest moments as a rabbi. We spent hours talking about marriage, examining it, re-examining it, pulling it apart and debating it.” Joanne, the girlfriend, says, “So what’s he going to do?” “I don’t know. That’s the thing about Judaism. We love to talk about things from every direction. You know, I was being too rigid in how I was looking at it before.” “I love analyzing things from every direction.” She says, “I know, it’s very Jewish of you.” He says, “A religion that encourages me to argue. Love that. Sorry, hold on. I’m just texting her mom.” And at that point, she actually was writing to herself. “I think I just moved an inch.” And that inch is towards conversion. So here is a woman who was attracted to our faith because of our embrace of dispute. Rabbi, have you ever come across that?

Adam Mintz [00:05:08]:
Of course they love the energy. You know, what you would say? The beit midrash (Study Hall) energy, the bes medrash energy. There’s nothing like it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:17]:
Okay. So I said, we’re going to have three little scenes here. So the first one is in Genesis 18, where the angels come. And they said to him, where is your wife Sarah? Speaking to Abraham. And he replied, they’re in the tent. Then one said, I will return to you next year, and your wife Sarah shall have a son. Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent, which was behind him now. Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. Sarah had stopped having her periods. And Sarah laughed to herself, saying, now that I’ve lost the ability, am I to have enjoyment with my husband so old? Then God said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh, saying, shall I in truth bear a child, old as I am, Is anything too wondrous for God? I will return to you at the same season next year, and Sarah shall have a son. Sarah lied, saying, I did not laugh, for she was frightened, came the reply, you did laugh. So this is great. The segue from this sitcom, if you will, is perfect because there it was, couples therapy. And here we’re talking about not necessarily a relationship between man and God, but two individuals maybe monitored by God. And there are so many amazing points here. But the first thing that struck me is that, you know, the whole book of Genesis, Rabbi, if you think about it, is the story of miraculous birth. Every one of the matriarchs has problems having a child. In the case of Sarah, she’s 90 years old. She has no right biologically to have a child. So it’s a miraculous birth. Obviously, another religion, Christianity, is born on the virgin birth. But the response that our patriarchs and matriarchs have to the idea of a miraculous birth is they fall down laughing. And I find that to be kind of amazing because it’s part and parcel of this, I wouldn’t say argumentativeness, but this ability to look at things and say that makes no sense at all. Are you kidding me? I just think that’s a wonderful way to start.

Adam Mintz [00:07:35]:
It is amazing. I would just add, isn’t it amazing that you know, that God said, you laughed and she denies it? Can you imagine denying things to God? Like, it’s one thing. We deny things to one another. Who knows what the truth is? But this is God. What does she think?

Geoffrey Stern [00:07:54]:
So here’s where we live in an amazing moment, Rabbi. We live in a moment where women are starting to write commentaries on the Torah. And so in The Woman’s Commentary, which is in the Sefaria notes, why is Sarah laughing? Some interpreters have concluded erroneously that Sarah’s laughter was divisive. When Abraham heard that he would have a child with Sarah, he fell flat on his face. A few verses before, Abraham also laughed, and he literally fell on his face and he said the same thing. So what The Women’s Commentary is saying is actually that God is testing Abraham to see if he’s going to stand up for Sarah and protect Sarah. It’s kind of like Adam and Eve. We do remember where Eve ate from the fruit. She gave it to Adam. And when God confronted Adam, he goes, I didn’t do it. She gave it to me. Here he laughed out loud. And a few verses, she laughs. But this, the next commentary, comes right to your question. Sarah was afraid. Whom does Sarah fear? Most interpreters assume that Sarah is afraid of God. I contend, says this woman commentator, that she fears Abraham. Sarah has no reason to fear God, who apparently comes to her rescue in the house of the Pharaoh, blesses her and promises her. Remember all those stories where Abraham is coming down to Egypt and he pawns off Sarah as his sister, not his wife? God saves her all of those times. God was always there. However, she does have reason for fearing Abraham. He does not seem to object. When she is taken to Pharaoh’s palace, he allows Hagar to treat her disrespectfully. And insofar as the reader knows, he has not informed her that they will be having a child. It’s a fascinating new take on it, because the verse does not say who asked the question and who she was afraid of.

Adam Mintz [00:09:57]:
Yeah, I mean, that is so interesting.

Geoffrey Stern [00:10:00]:
Right?

Adam Mintz [00:10:00]:
And that’s what I’m pointing out. You know, that last verse that she laughs and she’s afraid and God says, don’t do it. It’s so. … the fancy word is it’s enigmatic. You’re just not sure what’s going on, what the Torah is trying to teach you. Now, of course, you have to know that later on, when Isaac is born, he’s called Yitzchak, after the laughter. So obviously this laughter is not just a mistake. This identifies who he is.

Geoffrey Stern [00:10:30]:
It’s not such a bad thing. Again, it shows, as you say, enigmatic. It shows that there’s no right side, there is no heroes here, and there’s no correct position. I also love the fact that we’re getting into what people and God are thinking. She says within herself, Ibn Ezra says, in her mind, God reveals Sarah’s inner thoughts. In the pasuk that talks about Abraham also, it seems to be that Abraham was thinking, this is crazy, but didn’t say it. And this is going to become very important. I think when we look at the Akeidah, this emphasis on dialogue and on disparate opinions does not only operate in the verbal universe, it also operates inside of the minds of the protagonists. And it has value. Humor has value. I was gonna say that if the girlfriend had said that this is a religion that loves dispute, she might have also said, and it loves humor and it loves laughter. Because the response that she gives her way of, I would say, going against reality, of standing up to something that made no sense, was to laugh. And so In a sense, laughter itself is a form of dispute or of taking another position and getting more involved in the questions. I just love all of the different elements that come to fore here.

Adam Mintz [00:12:04]:
Yeah, I mean, it’s fantastic. Okay, let’s go to the next story, because each one of these stories is connected to the next story. So let’s move on to the Sodom story.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:15]:
Okay, so now we have Sodom. And the angels have given Abraham this great news. And the angels go down to Sodom and God says, shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? And here the commentaries also say, God is thinking it, he’s not saying it. I just love the fact that in these stories we are giving such value to the inner mind and to the conflict and the questions that humans and gods might have. Since Abraham is to become a great populous nation and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him, for I have singled him out that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of God by doing what is just and right in order that God may bring about for Abraham what he had promised him. So he goes through a whole description of who he is to Abraham and says, I can’t hide this from him. Then God said, and now he’s talking out loud, I assume, and he’s talking to Abraham. The outrage of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin is so grave. I will go down to see whether they have acted altogether according to the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will take note. So then the angels go down and it says, while Abraham remained standing before God, Abraham came forward and said, will you sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? So here, I think, you know, I have a book. It’s called Arguing with God, a Jewish tradition. This is the argument of Abraham with God is, I would say, a piece of evidence #1 in this. And he stands up to God. We’re gonna see what the rabbis talk when they say he came forward, but he is making his move and he is saying, how is this possible?

Adam Mintz [00:14:15]:
Now, I just wanna tell you that’s an interesting argument. You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty. I mean, maybe the answer is that’s what God does. That if most people are guilty, then he sweeps away the innocent with the guilty. Abraham assumes that God is bound by our sense of morality. That’s a very important point, that we try to imitate God, and God, in a way, imitates us.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:47]:
And in a sense, God set this scene up because in verse 18, he says, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation, and he goes through all the things that Abraham has projected onto him. So really the scene is being set. But you’re absolutely correct. It’s both of their perceptions of each other. So Abraham, as we all know, starts with 50. Far be it from you to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from you. Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly? Says Abraham. And then he says, after God says, yes, if there are 50, he goes, I venture to speak to my Lord. Who am I but dust and ashes? But what happens if there are less than 50? What happens if there are 40? What happens if there are 30? And as he goes down, he says, let my Lord not be angry if I go on. Let my Lord not be angry if I speak but this last time. So I think that you’re absolutely right, that what makes this story so powerful is that man speaks truth to power, so to speak. He stands up to God. But I don’t think that that’s what makes this story as historic as it is. In other words, there are foreign sources of kings doing the same thing. Even in our own text, Avimelech, a non-Jewish king, approached her and said, oh, Lord, will you slay people even though they are innocent? It’s a situation where he takes Sarah, Sarah’s not his wife, and he’s about to have calamity fall on the whole people. He says to God, will you slay people even though they are innocent? We have Hittite documents that you can find in the source sheet that also talk about, “let not the good ones perish with the evil ones”. Rabbi, what I will argue is that what makes this story so powerful is that it became more than just at that moment of do or die. It became a way of conversing with God. It became a motif, it became a genre in Judaism. And that’s why you can write a book called Arguing with God: a Jewish Tradition. And I think that comes out in the commentaries that first of all we have in Beresit Rabba, where it adds to the arguments that Abraham makes. It kind of piles on. So the rabbis didn’t kind of try to modify and minimize the arguments that Abraham has. They actually tried to maximize it it. So they said, you took an oath saying you would not bring a flood upon the world. Are you seeking to evade your oath? Says the rabbis. And you think you can get away with the fact that you’re not using water, you’re going to burn them. That doesn’t stand up. So the rabbis put words into Abraham’s mouth to make his argument even stronger. He says, if you wish to have a world, there can be no strict justice. And if you wish strict justice, there can be no world. Beautiful poetry from the Rabbis! But you seek to hold the rope at both ends. They accuse God of. You wish to have a world, and you wish to have strict justice. Choose one of them. Rabbi, you can’t make this stuff up. These are religious sages that are emphasizing, that are putting on steroids. What. What Abraham said. He says, if you do not ease up a bit, the world will be unable to endure. It’s just beautiful.

Adam Mintz [00:18:45]:
A beautiful, amazing midrash.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:47]:
Yes. So here’s where I love it. Abraham approached. I said that before he approached God in order to engage in this argument. Would you even destroy the righteous with the wicked? Abraham approached and he said, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Nehemia, and the rabbis. Rabbi Yehuda says the term approaching means for battle. Yorav and the people who were with him approached Aram. He brings a verse. Rabbi Nehemia said, approaching means conciliation, as it says. And he quotes a verse. Rabbi Pinchas, Rabbi Levi, and Rabbi Yohanan. When one passes before the ark, meaning to say, when one begins prayer, especially when one leads the prayer, one should not say to him when inviting him to lead prayers, go and perform, Go and do battle, or go and wage the battle of the congregation, but rather go and do battle in prayer. So the rabbis took this argument of Abraham with God at Sodom, and they made it into an everyday aspect of prayer. How many religions approach prayer as battle with God? It’s just amazing.

Adam Mintz [00:20:04]:
Well, you know, it’s amazing for a couple of reasons. Number one is it looks as prayer as a battle. That’s never the way we look at prayer. We look at prayer as being something that’s kind of, you know, friendly and genteel. That’s number one. But the other thing which is amazing is the fact that he’s doing battle with God.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:27]:
Right?

Adam Mintz [00:20:28]:
I mean, that’s really a chutzpah. What do you mean, do battle with God?

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:33]:
It’s absolutely a chutzpah. It really takes this story, and it makes it into a template. It makes it into a paradigm. And there are so many Hasidic stories. There are so many stories of rabbis getting up and, you know, the Clausenberger Rebbe, when he’s supposed to say the curses In a low voice, he says them out loud and he goes, let God hear what he’s done. I mean, these are deeply religious people.

Adam Mintz [00:21:03]:
I know who you heard that story from.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:06]:
I heard it.

Adam Mintz [00:21:06]:
The same person, Rabbi (Shlomo) Riskin, of course.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:07]:
So you know, the Hasidim, we all know, they wear a hat, they have payos, and they wear a long coat. But what you might not have noticed is when they pray, they put a gartel, a belt around them. Some people think that’s to separate the top half from the bottom half. I heard it’s to bind their loins before battle. That comes from this concept that praying is going into a debate. Prayer is going into that back and forth that you described before of the beis medrash. What’s amazing about the Sodom story, more than the story itself, is how the rabbis took it. I find that to be amazing.

Adam Mintz [00:21:50]:
Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:53]:
So in the Sifre, it says what Abraham did was a paradigm shift. It says, before the advent of Father Abraham, the Lord judged the world with severity. The men of the flood sinned. He flooded them like sparks. He scattered them at the tower of Babel. But when our Father Abraham came to the world, afflictions materialized in place of destruction. So now they’re explaining why life is tough, okay, but we don’t get all destroyed. Life is tough in a sense. You know, they used to. There’s something in the Talmud that says Mikabel Isurim B’Ahava, you have to take punishment with love. The idea, I think again, Rabbi, is that it stopped being black and white and it started to be, you take a bout, you take a hit. It’s part of this conversation that God and we, as we go through life, we hit a bump, we hit a challenge. It’s part of that conversation as well. But I think that what they’re recognizing also is that that Abraham in this episode, makes a powerful paradigm shift.

Adam Mintz [00:23:05]:
No question about it, right? All these things. So battle and argument and the unique relationship that our forefathers had with God. It’s a kind of relationship that we would never imagine to have with God.

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:22]:
Yep, yep. And the rabbis did everything that they could to enlarge this story, to take this story, and to make it something that can be used in all of life’s doings. So when Abraham says, far be it from you to do something like this, Rabbi Abba said, from doing “this” is not written, but rather to do something “like this”, neither it nor something similar, nor something lesser than it. In other words, he was saying, it doesn’t apply only to Sodom and Gomorrah. It applies to every little minutia of our life. We are entitled, we are empowered to say, is this fair? Is this right? And that is the position I think, that the Jews have taken typically in history and in society. Whether you call it a muckraker, whether you call it a reformer, it’s someone who doesn’t let even the smallest thing pass without questioning it, without turning it over, without evaluating it, and then speaking out.

Adam Mintz [00:24:31]:
Yeah, there’s no question about that. That’s great.

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:34]:
The Lord said, if I find in Sodom 50 righteous people within it, I will forgive the entire place. I am silent for him with his claims. God said to Abraham, for you and for the branches that emerge from you. I will be silent for Abraham who said, far be it for me to do something like this for Moses who said so. Then he goes and says, look at how this has happened in the future. Why, Lord, will your wrath be inflamed against your people? That is Moses speaking. Why did you take this people across? That’s Joshua speaking. Why do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? This is Job. The midrash traces the question that Abraham asks at Sodom through the Bible’s history up until Job and and Job’s forebears. In this book, it brings night and Elie Wiesel. It’s all part of that same tradition that questioning God and asking him how he can do this, how he can even hide himself, is legitimate and is actually the core of the relationship.

Adam Mintz [00:25:46]:
Not only legitimate, it’s part of the tradition.

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:49]:
Yes, absolutely. And what I want to do now is go to the really challenging story. Because after I looked at the first two stories the way I did, I looked at the third story differently. And of course, what I had in my mind was I had the fact that arguments can occur in your mind and arguments can occur through silence. And so now we have these events. It says God put Abraham to the test in Genesis 22, saying to him, abraham, he answered, here I am. Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you. So you can understand Abraham hearing this, God actually says, “offer him as a burnt offering”. And saying in his mind, let’s see how this all works out. How can this possibly be? Yes, in Sodom he said it outright, but in the announcement of the birth of Isaac, maybe he laughed internally. I think what we are now is we’re a little more sensitive to the silent questioning that could go on. So early next morning, Abraham saddled his ass and took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. He split the wood for the burnt offering. He set out for the place for which God had told him. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his servants, you stay here with the ass. The boy and I will go up there, we will worship, and we will return to you. So now when Abraham is speaking, enunciating, he goes, don’t believe anything that you’ve heard till now. We’re both coming down. Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac. He himself took the firestone and the knife, and the two walked off together. Then Isaac said to his father, father. And he answered, yes, my son. And he said, here are the firestone and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering? And Abraham said, it is God who will see the sheep for the burnt offering. My son. Again, he’s not talking to God, but he’s making a statement that God is going to have to come through here and bring that sheep. And the two of them walked on together. And we all know how the story ended. Do not raise your hand against the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God since you have not withhold your son, your favorite son, from me. You can look at this equally as a dialogue, and you can look at it if you give Abraham a little bit of a benefit of the doubt that he is actually standing up to God. He’s waiting for that Deus Ex Machina to come down and to save his son as he knows he must, because he knows what God has to do to live up to his perception of him. It just. I think that the preparation that we have from the other stories is not so much questions why Abraham acts so differently here, but possibly gives us an insight into how he acts, what he says, what he doesn’t says when he pauses. I think it’s an interesting different read.

Adam Mintz [00:29:06]:
I think, Geoffrey, what we’re really talking about here is the fact that Abraham is the first one, and arguably with Moses, the only two people who actually have dialogues with God. You know, there are plenty of prophets, but nobody has a dialogue with God. And, you know, it’s a chutzpah. They actually challenge God and they discuss with God, and God pulls back, and that’s a remarkable thing. And I think the Torah is trying to teach us a very important lesson. And that is the fact that we learn that God actually dialogues with human beings and we learn from that dialogue.

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:44]:
And I think that our perception of God evolves as well. I won’t say God evolves, but I’ll say the point of these stories is because there is this interaction, this battle between man and God. Both of them have to change and they change in our texts and in our traditions and in our prayers more than anywhere else. So I think Nobody Wants This; I hope, I want a third season and where we get into the back and forth and we learn more about the battles. But even what we’ve seen till now, I think it’s an amazing insight into Judaism and the attraction, I think, of Judaism, that dynamism of Judaism and.

Adam Mintz [00:30:33]:
Why don’t you say Geoffrey, in the third season? They’re going to be watching Madlik together.

Geoffrey Stern [00:30:39]:
I hope so. We’re available. We are available as consultants anytime. Shabbat Shalom. Enjoy. We’ll see you all next week.

Adam Mintz [00:30:47]:
Shabbat Shalom.

Three thousand years later, other men and women make the same journey, not on Camelback, but on commercial airlines. They, too, are answering a call, not divine, but deeply personal. They land not in mythic Canaan, but in modern Israel. And like Abraham and Sarah, they find a country bustling, complicated, and endlessly in motion. A land and a people that deeply resonate. And yes, did I say complicated? This week on Madlik Disruptive Torah, we sit down with Noah Efron from the Promised Podcast. A progressive American who in the early 80s made Aliyah at the age of 24 with his future wife. He is the founding chair of the Interdisciplinary Program on Science Technology at Bar Ilan University. He raised a family, entered local politics, and hosts the Promised Podcast. We’ll explore what it means to go forth in our generation.

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern. And at Madlik, we light a spark, 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 Lech Lecha. We use the narrative of Abraham’s aliyah to Canaan as an opportunity to talk with Noah Efron, a friend and a progressive American who made aliyah to share his story and insights. Welcome, Noah. It’s great to see you.

Noah Efron [2:17 – 2:21]: I am so delighted to see you and to be here. Love this podcast.

Geoffrey Stern [2:23 – 3:26]: Thank you so much. And I love the Promised Podcast, and I will say it again later, but if you haven’t listened to it, you should listen to it. It’s amazing. But am I right? I mean, you and your cadre on the Promised Podcast all kind of made aliyah around the same time, you all Anglos. And it really is an insight into what the experiences are of progressive American Jews, passionate as you are and your experience in Israel. And so I think that’s the weight on your shoulders today, Noah, you are representing that aliyah. You know, there’s an amazing thing on YouTube you can find it, of when each aliyah used to have its own name. The first aliyah, the second aliyah, and this has Arik Einstein and what Uri Zohar is in it. And each new aliyah looks back at the new one coming. And of course, they disparage them.

Noah Efron [3:28 – 3:34]: It’s an excellent question. Yeah, what the fifth aliyah was in the 1930s. So I don’t know, the 25th aliyah.

Adam Mintz [3:34 – 3:42]: Well, we have to say 1984 is a long time ago. So you’re definitely part of Israeli culture.

Noah Efron [3:43 – 3:43]: Yes.

Geoffrey Stern [3:44 – 5:31]: Okay, so we always start by looking at a few of the verses and the rabbinic commentaries and using that as a way to segue into the subject matter. So today, as I said, is Parashat Lech Lecha. And God said to Abraham, go from your land, from your birthplace, from your father’s house to the land that I will let you see. And Rashi says, for your own benefit, for your own good. And the way I take that for today’s discussion is that every Lech Lecha is personal at the end of the day, and everybody who makes a migration in general, but certainly coming to Israel, it’s going to be your story, Noah, that we’re going to be discussing, but it is a personal journey that we all take. And he says, and in coming to this land, you will have the privilege of having children. And it is known for giving you teva haba olam, your nature, your character in the world. And my guess is that your aliyah to Israel was without children. You started a family in Israel, and then I’m sure you were who you are today when you came. But certainly, the experience has had an effect on who you are. And the last thing that I’ll say before we get into the first question is I said before that you must have come in the 73rd aliyah. But the point is you came as a group. I think that not every, I mean, different aliyot have their different characteristics. And what it does say about Rashi.

Noah Efron [5:31 – 5:31]: Says.

Geoffrey Stern [5:34 – 6:02]: And he says that Abraham and Sarai made souls in that they had made in Haran. And I take that to mean they came in a group, they were passionate, they somehow discovered themselves, made their own background. So with your permission, Noah, I’d like you to use this as a segue to really describe your story, whether it’s Young Judea, to give our listeners a sense, if you could, of your aliyah.

Noah Efron [6:02 – 6:33]: Well, thank you for that beautiful introduction. And it’s so resonant in so many ways. What you said about children, for instance, in the end, one of the reasons why I know I’m in the place where I want to be, where I feel like I’m meant to be, is because of how beautifully my children have grown up. And I think it was Aristotle who said that you cannot tell whether a man is happy until you see how his children turned out. He wrote this in the Nicomachean Ethics, and I understand that as well. I feel that way as well. And my children have turned out beautifully, and that’s how I know that I’m happy.

Noah Efron [6:33 – 7:03]: I’d also add that another thing that’s resonant is that the commandment is to, as you said, among other things, to leave the house of your father, to leave the house of your parents. And that is a very, very big part of my aliyah as well. And something that changes over time, continues to change to this day as I every month make a trip back to the United States to see my parents, who are now in their late 90s, and measure myself as a son and as a human being, in part by the distance between us. So it becomes complicated. But my aliyah story is a very happy aliyah story.

Noah Efron [7:03 – 7:34]: And it starts, like you said, in Young Judea that I joined when, I don’t know, I was 12 years old, a yeshiva bocher who was looking for something beyond just religion, just shul, through which to understand my Judaism and enact my Judaism. And my older and very beloved sister had been involved in Young Judea. And I joined that and found the people who, it turns out, are the people that I spent my life with, that I have spent my entire life with.

Noah Efron [7:34 – 8:04]: Tonight, after we record this podcast, I have a weekly Zoom with friends that I made when I was 12, 13, 14 years old in Young Judea. And one of them was, until recently, a member of the Knesset, Alon Tal. And another, my friend, Bill Slott, was the maskir, the secretary-general of Kibbutz Ketura, and other friends as well. We have, it turns out, we began our lives before we were adults together, talking about what we wanted to do, what we hoped for from our lives, what we hoped for from this place. And we came.

Noah Efron [8:04 – 9:05]: I came with what’s called a gareen, which is a group of people committed to building a settlement together. And from Young Judea, right after college, my wife was one of them and other close friends from the movement, and we went to Kibbutz Ketura. I was 21 and my wife was 20. And when we first arrived and went into the army together, and have since we’ve moved around the country and at different points in time, moved around the world.

But we have spent a life together in this remarkable place, seeing it change around us and being part of that change, which is one of the miraculous and extraordinary things about Israel.

Noah Efron [9:37 – 10:07]: How given it is to being influenced by people who decide to join their life with this place. You do that and then suddenly you have a voice, and suddenly you can make things be this way rather than that way. And you can create, as my friends and I did, your own Jewish community. It can be egalitarian. It can not have a rabbi if you don’t want. And you can build a new school, as we were involved with.

Noah Efron [10:07 – 10:38]: And you can, as I am now, you know, get elected to city government and be in charge in Tel Aviv of environmental policy and animal rights policy and pluralism policy. You can do those things. I don’t know exactly what it is about this place that makes it so amenable, that makes my friend Alon Tal somehow find his way to the Knesset because he wanted to. But it’s a feature of this place.

Noah Efron [10:38 – 11:09]: And I’m going on at great length. I just would add. Would go back to what I said about my children. There is something for someone who grew up like me, like I said, a yeshiva bachur, but very much an American football fan and a baseball fan, very much an English speaker. There’s something about seeing your children toddle around speaking their first words in Hebrew and seeing them grow up.

Noah Efron [11:09 – 11:39]: And the world of associations of theirs is a world of Hebrew association that pricks your heart. That’s so beautiful. And also seeing them grow up very different than any American kid grows up. Seeing them grow up, not exactly knowing where they end and the people around them begin, being much more porous. I remember, you know, from when the kids were in second, third, fourth grade, you’d walk into a room with a bunch of kids and they’re all over each other on the sofa, and they’re completely involved in each other’s lives.

Noah Efron [11:39 – 12:10]: And there’s no such thing as a paper that you write in school that’s your paper. It’s always done in a group. And this idea that it’s us, not me, that you see in your children in the most pedestrian ways, you see their concern for the people around them. They’re feeling that who they are is a function of who they are with. It’s really astonishingly beautiful and moving for someone like me.

Geoffrey Stern [12:22 – 13:05]: Amazing. I’m going to jump in for a second. I must say, I did mention you recently. My grandchildren go to Camp Ramah, and my oldest grandson, Adam, is 16, and he decided to go to Young Judea for the first month of the summer. And I said to his parents, do you know what Young Judea is now? I don’t know if it still has the power, but I said, you know, you better be prepared. I think my friend Noah joined Young Judea and moved to Israel. I didn’t grow up with any of that. Rabbi, were there groups around you that you had the opportunity of kind of joining? For some reason, I just wasn’t. Wasn’t in part of that.

Noah Efron [13:07 – 13:08]: Yeah.

Adam Mintz [13:08 – 13:33]: I mean, my world was a little different. I grew up in Washington, D.C. The Zionist world that I was part of was a B’nei Akiva world, B’nei Akiva and Camp Moshava. And it’s interesting that many of the people who I grew up with also moved to Israel. You know, I don’t know, Noah, you know, you have a direct line from Young Judea at 12 years old. What city were you from?

Noah Efron [13:34 – 13:38]: I’m from the Washington area as well. From Maryland, outside of Washington. And I.

Adam Mintz [13:39 – 13:41]: Did you go to Jewish Day school? You went to Hebrew Academy?

Noah Efron [13:42 – 13:43]: No, Silver Spring.

Adam Mintz [13:43 – 13:45]: And that’s amazing, Geoffrey, because I went to the Hebrew.

Noah Efron [13:45 – 13:48]: I went to the Hebrew Academy and.

Adam Mintz [13:48 – 13:54]: On 16th Street. It sure was. I’m a little older than you are.

Noah Efron [13:55 – 14:03]: But we have a WhatsApp group of my class at the Hebrew Academy, and half of us are here in Israel, in fact.

Adam Mintz [14:04 – 14:08]: Yes. So do we. And half of my class is in Israel, too. That’s fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [14:09 – 15:54]: So I just really want to jump in and say this concept of being this group. I didn’t even realize when I asked the question how powerful it is. But I really do think it’s amazing. It comes almost out of that Rashi where they came as a group and you’ve stuck together. I think that one of the other questions that I have is, and maybe I’ll just give you my personal experience, if I used to walk into a Masorti synagogue in Israel and I heard English, I would walk out because if Masorati Judaism or Liberal Judaism is gonna have a chance in Israel, it needs to be organic in Hebrew. And then I caught myself and I said, you wouldn’t do the same thing if you walked into a Moroccan synagogue or you walked into Azerbaijan synagogue. And so what I’d like to do now is talk about the impact of American Jews like you on the Greater Israel.

You know, we talk about Mizrahim, we talk about this. And certainly there’s a whole bunch of, I think maybe Anglo Americans in Yehuda and Shomron, and they have their voice. What is the voice of your cadre? Because you are, I’m not misidentifying you as a progressive American, but also a very traditional Jew. And I think the cadre of people that I hear on the Promised podcast is a strong group. And when I go to your Chavura in Tel Aviv, is your voice being heard along with the other symphony of other voices in other Aliyot in Israel?

Noah Efron [15:54 – 16:25]: It’s funny that you mentioned this. I spent last night in a long Zoom meeting planning an academic conference about the 120-year relationship between American Jews and Jews in the Yishuv and how deeply interpenetrated the histories are from the very, very beginning. So I think that American Jews have had an enormous influence here and have an enormous influence. And I used to get skittish too about hearing English in the streets and think, oh, we ought to be real Israelis.

Noah Efron [16:25 – 16:56]: And then I had the same experience that you just described of realizing, no, what we are is an Eidah. We are an ethnic group in Israel of English-speaking former Americans and Brits and Australians. In fact, in Tel Aviv today, one of every 40 people who live in this city is a native English speaker from one of those three countries between the ages of 20 and 30. Which is to say we’re a big, big, big group. And there are, like all ethnic groups, we have tended to concentrate in certain areas, so go to any university, and you know, it’s full of us.

Noah Efron [16:56 – 17:27]: But also environmentalism in Israel, and I’m an environmentalist, and that’s my political identity as well. I ran with a Green Party for city council. Environmentalism was something that was more or less brought to Israel by Americans. Also human rights NGOs. In fact, all NGOs are things that our ethnic group brought to the country in the ways that other ethnic groups brought the things that they brought.

Noah Efron [17:27 – 17:58]: And I think that there’s an enormous amount to be proud of once you get over the feeling that somehow it’s not legitimate to not speak Hebrew without an accent. Of course, once you make that psychological change yourself and you realize that it’s fine for you to have an accent, you can give a speech at the city council with an accent, and everyone will listen to you.

Noah Efron [17:58 – 18:29]: Once you realize that that’s fine, you start to notice that a lot of other people around you have accents, too. They have Russian accents, and they have Ethiopian accents, and they have Moroccan accents and all sorts of things. And that’s fantastic.

So I was just reading about the kibbutzim up north in the Galil in the 1950s, like Kibbutz Hasololim and Kibbutz Sassa. There are five or six kibbutzim that were predominantly American back then. I was reading newspaper articles about the softball league that was so popular in the 1950s in Israel. The American Marines, when they’d come to Haifa, would come and play against the

Noah Efron [18:59 – 19:05]: teams of American pioneers living on kibbutzim up north. It made me feel proud.

Geoffrey Stern [19:06 – 19:20]: Talk to me a little bit about the fact that you are a traditional Jew. You teach at Bar Ilan University. But of course, what you teach is, as far as I know, the philosophy of science. And you’re in the, what’s it called?

Noah Efron [19:20 – 19:24]: The interdisciplinary studies, where they.

Geoffrey Stern [19:25 – 20:17]: Interdisciplinary studies. But you do walk a line sometimes. On the Promised Podcast, I think in a recent episode, one of your peers said, stop with the rosy-eyed look already. I mean, sometimes when maybe the Haredim are disparaged, you seem to have a sweet spot where, yes, you understand issues like the draft and things like that, but there is a sweet spot in you for maybe the institution of the past. Maybe you just seem very middle of the road. Sometimes in the conversations, you seem to have that kind of role. Is that unique? Is that something that you own? Talk to us about that for a little bit. Maybe talk about teaching at Bar Ilan.

Noah Efron [20:17 – 20:47]: It’s funny, I don’t particularly consider myself middle of the road, though I know exactly what you mean. My grandparents, my father’s parents, when I was just a tiny kid, moved to Bnei Brak, and I grew up visiting them. Then, when I was in the army, I stayed with them when I had time off from the army in Bnei Brak and really fell in love with ultra-Orthodox society.

Noah Efron [20:47 – 21:18]: I have a different view than many people about the ultra-Orthodox in particular. To me, they seem as though they offer an alternative way to understand a great many things that would be helpful for all of us to understand. For instance, the idea that study is more valuable than making money is something that it’s true a nation could not survive if everyone decided that they were going to abandon work and study Torah or study poetry or study physics all day. I understand that. But there is something beautiful about this ideal that I think is astonishing and a great resource for all the rest of us.

Noah Efron [21:49 – 22:20]: The reason why it’s unusual is one of the infuriating and yet still beautiful and sweeping characteristics of Israel is that we are, as a society, evisceratingly critical of everything. This is not unique to Israel. This is a Jewish characteristic as well, of everything. You know the old joke about the woman

Noah Efron [22:20 – 22:51]: whose boy is swept out to sea, and she raises her hands up to heaven and says, God, God, please give me back my boy. I’ll never complain about anything again. Then a wave comes and deposits the boy right in front of her, completely dry. And she looks up and says, he has a hat. This is what this country is like, where we complain about everything. It has all sorts of implications, including implications that for

Noah Efron [22:51 – 23:22]: our international position are quite disastrous, where we are always broadcasting our flaws or each other’s flaws to everyone, all the time in the most immoderate ways. It’s a cultural matter that the ultra-Orthodox leftists are portrayed by us, to us, as malingerers, and leftists are portrayed by us, to us, as people

Noah Efron [23:22 – 23:52]: who are unpatriotic, and right-wing people are presented by us, to us, as messianists who have no concern over the feasibility of what they are insisting that all the rest of us do. They’re dragging us to our doom all the time. All of our descriptions of ourselves to ourselves, and hence to the rest of the world, are so evisceratingly critical. There’s something wonderful about that. There’s something bracing, there’s something

Noah Efron [23:52 – 24:23]: exciting, there’s something I think morally useful about always criticizing everything. But I think that it allows some of us to forget how astonishingly successful this country is. The project of this country is. It’s partly because I came from far away, because mine is a story of Lech Lecha that I

Noah Efron [24:23 – 24:53]: do not fully ever manage to forget. That is one of the great gifts of being an ole, of having a Lech Lecha story, of being an immigrant, is that you are never capable of fully forgetting how astonishing the place where you find yourself is, how surprising it is, how beautiful the beautiful things are, how profound the profound things are because you never fully get used

Noah Efron [24:53 – 25:24]: to them. Hebrew is. I don’t have the best Hebrew, and so reading poetry for me is work, and for other people, it’s natural. But I don’t know if it’s possible for anyone to love Hebrew more than I love Hebrew. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to scan the street, you know, the street I live on, Ben Yehuda, and I live on Nordau, the corner of Ben Yehuda in Tel Aviv, to scan the coffee shops.

Noah Efron [25:24 – 25:54]: I don’t think it’s possible anyone looks at the coffee shops and thinks more than I do, my God, what a beautiful people. I don’t think there’s anyone who thinks that the comedy here is more surprising or funnier. That is because I come from there, and I came here, and always I am seeing things as I think I feel like quite an insider. I’m also seeing things through the eyes of someone who came from

Noah Efron [25:54 – 26:25]: somewhere else. You asked about Bar Ilan. I’ll say Bar Ilan is the Orthodox, the religious university in Israel, and it is an astonishing meeting place of ultra-Orthodox Jews and modern Orthodox Jews and completely secular Jews and Palestinians and Muslims and Christians and, you know, lesbians and just everyone that

Noah Efron [26:25 – 26:56]: you can imagine. The day-to-day life of trying to learn something about the world, about how cells work, about what the meaning of the Talmud is, or about how we ought to live our lives, or why society is the way that society is. In a group of people that looks like so many different people at once, but have this common purpose, is this astonishing gift. I get to bike over to Bar Ilan every week and meet this remarkably heterogeneous colloquy of people asking questions together, each of them bringing their own Lech Lecha stories to this endeavor.

Noah Efron [26:56 – 27:24]: You end up hearing some pretty astonishing things from these brilliant students and from my colleagues as well.

Geoffrey Stern [27:26 – 29:55]: I think you’re really emphasizing the Lech Lecha part in terms of you. I’d like to think Adam and I, when we look at the texts that we look at, we discover something new. The last thing you can do is generalize. The last thing that you can do is talk about what Rabbinic Judaism stands for when it’s so multifaceted. You do the same thing, whether it’s at Bar Ilan or at a café. It’s just a multiplicity. The fact that you came to it from outside, you have a special lens and I think that’s amazing. Every week I find some texts that kind of surprise me. This week, I want to share with you a beautiful text from the B’reishit Rabba. It says that Abraham was told to go and to go to a land that God will show him. It doesn’t say Canaan.

So Rabbi Levi said when Abraham was traveling through Aram Naharaim and Aram Nahor, he saw them eating, drinking, and reveling. He said, “Would that my portion not be in this land.” When he reached the promontory of Tyre, he saw them, the Canaanites, engaged in weeding at the time of weeding, hoeing at the time of hoeing. They were hardworking people not given to merrymaking. He would that my portion be in this land.

So first of all, it seems to be amazing that in the eyes of this rabbinic piece, the Palestinians, the Canaanites, the people that were in this land were actually inspirational, were talked about in flattering terms on the one hand, and the other part is the industry of the land. The startup nationness of this land is recognized in this Midrash. So much in here.

But let’s talk for a second in the closing minutes that we have about what your perceptions are when you came here and now through the years, and especially through these last two years of this being able to look at this land that I’m sure when you came, you had certain perceptions of how it could be a shared society, and certain perceptions of how we can resolve some of the big issues. Has that changed in the last two years? Has it changed since you’ve come here asking you to say this? Of course, Al regel echad (on one foot).

Noah Efron [29:59 – 30:29]: I don’t know if it’s changed in these wretched last two years. I guess what I have gotten from these last two years is a fuller sense of just how vexed, how difficult the challenge is, how much pain there is for so many people, and now more than there was two years ago. Even though what happened over the last two years is a product of the pain that came before. So I’m left with a greater sense of the gravity of the situation.

But I think that what hasn’t changed is my confidence that, in the fullness of time, whether it’s in my children’s lifetime and not my lifetime or just later in my lifetime, I think that we will reach a resolution. And I don’t claim to know much about the souls of Palestinian friends of Palestinians, though I’m very eager and always probing my Palestinian friends to try to understand more.

But what I have seen in my lifetime in Israel has been a single overarching narrative now that I see from the heights of my advanced age, and what it is, is that since I have come to Israel, I have seen the hearts of Israelis grow softer and gentler and more open continually.

I know that this conflicts with a lot of people who tell themselves the story of Israel as a story of decline, of how at the beginning there were socialists, it was this progressive place, and then, since then, it’s become more right-wing and more exclusive and more racist and less open-minded and less open to the world and less modern and less progressive. But what I have seen over the course of my lifetime is exactly the opposite.

I have seen, I came to a country where, for instance, if you were gay, then you had no place to be public at all. I live near Independence Park here in Tel Aviv, and that was the place that was known for being the park where gay men could meet each other and surreptitiously have sex under trees in the park because there was no place to gather.

I have seen the story of LGBTQ rights, or the position or the culture of these people. The acceptance of these people in Israel is a very, very dramatic story of having gone from being utterly unutterable, utterly unable to say that you exist, to one where people are just warmly accepted at Shabbat dinner by their Orthodox parents with their husbands if they’re men or with their wives if they’re women. So we’ve all seen that change.

That’s really simple. But what it is like to be Russian here, what it is like to be Ethiopian here, frankly, what it is like to be a Palestinian, Israeli also, in every way, there is so much more acceptance. The academic year started yesterday, and 30% of the new students in the medical schools are Palestinian Israelis. It’s an astonishing thing that would have been unthinkable.

When I came to the country, it was illegal to speak to a Palestinian who was not a citizen of Israel. And now just the degree to which people accept one another, people value one another. If it’s Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, if it’s Ethiopians, if it’s Russians, if it’s just everyone, it has changed so dramatically.

And it’s hard for me to believe. You know, Israelis are geniuses at embracing us. We’re geniuses at us. We saw that on October 8, how the entire country rose as if at once, everyone seeking ways to help everyone else. We’re geniuses at us. And what I have seen in my lifetime, the story of my life, is seeing the us in this country grow and grow and grow.

When I came here, it was, you know, kibbutznikim. It was Ashkenazi, kibbutznikim. And I’ve seen it grow to include Sfaradim and include immigrants of different sorts and include Christians and include Muslims who are citizens of the country, at the very least. And I do not see any reason to expect that that expanding notion of us has reached its limit.

So I envision, I think, that the next generation, the problem that they’re gonna be talking about on their podcast 35 years from now is gonna be the problem of assimilation. I’m worried that my Muslim child is gonna marry a Jew. I’m worried that my Jewish child is gonna marry a Christian. That’s gonna be the problem that they’re talking about on podcasts because I think that we will by then have managed to find a way to create a bigger us, like in Bereshit Rabbah, like you were talking about, to appreciate the people who are working hard and to understand that we all have a portion in this land.

Adam Mintz [35:58 – 37:27]: I’ll just say, first of all, thank you so much. And your perspective, I think Geoffrey will agree, your perspective here and on your podcast is, you know, so refreshing and so broad and so, you know, so optimistic. And I’m sure that’s true in Israel, but we know when we listen here in the United States from far away, it’s something that, you know, gives us an optimism that we don’t always hear.

And I just want to, you know, just maybe we can close with a verse that we both learned in the Hebrew Academy on 16th Street many years ago, and that is that Abraham says at the beginning of Chayei Sarah, he defines himself as being a ger v’toshav. Means that I’m both a citizen, but I’m also, you know, I’m also someone from a distance. And, you know, you’re describing yourself as being someone from a distance, but someone who’s very much part of society.

But what we just heard from you in the last few minutes is that the society is a society of ger v’toshav, of people who are there, but people who at one time didn’t quite fit in, and now they fit in exactly. And you’re talking about a situation where it’s going to be mixed up. And that’s what you said in the podcast. They’ll be talking about assimilation. We won’t know who the ger is and who the toshav is. And we’re going to, we’re not going to know exactly how they merged the two of us. So Abraham was really prophetic when he described not only himself but the Jewish personality as being that of a ger v’toshav.

Noah Efron [37:29 – 37:40]: That is beautiful. I’m gesticulating wildly for those who are just listening saying yes, yes, yes, that is a wonderful description and exactly what I believe and thank you for that.

Geoffrey Stern [37:42 – 38:11]: Okay, I don’t want to jump in on this alumni reunion here, but I do want to thank you both for being on the podcast.

This was an exceptional episode. I want to encourage every listener of Madlik to listen to the Promised Podcast. You get this refreshing, uplifting voice every week, and you get a front seat at the 73rd Aliyah.

I’m going to call you to the land of Israel by coming patriots from America. So Shabbat Shalom, thanks for joining us, Noah.

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.