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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 platforms and now on YouTube, so you can see us and not only hear us. How ironic is that? We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s Parsha is Eikev. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has pointed out the importance of listening as opposed to seeing, especially in Deuteronomy, and as it relates to interpersonal skills. We explore the primal power of sound, speech, and music as emotional triggers essential to Jewish practice. So join us for Listen, Just Listen. Rabbi, I have to say, last Shabbat was Shabbat Nachamu, and I went to my local Chabad in Westport, Connecticut, and Yehuda Kantor, the Chabad Rabbi, pointed out—he didn’t quote Rabbi Sacks—but he pointed out the power of hearing as opposed to the challenges of seeing idolatry. Then my wife sent me this Rabbi Sacks article on Shema, and I said, you know what? I guess the gods are saying something I’ve got to do this week on Shema.

Adam Mintz [2:27 – 2:32]: Listen. Just listen. It’s a great thing. I’m happy that it came from the Chabad Rabbi in Westport.

Geoffrey Stern [2:32 – 3:22]: So before we start, we have a little housework or homework or file-keeping to do. You sent me, I guess, a pre-publication of an article in Sapir, a very respected journal that you wrote for the coming edition. I assume it’s called the Paradoxes of Conversion, and I read it. We have talked about ger so many times, but you somehow bridged the gap between ger as stranger and ger as convert as I’ve never seen before. So all I can say to our listeners is I hope you’re subscribed to Sapir because in the upcoming edition, there’s an amazing article by Adam Mintz. I just loved it.

Adam Mintz [3:22 – 4:23]: Thank you so much, everybody. I think you can go to the Sapir website and access it, or if you would like, you can go to my Facebook page. I actually posted it today, and I look forward to hearing everybody’s ideas. I’ll just tell you in one second that the word ger, which we probably have talked about over time in Madlik, is a fascinating word because, in the Torah, ger doesn’t mean convert; it means stranger. The rabbis use the word that in the Torah means stranger, to mean convert, which is an interesting selection of words. Why would you choose the word that means stranger as convert? Probably on some level, it means that the convert never loses that uniqueness, even after they join the Jewish people. But, anyway, read the article. I look forward to your reactions. And now let’s listen. Just listen.

Geoffrey Stern [4:23 – 4:54]: Well, that’s a great tease. I have to say, because we are talking about listening, I don’t normally share my other hat or my other kippa, but to pay the bills and the rent, I have a company that makes products that have audio chips inside of them and record audio. There was a podcast published also this week called The Business Behind Your Business. I’ll put a link in the show notes, but I think, as we move forward in this podcast, that the power of hearing, the power of music, the power of the spoken word is powerful. The potential of a screenless society where you can focus sometimes on just the word kind of unites my two careers. So anyway, here we go.

In Deuteronomy 11:13, it says if you hearken. Yes, hearken! It says the word to hear twice to my commandments that I command you today to love God, your God, and serve him with all your heart and with all your being. So if you ever look at the show notes on Sefaria, Sefaria now has all the writings or a large part of the writings of Jonathan Sacks. You can just go there. I mean, it’s great to have his books, but this is a brilliant commentator who is so well-versed in the literature and ethos of our day. He’s just fascinating.

So this is what he writes. Shema is one of the key words of the book of Deuteronomy, where it appears no less than 92 times. It is, in fact, one of the key words of Judaism as a whole. It is central to the two passages that form the first two paragraphs of the prayer we call Shema, one in the previous Parsha, the other in this parsha. And that is what kind of hit me between the eyes. He goes on, and he says at the most basic level, Shema represents that aspect of Judaism that was most radical in its day, that God cannot be seen. I think that’s amazing, that you have to listen to him because he can’t be seen. He can only be heard.

Time and again, Moses warns against making or worshiping any physical representation of the divine. As he tells the people, it is a theme that runs through the Bible. Moses insistently reminds the people that at Mount Sinai, the Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form. There was only a voice. Even when Moses mentions seeing, he is really talking about listening. A classic example occurs in the opening verses of the next Parsha, Re’eh. In Deuteronomy 4:12, it says, “God spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but perceived no shape, nothing but a voice.”

I have never read this passage with more enlightenment than when I read it after this introduction by Rabbi Sacks. It is just brilliant: “God spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but perceived no shape, nothing but a voice.” It’s just absolutely amazing if you think about it, Rabbi.

Adam Mintz [8:13 – 8:26]: einchem ro’im zulati kol You saw nothing except the voice. That’s what Sacks is saying. It gives the impression actually that you see the voice.

Geoffrey Stern [8:27 – 9:14]: It just. You talk about an eye opener. You talk about someone who opens your eyes. He goes on. Judaism by contrast is a culture of the ear more than the eye. As Rabbi David Cohen, the disciple of Rav Kook, said, the Talmud constantly uses the metaphor of hearing. So when a proof is brought, it says “tashma, come and hear.” When it speaks of inference, it says “shmamina, hear from this.” When someone disagrees with an argument, it says “lo shmale, he could not hear it.” When it draws a conclusion, it says “mashma, from this it can be heard.” Rabbi, we take all of this stuff for granted. Maimonides calls the oral tradition “mishmi,” from the mouth of that which was heard. In Western culture, understanding is a form of seeing. In Judaism, it is a form of listening.

Adam Mintz [9:14 – 9:15]: And.

Geoffrey Stern [9:16 – 9:26]: From the mouth of that which was heard. In Western culture, understanding is a form of seeing. In Judaism, it is a form of listening.

Adam Mintz [9:26 – 9:39]: That last sentence is remarkable. Now, I don’t know enough about Western culture. I don’t know what that means, understanding as a form of seeing. But the idea that Judaism has it different is also fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [9:40 – 11:29]: So you are welcome. And I invite you to read Rabbi Sacks’s full particular article that is quoted in regards to our Parsha. It has him leaving a conference at the Hebrew University because people are talking and not listening.

Speaker A: And him going to meet Amos Oz a secular writer and learning what it is to listen. I just want to say he really opens up our eyes. I would argue that there’s a place for hearing and there’s a place for seeing. I mean, last week’s Parsha we read, it has been clearly demonstrated—you have seen it—that God is king, that God is God.

We learn when the Mishkan was being built. It says clearly, in architecture, it’s important to see a plan once in a while. “Exactly as I show you, the pattern of the tabernacle.” And of course, in the Talmud, there’s an amazing expression, “ein shmia k’reiyah.” It happens to deal with the new moon. But hearing is not quite like seeing.

So, I think we need to take Rabbi Sacks with a grain of salt. But alternatively, we need to say, wow, there is something here. And I’m not saying a pun. We have to listen. And where does that take us? In the rest of today’s talk, we are going to talk about the power of listening—not necessarily to the exclusion of the other senses, but focusing like a laser on the power of listening and what that means to us. Rabbi, do you hear me?

Adam Mintz [11:30 – 11:35]: I hear you. Let’s go. Video Killed the Radio Star, so—

Geoffrey Stern [11:35 – 14:28]: I will argue at the end that there was a moment in our tradition very similar to the moment when the song came out, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” I looked it up on Wikipedia, and it really was fascinating because it was the moment where we transitioned from—and I have pictures in the show notes from Norman Rockwell and others of people listening to Roosevelt talking to the nation. They were listening to a radio, and their imagination was alive.

There’s another picture that I show of a bunch of guys with a beer in their hand listening to… maybe it was sports, maybe it was a horse race, or who knows? The power of sound and that image that we have of just radio. And then all of a sudden, we came into a culture with all of these technologies, whether it’s video or screens, that in a sense robbed us of that imagination of just listening and listening with others, and also listening in terms of the imagination that it conveyed.

The Wikipedia entry on “Video Killed the Radio Star” ends by saying it was inspired by memories of listening to Radio Luxembourg at night as a child. And if you look at the video—and the irony, of course, is that this was the first video that was produced on MTV, so it was the first music video. But I think it was a seismic moment where we moved to this age of everything being shown to us, and we lost something in the process.

So, you know, I want to talk a little bit about what happens in our world when we start looking at screens. One of the things that I learned in my business life from this company, Build-A-Bear, that I provided the sounds to, is what people do with those sounds. They have voices of people that are no longer with us. They take the last message from their answering machine. There’s something about having tactile memories that triggers emotions, and there’s a lot of research that shows that children, for instance, who get addicted to that iPhone and iPad screen, they lose certain—not only what Rabbi Sacks was talking about the social interactions, but their language development is impacted. You watch a kid watching a video, and their mouth is open. They’re just kind of taking it in, but it’s not interactive.

Adam Mintz [14:28 – 14:32]: Even my three-year-old grandson is like that when he watches a video. It’s crazy.

Geoffrey Stern [14:33 – 16:59]: There are all sorts of studies, and I think this is a wonderful kind of introduction for us to maybe reclaim not only the audible content in our Torah and the power of Shmia, but in our daily life. So music is another. And I couldn’t help but get a sense when I was at Chabad of the singing involved. But, Rabbi, I think a Friday night dinner is all you need. You say the Kiddush, you might sing the Birkat Hamazon. When I was a kid, my grandfather paid us—he gave us a prize if we could sing the whole Birkat Hamazon.

My kids, my grandkids go to Camp Ramah. It’s because they put these tunes to music that they are memorized, and those music pieces are triggers. Have you ever heard a song that instantly transported you to a specific moment in your life? Maybe it was a childhood tune that brought back innocent feelings. Music has a profound ability to evoke deep emotions, and there’s some fascinating science behind this.

Some of the science I saw was that music is not just a collection of sounds—as you know, it’s a complex stimulus that interacts with multiple regions of the brain. I’m going to mispronounce this: the amygdala, which is responsible for processing emotions, and the hippocampus, which is associated with memory. Rabbi, memory and music and sound.

In a month’s time, a little more, we’re going to hear Kol Nidre. And Kol Nidre is sung the same way all over the world, but much more importantly, it’s been sung like this forever. You know, they get into music today, and once in a while, you’ll hear remastered CDs where they took the original tracks and remastered them.

When we hear the leining of the Torah, when we hear Kol Nidre, when we hear a tune, a song, or a melody of words that is part of our tradition, it’s as close as we can get back to those original traditions. It’s the same human voice chords that are singing or saying the same words. You don’t get that with visions; you don’t get that with screens.

Adam Mintz [16:59 – 17:19]: Now, I think that there are many studies showing that people with dementia respond not to words; they respond only to music. And I’m sure that it’s related to this same thing, right? That there’s a piece of memory that only reacts and responds to music.

Geoffrey Stern [17:20 – 18:14]: So I have a very dear friend, Michael Posnick, who sometimes comes on the podcast, and his wife, God bless her, had dementia. And the only thing that triggered her without fail was music. And she was a member of Zimria, and literally what you just said was the fact.

And I would suggest one of my products is the Old Fashioned mixtape, where we used to make a music track for a loved one, because this was either our music or their music or our shared music, and we would give it to them. And I think every one of us should have our own mixtape, because God forbid we ever get into a situation where we need those triggers. We’re going to need our mixtape. I think it’s profound.

Adam Mintz [18:14 – 18:26]: It is absolutely profound. And this is exactly what you read in the previous paragraph, that there’s a scientific, biological, or neurological reason for this.

Geoffrey Stern [18:27 – 19:01]: So then we get into memory techniques, because as I said before, it’s connected to memory. And there are mnemonic devices. We believe in an oral tradition. We have a word that Rabbi Sacks didn’t mention but should have: Torah Sheba’al Peh, the Torah that is by voice.

Now, we normally consider it as a complementary Torah, a Torah that fills in the empty spaces. And that’s all true, but it’s also a Torah of voice. It’s a Torah that you hear.

Adam Mintz [19:02 – 19:11]: Yeah, I mean, we say in English, the Oral Torah. So actually, in that case, the English translation is perfect. It is exactly right.

Geoffrey Stern [19:13 – 20:53]: Exactly. And we have these mnemonic devices. We all come across them, for instance, in the Haggadah, where it talks about the ten plagues, which can be minimized to “Datzach V’adash B’achav.” The point is, in tech, we have a lot of mnemonic devices and acronyms. DOS is Disk Operating System, but the Torah—and this gets back to Moses. Moses is giving the people something that they can carry with them into the future.

And Shmia is one of those things. Hearing is one of those things. And with that comes a whole toolbox of tools, including acronyms, where you take a lot of information and you put it into just a few letters.

Speaker A: It’s called an algorithm, Rabbi. You make dense data, and it is a trigger. Judaism is full of those triggers. You hear them, and you have a response. There are rhymes, there’s organizing by the alphabet. Ashrei, if you look at it, is a famous psalm, but there are many psalms that go through. The first letters are the letters of the alphabet. This concept of hearing is not only a trigger to our emotions but also a direct connection to our memory. It’s just so profound. And it all starts with this infatuation of Deuteronomy with hearing.

Adam Mintz [20:54 – 21:16]: It’s fantastic. I mean, that’s what it is. And that’s great. And it’s right there. The amazing thing, Geoffrey, is that Rabbi Sacks highlighted it. But it’s in the Shema that we say twice a day. We don’t think about it that way. If you will listen. But actually, it talks about the importance of listening.

Geoffrey Stern [21:17 – 22:52]: Yeah, it’s as everything else that we kind of quote-unquote discover on Madlik. It’s there in front of our eyes, or in this case, in front of our ears. But again, this concept that I talked about, about remastering audio, if you really focus, for instance, Rabbi, on the shofar, it is the Halacha guides us into the simplicity of the design of the shofar. And what that does is ensure that our shofar is identical to a shofar that was blown a thousand years ago, 2,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago. Even if you believe in evolution, a thousand years is nothing. The chances of our ram’s horn being identical to the ram’s horn that was used a thousand, two thousand, or three years ago are very feasible. And then, if it’s blown and you close your eyes on Rosh Hashanah or during Elul when you hear it, this is high-fidelity Judaism. You are literally re-experiencing the identical sound. You can’t do that with images. We can all pretend we know what the Menorah looks like. The Chabad Menorah is very angular. The Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome is not so much. But when it comes to sounds, it has this amazing ability. If we do it right with musical notes, which is what Trop is, to reproduce.

Adam Mintz [22:53 – 23:31]: Yeah. I mean, that’s fantastic. I mean, the whole idea doesn’t exactly mean music, but of course, it’s right. And we also don’t know, by the way, the way that they recited the Torah. Right. You talked before about Trop, but how was the Torah transmitted? How did Moses transmit the Torah to Joshua? Did he say it? Did he declare it? Maybe, Geoffrey, he sang it. Maybe it was like poetry. So maybe from the very beginning, the way the Torah was transmitted was through song.

Geoffrey Stern [23:31 – 23:45]: I mean, certainly there’s that famous Yiddish song. Unless it was the sound of the kinder studying Torah.

Adam Mintz [23:45 – 24:08]: That, by the way, is an interesting idea. The sing-song. You know that from Yeshiva, when you open a Gemara, you don’t read the Gemara. You sing the Gemara. The fancy word is you chant it, but basically, you sing it. There’s a way to learn Gemara, and everything goes with a tune.

Geoffrey Stern [24:08 – 25:03]: Called the Kol Torah. I just thought of that. I mean, you can. I used to live on 79th and Riverside. Opposite, there was a cheder there, and you could literally hear. I said to my wife, that’s the Kol Torah. That’s the sound of Torah learning. It is just the sound. Amazing. These are triggers, and they’re triggers that really are so kind of primal that we dare ignore them. I would argue that after listening to Rabbi Sacks’ insight, I recommend that when we shake the Lulav. I was once in China, and I saw a Buddhist making sounds with something they were shaking, and it reminded me of the sound that you hear from shaking the Lulav.

Adam Mintz [25:03 – 25:28]: That’s so interesting. The Mishnah seems to suggest that the sound you make when you shake the Lulav is actually what’s most important. There’s sound. And actually, you want to say it better. That connects Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot. Both of them are connected to sound. One, you make through the instrument of the shofar. The other, you make through the Lulav.

Geoffrey Stern [25:28 – 26:54]: Thank you for that. I mean, that just confirms what I was saying. So, you know, if you look at Maimonides, who wrote the first code of Jewish law, in his introduction, I am going to argue he came as close to giving in legalese what the song “Video Killed the Radio Star” did in lyrics. What he does is go through the history of the oral tradition. And of course, he’s much more interested in the part of the oral tradition that filled in the blanks, those things that it says, put these words on your arm and on the frontlets between your eyes. The oral tradition told us what tefillin looked like. But I think you can just as easily say that it had to do with also the oral tradition. And there was a time where he says that either it was because the Jews became dispersed, but if you look at the beginning of Pirkei Avot, it’s all about how the tradition was translated. It was the oral tradition that was translated. Then came along Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi and the generations. There was persecution, and they had to break the law. They broke the law by writing down the oral traditions.

Adam Mintz [26:55 – 27:26]: Now, explain why they broke the tradition. Because they were afraid that it would have been lost. They would have forgotten it because the Jews were dispersing, and that oral tradition would be lost. The other piece, Geoffrey, about an oral tradition is you need people. A written tradition can be maintained even if there’s no community. If there’s a break of 100 years, you still have the written tradition. But the oral tradition needs continuity, which also makes your point very strong.

Geoffrey Stern [27:26 – 29:30]: I guess it’s like an echo. Sound carries, you know. Meanwhile, Maimonides went ahead, and he codified everything because he said in his generation, it went to the next level. But what he talks about is that I am going to give you clear laws, judgments that result from all the texts. There won’t be any arguments anymore. There won’t be any discussion anymore. Everybody will have this processed and prepackaged. And similar to “Video Killed the Audio Star,” where they both reminisced about it and regretted it and then went on MTV, Maimonides does both. He talks about the power of the oral tradition. He clearly had a love, and his critics believed that he kind of abandoned his love for the discussion, for the discourse, for the argumentation, that Kol Torah. For pragmatic reasons, he put it down into writing, which in today’s day would be almost putting it into the video. This is the way it looked. You can only see it this way. I think that we owe Rabbi Sacks a great thank you for focusing us on the power of sound, the power that sound has. It has an ability to bring us together, as Sacks says. It also has this ability to require us to listen to each other. I think also it is this amazing emotional trigger. It is a tradition, whether by music or by other instruments like the shofar or by the transmission of sounds and intonations that we really can’t ignore.

Adam Mintz [29:30 – 29:30]: And.

Geoffrey Stern [29:30 – 29:58]: And we have to thank ourselves that on Shabbat, where we hopefully unplug a little bit and get away from our screens, I think if we look at that Friday night table where we have so many sounds of liturgy and music, we really take advantage of this gift that Sacks says is a radical idea of Judaism. I think it’s certainly one that’s very empowering.

Adam Mintz [29:59 – 30:25]: Amazing. Not only, Geoffrey, are we going to think about this idea on this Shabbat when we read Parashat Eikev, but every single day, when we say “V’haya Im Shamoa” when we recite the Shema, we can think about this idea.

You gave new meaning, Rabbi Sacks gave new meaning to something that we all kind of take for granted. So thank you, Geoffrey. Thank you, Rabbi Sacks. Shabbat shalom to everybody. And we look forward to seeing you, everybody, next week.

Geoffrey Stern [30:25 – 30:36]: Shabbat shalom, everybody. Listen to us wherever you can. We hear you; we hope you hear us and look forward to seeing you all next week.

As Moses gives his parting advice to generations to come, he uses a word not mentioned in the previous books of the Torah. The word is limmud, the source for both teaching and learning. And we watch the rabbis try to keep this genie in the bottle. 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 channel and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

If you’re listening and you like what you hear, why don’t you give us a few stars and say something nice? This week’s Parasha is Va’etchanan. Judaism is dedicated to, even infatuated with learning and teaching. So we are a little surprised to find the word limmud appear only now in Devarim, where Moses provides the tools for the future. The rabbis want us to learn in order to do, but we explore the power of pure as opposed to applied learning in rabbinic and later literature.

Rabbi, I couldn’t help but think, as I was wanting to prepare, that it was Tisha B’Av and we’re not allowed to learn on Tisha B’Av. It’s the only day of the year we’re not allowed to learn. And why is that? The Talmud in Taanit says, because the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. It’s too much joy in learning.

Adam Mintz [2:16 – 2:24]: It’s remarkable, isn’t it, that learning Torah is so much fun that we can’t have that fun on Tisha B’Av.

Geoffrey Stern [2:24 – 4:10]: You know, there’s a word that we use in the yeshiva. It’s called taiva. If you have a taiva for chocolate cake, you just can’t resist it. I am telling you, Rabbi, the rabbis of the Talmud—and I think we—I’m guilty as charged, just love to learn. And therefore you have to get into, well, what are my intentions? Am I doing it for the right intention? It’s absolutely amazing.

I want to start with a story that I heard from Rabbi Riskin and I did a Google search, and I searched and I searched, and I finally found this story in Tradition magazine in the 70s. We might get into it in more detail later, but the context is can apikorsim, can non-believers study Torah? And here’s the story that Rabbi Riskin tells. He says there’s an archetypal story told about the European shtetl Jew who would badger the rabbi with heretical questions for an hour after Havdalah each Saturday night.

“If this is your opinion, why do you persist in coming to shul every Sabbath?” ultimately asked the exasperated rabbi. Came the response, “An apikoros I am, a goy I’m not.” The idea was that even a non-believer loves to study Torah. And where else can he study but the study hall? Where else can he study but the shul?

I think there was an archetypal image that I have, and I tried to find it in Yiddish literature, of the heretics studying Talmud on Shabbos with a cigar. But wasn’t there every… didn’t every town have that apikores?

Adam Mintz [4:10 – 4:21]: There’s no question about it. There are famous stories about the yeshivas in Eastern Europe and how they used to keep their secular books inside of their Talmuds.

Geoffrey Stern [4:22 – 4:31]: Okay, but that’s a little bit… That’s slightly different, but you’re right. They love… the Talmudists loved to study the secular world. Loved to.

Adam Mintz [4:31 – 4:42]: That’s correct. That’s really the opposite. The Talmudists like to study secular studies. The secularists like to study the Talmud. Yeah. Okay, good. So I gave you the flip side of your example.

Geoffrey Stern [4:42 – 5:37]: You know what, Rabbi? We’re gonna get to the flip side. We’re gonna get there. But for now, let’s just look at the verses in Deuteronomy 4. It says, “And now, O Israel, give heed to the laws and rules that I am instructing you to observe so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that God, the God of your fathers, is giving to you.”

In Hebrew, it says, “Yisrael, shema el hachukim,” listen to the commandments, “ve’el ha’mishpatim,” and the laws. asher anochi melamed etchem l’asot. limmud is to learn. Melamed is a teacher. limmud is study. So I couldn’t believe it, Rabbi. I looked it up in the concordance and limmud and no word using the shoresh lamed mem dalet is anywhere else in the five books of Moses besides Devarim. I had never realized that before.

Adam Mintz [5:38 – 5:55]: It’s a Devarim word because limmud has to do with transmission to the next generation. And Devarim is the book where Moshe wants to transmit to the next generation. So it’s not surprising that’s the only place it appears. But that is very interesting.

Geoffrey Stern [5:55 – 7:09]: And once you raise your antenna like that, then you start reading farther on. In our parasha, in Devarim 6, it says, “Impress them upon your children.” This is part of the Shema that we say two times a day, and it is here that we learn. There is a mitzvah to teach your children Torah, to study Torah. In Devarim Yud Aleph, in Devarim 11, it says, “And if you faithfully keep all this instruction that I command you, loving your God…” Here it says, this is a formulation that I think we’re more used to, “which I have commanded you to do.”

What is going to strike the rabbis is that in our verse, it says, “that which I taught you to do.” And they’re going to make some interesting connections as opposed to “mezaveh etchem le’asot.” That is going to have a big impact on what the rabbis start learning already now, with the first mention of limmud, is how you’re supposed to learn.

Adam Mintz [7:10 – 7:13]: Fantastic. Okay, let’s see what they have to say.

Geoffrey Stern [7:13 – 8:55]: So in Mishneh Torah, the positive mitzvah, the 11th Commandment, is to study Torah and teach it to others, as it says in Deuteronomy 6:7, “And you shall teach them to your children.” So the word that it uses that we find in the Shema is “V’shinantem.” That comes from the word Mishnah, to repeat over and to teach. But clearly, our sense of limmud has more to do than simply teaching your child.

Let’s read a little bit from the Mishneh Torah. Just as a person is obligated to teach his son, so too he is obligated to teach his grandson. There we go, Rabbi, we learned something new today. We have to teach our grandsons. Or alternatively, it’s a mitzvah to teach our grandsons: “You shall teach them to your children.” Furthermore, this charge is not confined to one’s children and grandchildren alone. Rather, it is a mitzvah for each and every wise man to teach all students, even though they are not children. For as it says in Deuteronomy 6:7, from our parasha, “And you shall teach them to your sons.” The oral teaching explains: “Your sons,” these are your students. For students are also called sons.

And it goes on a little bit like that. Rabbi, I think what it’s doing is it’s giving a basis for what you said. You said that the reason why limmud teaching is in Deuteronomy is because in Deuteronomy, Moses is giving the people of Israel the tools to transmit into the future. He’s giving his last words of guidance. And the most important tool that he gives them is to teach. To teach your children and to teach your students as if they were your children.

Adam Mintz [8:56 – 9:05]: Right. There’s no question about that. And Rambam understands that. And that’s exactly what Moshe is trying to pass on to the next generation. Good.

Geoffrey Stern [9:06 – 10:00]: So now we’re going to start splitting the hairs here about the different types of learnings or maybe the different intentions.

In Mishnah Pirkei Avot, it says, Rabbi Ishmael, his son, said, he who learns in order to teach, it is granted to him to study and to teach. But he who learns in order to practice, it is granted to him to learn and to teach and to practice. So all of a sudden, we’re starting to get into different reasons to learn. There’s the reason to learn, which is to kind of carry on the tradition with your children, by extension with your students. And then there’s a higher level, and I call this applied science or applied learning. This is to study in order to do. And if you do that, it includes everything.

Adam Mintz [10:01 – 10:18]: Fantastic. Okay. I mean, we study Pirkei Avot in the summer. And it’s interesting that Pirkei Avot is about study and that we come to the word l’ilmod in Sefer Devarim, which also is a summer word. So I’m sure that’s not by chance.

Geoffrey Stern [10:19 – 12:06]: So I. Well, one of my takeaways from this is if you teach in order to practice, you get everything because you set an example. I’ve always thought there are no silver bullets, especially living in America, when we try to transfer our Judaism to the next generation. But there are those outward teachings and then there’s watch me. And I think kids are much more impacted by what they see their parents do and they see others do than what those people tell them to do. So that was one of my takeaways.

The Pirkei Avot continues. And it says, Rabbi Tzadok said, do not make them a crown for self-exaltation or a spade with which to dig. They already were looking at Talmudic rabbinic Torah knowledge as something that could be used, misused. Don’t use the Torah as an atarah lehitgadel bahen. Don’t use it to build yourself up for pride. Don’t use it to dig with, to make a living, maybe to get rich with. All of a sudden, the rabbis are talking about what you can’t do with the Torah. But also it’s starting to say something about the society we live in.

Rabbi, if you have an agricultural society that no one studies and somebody becomes a great scholar, I would say nine out of ten societies will make fun of that person. They’re not going to admire him. They’re not going to say, oh, he’s using the Torah. It has to come from a society that values learning. It’s already saying something about the Israelite society that they have to warn and don’t use this to aggrandize yourself.

Adam Mintz [12:07 – 13:16]: So that’s so interesting. It’s not only have to value Torah, they have to value Torah as a value in itself. Torah is not important so that you will be important. It’s almost like you say, people value their work, they go to work every day. But the truth is they don’t actually value their work. They value the salary they’re going to make from their work. So the value is as a way of getting to the ultimate goal. But his point is, and the Lithuanians make a big point about this, is that the value of Torah is Torah. You know, the Hasidim, I’ll just take a second to say this. The Hasidim believe that you study Torah, that you pray as a way to get closer to God. But the Lithuanians always said that that’s not true. They quote Geoffrey, the sources that we’re talking about, and they say the value of Torah is Torah. Not what will come from Torah, but it’s Torah itself.

Geoffrey Stern [13:17 – 14:21]: It just struck me though, that in a society that we live in, even today, that learning and academia and knowledge is not that valued. You would not have to warn somebody. Don’t misuse it. Build yourself up with your Torah learning. Don’t use it to make a living. It really says something so profound about the society, but also about the people in it.

I mean, they really, I said in the beginning they let the genie out of the bottle. Torah is something that attracts people like me and you. We spend every week studying it. We have to be careful because it is so engaging. It’s so wonderful. At least that’s the world they came from. I just love that that’s the benchmark. It’s not as though they’re saying, you know, you can eat but don’t overeat. You can eat, but don’t do this. We’re talking about learning here, and they feel they have to put so many guardrails in because you might misuse it. I just find that fascinating.

Adam Mintz [14:21 – 14:47]: I’ll tell you, I saw a Tisha B’Av an amazing story. It was a story about a rabbi who after a long Tisha B’Av, rather than sitting down to eat, he would first study. Because on Tisha B’Av you don’t eat and you don’t study. But what he missed more than the food was the fact that he couldn’t study. That just shows that’s what you referred to at the beginning, the taiva for learning.

Geoffrey Stern [14:48 – 17:46]: It’s just amazing. And again, I think the story that Rabbi Riskin told about the guy who says, a heretic I might be, but a goy I’m not. In other words, he had the taiva. The taiva remains. It is such a profound part of the DNA of the Jewish people, this love of learning. There’s a reason we’re called the people of the book.

So about 15 years ago, and you know this story, there was an amazing woman from Alma who became a member of the Knesset, and she taught Talmud in front of the whole Knesset, in front of the Haredim and everybody. And all of a sudden people started thinking what’s called secular Yeshivot. And there is a current scholar, a guy named Gil Student, who asks the question in a blog post, is secular study of the Torah permissible? I mean, it’s a fascinating question. Rabbi, who would have even thought that you would need to ask that?

So he brings the sources. He says, non-observant Jews study Talmud for two main reasons, either devotional or intellectual. While these need not be mutually exclusive, the first attitude represents a religious act or a form of worship, even if denying the Talmud’s full religious authority. The second considers Talmud study an intellectual exercise, a broadening of cultural awareness, but is potentially problematic from a Talmudic perspective. So I thank him for the sources that we’re going to use.

In Berakhot 16B, it says, after his prayer, Rav Safra said the following: May it be your will, Lord our God, that you establish peace in the heavenly entourage of angels, each of whom is a minister, and so on and so forth. And then he says that he should be among the disciples engaged in the study of your Torah, whether they engage in its study for its own sake or not for its own sake. And all those engaged in Torah study not for its own sake, may it be your will that they will come to engage in its study for its own sake.

So the Hebrew words are Torah oskim shelo lishma and oskim lishma. But the question is already in the Talmudic period. First of all, it identifies, I think, a social institution that there were those people who learned Torah lo lishma, they’re not learning it necessarily to do it, to fulfill the commandments. They’re just learning it. And his belief was it’s okay because lo lishma ba lishma. If you study Torah not for the right intentionality, you’re studying it because of comparative religion, because of its wonderful stories, its access to human nature. Ultimately, you will fall so much in love that you will start doing the commandments.

Adam Mintz [17:46 – 18:00]: That idea of if you do it for the wrong reason, you’ll come to do it for the right reason, Geoffrey, that shows how powerful Torah is, that Torah will win you over.

Geoffrey Stern [18:02 – 18:59]: At least he believed it did. And he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t ask the question that was posed in this thing is, do we let everybody read Torah? Do we let everybody learn Torah? He wasn’t afraid. There are other opinions who are not so much. There’s Rabba once said, he who does them not for their own sake, it would have been preferable for him not to have been created. There is this concept. Rabbi, as much as we can say that learning the Torah has this great attraction.

It’s a sam HaChaim. It’s almost like a medicine that makes you alive. They were also afraid of what people could do with that knowledge. Maybe they could turn it against them. There was a line of reasoning that said, do not let the unbelievers study our texts.

Adam Mintz [19:00 – 19:18]: Right? I mean, you know, what is. Let’s analyze that for a minute. What does that tell you that you don’t want non-believers to study the Torah? You know, simply, I think what that says is that they’re gonna misinterpret the Torah, right? Isn’t that the risk?

Geoffrey Stern [19:19 – 19:23]: Okay, so let’s say higher biblical criticism, right?

Adam Mintz [19:23 – 19:47]: They misinterpret the Torah. That Torah isn’t just reading the text, it’s understanding it. That’s what we always talk about, the written Torah and the oral Torah. So therefore someone who’s a non-believer is going to misinterpret Torah. And misinterpreted Torah is worse than no Torah at all.

Geoffrey Stern [19:48 – 21:54]: At least that would be that opinion. So we’re getting different trains of thought here. Again, in Taanit, we do have that understanding that you can find good in Torah and you can find bad in Torah. You can have Torah that drives you to be a better person. And maybe you can find things in the Torah that are not so.

Rav Bana’a would say, anyone who engages in the Torah for its own sake, his Torah shall be an elixir of life for him, as it is “Etz Haim hi l’machazikim ba.” It is a tree of life. To them who hold it, it shall be your navel. And whoever finds me finds life. But he who engages in Torah not for its own sake, and this is interesting, not for its own sake, all of a sudden now he has ulterior motives. Maybe this is an elixir of death.

“My doctrine shall drop as the rain.” And “arifa” means nothing other than killing. So really there was strong argumentation about the danger, the potency of Torah. There’s in Pesachim, it says even a mitzvah performed with ulterior motives, God gives as a reward. As Rav Yehuda said, a person should always engage in Torah study and performance of mitzvot, even if he does it not for their own sake, as through the performance. So this is the lo lishma ba lishma.

But again, it comes down to a real discussion of, number one, what Torah is. Is it only to apply it so that you keep the commandments? In some of the texts, they start talking about, you know, it teaches you to honor your parents, it teaches you to have a good heart, it teaches you to do other things. And then, of course, as you say, there’s the potential for misunderstanding it, for using it to undermine the religion. But it is so profound that they really recognize the potency of Torah and they start wanting to draw conclusions.

Adam Mintz [21:56 – 21:59]: Yeah, it is remarkable. Okay, great.

Geoffrey Stern [22:00 – 24:22]: So what I wanted to get to a little bit is Norman Lamm, by the way, who is another one of my teachers. We’re mentioning Rabbi Riskin and we’re mentioning Rabbi Lamm. He wrote a whole book on this subject. And in it, he starts to bring the different opinions, quotes Tosafot that believes that the study of Torah should never be pursued with a conscious preclusion of the resulting implementation of the precepts, “limud al menat shelo la’asot.”

And this takes it to a very next extreme, where one is studying as a critic, maybe one is studying and saying, no, no, no, I’m not here to buy into this movement. I just want to understand the Torah. There are others. In the words of Rav Chaim Volozhin, he says the transformation of the study of Torah from a religio-intellectual to a cultural exercise is sinful. A secularist, detached Uncommitted study of Torah is considered by Rav Chaim a subversion of his definition of lishma and his understanding of the purpose of the study of Torah.

Rabbi, I am continually struck as we read these texts that the Torah was so powerful that it was constantly attracting people who wanted to study it to get other things out of it. Listen to Rabbi David Zvi Hoffman. He says the Torah of Israel is not a song or poem that you study in order to understand Jewish religion, but its purpose is learning in order to practice. They have this text that is so powerful. They have this body of law that is so fascinating. They have this Talmud that is full of insight into the human condition. And they have to say, no, no, no, it’s not a song, it’s not a poem, it’s not literature, it’s not drama. I just find it’s an amazing commentary on the power of Torah. And frankly, I am attracted to the songs and the poems and the lyricism and the human nature. And I’m impressed that they were so aware of it.

Adam Mintz [24:23 – 26:12]: So, I mean, Rabbi Lamm’s book, “Torah Lishmah,” which was his doctoral dissertation back in the 1960s, is actually a discussion of Rabbi Chaim Volozhin’s definition of “Torah lishma” as a reaction to the Hasidim. When Rabbi Chaim says that “Torah lishma” for its own sake means for the sake of studying Torah, that as opposed to the Hasidim, the Hasidic community, the Hasidic rabbis who believe that you study Torah to get close to God, the non-Hasidim didn’t like that. They didn’t like this idea. They thought even that was a misuse of Torah.

And that, Geoffrey, is amazing that the idea of using Torah to get close to God, that in itself is not allowed. And I’ll tell you a Rabbi Riskin story. When I was in 11th grade, I was in Rabbi Riskin’s high school in Riverdale, and Rabbi Riskin, as you know, once a week, I don’t remember what it was, Wednesday night maybe, used to give a lecture, right? That was the most famous lecture. It was the hottest ticket in New York. And we used to go sometimes to go listen to his lecture.

And one week, Rabbi Riskin was talking about this, and he said, and what does “Torah lishma” mean? And he turned around, you know, Lincoln Square is in the round. He turned around and he looked at me and he said, Adam, what does Tora lishma mean? I can’t believe I got the right answer. I was so petrified that I can’t believe I even knew how to talk. But he was proud. I gave him the right answer. I told him, Torah for its own sake. He was happy.

Geoffrey Stern [26:13 – 27:57]: Just amazing. It’s just amazing. But again, it cuts both ways. Torah for its own sake, in a sense, if it’s, you know, that’s where it becomes so fascinating to me, the amount of splitting and cutting and slicing and dicing to understand this amazing cultural phenomenon. And I think you could dedicate a whole podcast just to look at the different ways the Hasidic and the Lithuanian communities did look at Torah’s study. But I want to end with the takeaways from both.

This rabbi Student who talks about the secular yeshivas and we’ll go to Rabbi Riskin. So a student says, does a secular yeshiva teach the same Torah that religious yeshivas teach? In one sense, no. If the secular approach to the Talmud spreads, we will find our sacred texts profaned widely in society. Abayi and Rava will be two ancient debaters whose words are twisted beyond recognition in the public arena. We will also see religion challenged by a foreign textual sensibility that is difficult for the unintimidated to identify and reject.

This is not a matter of protecting rabbis from challenge, but protecting the Talmud’s sanctity open to all students who accept it as a sacred text. So at the end of the day, he questions whether you can study a sacred text in a sense. In the end he says, however, I can’t object to a secular yeshiva because Israeli society is so shallow that even a little religion, even if subversive, is a blessing. But I see the dilemma.

Adam Mintz [27:57 – 27:58]: That’s a great paragraph.

Geoffrey Stern [27:59 – 28:29]: Rabbi Riskin goes slightly differently. He tells the story of that heretic that comes to shul every Friday night.

And he ends up saying that nowadays, he says, what we are afraid of is not heretics, but Yiddish goyim who have no relationship whatsoever with any synagogue, not even for Yizkor services on Yom Kippur due to our lower birth rate and high assimilation rate according to the latest statistics. He says any excuse to study Torah is better than none. We must galvanize all of our forces to create Torah institutions.

In this particular article, he’s talking about how we dare not waste any of our precious resources and energy in the kind of inter-religious strife. He’s saying Reform is good, Conservative is good, Reconstructionist is good. Any exposure to Torah, who is it for us to criticize?

The fascinating thing is, Rabbi, you brought up in the beginning, and I want to end with this, you had that yeshiva student looking for the secular book in the Talmud in the stenda And I said, no, no, no, that’s something else. But the truth is, at the end of the day, what about all of those secular Jews learning Torah? What about the Torah that we study at Madlik? Isn’t it possible that we come up with some insights that might be of interest to the other community, to the totally dedicated community? And I think that’s what’s fascinating.

We live in an age, Rabbi, where women are studying Talmud and Torah for the first time. And I’ve got to believe at Maharat, where you teach, there are going to be times where, because we’re studying it with a new demographic or in a new way, we’re going to come up with chidushim (novel interpretations) that have never been heard before.

So, that really raises the question, can you study Torah from someone who is studying Lo Lishma? And the most famous example of that is Rabbi Meir and Elisha ben Abuya. Elisha ben Abuya is the penultimate heretic. He has been kotzets baNatiot. He has destroyed all the roots of Judaism, but he is still a Talmud Chacham. The Talmud refers to him as, “others say”, “acherim omrim”. There is this amazing story of Rabbi Meir, one of the greats who was his student. Rabbi Meir is walking with Elisha ben Abuya on Shabbat, and they are learning Torah. Elisha ben Abuya, Rabbi, is that Kofrim, that heretic on a donkey. As they approach the Techum Shabbat, which is the 2000 amot, outside of which you cannot walk on Shabbat, Elisha ben Abuya says to Rabbi Meir, we’ve reached the border, you should go back. And of course, Rabbi Meir turns to him and says, “No, oh, Acher, maybe you should come back.”

One is talking spatially and the other one is talking spiritually. But what happens at the end is when Acher passed away, the heavenly court declared that he should not be judged nor brought into the world to come. Rabbi Meir said, it is better that he be judged properly and be brought into the world to come. When I die, I will request this of heaven, and I will cause smoke to rise up from his grave as a sign that he is being sentenced to Gehennom. The Gemara relates, when Rabbi Meir passed away, smoke rose up from the grave of Acher, meaning that Rabbi Meir’s wishes were granted. Rabbi Meir learned from Elisha ben Abuya.

And I think that’s the additional answer to that of Rabbi Riskin and Rabbi Student. We live in a golden age when so many people are studying Torah. We should not necessarily be criticizing; we should be learning. What are they seeing in our text that we might have missed or that we have overlooked?

That’s amazing. I recommend everyone should read the book “As a Driven Leaf,” which is a historical novel written by Rabbi Milton Steinberg, who talks about the relationship between Rabbi Meir and Elisha ben Abuya. It’s an amazing book. He was the rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue.

And it’s an amazing Shabbat Shalom, everybody. No matter how you learn, no matter why you learn, you’ll always have a place at Madlik. We should just learn Torah. It’s an amazing thing. It’s not Tisha B’Av. Let’s enjoy Torah.

Fantastic Shabbat Shalom to see everybody next week.

Join us as we dig into Parashat Devarim, where Moses delivers one of the most unexpected farewell speeches in history. And it’s about law, leadership, and the burden of justice. We’ll look at ancient Torah, Rashi, Ramban, the Midrash Echa Rabba, and yes, Eisenhower and Ben Gurion too. To ask, why was Moses’ final warning about the courts, and what does that say about justice and the political situation in Israel today? Welcome to Madlik.

My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s parsha is Devarim. Deuteronomy is many things, but at its core, it is an iconic instance of the farewell speech genre. We review famous farewell speeches, specifically the rhetorical legacy of world leaders issuing a final moral word or final thoughts, and we’re surprised to discover that for Moses, it was the the independence of the judiciary.

Join us for the first judicial reform as we explore the lesson for our own times. Rabbi, we are just constantly tied to the events of the day through our Parasha. I don’t know if it’s the events or the way we read the Parasha.

Adam Mintz [2:49 – 2:59]: I would just say that the introduction today is better than usual. That in itself is a whole class. The introduction today. Fantastic. Let’s take it away. Parashat Devarim.

Geoffrey Stern [3:00 – 4:39]: So, as I said, Devarim is many things. Some people call it Mishnah Torah, a review of the Torah. But I think we can all agree that a core part of it is, as I said in the intro, Moses’ parting speech. And there’s a whole genre of that. But in Deuteronomy 1:3, it says it was in the 40th year, on the first day of the 11th month, that Moses addressed the Israelites in accordance with the instruction that God had given him for them. And Rashi comes right in because he’s struck by the date, and he says this tells us that he reproved them only shortly before his death. Jewish tradition holds that Moses died on the seventh day of the 12th month. From whom did he learn this? From Jacob, who reproved his sons only shortly before his death. He said, Reuben, my son, I will tell you. And he goes on and reproves them. And similarly, Joshua reproved Israel only shortly before his death. And so too Samuel, as Samuel says. So, Rabbi, what Rashi is saying is there is a strong tradition in our tradition for public leaders, maybe not so public, maybe leaders of clans, leaders of family, gathering their loved ones, gathering their nation around them, and not only saying goodbye, maybe reviewing all the good things that they’ve done, but also doing a little bit of moralizing, picking that issue that is of extreme importance to them, that last word, so to speak.

Adam Mintz [4:39 – 5:00]: Now, that’s interesting. You mentioned about public versus private. It’s not entirely clear whether it’s public or private. Especially Jacob, right. Jacob gathers his family. Now, you might say that that’s all he had, but that’s a good question. Whether they want to. Whether this idea of, you know, what we would call giving.

Geoffrey Stern [5:00 – 5:01]: Mussar.

Adam Mintz [5:01 – 5:11]: Right. Criticizing or correcting, whether that’s something good to do publicly or better to do privately. I think that’s something that we still argue about today.

Geoffrey Stern [5:12 – 7:11]: What I was struck by, though, is you only have one chance at a first impression and a last impression. And ultimately what these leaders or patriarchs have to do is to pick the one issue that is really on their minds. So, I have on the screen, for those of you who are watching, the handwritten notes of Eisenhower, the president, and he is addressing the nation. And he says, this evening, I come to you with a message of leave taking and farewell and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen, I would guess. And I started looking at different farewell speeches. And each one of them has to, some of them just review their good deeds and how much they love their people. But some of them also have to do with their last word. And I think Eisenhower, we all kind of know, we know that he says, as a general, he says, you know, we have to worry about. What did he call it? The military-industrial complex. I was also struck that he used a pasuk. He says American makers of plowshares could, with time, as required, make swords as well.

But I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds on each one of these farewell addresses. But clearly, each one of them was tied to the essence of the person, in this case, not only a president but a general, and his particular insight into what the concerns would be going forward. Washington’s farewell address in 1796, he talks about the unity of government, which constitutes you as one people. Obviously, this is the first time they’re gonna have elections. He has the 13 states, the union he probably saw as his greatest contribution. And he focuses on how quickly that union can dissolve.

Adam Mintz [7:12 – 7:50]: I just want to say it’s interesting which people make farewell speeches. You know, Eisenhower makes a point. Eisenhower wasn’t just the president for eight years, he was a general. He says it’s been 50 years. You know, George Washington was the first. It seems people who have a real sense of history. Joe Biden didn’t make a farewell address. You know, Donald Trump in 2020 didn’t make a farewell address. I don’t even think that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton made farewell addresses. It’s a certain sense of yourself as being an important part of history, I think.

Geoffrey Stern [7:51 – 10:46]: I was thinking about it also. I think part of maybe a two-term president is more likely than a one-term who was voted out of office. I think a president who’s passing on the baton, maybe to his vice. So there’s continuity. I think a lot of things factor into it. But I did start thinking about that as well. And in the case of Moses, he is passing the baton onto Joshua. He’s put his house in order, but that doesn’t negate the need or the right, I would say maybe the obligation for him to give some guidance.

So in the show notes, you can look at links to all of these farewell speeches. I was blown away by Ben Gurion because it really is a history lesson from a student of history, one who goes literally back into the Mishnah, into the Tanakh. He talks about what makes the Jewish people unique. And clearly, the scholar in him came out, and I think so there too, it kind of shows what is on his mind. I think what Ben Gurion was mostly interested in was the exceptionality of the Jewish people and the Jewish State and his sense that it hadn’t yet achieved its potential.

But he talks about three things, the kibbutzim, the agricultural settlements, the IDF, and the scholars, the scientists, the writers, the creativity of the Jewish people. And those are the three things he feels will differentiate the Jewish people as both a religion, which means an ideology, and a people of ethnic origin.

Anyone who’s interested in this genre because of this week’s Parsha, I definitely suggest you take a look at some of these. And there are others as well, these farewell addresses. Reagan, he says, and he’s the one who hits the nail on the head in 1989. He says there is a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells. And I’ve got one that’s been on my mind for some time.

So again, not in every presidential or leadership farewell address is there a warning. But certainly Reagan and his speechwriters determined that that was a core component. And in his case, what he wanted to convey was not only morning in America, how great America is, but this sense of patriotism and understanding of who we are that he believes starts around the dining room table, that we all need to know who we are and be proud of it. But I love the fact that he focused on this tradition of warnings.

Adam Mintz [10:46 – 11:03]: It is interesting that Reagan in 1989 was passing it on to George Bush the first. So he wasn’t even, it was staying within his family. Nevertheless, he felt, and I think that’s good about Reagan, he felt that it was his job to give a farewell address.

Geoffrey Stern [11:04 – 11:36]: Yeah. And I think if anything, Obama’s farewell address was back in Chicago. And at one point when he talked about good wishes to Trump, they booed him and he goes, no, no, no. So, he was, it’s a different type of speech, even though he was a two-term president, but clearly the tide had shifted in a different direction. But I just love the fact that there is this tradition. And looking at our Parsha from that lens, I think is going to be a fascinating read.

Adam Mintz [11:36 – 11:38]: Yeah, fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [11:38 – 13:41]: Okay, so the big question is, is this truly about judging? And of course, when I talked about bookends, Rabbi, what I was referring to was in the beginning of Moses’ career, if you recall, he leaves Egypt, he meets his father-in-law in the desert. Whether it happened right before Matan Torah, the Torah being given, or after. But ultimately, he had this loving, caring but outsider look at him and say, you can’t do it all by yourself and you’ve got to appoint judges.

And here we are if you want. That’s the beginning of his social service. Yes, before then, he was the leader of the Exodus, if you will. But it was at this moment that he became the great legislator that he was. And it starts with appointing judges. And here in Deuteronomy 1:9, he says, I am not able to bear you alone. Is it possible, said Rashi, that Moses was not able to judge Israel, the man who brought them forth from Egypt and divided the sea and made them manna? But this did he say unto them, the Lord your God hath made you great. He has made you superior and has placed high over you judges in as much as he takes.

So what Rashi starts to do is literally focus on the issue of judges. And he draws a direct line from that Jethro moment when Jethro said, appoint judges to this moment now. And he really said something unique about judges in Israel, that unlike other systems, the judge in Israel has to take the, I guess the responsibility for what happens when he unjustly sentences a person and he kind of hyper focuses on what the appointment of judges is for our people. He starts going through the traditions.

Adam Mintz [13:42 – 13:56]: Yeah, no, that’s also, it’s, you know, it’s kind of out of character for Rashi. It’s a very long Rashi here. Everyone always asks what bothers Rashi. Clearly, something’s bothering Rashi here, which is interesting.

Geoffrey Stern [13:57 – 14:09]: I kind of feel, and I think we’re going to get into this with the Ramban a little bit, that it almost fell flat. Is this the message? It’s about judges. Is this all you got?

Adam Mintz [14:09 – 14:11]: Means you gotta do better than that.

Geoffrey Stern [14:11 – 14:22]: So he’s flushing it out. He’s like talking that this is. And I think what we’re going to get into a bit today is the understatement, is the overstatement. But let’s see, that’s what you pointed.

Adam Mintz [14:22 – 14:36]: Out, what’s bothering Rashi. So he. That’s great, because he doesn’t say that explicitly, but what he means to say is, come on, you know, if. If Ronald Reagan can make such a good farewell speech, you need to do better than this.

Geoffrey Stern [14:37 – 15:56]: Okay, so let’s see what the other commentaries do. First of all, let’s let them talk for themselves. So we go on to verses 12 through 18. And it says, Moses says, how can I bear unaided the trouble of you and the burden and the bickering? Pick from each of your tribes candidates who are wise, discerning and experienced, and I will appoint them as your heads. You answered me and said what you propose to do is good. So I took your tribal leaders, wise and experienced men, and appointed them heads over you, chief of thousands, chiefs of hundreds, chiefs of fifties. And I commanded your judges at that time, saying, hear out what is between legal disputes between your brothers. Judge with equity between each man and his brother or a sojourner, a ger. You shall not be partial in judgment. Hear out low and high alike. Fear neither party. For judgment is God’s. And any matter that is too difficult for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it. Thus, I instructed you at that time the various things that you shall do. I mean, he’s making a total obvious reference to the Jethro story. This is the bookend.

Adam Mintz [15:56 – 16:16]: What about verse 12, which is a famous verse? Cause it’s the Eicha verse. How can I right .. Eicha esa levadi How can I bear unaided the troubles of you and your bickering and your fights? So you know that’s the key line, and you know that explains everything. Everything.

Geoffrey Stern [16:16 – 18:20]: Well, we’re in the three weeks, and when we read the word echa, it clearly means something to us. But I think we are not alone here in Eicha Rabba, which is the midrash on the Book of Lamentations that we will read shortly on Tisha B’Av, it says, how does the great crowded city sit alone? That’s the beginning of the Lamentations. She has become like a widow, great among the nations, a princess among the states. It says, how echa. Three prophecies with the term echa. Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. So it’s trying to connect our eicha to the eicha that you talked about. And Moses says, how echa can I bear it alone? Quoting our verse, Isaiah said, how echa did the faithful city become a harlot? And Jeremiah, of course, says, how echa does the great crowded sit alone?

Rabbi Levi said, this is analogous to a noble woman who had three friends. One saw her in her tranquility, one saw her in her debauchery, and one saw her in her disgrace. Rabbi, what he ultimately comes out saying is you have to deal with this no matter what the situation. You can deal with it when things are tranquil, just like Moses was a peaceful transfer of power. You can deal at the debauchery of your society as it’s falling apart. And Chas V’Shalom, you can deal with it after the destruction. That’s how they connect this message of echa, that ultimately the message is the same. But you have a choice. Which one of those friends are you going to be? And I think it was part of the rabbi’s attempt to connect it to the times. Maybe because of the parsha has that it’s always read this time of year.

Adam Mintz [18:20 – 18:49]: Well, obviously it’s set up that way, right? Because, you know, because that’s the message of Tisha B’Av, that eiha, you know, that the experience of Tisha B’Av is in all generations. Right. Is as true in the year 2025 as it is in the year 70.

And that’s exactly what that Midrash is telling us, that Moses saw the people in their glory, but he still had eicha. Because eicha is relevant always, you know.

Geoffrey Stern [18:49 – 19:25]: And I also think of it in regard to what lies behind the judicial issues in Israel. Part of that has to do with the fact that Israel never had the time to write a constitution. They said for 77 years we’re attacked, we’re surrounded by people. These are tough times. Let’s wait for the good times to come. It’s kind of a lesson that for some issues there’s never going to be a good time. You always have to make the time. That’s at least what I take to be the message of the connection between the word eicha.

Adam Mintz [19:25 – 20:35]: That’s very good. You see, that’s exactly what the Midrash wants you to do, Geoffrey. It wants you to apply eicha to this time. I’ll just say one thing. The destruction of the Temple is a very hard thing to mourn these days, right? You say it’s a hard time in Israel, but you can tell me that the Temple is destroyed. You go to the city of Jerusalem, you tell me the Temple is destroyed. That’s crazy. Jerusalem has never been so successful and so busy and so excited and all these things. And you’re mourning the Temple. There’s a famous story, Geoffrey, that the Six-Day War happened in 1967, in June. That summer was Tisha B’Av. And the story is that Rabbi David Hartman, who’s famous, was a rabbi then in Montreal, and he came home after shul on Tisha B’Av morning, and he said to his wife and children, there’s no more Tisha B’Av. Let’s go out and have a picnic. Because they got back the city of Jerusalem, how can you be fasting on Tisha B’Av? But actually, your response is a more honest response to Tisha B’Av, that there’s always something to say eicha about, unfortunately.

Geoffrey Stern [20:35 – 22:11]: Unfortunately. And the trick is not to wait for the destruction to have these discussions, not even to wait until you’re at the bottom of the pit of debauchery, but to do it when you have the status quo. Literally, we’ve gone through all of those kinds of steps in the last few years. Getting back to what was bothering Rashi, I looked at the Ramban, and the Ramban all of a sudden says, according to the simple meaning of Scripture, Moses, our teacher, alluded to the three things that he told Jethro. Now, Ramban goes out of his way to say that we’re not just talking about judges, we’re talking about prayer. He pulls a rabbit out of his hat here, saying that matters of judgment, statutes, laws, their meanings, and interpretations are included. I think the Ramban is bothered by how flat this justice rings. He has to put into Jethro’s mouth, no, no, no. We’re not only talking about appointing people to be judges. We’re appointing prayer leaders and theologians, people who can explain Scripture and the mitzvah. I think it’s very nice, but I also think it gets to the heart of the issue that Rashi was having, which is: Is the whole message just pointing judges who can adjudicate and be fair? I think that’s the big question here. What lies behind it is this is Moses’s last words, so to speak.

Adam Mintz [22:12 – 22:27]: That is absolutely right. I mean, it’s the beginning of Moses’s last words. We’re going to be spending a bunch of weeks on the last words of Moses. However, they make a big deal about this because it is the beginning of that last speech.

Geoffrey Stern [22:27 – 24:07]: So, I want to get into the meat of it. Ramban goes on to say that these verses, when it says appoint the right people for judges, he quotes Rashi. Rashi says that if one perceived that his opponent was winning a litigation, he would say, “I have a witness to bring, I have evidence to present, I exercise my right to add judges for you.” So all of the things start to come up when you discuss the Supreme Court and talk about what rights the executive branch, for instance, has to appoint. It always comes down to what defines the right person and how many people. You can change the balance of the court if you add judges. Ramban says, “I do not know the validity of this law, that a litigant should have the right to add judges above the usual number of three in cases concerning monetary matters. And surely he has no right after presenting his case to make it after the fact, for he had voluntarily accepted upon himself a relative or an unqualified person as a judge.” He starts getting into all of the nitty-gritty. He says, a suit decided by five justices is not comparable to one decided by ten. So he really is, after kind of pushing back about whether this is just about judges, he does get into the weeds of justice. Of course, he quotes something we all should be very proud of: Justice, justice shall you pursue. Tzedek, tzedek tirdof.

Adam Mintz [24:07 – 24:08]: Which we’re going to get to in.

Geoffrey Stern [24:08 – 26:19]: A few weeks. Of course, the Sifrei interpreted, “Go to a reliable court.” An increase in the number constitutes a reliable court. So he is getting into the issues. In a sense, I would argue that what he’s saying is Moses is raising all of these issues as bookends, because at the end of the day, this will decide the core of your being. Is it fair? Is it justice? I think it’s a very timely message. Rashi goes on, commenting on the words “wise and understanding men,” saying, “Men who can understand a matter out of another matter.” This is what Arius asked Rav Josi: What is the difference between wise men and understanding men? Now, I think the way I interpret this Rashi is he’s discussing judicial activism and judicial restraint. He’s saying there are some justices who, when you come in front of them, make a decision and when you leave, they have nothing to do, like a merchant money changer. You bring them coins, they examine them. When you don’t, they don’t. Then there are other justices. When you’re not coming in front of them with a money-changing exercise, they go out and start getting involved in commerce. I think here too he raises the issue of what are the types of judges that we want. Are there ones who are very cautious and restrained, and are there judges who are activists? I don’t think it’s our job in reading this parsha to come out on any side of the current judicial reform. But I think it is our part to say this was a key element to Moshe and our tradition. You know, Rome is always ascribed to Roman law, but I think the passion for law, the passion for justice in and of itself, is something that comes out of the Torah very strongly. And Moses is the spokesman here.

Adam Mintz [26:20 – 26:41]: Yeah, well, that’s for sure. You make an interesting point. You can never judge modern events based on a Rashi. That’s not fair. But what you can say is that Rashi clearly says the same issues we’re working through today are the issues that Moshe himself worked through. And that’s actually pretty amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [26:41 – 27:28]: Yeah, absolutely. The other commentaries as well. It says we do need people that are known. Ibn Ezra says men who were known, men whom all recognized—there is a democratic element here. There is somebody with the ability to lead the people and whom they trust. In weeks past, we discussed Vayikra where we found an amazing statement that I think is unique to Jewish law: It says, “Do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich.” You would expect it to say “Do not favor the rich,” but what it protects you against is that bleeding heart liberal who all they want to do is protect the poor, maybe at the expense of the rich and at the expense of commerce of the right. Fascinating.

Adam Mintz [27:28 – 27:43]: That is actually interesting that the Torah assumes the default is to be a liberal.

They assume that your inclination is to support the poor person. That’s a good modern read on the Chumash.

Geoffrey Stern [27:44 – 27:47]: Yeah, and that does come out. You can’t. You can’t ignore that.

Adam Mintz [27:47 – 27:48]: No, you can’t ignore it.

Geoffrey Stern [27:48 – 30:10]: It’s not a typo. That’s not a type of typo. So, Mishneh Torah to the Rambam says, whenever a Sanhedrin, a king, or someone else appoints a judge who is not fitting and who is not learned in the wisdom of the Torah and is not suitable to be a judge, even if he is entirely a delight—I love that translation—and possesses other positive qualities, the person who appoints him violates a negative commandment, as it says in Deuteronomy 1:17, do not show favoritism in judgment.

According to the oral tradition, we learned that this command is addressed to those who appoint judges. Our sages declare, perhaps a person will say so-and-so is attractive. I will appoint him as a judge. So-and-so is so strong. I will appoint him as a judge. So-and-so is my relative. I will appoint him as a judge. And so-and-so knows all the languages. I will appoint him as a judge.

This will lead to those who are liable being vindicated, and those who should be vindicated being held liable not because the judge is wicked, but because he does not know the Torah law. Therefore, the Torah states, do not show favoritism in judgment.

So here, Rabbi, you and I would read this, and we would think of the local judge showing favoritism to one person over another in a civil source. And clearly, what Rambam is doing here and what the Talmud that he quotes is doing here is about, no, favoritism in judgment is how you put together your court, the parameters that guide the court.

I just think it is so fascinating that this discussion and our texts are so rich with guidance, so rich with questions that relate to this, that it really does make you think and say, especially given the whole fight over judicial reform, which turned to be a matter of life and death of the safety of our people, that, no, you don’t have to embellish Moses’s bookends. He understood where he was coming from. He understood that probably the most primary thing that his people needed to go forward were guidelines, were rules. And he’s not even talking about religious rules, rules that are fair to everybody. I just loved it.

Adam Mintz [30:10 – 30:13]: It’s love. It’s fantastic. It’s such a good topic for today.

Geoffrey Stern [30:14 – 30:34]: Okay, so we wish everybody a Shabbat shalom. Enjoy cracking open the new book of Deuteronomy of Dvarim. Enjoy looking at Moses’ speech through the eyes of a closing speech by a legislator, and enjoy your Shabbat. We’ll see you all next week.

Adam Mintz [30:34 – 30:37]: Looking forward to a great parasha next week. Shabbat shalom.

Geoffrey Stern [30:37 – 30:46]: Shabbat shalom.

And it’s not a new question. When the tribes of Reuben and Gad approached Moses with a request to settle outside the land of Israel, Moses didn’t argue theology. He asked, “Shall your brethren go to war while you sit here?” That line, buried in the Book of Numbers, has become a litmus test for national solidarity. It draws a hard line between tribes and spirit, special interests, and the social contract between being part of a people and stepping outside of it.

Today, with special guest Agamit Gelb, founder of Mothers on the Front Line, we go deep into one of the worst debates in Israeli society. A debate about military service, values, shared responsibility, and what happens when one group opts out. This is not a story about war. It’s a story about belonging. Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform, and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s Parasha is Matot, and we are joined by Agamit Gelb, founder of Mothers on the Front Line, an Israeli grassroots, not-for-profit organization, fighting for the soul of Israel. Normally at Madlik, we focus on Torah texts, and this week will be no exception. But this week, we will be privileged to hear from a Torah. The Book of Proverbs warns us not to ignore Torat Imecha, the Torah of our mothers. So join us. “For shall your brothers go to war without you?” Adam, Agamit, welcome to the podcast. I realized this morning that this is the first time we’re having a podcast with three podcasters on it. Adam, you have your podcast, “My People Will Be Your People,” part of Project Ruth. And Agamit, you have “Ima B’Masa Komunah,” which translates roughly to “mother on the journey of the beret,” like the Green Beret, the soldier beret.

Agamit Gelb [2:45 – 4:47]: Yes, so thanks. And thank you for having me here. I’m very excited to be here. I’m a mother of three. One of them is a combat soldier. We actually founded Imahot Bakazid, which is Mothers on the Front Line, in April 2023. We have already celebrated over two years. We founded this movement because for decades the Haredi community in Israel has been exempt from military service while other Jewish men and women are being drafted. We saw this as a major violation of the principle of equality, sharing a national burden, and national solidarity. We also saw the national security situation, and after a couple of months, we woke up to the October 7th war, which made us understand that we need all sectors in Israel to serve the country and be part of this draft duty. So this is the background for the movement.

Geoffrey Stern [4:49 – 6:20]: When we first talked, I was amazed when you gave that date because that was before October 2023, and so with the intuition only mothers can have, you realized that this issue cuts to the core of Israel. It’s an issue of fairness. It’s an issue of the social contract. It’s an issue of values. I listened to your podcast in Hebrew as best I could, and the episodes are amazing. You interview other mothers, and one of the mothers describes what happened. You ask everybody where they were on October 7th. One of the mothers was living in the United States with her Israeli husband for 30 years, and her children were lone soldiers in Hebrew, that’s Hayalim Bodedim—is that right? Yeah. She never understood that to be something that had any baggage with it, but her American friends would say, “That sounds so sad,” and then she realized what they were going through. So talk a little bit about the mother part because I think what makes what you do so fascinating is what unites the many members. I think you say you have 70,000 mothers involved with this is that you’re mothers. Does that cut across all demographics and all tribes, so to speak, in Israel?

Agamit Gelb [6:20 – 8:00]: Yeah, absolutely. You’re totally right. We heard Gallant back then talking about our existence and the potential threat over here with security issues that are coming ahead. We, as mothers of combat soldiers, realized that we are going to hit something big. Yes, we have already reached 7,000. But I definitely think that no, there isn’t any mother in Israel that will forget the morning of October 7th. I will not forget it in my whole life. But I definitely think that, in my view, mothers are the pillars of the home, family, and in a way, they are also the pillar of the community. We see mothers as the engine that can really change society over here and preserve the country as democratic and equal. We have educational and resilience programs that gather mothers from all sectors in Israel because the equal draft consent in Israel is about 80% of the population here. I think that this issue is a consensus that everyone agrees should be reinforced as soon as possible.

Adam Mintz [8:01 – 8:08]: So you mentioned 80% of the 70,000 mothers. What percentage are Haredi mothers?

Agamit Gelb [8:08 – 9:06]: So there aren’t a lot of Haredi mothers that send their sons to the military. We have only a couple of hundred Haredi soldiers who were drafted this year. But we have some of them, and they are talking to us and working with us. They also have their own groups where they understand each other and talk to each other on the same level. But we have also secular groups of mothers, and they are all combined together because as mothers, we have a mutual language of anxiety, love, and everything that we as mothers know how to handle with our children. This is a very good basis to use for activism in the end.

Geoffrey Stern [9:08 – 10:46]: So, I mean, I think one thing that our listeners have to understand is what makes Israel different is it’s a people’s army. It’s not like the United States, where at this point, the military is by option. Many families are military families and have a strong tradition. In Israel, everybody goes to the army, but that’s where the rub is because not everybody goes to the army. In one of your podcasts, a mother was describing what it’s like to have a baby boy in Israel. She says, “The first thing you think about is the brit, the next thing you think about is the joy, and the third thing you think about is you look into the future 18 years and you say, another soldier is born.” That is such a powerful statement that affects literally the mothers. But I think one of your challenges is that you need to be able to break through to other mothers, and I think of any group, you have the highest potential because a mother is a mother is a mother and has that.

The other thing, when I first talked to you, I didn’t sense a feeling of anger or bitterness. I’m sure it’s there somewhere because you can’t go through the experiences you’ve gone through.

But on the other hand, there is the potential to reach out as a mother with love and embrace. And so I think what you’re doing is really important. What are you doing right now? What are your activities? If you could go through the gamut you talked about, I know in the podcast you bring on psychologists and there’s resiliency training. It’s not all about getting the Haredim into the draft.

Agamit Gelb [10:47 – 11:19]: Absolutely. So I think that we, and thank you for the sensitivity. And of course, we are angry, and we have this anger all the time because we filed a petition to the Supreme Court, we had two of them. And those petitions canceled the exemptions of the Haredi sector from the army. And of course, we push the army to send all the draft orders that they can send because we are fighting over 21 months, and we want to see everyone under this burden.

But we don’t call it a burden. And that’s why I also say that it’s kind of love because we think of it as our duty, but it’s also something that we are proud to serve our country. This is something that cannot come only with legal petitions or anything else. It should come also from education plans, which we are doing, because if you love the country, you will be loyal, and you’ll come to serve her. We are raising our children to love the country and to serve the country.

It all starts at home. So what we were doing, we were actually filing petitions to the Supreme Court. As you said, we are still growing the movement. Of course, we do a lot of involvement and engagement in the field. We want to create more mothers that will come and raise their voice because when you have a lot of people in the field that are engaging and doing those activities, it’s really powerful.

We also work a lot with municipal and communities on the ground, and we take actions to make sure that whoever serves gets the rights that he needs for resilience in this kind of a very challenging time. And of course, we promote equality in education and in resilience programs. I must say that we’re going to pursue another. We’re going to continue our petition in the Supreme Court very, very soon because we see that the Haredi sector is not exempt from military by law. But their leaders, actually their religious leaders, tell them not to come.

They’re like, you know, they say if you get a draft order, just throw it away, put it in the toilet or something, and that’s it. So we are fighting also on this level also in the Supreme Court.

Geoffrey Stern [14:08 – 14:38]: You know, the word I think that you were looking for before, in terms of not so much an obligation, in English, it’s called a privilege. In Hebrew, it’s called a zechut. It’s a zechut to serve, and that’s also a biblical word and a Talmudic word. I think last week we learned about the daughters of Tzelofchad who came and petitioned in the Supreme Court, named Moshe, to change the law. I think also what you’re doing is very much in the tradition of our people, and I just applaud it and love it.

We’re going to jump into the text because I think what we do at Madlik is we look at our ancient texts, and we don’t look at them through the lens of anybody else besides ourselves. You talk about the leadership. I am not going to engage in a halachic dispute with any other Jew. I’m going to look at our texts, and I’m gonna see what I see there and what they say to us. I think that’s much more important.

We lead by example. We would love to believe at Madlik that no Jew can give away the privilege of looking at their texts to anybody else. Nobody owns our Torah, just as nobody owns our country, and nobody owns the social contract. As I said, the Jews, the Israelites, are about to cross the Jordan River. It’s a pivotal moment. Maybe you could even say it’s an October 7th moment. All of a sudden, two Shevatim, two tribes, come, Reuven and Gad, and they say to Moshe, we’re actually happy here. We don’t want to continue on. You fight without us.

Moshe says, and you can hear the disbelief in his voice, “Your brothers will go to war, and you will sit here.” I was obviously struck by the word tishvu. It sounds a lot like Yeshiva to me, but the point is that it’s staying out of the fight. Then what happens is Moshe goes through arguments, and he actually brings them back to the meraglim, which was the greatest fiasco in the Israelite political dynamic. It says that what was the big sin of the meraglim? It says, “they took away,” the English trail translation is varied here. It says, “away, they turned the minds of the Israelites.”

This is not only a question of, do you go to the draft or do you not go to the draft? It’s a question of the morale of the Jewish people. It’s a question of resilience. We are almost two years into this war. Your children, your boys are going back and back and back to the army. They’re leaving their wives, they’re leaving their children, they’re leaving their jobs. The most important factor is not guns and airplanes anymore. It’s resilience, its morale. This is exactly what the text focuses on. It says, “you now, to these two Shevatim, are a breed of sinful fellows. You are bringing calamity upon all these people.”

What it’s saying is this is not a segment. This is not like a. As I said in the beginning, it’s not about coalition numbers. Do we lose a few votes? Do we win a few votes? It’s about all this people.

Adam Mintz [17:35 – 18:16]: I just wanna say that this is also about leadership. Because the question is, Moshe is challenged by the people. We don’t want to go. The question is, how does the leader respond? In this case, Moshe stands up, and he says, no, that’s not acceptable. You need to fight ahead of everybody else. So you’re right, Geoffrey, that we’re worried about how the other tribes are going to react to this request. But also, it was a challenge to Moses’ leadership. While Moses didn’t always in these parshiot respond with strength, right here, he responds as a really good leader.

Geoffrey Stern [18:17 – 18:49]: I think we’re going to see through the rabbinic commentaries that he moved the conversation from him personally to the people. But let’s just finish the verses because an interesting word comes up. So what happens is we actually have a good ending here. A paradigm shift, if you will. The two tribes say we’re going to fight, but they say we’re going to stay till the end. Not just until things have solidified, but until the whole haluka is made. It uses words, a terrible translation, shock troops. But in Hebrew, it’s halutzim. They said we will be the halutzim.

I think one of the unintended consequences of missing a demographic such as the Haredim in every vote, where we vote about peace and security and they don’t have a horse in the race, they are not Nogaya b’ Davar. That affects their vote. I think the whole polarity of Israel could change. If the Haredim were Nogaya b’ Davar and if their mothers were worrying about their children, who knows how they would vote? We need their voice as much as we need their children. They might be leaders in the peace movement. They might be leaders. Who knows? It’s a fascinating dynamic, but I think in these verses, it brings out the challenges.

Rashi, well, the Seforno says in terms of what Moses’ argument was, “surely you did not think for a moment that you could get away with such an arrangement.”

He puts into Moses’ mouth, your suggestion, therefore, can only have the effect of undermining the morale of your brethren. He hits the nail on the head. We are talking about the social contract and the morale of our people. In a different commentary, Birchat Asher, which is actually a very new commentary, the word that he says is “b’derech klal yotzim lehem yotzim l’milchama,” we go out to war. Here it says, “yavo le Milchama” coming to war. He says, this is a war of existence. This is a war that came upon us. It wasn’t our choice. This is not some adventure. And for that type of war, we all have to be together, because if we’re not together, we lose everything. I just love the way the rabbinic commentaries are using this as kind of a mirror to comment on issues that are with us even till today.

Geoffrey Stern [20:51 – 21:22]: And then we talk about the paradigm shift and Rashi says that what they did at the end was they came 360 degrees and they made an additional promise to stay on, on to the seven years. And that’s what I was talking about before, that we have to understand what we’re dealing with here. The potential. It’s a terrible situation now, but the potential is so large because all of a sudden 20% of the electorate will be voting on issues of war and peace with skin in the game.

Agamit Gelb [21:26 – 22:56]: I think that if we look at the Haredi sector already, they are 14% of the Jewish, you know, of the Israel population right now. So demographic-wise, we need them to be part of this people’s army. And we don’t have any choice even on a demographic or economical level. So it should be there.

Of course, that equality is not just a legal principle for us; it’s a core value. And I want to give you an example as a mother for a moment, if I may. Imagine the mother of two boys, right, who tells one child you have only rights and one child you have rights and duties, right? So which one of them will appreciate what they receive at home eventually and want to give back? You have any suggestions?

I think that the same applies to any state. When a state allows some citizens to only receive and be exempt from duties and never give back, it destroys both love and loyalty and solidarity and everything. So I think it’s very much resembles what we have right now in Israel.

Adam Mintz [22:57 – 23:03]: That’s what Geoffrey said, what you call the social contract. Right. It’s how one group relates to the other group.

Geoffrey Stern [23:04 – 25:29]: Of course, I love the fact that you bring the mashal from a mother’s perspective of raising her children, because that never goes stale and it always resonates. It’s timeless. And that’s what I meant by Torat Imecha. It’s so obvious. And I think the challenge is I’ve got to believe. And we’ve had discussions on our podcast with Haredim who are fighting very hard for the draft, and they’re doing it quietly behind the scenes because the issue is those leaders.

And you know, the Haredi man who wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror and he has nine kids and he can’t have a job because he has a draft deferment that requires him to study in the yeshiva. He’s not totally committed to studying in yeshiva. Or maybe he is, but Torah im derech Eretz, he knows he has to provide for his family and then he walks through the streets and he cannot be blind to the fact that the whole country of Israel is being attacked, and that’s him too, and his safety is there.

You have to think in terms of him and his wife, the mother of those nine kids, the self-respect that they must be looking for. And I think there’s going to be a tipping point. And it’s going to take people like you, mothers like you on one side who are approaching it from the pragmatic, motherly point of view that you are, and people on the inside who are trying to undermine that leadership. And you know, at the end of the day, I think it’s not an argument that’s based on philosophy or theology. It’s really an argument.

The Haredim argument is, and I think one of their rabbis said it, maybe it was the last Sephardic Chief Rabbi, that if you go into the army as a Haredi, you don’t leave as a Haredi and it means that you lose what is so precious to them. And part of that has to do, I think, and you’ve identified this, is the army has to be prepared for the Haredim. Something in the past that they looked at as maybe, oh, let’s do something “simli” (token), or this would distract us.

But now with those boys of yours going back into miluim on a constant basis, it’s no longer a luxury. The army has to be able to address the needs of the Haredim and take away any siba, any excuse for them not being able to do that. Are you working on that front as well?

Agamit Gelb [25:29 – 27:30]: Yeah. So first of all, we need to understand that even our children are not getting into the army and getting out of the army the same one. They are on a constant change and I think that the war really changed them and some of them are getting back with post-trauma symptoms, and some of them are getting back wounded and some of them are getting back totally different people. I know that this is a risk and it’s crazy, right?

An Israeli mother sends her precious thing to the army and I’m taking here a huge risk when I’m sending him because I know what the consequences might be. Right. So no one sends his child to the army and expects to get him back as, you know, as the original one. The other thing that I must say is that we were talking with the IDF commanders a lot and they are really getting there. They build special bases, they are dedicated special troops for Haredi soldiers.

They have their own bases with their own, you know, things that they need for kosher things and stuff. So I don’t think that there is a gap anymore not to send them to the army. They had really big steps and huge steps just to make them come. But as you said, their leaders are actually, I think in Israel it’s against the law to tell them not to go to the army. I don’t think that any citizen in Israel should be above the law. And this is something we all should understand right now.

Adam Mintz [27:30 – 28:06]: You mentioned courage, the fact that it takes a lot of courage for a mother to send her son to the army knowing that the child, the soldier is going to come back different. I think that’s something that we don’t talk about so much. And the fact that the Haredim need more courage. They have a lot of religion, they have a lot of observance of ritual, of mitzvot, but they’re lacking courage, they’re afraid. And I think that’s something again that, you know, the mothers and organizations like yours, they teach courage to the Jewish people.

Agamit Gelb [28:06 – 29:27]: Yeah, I think it’s more like we really love our country and we are raised on this love. We want our country to be stable and strong. We were taught to look at the country as our home. So when you feel attached to something like this, you are doing this courageous and maybe stupid stuff. I don’t know. But this is how we do it. And I think that this is part of what we’re doing on a daily basis.

Because if we teach the Holocaust, if we go and travel around Israel and we show our kids what they fight for, right, for the country, they need also to have those pillars in their education programs in order to make sure that they know the country, they love it and they get attached to it. And yeah, this is a courage, but we all know what we had in the past when we didn’t have a country to live in, right? So it’s not that, you know, we all remember it.

Geoffrey Stern [29:28 – 31:39]: I think the metaphor of our parsha, where those two tribes are standing outside of the country and actually what the decision that they’re making is, are they in or are they out?

And one of the commentaries, I think, really pushes the right button. He said, “she’atem rotzim lehafrid atzmachem mikahal Yisrael.” And it goes further and says, if you do not cross that Jordan, if you do not consider Acheichem your brothers, then you literally are ma’asim. You are detesting God, you’re detesting the land, and more importantly, and most importantly, the people. In the Haggadah, we all talk about the four children and the Rasha. The only thing the Rasha does that’s wrong is he refers to the people as them and not me and not us.

What you were talking about a second ago is if we love this country, if we love our people, if we love our Torah, there’s really no discussion to be had here. I think that probably those leaders who are against this, it’s not for religious reasons; it’s to maintain control over their mandate, over their tribe. They’re going to have to learn to let go, and they’re going to have to learn to read the Parasha and to read our Torah and to listen to the Torah, listen to our mothers. You got emotional before. I was shaken when you said, we are all changed and we are all making sacrifices. I think we just so respect you and your children and our people. We try here in the States to do whatever we can to provide support, but we are just inspired by you and we’re here for you. There will be a link in the show notes to your Amuta. You can contribute to the Amuta through PEF, the organization that I run. I’ll also provide a link to the website and really just keep up your work, keep up your voice, keep doing what you’re doing.

Adam Mintz [31:40 – 32:04]: Thank you for everything that you do. It really was an honor to be able to share this podcast, Parshiot Matot Masei. You know this is right before Tisha B’Av. We pray “hashiveinu Hashem elecha” and “hashuvah,” that things should go back and that sense of democracy that goes all the way back to this story of Reuven and Gad, you should have your role and be able to return us to that democracy.

Agamit Gelb [32:04 – 32:37]: Thank you so much. It was an honor to meet you and talk to you. I feel a bit emotional but very, very much grateful. I know it might sound crazy that we still do it over and over again, but we believe in it and I think that we will make Israel a better democratic and a very stable Jewish country. Thank you for all the support you are giving us.

Geoffrey Stern [32:38 – 32:39]: Thank you so much.

Adam Mintz [32:40 – 32:40]: Thank you so much.

There is one figure who embodies this idea more than any other. Her name is Serach Bat Asher. She enters Egypt with Jacob’s family, and somehow, centuries later, she helps Moses find Joseph’s bones. She remembers what no one else could. She bridges generations. She transcends time. The Torah lists 53 grandsons and only one granddaughter of Jacob. Why?

According to the rabbis, Serach doesn’t just belong to her own generation; she belongs to all of them. This is the story of Judaism’s first real daughter, a woman who survived slavery, spans centuries, and becomes a living link between the Exodus and our eternal story. Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sephardim, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s Parasha is Pinchas. There is an innocuous reference to Serach, the daughter of Asher, and the only granddaughter amongst Jacob’s 53 reverent grandsons. This enigma gives the rabbis license to ascribe to this woman immortality and make of her an example of a critical source of cultural history, the living legend. We explore this undervalued social institution in Judaism and other cultures and wonder what we are missing.

Well, Rabbi, another week. You know, I think a year ago we did the whole thing of Pinchas and vigilantism. And I probably should put a link to that in the show notes because that’s very timely. But sometimes you just gotta drill down into something that’s totally innocuous. I had not really ever focused on Serach before and found the preparation and information just fascinating.

Adam Mintz [2:48 – 3:16]: Well, it’s great, I mean, because, you know, this Parasha is so full of exciting things. We have the stories of the daughters of Tzlafchad, we have the transition from Moses to Joshua. But you actually have gone through the census and picked out the most interesting, maybe the only interesting piece of the census, and that’s verse 46: the name of Asher’s daughter was Serach.

Geoffrey Stern [3:17 – 5:09]: And as you say, we have another group of mind-numbing statistics where each tribe is divided into the particular clans, and they’re all males. And at the end, they all give a total of how many they were, and they all add up to 600-odd thousand soldiers, men of military age. But here in Numbers 26, Verse 46, it says the name of Asher’s daughter was Serach out of nowhere.

Rashi picks up on this immediately, and he says because she still remained alive after all these long years. He quotes the Talmud, which especially mentions her here. So it’s like special notice of special note. We have—I don’t know how old you have to be, Rabbi, to literally go down into Egypt. You pointed out one episode that she might have been in her mother’s tummy when they crossed the border. She made the number 70, the 70 souls that went down into Egypt. And here she is in the count. I think we’re going to see. According to some authorities, she actually crossed into the land of Israel. So talk about a “Real Daughter”.

And I found that Civil War—I always knew there was this thing, but that there’s a term for “Real Sons” and “Real Daughters”. I think we’re going to get into it. This becomes an archetype of someone you go to, someone you have who actually was there. And I think that I said is a piece of social history that maybe we don’t focus on enough today.

So in Ramban, I’ll just say before—

Adam Mintz [5:09 – 5:36]: We get to Ramban, we don’t have this phenomenon anymore. But my grandfather was born in 1898, and I always thought as a child that that was the coolest thing in the world: that my grandfather was alive in the 19th century. You know, that’s kind of a Serach Bat Asher moment, that we’re connected to a past that’s so far away we can’t even imagine it.

Geoffrey Stern [5:37 – 6:03]: And my grandmother, who died at 103, was born in 1899. So she lived in the 1800s, 1900s, and she made it past the year 2000. And not only did she survive, but she literally is that archetype in our family. People quote her today. It’s amazing when you have those types of people.

Adam Mintz [6:04 – 6:11]: So hey, that’s—so I hit it on the head. That’s why you’re interested in this woman, because you have such a woman. Your grandmother was such a woman.

Geoffrey Stern [6:12 – 8:06]: Absolutely. So in Ramban, he’s kind of interested in the terminology, and the name of the daughter of Asher’s wife was Serach. By this, he intended to say—and this he’s referring now back to Onkelos and Rashi—that they intended to say that she was a daughter that possessed an inheritance.

Getting back to your question about Tzlafchad, the only reason why the daughters of Tzlafchad had an inheritance is they didn’t have any brothers. Well, if Serach had real brothers, she would not have had an inheritance. But Rashi, Onkelos, and Ramban are saying, what’s unique here is she was adopted. So here we have this real daughter, and the real daughter isn’t even quote-unquote real. Or I should say that the commentaries the Torah is saying that that real daughter is very real because the realness comes from the experience.

In Wikipedia, it says Megillah learns from here, the Talmud Megillah, that adopted daughters are daughters in full. I couldn’t find the source in Megillah. I’m going to have to trust Wikipedia for now. But it just adds a little spice to this. We’re talking about authenticity. And the authenticity is not genetic. The authenticity has us at a higher and deeper level. And so Ramban continues to say, and therefore, it says the name of the daughter of Asher was Serach. It does not say, and Asher’s daughter was Serach because the intention of the verse is to say that her name was, or she was known as, Asher’s daughter, even though she wasn’t maybe genetically Asher’s daughter.

I just find that’s a fascinating twist to this fascinating personality.

Adam Mintz [8:06 – 8:27]: That is great. Obviously, that’s not in the Torah itself. But you see how the rabbis use these things to teach us things that obviously affect us to this day, right? Adopted daughters are really daughters. That has to do with whether or not they sit shiva for their parents, whether they’re obligated to honor their parents. That is really a broad and fascinating topic.

Geoffrey Stern [8:27 – 10:01]: And I will say that today, what we are discussing is, as I said in the intro, what the rabbis were given license to project. But it’s fascinating that they projected this woman who spanned the ages from slavery to redemption, and that they found it was important. So here they start fleshing out stories—and one of the stories that we all know is that Joseph made his descendants promise that they would not leave Egypt without taking up his bones.

Moses, who did not know Joseph, I would think, didn’t know where they were. So how did he find out where the bones were? It says in the Talmud of Sotah, he said, Serach, the daughter of Asher, remained from that generation. And she told Moses that Joseph was buried in a casket of metal and buried in the Nile in order to give strength, that the Nile would be blessed. She knew ethnic nuances, archaeological nuances, and rituals of the host country of her own people in a way that nobody else did.

And so what I think the rabbis are doing is they’re making this prototype, this prototype of people that we can go to that go beyond books and go beyond movies and are living legends, roots if you will.

Adam Mintz [10:02 – 10:16]: Right. Well, I mean, obviously she knew where Joseph was buried because she was alive then. That’s the idea of being alive in the 1800s and 1900s and the 2000s. You’re going to know things that by definition no one else could possibly know.

Geoffrey Stern [10:17 – 11:06]: Yes. And I think what’s as important is not only that the rabbis believe from this innocuous verse, or maybe one other, that she lived that long, but they felt the need to create the impact that someone who lived that long can have on us. Sometimes you have to be able to go to someone who was there, on someone who grew up with someone, or was born to someone, or married someone who was there.

So getting back to how impactful this is, we all are told that no one from the generation of the Exodus actually made it into the land of Israel. I had never really focused on the word that it said there was no man among them left. Rabbi, no man.

Adam Mintz [11:06 – 11:08]: Only men. Right. Only men.

Geoffrey Stern [11:09 – 12:05]: So according to Seder Olam Rabba, it says, and Serach, their sister. This is a reference to Genesis 46, the other time that she is mentioned. And she was from those who came to the land of Israel as it was a daughter of Asher, Serach. So according to this tradition, it was, as I said before, Serach who made up the 70 souls that went down into Egypt. And unlike the men, where no man actually made the complete journey from refugee, from slave to Exodus, to entering the Promised Land, this woman actually made that journey. So she became iconic if whether she ever really existed or in the imagination of our people. And I find that to be profound.

Adam Mintz [12:05 – 12:21]: That is profound. Now, let’s take a minute to talk about why it has to be a woman. Right. Why couldn’t the same thing, why couldn’t it be your grandfather? Why is it somehow that we associate that ability to span the generation to women?

Geoffrey Stern [12:22 – 12:40]: So, I mean, I think it’s a good question. I think that there are traditions, if I was to ask the typical man on the street, who was that biblical person who lived forever? I think the typical answer would be, I want to pronounce his name.

Adam Mintz [12:40 – 12:40]: Elijah.

Geoffrey Stern [12:41 – 12:49]: Well, Elijah never died. I get that. But then in terms of longevity, there’s Methuselah, right? He.

Adam Mintz [12:51 – 12:52]: Methuselah. Methuselah.

Geoffrey Stern [12:53 – 12:54]: Methuselah. There you go.

Adam Mintz [12:54 – 13:09]: Is how you say it in English. He lived to be 969 years old. He was the oldest human being ever. But, you know, because we have no idea what happened then, living to be a thousand wasn’t so exciting, because I don’t know how exciting what went on in those days was.

Geoffrey Stern [13:09 – 13:40]: So I think. But you are right that there is another tradition that Elijah went up to heaven in a chariot and never died. So I think here, I think it’s for others to decide why it had to be a woman. Certainly, I think the fact that it said there was no man left among them left the window open for a woman to, I would say, transcend men and to be able to be that bridge.

I think that there are so many wonderful stories about how the women were so critical and seminal in sending us out of Egypt. We could spend a whole episode on that. But I think it’s an interesting question and maybe the answer is an open answer. But the fact that there were 53 grandsons to Jacob and only one granddaughter is amazing.

I think as long as we’re on the subject of women, the fact that in this Parasha we have the daughters of Tzelophehad, as you mentioned, and these were daughters who had no brothers, and they went to Moses and they said, what is going to happen to our Father’s portion in the land?

The fact that there are singular cases where Moses is posed with a question and then has to consult with God, I think gives women a lot of credit. And I would go out on a limb here, and I would say thinking outside of the box, questioning outside of the box, living outside of the box.

Be that as it may, this is the history, the tradition, the midrash that we have in Sefer Hayashar, it continues fleshing out what was unique about this. Serach, what happens, if you remember, is the tribes, the brothers go down to Egypt multiple times. Finally, Joseph unveils himself, and they realize that Joseph is. Is alive. And Joseph, of course, says,

Od Avinu Chai?, is my father still alive? And then the brothers are confronted with a challenge. How are they going to break this news to their father without giving him a shock? And as they’re coming home, it says they met Serach coming towards them. And the damsel was exceedingly beautiful and wise, and a skilled player on the harp. And they called her. And she came unto them, and she kissed them, and they took her and gave her a harp, saying unto her, go,

We pray thee, before our Father, and sit down before him and strike this harp and speak unto him according to these words. And they instructed her concerning what she had to say. She hastened unto Jacob, and she sat down before him, and she sang, and she played beautifully upon the harp. And she sang in the sweetness of her voice, Joseph, my uncle is alive. And he reigned over all the land of Egypt. He is not dead. And she often repeated these words. And Jacob heard her words, and it pleased him greatly.

Sometimes we listen to the lyrics of a song. It’s gotta be repeated a few times till it sinks in. It was an amazing strategy that they used. But clearly, whether they took credit it for giving her this idea or this was her literary idea, here again, it was the genius of this particular woman who was picked to deliver this message.

And the punchline is that Jacob blessed Serach for singing these words before him. And he said, my daughter, may death never prevail against thee forever. And if you read the story into context, at this point, he wasn’t even convinced that. That Joseph was alive. I think he was just thankful for the dream that she had given him. And then he looks up and he sees all of his sons coming dressed like royalty. And he’s prepared. She gave him the hope. She gave him the material to make transitions,

to make paradigm shifts, I find this to be a beautiful midrash as well.

Adam Mintz [17:21 – 17:56]: Well, so let’s talk about the word transition. That’s what someone who lives in the 1800s and 1900s and 2000s, she gives hope to the younger generation that they can make difficult transitions. If you live through the First World War and the Second World War and Watergate and all the other things that happen, and that gives me hope that I can handle whatever challenges there are going forward. That’s what Serach represents. You can do it because I represent that continuity, that transition.

Geoffrey Stern [17:57 – 19:31]: It’s context. It’s, you know, we live from headline to headline. And you have people that have lived through real cataclysmic changes in history, and they definitely give us context, I think. And I think that’s what this is about. They give us songs and foods and poems. All of these are tools that I think we don’t value enough. But certainly in the story of Serach and the way the rabbis used her, they certainly were giving value to this social institution, this what I call living legacy. So in the Kitzer BAAL Haturim, it adds a little bit more nuance to the story. And it says, blessed is Asher, her father, above sons.

Therefore, Moses blessed him with these words, because when the tribes sold Joseph, they swore each other to secrecy on pain of excommunication. And Serach, the daughter of Asher, knew about the sale through prophecy. So now we have a situation where the rabbis are attributing to Serach this intuition that she knew from the beginning. And that’s maybe why, in the rabbinic mind, she was picked to give Jacob hope and then to help him transition because she knew from intuition what the brothers had done to Joseph. They’re giving her, again, this great wisdom in addition to her beauty.

Adam Mintz [19:32 – 19:36]: Yeah, no question about it. Right. Okay. That’s what you say. That’s context. That’s great.

Geoffrey Stern [19:37 – 19:46]: So the Bereshit Rabbah says as follows. It was learned there were 13 that never tasted the taste of death.

Adam Mintz [19:46 – 19:47]: Death.

Geoffrey Stern [19:47 – 20:57]: And these were the Milham, the phoenix bird. That’s another tradition. We could talk about the phoenix, the rising of the phoenix and its species. Enoch, the son of Jared, Serach, the daughter of Asher. And it goes on. It says, Serach, the daughter of Asher. Why did she never taste death? Because she had always been righteous.

When the sons of Jacob went up from Egypt and found Joseph alive, the Holy Spirit disappeared from Jacob until the day he was told Joseph is still alive. At that time, he said to her, you should likewise live forever. And it clung to her since she had always been righteous. So she is still sheltered in the Garden of Eden. Rabbi, what this is saying is that she was the one who gave the spirit of life back to Jacob. And as a result, Midah k’neged Midah, she got to keep that spirit forever. It’s a twist on that other Midrash that we learned before. She retained it and she gave it back to Jacob.

Adam Mintz [20:58 – 21:38]: Absolutely. Right. Of course. I like the first line, that she had always been righteous. Right. It’s important that these characters are not just that they live a long time, but that they’re good people. Now, sometimes that’s just a matter of kind of a tradition, of legacy, of nostalgia. You remember them well, but it’s important that they be good people, not that they’re, you know, that they’re either negative or even neutral. I think that first line is an important part of what you are describing here. These people not only live a long time, they’re also righteous.

Geoffrey Stern [21:39 – 23:46]: And I like this version better than the previous version because the previous version feels kind of compelled to say that she was a prophetess, that she was able through prophetic knowledge to know that Joseph was still alive. Here she’s just a person. She’s just a human being who gave Jacob hope and a future and his soul back.

And I am going to make the argument that unlike Elijah the Prophet, unlike other great Tzadikim, righteous people and even Roshoim, you could make the case like the Rolling Stones did about Satan (“guess my name.”) . He always is there. He’s always showing up. These bad people and good people. Here was a pashut, I’d say, a simple Jewish woman who saw it all and was there and survived. And she had these amazing traits.

So in Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, as if we don’t have enough stories about this woman, Rabbi Yohanan sat and expounded. How did the water become for the Jews like a wall at the splitting of the sea? He asked. Rabbi Yohanan expounded, it was like lattice work. Serach Bat Asher looked out and said, I was there. And it wasn’t like that. It was like a glass window.

So now we have a situation where Serach Bat Asher not only came into Egypt as a refugee, was a slave, went into the land of Israel, but she’s alive in the Beit Midrash of Rabbi Yohanan. And she just shows up kind of like you would expect Elijah to in many other Midrashim. And she says, no, it was like a glass window actually, just fascinating. What they made of her.

And it’s amazing to me that I had not heard of her before and that she doesn’t have the renown of the Elijah’s and the other figures, those mythical figures that show up and become mystically into discussions and set the record straight.

Adam Mintz [23:46 – 24:15]: So let me just say about Elijah for a minute, because we’re talking about these kind of figures. You know, for some reason, I agree with you. I don’t know why there’s a difference. Elijah pops up all over the place. Elijah’s at the bris, Elijah’s at Havdalah, Elijah’s at the Seder. He’s all over the place. Why isn’t Serach Bat Asher, you know, why doesn’t she come to Havdalah? So that’s an interesting question, just on how these traditions evolved over time.

Geoffrey Stern [24:15 – 27:12]: I think at my Seder I’m going to find a nice kosher Syrah wine and serve it. But we’re discovering it and the Madlik listener now knows about Serach. So here we are. It’s just fascinating. As I said before, everybody always thinks of this Methuselah. Methuselah, I guess, is the way that you should pronounce him. I think he even made it into the musical Cats. But he’s become a synonym for longevity. As old as Methuselah is an expression. Serach did not get any great expressions.

So now I want to leave Serach for a second and I want to explore this, I would say this social institution of a living legacy. And to me, I didn’t have time to find 5, 10, 20. But I think the one that I think of is the most profound. In Ezra 3:12, we have the second temple being rebuilt. Seventy years after the first temple was destroyed, the second temple was rebuilt, built. And it says many of the priests and Levites and the chiefs of the clans, the old men who had seen the first house wept loudly at the sight of the founding of this house. Many others shouted joyously at the tops of their voices. Rashi says this temple. When they would see the building of this temple, they would weep because they remembered the large building of the first temple.

And many who had not seen the building of the first temple were rejoicing and shouting for joy with a loud voice out of their great joy that they had emerged from exile. Rabbi, two groups of people are seeing the same situation totally differently. But what we have here is one of those iconic figures. It’s targeting. It’s identifying people that saw the first temple destroyed and saw the second temple rebuilt. And whether it was the stones were not as large or I suspect something much more profound. They looked at it like all of us do. You know, it’s not quite like Sinatra. It’s not like the Beatles. It’s this saying that what’s great today doesn’t stand up to what was great. Days of old. Or I would say, even deeper. There were those who never believed that the Shechina came down into the second temple. There are people that make the argument that the Essenes went into the desert because they didn’t think God was in this temple. This was a serious difference of opinion. And here we have what I would argue is real sons of the first temple who were there, and you looked at their face and you saw that something was amiss.

Adam Mintz [27:13 – 27:47]: So, of course, that’s right. But remember nostalgia. Nostalgia always tells us that the ways of our youth are better than the way that things are now. It’s not like the Beatles, because when I was young, it was about me. I’m not like I was then. So you have to. I think that’s important too, that the first Temple, they had a sense of energy and a sense of pride that somehow the second temple didn’t have because the Jews didn’t have their own king and all those things. Anyway, these are great verses, but I think there’s another piece of it also.

Geoffrey Stern [27:48 – 28:19]: I agree. The thing that I wanna say is in the Talmud, we don’t necessarily have an analog for real sons and real daughters, those people that were there. I have a chiddush and my chiddush is that when in the Haggadah it says Amar Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah. I am like seventy years old.

I would like to argue that when he says, “I am like a 70 year old,” he might have been referring to the experience that we’re talking about right now. That he was like one of those people who straddled the generations, who saw things differently. And that’s why he understood that you have to talk about Yetziat Mitzrayim, going out of Egypt, even in the night, even in the dark times. I don’t know. But I do believe that when you look at Ezra, it was a thing. These were a special group of people.

So I want to finish up. I said we were going to look at other cultures. You know, in Hinduism, there is this concept of an eternal witness primarily associated with Vishnu, representing an omnipresent observer of all universal phenomena. In Christianity, it’s Enoch and Elijah. I wonder where they got that from. So I would say in Judeo-Christianity, and this comes from Wikipedia, there was Enoch and Elijah. Believe it or not, they also have the concept of an eternal witness in Christianity, which also signifies God’s unwavering commitment to Israel and His glory, with Israel itself serving as an ever-lasting witness of God’s holiness.

So the Israelites themselves become this living engine, this living legend. That’s the good. On the bad side, the legend of the wandering Jew tells the tale of a man cursed with immortality to wander the earth until the second coming. So like in last week’s Bilaam, we get it coming and going. But again, the Jewish people themselves become that living legend.

And in getting back to the children of Civil War veterans, there was an article published as recently as 2012 and republished in 2024 that argues that there are people that are real sons and real daughters. And how do you do the math? Well, you have somebody who fought, who maybe got remarried, who had children very, very late in his life. Maybe there was adoption involved.

It is fascinating that now that we are seeing images of Normandy, where there are just a few soldiers left, and we are confronted with Yetzolei Shoah survivors of the Holocaust, and there are just a few left, we are at a pivotal moment in history where we’re experiencing real sons and real daughters. There is a website called Living Links, and it is all about children of Holocaust survivors. These are people that are going to be working and talking in the Dalet Amos, the cubics of our earth, who have touched, who have bathed with, who have eaten with people that had experienced this iconic experience of the Holocaust.

I think this is something that if Serach helps us focus on this social institution and make us question whether we value enough institutions like this, I think it’s Dayenu; it would be enough. And thank you, Serach, for that.

Speaker B: Thank you. This was really an amazing topic. What a good way to introduce a great parasha, Parashat Pinchas. Everybody should enjoy this parasha. There’s a special Haftorah. As we lead up the three weeks to Tisha B’Av, we talked about those who remembered the first Temple. These are the weeks that we also remember the temple. So a perfect segue and a perfect topic. Shabbat Shalom, everybody. We look forward to seeing you next week.

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

Join us as we follow the long, twisted history of how the Jew became the world’s most famous and infamous outsider. As the ancient Israelites approach the Promised Land, the Moabites are afraid and use a word for fear that rhymes with outsider. We’ll trace this stereotype of the Jew as an outsider from Pharaoh to Balaam to Haman to the modern university seminar room and to recent campus protests.

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. If you like what you hear, give us a star or two. Say something nice.

This week’s Parasha is Balak. In this iconic narrative of how the non-Jew hates and then loves the Jew, we explore the myth of otherness and the Jew as an idea in the modern and postmodern world. So join us for the Jew as Other. You know, Rabbi, when I was reading the Parsha this week, I noticed in the beginning they wanted to curse us and then they wanted to bless us. It’s kind of like antisemitism, you know, you don’t know whether the curse is a curse or the blessing is a blessing.

Adam Mintz [2:08 – 2:09]: I think that’s fair.

Geoffrey Stern [2:10 – 3:55]: So I think this week I win an award for discovering what I was going to talk about in the context of the first three psukim. In one word, as I said in the intro, in Numbers 22:3, it says Moab was alarmed because the people were so numerous, talking about the Israelites. Moab dreaded the Israelites. In Hebrew, it says vayagar Moav. Moab was alarmed. The Hebrew word for “gor”, we all know it from the word ger, it means to sojourn, to be a stranger, to abide, temporarily dwell. But it also means to stir up trouble, strife, quarrel, gather together, to stir up strife. It means to dread, to fear, to stand in awe.

That’s amazing. To me, on the one hand, it means to fear, and on the other hand, it means to stand in awe, to be afraid. I mean, if you think about it, Rabbi. And now you can get an insight into what I was thinking. This word is so pregnant with all of this baggage. This was not a standard fear. Was it the fear of the stranger? Was it the fear of Rav, who they said they were so numerous? Is it of all the “millions of people coming over the border”? I mean, it’s kind of in one word. It has so much nuance to it. It really got me thinking that this was the Parasha and Balaam as the one who wanted to curse and ended up blessing, to really dive into this worship that we have for the Jew as the other.

Adam Mintz [3:55 – 4:11]: This is fantastic. And of course, “Ki Rav hu”, also is a pregnant phrase which is hard to know. What does that really mean? The Egyptians were also worried that we were too many. Pharaoh said, lest we become too many. The Egyptians say, right?

Geoffrey Stern [4:11 – 5:43]: I mean, in Exodus 1:8, they say a new king arose over Egypt. And he said, look at these people. Look at the Israelite people. They’re too numerous for us. It is funny, and I don’t have an answer on this one, because that’s not a typical trope of anti-Israelite or anti-Jewish hatred that we kind of find. But it does come up in these two texts, and we’ll see in others too, kind of like they kind of multiply like rabbits, you know? Maybe it’s that kind of sense of it.

But again, the first association that we have to something where the Israelites were seen as, I’ve always read it, as another. But I think we’re going to have to control ourselves a little bit as a people that were numerous was Exodus in the mouth of Pharaoh. And then of course, in Esther, the Megillah of Esther, we have in chapter three, verse eight, Haman said to Ahasuerus, there is a certain people that is scattered and dispersed amongst the other people in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws. And it is not in your majesty’s interest to tolerate them. This is specific to these people. Whereas the other thing, you could say it’s just an immigrant. You could say it’s the stranger here. We’re getting this specificity. These people keep different laws, right?

Adam Mintz [5:44 – 6:02]: Yeah. I mean, this doesn’t say they’re too many. This is right. Am_ekhad, Mephozara, Mefhorad. There’s a certain people scattered and dispersed among the other people. It might be scattered and dispersed is a, is the same thing as being too many, right? That right, Geoffrey? That’s hard to know.

Geoffrey Stern [6:03 – 7:21]: It almost feels like whack-a-mole that wherever you look, they pop up. So they don’t have to be a lot of them. They’re just peppered everywhere. I think there is a connection, and it is an enigma that here we are, the smallest minority, and the first thing we come up against is our numbers. The Septuagint has a slightly, it adds information to its quote-unquote translation. So in the Septuagint, it says that they have laws contrary to those of every nation. Of every nation. It adds and continually disregards the ordinance of the kings.

So here, it’s kind of universalizing their differences, where in the mouth of the original Haman, he’s saying to a particular king in a particular country so that the unifying of the kingdom which we honorably intend cannot be brought about. So that kind of adds something that they break down the unity of the culture and it says so that our kingdom may not attain stability. So they’re numerous, but they’re sprinkled everywhere, and they kind of break down their unity. And if you think about Haman and Ahasuerus, from Hodu to Cush, he had an empire.

Adam Mintz [7:21 – 7:23]: They break down, right.

Geoffrey Stern [7:23 – 8:30]: So there is an article in thetoah.com and it’s called “What Did Haman Not Like About the Jews?” by Professor Marty Lockshin. And I quote him a little bit in this section of our discussion because we only have the two main sources of this anti-Israelite agenda. I think I’m adding a new one today by saying when the Moabites looked at the Jews or the Israelites and said vayagar, we’re afraid of this stranger. I think you can put it into the same context. But he basically says that if you read the Septuagint, the idea is they undermine the political stability of a country.

There’s a scholar named Peter Schaeffer who has his own interpretation. The Jews are the only people who are in the state of military alertness always and against everyone. I mean, I see that more in the Exodus thing where Pharaoh says they are many and they could be a third column. They could unite with the enemy.

Adam Mintz [8:30 – 8:44]: It’s hard to know in this week’s Parasha what it means. They’re too many. What is he afraid of? That therefore they’re going to attack us? That therefore they’re going to run through us? What exactly are they afraid of?

Geoffrey Stern [8:44 – 9:39]: Yeah, I mean, the main takeaway that I took from what the Septuagint did and the reason why it’s so important to look at how these ideas developed. The Septuagint was already giving an explanation of what they thought other people were thinking of them. Kind of like the grasshoppers of the spies. According to Schaeffer, Greek texts confirm that these Jewish authors correctly understood the thoughts of many of their gentile neighbors. So we’re almost getting a mirror of what others were saying about the Jews. This unsociability. They just didn’t assimilate.

They didn’t blend in. And maybe that again is why there are so many. You could have an empire from Hodu until Cush with millions of people. But if there’s only one people that’s not blending in, they look like a lot. Maybe that’s part of it.

Adam Mintz [9:39 – 9:41]: Yeah, that is interesting. That’s good.

Geoffrey Stern [9:42 – 11:44]: So in terms of. We’ve looked at the Septuagint and again, I quoted a little bit. Even Josephus also says there is a certain wicked nation. He now adds, not only are they scattered and many, but they. And not only don’t they follow our laws, they’re wicked. Everybody is kind of laying onto this criticism of the Israelites, of the Jews. In our own texts, in the Talmud, in Megillah 13b, it says, and their laws are diverse from those of our people quoting the Megillat Esther as they do not eat from our food, nor do they marry from our women, nor do they marry off their women to us, nor do they keep the king’s laws. They spend the entire year in idleness as they are constantly saying Shehi pehi, which is an acronym for Shabbat and Pesach.

So now we’re getting that they don’t contribute to society. More importantly, they have different laws that make them not be like us. The commentary here says the rabbis view antisemitism as a direct and even understandable result of the Jews observing Jewish law. It’s almost turning this question, and there are some of the midrashim that blame it on God. Why are people hating us so? Because you gave us these laws that make it so that if a fly falls into a glass of wine, we’re allowed to drink it. But if the non-Jewish king touches the wine, we can’t touch it. You make us look terrible, God. Fascinating that we Jews saw the source of this. I won’t call it antisemitism yet, but this hatred for the Jewish people because God gave burdened us with These laws that made us different, where we couldn’t open up the market on the Saturday, so forth and so on. Kind of interesting.

Adam Mintz [11:46 – 12:03]: Very, very. This is a great gemara, right? Because it kind of. It gives the impression that we look bad, that the reason for anti-Semitism is that we look bad. And it’s blaming God. God, you give us the rules, or the rabbis give us the rules that make us look bad.

Geoffrey Stern [12:03 – 14:43]: It also kind of goes against something, which is when bad things happen to the Jewish people, it’s because we’re not keeping the laws. Here, this is saying, God, we keep your laws. Get us only hatred, only mixed bag results. There’s one last rabbinic source that I want to quote. It’s called Targum Sheni. They don’t know exactly when it was written, but it gives a kind of a laundry list of all the reasons why, in the view of the rabbinic tradition, why people hate the Jews. It says that they are proud and haughty. You know, they think they’re better than us. That was a little bit of what we saw with the drinking of the wine. If a non-Jew touches it, all of a sudden, they can’t drink it. They practice laws and customs that are different from those of every other nation and country and do not walk according to all laws, nor have pleasure in our customs, nor do they serve the king.

It goes on to say, when we try to catch them, they turn around and stand staring at us, gnash their teeth, stamp their feet, and so frighten us that we are not able to take hold of them. We do not marry their daughters, they do not marry ours. Any of them taken for the service of the king passes the day in idleness with all kinds of excuses, such as today is Shabbat, today is Passover. It really, I think, reflects on how the Jews saw themselves through the eyes of the non-Jews. But they did understand that they had a culture that was not easily assimilated. It comes very quickly. I think what we’re starting to see is that maybe the scholar that we’re going to end with, who says that this whole concept of the Jew as the other, this universal of the other, does not really apply to the ancient traditions. What he’s saying is this is particular to the Jews. You can’t extrapolate from this. This is not just any people that is different gets hated. No, the Jewish people have their laws, they have their traditions. It’s very particularistic.

I think what he’s challenging us to do is to say this otherness is a kind of a modern creation. It made me look at these texts slightly differently. I must say, if you look at them and you read them without projecting, it really is talking about a particular people who are hated for a particular reason.

Adam Mintz [14:44 – 14:59]: Yeah. I mean, that’s an interesting idea, that otherness is modern. It’s not only vis a vis the Jews that we define ourselves versus the other person. That’s the way modern society is kind of divided.

Geoffrey Stern [15:00 – 16:29]: Yeah. The only argument that I’m going to give against this to say that otherness is a modern construct is the famous two phrases that now follow. These are not unique and singular phrases. These are phrases that every progressive and every universalist will talk upon to say that no, the stranger is a construct. In Exodus 23, it says, you shall not oppress a stranger. For you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourself been strangers in the land of Egypt. Could you make this into particularistic? You shall not oppress the immigrant because you were an immigrant. You shall not oppress the merchant with a backpack who travels the itinerant merchant. You could, but clearly what it’s saying is universalize this concept of a stranger because you were a stranger. It’s a thing.

In Deuteronomy 10:19, it says, you must befriend the stranger V’ahavata et HaGer, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I think if you had to make an argument that even in our ancient texts, we realized that we weren’t just experiencing this as a particular people, but we were a universal construct. You would look at these verses. We were the strangers, therefore you have to love the stranger.

Adam Mintz [16:29 – 16:47]: I’ll just say there’s a movement from Exodus to Deuteronomy. Because in Exodus it says you shouldn’t oppress the stranger. In Deuteronomy it says, you should love the stranger. That’s interesting, right? It’s almost like when the Jews are about to enter the land, it’s not enough not to oppress. They have to actually love.

Geoffrey Stern [16:48 – 16:49]: It’s an escalation.

Adam Mintz [16:49 – 16:50]: Right.

Geoffrey Stern [16:50 – 17:21]: So we’re going to spend the rest to read, and I can only tell our listeners, if you can, go to Substack and look for Hussein Aboubakr Mansour He has a Substack and he wrote this past week. It’s gotten a lot of comments. The Jew After Otherness, A Metacritique of Modern Judaism. It is fascinating, erudite writing. We will not do him justice today.

Geoffrey Stern [17:21 – 17:52]: But I wanted to convey some of his ideas in terms of who he is. He did write an autobiography. Basically, he was born in Egypt. His brother became an imam, inspiring young people to become jihadists. He left home. He found. He searched out Jews and Israel. He forged relationships. He was made a refugee by Barack Obama in 2012. He is a public speaker who has spoken with StandWithUs. He wrote a book called Minority of One: The Unchaining of the Arab Mind. He writes in Commentary, Newsweek, the Jewish Journal, Times of Israel, and Mosaic. This is a lover of the Jews and of Israel, but extremely erudite. So I think you have to take what he says very seriously. And he writes as follows. There is no more sacred category in the postmodern moral imagination than that of the Other. It is invoked with reverence, defended with zeal, and guarded as the guarantor of all ethical meaning. To be other is not merely to be different, but to be invested with a kind of secular sanctity.

He says otherness has become not just a conceptual tool, but a liturgical core of liberal self-understanding. I mean, this guy is going deep, and he’s going strong. A moral totem through which the modern subject flatters himself as just, inclusive, and cosmopolitan. Thus, this essay begins with a simple, if heretical, premise: the dominant cultural conception of Judaism today, canonized in academic, political, and communal discourse alike, is not a retrieval of something ancient, but the fabrication of something modern. So he’s arguing that this whole deification of being an Other is something that happened in the modern world, right? And he calls it, is Judaism an ism in the modern sense?

Like all modern isms, it is a symbolic technology, a hollow abstraction. And at its core lies a single, all-encompassing predicate: the Jew as Other. The Jew was no longer a person simply living his life; he was performing someone else’s metaphor. For once the Jew accepted this position, this function as the sacred Other, he ceased to be a subject of covenant and became an object of culture.

That’s an amazing line. He really gets into this. He says, in doing so, he entered into a game whose rules were not his own and whose prize could always be withdrawn. For if the Other is sacred only so long as he suffers, then Jewish sovereignty is a sacrilege. And if the Other is sacred only so long as he critiques power, then Jewish power becomes betrayal. He really traces this concept of otherness through Marxism, through Hegelism, through philosophy, through all of the different trends, and he brings it into modern times.

He says the version of modern Jewish identity we cast with the semantical field of otherness is structured around a constellation of derivative tropes. The Jewish exile, the Jewish diasporic, the Jewish victim, the Jewish prophetic, the Jewish countercultural herald—as a critique of power, as a therapist of Christian repression, as a feminine foil, as the homosexual antithesis to the white Christian, heterosexual philistine. I mean, oh my goodness, this worship of the other—what he argues is it came, it was created on the Jew to make this idea of the Jew as an idea.

I’ve once, in another podcast, talked about how I’m always concerned about people who love mankind in the abstract. So he is making a radical argument that the Jew is a particular and is not a universal. And when we let ourselves become a universal, we set ourselves up for what is happening today, which is it is being taken away from us, and we are actually suffering as a result of it. So he says, where once a Jew stood as the sanctified symbol of suffering, he is now displaced by newer sacrificial icons: the Palestinian, the post-colonial subaltern, the indigenous avatar. These figures now claim exclusive rights to victimhood, demanding not just recognition but liturgical primacy. The new Jews of the new Jerusalem.

In this postmodern symbolic economy, Jews are not only decentered; they are condemned forever, having occupied the sacred space of otherness. Wow, wait. It is such an interesting, fascinating read, and as I started by saying, count me guilty. I have always really been so proud of the fact that we Jews have been the outsider, that we Jews have been that catalyst, that we Jews have played a role as helping society move forward. And I think we can be proud of that. And I won’t give to this guy 100%.

I do believe that there is. When it says loving the ger, it is talking about the ger. In the abstract, it is loving others. Because when you can extrapolate from who you are to somebody else, you are universalizing to a degree. But how does this all strike you? You’ve got to read the long-form essay. It is just fascinating.

Yeah, I mean, so what’s the punchline? We started with the verse that talked about, you know, vayagar moab, you know, that they were afraid of the stranger. So how do you understand that in light of this essay? So the way I see it, and again, I paint it in the context of, here we have a prophet of the non-Jews, an intellectual poet, an artist who is going to curse the Jews, curse the Israelites, if you will, and he turns around and he ultimately ends up blessing them. You could make the argument he was afraid. And then he somehow embraced them.

And I think part of what I took from what this guy is saying, and we’re going to move a little bit forward with him in terms of how he sees Zionism and how he sees what the opposite of the Jew as other is. I think that it really fits into the punchline of Balaam, because at the end, what does Balaam say? He says, Ma Tovu Ohalecha Yaakov how goodly are your tents. How many great societies, great empires have been characterized as wonderful tents. The tent is the opposite of an edifice. The tent is the opposite of an empire (or an ‘ism). But I think ultimately what this guy is telling us is that.

And by the way, that verse that I just quoted is not just a simple throwaway line. It’s probably in your synagogue over, over or on the Aron where the Torah is. It is the first thing that Israelite, a modern-day Jew, Israelite says when he walks into his sanctuary. How goodly are your simple tents. So I think that what he is saying is that we Jews, we were swept in universalism, in all of these isms. We let ourselves become that caricature, and as a result, we lost touch. And that’s what I think you loved about what he said, where he was going.

He says the Jews are no more studying the Bei Medrash He literally says that this was what they were learning in academia. They were no longer splitting hairs of halacha. What can you do in this situation? What can you not do? They were rather talking in terms of universal peace and goodwill to man. And what he simply is arguing is that the Jew, and he doesn’t claim that we invented it, he really is arguing that it was imposed on us. I think that’s an interesting question or argument that could be raised.

But nonetheless, it was a contribution to world thought in terms of the modern and postmodern world that has really come back to bite us and is part of the reason that we have. It is so hard for us to defend our position. It’s defending what’s happening in the Middle East, which is anything but universal. It is particularistic to the core. And we’re accused of giving up our universal values. And what he’s trying to do is to bring that back.

And I think we’ll read a little more because I would like to get into how he characterizes the return to sovereignty and the Zionist thought less as a political movement and more as a rejection of this Jew as an idea, Jew as the other. He says, after the Jews accepted this mantra. The Jew was no longer a person simply living his life. He was performing someone else’s metaphor. For once the Jew accepted this position, this function as the sacred other, he ceased to be a subject of covenant and became an object of culture. He traded the particularity of Torah for the abstract universalism of suffering. And in doing so, he entered into a game whose rules were not his own.

That’s an interesting idea, that we traded the particularity of Torah to the abstract universalism of suffering. That is the other. We kind of live on the fact that we’re persecuted. We need anti-Semitism And getting back to our sources, they were celebrating the particularism, or at least they were fingering the particularism as why people hate us.

Adam Mintz [28:15 – 28:23]: That’s what I’m pointing out. That’s going all the way back, that we’re particular in terms of suffering. We’re the ones who suffer.

Geoffrey Stern [28:23 – 28:36]: We are the ones who suffer. But I think, yeah, and made a holy cross of carrying the cross of suffering. We were the Jesus of the world, so to speak.

Adam Mintz [28:36 – 28:36]: Correct.

Geoffrey Stern [28:37 – 30:02]: So he says this was not a Judaism of observance or transmission. I mean, Rabbi, this guy, this Muslim Arab is teaching us Jews what our Judaism is. When we took on this universalism, we were giving away Jewish observance and this concept of transmission.

It was a Judaism of metaphor. The Jew for this milieu became a counterculture icon. So he goes along and now he’s going to talk about Zionism. And he says, against this long historical backdrop, Zionism, at least in its modern mainstream articulation, emerged as a radical departure.

It did not deny that Jews had been cast as others, but it refused to treat that condition as metaphysical, eternal, or ethically redemptive. It met the idol with indifference. Zionism’s implicit philosophical wager was that Jewish otherness was not a mystery to be explained nor a symbol to be sublimated, but a political condition to be reversed.

Zionism offered a brutally terrestrial thesis that exile, statelessness, and persecution were not myths to be interpreted, but facts to be overcome. The cure was not dialectics, but sovereignty, really. And he says, that’s what Ahad Ha’am.

Adam Mintz [30:02 – 30:04]: This guy’s speaking, a nation like all others.

Geoffrey Stern [30:06 – 31:44]: And then he goes one more step, and then I’m going to finish. And he says that what’s happening in Israel today is ultimately at the core that we just want to be a simple people. We just want to not be the other. And this highfalutin type of concept. We want to be not a concept, but a particular, and he talks about that the left in Israel that isn’t willing to accept that reduces Judaism to a set of liberal democratic values, and the right, who has sacralized nationalism that interprets Halacha as the constitutional blueprint for a maximal territorial state, is also going away from it. They’re trying to universalize and conceptualize. They’re getting into the ism of all of it.

What he’s saying is, if we looked at the sources that we were looking about, for the most part, they are very particular. We are just a people that has our strange customs, and we sometimes create dissonance because people don’t want everybody to be the same. But we have to worry about who we are. Ultimately, that’s what the pure Zionism of the people who started the country is. And that’s how we have to kind of revisit our sources. That’s what we’ve tried to do today, to revisit those sources and to question how much of this otherness is actually imposed upon us and how much of it was homegrown and should be embraced by us.

Adam Mintz [31:45 – 31:57]: Fantastic. This was an amazing article. Thank you, Geoffrey. Hope everybody enjoys this article. For this Shabbat, enjoy the Parasha. We’ll see you next week to talk about Parashat Pinchas. Enjoy, everybody. Shabbat Shalom.

Geoffrey Stern [31:57 – 32:13]: Shabbat Shalom. Check out on Substack “The Jew After Otherness” by Hussein Aboubakr Mansour Shabbat Shalom, and let us all discover what makes us unique and not universal. Shabbat Shalom.

Geoffrey Stern [0:35 – 1:06]: own descendants. But in the Torah, in this week’s Parasha, Miriam dies in the space of a single verse. And when Aaron dies, Moses strips him of his priestly garments, dresses his son in them, and moves on, foreshadowing his own death. No monument, no shrine, no eternal flame. Just dust, mourning, and a continuation of purpose. In the Book of Numbers, we read the strange rituals surrounding the red heifer. And these are not burial rites. These are exit strategies,

Geoffrey Stern [1:06 – 1:37]: rituals of purification that scream, “Death is not sacred. It is not a god. It’s a pollutant, something to be washed off.” And here’s the thing: this may be the most radical idea in the entire Hebrew Bible—that we don’t make heroes out of corpses, that power doesn’t persist in the grave, that the dead are not part of the community of the living. Baruch Levine, the great biblical scholar, calls this the Bible’s campaign against the cult of the dead. Ezekiel sees

Geoffrey Stern [1:37 – 2:08]: kings buried too close to God’s presence and demands their corpses be removed. Josiah digs up ancient bones and burns them just to purify the land. And yet, that primal urge to hold on, to glorify, to make death meaningful, never quite dies. 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

Geoffrey Stern [2:08 – 2:38]: podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Parasha is Chukat. It is almost a cliché to say that Judaism rejects a cult of death and celebrates life. We explore the biblical and ancient Near Eastern sources for this concept, for this radical approach to mortality and man’s search for the heroic. We ask, what does it

Geoffrey Stern [2:38 – 3:08]: mean to truly reject death? And what happens when a religion insists that life—not sacrifice, not martyrdom, not memory—but life is what matters most? So join us for Not in Your Life, Rabbi. You’re in England. They have big pageantry when a king dies. A few weeks ago, the Pope was buried in a catacomb underneath the temple, so to speak. I think this week’s Parasha is kind of fascinating. A lot of times we look

Geoffrey Stern [3:08 – 3:25]: at the mixed bundle and we say there’s no connection. But at the beginning, we’re going to see it talks about the Parah Adumah and this concept of impurity, Tumah, related to death. And then, as I said before, we have Miriam, Aaron, and the foreshadowing of Moses’s death. I don’t think you can ignore the connection.

Adam Mintz [3:26 – 3:45]: No, for sure you can’t. And obviously, this is the end of the 40 years in the desert. This is the transition. One generation is dying, and the next generation is coming to life. So this is the right topic for this week. This is the—We move to the 40th year in the desert, and this is the beginning of the story of that transition.

Geoffrey Stern [3:46 – 5:06]: So we’re gonna start at the beginning where it does talk about this red heifer, which we’ve explored in the past, but ultimately into this question of impurity caused by death. Numbers 19, it says another party who is pure. In the Hebrew it says v’osaph Ish Tahor, not a Levite, but just another person. You have this kind of contradistinction between pure people who create the ashes and the impure who benefit from them. So another party who is pure shall gather up the ashes of the cow and deposit them outside the camp in a pure place to be kept for water of lustration. For the Israelite community, it is for purgation. So again, it’s an individual, it doesn’t say it’s a Levite, and it’s outside of the Temple grounds. The one who gathers, again, very generic. The ashes of the cow shall also wash those clothes and be impure until evening. This shall be a permanent law for the Israelite and for the strangers who reside among them. I know, Rabbi, many people see the word ger and they think of Project Ruth and they think of conversions. But I think you can agree with me. A ger is like a toshav—it’s someone with a green card living amongst you.

Adam Mintz [5:06 – 5:13]: The idea of convert does not appear in the Torah. In the Torah, it means a stranger, someone on the margins. Absolutely right.

Geoffrey Stern [5:13 – 6:49]: So it’s kind of fascinating. And we’re going to see this come out in this Baruch Levine, who we’re going to focus on for his interpretation. So clearly, when it says ger, it means just a resident alien. And so here we have no. No reference to a Levite. It’s just a person who’s pure. We have it outside of the Temple grounds, and we have this available to anybody living in Israel, which kind of focuses me on the humanity of death and the humanity of how we deal with death. It is a universal issue of mankind. How do you deal with your mortality? And I just find that kind of fascinating. So then it goes on and it says, another party who is pure shall take the hyssop and dip it in the water. In 19 it says the pure person. It’s so funny how it refers to. You would really think it would say the Levite, whoever, but it says, the pure person shall sprinkle the impure person on the third day. And this shall be a law for all time. And then, of course, we have this fascinating irony that we’ve dealt with in the past of how the pure person becomes impure and the impure become as pure. But I want to go to the commentary of the Baruch Levine, that he wrote a commentary on Leviticus, which is chock full of sacrifices, and he wrote a commentary on Numbers. And he literally was an expert. I read a little bit about his bio. He was at NYU, he established the Judaic Studies Dept..

Adam Mintz [6:49 – 6:51]: He was my professor.

Geoffrey Stern [6:51 – 9:24]: Unbelievable. So confirm to me that he really— I mean, when we look at his commentary today, sometimes you and I will say, that’s a nice drash. And then sometimes we’ll say, that’s peshat. I don’t think that Levine would be associated with Drash. He really looked at the philology of the ancient Near East, the context that these verses were written in. And he looked at other practices very similar to Cassuto, who we dealt with in another episode or two. And what I found in his commentary on this section, there is a surfeit of exclamation points. He’s getting excited, so let’s just dive right in. He says in the second section of Numbers 19 that we just read, no specific role is projected for priests. It is required only that a pure person, Ish tahor, perform the rite of lustration. The implication of this shift will be discussed in the comment below. Quite possibly the lustration rite prescribed in the later section of this chapter had a popular rather than a priestly origin. So what he’s saying is this is something that was really organic in a sense, and very important. And then he goes on to talk about the ger. And again, he says, the ger is clearly the alien resident within the Israelite settlement. And true, this is just how people living in the Israelite nation dealt with these issues. And he says two questions are raised by the inclusion of the alien in the requirement of purification. One, was the corpse of a non-Israelite also a source of impurity? That is a question that gets asked even up till today. And would a non-Israelite be contaminated by contact with a corpse in the same way as an Israelite?

So again, I take this to mean that what we are doing is every religion in the world. Rabbi, I’m going to quote a little bit later a book called “The Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker. And you can make a case that one of the prime, I guess, objectives of every religion is to explain mortality and to provide the adherents of that religion some way to navigate our mortality. And we’ll see, maybe, how do we make an impact upon life? And I think as we look at these verses, guess what? Here we are. This is where our Torah is doing it.

Adam Mintz [9:24 – 9:55]: Yeah. I mean, you know, you say that Levine is interested in this and then denial of death. I mean, the topic of death is a topic that has been that’s fascinated people for 3,500 years. And of course, the reason for that is because of the unknown. It’s really a question of how does the Torah deal with the unknown? And that’s why it’s so fascinating. And that’s why Levine is so fascinating. He’s trying to get, you know, get underneath, get to the truth of what does the Torah think about this unknown.

Geoffrey Stern [9:55 – 10:26]: Yes. And he jumps forward to Numbers 31 because he says in Numbers 31, we have the first real use case of these laws. And it says there, you shall then stay outside the camp seven days. Everyone amongst you or among your captives who has slain a person or touched a corpse shall purify himself on the third day. So now we’re talking about battle. We’re talking about soldiers returning from the battlefield, and they have to go through this. And it literally repeats over all of the laws that we just learned.

Geoffrey Stern [10:26 – 10:56]: Levine says the laws of Numbers 31 require Israelite warriors who had killed human beings in battle to remain outside the encampment for seven days. Inevitably, the provisions of Numbers 31 represent a direct application of the laws of the present chapter. Numbers 19 provides a unique instance in priestly legislation of riddance rites entirely separate from the sanctuary and its sacrificial altar.

Geoffrey Stern [10:56 – 11:27]: So here’s what he’s saying. We are looking at a kind of a closed battery of rules. Consider the following of its features. The slaughter of the red cow took place outside the encampment. The cow was totally incinerated in a single procedure. The ashes yielded by the incinerated cow were to be stored in a pure place outside the encampment, not within the sanctuary as was customary for consecrated subjects.

Geoffrey Stern [11:27 – 11:58]: He goes on and on to say two things: that, number one, this was totally isolated from all of the temple rituals that we’ve been studying about. You can really look at it on its own. And he goes, the operative magical principle of the rites of Numbers 19 is sympathetic: death rids the community of death! And this is where this scholarly academic puts an exclamation point.

Geoffrey Stern [11:58 – 12:28]: What he’s saying is that the ashes represent the annihilation and are therefore effective when applied to persons and objects defiled with contact to the dead. He is saying that the Torah’s approach, and I’m going to let him speak a little bit further, where he argues that it’s unique, is to not make death transcendent. He put an end to death. The mixture of ashes and living water had a primary practical basis in liquid form. This mixture could be applied in persons and objects. The operative cult of principle is substitution.

Geoffrey Stern [12:28 – 12:59]: So he’s getting a little worked up here. He’s very excited by this. And as I started thinking about it, Rabbi, there’s one other thing that was mentioned above. It didn’t say the mishkan (tabernacle), it said the mikdash (temple). And I’m sure later scholars will say, ah, this is a later text. The way I take it to mean, the reason it didn’t refer to the tabernacle and instead related to the temple is because the Torah was literally distancing our acts of mourning and dealing with the dead from others who use their temple.

Geoffrey Stern [12:59 – 13:29]: I made a reference before, when the Pope died, they buried him in their temple. That to a Jew would be anathema. We could never imagine burying somebody in our Beit Knesset or in our sanctuary. There might be a cemetery next door. But it’s this separation, I think, that he points to that comes literally from this. And what he’s arguing is these rituals were made not to aggrandize death and to give people this kind of…

Geoffrey Stern [13:29 – 13:57]: Think of it, when we think of death and the ceremonies that one associates with death, it’s almost a ritual rite of accompanying the dead to the netherworld, making sure the dead remember it. If you think about it, it doesn’t exist in Judaism.

Adam Mintz [13:58 – 14:45]: Yeah, well, that’s really good. And I would add to that, you know, Min Hamikdash lo ye say the reason they talk about mikdash about the temple rather than about the tabernacle is because the word temple has the word mikdash, which is kodesh. And that’s what Levine points out. This whole thing is about how you deal with the holiness. Right. That someone who’s in contact with the dead is not allowed to come into holiness. And how are they allowed to reenter holiness? They reenter holiness by coming in contact with the ashes of the dead heifer. So the death cancels out the death, and then they can be holy again. So it makes your point and Professor Levine’s point even stronger.

Geoffrey Stern [14:45 – 16:35]: Yeah. And I think what I always believed, and when I started researching this week, I said, you know what? I always thought we left Egypt. Egypt was all about pyramids. It was all about the afterlife. And the Torah was a rejection of that. The truth is that a scholar like Baruch Levine, he’s less interested in Egypt because Egyptology had less of an effect on what was going on in Canaan. But what he’s saying is pretty much the same thing. And so he is struck by the fact that the kohanim, the priests, have no role in this whole death ritual.

So not only is the ritual itself made to minimize the importance of death, he says it’s a ritual made to stamp it out. The second it happens, you want to get rid of it. It’s amazing if you think about it. We’re so used to it that we pass over these laws and we don’t understand the impact of them. But clearly these laws are saying schmutz happens. Get rid of it. We don’t want to talk about death. Let’s move on. And then add to that that the priest is not involved. He says Rabbinic Judaism endorsed the same dispensation and said that a priest, normal priest, can only defile themselves. And this is up until today for their own family. And a high priest has no exemptions at all. He could not go to a funeral. I mean, that is a profound statement that we’re all aware of, but I think the message gets lost sometimes.

You know, he says that Leviticus was aimed at eliminating a funerary role for the priesthood. And you think of funerary, Rabbi, we have funerals today, no question about it. But there’s no basis in the Torah. The Torah is only interested in getting rid of death. It’s crazy if you think about it.

Adam Mintz [16:35 – 16:59]: Well, you know, the one, you know, the book of Leviticus doesn’t have any stories, any narratives. The one narrative that it has is the death of Nadab and Avihu, the sons of Aaron. So that also is they’re challenged by death. Right. How does Aaron deal with the death of his sons when he has to serve in the temple? They want to distance themselves from death.

Geoffrey Stern [16:59 – 18:23]: Yeah. And what he calls it is the cult of the dead. And he says by their very nature, cults of the dead exhibit two kinds of complementary objectives. First, they are aimed at affording the dead what they seek, namely an agreeable afterlife. And I know there are discussions that we’ve had at other times and are ongoing in academia today. Does Judaism believe in an olam haba? Does it believe in an afterlife? We’re not even getting there. We’re talking about the rituals that were used at death.

Speaker A: And there’s no question there is nothing that we read today that is creating rituals to enable people to pass into the afterlife. The second, he says, is that death cults are cults of the dead to seek to ensure that the powerful dead will not forget the living and will act benevolently rather than malevolently toward them, especially toward their descendants. Rabbi, we have laws against trying to bring up the dead, trying to get the dead to be involved with our lives. It really is, as I said in the beginning, that Judaism is all about choosing life, “becharta bachayim.”

But here we’re looking at the laws, and it’s striking what is not being done. And of course, you need a scholar of Baruch Levine’s size to really give us the confidence to say, this is not d’rash. This is peshat.

Adam Mintz [18:24 – 18:35]: Right. That’s the interesting thing that he says. This is really what it’s talking about. That’s the tension in the Torah, how you deal with death. Okay, good. Now we’ll see what Yechezkel has to say.

Geoffrey Stern [18:35 – 20:29]: So he brings a few proof texts to show that this was such a key element in Judaism. We are all very aware of how later generations stumbled and they worshipped Baal and so forth. In Ezekiel, he talks about kings must not again defile my holy name by their apostasy and by corpses of their kings at their death. What Levine is arguing from verses such as this is that when we fell back and when kings and prophets came to bring us back to our sources, one of the things they were fighting were funeral rites for kings that were occurring.

That was not Israelite, that was not part of our mission. And the other thing that happened was the temple was combined with where the kings were buried. You literally had what I was talking about before, when the Pope was buried. When Israel fell behind in their theology, they were burying kings right next to the temple. He brings other sources where in Kings 2, there was a reversal of a customary practice to establish a new category of impurity associated with death. This was part of our fight to stop Israel from falling back into the default culture of the world they lived in, where kings, powerful people, and maybe just everybody were seen as important in the afterlife for our life. What he’s arguing is that what is unique about the Israelite perspective that we’re seeing today is that literally these rituals we have are made to put death into the box, so to speak, to get rid of it.

Adam Mintz [20:29 – 20:35]: Yeah, that is fantastic. Okay, great. Let’s see what he says now. Now we go back to our verse about Miriam.

Geoffrey Stern [20:36 – 21:25]: Yeah. So you cannot ignore the fact that right after all of these laws, what do we get? We get in Numbers 20 that the Israelites arrived in a body in the wilderness of Tzin on the first new moon. The people stayed at Kadesh. So far, you’d think it’s a typical verse from Bamidbar, from Numbers, counting a stop on the road. And then it says, Miriam died there and was buried there. And that’s it, Rabbi. Of course, if you look at the women’s commentary, they will say, typical example of the male chauvinism of our scripture. And we have to agree with them. But nonetheless, it is very striking in the shortness it gives to the death of a prophetess, Miriam.

Adam Mintz [21:25 – 21:56]: Yeah, well, that, you know, and it’s even better. It comes literally out of nowhere. The previous chapter, chapter 19, talks about the red heifer and then we go back to the narrative. There’s no introduction. The next verses talk about what leads to Moses and Aaron’s death, and that is the hitting of the rock. But Miriam just seems to die. It’s almost as if that’s the end of this generation. One dies and the next dies. That means the generation is finished. Finish. And we move on to the next generation.

Geoffrey Stern [21:56 – 23:34]: And then we go to 20:11. It says, and Moses, of course, what they do is they say, after Miriam died, she brought the well and the people lost access to water, so they all complained. Famously, Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water and the community and their beasts drank. But God said to Moses and Aaron, because you did not trust me enough to affirm my sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore, you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them. Here, just 11 verses after Miriam dies, we get the death sentence on both Moses and Aaron.

I would like to argue that this gives truly another nuance. It’s not simply a death sentence It’s the “you shall not lead this congregation,” this sense of mission that no one completes their mission. I would argue that we have to focus, at least this year, on the outcome and not the reason for it. Whatever the reason that Miriam died when she died, that is between her and God and the writer of the Torah. The same goes for Aaron and Moses. But what’s important is that they had a death sentence and they were not going to be there to complete the story. It’s almost as if there are directions to leave stage right Basically, the story continues. You’re not going to be part of it.

Adam Mintz [23:34 – 23:57]: Right? I mean, that, that’s. That I think is important. And there’s a lot of material spent explaining why they died. And what you’re saying is it doesn’t matter why they died in this context, it matters that they died. And that’s the transition. That’s the beginning of the next series of chapters and stories in the Torah. Good, I like that.

Geoffrey Stern [23:57 – 25:30]: So it continues in 23. It says, At Mount Hor, on the boundary of the land of Edom, God said to Moses and Aaron, let Aaron be gathered to his kin. He is not to enter the land that I have assigned to the Israelite people because you disobeyed my command about the waters of Meribah. Take Aaron and his son Eleazar and bring them up to Mount Hor. Strip Aaron of his vestments and put them on his son Eleazar. There Aaron shall be gathered unto the dead. Moses did as God commanded. They ascended Mount Hor in the sight of the whole community. Moses stripped Aaron of his vestments and put them on his son Eleazar. Aaron died there on the summit of the mountain. When Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain, the whole community knew that Aaron had breathed his last. All the house of Israel bewailed Aaron for 30 days. And then the story continues.

It is truly amazing, again, if you look at it through the lens that we’re looking at, how quickly the transition occurs. It’s in the most trivial fashion. Take off your clothes, pass leadership onto your son, go up the hill, be gathered to your people, mourn, and move on. It’s very striking if you think of it as Baruch Levine would, by looking at the pageantry of what would happen in a similar situation at the death of a high priest or the death of a king in ancient Near Eastern societies or anywhere.

Adam Mintz [25:31 – 25:44]: Yeah. I mean, that idea of transition. Right. The fact that he goes up, strip Aaron of his vestments and put them on his son Eleazar. You know, the truth of the matter is, Geoffrey, you started by talking about the pope.

Geoffrey Stern [25:44 – 25:44]: Pope.

Adam Mintz [25:44 – 26:32]: The Catholics know that, too. Immediately after the funeral, they gather all the cardinals together and choose a new pope. Having a period with no leader is problematic. When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, there’s a famous picture of Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office on the plane back to Washington. That was extremely important, that there should be not a moment where there’s no leader.

Now, in the case of the United States, it’s that we’re susceptible; we’re not powerful if there’s no leader. But anyway, that goes back to the Torah. The minute that he takes off, he dies. He takes off his clothing. Eleazar needs to have the clothing on immediately. There can’t be any period in the middle where there’s no leader.

Geoffrey Stern [26:33 – 27:03]: I mean, I think from a pragmatic point of view, you’re absolutely correct. What is the phrase? The second the king dies, “The king is dead, long live the king!”. So from a transition point of view, I agree with you 100%. And it’s interesting to know that here the theology of Judaism corresponds to what is very pragmatic as well, that you do have to transition power immediately. But nonetheless, I will stick to my argument to say that from

Geoffrey Stern [27:03 – 27:33]: a theological, ritual way, this is still extremely striking. How death is almost, like I said before, put back in the shoebox and you move on. And Levine said before that the rabbinic tradition really kind of mimicked, and I would say emphasized, this concept. I could not think of a more profound way than in Pirkei Avot 2:16, where it says Rabbi Tarfon used

Geoffrey Stern [27:33 – 28:04]: to say, it is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it. If you have studied much Torah, you shall be given much reward. Faithful is your employer to pay you the reward of your labors. This iconic phrase was this very fine line that I think these rituals were able to do with not aggrandizing death

Geoffrey Stern [28:04 – 28:34]: and not belittling life. In other words, the approach that we’re seeing here today, it’s not trivializing death, but what it’s saying is it’s not yours to finish. And I think that’s what God was saying to Aaron and Moses. He didn’t say, you’re going to die. He says, you’re not going to finish the mission. You’re not going to lead them. And I think what becomes then eternalized is the mission. What becomes eternalized is the endeavor,

Geoffrey Stern [28:34 – 29:05]: the experiment, the model of what we’re building, the society that goes on. But I think it is so striking that death itself is almost, you can’t but say, minimized. And I think the sense of heroism keeps on. It came up when I was reading “Denial of Death” because part and parcel of wanting to be immortalized, our desire to be

Geoffrey Stern [29:05 – 29:36]: able to transcend the end of our life is this sense of being able to heroically persevere. And I think we saw that a little bit when Levine quoted the verses in Numbers 30. And he says, the first use case that we have is after a battle. After a battle, you’re the hero, you’ve won, and you have to wash yourself from this. You’re almost taken back to your

Geoffrey Stern [29:36 – 30:07]: source. There’s no room for triumphalism because none of us gets to finish the mission. In “Denial of Death,” he writes, the idea of death, the fear of it haunts the human animal like nothing else. It is a mainspring of human activity. Activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death. To overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man. Anthropological and historical research, also begun

Geoffrey Stern [30:07 – 30:38]: in the 19th century, put together a picture of the heroic since primitive in ancient times. The hero was the man who could go into the spirit world, the world of the dead, and return alive. And he talks about how obviously in Christianity you had that clearly in Jesus. But here we’re looking in the same few chapters that we’re dealing with. How do you deal with death? We look at our potential heroes. And I think it is so striking how the heroes are

Geoffrey Stern [30:38 – 31:09]: dealt with. There is no such thing as watching Aaron or Miriam go into the spirit world. And there is certainly no sense of them coming back or even having power in the next world over our life. They are truly divorced from it. And I think that is striking. And I think this is a singular case where the peshat, the academic and historical analysis of the texts, really

Geoffrey Stern [31:09 – 31:23]: flushes out something that has become very Jewish. This love of life that we Jewish people seem to have drunk in our mother’s milk. But it comes from these sources. It’s fascinating to me.

Adam Mintz [31:24 – 31:34]: Absolutely fascinating. You should live by the laws, right? You don’t die by the laws. We’re people of living. You can’t serve God if you’re dead.

Geoffrey Stern [31:35 – 31:49]: Yes. So we wish everybody a Shabbat Shalom full of life. When you raise that Kiddush cup on Friday night, you are making Kiddush. But you are also saying L’chaim. So L’chaim to everyone. See you all next week.

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s Parsha is Korach, and we are joined by Mark Friedman, an ex-attorney now practicing political philosophy and theology without a license! In one of the pivotal chapters of his recently published book, Mark uses the Korach story to explore the place of disputation and disruption in our tradition. Mark is a fellow student of philosophy who has a lifelong love for Jewish texts. So it is with great pleasure that I welcome him to Madlik for this week’s episode, “Arguing the Truth.” Welcome, Rabbi. And welcome, Mark. It’s great to have you here.

Mark Friedman [1:40 – 1:44]: Thank you very much. I’m looking forward to a very interesting conversation.

Geoffrey Stern [1:44 – 2:02]: So there’s a link to your book in the show notes, but maybe you can just give us a little bit of a background on your journey. I mentioned that you’re an ex-attorney and and practice philosophy and theology without a license, so why don’t you put a little texture into that?

Mark Friedman [2:03 – 4:21]: Sure. Happy to. I grew up in what is probably a typical Jewish environment. My parents were both Jewish. They were very proud of being Jewish. I would say they were in many ways culturally Jewish in terms of the values that we associate with the religion, but they weren’t really observant. So I grew up Reform. I was bar mitzvahed Reform, and pretty much at that point, I abandoned any kind of observance of Judaism. I, like my parents, were very proud to be Jewish, and I welcomed all the accomplishments that we could claim. But in terms of actual practice, I was pretty much disassociated with it.

This started to change when I met my wife. She, I believe, is substantially more spiritually attuned and inclined than I am. So we started going at least to high holiday services. We were living in Los Angeles at the time, and we would buy tickets to the high holiday services and go to one of the mega synagogues in Los Angeles with thousands of other people. Eventually, we moved to a small city outside of Tacoma, Washington, and through various circumstances, hooked up with the Chabad rabbi in Tacoma and became regular congregants.

We attended services on a very regular basis. We started becoming much more observant, keeping the dietary laws and other things, not in exactly the way of the Orthodox, but respectful of tradition and moving sort of in that direction. I attended the Rabbi’s Torah study class pretty much every week for those 15 years. So I think in the course of that, I got a pretty good overview of Hasidic Judaism, or at least as it was practiced by Chabad. That experience was, I would say, the genesis of my research and then the writing of the book.

Geoffrey Stern [4:21 – 5:08]: You mentioned, well, I feel like I’m talking to a modern-day Rabbi Akiva. Because your book is scholarly, the sources that we’re gonna quote are just from three or four pages. So this is really gonna give Madlik listeners just a taste of what you put in here. Some amazing sources. So hats off to you, or I should say kippah off to you. You’ve done a wonderful, wonderful job. So let’s dive into your reference to the Parasha. What you start by doing is quoting Pirkei Avot. Pirkei Avot talks about something called a Makhloket L’shem Shamayim and Shelo L’shem Shamayim. Why don’t you walk us through what it has to do with Hillel and Shammai and Korach.

Mark Friedman [5:09 – 6:39]: Sure. I believe it relates back to your introduction, which is the value of controversy, and controversy being an essential element of progress. Because if we just had no controversy, we wouldn’t evolve new theories and different ways of looking at the world. So I think Judaism regards controversy as an essential element, almost a required element. The Parsha, or at least the Talmudic references, are to the value of controversy. It is said if the Hillel-Shammai dispute, the dispute of their academies was for the sake of heaven. Even though they had much different views about the law, they were arguing in good faith. They were arguing to try to get to the answer, whereas Korach was arguing for a dishonest, devious purpose. He was not interested in the truth; he was interested in a power grab.

So, in one case, it says the Hillel-Shammai controversy will endure, which I take to mean we’ll continue to have that kind of controversy. But the Korach controversy will not endure because it wasn’t for the sake of truth. And as you both well know, it ended in a rather sudden and tragic fashion as God had the last word about Korach.

Geoffrey Stern [6:39 – 6:57]: Rabbi, isn’t it amazing that the reward for having a dispute that is well-intentioned is that the dispute will last, endure the ages, so to speak? In a sense, the legacy we want to leave are not answers, maybe not even questions, but disputations.

Adam Mintz [6:58 – 7:35]: Well, I mean, I think. Thank you, Mark, so much for this. It’s really interesting that, you know, makhloket plays such a central role in Jewish history. All of Rabbinic Judaism is makhloket, is dispute. So I think the Mishnah is dealing with that. We like makhloket. So if we like makhloket, if we like Hillel and Shammai so much, why don’t we like Korach? What was wrong with Korach? So I think you have to see it against the backdrop of the fact that generally speaking, we like makhloket.

Geoffrey Stern [7:36 – 9:32]: I heard a joke recently that said, you know, arguments that are based on theology, they never end. They are kayam forever. It wasn’t in a complimentary fashion, but we’ll see in a second that also appears. The idea is sha’einu l’shem shamayim zu machloket Korach v’chol adato. That a makhloket that is not for the sake of heaven will not survive like Korach and his ilk. Almost, it could mean those who were with him, and it could mean those going into the future who follow that type of approach.

It seems to me that you first set out to lay the groundwork and you do try to characterize a little bit what was wrong with Korach. I think it’s fascinating, and really the subject matter today is not going to be what’s wrong with Korach, but what was right about Shammai and Hillel. But nonetheless, it’s fascinating that the rabbis learned from our Parasha, from what not to do. Their takeaway was what to do. I think what you do is you bring the Midrash and you basically ascribe the insincerity of Korach to two things.

Number one, he was looking for his own personal gain. He was complaining about the choice that was made in terms of Aaron and the firstborn, the second born. He said, my father was a second born. He should have been chosen over the third born, who ultimately was picked to be the Levites. So that was one problem. I think an argument that is based on kind of your private needs and ulterior motives is not great. It’s also really not a makhloket if you think about it. You’re just posing. You’re just trying to position yourself in a certain way.

Mark Friedman [9:34 – 11:30]: I think you’re right on track. The interesting thing about Korach being swallowed up by the earth is it’s a dramatic finish to him because I think his sins were in more than one direction.

It was first, I think, that, as you said, he was arguing for an improper purpose. He wasn’t arguing ideas; he was using ideas to try to get his own way. But, as I mentioned in the book, it’s interesting what he chose to argue about because, as you know, two very interesting things.

Okay, so you need a tassel to make a garment, to sanctify it. And so he says, well, okay. Well, then logically, if the entire garment is of the same color as the tassel, then I don’t need the tassel, right? Because if the tassel could do it, why wouldn’t the entire garment do it? And Moses says, well, no, you still need the tassel. And what’s fascinating is he’s picked an example of something that is not logical. You can’t argue about it because it’s not a matter of logic to begin with. It’s a matter of a divine command that you either choose to accept or you don’t. Like the Red Heifer, or, you know, why we can’t have a cheeseburger. There’s not a logical explanation that it’s this way and not that way. It’s just a command. And the same thing with the mezuzah. He says, well, if you have a whole bunch of holy books in your house, you sure don’t need a mezuzah, do you? Because you’ve got way more than a mezuzah. And again, Moses just says, well, no, you need the mezuzah. Moses doesn’t try to argue with him logically because there really is no argument he can make. It’s just, this is the way it is. You either take it or leave it.

Geoffrey Stern [11:31 – 12:22]: You know, part of what you said made me start thinking about one of the problems of asking a question and then going into a mahloket, a dispute, is the question has to fit the material. And what you just said is, you can ask a question about anything. But when you’re talking about a chok, when you’re talking about a ritual, when you’re talking even about anthropology, there’s some way that you fashion your question and you don’t take Newtonian laws to dissect the Tekhelet and tzitzit. I think that’s kind of fascinating. It’s misapplied. And I think it’s also really, we can never undervalue the importance of how a question is framed. And all of his questions here are kind of misapplied questions is what you’re really saying.

Mark Friedman [12:23 – 13:11]: Right? They were gotcha questions. They were trying to embarrass Moses by saying, well, you know, you have these very illogical—you’ve transmitted to us very illogical commandments, and therefore, everything you’ve said is illogical, and we shouldn’t follow any of it because you can’t justify these two commandments. But as we know, there are some commandments that can be understood rationally. Some are commemorating the miracles that God performed for us, and then some are just commandments that, you know, there’s no rational justification for. And you’re right, there are different ways to frame the question that are designed either to provoke an honest, thoughtful answer, or it’s a gotcha. I’m asking you a question that I know you can’t really answer.

Adam Mintz [13:12 – 15:34]: It’s interesting that you talk about the fact that the question is misapplied. I mean, it’s not only asked in the wrong way. The whole idea of the question is wrong. Like you said, the idea that God’s laws have to make sense to us, that’s a mistake. Rabbi Soloveitchik has a famous title to the chapter in which he talks about this Parsha. He calls it the Common Sense Rebellion. And he says that’s the mistake. Religion is not always common sense. Now, we like to make it as common sense as we can, but to narrow religion to common sense, Rabbi Soloveitchik says that’s what Korach did wrong.

I’ll just say, now, Mark, maybe you’re going to say this, but I’ll beat you to it. The Malbim, who was a great 19th-century biblical commentator, he says, if you go back, Geoffrey, to the Mishnah, it says, what’s a bad mahloket? A bad machloket is Korach va’adato. Now, Geoffrey, you very keenly said, I don’t know what adatoh means. Does that mean his group, or does that mean the people who follow them in every generation? The Malbim says that the problem with Korach was he couldn’t even get along with his own people. His dispute with Moses doesn’t even make it into the Mishnah. His dispute with Moses was a common sense rebellion, which is wrong. He was just fundamentally wrong. But the reason that Korach didn’t have a leg to stand on, says the Malbim, is because he couldn’t get along with his own people. You know, Datan and Abiram were his co-conspirators, but actually, they weren’t interested. They had their own concern. They came from Reuben; they come from another tribe. They had a whole completely different concern from Korach. So, that’s what it’s saying. If you want to have, if you want to make a good argument, you want to create a group, you have to make sure that you agree among yourselves. And obviously Geoffrey and Mark, that resonates today. Right? If you have arguments among yourselves, you’re not going to be a success.

Mark Friedman [15:35 – 15:39]: Absolutely. And unfortunately, in Judaism, we have those kinds of arguments.

Geoffrey Stern [15:40 – 18:20]: Yeah. I mean, Mark, you even reference the case that although Shammai and Hillel married amongst themselves, which of course is always a critical criteria when we talk about sectarianism and the division of peoples. However, there were times where there were murders, and there were times. Getting back to what I said earlier about sometimes when you’re fighting about Shamayim, they do actually last forever. But I want to move on because one of the things I said about that I loved about your book was the sources that you quote and what you do is you segue directly from Korach to the Tower of Babel of all places. And I was scratching my head as to what they have in common. And what actually they do have in common is that both of them were challenging God or God’s representative. Korach was challenging Moses, and the Tower of Babel was challenging God. They wanted to go up to heavens. And normally you would think that their problem was they were arguing with God. If anything, they were on the side of dissent. And you quote an amazing commentary on the whole story of the Tower of Babel, and it’s from one of our favorite commentaries. It is the Netziv. And what he says is he flips it on its head in terms of the Tower of Babel, similar to the way we’re flipping Korach. Korach is not the one who wanted disputes; he wanted to put an end to disputes. He wanted to grab power. But in the case of the Tower of Babel, the Netziv takes the verse in Genesis 11:3-4 that they say, let us build a city and a tower with its top to the sky to make a name for ourselves, else we shall be scattered all over the world. He says they wanted to create this tower to stop the diversity of opinion, and in fact, that God didn’t punish them with multiple languages. He defeated them. They were going for unanimity of opinion and language. And he said, no. I mean, Netziv says it. And since the opinions of people are not identical, they feared that people might abandon, abandon this philosophy and adopt another. So both the Tower of Babel and the Korach story, through the eyes of Avot, are literally celebrating disputation. I love that you made that connection.

Mark Friedman [18:22 – 19:03]: Thank you. Yes. I mean, I think he makes a brilliant insight that you turn it around. What was really happening was some core group like Korach, if he had been able to, some core group was enforcing its philosophy on everybody else. We’re going to build this tower whether you guys like it or not. And it helps us accomplish this end by having only one language. So God, seeing all this in play, says, well, I’m not going to let you do that. And it’s not quite as dramatic, I guess, as the earth swallowing up Korach, but it’s a pretty important point.

Geoffrey Stern [19:04 – 20:41]: You are an ex-lawyer, but you’re also someone who in his youth, like myself, studied philosophy.

And what I want to do for the remainder of our conversation today is to follow your segue from these ancient stories to the modern perception of what is truth and how. Because I think most people’s knee-jerk reaction is that if, if God represents anything, if theology represents anything, it’s that there’s only one answer to every question. There’s one emet. And therefore, it’s surprising that the Tower of Babel and Korach are, in fact, supposed to be metaphors or have a moral lesson that no, the last thing we want is one answer.

And what you do is you quote the famous Mishnah in Ediyot that explains why we have multiple opinions. And Rashi, a famous Rashi that you quote, says the reason we have to retain minority views and the reason why the Talmud is chock full of varying opinions is you never know when a dog is going to have its day. And what he quotes is the most famous rendering of that, that “this and this,” meaning this opinion and that opinion, are the words of the living God. And your takeaway from that is that that sounds very similar to modern philosophers such as Karl Popper, who talk about a nuance of truth. So maybe walk us through that transition.

Mark Friedman [20:42 – 22:44]: Sure. Well, I think if you had to summarize Popper’s philosophy in a nutshell, it’s the idea that we’re probably not going to get to the ultimate truth. There’s no sense in trying to formulate a theory that gets to the ultimate truth once and for all, and then we’re done. We can close down all the science departments because we’ve arrived at the ultimate truth. His point is that we shouldn’t strive for that because it may be out of our reach, but what we can practically strive for are better theories that are better supported by the evidence that we have before us.

Over time, if we do that repetitively, we will get closer and closer to the truth, even if we never get there. And controversy is an essential part of that, obviously, because you have the regnant theory, the Newtonian theory. And then Einstein comes along and says, well, I’ve observed some anomalies that Newton can’t quite explain. So let me put forward a better theory that retains the good parts of Newton’s philosophy but gives us a better overall explanation. Then quantum mechanics comes along and questions some of Einstein’s basic assumptions. So it’s a never-ending process by which we try to get closer to the truth. But at any one time, we don’t have an ultimate truth. We have competing theories about the truth. We hope that over time we can have good reason to prefer one theory to the other. But for all we know, it’s possible at least that the theory that gets rejected at time X might be rehabilitated at time Y. So you’re never really sure. You can’t just say, well, this theory’s done. We’re going to forget that anybody ever held it because it may come back and there may be elements of it that you have to adopt again. So it’s a never-ending process with a radical skepticism about knowing the truth at any one moment.

Geoffrey Stern [22:45 – 25:36]: And you do give credit to Menachem Fish who you believe is one of the first Talmudists who made the connection to Popper. I will add that you make a strong point that Popper still believed that there was objective truth, only that man with his five senses and limited knowledge is not capable of finding that truth.

So truth-seeking, in a sense, really comes down to theorizing, and one theory is going to be better than another for some arbitrary reasons. What’s fascinating is he really says the most important thing about a theory is being able to test it. You can have two equal theories that represent the facts and explain the facts equally. But if one can be tested and the other can’t be tested, the one that can be tested is better.

Now, that’s arbitrary in the sense that we like theories that you can test. But the point is that I think. And maybe I’m misreading, but even if you didn’t believe there was truth, because we’re splitting hairs. If we say that man is not capable of knowing what truth is, then the fact that there actually is truth is really irrelevant because we’re human beings. We’re talking with our… with the knowledge that we’re in doubt of. It’s like we can’t really fathom what it is.

I think there are equal amounts of people who could say actually there is no truth, or at least no truth from a human perspective. But what’s important is… And you say that Fish looks at it from the perspective of practical nature. How can we use these tools that modern science has given us to understand our own texts, for instance. But the way you go is, how does that determine our understanding of arguments? And I find that just fascinating because if you think about it, you know, some of the things that he says are not only is it testable, but he says, if you have two theories and one is simpler than the other, a simpler theory is better. Well, because we can use it more easily. But again, the old theory might come back one day. We are engaged in this Machloket that will continue practical use. Clearly, if you have two theories and one you can use to build an airplane, that has value to it. And I think all of these concepts have. And you’ve kind of brought them out in our texts. How? In the Talmud, they’re looking for practical results sometimes. They’re looking for moral lessons sometimes. But I do think it’s a fascinating way to look at the confluence of the way the Talmudic Machloket is and modern science and theory of science. What things you. Adam.

Adam Mintz [25:37 – 25:55]: So I want to go back to “Elu v’Elu Divrei Elohim Chayim.” Both are the words of a living God. So, Mark, do you think that that means that both are truth, or you think that the rabbis are not really interested in truth per se?

Mark Friedman [25:56 – 27:21]: That’s a very interesting question. I think reverting back to Popper at that given moment, we don’t know which of those two groups has the correct objective theory. But what we do know is that the Hillelites are much more flexible in their approach to theory. And it’s pretty clear when the heavenly voice speaks that one of the things it’s saying is the Hillelites, the truth is according to them. Because in the future, we will need to revise these laws and bring truth into the future. And if we go, if we say the law is according to the Shammites, they’re not willing to change their mind. So whatever the theory they have at that moment, that’s likely to be the theory into the infinite future, because they’re never going to change it.

Whereas the Hillelites would be willing, if the social conditions change radically and a law that made sense at the time of the Torah no longer makes sense, then they will change the law to not inflict harm on their fellow Jews, whereas the Shammites might not. That’s my interpretation of why God said the law is according to the Hillelites.

Adam Mintz [27:21 – 28:26]: So that. So I think that’s brilliant, Geoffrey. That’s a great explanation, but that has nothing to do with truth. That doesn’t mean that Hillel is more correct than Shammai. That’s a practical consideration that we, we have to follow Hillel because he’s more flexible. But you see that. And that would support what I asked you. And that is the rabbis. Truth is not what the rabbis want. It might be that “Shema Yisrael,” that that is true, that’s a verse in the Torah. But when Shammai and Hillel argue about, you know, exactly how you take the Lulav or how you blow the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah, that’s not a question of truth, that’s a question of interpretation. And interpretation, there are a lot of factors in determining what you’re going to do, but that’s interpretation, not truth. So I think there, obviously, a lot of people have spoken about this. I think there the philosophy of Halacha might be different than Western philosophy, Philosophy.

Mark Friedman [28:26 – 29:22]: On this question of truth, it’s interesting.

I mean, there’s one exception that Popper, I think, makes about questioning the truth, never being sure that you’ve arrived at the truth, which is, Geoffrey, you’re probably familiar with this idea. The analytic statements, statements that are true by their own definition. A bachelor is an unmarried man. Two plus two equals four. These, I think even Popper would say, you can’t argue about them because they’re true by virtue of the meaning of the words that express them.

So the Shema, in transferring it to religious jargon, the Shema might be one of those necessary truths that you have to have to get the religion off the ground. And so you can’t question the existence of God or the religion means nothing. So maybe that’s the analogy.

Geoffrey Stern [29:23 – 29:53]: So I want to finish up. I mean, a lot of what you just said now, in terms of a priori truths, you can’t say them without them not being true. They have to do with language. Once you have this language and you define one as one and two as two, one and two becomes three. These are all traditions.

What I think the flip side, and a philosopher called Paul Feyerabend actually pointed this out, is that what really Popper is doing is he’s describing the tradition of modern science and theory. Therefore, a theory is for arbitrary reasons. I said before, it’s better if it’s simpler, better if you can test it, and better if you can use it.

But what he said, and I’m going to read a little bit from him, maybe this will be for your next volume. He says there is no idea however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge. The whole history of thought is absorbed into science and is used for improving every single theory. Nor is political interference it may be needed to overcome chauvinism.

What he argued for is you cannot look at, for instance, the Torah. He even says we should regard the worldviews of the Bible, the Gilgamesh epic, the Iliad, the Edda as fully fledged alternative cosmologies. The point is, we have to understand that all of these traditions that our forebears had spent hours and lifetimes analyzing have gems within them, have truths within them. And our choice of science for when we construct our cars and airplanes is one choice that we make. But when we look at our texts, those are alternative truths.

And I think it’s not necessarily, I think it would be wrong to say that this suggests a relativist view of truth because that is normally taken to diminish truth. I think the truth is important because whether it actually exists or it motivates us to continue searching is always going to be important.

But I do think what we learn from the Pirkei Avot that we started with and from the treatment of Shammai and Hillel that you have in your book is we have to value other opinions, alternative opinions, minority opinions, because of their richness and because of what they can add to our life. At the end of the day, what your book argued for is pluralism.

Pluralism within our tradition, not as an alternative. Because what we saw in the Tower of Babel was, God forbid, there should be unanimity as the only alternative. That’s the only thing we can agree upon. And I will say to our listeners, if you have a chance, go ahead and get this book, because it has amazing sources and it is so well researched. Now that I’ve met Mark, I just really appreciate your dedication and life story for putting this together and sharing with us today and sharing with the world in your book.

Mark Friedman [32:32 – 33:06]: You’re very kind, Geoffrey. I appreciate that very much because it’s coming from somebody who actually, I think, understands the issues and understands the things I’m trying to articulate. I’ve appreciated listening to your podcasts. I think you and the rabbi have really insightful discussions, and I learn a lot when I listen, and I’m thankful that I might be able to return the favor in a small way. So thank you very much for having me on your podcast.

Adam Mintz [33:06 – 33:16]: So much for joining us. This is really a true, Geoffrey. Fantastic, fantastic topic. So much to think about. Shabbat shalom, everybody. It’s a hard parsha, but enjoy the parasha.

Mark Friedman [33:17 – 33:18]: Thank you.

Geoffrey Stern [33:18 – 33:19]: Shabbat Shalom.

Mark Friedman [33:19 – 33:21]: Shabbat Shalom.

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. If you like what you hear or what you read, why don’t you give us a few stars and say something nice.

This week’s Parsha is Shalach. This week, the state of Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, an operation already being hailed for its strategic brilliance and no doubt will be dissected in military academies for years to come. In light of the planners’ boldness and their ability not just to read reality, but to shape it, we turn to the story of the biblical scouts. But this time, our focus isn’t on the failure of the majority; it’s on Caleb Ben Yefuneh, who defied the consensus more forcefully than even Joshua and who, the Torah tells us, was gifted by a “ruach acheret.” A different spirit. So, Rabbi, welcome. What a week this has been since.

Adam Mintz [2:11 – 2:18]: Wow. Yeah, it’s hard to believe. And I, please God, everyone should be safe, and it should come out with a good outcome.

Geoffrey Stern [2:20 – 3:19]: Yeah, yeah. And you know, I… One podcast I love is Call Me Back by Dan Senor. I was listening to it this morning, and his mother is an elderly woman from England, and she draws references to being in London as a young girl when, what was it? The War of London? The Battle of London? When the missiles were coming in and the English had a stiff upper lip, were making tea and just knowing that, as uncomfortable as it was, their troops were doing what needed to be done. I think this is so different than what happened on October 7th, because, as I said, in the intro, this was a brilliant surprise attack that read so many of the facts in a disruptive manner that no one thought of, and that added to the surprise. So it’s truly fascinating.

Adam Mintz [3:19 – 3:27]: Absolutely fascinating. And we’re praying that it should have a good outcome. Just like those people who made tea in London had a good outcome, this is gonna have a good outcome, too.

Geoffrey Stern [3:28 – 5:39]: Amen. Anyway, let’s get to the parsha, because the parsha is here. Week in and week out, we are in Numbers. And this is a story that pretty much takes up the whole parsha. So every year, we basically are talking about the scouts, the spies, those 12 individuals that were appointed to scout out the land.

Numbers 13, it says, God spoke to Moses saying, “Send agents to scout the land of Canaan, of which I’m giving to the Israelite people. Send one participant from each of their ancestral tribes, each one a chieftain among them.” So Moses, by God’s command, sent them out from the wilderness of Paran, all of them being men of consequence, leaders of the Israelites, and these were their names.

We are in the Book of Numbers, where counting is a big thing. So it goes ahead and lists the names, mostly without anything remarkable about them. The only commentary is in verse 16, where it says, these were the names of the participants whom Moses sent to scout. But Moses changed the name of Hoshea, son of Nun, to Joshua. Rashi comments, why did he change his name? By giving him his name, Yehoshua. In other words, adding the “Yah,” which is God, God’s name, in front of Savior. It’s “God may save.” He, in effect, prayed for him. May God save you from the evil counsel of the spies. Fascinating.

Joshua was the one who conquered the land of Israel. He was a warrior. There were many obstacles and challenges he had in his life that he could use God’s help for. But what Rashi punctuates is the fact that he’s given the name change here, Rabbi, is he really needed help? Not listening to those who were misinterpreting the facts, not to be led astray in the world of ideas as opposed to the actual battlefield. I found that fascinating.

Adam Mintz [5:39 – 5:50]: That is fascinating. And obviously you see here that Moshe changes his name because he’s obviously Moshe’s favorite. And if you’re going to be Moshe’s favorite, probably good things are going to happen to you.

Geoffrey Stern [5:50 – 7:26]: Okay, I like that. But of course, some of the commentaries that we’re going to see in a few minutes, reference or contrast, I should say the difference between Yehoshua, who had a name change, and Caleb, who did not. Caleb’s name could be considered a dog. I mean, a “Celev” and a “Caleb.” So let’s dive in a little more. We’re going to just go over the basic story because there are some interesting nuances.

So in Numbers 13:18, it says that you should go and see what kind of a country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains, continues the verse, to bring back some of the fruit of the lands. Kind of like going to the moon. We want to see some hard facts. Now, it happened to be the season of the first ripe grapes. So it talks about them going, and it mentions a bunch of the geography. They passed by from the Negev to Hebron, and they went into Wadi Eshkol and they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes. And there it says, and at the end of 40 days, they returned from scouting the land.

So, Rabbi, you always fond of saying 40 is a big number, I think, because it means some sort of transition. Is that what you read into it?

Adam Mintz [7:26 – 7:44]: I would say that 40 is good luck because Moses spent 40 days on the mountain. So you expect at the end of 40 days they return from scouting the land, that they come back with a good report. So, the fact they came back with a bad report makes it even worse because it’s 40 days. That’s good luck. That’s good news.

Geoffrey Stern [7:44 – 8:49]: Okay, I like that. And at this point, we have no clue what’s going to happen. In verse 26, it says they went straight to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. And they made their report to them and to the whole community as they showed them the fruit of the land. So far, so good. This is what they told him. We came to the land you sent us to. It does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. They could have put a period on it. This is wonderful. They have the material evidence. They went straight to Moses. They got everybody there. And then in verse 28, it says, however, the Hebrew word is Ephes. The people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the Anakites there. Amalekites dwell in the Negev region. Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites inhabit the hill country. And Canaanites dwell by the sea along the Jordan.

Adam Mintz [8:50 – 9:07]: I just want to say, the right? The Anakites. I saw this also in Sefaria. They translate the word “anakim” as “Anakites.” We always grew up to say that meant the giants. It gives it more of an oomph, doesn’t it, that they saw giants there?

Geoffrey Stern [9:07 – 11:18]: I was gonna say, I think I’m sticking with the giants part because I think everything that they’re saying is full of innuendo. They are steering the facts.

They’re not just talking about who’s living where. But first, they go with the Anakites, the giants, and then an Israelite cannot say the name Amalekites without knowing that that is going to create shaking in the boots. So they are giving the facts supposedly, but they are leading the audience. And of course, they start with this, but this Ephes, this however, and they talk about hill countries and other formidable enemies.

Then in verse 30, we get to the star of our show. Caleb hushed the people before Moses and said, “Let us by all means go up and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it.” He too is taking up on the innuendo, and he says, if you’re going to take anything from these facts, let’s do it. Let’s act. Let’s act boldly. He understood they weren’t discussing facts; they were discussing the commentary on it.

This week, we were all looking at the same facts, and everybody was commenting differently. Nothing changes under the sun. But he definitely talks about we shall overcome. Let’s go. Go. But the other men who had gone up with him said, “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we.” Thus they spread calumnies among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying, “The country that we have traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there; the Anakites are part of the Nephilim, and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves. And so we must have looked to them.”

Adam Mintz [11:19 – 11:21]: And of course, that tells you the.

Geoffrey Stern [11:21 – 11:27]: Whole story because it was always. They were always just talking about themselves, whether they knew it or not.

Adam Mintz [11:27 – 11:50]: And if you’re. If you’re insecure yourself, then you’re not going to come across as strong to the enemy. You need to have a lot. You better believe that those pilots who flew into Iran on Thursday night, that they had a lot of self-confidence; they had Israeli bravado. You need to have a certain sense of bravado to scare the enemy. If you think you’re a grasshopper, you’re not going to scare the enemy.

Geoffrey Stern [11:50 – 12:52]: Yeah, I love that. So we really have this kind of interaction between facts and perceptions and then perceptions affecting the facts. It’s a cycle. And in terms of. We said in the introduction about the planners of this campaign made the facts, your perceptions of yourself also create realities. There’s no question about it. Our friend Shadal says that on the word Ephes, which we translated above as the but word, the exception word, they should have said, the inhabitants are strong and the cities are fortified, but they sinned in using the word ephes, except. And he quotes Nachmanides, who we’re going to see in a section. So what he’s really saying is what they were saying about the facts was no problem. They added the commentary to it that they added except.

Adam Mintz [12:52 – 13:01]: And that’s what you pointed out about this week. You always get in trouble in the commentary. The facts are never problematic. It’s the commentary that’s problematic.

Geoffrey Stern [13:01 – 15:23]: Yeah. And the alternate of that is Caleb didn’t even bother addressing the facts. Shadal says Caleb had to say, let us go up. Go up. He said it twice. Twice. Aleh na’aleh, which implies from the words of the scouts, it was understood that it was not possible to go up. So it really was just more talking about the commentary. The reaction to what was seen as much as anything else. Nachmanides is fascinating vis-à-vis this last week. There is, and we’re not gonna get into it, there are two, at least two, if not three or four, versions of this in the text. And one of the versions seems to imply that it was God’s idea to send out the spies or the scouts. The other, that it was Moses. So in the beginning of Nachmanides commentary, he’s trying to square that circle. But what’s fascinating to me is what he ends up and says. And what he says is, it appears they asked of Moses, “Let us send men before us that they may search the land for us,” which means spying out the roads and working out the strategy of conquest, similar to the expression from the Kephar, “the prey.” When you prepare to spy out your prey, this is the meaning of the words before us. For they, the Israelites, will follow them later on in their route, similar to the expression “the Ark of the Covenant went before them.” So Ramban is saying this was not to do some sort of travelogue, to plan out a vacation. What we’re seeing here was military planning. Right. The 12 leaders of each of the tribes were sent out to make detailed maps; that’s why it says the road in front of us. And to look, it wasn’t. People don’t plan a war and come back and say, no, we’re not going. They plan it to say, here is the fortification, here’s a clearing, here we have a blind spot, so forth and so on. I just found that very timely in terms of an interpretation of what this is all about.

Adam Mintz [15:23 – 15:51]: You mean what again, how you interpret the facts, how you interpret the whole story here? What did Moses send them for? It’s interesting that it’s clear, you know, here it makes it seem that God spoke to Moses and it came to from God in Devarim. In Deuteronomy, it seems to say that Moses sent the spies. So even that basic point of who sent the spies is not so clear.

Geoffrey Stern [15:51 – 18:49]: Yeah, I only quoted an excerpt from Nachmanides, but I think the way he tries to square the circle is there were different, I guess, motivations for them going. Some of them were to see how beautiful the land was, to look at agriculture clearly, sustainability, how are we going to. But what he focuses on is that God said, do it. Moses kind of tweaked it a little bit. And then the people came up and said, we are going to plan this war. We are going to come up with a plan. And that’s what this is all about. He goes, and then he goes back and he says, but however, they started to make choices. And I think the reference that Nachmanides brings is fascinating. He says a choice is made of those, like someone trying to buy something. He says, all of a sudden they become consumers and they start holding the tomatoes to see whether they’re going to buy them or not and whether it’s good or bad. They changed the goal of the mission. The mission was to plot out a line of attack, and they misunderstood the mission and they came back and said, nah, we’re not going to go for this purchase. Maybe we should look elsewhere to shop. Just a fascinating to me metaphor. But then later on, he starts to talk about this word Ephes. And this is what Shadal referenced before. He says, in all this they said the truth. They gave a report about those matters which they had commanded to find out. Therefore, they should indeed have said, as in fact they did, that the people that dwell in the land are fierce, and the cities are fortified, for it was their duty to bring back words of truth to them and sent them and Moses, as Moses has commanded them. But the wickedness of the spies consisted in saying the word Ephes. Nevertheless, nevertheless, the people that dwell in the land are fierce, which signifies something negative and beyond human capability, something impossible of achievement under any circumstances. Similar to the expression, and he quotes from another verse, ha’Ephes le’Metzach hasto, it is impossible that the mercy will come. So Ramban really focuses on the sin. He’s not so much the interpretation. What he’s talking about is, and this gets back to what you were saying about the grasshopper thing. They were reflecting on their own inabilities. Clearly, you could make the case, since they were a divine people. It’s also in a commentary on their faith in God. But Ramban doesn’t even go there. Something negative, beyond human capability.

Adam Mintz [18:50 – 19:04]: That’s absolutely right.

I mean, you know, again, that’s… do you believe in yourself? And that also is relevant to this situation in Israel. Now, you have to believe in yourself. Now, that’s not enough, but you have to start there.

Geoffrey Stern [19:05 – 20:19]: You have to believe in the possible, no question about it. So then it goes on bringing back our hero. And in Numbers 14:24, it says, “But my servant Caleb, because he was imbued with a different spirit and remained loyal to Me, him will I bring into the land that he entered, and his offspring shall hold it as a possession.” So interesting that this is where I got the subject matter of our discussion. It says in Hebrew that Caleb had a “ruach acheret.” Ruach is a word we know from the first set, verse or two of the Torah, that ruach Elohim, the spirit of God, hovered over the land. Ruach is typically associated with spiritual things, but I think here it really means his… what’s the word, his spirit, his… the way he looked at things, his approach. Absolutely, his approach to things.

Adam Mintz [20:19 – 20:36]: He had a different… but by mistake, your connection to ruach Elohim Mi’rachefet is important because he had a different spirit. You’re supposed to understand that was a Godly spirit. He was the good guy.

Geoffrey Stern [20:36 – 21:26]: Yeah, yeah. I love that they had a spirit too. It just wasn’t a very good spirit. It was ruach ra’ah, I guess is another phrase in Hebrew. The other thing that’s interesting is the verses do focus on Caleb and not Joshua. In the beginning, it was Joshua, as Rashi said. And as you said, he was Moses’s favorite, his chosen leader. But the day really belongs to Caleb. He was the one who had that “ruach acheret.” And the distinction then between Caleb and the other ten spies is significant. But also there was a difference between Caleb and Joshua. And I think that this verse shows, and maybe through the commentaries and reading the text, we’ll maybe have a better sense of what was the difference between the two good guys.

Adam Mintz [21:26 – 21:38]: Right. Well, what you suggested was Caleb had it in his gut. He had a different spirit. Joshua needed some help from Moses to give him a different name.

Geoffrey Stern [21:38 – 23:15]: I love that. And that’s certainly, I think, where Rashi was coming from. And those are the traditional texts. So in the book of Joshua, it does recount this story again. And there, it says, and we’re talking about Joshua, Chapter 14, verses 6 through 15. In verse 8, it says, “While my companions who went up with me took the heart out of the people, I was loyal to my eternal God.” In the Hebrew original, it’s “him, sivi et lev haam.” Just a beautiful turn of phrase. They stole the heart of the people. This is all about stealing the spirit, spirit from other people. And the flip side of that is… it doesn’t use a word that we normally, I think, associate with faith. mileyti means fullness. And he was full. He was secure. He was complete. I would, I would, I would suggest. But again, even when the story is recounted in the Tanakh, it comes down to the perception of the facts, how one looks at it. And stealing the heart of the people is just profound. We came across that a little bit last time when we were discussing what happens when you have draft dodgers or people that don’t show up in the army. It takes away the spirit. And if you need anything in your fighting force, it’s that positive spirit.

Adam Mintz [23:15 – 23:17]: Absolutely right.

Geoffrey Stern [23:18 – 24:06]: So let’s get into this “ruach acheret,” this other spirit. Rashi says another suggests that he was filled with a twofold spirit, one to which he gave utterance, literally one in his mouth and another which he concealed in his heart. So this is fascinating. The commentaries are going to go in multiple directions. Rashi’s is that Caleb was able to hold one truth within himself and deal in subterfuge. We’ve come across this with Aaron dealing with when they sinned with the Golden Calf, you know, trying to guide them. Maybe they didn’t even know he was disagreeing with them on the trip. I thought that was fascinating. And of course, that comes into battle too, right?

Adam Mintz [24:06 – 24:06]: Very good.

Geoffrey Stern [24:07 – 25:13]: I mean, the planning that we had this week was the Israelis and the President speaking out of two sides of their mouth, which made it all possible. They were engaged in negotiation. So I liked that a lot. Another one is the Malbim. And what many commentaries say is “ruach acheret” really reflects more of an evolution. Caleb initially was with them, and then he went off to Hebron by himself. He went back to the ancestral burying ground and maybe meditated upon it. He thought about it, and he changed his spirit. So whereas the first Rashi talks about him holding the two spirits at the same time, one close to his chest and the other speaking it out loud, here other commentaries talk about a metamorphosis, an evolution in his thinking. He was adaptable. I think that’s a key element in terms of a good plan which could correct.

Adam Mintz [25:13 – 25:19]: You have to be able to adapt to different situations. A rigid leader isn’t going to get you anywhere.

Geoffrey Stern [25:20 – 28:13]: Yeah, you’ve got to be able to absorb new facts. And that’s, interestingly, the word that we talked about before that comes from being full is he decided. So there are a lot of commentaries that talk about this. Really, it’s almost as though when we had Abraham and “Lech Lecha,” it has one verse, and it’s left up to the commentaries to say what happened. How did he discover God? It was similar here with Caleb. He went on the same journey that they did, but there was a metamorphosis. It’s interesting how they describe his name. I joked a while ago that Caleb can mean dog. One of the commentaries that I saw said that, yes, he was compared to a dog in a good way. Dogs follow the trail. They stick with the mission. They’re totally loyal. But I think the real takeaway from Caleb is it has the word “Lev” in it. It has the word heart in it. And I think one of the commentaries on it is that it’s a full heart. It’s a complete heart with his whole heart. The Midrash Agada says Caleb ben Yefuneh. Why was he called thus? Because the words that were on his heart, Lev, he replied to Moses not according to what was on the hearts of the scouts, as it said, who had a different spirit. So he followed his own intuition, I think, would be one way of looking at that, his own judgment. And then, of course, we get to Ben Yefuneh. What does that mean? And Yefuneh can mean multiple things. One is to turn, “lifnot.” And he was to say Ben Yefuneh differently. He was a master of change. He was a master of the pivot. That is another quality. I think there is so much that’s going to come out in the history of what happened a week ago, but part of it had to do with what the changing circumstances were. After Hezbollah was destroyed, they could no longer launch their thousands of rockets as a deterrent against attacking Iran. What happened after the first time Iran launched their missiles and Israel didn’t disappear almost a year ago? What happened when Israel retaliated and was able to take down the anti-missile and anti-air defense systems? All of this, this was constant calibration. And I think that to a degree is what Ben Yefuneh means. It means someone who can master the change.

Adam Mintz [28:14 – 28:32]: Right, right. I mean, that’s great. I mean, it seems to be that what you brought up at the beginning, “ruach acheret,” seems to be what all the commentators are focused on. That’s what made Caleb different. That was in his name, Caleb. That was in his name, Ben Yefuneh. Everything revolves around.

Geoffrey Stern [28:33 – 31:16]: And the other thing that the Malbim says here is that he was also able. He turned away from the accepted wisdom, so to speak.

Speaker A: And so, what they really do is they contrast the two. Joshua was helped by God, and while Caleb is not shown as a secularist, he is shown as someone who was able to find it within himself. It wasn’t some sort of secret sauce that he was given, but very rational things.

So the way I want to end is, and this I had not really seen strongly, is that Caleb at the end talks about why we need to go. He says in Numbers 14, he exhorted the whole Israelite community, “The land that we traversed and scouted is an exceedingly good land, Tovah, Aretz meod, meod.” There were those commentaries. Emek Davar is one who is fascinating when he comments on Genesis when God said after creation that creation was Tov meod. He actually references this quote by Caleb and does it again in his commentary on our verses.

I think what he’s trying to say is one fascinating thought. The traditional explanation for Tov Ma’od was that in every good, there’s also bad, and that you can’t recognize the good unless there was bad. I would almost say if you’re evaluating a plan or a strategy, if there isn’t any bad, there’s something wrong; it must be a trap. You have to be able to accept the bad.

But getting back to that spirit of God hovering over creation, looking at the spirit of Caleb, one almost wonders, in kind of looking at it like a Victor Frankl perspective, that what God gave us more than creating a world was, if the Torah gives us something, it’s what perspective, what judgment, what motivation we should take that world to be. And that’s why it says, after everything good, it’s good, it’s good. That was above the facts. God gave us what Caleb gave us in spades, which is you have to have the right attitude.

Adam Mintz [31:17 – 31:28]: That’s such a great thing. You know, the HaEmek Davarwas written by the Netsiv, who was the head of the Volozhin yeshiva in the second half of the 1800s. He always has great insights. This is a good insight. Very, very good.

Geoffrey Stern [31:28 – 32:27]: And the last thing I’ll say is it made me think over the last two years. The biggest mistake that Israel made in its history, and it did it twice, is it underestimated its enemy.

In terms of Gaza, we underestimated Hamas; in terms of the Yom Kippur War, we underestimated the Egyptians. In this particular war that we’re having now, they, if anything, overestimated the Iranians, overestimated the Lebanese and Hezbollah. That’s the right way to plan a war: be surprised that they are more of a paper tiger. But I think this is the war they were prepared for. Hezbollah was the war they were prepared for. And what they did is they didn’t ignore the strengths; they addressed them. When we underestimate our enemies or underestimate the challenges that we’re against, that’s when we get into trouble, actually.

Adam Mintz [32:27 – 32:36]: Oh, that’s a great thing to end on. So Shabbat Shalom, everybody. Am Yisrael Chai. We hope for good news from Israel, and we look forward to seeing everybody next.

Geoffrey Stern [32:36 – 32:38]: Shabbat Shalom.

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. If you like what you hear, feel free to give us a few stars and a nice review. This week’s Parasha is Beha’alotcha. The Israelites celebrate their first Passover, we are told, at twilight. One cannot help but acknowledge that a lot of Jewish ritual is dependent on time, or to use the Talmudic phrase, taluyot bizman. Watching Shabbat and holiday observance, one could be forgiven for thinking that Judaism has a fixation on the liminal moments of twilight and, to a lesser extent, dawn. We will explore this fascination with twilight as an embrace of the ambiguity and disorientation experienced during this daily transition. So welcome to the Twilight Zone.

Adam Mintz [2:01 – 2:04]: Rabbi, okay, I’m looking forward. This is a great topic.

Geoffrey Stern [2:04 – 2:09]: You know, I don’t know how we get these topics, but we stumble into them and we have some fun.

Adam Mintz [2:09 – 2:10]: They’re amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [2:10 – 2:41]: We have some fun. So, you know, most people, I think if you ask them about twilight time outside of the context of a particular few minutes of shkia or one of these technical terms that are used for the setting of the sun and the onset of the Sabbath, or the coming out of the stars and the end of the Sabbath, they might refer to a Mishnah in Pirkei Avot. And there it says in Pirkei Avot 5:6, it says 10 things were created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight, Erev Shabbat Ben Hashmashot. That’s the word used in Mishnaic Hebrew.

And these are the mouth of the earth which swallowed up Korach, the mouth of the well, the mouth of the donkey, the rainbow, all of the 10, I would say, miracles that occurred in the Bible. And I have always, Rabbi, taken this to mean that the rabbis didn’t feel comfortable with miracles. So they said, you know, it must be written into the code, it must be coded into the software of the universe. And that was done at this twilight time.

But frankly, I think, and today I’m going to argue that it goes beyond just having a problem with miracles. The twilight time was the place of safek. It was the place of uncertainty. And that coursed over the uncertainty that comes with not knowing what’s ahead to the uncertainty of philosophical arguments, uncertainty regarding philosophy and theology, and certainty about halakha. And we are going to see that if there was one moment of the day associated with safek, which is the Hebrew word for uncertainty, it is twilight. So let us dive right into the parsha of that.

It is mentioned in the biblical Hebrew and it says God spoke in Numbers 9:13 to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai on the first new moon of the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt. So already there is a fixation, Rabbi, in Judaism, on time; it’s the new moon, it’s the second year. We are very calendar-oriented and I would say time-oriented.

Let the Israelite people offer the Passover sacrifice at its set time. You shall offer it on the 14th day of this month at twilight, Bein Ha’arbayim. At its set time, you shall offer it in accordance with all of its rules and ways. So again, Rabbi, you can’t help but notice that when we are talking about mishpat and laws, there are a lot of laws and rules in Judaism that have to do with dates and with times. You just can’t get away from it.

Adam Mintz [5:22 – 5:24]: So let’s look at the term.

Geoffrey Stern [5:26 – 5:26]: Because.

Adam Mintz [5:26 – 5:40]: The word arbayim is a familiar word. That’s the word erev, meaning evening. So bein ha’arbayim means between the evenings, which they translate as being twilight.

Geoffrey Stern [5:40 – 6:05]: And I said in the intro that we had a fixation on twilight. And Rabbi, really? I think twilight can be in the morning and at night; it’s both dusk and sunrise. It’s that moment where I think that you get a transition from day to night. But I think you are right. In the biblical Hebrew, it comes across more for the twilight that we get at sunset.

Adam Mintz [6:05 – 6:19]: And that’s why the Rabbinic Hebrew uses bein hashmashot from the word shemesh, because the word Ben Hashmashot applies equally to the morning and the evening, while bein ha’arbayim really only applies to the evening.

Geoffrey Stern [6:19 – 7:27]: I absolutely agree. I love it. And the only thing that I would add in thinking about this is maybe the reason where both the biblical Hebrew word focuses more on sunset and our tradition focuses more on the importance of sunset is actually we start and end the day at sunset. The morning dawn might have an impact on when you can start to pray, when you can put on your tzitzit, things like that. But at the end of the day, or the beginning of the day, I should say it begins at sunset.

And so it is only natural that we Jews should be focused more on twilight because it’s the beginning of our day. Midnight has no significance for us. The calendar doesn’t change when the clock strikes 12. It changes when the sun sets. And I don’t know how many cultures and traditions and religions are like that, but certainly in Judaism that already adds to the baggage inherent in twilight and sunset right now.

Adam Mintz [7:27 – 7:37]: Islam also works, you know, days from the evening. I just wonder whether they also have a category called bein hashashot. That would be interesting comparative religion someday.

Geoffrey Stern [7:37 – 8:08]: Yeah, absolutely. And those listeners who know a lot about Islam, guys, send us a note. Put a note on Substack. Let us start a discussion. In any case, this is not the first time that Passover is associated with being done at twilight. I think that’s kind of unique. Also, whereas Shabbat, you kind of wait for the twilight transition to be over, and then, you know, it’s Shabbat here somehow. Even in Exodus 22:6, it says, you shall keep watch over it until the 14th day of this month, talking about the paschal lamb, and all the assembled congregation of the Israelites shall slaughter it at twilight, Bein Ha’arbayim.

And here is where in Targum Onkelos, the Aramaic translation, he translates it as Ben Shimshaya, Ben Hashmashot. So we do get these two terms that you referenced before; they are identical. Slightly different nuances, but they are certainly identical to what that rabbi told me when he wouldn’t speak to me. It was Ben Hashmashot. It’s universally understood as it’s that transition time.

Now, Ibn Ezra, on his commentary on that Exodus verse, says, bein ha’arbayim is a difficult phrase. He quotes Rashi, who actually starts thinking in terms of the midday sun. We’ve mentioned this before, Rabbi. The Jewish or the Halachic hour is not 60 minutes. The day is divided up into 12 equal parts. So in the summer, the hours are longer. In the winter, they’re shorter.

And Rashi somehow believes that once you get into the second half, the second half of the game, so to speak, of the day, already you’re starting to talk about twilight. Ibn Ezra, and I would argue most of Jewish tradition, does not agree. And what Ibn Ezra says is that there is no question that when we are talking at dusk, you shall eat the flesh of the Passover sacrifice. He is talking about when the sun starts to go down on the horizon. That, he says, is the first part of dusk. The second is when the sun is no longer visible, but there is that ambient light.

Those are the two parts of twilight. Not the first time that the Ibn Ezra quotes the Sadducees, the Tzedukim, who say that they divide the evening dusk into three parts. So of course, the idea is it was so important to Judaism that it was kind of like an Eskimo giving different words for snow. We started to slice and dice what the dusk was, and that there were just disagreements between different factions. I just find that kind of fascinating.

Yeah. So let’s just explain it. The two parts of this dusk: one is when the sun’s on the horizon, that’s before sunset, but after sunset, where it’s still light. And we all know that, right? For a while after sunset, it’s still light. That’s the second half. So actually, the two parts of this dusk period are divided by sunset. They’re the two sides of sunset.

Yes, absolutely. And there’s a magic to it. There’s a magic to when that sun goes down below the horizon and there’s still light. There’s magic in the morning when you don’t see the sun yet. But there is an aura, I would think, in many, many religions and cultures. There is this idea of this beauty of the twilight moment. But I made an argument in the beginning that for our rabbis there was certainly an issue and an association between twilight and Safek, or uncertainty.

If we go to the Talmud in Shabbat 34b, it says the sages taught in a Baraita, which is like a Mishnah, which discusses the range of problems that arise with regard to the twilight period. Twilight is a period of uncertainty, Ben Hashemashot Safek. And there’s uncertainty whether it is day and night, or is it completely day, and there’s uncertainty whether it’s completely night. And that is the first moment. They don’t know whether it’s day and they don’t know whether it’s night.

Besides this Passover law, Rabbi, which is kind of fascinating to me, and maybe we won’t touch upon, there’s really nothing that is done during twilight. Things are done at day and things are done at night. And you’re kind of waiting for the end of Shabbat or you’re waiting for the sun to set and the beginning of Shabbat.

Well, actually, but that. That period, what you call that liminal space, that’s the reason we had 25 hours of Shabbat, because we’re strict at the beginning and we’re strict at the end. That period on Friday between sunset and nightfall, since it’s a Safek, since it’s an uncertainty, we consider it as Shabbat. And on Saturday night, we also consider it as Shabbat.

And I think that fits right in with where the rabbis go now. And it says, therefore, the sages impose the stringency of both days upon it. So if we’re talking about, oh, I don’t know, as you say, Shabbat, or it’s a fast day of Yom Kippur.

So I want to tell you. So let me give you the example. This year, this summer, Tisha B’Av, the fast of Tisha B’Av is Saturday night and Sunday. Yom Kippur can never fall out on a Friday or Sunday. We protect Shabbat. Yom Kippur, the calendar is rigged in a way that Yom Kippur never falls out on Friday or Sunday, but Tisha B’Av can fall out on Sunday. So that liminal space, Geoffrey, between sunset and nightfall is a weird space. It’s both Shabbat that you can’t violate Shabbat, but you’re not allowed to eat during that period because it might also be Tisha B’Av. So, as the Gemara says, it has the chumrot, the stringencies of both days.

Yeah, it’s fascinating. I have a memory also going back to the yeshiva. There’s a tradition that you have three meals on Shabbat, and the third meal is called Shalosh Seudot, Shalosh Sudat. And I have memories of sitting in the yeshiva in a classroom, and, you know, you’ve been eating all day, so basically you want to break bread, and you might even use matzah during the year just to have two challot, so to speak, and you start singing.

Then the light outside starts to go down. But in researching tonight, I saw a ruling that says that you’re not allowed to eat before Havdalah. Therefore, some of the legal authorities say you can’t stretch your third meal too far because if it gets into that twilight zone, you might be eating at the end of Shabbat. And I definitely, God bless the Hasidim, they were times where they broke the rules because they felt very strongly that the twilight time was so magical, so spiritually powerful, that it would stretch on and stretch on and you would be singing, and it was powerful.

We’ll get a little sense of that in another tradition, hopefully later, where there is this sense of the forbidden. As you say, sometimes you want to be more stringent, but sometimes you can’t be stringent. Let’s finish with the rabbis, because this becomes kind of interesting about how you measure the twilight. It says the definition of twilight is uncertain. And what is twilight? From when the sun sets, as long as the eastern face of the sky is reddened by the light of the sun, if the lower segment of the sky has lost its color, the upper segment has not lost its color. That is the twilight period.

It goes on, and then it does something fascinating. The rabbis try to define the length of time of twilight. Rabbi Nehemia says the duration of the twilight period is the time it takes for a person to walk half a mil after the sun sets. Rabbi Yossi says it does not last for a quantifiable period of time. Rather, it is like the blink of an eye. This night enters and that day leaves, and it is impossible to calculate it due to its brevity.

I love the fact that they’re measuring things in ways that transcend time and space. Assuming that it takes you and me about the same time to walk half a mil as it did 2,000 years ago, we can get a sense of time. We can calibrate our watches. And then the other, a k’heref ayin, the blink of an eye, is a Talmudic phrase that is just so special, meaning something can come instantly. I love all of the words that are so descriptive and have such feeling about them.

That’s great. Choref ayin is a great word. But you know, Geoffrey, of course, that different people wait a different amount of time after sunset on Saturday night to end Shabbat. I’m sure in the yeshiva they waited a long time after sunset. The Modern Orthodox wait a shorter time. And you know what that’s based on? It’s exactly what you said. It talks about how long it takes to walk a mil, how long it takes to walk this distance. And that, of course, depends on the person. There’s a huge debate about how long it takes to walk, and therefore there’s a debate about when Shabbat is over.

So I didn’t tell you, Rabbi, but we had the week off last week, and I decided to rebroadcast an earlier episode that we did called Rashi, Women, and Wine. In it, I talked about Rashi’s daughters and the fact that they all married the Tosafot, who argued with Rashi.

And I believe what you were referring to is some people follow Rashi’s determination of when Shabbat begins and when it’s out. And some people follow the Rabbeinu Tam. So here, this is a segue from Rashi’s grandson. Yes, absolutely. These have strong impacts, I will say. Besides the stringencies, when things are, for instance, forbidden only from the rabbis d’Rabbanan, then we permit them on Bain Ha’shmashot. You can do things that maybe the rabbis would say you can’t do on Shabbat, but you can do them in this twilight moment.

I wanted to come back to this question, Safek, of things that are unsure, which is a very strong concept in the Talmud. There’s even a phrase called “Sfek Sfeka,” where you have the translation is a compound uncertainty where, to put it into the language we’re talking now, you don’t know whether the sun has set yet and you don’t know whether it’s Friday. So now you’re talking about one Safek on top of another Safek. The rabbis literally thrived on questions of uncertainty. I think part of it had to do with this transcending the calendar. It talks to the fact that we start every with a moment of gray, a moment that’s neither here nor there. I think it had to have an effect.

If we’re talking practical halacha, you talked about Tisha B’Av. I will quote from our favorite mohel cantor, Philip Sherman, Zichrono Livracha, who talks about a baby born on Monday will have his bris the following Monday. Eight days later, a baby born on Monday, after it’s dark, will have his bris the following Tuesday. No big deal, you know, because it’s a Safek of whether it’s the eighth day or the ninth day, you push it out. A baby born Friday evening after sunset, but before it’s dark is called a twilight baby. I had never heard that phrase before.

Adam Mintz [21:15 – 21:20]: Geoffrey only can if Philip Sherman used that phrase. But it’s a good phrase.

Geoffrey Stern [21:20 – 22:26]: So he. He made it up. But I think it fits. There is a perfect example of when, because of the doubt, we don’t. We leave something, we don’t do something. There is a wonderful tradition since we started talking about twilight and Pesach, of making matzah after the time on Erev Pesach, that you’re no longer allowed to eat chametz. You’re no longer allowed to own chametz; you’re certainly not allowed to do anything with it. So that is the elongated twilight, if you will. There’s a mitzvah to make the matzah at that moment that you will use at the seder. Rabbi, it’s kind of like walking on the wild side. There is this sense of the uncertainty of the twilight period, the uncertain period that adds to its holiness, that adds to its mystery, that adds to its magic. I think there’s certainly something there.

Adam Mintz [22:27 – 22:51]: There’s no question about it. The mystery is a good term. The Bain Ha’shmashot is a mysterious period that actually, Geoffrey, goes back to the first source you quoted. The things that are mysterious, like the earth that opened up to devour Korah, all the things that don’t make sense in nature, they’re mystery. They’re created in this mysterious time.

Geoffrey Stern [22:52 – 23:23]: I think that’s the new read that we have on that Pirkei Avot. And that’s what I was trying to say, but you formulated it much better. I always thought that was coming out against miracles. In fact, what it’s doing is celebrating the mysteries, the things that we don’t understand, and celebrating them, truly celebrating them and making them special. There is no question. Now, we talked about the fact that the emphasis is clearly on the evening, the Bain Ha’arbayim. But dawn also has its moment.

I’m going to quote from a rabbi who has a website for people whose gender is not totally defined or post-gender. He has an article called “The Holiness of Twilight” by Reuben Zelman. He’s clearly a scholar. Let me read a little bit of it. He says, in Halacha, there is no morning. There is alot hashachar, the rising of the sun, the point at which the sunlight peaks on the horizon. There’s netz hachama, peaking of heat, the moment when the top of the sun can be seen. And Mishik Yakar, from when he will recognize the moment when a person can recognize someone else.

I always love that part of the morning. When do you know it’s morning? When you can recognize another human being, and it says specifically not their closest friend at a distance of a few feet. These distinctions, he continues, are incredible and precious. To collapse them into the binary of day and night misses the juiciness and the beauty of the spaces in between and the specificity that they each carry. The same is true for evening, which famously includes Bain Ha’shmashot, twilight, a period of time that sits between two days as both and neither, and has been carved out as a holy, liminal in-between place for Rabbi Reuben Zalman’s teaching and the twilight people’s prayer.

So he quotes a bunch of stuff. And then he taught me something, Rabbi. There is, in Mishnah Avot, a saying that says Rabbi Shimon said, be careful with the reading of Shema and the prayer. And when you pray, do not make your prayer something automatic, “Al ta’aseh tefilat keva”. I always thought that meant don’t do it by rote. Make every prayer as if you’ve never prayed before. But this Rabbi quotes from the Talmud in Shabbat 35B. It brings the opinion; he says, with regard to this keva. Rabbi Chiya Bar Abba said, Rabbi Yochanan said it is a mitzvah to pray with the reddening of the sun. Rabbi Zeira said, what is the verse that alludes to this? Let them fear you with the sun and before the moon, generations after generations.

So he translates keva, Rabbi, to mean when it’s 100% day or when it’s a 100% night, and with no uncertainty. No uncertainty says the only time to pray is when it is transient. And what does that transience of twilight bring in this regard? It brings fear of God. Fear can mean trembling; you can also say fear is what you were talking about before, the awe of the divine. But he takes this to mean don’t pray in the middle of the day; don’t pray in the middle of the morning or the evening. Get up and pray at dawn and say Ma’ariv at twilight. I just love that.

Adam Mintz [26:44 – 26:46]: That’s great. That’s amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [26:46 – 26:53]: And I had never even thought about that. This is a bona fide translation, or I should say interpretation from the Talmud.

Adam Mintz [26:53 – 26:58]: Talmud, yeah, I think it’s not. It’s not a translation, it’s an interpretation.

Geoffrey Stern [26:58 – 29:25]: Absolutely, absolutely. But I think keva, once you hear it, it makes you think. It definitely makes you think.

So I didn’t want to. The Talmud in Shabbat continues with its discussions. Since there are so many people who say, when is Shabbat over? When you see three stars, I thought I would also quote that, so we just put that in our little toolbox. On Shabbat 35B, where the conversation continues, it says, with regard to the period of twilight, Rabbi Yehuda said that Shmuel said, when one can see one star in the evening sky, it is still day. Two stars twilight, three stars night. Then they describe how big the stars are, so forth and so on. But that’s where that tradition comes from, from. Of doing the stars. Interesting. He has three gradations here, similar to the Karaites and what we were talking about before.

So I think that if there’s any real takeaway that I wanted to leave everyone with, it is this: If you look up twilight in Wikipedia, for instance, you’ll see the Christian practice, a vigil which gets held at a few times in the dark. In Islam, as you said, Rabbi, it might be the start of the day, but I think only in Judaism is it this liminal moment.

The word liminal comes from threshold, a doorway, a moment of passing. It’s this analogy, the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage. And I think that’s what I took away. It fits into our parasha in terms of the Passover Seder. You’re going through a rite of passage; the doorpost, that liminal thing, has the blood on it. I really do think that for the rabbis, it was this belief in Safek, in uncertainty, the awe that uncertainty brings. That was a profound tool for both feeling that which is transcendent, but also embracing uncertainty. And I just love it. Wanted to hear your comments. And then I am going to finish with my story of the yeshiva.

Adam Mintz [29:25 – 29:26]: Finish with your story. Take it away.

Geoffrey Stern [29:27 – 31:13]: So anyway, I studied in the yeshiva with Rav Shlomo Wolbe, who was considered in his own right, one of the great Mussarniks. But when I told him that I had applied and been accepted into Columbia University, he gave me an envelope and he said, you need to visit Rab Yitzhak Hutner.

So I went to Brooklyn, to Chaim Berlin, and Rav Hutner’s office had a door that had one of these (magnetic) buzzers on it. I was told before I went in that when you leave, do not show your back to Rabbi Hutner. Walk out backwards, because if you turn your back to him, he’s not going to buzz you out. So I knew that I was dealing with somebody who had gravitas. I went to him. I gave him the envelope. If there is anyone listening who has the archives of Rabbi Hutner and can find that letter, I’d love to know what Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe wrote. My sense is he wrote, Rabbi Hutner, you’re our last chance for saving this kid’s soul. You got to save him.

And I can tell you, Rab Hutner did not bite the bait. He looked at me and he said, as I said in the intro, you are Bain Hashmashot You are in the Twilight Zone. When you go to Columbia, you can come back and then I will talk to you. So I went to Columbia, and I went to talk to him, and he still would not talk to me. So, Rabbi, you know what I’m taking from that? I am taking from that I got a blessing from Rav Hutner that I am to live in the Twilight Zone. In that magical moment of Ben Hasmashot. I am still here, still thriving. And I take that not as him turning me away, but as him recognizing me for the path, the unique path that I was following.

Adam Mintz [31:14 – 31:29]: That’s a fantastic story. Okay. Please God, for many more years to come. Thank you so much, everybody. Great topic. Enjoy discussing the Pesach and Shabbat Shalom. We will see you all next week.

Geoffrey Stern [31:29 – 31:31]: Shabbat Shalom.