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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Together, we are privileged to be joined by Yossi Heimann, Director of JDC Eshel and the visionary behind Muni100, an ambitious program working with municipalities throughout Israel to promote optimal aging and to increase the presence and participation of older adults in the public space for 100 years of life. Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform. Now on YouTube and Substack, we also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s parsha is Vayelech. Moshe describes the debilitating infirmities of old age, and we explore care for the elderly in the Rabbinic texts and modern Israel, and even in our high holiday liturgy. Well, welcome, Adam. And welcome, Yossi. This is the last podcast of the year, very special to have you. As I said, I was reading the Parasha I was preparing, and when it said that Moshe could not get up and go outside, I thought of you. Because what you’re doing, working with municipalities is changing the architecture and the structure of cities around Israel to get people out. I’m wondering if you can tell a little bit about yourself and a little bit about Muni100 before we dive into details.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform. And now on YouTube and Substack, we also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s parasha is Nitzavim. As the Israelites renew their covenant, the spectrum of those entering this treaty with God is broadened to include the woodchopper and water carrier. And to those here and those yet to come, we explore the radical significance of this original Sermon on the Mount to the ancient Israelites and to us today. Well, Rabbi, we’re back in real-time. Last week, we took a parsha off because we did two on the previous parsha. But here we are. Devarim never ceases to attract us, to make us think afresh anew. And you’re in D.C. so why wouldn’t we talk about “We the People”?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam Mintz [10:53 – 10:54]: Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam Mintz [18:54 – 19:14]: Good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was electrifying. Welcome to Madlik, recorded live at the Shtiebel at the JCC of Manhattan. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark and shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube and Substack.

We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. The Parasha is Ki Teitzei. In our previous episode, we highlighted three Mitzvot in the Parasha which articulate a message through their actual observance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform. And now on YouTube and Substack, we also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Parasha is Ki Teitzei. We are commanded when to regard and when to disregard lost objects, the gleanings of the threshing floor we are to leave, and the mother bird, we are told to let go when we take her fledglings. Are we to conclude that which is unintentional is as important as the intentional? Join us for intentional and unintentional holiness. Well, welcome Rabbi from Ita, Italy. You’re in Pisa, I’m in Lucca tonight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us as we imagine a different Yom Kippur. Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform, and now on YouTube and Substack. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Parasha is Shoftim. We admire the biblical abhorrence of bribery in administering justice and against favoritism in interpersonal relationships. But sacrifice and worship found throughout Leviticus and Numbers, and so prevalent in our religion, can be taken as attempts to influence and curry favor, even gain advantage with God. How do we square this circle?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam Mintz [5:35 – 5:35]: Mm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So begins the challenge. In a world built on colonizing and blending, Deuteronomy proposes a third path, a covenant that refuses both and, in doing so, invents transcendence. Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam Mintz [28:09 – 28:09]: It.

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.