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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss Parashat Chukkat, and life's mysteries
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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss Parashat Chukkat, and life's mysteries
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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss Parashat Chukkat, and life's mysteries
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This is a conversation between two individuals discussing the mysteries of life and death. They touch on topics such as the Torah, the concept of obedience, the wonder and mysteries of the universe, and the presence of loved ones after they have passed away. They also mention the significance of memory and the idea that thoughts and memories may not be stored in the brain, but rather connected to a spiritual presence. They reflect on the importance of embracing mystery and wonder in life. The conversation ends with a discussion about Miriam, Moses' sister, and her role as a source of water for the Israelites in the wilderness. Shalom Shlomo Shalom Elisha You guys can't see us but it's a very special day today because we're hooked up to this incredible equipment that just arrived here from the United States and it's very very exciting so we suddenly became a little bit more professional so let's hope that the wisdom will follow suit Elisha the Be'er Havta is in the 21st century finally finally so we have a very interesting parasha this week in fact it starts on a very challenging note I guess we should say that we're first of all the name of the parasha and we should say that it's we're on the 40th year of the wandering we jumped about 38 years and now we're in the 40th year and it starts with this really bizarre story I don't know where you want to take this conversation to but take it away Shlomo so this is a fascinating parasha Elisha especially for me my whole career has been at a university a science and technology university in a university the basic assumption is there are things we don't understand this is temporary we will get to the bottom of it everything in the world has an explanation and along comes the Torah and tells us in a beautiful fashion mysterious fashion hold on guys there are things you don't get you don't understand and you never will and that's the way things should be because in God's world there are still mysteries and we need mysteries not just science yes yes yes yes and what Shlomo is referring to is the Torah the parasha opens with this very very bizarre ceremony it's a ceremony of the red heifer of the burning of the red heifer and which is supposed to purify the Israelites from from death from the energy of death from the impurity of death and just a reminder it's a new parasha where the last final of those who left Egypt die including Miriam and Aaron and Moshe his turn is coming up pretty soon so death is all around and we have this purification ceremony and it's a very very strange ceremony indeed very strange and it's mysterious Elisha because the ashes of the red heifer purify but the person who handles the ashes of the red heifer the person is defiled himself why why a red heifer and why does the red heifer have to be perfectly red and if there's one white or black hair it's it's improper it can't be used why why why and the rabbis line up to explain Elisha with all kinds of explanations but Sadia Gaon I think has the best the best statement it is a command a chuka like the red heifer issued for no other reason than to reward us for obeying in other words do this we don't tell you why you won't understand why you know it reminds me of basic training in the army where we do things run to that tree in three minutes and there's no reason giving it's simply done so that we will obey it instills discipline discipline where you don't question you just you just do things and so we have this band of Bnei Yisrael they're about to enter the Holy Land it's going to be a really hard fight and they need discipline they need to be aware they need to be good at doing things without asking why just do it right right and maybe obeying is a good word it's all about obeying and I think we have an issue with that today in the 21st century now that we finally made it to the 21st century with this technology here we know that blindly obeying orders can be very very dangerous right that's all very very true and and yet you asked why and he said Sa'di Go'on Rabbi Sa'di Go'on kind of said just just for the sake of obeying and and that's that's a tough one today in our in our class this morning we had a and we were in the middle of a series of a class on on the afterlife Sunday evening is the Hebrew Monday morning is there is the English version of it and it was actually Aviva who said that being willing to perform it's for to obey the commandment without questioning is a great spiritual practice of putting putting our egos aside and allowing for a whole new level of understanding perhaps to to to appear we always do we always insist on doing things that we understand and if not then we ask we ask why just as you asked earlier and it's a good question why is a good question but one of the things I've come to learn is that the question why is a is it's a good question as long as we don't take the answers too seriously because the truth is we never really know why not even two easier questions and our brain is like a Google engine where you ask Google a question Google will give an answer is it intelligent is it correct who knows but it will give an answer so our brain is trained to provide answers but are these answers truly intelligent is this the real answer we'll never know so knowing that yeah we're good at giving answers but not to trust these answers too much and therefore maybe sometimes the question why is is superfluous I agree and and there's a dilemma or a paradox here Elisha because we have hookah in the Jewish religions we have halakha we have things we have to follow not to mix meat and milk and it's not always clear often isn't clear why but at the same time we accept these things we are one argumentative people Elisha we argue we have hundreds of opinions the Talmud is full of that how do we how do we reconcile the argumentative nature of the rabbis and the people and the fact that we have the halakha which is do this because God said yeah yeah yeah what a great question as usual and maybe I'm sorry maybe that's part of the answer that there's a neat balance between our being argumentative and and accepting that we can argue forever and ever but we we won't truly find the ultimate answer so there comes a moment where you set aside the arguments and you just say okay I'll just flow with it I'll just accept it because when we do when we flow with it when we accept something without asking why we we get to learn something new when we ask the question why the answers that we get are things we already knew and when we're willing to do something without knowing why we suddenly find new answers hence we've talked about that when children of Israel receive the Torah and it said to God everything you say we will do and then we will find meaning in it and there's great wisdom in it so I guess the people that is so argumentative we all need a parasha or two in our Torah maybe even more that will tell us okay stop arguing stop asking why just do it and the answer will come yes indeed and in the drashah that you write in your book of drashah Elisha you have a lovely sentence the idea of a red heifer represents an ultimate goal a time in which we can thoroughly accept life's wonders and mysteries essentially without questioning and we need that in our daily life we need that for our spiritual well-being and the scientists too Elisha they need that they need that sense of wonder and scientists that I know the great ones have the sense of real wonder I have an example of things that are inexplicable that you can't explain I know that you're very fond of quantum mechanics and I am as well and I think part of the reason quantum mechanics is about the science of very small things inside the atom way inside the atom so a small story in the 1990s we believe that the cosmos the universe was slowing down it was expanding but slowing slowing slowing slowing because when things get far apart the force of gravity gets weaker and so they aren't pushing things apart as forcefully and then we put a telescope into space the Hubble telescope and we looked into space and we look very far into space guess what the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate it's going outward more and more quickly this can't be this can't be and there's only one explanation there is a lot of matter out there that is pushing things out and we can't see it matter and energy so this is the final count from the scientists themselves 5% of the universe is energy and matter that we can see we can observe two-thirds is dark energy and we know it's there because it's pushing the universe but we can't see it because it doesn't interact and a quarter more than a quarter is dark matter stuff that it's there it has to be there we know it's there but we can't see it 95% of the universe Alicia is things that we can't see observe check test experiment with mystery right yes a mystery so even the scientists have mysteries and it's good that we have yes it is very good that we have mysteries it's it's it's very humbling and knowing 5% and not knowing 95% that's a great ratio it's a I think it's a beautiful parable what you just said it's a metaphor for a way to live our lives and it brings about both humility it brings about wonder and it brings about and the ability to to be renewed constantly renewed when we know there's no room for novelty when we know that we don't know new things can come up so we will forever it will forever be 5% and 95% so to speak like that it's not as if we're slowly but surely discover the 95% and it will shrink with time it seems like it's built into the system where you get to know 5% and the more you know the more new mysteries will be formed the more than 95% will will grow so I love that that's that's beautiful and personally Alicia I think we men we understand women maybe 5% 5% and I've been on this earth for 80 years and I think 5% may be an exaggeration and what do you think about the other way around do you think women understand us more than 5% yeah I'm pretty sure okay okay but I'm sorry but what if we indeed looked at one another whether you know regards of even of gender and and recognize that the person standing across from us we may think we know them and but we don't we don't they don't even know themselves there's 95% of dark matter dark energy which is continuously like pushing the universe forward there's a comedian Jewish comedian I'm very fond of his name is Woody Allen and he makes a movie a year he's really funny and he has a comment that he once cheated on a metaphysics exam he looked into the soul of the students sitting next to him I I wish that were true that we could look into the soul of people but I don't think we can do that but I do think Alicia that we have souls and this this leads us to another issue so in your part in your crush up you accurately mentioned that that the red heifer is not just about purifying the dead it's about death itself and just as the red heifer itself is a mystery death is the greatest mystery of all by chance in the magazine the Shabbat magazine of our arts you probably read this there was a long article about a doctor named Prania Sam Prania he has a lab in New York and he studies after-death phenomena people who've been revived and there's some amazing things in there about people who literally been been dead I found this on the web for example about a woman who drowned in Australia and she was found face down in the water and she had no pulse and she had been dead for 15 minutes her heart stopped her heart stopped and they revived her and then she explains what it was like my experience is a little bit like being asleep when you're aware you're sleeping but you're not dreaming it's like being consciously unconscious that's what it felt like there was no light wasn't hot and it was like a grayness that's that's what I felt a big mystery a mystery about about death but that's another one of the things we don't fully understand maybe we never will right right and actually you're touching on a subject that I that I'm very fond of I'm a I'm an avid reader of near-death experiences and in fact in our next class in in our course on the afterlife this is the topic we're going to be talking about we just finished discussing Maimonides and his understanding of the mystery of life and we're going to be approaching the whole question of of NDE and the Haaretz article is going to be actually one of the resources we're going to be using yes yes and I think that one of the reasons I'm really drawn to NDE experiences is because they do shed some light on this great mystery without solving it they don't solve it but they but they make the mystery um almost uh fascinating and and fun as opposed to dreadful and fearful we're all very scared of death we're petrified of death and um and death is all as you said it's the ultimate mystery it's the ultimate unknown and we're very often scared of the unknown and um if only if only we could like switch a little switch in our minds and and move from from fear to wonder in our class this morning and also last night in the Hebrew class we always listen to songs um I try to find songs about the topic that we study so now we're studying about the afterlife and so we had all kinds of great songs um and the song we listened to yesterday and today was um by Led Zeppelin stairway to heaven and uh and um he in a song they keep on going back to and it makes me wonder and it makes me wonder that's like the recurring kind of line throughout the whole song and it makes me wonder being in a state of wonder is a wonderful state of being Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was um a big uh proponent of of of being in wonder in awe absolutely um and and this brings me to the the idea of the soul the thing that lingers on after death so today is June the 19th we're recording this on June the 19th um this is the second anniversary of the death of my sister Estelle she passed away in Pittsburgh two years ago she was 90 91 she fought a valiant battle against Parkinson's for many years she was an artist and a pianist and at the end her fingers didn't work that well she found a way to paint using sponges by dabbing the paint rather than holding a paint brush and she still managed to play the piano even though some of the fingers didn't work but I'm thinking of Estelle and thinking she has a presence that that lives on there is an sure her presence is very real in in the way we remember her and her qualities what she did what she said uh the music she played when I hear that I can hear her playing uh there is an issue somehow it lives on especially with the people that we love so I want to ask you about that as you're um um talking about that are you talking about I'm I believe you know strongly there's an issue in yet when you explain it you talk about memory you know the kind of live on in our memory and I'm I'm wondering in your opinion um do they continue living doesn't the shamas survive um only in our own memory of them or or even if we were not there to remember what do you think so I have some wild ideas about this Alicia um so I mentioned earlier that that 95 percent of the universe is there but we can't see it and maybe it's more than a memory Alicia there may be parts of our universe where there are things that we can't see but that really do exist and maybe someday we we will be able to uh who knows but it's so tangible I think it's it's more than just a vague memory there's something out there Alicia and I'm an economist I'm a person who spent my whole life crunching numbers data but uh there's a wonder in the universe and a mystery and I hope we never ever lose that sense of mystery the great scientists that I know they they have this the sense of awe and mystery that there are things they don't understand and they never will and even the things we understand they're incredible the human body the the DNA how a little baby um we saw our little our new great great granddaughter at Shabbat on Shabbat it was a wonderful a wonderful event and I'm looking at this amazing little creature and she's like a month old and she's sleeping and eating and crying and looking at people and she will grow into an amazing beautiful woman and she may be a scientist or a singer or an artist or a rabbinator who knows but it's a miracle Alicia it's truly a miracle yeah yeah and I think he says something very very important there um that it isn't just a memory um it's a lot more than that we actually feel that presence um if we even ask ourselves what is memory um memory is is a thought well where are thoughts stored where where are they um you know we know today they're not stored in our head there's no particular place in our head where they're stored our head is a receptor um for thoughts coming in and um but the thoughts are not inside the head so maybe even what we call memory is basically um a way that our brain kind of um tunes in to um to the spirit of your sister of of others that uh that we love and and you're right it's part of the mystery because we can't explain thought and we can't explain memory um we just we kind of just say oh well um they're no longer alive but we but we remember them and what you're suggesting here is we remember them because there is presence they're actually present um and their presence is this dark matter so to speak in a dark but very beautiful um the mysterious matter in the world um and nothing is ever truly lost yes that is really true we really do feel the presence of our loved ones who have gone from this world and i have a small story about that alicia so my niece kim estelle's daughter uh she lives in new york city and um she rescued a hibiscus plant a hibiscus flower which estelle cared for with with loving care and which blossomed beautifully for my sister she rescued it from pittsburgh and brought it to her apartment in new york and it's not the greatest place for a hibiscus and maybe there's not enough light and air and so on but alicia uh the hibiscus at crucial moments that hibiscus blossoms beautifully and when it blossoms kim tells me about it and and we share the pictures and we share the feeling of a presence in a flower this little flower that's blossoming and it's telling us something that little flower is absolutely telling us something about the presence of this beautiful person who's no longer with us yeah yeah i'm i'm i have to say i'm very proud of you slow being a professor at the techneon and uh being able to have this kind of conversation that's uh that's impressive at least if they're listening to this i'm going to be thrown out of the union so we'll make sure they they don't listen to it and that and don't worry the only ones who're going to truly listen to it are those who who care about wonder who have wonder who are um who view life as one big mystery and uh and are driven by it and i have a theory about that alicia because i think men and women are different in this sense i think men are hard-headed practical pragmatic skeptical a little cynical and i think women tend to have more of a sense of wonder and i'm wondering if that's because of the miracle of childbirth that when you experience childbirth and you bring life into the world you have to have a sense of of wonder at this little life that that comes out into the world and grows into into a beautiful person now we men we get to see it as bystanders we're observers but we never get to actually experience it yeah yeah yeah that's that's beautifully said ken so what else do we have here anything else that's kind of um there's so much richness i you know i want to mention you you mentioned your sister and moshe's sister and brother they both uh they both pass away in this parasha both miriam and aaron so and we we come back to them year after year and maybe in honor of your sister and uh um to give miriam um some light of day after all aaron he's eternalized for being a priest and his descendants are all priests but miriam we don't have continuity for miriam and i want to try and give her some continuity here in the whole amazing story of moshe striking the rock happens in this parasha and it's right after miriam right after miriam passes away miriam dies and the children of israel are in despair they have no water the sages conclude that miriam was the living spring of water that um journeyed with the children of israel throughout the wilderness um and so going back to your gender observation i know it may not be totally politically correct today but um they'll forgive us um i want to suggest that while our own begot um all these priests and young priests and and and uh this never-ending lineage of priests priests miriam um begat is that the word yeah um water living water nourishing water and um and really her ability to um to bring to sustain the children of israel her whole life story is about water she brings moshe to the sea to the eole to the nile river and places him there she she follows him along the line along the nile after they cross the sea of reeds she takes all the women go out dancing following miriam and um celebrating the crossing of the of the red sea and um and she we didn't know that until now we didn't know it was a big mystery but now we know she was the living water she brought about she helped bring up the water from the depth and um so part of talking about mystery and loved ones is when we're facing people and we have five percent knowledge and 95 mystery knowing that a person provides sustenance and water living water meaning for us it's not something we can put our fingers on it's something we can say oh yeah i knew that sustenance like living water that which is alive is not visible it's beyond the visible it's part of the 95 that brings life to the five percent so milian stands for that and sounds like um your sister had a lot of that too in her this uh artistic ability to bring beauty to the world and uh and an amazing strength to persevere in really difficult uh through difficult times absolutely and speaking of water alicia being the elixir of life i have to mention this we have a brilliant scientist giddy greater at the technion and you know the water is made of hydrogen and oxygen and hydrogen is a wonderful fuel it's a lot better than oil or gas because when you burn hydrogen you oxidize it and when hydrogen oxidizes you get h2o which is water so it's an ideal fuel and if we were running our cars and trucks on hydrogen we would have a much cleaner planet and at technion we have a scientist who figured out how to economically separate hydrogen and oxygen and the oxygen is highly useful it's useful in medicine and the hydrogen can become a fuel someday the whole world will use this invention and we'll run our vehicles on hydrogen rather than anything else that's incredible and people will be able to say we heard about it on shlomo and alicia's podcast yes and it came from the technion from israel and it came from the technion from israel from israel you see so we're going to stay um with the mystery um we're going to make peace with the five percent that we know and we're going to really rejoice with the 95 that we don't know and uh and celebrate the wonder celebrate the wonder celebrate wonder and awe the sense of awe at the amazing world that we live in yes yes so thank you all for listening your feedback is um you know always um wanted we'd love to hear what you think and shlomo thank you for all this amazing equipment and thank you for your son who brought it we schlepped it all the way from america it's a great pleasure and we'll speak to you guys next week shabbat shalom everybody
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