Podcast #1 Parashat Yitro

Shalom! In this podcast, Rabbi Elisha and Professor Shlomo Mittal discuss Parashat Yitro. They talk about the importance of management, decision-making, and creativity. They also discuss the role of Yitro, Moshe's father-in-law, in advising him to delegate and not carry the burden alone. They emphasize the need to step back and observe, and the importance of humility and seeking truth. They also discuss the concept of Shabbat and the idea of finding renewal and new ideas by taking time to rest and reflect. They share personal stories and examples to illustrate these points. Overall, they highlight the importance of embracing the unknown, being open to new ideas, and finding inspiration in everyday experiences. Shalom everyone, and we're discussing Parashat Yitro today. It's our very, very, very first podcast, so it's very exciting. I'm sitting here with Professor Shlomo Mittal, who will introduce himself shortly. My name is Elisha, Rabbi Elisha Wolfin of Kilat Vahavtein Zichron Yaakov. And Shlomo, why don't you introduce yourself? I'm a retired professor from Technion. My field is innovation, entrepreneurship, startups, and in general, creativity, and how we get ideas to change the world. And I'm privileged to be a member of your congregation, Elisha, for a number of years. And we're discussing the Parshah, Parashat Yitro. Right. So let me ask you, first of all, this is the Yahrzeit, one year of the death of the founder of the congregation, the founder of the congregation, Baruch Friedberg. Say a few words about Baruch and his memory. So Baruch, Baruch Friedberg, born Barry. Everyone knows him as Barry. Baruch was indeed the founding member of Kilat Vahavtein, along with his wife, Ariella, who will indeed live to 120 at least with the level of energy that she brings to the world. Wonderful, wonderful woman. And a few of us, a few families got together and founded this Kilat, and Baruch was our very first chairperson. Baruch had an amazing way of guiding us, a very gentle way of coaching us into making the decisions, the steps we need to make. And I think it's going to be echoed in the Parshah itself. It's one year since his passing, and he is missed, and his memory is still very much present in our Kilat, and I'm sure will be present for many, many years to come. I absolutely agree. Baruch was a wonderful person. I had many conversations with him. We shared a love of Broadway musicals, and I remember listening to some of them with him on his vinyl records, on Lincoln Play Records. Elisha, my field is management. I teach management. I've taught managers and entrepreneurs for many years, and this Parshah really is about management. The Torah brings us very good advice about management. What does the Torah and the Parshah tell us about managing? Right, right. I find at least two levels here, both management and decision-making and creativity, which is really your field. The first is obvious and quite well-known. That's Yitor's great advice to Moshe. Yitor is Moshe's father-in-law. He's non-Jewish. Right. Not only non-Jew, a pagan priest. And here, this most important Parshah, the Ten Commandments, gets to carry the name of a pagan priest. I think that's beautiful. And Moshe, what's important to note here is that Moshe, as he brought the children of Israel into the Sinai desert, actually he brings them home to meet his parents-in-law. And this is the territory of Yitor. Mount Sinai is exactly where Moshe first encounters God with a burning bush. And God even said to him back then, the proof of your mission is that you will bring the children of Israel to this place. So Yitor, along with Moshe's wife Zipporah and their two children, come and greet Moshe. And Moshe is deeply moved. There's a beautiful relationship between Moshe and Yitor, not just in this Parshah, but later on as well. And Yitor is deeply impressed by the success of Moshe's mission. They make sacrifices, one of the first mentionings, actually, of sacrifice. And then Yitor looks. So maybe lesson number one in management is to look, to sit back and observe what's going on. And he sees Moshe working from morning till night, till nighttime, and a long line of people waiting for Moshe's guidance and answers. And Yitor turns to Moshe and says, you will wither. This cannot last. So Elisha, we have a phrase for this in management. We tell our managers, get up on the balcony. Get up on the balcony where you have an overview of what you're doing. Because if you're right in the thick of things, you can't really see. And that's Yitor's big contribution. Beautiful. In fact, it's his big contribution before his big, big contribution. In order to make his big contribution, he knows how to step up into the balcony and observe and look. And that's an amazing ability. And he basically says to Moshe, you've got to bring other people into this position of advice, of leadership. And his recommendation is pretty well known. It's spelled out very simply and beautifully in the Parshah. His recommendation is appoint wise people. The people can turn to you and ask the most difficult, difficult questions we've brought to you. And Moshe adopts this. At first, by the way, it's interesting to note, Moshe doesn't adopt it right away. He resisted. He said, what do you mean? They turn to me because I have all the answers. No one else can do what I can do. And Yitor says to him, well, you're wrong. You're wrong. There are other wise people. You're not the only wise person here. Allow other people to share in this responsibility of sharing the wisdom. This is classic in startups, Elisha. The founder of the startup, it's his baby. And he does everything at first because he has to. There's no money, he or she. And at some point, you have to delegate. It's very hard for founders to do that, as it was hard for Moshe to do that. And I have to admit, I can personally identify with that here in our key lab. And how important it is, and how when I do delegate, when we delegate, both Avriva and I, it always works out better than I expected. And it opens up some new possibilities that weren't there before. So in your drashah, Elisha, you skip to the end to find important meaning rather than dwell on the standard stuff, which is a giving of the Torah. And at the end, you note that again, God is testing us. How do we know that God loves us, the Jewish people? Because he's always, always testing us. Again, in this parashah, God is testing us. How is God testing us? And what can we learn from this? Right, right. Yeah, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful line in the parashah. And you have to write, it's after 10 commandments already. And the people say to Moshe, you speak to God, you relate to us whatever God says, we're too scared. And God's response And I'm quoting here, it's like, be not afraid, for God has come only in order to test you. And the question here, what is the test? Why test? Is that a sign of love? And you're talking about God loving the people of Israel, then why do you test us all the time? Just love us without, without all these tests. And, but it's written in the Torah, God has come only in order to test you. So, I've looked deeper into this text and wondered, what exactly is the test here? What exactly is he testing here? And the answer, I think, comes up further, a few, the next verse, actually, when Moshe does an amazing thing. One of my favorite verses in the whole entire Torah, and I'll quote it, it's from chapter 21, verse 18 in Exodus. The people remained at a distance while Moshe approached the dense mist where God was. I love that verse. I think if we could take, if this could be the only one we take away from this whole entire podcast, then we did our job. First of all, Moshe is willing to go into the mist. And people are scared of the mist. And the mist stands for the unknown. The mist stands for the big mystery of life. And we want clarity. We want, we're, we must prefer the familiar, the visible, the clear. And Moshe knows that God will not be found in the known, in the familiar. God will be found in the unknown, in the mist. And he approaches the dense mist where God was. And in that, I think he, indeed, gives an amazing legacy of, number one, where to find God. But not only where to find God. That's good enough. But where to find answers for our questions. Where is creativity to be found? Where is novelty to be found? We're so good at looking for the answers in the known, in the realm of the known, in the realm of the familiar. Because that's all we know. And it's not just a matter of willing to study hard and learn something new. It's that, too. That's really willing to let go of everything we know and step into the unknown, knowing that something new, something fresh is going to be found there. I have a small story about that. I have a close friend at Technion. His name is Professor Dan Schechman. He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry a few years ago. And he did it by an electron microscope photograph of aluminum alloy, crystalline matter. And what he saw was impossible. Because crystalline matter is perfectly regular. But he had a crystal photograph that was not perfectly regular. And he showed it to 100 experts. And they all told him the same thing. You screwed up your photograph. You messed it up. Go do it again. This is not possible according to existing theory. They would not go into the mist. And he, being Israeli, he was willing to go into the mist. And he fought for years and was told that he was a pseudoscientist by the leading people, until in the end he proved correct and all the theory was redone. All the great things we have, all the innovations come from the mist. People were willing to go into it. Incredible. And it takes the very, very few, like the Nobel Prize laureates, who were willing to go into the mist and be ridiculed by people. And it will suffer, as you said, you know, the ultimate is to know that you don't know. So yes, indeed. And that's a test. And I think that's where, for God has come only to test you. Are you willing to go into the unknown in order, A, to find God, to find God there, and B, which is not really B, but we'll call it B, to receive new and fresh answers. I found that deeply inspiring. There's another lesson, at least one more, in your drashah. God tells Moses to build an altar, to sacrifice, to worship him, but not to make it beautiful and spectacular. Make it out of earth, out of simple things. And you quote from Tehillim, from the Psalms, truth springs up from the earth. Why the earth? What do we learn from this request of God? Right. That's a great question. It's another verse that I love. It's from, as I said, from Psalms, Tehillim 85, 12. Well, it so happens that also, you know, we celebrated Tuvishvat this week, and Tuvishvat and Yitor, Parashat Yitor, always coincide, which I find very meaningful as well. And here we are celebrating the festival of the trees. Now the tree, the Torah is likened to a tree of life, and the tree kind of springs from the earth. It has roots. It germinated. It has roots, and it kind of springs forth up from the earth, brings about fruit, and so many other things. Oxygen, stability, and so many wonderful things. Ultimately, shade, here in Israel, we need shade, especially in the hot months of the summer. But here the earth is, I think, symbolizes humility. And part of knowing that we don't know is also a form of humility. When truth comes from, when we look for truth in haughtiness, in the sublime, in great ideas of the past, then, A, there's no novelty there, there's no freshness there, there's no creativity there, because these are answers as lofty as they are. They've already been handed down to us. But that which grows from within, in Bereshit, in the story of creation, we have a beautiful description of how trees and shrubs and weeds, how they come about. They grow from the earth, and within them they carry their own seed of continuity. And there's something about that which grows from the earth, the simplest matter, the earth that we all walk on, where we all came from, and to the earth we shall return, to dust we shall return, to the earth we shall return. It's there, it's deep in the earth that seeds germinate. And if anyone has ever watched a seed germinating, is that a correct verb? Yes. Okay, a seed germinating in the earth, and you can watch YouTube clips on how that happens, it's a beautiful, magical process. Not a simple one, and not an easy one. But you see that seeds that did not germinate there, will not then carry the strength that a tree has. If it's done just on cotton wool, it will never grow to be a tree. It will grow to be a cute little weed. But the germinating within the harshness and the hardness of the earth, and sending out roots, and making its way up to the open air, gives it the strength and vitality it will need to be a solid tree, and to bring truth into the world. Exactly, and we learn a great deal from nature about renewal and resilience. Elisa, not far from here we have the Carmel Forest, and some years ago there was a terrible fire there. Firefighters perished in that fire. Look at it today. It's beautiful again. Beautiful, yes. Burnt ashes. We have a beautiful forest again. We can really learn about renewal, and renewal comes from the earth, and truth also comes from the earth. Right. Renewal is about finding new truths. Right, and in a sense, we're doing this podcast here in Zichon Yaakov. There's a beautiful story about the Rothschilds who came to visit, and the people of Zichon Yaakov in the turn of the 20th century wanted to impress the Rothschilds' family, and they wanted to show the beauty of the place, and the trees were still very, very small, so they actually brought beautiful palm trees from somewhere else, from Iraq or somewhere, and they dug deep holes in the ground, and they stuck them in the ground, and they put earth around it, and when the Rothschilds came on their chariot and horses, a strong wind blew, and the trees just fell all over the place. Luckily, no one was hurt, and it was the Rothschilds who told them, that's not how you start a new enterprise. It needs to come from the earth, it needs roots, it needs the strength that the earth gives it. Absolutely. So, apropos new enterprise, Moshe is about to bring a new enterprise, not just to the children of Israel, to the world, but in order to do that, he needs some reflection, he needs some idle time. He has to free himself from the humdrum chores. One of the things we teach our students is to waste time. The brain has amazing ideas, but you have to be able to listen to it, and to do that, you have to find time where you're not doing other things. So, actually, by turning over some of the daily management, as Yitro advised, Moshe is freeing space and time in his head to receive this massive, incredible new approach for the world, the Torah. What about this renewal that Moshe achieves only after he gives up all of the daily humdrum? Right, right, right. So, without Yitro's advice, Moshe would not have had the internal space to hear something new, as you're saying. It's no coincidence that it's in this parasha that the mitzvah, the fourth commandment, the fourth covenant and commandment, is the commandment of the Sabbath, of Shabbat. Suggesting exactly that, Shabbat is a revolutionary idea, and it can be discussed on many different levels, and Shabbat is the answer to many issues and questions. But here, I think Shabbat is a great opportunity to take the minute, take time out, to rest, to put everything, to let go, let go of our busyness, and allow for a new week to germinate inside of us, but a really new week, not a week like the week we've had, but something for a whole new creation to spring from the earth, which is our lives, which is our bodies. And I'd like to share here my first Shabbat ever. I used to be a settler, I was living in America at the time, I'm an Israeli, Israeli-born, and Shabbat was always a very busy time, especially in Israel, when there's only one day of the week, and there's no Sunday. Or rather, there is a Sunday, but it's a workday. And I'm living in America all the more so because Shabbat is always a great day for shopping and sales, and if you're living in America, hey, do it the American way. And I hope I'm not hurting anyone's feelings. And I remember, it was a long story, but to cut a long story short, I remember the first time I ever observed Shabbat, I ever kept Shabbat, I stayed home, and I actually stayed in bed most of the Shabbat. I was married, didn't have kids, so it was easy to do. And first of all, it was wonderful. It's something that I usually allow myself. I'm quite a workaholic, and I work hard, and I like working hard, I like what I do. But here I took it upon myself to let go and to rest. And I remember walking into the bathroom, the toilet, the bathroom, Shabbat afternoon. I got out of bed, and I was reading all day and sleeping and reading, and I walked in the bathroom, and I passed by the mirror, and I looked at the mirror, and for the first time, I saw my eyes in a way that I'd never seen them before. They were clear. Usually I have blue eyes, and blue eyes tend to get red very easily. And for the first time in years, I saw my blue, blue eyes, but that's only the, you know, I was shocked. I looked back at the mirror, and I was like, oh my God, wow, I've never seen my eyes with such brightness. And that what really touched me deeply was I noticed as Shabbat was evolving, which was about afternoon, early evening, all these amazing ideas, all these fresh new thoughts came to my mind, and solutions to all kinds of problems that bugged me during the week. Suddenly there was this freshness of thought that I had not, I think I'd never, ever experienced. Yes, indeed. Alan Greenspan was Jewish, was the head of the Federal Reserve, and he used to take long hot baths, and that's where he got his ideas for running the money supply in the United States. I think many huge ideas come out of the shower, when we're showering and our mind is free to wander. Alicia, you and I have shared fondness for Herman Wouk, a great American Jewish writer, served as a naval officer in World War II, and came back and wrote a wonderful novel, Became Mutiny, best-selling novel, and it became a movie, and you have a great story about Herman Wouk observing Shabbat while filming the movie Became Mutiny. Tell us the story. Right, yes, it's a very telling story. The story is from 1954, when the book was turned into a film, and it's not easy turning a book into a movie format, it's not simple at all, and he was actually on the set giving advice, helping, finding solutions to things, and he got stuck on one of the scenes, and he just could not find the way to translate that from the written form to the visual form, and the tensions were running high, and people were angry, and every minute on the set costs a lot of money, and Herman Wouk looks at his watch and realizes Shabbat is almost here, and he says, guys, I'm sorry, I need to go home, Shabbat is almost here, I need to go home, and the director tells him, you absolutely cannot go home, we're stuck here, we need to solve this, no one leaves the set until this is solved, and he says, well, I'm sorry, Shabbat is what I do, I do Shabbat, I observe Shabbat, and off he went. When he came back, after Shabbat, he was shocked to see them working on that same scene over and over again, still stuck at the same place, and he went up the balcony, so to speak, and he kind of looked at what was going on, and he said, wait a minute, what if we do it this way, and he describes how all of a sudden everything went very quiet, and he turned to him and said, that's a brilliant idea, you see why we didn't want you to leave? If you were here, we could have reached a solution yesterday at 9 o'clock in the evening, and Herman Wouk said, you know, basically the lesson from the story is, this solution would not have come about, this novelty, this ingenuity, this new look, this freshness, would not have come about had I not left to take time out and let go. Exactly. And Elisha, toward the end of your drashah, you return to the theme of renewal, getting out of our comfort zone, along with the familiar. Jewish practice is based on things that we do again and again. We read the same prayers, Shacharit, Musaf, we read them again and again, and the question is, how does renewal come from the familiar? I have a quote from Herman Wouk, who wrote a book called This Is My God, about Judaism. He explains Judaism to Jews, but also to non-Jews, and he addresses the issue of prayer. What is the role of prayer? And he talks about prayer with a metaphor. Prayer is like gardening. When you garden, you prepare the seedbed, and you prepare the earth and turn it over and fertilize it and get it ready for the seeds. That's prayer. That's the start of prayer, not the prayer. That's the start of prayer, preparation. When you plant the little flowers, that's when the real prayer begins. Without the seedbed, you can't plant. But that's not the purpose. The purpose is what comes after. So we need the familiar, and because it's familiar, it frees our mind. And frankly, Elisha, when I'm gardening Shacharit or Musaf, my mind floats away to a million miles away to many different things. But it's still prayer. It's still prayer. So renewal has this combination of the familiar, but also renewal, new things, new ideas. Right, right. I think that in Judaism we have this duo, this phrase that's called kevah and kavanah. Kevah is the set, the familiar. Kavanah is the intention. And they kind of go together. We cannot really find this deep intention, this feeling, without the habit, without the familiar, without the... They go together. They somehow in a miraculous way go together. And I find, for example, when driving, as something very habitual, we all know, we're all familiar with it. We drive, you know, and thank God we don't have to think of every move we make when we drive, otherwise driving is going to be very exhausting. But I find that I have the best phone conversations when I'm driving, and I'm totally alert to what's going on around me. But it's as if the driving is occupying my habitual mind, freeing my creative mind to wander and be in different places. And it works together. And my driving is not compromised as a result. For some people, you know, I don't want to make this general advice, because for some people it depends how much experience they have. They should really focus on driving. And there are situations when you're driving in traffic in the middle of town, just focus on driving and don't do anything else. But when you're driving on the freeway and the freeway is open, the habitual actually frees our creative mind to wander and go into the mist. So, Alicia, what you just described is actually a finding of modern neuroscience. In neuroscience, we now can explore how the brain thinks by something called functional MRI, and you can actually see the brain and which parts of the brain are active. And we now understand something that's called, by the neuroscientists, creative foraging. Foraging is what animals do when they explore and look for food. And foraging is what we do when we look for ideas. And there is a place in the brain that does foraging, and it's separate from the parts of the brain that drive the car or talk on the phone or whatever. And the two come together. The catch is, Alicia, you have to be able to listen to that very quiet part of the brain that's throwing ideas at you, and it takes some practice. But what you just described is absolutely anchored in modern science and neuroscience. Right, that's a beautiful point that you, that's a great explanation. When Moshe's big lesson, he learned how to listen to this very slow voice that later Eliyahu Hanavi in Naftalah will also discover that God is not in the fire and God is not in the wind God is that still, silent voice. But most of us, we never learned. We never learned how to listen to that still, silent voice. It's something that needs to be learned and practiced. And I love that. That's beautiful. That's really beautiful. Alicia, there's so much noise in modern society, and it's getting louder every day. We have to learn somehow to not listen to it so we can hear the voice of God. And we have the answer here through Shabbat and Shabbatists. Exactly. So I think we're coming to the end of our conversation. I've enjoyed it a lot. You too. Alicia, what is our take-home for our listeners? What do we take home from Tarshat Yitro? Well, first of all, there are many takeaways, but to focus on what we discussed here, I would say that the known is not the enemy. It's great that we know a lot of things. Knowing things, having habits is wonderful. Just like driving, as we talked about earlier, it's great that we have a grip on the habit of driving so we don't have to reinvent driving each time we get into the car. So one habit is really good. But if we want to connect with aliveness, with freshness, with creativity, then it's a must, it's really to remember that freshness, we need to agree, be willing to, be courageous enough to step into the mist. To know, just to know that the answers are going to come from the unknown. To allow ourselves to say, okay, this I know. Great. Put it aside. And ask ourselves, just allow for the unknown to present itself, to surface from the mist. And that's the big test, as Moshe tells the people. So I hope we have a great week of being tested, being tested if we can, if we're willing to step into the mist, because that's where God is and that's where freshness comes from. Step into the mist. Harav Elisha, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. Tovah Abba. And Shabbat Shalom to everyone. Shabbat Shalom.