Podcast #51 Parashat Beshalach

Shalom again! We had a glitch and had to record the podcast again. It's dedicated to the soldiers who were killed in Gaza. We talk about unity and how Hamas helped us remember that we have a common enemy. We discuss the power of unity and how it can create miracles. We also talk about the importance of fresh ideas and breaking the rules for innovation. Israel is known for its innovation and creativity. We mention an example from Jewish history and the story of the oven of Akhnai. Overall, it's about the strength of unity and the power of new ideas. Shalom Shlomo Shalom again Elisha Yes, Shalom again and it's kind of amusing because we just recorded a whole podcast and only at the end of it we realized that there was a glitch here in the system and it didn't record. Exactly, but we're Israelis and we've solved the problem and now we're going to do it again. It'll be interesting to see if we get better or we get worse. Yes, maybe even something different altogether. So it's Parashat Beshalach, we've reached the Sea of Reeds and we said we want to dedicate this drasha, this podcast, it's dedicated to the 24 soldiers, 21 plus 3 others who were killed yesterday in Gaza. One of them is from Zichron Yaakov whose family is part of our Kihila, his name is Shai Biton Chayun, Zichron Olivrecha, blessed memory, and he was 40 years old, he's married, he has children and he was killed. The funeral is today at 12 o'clock and all the funerals are taking place yesterday and today so we're dedicating it to their memory, the crossing of the Sea of Reeds. And Elisha, for some reason, for us Israelis, I think this is true of the country, yesterday was the hardest day. October 7th was the worst day and yesterday was the hardest day because somehow we see the pictures of these young men and they have wives and children and families and all their life ahead of them and they're gone. And I learned something Elisha, from their names and I want to read their names, the first name, because there's an important truth in these names. Mark, Eli, Barak, Yisrael, Ariel, Sagi, Achmad, Achmad from Bedouin city, Rahat, Nir, Cedric, Rafael, Matan, Hadar, Sergei, Nicholas, Elkanah, Yoav, Yoval, Yoval Lopez from Peru, and Shai. Names from every country, from every walk of life, from every religion, every group, every, together, fighting, fighting together, these were in one unit, in a single unit. There is no ethnic differences or racial difference or socioeconomic difference when you're in the army. I came to Israel and I actually was drafted before I got my citizenship papers, my little blue book, and I was thrown in with a little Hasid and with a drug addict and somebody who'd been convicted and a Technion professor, all tossed together into one cohesive unit. We had to be cohesive because it was survival. Israel, Israel is unique, Yulisha, we are, we are, we are unique. Yes, we are unique, and you know, as tragic as it may sound, and it is tragic, but Hamas in an ironic way is doing us such a great favor. We were so divided before the 7th of October, and Hamas really helped us reunite, and remember, Hamas helped us remember that we have a common enemy, and our unity, you know, today we're going to be talking about the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, and there are many, many nuggets of wisdom that can be taken from the splitting of the Sea. One of them is that it's the unity, the entire people of Israel were there together when Herzl said, that's another splitting of the Sea, when Herzl said, if you will it, it is no dream. It's not enough if one person holds the dream, and Herzl was one single person, and he faced a lot of despair. There were times where he felt that the Jewish people are losing the dream, and when things got tough, and, but eventually, you know, the Holocaust helped us remember, you know, we have no choice but to dream, and in 1948, the entire population, 600,000 Jews living in the land of Israel, dreamed together, and that split the Sea of Reeds, and a state was created, and I think there was a moment there, on the shores of the Sea of Reeds, that there was a moment of unity, here's the Egyptian army pursuing us, we're now not asking who's on the right, and who's on the left, and who's progressive, and who's conservative, we're all one, and there's a huge power in unity, a power to split the Red Sea, and miracles happen. Absolutely, and of course, Elisha, we recall, we Jews, we don't get anything for free, never have, never will, the death toll, the tragic death toll in the War of Liberation in 1948, we were only 600,000 Jews, we had 6,000 dead, killed, in that battle, that's 1% of the population, that was a heavy price that we paid. Elisha, your Drasha is wonderful, it was written in 2019, its title is, How Do Paths Through the Sea Form? How Do We Form Our Paths? And you start by making a great observation, that I absolutely love. I always rejoice, I'm quoting you, when a good explanation for one riddle or another in the Parsan no longer satisfies me. This is a sign that I have evolved. Sticking to jaded answers makes us old. New wisdom brings fresh new perspectives to the soul that keep us young. This is the spirit of the innovator. I believe this is the culture of the Jewish people. We are innovators, we are creators, and we had a small poor country without weapons, we made mortars out of water pipes and we made great wealth and prosperity out of brain power rather than oil, which somehow God decided to give to our neighbors rather than to us. Yes, yes, I think it's a very powerful idea. I think that's another way in which the Sea of Reeds splits, like opens up when there's novelty. When we stick to our old routines and old wisdom, we do indeed become old, we become stale. And it's difficult for novelty to happen, what is required there is recognizing that what we already know is old news, recognizing that it brought us so far, it brought us to the shores of the Red Sea, and nothing that we had in our arsenal of ideas, nothing that we knew could now split the sea, nothing whatsoever. Only something new will do the work, and that's what happens there. So I'm sure everyone here listening to the podcast has experienced in their lives the rejuvenating feeling of a fresh idea. And these fresh ideas, I see them as the grace of God. We don't create the fresh ideas, they come to us. We are a conduit, they come through our mind to us and to the world. We can take no credit for novelty, it's a great gift of the infinite wisdom in the universe that comes through us and presents itself. And that's how seas are split, that's how new solutions are found to all problems. It was Einstein who said you can't fix a problem with the same thinking that created it in the first place. Exactly. So Alicia, yesterday was our entrepreneurship class at the Technion, and it's relevant because it's proof of what you just said. Our guest speaker was Dan Sheffman, he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2011. And we teach our students about the beauty and joy of innovating and creating, coming up with creative ideas. And the principle is, break the rules. Because if you follow the rules, you just do the same thing that everybody else did all history. Break the rules. And fortunately, Alicia, we Israelis love to break the rules. And we do it all the time on the roads and everywhere else. And that's why it's so hard to run a Jewish country. Because we are breaking the rules. Not the laws, breaking the rules. But that does lead also to creativity. Professor Sheffman pointed out that he's traveled the world speaking about entrepreneurship. And the reason Israel is the start-up nation above other nations, in Asia, for example, people are incredibly hard working. The Koreans work harder than anybody. And they create wealth through that. But they're not innovative. And we Israelis are innovative because of what we call low power distance. Power distance is the perceived distance between the lowest and the highest. And in my class, I have students who still haven't graduated, have no experience, and they will tell their professor who has 50 years of experience, you are totally wrong. And I absolutely love that. That is Jewish. That is Israeli. To hold an opinion and to express it no matter what. In many countries, you cannot do that. Professor Sheffman lectured in Germany and explained that principle to the Germans. And they were horrified. Horrified. Nicht. They said nicht. Not in our backyard. Not in our country. That is so interesting. That is so interesting, Shlomo. I think you're right. It's part of the Jewish ingenuity. I think for two reasons that I can think of right now. One is due to our history. In our history, we were between a rock and a hard place, between the sea of reeds and the Egyptian army, time after time again, and we had to keep on coming up with new ideas, like allow new ideas to present themselves. That's reason number one. Reason number two is that our sacred texts, i.e. the sages, the Mishnah and the Gemara, they're basically all about finding new explanations and arguing things out and pressing really hard and saying, yeah, but that doesn't fully make sense. Let's explore it even further. And there's a lot of chutzpah in that, kind of really questioning the old wisdom and allowing for new wisdom to present itself. So the most famous, it's really famous, anyone who's studied anything about the sages knows this great example of the story of the oven of Akhnai, the famous oven that was discussed. And the sages argue with this oven, is the whole not quite kosher, is it pure or not? Let's say kosher for the sake of this conversation. And one rabbi gives one answer, all the other rabbis say, no, not so. And the one rabbi brings in God to help him with the arguments and God intervenes in the conversation. And you're talking about the chutzpah here. The other sages say to God, hey, hey, hey, hey, excuse me. You stay out of this conversation. We are discussing now. You said, you gave your word at Sinai. Now it's our turn to talk about it. So you be quiet. And the story continues that Elijah the prophet was asked, what did you know? How did God respond to this chutzpah moment? Like what did God say? And Elijah says, I'm saying it in my own words right now. Okay. He said, God loved it. God laughed. God laughed and said, and the way it's usually interpreted is, my children have overcome me or prevailed. But it's much deeper than that. In my humble opinion, Nitzchuni doesn't only mean they were victorious over me. It comes from the word Netzach. They have eternalized me. They've taken my words at Mount Sinai, the Torah, and through invention and creativity, gave it new meanings. And this way, by giving the same old text a whole new meaning, they've actually immortalized me, God. So it's a very Jewish thing to be chutzpahedic and innovative. It is. And it's how we change the world. Maybe it's appropriate if I tell this little story about a computer, Elijah, of all things, because it's related to what we just said. The Pentium is a computer microprocessor made by Intel. And it conquered the world. It made billions for Intel. It helped Israel a lot. Incidentally, shortly after the war broke out, October 7th, Intel announced they were investing $10 billion in expanding their plant in Kiryat Gat in the midst of the war. Intel is the largest private employer in Israel. And let me explain why Intel has such faith in the Jewish people to invest in us. So long ago, Intel had a CEO named Andy Grove, Jewish, Hungarian refugee, brilliant PhD in silicon chemistry, who became CEO of Intel. And he decided Intel had to completely change their technology into something called RISC, rather than serial computing. And in Israel, the Israeli Intel engineers were horrified. It was a big mistake, they felt. They felt they had a better solution. Junior engineers in Israel, far away from Santa Clara, decided they were going to change the mind of the CEO of Intel. Dadi Perlmutter, engineer in Intel, did a fax, prepared a fax. On the fax he wrote, he drew a picture of the goose that laid the golden egg with a big X. He said, Intel, you are killing the goose that laid the golden egg, the Intel backward compatible technology, and sent the fax to Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel, a junior engineer in a remote place in Israel, maybe he'd never heard of him. And Andy Grove read the fax, invited Dadi to Santa Clara, listened to what he said, and he changed his mind. He changed his mind. Intel went on to develop the Pentium, which made them a fortune and a dominant force in microprocessors. Chutzpah, creativity, thinking out of the box, and finding a new path, a new path. Right, right. And that was the essence of this Bereshav, to make a distinction between a road and a path. A road is a road, an existing road. It's a road, Robert Frost talked about the road less taken or not taken, but in this context, the road is a well-trodden path, or trodden, how do you say it? Well-trod path. Well-trod path, thank you. And a path is new, it's something new that emerges, where there's no path, there's a beautiful song by the poet, Rachel, Rachel, one of the early Zionist immigrants who settled the area of the Kinneret, and in one of her beautiful love songs for the Kinneret, she says, you know, I didn't do much, but my own feet actually discovered a new path. And that's another way that the Sea of Reeds is split, by not looking for an existing road, by recognizing that there are moments, there are times in life where a new path has to be found, and it's not there, you don't see a path. We're all looking for a path that someone else can show us the way, someone show us the way, and there are moments in life that there's no one there to show you the way, and you have to find your own path, and we're talking about have to, you have to find your own path, it's a moment of necessity, and when you're open to that, a new path presents itself. Absolutely, and you make an excellent point, which is actually a key part of being an entrepreneur, and that is, there's a two-part process to creating a path. The first part is understanding and identifying the need. You have to be aware that you need a new path, and the Hamas did that for us. We need a new path in Israel, and it was painfully shown to us at a horrendous price. But the second part is, after you realize you need a new path, you have to have the will to find it. You have to be willing to get out and do it, and this is actually what we teach our students in entrepreneurship. Get out into the world and talk to people and find something that people need, and they can't tell you because they're used to the old path, they're used to the roads. We all go on the road rather than on paths, so you have to be really empathic to figure out what do people need. Nobody knew that we needed a smartphone. Nobody told that to Steve Jobs, but he sensed it. He sensed it. And then the second part is, have the courage and persistence and ability and knowledge and wisdom and courage to go out and do it, to meet that need. Those two things, the need and the will, and we're seeing that now in Israel. We realize the need, and now we're mobilizing the will to do things differently in the future, to run our government different, to run our democracy different. And Alicia commented about the parson relation to democracy. Democracy is not just the rules for elections and forming a government. Democracy is how people perceive their role in society, and Israel is the most democratic country in the world by far, and I'll explain why. Something called power distance. What's the perceived distance between the lowest and the highest? The lowest worker on the assembly line and the boss of the whole company. And in Asia, in Korea, in Germany, many countries, power distance is really high. And if you're a lowly worker, you don't raise your voice or suggest anything to the CEO. In Israel, power distance is the lowest in the world. And my students will tell me that I'm totally wrong off the wall when they have very little knowledge to back it up, but they still feel they have the right. In that sense, Israel is highly, highly democratic, and that can never be taken away from us, no matter what governments do or what laws are promulgated. Yes, yes. So, we actually do need to end because, unfortunately, the funeral is scheduled shortly, and we do want to make it the funeral. So, guys, here we are on the shores of the Sea of Reeds. The Egyptian army is pursuing us. And what's left now is, A, to really be united, B, praying. Moshe prayed. It really, really helps. And to have some chutzpah and believe that we can somehow split the Sea of Reeds and we can do what Nachshon ben Aminadav did. He just jumped into the water. And as he did so, the sea split. So, that's all that's left for us to do. And I have tremendous faith that a new path is going to be discovered. And we're just beginning now to see the new path beginning to present itself. But it will present itself, and we will cross the Sea of Reeds. And, Elisha, a final word. We have many listeners abroad, in America especially, and they're deeply, deeply worried about our country. And a lot of the media amplify that. I wish they could be here to sense the incredible spirit of this country. It's undefeatable, undefeatable as it was when we crossed the Red Sea 3,000 years ago. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, we will stay in touch. And next week, we're getting to Mount Sinai. So, be ready for a new Torah to present itself. Shabbat Shalom. Shabbat Shalom to everyone.