Podcast #53: Parashat Mishpatim

Shalom Shlomo and Alisha discuss the weather in Israel and the importance of the sun shining after days of rain. They also talk about their podcast and the upcoming anniversary. They then discuss Parashat Mishpatim and the concept of being human doings rather than just human beings. They explore the idea of action and motion in Judaism and how it differentiates from other religions. They also discuss the importance of choice and free will in following the mitzvot. They mention Richard Thaler's book "Nudge" and how the Torah is like a nudge to choose the right path. They end with a humorous example of nudging men to aim properly in urinals. Shalom Shlomo. Alisha Shalom. And it's good to see you. And it's good to sit here just to tell people that the sun is shining. And if you've been to Israel or you've been or you live in Israel, you know that the sun shines here most of the year actually, but not in the last few weeks. After seven days of constant rain, yesterday was the first day that the sun actually came out. And it feels, Tammy was the one who said, it feels like from Noah's Ark, as they stepped out on the first day after the flood, it actually felt like my house was flooded, many people's homes were even damaged by water. So we have a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful day today. And here we are sitting here with Parashat Mishpatim. And Alisha, we're approaching a whole year of doing our podcast. And I can't believe that a year has gone by. This is like the 51st podcast that we've done. I think it's more, Shlomo. I think it's more because I think we also, the count on the, whatever it's called, I think it's already like the 53rd or 54th. Yeah, 54 is a year. It's all the Parashat. Right, okay. Did we start on Parashat Mishpatim? Do you remember which Parashat we started with? I don't remember. No, we didn't start with Mishpatim. We need to check. I'll check it. I'll check it. But, Alisha, this is a wonderful Parashat and a wonderful drashah. And I like the drashah so much, I usually find a drashah that speaks to me in English. And then I find it in Hebrew. And I didn't find it in Hebrew, so I just used Dr. Google to translate it. And the translation, I think, came out pretty well. It's improved a lot. It's just interesting that for you it's Dr. Google, for me it's Rabbi Google. Okay, and Mrs. Google. And Mrs. Google, yeah. And, Alisha, the Parashat Mishpatim. Okay, now we're getting serious in the Torah. We've had wonderful stories so far. Now we get the mitzvot. Okay, guys, here's what you've got to do. Moshe takes the covenant, the tablets and the Ten Commandments, and he stands up in front of the people and says, okay, people, this is it. This is what we need to do. And you have a wonderful phrase in your drashah, which is that we need to be not just human beings, but human doings. And I love that, because there's a deep, deep principle there, and it explains something, Alisha, that I really never understood until now, for 80 years. The phrase da'aseh v'nishmah. Because Moshe says that in his speech to the people. And he reads out the covenant aloud to the people, and the people answer. They say, whatever the Lord has said, we will faithfully do. Da'aseh v'nishmah. We will do it, and then we will hearken, or question, or understand, or debate, or discuss. First, we will do. How in the world does that work? That first you do, and then you kind of think, or discuss, or examine, or listen? Is that not abject obedience? It turns out to be the exact opposite, but it's a wonderful phrase. And you note in your drashah that this is differentiating Judaism, the Jewish path, from that of the rest of the world. In Buddhism, you rest on a pillow, you refrain from activity, and you do quiet meditation. And we Jews, man, we run around. We are, as you say, possibly hyperactive. We are frenetic. We are human doings, rather than just human beings. Yes, and just to be fair, those who do not read past drashot, and haven't read this drashah, I just want to have a lot of respect for Buddhism, just to be really clear. Also, I personally meditate. And for many years, I was a champion of the whole notion of being. You know, everything starts with being. We're human beings. We're not human doings, and we're not human havings. It's a very new age kind of idea, that we're human beings and not human doings. And indeed, as we look at parashat Mishpatim, you're right, there's like, we Jews, you know, go have like a Jew to sit down for a few minutes and just be quiet and meditate. And that's a rare occurrence. I mean, the 60s are over. In the 60s, you have many Jews flocking to India and learning how to finally just quiet their minds. But they've all eventually came back to the West. They've all matured and returned back to being human doings. And yes, I've come to the realization that there's something very precious about being a human doing. And basically, the idea here is that nothing rests in creation. Nothing sits passively in creation. Everything is constantly in motion. Everything is in motion. It could be very soft motion. It could be powerful motion. But nothing is ever, ever still. And there's this tension between the Buddhist part of me, the contemplative part of me, that really believes in getting still, in quieting our mind. And I know the value of it. There's plenty of value in it. And on the other hand, as Jews always say, there's always on the other hand, as Tuvia says, nothing in the universe is static. Everything is in motion. And I think that the two work really well together. And there are a number of ways of seeing how they work together. One, the way that kind of works for me right now, is that beyond the physical universe, as we get to the realm of the Divine, the Divine is powerful stillness. It's like a pregnant potential, just wanting to become. Wanting to become. And there's stillness in there. But in the physical world, the minute the Divine materializes in the physical, then it becomes in motion. So the two together are a great combination of the Divine and the material. Exactly. And Elisha, I want to explain why the Torah wins the Nobel Prize. The Torah is over 2,500 years old. There are ideas in it, Elisha, that are so modern, they've created the Nobel Prize. And I want to explain. So there's a question here. If God can lift a stone, if God can create a stone that God can't lift, if God can do anything, why is there evil in the world? And why are we so obstreperous, including we Jews? And I looked up the answer, or the Rambam's answer. As you know, in Moreh Nebuchadnezzar, there's a famous passage in the Rambam. And it's from Devarim. God says in Devarim, this is the last part of the Torah. I'll say it in Hebrew first. Mi'iten ve'yeh levavchem zelahem le'yira'oti. I wish you would be God-fearing. You wish? God wishes? You can make us God-fearing. What's going on here? We have free will. We have free choice. And it's built into the Torah. So, a small story. Shona and I, my wife Shona, a psychologist, and I did early work on behavioral economics. It's become a famous thing in economics now because of greater people than we, because of, among other things, two Jewish scholars, psychologists, Kahneman and Tversky. Kahneman is still alive. He's teaching in California. And Richard Thaler, Jewish kid from New Jersey, professor at University of Chicago, and he won a Nobel Prize, including, for other things, a book called Nudge. Nudge is a book about choice architecture, Elisha. If you want to get people to do things, how do you do that? You pass a law. The speed limit is 100 kilometers per hour and you must wear a seat belt. Okay. It doesn't work too well, especially in Israel. We love to break the law. That's why we're great entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is breaking the rules. There's another way. Choice architecture, according to Richard Thaler. You organize the choice in a way that people choose voluntarily. They choose to do the right thing. And I think that's what the Mitzvot are about. If we're commanded to do them, it's true. But they're orchestrated in a way that we should want to choose them and try them. Try it. Try it on. Like when you try on a tuxedo before you get married. Although you, a kibbutznik, wouldn't do that. I never wore a tuxedo in my life. Never. Someday, Elisha. Someday. God willing. God willing. Try it on. Try the Mitzvot. Try Shabbat. Give it a try. This is called Nudge, choice architecture. And Thaler wrote a wonderful book about Nudge. And that's what the Torah is about. I see the Mitzvot as that. I'll tell you why. You notice, you note in your drashah that for the first time in history, really, a majority of Jews do not follow halacha. Certainly not in its entirety. But they follow some things. And they try it on. Because we have free choice. And we try it on and we see which things suit us. Like Shabbat, which is something you can read about in theory, but you have to do it. Naaseh v'nishmah. So Richard Thaler won a Nobel Prize for a book about Nudge. And the whole Torah, 25 years, 100 years ago, it's about Nudge. Try it and see. And then think about it and discuss it and debate and so on. Last thing, Elisha. That's very beautiful. I love that. The last thing. An example of Nudge. I don't know if this is appropriate for a podcast, but here goes anyway. So the ladies among our listeners may not be acquainted with the urinal, but we men are. That's where we urinate. And there's a problem with urinals because some of us, especially us old guys, we tend to miss. And then there's a mess. And the place is dirty and it's unpleasant. How do you get people to aim? How do you get men to aim? You put up a sign saying aim your stream, right? It doesn't work. Richard Thaler found a way. At least the Americans found a way and Richard Thaler used this as an example. You take a picture, a graphic of a fly and you put it right in a strategic spot embossed in the ceramic urinal at the bottom, right in the right place. And men aim directly for that because it's in our nature. You organize the choice, you nudge them so that they do the right thing. And at least it works like magic. The whole Torah, I believe, is about nudge, as the Rambam says, because God could make us do these things, but there would be no meaning to that or no meaning to life. So we are given the free choice and the Torah nudges us, for the five books, to do the right thing. That's a beautiful, beautiful angle. And I love the fly in the urinal. I've certainly, I'm part of the male kingdom, or the kingdom may be a bit too, maybe not such a great term in our day and age. And indeed, it always makes me smile when I see that fly in the urinal and kind of like how, and I never thought of it in this context, but you're absolutely right. I want to say one thing for those who are less familiar with the parasha. It's parashat Mishpatim. And parashat Mishpatim basically is all laws. It's basically laws we have not had yet. A parasha which was not only all about laws, but hardly any laws at all. We had a few. When you reach the land of Israel, we celebrate Passover every year and put on tefillin. We had circumcision. We had a few mentionings of Shabbat. But that's basically it. And suddenly a whole parasha which is all about, it's an expansion of the Ten Commandments that we just had last week. And so, Franz Rosenzweig, a great, great Jewish thinker, Chavruta of Martin Buber, they're very close. He is a very interesting character in himself. He was a philosopher. And he became observant from coming from a very, very assimilated family. He was on the brink of basically going to get baptized. Philosophers who wanted to make it an academic world in Germany had a much better chance if they were not Jewish. So baptizing yourself is a good way of climbing the academic ladder. And he was close to doing this and he decided as a farewell from his Jewish faith, his Jewish religion. It wasn't a faith exactly. It was Yom Kippur. He would go to a synagogue in Yom Kippur. Fast and go to a synagogue. Just as one last goodbye. He didn't go to his family's great reform synagogue. Neither did he go to a conservative synagogue. He went to a small little Orthodox shtetl. Shtiebel. Shtiebelach. In a shtetl. Although I don't think there were shtetls in Germany, but there were shtiebelach. And he had a very, very profound experience there. Very profound experience. And what was it about the experience? It's worth exploring. But he eventually, the whole plan to leave Judaism and become a Christian was 180 degrees turn around and he started exploring. What is Judaism all about? And he started observing mitzvot gradually slowly and gradually. And what he, his formulation of it was, that mitzvot indeed are not it's not something you have to necessarily do all of them now, at once. This is what you have to do. Rather, it's a journey. It's a journey. It's like, try them out and see what happens. And grow. It's like a ladder. And when he was asked if he put on to fill in, his answer was, not yet. Not yet. And it wasn't like, no, not yet. I really feel bad about it. It's simply, not yet. I'm just not there yet. I'm checking out other mitzvot right now and I'm building my repertoire of mitzvot. And it's a really soft, soft engagement with the world of mitzvot. Like, as you were saying, I don't know if Maimonides would agree with what we're saying right now, but one could understand that he's suggesting, you know, check it out. Check it out. Experiment with it. Really feel it. Do it. You know, be a human doing. Do it for a little bit. And I have to say, that's how I started observing Shabbat. I became closer and closer to Jewish observance. And Shabbat, keeping Shabbat was a big one because I was living in America at the time and there was a lot to do on Shabbat. And there was a lot of shopping to do and things to see. We worked so hard during the week. And I just remember one Shabbat I decided, let's do Shabbat for one Shabbat. Let's see what it feels like. And it was magic. Now, I didn't go to shul, that Shabbat, because I didn't have a walking distance shul. So, I did stay at home. And it was a very restful day. Really restful day. And I'm not a person who knows how to rest. And I've shared this already on a previous podcast I'm sure. But I remember by the time of Mincha, by Shabbat afternoon, early afternoon, I went to the bathroom, to the urinal. There was no fly on our urinal at home. And I was washing my hands and saw my face in the mirror. And suddenly I saw these clear, clear blue eyes. And anyone who has blue eyes, usually they're redder than bluer. Because blue eyes tend to get fatigued easily. And I just looked and suddenly my face seemed very relaxed. And my eyes were clear. And I remember going back to bed with my book and having a really pleasant afternoon. And I remember really fresh thoughts started appearing. Suddenly everything seemed very lucid, very clear, very coherent. And that's when I fell in love with Shabbat. I checked it out. I did it. I did Shabbat. Observed Shabbat. And before that I would have theoretically thought, ah, Shabbat is important. You need to do Shabbat. It's a mitzvah. But once I did it, I remember really falling in love with this idea of Shabbat. So Elisha, this brings to mind possibly a way to distinguish between different groups in Judaism at present. So there is a group for which when you ask them, do you observe Halakha? The answer is, always. Always. They don't always succeed, but yes, everything in Halakha we observe, including tearing the toilet paper before Shabbat. There is another group and you say, do you observe Halakha? And they say, what? This ancient, archaic set of laws from 2,500 years ago gave me a break. Never. And we, Masothi, and we conservatives, we're in the middle. And I think our answer is, do you observe Halakha? Not yet. Not yet. We're trying. We observe things. This with some things we don't observe, can't observe. We're open-minded and we value Halakha. We want to adapt it to modern life. We observe some of it, some of it we don't, we can't. Maybe we will observe more in future. And I think we have a good way. And I want to go along with what you're saying, but give a bit of a different answer. If a Masothi Jew, and I'm not necessarily talking about the rabbis who, Masothi rabbis are known to be, as were mocked often, we're the true lonely people of Halakha, because usually we're the only ones in our Kilo to actually try and observe Halakha as fully as possible. Because you're right, many in the Masothi world are on a really wide spectrum of observance. So I want to suggest a creative answer. Do you observe Halakha? And the answer of the Masothi Jew, on wherever they are on the spectrum, could say yes, I certainly do. Now why answer I certainly do? Because the word Halakha itself is a really interesting word. It comes from the word walking. It's also in the Drasha here. It comes from the idea of to walk. Walking means we're not, someone who said yes, I observe Halakha to the letter. There's no walking there. There's standing still. There's like doing. Firmly doing. And there's no it's very stifled. There's very little movement there. And I think there's something very dynamic about the actual word Halakha. Walking. Meaning, yeah, we're walking our lives. And we're walking on a path. On a Jewish path. And do we look and smell do we, you know, smell every flower along the way? No, we don't. Do we always look at the view 360 degrees? No, we can't. But we're walking on this path called Halakha. We are walking Jews. And as we're walking, we are observing. We're observing many, many different things. And it's very dynamic. And we're growing. And we're evolving. And sometimes we do a bit more. Sometimes we do a bit less. I'm very much in favor of doing more. I don't want to make it sound like ah, Halakha, you know, pick and choose what you want. Rosenzweig really teaches us that it is indeed a ladder. You are climbing. You are making progress here. But it's not about getting there. It's not about you're neither better nor worse if you follow it to the ladder. So what I like about our movement is that we're not neurotic about it. About Halakha. We see Halakha as a certain ideal. Rosenzweig saw Halakha as an ideal. As an idyllic path. And we know it's ideal. Ideal means that you never get to fully live Halakha to the ladder. You don't. You can't. And if you try to, and that's what you believe you should do, you're going to live in constant guilt. And we choose a much softer path. And I believe in softness. Agreed. And Elisha, Halakha is in some ways like a pool of water. If the pool is stagnant, it doesn't move. It isn't fed. It doesn't change. It becomes awfully smelly. If Halakha can't change and adapt, things like electricity. Elisha, we didn't have electricity 2,000 years ago. Halakha needs to adapt to it. And many other things. Water that moves, that is flowing, it's fresh and life-sustaining. And that's, I think, how we interpret Halakha. And that's what the Mikveh is all about. The Mikveh can only be a Mikveh if the water is continuously moving. If it doesn't get stagnant. If there isn't a trickle of water leaving the Mikveh and trickle of water entering the Mikveh. It's not a kosher Mikveh. So it's all about choose life. And life is motion. Life is change. Life is growth. So, on the one hand, you know, let's call for seriousness here. You know, maybe people could say, okay, indeed, check it out. Try and do it. As opposed to what you said earlier, those who say like Halakha, oh no, no, no, no. That's absolutely not for me. In fact, I've often mentioned on this podcast that with our Bar Mitzvah families, we really encourage them to regard themselves as observant Jews. You are observant Jews. You are observing many Mitzvot. I don't know if any of you in the room, you tell them, has murdered someone recently. And I'm sure you all respect your parents. If not better than I do, certainly not worse than I do. So, we're all observant Jews and we have different ways, different ways of walking this path. Absolutely. A big problem with Mishpatim, Elisha, what's the first Mitzvah that's mentioned in Mishpatim? Where does the thing start? Of all places to start, when they're giving the Mitzvot, the commandments to the Jews, slavery. And of course we regard slavery these days with abhorrence and no civilized society would even think of allowing slavery. And the Torah regulates slavery. This is how you should behave. But Elisha, I interpret this in terms of nudging. This is a nudge. In those days, 2,500 years ago, life was really hard. The economy was subsistence. You barely stayed alive and you did this by working from dawn to dusk and even labor. And labor was the essence. You needed all the labor you could get and there wasn't enough. And you had lots of kids and there still wasn't enough. And everybody worked, including the women. So you needed slaves in order to stay alive. So the Torah could not come and say, no slavery, end of slavery, that's the end. And instead, what it does, it regulates slavery in a manner that's humane and it gives us a nudge. And the nudge is, look guys, you're doing this now because you have to and we realize that. But eventually this is going to end. Free your slaves after seven years and so on. There are a lot of things in the Torah. Sacrifices, I think, are another example. And the Rambam says this. Someday if Beth HaMikdash, the Holy Temple, is rebuilt, Rambam says we're not going to have sacrifices. We don't need it. It's not part of our modern life. The Torah is a Torah of nudging away from things that were appropriate at the time and may no longer be appropriate. It's the Halacha that moves like a moving river, not a stagnant pool. Yes, indeed. And in the world of focusing, it's a therapeutic method that I use in my coaching, the language that we use as a person who's coaching another person, we have what's called in Hebrew hazmana. We have an invitation. So if someone is focusing, then we put an invitation out there. I'm inviting you to check this a little bit. Consider this a soft invitation. And I love that mode. It may sound really superficial, but it's not. It's like something you really should or why don't you, etc. It's a soft invitation to put your awareness on something and see how does that feel. And I think in general, I think what we're alluding to is we're alluding to a gentler path, a gentler way of being that we Jews have and I think we have that. It's not that we don't have that. And certainly our movement, the Masorti movement, and by the way, I just want to say, not just the Masorti movement is unique in that. It's different from both Reform and Orthodox. I think in the Reform world, and it's a big generalization, I realize that, but in the Reform world, the mitzvot are it's not a center in the core of Reform Judaism. And in the Masorti movement, it is. Mitzvot are a halachic movement. Reform movement is not a halachic movement. But what's unique is it's a gentle journey, it's a gentle road. It's like the nudge, as you call it, the movement of the nudge. And some people, especially people who are younger, often, who like to see things in black and white, what do you mean, nudge? Either you do or you don't. Get serious. People, the younger the person, I think, the more they need a black and white answer. And we're not about black and white. We're very much about the gray and the in-between. Going back to the bar mitzvahs, I start every bar mitzvah with introducing our movement. Say, like, welcome to Vahavda, we're a Masorti Kila, Masorti means well, neither this, nor exactly that. You know, we refrain from the black and the white. We always look for the gray. We look for the middle way. And I say, this is going to be a very gentle bar mitzvah. And I really believe we're a gentle movement. And one of my young rabbis was just ordained recently. You know, he's not so young actually, but he was just ordained recently. You actually know him. He was raised in Moria. He I was kind of like his coach in rabbinical school, or his mentor, rather. And he said something really beautiful. He said, I've come to realize the Masorti movement is really good for people who are over 45 or 50. Because only when you're 45 or 50 can you handle, you know, the middle way, the gray path, the soft path. It's not either or anymore. And that was a very enlightening comment. And I think he's right. Which is why we see a gap very often in the Masorti movement. You know, we have children who come to Noam, and they have bar mitzvahs, etc. And then we kind of lose them for a while. But then they come back when they're older and a bit wiser. We're good for the older and the wiser. And I love being in that space. So, in the philosophy of logic, Alisha, there are two key operators. One is either or. Black or white, as you say. And the other is both and. Right. The brain tends toward either or in general, because it's simpler. But in fact, great ideas and insights come from both and. Including things that are antagonistic or contradictory. Creative people are both and people. They combine two things that don't combine too well, and they find a way. But it takes a lot of maturity and insight and patience to apply both and. And a great metaphor for that is indeed I mentioned in passing, Tevye. You know, Tevye. How do you call him in English? Tevye? Tevye. Tevye the milk-sicker. Right. From the fiddle on the roof. Tevye and his seven daughters. And there's this classical scene every time I've mentioned that already before, because for me it's a Masorti moment when every time one of his daughters falls in love with someone that he just can't possibly accept. He may be a Zionist, God forbid, or a communist, socialist, secular, etc. He's standing there with his old donkey and his milk cart and he's looking up to the heavens and saying on the one hand, you know, no, he's a socialist, God forbid, or he's a Zionist. On the other hand, she loves him. The spark in her eyes when she looks at him. And it's on the one hand and on the other hand. And then he continues walking. You know, walking. Walking. And eventually the girl gets married. So maybe, Elisha, we can close. And I want to quote a brilliant piece from your Rasha. You have a knack of asking good questions. James Thurber once said, more important to know some of the questions than all the answers. And I agree. And the question you raise is the question that we should all ask ourselves, and I ask myself this question every morning, thinking about how I'm going to be relevant that day. Your question is, what do you want to come into being? What do you want to bring into being through you? It's part of becoming a blessing, which is our main mitzvah, which is why we're on this earth. And it's an aspect of doing. Because in order to bring things into being, you have to practice doing. We are human beings, but we are here to be human doings. And I think that's a great question to start the day with. Today, what do I want to bring into being through myself that will be a blessing for myself and for other people? What am I going to do today for others? And in doing for others, what am I going to do for myself? I'll just add in closing that I usually ask myself that question. I feel a little bit different. I ask, what wants in the universe, God, whatever you believe in, what wants to come into the world through me today? It puts me a little bit, it's not what I want, but I'm trying to ask God, ask the universe, what wants to come in through me today? And I usually do it when I put on just a proponent to fill in. I put on first the tallit. I take the tallit, I say the blessing, put the tallit over my head. If I wake up early enough and the house is quiet and I have some privacy, I have to sit with the tallit on, like covering myself fully. I sit there and meditate, apropos meditation, meditate on this question. Now the tallit is all about mitzvot. The tallit is a reminder, a daily reminder of what are our mitzvot? The question I ask vis-a-vis mitzvot, doing, is what indeed, what today, what wants to come into being in this world through me today? And that will be my mitzvot, my mitzvah today. I'm embracing that and adopting it from now on. That's an excellent edit to that question, Elisha. Thank you. May it all be a blessing, and may we be a soft blessing to the world. Amen. Amen.