Podcast #23 Matot-Masei

The speakers discuss the two parashot, Matot and Masei, and their significance as the closing of the book of Bamidbar. They also debate whether the Torah could have ended with the previous four books and the controversy surrounding the authorship of the Bible. They highlight the power of storytelling and the importance of finding meaning in the Torah's stories. The speakers share personal anecdotes about the impact of storytelling in education and conclude that stories have the ability to captivate and teach in a way that theories and numbers cannot. Shalom, Shlomo. Shalom, Elisha. It's good to see you. It's good to record again. Even though we're actually really close to Shabbat. It's Thursday today. Usually we record on Tuesday. But you have a Simcha coming and you're helping with the grandchildren and so I'm glad we're finally sitting here and talking about parashat, parashot, matot and masei. And it's especially meaningful as we await our new baby granddaughter who's taking her time to come as babies do. So good to be here. This is podcast 23, Elisha. 23, wow. So we are towards, we're actually closing the book of Bamidbar this week with these two parashot. And two incredible parashot. It's always very painful when two parashot are linked together because there's so much to say about every one parashat. When we have two, it's almost like a torture. I think we'll manage to cover the key points in each of them, Elisha. But before we do, so you mentioned rightly their amazing parashot. And Elisha, personally, I think the Bible, the Torah, the five books of the Torah could have ended with four books. Because in terms of literature, and we'll speak about this a bit later, this is a perfect end to the powerful story in the Bible. And frankly, Elisha, there are some question marks about the fifth book, which was discovered much later under King Yoshio. Just 34, 36 years before the destruction of the temple. So Elisha, what about this? Could we just end the Torah with these four books? I'm sorry. Well, that's a great point. Usually when I sit with Bar Mitzvah kids and we discuss the book of Deuteronomy, of Devarim, the last and final book of the Torah, I always tell them, you know, what's special about our movement is that we, the Masorti movement, or conservative movement, is that we're able to hold, to juggle two narratives. One, the traditional, that there is yet another book, the last book, departing speeches of Moshe Rabbeinu, which happened in the last month of his life. And then we also say, and scholars claim that this book is a much later book, and discovered much later, and has a political twist to it, and we're able to hold the two things together. On the one hand, just like fiddle on the roof, on the one hand, no, there is a fifth book, and Moshe wrote that book on the last month of his life. On the other hand, scholars say, et cetera, et cetera, and I love this complexity. I love complexity, and so I guess we need a fifth book to say, guys, you know, life is complex. So we're throwing another book in your direction, so that you can deepen your understanding of life. Okay, so let me ask you this, Elisha, in your role as an educator, as well as being a rabbi, you're an educator, you work with kids, you worked in the Tali school system for quite a long time. There's an interesting controversy among educators of Tanakh. There's a book written in 1959, that's a long time ago, by Tzvi Adar, called The Biblical Narrative. It's a wonderful book, and he had the view that you teach the Bible to kids as a powerful story, and the archaeology, did King David exist? The power of David, was that really built by King David? Who cares about the archaeology? It's the story that's powerful. And this leads to another question. I've got to hit you with this, Elisha. Elisha, who wrote the Bible? Who wrote it? And does it matter? Right. I'm glad you asked that last, final question. Does it really matter? There are people who are really driven to scholarship, and driven to research, and driven to archaeology, and I respect that. I have to say, I'm interested as a lay person, but I don't have a deep, deep desire to know who wrote it. And I have a much deeper desire to understand life. And the Torah is a guidebook for life. That's why it's eternal. That's why we're reading it today as if it's happening today, not as a history book. Yeshua Lebovitch often said, you know, the Torah is not a history book, and it should not be read as a history book. It's a book of deep, deep truth. And we confuse, modern society confuses truth with reality. Truth is not necessarily reality. Our imagination can be just as truthful as concrete things around us. So I'm curious, and I'm always interested in the scholarship and archaeology, but at the end of the day, the reason why I'm so addicted to the Torah is because of the depth of the truth, of the living truth that's in it. So for me, it's much more interesting that Moshe wrote the book of Devarim last month, before leaving this plane. So whether that answers or not, I love your quote of Tzvi Adar. And we just had a bat mitzvah now. We walked in here right after a bat mitzvah of a young girl. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of bat mitzvah yet. It's not as customary in Israel for girls to have an Aliyah Torah. But her mother comes from a religious home, and her religious grandparents were both here. Her religious grandparents were very excited, very moved, even though it's very strange for them that their granddaughter is having an Aliyah Torah. And just before we walked in here, the grandmother, after the ceremony was over, she got up to read her personal blessing. And she referred to the Torah, and she said, it's a complex Torah portion. There are difficult things in there. And she said to her exactly what you just said. She turned to her granddaughter and said, the Torah is our story. It's a deep story. And every story, we have to find what's good in that story. And she goes on to find what's good in this particular story. And she wished her, I want to wish you that in your life story, you'll always find what's good. So it's a beautiful way how the grandmother uses the Torah as a story to strengthen her granddaughter's grip on life. That's beautiful. And Elisha, as an economist, I think of things in terms of a marketplace. A marketplace is where things are bought and sold. Well, there's a marketplace for ideas and a marketplace for stories. And when you look at the Bible and those who wrote the Bible, those brilliant storytellers who wrote it, they were the best. We know they were the best. Why? Because it's the most powerful book, the most published book ever published in history, by far, by far. So the test of the ideas and the marketplace has proven that these are powerful stories, the most powerful ever written. It leads me to another question, Elisha. I have a good friend in Canada. His name is Professor Paul Salkin. He is a retired professor of French-Canadian literature at University of Western Ontario. He also did the Jewish Studies Initiative there. And it's very learned. He wrote a wonderful article asking a question, why are there so many stories in the Talmud? The Talmud is a very learned book with rabbis who are really, really smart. And they told endless numbers of stories, some of them really fantastic. Why? And his explanation, I'm going to ask you for your take on this. His explanation is simple. The Talmud basically defines the law. But people are the ones who have to accept it and implement it. And people understand. They understand the world through stories. So the rabbis told the stories to set the law in the context of real life and real people. And I think the Torah does that as well incredibly because all the great figures in the Torah, Elisha, they have fleas. I mean they have flaws and fleas. Literally. And that's what's amazing about it. And the Torah spares no one. Yeah. I love that. Fleas and flaws. I love that. It's beautiful. First I want to apologize for coughing. It's one of those time of year for allergies and things like that. Yeah, yeah. You're right. And as an educator, I always, when I look at the classroom, I just convey information. I can see how the eyes are getting glazy. And I'm losing the classroom. I'm losing the kids. And then when I tell a story, which is what I often do, I'm a storyteller, I tell a story, all of a sudden the glaze is removed and the eyes are wide open. And just a little anecdote, one of the schools I went to in Karmiel, it's about an hour away from here, a tiny school. I had 120 kids from 6th grade sitting in that big room. And the teacher, she didn't know me, and the teacher said, did you bring a slide show? No, just me. Really? You do have 120 kids here. You are aware of it? Yeah, I understand. Kids today, they can't really listen. You are aware. She was really nervous. Will I be able to have the kids for 45 minutes and it's Israeli kids and not as well behaved as I think American kids. These are kids who are used to plasma. They're used to screens. Right, they're used to plasma and screens. And for 45 minutes, the kids were captivated because that's what stories do. And the teacher came to me afterwards like, wow, I don't think I've ever seen them as captivated. I didn't take it personally. It's not just me being this amazing educator. I don't think I am this amazing educator, but it's the power of stories, of telling stories. And you know, Alicia, as an educator like you, I spent many decades of putting my students to sleep with numbers. It took me 45 years to figure out that what they really want is stories, and this includes high-powered CEOs, not just kids, who really want to hear the stories rather than theories. You know, it's Rabbi Nachman who is really well-known for his stories. The stories in Rabbi Nachman are very late, actually close to his death. And he resorts to stories when he tried teaching his wisdom. And he is one of the wisest rabbis, I think, that has ever lived. He's deep and wise and complex and troubled very often. And he noticed that his disciples, who loved him dearly, he didn't have a lot of disciples at the time, they loved him, but they didn't understand what he was talking about. And it really bothered him. So towards the end of his life, he died very young, he died at the age of 38, if I'm not mistaken, towards the end of his life, he said, I'm just going to tell stories. And the stories are very deep, but every person can connect to whatever level in the story that they can connect with, and they get something out of it. So he too, just like you, at some point said, enough data, enough numbers, stories. So maybe we have a small bit of personal advice for our listeners, that if you want to really communicate with people, including really, really smart people, you do it with a little story. And Elisha, I'm one of those kids that you talked about, because when you do your drashot, and you tell us about your journey, your life, your experiences in America, in California, on the kibbutz, they're riveting, these stories are absolutely riveting, and they help explain the point that you're making. So in order to respect the amazing two parashot, Matot and Masae, in your drashot, about each of the parashot, you make a key point about each. The first point you make about Matot, it's about vows. And vows are things that we take upon ourselves that constrain us and limit our freedom. I'm thinking of this little baby granddaughter who's waiting to be born any day, and after she is born, as you note, she will become part of a process called socialization. She will learn to live in a family, and to live in society. And we do that by accepting constraints on ourselves. We limit our freedom, and we do this voluntarily, willingly. I'm thinking of this because all over the world, we have rebellions against these constraints. Take, for example, face masks during COVID. There are a lot of people in America, and even in Israel, who are opposed to wearing a face mask. You are limiting my freedom. Of course we're limiting your freedom. Wear a mask not just for your own health, but in order not to infect other people. Why has this become so hard, this principle of limiting our own freedom, which is part of the Biblical narrative, the Biblical story, especially in the Parsha of Matot, treating vows really seriously. Vows matter. Right, right. Our story is a story of coming out of bondage, seeking freedom. It's the Jewish DNA. The Jewish DNA is the journey towards freedom. But it's not accurate. It's a journey from bondage, through freedom, into commitment. The Torah is given along the journey, saying, now you're free to choose. What are you committing to? But nevertheless, this Parsha talks about commitment which is very important, but not vows. What's the difference between vows and commitment? And I think there are many ways of answering this. But since we honor freedom, and it's important to dwell on that one second before moving on to the vows and commitment. We honor freedom because without freedom, God cannot be. For us to connect to the Divine, for us to connect to the Divine within us, for us to connect to infinite possibilities, we cannot be bound by limited possibilities. Whenever both you and I served in the Israeli army, and one of the biggest lessons I learned in the army, which today I have a lot of questions about, but at the time it was very fitting for what I needed to learn. There's no I'll say it in Hebrew, whenever you say in the middle of a really tough whatever it is, there's no such thing as I can't, there's I don't want. So no I can't, it's all about what do you want? And we can only want from something that we believe is even possible for us. If we don't believe it's possible, we won't, we will shun this desire, this want. Freedom is an essential value. Commitment is really beautiful, because if we're just free, if we're only free and there are no commitments, then we don't do anything in the world. We're not constructing anything, we're not building anything, we're not creating anything. To create something can be difficult, and there can be hardships. So if we're not committed to the task, to our journey, to whatever it is, we will simply give it up. We see that with spoiled kids, one of the problems is they often lack the ability, lack the stamina to bring a project to fruition. Vows, on the other hand, vows are limiting. Vows sometimes we need to be committed to something, but there's always a part of us that needs to reflect and say, I'm committed to this, but am I truly on the right track? Is this really what I was meant to do? Is this really right, what I'm doing? Am I doing this for the right reasons? Am I doing this out of pure survival? Or am I being a blessing in the world? And when it's a vow, then we can't totally lose our freedom to make new commitments. I mentioned the idea of divorce. Divorce is tragic. Divorce is a terrible, terrible thing. But sometimes, and we know that marriage is a commitment in Judaism, but it's not a vow. It's a commitment. And sometimes divorce is better than staying together, because we will bring more of a blessing to the world if we do end this commitment. Absolutely. And what you just said, really, these are powerful ethical principles and principles for living, but they're also principles that I teach in innovation. And let me explain why. One of the most powerful tools for an innovator is the assumption that you make when you start anything, the assumption that every challenge, every problem has a solution. I'm facing a dilemma and there's a way to solve it and I don't know what it is, but I know it's out there and I will find it. And this is crucial, because if you really believe that as a matter of faith, you're much more likely to have your subconscious come up with solutions. So, you strengthen your commitment by this belief, which I think is a religious principle as well. When you believe, your commitment becomes much stronger. Working in a technological university, we operate in a realm of doubt. We challenge and question everything. And sometimes it can make you a little bit cynical. Because in the end, you have to believe in something. And that belief is a powerful driver of commitment and creative ideas. I love that. That's really beautiful. I just want to add something to that. I'm a firm believer and it really follows exactly what you were saying. We may not have the answer right now. We don't have the answer right now. The reason why we call it belief or faith is because right now we don't have the answer, but we do believe that there is an answer. And the way I try to live my life and also when I counsel people is finding the ways to open ourselves up for answers to come. And that's also why vows are problematic because vows shut the gates of new information, new insight. And insight is the mechanism through which novelty comes into the world. And for insight to come in, we need to have faith and we need to be open to know that answers, the answers are out there and they will present themselves if we're open enough. And this is related to Yom Kippur as well because when we do make vows, they are not binding us forever. They are not closed. They are open. And once a year we sit down and go through them and kind of open the windows and start afresh. And that's really, really important as a principle in our religion. Right, Kol Nidre, which we actually stand up. For Kol Nidre, Kol Nidre is like all the vows. So we kind of stand. We open the Aron Kodesh kind of like opening the gates. We're going to end Yom Kippur, we're going to close the gates. We start off with opening the gates for insight, for novelty, for creativity. And we say everything that we have vowed and limited our lives with, we're letting it all go. We're letting it all go. So Elisha, we have to do justice to Masae as well as Motot. Masae is a wonderful closing pasha for the Book of Numbers. And you make a lovely point which I really, really like a lot. So the children of Israel are completing their Yetziat Mitzrayim, their exodus from Egypt. But it's not over yet. They still have to go into the Holy Land. And even when they do go into the Holy Land, and even when we establish the State of Israel, the journey goes on. The journey is unending. The exodus from Egypt is a process which is unending. I'm reminded of this because of something in the Jerusalem Post this week about a new Yetziat Mitzrayim, Elisha. We have a tremendous amount of aliyah which has gone almost unnoticed because we're so engaged in this protest movement. Nothing else seems to get attention. And there are a lot of important things going on. Here are some numbers. The Jewish Agency says that 43,685 immigrants, Olim Hadashim, arrived in 2022 from Russia alone. That's almost 50,000 people. That's a lot. It's five times more than the previous year. And we have 15,000 who came from Ukraine as well. We have a big Yetziat Mitzrayim going on now. And that's why Israel exists. Because we have a homeland for these people. They have a place to go and others wouldn't accept them. A powerful reminder from Masae. People, the journey is ongoing. And I wish we could pay a little more attention to treating this aliyah as it should be with education and housing and healthcare and all the things that these people need. Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. It's such a blessing. And yesterday, the very last, well at least for now, but the very last flight of Olim from Ethiopia also landed. Supposedly, according to the article in the paper, I can't remember which paper it was, said that this is it. They brought the last Jewish or formerly Jewish or however they're connected from Ethiopia to Israel. So it's ongoing, it's ongoing. And there is a theological question that comes up vis-a-vis the Siddur Tefillah. Now that we're here in the land of Israel, is that it? Or have we so Olim are coming, but we're here. You've made aliyah, you're here. I was born here and I'm here. So does this now Yitzhak mitzvah now pertain to others and not to us because we're here? So I love the way the Masorti movement relates to it also in the Siddur Tefillah suggesting that we're even within Israel we're still on a pilgrim. We're still making aliyah inside of Israel. Trying to make Israel a better place. Trying to make Israel a more ethical place. Trying to free people who are in bondage, spiritually, psychologically who are in Israel, but now it may be another form of exodus. It may not be a geographical exodus, but certainly a emotional and spiritual exodus. I agree. My parents made this exodus from Bessarabia, now Moldova, to Canada. My wife and I made the exodus, the aliyah from America and Canada to Israel. But those are physical journeys. We are also on a spiritual journey and it's ongoing. That's the way it should be. We have to treat it that way. We are all on an ongoing journey with open windows and open minds, with deep faith and always looking for answers. Always, always looking for answers. Yes, yes, absolutely. So Elisha, on another subject, this is related to Masae, to the stories in Masae. Basically Masae brings the story to a kind of conclusion. There's a big fuss going on now about artificial intelligence and an article that appeared co-authored by a brilliant Israeli scientist, Ronen Eldar from the Weizmann Institute and he was hired by Microsoft to study open AI and the software called ChatGPT4, the latest version of artificial intelligence. He spent months doing this, wrote an article with about a dozen other scholars and he's interviewed in the Jerusalem Post and he was floored, stunned by this AGI, Artificial General Intelligence. What this software is able to do and it can do amazing things and we don't know why, we don't know how, we just know that there's been a major, major breakthrough and one of the breakthroughs relates to the Torah. So Elisha, let me ask you what you think about this. There's something called BiblePix. It's artificial intelligence applied to the Bible and it will enable you and me to talk to King David, to Abraham, to Jonah and the whale and the conversation is fact based in the sense that it's based on the historical figure, on archeology, on historians and on the Bible. What do you think about this Elisha? Is this a useful tool? That's a great question. First of all, I'm really curious about that. I can tell that I often have conversations in my head with all kinds of people. My personal teacher and rabbi if you like, he's been, he passed away a hundred years ago, a hundred and one years ago Aaron David Gordon and I have conversations with him in my head all the time. He was a great person to talk to and I even have on my phone, I propose technology plasma, etc. I have a picture of him. I was mesmerized to his eyes when I first, 5th grade, when I first saw him at the museum in Degania. Here I can show it to you. I can't show it to the listeners but I can show it to you. I was about 10 years old and I was mesmerized to his eyes so I have this picture on my screen. His eyes are amazing. Aren't they? You can see that those eyes have a lot of wisdom. Yes. Very, very deep wisdom. Yes, yes. And so what I often do when I'm at a loss or feeling bogged down, feeling, you know, in a tight place, in Mitzrayim, in a very narrow place, I open the phone, if it's not Shabbat, I open the phone and I can look at his eyes, gaze into his eyes and in my head, in my own artificial intelligence, or maybe it's not artificial, I have a conversation with him. Now he's been dead for 101 years and these conversations are incredible and I really allow, apropos our earlier comments on allowing wisdom, creativity to come in, I allow his wisdom to come through. Would he really have said what I imagined him saying? I don't know. I don't know. But you know, it works. So if this AI could maybe help us, I would say the following. I know we need to end shortly, but I would say the following. If the AI is okay, if AI said so, then that's clearly what King David would have said had he been alive today. That's problematic. But if we can see it as a possible conversation that opens our boundaries to new thinking, creative thinking, I think that could be pretty powerful. What do you think? It could. I think Elisha just revealed an important insight. We don't need AI to have conversations with people, like people we love, like people who have passed away. And I think this strengthens the idea of the nishama. There is a nishama of A.D. Gordon. By the way, Rabbi Nutt has written a wonderful book about A.D. Gordon. That's right. We can speak to people. We don't need AI. We can speak to people and engage in conversation. And you do this with A.D. Gordon. I do it with my late parents. And sometimes my late grandparents as well. And this can give us comfort but also real guidance. And AI, technology really works when it supports human desires and human behavior. When it's an enabler and not a goal. It enables us to do things. So treat AI as an enabler and if we use it that way, it can be very helpful I think. It kind of reminds us the whole thing of AI, that's our next journey. So we are, here's another leg in this never ending journey of the human species towards, in my humble opinion, towards the promised land in a metaphorical sense towards the divine. And a last word about that, there are very very smart people who know a lot more than I do who have really gone into this deeply. And they're not prone to hyperbole, to exaggeration. And they say that we are at the beginning of a new industrial revolution. Because artificial general intelligence, which is intelligence like human, can do so many things that enhance the human life. Let's just hope it's going to be all part of the blessing. So thank you, Shlomo, thank you so much. Thank you very much. And to everyone who's listened, thank you for listening and send it on to others and write back, tell us what you think and your insights and thoughts. And have a Shabbat Shalom. Shabbat Shalom, everyone.