podcast #25 Parashat Va'etchanan

This is a conversation between two people discussing the current state of Israel and the upcoming holiday of Tisha B'Av. They talk about the protests happening in the country and the new laws passed by the Knesset. They also discuss the front page of newspapers being black to represent the heavy feelings in the country. Despite the troubles, they express optimism that the sun will shine again and that the crisis will lead to a lasting solution. They also talk about the importance of democracy and unity among the people. They then transition to discussing the Torah portion of the week, which includes the Shema and the Ten Commandments. They talk about the importance of starting with why and the motivation behind actions. They also discuss the purpose and higher values beyond just following the law. They mention that Moshe chooses Yeshua as his successor, highlighting the need for different types of leadership in different situations. Shalom, Shlomo. Shalom Aleichem. This is a, it's not a simple morning. It's a Tuesday morning, so we are actually before Tisha B'Av. We're going to be talking about a parasha that was meant to be after Tisha B'Av. And we are after a night of huge protests throughout the country after Knesset passed the new laws. And our feelings are very complex, heavy, and... Troubled. Troubled, thank you. That's a beautiful word. And maybe we're meant to be troubled before Tisha B'Av. But here we are. Alesha, I've chosen two dresses out of yours, rather than one. One in English, the one from your book in English. But I added that last night. I added to that the second one, which is in Hebrew, which is titled Nachamu Nachamu. And it's Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of comfort, where we read the haftorah of Yeshayahu, Isaiah. And it begins with the words Nachamu Nachamu, Be comforted, be comforted, my people. And we really need a great deal of that today. And Alesha, I'm holding up now the front page of the newspaper Haaretz. And it's the same front page in all the newspapers, the leading newspapers, Maori, Jerusalem Post, Israel Today. And it is totally black. And it's a creative advertisement bought by high-tech people. And they chose to do that, to indicate their feelings in a dramatic way with a black, dark front page, which is how many people feel today in Israel. Yes, yes, indeed. And I'm personally oscillating between dread, I have to be honest, and my natural tendency for optimism, which is very fitting for Shabbat Nachamu, that knowing that even the dark times, and it's so fitting that the newspapers, their front page is just people can't see it because they're hearing but not seeing right now. The front pages are black and dark. And we know, we know that the sun will rise again. And it may be difficult, we may go through difficult times, but the sun will shine again. It will. And I have a strong optimistic feeling, Alisha, that since I'm 80 years old and also have studied history a bit, the deeper the crisis is, and we have a deep crisis, the more likely it is that we emerge with a lasting solution. And one of the bright sides is that in future, we will never go through this again, in the sense that no government will embark on a program that is not supported by a large majority of people and plunge the country into chaos. This is an object lesson. But we will also emerge from this stronger and more united as a people, and our young people have suddenly discovered democracy and its value and how important it is. And this is crucial because this will be an asset for our country in the years to come. Yes. What is important, though, is I wouldn't say that it will never happen again because we can see that there's a cycle. Memory lasts approximately 75 years. So after 75 years, the memory of the catastrophe that we endured fades and we forget how easy it is to bring about destruction. So for the foreseeable future, it looks like we may be safe. And, Alicia, there's comfort as well on Shabbat Nachamu in this amazing parasha by Hanan. Wow, this is a blockbuster. Good heavens. We have in this parasha the Shema. Moshe recites the Shema, Hero Israel, and the Ten Commandments, which he repeats. And it's an amazing section or part of Moshe's final words, and there are so many things in here. I don't know if we'll manage to get through them during our whole podcast. And also the name of our key lie is mentioned here, V'ahavda. It's also mentioned in the parasha. Absolutely. Just a very small point that struck me, Alicia. We're going to talk a lot about motivation. This is a Moshe motivation speech, like the manager of a soccer team tells his team before playing in the cup final. And there are six words that we say every Shabbat. V'atem hedvekim l'Adonai, chayim kulchem hayom. Six powerful words. In order to translate that to English, Alicia, we say, do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord thy God, that it may go well with you. Twenty words. It takes twenty words in English to say six punchy words in Hebrew. Hebrew packs a punch. Boy, does it ever, especially when Moshe says it. I'm not so sure that I would agree with that translation. I think it's a possible translation, but I think it's a very poor translation. It could be a lot more accurate, but I'll follow your lead, so wherever you want to take this to. So let's talk about motivation. So, Alicia, for years I taught managers, startup managers, high-tech managers, and one of the points that I made was you have to ask the right question. What's the question you ask when you start on a big project? What question did Moshe ask when he started leading the children of Israel toward the Promised Land, or a startup, when they begin developing a new product? And we think very often, obviously, the question you ask is, what do we want to do? What do we want to achieve? What is it that we are bringing to the world to create value? And a man called Simon Sinek came along, gave a TED talk, and wrote a book. And the title was, Start With Why. You don't start a project with what. You start a project with why. And Moshe has this insight in his parting words because he is delivering the why. Why are we doing this? Now, why is the why so important? It has to do with leadership. A leader is not somebody who does great things. A leader is somebody who gets other people to do great things. How do you get other people to do great things? You motivate them. You give them this powerful motivation to make them want to do the right thing. And that's what Moshe is focusing on, I think, in this parasha, in motivating the people. Okay, we have four books. The Torah is the law. You know the law, the sacrifices and the law and so on. But why? Where is the why? Start with why. It's a lesson in life as well. And I'm astonished at how the Torah from 3,000 years ago has this key principle that other people have discovered recently. Of asking the why question from which everything comes. I'm intrigued by where you're taking it to because I'll be honest. In my theology, why is a dangerous question. So I'm really curious where you would like to take it to. Because why can also provide mistaken answers. Given that our mind is like a Google operation where you punch in a question and the mind gives an answer. It may not be an intelligent one. It may be something that you already know but nothing that is very deep or very elevated. So not always does the why question produce really worthy... In fact, very often when there's an argument between two people, let's say. And I think that's not what you're referring to. When there's an argument between two people and one person may say, but why did you do it? Now, instead of just being able to say, you know what? It doesn't matter why. I'm sorry, this was really wrong. When we're asked why, our mind immediately goes searching for a good excuse for why we did what we did. Instead of just saying, you know what? I'm sorry, that was wrong. So what do you mean with the question why? Absolutely. And in your Hebrew drashah, you make this point very forcefully. That very often the why that we ask is why is this happening? Because it's coming to me. It's not fair. It's not fair, which is kind of a childish thing. But how often do we say that? And I think that there's a very good point that's made here and I'm referring back to Atem Adveikim La'Adonai. Those powerful six words of Moshe. And a commentary by Ramban, Ahmadides, about what this means. And his point is, and he goes beyond Rashi, who also talks about this. He tells us that the Torah is the law, but our behavior has to go beyond the formal aspect of the law. It has to do with how we relate to our neighbors and our friends. We have a higher purpose than simply obeying the law and the mitzvot. And I think this is a crucial point. Because there are a great many people who are machmirim, who definitely emphasize following every letter of the law in terms of halakha. But beyond that, how we relate to other people, other Jews, the world, strangers, that's a crucial lesson as well. The Ramban makes that point very strongly. The why goes beyond just kach. Dosh is dishribim, as they say in Yiddish, because it's written there. It's not enough. Okay, so what if we change the word why to for what purpose? Would that also work? That's much better because why is ambiguous. Why is ambiguous and sometimes sounds a bit like whining, but for what purpose is much clearer. Okay, so Moshe is actually presenting them with a purpose that will serve as a compass for their journey. Now that he's not going to be around to tell them what to do and what not to do and reprimand them, he's saying, you know what, I'm leaving. I'm leaving in less than a month. I'm giving you a compass with which you can go and the compass is, you know, what is the purpose? What is the purpose of this whole mission? Exactly, and there's something else incredibly modern about this parasha and about Moshe's parting words, and that has to do with Moshe turning over the reins with giving up the leadership and he does choose his successor, Yeshua, not his sons, not our own sons. He does it by choosing Yeshua and he does this in a way that's intelligent because Moshe is a certain kind of leader, absolutely appropriate for taking this band of slaves and bringing them into freedom, but now they're going into a country that's inhabited and that means fighting. We have to fight for every scrap of land and that's not Moshe. He is not a general. He's a man of peace. He's a mediator. He's a mediator between God and the children of Israel and Yeshua, Yeshua's a fighter. Elisha, this is so relevant to my field, which is entrepreneurship because so many startups are founded by a brilliant visionary founder and then they have three people and it's dramatic and fun and 24-7 and then they have 100 people and they have to pay taxes and file reports and talk to the accountants and the lawyers and it is boring and the founders are not suited to it, not suited to it, but this is their baby. They're not going to give their baby up for adoption, so they're not as wise as Moshe. They don't find a suitable leader. Startups that are able to avoid founder's disease, for example, Mobileye, founded by a professor, Amnon Shashua, he's a technology guy. He knows the science, but he chose a friend of his, Zev Aviram, to be the manager, the mankal, the CEO. He chose a professional manager because that's not his field. That's beautiful. So I guess the question of purpose and for what, can also help us personally in knowing when our mission is in a particular field or when it's over and to recognize that the what for, in this case, that's not our what for. That's someone else's purpose and for us to be committed to our own purpose, and that's not an easy question because Moshe was the most humble of all people and knowing that his purpose is over is something that we should be deeply inspired by and take note of because we don't often have that humility to recognize that this particular purpose of stabilizing the company, of expanding the company, of getting it to be a proper organization, that's not our purpose. We need someone else with that purpose. So asking yourself the question, what is my purpose and where does my purpose end? Exactly right, and you make the point that in the Torah, we really don't know why God did not allow Moshe to enter the Holy Land. There are ambiguous explanations and reasons and I think you hit the nail on the head. You write that perhaps it was a supreme act of divine kindness. After all, someone has to tell us when to quit, when we have done enough and can finally rest. So God basically is doing an act of kindness because Moshe is not the general who is going to lead an army into this battle over Jericho and other places in the Holy Land. God giving him an act of kindness, Moshe, you can rest. Let the young guys do it. Yeah, yeah, and I'm thinking about it as you're kind of echoing this idea and I'm thinking about how incredibly difficult this message actually is. It's a beautiful message. It's very easy to write about it regarding someone else. I'm kind of not sure if getting into politics is a good idea, but when enough is enough, and our ego, we are controlled by our egos and our egos have a very good purpose as well. They also have purpose. Ego is there for a lot of creative endeavors. Ego is really important for me to do what my ego is driving me to do. The whole of humanity can benefit from that, but when our time is up, when our purpose is up, when our purpose has been, the mission has been complete, that's when the ego has a really hard time giving up and I pray, I really pray that I will know personally, that I will know when my time is up. Okay, so here I want to take issue with you and debate this with you a bit. Great, I'd love to. I call to the witness stand Elisha Wolfen. You write, the notion we are meant to complete a certain life journey with X achievements is erroneous. I absolutely agree with this. I don't think Moshe completed his life journey. He supplied the motivation and the philosophy, the thinking, the drive for the next stage. And Elisha, at the Technion in studying entrepreneurship and start-ups, I was astonished to find so many start-ups by people over 70 years old who've retired, so-called. Maybe I can quickly tell you a short story about that because I think it makes the point. You're absolutely right. We do not end our life's journey when we retire. We simply move on. I hope we move on to something else. There's a professor in the medical school, professor of cell biology. His name is Yoram Palti. And around the year 2000, he retired. He was 70 years old and he had a wild idea how to halt cancer, especially brain cancer, glioblastoma, these violent tumors in the brain and often you can't take them out. You can't operate because they're deep inside the brain. And he had this idea, okay, so the cancer cells divide. Healthy cells don't usually divide. The cancer cells divide much too rapidly. And when they divide, they have a narrow kind of a neck and they split into two. And he thought, what if we put an electromagnetic field around the brain and when the cell became narrow and divided and almost split into two, the electromagnetic field would explode it and stop the cell, the cancer cell, the glioblastoma from dividing. And everybody said, this is a wild idea. This is crazy. So he did it in his basement and he built a device, a cap, that put an electromagnetic field around the brain and started a company called Novocure, which means a new cure. And it works, Alicia. And it also works on lung cancer, which is almost incurable, with a vest that has an electromagnetic field. And these cancer cells, they try to divide and they explode because of this electromagnetic field. This is a 70-year-old man who started a company based on this wild idea. Our journey doesn't end. Absolutely. And Shlomo, let's remember, Moshe's journey, as far as we're concerned, begins at the age of 79. He was 79 when he encounters God at the burning bush and God sends him on his next journey. He's just finishing a great career as a shepherd and that mission is over. And Moshe doesn't want it to be over. He says, no, no, no. I'm really happy here with my sheep. Don't send me off to shepherd human beings. They're way too difficult. And he says, no, no, no. I actually need someone who is not in his 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. I need someone who is wise. I need someone who age brings about wisdom. Moshe's career that we're talking about here was from the age of 79 to the age of 120. So I think the whole idea of retirement is totally unrelated to our conversation in a sense that retirement, it's an economical, sociological idea which today should be reexamined to begin with. It should indeed. And I think about this a lot, Elisha, because thinking of the demographics, retirement age is 65. That was set by Bismarck 100 years ago. And he set it at 65 when he invented the old age pension because he didn't think anybody would make it to make him pay that old age pension. And today in Israel, we have incredible life expectancy. Among the highest in the world, men live to 84 on average, life expectancy from birth, and women to 86. So think of it. We retire at 65, sometimes forcibly retired, and then we have 20 years on average and often more than that. What do we do with all of this wisdom and all of this knowledge? Does it go to waste? What about all these seniors who have all of this wisdom and knowledge, Elisha, and it's just going to waste? I think it's a problem. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I agree with you. Especially because there are unique values. When we talk about wisdom, wisdom is not just accumulated data. It's not just, oh, they've lived a longer life, so they know more. It's not that kind of wisdom. It's the wisdom of having, the whole temperament is different as you get older, and you can hear layers of existence that you weren't able to hear 20 years earlier. And it's something we need to tap into, and you know what, Shlomo, maybe that's, we're kind of heralding the new wave of, you're an economics professor, the new wave of neo-economics, of tapping into the wisdom of the people who, not just the data, but they have the frame of mind, heart, soul, spirit, that can provide us leadership that younger people simply can't. I agree, and you know, Lisa, I think wisdom is going to become a much more important word in the future, and I'll tell you why. There's a new scientific paper published, sponsored by Microsoft, based on CHAT-GPT-4, based on artificial intelligence. One of the lead authors, the co-author, is Professor Eldon from Weizmann Institute. He took a leave of absence, went to work on the project, took several months to work with this artificial intelligence software. They wrote a 150-page paper, and it's called The Sparks of Intelligence. He was surprised by the general intelligence that this software shows, and the experts don't really know how or why, but let's be clear. It's intelligence. It's not wisdom. Intelligence means it knows everything, and it's able to solve difficult problems. But wisdom? Wisdom's a different ballgame, and that's going to become a much more important commodity. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's such an important, you're making such an important point here, so thank you. And again, again, this is really, remember, the Torah of Moshe. Moshe, we benefit from Moshe's wisdom in the last 41 years of his life, leading up to 120, and that's not a coincidence. It's not a coincidence. And when he, at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, walks up Mount Nebo, and the description is beautiful of how his eyes, I'm going to translate it loosely, his eyes see clearly as he's climbing up the mountain, and that his eyes see clearly does not necessarily mean that he didn't wear glasses. His eyes saw clearly in the sense of wisdom, in the sense of foresight, in the sense of being able to see that which people who are younger simply cannot see yet. And there's another lesson as well, Elisha, in Moshe walking up Mount Nebo. We don't know where he's buried. That was purposeful, and that was brilliant, because it would have been so easy to turn Moshe into a demigod, or a real god. And I feel sad that in some ways many of the rabbis, that has happened, and pilgrimages are made to their burial place, and they are worshipped, and we call on them to help us with various problems. We worship God. That's our message as Jews. We don't worship people. We cherish people. We cherish their memory and their message. We cherish Moshe. We don't worship Moshe. Right, right. And it's important that we don't know where he was buried. Right, very much so. And we also, the sages, view Moshe as a vessel for divine wisdom. The wisdom is not from Moshe. And that again goes back to age issues. The younger we are, the less humble we are, the less humility we are able to have, because our ego is so strong. So we think we are the source of the wisdom. And the older we get, and I remember my grandmother, with whom I was very, very close, she was always much older than me. She was always my grandmother. So as far as I was concerned, she was always a wise, wise woman. But I remember the last years of her life, the wisdom expanded. And it wasn't her wisdom. It was her ability to allow wisdom, divine wisdom, great wisdom, to come through her and present itself. And that's why we have this beautiful midrash of Moshe sitting, being transported in time and sitting in the academy of Rabbi Akiva. And the sages are arguing something and Moshe doesn't understand what the hell they were talking about. And then Rabbi Akiva says, I know that because Torah of Moshe Messinai, this was the Torah that Moshe brought from Sinai, and he's appeased. Yeah, Moshe didn't understand their discourse at all. But he realized it's based on the wisdom that was kind of channeled through him as a vessel many, many, many years ago and still inspires Rabbi Akiva and his fellow rabbis. I agree with that. And in many ways, I think that creativity is truly a gift from God, like the creative idea of Yoram Palti, how to hold Glioblastoma, that has a divine element to it. But I want to ask you about Moshe. So we're now in the book of Deuteronomy, Devarim, and last week I suggested that it was superfluous and I take it back this week. And it's largely the words of Moshe. Wait a second. Moshe's words, was there a stenographer? Was there somebody recording those words while he was saying them? No. It's clearly somebody who wrote those words and those people who wrote the words were empathic. They really understood Moshe. How did they do this? I'm astonished, Elisha, at the empathy that we see in these words because they ring true. These are words that Moshe could have said given what we know about Moshe and the other four books. What was the process that Moshe's words were brought to the world when they were probably written down a long time afterwards? Right, right. So perhaps, you know, I don't have the answer obviously, but perhaps connecting to what you said earlier that creativity is divine wisdom. We're just vessels for this divine wisdom and we're given even credit for that creativity and we may even make a lot of money from this creativity. But true creativity is, kind of comes through us and not from us. So maybe the people who wrote the Book of Deuteronomy, they actually wrote it down and their greatness is that they were open enough to allow for the divine words to flow through them and they kind of were old enough also to put their egos aside and I think many of us have this experience in life that we can tell there's a qualitative difference from when we feel that we're actually speaking and communicating from our own brain and when we are communicating much greater wisdom for which our brain is only a conduit, like it receives information and puts it into words and if you haven't, if one hasn't felt the difference between the two, it's really worth exploring it and if one has felt the difference between the two, it's worthwhile coming back over and over and over again to that experience of being a vessel for which divine wisdom, creativity, love, whatever it may be, can flow. So Elisha, I have a practical suggestion for those who are listening and it's based on my own experience. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, Mima Rivka, this little lady under five feet tall who survived amazing things, raised a family, was widowed when my grandfather died in the influenza epidemic in Pittsburgh and I played Canasta, played card games with her. I never really talked to her about her stories. I was ignorant about them and I deeply regret it now. Those young people, relatively young people who are listening, if you are fortunate enough to have living grandparents or living parents who are elderly, ask them questions. Ask them questions and talk to them and get their stories and harvest their wisdom because they have a lot of wisdom and sometimes there's reluctance to share it because we older people, we're a little bit sensitive about giving people advice which is not always received well. I'm really careful about that myself. Talk to your parents or if you're lucky enough, your grandparents, get their stories and even record them and write them down. I'm thinking about doing a project that will formalize that and simply go around to older people and ask them, what do you know? What stories can you tell us? What wisdom can you share with the younger generation because they need it and I have an example, Moshe, look what he did. He spent a whole book of the Torah sharing his wisdom and boy, are we lucky to have it. Yeah, yes, yes. Yes, so first of all, how are we doing with time? Close to ending. Close to ending, close to ending. Okay, so maybe if we kind of try and bring all the pieces together, we're at a very difficult week and I have to say that for a moment while we're talking, I was totally transported away from all the hardships that we're going through right now and all the difficulties to a place of eternity which is much greater and I think that one of the things that we gain from talking with the elderly is their concept of time is very different. Their concept of time, they're closer to eternity when we are dealing with tomorrow morning, with yes, what's going to happen now and what's the next law that's going to come to Knesset and what's going to happen then? It could be very, very scary and our focus can get very bogged down with all these details and perhaps the older we are and the broader perspective we have, we're able, without meaning to, we're just naturally more connected with eternity, with infinity and wisdom comes from the infinite and through the eyes of eternity, everything will be okay. Everything will be okay. It will and as you noted earlier, Lisa, there is a natural cycle and rhythm to life and the rhythm is a rhythm of ups and downs. We all go through that in our lifetime. All countries go through ups and downs. We're in a down right now. There will be an up and we're old enough to have been through several of these cycles and this is a deep one but there will be an up. Yes, amen, amen. So, Shlomo, thank you very, very much for this inspiration. Thank you, Alisha. And I want to wish everyone Shabbat Shalom and since you're going to be hearing it after Tisha B'Av, wishing everyone a lot of mechama, a lot of consoling and a deep, deep sense of hope for a beautiful future that will surely come. Amen, amen. Shabbat Shalom.