Podcast #58: Parashat P'kudei

In this conversation, Shlomo and Elisha discuss the completion of the book of Exodus and the significance of the completion of the Mishkan, or tabernacle. They talk about how the presence of God fills the tabernacle and how this relates to the idea of mindfulness. They discuss the belief that everything is God and the challenge of understanding God's presence in both good and bad situations. They also touch on the concept of paying attention and how it relates to mindfulness and meditation. Shalom Shlomo, Shalom Elisha, and it's good to be back and it's Tuesday afternoon. You had your class today, right? Yes, I did. I'll mention the story from it. Amazing class today on entrepreneurship. Okay, they're always amazing, let's be honest here. This class is an amazing class. They are indeed. They are indeed. But your drashai is amazing, Elisha, and as I mentioned to you before we started recording, there are no underlines today. I normally underline, and today I would have underlined the whole thing, so I just didn't bother. Wow, what a compliment. So we'll just remind everyone where we're at. We're actually finishing the book of Exodus of Shemot this week, and it's the very last parasha. Usually on non-leap years it goes along with Parashat Vayakhel from last week, but this year it has its own, own parasha, own Shabbat, and it's a great parasha. In fact, it's so great that very often when they do come together, most of the drashot end up being, you pointed that out, most of the drashot end up being about pikudei and not Vayakhel, because there's something so beautiful and profound about it. And it's about the completion of the mishkan, and of course the completion of the tabernacle is the completion of the book of Exodus, the book of Shemot, which itself is an amazing book, and we learn so much from this. By the way, something I've learned from the Torah, the Torah is a textbook in the craft of telling stories, Elisha. So each book is complete in itself, and you point this out, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end in each book, and in this book the completion is the amazing, dramatic event of completing the mishkan, the tabernacle, and Moshe brings the articles into the tabernacle, and then this dramatic event. Before we talk about this dramatic event that you write your drashah about, I was on sabbatical in Princeton in 1977, and I muscled my way into a creative writing course. I still had this dream of being a writer instead of an economist. And you are also a writer. You write a lot. You write prolifically. A lot of words. A lot of words. I came to it a bit late. The teacher was someone named Joyce Carol Oates, a very, very famous writer, prolific writer, and she taught us how to write a short story, and a key point of a short story, telling a story, is that it has to have a climax, an end, and then at the climax, then you end the story right there. You don't go on and continue to babble, and of course the Torah does that beautifully. This is the end of the book of Shemot, and well, we'll talk about that in a moment. Something dramatic happens, and that's the theme of your drashah. We'll give our listeners a clue. The title is Paying Attention is the Essence of Torah, and that's such an important idea. So, should we tell people what the dramatic ending is? Yes. So, the dramatic ending is Shemot 40, 33 to 34, and Moses finished the work. The cloud covered the tent of meeting, Mishkan, and the presence of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Dramatic. And you note that if you are not deeply moved by these two verses, read them again, because these are really, really, really special, and we'll discuss exactly why. Right. Right. It's really amazing that one can read it, and say, okay, okay, let's move on now to the next book. Let's move on to Leviticus. Okay, they finished Mishkan, okay, well, uh-uh. And obviously, you know, since modern man doesn't really believe in God's presence in the way they believed it in the Torah, then, ah, okay, it's a fairy tale, etc., but not so. Not so. Not at all. Not at all. And it's amazing because the parasha is related to a very modern idea, which has turned out to be a powerful tool for treating mental stress and mental trauma, and we have enough of that in our country right now, as you know, Alisha, and it's related to something called mindfulness. So I took your drashah in English, and I asked Google to please translate it, and the translation is really good, as you'll see, we do the Hebrew podcast after we do the English one, and I asked Google, well, wait a second, how do you translate mindfulness, Google? And Google translated mindfulness as mindfulness. But there is a Hebrew translation, I think, and we can discuss that. God is everywhere, as you note in your drashah, it's just that we are not aware of it, we are not mindful, we are not mindful, we don't see half the things that go on around us, we don't see the beauty and the splendor of this amazing world that we live in, especially in hard times like these. Right, right. Very often we think, you know, we think, oh, God is present in this beautiful view, we see a view of the ocean, we don't have an ocean here, but we have a sea, and God is present, a beautiful flower, but that's a cop-out, because really, God only can be present in beautiful things, God will not be present in mundane things, or in what we think is ugly things, who says God has such a good taste, God only reserves God's self for beautiful views or flowers. The Kabbalistic view is that God is absolutely everywhere, absolutely everywhere, which posed a huge problem for later commentators and sages, because if God is absolutely everywhere, then, first of all, we'll get to the issue of the Mishka in a second, but is He also in the garbage, is He also in the trash, is He also in, was He also there on October 7th, in war, in war, right, when soldiers are killed, when people are hurting, and in general, when people are hurting, is God present there too? And if God is everywhere, bringing it back to Mishkan, the question in the Darshah is, so, God is already in the Mishkan, why do we need to read that God's presence descended down and filled the Mishkan, God is everywhere, God is present everywhere, so, that was a big dilemma. Let me just read this very short sentence, two sentences from your Darshah, because I think this is an idea that is something that you refer to a lot, Elisha, and you obviously believe in it really strongly, and I think it's a very unusual one, the fact that everything is God, the presence that the Darshah is referring to, the cloud that comes down, is the Divine Presence. I would like to suggest there is no other kind, Divine Presence is all there is, or in three words, everything is God, Elisha, everything is God, really, really, Elisha? Yes, really, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I think it's also unique to Judaism, not only to Judaism, I think also, by the way, I think also it's unique to Islam on a certain level, but in Christianity it's less so, in Christianity there is Christ and the Antichrist, that which is evil, which is bad, which is sinful, which is, in Judaism there is no such thing, otherwise it means that there are two deities, there are two gods, and we know that the religion of ancient Persia, the Zoroastrian religion, believed indeed in two deities, a good and a bad God, light and dark, and we say, God is one, all is one, so if all is one there cannot be, there cannot really truly be good and bad, there cannot truly be, there's certainly no two gods, so if we are saying that, okay, only the good is God, even the letters are similar, so only the good is God, bad is not God, so what is bad, so if it's not God, so it means there are things that are not divine, not godly, not in God's sphere, that means there's more than one God, it means God cannot be one if there are things that are not God, and that's difficult, it's difficult to stomach, it's really, especially in time of war, when right now the UN is discussing, finally, finally, is discussing the sexual atrocities that were committed against most of the women on October 7th, and our instinct is to say that's not God, that cannot be God, it just can't be, and that's okay, we can say that, we're still hurting, and that's okay psychologically to say that, and to claim that only the good is God. I apologize for this annoying cough, but that's what there is right now, that's exactly, that's God too, so now I can cough freely, so we have to ask ourselves, so how come the tabernacle is all of a sudden, a moment ago supposedly wasn't filled with God, and now it is filled with God, and what does it mean when we see, when there are things that we look and say, no, no, there's no God there, absolutely cannot be. I know the answer. The answer is, God was always there, and is always there, but we just didn't see it, we just didn't see it, like we don't see an awful lot of things around us that indicate the presence of God. Right, right, or at least, that's a possible answer, it's my answer personally, people don't have to buy into it, but basically it's suggesting that, you know there's a famous quote from Yaakov when he woke up from his famous dream, after fleeing from his brother, he has this amazing, amazing dream, and he wakes up and says, wow, God was in this place and I did not know, I did not know it. So that's kind of it, that God is in this place, he didn't say God was, he said God is in this place, and I did not know it, and some of the sages thought that he meant God is in this particular place, and I did not know it, so I'm going to build a shrine here and that eventually becomes the site of the temple, but that's problematic, I think we can understand Yaakov as saying, God is in this place, he's in every place, he's everywhere, but I did not know it, that's the issue, when we don't see God, when we don't feel God, we're not aware of God's presence, that's ok, that's ok, that's how we're built, it just means that God, that we were not aware of it, and that's why we're talking about the art of paying attention. Ok, and the art of paying attention is a concept psychologists use all the time to help people, and it's called mindfulness, and I know you're aware of this, or familiar, or very familiar with it, mindfulness is related to meditation, you meditate, I believe, and meditate is partly about being mindful, being in the moment, mindfulness is defined as bringing one's complete attention to the present experience on a moment to moment basis, and that's a very hard thing to do, Alicia, we are sleepwalkers, there's a book by Arthur Kessler called The Sleepwalkers, we are all walking in our sleep, and on a practical basis, by the way, some of our listeners are seniors, Alicia, one of the big dangers for us seniors, and I'm aware of it, is the danger of falling, falling is a real risk for seniors, and when you fall and you hurt yourself and then you lose muscle mass, it's very hard to come back, and there's a remedy, one remedy, which is simply being mindful, and I use that all the time, walking down stairs, be mindful of where you are and of each step, and when you do that, it feels a lot safer, mindfulness is a religious concept, but it's also one that can keep you healthy and well. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, it's a beautiful connection that you made there, right, so being mindful of paying attention, and really paying attention, and in other words, if we don't see God in something, it means we're not mindful, it means we're not paying attention, but you may also say, you know, one may argue and say, okay, I'm really paying attention to what happened on October 7th, I'm really paying attention, I'm being really mindful, and I don't see God there, I absolutely do not see God there, so I want to suggest that I want to say, it's going to be very daring, and maybe it's too early to make this statement, we're still reeling, we're still in pain from October 7th, there are people who, you know, suffered so, so terribly on that day, so I'm going to move away from October 7th to another example, which is painful, but not as painful, and that's going to a dentist, when we go to a dentist, I'm not a big fan of dentists, but I end up going a lot, my genetic inheritance is not that great when it comes to my teeth, and I'm a big fan of getting a shot to eliminate the pain, and then I actually, often I really just fall asleep, and I go into meditation, and if I can fall asleep, I'm really delighted, but I know of people, I know one particular person, but I know there are others, who refuse to take anti-pain shots, they meditate, and they are totally, totally present, they've practiced, they're really good at it, and they're totally present, and they, I'm not saying they don't feel the pain at all, they probably do, there are moments they do, but on the most part, they discover, they can easily withstand the pain, why? Because they're present, because in the present moment, there cannot be two things taking place at one particular time, and it's not just men, all human beings, even women, cannot truly, truly do, and be aware of two different things at the same time, they claim they can, they can't. Why do they claim they can, maybe that's for another podcast, but basically when we're totally present and paying attention, then all there is right now, is just this present moment, and it connects the word presence, which we'll talk about shortly, so yes, even in really difficult situations, and we wish none of these situations, you know, occur, but when they occur, if God forbid they occur, presence is really important, in fact, in fact, I'm just going to take a sip, one second, in fact, at the Haifa University, there's a research taking place, and they're looking into the trauma suffered by the people who were at the party down south on the 7th of October, the Nova party, at Re'im, right? Now here's the interesting deal, it's not something we recommend, but the people who were there were on all kinds of chemicals, many of them were stoned, not so much drunk, but stoned, and not necessarily only marijuana and the like, even some more severe drugs, and interestingly enough, now this is not advocating drugs in any way, shape, or form, but interestingly enough, what they found is that those who were indeed on a trip actually suffered less trauma, and the consequence was they had less post-trauma as well, and I thought, that's interesting, and they gave a lot of examples, and what's really beautiful about it is these researches are really non-judgmental, because you could be very judgmental here, and you guys, here you are, this is a case of emergency, and you can't really respond because you're stoned, but they said something else, which is really interesting, they said because they were on all kinds of drugs, they were not fully, they were not in the usual human consciousness, human awareness, and the human awareness and human consciousness is not that great, so what ended up happening, they were far more present than those who got into this event of October 7th, who were fully lucid, who were not fully present, those who were not on drugs, where were they? They were deep in fear, they were terrorized, they were traumatized, etc., and not fully present, so those who were on drugs were able to transcend the fear, they simply did not feel the fear, they were present in their own unique way, so one example they gave, which is fascinating, one woman said, I was hiding behind a tree, and she was hiding well, she survived, and she said, I just felt, and I knew the tree was fully protecting me, I was one with the tree, notice the word, I was one, one with the tree, I felt the roots of the tree, I was so at one with the tree that I felt totally safe. So Alicia, this relates to something else, that corroborates what you just said, and what Haifa found, Haifa University, in the 60s, Timothy Leary, a Harvard professor, pushed psychedelic drugs, and they came down, they were made illegal, he was jailed, and everyone thought it was terrible, and now they've made this big comeback, because they've discovered psychedelic drugs treat trauma, and stress, and they're now legal, and used in many places, for the reason that you just suggested, they alter our consciousness, and they help us become more aware of really being in the present, so it fits. Right, what these, I don't want to say hippies, because they have to define themselves, but in the 60s, they saw God, they saw God, they saw colors, they saw all kinds of really, that's what psychedelic experiences are all about, and there's actually, with the survivors of that terrible, terrible day, one of the ways of treating right now, is through, it's actually being practiced here in Israel, through psychedelic drugs, in order to re-experience that whole experience from a place of presence, to be able to eliminate the fear, and when there's no fear, you can be present in the moment, and you realize that in the present moment, everything is okay. Now it could be that a minute from now, you're going to be dead, that could be, but we are petrified, because a minute from now, we might be dead, but if you are present, there's no minute from now, if you're present, you are present, and at the present moment, you're always 100% okay. You know who really knows that instinctively? Little kids. Little kids live absolutely in the present. Let me tell a story, recount a story about that. So Zalman Schachter, Rabbi Zalman Schachter, legendary Hasidic Rabbi, I knew him, he worked in Winnipeg, I'm from Canada, Western Canada, I remember him giving us sessions at B'nai Rith, a youth organization, B'nai Rith, and we have Conclave, and he was there, and he was charismatic, he was also controversial, but we won't get into that, and Zalman Schachter tells this story that I found, he has a little daughter, Shelby, Shelby was three years old, and he recounts, she came into the room one morning and asked him, Abba, you know when you are sleeping and then you wake up, well, when you are awake, can you wake up even more? Beautiful. Wow. Yeah, little three-year-old. Wow. So we are still sleeping even though we're awake, can we wake up even more? We don't have to have drugs to do that, we just need to be mindful and practice a little bit of being more aware of what is around us. Right, and just to connect with what Shelby said, we all probably didn't notice because we don't pay attention, we're not always mindful, but when, we have to end shortly, but when Adam and Eve, when God casts sleep on Adam before taking his one side of him and splitting the male from the female, we don't translate Tsele as rib, Tsele as side, so we split the male and the female side and turn it into a male and female, man and woman, and it said that he cast sleep on Adam and it never, ever, ever says that Adam ever woke up, he never woke up, we are still staffed asleep, so she's so right, Shelby said, can we wake up from this supposedly awake state that we're in? So we're talking about presence, it's about presence and that's exactly what happens in the tabernacle, God's presence descends, and in other words, we can read this story as we are conscious, we are aware, we are noticing that God's presence is descending, it's been there all along, but now we can suddenly see it, just like Jacob when he woke up from the dream, he suddenly saw what was there all along, but he never noticed, never paid attention. So I need to ask you this, at least I've been preparing it for a while, this idea about everything is God, this is really Spinoza, Spinoza saw God everywhere, and boy, the Jewish community, the Jewish establishment in Amsterdam came down on him like a ton of bricks and excommunicated him, what's so bad about this idea of Spinoza, what was so heretical about God being everywhere? Yeah, it's a great, great question, I pondered and wondered for many, many years, I'm a big fan of Spinoza, but it took me a long time to try and understand what was the problem with Spinoza's theology, what infuriated the rabbis so much. Now I'm not talking about the ignorant rabbis who just because he said all kinds of things that today would be considered as religious rhetoric, at the time they sounded heretical, and they were just a scared bunch of people, just to remind them, it was also in the Dreschah, but Spinoza lived at the time in Holland, in Amsterdam, and Amsterdam's Jewish community was entirely a former, what a derogatory term, Marano, Jews who fled from Spain and Portugal, who actually converted to Christianity in Spain and Portugal, and when the opportunity arose, they fled to the New World, to Holland at the time, not the New World that will later come, and there they were allowed to return to their Judaism, but they were all, we're talking about a period of 100 years after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, so this is 100 years of Inquisition, they lived in terror, and all they knew, first of all they were petrified if a Jew said blasphemous things, because what will the church think, what will the church say, what will they say about him, what will the goyim say, so they excommunicated him and they did to him exactly what was done to Jews by the Inquisition, they tortured, they wanted to torture, and eventually they couldn't because the Dutch law didn't allow them to do that, they did torture another heretic Jew and he eventually committed suicide. Not Spinoza, Spinoza was delighted that he was excommunicated because finally he can think for himself, he doesn't have to think like all the others do, and for many years I wondered, he's so deep, and he supposedly is the founder of the secular thought, and his famous book is all about God, the book Ethics is all about God, and I've come to the conclusion, once I realized that Rav Kook whom I admire, also believed that the excommunication should remain, I don't believe that obviously, but I wondered how could Rav Kook, this wise wise man, who's read Spinoza and understood Spinoza, how could he say that, why would he not say, you know what, we've moved on, let's just put aside this ban, this excommunication, but no, he said the ban is still in place, and the reason is, because Spinoza, so Spinoza, all that is, is God, meaning it's called pan-antheism, so everything that is, is God, the sum of all that is, and all that is, is infinitely is, and God is infinite, and God is infinite, and here's where the issue is, he misses the mark on all that isn't, in other words, he didn't believe in freedom of choice, he believed there was no freedom of choice, because all that is, is God, and all is cause and effect, and where we discuss this in this podcast, where does freedom of choice come, freedom of choice comes from the real that is not yet, from the, it's called in Hebrew Ein Sof, from the infinite, the infinite is not yet finite, and Spinoza is talking on a certain level, he's talking about the finite world, and Judaism believes in there being a finite world, which it calls Elohim, and the infinite, which Judaism calls Adonai, and all creativity, and all free choice, all miracles come from the infinite, and that doesn't sit well with Spinoza's philosophy. Exactly, in other words, God created this amazing world, but part of his creation was giving us the freedom to choose and to alter the world, we have the choice, and I guess with Spinoza, everything is predetermined, determinism, which I don't agree with at all, I can't, because I see creative people every day, I work with them, and it's a matter of their divine inspiration, but they're people, and it's godly in the sense that God has created the conditions to enable it, and also the free will to do the most horrible things, but that's the world that we live in. Right, but just to do justice with Spinoza, he's so deep, and so wise, and so intelligent, that we're kind of just really scratching the surface, he is worth reading, he is really worth studying. And he also teaches us an important personal lesson, he was vilified, excommunicated, cut off from society, and he seems to have been serenely happy in this. That's right. He lived his values, we all need to live our values, as Spinoza did, and that really is a source of true deep happiness. Yeah, and maybe that's a good place, I think we do have to start ending, so a good place to end is also to remind ourselves what Spinoza's occupation was, he didn't live off of his philosophy, he was a glasses maker, a spectacles maker, refining glass into spectacles. He ground glass to the right curvature so that people could see better, that's appropriate for him, right? So people could have spectacles to see the world as it is. To see better, to see God, to see God, and that also killed him eventually because he breathed in the dust from the glass, but nevertheless, his expertise was in how well are we looking, paying attention, noticing, so I guess we should wish all of our listeners to really pay attention, be mindful, and notice, just as Jacob did when he woke up, again another theme here, waking up, wake up and notice, God is indeed everywhere, and God is going to be wherever we notice God's presence to be. Well said. L'hitrot Elisha, Shabbat Shalom.