Podcast #28 Parashat Shoftim

Shlomo and Elisha discuss the importance of judges in the judiciary system, as mentioned in the Parasha Shoftim. They talk about the power of words and the need to be mindful of what we say. They also discuss the concept of controlling our gates, both physical and metaphorical, and choosing the people with whom we associate. They emphasize the importance of doing our own inner work and taking responsibility for our actions and surroundings. They also mention the upcoming month of Elul, which is a time for introspection and soulful accounting. Shalom, Shlomo. Shalom, Elisha. Hi, everyone. We're both glad you're listening to us again. We have a very, very appropriate parasha this week. Israel, as you all know, is in turmoil right now over the judiciary system. Indeed, this is parashat Shoftim, the parasha where God, through Moses, commands us to be sure to have judges in all of our gates. Judges are really important. So, Shlomo, what are we going to be discussing today? First, I have a question, Elisha. So, we're discussing the drashah that you wrote, and it's published in your collection of drashah. And my question is, when I bring this in and we sit down opposite each other to record our podcast, the question is, when you read the drashah, do you remember what you've written, or is it fresh to you? Yeah, that's a good question. It is fresh. I often think like, oh, I either think, oh, I should have written this differently or whatever. But sometimes I'm actually very impressed. But you also write a lot, and you've been writing for years and years. So, when you read a column from years ago, from the Jerusalem Report... I have a short memory, and I'm sometimes embarrassed, and sometimes I think, wow, that's not bad. That's not bad, right? Yes. There's a lot of advantages, Elisha, to having a short memory. And as you get older, it gets a lot shorter. And maybe that's good, because there's so much more to remember. So, the shorter it is, we don't have to carry the burden of memory. But, you know, one of my teachers, one of my many teachers, she actually published a number of books. And she said she was warned before the first book that she wrote by her own teacher who said, be careful, because what you write now cannot be erased. It's going to be out there. So, you will regret. You'll be happy, and you'll also regret having written the book. And she said she does indeed regretting every single book she wrote. A little later in our podcast, Elisha, I'm going to hit you with some of these wonderful observations of Rabbi Sachs. But I'll mention this one, because it's relevant. We need to be careful how we use our words, for they hold great power within them. Words are so immensely powerful, and sometimes we don't take them seriously enough. And I think I mentioned this before, but something I found very helpful, and I only learned this in older age. Before you say words vocally, you verbalize them, listen to them in your head. And then ask yourself, do I really need to say this? Is it kind? Is it accurate? Is it true? Is it good? Is it constructive? And a lot of the things that I think of, I end up never saying. Yeah, yeah, that is so incredibly wise, Shlomo. I could not agree with you more. On the one hand, we really want to be spontaneous, we want to flow, we want to, when our communication is always premeditated and controlled, it can really stifle a conversation, it can even stifle a relationship. Yet, the words that we say, they cannot be taken back. Just like this woman who wrote all these books said she's going to regret having written, even those words of wisdom, she's a very wise woman. And I think her books are amazing. But she feels that words give life to things. According to Jewish tradition, the world was created through words. Christian tradition too, but it's based on the Jewish tradition, the logos, the word. And that's very powerful. I don't think we're aware of how much our words create little worlds and realities every single moment. And we could say something in passing even, but the person who heard us or read us, maybe carrying these words now, hopefully not agitated, but maybe so, and mudding them in their heads and thinking about them and changing the course of their life for better and sometimes for worse. So Elisha, radio programs, I listen to them a lot, WBUR, Boston, and they have like a one, two, three second delay between the time that people speak and the time that I hear their words. And that is, lest somebody say something, profanity, which is not allowed in radio in America, so that they can bleep it or stop it. And so when we have a conversation, it's not so terrible if you have like a radio delay, a one, two, three second delay. It can be helpful sometimes. And I find it doesn't really block the flow. You hear the thought in your head and you think and proceed. Elisha, shoftim v'shotrim titenlecha v'shaarecha. And everybody talks about shotrim and shoftim and what they are and why we need them. And you, Elisha, in your creative imagination, you talk about shaarim, which becomes the operative important word. And you make this point. Maybe we'll just translate a second. So shoftim is judges, shotrim is police officers or law enforcers, and shaarim are the gates, so in all of your gates. Exactly. And you write these words. On a personal level, our physical gates are the means with which we meet others. Our eyes, our mouths, nose, hands, feet, pores, these are the gates where what is internal meets the external. There is much power contained in these meetings. And you also make the point that we are responsible for our gates and for controlling our gates and who enters our gates. And a personal story, Elisha, I was at the Technion for many years. I still am at the Technion. I was in a faculty as an economics professor with people who didn't value much what I was doing. And not all of them were ethically straight. Professors have a talent for stealing the ideas of some of their graduate students. I found that abhorrent. I didn't control my gates, Elisha, and I finally took early retirement and moved my gates to Zikron, thanks to my brilliant wife, and found Veerhavta, which is a different community and people I welcome, every single one, into my gates. But this is a brilliant observation. In my life, if I were to pass on advice to my children and grandchildren, choose the people with whom you associate. Choose the people in your community. This is crucial. And if you can, and you can, choose people who are consistently similar to your own values. Because if you don't, there will be great pain and great suffering. Wow, wow. So what you're saying is not just to control our own gates, but also it's not just to take responsibility over, well, I guess it is taking responsibility over our hearing, for example. We can't block our hearing, but we can relocate. We can move. We can move to places where what we hear is in par with our values. And that's really beautiful. I like that. Because I've wondered about that. As I was reading what I wrote many years ago that you just quoted, I thought to myself, can we really indeed control our gate of hearing, speaking? For sure, on the most part. But hearing, we can close our eyes, we can shut our eyes, but we can't really shut our ears. But what you're suggesting now, we actually can. We can decide to move away from a certain conversation, from the neighborhood, from a professional place or town or community. So what you're saying is choose to dwell among people that hearing, taking responsibility over your own hearing, that you can hear valuable things as opposed to trash and other unfortunate noise. Absolutely. We can control our gates. And as a side comment on this wonderful book of Deuteronomy, which I was dumb enough to scorn and berate, it's the discourses of Moshe. And what's interesting is Moshe is speaking to the Bnei Yisrael, to the children of Israel, but Elisha, he's speaking to each of us about gates and many other things because he uses the singular. He uses the singular. Not you plural, but you singular. Re'eh, look, behold, Shema, listen. So these are very personal messages, and with a gap of time of 3,000 years, they remain very fresh. These are practical pieces of advice. Yes, yes, yes. It's quite amazing that Deuteronomy, of all the books, seems to be the most personal, even though Moshe is standing in front of two million people or so. It depends how one chooses to count. And yet, so many of the verbs are in the singular form, which kind of suggests, as I think you're alluding to, we all tend to berate others, or we very often judge others and are blind to our own shortcomings. And something in the singular form, in this way of speech, kind of suggests, no, no, no, no. It's not about the people of Israel. It's not about everyone. Right now, we're talking about you. You do your own inner work, and there's a very good chance you'll see your immediate environment change accordingly. If we expect the environment to change, that usually does not work. When we do our own inner work, all of a sudden, miraculously, the environment changes, or we relocate. But when I was studying spiritual coaching 12 years ago, 13 years ago, more, 15 years ago, in 2008, it was a three-year program of spiritual coaching, and I remember it was basically all about self-responsibility. There's no such thing, so to speak, as the other and what others are doing. The work is our own work, our own inner work. And it's coming up also now with the demonstrations, with which I'll be honest here. I'm very much in favor of the demonstrations. I personally, theologically, strongly believe that I'm called to do my own inner work. Before going off to demonstrate, where am I? Where am I putting down my own judges and judicial system? Where am I slacking off in the law enforcement powers that be within? And it's not only because, first of all, you know, clean up your own mess before you try to clean the mess around you. I think also, almost on a mystical level or a metaphysical level, we attract an environment that mirrors our own inner environment. And when we can do our own inner work, the environment will mirror our own inner work. Indeed, and of course, the phrase inner work is especially relevant now, because on Thursday and Friday we celebrate Rosh Chodesh Elul. Right. Elul is the month before Rosh Hashanah. We have 30 days to do our serious inner work, our cheshbon nefesh, our soulful accounting. And you'll help us with that because we'll have classes that will discuss that and they're always memorable from year to year. I remember them. But the inner work is an important phrase. And I have an addition to that phrase, something I'm very fond of. There's a Danish philosopher, an existential philosopher, named Soren Kierkegaard. And Kierkegaard defined what he regards as the great tragedy of life. And I've run into this personally. Kierkegaard says, we learn life looking backward. We live life moving forward. There is a real asymmetry here. And I think the beauty of the Torah, especially Parshat Shoftim and the book of Deuteronomy, the beauty of the Torah is it helps us learn life moving forward because of the wonderful stories and moral lessons in it. But Kierkegaard may not be entirely right. You can also learn life moving forward. But it requires this inner work. Not everybody is able or willing to do that. The Torah helps. Yeah, yeah. And the beautiful metaphor that you gave with the radio station that you listened to in Boston, the fact that they have like a one to three second delay, that's a great idea. I would say it's even more than a metaphor. It's almost like a practical idea of delaying yourself. I remember a very good friend of mine who tends to speak very slowly. And every word is thought out. And I really enjoy listening to him because I can tell that every single word is he meant to say and is in its right place and is very, very accurate. Indeed. There are so many modern ideas in the Torah. It's amazing, Alisha. I discover them every year. And in this parasha, let me read what you write about this, about chaos and the role of chaos. Our inner world, we're talking about inner work. Our inner world is full of incredibly powerful forces. Deep within us there is probably a divine order. And God dwells within us. But, quoting you, what we usually sense is chaos and upheaval. Conflicting forces which feel much more real and frightening than a seemingly unattainable inner peace. Alisha, in my research on creativity and innovation, creativity, ideas, innovation, they don't come from order, Alisha. They don't come from inner peace. They come from bal agan. They come from chaos. That, Alisha, explains in part why big organizations which have management discipline and management manuals and strict rules, they have real trouble innovating because they have order but they don't have chaos. If you want ideas, introduce a little chaos and maybe good things will come out of it. Yeah, that's a beautiful insight. It explains a lot about the start-up nation of Israel. Israel is one big chaotic country. It's amazing how unregulated we all are, how much chaos there is in every encounter, in every situation, which often is displeasing and often it's uncomfortable. I wish we were a little bit more ruly and less unruly. But yet, it's through this chaos that, as you're saying, that creativity comes from this chaos. In fact, as we know, we've also spoken about it in this podcast, that the world was created from chaos and it could not have been otherwise. Everybody's been looking for us. Maybe the person who called you is now calling me. That could be. Yes, indeed. Getting back to your phrase of inner work, people who are at peace with themselves, who are comfortable with themselves, Alisha, these people will probably not do the inner work. The inner work requires that we be chaotic inside, that we be uncomfortable. That's another rule of creativity in start-ups. You have to leave your so-called comfort zone, where you think you know everything, you can do everything, you're fine, you're perfect, you're moral, you're good, and you have to be uncomfortable with the way things are, with who you are, because ideas, innovation, creation, creation, comes out of this chaotic inner discomfort that we have. Yes, I personally belong to a pretty large family today of people who have ADHD. If those who are listening, if you're among them, then you're part of our tribe. It's an ever-growing tribe. There are a lot of theories about it, and a lot has been written and spoken and taught. But one of the things we know about people who have ADD or ADHD is that they're often very creative, and there is this chaos inside of them, this hyper-activity that's going on inside of them, comes out in a lot of very creative ways. And there's this famous, famous story, I have this feeling that we may have discussed it at some point, the story of Rabbi Nachman of the two artists, the two painters. Did we talk about it? Do you remember? I'll just say briefly, because it really touches on what you said. One of my favorite stories of Rabbi Nachman, where the king, the king is always God, the king assigns two artists with the task of painting the palace. Now the palace is a metaphor for the world, the king is a metaphor for God, and the two artists are metaphors for either the tzaddik or the human being, not so clear, there are a lot of interpretations. And he gives them each half of the palace to decorate and paint. One of them immediately goes and learns the skills of art and drawing and painting and creates beautiful, beautiful, beautiful things. The other, who is from my tribe, who has ADHD and is a procrastinator, is doing many other things, but not doing what he was supposed to do, what he was assigned to do, because he has time, later, later, there are other things, and he's busy now being chaotic. And time passes, and he sees the other side of the palace, and it's really beautiful, really gorgeous, and he starts getting pressed for time. And he realizes, uh-oh, time is coming up. And he gets very, very nervous, as we procrastinators always do in the last minute. And then, as is always the case, at the very last minute, this amazing, amazing creative idea comes up. Now, I'm not going to say what it is, so people can actually go and read the story if they want, but I've always found when I've taught the story, those who have ADHD or procrastinators in general, they love the story. Those who are really well organized, they hate the story, and anyone who reads the story will understand why. I guess if you love the story, then you know which tribe you belong to. If you don't, then maybe you're better off, but you know where you belong. But it's really about the incredible creativity. And when the king comes in and sees both sides, one would think, oh, the king loved the side of the ADHD artist. But no, he loved them both. He loved both equally, and both were perfect in the king's eyes. So there's a lot to be said for both approaches. But for those of us who are procrastinators, for those of us who just know they're living with tremendous chaos inside of them, which comes out of ADHD, you're good. You're good. You're creative people. Don't despair. Don't let the world put you down. I know 12 years of school really put you down, but it's time to reconnect and know that you're the creative ones out there. So in teaching innovation, I often use a graph. Excuse me, Alicia. On the x-axis is discovery, creativity, chaos, ideas, innovation. On the y-axis, what I call delivery, which is implementing ideas, which takes order, discipline, management, instructions, and you need both of those things. And if you have just one, you won't get anywhere. Many big organizations kind of discard these weirdos. They really need them, but the weirdos alone can't do anything. They need the organization. Exactly. Exactly. Both artists are really necessary here. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's what time gives us, the keeping of time. Time is, in philosophical terms and mystical terms, time is an illusion. Time is made up. But time is our best friend to get things done. We know that we're not going to live forever. We have 120 years at best, and the clock is ticking. And that sense of urgency allows us to implement all these wild ideas within us. Indeed. So you tell a story about a king, and a king is mentioned in the Parsha, Alicia. That's right. And Rabbi Sacks has an insight. He tells us that there is no concept in the Torah that is more ambiguous than the notion of a king. The people ask for a king. They demand a king. And there's acquiescence in Jewish history, but the Torah is very ambivalent about the idea of a king or a ruler and has very clear instructions about who that ruler can be. It can't be someone pursuing wealth. It has to be someone who is modest and with all these characteristics, which don't always occur. It's very relevant today because we have the longest-serving prime minister in our history who is sometimes known as King Bibi. And it may be that we need something called a term limit, which is, okay, you can serve one term, two terms, but more than that, that's quite enough. That's quite enough. Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry. But it also reminds us that we human beings, we're the ones. This is not God wanting us to appoint a king. This is the people wanting a king. There's a part of us that wants someone powerful to tell us what to do, someone who knows, someone. And admiration that about 25%, 20%, 25% of the Israeli public seem to have for Bibi. Admiration really is a beautiful example of how we admire strong people. We want strong people to tell us what to do. We don't like people who give us freedom of thought, think for yourself. No, no, no, no. You tell me what to do. I'm lost in this world. And this need for a king is, I guess, part of the human psyche. It's related to my profession as an economist. President Harry Truman once said that he wanted a one-handed economist because he has all these economists who are saying, on the one hand, on the other hand, who see both sides of the issue. People want one-handed leaders who tell them what to do. Beautiful. At least I have an idea. I've connected some of the sort of one-liners, the snapshot quotes from Rabbi Sachs, and I'm going to read them to you and get your quick comments before we run out of time. Rabbi Sachs, our understanding of Torah can be illuminated by our understanding of the world. Beautiful, beautiful. So our understanding of Torah can be illuminated by our understanding of the world. So basically bring our wisdom of the world into the wisdom of Torah and vice versa. Okay, there's a lot to be said about that, but keep going and we'll... I think that one is crucial because I don't believe that you can understand the Torah unless you live in the world and work in the world and experience the world. Right, and that's a cause of a lot of tension in the world today. Can you not work and just study Torah all day long? Is that an effective study of Torah if you're not engaged in the world? Rabbi Sachs, we must be particular in our identity, but universal in our commitment to the human for future. Particular, universal. Beautiful, beautiful. Beauty, beauty can help us see the universe as God's work of art. Here I have a bit of a, I love beauty and as we all, we're all attracted to beauty. It's an evolutionary part of us. And yet, you know, there's a beautiful song by Leonard Cohen, Suzanne. It takes you by the garbage and the flowers. What is beauty? If we had a microscopic look into things, we could go into a pile of garbage, which stinks and is rotting, et cetera. But if we looked on the subatomic level, we'll see absolute beauty. So I think part of what we need to train ourselves spiritually is to really know that existence is exquisitely beautiful. And if we don't see it, it's about our gaze. It's about our seeing. Our seeing is not yet good enough. Excellent. Two more quickies. And this one is really relevant. I wrote this a long time ago. For a nation to flourish, politics must be moral. Politics must be moral. Yes. Yes. That one really hurts. Yes. Yes, it does. It hurts me a lot because everybody, especially very religious people, go around saying, bus drivers say this, when young ladies get on the bus and they're not dressed properly, you live in a Jewish state. Really? We're a Jewish state? We're a moral state? We take care of the poor. We look after the strangers. We take care of the migrants. We're ethical. We have no corruption. Really? We're a Jewish state? I think we have a long way to go. Yes. And the last one, Alicia. Rabbi Sachs again. Freedom is sustained only when a nation becomes a moral community. Until we become a moral community, we're not truly free because we have this huge burden on us of unethical behavior. Politics is about policy, and everybody knows that, but politics is, should be, about being good, about moral choices. And I think we need to discuss that a lot more if we want to be a really Jewish state. Yes. Yes. And it's tragic. It's not a good note to end on, I guess, but it's tragic that it's today Daska, the religious side of the political map, which is trying to diminish the power of the judiciary in order to allow for more corruption, for more injustice to go under the radar and not be scrutinized and be dealt with. And that's tragic. So what's left? What's left is for us to never, A, never give up hope to continue reading the book of Deuteronomy, for continuing to do our own inner work. And it's not useful. What I just said now a second ago is really not useful. It's not going to make any change in the world accusing the religious side of the political spectrum. It's just myself venting. I think the most effective thing is for each one of us to do their own inner work and to put judges and law enforcement officers in their own gates. And if we each just take responsibility over our own way of being in the world, it will be amazing how much better this world will be. Those are words to reflect on, Elisha, as we come through the month of Elul. Yes. So Shabbat Shalom. And things will get better. Some things will get better. It's a promise. They will get better. I agree with you 100%. Shabbat Shalom, Elisha. Shabbat Shalom. And Chodesh Tov. Chodesh Tov.