Podcast #60: Parashat Tsav

Shlomo just came back from a class on entrepreneurship. They discussed the connections between high-tech entrepreneurship and the Bible, specifically the sacrifices in the book of Leviticus. The second portion, Tzav, focuses on the guidelines for performing the sacrifices. The speaker talks about the importance of following protocols in high-stakes situations like hospitals. They also discuss the shift from temple worship to home worship in Jewish history and the challenges of giving and receiving compliments. The speaker highlights the importance of pivoting and the impact of the right person introducing a new idea at the right time. Shalom Shlomo, Shalom Alisha, Shalom LeKulam, hi everyone, we're in English right now, I have to remember that, so it's Tuesday, Tuesday afternoon, and Shlomo just came back from his weekly class on Yezamut, on entrepreneurship, correct, is that the title, yes, and which often comes up in our conversations, and who knows, maybe it will even come up today, I don't know. It's amazing, the connections that I find every single week, especially this week, we'll talk about it in a moment, modern day high tech entrepreneurship, and the Bible, especially Vayikra, the sacrifices, what in the world could be the connection, powerful. I'm curious now, so we're in the book of Leviticus, and we're in the second parasha, parasha Tzav, so just maybe just say that the theme of the parasha is, it's really a continuation from Vayikra, Vayikra was the sacrifices that the children of Israel were commanded to bring, or offered to bring, asked to bring, and the second parasha, parasha Tzav, are the way the Kohanim are meant to perform these sacrifices, so if Vayikra was more of a calling out, Vayikra, calling out, Tzav is commanding, ordering, so that's what the second parasha is about. And you say this really clearly in your Gashah, I quote, the guidelines for giving, Vayikra, are gentle and inviting, those of receiving, the Kohanim, are precise and stern, Tzav, command, do it, and there's something modern in this Elisha. So when we have something really, really important to do that could be life-threatening if there's a mistake, take hospitals for example, nurses work 12-hour shifts and they're exhausted, and God forbid if they make a mistake with medication, or doctors, or surgeons, so hospitals have the equivalent of what we read in parasha Tzav, what you call the protocol, it's a checklist and you follow that absolutely carefully every step of the way, and God forbid if you depart from it through fatigue or carelessness or lack of mindfulness, so yes, the Tzav, there are occasions in life when we have to follow parasha Tzav and command, do it by the book, as they say, by the book, by the way, we Jews are not really terrific at that, we like to break the rules, but sometimes you've got to follow the rules. Yes, yes, yes, that's very true, it's part of what makes us special, but it can be very, very annoying. And you say this clearly, the language of commandment Tzav ensures that the priest will not stray one ayodah from the protocol, he has to do it, they have to do it, exactly as written, and there's a message in that. Right, and Vayikra, I think is the most accurate book of all the books, and we have, coming up next week is parasha Tshmini, the parasha of when the two sons of Aaron are burnt as they bring an alien fire, we don't know what that alien fire is, it could very well be that they just moved a tiny bit from the protocol, and that brought about a terrible, terrible disaster. And you know, something that I'm going to teach in a workshop to a high-tech company very soon, relates to Vayikra and Tzav, it's a paradox in high-tech between what I call discovery, creativity, ideas, wild ideas, and delivery, which is implementing your ideas in a very organized and disciplined way. Discipline and indiscipline, wild ideas and structured management. And a high-tech company, a start-up, is totally undisciplined and balagan, total, and they have to transition toward becoming an organized, methodical business, efficient business, and many of them don't succeed, it's very difficult. It's a change in culture, it's a switch, you might call it a pivot, and this parasha as well is an amazing example, at least in history, of a pivot that saved the Jewish people. Now you have to see more. So in the year 70, the Romans besieged Jerusalem, starved the people, then captured Jerusalem, and then destroyed the temple. That was a huge blow to Jews, and it could have been the end of Judaism, because all of our rituals were around the temple. All the sacrifices, the chagin, the holidays, the festivals, all of them built around the holy temple, and for the second time, the Romans destroyed it. It looked like the end for the Jewish people. And then this amazing man came along, Rabban Yochanan ben Zechariah, and according to legend, and it may be true, it sounds true to me, he was smuggled out of Jerusalem, out of the siege in a coffin, as if he were dead, and went to Yavneh. And he said, according to what I researched, he was a brilliant expert in geopolitics. He knew that Vespasian, who was the general besieging Jerusalem, he knew that Vespasian was going to become the next emperor of the Roman Empire, and he developed a relationship with him, and he cut a deal with him. Now I don't know how he did that. What bargaining chips do we have with the Jewish people compared to the Roman Empire? But Vespasian agreed to a number of terms, including letting Yochanan ben Zechariah set up a yeshiva, a school, in Yavneh. But the pivot here, which is interesting, is that this man, this one person, Rabban Yochanan ben Zechariah, who is apparently the first to be called Rav in the Mishnah, is a very early sage, figured out, okay, we don't have the Mishkan, the holy temple, we don't have it, okay, so the Jewish home will be the temple, and people will pray there. Not just on the holy temple, people will pray in their home. Wait a second, in order to pray, you have to know how to read. Okay, so we must teach our children from the age of six how to read, how to read Hebrew. And the Jews became literate at a time when only the wealthy elite were literate. This was an incredible pivot done by this brilliant man who seemed to have a skill in negotiation, geopolitics, and religion, being a brilliant sage. And that saved the Jewish people, and other religions copied and made religion part of the home, not just part of a sacrificial ritual. Very interesting. So that was a major turning point in Jewish history, the transition from temple to study, to the home, and how do you see parashat Tzav being a pivotal moment of change? So first of all, the theme in your Dosha is really important, the asymmetry between giving and receiving. Giving is a very gentle act, it's not commanded, and receiving is an act with a protocol. And there's a reason for that, which is that it's sometimes, sometimes harder to receive. You mentioned this. We very often have problems accepting reality as it is, and accepting a compliment as a gift. I think you and I both have that problem that we face. It makes me very uncomfortable when people praise me. There's kind of a reason for it, Alicia. In American culture, it's very common to offer people compliments, right and left. Whether you mean it or not, it's part of the ethic. And that's why sometimes it's very hard to know, is this person really sincere, or is he just buttering me up? In Israeli culture, the opposite. We criticize people, and sometimes in Israel, and I've complimented people, they look at me and say, what's the guy's game? What's his game? What does he want from me? So we Jews, we don't do well at either giving compliments or receiving them. And the Parsha has very strict rules about receiving, the Kohanim, who receive the sacrifice and they have to do it according to the protocol. But the pivot I wanted to mention is that the whole book of Vayikra, 10 Parshot, are all about sacrifices, and they're a key part of life, a crucial part of life, and very, very detailed. And a brilliant Rabbi came along, looked at reality, saw reality as it was, and pivoted the whole nation, the whole religion, the whole people, toward a different approach, a totally different approach. All of this within the Torah. It was amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. Well, there are a lot of amazing things here. First of all, the actual idea that the right person at the right time, at a pivotal moment, comes and changes the course of history, or rather, kind of prepares the nation, humanity, a company, to take its next step, a visionary moment, so that's really beautiful. It could be that the person was indeed divinely inspired, or simply was the right person at the right time, and it just fitted perfectly. But there's also, I think, another thing that's really interesting here is not just the person, but the idea, the idea that kind of is suddenly introduced to the world. So the idea that's introduced in the first story about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who introduces the idea of Judaism as a form of study and personal worship, worship of the heart, and you can do it at home, you can do it anywhere, you don't need a temple for that, but you need to be literate, you need to study, and in order to bring it to your own home, your own home needs to be evolved. So you can't just be a simple peasant who has no education and no spiritual education and grounding in spirituality. And in the book of Vayikra, part of becoming a nation, it's really, the idea here is, specifically in this Tirasha, because there are many ideas, but I want to stick to this Tirasha, of the way energy flows, the way life flows. Life flows through giving and receiving, and giving and receiving, and the Torah starts, one of the first tragic stories of the Torah is with Cain and Abel, who both want to give, give God, give the Great Father, and Hevel's gift is, he gives from the choicest of his flock, and God is willing to receive it, and Abel is delightful. Cain brings from the fruit of the land, we don't know if it's the choicest or not, it could be his rotten tomatoes, we don't know, and God will not receive it. And the story gets stuck, and Cain's life becomes derailed, and he becomes enraged, and he is jealous, and it leads to the first murder. So the idea of giving, we all, deep inside, it's something that, I'm not so sure it's, every person, every stage in life wants to give, I think it's something we start, we develop at a certain point, at a certain point in life, we understand that the biggest pleasure we have is giving, is sacrificing, is moving the energy along. And then, as I said at the very beginning, if there's not someone on the other side that wants to receive it, then the whole process is stuck. So just, there's a person that I'm counseling, and we're good friends, he's very religious, he lives in one of the settlements in the West Bank, and he has a lot to give to the world, and he feels like the world is not, that no one wants his gift. He's doing a lot of things which are okay, but what he really wants to give to the world, the world doesn't want to receive. And it's a major crisis for him, that he has something he loves to give, but there's no one who wants to receive it. And that's tragic, and that's what we're working on, we're working on how to, what is that stuckness in the flow, how did that happen, what does that mean, what does that mean in his life, and how could he be more attentive to the flow in his life, so that the river starts flowing again, the river of life's energy. So there's another beautiful issue that you raise in the Darshah that comes out in this Darshah related to receiving and giving, and it's a difference between the Jewish people and other peoples. The Americans have a document they worship, they love, called the Declaration of Independence, an amazing document from 1776, and it says that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Okay, that sounds good, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is not a Jewish idea. We have a different concept. Let me cite some numbers, I'm a number guy. So every year the United Nations does a world happiness survey, believe it or not. I read it recently, and I was shocked. Okay, I have an explanation. Okay. Israel continuously, perpetually ranks very, very high. Number five. Number five this year. As your Scandinavian countries, Israel's number five. The countries that are at the top are the Scandinavian, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and then Israel. Unbelievable. Yeah. So how do we explain this? And America continues to drop in the survey. America is 23. I think it dropped from 15 to 23 or something. Way down, way down. And the state of Palestine, which is in there, because 139 countries recognize it, is 103. And the number one, the last, the very last on the list, it's a shame, is Afghanistan, which is understandable. Number five, Alicia, what is going on? The question is basically self-evaluated happiness. But it's not really about happiness, Alicia. It's about life satisfaction. How satisfied are you with your life? And Israelis rank high. Now there's some statistical issues here because the study was done partly before, partly after October 7th. Right. And we did go down in some aspects of it, and they did a three-year moving average. It's not important. We consistently rank high, and we still do. And why? Because in terms of life satisfaction, what gives you satisfaction in life? All the money, filling your closets, your Nike shoes, and iPhone number 12, model 12. No, 12 is old, slow-mo. No. What gives us satisfaction in life is meaning, to have meaning to your life. And many people when they grow older realize suddenly, why was I put here? What was the meaning of my life? And we Israelis, by living in Israel, in a Jewish country, and struggling to maintain the country and grow the country and raise our children, we, by definition, you have meaning. You step on the soil, and suddenly you have meaning as a Jew living in a Jewish state. There was a famous Apple marketing executive. He was the marketer for Macintosh, one of the best computer ever. I had a Macintosh. His name was Guy Kawasaki. And his counsel to entrepreneurs was, make meaning, not money. Which means, create value for people. Basically, give to people. And you'll find meaning in that way. And if you do that really well, well, probably you'll do well financially, but that's not the goal. Make meaning. And when you make meaning in life, you have satisfaction. But in order to make meaning, as you say with this person you're counseling, you have to give appropriately. But there has to be people who receive. And it has to be two ways. And they're equally important, the receivers as well as the givers. Right. So to translate this to our parasha specifically, we're talking about the givers are from the parasha of Barikra, the people of Israel. The receivers are the kohanim, the priests, in the name of God. They're receiving in God's name, kind of telling every Israelite, your gift is wanted. Your gift has been received by God. And that's such a great feeling that you know that the priests are not just saying, oh, we love the lamb that you brought us. It was so delicious. Exactly. That's not what they're supposed to say. We even, in the Seder Pesach, the very last thing is Nirzah, that it's been wanted and received. God appreciated the sacrifice. And that's exactly where Cain's issue started when his gift was not received. And I'm wondering, first of all, I'm wondering two things in relation to what you said. I wonder if it's just Israelis, Jewish Israelis, or if it's Jews worldwide. I know that the survey doesn't differentiate between religions within the United States, but I wonder if it's a Jewish thing and not just a Jewish-Israeli thing. And I don't have an answer for it, obviously, but I have a feeling that Jews living in the diaspora outside of Israel, who don't have the sense of purpose that we in Israel have, nevertheless, Jews so often are so engaged in the world, in tikkun olam, in doing good things. It's such a Jewish thing to be engaged and to see the world as a place that you have a responsibility in that maybe goes beyond the State of Israel. And this is creating a major problem now, Elisha. I've seen articles in the New York Times about this. There's a divide between Jews abroad and Israelis. Liberal Jews in America feel that we are behaving in an un-Jewish fashion toward the people we're fighting. And we Israelis feel that we are defending our country, and terrible things were done to us, and we have the right to defend ourselves. And there's a really big gap, and it's growing precisely for that reason, precisely because we are Jews. We have soft hearts, absolutely. Right. We have soft hearts, and we feel we have a role to fill in the world. And are we filling this role or not? And yes, and we actually talked a bit about that last week, when responding to a question someone asked, if we're aware, if we in Israel are aware of the suffering that's going on there in Gaza, or just talking only about our own pain, our own loss. It's a tough one. It's a really tough one. I read something interesting this weekend. It helped me understand something, Elisha. So, a key prayer in our religion is the Shema. And in addition to the first statement, Shema Yisrael, we have right away, You shall love the Lord thy God. And it's a commandment. You shall. You shall love the Lord thy God. And the question is, can you command an emotion? And why love God? Why not just obey? And there's an answer that I found this week that is fascinating. There's a Jewish scholar in a business school of all places, NYU Business School, a really good business school. And he's a psychologist who deals with moral philosophy. And he's written a wonderful book called, The Righteous Mind, Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. And his answer is so simple, and it explains the Torah, in my opinion. When you make a moral choice or a moral decision, do you do it with the part of your brain that is rational, on the one hand, on the other hand, reason, logic, or do you do it with your gut, with your emotion, with your feeling? And the answer is, based on research, is that moral decisions are emotional. Like all the decisions we make, they're based on emotions. And we differ in our emotions. And so some people on the right have emotions about freedom and liberty, and not messing around with people and telling them what to do. And people on the left have emotions about fairness and equality. And we all feel strongly, but we feel, the dominant word is feel. We make moral beliefs and decisions based on our emotions. Ve'ahavta, you shall love God. And the Torah seems to be aware of that. In what way do you think the Torah, I think so too, but in what way do you think the Torah is aware of that? By commanding us in our religious precepts, in our religion, in our belief in God, in our attitude, in our relationship to God, to love God. Because if you truly love God, your moral decisions will come out of a feeling of love for God and his people, which he has created. And moral behavior coming out of the emotion of love is really powerful. It's more powerful than the reason part of your brain, because you can use reason to justify anything, and people do it all the time. But this gut emotion, that's powerful. That's powerful and enduring. So if we connect these dots together, then we have the great idea in the book of Deuteronomy to love God. And in Leviticus, it's how do you love God? You give. You give and you let God's life energy flow in the world. You let it flow by giving. So it's one thing, it's a childish thing to love on the basis of receiving. If you give me, I will love you. Or I love you because you give me, because you protect me, because you're my savior, because you know, etc, etc. And it's different as a mature person to love via giving. And it's giving, the sacrifice or giving of yourself. We don't recognize it because we think that today we go to the supermarket and buy our meat there. But in the past, the livestock was part of your family. They were, you know, we have a dog, relatively, somewhat new. We actually got the dog on the 7th of October. It's unbelievable. And we were, that was the date that we're supposed to get it. And that was the day we got the dog, which was a great thing because it really helped them, I think, or needs more than myself, and deal with this war being so immersed with, it's quite a, it's a, it's a Belgian, Belgian shepherd, which is right. Beautiful. Beautiful. And boy, is a handful. High energy all the time. Right. And we need a lot of, we're getting a lot of guidance to how to raise that sweet, sweet dog. And, and it's quite amazing to see how that dog is, is just naturally giving, naturally receiving. And it forces us also to give, it's not like a baby, you know, a baby that's born, obviously you give the baby, you nurture the baby, but here's this dog where the, you know, demands our, our, our care. And we can't just easily say, oh, that's way too much. I'm, we're giving him away. There were some moments, but when you know, of course not, you know, we're, and the dog here is, and I don't want to compare gods to, to priests, God forbid, but, but the dog in a way is a conduit, or everything could be a conduit for, for the flow of energy, for giving and for receiving. And yes, it's a, it's a really important, like loving through nurturing, loving through giving. And it's something that you develop over time. I'm, I'm not so sure I see it in young children. Young children are more, and Sharona, your wife can shed more light on that. But my sense is that young children, first of all, learn how to, how to receive, how to receive, because that's also really important. We mentioned that in the, in the beginning of, of the podcast, that first of all, we need to be able to receive. If we're not able to receive, then again, we block the energy. So a young child, if they won't receive, they won't survive. And, but at some point in life, around Bar Mitzvah, I think that's what happens around Bar Mitzvah age, something starts changing. You still want to receive. We all need to receive. We all need certain things, but we start recognizing a whole new muscle in our being, the muscle of, of giving, of giving back, of circulating the life energy. Otherwise we get pathologically stuck and, and ill. Absolutely. And I have a story about that, Alicia. So we have a leaky roof in our house. In fact, two thirds of Israel now have leaky roofs because we had a really, really wet winter. And the two thirds are in my house. Yes. You had an especially leaky roof. And so did our chairperson. Our house became a shower. Yes. So we brought an expert, the person who fixed Daphna's leaky roof, her waterfall roof. And he told us all kinds of things, what had to be done, how to do it and so on. And then what sold me on this, this amazing person, is he looked me in the eye and he said, I like to solve problems. He's not in the business to make fortunes of money. He's in the business because he truly likes to solve problems. And he was very proud when he told us about how he solved Daphna's problem, which was really, really bad and other problems. That's what he does in his business. And it gives meaning, his meaning to his life. And people who solve problems are people who give and there are, on the other end, people who receive. And it's like exactly as you said, it's a flow. You know, for poor am I dressed up as a doctor, my life's dream. I asked my daughter, who's a doctor, if 81 is too old to go to med school. And she felt maybe it would be a little bit late. And I had a little saying on my costume that said, a community is a medicine. And that's exactly how I feel. When you're in a place where there is this flow of giving and receiving, and it has to be two ways. One way straight doesn't work. When you're in such a community, it's actually like medicine. It prolongs your life. I have evidence of this. The United States has a surgeon general. That's the chief doctor of the United States. His name is Vivek Murthy. He's of Indian background. And he's on a campaign now about the latest pandemic. And it's not about COVID or flu. It's a pandemic of loneliness in America. People are dying from loneliness. They have cardiac illness and other things. And he's written a book about this epidemic of loneliness, partly because of social media. Worse for girls than boys, by the way. And he did an interesting experiment, Alicia. In New York, he gathered a lot of people together in a stadium. And he said, take out your cell phones. Purposely did it using technology. Take out your cell phones. And I want you to call somebody whom you really love and appreciate. And tell them that. And everybody took out their phone. And he called somebody, the kid, the grandchild, or whatever. And then they turned out the lights. And he said, now turn on the flashlight on your cell phone. And all these lights went on in the stadium. And people felt they were part of a community. This is a community of giving. And on the other end, somebody who's receiving. Yeah. That's interesting. It's an interesting experiment. It's more of a creative metaphor for the kinds of giving and receiving and being part of a community. And it's very beautiful. I know we have to end. And time flies when you're talking about the flow of energy in the world, in life. But I think at some point, we mentioned a piece. I can't remember who wrote it. But if you look at all the terrible things that happened on October 7th, you get a very bleak, bleak picture. If you look at all the amazing things that happened on October 7th, all the flashlights, all the moments of deep, deep courageous and amazing giving, you get a huge, huge ray of light from the same event of the 7th of October. So it's not about life. It's about what we do with life. It's about, can we be part of the flow of energy? Can we be part of giving? Are we part of that? And that also takes receiving. If we don't know how to receive, then it's really hard to give. If you don't know how to receive, you block the energy. So it really takes both. Absolutely. I'm working on it. And I'm on the train. And a young soldier lady, one girl soldier, offers me a seat. I used to be offended. I need to sit down. And lately, I take the seat. Thank you very much. That's the right thing to do. Yes. Even though I know you, you don't really have to sit down. You don't need it. But that's beautiful. That's beautiful. That's a good, you know, and thank you. Thank you for giving me your seat. It takes a lot of humility. So let's keep the flow of energy flowing. Amen. Amen. And Shabbat Shalom to everyone. Shabbat Shalom to all.