podcast #31 Parashat Nitzavim

Shlomo and Elisha discuss the Parashat Shavua, specifically the concept of Tshuva (repentance) and its connection to the Jewish calendar. They explore the views of Rambam and Ramban on Tshuva and the idea of returning to oneself. They also discuss the importance of choosing life and loving God, and how this can be achieved by appreciating the world and making it a better place. They reflect on the question of whether one can be commanded to love God and the freedom of choice in loving life under all circumstances. Shalom, Shlomo. Elisha, Shalom. And it's good to sit across from you again and discuss the Parashat Shavua. We're like inching our way, I don't know if that's an expression, but making our way towards the end of Devarim. We are. Nitzavim Vayelech. Nitzavim, and Elisha I'm always amazed at this incredible Jewish calendar that was developed in Babylon, Babylonia, by the diaspora of Jews. And it's such an exact calendar. There are so many things that fall into place at the right minute. For example, Nitzavim always, always comes before Rosh Hashanah, which is quite amazing. And there are many other things that happen too. How in the world did they know to do this? It's a feat of astronomical brilliance. And just parenthetically, Elisha, waiting for you, I managed to read part of the book on your desk by Art Green, your mentor and brilliant Rabbi Art Green. And Art Green notes that the calendars are evolution. Until Babylon, the Jewish calendar said that Pesach, the spring, the festival of the spring was the start of the year. Makes sense. Rebirth, spring, renewal. And then in Babylonia, they changed it and Tishrei became the first month, not Nisan, which is in the fall. And this was really a revolution. What in the world is going on? Why did they do this? How did they do this? What's the story? And, of course, they also redid the calendar, which is a miracle of precision. It is. Yeah, the Jewish calendar is quite an amazing project. I think there are many levels to address this question, this point. But one of them is the move from the agricultural, concrete, physical to the spiritual. And there's something to be said about exile, the exile from the land, the exile from the material, the exile from the seasons of the year. We're no longer grounded in the earth. We're now grounded in spirit. So, all of a sudden, Rosh Hashanah is a festival in the fall season, which makes perfect sense. If you ask me, when should one celebrate Rosh Hashanah? In the fall season, of course. Why in the fall season? Because it's the time of Tshuva. Tshuva comes from the word lashuv, to return. I love the imagery of how after the summer vacation, and forgive me if anyone's listened to this in Australia or New Zealand, but after the summer vacation of July and August, we're all returning back home. We're kind of returning back to routines. And that's Tshuva. And from there, you start a whole new year. So, indeed, for this parasha, we are all thinking about Tshuva as we approach Rosh Hashanah. And Elisha, I discovered an interesting debate between two great rabbis, Rambam and Ramban. I'm sure you're familiar with this. And they have different views about Tshuva. And it's related to what you just said about exile and coming home. The Rambam says Tshuva is a formal act closely related to the korbanot, to the sacrifices. And it's a staged event in which we recognize our sins. We do a vidui. We confess to our sins, like in a court of law. And we feel deep, deep remorse and a desire to change. And then we take action in order to repent and to mend our ways. Very much related to the korbanot, the sacrifices, etc. And, of course, his nemesis, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachmanides, said, No, no, no, you got it all wrong. This Tshuva is a spiritual thing about the people who have been in exile and have come to their country. It's about finding yourself, about finding who you truly are, about looking inward. You call this avodah shel halev. And Rabbi Sachs, our great Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, makes this, for me, very painful point. Which is that we, the Jewish people, have physically come home to our country. And this is an incredible event after 2,000 years. But we have not spiritually come home and done Tshuva as a people. Why? Because we haven't yet found ourselves in terms of who we are and what it means to have a Jewish people and to relate to non-Jews, for example. Something that's personally painful for me to look at our country and to see that we're not doing what the Torah suggested. We are not, as a country, doing Tshuva. That's beautiful. I'm glad you brought Nechmanides and Maimonides, one opposite the other, and how Tshuva can be viewed as an action that you take to repent and to do better, as opposed to Tshuva in the sense of returning back to yourself, returning back to who you truly should be, returning back to your divine mission in life. I agree with you. We're not living up to our own expectations. I'm kind of wondering, do we want to? I don't want to get too political here. It is very tragic, and you've actually pointed that out a few times. It's tragic that those who represent religion in Israel today, the religious parties, they're the ones who are the furthest away from the Torah, the furthest away from how one should treat creation and all of God's creation and all of God's children. Instead of being a light unto the nations, a light even within our own nation, they represent the exact opposite. Indeed. That's tragic. The parashah begins, Atem Nitzavim. This is said specifically, who is you? It's you, plural. Moshe is talking to the entire nation, but not just the nation who is there, to the nation that has come before and specifically to the nation that will come after. He's talking to us, Atem, Ani, Atem Nitzavim. Before you continue, for those who are not so fluent in Hebrew, maybe we should remind them, Atem Nitzavim, you stand here today. Moshe, this is the day that he's going to be leading the people. It's his birthday, he's 120 exactly, and also the day of his death. It's basically one of his last final speeches. He addresses the people saying, all of you, all of you are standing here today. As you're pointing out, there are two kinds of all of you. All of you who are physically present here, men, women, poor, rich, elderly, young, they're all standing there, but also future generations. You're all standing here before God today. Exactly, and Elisha, imagine this incredible scene. So, people are aware that Moshe is dying, their great leader, and they're all gathered together, massive people, two million maybe, and Moshe is standing up on a raised mountain somewhere, speaking to the people his last words. It's an incredibly dramatic speech, and his message is quite amazing. And the message is, and you quote this in your Rasha, Choose life. Okay, that sounds good. What does that mean, choose life? I'm alive, of course I've chosen life. Choose life by loving the Lord your God. For thereby you shall have life and shall long endure upon the soil. So, we choose life by loving God, and Elisha, this has escaped me for 80 years. How do you command someone to love God? What does it mean to love God? I love my wife, my family, I love my little dog. To love God, something you can't see, you can't touch. What does that mean? And thanks to this podcast, I think I've come to my own conclusion. Let me share with you what it means to love God. I found the answer, Elisha, in something that every Technion student studies, sometimes painfully, thermodynamics. There are two main laws of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is the study of energy. The first law of thermodynamics says energy is neither created nor destroyed. So, from the Big Bang, energy was released in matter. Of course, matter is destroyed, energy is created in the sun, but that's just a transformation of the matter, because matter is energy. We know that Einstein proved how energy and matter are related by a famous equation. So, the first law of thermodynamics says it's all there. So, what? Well, Elisha, I looked this up. The body, our body, our amazing bodies, our bodies have 30 trillion cells, 30 trillion cells, 4,000 cells for every human being alive on this earth. And in each of these little cells is something called a mitochondria. Mitochondria is a little motor, it's a little engine, and it takes in carbohydrates and makes energy so that we can do things. This is an incredible thing. It's an incredible thing, the human body, and in general, the amazing world that we live in. And God created this world. And if you believe that, you can love God by loving the world and appreciating this amazing world in which we live. And if you love the world and love God in doing so, then we are obligated to be good citizens of the world and make the world a better place. And it just becomes clear now to me, I am choosing life by trying to be a little creator on my own with these little mitochondria, little motors inside our 30 trillion cells. Yeah, that's beautiful, that's beautiful. And this is a huge question. Loving life, what if life sucks? What happens? Are you commanded to love God even when so many bad and terrible things happen? And if we follow, if we go back to Maimonides, Maimonides said, absolutely. Maimonides basically, the first commandment in Hayad HaKhazakah, in his collection of the law, is to love God, to know that there's God there and to love God. And can you indeed command someone to love God and on what premise? We're living in such a... In our day and age, life is so easy. And I know that people may be listening to it and saying, excuse me, my life is not easy. Come live my life and see how difficult my life is. But nevertheless, as difficult as it is, or as difficult as we sometimes make it to be, our lives, on the most part, we're healthy. We're usually more healthy than not healthy. Mortality is really low. Child mortality is really, really, really low. We have washing machines. And we don't have to wash diapers. We have disposable diapers, et cetera, et cetera. Life is a joy. And still, we don't love life regularly. And we don't love God. And in my humble opinion, that's where the freedom of choice lies. Yes, you can be angry at God or be angry at life or whoever and whatever you believe in. You have that freedom of choice. And you can make that conscious choice to love life under all circumstances and love God. And there are moments where it feels to me as if this is the only spiritual work that we are supposed to do. I agree. To love what is loved. And some people will say, but you know what? If you end up loving life as it is, then you won't change. You'll become apathetic and it won't change. I think the exact opposite happens. When we love God, love life, that's when energy is released to start changing and improving and growing and manifesting in a huge way a lot more than when we're angry at life, angry at God. But it's not an easy spiritual task at all. So, Alicia, you've discovered the two-thirds of the world that is dark energy that we can't observe. It's all the energy that's generated by all those people who love life and who embellish, enhance life by using their energy to make life better. Alicia, I'm thinking of my sister. My sister passed away two years ago. She was 90. She had a good life. She had Parkinson's toward the last 10 years of her life. Parkinson's is a problem. It's a problematic illness. She had trouble using her fingers. She was a piano player. She was a painter. She had trouble holding the brush. And when I would speak to my sister every day, I called her in the afternoon. It was morning there. I would ask her how she is. And she would tell me how much she was enjoying her oatmeal for her breakfast. She found ways to love life by taking little pleasures and by having an optimistic outlook on life. By the way, I still eat oatmeal every morning, and I think of her when I do that. That's beautiful. And it's really good. It's really good. I recommend it to everybody. In little ways, we can love God by simply enjoying our life and taking pleasure even in the little things. In your class, Alicia, on Sunday, you ended the class by playing this amazing song, which the words begin, Lo kalai, lo kalado keno. Our path in life is not easy. And Alicia, I looked around the room, and there were people with tears in their eyes because it spoke to them because their life was not so easy. And they maybe were remembering loved ones. And it's true for every single person. But it's part of life, and it's actually part of the beauty of life. I don't want to lecture upon this, but if life were just a smooth path with only sunshine and no rain or no clouds, would it really be the beautiful life we know? Life is rich and full, and it's got ups and it has downs, and we go through them. And somehow we create the energy as little creators by the way we express our love for this incredible world that we live in. Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you're insisting on this idea of the mitochondria. Did I say it correctly in English? Mitochondria. Right. Yeah. Mitochondria. Okay. I had my five kudos in biology, and I remember studying it, what, like 40 years ago? Yeah. Well, more, 43, 44 years ago. And I remember being very, very deeply touched by that idea. Basically, you know, what you're insinuating, what you're suggesting is that the energy, you started off by saying, you know, energy is not created and energy is not destroyed. It's there. The energy is always there. It just changes form. It takes different form and different shape. An idea that I love dearly. But yet, we feel, subjectively speaking, we can be really tired and exhausted. We can say, oh, today I have no energy. And then a minute later, not necessarily after a good night's sleep, it could even be a minute later without any, you know, coffee or anything, suddenly we could feel energized. What happened? What changed? I mean, we weren't just suddenly filled with more energy because energy is not created nor destroyed. So what happened? Something within us connected psychically or spiritually or psychologically, connected with life. There was a moment there of, we didn't see it necessarily this way, but there was a moment there of loving life. People often think of love as something romantic. And as Eric Fromm taught us, we're not talking about romantic love. It's not about falling in love. It's not about being in denial in order to love what is. It's a state of being, a state of mind of connecting. We can be in connection with life. We can feel life as it's being lived through us. Or we can be detached from life because we just can't stand it anymore or for whatever reason. And I think the call to love life is the commitment to be in life, to live life fully. And it could also be through pain. It could also be through to be truly angry, not to be wild and throw things in the air and beat people up, but to really connect with the sense of anger right now that's within us. That's a way of living life. And that's even a way of loving life because we're fully alive in the moment. Exactly. And we're actually commanded to do this. I'm very fond of Pirkei Avot. And one of the sayings of the wise rabbis in Pirkei Avot, in only four words, You cannot be a deeply religious person loving God by closing your door and closing your windows and blocking your way from society. Be a part of the world. Be in the world. Right. And Elisha, I want to go back to thermodynamics. Because I mentioned there are two laws of thermodynamics. And the second law is also insightful in the context of the Parsha and Torah. The second law of thermodynamics says, only in two words, Entropy increases. Entropy means chaos, disorder. I have proof, by the way. Come to my office at the Technion sometime. You'll see the second law of thermodynamics in action. Entropy. What does that mean? Entropy increases. We humans, who are created by God, we have an important role. We have to battle against and rage against this entropy and make order where there is disorder. Because there is constant disorder. We have a function in life. We are given energy. And we get up and we can use that energy in the most amazing and creative ways to fight against the entropy that is constantly increasing. Now, we know from the physicists, Elisha, many billions of years, the universe is cooling. It's slowing down. And eventually, this whole process will stop and everything will be cold. But that's billions of years ahead. Meanwhile, we have a job to do here on earth. And that is to combat the second law of thermodynamics by doing good. And you do that by loving life and being an integral part of life and using all the gifts that we've been given in order to do that. Okay, that's a really good point. Maybe I should ask you to make that point in our next class on Sunday night as we're talking about what happens, what we've been studying now, is what happens when our world is breaking down. And when everything seems to be, you know, the vessel is cracked. So we've been discussing that. And perhaps loving life in this particular context of the second law that you've mentioned is to know that entropy is a way of freeing energy that's trapped in a certain form and no longer needs to be in that form so that a new form can be born. And for a new form to be born, the old form needs to dissolve. And for us, it's really difficult seeing an old form dissolve because we're part of that old form. And, you know, our world is changing. And the forms that we're used to are falling apart. They're crumbling. And it's really, really difficult and painful. And one of the people that I've mentioned also in class, David Passig, a futurist. I mentioned him here as well. He's not a spiritual futurist. He's an academic. He's at the Bar-Ilan University. He's suggesting that he has this really optimistic view of life. By listening to him, you can really feel the love of life that he has in him. And he talks about the entropy, the breaking down of everything, in loving terms, in expectations. So what's next? What's going to appear next in our lives, in our children's lives, in anticipation and curiosity? Okay, God, what's next in your plan for us? Yes. And the instrument that we use to combat this entropy to love life and in doing so to love God is our amazing brains. And, Elisha, this is literal. You talk about how we use energy and we capture energy. We do this through our brains. It's a true fact. Our brains consume 20% of our total energy consumption. Now, I'm not talking about our biceps or our legs or when we're running. Thinking, thinking. Our brains really need a lot of that energy, and they use, on average, 20% of the total consumption. If we have, like, 3,000 calories a day, then 600 calories goes to our brains that are thinking all the time, how do we combat this entropy and create things of value to make people happier and smarter and wiser and healthier? So maybe, first of all, I love that. I love that idea. I mean, my whole philosophy of life is that the world was created through thought, and we, being in God's image, we create our world and our life through thought. And thinking is a tool that we use to create our reality. And then, perhaps, instead of battling entropy, maybe we should enter a new kind of relationship with entropy, seeing entropy not as an enemy, but rather as a mechanism by which our freedom of thought, our free thinking, will allow us to dissolve that which isn't working anymore and think a new reality into existence. We do it anyway, we're just not conscious of it. And using our imagination, using our... Or in other words, if we want to start getting practical about loving God, one way is be more mindful of what you're imagining and use your incredible imagination to imagine things being better and imagine a better future as opposed to an apocalyptic one. But for that, we need entropy. We need that. We need to be able to let old patterns dissolve and for new ones to form. We do indeed. And, Elisha, there is another beautiful insight in this parasha, and you mentioned it in the drashah. It's a quote that Dov Elboim used to use to introduce his lovely pre-Shabbat program about the parasha. And the quote is, Surely this instruction which I enjoin upon you this day, Moshe is telling people, is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It's not in the heavens. Lo bashamayim. Nor is it beyond the sea. It is within reach. It is here within us. I've spent my life in an academic institution with very smart people. We have a tendency in academic life to overly complicate. And Moshe is coming to tell us, listen people, it's pretty simple. Love God. Choose life. Do good. It's pretty simple. And it's not rocket science, as they say. It's just simple, pragmatic, simple life. Do it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And that reminder is extremely helpful. It is simple. There's a beautiful song by Leah Goldberg that we sing here quite a lot on Friday nights. Things are simple and they're alive. Just reach out and touch them. Absolutely. Elisha, in many of your droshot, you have a little section called Avodah Sheb Alev, Avodah Shel Alev, working our inner selves, looking deeply into ourselves. And I found a little exercise I'm going to try on you in the context of tshuva, as we move up toward Rosh Hashanah. And the exercise is, what advice would you give to your past self? Elisha, imagine yourself, maybe as a young officer, maybe in officer's school, officer's training, maybe before, maybe as a shaliach in the United States, and you're speaking to that person, maybe in the late 20s, 30s, as you are now, and giving that person advice. What would you tell your younger self as a wise, experienced rabbi? First of all, I actually do this exercise with myself quite often, when I kind of go back to my old self, and usually it's the adolescent self. Adolescence is a difficult time in life, and I had a lot of challenges, and today I look back and it's like, what challenge? What are you talking about? Come on, you had a great life. But we don't know it at the time, that our life is actually really good and great. But I remember those dark night of the soul, and I have one thing that I always say to the good old Elisha of 15, 16 year old, I always say, Elisha, I know that everything will be okay. Everything will be okay. I know it doesn't look this way right now, but it will. It always will. Always will be okay. And it sounds so simplistic, but I think that is indeed, I think it's true. I think it's true, even we were discussing on Sunday night, even if I walk in the valley of death, I shall fear no evil for you are with me. On that level, even if I walk in the valley of death, everything will be okay. Everything is okay. So is dying. And I'm not looking forward to dying, and I certainly don't want to feel physical pain, and none of us do. But there's a deep, deep knowing in me today that everything is okay, and everything will be okay. That's amazing, Elisha, because I have a very similar experience, even though we come from very different backgrounds. I was raised Jewish. I was a Balfila, my dad taught me, in a small community, with a very small Jewish community, and then went to college, where I was with non-Jews. This is not New York City, this is Canada, in Kingston, Ontario, and always had a deep sense of isolation, of being alone, and it troubled me a lot, and I had a dream of a country of Jewish people, where I would be in my own country. As Arthur Kessler said, we were a nation without a shadow, because a country is the shadow that a nation throws, and we Jews had no shadow, until we had a country. And I got professional help, to some degree, and we reached a conclusion together, that my solution was to finish studying as quickly as I could, and I did a quick and dirty PhD as fast as I could, and went to Israel, and everything worked out. It was true, being in my own country, with millions of other people who are also Jewish, and who share my values, that was the key to loving life, and loving God, and loving the world, and fulfilling myself as a Jew. So I'm with you, I would say to that younger person, okay, it'll work out. You're going to Israel, just get it done, get on that plane, and that's where things are going to work out. Yeah, yeah. What didn't work out, Elisha, I had this idea of finding an Israeli young lady, and I met Sharona in New York, and she was on the same path as I was, so we shared it together, and that really did work out. It sure did, it sure did. Yes, so wherever you are, whether you're in Israel, or in Canada, or in the U.S., or even in Australia or New Zealand, wherever you may be, everything will be okay. Everything is okay, and let's just practice loving life, and loving God. Absolutely. It will work out. It will work out. Yeah, and if you think it's way too simplistic, you're absolutely right. Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom.