Podcast #61 Parashat Shmini

In this podcast, the hosts discuss Parashat Shemini and its significance. They mention that Parashat Shemini is the third parasha in the book of Leviticus and is a very powerful and dramatic parasha. They also talk about how Shabbat HaChodesh, which is the Shabbat before blessing the new moon of Nisan, is a time of panic and preparation for Pesach. They discuss the importance of asking for forgiveness and how it is hard for many people, especially Israelis, to admit when they have made a mistake. They also talk about the importance of listening and active listening in particular, as it is a way to understand and learn from others. The hosts mention research that shows that only 8% of comprehension as listeners comes from words, while 58% comes from understanding the emotions of the speaker and 56% comes from body language. They conclude by emphasizing the importance of accepting our mistakes and being forgiving towards ourselves and others. Shalom, everyone. Hello, everybody. It's another great Wednesday. By the time you get this podcast, it's going to be Friday, or Thursday, Friday, but we're hoping you're all well. We are in Parashat Shemini, a very, very powerful parasha. It's the third parasha in the book of Leviticus, of Vayikra, and very dramatic. It used to be my favorite parasha. After that, every parasha became my favorite parasha. But that was one of my first favorite parashot, because of this drama. This drama is so incredibly powerful. I don't know if we're going to be talking about that or not. Shlomo is the one who decides here. So, Shlomo, what are we going to talk about today? Let's set the stage. So, Parashat Shemini, this Shabbat, is also Shabbat HaChodesh. Shabbat HaChodesh is the Shabbat before we bless the new moon, bless the new month of Nisan. Nisan, in a sense, is a new year. It used to be, and still is, in a sense, a new year. It's spring. It's a time of renewal. The world renews itself. And according to a drasha that I found by a brilliant rabbanit, rabba, it's a time of panic, because it's a time when you have two weeks before Pesach. How are we going to get it all done? And it's a time for panic for us men as well, because we are about to return to slavery, we have to say it, after becoming free from the Egyptians, we're returning to slavery, and then we'll free ourselves again on the night of the Seder. And it's all to a good purpose. And the slavery you're talking about is the slavery of cleaning, and if it was totally up to us, it's a generalization, but maybe thousands wouldn't be as clean as some others in our nation and our people would have liked it to be. Exactly. My symbol of Pesach is the toothbrush, because literally we use the toothbrush in cleaning some things. Yes, so if it were up to me, I perhaps would not use a toothbrush. And let's remind everyone, all those who are listening that dust is not chametz. Just to remind us all. True. But chametz is chametz, and chametz hides in corners, and you've got to get to it and clean them all. So, Elisha, the droshah, you mentioned, we mentioned this in the Hebrew podcast. It's amazing to me you write, this is your droshah from 2017. My heavens, Elisha, that's only seven years ago. It seems like an eternity, doesn't it? Yes, before pandemic, before the war. Everything. You write that it's amazing to me that the first thing in the spiritual journey, this is, Shemini is the spiritual journey beginning. It's the day-to-day, seven days of preparation, then this big event, inaugurating Chanukah Tamishkan, doing the sacrifices. People are really into this. This is a big deal, Elisha. The first thing that happens, asking for forgiveness. Asking for slichah, the sin offering, korban hachata, and that's important. We begin our spiritual journey by asking forgiveness, a lesson in life here, Elisha. It's very hard for many of us, maybe I'll make a generalization, maybe for Israelis, to admit that we screwed up. We screwed up royally on October 7th. A lot of people screwed up. Some of them have asked for forgiveness. Others, very important positions, have not yet done it, certainly not sincerely. The people are waiting for it. If they read Parashat Shemini, I think they will understand why we need people to ask slichah. We'll give the context a little bit, but also I want to address what you just said. It's a very important point. First of all, it's important to say that what happened with Parashat Shemini is after seven days of preparation, as you said, they're about to inaugurate the Tamishkan, which is interesting. It's eight days. It's kind of like the Brits. We were born and then on the eighth day we're inaugurated. The story of Chanukah is eight days. Chanukah is also the inauguration, the re- inauguration of the temple. Number eight is a really important number. We also mentioned in the Hebrew podcast, which this time was before the English, that it was like after the first seven days of creation, Sunday is always the eighth day. The eighth day of a new beginning, of inaugurating a new week. So, Moshe instructs Aaron to offer the sin offering, the korban ha'slichah chatat and slichah, like the sin offering and asking for forgiveness. So what we're saying here is the whole process of inauguration begins with forgiveness, which reminds me, by the way, it just occurred to me now, when a couple gets married, the tradition is for the wife and the husband too, if he wants to, go to mikveh. Go to mikveh, like purify themselves, clean themselves, and they're not cleaning themselves from dirt. They're not cleaning themselves from, they weren't horrible people, they were human beings and they carry a lot of baggage. We human beings carry a lot of baggage. And the mikveh is an opportunity to cleanse ourselves from baggage before we open a new page in our life. So same thing here, it all starts with the sin offering. And then you say, on the 7th of October, since then there were people who really did ask forgiveness and took responsibility, and some people, as we know, haven't. I think one of our problems, all of us, is that we are easy to expect others to ask for forgiveness. It's really easy to see another person's sin. It's so much harder to see our own sin. We expect our leaders a bit more than any other common person. But I would encourage every one and one of us at this time, Parashat Shemini, and maybe even any day and every day, before we blame others, to also notice, okay, what do we need to ask forgiveness for? Not just on Yom Kippur, but just to be conscious of all those little sins that we commit daily, hourly, all the time, without intending to hurt anyone. We simply do. And asking forgiveness is really, really important. And Elisha, I think you make an important point in your drashah. You note in your drashah that we all sin, and you yourself say maybe every hour. And I'm thinking to myself, Arab Elisha sins every hour. Come on, give me a break. I think I may have figured it out. Not for you, but for me, personally. I think one of our biggest hourly sins is our inability to listen to people, to really listen. Because in a sense, Tzlichah begins with understanding, what have I done wrong? If you don't listen to other people, you never will come to that understanding. It's not in Google. You can't Google what are my sins. You listen to other people and understand how you've offended them and hurt them and so on. You really have to listen. And sometimes it's between the lines. I listened to a podcast called Hidden Brain. And the guest this week was Guy Yitzhakov. He's a psychologist at Haifa University. And his specialty is listening. And I think he picked that because, let's face it, we Israelis are terrible listeners. We are big time talkers. Maybe this is true of the Jewish people. I don't know. But I think Israelis especially, I see this all the time, Elisha. On television, it's very hard to watch news programs because the technique on a news program is, if you're being interviewed, if you're a politician, you continue to talk in a loud voice and ignore the questions of the interviewer and talk over them and don't let them get a word in because they might ask you an embarrassing question. This is terrible listening. So there are techniques that we can discuss about how to be better listeners. I think you're an amazing listener. And it's important to understand that being a good listener is not passive. It doesn't mean just sitting there and going, uh-huh, uh-huh. You have to listen actively. You practice this, Elisha. I don't know if you do this consciously or not, but you are an active listener. Being an active listener means you listen and you ask questions and you enter into the conversation with the person you're talking to and you elicit information by asking questions that indicate you understand, you get it, you're listening, and you want to learn more. Active listening. We need to practice active listening. And passive listening alone is not enough. First of all, thank you for the compliment. I'm not so sure it's always that deserving. I wish it was across the board and always in every situation. But it's a tough one. It's a tough one because what is the part in us that listens? Is it the brain? Is it the heart? What do we listen from? What are we listening to? Are we listening to the words? Are we listening to the person's anguish? Are we listening to the person's passion? Are we listening to the person's humanness? And very often we listen so much with our human ego, which is understandable. We don't want to be wrong. We don't want to be proved wrong. It's tough listening. It is, and here's some research that might be helpful, Alicia. So, what do we listen to and how do we listen? Some research about this. 8% of our comprehension as listeners, 8% is words and text and rational things, 8%. 58% is emotion, is understanding the emotion of the person that we're listening to, the heart. And 56% is body language, the way the person is speaking. If I'm speaking to you and I'm kind of sitting back and not really engaged, if I'm leaning forward, looking you in the eye, making eye contact. Listening involves a lot more than just what you're hearing. It involves what you're perceiving and what you're feeling. Right, right, Ken. Ken, and I'm wondering how we can indeed become better listeners and also how the parasha, I think maybe the parasha can help us in listening better through this whole thingamate of forgiveness, recognizing that we do sin, the fact that we err, we make mistakes, is not held against us. It's not, it's okay. Not only is it okay, it's the most human thing to do. We err all the time. There's a quote I also use in the parasha from Ecclesiastes, from Kohelet, that there's no righteous man on earth that doesn't ever sin. No such thing. So if we can really, if we can accept our humanness and love our humanness, we'll be able to accept our mistakes and then when we're confronted with our mistakes, maybe it'll be somewhat easier to say, you know what, yep, I hear you. I apologize. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to do that. But I see it now. I understand what you're saying and I apologize. And we see this in the parasha. Aaron's two sons are killed, consumed by fire. It's a terrible event. Aaron is supposed to eat the korban. He can't. He simply cannot. And Moshe rebukes him and Aaron explains, Moshe, I just can't do it right now. I had this terrible loss. And Moshe listens and forgives him. This is a lesson. We listen to other people and understand and feel their... empathize with their distress and not be rigid. Not be rigid. It's very important. So I think there are lessons to learn from what you're just saying. Like Aaron and Moshe's dialogue there. Because first of all, Moshe forgives him in the name of God. The sacrifices are the realm of the Divine. It's a religious act. And in a way, Moshe takes the permission to forgive Aaron on behalf of God because it is a godly moment. If it's a human moment, it's a godly moment. When a person can really bring their humanness, God is present. So Moshe can say, you're forgiven and you're forgiven from a divine place because I, God, created you human and I want you human. If you just say to Moshe, I'm not going to eat from this. Excuse me, I'm not going to eat from the sacrifices. I'm just too full. Then it would not have worked. Moshe would have told him there's a protocol here. You have to follow the protocol. But the minute he brought his human side to it, the divine side all of a sudden appeared. And so, before we wait for others to listen to us, maybe we can work on our humanness. If we're able to, if we're willing to be a bit more honest and take our vulnerability, be willing to be vulnerable, it makes wonders in the world when we're willing to be vulnerable. Absolutely. So, I'm going to make a suggestion, Lelisha, on active listening. This is from Guy Tarkoff and it's a little exercise. And I'm going to suggest that you and I try this and perhaps our podcast listeners an exercise in active listening. So, the exercise is this. Can you discover something about a loved one whom you've known for a long time, let's say your spouse, that you didn't know before? And the rule is, you cannot say, tell me something about yourself that I don't know. You have to discover it by active listening, by asking questions. And it has to be not too obvious. Is there something about Ronit that you can discover that I haven't known and you've been married for over 30 years? And I've been married to Sharona almost 57. Is there something I don't know about Sharona that I can discover by really perceptive active listening? Let's try it. Are you willing to try that? Of course. Good for you. I knew you would. Next week we'll report to our listeners and perhaps they can try it too. In a sense, forgiveness, many things. Compassion. Compassion is one of the most important human emotions. Compassion begins with listening because how can you be compassionate about someone if you don't really know them, if you don't hear them? We listen to people but we don't really hear them very often. Can we really listen and hear? Especially for Israelis and our political leaders, they are so bad at that. Yes. Yes. I'm willing to take on the challenge. There was something actually even this week that happened that Ronit and I had an argument, a fierce argument about, it sounds like so unimportant, about Israel's Israel, the way we explain ourselves about the world. My claim was that no, we can't do any better because we're dealing with lies. There are so many lies disseminated. How can you possibly combat lies? There's an idiom in Hebrew that says, go prove that you don't have a sister. You were accused that your sister is a prostitute, that's where it comes from. But you don't even have a sister. How do you even combat these lies? She insisted that no, we're just failing in this thing. It's all excuses. I was very defensive of our state of Israel and it's not excuses. The world is still full of lies. She was very angry that I was not listening and I thought to myself, okay, let's listen. I'm missing something here. I'm missing something here and for a moment there, there was a moment of chesed, of grace that I said to myself, okay, she seems to be so incredibly wrong in what she's saying, but she's not a stupid person. What is she saying to me? Let's not really understand what she's saying. So she continued. She repeated what she said or she elaborated and all of a sudden I got it. I got it like, aha, okay, no, you're right. I did find excuses for why we're not good at this and why we're not good at that, but there was this magical moment, it really was a magical moment that I could suddenly hear what she was saying, but hear, not just like hear the facts that she was saying, because I was hearing the facts, but hear on a deeper level and suddenly realizing, you know what? You're right. You're genuinely right and I was really enriched at that moment by learning something and it changed my perspective somewhat on our Hasbara, etc. It can't be that we're such a bright people and nation and we're failing so miserably at Hasbara and when I was able to get less defensive, I could suddenly hear her point and suddenly I was motivated to, you know what? Yeah, let's do something about it. Maybe we can contribute something to our Hasbara somehow. So Elisha, I can add to this. I just wrote a column, my regular column for Jerusalem Report. The title of the column was The TikTok War. I don't think you're on TikTok and neither am I, but all the kids are. TikTok is a social media with a short form video, 15 seconds to 28 seconds. Elisha, we are losing the TikTok war because we are not there and the young people are there and let me give you a small example. There is a child, a Gaza child named Amar Jamus and she's nine years old and she is a star of TikTok and she's on TikTok with hundreds of thousands of followers. She takes her cell phone and she talks about her plight, hunger, fear, destruction and it's powerful. She is a newspaper. She is a TV channel with a cell phone and a nine-year-old child who happens to be particularly verbose and we Israelis, we're not there. We're not on TikTok. And that's where the kids are. Elisha, that's where the kids are. So, there is a war that we're losing and we're not even fighting it. We're not even there and we should be. Right, right. Okay, so back to our parasha, there are all kinds of other things you prepared for us. Yes, so I mentioned in the Hebrew podcast Danny Kahneman, Daniel Kahneman, famous psychologist, Israeli psychologist, died at his home in Princeton a week ago on March 27th and he was a psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in Economics, of all things. That's a first in history. Now, in your drashai, Elisha, you point out that we are constantly sinning. Sometimes without knowing it or realizing it. And Daniel Kahneman together with Amos Tversky who passed away in 1995 those two have shown ways in which quotation marks we sin by behavior that is not entirely rational. Kahneman's latest book is called Noise, Elisha, and he makes a simple point. When you give a judge facts about a case and ask him what the sentence is, if you do that to a hundred judges, you get an enormous range of decisions from very strict to very lenient. If you give a radiologist an x-ray and show it to a hundred radiologists you get a huge range of decisions. And that's true of many fields. If you ask an insurance adjuster about what the risks are and what the premium should be, you get an enormous range. Much more than was expected. They did research on this and wrote a book about it called Noise. We are very arrogant about our expertise Elisha, but the truth is that given a situation there is a wide, wide range of facts about it, depending on who you are and what the day is and how the coffee was and how you slept that previous night. There are all kinds of decisions. So, arrogance is I think one of the most common sins in the sense that we overestimate our ability to make proper judgments. Even the wisest and most experienced and oldest among us. Yes. I'm kind of wondering how can we use Hanuman's and Tversky's wisdom and really overcome that on a daily basis. What would it require of us? It's not just thinking fast, thinking slow. It's also about slowing down for sure. The Torah has an answer. The answer is a wise protocol. In other words, guidance. The United States has been working on minimum sentencing in the sense that given a certain crime, some judges are very lenient, others are very, very strict. What would be a reasonable range for a sentence? The Torah and all of the Fayuka is basically a protocol. It's a step-by-step instruction about how to do the sacrifices. In a hospital, nothing would be done without a protocol because a mistake is fatal. You have to be very careful and people go without sleep. They work 12 or 15-hour shifts. They need to have clear instructions step-by-step. Protocols are helpful. We teach our entrepreneurship students. We offer them protocols for how do you start a business and what do you need to know? What do you need to do? What do you need to prepare? It's tiresome, very tiresome, but it's sometimes helpful. That's really interesting. If indeed we could lean more on protocols and less on our problematic intuition because our intuition can be very, very misleading and not to trust our intuition too much. That's interesting. Be loyal to the protocol. Follow the protocol. In this sense, you eliminate human errors by sticking to the protocol. Once in a while, within most protocols, there's also a caveat that should say on rare cases, you can deviate from this protocol and use your good judgment, but on really rare cases, there needs to be a justification to leave the protocol. Protocols are really important. As you say, it's all about protocol. It's all about protocol for the priest, how to bring holiness to the people, to the children of Israel. But there's also some really great humanity in Vayikra, despite the protocols and especially something that psychologists have been writing about fairly lately. In Parshat Shemini, Moshe instructs Aaron, the Mishkan, approach the altar. That indicates that Aaron is reluctant. He's sort of holding back for some reason. Why would Moshe have to tell him, hey, get in there. Go do your job. The answer comes from an interesting concept called the imposter syndrome. Many true leaders, Elisha, feel inadequate. Aaron felt inadequate to do this big job. Moshe felt inadequate to do his job. He asked God several times to let me out of this. I'm not worthy. I'm not able to do this. A true leader feels inadequate and is reluctant. An imposter gets up there and pretends that he knows it all. I will decide and I will lead and I will do this. It's true, especially of women. This concept of the imposter syndrome was originated by two women, two clinical psychologists. I find this is very much more true of women than of men. Men have bluster and they are full of macho and they can do it all. Very many women who are capable feel that they're not or they're put down by men. I've worked with groups of managers, and we have them do a complicated task. The men are in there telling people how to do this and that and organize. The women are standing back. I approach Michal and ask her, do you know how to do this? She says, sure. I said, why aren't you in there? The men are doing it. They know it all. I stopped everything and brought Michal to the front. She organized people. This was done beautifully. Elisa, I have this strong feeling if we had more women in leadership positions who felt inadequate but were able to do the job, we'd be a whole lot better off than having these arrogant men who are clueless. That's really interesting. There's something about feeling inadequate, which you're absolutely right. Moshe certainly felt inadequate. We need people who feel inadequate in order to help us all become more human. And to listen. If you feel inadequate, you're going to listen to other people and gather information. If you feel like you know it all, you're not going to listen to anybody. Right. That's very, very interesting. Taking from Moshe, not just his humility, but that he is feeling his basic sense of inadequacy. It's part of the deal here that's really, really interesting. Do we have time for one short comment? Yeah, I think so. Last night we had a wonderful event. We had a dedication of a book by Romim Saranga, one of our members of the Keilah. You were kind enough to edit the book. The book is titled Ma'ani Rotse, What Do I Want? It's a book of recipes to find out what we want. And I think it's brilliant. Because really, we don't always know what we want. And it's a search. It's a search. But it begins the book with a beautiful quote. I'll translate it. Sell your wisdom and buy mevucha. Buy what? Mevucha. Inadequacy. Buy inadequacy. Buy inadequacy. Share the world. If you know something, come forward and share that, but never ever drink your own Kool-Aid. Always be aware that you can learn from others. There's much to learn. And then you need others and you need to learn from others. Those two things are hard to combine. Share your wisdom and come forward gladly and willingly. But at the same time, moderate and never ever become arrogant or overconfident. A lot of bad things have happened in Israel because of this self-confidence and arrogance. Excessive. Yes, yes. Indeed. Okay, so we took such a minute to go to all kinds of very interesting places which are somewhat unexpected and we'll all work on our listening skills and one of my takeaways from this conversation is that feeling inadequate at different moments, different times is a really good sign. It's a sign that you're human, that you're in the right place because we are meant to feel part of this journey. In a sense, revealing weakness, weakness in the sense of not feeling adequate or know-it-all is actually a source of strength. It's an inner strength that you're able to do this and admit vulnerability. And so many of us in the male persuasion are unable to do that. I think it's a huge advantage that the female gender has over us. Yes. Okay, so there's a challenge for us and we want to wish you a great Shabbat, a Shabbat of listening, a Shabbat of being attuned and a Shabbat of compassion, a Shabbat of taking responsibility so that on the next eighth day, which is Sunday, on the next eighth day we will start the week, here in Israel we start the week on Sunday, in America or England you start the week on Monday obviously, but may the eighth day always be a beginning of a great week in which we are able to shed and discard the excessive baggage that we're carrying with us because we're not able to ask forgiveness, to be human and ask forgiveness and release all this excess baggage. Well said, Elisha, well said. So may we have a light Shabbat. Shabbat Shalom everyone. Leit Rot.