Podcast #35 Simchat Torah

Shalom and Elisha discuss the upcoming Hebrew blog and podcast. They mention that it is Sukkot and the blessing is "mo'adim l'simcha" which means "times of joy". They then discuss Elisha's process of writing drashahs, which involves focusing and connecting with the implicit. They talk about the connection between creativity and divine inspiration. They then discuss an incident where a protest tore down the mechitza on Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv. They mention that this act of violence goes against the idea of being a blessing to the world. They also discuss Rabbi Sachs' book on confronting religious violence. Elisha's drashah is based on Qohelet and talks about the choice between justice and peace, emphasizing the importance of choosing peace. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Elisha. Oh sorry, we are switching to English. English. English, yes. Next week we will start the Hebrew blog. Yeah, yeah. Big news by the way everyone. We are starting also a podcast in Hebrew. We are going to start next week with a new Torah reading cycle. So this week is Sukkot. We are actually in the middle of Sukkot. So the blessing is mo'adim l'simcha and we hope you are enjoying the Sukkot because as we discussed last week it is all about joy. So hopefully you are connected with joy. It is about joy but an incident that we will discuss based on your drashah has cast a shadow on that joy I must say. Elisha, I am an ostrich. I put my head in the sand and try to ignore this. This is something you cannot ignore. It is an elephant in the room. Before we discuss it, Elisha, I have been curious. I want to ask you this. I have been wanting to ask you for a long time. We are going to discuss a drashah that you wrote just a few days ago. As somebody who researches creativity, what is the process by which you write these wonderful drashahs? How does that work? Where do the ideas come from? Well, first of all, it is a mystery. First of all, let's give God most of the credit here or all the credit. It comes from the mystery. I practice what is called focusing. Focusing is kind of a meditative practice. The founder would not necessarily consider it a meditative practice I think that is a good description. I think I have mentioned him on this podcast. His name is Eugene Jendlin. He passed away a few years ago. Originally an Austrian Jew who immigrated to America. He basically developed this whole notion of the implicit, the underlying implicit which seeks to become explicit. It is the art of connecting to that which wants to become. There is a whole process. I am a student of his philosophy. I study his philosophy every week with a group. We study the philosophy of the implicit. It is really, really fascinating. You can only study it through a form of meditation. He was a professor. He was the head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Nevertheless, that is a book you can only grasp by using his tools of focusing. That is fascinating. I am going to read that book. It connects with something I have also found in creativity. Creative people mind their subconscious. Our brains are always working and below the conscious level, always coming up with ideas and they are very quiet. I guess you have to focus in order to listen to them. When you do, they come up and they are very, very useful and insightful. Yes, that is true. He calls it thinking at the edge. It is like reaching the edge of the known, the edge of what you already know and starting to connect with that which is under the surface, with that which is not known yet, but that which kind of seeks to be known, is begging to be known, so to speak. That links to my theory that essentially creativity is an act of divine mercy, divine intervention, divine inspiration, because some of the ideas that entrepreneurs come up with, creative people, are just mind-boggling. You just wonder, where in the world did that come from? Yes, and it certainly is divine. When I was studying, focusing quite a few years ago, I was the only one religious in the group. To me, everything we studied was like a two-year program. Everything we studied was all about God. It was all about God and people who were all secular Israelis who despised religion and I would say at least at the time were atheists. What has God got to do with it and what has Judaism got to do with it? Today, interestingly enough, this whole community is already talking about the divine, recognizing that it comes from that sphere. Elisha, we need to deal with this terrible incident that happened. Perhaps you can describe it for our listeners very quickly. The incident of the protest tearing down the Mechitza on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Tel Aviv. Right, and also something similar happened in Zichon Yaakov as well. So the incident pretty much is a few days before Yom Kippur, the day before Yom Kippur, the Supreme Court ruled that in public areas, in the public sphere, there cannot be anything that segregates, that is not inclusive of every single person. Hence, the Mechitza is not legal in the public sphere. It's obviously legal in synagogues and places where you, if you hire the space, you can do whatever you want. And a group in Tel Aviv, a Jewish group that's trying to spread orthodox practice in Tel Aviv decided to have Yom Kippur services in Dizengoff Center, at the Dizengoff Square, the famous Dizengoff Square, where people come and hang out. And they put up the Mechitza. Now the Mechitza there was kind of a bit of a sneaky Mechitza. It was made up of Israeli flags, and it could be interpreted as decorations. It didn't look, you know, on purpose, didn't quite look like a Mechitza, but when people started coming to the service, they knew, you know, they knew this was a Mechitza. A group of demonstrators who were linked with demonstrations against the reform, the judicial reform, basically came and tore it down. And there was a lot of, I would say, you know, there was verbal violence and even some physical violence, and they tore down the Mechitza. And everybody in that story, everybody there was to blame. I mean, to begin with, this would not have taken place in the public sphere. It was against the law. But then again, is that what you do when you're against something? Do you tear it down? So there's a lot of criticism, and even those who are really in favor of the protest against the judiciary reform, judicial reform, were very critical of the extremism taken by the protesters. And it was just shocking when we all heard about it after Yom Kippur. People were really shocked. It's still kind of in the air. Absolutely. Elisha, before I refer to your take on this, and your wonderful drashah, which is related to Qohelet, the book that we read on Sukkot, I want to read a passage from a book by our beloved Rabbi Sachs. Jonathan Sachs wrote a book in 2015 called Not in God's Name, Confronting Religious Violence. I'm reading it now. This is a short passage, which is relevant. Abraham himself sought to be a blessing to others, regardless of their faith. That idea, ignored for many of the intervening centuries, remains the simplest definition of Abrahamic faith. That means Jews and Muslims, because we're both descended from Abraham. It is not our task to conquer or convert the world or enforce uniformity of belief. It is our task to be a blessing to the world. The use of religion for political ends is not righteousness, but idolatry. To invoke God to justify violence against the innocent is not an act of sanctity, but of sacrilege. I don't think you could say it any stronger than that. It's an act of sacrilege, done by many of those who, in the name of religion or justice or whatever. Morality? Ethics? Yeah, yeah, yeah. In our Bar Mitzvah program here at Vahav, for years and years and years, we tell the kids, you know, Abraham, our forefather, had one mitzvah. He was told to go forth, to go on a journey. He was told to have a circumcision of himself, of his son Ishmael, and later of his son Isaac. And he was given a lot of mitzvot, but his ultimate mitzvah was one, to be a blessing, to be a blessing. And it's kind of one of the mottos of our Bar Mitzvah program. And the question we usually ask the kids is, being descendants of Abraham, how are you a blessing to the world? And we ask them both to think about it. We give them a list of mitzvot, a list of 13 mitzvot, because it's a Bar Mitzvah program. I'm sorry. And we ask them which mitzvah on this list really defines their passion. So it could be anything from, love thy neighbors as you would love yourself, all the way to, honor the elderly, etc. And also one of the ones that they love is treating animals kindly. And we tell them, you know, there could be many, many others, but may your compass in life, with the compass that you use, the mitzvot may change, but the compass is, be a source of blessing. Be a blessing. And if it's not a blessing, then you're not performing whatever the mitzvah is, you're not performing it correctly. And both sides of this incident were, neither of them were in sync with the commandment to be a blessing. So in a moment I'll refer to your take on this and your wonderful drashah, Elisha, but a small story, parenthetical story. So the son of a cousin named Jacob, before his bar mitzvah, was in search of a blessing, to become a blessing, and he chose an unusual one. His blessing was to visit people who were sitting shiva, people he didn't know from the community, but people he didn't really know as a kid, as a 12 year old. Wow. And it's pretty strange, we don't often have 12 year olds at shiva, at shivas. And he brought a blessing to these people, as this young person, the future, this kid, the future generations. I think that was quite amazing. I was privileged to kind of counsel him about this, and he described it when he gave his drashah, his bar mitzvah drashah. But Elisha, to less pleasant matters, your drashah makes a powerful, clear statement. You couldn't say it any clearer. And it's based on Qohelet. Qohelet talks about a time for war, and a time for peace. And you notice that in all of Qohelet, in all of the choices that Qohelet gives us, and these are either or choices, either war or peace, either this or that. It doesn't mention justice. And you note that we are now at a time where we are supposedly facing an either or choice. Either justice or shalom. Shalom by peace. And we are choosing justice. Each side is choosing how it sees justice, when we should really be choosing peace, which is overriding. And I'll take a moment to go back in my history, back to college 50 years ago, 60 years ago. I went to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in Canada. At that time, every student in arts and science had to take a course called Philosophy I, taught by A.R.C. Duncan, a tough Scottish philosopher who was a wonderful teacher. And we studied logic, which is very mathematical. Alicia, in logic, there are operators. Either or. Either A is true or B is true. Not both A and B. Clear choice. Black and white. And there's another logical operator called both and. Both A and B. And I think translating your point in your drashah to the language of logic we are excessively using the logic of justice. Either you're right or I'm right. And of course, I'm right because it's me. Instead of using the language of peace, which is both you are right and I am right. And this truth is somewhere in this gray area between black and white. And nobody likes gray. At least 1% of the world thinks gray is their favorite color. Nobody else. But the world is gray, as you so often point out in your drashah. And truth is gray. And morality and ethics are gray. And even the Torah is somewhat in the gray area. Even Harry Potter, which we'll talk about in a moment, is somewhat gray with this combination of evil and good. So it's a shame. It's a shame we should be choosing both and, which is a unifying principle rather than either or. Right, right. But in the spirit of both and, it's both idea of the both and and the idea of the either or. It's both and of these two theories of logic. The two possibilities. There are times, as Ecclesiastes is saying, as Kohelet is saying, there are times for war. There are times for waging war. We just commemorated the Yom Kippur War, 50 years to the Yom Kippur War, which this week is the Gregorian date of the war, the 6th of October. And we basically, we had to go out to war. We were forced to go out to war. We had no choice but to fight. We did have a choice. We had a choice of raising a white flag and it would have been a disaster. And we did choose to fight, but we really had no choice but to choose fighting. So there are times where we need to choose either or. And that's okay as well. There are times for that. And those who went out tearing down the Mechitza, and those who went out erecting the Mechitza in the first place, they felt, I'm sure they felt, in their own internal justice system, that they had to do what they did. They had to, in the name of preserving Judaism, we need to show the Tel Aviv people the truth of the beauty of Judaism, the Mechitza between men and women, and how beautiful it can be to daven together on two sides of the Mechitza and to help the secular in Tel Aviv see the light. I'm sure they didn't do it in order to say, okay, let's see, how do we disrupt life in Tel Aviv? How do we make their life a misery? I'm sure they believe that they're bringing the light. However, Judaism does not believe in missionary practices. But nevertheless, they thought they were doing things very, very, very great. And those who came and tore down the Mechitza, it's like, this is really dangerous. Israel could easily become an Iran. It's upon us to tear down the Mechitza and we're also protecting the law because police would not be enforcing it and this would be in violation of the Supreme Court ruling. So we have to take action. We have no choice. So it was a tragic case of the two sides believing they really, really had to. And the difficulty here, it's so complicated because both sides really believed that what they're doing is really important. And we, from the side, feel that peace is more important. But we do need to recognize, as we're discussing it, and that's what's so hard about it, really hard, to recognize that while we think that peace is preferable over justice, at this time, at this particular time, they really believed, in the sake of the future of the Jewish people or the state of Israel, that their path is better. So one may ask, so what do we do? What do we do when both sides really believe, you know, Ecclesiastes did say, there's a time for peace and a time for war. There's a time for this and a time for that. What if one side believes, okay, now it's a time for war. Now is a time for war and not a time for peace. And sometimes, sometimes only in retrospect, we could look back, we could look back and say, that was wrong, that was wrong. The extremism that took the Second Temple Jews, sweeped them into rebellion and brought down the Second Temple, I think in retrospect, we can say it was wrong. But only in retrospect. At the time, certainly the extremists thought this was the wisest thing to do. So what am I trying to say? What am I trying to say? I'm trying to say that it's not easy. Choosing peace over justice, there are times where justice is more important than peace. One of the emails I received in response to the Drashah, I'm not going to mention names, but there's a good chance that he'll be listening to this podcast. He wrote back and shared an anecdote, a story, of when he tried his best with a friend to approach the dispute they had in peaceful measures and it just made matters worse. And eventually he had no choice and seek justice. And by seeking justice, it meant war. And he regretted not taking that path earlier. So I wrote back and said, indeed, there's a time for this and there's a time for that. And being human, we don't always know what's the right thing to do at one particular time. But I think one other thing to bear in mind is, as Rabbi Nachman said, the world is a narrow bridge and the most important thing is not to fear. It's a narrow bridge. And we don't know what's right at this point. Is it a time for peace or is it a time for justice, for war? Even though we said justice is not one of the options here. But it's a very narrow bridge and we have to act with what we know at that particular moment in time. But we also have to act with a compass. And I think what you started off with, we can ask ourselves, is this bringing a blessing? Is this bringing a blessing? Not just to me personally. Okay, there will be a Mechitzah here, so I can daven as an Orthodox Jew, let's say, it brings me a blessing. Does it bring the world a blessing? Is it really a blessing to the world? And if we really ponder it, it would be good to talk to other people about it because sometimes we are hijacked by our own thinking. And if we come to the conclusion, you know what? There are better ways of bringing a blessing to the world, to advance our cause. And the same thing on the other side. Is Onyom Kippur tearing down a Mechitzah? Is that going to bring a blessing to the world? Is it truly going to bring... And we have to, have to, have to consult other people. Because when we are in a certain... That's why the Chavruta system is so wonderful. When we are trapped in one mode of thinking, we're always wrong. We're always wrong because there's always the other side. So if we can find a Chavruta, someone who we know will not agree with us, it could be our wife, for example. Always a good idea. To tell us, to argue with us, to argue this thing through, will be somewhat wiser. God, I've spoken for a long time. Let me tell you about a project which makes what you just said operational. So unlike me, I hide my head in the sand and don't watch the news. And Sharona is deeply involved and she has taken action. Sharona is Shlomo's wife. Sharona has taken some leadership in a project called Siyach Mugan, Sheltered Protected Conversation. Alicia, tomorrow we'll host 8 to 10 people in our Sukkah. And these are people with very diverse views. Very. And we will sit in our Sukkah and in a structured fashion, we will speak to one another, not interrupting, and we will listen. And we will do some little exercises and we'll simply listen. We'll simply learn to listen one to the other. Shalom instead of justice. Trying to understand. Beautiful. And it's very small. What possible difference could a small meeting in a small Sukkah with 8 to 10 people make? But Alicia, this is happening in a lot of places in Tehran and elsewhere. And it's a start. It's a start because, as we've often said in this podcast, we Israelis, we are wonderful talkers, but boy, do we have a lot to learn in terms of listening. Yeah. So I want to share a story along those lines. A few years ago, here in Zichon Yaakov, there was a project that the Ministry of Social Welfare initiated. It's a lot more complicated than that, but I'm going to simplify the story a little bit. They were going to build a hostel for mentally disturbed people who were going to be living in the middle, in one of the neighborhoods, one of the quiet neighborhoods of Zichon Yaakov. These are people who cannot be cured or healed, and they are going to be living there for the rest of their lives. These are people who were drug addicts. Sometimes, unfortunately, they return back to drugs, but the idea is to help them live drug-free. Some of them performed all kinds of crimes, and they're considered reasonably safe to the public, but nevertheless, it's in the middle of a neighborhood, and people in the neighborhood, and then throughout Zichon Yaakov, there was an outcry. How dare they put up a hostel in the middle of our neighborhood? No one asked us. First of all, there's a fear of the kids walking around. Is it going to be safe? Then there was a fear of the value of property dropping because now there's a, and this is not a temporary arrangement. It's a permanent arrangement, and there was an uproar, and Zichon Yaakov was split between people who said cynically, not in my backyard or along those lines, and those who said, how can we, who are relatively comfortable here in Zichon Yaakov, how can we not open our hearts and homes to people whose life has been cruel to them, and we have everything we need. Let's help others as well, and it got very emotional. Do you remember that? Do you remember that period? Yes, I do. And it was really emotional, and there was also a lot of anger that the company who did that did it in a very sneaky fashion, so there was no dialogue, there was no, and everybody on both sides of this argument tried to drag us, Vahavta, into this argument to back them up. I'm saying, you're Vahavta to love. You've got to help fight in favor of this hostel. We had a lot of Bar Mitzvah families who lived in that neighborhood and were really wonderful people, really good people, and said, we are not willing for this to be in our neighborhood. We don't know enough about it. We were not part of their decision making, etc., etc., etc. And both sides insisted, you cannot stand by. You, Vahavta, you, Rabbi Elisha, you need to get involved. And I thought, okay, what do we do? So I decided to have an evening of dialogue. And both our chairwomen at the time, we had two chairwomen, they were both really against it. And I said, no, that's the least we can do, and the rules were, the rules were that we had like a clock where people could sign up to speak. They had three minutes. When the three minutes were up, they were up, and no one was allowed to comment. Even before the evening started, I received phone calls from organizers on both sides, you need to let us, the leaders of this, speak, because people are just ignorant. They don't understand. They don't know. We will set them straight. And I remember the tension. There were about 60 people here from both sides of this argument, and it was, you could feel the tension in the air, and I set the ground rules. I set the ground rules. They were very, very clear. I said, no, no interruptions are permitted, and I'm asking not even facial interruptions, like saying, like rolling your eyes up, none whatsoever. The three minutes exactly, when the three minutes are over, they're over. And we set up a table outside with cold water. Anyone who feels they can't take it anymore, just walk out, drink a glass of water, come back when you're... The evening was amazing. Shlomo, it was amazing, person after person, and people spoke from the depths of their hearts. Those who were in favor, those who were against, those who... People sat in my office before that evening and cried, how can we let this project fall? We've got to support it. And people on the other side, too. And the listening was amazing, Shlomo, and I... We didn't reach... There was no vote after that, none whatsoever. At the end of the evening, about an hour and a half, people were able, after they spoke, if they wanted to speak again, to sign up at the end of the list again, and there was a big board, people could sign up. And at some point, the list exhausted itself. People just said all there was to say. And we ended the evening with a few words of thanking everyone for their listening. People really listened. And people hung out. And then people from both sides, went over and chatted and talked, and... I'm not saying that that caused the whole issue to subside. But historically speaking, it did subside shortly thereafter. I don't even know how it ended. I do know that we have here a hostel right behind Vahasta. We have a hostel for young people with all kinds of mental conditions, I'm not so sure. We hear their voices, and the yelling, and the shouting, and you know what? It's just part of Torah. It's part of Torah as well. Amazing. So I think what you're doing, your Sukkah, is beautiful. And I hope to be in one. You're doing two evenings. I hope to make it to at least one of them. You did it first, Elisha. And this is, I think, an example of both and, rather than either or. You listen to the either or, and you come to realize both and, there is right on both sides. Right. That was the conclusion. Shlomo, that was... When people were listening, they suddenly saw, oh... Here's another quick story. Do we have time for another quick story? We do. A quick one. Okay, a quick one. We, and if I shared it, just tell me I did, and I'll be quiet. Before we moved into this present, in our present location, we were in the center of Zichron Yaakov, and we were harassed by the nearby Sephardic Orthodox synagogue. And a wonderful, wonderful man who was a member of the kilat at the time, he's living in America, a great peacemaker, he asked me if I would want to, for him to be a mediator. I said, yes, please do. And he said, okay, but here's the condition. I want you to first convince me why they are right. And after you convince me they are right, I will go over and ask them if they want to join the mediation. And what a great exercise. I had to sit there, and he said, I need you to convince me that they are right. Why? Having a conservative synagogue in the center of Zichron Yaakov is a threat to Zichron Yaakov, to Judaism, to Israel, etc. And I had to convince him. And it was a very powerful exercise. And eventually, they did not want to be part of the mediation. In the end, I benefited greatly from this exercise. And the best thing is, because of that, we made a decision not to stay and fight. We left, we moved, and since then, we're here in our current location, which we love dearly. So, I'm not sure who the person was who suggested that, but it has basis in very deep psychological research called cognitive dissonance. And the research goes as follows. You take someone who deeply opposes vaccination, and you get them to make a speech promoting it, supporting it. And the act of supporting something modifies your views. Let's say it that way. It doesn't totally change. It modifies your views when you have to speak in terms of the people who oppose you. Yeah, yeah. So, I do want to give him credit. He's called Jay Rothman, and he's an internationally well-known mediator. He's trained. He's trained, and he clearly knows the literature. Alicia, we can't end. We cannot end without mentioning Harry Potter. Of course. Very quickly, because you're a fan of Harry Potter. You mentioned Harry Potter in your dresser. You read all the seven Harry Potter books with your son, Jonathan, who loved them. The man who played Dumbledore, Aaron Dumbledore, in the movies, wonderful actor named Michael Gambon, passed away a few days ago. And I mentioned to you that I thought Harry Potter is an example of either or because the clear cut between good and evil, between Harry, David doesn't know he's a wizard, and Voldemort, that's evil for us. It's very clear, black and white. And you pointed out to me with many examples that that's not the case that Harry Potter is an example of this gray area because the bad guys sometimes are pretty good, and even some of the good guys are not so good very often. Harry Potter is an amazing book. It sold 600 million copies in the seven volumes and made billions of dollars. The franchise is worth $26 billion, several movies, I think eight movies actually. And there's more lesson in Harry Potter not just in the Torah. Yes, and ultimately the lesson in Harry Potter is love, is love. He was saved by his mother's love. Now it's a very Christian series, very religious, deeply religious, beautiful, I love it. Very, very, very Christian, although also very, very Jewish on many levels. And at the end of the day the answer is love. And the fact that in the two other books, in one of the later books, Harry Potter has two sons and a daughter. One son is in Gryffindor and the other son is in Slytherin. That's unbelievable. And he named them, one of them is named after Snape. And Snape was the evil guy throughout the books. And only in the seventh book you realize there was a lot of gray there. So just to end with this, Alicia, when you asked J.K. Rawlings, the author, by the way her name is Joanna, and she used her name on the first book and the publisher said you can't use your name Joanna because young male boys like your son Yonatan, they won't read a book written by a girl. So she had to use J.K. Those were the days, Alicia, 1997, not that long ago. Amazing. Yeah, but she was asked what's the theme of Harry Potter books? And she said the theme is death. Death? Well her mother died just before she wrote the first book. And it was kind of on her mind. But that's not the theme of the book at all. The theme, as you say, is absolutely love. And it appears in every one of the seven books. Right, yeah. Which is why we're called V'ahavda. Exactly. Love, love, and choose both and. And let's listen to each other. Please listen to each other. Amen, amen, amen. So, Shlomo, thank you. And everyone, have a great Simchat Torah and Shemini Atzeret. And return to the blessed routine. Wow, am I looking forward to the routine. And Alicia, let's remember that it's so simple. Let's act so that we are a blessing, like Avraham. Yes, yes. Leitraot. Leitraot.