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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss the current war in Israel, and how Parashat Bereshit may assist us in reframing it all.
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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss the current war in Israel, and how Parashat Bereshit may assist us in reframing it all.
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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss the current war in Israel, and how Parashat Bereshit may assist us in reframing it all.
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Four days away from a horrific pogrom, the speaker expresses sadness, shock, and fear. They discuss the difficulty of finding words of comfort and solace in the midst of tragedy. They talk about the importance of silence and honoring those who have been lost. They mention the creation story in the Torah and the significance of darkness. They discuss different ways of reading the Torah and the need for personal growth and interpretation. They mention a verse from Jeremiah and the consequences of not listening to warnings. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Elisha. And Shalom to everyone. We're recording this on Tuesday, the 10th of October. We're only four days away from the horrific, horrific, horrific pogrom. There's not a better word to describe it. What we experienced was a pogrom that we Jews have experienced throughout Jewish history. And we're in the midst of it. We're still in a state of shock. So I don't know what we're going to be talking about. You know, Shlomo is the only one who has a clue here. But I do want to just express how deeply sad and shocked and somewhat scared we all are. And for those of us, for those who are listening to us from overseas, from the diaspora, my feeling is it's probably even harder there. Because here at least we feel we have some kind of involvement and we can do things. Outside of Israel, it's even harder. So having said all of that, there's a lot to be said about that. And I'm sure things are going to come up as we'll talk. So Shlomo, we're back to Bereshit, back to the very beginning, back to the story of creation. So what have you prepared for us today? Elisha, I've been an educator for almost 60 years. You are an educator as well, as well as a spiritual leader. Educators, their tools are words. And I've probably spoken and written many millions of words, too many. And usually I have lots of words. But Elisha, I don't have words today. I expected to come and discuss the beautiful beginning of the Torah, to celebrate reading the first parashat Bereshit, creation of the world. And Elisha, I just don't have words. And I turn to you, as we always turn to our spiritual leaders in these times. Can you give us some words of comfort, of solace, of hope? What do you say to your flock at this time? First of all, we had a special meeting Sunday night for Hebrew speakers and Monday morning for English speakers just to talk about what's going on. And what we opened with was saying that the Torah has a paradigm for such situations. And following Aaron, the high priest, when his two sons were burned to death at the inauguration of the tabernacle, his response was interesting. It says, Veidom Aaron, and Aaron was silent. And since then, we stand, we take a moment of silence. We stand on Memorial Day in silence, on Holocaust Memorial Day in silence. There are times when, indeed, there are no words, and we need to honor that. And I did receive a cute WhatsApp that's been going around, and I just took my phone out. It says the following. I'm going to read it in Hebrew and then maybe in English. HaSafa Ha'ivrit Markina HaBoker Et Rosha V'mvucha V'tzar Al She'en V'milim Ve'en Milim K'dei Le'abia Et So, in English it says, the Hebrew language this morning is bowing its head, lowering its head in despair and confusion for having no words, no words to express the. So, sometimes there are no words of comfort, sometimes there are no words of solace, or rather, I would say the following. Comfort will come. There will be comfort. There will be comfort. We'll bounce back. We're going to win this war. This we know. We know we're going to win this war. We're already winning. And life will return. But right now, we're not there yet. Right now we're still gathering, literally gathering the dead. Most have not even been buried yet. Most cannot even go back to their, cannot be taken back to their, to the cemeteries, because the cemeteries are right by the kibbutzim who have been burnt down and destroyed. So, we're still in a state of shock and grief. And it's okay if we don't have the words. It's okay. And it's also okay to know that comfort will come. And things will be, they will be okay. Not for everyone. Not for everyone. But there is one thing that I think is worth connecting in this parasha. There are many things, obviously. I'm actually going to be writing about it this week in the weekly drashas. I'll just mention it in brief. That the world was created from darkness. The very second verse in the Torah is, it actually says that God created the heavens and the earth. And it says that the earth was in a state of chaos. And there was darkness over the abyss. And that was the beginning. Darkness. So, I'm going to write more about it. But right now, we'll let the comfort kind of like bubble up as we're talking. Exactly. And I think we'll find a great deal of comfort in the Torah. In the Torah itself and how we read the Torah. But Elisha, maybe it's appropriate as we begin the first parasha of 54. Rashid. It's appropriate to think, to do some meta-thinking. How do we read the Torah? How do we read it? How do we read the words? I did a bit of research. Because I think we'll find comfort in the Torah. But if we read it in the right way. If there is such a thing. And I found that there are two ways of reading the Torah. Let me read this to you and I'll get your views. I know you have strong views. The first way is exegesis. Ex means out of. Exegesis is the process of drawing out the meaning from a text. In accordance with the context. And discovering the meaning of its author. What did God mean? What did Moshe mean? To find the pearls, the diamonds of wisdom in the Torah. The truth. That's exegesis. There's another way. It's called eisegesis. It occurs when a reader imposes his or her interpretation into and onto the text. In my view, this is totally, completely, utterly fallacious. There is no such thing as exegesis. Because we are people. And we see in the Torah who we are, what we are. And based on our own personality. But Elisha, in general, what are your words of wisdom about how we read the Torah as people, as Jews? It's amazing that you're bringing this up. Because I'm just going to open in my little phone. I'm going to open the Shite. It's still in the making. And I wrote here a comment. That indeed when we study Torah, the beauty of it is that we get to interpret the Torah every year anew. And find new meanings, etc., etc. And I wrote here, there's not one, I'm translating from the Hebrew. There's not one interpretation, obviously. And that's the beauty of the Torah. I'm quoting myself. Just as in life, the Torah summons infinite possibilities. As in, quote, tell me your interpretation and I will tell you who you are. End quote. So, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. We're all in a way imposing on the Torah our own agendas and our own understandings. But I think, you know what, Shlomo, I think it's a relationship. It's a relationship between who we are as a person who's coming to interpret the Torah. Along with the Torah itself. It does need to make sense. It does need to be loyal to the text. It can be totally disconnected. So the Torah is challenging us to be in a communication with the Torah. And I think it's also challenging us to grow. Don't repeat what you said last year and the year before. You must have grown this year. So if you've grown this year, if you've evolved, then let's hear a new interpretation. Exactly. So I have this Rasha from Rabbi Sacks, famous Rabbi Sacks. And he quotes Rabbi Yitzchak who said, The Torah should not have started with, That's right. It should have started with, This shall be the first month. Which is in the book of Exodus. In Shemot, exactly. And Rabbi Sacks says, Rabbi Isaac is telling us something. If we seek to understand the Torah, we must read it as Torah, which is to say, law, instruction, teaching, guidance. I love this sentence. Torah is an answer to the question, how shall we live? And when you read the Torah for guidance on how should I, Shlomo, live? We find so many, so many wonderful things there. So let's read the Torah and think about how it applies today to 2023, including the awful mess that my country finds itself in right now. And as a New York Yankee baseball catcher named Yogi Berra said, It's that old déjà vu all over again. Yeah. Yes. Yes it is. Yes it is. Right. So here we were, like, opening the Torah again, but we're not the same as we were last year. We're not the same as we were this past Friday before Shabbat and Simchat Torah with this horrific event. So indeed, you know, it's not a coincidence that as persons, I was like reading the Torah, my eyes went to something they never actually went to before. I never, I knew, you know, there was darkness hovering over the abyss but I always gravitated towards and God said, let there be light and there was light. We love the light. We love talking about the light. And what is that light? It's so mysterious. It's so wonderful. It's creativity. So we all rushed there. And this year, and it's totally a result of the events of the past few days. Suddenly my eyes captured these words and there was darkness. At the very beginning of creation, it was pitch black, dark, dense, dense darkness. And I think I find this to be what I'm called upon to focus on this time, this year that we're reading Bereshit. Absolutely. So Elisha, there's a website that you are familiar with. I'm sure you are fond of it. I am. It's called 929. 929 is the number of verses in the Tanakh. And every day a verse appears going through the whole Tanakh. And there are commentaries, beautiful commentaries on it. Sharon pointed, my wife, pointed this out. Today's verse, Elisha, this is unbelievable. It's from Yirmeyahu, Jeremiah. Thus saith the Lord, those who are sitting in the city, living in the city, Jerusalem, will die by the sword, by hunger, and by plague. Those who go out, leave it, will live. His soul will survive. This city is going to fall into the hands of the Babylonians. How did they react? The ministers said to the king, Kill this man, kill Jeremiah. He is weakening our defenders who are going to defend the city by speaking the truth. Good heavens, Elisha. He said this for 40 years, Prophet Yirmeyahu. Beware of Babylonia. Nobody listened. From 626 to 586. In 586 the temple was destroyed. Before the disaster on October 7th on Shabbat, on Simchat Torah, at 6am we had people, including people on the border, who said something is up. The Egyptians claim and insist that they told us something is going to happen. We didn't listen. We had other information as well. Deja vu, Elisha. Deja vu. The scenes that we saw on Shabbat, the chaos, I remember them well from October 6th, 1973. You were a child, but you have similar memories. Deja vu, and that really, really hurts. Yeah, that's a really good point. We want to hear what we want to hear. Don't confuse it with facts. Not only is my mind already made up, but my heart and soul are made up. I don't want to hear anything else. I do expect more of our leaders, but we'll put our leaders aside. We'll talk about ourselves. There's something very human about it. At the end of the day, we mortals cannot hear everything. We have to decipher. If we were open to every piece of information, we would go mad. We simple folk, we just have to say, okay, no, I don't believe that, or I'm ignoring this information, and I'm going to focus on other kinds of information. Thank God none of us are prime ministers of this incredible country. You're right. Just like in the Yom Kippur War, there were warnings that came from Egypt, not the leadership of Egypt, but the spy, who said there will be a war, and people chose to ignore that piece of information. Here again, it came from Egypt. There's an argument right now. Did the Egyptians actually say it to Netanyahu personally? He claims they didn't. They insist that they did. There's something going on in Gaza. Notice what's going on in Gaza, and they chose to ignore it. We all tend to want to kill the messenger. Naftali Bennett was prime minister until last November, retired from politics. He was interviewed. He said something insightful, I think. Bennett himself was a member of special forces, special unit. He said that you can't blame Army intelligence because we will always be surprised. Army intelligence can tell what's going on, but they can't really interpret the meaning often accurately. Therefore, as a nation, especially a small nation, we have to expect to be surprised. We have to be ready for a surprise and be resilient and be ready to respond to it. That's basically what's happening now, and we will. We will respond to it, and we will do it very effectively. I really appreciate those words. I really do appreciate that they do put things into perspective. We always expect the intelligence to know it all, and you absolutely can't. You cannot know it all. I was an intelligence, and here again, you have to decipher. You have to choose what you take and what you don't, and you will eventually and ultimately be wrong. Then the question comes, the question that's raised here, okay, so what do we do, and as you quoted Bennett, A, we always have to be ready, but you also said something else. We have to be resilient. We have to be resilient, and resilience is not just our preparedness for war. That's really important, but our resilience is something much, much deeper. It basically suggests that we all have the inner abilities and power to handle what God sends our way, what's coming our way. One of the things that's coming out really beautifully now, besides all the horror stories, there were such amazing stories of bravery from the usual heroic military bravery, which are amazingly heroic, to simple civilians who had nothing in their hands but their own inner resilience, and they saved lives, and they did everything they could, and people who fled need to know, people who ran away need to know that their running away was an act of bravery. The fact that they could muster the energy to run and not stay behind and save more people and do that too was bravery. Exactly as Jeremy Howell suggests. Leave the city, people, leave the city and you will live. Stay in the city and you will die, and that happened. Right, right, right, exactly. So if there's a fight, flight, or freeze, sometimes freeze is the right answer, sometimes fight is the right answer, sometimes flight is the right answer. But in those stories, what I'm so moved by in those stories, and we're unfortunately hearing hundreds and actually thousands of stories right now of people who did unbelievable acts, small acts, big acts, that are all signs of deep, deep inner human resilience. Alisha, I want to read a passage from your brilliant drashah. You speak about, it's about words. The title is Fake News, and there is so much of that, and it's disastrous, absolutely disastrous. My son tells me, I don't have Instagram, but some of the images, Alisha, are unbearable. And you make a brilliant point, I think. As a person who deals with words, you note that words can be a prison, and we humans, we give words to everything. We think in words. Basically, I know what I'm thinking when I write words, and then read the words, and think about it, and then I know what I'm thinking. And in Brashid, there's an interesting passage. God says, God created the animals, the birds, and he came to people, Anything we humans call something, that's going to be its name. And the moment we name something, we have created a prison, and you make that point brilliantly. We humans give names to everything. We are the ones who made the subjective connection between our sensed reality and words, and thus create our experience of reality, for good or bad. We create the reality by the words that we use. And in a sense, it's a prison, these words. And we can escape from it, but it's the hardest thing to do. To break out of prison requires spiritual work. This is fascinating to me. We begin to read the Torah. We begin with Brashid. We read the words. They're familiar words. We've read them many times already. But in reading them so many times, they become a prison. Break out of the prison, you tell us, in your drashah. Think differently. Think for yourself. Interpret the words. You're a different person. The cells of your body have changed. Your brain has also changed since last year, since we last read Brashid. You actually break out of the prison, but it's really, really hard. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So people may call it like the art of reframing or the whole narrative approach. And indeed, just to emphasize here, words are a gift. I think human beings are the pinnacle of creation. That's the correct term. Correct? We're the pinnacle of creation because we have language, because we have words. So it's great. It's wonderful. We wouldn't be speaking here right now had it not been for words. We wouldn't express love. We wouldn't read poetry. We wouldn't do anything without words. So words are amazing. Sorry. But again, words can be imprisoning. And I think what Brashid is inviting us to do is to remind ourselves that it's a fluid process. So we gave names to all the animals. And the names that we gave to the animals, it said, that's what the animal became. So we named it, we defined it, and that's what it became for us. And it's now up to us to remember that we create our own reality, our own perception. And that's a good thing. It's a bad thing when we create our own perception and reality and then we're trapped in it. We can no longer get out of that reality. And there are two ways here that one can get out of this reality, can free themselves. The Torah is a Torah of freedom, of the Exodus from Egypt. One way is choose another narrative. That's the narrative approach. And that's important. That's good. That's totally fine. Just choose another narrative. The other idea is you don't have to choose another narrative. It's okay. What you do need to do is remember, just remember that you are creating your own narrative. Now, if it's a good one, if it works for you, then wonderful. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Still remember you created it. But if it doesn't work for you, and how do you know it doesn't work for you? You feel awful. You feel terrible. You feel bad. You feel depressed. You feel angry. Whatever it may be. If the feeling is really, really bad, remind yourself, I did a great job creating this reality. Now, what I'm saying, I don't mean it in a new age sense of we summon what we, we call forth our reality. It's not on that level. That may be true as well, but that's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to this idea of names become words, become reality. So instead of changing the reality and being imprisoned in the new reality now, just remember the softness of words. The words are, that all they are is words. They create reality, but we created that. And that they are open to change. And if necessary, do change them. But if it's not necessary to change them, don't. But don't, we should not take our words too seriously. I don't feel I'm very articulate this morning, but I'll leave it at that right now. You're very articulate, and I'll just read your words from the Drashah that we're discussing. Which is I think from four years ago, if I'm not mistaken. That's right. 1918 to 2018. You write, Welcome back to the beginning of human experience. Rashid. Welcome back to the words, the names, and the stories that formed our reality and are transmitted from generation to generation. And, welcome back to the hidden keys to the prison gates. We are going to find those keys and unlock those prison gates, the invisible prison gates that imprison us in fixed ideas that may no longer be appropriate for us. And we can open the gates and free those ideas and create a whole lot of new ones. Rav Elisha, I have to ask you this. It troubles me. It will trouble me in the weeks ahead. And I have to ask you this. We're about to engage in a war against our enemies in Gaza. It will mean sending troops into Gaza and attacking them from the land, from the sea, and from the air. Hopefully using some deception, as they did. Gaza is the most densely populated area in the world. Our enemies have hidden rockets and ammunition and other bunkers under mosques, schools, and hospitals. They do that on purpose. They themselves attack us with commandos who have caps with quotations from their holy book. And in doing that with these uniforms, they slaughter men, women, and children and act inhumanly. We have different values. When we engage in war in this densely packed place with 2.1 million Arabs, mostly civilians, and we need to defeat them and clean it out of any military capability, Elisha, what in the world do we do? There's a concept in the army, as you know, called Torah Anishik, the sacredness of weapons. We respect human life, but we need to defend our country. How in the world are we going to behave as a Jewish army in attacking our fierce enemies in Gaza when they are purposely hiding amongst the civilian population who right now have no electricity, no water, no fuel. What in the world do we do as Jews, Elisha, in managing the war as Jews, but as an effective fighting force? You open this aweful, filled with awe, question with, Rabbi Elisha, assuming I have the answers. I don't. Obviously, I don't have the answers, and I know you know that I don't have the answers. But there is something I do want to stress, and by the way, by the way, one other point here is that there is another issue here now. In Gaza now are about 200 Israeli hostages. Women, children, babies, elderly, young, men, soldiers and officers, and they could be used as human shields as well. And they are there right now in the tunnels under Gaza, and they are experiencing every blow that Israel is dropping on Gaza right now. So that adds to the complexity here. So, obviously, I'm not going to answer directly. I'm going to answer indirectly. I'd like to say the following. What we saw in this pogrom, which we also saw with ISIS, we saw it in other places around the world, is that these people who flooded into Israel came in the name of death, the God of death. They themselves knew that they were going to be shahidim, they were going to be, they were martyrs, they were going to die. They left their wives, their children, their mothers and fathers, they left them behind knowing that they're going towards their death. But they didn't just commit suicide. No. They're going to also kill as many innocent people in the process as they can, and then, and then be killed. That is, that is the ultimate evil in the eyes of the Torah. That is, if the Torah is the Torah of life, and sanctifies life, this is the sanctification of death. And we do have to understand, we have to understand that this is now a battle between those who sanctify life against those who sanctify death. And in order to sanctify life, we have to face this horrible idea that our enemy has sanctified death and has chosen the path of death. And they are, Hamas, as well as the terrorists, have imposed the God of death, the God with a small g, obviously, on their population. And if we are, if we choose life, then we have to muster the bravery and the resilience to face the God with a small g of death. And that means that a lot of innocent people are going to be killed. A lot of innocent people are going to be killed. Because when those who rule the 2.1 million, is that what it was? 2.1 million? 2.1 million people in Gaza, those who are ruling are ruling in the name of the God with a small g, the God of death. So they are imposing death on their people. Until now, we were careful. But when the God of death invaded into Israel, which is seeking life, and wreaked havoc and death among our own people, children, babies, women, elderly, and men, then the forces of life have to act. And this is really, really tough for us. But I think we have to understand that it's not about saving a life right now. It's about saving life with a capital L. And a lot of people individually are going to pay the price and are going to be killed. This is tragic. It's awful. But it's in the name of life with a capital L. And that's our biggest test right now. For us, for Jews, representing the Torah of life, to agree to face the eradication of the messengers of death. And just like Israel has the death penalty for only one crime, and that's Nazi criminals. And it's not a coincidence because Nazism was about the ideology of death. So the ideology of death needs to be fought. And those who are seeking life have to destroy the ideology of death. Elisha, Chagav Elisha, thank you for that insight. I am greatly comforted by that. And it needs to be understood widely in view of what's about to happen this week and in the coming weeks. Elisha, we need to end our discussion. As they say, let's hope for better times. Yes, let's hope for better times and wishing healing for all those who are injured and all those who are grieving and all those who are injured spiritually and emotionally. And this promise that we will prevail. We will prevail and we will win this war, the war for life with a capital L. Amen. Shalom, Elisha. Shalom.
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