Podcast # 38 Parashat Lech Lecha

The podcast hosts realize that their conversation wasn't recorded, but they continue to discuss various topics. They dedicate the episode to the well-being of hostages and soldiers in a war. They talk about the importance of being a blessing and the significance of certain mitzvot. They reflect on the meaning of life and being of service to others. They discuss the idea of the movement from the inside out and the importance of connecting with one's inner self. They also mention that divine guidance comes from within. The host shares their personal experiences and insights on these topics. Shalom Shlomo, we're kind of giggling a little bit and laughing because we started the podcast and realized that not all the equipment was in place and it wasn't actually recording so we had a good conversation between us but you guys were not part of it so let's see what do we talk about. We said it's Tuesday morning, it's a little Tuesday morning, nothing changed since five minutes ago. Par Mayim Ketov. Par Mayim Ketov, that's right, that's why we did it twice because it's Par Mayim Ketov today so it's a blessed day and yet with all the blessings we're in the middle of a war and it's a painful war and a difficult war and we want to dedicate this podcast to the well-being of the 220 people who are still kept as hostages in Hamas, they're not all Israeli, they're not all Jews but they're all human beings in captivity and all have been kidnapped and held underground somewhere in Gaza so we want to dedicate this podcast to their well-being and to the soldiers that are on the front line and to Am Yisrael to really strengthen and be able to bear these really dark, dark and difficult times and Parashat Lech Lecha which is an amazing parasha, formative parasha, we're starting a whole new journey, we're actually starting the Hebrew journey, Abraham the Hebrew. The parasha that I've chosen, I really love it, you wrote it four years ago, it's highly relevant and you start with an effective approach with questions and these are two key questions, the first question you ask is to each of us, what is your formative mitzvah, your formative mitzvah and the second question you ask each of us, what is the movement of your life, the arc of your life, an American writer James Thurber, he was a humorist but he once said in a serious moment, it's more important to know some of the questions than all of the answers and boy do I know that Alicia because in my career as an economist I answered a lot of questions that were not important at all and if you answer questions that aren't important then the answers of course aren't important either, so asking good questions and you ask two great questions and even though we're told and taught that all the mitzvahs are of equal importance, the tiny ones and the big ones, it's not really true in terms of living our life, the Torah tells us how to live and some of these mitzvot are crucial and the first commandment of significance is given to Abraham, go forth, go forth, Nike made a fortune with something similar, just do it, just do it, I would translate as go for it, I wish I had gone for it on many occasions looking back, go for it and this is a crucial and interesting mitzvah and we all need to ask ourselves as you challenge us and ask us what is the meaning of this mitzvah and Abraham is told that he is to go forth to be a blessing, to be a blessing. Alicia, I got an email from a listener who listened last week and you asked me last week a good question, you asked me Shlomo what is the best age that you've lived, what is your best age, 20, 25 and I said 80.9 which is how old I am right now and the listener asked me why, why is that, she was intrigued by that and I told her because at this age it took me 80.9 years to figure out why I'm on this earth with your help and with the Ahavta's help and with the help of the Torah and the answer is I'm here to be a blessing and so are we all. Now, one question leads to another, what does that mean? It means to be in service and helpful and supportive and loving to other people, people you love, your family, your children, your grandchildren, great-grandchildren and strangers and everyone. Gee, it took me a long, long time to figure that out, Alicia. That's so beautiful, Shlomo, that's really beautiful and you know what, just to get some perspective here, Abraham in his parasha is 75 years old, so he's only 5 years younger than you are right now, 5 years and 9 months, no, 5 years and 11 months. Shlomo and I share a birthday, I think, or one day apart and so yes, indeed and you know what, being a blessing, I get now what you said last week, that we can hear these words, you know, be a blessing, yes, be a blessing. We've been saying this for years and we all want to be a blessing, but there's getting it and there's getting it and at different ages we bring a blessing in different ways and I think one of the beautiful things in getting old and maybe that answers the question, why is Abraham 75 when all this takes place, why couldn't he be 65, 55, 45, or even 25 and maybe it takes a certain age to understand the true and deep meaning of really being a blessing and putting your own ego to the side and just as you said, the words that you used are so accurate and I don't think I would have come up with them on my own. To be of service, to be of service, that's a great thing and it can't be a moment earlier. So, you know, thank God for getting old. Let me quote what you write, Elisha, in your Drosha. You wrote this 4 years ago and it's very personal and it's in the section called Avodah Sheba Lev, service of the heart and in parenthesis, Elisha, maybe it's time to bring back that department in your Drosha, although all of your Drosha include service of the heart. You write, I will soon be 54. I can definitely look back for the formative movement in my life and as I listen to the direction that excites me, I can see the path forward. So, Elisha, how has it worked out over the last 4 years in this path that you saw? Have you been on that path? Okay, wow, what a challenge, Shlomo. So, first of all, I want to make a minor correction. This Drosha, just because I'm almost 54 and this Drosha is 6 years ago, I'm going to be 60 in a month, exactly a month from now. You don't look 60. But I'm going to be 60 and so I'm following your, you know, you're an economist. I'm going to use your numbering. I'm 59.9 years old and yeah, that's a good question. So, first of all, I do want to say that it's not a one-time answer and a one-time question. It's almost like a daily question and the question of what is our movement in life? How is life moving within us? What is life asking of us? How can we be of service, if I use your words? And the one answer that I do have, you're asking if it worked out or not. Well, you know, six years later, first of all, I'm still alive. That's a good sign. We're both and all of us, all those who are listening are alive. It means that we must have been doing something right. But on a more serious note, yeah, I think that my personal movement as I'm discovering it, as it unfolds, is that of from the inside out. The movement is always from the inside out. And I'll try and explain it briefly, if I can. Until a certain age, we're dealing a lot with age today. So, up to a certain age, I think we look at the world as outside in. We see what's happening around us and that impacts our inner world. We respond to what's happening outside. He said, she said, he did this, she did that. And we are kind of responding to the outside world. This is making me sad, this is making me happy. We're almost in a way victims of the outside world. And the older I get, the movement that I'm discovering is that we got it all wrong. It's not outside in, it's inside out. And we all know it really well. We've all had experiences where things where we felt very upset or aggravated or whatever it was, or confused. And when we try to understand why, we kind of look outside of ourselves and said, well, this is going on and it's really getting me depressed and getting me down. And this war is certainly having a huge impact on us. And if we live that way, then indeed, that's going to be our experience. But we've, I'm sure we've all had experiences where in the midst of chaos, in the midst of turmoil, in the midst of difficulty, we were able to either close our eyes or not close our eyes, but look within, connect within. And all of a sudden everything changed. Now, it doesn't mean that the war ended or that the person who aggravated us suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth. The war didn't end and the person didn't disappear. But we were very different. And the minute we can connect deeply inside and connect to that place within us that's always healthy, that's always bright. And there is that place. There is that place in us that is always 100% healthy. Even on our deathbed, there's going to be that place inside. There's going to be 100% healthy and fully okay. We can call it divine, we can call it whatever we want. When we connect with that place, all of a sudden the outside transforms. Now, there still could be a war outside, but suddenly this war looks very, very, very different. And our whole reality looks very, very different. So, one of the repercussions of that is most of us view the divine voice of like Lech Lecha or any time we speak of a divine voice, we usually imagine it being outside of ourselves. God is in heaven and we hear a heavenly voice. And I think it's a beautiful metaphor because I think the truth is that it's not an outside voice, it's an inner voice. And the closer we are to our core, the closer we are to our essence, the closer we are to that place within us that's 100% healthy and beautiful and tamim in Hebrew. The minute we're connecting that place, we can hear that voice again. And then we hear, ah, indeed, it does come from within. It cannot come from without. To even take it one little step further, and then I'll be quiet, God willing, is that there are huge questions we've discussed this before with Professor Hoffman from UC Irvine, I think, who claims that we don't even know what is really happening outside. Our brain is telling us what you're seeing, it interprets that into a picture. But even that, it's not clear if what we're interpreting is indeed what's happening outside. So it's always the movement is, you know, the bottom line, answer to your question, and I'm just discovering that more and more and more, that life's movement is from the inside out. So I share this with you, Alisha, and I have a different metaphor that helps me a lot. For many, many years, I was guided by radar. Radar takes signals from the outside world and puts them on a screen, and you interpret what's happening in people around you, and what they think of you, and how they feel about you, and so on. Teenagers, especially, all they have is a radar. It's a very sensitive radar, and it's very painful to be a teenager. All of us remember that. But even in older ages, we have this radar. There's another device that we need much more, and it's a compass. The compass is inside you, and the compass is the set of values that guide you, this Kol Dakad Mamad, the voice of God, which is very, very quiet. This compass in us gives us the north, the direction, and we get that from many places, from Torah, from values. We get that from Jewish values, Jewish religion, the Jewish sources, the Torah. That gives us a compass. It must be really hard to live without it. When you have it, Alisha, you have resilience. You can go through war, tragedy, loss, illness, because this inner compass guides you in the right direction. But if you only have radar, God forbid. That's a beautiful metaphor. I love this metaphor. The radar on the one hand, and the compass on the other hand. It's a beautiful observation that teenagers have their radars fully on, and they keep on responding to what they perceive to be stimuli from the outside. That's very, very, very powerful. Instead of that, go within. We know that you can tell a teenager over and over again, just ignore it. Ignore those outside signals. They're not important. Listen to your own heart. Listen to your compass. Listen to your own inner voice. As a teenager, you're unable to hear that. Small story, Alisha. When I was a teenager, I was very short-sighted. I knew that the moment I put glasses on, I would be called four eyes. I would be teased. For years, literally for years, I went to school, and I could not see the blackboard, Alisha. Nothing. One big blur until finally one day, I had to put those darn glasses on. For years, I refused to do that because of my radar. That's really interesting. I don't want to see because if I put these glasses on, if I'll see, I'll be ridiculed. We give up our vision for the sake of a false radar. Maybe we're picking up correct signals. Maybe. It could be that this person doesn't like us and this person is ridiculing us. That may be true. Our radar may even be really accurate. Still, nevertheless, living a life based on a radar as opposed to a compass, to use your metaphors, is an exhausting life, a fruitless life, and a misguided life. Alisha, I want to refer to a mitzvah. It's actually the one given to Adam and Eve, perhaps the first mitzvah in the Torah to be fruitful and multiply. It's a mitzvah that all living creatures follow because the desire that drive to reproduce is inherent in every living thing, trees, birds, bees, everything. This is something very painful for me and I want to discuss with you. We share very few things with our neighbors in Gaza. One thing we share is children. Alisha, there are two million people in Gaza. One million of those two million are 18 and under because the fertility rate in Gaza is 3.8 children per woman. Women in Gaza marry very young. Many marry before they're 18. It's a custom. It's a Zohu custom. Alisha, in Israel, we have three million kids 18 and under. We have the highest fertility rate among the OECD by far. Most European countries are below replacement. Their populations are declining. We have lots of children in Israel and lots of children in Gaza. In Gaza, there are 50,000 pregnant women at this moment as we speak. 5,000 of those women are due to give birth in the coming month. God knows how they will do it or what the little baby will see when it comes into the world. I'm thinking about the people who brought this war on us, Alisha, and what they were thinking and whether they were thinking about their people, about these unborn babies. I'm thinking about our soldiers. What in the world do we do, Alisha, when we go into this place, which we have to for our survival, I believe? What do we do when we encounter half the population under 18 and pregnant women and unborn babies? What in the world do we do? I'm asking my Palestinian counterparts who are demonstrating and demanding that Israel be moral. What do we do when those who brought war on us care nothing for life and we have a value that does care for life, our lives, but their lives as well? How in the world does an army make that moral distinction faced with existential crises? Yeah, that is such a tough, tough situation. It's painful. It was Golda Meir at the time who said if there's one thing she won't forgive the Arabs for, it's not what they did to us. She said, I can forgive that. I will not forgive them for causing us to hate them and for infusing hatred and fear. So since we don't believe in outside in, but from inside out, it's a tough one. It's certainly a tough one. Until the 7th of October, the equation was indeed different. It was different. It was a war. I don't think it was a legitimate war. Hamas bombed. Thank God we have modern technology to help us protect from Hamas missiles, but we never started any of the rounds of the wars between Gaza and Israel. It was always Hamas. Furthermore, you're talking about pregnant women who are about to give birth. The headquarters of Hamas in the tunnels, the headquarters of the tunnels in Hamas is under a huge hospital in Gaza. The hospital is called Shifa, which means health, and under that hospital, Hamas placed its headquarters. And here we are, the world, people are going out in demonstrations demanding of Israel to be moral, etc., etc. How do you fight a moral war against an immoral enemy? How do you fight against some of the husbands of those pregnant women with those who went into Gaza and went into Israel on the 7th of October and butchered children, killed pregnant women? I'm not going to go into graphic details because they're so horrific and we just don't want to go there. So what do you do when immoral people are facing an immoral enemy? Obviously there isn't a simple answer. At the end of the day, the people of Gaza have to take responsibility. At the end of the day, it is the responsibility of the people of Gaza to choose who rules over them, and it's not going to be easy. Hamas is ruthless, they're brutal, just as they wouldn't put their headquarters under the hospital. They were the ones at the end of the day, the Islamic Jihad, who bombed the hospital. I don't think it was on purpose, but nevertheless they bombed the hospital, their own hospital, and of course accused Israel for it, and of course the world bought into it until they realized that they were wrong. But I think at the end of the day, it's the responsibility of the people of Gaza to say, we are not willing to let Hamas do this to us anymore, to drag us into this war time after time after time. What's happening right now in Gaza, that's what Hamas wanted. What did they not think? That Israel will retaliate after the brutality that they did on the 7th of October. Do you really think Israel will not retaliate? Israel retaliates for much minor offenses. So that's what they wanted. They wanted to drag Israel into this, and to show the world how immoral Israel is. But if we're talking about morality, I think that to fight immorality is morally right. There's only one way of doing it right now, and help the Palestinians themselves get rid of Hamas, who are causing all of their suffering. Elisa, we have loved ones who are in uniform, and drafted in the army, on the border, waiting to go in. And they report to me, understandably, the army is burning with anger, Elisa. Burning with anger. Every single soldier. I hope and pray that the discipline of the Israeli army will prevail, and that we will continue to respect Torah and Ishaq, the sanctity of weapons, despite the immorality of the people that we are facing. Our enemies have opened a Pandora's box, and it's horrific. I want to end on something a little more positive, Elisa. This is rather dark. What does it mean to be a blessing? I want to bring an example of being a blessing. My research is in the area of creativity. What makes people creative, come up with innovative ideas? These are so wonderful, some of these ideas, and I write about them and interview people. Sometimes it seems to me they're purely from God, from the small, quiet voice of God inside them. But here's a little story. There's a place called Bell Labs. Bell Labs is a research institution in New Jersey. The most amazing things came out of Bell Labs for years and years and years. Many Jewish researchers. Arno Penzias was a physicist. He discovered background radiation, proving the existence of the Big Bang radiation that came from the Big Bang. He won the Nobel Prize. That was just one example. Some of the patent lawyers at Bell Labs wanted to figure out, how come some of the people like Penzias are incredibly productive and creative and other people are less so? They tried to check on education and age and all the different variables. Nothing. Then they found something interesting. All of the productive researchers were in the habit of having breakfast or lunch with an electrical engineer. His name was Harry Nyquist. Nyquist was really, really good at listening to people, asking questions, getting inside their heads, and he brought out the best in them. Nyquist was an illuminator. Nyquist was a blessing. We can talk maybe next time more about the art of listening as an incredible skill. But that's a concrete example of how to be a blessing. You bring out the best in other people, not necessarily in yourself. That's beautiful. I'd love to learn more about him. Sounds like a great model to kind of like sharpen our compass, our inner compass. I want to connect what you're saying with a conversation I had yesterday with someone. I'm not going to give the names. We were talking about how as we're getting older, our relationship with our children is changing. That person said that all of a sudden now we're expected to be quieter around the table because our children are supposedly wiser, and they don't need our old-fashioned advice, et cetera. There's something a little bit depressing in that. Here we have so much wisdom to impart and so much to say about life, and we have life experience, and now we're supposed to shut up? I mean, that's the time to... We kind of both concluded that maybe one of the beautiful things about getting older is, and it kind of seems to be the theme, and that's legitimate. Abraham was 75 years old when he heard the voice. The older we get, the more skillful our listening can become, and maybe to have less of a need to put out our wisdom and allow for other people's wisdom to come forth. It's not easy. We do have to get older for that because it takes a lot of calming of the ego, and thank God for getting old. Here again, Alicia, is another reason why I'm so pleased to be 80.9, and that has to do with words, Alicia. My business is words. As an educator, I speak words, I write words, I think words. I'm in the word business, and I was thinking the other day, the best words that I've ever come up with by far were words that I never spoke and never wrote. Those are the words that should not have been said or spoken, and at a younger age, I would have blabbed them with a big mouth, including to my kids, giving unwanted advice. At an older age, I think I figured out when to shut up, which is most of the time. Incredible. That's a great piece of advice. Maybe that's where we should end. We're talking about the movement of life and the mitzvah, and we all have our personal mitzvah. What is our own unique mitzvah in the world? There's also a common mitzvah for all humanity. There are 613 mitzvot at the end of the day. Maybe one common mitzvah for all of us is to listen more than speak. As a person who speaks a lot, I talk a lot. It's something that I still need to learn and work on. And perhaps connecting one last thing to if it's inside-out as we're listening. Listening is not outside-in. Listening is inside-out because we're listening to the other person, but that deep place, deep, quiet, healthy, beautiful place within us is the place that's listening. And when the person is listened to from that deep place within us, what a healing that is for both speaker and listener. What a huge healing that is. Exactly. Exactly right. So, Shlomo, thank you so much for all this wisdom. And again, we're going to wish all those who need to be listened to at this point that a deep heart is going to be able to listen to them and to their pain. And may that listening strengthen them. Amen. And perhaps we can ask them. We'd love to hear from them in any way that they choose. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Tov. Shlomo. Litroot. Litroot, Elisa.