Podcast #39: Parashat Vayera

In the transcription, two main topics are discussed: the significance of laughter in the midst of tragedy and the idea that creativity is fostered through laughter. The speakers share personal anecdotes and discuss the role of laughter during times of war and hardship. They also mention historical examples of laughter in challenging situations. Ultimately, they conclude that laughter is not only permissible but also necessary for resilience and creative problem-solving. They end with humorous quotes from Groucho Marx. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Elisha. Hi everyone, wherever you may be right now, whatever day it is, time of day it is, it's Tuesday morning here in Zichron Yaakov and we are in the middle of two huge events. One is a war and the second is Parashat Vayera. Parashat Vayera is a huge parasha. We read from Parashat Vayera on Rosh Hashanah, the first day and the second day. It's about the birth of Yitzhak and the almost sacrifice of Yitzhak and quite a fitting parasha for a week in which there is a war going on in the background. And many things in this parasha Elisha that are incredibly relevant that we can learn from. Parashat Vayera is the fourth parasha in Sefer Beishit. It's the second longest, over 2,000 words. It's second in length only to Parashat Nassau. But in content it's full of rich, rich jewels and you begin your droshah which you wrote four years ago. Parashat Vayera is one of the great parashot in the Torah and I absolutely agree. And it includes some stuff about laughter. That's going to be one of our themes that I want to talk about Elisha, about laughter, Yitzhak, which means he laughed. The role of laughter after 24 days and 5 hours from the great tragedy and many of us are hurting and suffering. But we are also laughing and my first question to you Elisha, is it okay to laugh after such a horrendous event? Yeah, well first of all it's a little bit difficult to laugh I have to say. There's this heaviness in the air and we're all feeling a deep sense of sadness about so many things, about so much has gone wrong or so it seems. Who am I to judge? But that's a really good question. I think we can ask the question in two different ways. One, is it okay to laugh while so many people are really hurting and suffering? And the other question is maybe we should laugh. Should we actually try to lighten things up even if we know that there are people who are suffering? So I don't have the answers obviously. None of us do. But I'm always reminded that in the ghettos and even in the camps, mostly in the ghettos, they actually had theatres. The Jews actually had theatres and they laughed. They actually did laugh and I'm trying to visualize it how they're walking off the street and on the street there are bodies of hungry children and some of them already dead, some are dying. And people are walking into a makeshift kind of little theatre and they're laughing. So maybe yes, maybe the answer is we do need to laugh but we'll examine this further. So let me make the case for laughter in the midst of tragedy and secondly let me prove to you statistical proof that God has a sense of humor. We'll start with laughter. In Parshat Vayila Elisha, Sarah is told that she's going to have a baby. Sarah is a pretty old lady and she's not exactly in the prime of her life. Now understand for a woman in those times to be barren is the hugest tragedy of all. It's disastrous. It's even grounds for divorce in the Torah. Yet Sarah laughs. She is given the news and she laughs, it sounds so ridiculous. So even in the midst of great tragedy and pain and suffering Sarah Emano laughs and I think we perhaps can take a lesson from that as well. And the point about God having a sense of humor, I have proof Elisha. So I'm a numbers guy. I looked this up. Half of the world's oil reserves Elisha, that is the remaining amount of oil that exists in the earth, half of it is in Arab countries. Sandy deserts run by despots and countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Shiite theocracies, not the greatest countries in the world. Elisha, God has a sense of humor. Otherwise he wouldn't have done that. Pretty late in the game he figured out okay maybe we'll give Israel a bit of gas as well. And 30% of the world's gas is in Arab countries. Doesn't that prove that God has a sense of humor? Good heavens. Yes, yes. Now there's a deep lesson here of this commandment to laugh. And in Elisha I just kind of read it through because I can't remember what I wrote four years ago. I can barely remember what I wrote this past Friday. So there's a poem that I quote here by Rilke Miriam, a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful poet. Her daughter was actually a good friend of mine. And she says, she's a religious poet, and she says God taught Sarah and Abraham that only through laughter can there be continuity and creativity. If you take life so seriously, which they did. They were very serious. They were the founders of a new nation. That's serious stuff. But if you're so serious, forget about creativity and forget about fertility. And only when they're able to laugh can they actually have a son. So maybe here, too, we do need to lighten up somehow. We need to lighten up and laugh. And just a little anecdote, I think two weeks into the war or something, my wife and I, it was Shabbat afternoon, we went for a walk. We lived close to the adjacent nature reserve. So we can do some tiulim on Shabbat without getting into a car. And we often bump into people that we know, that I know, that are parents of Bar Mitzvah kids. And this one woman passed by, and she kind of like says, Hi, Manishma, how are you? And she was like smiling. And then she caught herself and said, Oh, is it okay to smile in these times? And she moved on, we moved on. And Ronit and I looked at one another and it's like, what a weird question. I mean, obviously a genuine, authentic question. But are we allowed to smile? Of course we're allowed to smile. Maybe we should smile. Maybe we need to smile during these times. So it's a really relevant question that you're asking. Are we allowed to laugh at this time? What do you think? So I'm going to make the case that we have an obligation to laugh. And I'm going to explain. First of all, personally, I try really hard to make my wife laugh, at least from time to time. It's good for our relationship. It's good for my wife. And I recommend it to all the husbands who are listening into our podcast. And I'm sure you do that as well. But seriously, we have an obligation to laugh. And I'll explain why. We in Israel now are in a pretty pickle. And we need some out-of-the-box creative thinking to get out of the pickle. And we're seeing this in the course of the war by the army and by our courageous commanders and generals and soldiers. But the reason we have an obligation to laugh, Alisha, is this. I teach innovation and creativity. When is a group most creative? Are they most creative when they are tense and serious? The head of Intel once sent a memo telling Intel people, engineers are pretty crazy people sometimes, telling them, get serious, guys. This is serious. We're in a jungle. Get serious. And that was a big mistake. Because we are most creative, Alisha, when we are fooling around and we are loose, loosey-goosey and having fun and laughing. So we need to laugh in order to be creative. And that creativity will help us get out of the pickle. And Yerusha, which is absolutely wonderful, says that divine creation itself is one of laughter and insane theatrics. One of my favorite TV programs is about weird things in nature. Alisha, they are the most weird things you can imagine. Seahorses, Alisha. The seahorse daddy raises the kids in his belly and takes care of them after they are born. And only when they are ready, he spits them out. I mean, there are some really amazing things in this incredible world that God has created. So, yes, we need to laugh. It's part of our choson, our resilience, and part of our creative inspiration. I'm in full agreement. In fact, one of the things you see on Israeli TV whenever a war breaks out is all these incredibly creative programs that are hilarious. If you look at like Zehuzeh, these five comedians who are very well-known in Israel, they first came together in the Gulf War in 1990 or 1991, and they kind of joined forces, and they made us all laugh and actually quite hysterically. And ever since then, every war, that group comes together again ad hoc to make us laugh. Not just to raise the spirits, but as you're saying, it's love more than that. We're at our best when we can laugh. And I guess one of the obstacles here to laughing is a sense of guilt. How can we laugh when, especially now with our 238 hostages underground and their families who are suffering tremendously, are we allowed to laugh? Can we laugh? It's really different from any other war that we've had before because we never had the situation of civilian hostages for such a long time. We had hostages in the past, but it was only for a few hours or a day or so until they were eventually freed or sometimes the ending was not that good. But either way, here we are asking if we're allowed to laugh. So you're saying not only can we, but we really, really should because creativity comes from laughter, and that's a very, very good reminder. And maybe because of the guilt that we're also carrying, maybe we can also pray that somehow, in the most incredible way, the hostages, wherever they may be underground there, are laughing too. Maybe there's, I don't know, one way or another, they can find a little bit of sense of humor to ease their time there. Absolutely. So your drashah, your remarkable drashah, ends by quoting Groucho Marx. How do you know about Groucho Marx, Elisha? Good heavens. Wasn't he there at Mount Sinai with all of the Israelites waiting for Moshe to come down with the tablets? Yeah, he was there making smart cracks. So maybe we can make our listeners laugh a bit. Shall we try? Because I've collected some Groucho Marx quotes. Let's see if I can make you laugh. Okay. We'll start with your wonderful quote from the drashah by Groucho Marx. He talks about a book that he picked up, maybe my book. He says, From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. I must read it one day. Groucho Marx said, I never forget a face. But in your case, I'm happy to make an exception. My wife is beautiful. She got her looks from her dad. He's a plastic surgeon. Elisha, this parashah va'eva, it's so easy to understand. A child of five could understand it. Can we find a child of five quickly? Elisha, I'm going to be 81. Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped. I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. Very good. Last one. Elisha, these are my principles. If you don't like them, I have lots of others. They're wonderful, Groucho Marx. Groucho Marx. And now back to Va'eva. Let's get serious. Let's get serious, yes. So you discovered something. Maybe Sarah Navram did not give Yitzchak the name Yitzchak because Sarah left. Because well before he's born, God promises that there will be a son born to them called Yitzchak. That's right. I like the point that this is sort of foreordained. But I have a little bone to pick because I'm picturing this brilliant storyteller and the Torah was written by brilliant storytellers. And he's preparing this Torah and writing it down on parchment and goes back and adds this little piece in where God really had all this planned in advance because God plans everything unlike us humans who plan but it rarely works out. I mean does it matter? Does it matter that the name Yitzchak was foreordained by God? I mean and what a strange name for our forefather Yitzchak. Somebody who laughs. Do names matter? Are names important? Okay. Wonderful. Great question. There are so many ways of answering this question. One is here we are doing this podcast in English. We've also started doing the podcast in Hebrew as well. But according to tradition, the Hebrew language is a magical language. For those of us who are listening in English, you may want to consider taking your Hebrew a bit more seriously. If you delve deep into the Hebrew language, the wisdom there is incredible. When you really delve really deep into the language, into the Hebrew language, you can really understand why the sages were convinced that the world was created in Hebrew. So somehow it must matter that his name was Yitzchak. There's a deep, deep meaning to that. And there could be a lot of possible meanings. But maybe again God is trying to teach us this beautiful, beautiful lesson of you think you're planning your life. You are sure when you write your memoirs about your life, you say how you decided this, and then you did that, and then you went there, and you made all these amazing decisions. This decision was correct. This decision was maybe not as successful. And here it's suggesting that while we think that we are planning, you know the beautiful statement that also appears in the Darsha, man plans, God laughs. And we usually say, well, we make our plans, and then God kind of changes everything and proves to us who's really the boss. It sounds better in Yiddish. It does sound better. Yeah. Right. Much better in Yiddish. But I want to suggest another understanding of it. It's not that we are planning, we're taking life so seriously, and God is laughing at us for making these plans because at the end of the day He decides. But rather, it sometimes feels like that's how God created the world, in that indeed God has it all planned out one way or another, but we have the feeling as if we're making the decisions. And that's why God is laughing. God is laughing because we're taking our lives so seriously that we decided. We made this mistake. We made that mistake. God is laughing not because He totally confused our plans and kind of changed everything around to prove us wrong, but rather laughing because we take ourselves so seriously. We were the ones who made this decision or that decision. What if, and there have actually been experiments that have proved, proven, I think that's the word, that a second before, less than a second, before we raise our hand, for example, there's already, before we think that we raised our hand, there's already a motion of the hand rising. And then we think to ourselves, a millisecond after that we think, I think I'm going to raise my hand. The hand was being raised a millisecond before we made that conscious decision. And then we think, yes, I decided to raise my hand. Well, God says, not so, and God has a really good laugh, but gives us the freedom to think that we were the ones who made the decision. Exactly. So, Elisha, every year on Shabbat we come to Parshat Vayira, and in Parshat Vayira is the Akedah, the binding of Itzhak. And we need to deal with it. It's the 800-pound gorilla sitting in this little office where we are right now. And Elisha, you need to fashion your seatbelt, because every Shabbat of Vayira, I recall this well, your congregants, your flock, your sheep who love you dearly, we give you a really hard time, because we just do not buy this. And none of the Parshat Vayira, none of the explanations and justifications and apologetica. But I found one by Rabbi Sachs that I finally agree with. Let me explain, it's a little bit long. The psychologist named Bowlby wrote a seminal paper called The Nature of the Child's Tie to the Mother in 1958. And he describes the stages that children go through, attachment, separation, and loss. And the idea is simple. Little babies, Elisha, they recognize their mother's face almost instantly, and they bind to it, they're attached to it. As teenagers, and we both parents of teenagers, or have been parents of teenagers, they go through separation. I did it. I did it really painfully. I regret it, but you maybe did it as well, maybe less painfully. And we have to separate in order to become full-fledged adults. And we feel loss, but eventually return to attachment, and close attachment to our parents. Rabbi Sachs, the brilliant Rabbi Sachs, has a different take on the Akedah, on the sacrifice, the so-called sacrifice, in Parshat Vayuha. He says it's not exactly that way. It's not attachment, separation, loss. It's separation, attachment, and a feeling of loss. Or separation, loss, and attachment. Lech Lecha, Abraham is sent out. Separate yourself from your parents, from your home, from everything. You have to do this in order to be attached to this new value system that you're going to create, that will give birth to Judaism, and also to Islam. Creation, creativity, begins with separation. And I teach my students this as well. Okay, you want to do a startup, you want to launch a new product. First you have to get rid of something to make some room. When I'm writing a paper or something, I have to clean up the clutter on my desk and separate myself from it so I can create something new and be attached to something new. And this is the point about Abraham and the Akedah. He is given the most difficult exercise that one could possibly conceive, his only son, that he is asked to sacrifice, although not really, as separation in order for him to embrace fully, in attachment, this new value system. And only through separation and loss can we create things in the same way that God created the world, the universe, the cosmos. 13.8 billion years ago, black chaos, it's written in the Bible. Dove of O, chaos, separation, and then attachment, this act of creation out of chaos. And this amazing world that we have today. Yeah, you see, you see. And I have to say, it's a beautiful explanation and I love it. And there are actually quite a few really, really good explanations. I have to say that I love the Akedah. I have no problem, I don't want to sound rude, but I have no problem with the Akedah. I think it's one of the pinnacles of the Torah. So does Islam, by the way. It's a major festival for them, the Akedah. It's a powerful metaphor. Right, right, right. And I think that Islam and Judaism may view it a bit differently, but nevertheless, it's something that we... Let's connect for a second to the war that's going on right now. We are on the 7th of October, because right now everything is connected to the war. On the 7th of October, we had a huge Akedah. We were asked to sacrifice our sense of security. We had a false sense of security. We thought we have this fence there and we're safe. Hamas will not start a war, etc., etc. And we sacrificed all these children, not we personally, but reality or God or whoever had us sacrifice our loved ones, 1,400 of them, not to mention those who were kidnapped. And we're constantly, constantly sacrificing our sense of security, not just politically and not just the modern state of Israel, but every single person. And there's a deep spiritual lesson here, teaching us that there is nothing permanent. There's nothing. You're never secure, not in the sense of be scared, be afraid, but rather deepen your faith, deepen your faith even further. You cannot base your faith on offense. You cannot base your faith on technology and Hamas taught us this really cruel lesson that we put our faith in all the wrong things. And I don't want to just say plainly, put your faith in God, because what does that mean? What does it mean, put your faith in God? Go to your Shiva study there and then pray that enemies will not launch a war. We've seen that for 2,000 years and it didn't work. Yes, we need to build a fence. Yes, we need to invest in technology. But at the end of the day, we're investing. Technology is just an end result. Offense is just an end result. There's a deeper sense of faith that we need to foster. And I think that's what we're going to be, as we're going to be healing from this terrible wound that's still bleeding, we will be searching, seriously searching. What are our pillars of faith? What can we have faith in again? And it's quite amusing that the American dollar has like, in God we trust. If I'm cynical about it, and it's easy to be cynical about it, then yeah, well, here's a culture that trusts money. So in God we trust and confusing money with God. But I don't think that's the case. I think there's something very beautiful that on the dollar bill it says, in God we trust, saying, Hamud, sweetie, it's not the dollar that you're going to trust in. It's the divine, it's God that is invested, so to speak, in this dollar. And don't confuse the two. The dollar will never give you true safety. So here's the dollar. Enjoy it. Buy what you want. Buy what you need. Buy what will give you joy. But remember, in God we trust, not in this dollar. There's a saying the Americans have. It's even a little song. In God we trust, pass the ammunition. And that's kind of a lesson, at least. The CEO of Intel was a brilliant man, Jewish, named Andy Grove, Hungarian immigrant who had vision problems, came to America. He got medical treatment without charge. He had no money. Saved his vision. He was an expert on silicon. And Intel, led by Andy Grove, created the silicon revolution. All of our computers and cell phones are based on wafers and silicon chips. And Andy Grove wrote a book. He had a saying, only the paranoid survive. Which means, I think, we Jews need to have deep and abiding faith in God. And while we do that, we need to be paranoid. And being paranoid is not a mental illness. It's a constructive state of mind and based on numbers. Here I go again with the numbers. Alicia, there are 15 million Jews in the world. Not quite as many as we had before World War II. But we're getting there. And the Israelis are helping. 15 million Jews. There are 1.9 billion Muslims in the world. And some of them are enlightened. But quite a few of them really deeply dislike the state of Israel and Jews in general. And to be honest, Alicia, I've read a lot about this. The Koran is not super keen on the Jewish people. Because the Koran was written by people who wanted to create a religion that would compete with other religions, including the founding religion, Judaism, which is the basis of Islam. We need to be paranoid. And from time to time, Alicia, we fall asleep. We were asleep in 1973 and paid a heavy price. We were asleep literally on October 7th and woke up to a massacre. And we have to learn the lesson. It's a bitter lesson. You trust in God. You have faith in God. You believe in God. And you help him out by doing all you can to protect yourself, protect your values, protect your country, your people, your family, and to stay secure in this very dangerous world that is increasingly dangerous. Yes. Yeah, I think you're raising a huge question. First of all, how much time do we have? I just want to make sure. We have a couple of minutes. A couple of minutes. Okay. Because I think you're raising a big point here. Like here we're talking about, you know, trusting God, having faith in God. And then you said, and now past ammunition. Or let's develop better technology. So what does it mean to trust in God if that's the case? Well, maybe it's trusting the God of creativity, meaning it's not as if God is a huge armored vehicle on a cloud that will see someone in trouble and will rush down there and save that person from harm. Maybe trusting in God is indeed trusting the infinite creative process within us, that we have A, we have the ability, we have the strength, we have what it takes to deal with the problems that life throws at us. We have that ability. And to me that's having faith in God. And I'm going to come back to something that I've been saying quite a lot lately. The acts of bravery that we've seen, the acts of bravery that we've seen on the 7th of October and since then, and every day since then, there to me are a sign of a faith in God, not retrieving to the yeshiva and studying Torah. It's a great idea to study Torah. I believe in studying Torah. But a faith in God is going out there and doing the work, doing the work of creativity. And if there's a challenge to be tackled, tackle the challenge. Why? Because you can, because you have faith in God, because you have faith in your ability, in your innate, the world I love, innate, in our innate divinely born ability to deal with the challenges of life. I buy that 150% Alicia and I live by that very briefly. One of the principles I truly believe in and I practice it and it really works and I recommend it. And it's based on innovation. And to me it's a religious principle. Every problem, Alicia, every problem has a solution. If you begin from that axiom, which I regard that as a divine axiom, because that's how God created the world. If you believe every problem has a solution, you will try really hard to find it. If you despair and believe that no problem has a solution, and I understand despair among many people, then it's very hard to come up with creative ideas. Every problem has a solution. Find it. Right, right. And I will just add to that one other little piece. In the plan of creation, what you just described now, that's the mechanism. We actually evolve through problems. We grow through problems. We grow through challenges. And why are we met with all these challenges? To discover whole new realms and worlds we didn't even know existed. And the end result is technology. The end result may be ammunition. The end result may be something beautiful and sustaining like a new vegetable that we discovered or how to save the world from its ecological problems. But these can be exciting problems that call on us to connect with the divine within us to find the solution. And then, God laughs. Well said, well said. So, hoping for really good laughter to end this crisis. And may this war, may this crisis bring about a whole new creative spirit that will take us to the next stage of our evolution. It will. It will, I believe so too. Amen. Amen, amen. So, thank you all for listening. And comments are always happy to receive any comment. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.