Podcast #40: Parashat Chayey Sarah

This conversation takes place on the 30th day since the beginning of a war. The war is still ongoing, but the atrocities from the beginning have ended. They discuss the importance of continuity, both biological and spiritual, for the Jewish people. They mention the role of Israel in the world and how the Torah provides spiritual continuity. They talk about the mystery of what continues throughout generations and the importance of choosing life. They also mention the story of Abraham's servant finding a match for Isaac based on traits and values. They emphasize the significance of not taking continuity for granted. Shalom everyone. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Elisha. So it's another Tuesday morning. There were meetings. And you always remind me, Tuesday is Paman Kittuv. Tuesday was blessed twice, so it's really good that we meet on Tuesdays. And a reminder, maybe for those who will be listening to this years from now, who knows that today is the 30 days since the beginning of the war. It's the 7th of November and the war began on the 7th of October. And it's marked throughout Israel. We marked it last night, the Hebrew Shloshim. Today is the Gregorian Shloshim. And we're still in the middle of war. We're not just commemorating something that happened and ended. It's still unfolding. But the atrocities of October 7th, thank God, they themselves are over. But those kidnapped are not home yet. So we will, as usual, dedicate our conversation to the soldiers who are out there trying to free our hostages and for the safe return of all the hostages. Yes, indeed, Elisha. And your Drosha was written in 2018. That's five years ago. And it's about Parashat Chaye Sarah, the lives of Sarah, lives plural. It's about her death, burial in Marat HaMachpelah. But as you note, and you always see the subtext. Actually, there is no subtext in the Torah. There is no subtext. There's only text. Only we have to see it. And you helped us see that. And your Drosha is about continuity and life. Hem Shechiut in Hebrew. And that's so relevant now because when we have a terrible tragedy that befalls us as a people, not just Israel, the Jewish people. This is a tragedy, the war, the massacre. It's a tragedy for the Jewish people all over the world. And our thoughts turn to continuity. And some people, who I'm afraid are not too bright, always bring up the Shoah and the yellow badge. It's not relevant. We, the Jewish people, have continuity. And we will forever. And part of the reason, Elisha, is not biological continuity. I want to talk a bit about that. But spiritual continuity, the continuity of our values based on the roots of the Torah. So your Drosha is perfectly smacked right on for this time about Hem Shechiut, about continuity, and the sources of the continuity as we learn from Parshat Chayisara. Thank you for the kind words. Before we start recording, you know, Shlomo does all the homework, I have to say. And I thank you for it. Doing a lot of choosing the Drosha we're going to be discussing, and then doing some research, and going to all kinds of articles, and Rabbi Sachs, and other sources, which is great. I feel like I'm always expanded after our conversations. So yes, it's about continuity. And there are so many things to say about it, I don't know where you're going to be taking it in a second. But I'll just point out maybe that in times of tragedy, like the 7th of October, when so many lives were taken, we often mourn the individual life. And so we should, we should mourn the individual life. But as you're saying, here you are celebrating Jewish continuity. We've always been around, we will most likely always be around. And how could that be a source of solace, when our dead are lying before us, and they're being buried now, one after the other. And yet it is a source of solace, because it's not about individual continuity, it's about our collective continuity. And only at a certain age can one appreciate the value of collective continuity. Up to a certain age, we're all concerned about our own personal continuity. But then we realize that it's really not about that, there's something much greater going on. And before you'll steer it to wherever you want to take it to, I just want to say, I think Israel, Israel, the people of Israel, we have a role in the world, we have a distinctive role in the world. We're the chosen people, we're chosen for a certain role. We can discuss what that role is, but we're chosen for a specific role. And that role has not ended and will never end. And sometimes we fulfill that role, and very often we don't fulfill that role. But we can't disappear, we have to continue because we have a role in the world. And we'll see where you take the conversation to, and maybe another time we'll talk about what is Israel's role in the world. Before we discuss that, I want to say a word about continuity, Elisha. So I'm sort of an amateur biologist of sorts. I want to talk about biological continuity and spiritual continuity. The Romans have disappeared, the ancient Greeks have disappeared. They both had wonderful civilizations. The ancient Egyptians have disappeared, not physically. The genes continue and they can be traced back, but spiritually. Elisha, physical biological continuity is a miracle. It's an absolute miracle. How does that work? We know from Watson and Crick, right? DNA, which this is trivia, DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. You don't have to know that. DNA, it turns out, is two helixes intertwined, two little curlicues. And when cells reproduce, they reproduce exactly like you do in a photocopying machine because one of those spirals, those helixes separates and then creates itself exactly as a duplicate. That's the biology. And Elisha, those DNA helixes, they are four letters, A, B, C, and D, amino acid, different kinds. And they exist in different combinations, and that's why we are Elisha or Shlomo. And all of that is a miraculous Elisha. I mean, did that just happen by accident? It's miraculous, it's amazing. But that's not continuity in the true sense. Continuity is spiritual continuity, values. Italy is full of people who have genes from ancient Roman times. But where is all that civilization? Where is that amazing Greek philosophy and literature and Homer and the Iliad and Virgil? Where is all that? Where has it gone? The spiritual. And that's the Jewish people's continuity. And that we get from the source, from the Torah. And that's why we will always exist despite the efforts of the world to stamp us out. We had 18 million Jews in 1939. We have 16 million today. We still haven't come back to 1939. We will. And if God willing, we will continue with our powerful, strong, deep roots in the Torah. And it's that, not the DNA. It's the Torah that will give us that continuity no matter what. Yeah, I remember I used to be a tour guide. And I used to bring groups of teenagers, as well, teenagers from North America. And then, you know, I used to run those tours and guide them throughout Israel for six weeks. And for a while, I shared some of it with you. And for a while, we also used to take them to Europe. And we reenacted the story of the Exodus. I think we even discussed it on our podcast. I'm not so sure. But I remember guiding. We had to guide through Rome because we took a boat, the Exodus boat from Brindisi in Italy. But before, you know, if we visit Rome, we have to tour Rome. And we visited the Jewish ghetto in Rome. And one of the things that was amazing is that today, if you want to find original Roman cuisine, if you want to find the original Romans, you go to the Jewish Quarter. Because the Jews are the only ones who actually continue, have been there since those years, whether it was the 17th Common Era or even earlier than that. But as you said, it's not about the continuity of the genetics. It's something else that continues. And it's a huge mystery. What does continue? We know DNA. DNA in itself is an amazing mystery. But science has a lot to say about that. The spiritual continuity is a real mystery. For most generations, there was no good reason to remain Jewish. It was much better to assimilate. And we've had plenty of chances. Before the Nazis, the Christians only welcomed our assimilation. And while Jews did indeed leave the fold, the fact is most didn't. And here we are today. And Avraham in his parasha is really going out of his way. He's telling his servant, I need to find a match for my son, for Yitzhak. He tells his servant. And he says to him, she cannot be from this country, from this land of Canaan. Go back to my tribe and bring a woman from there. And why? Why not marry someone local? What's the problem? She will, many others did, she will become part of the Israelite tribe. And all will be well. Rivka is not a true Israelite either, even though she's part of the clan. He was looking. And the person who did the matchmaking and did a beautiful job of it is the servant itself. He's looking for very clear traits and values. He's sitting by the well and he makes an oath with God. He says, the woman who's going to come and offer me water. Because when someone wanders, what they need is water. And water equals life. If someone's going to come to me, run up to me and offer me life. And will even offer life to my camels. Offer water to my camels. She is the match for Yitzhak. Because we carry the spiritual genes of choosing life. We're about enhancing life. We're about sanctifying life. The woman who's going to come and sanctify life personally on a one-on-one basis. Just seeing someone thirsty and going to offer him water. She is going to be Yitzhak's wife. And what's interesting, Elisha, and you point this out. In the Parsha, we have this long list of this person had this person. And that person had this child. And that child had this bigot. Exactly, a bunch of bigots. That's pretty boring. And then brakes get slammed on. And it says, Sarah was barren. She had no child. And incidentally, Sarah was barren. Rivkah was barren. Rachel was barren. So the Torah is telling us something here. Do not take continuity for granted. Neither physical continuity, biological. Or mainly spiritual continuity. Not to be taken for granted. And the spiritual continuity is crucial. This is a small story that's probably irrelevant. I follow U.S. politics. It's really fascinating, also quite terrible. The United States has a House of Representatives, like the Knesset. It has a speaker, like the Yoshev Rosh, the chairman of the Knesset. The Republicans have a small majority in the House. Four representatives, very small. And so they get to choose the speaker. And they just fired their speaker, Kevin McCormick. And they've been trying to elect a new one. And they tried one, and then another. Didn't make it. And they've been doing this for weeks. And nothing, no legislation gets passed. And now they found one. An unknown congressman from Louisiana. Who's a new one. Elected in 2018. The year you wrote this dressage. His name is Mike Johnson. And nobody knows who the heck this guy is. Who is he? Speaker of the House. He's even in line for the presidency. And so they asked him, Mike, people want to know, who are you? And here's his answer. You want to know who I am? Read the Bible. Read the Bible? He's an evangelical Christian. He has some radical, far right ideas. I wonder, Alicia, if he knows that the Bible has 70 faces. It doesn't help me to tell him to read the Bible. Which of the faces of the Bible are you, Mike Johnson? And we still don't know. That's great. You know, you start off saying maybe the story isn't relevant. What an amazing story. I never think of this, of the angle. You just like, you know, the twist you gave to the story. Yeah, you know, we talked quite a lot in the last few weeks about the differences between Judaism and Islam. And there are also great differences between Judaism and Christianity. And the biggest difference is exactly what you're pointing out. Judaism doesn't go by the Torah. It sounds like a shocking statement. Of course we go by the Torah, but we don't exactly. We're not Bible thumpers. You know, we have the sages. We've discussed this already. We have the sages, and we go by interpretation. We go by interpretation of the Torah. So you're absolutely right in saying, well, you want to know something about me. Well, then you have to know how I interpret the Torah. Not go read the Torah and then you'll know something about me. It's all about interpretation. So it's pretty scary if someone believes that they are the living words of God. At best, at best, they are a pale representative of a possible interpretation of the Bible. So, yes, point well taken. And maybe, indeed, I'll also show you a little story we had among the rabbis. There's a wonderful, wonderful organization, which I would encourage everyone to consider maybe contributing to. It's called the Hani Foundation, which has been very generous to support rabbis of all denominations in Israel, supporting communities and supporting rabbis, and have been supporting my role here at Baha'u'llah for the past few years, even longer than that. And we have a group of rabbis from all over Israel, all denominations. And at this difficult time, you know, there's a lot going on on our WhatsApp group. And one of our wonderful, wonderful rabbis, I'm not going to mention any names, she put out this beautiful post on this WhatsApp group talking about unity, talking about at this time, let's all, you know, swear that we are united with the Jewish people. And she had really wonderful intentions. But boy, I'm sorry, boy, was she slammed. Because people say, wait a second, wait a second, you know, we're all for unity. But it doesn't mean uniformity. We all believe very different things. If your call for unity means that we have to give up our own personal understandings and interpretations of the Torah, then it's very romantic talking about unity, but no thank you. And there was this really heated discussion, but instead of war, we have to be united. And a lot of the rabbis there talked about our power, our force has always been in our pluralism, the unity which has within it a pluralism of opinions and interpretations. And that's part of our continuity. Our continuity, a great example is Spinoza. Spinoza was chirim, what's the English word for chirim? Excommunicated. He was excommunicated by a community of Jews. Who were those Jews? They were all Jews who were converted to Christianity in Spain and Portugal. When they found their freedom in Amsterdam, in Holland, they returned back to Judaism. But that was 100 years after leaving Judaism. They basically became, in a way, Christian. And they enacted the means of the Inquisition against Spinoza. Spinoza was an authentic Jew. Spinoza brought a brilliant Jewish interpretation. Now we may not agree with him, we may agree with him, we may love him, we may not. Einstein, whom we are very proud of, Einstein said, Do I believe in God? If you're asking me about the God of Spinoza, I believe in God, in the God of Spinoza. Spinoza was a Jew. But the community of Amsterdam that kind of, in a way, broke away from Jewish continuity, i.e. from the continuity of pluralism, from the continuity of the 70 faces, they could not have Spinoza as part of the living Jewish body. What a terrible, terrible loss. So if we're talking about our spiritual continuity, it's knowing that God is infinite. And if God is infinite, then God will appear in all kinds of interpretations of God's Torah. I want to mention now, Elisha, the terrible tragedy that has befallen us, this terrible massacre. Just a month ago, we're still absorbing it and dealing with it. Many people are suffering and wondering and questioning. Very religious people, ultra-religious, non-religious, partly religious, we all are struggling with this and trying to find some meaning. I want to try to provide a bit of comfort. So I listened to a podcast, which is about psychology. It's called Hidden Brain. I recommend it. A recent episode was perfectly right on target about narrative therapy, about stories, how we tell stories. Elisha, how am I, Shlomo, going to deal with this awful tragedy? When I tell the story, if I'm around in 10 years, how will I tell it? And how will I see myself in 10 years as I behave now during this time of great tragedy and great challenge? This is really important, how we tell stories about ourselves. There's a psychologist named Gilovich who has spoken about the story, Jonathan Adler. He's written a wonderful book, The Healing Power of Stories. So for our listeners, Elisha, we can heal ourselves. Sharona tells me that 70% of people who suffer serious trauma do not get post-trauma, the chronic suffering that follows it, do not get it. And I think part of the reason is they deal with it by making meaning, by finding meaning through their stories. There's great power in stories, and they can change your life. And we are editors, we are each editors. We all can edit our own story in a manner that is constructive and meaningful, and brings meaning to how we act and to our lives. So think about this, listeners. How will you tell this story, and what are you doing, rather than just stewing and watching television and feeling down? Get out there, get out there. My own role has been to write words, and I write a bunch of stuff, and send it off to America and try to help in that. Sharona does a lot more, she's working with kids. We're all trying to, everybody can do something. We can get out there and do something. And this will be very helpful in 10 years when we look back, and we will not have post-trauma, because we have created our own story of worthiness in dealing with the challenge. Yes, absolutely. And again, I want to keep connecting it to your initial thread here, of the 70 pages of the Torah, and the notion of Jewish continuity versus genetic continuity. The Jewish continuity is a continuity of narrative in many ways. We don't read the Torah as a definitive history. We read it as a text that needs to be interpreted, i.e., we need to find narratives within it. And one of the things that has collapsed, we've discussed this a little bit in our podcast, many of our conceptions about Gaza, about a lot of different things have collapsed. And so has our theology. Our theologies have collapsed. Just like Elie Wiesel in the Holocaust, in his book Night, how his entire theology collapses one dark night. And it's our role to develop, to allow a new theology to emerge. And I want to suggest that if I had to guess, I'm really kind of preoccupied with a question that you've just asked. If I had to guess what the narrative will be, it will be a narrative of bravery. And we've also discussed this on our podcast. The stories of bravery that are emerging from this nightmare are amazing, absolutely amazing. And now the stories of the bravery, they're not going to bring the people back. They're not. But as you said, it's not about what happened. It's about the story we tell ourselves. It's how we carry our pain. It's how we interpret it. And I think the story of life is not how long you've lived. It's great to live a long life. And, yes, Shlomo, you're going to be here in 10 years' time, I know, because you're made of really good stuff. But at the end of the day, it's not how many years we've lived. We know of amazing people who are a member of our key lab. I'm not going to talk about it right now because we haven't sent out the information yet. We will today. We know of people who died at a very young age. And it's not about how long you've lived. It's tragic when someone dies young. The question is how boldly, how bravely did you live your life? What did you do? How much good did you do for others? What blessing did you bring? So you lived 120 years, or you lived 40 years, or you lived 90 years. And compared to infinity, it's all the same pretty much. How brave were you to bring your blessing to the world? So a personal note, Alicia, about stories. The stories in the Bible are amazing. I've written a lot of books, too many. Some of my books were read by people who weren't enough to make a minion. And I always wondered, the Bible, the Bible is the greatest book ever by far. How come billions of people read the Bible and two and a half people read my books? What's the problem? And the answer is obvious. And it took me 80 years to figure this out. Stories, the Bible has these powerful narratives. And they're narratives that are real people. And they have fleas. They have flaws. They do bad things. They're real stories. We find meaning in them. So stories have power. And the Bible, the stories in the Bible are phenomenal. A word about continuity, just a personal note again. I went to Princeton in 1965 to do my PhD in economics. Many of my professors were emigres from Europe, Jewish economists, distinguished ones. And they fled from the Nazis. They managed to survive. And they fled and were hired by Princeton. And they were brilliant. But you wouldn't know that they were Jewish. I knew. I knew. But they wouldn't admit it. They had denied they were Jewish and there was no continuity. And that's part of the reason, Alicia, that I decided to finish my PhD in double quick time and get out of that country and go to Israel. Because there's no continuity here, people. There's no continuity. Continuity is our Jewish state. And I still believe the key to our Jewish people's continuity is the well-being and survival and thriving and growth of our state, of our country, Israel. It greatly, greatly upset me to see non-continuity among Jews. And we see this in the world. But I hope our value system, our Torah, our culture is strong enough, our religion, our belief, our spiritualism is strong enough to ensure our continuity in the future. Yeah, yes. And I want to just give some credit also to Jewish continuity outside of Israel, just for the sake of balance here. The Judaism, the kind of Judaism that emerges from the Israeli narrative is going to be very different from the kind of Judaism that emerges in North America and other countries, especially in the West, but not only in the West. And it's a very important narrative that comes out in countries. Here we are, there's tremendous Jewish creativity here, but we're also bound by having a Jewish state, a Jewish rabbinate, a Jewish agenda. We fight for our existence. And a very different narrative can develop and evolve when Jews live as a minority in the world, and it's a very important narrative because Jews, you know, Abraham, Abraham was a wanderer at the end of the day. Abraham was an alien citizen in the land of Israel, and it was not his country. It was not called the land of Israel yet, and he's our forefather. It's not as if, you know, like when I studied Islam and Middle Eastern studies, one of my heroes was Ataturk of Turkey, the founder of modern Turkey. He was a product of Turkey. He was born there. He created the new state. Abraham didn't. Abraham didn't. Abraham created a wanderer. He was the one who taught us that God isn't in the stones. God isn't in the earth itself. God is absolutely everywhere. And we as Israelis can easily forget that, which is why we have a tendency towards nationalism and ultra-nationalism. We need, I think, our American and Western Jewish brothers and sisters to remind us that God is much greater than the IDF, than the Iron Dome. It's a different kind of continuity. We foster a certain continuity here. They foster another kind of continuity. And these two narratives are very important. There's a certain bravery in the Israeli narrative, and there is a certain bravery in the diaspora narrative as well. Exactly. Perhaps we can conclude, Elisha. I have two brief stories about the power of a narrative. Our story as Jewish people, I think, is something that gives us continuity. As individuals, stories also give us well-being and can free us from trauma. Two short stories. My own personal story and then another. I ran the New York Marathon in 1985. I was 42 years old. I hadn't trained properly. I stupidly didn't drink during the race because I didn't want to waste time. I ended up with severe cramps at the 20th mile. My leg was just cramping terribly. I barely could limp along. I was finished and done. I hit the wall. In the South Bronx, which is a worst slum in New York, full of crime and poor people, in the South Bronx, a black guy came up to me, saw my distress, shoved a can of Pepsi in my hand. I drank a sip. He made me drink the whole thing. That sugar dose enabled me to limp home and finish the last six miles, and I finished the marathon in under four hours, which was a record that my sons had a bit of trouble trying to beat. Wow. That changed my life, Alicia, that story, because I told myself based on that narrative, you can overcome anything. Alicia, I was a failure as an academic. I was turned down for senior lecturer, for assistant professor, associate professor. I was turned down for tenure. I was turned down for professor. I have the letters in front of me telling me why I'm not up to snuff. But that marathon, I finished it, and thanks to that black guy, I learned two things from that. Persistence and helping others and random acts of kindness. Those two things in my 1985 marathon narrative, those drove my life in a very constructive way. Jonathan Adler, the guy who wrote Healing Power Stories, tells an amazing story about a wonderful pianist, Leon Fleischer. I remember listening to him play classical music. Amazing Jewish pianist. At 16, he played in Carnegie Hall. After he became famous, he lost the use of his right hand. He had something called focal dystopia, because he had practiced for eight hours for so many years, he ruined his hand. He couldn't play anymore. What story do you tell yourself after that? Oh, I'm so unfortunate. Why has this happened to me? Why do bad things happen to good people? He didn't buy that. First of all, he became a left-hand pianist, and there are quite a few piano pieces for the left hand. He became a famous teacher and a famous conductor. He retold his narrative and redefined his life. I think we all can do that as a way to deal with adversity. Tell the narrative as a constructive, heroic narrative, not a narrative of despair. It's something we Jews have to do a lot, unfortunately. We're Israelis, we're not used to it, but we are doing it again, and because of that, we will overcome. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, it's a story of bravery. It's a narrative of bravery on the spiritual level, on the physical level. Continuity is a story of bravery, and I know we need two answers. Maybe to say, continuity means optimism. In order to have a motivation to continue, you have to be optimistic about the future. Optimism is an act of bravery, because on the surface, it seems like optimism? Look at the world. Why be optimistic? Where would you draw bravery from? So, continuity is optimism. Optimism is bravery, and I think maybe that's one of the secrets of the Jewish people. Amen. Amen. Thank you all for listening, and yes, may peace prevail. Amen. Thanks, Alicia.