Podcast #69: Parashat Bechukotai

The speakers discuss the significance of the Torah portion of Bechukotai and the creative process. They explore the idea that assumptions can be misleading and emphasize the richness and infinite interpretations of the Torah. They also discuss the creative process, highlighting the importance of discomfort and the need for a structured approach. They share personal stories and experiences related to creativity and finding new insights. The speakers reflect on the transformative power of focusing and reevaluating goals. They conclude by discussing a drasha and questioning the transactional relationship described in the beginning of the Torah portion. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Elisha. Good morning. Good morning everyone. It is Tuesday morning. We're back on track. We started off with Tuesday mornings and we're back with Tuesday mornings. And that's a good day because it's exactly midpoint in the week between Shabbat and Shabbat. And until Tuesday we kind of like, we still bid farewell from the previous Shabbat. And from Tuesday on we start looking forward towards the Shabbat. And we're ending a book this week. We're ending the book of Vayikra. Yes, we're saying goodbye to Vayikra with Parshat Bechukotai. And Elisha, I have a confession. For years, 80 years, I assumed that when we come to Parshat Vayikra, Leviticus, there's nothing for me to learn in terms of being a better person and how I should live because it's all about the kwanim and the sacrifices. Assumption. Wrong. Wrong assumption. And especially in Behar last week and this week, Bechukotai, there are powerful insights, amazing insights in this book. Let's not make assumptions, Elisha, because they are usually wrong. Right, yeah. And the Torah is so rich. It's so rich. And one of the things that we can really take away from these podcasts and just in general, any Brashah that you read is that the Torah is magical. It's magical because it just allows for infinite interpretations and infinite wisdom and infinite understandings. So if at some point you read a Parshat and it seems, I don't know, it doesn't speak to me. It just means that you haven't worked hard enough yet. Right, exactly. And Elisha, this Brashah, if I had to pick the top five Elisha Brashah, this would be in the top five for sure. The title of your Brashah, which you wrote and distributed in June 2019, five years ago, is Parshat Bechukotai, the letter Yod spells T. And you focus on a tiny letter at the end of the name of the Parshat Bechukotai. And that made me curious, Elisha, so I have a question for you. Yesterday I taught two classes to brilliant young students at Technion on entrepreneurship. And they have wonderful ideas. They're going to be very creative. I've studied the creative process for 40 years and they still don't fully understand how the ordinary people, relatively ordinary, everybody, people come up with amazingly creative ideas. And my question to you, Elisha, is how do you write a Brashah and come up with something new so often? I recall going to Shul on Shabbat in different congregations in Canada, in school in Manchester, in Princeton, here in Haifa now, here in Biafta. And usually the Brashah of the Rabbi is pretty predictable. And after the first few sentences you know what's coming because you've heard this before. It has never happened to me with you and this is my question. How in the world do you get the idea to write a Brashah about the little letter Yod that comes at the end of Bechukotai and bring us insights? Where does that come from? First of all, thank you for the kind words and the compliment. I don't know. I really, really don't know. But I can tell you one thing that is in the creative process, which I know that's your field, so I'm going to share with you. Maybe you have an insight about it, so I'll share it with you. Usually what happens, I usually start a Brashah with a vague idea of what I want to write about. And I start writing and then I always, always get stuck. Always get stuck. The Brashah, at some point, I just can't continue anymore. It just doesn't flow. It doesn't say what I really want to say. It almost feels like someone is trying to express something. They know what they want to say, but it doesn't come out. And at some point it just reaches a dead end. And today, the good thing is today I know that okay, I reached a dead end. Put it aside. So I put it aside and let it go. And then either Thursday night or early Friday morning, very early Friday morning, I sit back at the computer. I read again what I already wrote and boom, it all starts flowing. It just starts flowing and it never, ever fails. Slow-mo never. So that's Brilliant Avisha and that is definitely a method for coming up with creative ideas. The paradox of creativity is that it's a wild and open, unfettered, unconstrained process. But in order to get there, you have to have some kind of structure. You just explained your method. And it's a good method and the method works as follows. You start tackling a problem and you come up with a tentative solution. And it doesn't work. It's not comfortable. It doesn't feel right. Now, many of us in a situation of that sort, I have to have a drosha. So we push on anyway and we end up with something. And we usually plow the same field. And you do exactly the right thing, Alisha. You put it in the back of your mind and it's working in there. It's working and processing and thinking and chewing it over. And then, on Friday morning, you listen to this cold mummadaka, this faint voice, and it comes to you. It brings you the solution. Discomfort, Alisha, is a crucial part of creativity. You have to be discomforted. You have to be uncomfortable with something and let the discomfort sort of ferment for a while. And it's very uncomfortable to do that. And some people can't do that. But it ferments, ferments, and then it comes up with this beautiful wine idea. Beautiful. That's such a beautiful description. You know, I'll share with you something else. If you want to push us forward, just push us forward. No, this is interesting. Please, go ahead. So, Shechter, where rabbis are ordained in Israel, they have a special program with people, whether rabbinical students or people who are already rabbis or neither, who want to do some kind of Jewish entrepreneurship in their field. It's a year-long program. It's pretty intense. I had the privilege of meeting with the group last week, actually. And each one of them has a mentor that helps them with their specific project. There's a project they have to work on. So, I'm mentoring one of the young women in the program. She's just absolutely an amazing person. I won't say too much about her because, you know, it's privacy. But it's very interesting. So, we meet once a week on her project as the project unfolds. And I had a gut feeling about her project that just seemed too obvious. And just really nice words and clichés and the motto, the objective, were all great. They were good. They were good for maybe to go seek funding or something. But I knew this will just be one more project that someone did. And she'll always be proud of having done this project. But it's not going to really change that much. One of those projects. And so, I asked her yesterday if she's willing to do something a bit different. If she's willing to do the process of, like, focusing. The process that I studied and I kind of practiced. And she said, yes, of course. I'd love to. I asked her, are you willing to close your eyes? And she said, yes, of course. So, she closed her eyes. And we kind of focused on the way focusing works. You're kind of really focusing on the felt sense. You feel the bodily felt sense. What is your body telling you? If we gave it a Jewish term, what does your kishke tell you? And I read out, there are four goals. Four objectives. And I read out each one at a time. Read out the objective. And then I read it again very slowly. Each word. And then I said, okay, now let's look at this word. Jewish. Identity. Et cetera, et cetera. There are many words there. And each one, she had to really check in with herself. Like, what's the bodily sensation? And by the end of the session, it was about 45 minutes. By the end of the session, the goals were written totally differently. They were rewritten. And I felt, by the end of the session, I felt, you know what? I'm now really excited about your project. Your project is really, it's alive. And she was like glowing. And she was like, yeah, this is so exciting. Thank you. And it feels so much, so alive. So, the creative process is really fascinating. You said like plowing the same field. She was plowing the same field, the same familiar words. And for that, you don't need me as a mentor. Just go, just do copy and paste from so many other projects. So, you know, being able to sit with a difficulty, with being stuck there, and just sit with it, be with it, be with it, and allow, trust the process, trust that something wants to be born here. Something wants to come out. I have a personal story about that. So, I was anxious to somehow escape Saskatchewan and go off to college. And to do that, I needed a scholarship. And that meant I had to get really high grades in school. So, I learned to plow that field exactly as the teachers told me and how to repeat old ideas. And I did that all through my PhD and got a doctorate, came to Israel. Whoops, now I have to come up with my own ideas. I have to write papers with original research ideas. I had no clue, Alicia, why I was a field plower. And it took me quite a while to come to the solution that you suggest. So, yes. Was there a particular turning point? Do you remember? Yes. Is it something you can share? Yes, like a lot of good things that happened to me through my spouse, Sharona. She brought me her own discipline, psychology. And I began to apply that to economics at a time when it wasn't done. Today, it's mainstream. In those days, it wasn't. And we wrote books and articles together on this. And so, my spouse helped me a lot. And to this day, we have great discussions. And I'll continue on that. So, Alicia, to the drashah. And I had big problems with this drashah for 80 years because of how it starts. I quote, If you follow my laws and faithfully observe my commandments, I will grant you rains in their season so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field yield their fruit. Transactional relationship with God. Pure transaction. You follow the mitzvot, everything will be good. You don't follow the mitzvot, things will be bad. And I'm thinking, this is not the way God works. This isn't belief. This isn't Judaism. It's not a contract. I'm not doing a contract with God. I'm doing a relationship with God. I, thou. And I'm misreading it for 80 years, Alicia. And your little yud comes along and gives us the insight. And the yud makes the chukotai plural. So, chukah is constitution. A set of laws, an organized set of laws. And chukot is plural. And so God is saying, if you follow my plural set of principles, things will be good. But what is chukot? What is he talking about chukot? Why is it plural? Chukah, the Torah is a chukah. One chukah. Countries have a constitution. America has a constitution. Israel is only one of six countries and we don't have a constitution. We really need one. But what does it mean by chukotai? And that little yud that makes things plural. It means that each of us is incumbent upon us to find our way in life, our own path, based on the Torah, as we see the Torah, as suits our personality and our history. And it's individual for each of us. And it's not dictated by anybody else. And later on in your dreshah, you cite a wonderful piece from Pilkei Avot, The Ethics of Our Fathers. And I've had big problems with that as well. Find yourself a rabbi and do everything he says. Is that what the idea is of Judaism? And you point out, no, that's not what a selach harav means. It means find yourself an authority and interpret it and adapt it to make it fit you. Like we try to try on a jacket before we buy it to see if it fits. The same is true with the Torah. So this, for me, is a totally new insight and a brilliant insight. And it leads to an important conclusion. Judaism is pluralistic. It's not a monolithic religion with only one way. There is more than one way. Right, right. You know, last night I went out for coffee with one of my best friends. He's a very successful psychologist. We met many years ago in Berkeley. He was doing his Ph.D. And I was a shalich there and we became really, really close friends. And we always have these really incredible conversations. And we talked about parenting last night, parenting and chartering. And we both shared our difficulties and our successes, etc. But one thing that he said, being a psychologist, being a very accomplished psychologist, he has a very clear path in parenting, which we discussed at length last night, which is really, really interesting. But more than anything else, he said at the end of the day, the secret is not one particular school. Like you have to follow this particular psychology guru because he knows what he's talking about. That's the way to parent. You have to, what you do need to, is really follow, like find your own authentic path. If you try to raise children based on someone else's path because someone said, you know, he knows what he's talking about or she knows what she's talking about, but it's really not genuine to you. It's not authentically you. It's just not going to work. And that person maybe made a lot of money selling their books, maybe in a bestseller, but it only resonated with those that it resonated with. There are so many who bought the book because they're so lost in parenting that they're trying other people's laws, other people's chukot, other people's paths, but it's not chukotai. It's not authentic to them. And he said there could be someone who could raise children in a very strict manner, let's say. I'm not talking about cruel. I'm talking about a very strict manner. And if that's authentic to who they are, if it's at one with who they are, it's going to work. And their children are going to appreciate it. But if someone adopts this strict, strict path, but it's really not them, it's going to be riddled with guilt and with doubt. And it's going to be a disaster. And the kids are going to really resent their childhood. So, Alicia, there's a fast food chain that makes hamburgers. It's called Burger King. And they're competing with McDonald's. McDonald's is number one. How do you compete with McDonald's? McDonald's makes hamburgers and only one way. You order a hamburger, you get what they give you. Burger King says, have it your way. That's their mantra. And that's the solution in part. There's a saying by Nietzsche, become who you are. In modern life, Alicia, there are so many pressures on us to be people whom we aren't really truly that way. That our parents, our spouses, our children, our community, our employer, to be as they want us to be. Become who you are. Who are we? What is our true nature? And especially, what is our passion? So, I've been counseling my students. You've studied computer science for four years. Is this really your passion? Is this truly you? Maybe not. It's not too late. Look deeply into yourself. Figure out what your passion is. Not what you do well. What is your passion? What do you want to contribute? How do you want to change the world? And then go for it. But first you have to do this deep inward look. The Torah is really helpful with that. But it's only helpful with that if you understand a Selech Arav. It's not find yourself a dictator who tells you what to do. That's really comfortable, by the way. That means you don't have to think at all. You just get up in the morning and you do what the Rav says. Find yourself a Rav in the sense of find yourself a path, a way of life. And you shape it yourself. But it's uncomfortable. It's a difficult process. It takes a long time. But you have to begin with the understanding. That's what you need to do. Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes. Indeed. So basically it kind of says here if we adapt, if we kind of take the ideas that came up here and adapt them to us, you're going to have rain in their season and the crops will be abundant. So it kind of says it's not if you follow a particular path, that will lead to rains in their season. But if you follow your path, and it's interesting, like your is also like with a Y, capital Y, like a Yud. So like your path, your authentic, genuine path. And it doesn't mean, by the way, it's going to be easy. It doesn't mean it's going to be necessarily comfortable. It doesn't mean it's going to be there may be hurdles along the way. Furthermore, just like with writing a Dresha, you're going to reach like dead ends all the time. There's going to be dead ends because your path is – and that's, I think, another important point to make. How do we know if our path is authentic? Not necessarily if it just like easily presents itself. If it easily presents itself, then there's a good chance it's a field we've already plowed. If you reach a dead end, then you know, okay, there's a wall now that kind of – that I need to knock on the door, knock on the wall, and wait and insist until the door opens. And the ways of doing it, whether it's focusing, whether it's so many other ways of doing it. But our path continuously unfolds. And in the unfolding, it's a process. And it's not an easy process. And it's not necessarily a comfortable process. It really requires – at every door, there's a demon that's kind of waiting like, no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to open this door. You go plow the fields. You were there yesterday. Don't open this door. You don't know what's there. It will lead you to new places. No, no, why don't you just stick to what you already know? And these demons, we have to face them. Absolutely. You know, in my life experience, and seeing people around me who had bad things happen to them, of course I try to understand this. And I found the following, Alicia. Bad things happen to us sometimes by external forces. Cancer, okay. But Alicia, a lot of the bad things that happen to people are self-inflicted wounds because they have not followed this path that is appropriate for them. They've tried to be something that they aren't. Someone close to me was a brilliant man. I'll say it, my father-in-law. A brilliant man, a Hebrew educator. But he somehow had the idea that in order to gain respect in the family, he had to be a business person and make money. And he wasn't suited for that. He was trying to be someone whom he wasn't and it did not end well, Alicia. So, if only we can not inflict self-inflicted wounds and follow the path that we are truly meant to follow. And this is true of countries. I found a quote this morning by Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln made a speech in 1860. He said that no country can defeat America. We can't be defeated. But we can defeat ourselves. And then there was this terrible civil war that tore America apart. Nobody can defeat Israel. They cannot defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves. Unless we get our act together. And instead of the slogans about BeYachad NenaTzeach, together we will conquer. We will be victorious. What does it mean for us as a people to join together and to reach agreement over prickly issues? Like ultra-orthodox serving in the army. We need them in the army. We need them to serve. We need to deal with this. Yes. Yes. Yes, sir. Okay. So, anything else that you want to point out in the parashah, in the doshah? Anything else you want to... Yes. So, doing a zoom out on the world, Alicia, I wrote a column called The New World Disorder. Shimon Peres loved to talk about the New World Order. But we now have the New World Disorder, Alicia. And the numbers are really distressing. The world is becoming anti-democratic. So, just a few numbers. Six billion people, three quarters of the world, live under authoritarian rule. China, Iran, Russia, big countries, live under dictators. And more and more people in the world... We have elections now. People are looking often for an autocratic dictator to tell them what to do. Democracy is on a decline. So, asel harav, in other words, find your own way. You need freedom for that. And people are choosing to give up their freedom, purposely, because of the disorder and the chaos. And they think that this autocratic leader, the dictator, will bring them salvation and peace. And it just doesn't work, Alicia. It does not happen. You end up with wars, as we've seen in our Middle East and in Ukraine. So, the Torah has a really important message here, not just for Jews, for humanity, and not just for the Middle East or Israel, for the entire world. Asel harav. Find yourself the right way and preserve your freedom, your freedom of choice. God gave it to us. This is a God-given right that we have to choose. Don't give it up. It's very, very precious. Yeah, yeah. And I want to add a little twist to this, asel harav. Asel harav literally means, you know, find yourself or make for yourself a rabbi. Meaning, find the teacher that really resonates with you, resonates with your path, because we all need teachers. The best teachers are those who help us find our answers within. So, that's why we need different teachers, because we all have different withins. But rav also means great, greatness. Asel harav is like, find a path which is great. It's a great path. Now, it's not necessarily a great path for someone else, but it's a great path where you feel great. You feel that you are making your contribution in life. And in the grand scheme of things, it's going to be a tiny contribution, but in your grand scheme of things, it's going to be a huge contribution. So, asel harav, we could also translate it like, do unto yourself greatness. Find greatness, not by copying anyone else, but really by bringing your light fully into the world. So, Elisha, as we end, I want to read the last part of your drasha, which I think is pure poetry. I quote, May we indeed ask the divine questions, questioning ourselves, what is my way of life? What is the right path that I should choose for myself? Do I need to change the path that I'm on? May we indeed ask the divine questions. And you continue, May we all meet one another on the infinite paths of the forest. May we team together and learn from one another. May we be accepting and respectful of each path, even when it is different from our own. And at the same time, be loyal to the one we choose. And may we be gentle, soft, and humble in our search. If only we Israelis could embrace that beautiful thought, Elisha. And be Jewish. Judaism is pluralistic. It is not monolithic. That's a false idea that has been dumped on us. And it is wrong. We are pluralistic. Just a quick mention, Elisha. I've been reading things from Hartman Institute. Hartman Institute was founded by David Hartman, a rabbi. David Hartman was an Orthodox rabbi. He studied at Chabad. He studied with Soloveitchik, Yeshiva University. Mainstream Orthodox rabbi. And he came to believe that this is going wrong. And this is what he wrote very quickly. David Hartman wrote, I'm fighting a war on the monopoly of certain people on truth, on the understanding of what Judaism is. And he founded this wonderful institute, which is fostering creative thinking and pluralistic thinking. His son, Daniel Hartman, is the head. Do you know him or know Hartman Institute? Absolutely. Hartman, it certainly is an example of a pluralistic institute. And that's a great quote. That was a really beautiful quote. So, may we indeed all find our paths in this endless forest. And now we're headed into the wilderness. And now we're headed into the wilderness. Bamidbar. Bamidbar. We're all kind of in the wilderness, searching. So, I hope we'll learn as much from Bamidbar as I personally have learned from Vayikra. Right. And maybe just to add, it's really interesting that I always say, there's no GPS in the wilderness. You really have to find your own path. And it's really interesting because now in Israel, because of the war, there are huge parts of Israel, mostly in the north, from Zichon Yaakov and all the way up north, where Waze or GPS just doesn't work. If you try to get from here to Haifa, it will lead you to Beirut. And so here, once again, reality is forcing us, find your own path. Absolutely. And we will. And we will. We will. Shabbat Shalom. Shabbat Shalom, everyone.