Podcast #50 Parashat Bo

Shalom Shlomo and Shalom Elisha. It's Wednesday and we're doing podcast number 49. We don't count people in Jewish tradition because a person is beyond counting. We can count podcasts though. We're discussing parashat Bo, which is about a heavy heart. Rashi said the Torah should have started from Parshat Bo because the Exodus is the ultimate story, the beginning of freedom. The book The Kuzari explains why the Exodus is the formative story of humanity. It's about freeing ourselves from slavery and difficult situations. This story happens every day. It's not just a story from 3,500 years ago. In the world today, less than half of the UN members are democratic societies, so a majority of the world lives in slavery. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Elisha. Hello to everyone. Shalom to everyone. It's actually Wednesday today. Shlomo was teaching yesterday at the Technion, so we're meeting on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. We'll see what impact that has on the quality of our thinking and on our message. So Elisha, we're doing podcast number 49. You're not supposed to count people in Jewish tradition, but I think you can count podcasts. By the way, why can't you count people? We don't count people because a person is beyond counting. A person is not a commodity. It's not a thing. It's not an object. And it's really quite tragic but also ironic that that's exactly what the Nazis did to us. They took away our names and put numbers on us, placed us into cattle carts and reduced us to animals. And the Torah says you can't do that to a human being. Never ever do that to a human being. King David was actually punished severely for counting his troops. So no counting, but podcasts, we're allowed to count podcasts. Got it. So Elisha, we're discussing parashat Bo. And parashat Bo is a lot about a heavy heart. We'll discuss that in a moment, but a small story. Many of us in Israel now have heavy hearts. It's hard to avoid it after 104 days. This is the 104th day of the war. And we see awful things. And for some reason the media insists on reminding us and showing us the horrors again and again. But yesterday I had a light heart, Elisha. So you mentioned that I couldn't come on Tuesday for our regular podcast because our studies began at Technion and it was the first day of our entrepreneurship course. And we had a packed room of 75 or 80 wonderful young students, all of whom want to become entrepreneurs with great ideas. And they're studying thermodynamics, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering. And just looking at their faces, Elisha, we have a great future. Because that room of 75, 80 students, there are many such rooms all over Israel. And they will change the world in amazing ways. Wow, that's really good news. First of all, it's great to hear that Technion is back and students are returning. And even though people, not all the soldiers, not all the reserve soldiers are in the army, but nevertheless. And it's great that the spark is still there. And again a preliminary question, Elisha, this has been bothering me. So you are a spiritual counselor. You are a spiritual shepherd and we come to Shul on Shabbat and you have messages of comfort. My question is who is your spiritual comforter? Who do rabbis go to when their spirits feel downcast, if they are? I don't know if there is one person that everybody goes to. But I have my spiritual teachers, both long dead and those who are still alive. The ones who are my most profound teachers are A.D. Gordon, Aaron David Gordon, one of the founders of labor Zionism. And he is certainly my spiritual mentor. And today I have plenty, I have many teachers. And it's basically I find teachers who remind me time and time again that number one, God is in everything and everyone. God is everything and everyone. There is nothing but God. That's reminder number one that keeps me afloat. And reminder number two is that what we see is not reality. So not to take what I see here and what I experience through my five senses, not to take them too personally because they are not reality. Maybe another time. So your Darshan, which is wonderful, opens by saying, the title is Opening the Heavy Heart. And we will talk about the heavy heart of Pharaoh a little later. But you begin by observing that Rashi said something astonishing. Rashi said, he definitely said this, the Torah should have started from Parshat Bo, not from Brashid. Rashi is rewriting the Torah. What in the world Elisha, what's going on? What's the reason that Rashi said that? Yeah, yeah, it's a famous Rashi. And Rashi basically suggests that the Torah indeed, I'm sorry, should have started with Parshat Bo. Because Parshat Bo is the beginning of the Exodus. That's when the Exodus, we're finally leaving Egypt yet again. We left Egypt last year. In fact, we leave Egypt every day anew. And according to Rashi and the sages and many of the sages, the Exodus is the ultimate story. The story of creation, says Rashi, is really not the most important piece of information. Which makes a lot of sense on many levels. Because what's really important is human beings leaving slavery and going out into freedom. There's a lot to be said about that, but essentially he claims this is the essence of the Torah. That's where it all really begins. And Yehuda Alevi agrees. In Sefer HaKuzarim, the book in which he is instructing the king of the Kuzari, he says that Sefer Shemot, the Exodus, Yitzyat Mitzayim, the Exodus from Egypt, is the formative story of humanity. In what sense is this not the creation of the world? That's the creation of the world. God makes the world. But humanity, the formative story of humanity, why is this the formative story of humanity when this handful of Jews, not a handful, there are two million, but when a relative handful leaves Egypt, why? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Indeed, first of all, it's a great book. If you haven't yet read the book The Kuzari, about the king of Kuzar, it's an imaginary, it's a made-up story, but it's based on historical foundations, let's put it this way. There used to be a Jewish empire, small empire, where Russia is today, the people were the Kuzari, and the king had these obsessive dreams. And in the dreams, God told him that his faith is favorable, but not his actions. And he sets out to discover, so what is the true religion in the world? It doesn't even occur to him to turn to the Jews, because the Jews are downtrodden and the lowest of the low. And I think we may have even discussed this once in our podcast, that he turns first to the philosophers. The philosopher was the religion of the time. He turns to the philosopher, and the answers he gets from the philosopher are phenomenal, but they don't do the job. The Kuzari tells him, really interesting, but you know what, there's no life there, there's no emotion there, it's all intellectual. And next he meets the Christian, a priest, and the priest tells him all about Jesus, and about the New Testament. And the Kuzari is very moved. Rabbi Udailevu writes the book, does a great job, really representing each one of those other religions. And it's quite convincing that the king says, I'm really impressed by what you told me, however, Jesus doesn't speak to my heart. I believe you that you're deeply moved, and Jesus died for your sins, but I don't feel like he died for my sins, etc. Then he invites the Muslim scholar, an imam, and the imam tells him about the beauty of the Quran, and the Arabic language, and how the Arabic language is a proof for its truth. And indeed, the Kuzari, the king, is deeply impressed. He says, I'm really impressed, and I almost even envy you, but I don't know Arabic, so what you say doesn't resonate with me in any way, shape, or form. And then he's at a loss, because who is he going to turn to now? The Jews are really out of the question, they're so despised. But eventually, because there's no one else, he turns to the Jews. And he brings in a scholar, the scholar is called a chaver, like the friend. And since Judaism is not in favor of missionizing, the friend says, the rabbi says, you don't really know, it doesn't really matter, it's really not for you, don't bother with it, just have a good life. And the king is kind of curious, like why wouldn't you want to try and convince me? Because it's just our shtick, it's nothing to do with you, you wouldn't even understand it. And now he's really, he really piqued his interest. So he says, well, tell me something. So he goes on to say, well, you know, we were in Egypt, and then we came out of Egypt, God delivered us out of Egypt, and we received the Torah, and that's basically it. And the king said, that's it? This whole religion on which two other religions are based on, that's all? You were in Egypt, you came out of Egypt, and I said, yeah, that's all? He said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you've got to tell me more, there's more to it. He says, I told you, there's nothing to it. Okay, you want to hear some more. And then he goes on to tell him, explains to him the essence of the Exodus. And explains to him how we human beings, now I'm saying it in my own words, obviously, but he explains that we human beings, we have a really difficult time coming out of very narrow places. We get stuck, we get enslaved, and it's really hard for us to free ourselves. And it really takes divine power to free oneself from bondage, from slavery. Now that really touches the heart of the Kuzeri, because he understands, he says, yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. I've experienced that too. I've really experienced that too. He says, I'm sure you have, says the friend, the rabbi. He says, you see, you too came out of Egypt. And then he suddenly gets it, why the story is such a formative story, because it's not a story that happened 3,500 years ago. It's a story that happens every day, every time we crawl out of bed, every time we leave a really difficult place in our lives, and we re-experience the Exodus. And the power that allows for salvation, as Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan said it, that is God, and the Kuzeri could finally relate to that. And that begins a long, long friendship, and he converts to Judaism, and so does his entire kingdom, according to the story. So it is a formative story. And I can add some numbers to that, Elisha. I did a little research for a column I wrote about what I call the court of injustice. We can discuss that maybe later, or maybe not. But there are 193 members of the United Nations. Of those 193, far less than half are democratic societies. So a majority of the world lives in essentially slavery. If it's not democratic, then it's autocratic, and you're not free. The United Nations has a Human Rights Council. They always vote against Israel, permanently, many times, again and again. Only 13 of those 47, 13, in other words, about a quarter, just over a quarter, only 13 are fully democratic, politically free. So, yes, the world is still essentially in bondage. And incidentally, there are elections in half the world this year, and in Russia, and in the United States, and now in Taiwan, and in many places, maybe, maybe in Israel. And many of those places, the elections are rather trumped up. Back to Parshat Bo. So, in Parshat Bo, God says to Moses, the Moshe, Go to Pharaoh, for I have made his heart heavy. And boy, that's problematic for so many reasons. Wait a second. God is a big manipulator. He is manipulating Pharaoh's emotions so that he won't let the Jews go. But we want to let the Jews go. We're trying to get them to freedom. Alicia, what in the world is going on with God making Pharaoh's heart heavy? What is this about? Yeah, yeah, the great question of free will. You know, it seems like God is evoking Pharaoh's free will. So, there are many, many answers, many possible answers, many ways to address it. The one that I connect with, at least today, in 2024, is that there is, like freedom, free choice, is a very tricky thing. Do we really, really have free choice? Do we really choose freely? When we make a choice, do we, you know, do we indeed, did we indeed make that choice freely? How much of it was our programming from our childhood? How much of it was as a result of our education? How much of it is all because of things that we identify with? Can we really, really choose freely? You could say that maybe we choose, but do we really choose freely? That's question number one. You know, is there really such a thing as freedom of choice? And we know, one of the problems in democracy is that you have the masses, and the masses often vote from the worst possible inner place. They hear all kinds of demagogues, and they hear all kinds of lies, and that's freedom of choice, is that what we're talking about? So, I think the answer is no. So, freedom of choice is not necessarily something we're all really familiar with, we think we're familiar with, but we're not. There was an experiment a while back, a really powerful and profound experiment, in which people were monitored, like an fMRI kind of, and they were monitored in actions that they were taking. And you could see they were asked all kinds of questions, and asked to do all kinds of tasks, and there was a fraction of a moment before they made a conscious choice, let's say, to raise their hand, that in their brain a decision has already been made, in the brain. And when the frontal cortex makes this decision to act in a certain way, another part of the brain really made that decision way earlier, way earlier, we're talking about a split of a second earlier, and the frontal cortex just gives the story that makes sense, why did I choose what I chose? But essentially, there's something much more primal that made that choice. So, is that freedom of choice? No, it isn't. We talked before about our ancient brain, our lizard brain, reptilian brain, and that's acting out of survival, not out of freedom of choice. So, one great explanation is that Pharaoh could not let the children of Israel out, because he was petrified, he was scared. Their freedom was a huge threat to him. And when someone acts out of fear, when someone acts out of anything but joy, out of anything but openness, anything but love, let's say, they're acting out of a heavy heart. In other words, it was Pharaoh's fear that was making the decision there. So, Pharaoh's heart was responding to his own fear. His heart was heavy from fear. When your heart is heavy with fear, anxiety, worry, and you just said, we're all heavy of heart. Lately in Israel, we're all extremely worried and concerned, and therefore, our hearts are heavy. If we knew, if we knew, and most of us don't, and I only know sometimes, but if we truly knew how to connect to a place of joy, even while this nightmare is going on, if we could really connect with this inner place of peace within us, then our hearts right now would not be heavy and our actions would be different. But it's natural for people to fall into anxiety and concern and worry and depression, especially in times like that. And then their hearts are heavy. So, what is God actually doing here? Because it sounds like it's not the consequence of Pharaoh's fear or causing his heart to be heavy. Rather, it sounds like God is causing Pharaoh's heart to be heavy. I think what God has to do with it is God gives us that free choice. You can act from fear. You can act from anxiety, from depression. That's fine. You have the freedom of choice to act from that place. But just know that you're going to be acting from a heavy heart. That's your choice. And if you are willing to do the spiritual work to connect with your higher self, it takes a lot of faith, with deep, deep, deep faith, and find that quiet place within. Find that place within that knows that all will be well. You'll find that your heart lightens up. Perfect, Elisha. So, I want to connect this to some amazing findings about brain science and neuroscience. That supports what you say. But first, a small story about how we're really not free. Elisha, we are manipulated. We are manipulated by marketing, by advertising. And here's a small example. The United States used to have a tax on inheritance. If you made $10 billion, or like Elon Musk, $300 billion, when you passed away, you paid some of that in tax, which is fair enough because the state helped you make those $300 billion. Right? They educated you. They gave you a home and help and legal support. Give some of it back, not all of it. Give some of it back. And then the Republicans attacked the inheritance tax, which is inherently just. So, Dick, it's just. And they killed it. You know how they killed it? Two words. They said, this is a death tax. They are taxing death. Oh, my gosh. How in the world can you tax death? Labeling it the death tax killed the inheritance tax. And we were manipulated. Why? Because they manipulated our emotions, our emotions, our limbic brain, which is the reptile brain, the basic emotional part of the brain. And I want to connect this to heavy heart because heart in the Torah, as I understand it, is not just emotion. It's a combination of motion and reason working together. So, Alisha, there are many people in Israel who have heavy hearts, and the numbers are staggering. This is from Shmuel Hirschman, who's a doctor. He's head of the Mental Health Center Directors Forum. These are all the people who direct mental health centers. And he said that the events of October 7th resulted in an estimated 300,000 additional patients who require treatment by a trained professional. The Golani Brigade has just come out of Gaza, and God knows what they've seen, and they've lost the most of any brigade in the fighting starting on October 7th. So, we have heavy hearts, and many people need treatment, and there aren't enough trained people to treat them. So, we're going to have to treat ourselves, Alisha. And let me follow up on what you said. So, there's research done on this about the source of stress. What is it in our brains that causes this stress? There's a tiny piece of the brain out in the front here called the amygdala. And the amygdala is the place where we feel emotions that are related to stressful events. And sometimes it replays these stressful events like a loop again and again and again. And this really causes post-trauma. It turns trauma into post-trauma. But I think there's a way to deal with this, as you note, which is to shut your darned amygdala down. Move to some other places in your brain away from the limbic brain. I did it yesterday by looking at the faces of these students and thinking in the future about all the incredible ideas that they're going to come up with. And, of course, they will develop an idea, create a team, write a business plan, present it, practice presenting it, get advice, have mentors. Kind of a simulation of a startup. That shut my amygdala down. That made my heart a lot, a lot less, a lot less heavy. And one last comment about Paro, about Pharaoh, about the heavy heart. I'm an economist. I think people are motivated very often by greed, by money. Elisha, there are 2 million Jews in Goshen. And they are hard workers. They are building buildings and doing the farming. Elisha, they are worth zillions to Pharaoh. And he's looking at these guys and they want to leave? Are you joking? Like the southerners in the United States who had slaves and who became wealthy, incredibly wealthy, because of the work of other people who weren't paid. So, of course, Pharaoh's heart is heavy. He's seeing his nest egg disappear and go off somewhere else. Naturally, he doesn't want this to happen. Right, right, right. And it makes perfect sense. That's the problem that in this world, in the way we were all brought up and raised, if something reduces our net worth or our income, whatever, then there must be bad. Nothing could be worse. There's one of Israel's leading business women, woman, Ofra Strauss. She was interviewed. It's like the Strauss company. She was interviewed a few years ago in one of Israel's leading newspapers. And the writer asked her. He said, like, you have so much money. Why are you still working so hard? She says, oh, no, no, no, no. I never have enough money. I never have. And he said, what do you mean? You have billions. And she says, it's never enough. You can never know what will happen next. And I thought to myself, wow, now that is slavery. Now, God willing, she enjoys her work. And if she enjoys her work and she goes out to work, then wonderful. And that's great. Then, yeah, just keep on working. But it didn't sound like it. It sounded like she was plowing along because of survival. How could a billionaire be in survival mode? But it just proves that it has nothing to do with how much money you have or don't have. Survival is the amygdala and is the reptilian brain, etc. And in that place, heart is always heavy. So you're absolutely right. In order to have a lighter heart, you have to shut down or do whatever you do with the amygdala to connect with an easier heart. And there's another thing that greed and money do together, Alicia. There was a famous Jewish mayor of a Brazilian city, Curitiba. Curitiba is a city in Brazil and it was bankrupt and he became mayor at the last minute. And he found there was no money and garbage was piling up. And he found ways of cleaning the garbage, cleaning the city, reviving the center city without money. And after he did that, I won't go into details, he said that he discovered something. If you want real creativity, you have to take two zeros off your budget. If you don't have money, then you need ideas and you need creativity. And I've seen this a lot. Start-ups that raise a lot of money sometimes end up not very successful. And start-ups that are penny-pinching have to use their heads. And the people working in the start-ups have to do a lot of things themselves. And they learn programming and human resources and all of those things instead of spending fortunes and hiring people. So yeah, money can be destructive sometimes. Interesting. Very interesting. Yeah, so we can see again why the Khuzari, the king of Khuzar, understood that the story of the Exodus is the ultimate story. And why Rashi says what he says. Because here we are, all of us, all of us are driven by our amygdala, are driven by survival. I don't want to say we're created this way, but we're definitely programmed this way. And if we could only learn how to get out of our amygdala, get out of our own way, then we would be willing to be free and allow others to be free as well. And I want to quote your Rasha, because this is beautiful. You say, the heavy heart does have meaning when we have a heavy heart. We all have heavy hearts, especially now. Quote, while it is not too smart, it signals to us that we are not seeing reality clearly at the moment. We are seeing on television these terrible scenes. We are not seeing this dynamic, incredible country with amazing youth, with motivated soldiers, with a unified, strong country with thousands and thousands of volunteers. We are not seeing reality, and you're absolutely right. Yeah, so when we have a heavy heart, and we all have heavy hearts, once in a while or more than once in a while, it's not about, oh, I have to do something quickly to get out of this heavy heart. No, no, no. First of all, it needs to be recognized. It needs to be appreciated because the heavy heart has a role to play. It tells us that our thinking right now is not lucid. Our thinking is hijacked by the amygdala. That's why we have a heavy heart. So we can even thank our heavy heart because it tells us, whoa, you have some spiritual, psychological, whatever kind of work to do on yourself and to allow for something better to arise. I must ask you this before we end because it bothers me a lot. I get to bring you all the things that bug me and ask you all the hard questions. So we read the Shema every day, and it tells us the Shema, the prayer. It tells us to love thy God. Love is an emotion. Alicia, what are we supposed to feel about these awful people in Gaza? First of all, there are many people there who are hungry and suffering. Are we supposed to feel khemlah, compassion for these people who have done such harm to us? And are we allowed to feel bitter anger at these people? And can we talk at all about the morality of emotion? Emotion comes from the limbic brain. Is it something you can really control? What does the Torah say about how we feel toward our enemies? In the court of justice they quoted Netanyahu who quoted Amalek, wipe them out and all his descendants, blah, blah, blah. What are we supposed to feel about these people in Gaza? Yeah, well, that's such a good question. I don't know if even the word supposed to is the most fitting word only because can we really design our emotions? But first I want to question is love necessarily an emotion? It's expressed as an emotion. I think love is a state of mind, a state of being, a way of looking at the world. I understand emotion to be a result of our thinking. There's never an emotion that doesn't have a thinking that comes before it. People think there's thinking and then there's emotion. I think that emotion, if you look at any emotion you'll find, you'll always find a thought that came before it that triggered this emotion. So love is a very high vibrating thought. And when we can be there in that consciousness of love, then our emotions will reflect that. So just as a heavy heart is a really good indicator as to how we're doing vis-a-vis survival or freedom, our emotions serve as a great indicator to tell us about the quality of our thinking. If we have a very muddy and murky emotional state right now, then that tells us something about our thinking process right now. I don't believe in, oh, just change your thoughts, start doing positive thinking. I'm all in favor of thinking positive, but we can't force it. But if we really know that our emotions come from thought, then something amazing will just happen upon itself. Our thoughts will be set free and our emotions will naturally start changing. So now back to specifically the question of Gaza. Gaza used to belong to Egypt once. So you're asking what does the Torah say. The Torah says something very clear about the Egyptians. Not hate. Right. Never hate the Egyptians. Exactly. They did some good for us. They saved us from starvation. Right. Became a nation there. Right. Exactly. God says to Moshe, Moshe says to the people, you should not hate the Egyptians in your heart. For you came there a hungry family and you were fed there. You were nurtured there. I always view Egypt as a womb. It's a womb in which the people of Israel were conceived. And then just like any fetus becomes an embryo, becomes a baby, and eventually needs to come out. It's just too big to remain inside the womb. And it's painful. The Exodus, you know, talk of the splitting of the Sea of Reeds next week. It's an accurate description of birth and everything about it. It's such an amazing powerful metaphor for birth, including the placenta that kind of like the Egyptian army that kind of is swept ashore after the children of Israel are delivered out of Egypt. So Moshe tells the people, do not hate the Egyptians in your heart. Just like we should not hate the womb. We would not want to stay in the womb forever and ever. Some probably do, but it's better to be out and live your life. But we certainly should not hate. Through adolescence, we go through phases where we can maybe like really be angry at our parents. They don't know anything. They don't understand anything. But nevertheless, we don't hate them. We're just doing another little Exodus. At the end of the day, we learn to honor our parents for all the good reasons. So that's why the big question is, do we regard the people of Gaza, let's say Hamas, let's stick to Hamas, are they Egyptians in this sense or are they Amalek? Because if they are Amalek, then you are supposed to destroy them, to totally annihilate them. You will never succeed by the way. The Torah is pretty, the Sages are very clear. It's an eternal task to always exterminate Amalek because Amalek is always going to be around. And it could be argued that Hamas, I would argue that Hamas is somewhat like Amalek. Amalek was after the weak. And what does Hamas do? Hamas, on 7th of October, they murdered babies, mutilated babies, raped women, kidnapped elderly people. So they certainly, you know, they didn't go after the army. They went after Kibbutzim who were not well protected. So when anyone goes after the weak, that's Amalek. And then, yes, that's a different story, but perhaps the story of Amalek is coming up next week. So maybe we can discuss it more in depth next week. We shall. And one final thought. It occurred to me listening to you that the exodus from Egypt is something we all do. And one way we do it is that we free ourselves from this binding control of raw emotion that's often manipulated by media, by advertising, by other people, by politicians. We free ourselves from the emotion and we introduce our thinking part of the brain to at least temper what we feel in our emotions. And that's part of the continuing daily exodus from Egypt. Yes, yes. And we do it by remembering that emotions are first and foremost thought, thought in motion. So when we learn that, the thought simply passes and we can lighten up our hearts. Got it. I hope I got it too. I'm still working on it. So Shlomo, thank you so much. Thank you, Alisha. And may we enjoy the journey that's beginning this week in the wilderness of life. Amen. Bye-bye. Bye.