Podcast #81: Parashat Ekev

This is a conversation between two friends discussing the main ideas from a Torah portion called Parsha Ekev. They talk about the significance of the book of Deuteronomy and the wisdom it offers, particularly in terms of logic and causality. They also discuss the dangers of assuming causality without proper evidence, as well as the importance of being open to new interpretations and understandings of the Torah. They touch on the biological limit of human life being around 120 years, which coincides with what is mentioned in the Bible. They also explore the concept of being a stubborn and persistent people, and the balance between personal agency and submission to divine will. Overall, they emphasize the endless insights and relevance that can be found in the Torah. Boker Tov Shlomo, Boker Tov Elisha, Boker Tov to everyone, it's Thursday morning, Thursday morning August 22nd I think if I'm not mistaken, and we have an amazing parasha this week. Amazing indeed Elisha, it's the 46th parasha of the Torah, third parasha in the book of Deuteronomy, long one, 1747 words, not too many mitzvot, 8 mitzvot, continuing Moshe's discourse and Elisha, I'm feeling so happy and so blessed that they discovered the book of Deuteronomy in 621 BCE, 2600 years ago, because it has this brilliant, brilliant discourse of Moshe, summing up his life before he's about to pass on, and there are so many wonderful and useful pearls of wisdom that we can apply to our own lives, even though the context is so foreign to what we have today, and Elisha, it's also a lesson in logic, philosophy has three branches, logic, ethics and metaphysics, I was fortunate to study philosophy in Queens University when I was very young, my professor was ACR Duncan, I remember him so well, very challenging course and everything I learned I use every single day, logic is about how to think in the right manner, and in a sense parashat Ekev is about logic, and I'll explain, Ekev means basically if, it's if then, there are three logical operators, main operators, if then, if you do X, then Y will happen, the second one is either or, either A or B, and the third one is both and, both X and Y, if then, Ekev, as, is causality, and it's really problematic for me and also for our sages who struggle with it, does it mean Ekev, if we do the mitzvot then God will promise us that we will have a blessed and peaceful and happy and wealthy life, is that the idea, what's the causality here, and Moshe helps us delve into that and of course our commentators as well, and we'll talk about that, what exact causality are we talking about here, right, beautiful introduction, beautiful, beautiful introduction, yeah, the issue of causality, you're absolutely right, Ekev, Ekev is the essence of causality, you're right, and causality, well what does that mean, we know that, I was just there this morning, I was on a long, long, brisk walk, brisk, is that the word, yeah, and we have this big dog, a Belgian Shepherd, so she needs a lot of walking, hence causality, so most mornings, I wake up really early in the morning, about 5 in the morning, and well you wake up even earlier, and off I go to our beautiful nature reserve and it's just delightful, it's beautiful and delightful, and I was actually thinking about that a lot, probably in anticipation of the issues you may bring up this morning, and I was listening to a podcast as I was walking briskly with the dog, and the podcast was all about treating pain, chronic pain, I'm very interested in helping people deal with chronic pain, and so I've been studying a lot about that, and I'm doing a lot about that, and major breakthroughs, and the professor in this podcast basically gave an overview of the history of scientific approaches towards pain, and they're all looking for the causes, the cause of the pain, and it goes all the way back to, and even antiquity, and then the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and then modernity, and even in the last 30 years, there have been huge changes in understanding what causes pain. Why am I saying all of that? First of all, because I want to encourage you all to go out on brisk walks first thing in the morning, it's good for your health, but the most important thing is that we think we know the cause of something, if then, if you do this, then, and there's a huge question mark, is that indeed the case? And they used to treat pain in the most horrific, horrific ways, and because they misunderstood the causes of pain, so anywhere between that dilemma of, we don't really know what the causes are, all the way to the theology of Rabbi Nachman, for example, who says that ultimately, ultimately, there is no cause, the thing itself is its own cause, and there actually really is no cause and effect. Yes, that's very interesting. We human beings, we have taken over Ekev, as if we understand all the causality, and always will, if you build a billion-dollar hadron accelerator and smash protons together, you can take apart the insides of the atom, and then we will understand what's in there, so if we're clever, we human beings will understand even the inner workings of an atom, and the tiniest particle, and this leads to hubris, arrogance, and bad things, which is exactly what this parasha is about. Exactly, and I'm not fond of if-then, because sometimes in my field, and in science in general, when you find two things that are correlated, we assume causality, and it's a standard fallacy, just because two things occur together. I followed the mitzvah, I kept kashrut, and I made money in the stock market. Is there a connection? Maybe, probably not, but they came together, we infer causality where there is none. I'm very fond of another logical operator, both-and, and oppose the either-or philosophy, which some people espouse, which is against Masorti Judaism, but at least I want to digress for a moment before we discuss what Ekev really means, what if-then really means. So this is a dramatic scene, Moshe is approaching 120, he's still 119 I think, and he's going to climb Mount Nevo and look across at the promised land that he will never set foot on. He will only see this beautiful vision of a beautiful country laid out before him. There's something magical about 120, which is in the Bible, going back 2,500 years, and Elisha, it's been verified biologically. I'm not kidding. There's a Jewish biologist named Leonard Halflink, Leonard Halflink. He passed away, he was 96 years old, and he discovered that the upper bound of human beings, of human life, is 120, biologically. Here's the reason. Cells divide and they repair the body. Our heart cells repair themselves sometimes when they divide, and when cells divide, the DNA splits into two, and the new cell has the same DNA as the old cell, and so it's a heart cell, it's cardiac or whatever. As we age, Elisha, when this division occurs, the telomeres, the ends of the DNA, get shorter and shorter. They decay, and the message of the DNA gets more and more blurry. It's like, Elisha, if I were to photocopy your drashah, and then copy the copy, and copy the copy of the copy, eventually I wouldn't be able to read it, and that's what happens to our body. Halflink discovered that that takes about 120 years. After cells are 120 years old, they're not able to really reproduce and copy, and the body just shuts down. That's it. That's it. It's amazing. It's not that I find super validity because biology coincides with Torah, but it's still amazing to me how many insights there are in Torah that are purely modern, and coincide with modern science, even things that we discover very, very recently. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Absolutely, absolutely. I've read Harry Potter four or five times, the whole series. Two times, the last few books are not really part of the series, and then I felt like, okay, I think I'm done. I think I'm done with Harry Potter. And with the Torah, on the other hand, every year, reading it over and over again, every year, it somehow seems to sprout new meaning, and new understandings, and new revelations, and more and more layers. I'm studying Zohar, the Book of Splendor, the Book of Zohar, and they have a whole other layer of understanding of the Torah, which is totally different from everything we're discussing here, and it's all there. It's all in the Torah, so it is indeed absolutely endless in what the insight it can bring forth. Absolutely, so there's another insight that I found in the Parsha Elisha that's also very, very modern. Your Drashah says, you point out this from the Drashah Parsha, no therefore, it is not, this is your interpretation, it is not for your righteousness that the Lord your God gives you this good land to possess it. It's not because we're such holy people that we're getting the promised land. You are a stiff-necked people. From the day that you went forth out of Egypt, until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. This is Moshe, actually, speaking. Right, it's not me. It is Moshe. It is Moshe, absolutely. You are a stiff-necked people. So, Elisha, there's a psychology of stiff-necked people. There is such a thing as a Jewish culture, I believe, and we Jews are persistent, and if you want to say so, stiff-necked and stubborn to a full. My mother used to call me a stubborn malt, and that's how you finish marathons, but it's also how you get into big trouble. Psychologists have studied this phenomenon called reactant, a person who is reactant. Elisha, we're raising kids. We have raised kids. You have a teenager, and I am guessing you have heard the following, Abba, you are not my boss. This is reactant. This is a person who, when he's told to do something, and it's good for you, take your vitamins, drink your milk, etc., we find that as an encroachment on our freedom, and we react to it, and we say, you are not my boss. The people of Israel said to Moshe, on more than one occasion, Moshe, you are not our boss. We're going back. We're going back to slavery in Egypt. There are advantages to being a stubborn, stiff-necked people. It has helped us survive. It is, when exaggerated, it's problematic, and the issue raised, one among many issues in the Parsha, is how is it that we can be persistent and resilient, but at the same time accept the will of God? As religious people often say, where is the line that we draw, Elisha, between being a deterministic human being, we guide our fate, we choose our fate, but we also submit to the divine will of God, and this is related to the if-then. Exactly. Right. Absolutely. Right. It goes back to the cause and effect, and so, there are many ways of addressing what you said. It's a really good point, and I think that's what maybe Rabbi Nachman was referring to when he said he doesn't believe in cause and effect, or that there is no cause and effect. Nature goes by cause and effect. We might not know what the cause is. We may, scientists rather, may discover, oh, it's not this cause, it's another cause, but we understand nature as cause and effect, and God is, on the one hand, is the God of nature, but is also beyond nature, and in a way, being adherent of cause and effect is a form of idolatry. In other words, we give power to things by saying, this causes it, you know, if-then. The if has power over the then, over the consequence, the outcome. So, we're giving things power. That's how the sun became a god, the small g, because the sun creates light. Oh, what creates light in the world? The sun creates light, and all of a sudden, we've turned the sun into the cause, and, you know, we know from the book of Genesis and from many, many other sources that God created the sun and endowed the sun with powers. So, the sun is not the cause. The sun is maybe the cause of certain things. In a natural world, the sun is the cause of many things, but the sun is also subjugated to a higher cause, and that is God. Now, is there a qualitative difference between God being the ultimate cause and the sun being a cause? Okay, so now we can say, okay, God is the cause. God is the cause. We're still trapped in cause and effect. In cause and effect, there's no free will. And why are you behaving the way you're behaving? Because I was traumatized as a kid, because this happened, because that happened, because you forced me, because you told me, because we always have a reason. And that's a form of idolatry. We always have a cause that we give. What is idolatry? We have a cause that we give power to. And the radical Judaism, in the positive sense radical, the root of Judaism is nothing, nothing has power but God. Only God has the power. God is the creator. So, you have to really be able to yank yourself out of the cause and effect philosophy in order to be free, in order to have a God in your life. And that's what the Exodus is all about. The Exodus from Egypt. Egypt stands for cause and effect. Egypt stands for the laws of nature. And God says, I'm taking you out of this matrix. I'm taking you out of the matrix of cause and effect, and to be subjugated to me, to God. And I'm the God of freedom. So, I'm not your new, I'm not your new deterministic cause and effect. Don't, you know, you're just, oh, so now it's not Pharaoh, now it's God. I'm not your new Pharaoh. I am, I am your liberator. I'm your freedom. I'm demolishing the whole system of cause and effect. Okay, but this is problematic, Alisha. Very. Because we just read the Shema. And the second paragraph of the Shema is a total, as it were, apparently, a total cause and effect. If you do such and such, then such and such will happen, and your cows will be fat, and the grass will be green, and the rain will come in its time. And I believe for decades that this was a pure cause and effect, reward and punishment. And then we got a Nusidur, with a beautiful interpretation, which simply moves the comma to a different place, and it suggests that the problem is not doing wrong, but becoming fat and wealthy and complacent. And when you become fat and wealthy and complacent, then bad things happen, because you separate God from your existence. And there's a beautiful explanation by Yehuda Alevi in the Khuzari book, which is really fascinating. And he relates to this, and he says, you shall remain in the country, in the holy land. Its fertility or barrenness, the happiness or misfortune, depend upon, this is an if-then, depend upon the divine influence which your conduct will merit. And what he means by that is, the cause and effect, the ultimate cause and effect is, we have to create a surrounding, a family, a neighborhood, a house, an existence, in which God feels comfortable to reside in. We have to prepare the seedbed, like good gardeners. And if you do that, veshachanti betokham, and God will dwell within you. And when the divine presence is within you, good things happen. And they happen because of the divine presence, not because of your brilliance or your science or your lab or your drugs or whatever. So this seems to be the, I call it the meta-if-then. The meta-if-then is, we have to live well and live right, be empathic, v'ahavta l'reyakha. And if we do that, we will create a surrounding in which the shekhinah comes. And when the shekhinah comes, good things happen. Not necessarily material, but simply the presence of the shekhinah is a source of serenity, serenity and insight and well-being. And if you've experienced it, you know what I'm talking about. Right. And it happens from time to time. It's not permanent, but you have this feeling. The shekhinah is simply here. Alicia, let me give a small example of this. So we've been running summer camp for our nechadim. We had a great family gathering down south at my daughter's place. And I'm kind of standing aside and there are toys and games and things on the floor. And we have little ones and three-month-old and 12-year-olds and six-year-olds, four-year-olds, five-year-olds. And these beautiful faces are playing together and laughing and having a great time. And I'm thinking to myself, just as the Rambam said, as you explained to us, what is the next world? What is heaven? Heaven is what we create here on earth when there's the divine presence. I felt a divine presence, Alicia, in that room looking at this new generation, at these amazing, beautiful, brilliant, healthy, wonderful children. That's beautiful. That is so beautiful. That's so beautiful. And you're making some really important points here. And I feel like philosophically there's one thing that's really important to clarify, even though I'm thinking to myself, is it really important to clarify? You just gave a great example of how the presence of God just gives this amazing feeling. And it's nothing to do with wealth. It's nothing to do with, it's just the presence of a really, really good feeling. So should I ruin it with a philosophical thought? I'm not so sure. But I'll do it anyway. So it might, again, it might sound like we're saying, okay, there is, and you said it very beautifully, a meta cause and effect. So it's not Pharaoh, Pharaoh being, you know, all the forces that we give power to, and it is God. God is the cause. Now, that's true. But in order for God to be the cause, we have to come out of the matrix of cause and effect. That's why the Kuzari, as you quoted from the Kuzari, quoted from Yehuda Levy, when he stands before the king of Kuzar in Russia, and, you know, the book was written over about a thousand years ago. And he's telling a legend that supposedly happened about 1,500 years ago, or 1,300 years ago. And the king of Kuzar is having these weird dreams about faith. And he consults a Christian, a Muslim, a philosopher, and he finds no answer. And eventually he realizes, okay, there's one other religion, and it's a really pitiful religion, and they're so downtrodden, why even bother talking to them? But, hey, that's the only, these are the only ones left, and so he consults this rabbi. And the whole book is about the rabbi's discourses with the king. The rabbi is called the Friend, Achavir. And the king says, so convince me that Judaism is right. And the friend says, I'm not going to convince you that Judaism is right. Judaism is right for me. I don't think it's right for you. It's not right for everyone. And the king is really shocked because the Muslim and the Christian and the philosopher tried to convince him that their faith is the right faith. And the rabbi says, you know, you know, Judaism is for Jews. You know, it's really not for you. He says, well, still, nevertheless, convince me. And he says, well, you know, we were a bunch of people. We were enslaved in Egypt, and then God came, and he took us out of Egypt, and everything was great. That's pretty much what he said. And the king said, yeah, this is how you're trying to convince me that Judaism is right? I told you I'm not trying to convince you. I have no intention of convincing you. That's not my goal here. So the king says, so you have this like really pitiful and stupid little story, like a childhood fairy tale about Egypt and everything, and that's what you Jews are all about? He says, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And by the way, you too. And then the king kind of pokes up and said, what do you mean, me too? I said, you've also come out of Egypt. I have? I don't remember coming out of Egypt. Of course we have. You come out of Egypt all the time. You have exoduses all the time. We always come out of Egypt. And then he starts going deeper and says, coming out of Egypt is not a historical geographical story. It's an existential inner story. It's about coming out of a certain matrix, a certain way of thinking, a certain way of thinking of cause and effect. And that's what freedom is all about. It's really finding freedom. And he said to the king, you are looking for freedom right now. You're under the spell of some kind of cause and effect, and you're looking to come out of this matrix. He doesn't use the word matrix. I'm using it. And so in order for God to be the ultimate cause, to reach the meta cause and effect as you're describing it, we have to really free ourselves from the cause and effect reality and notion that we are all, all subjugated to. We can really say we're not. We are. Just look at every sentence we're saying. How are you feeling? Not that great today. You know what's going on up in the north, and the hostages is driving me crazy. Cause and effect. That was cause and effect. We use cause and effect all the time. And being able to come out of this matrix is, that's what Rabbi Nachman was trying to teach. And his disciples who loved him dearly didn't quite understand. And because it's really hard coming out of Egypt. So what Eckett is kind of saying, you want to rise, I'm going to use your words. You want to rise up to the the meta cause and effect where bliss really is to be found. Well, you're going to have to cling to God's commandments. Now what does it mean to cling to God's commandments? It doesn't mean if you eat kosher, then you're going to succeed in the stock market as the example you gave earlier. No, nothing to do with it. If you eat kosher, it's great that you ate kosher. That will have no effect on your success in the stock market. And if you eat kosher, you're going to make room for God. You're making room for God in your life. That's all it is. And if you make room for God in your life, it still doesn't mean you're going to do well in the stock market. But it will mean that when you look at your grandchildren on the floor, all ages playing with their toys, there's going to be room in your heart to see like, wow, it's not about the stock market. It's about this incredible scene of presence, of God's presence here on the carpet in my daughter's house down south. Absolutely, Elisha. But I find a problem embedded here, and you raised this in your drashah. You describe a glitch or a bug in the human system. And the bug is that we ate from the tree of knowledge. That's right. That is a bug. A bug in software is a problem, an error that messes it up. What's the bug here? We ate from the tree of knowledge, and the result is that we humans, many of us, a lot of us, treat ourselves as if we are the ultimate cause. We discovered, we found, we invented, we innovated. So many good things have come from that, but we make this ultimate mistake in attributing all of this to our own internal divinity, in a sense, rather than having this all come from God. I have an example of this, Elisha, but a positive one. So for 20 years, I taught summer school at MIT. That was a thrill because I was exposed to some of the smartest people on the planet, and they did amazing things. And one of them was a man named Ray Kurzweil, and he was a child prodigy. He was playing with computers when there were only very few in New York. He was the son of immigrants from Austria, and he went to MIT and studied computer science. And his invention, among his inventions, was a device, a scanner, so that blind people could read. Wow. And they simply put it on the page, and it scans it, and then verbalizes it so they can hear. And this was an incredible invention. He has many other inventions. He wrote a book, Elisha, about singularity. And in this book, he describes a situation in which artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence had been developed for 50 years. The breakthrough came just relatively recently. Kurzweil says, we're going to reach a point, he said it would be in 2050, but it's going to come a long time before that, when artificial intelligence becomes smarter than human beings. And many people are terrified about that. I think it will be superb, because our human intelligence had not been able to solve problems that maybe artificial can. Artificial intelligence is not artificial. It's human intelligence in a different form. Somebody wrote the software. Somebody developed it. But my point is, he says that this singularity, this amazing AI, will create greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. And he says these attributes are generally used to describe God. That means that evolution is moving us toward a conception of God, and the transition away from biological roots is, in fact, a spiritual undertaking. This is not a rabbi. He's a scientist, and a scientist with great inventions. And he sees where we are heading now is back toward God. We began with the bug, as you described, and we ate from the tree of knowledge. Maybe that wasn't the intention of God, but it happened. And now for 3,000 years, we are developing and evolving, and maybe we're going to return in a very unusual way through what is called artificial intelligence, but which is just a new form of human intelligence, and one that may bring us back to greater spirituality. This is great. I'm in the middle of actually working on a book, and I'm working on the book with the help of AI. And it started off by, for many years now, I've been working on this idea of, you know, it was the tree of knowledge that got us out of the Garden of Eden, and what we're really after is the tree of life. We are now seeking the path, the way of the tree of life. And this is kind of what I've been working on for quite a long time. And for a while, I was like, the book was going to be about the path of the tree of life. And the tree of knowledge was the nemesis, was the evil, was the enemy that brought us to where we are right now. We're in exile. We're outside the Garden of Eden, and we want to get back, not to a geographical place, obviously, but to a state of being. And as I was writing it, it suddenly occurred to me, there are no mistakes in God's world. God planted the tree of knowledge, of good and evil, for a very clear purpose. So where the book is heading now, it's about, it's a story. It's going to be, right now, the temporary name is, a story about two trees. So there are going to be two trees there, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. And the tree of knowledge kind of brings us out and brings us into the physical world, and allows us to create, and allows us to be creative, and do things, and manifest ourselves. And the tree of life brings us back inside, back within, back to God, back to the cause of all causes, back to the core. But then we have to come out again, and bring more blessing out to the world, and create something new, and do something else. So I think it's very beautiful. We really need both trees, we need both vectors. The tree of knowledge, of good and evil, and the lower cause and effect, and we need the tree of life. The tree of life, which you call the meta-cause and effect, or I would say beyond cause and effect, where there's only cause. And I would say the word singularity, it's a beautiful word, because singularity is basically another word for oneness. All is one. Where there is one, there's no cause and effect. Only in the realm of duality can there be cause and effect. So we kind of gravitate, we gravitate back towards the oneness, singularity, and then we come out again to the world of duality, the world of creation, the world of cause and effect, and back again into singularity, and etc., etc. And each time we get, we get to create a better, and better, and better world. Alicia, you made my day. I believe that every single person has a book, at least one, inside them. And of course, you especially do. And at last, I don't know how in your busy schedule you'll manage it, but how far along are you in your book, Alicia? It keeps on changing, it keeps on, and the book is revised all the time, so a third of the way. Wow. So Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone with the Wind, and when the publisher came to collect it, he had to tear it out of her hands because she felt it wasn't ready yet. Many others feel that way. At some point, Alicia, we're going to have to take your book and get it out there, because I'm especially eager to read it. I think we're out of time, but I think we've made some progress in understanding the real meaning of If-Then, and it's not purely mechanistic as we often believe. So Shabbat Shalom, everyone. Shabbat Shalom. Thank you for listening, everyone. Thank you for listening.