Podcast #87: Rosh Hashana and Haazinu

Shalom Shlomo and Shalom Alisha! They are recording the podcast early because they will be off technology for a few days. They discuss the Parsha for Shabbat, Ha'azinu, which is a short Parsha and Moshe breaks into poetry as he is about to pass away. The Parsha is all about emotional intelligence and feeling. They talk about their favorite passages and the hidden mitzvah in Ha'azinu. They also discuss the miracle of scientists germinating 2,000-year-old date palm seeds and producing honey from rocks. They emphasize the importance of getting the stories of our loved ones and recording them. Shalom Shlomo, Shalom Alisha, good morning, good morning everyone, it's Sunday morning and this time we are recording really early because as of Wednesday we are going to be off technology for quite a few days, thank goodness, so we want to record a special podcast for Rosh Hashanah. Indeed, and the Parsha for Shabbat which is always read between Rosh Hashanah and Giddur is Ha'azinu. Ha'azinu is a short Parsha, 614 words, 70 verses, and it's very unusual, Alisha. Until now we've been reading in the Parsha of Deuteronomy, Moshe's discourses, rational, logical, advice, historical, what needs to be done, what has happened on the plane of our thinking, reasoning beings. Suddenly, as he's about to pass away, he breaks into poetry. Moshe becomes a poet and this is unusual. Ha'azinu is pure poetry and it's absolutely beautiful and apparently there are no mitzvot, but I think there is a powerful mitzvot hidden inside and we'll discuss that in a moment. Sounds intriguing, sounds interesting, but you're right, it's all of a sudden after all these amazing speeches, he suddenly starts singing some claim that he even actually sang. It's not just poetry, there's a special tune and if I put on like a Hasidic hat for a second, I would say, if only we recapture the melody which Moshe Rabbeinu sang to the children of Israel, if somehow there's an elderly person, like a 3,000 year old person who maybe still remembers the tune of someone who has reincarnated or whatever it may be, and if we only have the tune for Ha'azinu, maybe then we will finally fulfill the mitzvah of the word Ha'azinu, meaning listen. Maybe we're just lacking the original nigun, the tune, and there's huge meaning in the first word, Ha'azinu, listen, because many of us have become not very good at really listening. We hear things, but do we really listen? So Elisha, this fascinating commentary by Rabbi Soloveitchik about Ha'azinu, and he's written a whole book about this. I found this really interesting. So Soloveitchik is one of a long line of famous rabbis, and in this book he explains that there's not just one Torah, there are two Torahs. There's the Torah of IQ, the Torah of reason, of rationality, of logic, and that's most of the Torah. And there's another Torah, the Torah of reason and rationality is what he gets from his father, or got from his father, but there's a Torah of EQ, rather than IQ, emotional intelligence, that's feeling, that's experiential, that's the warmth, and that's the Torah of the mothers, the Torah that he got from his own mother, who was quite an amazing woman. So Ha'azinu is all about EQ, about emotion, feeling, the limbic part of our brain, all of this written in this amazingly beautiful, lilting poetry with the same structure, three lines, and then the repetition in a slightly different way, six words together throughout Ha'azinu. Your favorite passage in Ha'azinu Elisha, as you've written in your Dressa, is this one, Vayenitehu drosh nisela. I have my own favorite, but tell us, why is that your favorite? God gives us sweetness and honey from a rock. Yeah, the idea actually is to have a website, and the website was called drosh nisela, that was the name of the website. I think I really love that idea, because it's one thing, it's a beautiful thing, to have water flow from the rock. Beautiful. But here we don't even have water, we have honey flowing from the rock. The rock is hard, difficult, certainly not sweet, and not life-nourishing and life-giving. So, knowing that God can actually produce honey from a rock is the ultimate metamorphosis, is the ultimate growth, the ultimate blessing. It's a metaphor, obviously. Very difficult person, let's say, who has a heart of stone, so to speak, at least on the outside. Knowing that deep inside, there is honey there, there is a softness there, there is sweetness there, and sometimes it takes divine power to bring that out. Human beings may try over and over again to appease that person, get the honey to flow, but it takes something much greater than that, than a human, to draw honey out of the rock, out of the stone. Elisha, let me explain that there is a literal meaning to honey from a rock. You know, we live in an age of miracles, Elisha. This is a miracle a scientist has brought. So, there are scientists at the Hebrew University and at Mahon Aravah, it's an institute in the desert, doing research, and they're working with 2,000-year-old seeds from date palms. I was just going to interject and say, the Aravah people are from an authority movement. That's exactly important to stress. These seeds, Elisha, literally are hard as stone, believe me. And they had this crazy, impossible idea. Maybe we can get them to germinate. And they're pretty tricky, as you can imagine. These are stones, Elisha, these dried seeds. And they succeeded. A little date palm sprouted from these seeds, and they gave it a name, Methuselah, the oldest person in the Bible. And now, Elisha, just read about this, they have fruit from these date palms. Sweet, delicious dates, and they happen to be especially good. Now, how does the honey come into this? The honey in the Bible, probably, Elisha, was not honey from bees. It was sinan. It was honey from the sweetness of the dates. So you process the dates and pulverize it, and you make it into this honey-like thing. We use sinan all the time. It's delicious. So, in this age of miracles, Elisha, we have produced honey, sinan, from rocks. And if I'm not mistaken, the seeds were actually found up on Masada. Exactly. Here are those people who, they were very hard people, the zealots. And they chose to take their own lives. Their heart was very, very, very hard. And we can't really blame them, because maybe that was indeed the best option. Who knows? But here we have the dates they may have eaten on their last day with Pesach. On their last day. Maybe they made haroset out of it for their Passover seder. And they threw away the pits. And the pits hardened over the years and became fossilized. Is that the word? Yes. And kind of like stone-like. And it took this kibbutz in the Aravah, the Masorti kibbutz in the Aravah, to bring Masada back to life. That's really, really beautiful. One of the scientists, by the way, was actually a medical doctor. She had this passion, and she worked with a biologist, two women. And together they did this impossible thing. And everybody said, you're crazy. It can't be done. And they did. Right. And we actually saw the tree. Quite a few years ago, we had a Shabbaton, a Kila Shabbaton at Kibbutz Keturah. That's where it's at. Right. And among other things, we went to see Netushelach, the tree. Wow. Amazing. Let me share with you, at least in my own favorite passage, and let me argue why I think there is a hidden mitzvah, and maybe a really important one, in Harazin, even though it's poetry. Sha'al avichav veyagedcha, uzkenecha veyomulach. In English, ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you. By the way, the Hebrew is six words. The English is 16, which is more than double. The Hebrew is a very terse economical language, and for that reason, it's sometimes ambiguous. It's a thinking language. You have to think about the meaning of the words because it's not always supplied. And English, of course, dots the I's and crosses the T's. Why is this a mitzvah? A personal story. My grandmother, Mima Rivka, I learned this later, really, the story. My grandfather, whom I'm named after, went to America to bring family over and died in the 1918 influenza epidemic. She was a young widow with five children, and she had to raise five children in a poor village in Bessarabia. My father was the eldest. He helped. He was a young teen, barely went to school, worked in the fields and helped his mother. She raised these five children and eventually, with my father's help, brought them all over to Canada. Amazing woman, under five feet tall, and to her last day, a businesswoman, going in straight to do business and find bargains. But I never really got the full story from her, and I deeply regret it. I want to suggest to all of our listeners, your parents, your grandparents, uncles and aunts, get their stories while you can. In my day, it was not acceptable for grandparents to talk about their hardships because it was felt that that would be stressful for the kids. They wanted to have a promising, trouble-free life. So that's why I didn't get the real story, and I deeply, deeply miss it and regret it. This is a mitzvah because their stories are who we are. I am who my grandfather and my grandmother was and what they experienced and what they went through and the challenges they faced and overcame. So get the stories. Get them down. Record them. Write them down. You'll be glad you did. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Indeed, indeed. It's beautiful, the correlation you make. I mean, there are two kind of correlations you're making. One is honey from the rock. If we think of the older we get, our bones get harder in a way, our skin gets harder, and life maybe gets harder. But we know that there's a story in there. We know there's honey in there. We know there's some sweetness in there. And getting the story is not just for the facts. So when did you do this and where did you go then? It's not about the facts. It's about someone's inner story. And that's always sweet, even if it's a tough story. It's always, always, at the end of the day, there's a sweetness to the stories of our loved ones. And that's correlation number one you're making, the honey from the rock. And the other is how parents and grandparents should tell. And the children need to ask. They need to ask because very often the parents and grandparents are not going to share the story. They don't want to burden us with their stories. But all the more so is they do want to burden us with the story. They want to share the story. And I believe that deep inside they really do want to share the story. I don't know if all, but I would guess most do. So ask, inquire. And there's a good chance the stories might not be that meaningful while they're still alive. Once they're gone, all of a sudden you're going to sit in a Shiva or even after, and you're going to, wait a minute, what did they do after that and why did they actually move there and who was it that, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And so ask, ask and get that honey out of the rock. Absolutely. So Alicia, Moshe's story is quite amazing. He lived to 120. And it's interesting. There's a connection between Moshe and Martin Luther King and Harav Abraham Heschel. Martin Luther King, the great African-American religious leader, civil rights leader, was a close friend of Rabbi Heschel. Rabbi Heschel went to Selma, Alabama and marched with Martin Luther King in a protest march against discrimination against blacks. On April 1968, Martin Luther King made a speech. In the speech he referred to Moshe and the book of Deuteronomy, the last part of it, and Moses is about to pass away and he will not see the promised land. And Martin Luther King presciently said the same about himself. In his speech he said, you know, I too may not see the promised land but we will get there. We, the black people, we will get there. The day after he was on the balcony of his motel in Tennessee and he was shot by an assassin and killed. And there was great protests and riots and great, great chaos. But this applies to all of us. There is a promised land. We live in the promised land. It's a huge blessing. But there is a metaphorical promised land, this great vision we've all seen for ourselves. And we may not fully reach it. We have ancestors. We have descendants. We are their ancestors. We have descendants. And we hope they will reach the promised land and maybe help by our own stories. And like Moshe, we may see it from afar, but not quite. Not quite reach it. And that's absolutely okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great points. Great, great points. And it's amazing how everything correlates and corresponds to everything else. It's really beautiful. Elisha, your dressage was written in 2018, just before a lot of awful things began to happen. And you talk about change. So Rosh Hashanah, Shin Nun Hey, the root is based on the word shinui, which is change. But it's also based on shinun, which means the shenen, to repeat. Which is the exact opposite of change. The opposite of change. So you use that to make a really important point. And I think that point also is reflected in a famous Quaker prayer, which is well known. Prayer to the Lord. God, give us the courage to change things that we can change. Give us the serenity to accept what we cannot change or what we should not change. And the wisdom to know the difference. Therein lies the rub, Elisha. To understand the difference. What can we change? Especially within ourselves. And you note too that we don't have to change everything. Our modern life capitalism wants us to change everything. Our shirts, our clothes, our running shoes, our phones. We have to change our phone every year. Good heavens, absolutely not. So what should be changed? What should not be changed? And this is part of what you call self-validation. That we accept things within ourselves that do not need to be changed. And I would take you even to an even more radical place of saying that we really don't need to change. We just really don't need to change. And from the place of not needing to change, change will happen. We just studied during the month of Elul, which ends this week, we studied about the will, human will. I think I mentioned that in a previous podcast. And Henry Bergson, the philosopher, spoke about the change that seeks to happen. Not what we want to change. What we perceive to be as needing change. But life, life will know, life flow will know what truly needs to change. And if we could let go of this statement that we need to change, we have to change, I think we'll be a lot happier. We are okay just the way we are. And now change might start, might begin to happen. Absolutely. Let me read this passage from your drashah, which is beautiful. Self-validation is the biggest gift of life we can give ourselves this holiday, this Rosh Hashanah. You write in 2018. This is at a time when we say shlichot, sholadim at least, say shlichot, and we say al ched, and we think about our sins. And you tell us self-validation, validation is our ultimate task. It is a religious mitzvah, we have no other. It's not easy, much harder than all of the diets, workouts, diplomas, accumulation of knowledge, all of our efforts to change and improve ourselves. Self-validation. Alicia, this is puzzling a bit because we get into trouble when we become smug and self-appreciative. As our army did, as our leaders did, we become arrogant, self-confident, overly confident, and boy, we get hit by a hammer. This happened almost exactly a year ago. What's the gap between self-validation and arrogance and overconfidence? Good question. It's a really good question. I think very often people who are very arrogant, and again, it's a huge generalization of what I'm saying now. People who tend to be very, very arrogant, I would guess that it's their lack which is speaking. It's their insecurity which is speaking out of them, which is causing this arrogance. Someone who is accepting of themselves fully will not be arrogant, will not be arrogant. Therefore, I just really believe that change happens from the inside out, not from the outside in. If it happens from the inside out, then no outside agenda can expect me to change. Usually, most of the things that we expect, that we think we should change, that we're expected to change, they're all institutional. I'm not against institutions. I belong to one. I belong to a number, I guess. It's basically in order to really, really change, if it comes from a place of lack, I'm not good enough. I don't have enough. I'm not worthy enough, whatever. The change that will happen is not going to be the true change that the Shema, the soul, actually wanted. It will usually be a change to satisfy someone, satisfy mom and dad, satisfy society. Sometimes that's important, satisfying mom and dad and society, that's okay, it's reasonable, it's important, but it's really much, much greater. If we can find wholeness within ourselves, which is what we've been discussing, if we can really find wholeness for a good few minutes, then from that place, amazing miracles start happening. First and foremost, we realize that the change that wants to happen, not that we need it, the change that wants to happen, is not at all the change that we thought should happen. We might be really surprised by what life is calling upon us to do or change. Absolutely. There may be a little formula that we can use, I think, that might be helpful. I try to use it. I actually teach this to my students about entrepreneurship. I teach them that if they do something really good, if they achieve success, make sure that you spread the credit around liberally and sometimes even ascribe your brilliant achievement to somebody else rather than to your own brilliance. Your baby, your startup, give it away for adoption in the sense that other people take credit for it and eventually run it because you're an entrepreneur, not a manager. You may need somebody to do management. Be liberal and generous with sharing the credit, the opposite of what our politicians seem to do. The principle here is if you do something good, make sure that you give credit to God because in the end, that's where the wellspring of creativity comes from. I'm convinced of that. If you do something not so good, accept the responsibility for the defeat. There's an asymmetry here. I think if you practice that, it's kind of unlikely that you will become arrogant and overconfident. Ascribing good things not just to your own brilliance but to the power and chesed and compassion of God. Indeed, so beautifully said. Absolutely. Maybe one last comment, Alicia. Some of the politicians in Israel, I'm afraid I'm not very enthusiastic about. Not the worst of them is a politician named Miki Zohar. He's pretty brave. He appears on channels on television that are not very friendly and that ask hard questions. A few years ago, in a moment of candor, and I'm pretty sure he deeply regrets this, he explained what his goal in life is. You mentioned this. Without mentioning his name, you mentioned this in some of your Dreschot. Miki Zohar said, I'm after three things. They all start with chaf. Koach, kesef, kavod. Power, money, honor. Many politicians seem to practice that rather than doing God's will and creating a Jewish country and doing the best thing for the citizens. So, yes. Part of self-validation, the key part I think, and especially in Rosh Hashanah, is thinking about who we are, why are we here, what is the Torah counseling us, what is a good life? Why was I put on this earth? I was put here for a reason. Why? To gain koach? To gain power and money and honor? I don't think so. I don't think so. And that's part of self-validation, which is finding the valid reason what we're doing, what we're doing on this planet. Yeah, yeah. That's very beautiful. I'll just maybe disagree on one little note because you have to disagree a little bit here. And that is, what we're here to do, I propose at the beginning of the podcast, where the will is unfolding. If you think about that palm tree that we mentioned, the date tree we mentioned earlier, there the seed was in a stone-like state for many, many, many, many years. And it didn't say anywhere that the seed had to sprout. It needs to sprout. That's what it's meant to do. That's its responsibility. It's a significant meaning in life. For many years, it didn't sprout. And that was okay. That was okay. 2,000 years. 2,000 years. And once it was given the circumstances in which it could sprout, it's not that it didn't sprout because it was meant to become a palm tree and meant to be a memorial to all those who were killed in Upper Masada. I think if we're thinking what it was meant to do, it's meant to grow, to grow and evolve without having a particular future plan. And if we're able to focus on the actual movement, the actual growing, then we're witnessing life at work. And I think that answers a lot of the things. In other words, nothing needs to change. Nothing needs to... God doesn't have a stopper. God is not bound by time. God doesn't care about time. We live in this world in which time plays a major role, a major factor here. And if we can understand that it's okay if we don't change, it's okay if we don't improve, it's okay if we don't grow right now. And instead, we validate who we already are. By doing so, by validating who we already are, the life force starts moving through us, starts awakening. And change indeed happens. It happens from a totally different place. It's not coerced. It's not pushed. There's no pressure on it. It's God unfolding in the world. So Nietzsche, who was vastly misunderstood and distorted by the Nazis, Nietzsche said this really well, become who you are. So I'm interpreting what you said in that sense. We have a core existence, a core being, who we really are, and it's not a matter of changing. It's a matter of becoming like this little seed, this little palm seed, who's destined to become a palm tree, but just needs a little bit of help. Become who you are. Who are you really? And this isn't processed so much of changes as being in the journey and evolving and blossoming like this amazing little palm tree. Right, right. So the year 5785 is upon us, and there are a lot of things that we want to see change in the world, which is really great. It's valid. It's legitimate. But maybe we can wish ourselves and our listeners, and we know, we know that New Year resolutions don't materialize. I think there's a day in Canada, if I'm not mistaken, it's the 17th of January, in which that's the day where most resolutions are dropped. It's the disillusioning day, or the day of, you know, making terms with the resolutions we're not going to fulfill this year. So if we can stop making resolutions, and instead really be, really listen closely to the hum of life in everything, to the honey in the rock, to that seed that has been dormant for all these years. What's wanting to happen? What wants to now come into fruition? Instead of us thinking we know what needs to happen, what has to happen, what should happen, and we're going to have a much softer, gentler year, and probably a lot more peaceful. Amen, Elisha. Well said. Well said. Happy New Year to all our listeners. Happy New Year. Shana Tova and Happy New Year to everyone. Shana Tova. Thanks for listening, everyone.