Podcast #89: Sukkot

A drone attack on a military base in Israel killed four soldiers and injured many more. The drone, which was invented by an Israeli engineer, was used for offensive purposes by the enemy. Despite the tragedy, the speaker discusses the importance of finding joy during Sukkot, a Jewish festival. They read a passage about Sukkot symbolizing the transient nature of life and the need to find joy despite challenges. They also discuss the benefits of joy in mental and physical health and its role in creativity and survival. The speaker shares a story about a Holocaust survivor who found joy in dancing with ripped pages of Mishnah. They emphasize the importance of finding joy even when circumstances are difficult. I'm not certain Elisha, it's a very hard morning. Right. It's a painful morning. We had a drone attack our draftee base for the Golani Brigade and killed four young men and injured perhaps 70, these are 18-year-olds Elisha, draftees and many of their officers who were there to train them, they were in their mess hall having dinner. Somehow our enemy knew where they were and knew how to locate a mess hall in a very large base. And Elisha, the drone, which is especially painful, I looked this up, the drone was invented by Israel. It was invented by an engineer, a Techneon graduate named Avraham Karin. And we used the drone actually in the Yom Kippur War, that's 50 years ago. It was used not for offensive basis but for intelligence, for taking pictures, for finding out where the enemy is. And of course it's an old symphony and our enemies have adopted and turned it into an instrument of death, which is what they do. But again, Israel and its creativity, and we'll speak about creativity, you mentioned it in your Drosha. Yeah, yeah. So it is, and it's also actually pretty close to Zihon Yarkov and as the crow flies, is that how the pigeon goes? Yes, as the crow flies. As the crow flies, it's actually really, really close. And I remember about two years ago, I'll share that story with you. I flew with a Bar Mitzvah father from here, flew a Buckeye, do you remember? It was just exactly two years ago, I think, right before the rain season began. And he lives right near that base. So we took off and we pretty much like, you know, we flew all over that area and we saw the young recruits come training. It was early, only 6 o'clock in the morning and they already had been carrying stretchers and walking and running up the hills and downhills. And we were flying above them and they were waving at us, we were waving at them. So it is, it is very, very tragic. And yet, and yet, I don't know what theme, where you're going to take us today, but Sukkot is coming up really soon. We're just after Yom Kippur and it's going to be a huge challenge because Sukkot tells us you've got to be joyful, no matter what, no matter what, you're not allowed to not be joyful. It's one of the Mitzvot of Sukkot, there's no other festival or time when you're commanded to be joyful. Adar is a joyful month, but you're not commanded to be joyful. On Sukkot, on the commandment, if you will rejoice in your festival and you will be only joyful. And in a moment, we'll talk about a very pragmatic, practical reason why we should be joyful, no matter what. Okay. But first, Elisha, I'd like to read an extended passage from your Drashah. This is a Drashah you wrote probably a decade ago and it's titled Sukkot, A Journey to Remember. It's from your collection called Ayaka, Collection of Drashot, which is wonderful. And this is very, very meaningful, I'm going to read a fairly long passage. Sukkot may be the ultimate metaphor for the totality of life and the world. We do not really know the world, we only know our own human experience of it. And Sukkot carries the essence of the human experience of life and of the world, filled as it is with a transient wandering and a potential journey from the hidden to the revealed. Far worse, try fleeing, futile and meaningless. Yes, Sukkot offers great solace and hope in the face of what may seem frightening and destabilizing. You said it. In fact, if we fully give ourselves over to Sukkot's calling, life's existential anxiety may indeed be transformed into ultimate joy. Then we will get to fulfill the overarching mitzvah of this festival, and you shall be happy in your festival. In fact, you shall be only happy. Ach Sameach. The Halakhan instructs us to build a Sukkot whose shade is greater than its light, enough shade to shelter us from most of the bright rays of the sun, yet enough open space to allow the stars to shine through at night, reminding us that the infinite is mostly hidden from our human perspective. At best, we can see a tiny shimmering glimpse of its light. Sukkot is a tribute to the human journey, the mythical, albeit 100% real journey from its rhyme to Eretz HaVad Halav Vash. No preparation, very little planning, scraping together whatever materials present themselves to provide shelter and face the challenges life has in store for us, a life in which all is transient. The Sukkot journey spirals. In my imagination, the spiral is heading down into the depths of our being. In my imagination, God is found in the depths at the core of everything. Quote, from the depths I call out to you, Imam Hakim Karakia. I know that for many others, the spiral seems to be ascending, a song of ascent, Shiroma Alot, rising higher and higher, for God dwells in the upper echelons. We humans come in many shapes, forms, and imagining of the divine. That's beautiful. Alisha, do you want to add to that? If I want to add to that. Actually, I like that. Yeah, I think what I would like to add is that when I wrote this, life was very different than it is today. Today we're facing some serious, serious national challenges, global challenges. And I'm thinking to myself, would I write the same thing today? It's easy to write about joy and the hypothetical option of there being existential fear and anxiety. But what happens when, you know, not too far away from here, a drone exploded and created havoc and so much is going on around us. What then? Can this still apply? Can it still apply? And I would like to suggest that of course it can still apply, it has to still apply. But yet, it is indeed harder to implement it. So I would like to suggest that it's actually times like these, times like the ones that we're experiencing right now, where we are truly tested, if we can, if we're able to find this joy, this ultimate joy at a time of incredible pain. And in one of our classes last year, I'm trying to remember even what the class was, I remember while I relayed the story, we studied about the Rebbe who actually built the Laniado Hospital in, he didn't build it himself, but he kind of founded this hospital in Netanya. It's a Hasidic neighborhood and a Hasidic hospital and the founding rabbi was a Holocaust survivor. By the way, our granddaughter, Rimon, she was born in Laniado. A lot of babies are born there. Absolutely. And they do a great job. They do a really great job, especially the maternity ward is well known, I guess given that it's a Hasidic Haredi hospital, then the maternity ward has to be the center of it all. It's happening. Yes. And so he survived the Holocaust and he lost his whole family, he lost everything, he lost his family. As you understand, he never lost his faith and he didn't lose his joy either and was Simchat Torah in the camp and he obviously had no Torah scrolls or anything, but the other people in the camp recall that when they came back to the, not the cabin, the cabin sounds too beautiful, back to the room or whatever you want to call it, they saw him in the room dancing around with a few ripped pages of Mishnah. That's all he had. All he found was a few pages of Mishnah that were ripped. That's the closest he had to Torah. So he was holding them in his hands, it was Simchat Torah, and obviously there was no holiday on that day, there was no special meal, there was no vacation, there was no... But he came back early to the room and started dancing with those pieces of paper. And I'm kind of wondering, and it's not superstition, I'm wondering, I'm asking a very pragmatic question, did he survive because he was able to maintain his joy? And joy is a way of really sustaining the body on so many different levels. I think people who know how to experience joy enjoy a healthier life overall. There are obviously exceptions to the rule, but people who have severe mood spells and mood swings would all, I think, get sicker more often, and it's not a judgment call, so if anyone's hearing it and they're having a lot of health issues in their life, it's not a judgment call, but it is a call to examine our ability to be joyful under all circumstances. And the thing is, we're so used to being joyful if something makes us happy. But what if there isn't anything that makes us happy right now? Can we still find joy? So Alicia, Judaism is a religion of joy. We are commanded to be joyful, unlike many other religions, and there are practical reasons, I believe. I believe it's a cause of our survival, one of our main causes of survival. And let me explain two major reasons. First, something called positive psychology, a very short story. One of America's leading psychologists is Martin Seligman, Jewish, grew up in Albany. Martin Seligman developed a theory of learned helplessness, which is not joyful. It's a situation where we are distraught because we feel we can't do anything, and we learn that there's nothing that we can do, so we are helpless. And that's an awful, awful feeling. It leads to depression. And it exists, and he developed a theory and wrote books about it, but he felt bad about it. He felt badly. And he went on to do the opposite. He was the pioneer and prophet of positive psychology, which is the health and mental health and physical health benefits of joy, of being happy. And this has brought comfort to many, many people. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association. He got more votes than anyone else in history because the psychologists realized, wow, this is a major contribution. By the way, his inspiration, five-year-old granddaughter, observing her and observing her joy and happiness and how that made her a whole healthy young lady. But the second reason, Alicia, our wonderful Rabbi Sachs, widely read Rabbi Sachs, who knew everything, quotes Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet, kind of a difficult poet, but a wonderful one. And he writes, only in joy does creation happen. And I would slightly modify that. Only in joy does creativity happen. So Alicia, when I teach my students entrepreneurship, I explain to them there are two ways you can manage your startup. You can tell everybody, listen, quit fooling around. There's a lot of fooling around among young people. Quit fooling around. Get serious. This is really serious. We are in big trouble. You're always in hot water if you're doing this startup. And you add to stress, and that is absolutely not functional, not useful, not helpful. If, on the other hand, you create an environment of fun and play, I've visited startups where there were toys and dartboards and Nerf balls and all kinds of craziness, and that atmosphere of joy is an atmosphere in which ideas, creative ideas, flourish. So the idea, the Samachta Bechagecha, it's not just so we enjoy. It's literally life-saving, Alicia, and it's an amazing insight from the Torah that we only recently have really come to understand. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. I think the Hasidic movement has, we can really give a lot of credit to the Hasidic movement for reintroducing joy. Joy has always been there. It's in the Torah. It's in Sukkot. Sukkot is from the Torah. And the mitzvah that we're quoting here is from the Torah. Nevertheless, during the very depressing years of the dark years in Europe where Jews were oppressed so badly in the 17th and 18th centuries, before that as well, the Hasidic movement came out of a period of terrible, terrible depression, Jewish depression, and they emphasized joy. And I can't emphasize this enough. It's really, I'll share a little story from this morning. You and I were supposed to meet here at 7.30, and then I called you about 7.15 and said, I think I have to delay our recording because we take turns, my wife and I, in walking the dog in the morning. We have a very energetic dog. It's a million wives. It requires a lot of... Dog and marijuana. Yes. Amazing dogs. My son has a dog and marijuana. Yeah. It's an amazing dog. It really requires, it really puts you in good shape. And I love walking her. I love walking her. I get up really early in the morning. But my wife also likes walking her. So we take turns. One day I do, I walk her, and the other day she walks me. But she woke up this morning with a fever. And it was a terrible, terrible fever. It was a terrible, terrible fever. It was a terrible, terrible fever. It was a terrible, terrible fever. It was a terrible, terrible fever. It was a terrible, terrible fever. It was a terrible, terrible fever. It was a terrible, terrible fever. It was a terrible, terrible fever. It was a terrible, terrible fever. And I was supposed to be out the door ready to meet you and record. And it was clear. And this dog, if you don't take her out, then you're doomed. So I called you and said, I have an emergency here. And it's an hour-long walk, you know, and it's mostly a run. So I took her out, which was, even though I was, like, frustrated because I had planned for this morning, it was actually a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. And I came back home and I said, you know, we're going to make a deal. You'll walk her every afternoon and evening. I'll walk her every morning in one condition. My wife loves dancing. That's one thing she does a lot. You're going to use that time that I'm walking her and you're walking her to dance. Because the dance will heal you. Dancing will heal you. She said, I'll think about it. I said, okay, think about it. But these are the conditions for this deal. Now, the truth is between us. I'd love to walk her every morning. It's really a lot of fun. But I told her the condition is I'll walk her only if you spend that time dancing. So I'll update everyone. Because dancing, I think, really is the best cure for any fever, for any malady, for dancing and joy. Absolutely. Good for you, Alicia. Alicia, from joy we go toward, well, Kohelet. Because we read Kohelet on Sukkot. And I'm going to quote from your drashah. Throughout Sukkot, a somewhat agonizing whisper accompanies our journey. Hezel havalim, it says. Hezel havalim. How in the world do we translate that? There actually is a translation there which I kind of like because there are a bunch of words that could translate. So I'll use all the words. So it's the groan of an ancient and wise king, Solomon. He wrote three books, and Kohelet was the last. Hezel havalim amal Kohelet, kol havel. Futility and fleeting, said Kohelet. All is transient. So, Alicia, I've been in love with Kohelet for my whole life. And I don't know why. It is surprising, I have to say. Because I'm an optimist. Right. But there's something grounded and pragmatic in Kohelet that speaks to me, especially now. I'm about to turn 82 in November. So Kohelet, there's a big question. Wait a minute. And we read this terrible, cynical book where all is fleeting and all is transient and all is chaos. What in the world is Kohelet doing on Simchat Torah? What's the story, Alicia? Right. Well, there are many ways of understanding and reading it. The end of Kohelet is obviously supposedly the answer. And I'm not so sure that's necessarily the answer. The end of Kohelet is some claim that was inserted later. The fact that the sages chose to include Kohelet in the Tanakh, in the Bible, is really amazing. It says so much about the sages. They really were sages. Maybe, Alicia, it was because of popular demand. Because this is a book that resonates with the people. The same with Shira Shireen. I'm pretty sure the rabbis would have liked to dump it. But the people, this beautiful love poem, come on. So they wouldn't agree. They wouldn't allow it. Maybe. And the more I read the sages over the years, the more I understand they were so revolutionary. They really were wise and quite amazing. So some claim that they added the last three sentences to Kohelet. And basically what the last three sentences say is that yes, all futility, and therefore you have no choice but to cleave to God. Because that's the only thing that's not futile. That's the only thing that's eternal. That's the source of joy. And I agree with that. I agree with that, that the physical world that we live in, you know, right now we're looking through the window. We live in a beautiful place. It's a beautiful season. Well, not like the northeast of the United States right now. But it's gorgeous out right now. It's not hot. It's not cold. It's perfect. Not too humid. Perfect. And yet we all know, you know, just yesterday there was this drone strike. And people were killed. And there's a war going on. And God, this world is so volatile and so fleeting and so devastating. And we will all die one day. We will all die one day. And most people at old age, it's not fun. Not fun at all. And so it's basically, it's asking the question, okay, so what is eternal at the end of the day? What's not fleeting? And it's kind of like with the idea of the Sukkah, where you leave, you have the Sukkah on, so there's more shade than light. But nevertheless, you leave some kind of room to see the stars, to let the light come in. And we often focus on the darkness. And that connects to happiness and joy again. It's difficult to be joyful, because how can we be joyful when such a terrible event took place last night? You know, we can't. And the Torah is kind of telling us, well, it's like really living with both. On the one hand, there's the incredible pain. That's the heaven of Elim. That's the vanity, everything is vanity and futile and fleeting. On the other hand, see the divine within everything. See that everything is imbued with the divine. And everything, all that which is fleeting, is imbued with the eternal, which is not fleeting. And if we can learn to focus on that, and it takes learning, it takes practice, it takes a spiritual avodah sheva lev, the service of the heart, to really be able to see the divine, the eternal divine, within the fleeting physicality of everything. And I think that's the answer to our great angst in life. So, the brilliant Rabbi Sachs refers to Kohelet in the Dosha, and in a very creative way. He seems to know everything and to read everything. And he tells the story of Tolstoy. So, Leo Tolstoy, a great Russian author, wrote perhaps the two greatest novels ever, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina is the greatest opening sentence of any novel. Happy families are all alike. Unhappy families are unhappy, each in its own way. And Tolstoy was very religious toward the end of his life, married to Sophia. And he was 82 years old, almost my age, I'm almost 82. And he was troubled by his death. His question was, what is the purpose of life? Is there any meaning in my life that will not be annihilated by the inevitability of death which awaits me? Kind of echoing Kohelet. He loved Kohelet. He knew Kohelet. He knew the Bible. He especially thought about Kohelet toward the end of his life. And the question that Kohelet really raises is that life is so fleeting and then we disappear. Is there anything left? This is a man who wrote the two greatest novels, perhaps in the history of literature. So, what happened? He gets up one night on 1910 and he leaves his house, goes to the train station and gets on a train. Where is he going? He's running from death. He's running from death. And he feels death coming because he's not feeling well. The train stops and he's taken off the train being very ill. Everybody knows him. He has this big bushy beard. Everyone knows Tolstoy in Russia. And the train master, the station master takes him to his home and a crowd of people. It's a media event. And all the journalists flock there because Tolstoy is nearing death. So, he was seeking peace and solitude and understanding. And toward the end of his life, at the end of his life, and he ends up with a mass of journalists surrounding this little house in rural Russia, away from his wife, away from his kids. He had a lot of kids. He had a lot of tragedy in his life. He had 13 children and five of them died before they were five. We sometimes forget that, Alicia. Child mortality was astronomical. Absolutely. A hundred years ago. Little kids died and there's nothing, maybe nothing, very few things that are worse. Tolstoy passed away. Tolstoy passed away. I don't know if he achieved peace or solitude. But there's a real lesson there. And the lesson is that you don't run from death. Good heavens. If you can, you embrace it. You embrace it because it's not the end. Whatever you believe, it's not the end. It's natural and there's even some beauty to it. The beauty to it is that it's essential for life. There is no life if there is no death. If there were no death, Alicia, there would be no room for new life. So the way that God has engineered this amazing creation of his is that there is birth, which is beautiful. There's also death, which in its own ways is also beautiful. And I feel so badly for Tolstoy, my fellow 83-year-old, that he wasn't able to see that this brilliant man was so troubled at the end of his life and died in such a sad manner. Yes, I didn't know that story. But I read many of his stories and I didn't realize that was the last final story of his life. Yes, yes, death is the ultimate. Death is really important. So Hewlett would not have been written, Ecclesiastes you have to say, would not have been written had it not been for death. And you're right. We really have to defend death. And there was a time here at Al-Kila, many years ago, where I started this project. I raised quite a lot of money for this project. And the project was all about helping people deal with death. And we raised about approximately $50,000, which in our terms is a lot of money. And I was really into it. And one day someone came to me, someone prominent in Al-Kila and said, Alisha, can we stop talking about all this death stuff? It's really, really depressing. I really don't want to hear about it. And I thought to myself, oh, it never occurred to me that while I'm enjoying discussing it, learning it, grappling with it, many people are really bothered by it. And they want to shut it out and not deal with it. And it's not that we just talked just about that. We had classes, and those who wanted to come to classes came to classes. But I obviously also, when I made announcements and I talked about it, and he said, I just don't want to hear anything more about death. And I actually, shortly thereafter, called the program because I realized that it kind of made me very happy. And I really enjoyed doing it, but it really made some other people feel very, very uncomfortable. So I have a small story about that, Alisha. I've told this before. My mother, Alea Shalom Cherna, lived to 105, absolutely clear-minded and in reasonably good health, taken care of by amazing Filipina caregivers. And we, of course, had a funeral. We gathered at the funeral home. Now, when you live a full life of 105 and you remain sane-minded and sound-bodied, you really can't mourn, Alisha. So we decided that we would tell Bubby stories. And Bubby was really quite funny. There were a lot of great stories. She was a makeup artist. She taught all her Filipina caregivers how to make a filter fish and how to do perfect makeup. And she never appeared out of her bedroom without foliage stick and powder, powder so thick that sometimes you couldn't see the face under it. We told Bubby stories. And we were rolling in the aisles, Alisha. And the caregiver, Thelma, a wonderful caregiver, we still have contact with her, was horrified because as a believing Christian, Seventh-day Adventist, their funerals, people mourn and cry. You show your love for someone by mourning their death and their passing. She was absolutely horrified. And I had real difficulty explaining to her the notion of joy at the time of death. But Alisha, it was absolutely appropriate. And when I die, when I leave this earth, I hope people will tell stories about me and will chuckle and celebrate my life because a funeral is a celebration of life, not the mourning of a death, or it should be, with the exception, Alisha, of these young men and women, all these unlived lives, and there is a time when that's not appropriate. But at 82, it's Tolstoy or Shlomo or Sally Malt. Perhaps it is. Shlomo, first of all, you're going to be around for many, many, many, many more years, creating more stories and more things for us to chuckle over. I'm not so sure who's going to die before whom. And I hope people are not turned off by our conversation. And I know we have to end because I just want to make a daring statement that even with those soldiers, and they were indeed young, and it's tragic and it's painful, it's really painful, there too, the number of years that you've lived is important to us because we live in a very relative world. But compared to authority, what's 18, 82, 120? It's just a moment in time. And you could really live a full life in 18 years too. And I think life can always be, even when an 18-year-old, God forbid, is killed or died, their life should be celebrated. Now, mourning, absolutely. Sadness, of course, of course. My family is sad and is mourning and is devastated, of course. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, age doesn't, it matters. But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. If we lived life fully, then it doesn't make a big difference whether it's 18 years or 100 years. And we grieve because we miss them. We miss them and we had dreams for them. They had dreams for themselves, and that was all severed in one blow. But at the end of the day, if we can really celebrate our lives as opposed to mourn them, we'd be so much, so much happier. Absolutely, Nisha. We're about, we've run out of time, but I want to take one minute to read this last passage from your address, Shah. Worth reading. You write, Something amazing happens. It is no longer important if our prayers are answered or not. They don't need to be. The prayers were never really intended to sway the Creator. Rather, they carried within them a deep yearning than just for solid ground and security. I believe that, Nisha. Prayer is for us. And prayer leads to action. That prayer is so important. You pray for things, and then your brain takes note. And maybe when you wake up the next day, you start to act in the direction that you were praying for. So I believe in the power of prayer, not just to get God to listen and to answer to our prayers. That's rather fatalistic. But for us to understand what we really seek in life, what the meaning of life is, and we're a part of it. So get up and help it along a little bit, as much as you can. Yeshe, yeshe. So, I want to wish everyone Chag Sameach. It was a really joyful festival. Chag Sameach, everyone. Thanks for listening. Yes, and really let's make a point of Sukkot to, especially given the year that we've just been through, to make a point to really work on our joy. Really explore. Explore joy. And don't worry if you don't get there. Because really explore. Remember, remind yourself of moments of joy. And just remember how much creativity, how much life was there in those moments of joy. Beautiful. Explore joy. Two wonderful words. That can be a mantra for 5785. Amen. Amen. Bye everyone. Chag Sameach. Chag Sameach.