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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss Parashot Behar and Bechukotai
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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss Parashot Behar and Bechukotai
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In this podcast, the hosts discuss the Torah portions of Behar and Bechukotai. They talk about the significance of Leviticus and how it is the core of the Jewish journey. They also discuss the idea of continuous revelation and the ongoing relationship with God. The hosts share their perspectives on the transactional nature of Bechukotai and how they view the relationship with God as unconditional love. They also touch on the importance of understanding both what ought to be and what is in the world. The hosts raise questions about the role of Torah study and the potential implications of artificial intelligence surpassing human knowledge. Shalom, everyone, and welcome to a new podcast, number, I think it's 14, if I'm not mistaken. Fourteen. Fourteen. Fourteen is a good number. And we have two parashot this week. We have both parashat Behar and parashat Bechukotai, the last two parashot of the Book of Leviticus. And we had a difficulty giving up either one of them. So we're going to give about 15 minutes to the first, and then 15 to the other. But at the end of the day, it's all one Torah. And so we're here, my name is Elisha Wilson, I'm sitting here with Professor Shlomo Maital. We're both from Kilat Vahavta in Zichron Yaakov. So Shalom. Shalom. Shalom, Elisha. It's been an amazing journey, rediscovery of Vayikra, of Leviticus, which I've always thought to be awful, because it's about sacrifices, and suddenly you discover amazing things. And like all great books or chapters, it ends with a bang with Behar and Bechukotai, which are each really powerful, and each have their own powerful message. But this has been an epiphany for me, going through Leviticus and seeing things that I'd never seen before. Yeah, yeah. Over the years, I'm also continuously rediscovering Leviticus, and really realizing Leviticus is the core of the Jewish psyche, the Jewish journey, unlike, we often think of Bereshit, we think of Shemot, but no, no, no, Leviticus is the vertebrae of our... It is. And I've learned from your Dresha on Behar, which is titled, To Be Born Every Day Anew, and you raised the question, did we get the Torah once and for all, and that's it, that's a one-time event, or are we receiving the Torah, the Enlightenment, all the time? And of course, your answer is that it's a journey, and we're in the midst of that journey and we're continuing it, and I've learned that personally from our discussions about Vayikra, Leviticus, we're definitely on a continuing journey, and Horev, which is Mount Sinai, Horev also means a flowing stream, and that's life, the flowing stream that we're in, an ever-ending journey. Yes, yes. And it's a deep, deep argument whether Revelation at Mount Sinai was a one-time thing, and we're just reinterpreting it over the years, or is Revelation continuing, continuing all the time? Each time we have an amazing epiphany, whether it's Torah-related or Bichlal, is that Mount Sinai still speaking to us? Is God still speaking to us from Mount Sinai, metaphorically speaking, obviously, because we're not physically at Mount Sinai? And as I said, I believe in the latter, but it's important to say that I think it distinguishes to an extent between Orthodoxy and the Masorti conservative movement. Orthodoxy would claim that it was a one-time event, and since then we're just interpreting and reinterpreting. Exactly. And, you know, I found a bit of psychology in this as well, in Mount Sinai. Let me explain. So the children of Israel are at Mount Sinai, and there's thunder and lightning and an awesome, an awesome event, and we are given the Torah, and we are attached to God, we're attached to God as a people. And then they leave. We have to leave. We leave Mount Sinai, and there's separation, and that's exactly what happens in life, according to a British psychoanalyst, John Bowlby, with his colleague Ainsworth. When we're babies, we are attached to the mother, and that attachment is powerful. Babies recognize the mother's face. Babies recognize the mother's voice, even in the womb, which is quite amazing. Yeah, it makes sense, though. Yeah, it does. That's survival. All human, all animal, all live babies do that. But then separation. I remember my own separation. You are going through it with an adolescent. You separate becoming an immature adult on your own right, and sometimes it's a very painful process. The children of Israel are separating from Mount Sinai and going off on this long 40-year journey, and we human beings all have gone through attachment and separation, and raises a question, Alicia, about the presence of God. Are we separating from God? Is God within us, as the Torah says, but yet he's giving us free will? How does this separation work in terms of our relationship with God? Yeah, yeah. Oh, what a great question. So we actually talked about that also in relationship to the Mishkan. We suggested then that the Mishkan is like, what's it called, an English transitional object that in preparing to leave Mount Sinai, we create a portable Mount Sinai, i.e. the Mishkan. But yes, it's a separation process, but it's not, as you said, it's not a separation from God. I don't believe in a separation from God, because I don't see God as a parent. God can be also like a parent. God can also be sometimes a lover. God can sometimes be for Spinoza, he was nature, he was the all, the all that is. And each one of us at different times in our life needs a different relationship with God. And there are days that we need a hug. There are days that we need good advice. There are days that we need just to know that you're there, you know, that we're not alone. And I believe that God is all of these things. I believe more than I believe almost in anything in the need for a relationship with God, in the beauty of the relationship with God, and in the need to foster and develop this relationship. I just sat with a teenager yesterday who came to consult with me after his Bar Mitzvah. His mother is a psychotherapist, and then she suggested that he continue working with me as a counselor, as a coach, which is what I do. And we met for about a year. We talked about his life and things, we had a great rapport, a great process, and until you know, you felt, yalla, it's time to move on. And last week, she called me and she asked, is it okay if he reaches out again, four years have passed. And I said, of course, of course. So we met yesterday, and he was 13 and a half at the time when we started our process then, and he's now 17 and a half. And why did he come to me? Because he's discovering God. Now his family is totally secular, but he's discovering God, and it really fills him up with a lot of joy and a lot of that. How is he discovering God, Risha? In what way? That's a good question. We kind of, I felt almost that I was talking to myself, what, 50 years ago, to a younger version of myself, was really phenomenal, it was almost like a deja vu. He had kind of an epiphany, there was one day that he just felt, he felt this presence, he felt a presence, and he felt, wow, I had someone I could like, talk to. But his concern was, he immediately, why did he come to talk to me? First of all, to see if he was normal, his mom assured him he was normal, everything's okay, it's good. She obviously explained to him, it really is the subconscious that's really talking to you, it's not God. And I reassured him that it's not, don't tell your mom, but it's not, it's not. You know, Freud invented the subconscious thing, it's a great tool, but it's a metaphor. And then we talk about how our brain, often, our brain being a survival tool, more than anything else, is trying to make sure that we are logical people, and we see things correctly, and the brain is saying, it's not really God, it's a thought, it's the subconscious talking to you, come on, get real. Don't invent invisible friends out there. And so the whole conversation yesterday was about, what's real? Is his relationship, is his budding relationship with God, is that real? Or the voice in his head that's questioning how real this relationship with God is, is that real? And it was my job to reassure him through a deep conversation, saying, no, no, no, no. And I had all kinds of proofs, which we won't get into right now, but that it's the relationship with God that's real, it's the questioning, which is not real, which is just our nagging brain giving us a hard time. Absolutely. So maybe we can skip to Bechukotai, because it's also really powerful, and Bechukotai is troubling to me, because it's transactional, or a deal, as you call it. If-then, it's the if-then logic, if you do such and such, great things happen. If you don't, and Elisha, the description of what happens if you don't follow the precepts, good heavens, even in Beknesseh, we read it under our breath quietly, because it's so awful. And it's just troubling to me, because whatever our relationship is with God, it's not transactional, although for many people it is, and they bring comfort in it. Who am I to say that's not right? But for me, it's not at all transactional. For me, it's much more like my relationship with our little dog, which is beside the door. The little dog, the love is unconditional. The dog looks at me, Pixie looks at me with her big eyes, and she says, I love you. If you forget to feed me, if you get to walk me, if you don't give me water, I understand. It's unconditional. And I think that's the relationship with God. How are we to interpret Bechukotai, which is a transactional relationship? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a real, real, that's a tough one. I would start with, first of all, the idea that I personally believe in a loving God, in a loving God, an unconditionally loving God. I believe in that 100%. What I also believe is that all these precepts, all the if, what you said, if, like if-then, so the if part, it's really, it's connected to love. So for example, with your sweet little dog, it's true, she will love you unconditionally. But we also know that if you're not going to feed her and give her water and walk her, etc., then you're not going to have her for very long. So there are consequences, there are direct consequences. It doesn't mean the love is going to be gone, and God is never gone, and God's love is never gone. I think God's presence is love. So that love is not gone, but God is not the problem here, we're the problem. When we, God is always there, God is always there, was part of also my conversation with this teenager yesterday, and God is always present. We're the ones who play hide-and-seek with God, often we're told that God plays hide-and-seek with us. I think we're the ones who play hide-and-seek, we lose God, we find him again, one day we can be exhilarated with the sense of the divine presence, and the following day we wake up in the morning, and it's like, yesterday, wow, it was so clear yesterday, what happened? Where did God disappear? Like, God, why have you abandoned me? God doesn't abandon us, it doesn't matter how bad we are, and if we don't follow the mitzvot, the precepts, the if, but we live in a world, we live in a reality, I think, in which there are consequences, and if we don't eat healthy, we will not be healthy. If we smoke, we will, you know, suffer the consequences. And the God's love, God's presence is always there. I guess what I'm trying to say, the bottom line is, our actions, they're the ones who determine the buffer we have between God and us. If our actions are actions that bring us closer, not God closer, bring us closer to God, then we will feel closer. God is always going to be there, nothing changes. That's a great point. In other words, we live in the world, in the world there is what's called teleology, that is cause and effect. If you do such and such, then there are consequences. That is nothing to do with the relationship of God to us and us to God, which is unconditional, but we in fact live in the world where there is teleology, where there's cause and effect. And I want to raise a point here that troubles me a lot, and it has for a long time. So we're told to learn Torah, which is important, and by the way, in the Masoreti movement, I think we don't learn Torah enough. We need to study more, but I'm thinking of some of our grandsons, and they will spend their life in the walls of Yeshiva studying 18 hours a day, studying Torah, and they're married and they have children, and I'm thinking of myself, oh wait a second, can you really live this way? And I'll explain why. So I go to the teacher, Rabbi Sacks, Jonathan Sacks, and look up what he has to say about this. And he makes such a beautiful, simple point. The Torah tells us what ought to be, that's a moral document. This is what should be, what ought to be. You need Torah. You need to know what ought to be, but you also need chokhmah, which he says is the wisdom to know what is, to know life. And I don't see how you can be a truly moral person or a spiritual counselor as a rabbi unless you have those two blades of the scissor, what ought to be, but also what is. You need to live in the world for heaven's sake, otherwise you don't have that chokhmah. And we see aged rabbis determining the future of my country. How in the world? In COVID we had a chassid who was the minister of health, who didn't have a clue. And he was advised by a council of sages who similarly, what's your position on that? I'm thinking about you, Elisha. Imagine if you spent your whole life inside a yeshiva studying Torah as my spiritual leader. Could you counsel me? Really? How does this work? This, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good question. Well, I think, I want to say two things that come to mind off the bat, is that an expression off the bat? Off the bat. Off the bat. Okay. First of all, we're recording this. Today is actually Tuesday. You're going to be, if you listen to this, God willing, it'll be either Thursday or Friday or maybe after. But it's Tuesday, today is Lach Ba'Omir. And in Lach Ba'Omir now, there are thousands and thousands of ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews who are flocking to Mount Meron to the burial of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the hero of Lach Ba'Omir. And it's a well-known story of him and his son sitting in the cave for 13 years. They were fleeing from Roman persecution. They were sitting in the cave for 13 years, and they were studying Torah, which according to tradition, that's when they actually wrote the Book of Splendor, the Book of Zohar, according to tradition. And 13 years later, rather, it was really 12 years later, they come out of the cave and they see Jews farming the lands. It's a very fertile area, and they're farming the lands. And they were both shocked. Here we have the Torah. We have the Torah, which is ultimate wisdom, and you're wasting your time working the land and plowing, like giving up eternity for this? And everything they gazed at combusted with fire. God got very angry. And God said, you guys, now this is obviously my wordings of it, get right back into the cave. I did not ask you to come out of the cave in order to destroy my world. And they knew that they were punished for having done what they did. A year later, once again, they're allowed to come out. They come out of the cave, and again, they see Jews. And the son, who's a bit more, I guess, who's younger, and therefore the fire was burning stronger, kind of started also burning the fields just with his gaze. And Rabbi Shim'on bar Yochai put out the fires, and then they see that one of the farmers is running back home with two myrtles in his hand, and they ask him, where are you going? What are you doing? He says, well, it's Shabbat. So one myrtle is for Shambol, and one is for Zichor. I'm heading home quickly. And they look at one another, the father and the son, and they say, you know what? That's okay. That's okay. Both. It needs the Shambol and the Zichor. It needs people who will work the land, people who will be immersed in this world, and people who will study Torah. The question is, is it the new paradigm in Israel, and that was the second thing I wanted to say, the new paradigm in Israel, is that anyone who's Haredi should study 18 hours a day, while the original Jewish paradigm, the traditional Jewish paradigm, is everybody should study Torah, for sure. But everybody should also go out and work. The very, very few who are geniuses in Torah, who are true scholars, they should study 18 hours a day. So they bring us the wisdom of Torah. But most people should go out of work in the evening, in their free time, and go and study Torah. And learn the world. And learn the world. So here's another dilemma. This one is, I would say, off the wall, Elisha, but I'll try it on you anyway. So I've been looking into artificial intelligence, and even using it a bit, and it's quite amazing. You can ask ChatGPT a question, and it will give you an answer, and sometimes it knocks your socks off. And these are called large language models, because it knows everything that's ever been written, and correlates it, and puts it all together, using neural networks and machine learning, and then spits back this wisdom. A short story, Elisha, about artificial intelligence. And this happened four years ago. People have been trying to make programs that play chess. And sometimes they could beat the Grand Master, and sometimes not. And then artificial intelligence experts came along, and created an unusual AI program to play chess. And they didn't feed into it all the chess games ever played. They told it, we want you to learn to play chess. Here are the rules of chess. Now you play yourself. You play black, and then you answer with white, and then play black. Elisha, in 24 hours, this, it's called the AlphaZone, this algorithm, became the best chess player in the world, defeating the Grand Master. So my question is, a long introduction, what happens when we have computerized machines that know more than we do, they know all the Torah and the Talmud, inside out, instantly, and a lot beyond that, and what happens when they're actually smarter than we are? Does this have any religious implication, when we have created this golem that's smarter than we are? What does this mean for us? What does it mean for our relationship with God? These things become God, good heavens. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not an expert at all on AI, I don't know if anybody is, and I'm certainly not. And I remember when I was first introduced to this idea of AI, I was at my parents' house, and it was a year ago, a few months ago, when it first came out into the public sphere, and one of my nephews, two of my nephews, my brother's sons, they were sitting there all said dinner, and they were saying, Ah, Elisha, you know, you've got to check it out, it's really amazing. And without even checking it out, I immediately gave my opinion, which was not a wise thing to do. And I said, I said, whatever I said, and he said, No, no, no, no, no, you don't understand, you don't understand. This is not just a Google search. This is a lot more than that. And they sent me the famous video clip that went out that introduces whole thing. And I have to say that, you know, a few months have passed, and I still feel very, very strongly, that there is a huge, infinite, qualitative difference between data, i.e. knowledge, which is data-based. It doesn't matter how amazing the data accessibility is, and it is amazing, and that's its greatness. It's great. All the data ever produced is at its fingertips. Great. And yet, there's a whole nother level of wisdom, which is not data-based. It is expressed as data. It is, you know, it comes eventually when it's written down, it's words, it's data. But it is, our body, for example, our body, there's wisdom in our body. And this wisdom, we can call it intuition. It's not the words that we say. One person could say certain words, another person will say the exact same words, but the third person in the room not only will hear different things, that's known, but will get something totally different from these two people who said the exact same words, who read maybe the same text, because there's that gap, that infinite, it's tiny, yet infinite gap between data that creates data to begin with, we call it the implicit. And that implicit, I believe, is a divine, is God. So, and that's where life is, and if we go back to Baha, that's the ever-flowing water. The ever-flowing water are not the words and the data, and what people have already said, the ever-flowing water is that which comes from the yesh miayim, we say in Hebrew, create out of no thing. AI can tell us all things, but it will always, there will always be the mystery of that which kind of is born out of infinity, out of the infinite, and I feel so strongly about that only in a world which is so, in a world in which we live in which is so computer-driven and science-driven, go talk to people about implicit, go talk to people about intuition. It's an alien language today. It is indeed, and I have two stories about wisdom, and I support you in believing in the crucial importance of wisdom, two stories, one is about my father. I brought Sharona home to Saskatchewan to meet my parents, and after a fairly short time my father took me aside and looked at me and said, she's perfect for you, and of course he was absolutely right, but he knew it very quickly, so did I, but it was good to hear it. That's amazing. It was good to hear it from him. He was absolutely right, but Jonathan Sachs, the story about Rabbi Sachs, so I've been fascinated by his work and looked up his life history, and this is a story about how wisdom changed it. Rabbi Sachs, before he became a rabbi, he was a student, went to Cambridge, he went to America, and he met with two rabbis, he met with Rabbi Soloveitchik, and he met with the Lubavitcher Rabbi, Menachem Schneerson, and he got advice from each of them. Rabbi Soloveitchik told him, young man, you think, you think for yourself, and he took that to heart, and he always did for his whole career. He got into trouble because of it, as you know. From the Lubavitcher Rabbi, he heard a different piece of wisdom. Young man, you become a rabbi and you lead, you become a leader, and he followed that as well. He was a leader, he became a rabbi, and he thought for himself, and we see that in this, and I recommend going to his website because it's phenomenal, there's so many pieces of wisdom, but you're right, I don't believe that, at least today, if he had spoken to an artificial intelligence chap GPT, I don't think he would have heard those words of wisdom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and maybe because we need to conclude, I think, pretty soon, yeah, we have like two minutes, I think it does go back to Baha'u'llah, to this whole idea of an ever-flowing spring, that we have to, each person has to make a decision for themselves. Do we believe in, in spirit, in a spiritual world, a spiritual dimension, in there being a deep, nurturing, ever-flowing spring that comes from the unknown, and the unknown is where AI will never reach, AI will always start operating from the moment the unknown becomes known, and then it will provide to us all the known there ever was and ever is, and that is, but if we don't believe in a life-sustaining energy, you know, we can give it so many different words, it's all words, then yes, AI is a new god, but that's 100% idolatry in my humble opinion, and I love AI, and AI is very useful, so is Google, and all the others, they're all very useful. You know, on a practical level, I think there's an implication for how we train rabbis, Elisha, so Rabbi Obadi Yosef made a huge reputation, he had a photographic memory, he knew the Talmud, some people say if you stuck a pin in the Talmud, he could tell you the words that the pin would strike on alternate pages, that was a powerful skill, and it gave him a huge reputation, but that's superfluous today, we have artificial intelligence, which knows the whole Talmud, and it will tell you instantly where to find something. We need people who think critically, we need rabbis who are spiritual leaders, who are able to accept the knowledge from AI, and interpret it, and use it in our journey to advise us, and adapt us, with chokhmah, with life experience, we need to train our rabbis differently. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the challenge is that we're talking about the mysterious, the luminous, a level in which, how on earth do you create a curriculum to train someone in the mysterious? But I think we had a really good conversation. Yes, we did. So, first of all, thank you, Shlomo, we're actually sitting in Shlomo's house right now, because our Killa, our congregation, is filled with teenagers from our youth movement who are preparing for a trip to the Ramah summer camps, which is very exciting, so to get some peace and quiet, we're sitting here, so thank you for hosting me, and thank you all for listening, and we'll talk again in podcast number 15, God willing. Shabbat Shalom. Shabbat Shalom.
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