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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss Parashat Bamidbar
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Prof. Shlomo Maital and R. Elisha Wolfin discuss Parashat Bamidbar
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Shalom everyone! In this podcast, Shlomo and Elisha discuss the power of storytelling and the evolution of truth. They explore the idea that stories, whether real or imaginary, hold deep truths that can heal and guide us. They also discuss the importance of interpreting and reinterpreting the Torah, as our own experiences and perspectives change over time. They emphasize the value of faith and intuition in decision-making, and how stories can help us navigate difficult choices. They conclude by acknowledging that truths may crumble, but new truths will emerge, leading to growth and a better understanding of the world. So, Shalom everyone, it's the end of a very hot day here in Israel, we're actually recording Tuesday evening. It's been a really hot day and for the purpose of the quality, we actually turned off the air conditioning. So, that's a sacrifice we make for a good podcast. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Elisha. And I got to choose the drashah this week and I've chosen one from your book of drashot. The book is called Ayikah and we're starting B'amidbar. We've had a long journey through Leviticus for 10 podcasts, 10 parashot, and now we're at the foot of Har Sinai getting ready for this long journey. Yes, yes, it's a new book and it's not a new journey but it's a renewed journey. For sure. So, what did you prepare for us? So, as you know, my field is innovation and creativity and the reason I chose your drashah is because the heading of it is the secret of Jewish creativity, which I love. And I'm going to read the boldface passage from your drashah, which I think is great. And you write as follows, imagine for yourself an imaginary situation completely, actually imaginary for those of little faith, in which the books that we read change as we read them according to our emotions, according to how we feel. And it responds to us and the plot and the book take the directions that we choose. And I thought of two things. First of all, that's exactly how I've been reading the Torah because the stories and the words are the same, but the meaning changes. And the meaning changes because I change. How is it for you, Elisha, do you feel the same when you read the Torah? Yes, very, very much so. I guess I'll respond on two levels. One level, the most, the level that makes sense is indeed what you just said. Yeah, the words are the same, but the meaning changes, absolutely, and if the meaning changes, that changes everything. I mean, it could be the same word, but if it's a totally different meaning, then it's almost as if the words themselves have actually changed, the story changes. But I want to suggest another bizarre option, and it's an issue of faith, I guess, that what if we actually have the faith that the words will actually be different this year, that we'll get to parashat, whatever, for example, that Moshe, you know, towards the end of Bamidbar, will not strike the rock, that maybe this year he will not strike the rock. And I know it's bizarre, because, what do you mean, of course he's going to strike the rock, but there's that level of faith there that maybe, maybe he won't strike the rock. I love that, to leave it open-ended. Incidentally, what you describe in the drashah actually exists, I looked it up. Netflix, which is a streaming service for all kinds of movies and programs, Netflix is trying this. Netflix is very creative. They're not paying us for this endorsement. No, they're not paying us at all. They have a program called Bandersnatch, which is an interactive film in which the viewers determine the order of different things and direct it by giving feedback, and a program which is brand new called Kaleidoscope, just started in January. And the same, it spans 24 years, and there's a whole series of segments, and you assemble your own story according to your wishes. But Elisha, you know what, they're not popular. It's not catching on. We're so used to sitting in front of the TV and having the stories told to us. This is an activity. It takes a mental activity to really change the story. And the same is true of Torah. You've got to think about it. You can't just read the words. You have to think about it and interpret and think about the story. And as you do that, it takes on new meaning. We read Vayikra. I've found many new things, partly because of a conversation with you that helps a lot. I understand now why in yeshiva there's chavruta. That's how you learn. You learn by bouncing ideas back and forth. Absolutely. And it's really, really powerful. But even on your own, you rethink things each time, and it takes a lot of effort. And you have to get out of the box, be willing to do that. As you said, maybe Moshe is not going to strike the rock. Maybe he's going to make it to the holy land this time. Come on, Moshe, you can do it. Yeah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah, it's interesting. One of the big issues that people have with our Beit Midrash, for example, and also our Shabbat morning, our weekly study of the Torah portion, is that I've heard before, you know, we don't want to hear everybody talking. We just want to hear you teach. You teach. We tend to hear you. First of all, it may be flattering, but it's not truly flattering, because you're right. Judaism is, the Torah is studied in chavut, in partnership, bouncing off things. And I love it when people make comments and ask questions. And, you know, sometimes Israelis can be rude. That's true. It would be nice if they were a little bit less rude. But nevertheless, it gets the juices of creativity flowing when someone offers another perspective or someone asks a question. So that I, as someone who's facilitating or teaching, I did not think about that. And all of a sudden, it does come up. So this notion that you come to a class with a set journey for the class, a set curriculum, and you may end up in a very different place from where you intended to get to. Absolutely. And in some ways, I find our sessions in class actually therapeutic. They're healing, Alicia. And I want to ask you about that. So we've spoken before in these podcasts about narrative therapy, stories that heal. That's a well-known tool in psychology and a powerful one. And Sharona gave me a beautiful book by Jerome Brunner, a famous psychologist. And he has the following statement about stories. A feature of narrative, I'm quoting, is that it can be real or imaginary without loss of its power as a story. So maybe this is a bit up your course. But I don't really care that much if the Torah is literally true in all the details. Because the story is so powerful and so healing, literally healing. And the fact is, it is because the book is so revered by so many people and other religions, not just by Jews. But let me ask you, you engage in spiritual counseling. Does the Torah heal? Have you healed people with the help of the Torah? Hmm, that's a good question. Have I actually healed with the help of the Torah? Yes, I wouldn't say, you know, obviously, it's not an explicit kind of, not an explicit sense as in, you know, just read the Torah portion every week and you will be healed. And that's not the idea. But I draw a lot of inspiration from the Torah. I draw a lot of wisdom from the Torah and that heals. But I also want to go back to what you just said right now about truth and about fiction and about myth. I was deeply impacted by, in I think the 90s, I got deeply into Jungian archetypal studying, mostly about myths. And Joseph Campbell wrote a book that I loved dearly, Myths to Live By, if I'm not mistaken. And then many years later, a conservative rabbi in LA said something very controversial. He said, it's absolutely okay if the story of the Exodus is a myth. Oh, that turned like a huge uproar in the Jewish world. How can a rabbi say that the Exodus story is a myth? And one of the things that Joseph Campbell teaches is that, or taught rather, is that myths are the truth. History changes. You have a PhD student who goes back to sources and discovers, no, that's not exactly what happened. What happened was a little bit different. So actually the historical account changes all the time. The myth remains somewhat the same. And the myth carries a deep, deep truth. I had kids in fourth grade. I was rushed into a school where I served as a school rabbi for a few years. A Tali school? Mm-hmm, a Tali school. And their teacher, who was a devout atheist, said, you know, the kids are asking me tough questions that I don't know how to answer. And in the past, she said, I would have answered like your typical Israeli atheist Bible teacher. People who live outside of Israel might not understand the reality of the way Tanakh is taught in Israel. But we're not going to talk about that right now. So she asked if I'd be willing to come and talk to her students. It's a very bright class. And would I be willing to come in? I said, of course, nothing I'd rather do. And I meant it, obviously. I walk in, and the kids ask me, you know, we're learning all these things. Did that really happen? Did that really happen? So my first answer, deliberately, in order to stir the conversation, was, of course it did. Of course it did. And I said, you know, Adam and Eve? Absolutely. It's a true story. And after saying that, I said, now I'd like to explain. And now, fourth grade, you know, that's a pretty young age to deal with these philosophical issues. And I started telling them the story of Adam and Eve from a perspective of archetypes, of that Adam and Eve is every single one and one of us. That every single one of us stood before the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and ate from that tree, and our eyes were opened, and something deep, deep happened to us, and we lost our innocence. I told them, you know, this thing has happened to you quite recently. The fact that I'm here in this class is because you've just eaten from the tree of knowledge, and you're no longer willing to be naive and innocent and say, of course the Torah is real and true. All of a sudden you have critical thinking, and that is because you've eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which I want to congratulate you. That's a really, congratulations for joining the human tribe. But there's one very unfortunate thing. You're going to miss the Garden of Eden. And I was like, what is this rabbi talking about? And I told them. These are 10-year-olds. These are 10-year-olds. But they really got it. I told them, you know, I said, do you remember when you guys believed in magic? Do you still believe in magic? They said, no, we don't. You know, and about the tooth fairy. They were too cynical to believe in all those things. But do you remember you believed in magic? And is it true that you've lost it? You've lost that belief in magic, that faith in magic. And today, you know, it's mom and dad leaving you some money or a gift instead of the missing tooth. So you were kicked out of the Garden of Eden of magic. And that's a huge loss. Right now, you can't appreciate it. One day, you really will. So myths carry a deep truth, which a historical truth, so to speak, does not carry. Absolutely. By the way, good for you for not talking down to these 10-year-olds. We usually talk down to kids, and they can understand a lot more than we think. But I want to support you in this and give you my take on myth. So I often bug you and ask you, who wrote the Torah, Elisha? Who wrote the Torah? Because I spent my career writing words, and I'm interested in people who write amazing things. And I guess the scholarly view is that the Torah was written over quite a long period, collecting folk tales that began with a kernel of reality, and maybe were embellished and changed. But the point is this. In nature, there's something called evolution, which has produced amazing human beings, our human brains and our body, through a process of natural selection. The same thing, I think, is true of the Torah. Over the years, these tales were told and retold, embellished, changed a little bit. The stories that didn't resonate, they kind of fell by the wayside. They weren't retold. By an evolutionary process, some of these so-called myths became the Torah over a period of years. And then they were put together, pulled together, and codified as the Torah. But there's truth in them. And the truth is in the sense that they resonate with people. As Bruner said, a feature of narrative is that it can be real or imaginary without loss of its power as a story. I would alter that. That if you believe it is real, it is real, because it is no longer a fable for you. It is reality. One last word. I've been Zooming with my granddaughter's husband, Yair, who's studying philosophy. And we're studying together once a week as a churruta, which is fascinating. Wow. And we discovered an interesting thing about something called epistemology, which is the theory of knowledge. What does it mean to know? What does it mean to know God? And Western epistemology is very, very interesting. And Western epistemology is very rational. It's based on belief. And belief is based on evidence. Everything these days is evidence-based medicine, evidence-based economics. Jewish epistemology, the theory of knowledge, is based on faith. It's the transition from faith to knowledge. I have faith in something. Now, seven nishma, experiential. I will do this, and then I will understand it, and I will believe it. And it's interesting. In Hebrew, Elisha, I look for the translation of belief and faith. It's one word. Emunah. It's one word. So we believe the Torah. Everybody believes in their own fashion. But in the sense that we believe it, it is truth. It is knowledge. We know it. First of all, what a privilege you have, having a chabut with your granddaughter's husband and discussing philosophy. That's incredible. That's really beautiful. I love what you said about from faith, from belief, to knowledge. You know, to know, if we think about it, to know ladat in Hebrew, ladat is something very intimate. And man knew his, the first human being, Adam, knew his wife Eve. Like, they became intimate. So to know ladat, you don't know facts. I mean, he knew already how old she was. He knew where, that she came from, you know, she was a, came from one part of him. He knew all the data, all the facts. But when he said he knew his wife, ladat, et ishto, he basically entered a whole new realm of relationship with her. And that is, that's both a matter of faith, but it also tells us that someone else will not know another person the way an intimate person will know their intimate partner. It's a different kind of knowing. And it's not knowing of facts. It's a knowing of the humanness of the other person. It's knowing the divine of the other person, the image of God in that particular person. So even when it comes to knowledge, knowledge, knowledge is not facts. Knowledge is way beyond facts. It's deeper than facts. Absolutely. And I think we have an advantage as Jews over the highly rational Western philosophers who insist on the evidence. And we begin from a position of faith. But I want to share something with you related to a method that I use. And it has to do with stories. And I found this helped me a lot. Sometimes, like we all are, faced with really hard decisions, sometimes ethical, moral decisions. And the question is, what guides you? What compass do you have? And of course, we have the Torah. But sometimes it's not entirely clear, unambiguous. So I have a method, Elisha. I tell myself the story about what I'm going to do. And then I fast forward 10 years ahead. And I'm looking back at Shlomo 10 years before making this decision. And I ask myself, how do you feel about that? When you tell the story about what you did, how do you feel? And if I don't feel right, I don't do it. Because it's not worth it. Because you will have 10 years of this story pricking you in the side like a needle all the time. It works. It works. Stories are tools. So what you're saying is that when you're on the crossroads and you have to make a decision, you fast forward your life and you're kind of reflecting back on this moment, actually. And what will it feel like 10 years from now to reflect on this decision rather than that decision? And that's the compass that you use. Exactly. And it's kind of based on neuropsychology. We used to think that there are two halves of the brain. There are two halves of the brain. And we used to think of the right brain and the left brain. The right brain is reason. The left brain is language and emotion. And that's not true. It's not true. The brain is a woven network. Everything is interconnected. And that interconnection is crucial. Because when you make a decision, part of your brain is using reason and part of your brain is using intuition and emotion. And they're entirely enmeshed and networked. And so those who are so-called totally rational, even they aren't. Because that's not how the brain works. Right, right, right. Yes, that's so true. So therefore, trying to find knowledge and facts and logic is futile to begin with. We may think it makes sense. We may think it's logical. But it's always a mishmash of some facts, you know, possible facts. And coated with interpretation and with intuition. And so we're always telling a story. And we're always... So in this sense, we're always reinventing and re-inventing over and over again. Which is why the Torah changes every year. Which is why we read the Torah differently. Because as I said at the very beginning of this podcast, we're not the same people who read the Torah a year ago. We've evolved. We've changed. I think it's really important to keep this freshness. And freshness isn't easy. We do tend to get stuck in all kinds of paradigms. And today I just came back from a conference, which I want to give credit to, the Honey Foundation, which is doing amazing, amazing work in Israel. We had a whole day conference in Jerusalem today, which is what we're meeting this evening. And we had a panel. I participated in the panel. And in the panel, I think it was a really sweet conversation we had there. But the question was, how do we get to where we got to in Israeli society? The rift that's happening here, the extremism, the conflict we're undergoing internally right now. And I had to think of an answer really fast, because it was somewhat of a... It wasn't prepared way ahead of time. And I found myself saying that we got to this place because recently our truths, the truth that we've held to be true, they are crumbling. And there's a huge, huge question mark. Unfortunately, I'm myself from a Kibbutz originally, from a very secular background, from a rationalistic background. And I no longer believe in those truths. So for many years, I would say for like 30 years or so, I've adopted a very different worldview and different truths. And it's time for that truth, that new truth, so to speak, new, to be questioned again, to re-examine it, because there's more growth that needs to happen. And if I'm not open to examining this truth and really, really allowing this truth that I held onto so tightly to dissolve, it's difficult, it's painful sometimes, then I will not grow, I will not expand, and I will not read the Torah any differently than I did last year. And what's happening in our society, a lot of our truths are being questioned. But the good news is, the very good news, when that happens, when the tectonic plates start moving, which is painful and can cause a lot of damage, the good news is new truths emerge. And I strongly believe, I have deep faith that the new truths are going to be so much better. The evolution that I believe in is not the survival of the fittest, the evolution is the survival of the goodness. That there is a better truth is waiting to present itself, to come through the cracks of the old, stagnant truth. And for that, we need to know there's no stiff knowing. It's all our interpretation, and yeah, it will be open to a new narrative, a new truth. Absolutely. And getting back to Bani Dar, so the children of Israel don't know it yet. They think they're going to get on a bus and go to the Holy Land. They have a long 39-year journey ahead of them, and so do we. So do we. We all do. So the metaphor of Bani Dar, I find, the Parsah, is that we are all on this journey, and we think we know where we're going, but we really don't, and many surprising things happen. And we need to keep this open mind as we go on this journey, because many wonderful opportunities are going to open. And if the children of Israel had said, oh no, I'm not going for 39 years, forget it, that would have been the end of the whole story. Last word about what you just said, challenging truths. I actually use that as a method in workshops on innovation and creativity. So I have people from companies, and they have wonderful products, and I tell them, what are your basic assumptions? Tell me about the things that are absolutely vital for your product. For example, cars. Cars need wheels. Okay, what if we assume that the car had no wheels? What could you do with it? How could you create value with it? And there's an embarrassed pause, because that's not something you challenge. That's a truth, right? Cars have wheels. They need wheels. But it's amazing how many things you could do with a car that has no wheels. Go to any kindergarten, and you'll find a lot of those that give kids a lot of pleasure. So it's really hard, by the way, for these brilliant, talented, high-paid managers to challenge their basic assumptions. But when you do that, amazing things happen. And we need to do that. And I think that's one of the messages of Bami Bar. We're all on a journey. We have to have an open mind, challenge everything. There's a paradox here, too. Because while we're challenging things, we have to hold fast to basic faiths. And I often teach Chinese. We have Chinese visitors coming to Israel. They want to become a startup nation. And China reveres Confucius. Confucius taught you have to respect old knowledge, respect the masters. And that's fine. That's true. You have to learn all the old knowledge. You have to learn Torah to study. But the other part of it is you need Steve Jobs, who challenged everything. You need Confucius and Steve Jobs. You need the Torah and this open, challenging mind. And that paradox, that conflict, is hard to do sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. So I want to wish, first of all, thank you. Thank you so much for these insights. And I want to wish everyone, as we're setting on this journey into the wilderness, that I know you're hearing some noise in the background, by the way. That's our youth movement. They're just finishing their sessions. And they sound very, very happy. And that makes me happy, too. So we're off on a journey in the wilderness. And you know what? We think we know it's going to take another 38 and a half years. But maybe not. Maybe not. Let's keep an open mind. And we're going to be surprised. It may take longer. It may take shorter. And who knows? Who knows? Yeah. Who knows? Enjoy the journey. Enjoy the journey. So thank you very much. And Shabbat Shalom, everyone. And we look forward to your feedback. Shabbat Shalom.
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