Podcast # 86: Parashot Nitzavim Vayelech

The speaker talks about the strange and unsettling situation in their country, where there is ongoing war and rockets are getting closer to their town. They share personal anecdotes about their parents living in a war zone and how life goes on despite the conflict. They then discuss the upcoming Jewish new year and how the number 5,785 has significance in Gematria. They also talk about the Torah portions read on Shabbat and the importance of leaders writing and understanding the Torah. The speaker reflects on the different interpretations of the Torah and the danger of interpreting it to fit one's own beliefs. They discuss the issue of grievance identitarianism and its impact on the world. The speaker calls for humility and dialogue to overcome this division. Good morning Alicia, good morning to our listeners, good morning everyone, so it's Tuesday morning and it's a very strange, I mean this whole year is so strange, this whole period is strange and the past few days are the strangest of all. Yesterday we were all watching the news, listening to the news, reading the news and seeing how the bombs, the rockets are getting closer and closer and closer, they're about five minutes away now from Zichron Yaakov and it's a matter of time that we will all be sent to the shelters and yet we had a board meeting last night and what seems to continue, what an odd time this is. It's very strange Alicia, we live in Zichron because of geography, Zichron is south of Haifa, north of Tel Aviv and we're kind of in an area, a small place that isn't significant enough to be bombed and shot at with rockets, we have this strange bubble and Alicia we're at a full-blown war and we have been for almost a year but you go into the supermarkets, the shelves are full and people go on with their lives and they go to plays and watch television and play with their kids, it's weird, it really is strange, this little country battling on all its borders against ferocious enemies and life goes on, life goes on and it has for almost an entire year with this deep ache in our hearts for the hostages and there's still 101 of them. Yes, my parents yesterday, my dad had a checkup at a hospital in Tel Aviv, near Tel Aviv and they live up north, not far from both the Lebanese border and the Syrian border and they've been watching this war going on from their own balcony, seeing the fires, seeing up in the sky, seeing all the drama taking place from their own balcony and running to a bomb shelter whenever needed, they don't have a safe room so my parents seek refuge behind a bookcase, which I guess being the people of the book, it should help but then off they went to Tel Aviv to see the doctor and back they went to the kibbutz on a bus, on a public bus, both my sisters who live in the center of the country tried to convince them to stay in the center but no, no, there's a cat to feed and they need to get back home so they got on the bus and I think people need to understand that there are rockets flying all over the place and if it's not rockets then it's the, what's it called, the debris from the Yigal team, what's the Yigal team in English? Interception, some of the rockets fired by Hezbollah are really big and they're blown up, they're exploded and the explosives are blown up, the huge pieces of metal fall and they can do a lot of damage. Right, right and in all of this, a bus is going from Tel Aviv to Apsua Shpina and with my parents in it, is it surreal, absolutely surreal? It is indeed. The point I wanted to make before we get into the Palashah, my mom was born in Israel in 1942 in what was Palestine and she's a Palestinian, my mother and she remembers the war of independence living in Jerusalem and remember the bullets flying, the rockets flying and she says one of the biggest problems was there was no food and there was no water, never mind the rockets and the bullets and what you're describing, she said on our way back from Tel Aviv to the kibbutz, we stopped at Aroma and got a really nice lunch and then we're going to go to the supermarket and buy everything we need. Just as you said, in this weird reality, life is good. Indeed, so Alisha, I want to begin with a little amateur drashah about the new year. Next week is Rosh Hashanah in a week and the year is 5,785. Being a number guy, I looked up this number to see if the number is telling us anything, Alisha, for our new year and indeed it is. 5,785, this is trivia, is a product of three numbers, 5 times 13 times 89. 5 is the letter Hey, which is God. So God is at the center as he always is. 13 is the 13 aspects of mercy, Middot Arachamim and these are the attributes of God as he relates to us with great compassion and mercy. And 89, what is 89? 89 is a prime number. It's only divided by one, but it's Psalm 89, Mizmor Ha-Lim 89, quote, the heavens are yours, God's, the world and all that is in it, you have created them. This is a small reminder from 5,785 that as you often say and explain to us and interpret with great wisdom, everything is God. Yes, yes, yes, that's first of all, that's quite a kibbutz, I did not expect that as a techno-professor to delve into such a Gematria style thinking, that's really impressive. And everything is God, yes, everything is God, including this crazy war right now. And one day we'll see it, one day, right now we just see the suffering and the anxiety, the fear, the worry, the concern. And one day we might not get to see it, but our great, great, great, great grandchildren, when they will learn about the history, they will see how God, how this period was part of the evolution of the human being, of the Jew, of the people of Israel. Absolutely. So Elisha, we have two parashat, we read two parashat on Shabbat, Nitzavim and Vayelech. I like our parashat to be separate because each has like a child, they have their own personality. And next year, a rare event, Nitzavim and Vayelech will be read separately, they each stand alone. But this year they're read together, and in 2026. Nitzavim's really short, 553 words, no mitzvot, amazing address by Moshe, with some incredible stuff, we'll talk about it. And Vayelech, the 52nd parashat, there are 54, so we're almost finishing the Torah, 1484 words. And there are two mitzvot, Vayakhel, get the people all together. And the second mitzvot, the last one of the 613, is that the leader, the king, is required to write a Torah by himself, which is really interesting. Writing a Torah on parchment, letter by letter, not making a single mistake, that's quite a task, Elisha. It seems to me that it's a brilliant mitzvah, because if our leader wrote the Torah, a whole Torah, letter by letter, it's going to end up influencing him. So I'm very fond of that very last mitzvah of the 613, and only if only our leaders, including the religious ones, would sit down and write the Torah, and really see what Jewish values are, and how we need to apply real Jewish values from the Torah. Yeah, yes, yes. And, you know, we've been talking a lot about the wandering, this government, which is such a religious government right now, and feels like they are so estranged from the Torah that they all pretend to live, or say they live. And I often wonder when we read the Psukim of the Torah, are they reading the same Torah that we're reading? And I'm not so sure. Now, obviously they're reading the same Torah, they're reading the same words, but they're really reading it very differently. For example, there was a horrific article that came out yesterday in one of the Haredi newspapers, calling on the kibbutzniks from the south, those who were deeply hurt on October 7th, to do tshuva, because they brought about the catastrophe of October 7th. And I thought to myself, how could anyone read it in such a way? And yet they do, and these are intelligent people. And I think what it kind of also calls on us to examine how we're reading the Torah. Are we not doing the same? Are we, when we accuse the other side of all kinds of immorality, or whatever it is we're accusing them, maybe we're making the same exact sin of reading the Torah, interpreting it in our own image, and wanting it to fit into our own, the way that we choose to read the Torah. And if that's the case, we really have to be very, very, very humble. There's a lot of humility called for, because we don't know why things happen. We don't know what causes what. And humility, I think one of the reasons I personally don't go out to the demonstrations, I'm not against demonstrations, but I don't go out to demonstrations, because it's, again, it's the slogans that are called out that I feel do the exact same thing as the other side is doing to our side, whatever side that may be. And I'm looking for a little way, for a way that we can have a true dialogue of what is it we really, really want, and work towards achieving that. Absolutely, Elisha. So before we discuss your wonderful Roshach, I have an explanation, because what you talk about has deeply troubled me as well. This incredible volcano of hatred that seems to be erupting, not only in Israel, but all over the world. And I think I have a bit of an insight into it after reading an interesting piece in the New York Times. And the explanation is based on a term, a terrible one, grievance identitarianism. Elisha, we have an illness, we have a plague that's affecting the world. It's called grievance identitarianism. What does that mean? Identitarianism is the ideology that says that who we are, what we think, what we say, what we do, all of that is driven by the tribe or the group that we feel we belong to. Ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, national, religious, secular, left wing, right wing, okay. We belong to this tribe, and that's who we are. And we say what the tribe says, and we do what the tribe does. And it's all based on grievance. That is, we belong to a tribe that has been wronged. So Elisha, in 2005, the settlers were pulled out of Gaza, including members of my family. That left me with scars. It was done by a right wing government, doesn't matter. And those who experienced it have this deep sense of grievance, and it's driving a lot of what they're doing in politics in this right wing government that we face right now. But it's not just them. Belonging to the Masorti group, we too have grievance identitarianism. We are Masorti, and we are a bridge over troubled waters, as I've written. And they don't accept us, and we are not accepted, even members of my own family, to some extent. It's so easy to fall into this trap of tribalism driven by grievance, rather than hope, and joy. As we read in the Parshah last week, instead of emphasizing that, counting our blessings, we count our grievances. And that's so destructive, good evidence. That is so beautifully said, Shaun. I'm really glad you brought it up and you phrased it this way. You've actually mentioned it before, and I think you're absolutely right. And the question is, what is the call on us to do? Because it's really easy, just as you said. I mean, you just said it yourself. It's so easy for everyone to see the other side as the whining, as an identity of victimhood. But what about our own identity? Are we, and you mentioned, you know, us as Masorti Jews, Masorti Israelis, and can we get out of this grievance? And if we do, if we don't play a conscious matrix, will we lose the battle? And I think that the quote you quoted from last week's Parshah, you said in Hebrew, so let's translate it into English. I said, why will all those things, the terrible things, befall you, all the catastrophes? Because you didn't know how to rejoice with all that you have, with everything that you have. And instead, you're whining, complaining, blaming, and accusing, and being a victim. So indeed, it's time to stop this game. And what I want to, I'm saying this now to myself, to you and I, and to our tribe. Indeed, let's stop playing the victim. There are many other narratives that are possible. For example, a narrative, I'm not saying there are no victims. There are victims. People suffer, and there are victims. But the narrative that I personally, I personally really connect with is the narrative of bravery. And bravery is also a narrative of my parents deciding, you know, that they have a cat to feed. They have a cat to feed. And they are, my dad is 19, my mom is 82, and they are going to get on the bus to go back to the kibbutz, to the war zone, because they have a cat to feed, and because they want to go home. I see that as bravery. And I think that's what life is about. Life is about, you know, doing good, and doing even better, and seeking to be a blessing, as we always talk about it, and just indeed not focusing on the grievances and the victimhood. Exactly. So Alicia, in one of your dress shows, you share with us some of the anguish that you've experienced over the past year. You are a spiritual leader, and your flock is troubled. And we come to you for comfort, and solace, and understanding, and hope. And you yourself are troubled. And this is, I think, a difficult task of a spiritual leader to provide hope for others at a time when the leader himself or herself is deeply troubled. And I have a small story. And the story is about an amazing songwriter named Irving Berlin. Irving Berlin came to America with Russian parents when he was five years old, and became a songwriter, even though he couldn't read music, and barely played the piano. And he wrote some of the greatest songs. And one of his songs has a story. He had insomnia. He had trouble sleeping. And he went to see his doctor or a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist said, Irving, before you go to sleep, why don't you try this? Instead of worrying about bad things that are happening, why don't you count your blessings? Something I try to do, Alicia, by saying, thank you, God, in the evening before I go to sleep, rather than in the morning. And he wrote the song called Counting Our Blessings. Alicia, I'm going to do something weird. I'm going to sing this, because the words are helpful. And they reflect some of the counsel that you give us, that we find hope by counting our blessings. When I'm worried and I can't sleep, I count my blessings instead of sheep, and I fall asleep counting my blessings. When my bankroll is getting small, I think of when I had none at all, and I fall asleep counting my blessings. I think about a nursery, and I picture curly heads, and one by one I count them as they slumber in their beds. So, if you're worried and you can't sleep, count your blessings instead of sheep, and you fall asleep counting your blessings. And by the way, well done, well done, well done. Let's clap. This is beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. That is absolutely beautiful. It's really interesting. I just heard this poem recently. I don't know if it's from you, from someone else. From you? Oh, okay. I heard it like recently on a podcast or something, and here it is in our podcast. That's miraculous. And I have an example, Alicia, very briefly. We had a terrible attack, a murderous assault on October 7th. How in the world can we count our blessings after October 7th? And strategically, militarily, we can, Alicia, for this reason. Our enemy in the north, Hezbollah, that we're dealing with now, and we're dealing with them very effectively, by the way, our enemy in the north is many times more powerful than the Hamas, with more fearsome weapons and backing of Iran. We know now that Hezbollah was planning a similar invasion of the Galil. The leader, Nasrallah, spoke of this openly. This is their goal, and had they done that, Alicia, God forbid, God forbid, because we were not ready in the north. No, we were ready in the south, but had they opened the war in the north, the toll and the cost would have been immensely greater, and we are now able to deal with it, with us taking the initiative rather than them, and we have them on our back foot. So there is even a military blessing in the fact that we were saved a much bigger tragedy, and by the way, the Hamas, of course, didn't consult with anybody when they attacked us. They just went ahead and did it. It was based on Sinwar's thirst for vengeance, but it may have saved us a much greater tragedy. Well, yes, I have indeed. I've read that, and the words are difficult to say because so many casualties from October 7th, and yet they saved so many other casualties. Yes, so Alicia, let's talk about your wonderful Drosha. The title is An Invitation to Look Inwards. It was written in 5777, 2017. That's seven years ago, and it's very, very interesting. You discuss the issue of extroverts and introverts. An extrovert is somebody who responds to external things, who is driven by what people think and say of them. An introvert is someone who looks inward as kind of an inner compass, and the Torah, as you note, is kind of favoring the extrovert. Torah seems to be a masterpiece of the extroverts, you say, but actually, you think that maybe there's some introversion involved here, looking inward, and you make an interesting observation. In the 60s and 70s, there was a trend in psychology. We might call it self-actualization, finding who we are. We Jews, we're in the search for God. Who is God? Where is God? What is God? But the psychologists turned this into a search for who we are, who we are, what am I, what am I put here on earth for, and so on. In this self-actualization, which I think is positive, because we need to understand ourselves, that's a crucial part of serving God, but as many things, we pushed it too far. We pushed capitalism too far. We filled our closets with stuff that we don't need and ruined our planet, global warming, and we made ourselves as little gods, rather than God itself. So, as we come to the new year, and we begin Shlichot, the prayers of forgiveness, although the Sfaradim started longer. They started at Rosh Chodesh Elul. I think we Ashkenazim should adopt that. We need a month of Shlichot, not just a few days. Let me quote Rabbi Sachs, who deals with this. Rabbi Sachs has a brilliant metaphor. On a computer, Elisha, sometimes I misspell a name or a word, and I do it 14 times in my column, and I have to fix it quickly. So, we use a command called find and replace. That is, every place the computer finds this word, it finds it and then replaces it with the right one, and Rabbi Sachs says, this is what we should do. We should employ find and replace. Every time we find the word me or I, replace it with others, and I think this is a good start at correcting the extreme of self-actualization, and a good start at Shlichot as well. For the last part of Elul, as we head toward Rosh Hashanah, focus on others, and by the way, that brings a great deal of hope, in my opinion, in my experience, when we help others, when we associate, when we befriend other people. Yeah, yeah, it's a balancing act, because we know that there are people whose help of others, their generosity, can sometimes be an escape from dealing with their own issues, and there are so many issues that they are escaping from, so they're just going out there trying to do a lot of good for others, and that's often not healthy, because they remain deeply wounded inside. On the other hand, if all we are is dealing with our own inner selves, then that's narcissistic, and that's really, really, really dangerous. So, it's an incredible and balancing act, and that's, I mean, the sages, you know, in Pirkei Avot, they said, I'm not for myself, and who will be for me, but immediately I have to say, and if I'm only for myself, then what am I, who am I, what's the worth of it all? So, I think what I love about the Jewish path, it's really both and, and it's both, you know, even if we take the commandment in the Torah, you know, love thy neighbor as yourself. If you don't love yourself, you cannot love thy neighbor. So, it's this beautiful balancing act, where you need to have a clear sense of self, in order to have a very healthy sense of others. Rav Kook has a beautiful, beautiful teaching about it. It says in the story of creation, that when, you know, after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, their eyes were opened, and there was something lost in the world, you know, existentially speaking, and the big question, the first question that God ever asks the human being is, obviously, ayeka, the question of love, where are you, you, where are you? And the next question that is asked, a few verses later, when, after Cain kills Abel, God says, where is your brother, aye achicha, where is your brother? So, Rav Kook says, if you can't answer the question, ayeka, where are you, you can't answer the question, where is your brother? But if you're only delving into your own ayeka, where am I, why am I here, what, you know, if it's all me, me, me, me, me, then you become narcissistic, and your brother is totally, becomes totally irrelevant, and that is a spiritual sickness. So, it's a really powerful balancing act, both and. Absolutely. So, Anisha, a question, how are you at mathematics? That's a deep question. I love mathematics. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do, I do. Yes, I do. Okay, so I can see that, and I'm going to claim that you're a brilliant mathematician. Okay. Let me quote from, let me quote from your address, Anisha. It teaches us profound theological understanding that the cosmos is not one infinite gathering of finite pieces, grains of sand, if you like, rather we are one infinite gathering of infinite infinities. What in the world? So, Anisha, probably unbeknownst to you, there was a Jewish mathematician named George Cantor, and he was a mathematician who explored infinities, and he developed a concept of infinite infinities, classes of infinity. There is infinity, and there is something beyond infinity, which is an infinity of infinities. He called it transfinite, and he gave this a name. He gave some of his concepts Greek letters, and then he ran out of Greek letters, so he used Hebrew letters, and his famous concept is the infinity of aleph zero, which is virtually a concept of God, I think, this concept of the infinite that is beyond infinity. So, yes, I love that. Yeah, I love that. I was not aware of it. Thank you for telling me about him. I'm curious to hear more about him. Yes, there were, the Spinoza kind of view of the world is we're all a particle in a large infinite sum of particles, and a particle is finite, and we're all part of an infinite world, and that has to be flawed. It has to be flawed by, just logically speaking, it doesn't make sense. We don't have time to get into it right now, but it makes a lot more sense that that each one of us is infinite, and therefore the totality, which is infinite, is an infinite of infinite infinites, and yes, that kind of mathematics I love. Good. So, Elisha, you quote a passage at length from the Pasha. I love this passage, and I remember it from a program I used to watch on television on Friday before Shabbat by Dov Elbon, and he would speak about the Pasha, and it was always introduced really beautifully, a picture of the sunset, and then this part of this passage. I'm going to read this, which you quote in your drashah. For this commandment which I command you this day, this is Moshe, this amazing address. The person was supposedly not eloquent. Give me a break. It is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven. This is in response to the question, where do you find God? It's not in heaven that you should say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it to us and make us hear it that we may do it. Not up there, guys. Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, who shall go over the sea for us and bring it to us and make us hear it that we may do it. This is the key, that the word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it. So this is kind of the self-actualization, and it's an answer to where do you find God. You look inward to find God in yourself, the shephanti b'tokam, and God can dwell within us, provided we allow it, provided we rent out some space for him in order to do that. And this is, I guess, the true self-actualization, where we search for something greater than ourselves inside, inside our own selves, in this beautiful passage from Moshe's eloquent final address. Yes, yeah, yeah. I love it. And as I mentioned in the Doshah, we recited that on our communal kibbutz bar mitzvah ceremony. Our whole class together, I was the youngest, or almost the youngest in the class. I was twelve and a half when I had my bar mitzvah, and we stood there on the stage before the entire kibbutz, and I think we were twelve kids, if I'm not mistaken. We all recited this together. We practiced it for a long, long time, and I didn't have a clue what this meant when I was twelve and a half years old. And yet, here we are, so many years later, and I remember, I remember the stage. I remember the whole ambience, the setting. I remember everything. There are things that you don't fully understand when they happen, when they unfold, but they later on, they really germinate in our consciousness and do wonders. And I think we have to end pretty soon, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. So I guess we're going to just abruptly end and continue next week, God willing. We have two minutes, Elisha. Okay. What is your wish for the coming year, Elisha, and what is your bracha to share with us for 5785? Well, that's a great question. That's a really good question. I'll think of something quickly, but also I think, Shlomo, we need to get together early next week in order to get a podcast out before Osho Shana. First of all, Friday is going to be a hug, so we won't be able to send out a podcast. But secondly, we can't get into Osho Shana without a podcast. What is my blessing? At this time, at this really difficult and challenging time, that we are really able to focus on what's enhancing, what's life enhancing, what gives us energy and power to bear the reality that we are in the midst of, knowing and recognizing that it is in a mysterious way, working in order to make us all that much better. We will emerge out of this. It may take a few years. It may take a few years. We will emerge out of it indeed that much better. Just know that life is about overcoming challenges. That's what life is about. Life is not about comfort. Life is not about ease. Life is about really learning what you're made of and how able you are to deal with the challenges of life. And that is a source of tremendous strength. We are emerging from this crisis as stronger individuals, but as stronger people, stronger community as Jews. Yes, yes, indeed. So in our next podcast before Osho Shana, you're going to have to tell us what your blessing is. Done. Agreed. Okay. So Shabbat Shalom everyone. Shabbat Shalom to our listeners. Thank you. Thank you very much, Lee Tork.