Rabbi Jonathan Duker, Talmudic Scholars and Jewish History

Rabbi Jonathan Duker  grew up near Philadelphia, attended Yehivat Reishit Yerushalayim in the Old City of Jerusalem, earned his BA and MA from Yeshiva University, was ordained as rabbi by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York. In 2004 he emigrated to Israel and subsequently received a degree in Education from Herzog College. He currently serves as an Israel Studies Educator at the Alexander Muss High School in Israel, Rabbinic Guide for Camp Yavneh in New Hampshire, and volunteers for the Jewish Marriage department for the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization. Rabbi Duker lives in Beit Shemesh with his wife Susan and their 4 children. He the author of The Spirits Behind the Law: The Talmudic Scholars (2007, Urim Publications) as well as other Talmud based writing. 
We started our dialogue by familiarizing us with the terms Talmud and Midrash since in the introduction to his book, Jon states that the scholars of the Talmud and Midrash had an immeasurable impact on Judaism.  Jon provides a detailed description of the work that went into writing a biography of the 15 scholars he chose for his book. The Talmud is 2,000 pages long and written in Arameic. It contains a hodgepodge of commentaries on observance, hygiene, legal issues, marriage and even jokes. There are discussions of discussions of discussions. There is no punctuation and often no reference as to who is being quoted. So, his book represents a Herculien achievement.
Rabbi Akiba, originally a simple shepherd, attended school with his son and became one of the foremost Rabbis of antiquity. As an outsider coming to it late in the game, he had something to contribute that the establishment could not.
We also learn that a lot of Jewish ideas spread to much of the world through the teachings of Jesus and Mohamed.
Talking about the different way men and women approach the study of Talmud. Jon tells me that there has been a sociological study done recently about women's Talmud study. The finding was that when men are reading the text together, and they're difficult texts, so you have to really parse out the words, they tend to be more competitive with one another, while women, when they're studying together tend to be more collaborative. Jon’s own experience supports these findings.
Jon also teaches Jewish history to students visiting Israel students from outside of Israel. It's a combination of classroom learning, and on site learning. They visit  all sorts of archaeological sites and historical sites, and teach them about the story of the Jewish people. A component of this program is to take certain groups to Poland as there was a lot of Jewish life in Poland, before ghettoes, concentration and extermination camps. I ask him, “How do you keep your face in a benevolent God after Auschwitz?” Hear his most illuminating answer.

My next guest will  be Dr. Dean Radin, Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences founded by Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell 50 years ago after the Apollo-14 mission. We shall explore with him consciousness, “presentiment” and psychic espionage and related subjects.

If you liked this podcast

• please tell your friends about it,
• subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and/or write a brief note on apple podcasts,
• check out my blogs on Psychology Today at

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/contributors/thomas-r-verny-md

Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
rabbi, talmud, people,  jewish, god,  israel, book, written, learning, world,  lives, study, 
scholars, 

0:02
This is Pushing Boundaries, a podcast about pioneering research, breakthrough discoveries and unconventional ideas. I'm your host, Dr. Thomas R. Verny. My guest today is Rabbi Jonathan Duker, who grew up near Philadelphia, attended Yehivat Reishit Yerushalayim in the Old City of Jerusalem, earned his BA and MA from Yeshiva University, was ordained as rabbi by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York.. I'm not sure about the pronounciation. That's good. You got it nailed down it got it. Okay. In 2004, he emigrated to Israel
0:44
and subsequently received a degree in education from Hertzog College. He currently serves as an Israel studies educator at the Alexander Muss High School in Israel. He is rabbinic guide for camp Yavneh in New Hampshire, and volunteers for the Jewish marriage department for the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization. Rabbi Duker lives in Beit Shemesh with his wife Susan and their four children. He is the author of The Spirits Behind the Law: The Talmudic Scholars published in 2007, as well as other Talmud based writings. 
Welcome Rabbi Jonathan Duker. Welcome. Thank you very much. Happy to be here. I apologize for the mouthful of money of my alma mater's, but he got everything on the nose. Okay, on the nose. So glad you could join us. May I call you Jonathan or John? What is Yeah, John John is fine, just fine. So in your book that I just referred to, you say the scholars of the Talmud and Midrash had an immense immeasurable impact on Jews, Judaism. Perhaps we can start by you explaining the meaning of the words Talmud and Midrash. For those of our listeners who are not familiar with that, so what is meant by Tom Wood? And Midrash? Sure. So the short answer is, take your time, don't give me the short answer. Oh, no, the long ones coming next, it's educational life short answer, the long answer. So it's records of discussions that were carried out by 1000s of rabbis over the course of hundreds of years. They're largely taking place between the second and ninth centuries in the land of Israel and in Persia. So you're talking about oral traditions of discussions, and later people getting together discussing those discussions and discussions about discussions. And this all is happening, or developing orally, over the course of hundreds of years, and both named figures who are part of these discussions and sort of anonymous people who are part of these discussions over the time, get inserted into these long traditions.

2:59
The longer answer is, I just want to take a step back and give a little scope of where we are in terms of Jewish history and world history. When this happens, yeah, so the Jewish biblical narrative ends around the sixth century BCE. At that time, there is a newly built temple in Jerusalem. There's a small, smallest Jewish community, mostly centered around Jerusalem. And that's where the Bibles to Jewish Bibles narrative ends. The Christian Bible picks up a little bit after that it with the Gospels, but that's the Jewish Bible ends around the sixth century BCE. What happened historically after that is Alexander the Great comes in and conquers Jerusalem, we have the Hasmonean revolt, which is more popularly known as the Maccabees, The Hanukkah story, which was a Jewish revolt, which replaced the Greeks and had a Jewish monarchy.

3:51
Eventually, this dynasty, the Hasmonean dynasty, the Maccabees dynasty is sort of dies out. And there's Roman rule of the land of Israel. At this point, you have famous figures like King Herod being a king. This is a period where Jesus starts his ministry.

4:09
We have in this time following Jesus, now we're talking about sort of the end of the first beginning of second century to fail the Jewish revolts against the Romans, which included the destruction of the Second Temple, and sort of the reorientation of the Jewish population, first out of Jerusalem and to Northern Israel, and then continuing to sort of leave the land of Israel, and to head eastward into the Persian Empire. So the really the Talmud is, starting with the Talmud, and a sub sect of it called the Mishnah, which maybe we'll talk about later, is a sort of a rear inpatient intellectual and spiritual reorientation for the Jewish people with this new reality, that they're no longer an independent kingdom, but they're either a vassal state or living completely as guests in foreign lands and

5:00
During these periods are a lot of the religious principles have to be explored lacking a temple and lacking a monarchy and lacking a strong a strong base. And these discussions which involve both legal aspects and philosophical aspects are, as I said before discussed in many contexts over many years, and eventually are put into these large books, which are sometimes some certain sections for the Talmud, or, or other books, which are referred to as Midrash.

5:36
Okay, so what are what are some of the subjects that these scholars are discussing?

5:42
So, the interesting thing about the, I'll really focus now on the Talmud more, because it's just easier to wrap your head around one book is that the books are there, as I said, the records of discussions and discussions about discussions and just as when you sit down at dinner with somebody, you might start in one place and jump to another topic, another topic, another topic, that's the way that Tom would flow. So the topics covers everything under the sun. So really, the official

6:13
subject matter of Talmudic tracks are generally legally based.

6:20
Either regarding Jewish holidays, torts and damages law, laws of purity, laws, and marriage and divorce, those are sort of the subjects that sort of kick off the discussions. But from there, it can go into other legal areas, or it could also go into philosophical discussions, theological discussions, personal stories, medical advice, jokes, these are all things that just happen by way of conversation that Thomas so really covers anything that any Jew might have spoken about, over the course of about seven centuries, it can find in the Talmud. So who would write all this stuff down like with the scholars themselves, write it down, or did they have scribes? That's a great question. And we don't really know. We do not know when the Talmud was first written down. There are lots of theories, we know that it was written down by the 10th century. The earliest record we have of a atonement of a written Talmud is in the 10th century where the rabbis in Persia were sending a version to the communities in Spain, the Jewish communities in Spain.

7:28
Were there versions of the Talmud written before that? It's possible, it's possible that there were, you know, certain sections were written. There were texts I mentioned before they called the Mishnah. The Mishnah is actually the first section, what later became the sort of the opening salvo discussions of the Talmud, those were edited into a sort of a final form in this all way back in the second century. But we don't know to this day, whether it was written down in the second century, whether all this were just oral traditions and just memorized in schools, which are called Yeshivat. Or yeshivas, in the English plural, and just memorized by people with phenomenal memories, and then eventually written down or they're written down pieces along the way. But until we find a 15 year 100 year old document, we're just not going to know that. So these questions. So this was, of course, before the printing press, right? Yeah, as the printing press changes everything, is you didn't have Hanford, and Tom Woods before the printing press. After the printing press, it gets much more centralized. And eventually, by by the time we get to the one year century, we'll say there's almost a

8:41
standard Thorah text that's going to happen, which can only have one printing press. So this is in addition to the dynamicism. That would happen to any text free printing press, you know, when you have every scribe running it, writing it down on their own or copying for somebody else, which will lead to much more dynamic text. But even that was at the tail end of this long oral traditions. So we do have variances in different versions of the Talmud. And it's possible at different rabbis or different schools, where you should vote had different versions of verses that Tom would. These are all questions that that Tom and scholars deal with.

9:19
So in your book, I believe you write about 15 scholars.

9:24
Is that right? That sounds right. So how did how did you? I mean, I'm sure they were more than 15 scholars. So how did you select those particular 15? So there's definitely a lot more than 15. And the challenge of I'll just take a step back and describe what I did in my book, which is

9:45
the book is I wrote actually wrote 15 years ago, and  this is my first podcast about it because I don't think podcasting existed when the book was published. But the what the idea the book was to come up with sort of

10:00
biographies, and  maybe later we'll touch on some of the challenges of doing that. But one of the major challenges in in writing these biographies of the rabbi's of the Talmud, is that as I said, conversely, the topics jump from topic to topic very quickly, and these conversations are constantly moving. So it's not like a section I wonder about this Rabbi can look a book and find all the stories about this rabbi or biography. What it is, is that over the 1000s of pages of the Talmud, it's a sort of collate the different places where this rabbis mentioned that sort of test number one to sort of put together the body of work and just to collect it a bit that's like a bibliographic graphical endeavor. And then, once that's done, it would have to be I had to felt like there's some common threatened and narrative that would make it into a story. This isn't an encyclopedia, it's just an doesn't have all the facts. What the premise is that while the stories appear in different places, the living tradition living memories that the Talmud scholars had about their predecessors, they had specific images in mind about what their personalities were like, what their theology was, and when I'm trying to put together a cohesive picture and all these various stories of what this person

11:22
might have believed what he lived or and what the rabbi's saw him as, as a lessons that they can learn from this from this person. So it's a combination of having enough material on the material, in my mind, at least coalescing into some sort of story that I could that I could tell the public.

11:39
So all

11:41
among, among these 15 people, and 15 scholars.

11:48
Which one if if there is one, which one sort of stands out for you?

11:54
Which one was which one of the most? I don't know, brilliant, or most? The one who impressed you the most personally? Wow. So that is a there's a lot of that question. Yeah. And I think the sort of the most amazing story and, and this is not a highly original sentiment is that the rabbi named Rabbi Akiba is sort of the historian his narratives is the most exceptional narrative. He is somebody who grew up, he was ignorant for large part of the Jewish tradition, likely illiterate. He was a shepherd, which in the sort of Talmudic narrative people who are shepherds are from rural areas are considered assumed to be sort of a lower class of literate, the Talmud, rabbis tend to

12:51
be in more urban environments. And he had at a later stage in his life, after meeting the love of his life was Rahel at Rachel, her father disowns him because of his ignorance, they live on their own, and he decides, nothing has changed has it? Right. It's, I mean, hope. I mean, the

13:24
my book is only relevant insofar as people see relevancy in it. So if this is if all these things went away, then then there wouldn't be much purpose to rehashing the stories but it's a real things and real tension and, and he decides to educate himself and he at a late age, some stories have him going to school with his son, like sort of going to first grade with his son and learning how to read and stay in the same classroom. But he becomes one of the greatest rabbis of the generation and not only the grit when the greatest rabbis boss, one was creative, which seems to speak to sort of an aspect that, that as an outsider coming to it late in the game, he had something to contribute that the establishment did it, and he becomes sort of a major, major teacher. How much he influenced later. A Judaism is an interesting question, which is one of the big meta questions in the Talmud, which is, how much when somebody says something that sounds radical?

14:25
Are they saying something new and radical? Are they saying something that's already as part of the tradition they're just framing it in a new way? And that's one of these questions that again, scholars deal with, but on the face of it rebek He was his interpretation of the of the biblical texts seems to be the most dynamic, the most radical, and he became the most respected rabbi of his generation. And so that's just amazing, amazingly inspiring story to read through. So would would his work or any of the others

15:00
dollars will also have had an impact on the non on the non-Jewish world?

15:05
That's a great question. So I'm going to break this down into two different answers. Number one is the Talmud. It's a it's a hard, hard book to read. It's a real slog. I mean, even if you're Aramaic is fluent and Aramaic was sort of the lingua franca of that part of the world, you know, 1500 years ago, 2000 years ago, is our recordings of conversations with no punctuation. It's really deep, often deeply immersed in legal terms and self referential, that almost assumption is that anybody who's learning the Talmud is already familiar with all the major concepts of the Talmud, it's very difficult to read, and the Talmud itself as a book did not really spread to the larger world. Unlike the previous Jewish literary critic, a creation of Bible. The Bible became the most popular book in the history of the world, the Talmud largely stayed as a Jewish only

16:06
endeavor, and therefore the rabbi's of the tumble are not as well known to larger role, but I will say that a lot of their teachings would have spread through through Jesus, meaning Jesus is before Rabbi keep up, but he's after some other rabbis in it that are whose biographies are in the store in the Talmud. What there's a chapter in my book about the Rabbi Hillel, who, who had the end of his life might have been Jesus might have been a kid. And like the Bible, like like, just as Jesus's teachings spread the teachings of the Bible to larger world, a lot of what he said may have come from rabbis or hearing from rabbis. For example, in the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus is asked what the most important biblical verses are, one of them he says, this is number two on his list is Love your neighbor as yourself. And this is similar to Hillel, who lived a little bit before the Crusades, Hillel, that when somebody said, What's the most important thing in Judaism? He said, the verse Love your neighbor as yourself. And he formulated something very similar to Jesus golden rule, right? Jesus golden rule is that Do unto others, what you would have them do to you Hilah has a phrase, which is very similar, which is that which is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. So it's the same thing, the inverse and the negative. But so did Jesus or his family or his teachers learn from Hillel. It's very, very possible. And so a lot of things that are in the gospels may have come from this rabbinic world.

17:41
Also is also worth mentioning Islam and Muhammad again, that a lot of Jewish ideas spread to much of the world through the spread of Islam. And there in Surah, 32 of the Quran, there's a phrase whoever saves a life is if you saved the entire world. And this is actually

18:02
well before the Quran, it was in the Talmud in Tractate Sanhedrin, which deals with courts and when it's talking about

18:12
dangers of capital punishment talks about whoever stays in life with persons if you save the entire world. And this gets quoted on this verbatim in the Quran. So these teachings did spread out. They're not though largely in the Middle Ages, and even nowadays, now a lot of people will know who Rabbi Akiva Hillel is, they might be familiar with some of their ideas.

18:34
Very interesting. So just to change the subject a little bit.

18:39
You also teach at the Sadie Reynold Women's Institute for tourists studies. Do you still teach there over that or is that? So I had to take a little break because of my schedule. Got a little crazy recently. But it's a very interesting thing, which is, it's called Matan ever here in Israel, and it's a women's Torah study organization. And which is an interesting idea to start with, because women's Torah study on a serious level is a relatively recent idea. There was a lot even though there's always been exceptions. And in my book, there is a chapter we talked about Gloria, who was a female scholar, in the second century, third century. So there always were exceptions to the rule as a whole. Women were not encouraged to be educated even after the the Enlightenment industrial revolution in recent times when women were being educated in Jewish communities, they often would have, be have a secular education, that well, well, outpaced the Jewish education. And really, in the past century or even less. There's been a movement towards you know, having first class Jewish education for women.

19:53
And one of the interesting things that I did in in Bhutan in this city rent a woman for Institute for Jewish Studies. What

20:00
I taught a Talmudic class, a daily Talmud class I was teaching every single day it was in rotation with other people, including my brother. And it's an interesting idea that the Talmud is huge, huge work, over 2002 sided pages, which are called folios. And there is a about 100 years ago, there's, there's, there's this idea that, well, let's do a cycle, that every day,

20:26
people will study one page of the Talmud, and about every seven half years, we'll finish the entire thing. And this idea caught on and it's pretty popular. Within Talmud study circle, let's say that that most people who study Tom Woods study in this fashion, sort of one page a day, a slow slow slog to the finish line where every seven half years he finished the whole thing. And I taught a class like this to a group of women, which I'm an Orthodox Jewish circles is not so common. There's probably maybe dozens of such classes in the world if that and we finished a few times and incredible people in the in the group, there was a woman who escaped

21:10
rework your Europe on the cast on the sorry, she she left on the on the Kindertransport where she was, you know, sent to the countryside in England, she later came to, she stayed in English got married, her husband was a Talmud scholar, she never studied Talmud in her life. And when he passed away, she must be in her 70s or 80s. She started and during this class, and she's already finished the potluck twice. And that was, it was a great, great group to learn with. And I hope to join that on temporary hiatus, just because of schedule conflicts, but I hope to join them again soon. Sounds really, really interesting. So, but you have also taught Talmud to male students, right? Yeah, yes. So have you noticed any difference in terms of how men and women react? Is there any difference?

22:03
Okay, so let's start with,

22:06
it's gone. Going back a little bit to this sociology of Orthodox Judaism that I referenced before that you have this trend that

22:15
this idea that men shouldn't be learning Talmud, and women in general, either shouldn't be or if even if they could be, it's not really expected of all women, the way it's expected of all men in the Orthodox community. So when men learn study Talmud, in the Orthodox community, it's almost the default, that is what's expected. And for women, it's a self selected group. And for me, that's already a huge difference.

22:42
I'm a little bit of elitist by nature. And it's to have a group of people, these are the 10 women out of a community of 1000s that have chosen to join this class. It's very, very different. So that was to have that sort of self selection process. Also less preconceived notions, I think for Orthodox men who've been studying at home an entire lives the survey, assume certain things have ideas that they heard over the course of their lives from elementary school and outwards, often tell me to start to be studied as early as maybe about fifth grade or grade five, as you would say, are some there abouts, which is a very young age and start something. And sometimes we start learning something very young week, except certain strange things about about it that we don't think about and with, with the group of women, we're often hearing things for the first time, it was great to see, like, you're more able to point out certain interesting things that sometimes men don't always notice.

23:42
Besides that, could you give an example of that?

23:46
Okay, so, so I think there's a lot of the idea of who is speaking in a Talmudic text is something that are questions I got asked by women's group, often, that I did not get, I got asked questions less by men, meaning again, the way the Talmudic narrative works is that you have, you'd have a conversation rabbis. Now it'd be discussed by other people later, and that would be discussed by the people later, so that some of these rabbis have names some of these rabbis are just anonymously and, and to follow the flow of who's speaking when is very, very complicated. And I think, in my experience, a lot of lifelong Talmud study errs that I that I learned with the way they dealt with the question, sort of by ignoring it, they're just like, oh, this is the Talmud talking. This is just, and I'm not thinking about well, while somebody who's approaching me for the first time, we are much more sensitive to wait, what's going on? Who's commenting on what and that's and me as somebody who likes to think historically. That's a very, very important question. So

24:51
I also had the I've also dealt with in common in other contexts, and I've worked for years in gap year programs for students who come sort of after high school

25:00
Cool before University, and they'll teach Thomas also to beginners but on a more intensive level there and then I've noticed the same, the same sort of trends in general.

25:12
Knowing that this isn't my idea, but there has been a sociological study done recently about women's Talmud study. And if it's different than men and I did a study, this isn't my field, it's just a second study, just what I read there, that the author claimed that when men are reading the text together, and they're difficult text, so you have to really parse out the words, they tend to be more competitive with one another, while women, when they're studying together tend to be more collaborative. I can vouch for this firsthand. But this is what it's about the most recent study, I think the only study ever written on this topic has said

25:49
this thing, not surprising, but interesting. Yeah. So what made you choose this particular vocation? In other words, why why become a rabbi.

25:59
So, um, I only ended up becoming a rabbi, because I love to study. And so I love to study. And so after I graduated, I finished my undergrad with a BA in history. And rather than going to other lucrative jobs that a BA in history can get, I stayed in school. And academically, I went for a master's degree in medieval Jewish history. And then I went to rabbinical school, which an orthodox rabbinical school is largely due largely tech study, the school that I went to which you mentioned issue about Kobe, Torah does have more of an emphasis on things like pastoral counseling, and rabbinic 's and other traditional Yeshivat, or rabbinical schools. But really, the bulk of the day is studying text, and just my love of learning, sort of kept me in school, and then what do you do when you and then eventually want to share what I what I learned. And so I really wanted to be an educator,

26:59
I felt a little bit uncomfortable with the idea of being a rabbi, especially when I was younger. But later in life, I've accepted that there's a lot of roles that are traditionally reserved for rabbis that can really contribute and help people. So in recent years, moving more in that direction to I'm still, education is still primarily what I do, but I have been spending a lot more time in more traditional rabbinic roles, when I feel that I can be of use to people and help them.

27:28
So just to accentuate that, like which part of your job as a rabbi, do you enjoy the most. So let me so I really love when I can help marry tradition, to what people need as individuals.

27:50
One of the things that I do, one of my rabbinic things that I do is, as you mentioned at the outset, I volunteer for an organization called Sohar. SAR is an interesting organization. And

28:02
what it does is that in Israel, Israel has a strange I might be being might be strange to North American listeners, but it'd be very normal to people who have been Middle East, that there's a law which goes back to Ottoman times, that any person of a certain faith group can only be married, their wedding can only be officiated by a cleric of their faith group. So a Muslim has to go to a Muslim and a Muslim is good Imam and a Christian has to go to a priest. There's some divisions based on various, you know, different groups and different sects. But and so a Jew in Israel has to get married by a rabbi. And for various reasons in Israel, it's specifically an orthodox rabbi. Now,

28:49
most Jews in Israel do not identify as Orthodox. And this creates some tension, that this is the most important moment of their lives and very meaningful time. And it should be very meaningful, personal. And they're often faced with a set of

29:06
rituals or traditions that they may not be fully conversant in or understanding or appreciate. And what's so hard does is we tried to bridge this gap by having rabbis volunteer to do weddings for anybody, any any Jew who asked me to be married by by Rabbi, and try as much as we can to give the wedding personalization and meaning to individuals, while still remaining within the context of tradition. And that creates all sorts of really fun challenges, which is, you know, it's part interpretation of the tradition and part understanding and getting to know a couple of what they're looking for. And that's something that's extremely meaningful. You take a couple from a place where they're nervous about their wedding and you know, when they say, Oh, you have to talk to the rabbi and they have to meet me and they're nervous. Oh, what's the rabbi gonna say, to having a really meaningful one?

30:00
ceremony being as meaningful as it should be. And so that's a very, very special thing for me.

30:06
Yeah, that sounds that sounds really interesting. Now, another one of your activities, I understand is taking students from Israel to Poland, and an education trip. I use that is, uh, you still engaged in that? 
Okay, so that is almost, it's a little different. It's what I do in my main job, my full time job now is I educate students from outside of Israel, whether they're from North America, from Australia, South America, who their high school students who come to Israel for a certain amount of time. And I teach them about Jewish history.. It's a combination of classroom learning, but also, we do it on site. I mean, it is really cool all sorts of archaeological sites and historical sites, and teach them about the story of our people. A component of this program was before COVID, and will be again soon take certain groups to go to Poland as well, as part of this as part of this trip, you know, Poland, has played and was the ground for the biggest or one of the biggest events in Jewish history, and to take the students to Poland as part of them exploring their Jewish story. And that's something that is part of my job, and I'll be heading to Poland, Sunday night, in Poland in January. So it's going to be it's going to be a trip.

31:38
So when you go to Poland, do you also go to Auschwitz concentration camp? Yes, we go to the Auschwitz extermination death camp. But it involves mostly places of tragedy, you know, concentration and extermination camps, various massacre sites, there was a lot of Jewish life in Poland, and one could spend time in Poland, talking about the living Jewish community that was there. And that's definitely part of it. But for most Jewish people, nowadays, Poland significance is

32:18
really focused on that window of time with so much murder and death and suffering for our people.

32:26
What sort of reactions do you get from the students who are with you on those trips? So I haven't been with this group yet, because I have not is it actually a new job I just joined about a month ago. So um, and of course, if COVID It's been pulling it off the list for a while.

32:45
It's but I do know, other other trips and other groups, that,

32:52
look, everybody's different people have reactions, it's  very, in the worst case scenario, is people feel despondent and depressed, seeing so much suffering.

33:06
But often, that idea of it also comes to sometimes a sense of identification. And a lot of people.

33:15
Even when there is a win, it's an identification through something negative, like, seeing the suffering of the Holocaust of discrimination, I can strengthen their identity in a way that can make their lives a lot more meaningful.

33:32
So, being a rabbi,

33:36
would you call yourself an orthodox rabbi? Yeah, if you want to get specific about it, the term identified by his religious Zionist, but orthodox is close enough. Okay. Okay. So, as a man who believes in God, right, yes.

33:54
How do you how do you keep your face in a benevolent God after Auschwitz?

34:03
So that's a very, very good question. And

34:08
I want to say what I liked about the question so much,

34:12
meaning? I think it's a theological, philosophical, dry question, abstract. It's not it's not the strongest question because we don't just don't have enough information about how God interacts with the world, right? God does things people do things, believing people, we still have some sort of interaction, and we don't have enough information to really

34:36
answer that in a real way. But really, the question is so great, is because religious people have a relationship with God. And, and when you're in a place like Auschwitz, so when you are you see evil in the world, there is an emotional response, which is very real and very, very valid. And even if we could say, theologically

35:00
You know, we don't understand the way God works, we understand various things. That's in a real relationship. That's to poopoo a question like this.

35:10
It means you're not really engaged in the relationship. And it's very, very difficult. It's very difficult to struggle with

35:19
how God can be in this world. And these things can happen.

35:24
I will tell you that I,

35:27
there's a rabbi whose name is Columbus, common Shapira. He was a rabbi in the Warsaw Ghetto, during the Holocaust. And he would give sermons, every Sabbath afternoon, to his to his followers, he was a Hasidic rabbi, so to various Hasidic Jews. And after the Sabbath, He would write them down. And they were hid in a milk, a big metal milk container, and buried

35:56
under the Warsaw Ghetto. And after the war, these were found, and they were later published, and myself and a group of friends, every Sabbath afternoon, we study his writings is that's writing since really his speeches that he gave, and he talks about, in one of his speeches, he says that the Holocaust

36:19
is God's punishment. God has been involved in so much evil in the world, he has to be punished, and the Holocaust is him being punished.

36:30
It's a little bit, it's a very heavy idea. It's a lot to wrap one's head around. But I think what he was trying to say, on a certain level, is that

36:39
we're saying, Okay, God, where are you?

36:43
But God is there, God is there, God is maybe suffering.

36:47
God is part of it. He's very involved. He's involved in our world. How is he involved, not always involved, as you know, Superman coming out in a cave and escaping the day, but God is present and in the Holocaust, God was present and whether God was present, a present is one of the victims as well as watching, watching people suffer.

37:07
I think in terms of relating to God, that that idea helps me a lot.

37:15
But isn't God supposed to be like, all powerful? Could he not intervene? If he wanted to? It's possible with meaning in our, in both Jewish tradition, and in live reality, if you're a believer, there's a

37:35
there there are times we believe God intervenes, and we believe and there's also a belief that people have large control over this over this universe. One of the major changes

37:47
movement out of Talmudic Judaism, in recent times has been

37:52
in

37:54
the idea, the Talmud was very, very hesitant about people trying to influence major political events too much.

38:05
In terms of, for example, you could say, well, if the Jews were exiled from Israel, or began fleeing to Israel during these various persecution from the second century and going on to the first century, second century, why did it take them so long? To come back? It was until the Zionist movement in the 20th century, after untold persecution, even before the Holocaust, the amount of persecution of Jews and Christian lands and less so it's still very strongly often in Muslim lands. Why didn't they come back before and a lot of it was a sense that, you know, these major, major historical events are in God's hands.

38:40
The Talmud has a narrative room they say that God made it made me promise he made the Jews swear that they're not going to come come back to Israel tilts the time, one thing at a time, presumably, we've got some sort of miracles, we're handing everything over to the Divine

38:56
with the events of the 20th century, you know, the, the various persecutions early 20th century, but then the climax, the Holocaust, and then the state of Israel, which was started by people who largely rejected this Talmudic ethos and felt that humans have to have an obligation take a larger responsibility in their history. And when I say perform religious Zionist, religious Zionist, is living in a little bit of both these worlds were religious, we believe God is in the world, but we're designing systems that we do have a huge

39:29
belief that people control their destiny, and how exactly this interacts, we don't know. But the idea that God can come in and do whatever he wants, is not the the ethos of my that I personally have and and when I think that recent history is crushed is first into question.

39:53
So, when we pray with any religious people of any religion,

40:00
and pray. It's usually asking for something of God. Right?

40:06
Please, you know,

40:08
he'll, he'll, he'll my wife's cancer or whatever. Right?

40:15
So does that sort of not imply that God could intervene? Otherwise? What's the point of praying?

40:25
It's great question. So this is something that the Jewish philosophers have shown about over for forever.

40:33
Yes, we've got all religious people, I don't want to speak for other religions. I'll I don't even want to I can't even speak for all of Judaism, but I'll speak for for my understanding of Judaism. There's a passage, the way that I understand it is that there are times where God intervenes. There are times when God doesn't. Now what are the percentages? So if there is one source that kind of has a percentage, and which is there's a passage by Montes, who's the greatest of Jewish philosophers, and it's but God for the Plex, where he understands calm? It's unclear what the Montes is saying it's a very, very difficult book to read. But one of the commentators on Mondays says that

41:13
God listens to prayers about one in 1000 times. Okay, so what's the percentage on that point? Point? 1%. So I don't know exactly what percentage is maybe it's much higher than that. Maybe it's lower than that. There is this We do believe God's in the world, we do believe that, that we have in the ship plays a role. And when somebody prays to God, for grace, he needs something, or she needs something. I think most religious people understand that. They hope God comes to their aid, but they're also doing it not because they're hoping God will give them what they want. It's just being part of the relationship. And it's the language that we have to reach out the relationship and, and the fact that we turn to God for help, just as you know, a child might, a child falls down and bangs her head, and she's crying, and then calls for her mother, she already felt there's nothing that mother can do anymore. But we want God in our lives. And one of the ways is by framing it in this way that we're asking for something, even though I don't think any religious person is sure, you know. And once again, I think over speaking by saying any religious but I don't understand how a person can be sure that God will answer or what the role is, clearly we have a world here that on a certain level runs without God's direct intervention. We also as religious people believe that God is in the world. And that's an interesting, push and pull.

42:40
Yeah, well, thank you for that. We had a few exchanges of letters before you came on this podcast.

42:48
And in the last letter, in your response to my question, whether you have any hobbies or play music,

42:55
you answered, I don't have any serious hobbies, casually play basketball, guitar, some other things, but not as defining aspects of my identity. I love that phrase, I really, I love that phrase. Being a writer, I'm always looking for interesting phrases, and I'm afraid yours, I'm going to steal that.

43:21
I love that phrase defining aspects of my identity. So what would you say are the defining aspects of your identity?

43:31
Okay, so the finding of identity so. So I have my family, which is so me as a husband as a father, I have four four boys. And that's a very sad, something defining aspect of identity.

43:47
Rabbi of religious Zionist Rabbi, who also

43:53
really wants to spread Jewish teachings, larger Jewish community, actually a big change in my life, in the past

44:00
six months even has been a I've gone from working exclusively within the Orthodox community, to working exclusively out of the Orthodox community. And the idea that I believe that

44:16
we're, the Jewish people is a faith we're also a family. And we really have to do more all of us to communicate better between our family members. And that's something that's very, very important part of my identity.

44:32
Other aspects, okay, we can throw in

44:36
mediocre, pick a basketball player, occasional runner, etc. But I think those those are the things that are really when

44:46
that are most important to me, are the fact that is learning and translating and interpreting the trician for ways for people will be meaningful and useful for them in their lives.

44:59
So

45:00
Um, you must have spent a great deal of time learning Aramaic, and trying to interpret the Talmud. Right? So are you are you going to use that knowledge for another project in the future is is there? Is there a book in your in your future? It's great. So so they just said, I'm going to transition time, and I'm figuring out what this means. That sort of moving from one audience to another, educationally, also. So the question is, what's that mean in terms of content and what that means in terms of

45:37
the best way to get the message across? I actually, just, there's a Jewish holiday coming up in about a month for now called to be shot the minor holiday. And I just worked with the Jewish National Fund JNF, an organization called Shalom learning to write curriculum for hundreds of Jewish educational institutions across North America. Which for me, that is almost more valuable than say, writing a book, you know, the, there's a there's a story about a Hasidic rabbi, his name was the the rabbi from Cusk. And he said, What are you going to write a book? He never wrote a book in his life. He said, Why don't you I'm gonna write a book. And when are people gonna have time to read it, people are very busy. So only time left time to read it is Friday night, after their Sabbath dinner, and they're gonna be tired, they'd be lying on the couch, and they're gonna read a couple passages, but then be so tired from working, you're going to fall asleep, and you drop the book on the floor. So what I should write a book, so they drop it on the floor. So for me, I hope that that

46:38
I'm not saying that

46:40
all books get dropped on the floor. But I am trying to think about, if I want to reach a large community, what are the best ways to do it? And a book might be might be the answer and what the content of that book would be is a good question. But this is all very new to me, this sort of new stage I'm in. So something else to think about over time?

47:00
Well, great. My last question,

47:05
what's the most important thing you have learned in your life?

47:10
Most important thing, so I'm assuming you're not acting, asking for like a practical skill, like to walk or make, like scrambled eggs, which is very, a very useful skill, maybe important. Yes, yeah.

47:22
So I think something that out of this most important thing I've learned in my life, but this is sort of the most important thing I'm trying to incorporate for my life recently is that

47:33
people like to talk when they like to listen. And it's a great thing to just let them do that. And sometimes in conversations with people, or maybe usually conversations, people,

47:47
that's probably playing the role that you're playing with me right now. Which is to act prompting questions, get people to talk, I think for myself, especially as a teacher, I think I have so many interesting things to say. And I just when somebody meets me, obviously, they want to hear me blah, blah, but actually, that's not what they want. And by listening to other people, letting them talk, I could learn a lot more. I already know what I think so I don't have to for my own sake, I don't have to speak but to make space for other people. And listen, I think that's something that I'm really trying to incorporate into my life. Well, thank you. Thank you, Rabbi. That has been a wonderful, stimulating and informative conversation, and I wish you continued good luck. Before we leave, I just want to tell our listeners that my next guest will be Dr. Dean Radin, chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic. Sciences founded by astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell 50 years ago after the Apollo 14 mission, we shall explore with him consciousness, free sentiment and psychic espionage and related subjects. Thank you for listening. And thank you once again, Doctor. Doctor. Rep. Sorry. Maybe that's on my agenda to all say baby, maybe that's your next

49:07
incarnation. Take care of yourself. And let's keep in touch. Okay, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Bye bye.
00:0049:22