Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
rabbi david walpy someone who i have
been a fan of for many years for the
kindness and his heart the strength of
his character and the kind of friends he
keeps and talks with many of whom
disagree with him but love him
nevertheless
including the late christopher hitchens
i will have many conversations like
these in the future about religion
about islam christianity judaism
hinduism buddhism and others looking to
understand and celebrate the culture the
tradition and the beauty of the people
who practice these religions
i will of course not shy away from the
difficult topics i will talk both about
hate and love
about war
and peace
this conversation was recorded more than
three weeks ago
please allow me this time to speak
on what has been on my mind
if this is not interesting to you please
skip i totally understand
some people asked me to say a few words
on the war in ukraine
i think my words are worth little
but perhaps let me try
i consider doing a long solo episode on
this war i tried several times
but it is too personal for now
to give you context i've been talking to
refugees friends loved ones in ukraine
in russia in poland slovakia moldova
romania even uk
germany canada india china and of course
the united states
some of them crying
or angry or confused or scared
i'm helping as best as i can privately
and i'm hoping to help in the future by
traveling to ukraine and russia and
celebrating the humanity and the beauty
of the people in this region
this was all set up both for ukraine and
russia trips before 2022
including conversations with scientists
artists athletes leaders and just
quote regular folks
who are equally if not more fascinating
to me
for now it has become much more
difficult but i'll keep trying to find a
way
i was born in the soviet union
my roots are both ukrainian and russian
and today and until the day i die
i'm an american
i'm proud of all of this
i hope to keep celebrating the culture
and the incredible human beings that
make up these nations and humanity as a
whole we're all one people
we're in this together
that's how i feel about the people of
these nations now let me speak about
those in the seats of power
i condemn all actions of leaders who
played geopolitical games on the world
stage disregarding the cost
paid in human suffering on the scale of
millions
for this reason
i condemn vladimir putin's invasion of
ukraine
and i condemn
many of the military interventions by
the superpowers of the world including
by my country the country i love
the united states
that after world war ii has intervened
in over 40 nations with many studies
finding that the united states is
culpable for an unfathomable number of
civilian deaths
i condem all heads of state who
needlessly waged wars
watching young men and women burn in the
fires they started
i don't understand how humans can be so
cruel to each other
or rather i understand
but i believe in a future world
where this is no longer true
let me also say a few words of what i
hope to do with this podcast
i want to explore the full complexity
and beauty of human nature
i believe each of us are capable of good
and evil
and i want to understand how the mind
and the circumstance lead one to choose
the former path or the latter
and i believe conversation is one of the
best ways to work toward this
understanding
for that i think i have to not only talk
to the most inspiring humans in the
world but also to the most controversial
i will speak with many people who i
disagree with
politicians activists ceos heads of
state with very different opinions on
the world
i will try hard to challenge their ideas
without closing my mind to the depth and
complexity of their perspective and
their humanity
my presence in the same room with wildly
different people will make it easy for
the media and the internet to pick and
choose clips and snapshots attacking me
for being a shill for one side or the
other
i can't defend this point
except to say that i'm a shill for no
one and that i hope you see the strength
of my integrity that i won't be
influenced by any of them no matter how
rich powerful or charismatic they are
like the poem if by roger kipling says
if you can talk with crowds and keep
your virtue
or walk with kings or lose the common
touch
if neither foes nor loving friends can
hurt you if all men count with you
but none too much
this is a really
really important thing to me that i try
to live by that all human beings count
with me the same
people have criticized me for wanting to
have some of these conversations like
with vladimir putin and vladimir
zelinski
and for times in the past speaking about
them without the seriousness the topic
deserves
for this i would sincerely like to
apologize i'm disappointed even ashamed
of my frequent ineloquence on these
topics i will work hard to do better
when i'm joking it should be clear that
it's a joke
and hopefully actually funny when i'm
being serious i should speak with care
and rigor
i've now done many hundreds of hours of
podcast conversation despite my frequent
failures and speaking i hope you know
where my heart is
unfortunately i think people will take
clips of me and use them to attack me
this will happen more and more i guess
there's nothing i can do but send them
my love
in the meantime try to be a better
person and a better interviewer
let me also say
that i like humor
especially dark humor
i like being silly and not taking myself
seriously i will keep taking risks
with that
all with the goal of having fun and
celebrating humanity at its most absurd
and most beautiful
i will occasionally
dress up
in strange and weird outfits to
celebrate the absurdity of life
i will hang out break bread and joke
with all kinds of people i don't have to
agree with them to laugh with them in
order to escape for brief moment the
tension the conflict the hatred in the
world
humor just might save this little
chaotic little civilization of ours
i love the ukrainian people
i love the russian people and of course
i love my fellow americans californians
and midwesterners new yorkers and texans
i love humans i love life and i want to
share that love with others with you
if i mess it up i'm really really sorry
i'm trying my best i have no agenda and
no one telling me what to do i feel like
the luckiest guy in the world to have
all these opportunities and i'm deeply
grateful to be alive and to share that
joy with other amazing people around me
thank you for your support
for all the love you've sent my way i
will work my ass off to not disappoint
you i love you all
this is a lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now here's my
conversation with david
walpe
let's start with a big question
according to judaism who is god
it's
difficult because judaism like any
tradition
that is thousands of years old and
encompasses so many different lands and
languages and thinkers
um it doesn't give a single answer to
even simple questions and to large
questions it certainly doesn't give a
single answer although judaism was
responsible for introducing the
monotheistic idea to the world it
doesn't mean that it's one idea
so if you take maimonides the greatest
sage
in the jewish tradition
um medieval philosopher
he would say that god is an omnipotent
benevolent intangible
unimaginable god in fact he said you
can't say what god is only what god is
not
because you have to emphasize
could talk more about that but basically
you have to emphasize the unknowability
of god
you have a modern philosopher like
heschel who says that god is a god of
pathos a god of deep feeling which
probably would make maimonides shiver if
he heard such a description and
if you look in the bible god is always
regretting or having human emotions
so there are so many different kinds of
depictions and ideas
and there is this tremendous tension
between transcendence and imminence that
is
in the jewish tradition god god is
exquisitely close god is imminent
in the talmud's words god is as close as
your mouth is to your ear
in other words whatever you say god
hears it and yet at the same time god is
unfathomably distant
sometimes when i speak to high schoolers
i will say in the jewish tradition think
of it this way
when you were two years old you had no
idea what it was to be a 15 year old not
only did you not know but you didn't
know what you didn't know
we conceive of god as being more the
distance between god and human beings is
far greater than the distance between a
two-year-old and a 15-year-old
so when we speak about god we have to
acknowledge
how limited we really are
so okay you laid out a lot of
fascinating things on the table so one
the nobility of god
then this idea of deep feeling
which
again can can god be
operate in the space of feelings too so
not just the mouth and the ear of the
senses can uh
god be known
can god be
felt
by
this three-year-old in the analogy
versus the the teenager so i will take
refuge in a beautiful phrase by from
martin buber another jewish theologian
he said god cannot be expressed god can
only be addressed
in other words you can speak to god you
can feel a sense of god but can you
begin to comprehend or know god no
josef cosby i'm pulling in a couple of
uh early jewish philosophers he said to
know god i would have to be god
but can we get close is it useful or is
it a distraction
to
visualize things to embody
to create to the uh to attach to the
stories some kind of visualizations in
our mind
uh for example gender he versus she
things like this or old man in the sky
kind of feeling
so it's almost inevitable but i think
ultimately you try to transcend it um
this was uh this was the great you know
we just read this actually in synagogue
the story of the golden calf
and the uh
the story is that human beings found it
impossible
to not have a visualization
because they had just come from egypt
and in pain in the world of of uh pagan
worship everything is it's not that
pagans thought that idol was actually
god but it represented visually what god
was
and along comes
this idea that god is actually not
capable of being visualized which is
very difficult and it stretches the
bounds of human comprehension maybe even
breaks them so would you say the the
proper way to operate
as a human in relation to god as
humility and that you're screwed you're
not able to basically know anything
almost anything
well the reason that you're the
salvation of this is that you can't
that you can't i was going to say the
reason you're not screwed but then i
thought somebody might be upset at a
rabbi saying that so i'm so i didn't say
it and have not said it yes um but but
the uh
the the reason you're not is
that you don't have to have a
comprehension of god you have to have a
relationship to god
and those are not the same i mean
to draw an uh uh
an analogy that is not far from perfect
as most analogies are but this one
especially
you have relationships with people who
are mysteries to you your mysteries
you're a mystery to yourself um
you can live and love somebody for 50
years and they can say something that
surprises you because ultimately we are
trapped in here
and when a child first says i we call
that individuation but what that really
means is
i i now know that i am cut off from the
minds of all other
children and all other people
and
so you have with god a more intimate
relationship because you can believe
that god is
you are known by god and you have a
relationship to god despite the fact
that you can't know god just as you
can't know others
and some would say to have a good
relationship you want to be constantly
surprised right you don't want to know
the things well the world yes the world
that god created is constantly
surprising but and by the way the the
the caveat to this you know when i use i
had all these debates with christopher
hitchens and he would always say that
god is a greater tyrant than north korea
because it continues after your death
and the idea of being known by god is
after all frightening if you think god
knows what i think and so on um if your
image of god is unloving
can we jump to this
you had friendships and conversations
with a lot of
the fascinating figures of the past
20 30 years of the great intellectuals
one of which
perhaps one of the greats is christopher
hitchens what have you learned
from your conversation your friendship
so there are a lot of views he held that
i really did not agree with but he was a
remarkable person that was a good line
about north korea he was full of
incredibly good lines well one of the
things i learned was you can't win a
debate with christopher one of the
reasons you can't win is because he has
this british baritone and this ready wit
that
um because you can't you you can't
triumph over laughter
it doesn't matter if your argument is
better if your quip is better you win
yeah and so i remember once we were
arguing about free will and he said well
i choose to believe in it and everybody
laughed and that was
yeah despite the fact that that's not
really an argument or like uh i have
free will because i don't have a choice
right exactly and people should watch
your conversation with him it's great i
mean it's a it's a kind of david versus
goliath situation and you're quite
uh masterful
at uh using charisma and sweet talking
christopher hitchens
i also genuinely liked him i i mean i i
i i i spent uh a three-hour
um limousine ride with him from one
debate to another from from la descent
to san diego and the entire time his he
said we just can't talk about religion
yeah so we talked about literature and
he gave me a long lecture about scotch
um
he was he was
inexhaustible
i mean not only did he uh i i began i
wrote a couple of obituaries about him
and when i began with the the um
historian keith thomas said there are
two ways of achieving immortality
by doing things worth remembering or
saying things worth remembering and by
that standard he did both
i mean he went all around the world to
all sorts of danger zones he knew like
the best bars everywhere from kuala
lumpur you know to beirut to l.a
and he could drink all night and
write a 2 000 word essay on the poetry
of yates and go to sleep uh i remember
before one of our debates in boston he
was at the bar
and he said come have a drink and i said
i'm gonna have a drink before i go to
debate with you
what are you crazy and he said just have
a beer it's water
um so
he was uh
uh he really was a constant
inexhaustible fountain of uh
of intrigue and interest what kind of
things
if you can remember if you can mention
if you can admit yeah to have him
enlightening you or
helping you change your mind about
something in this world so i think um
unrelated to scotch oh yeah unrelated to
scotch he convinced me
that the
idea
i mean i had my doubts about it and have
my doubts about it but he convinced me
through many debates and not only he
that the idea that religion makes people
better
is a is not it's not ipso facto wrong
but it's a much much more complicated
argument
than i wished it to be
so he is
however you conceive of the term beauty
um he's one of those one of the more
beautiful
humans yes this this weird little earth
produced
so
how do you explain
the
atheism combined with such a beautiful
mind so from your perspective
of a man of faith
um how do you think about that
so
of the atheists that i have debated
um
they i think about all of them somewhat
differently
so
i think that in in some deep way for
example sam harris is a religious
personality
i don't even think that he would he
wouldn't like the word religious but i
don't even think that he would
take issue with that um i think that he
would say his is a purely material
based spirituality but i mean his
his orientation towards meditation and
and appreciation of buddhism there's
something deeply seeking spiritual about
him
um
with hitchens
i honestly and and i know that some of
his fans will really not like this uh
it's not that he was any kind of closet
believer no certainly not at all but i
almost feel as though
he was less a passionate arguer against
religion
than he was first of all extremely upset
by the forms that religion took in this
world
and then once he trained his
intellectual howitzers on a target
he had so much fun inventing new
arguments and
and attacking it
that i really believe he gets carried
away sometimes by his own eloquence and
uh
and intellectual range so for example
the idea that you would call a book that
religion poisons everything
um i think he did that deliberately
provocatively so that he could defend a
proposition that obviously is
indefensible that it poisons everything
so
i don't know i think he had tremendous
joie de vivre that's really what that's
what sums him up this guy loved life in
all of its manifestations
and
and arguing against something that
someone else believed was one of his
greatest joys yeah and and of course the
practical aspect of that he just saw the
powerful and he challenged them with
humor absolutely and you know you could
argue perhaps that humor is the highest
form
of what humanity can achieve like
sometimes maybe us
little
humans take things a little too
seriously then sometimes we need to just
laugh at it all laugh at ourselves and
that's probably the the purest form of
wisdom you know auden the poet said
among the people that i like or admire i
can find no common quality but among
those i love i can all of them make me
laugh
there you have it uh speaking of people
that make you laugh uh sam harris um
because he's actually has a really great
sense of humor he does with a very cold
and monotone delivery he's another one
that you had um you're friends with you
have good conversations with
what um
where's your fundamental disagreements
and agreements with sam sam
believes that religion is intellectually
indefensible he really believes it like
deep in his soul
um
and and he gets angry at the idea
that a proposition
should be unchallenged if it offends his
sense of logic yeah so he cannot move on
until this is done nope in fact uh i i
mean
he you know i did a podcast with eric
weinstein
and then sam did one
and sam said when i heard your podcast
with david wolpe
i learned stuff about what he thinks
that i never learned in my conversations
with him because i can never let him
make those unfounded assertions without
challenging them and you just let them
go
and i think that there was something too
that was like
he finds it hard to have
a conversation about religion
that doesn't
arouse his real ire about
the harm that he thinks religion does in
the world it's more about the
implementation of religion in the world
as it is versus the really fundamental
i think he also thinks it's
fundamentally intellectually shoddy and
disreputable faith yeah faith
i don't know how to put this i mean they
they're both capable of separating their
contempt for religion
from the people that they have sitting
in front of them
you mean christopher hitchens and sam
harris yes both of them
okay so let me you mentioned eric
weinstein people should listen to your
conversation with eric as a fascinating
one is great uh it's non-standard it
just goes all over the place and there's
humor and weight
it's great so one
interesting aspect that i also learned
perhaps not about you but about eric
about both but
eric has a similar thing as with jordan
peterson
which is
if you ask him do they believe in god i
think they answer they're not
comfortable answering that question or
they might say no but
they're usually just not comfortably
answering that question but there's a
kind of sense that
they would like to live life
a religious life as if god exists i
think that's exactly right i think first
of all eric has a really deep
appreciation of the jewish tradition i
don't know peterson i've read his stuff
and i've reviewed his stuff and so on
but i think that
jungians are in their
very approach
they
believe that myth is the way the world
works and so it's not that big a leap to
god but it's still
there's still a distance there is it
possible to have your cake and eat it
too is it possible to have the
depth of a religious life without
believing in god like how do you make
sense of eric weinstein's uh devout life
within the tradition
i mean i honestly think he believes in
god
but doesn't believe in god and it's
oscillating like it's a quantum
mechanical system of some sort
schrodinger's god um so i think that he
would probably agree with what uh elie
wiesel said that that a jew can can be
angry at god or be disbelieving of god
but is not allowed to be indifferent to
god
and i think eric's not indifferent to
god
and and it's different than christianity
i've had this conversation many times
because you can be
very jewish and have deep doubts
about
theological questions because judaism
isn't a religion
it's a religious family and so you're
born jewish like if i said to you
tomorrow
if i was christian and i said oh i
believe in jesus today and then tomorrow
i didn't i'm not christian anymore but
if tomorrow i said oh i don't believe
all this stuff i'm still jewish
so it's a more complicated
system having said that though
i think it's very hard to sustain over
generations without
some belief that the source of it is
beyond ourselves and and in that sense
as in many others eric is unique
well he was actually making that claim
that we need
faith
to uh propagate
this tradition through the generations
yeah so without that the traditions
crumble it's a very interesting
idea
and very interesting argument for
developed faith which is it's a thing
it's a glue that holds a tradition
together otherwise like traditions fall
apart right so you can't have the
intensity
of that tradition i mean on the other
hand you do see tradition i mean
thanksgiving one of my favorite
so i would say traditions that are
demanding fall apart
to traditions that that require turkey
might not fall apart but traditions that
are that make demands of you that are
counter-cultural or are hard they fall
apart i think i need to introduce you to
some thanksgiving dinners that are quite
demanding
getting the family together you know
there's a first of all i'm a vegetarian
so i'm tough to have at thanksgiving
dinner but there's a there's a comedian
named kathy landsman who one year i
heard this on the radio and it stuck
with me she said that uh that holidays
are a chance to renew your resentments
afresh
you know and that's basically what
people do with their families it's like
i'm gonna go
home and fight with the uncle again this
year
i i apologize it'd take a dark turn but
you mentioned uh ellie wiesel
i recently saw a picture of ellie wiesel
when he was uh in the camp
when he was liberated
for some reason that hit hard
like you know i've seen pictures in
concentration camps of people i don't
know
uh or whose words i haven't really felt
and gone through but for some reason
like here's just a normal person like a
normal body
um
laying there that just some that that
was him i've seen it it's a and and
you see you can see his face
but at the same time you see that this
is an amazing and it i think what's so
disturbing about it is exactly what you
were saying is i've seen a thousand
people like this
and i know this one and i know what he
became so what about all those other
people who look exactly
like him who didn't make it out of the
camp you know maybe it's projection but
it seemed like
this perhaps is also just combining with
maths um
search for meaning is it seemed like it
was a regular day for them right picture
it didn't seem like i mean i'm not sure
what i expect to see what suffering
looks like but
it's almost
like there's no celebration i've never
seen a picture of actually liberation be
celebratory it's true
it's really true
so what do you make sense and i
apologize to take a step in into that
moment in history
how does
how do you make sense of um
the holocaust
that
of nazi germany that such things could
be committed by human beings to each
other
is it religion
is it
the thirst for power is it the madness
of crowds somehow carrying
us forward
i i mean for me it's multicausal
i don't think there's one reason so one
of the things especially there has to do
with the special nature of anti-semitism
which is let's put that to one side for
the moment the second is i think human
beings are fundamentally split
they are mostly good except when put
under certain pressures
my first explanation for hatreds is as
follows
go to a playground
what happens when a new kid comes on the
playground do the other kids say oh
let's go share our toys with the new kid
no
they say uh who's that stranger and
let's go get them
because otherness is built into our
genetic i mean we're tribal by nature
and we see people form tribes all the
time of different kinds
i asked you before if you were a chess
player
and
when i was a kid and playing in
tournaments and i didn't do it for that
long and i didn't do it that well but
when i was it was like the whole world
was divided into people who could play
chess and people who couldn't play chess
which is ridiculous if you think about
it as though that's the way you divide
the world but we we tend to do that and
the jews were always the identifiable
other there were frenchmen and jews
there were russians and jews there were
germans and jews and
the great blessing of america is that
there's no identifiable other
quite that way is that there's all these
minorities and no
there's not an american and a something
but once you have that identifiable
other and you have a long history of
blaming that identifiable other for all
the ills that befall you of course
people still do try to form you said
america they still try to form other i
mean immigrant versus uh
been here for a generation there's so
many ways to slice it we still try to
find ways it's just more difficult in
america because there's so many
sub tribes hierarchies of tribes and
upon trial absolutely right and i was
moving fast because i didn't want to get
bogged down in all the very difficult
it's true i tried
you're hoping i wouldn't mention that
tribalism happens in america
you know some when you're on thin ice
your safety is in your speed
um so i was trying to move fast yeah but
for most of history in in eastern
western europe not obviously in the in
asia but in eastern western europe jews
were the ones who like they're not like
us
they're clearly not like us
um and so
and in addition there was there's a
peculiar quality and i don't know i
wonder what you'll think of this
explanation there's a peculiar quality
to anti-semitism that is unlike any
other hatred that i know of which is
jews are both superhuman and subhuman
they're vermin the nazis thought of them
as vermin and yet they control the world
and
there was an english scholar named hyman
maccabee who said the reason that that's
so is the myth that jews killed
god
they killed jesus and to kill a god you
have to be super humanly evil you can't
just be bad otherwise you can't kill a
god
so there is some like supercharged
evil sense that people got from that
about jews that still in here
yeah that's true a lot of the way we
formulate the other in terms of tribes
is often
they're sub-human and they're here to
steal our resources like on the
playground
and but to be both
is a fascinating construction
do you agree with solji nitsan that all
of us have the capacity for evil
runs through every human heart i have no
doubt about it
i and i know
as you probably do but i
probably know more both because of what
i do and because i have lived a lot
longer than you um i know a lot of
religious leaders who people thought
or think are above the human
and they are emphatically not they're
not some of them have done horrible
things and they've used their position
to do horrible things um and it's
because
nobody there is no perfect saint there's
no you know
i mean
all through history you discover all
these saintly characters that we worship
the people who actually knew them around
them some liked them and some didn't
people are complicated all of us and the
tough thing is
the thing that's the toughest for me is
it's not very always clear what is good
and what is evil
because
certainly if you just look at history
and it's not always propaganda
i you know
i really believe that some part of
stalin
thought he was doing good
legitimately uh
and
it makes you ask
a question of yourself
for those of us who want to do good in
the world am i actually doing good and
that's a really difficult question
like in the technology sphere for
example in this dream of creating
technology that will do some good
am i actually doing good
so i have a question about that myself
um not about stalin i'm sure that stalin
thought so stalin does not does not
strike me from what i know of him as
somebody given to a lot of self-doubt
but
the question with ai to me is actually
it goes back to the god question which
is if we have an appreciation of the
limitations of our own intelligence
that we know that just like we can only
hear certain things and see certain
colors
how much of the world is inaccessible
to us because of the way our brains are
constructed
how can we possibly have any confidence
that we can create things that in
certain ways are far more intelligent
than we are and control them the way we
think is best
seems to me
um a hubris that might end up
being destructive definitely well any
any sentence with the word hubris in it
is going to end badly when implemented
at scale
but there is also beauty so if you
approach it with humility
there is a sense i don't want to over
romanticize it but there is a legged
robot right behind you which is
hilarious
[Laughter]
so there's a
magic
i don't have kids i would love to have
kids
but there's a magic to bringing robots
to life yes that it feels like you are a
mini god right because you just breathe
life into an entity that operates in
this world especially when they have
legs and they move in this way that's in
the case the four-legged robot is
like a dog
that i think i don't think i'm over
romanticizing it the feeling is like you
would with a child you just gave birth
like holy crap this this is a living
thing i wonder what what he or she are
thinking about by the way i'm not at all
insensible to how remarkable it must
feel to create that i'm actually
worried in part about how remarkable it
feels to create that because to maintain
humility and perspective when it's such
a fantastic
thing is what's difficult
and i think also because
creativity is both is both part of
uh what it is to be human and it's very
much part of the legacy of western
civilization and the legacy of having a
creator god if you have a tradition
where god is known primarily through
what god creates so
the first debate i ever had since we
talked about humor and god and creating
let me give you my one god creating joke
because the first debate i ever had on
religion and science was with stephen j
gould
and it was wonderful because he had a
deep interest in religion and his
interest was actually not to say
religion is terrible um
but but i started with this joke and uh
and i think it made the debate go a
little bit easier so the time has come
when human beings can do everything that
god can do and a scientist looks up at
heaven and says god look you are great
in your day and we thank you for
everything you did but now we don't need
you and god says really you don't need
me he says no we can do everything you
did god says everything
and human being says yeah we can do
everything god says okay
can you create a human being
and the scientist goes yeah god says
from dirt
scientist goes yeah it says okay let me
see scientist reaches down scoops up
some dirt and god says uh uh get your
own dirt
[Laughter]
yeah but the idea is that a creator god
impels us to create two but let me bring
up nietzsche
who proclaim that god is dead um is
belief in god slowly disappearing from
our world do you think and
what kind of impact does that have on
society
you wrote
that religion is not our enemy before
the western faiths captured the heart of
our world there was cruelty carnage and
destruction in the 20th century when
religion ceased to be a force of
international politics the scale of
human slaughter was far beyond anything
human beings have ever known what is the
world like when we take religion out of
it i mean i think nietzsche was largely
right you know
it wasn't a statement about god it was a
statement about god's presence in the
world um
and i think that that's largely true
that god is not a force
in
a lot of western society and i believe
that if the force of nihilism
has no
clear counter without
an idea that we're all here for a
purpose
and that our lives are inherently
meaningful
and that there's a god who
wishes us to be better
um so i worry a lot about it and i don't
think i think that the sort of optimism
that things are just going to get better
and better
is
what one philosopher called cut flower
ethics that is we're still living off
the morals that religion gave us but now
that they're separate from the soil that
gave birth to them
i see them wilting so this kind of
optimism for the future of human
civilization you think is in part
grounded in
in a religious society i really do
believe that i mean it was religion that
the greeks looked back at the golden age
of the past
it was the jews who said no the golden
age is in the future right it's the
messiah and i think that that idea that
we're moving towards something better
which i really believe
humanity can do
and and absent destroying ourselves will
do you know i i mean i'm
i'm very excited about the technology
that i won't live to see i think it's
fantastic and that excitement is a kind
of religious excitement because there's
a reason to preserve this whole thing
absolutely because i really think
um
i know this sounds this sounds absurdly
anthropomorphic but i really think god
is cheering us on um i feel like this is
why we're here we're here
to grow in soul and to grow each other
in seoul
yeah
so what do you think the world so if we
just think of this force of nihilism
that's contending with the
force
of faith-based optimism
right
um
what do you make of the atrocities in
the in the 20th century do you think
at its core it's part of human nature
and has nothing to do with religion or
not religion or do you think you can
assign this kind of nihilistic view of
the way i think it has to do with a
religion that doesn't make ethical
demands
that is
um
for stalin and for hitler they both had
religions but they were in a sense but
they were religions that didn't make
ethical demands
for the other i mean 36 times the torah
talks about the stranger
the point is it's trying to educate
people
away from their natural inclination
towards distrusting and disliking the
other and it's a lot of work that's
really difficult to do but if you have
the
the if you have
uh a tribal passion and not a universal
ethic then you're in trouble
well
the jewish tribe is a very strong tribe
so how do you make sense of this
mention of the stranger versus the power
of the tribe which is the whole point
not the point but right the mechanism of
transition propagates the trial so it's
both i mean the torah does not start
with
jews it starts with adam and eve that's
a way of saying
yeah this is going to be a story about a
people but understand that prior to a
kind of people there are people i like
i'm a human being before i'm a jew
um
and in fact the jewish new year you know
the muslim new year starts with
muhammad's
journey and the christian new year
starts with jesus birth the jewish new
year starts with the creation of the
world
because the idea is yes this is a
particularist tradition but it makes a
universal statement which is
all of humanity is a child
are in the image of god are children of
god
i think that the idea of judaism was
to try to exemplify a certain way of
making that statement over and over
again and i want to say one other thing
about chosenness
that's very name droppy but when i tell
you how i got there it won't be his name
droppy
so
my brother is a professor at emory
and so is the dalai lama actually
teaches at emory although he no longer
does because he's too old to go to emery
but for many years taught at emory and
so
my brother brought us he's the head of
the bi of the ethics center at emory
he's a bioethicist so he brought a bunch
of students to dharamsala to meet with
the dalai lama so i went to india i was
on sabbatical then anyway i met my
brother there and and we had a chance to
meet with a dalai lama
okay that was the name drop so we're
sitting in the ark before he speaks to
the students he was speaking to us but
not because i just wanted to make it
clear not because he said oh i got to
talk to that rabbi just we just happened
to be
i happen to glom along with my brother
we sit down the first thing he says is
he points at me and says what's this
about the chosen people anyway
so and he had by the way and he had
asked that i give a lecture which i did
later to to them to his monks about how
jews survived in the diaspora so it's
not like he doesn't know about judy he
knows a lot about it but he says right
away with so i said yes jews believe
that they were chosen for a certain
mission in this world
but that doesn't mean other people
weren't chosen for other sorts of things
they certainly i mean seems to me that
other people believe they're chosen for
things too he burst out laughing and
said yeah we also think we're chosen
so i think
no from a jewish perspective
uh you're chosen for a thing right
uh
but that doesn't make you better no the
only place where the bettors came in
honestly if i'm gonna historically if
i'm gonna be honest was not with the
idea
that you but it was when jews were
small persecuted
the way that you take this sort of
psychic revenge is by saying no we're
better than our persecutors even you
know yeah um but the idea is yeah
different people have different missions
which is
i mean like there was a jewish
philosopher franz rosenschweig who used
to say he didn't know very much about
islam he used to say judaism is the sun
and christianity was the rays of the sun
like judaism introduced the idea of god
and christianity brought it to the world
can you speak to this
difference what is the difference and
similarities between judaism
christianity and islam
the religious family part is different
and the the greatest difference which i
talked about in the eric weinstein
podcast is that
islam and judaism are more similar in a
lot of ways than judaism and
christianity
and the reason that that is so
is
christianity in its core is not a
religion of law
the reason it's not a religion of law is
because it grew up in the roman empire
so law was taken care of
i mean jesus didn't have to create civil
law because you had roman law
muhammad and moses created a religion in
the desert where there was no law
so you have to create a religion of law
otherwise
you have anarchy
and that's why in a lot of ways like
there was never a separation of church
and state in islam or judaism that was a
gift that christianity gave the world
and it could do it because of render
unto caesar what is caesar's but when
moses came along there was no caesar
when muhammad came along there was no
caesar so historically
the traditions shaped differently
but all three of them
have this core
i think the single most
important
statement and insight in all of human
history which is that every human being
is in the image of god
and if you believe if you really believe
that that's a transformative belief
so that means
you should love
you know thy neighbor as myself which
comes from leviticus comes straight from
the torah
so
i don't know if if you know i've been
chatting with omar assalam on i don't
know if you know who that is he's an
imam and dallas uh great guy i enjoy
his interfaith dialogues that he engages
in
and uh do you ever do that kind of talk
with christians with muslims yes often
often um i mean i do whenever i at least
listen to them
in the context of these kinds of
conversations there's so much love and
humor
and um
empathy and appreciation and also
ability to make fun of the quirks
of the
little of one's own on one's own
communities you know like so it's not
you know necessarily the depths of the
details of the traditions but you know
these are communities and they're full
of people and they're full of
weird people because we're all weird and
so you there is
very particular flavors of weirdness
that emerge and they can make fun of
them um and then in that way they can
talk about some like beautiful ideas so
i mean i don't know do you engage in
these kinds of things what would you
learn from them um so one of the things
i learned is exactly what you said that
personalities that you think are unique
to your own community in fact they exist
in all sorts of communities and
religious communities in particular draw
i think some interesting personalities
um and also that the
especially as clergy some of the
pressures that you feel
are shared
um
and
and it's weird again it has to do with
that tribal association there's almost
like there's an understanding among
clergy because they have similar
stray and
it's a strange role in the following way
um
it's one that you never escape
that is
you're not you're you're not my lawyer
at the supermarket but you are my rabbi
at the supermarket i mean it doesn't
matter
why you're there
that's not an escapeable role and every
religious leader is aware of that
um
that strange assumption of
of stepping into something that you can
never step out of
but you're also
the source where people go to
to think about the deepest question of
our lives and our our universe and so
that's some heavy you know when people
are suffering they look to you for
answers
i mean every privilege comes with a cost
of one kind or another the reason you
get to be in that role is exactly
because you get the privilege of being
there at crucial moments in people's
lives i mean the fact that i get to
marry people and get to
give eulogies for people and
come to the hospital at that's
it's inexpressible i have this joke with
uh people that i know that like when i'm
sitting on the couch and it's saturday
night i don't want to get up and go to a
wedding i really don't i want to sit
there and watch netflix like everybody
else
but when i'm actually doing the wedding
i always love it always always always um
and
and the reason is that i don't think i
mean yes people go to you for answers in
in calmer conversations like if you ask
me now like what's my theory of why god
allows evil i could give you a
conversation about it
but they really go for presence and
comfort not really for answers when
someone's suffering an answer doesn't
doesn't make them unsuffer
you know it's just they want to know
they're not alone yeah to be heard and
just to feel things in silence together
yeah
in terms of uh
weddings and marriage what's the role of
that hole i'm just i need to take some
notes here what's what's
rabbi the role of marriage in in human
existence
it is first of all to teach you
how to care for someone unlike you which
could be anyone you marry
um
and i think it's to create a home and a
family so there's a commitment to it so
care for a long time right exactly and
also
when when couples come to me and they
say we don't need to be married because
it really won't change how we think
about ourselves in our relationship i
said and that's true it might not but it
will change how everyone else looks at
you yeah and because it changes how
everyone else looks at you it changes
you because it's one thing to say this
is my partner it's another thing to say
this is my husband
you say this is my husband that means
we've made a real commitment to this
yeah
what do you um do do you worry that
there's a dissolution of that as well in
terms of um
how you know as as religion dissipates
like it it uh loosens its hold on
society loosens its impact in society do
you worry about that i worry about it um
i do think that it is possible
that we're going rather than a
dissolution we're going through a
transition
that is different kinds of families and
different configurations of families
that is i see some of that but i also do
see uh it's less a dissolution of
marriage than it is of the idea of
commitment
and i'll give you like a simple example
when i was growing up
a player on a sports team was always on
that team
and you rooted for the team because you
knew the players for 20 years
now there are very good reasons starting
with kurt flood why why people got free
agency and they can move around and it's
better for the players i understand all
that and i am not
i'm not saying oh they should continue
but
just like people move jobs and they move
sports teams and they change careers and
they change partners
and there is uh
there is a diminishment of the
commitment to commitment
that i actually think has serious
societal consequences and that that i am
worried about yeah there's a there's a
cost to that
i don't know what it is about commitment
that's beautiful
like through because like some of the
deepest friendships i have is when we've
gone through some together yeah and
so like
the hard times going through hard times
together
especially when the hard times are
between the two of you
that that if i mean that's always a risk
but if it if you can find a way through
that can bond you stronger that's the
fascinating thing about human relations
there's no question and even if it
doesn't keep you forever
you still have a connection that doesn't
that exists that so i can give you one
you said what is it about commitment
i'll give you one
i think beautiful answer someone once
asked
uh rabbi sullivan who is a great thinker
and leader in the
orthodox community in the 20th century
they said you know i go from religion to
religion i just take what i think is
beautiful in it
and his answer was
that you're treating religion like a
nomad he said nomads go from place to
place and they eat what they want and
they move on he says farmers stay in one
place the difference is farmers make
things grow
and i think that that's true also when
you think about the relationships you
have things have grown out of the
relationships that you've invested in
that you farmed basically
that can't exist in fly-by-night
relationships
can you talk about can we talk about
the torah
yes what is it and uh is it the literal
word of god
um easy questions yeah uh well
the torah is the five books of moses
written in hebrew um i
like most i think modern rabbis
non-orthodox or non-literalist rabbis
will tell you that it's a product of
human beings
and i believe that they are
inspired by god but it's clear to me
that it's a human product and i think
that people who study modern biblical
criticism it's really hard to study
modern modern
criticism it gives a wrong impression i
would say modern scholarship on the
bible and not appreciate the fact
that it it even has levels of language i
mean it's just like if you read today
um
somebody
writing like shakespeare you would say
this isn't it's it's like english is
developed it's different it's not the
english we speak today and if you study
the bible and you know hebrew well
enough you even see that this was
written over hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of years
um
it is a holy book and i like the idea
that it is what what you say in hebrew
is torah hashem and not to rami sinai
that is the torah is from heaven but
it's not from sinai
so it has its origin beyond us
but it has things in it that i think and
this is one of the
one of the things that was
a huge controversy at my congregation
when i started to do same-sex marriages
there are some people who try to argue
that the the torah does not forbid them
whether it does or not it seems to me we
understand things that
were not understood in the ancient world
about gender and sexuality and so so you
think that
in the scripture in the words
you can find the kind of spirit that
supports the idea of gay marriage well
that's yes that's my my argument is that
you criticize the torah by the torah
that is it gives you
the understanding
that you use
to evaluate its own claims
um
and and i think that judaism by the way
has always done that because it's clear
that there are things in the torah that
the rabbis
changed altered grew expanded diminished
um i think that's what it is to be part
of a living tradition yeah you wrote in
your book why faith matters
quote walt whitman wrote that in order
for there to be a great books there must
be great readers for a book to remain
powerful throughout generations it
cannot have a single meaning scripture
like great poetry is not reducible to
other words that is one cannot
paraphrase paraphrase it and capture the
totality of its meaning
so
how the heck do you capture the meaning
of the words in scripture is it an
ongoing process to the centuries yes
that's exactly so it's a continual
conversation
of
sages scholars readers
strugglers seekers
mystics visionaries all of them making a
contribution i mean
i write a weekly torah column for the
jerusalem post now
what is there left to say
but every week what i do is i start
opening books and seeing what people say
and it starts to percolate and you
realize that you're entering this
conversation that's been going on for
thousands of years with with remarkable
minds and it
and
it's constantly fertile in new insights
so yes
that's what it is to be part of a
tradition yeah why do people keep uh
writing love poems you should have
figured out
right
by this point already i use the analogy
sometimes of diet books if any diet
worked there would be one book
there'd be one book and you'd be done
you mentioned
this fascinating story that your party
you were part of several controversies
in your life
i've had a few so
for someone who walks with grace through
the fire you sure have found yourself in
a in a lot of fires
one of them
uh can you tell me the story of your
views on gay marriage the underlying
principles that led you to fight this
battle of defending uh gay marriage in
the jewish community
so i'm part of a congregation that is
really politically split
and even and and split not only
politically but split um
in terms of origin we have a lot of jews
from the middle east from iran a lot of
persian jews a lot of jews
from from israel some from mexico from
other places and and many that grew up
in l.a
and you have any russian jews the best i
have a few i have a few russian jews not
as many as i should but uh we'll work on
that
um
but uh
what happened was like increasingly
i became uncomfortable with people who
would come to me and say
um
this is the only kind of person i can
love
it's not it's not the same question as
an intermarriage as a jew marrying a
non-jew because you could find a jew to
love you may not have found but you
could and
and
um that's a whole separate question
but i i would have men in my office
primarily some a couple of women they
would say like this is the only kind of
person that i can enter into an intimate
relationship with how can it be
that my religion has no room for me
and
and that was very persuasive to me
so
but i knew that it was going to be
explosive in my community um
when by the way it finally happened it
was literally on the front page of the
new york and the la times it was that
explosive so it was not it was not a
small controversy
um
and
so what i did was
i started to teach classes not that many
people came about
you know homosexuality and jewish
tradition and so on it's funny much much
less about lesbianism much i'm talking
about in terms of the sources and so on
it's almost always about uh
homosexuality so
and then
i got ready to send out a letter
um and i said to my daughter
who at the time was maybe 10 or 11
now in her mid-20s um
i said look honey when you go to school
tomorrow or whatever it was i said
people might be saying bad things about
your dad and i just want you to be
prepared for that
um she said why and i said because i'm
gonna start marrying
i'm gonna start doing same-sex marriages
and she looked at me quizzically and
said what took you so long
and i thought
i really her face was like i said to her
i'm going to start marrying blond-haired
people to brown-haired people it's like
she really did not understand
why there was an issue and i thought
that's exactly why because i know that
this is
it's generational
people are raised with it they have a
deep in there but it's not really
um
right it's just not right
but
if you could just look back
to that
journey
how difficult is it to make these
decisions a principle so because you
have to think about that in order
to think about such decisions you yet
might still have to make in the future
and i will tell you one thing i did
wrong with that and one thing i did
right
the thing i did right was i waited until
in the communities where people objected
to it
i had enough people whose kids had come
out
so that i had parents
of kids who'd come out
to refer later on
other parents to so that they wouldn't
feel like they were the only ones
because once i announced it as i thought
would happen a bunch of kids came out
and said you know now the rabbi said
this mom dad i want you to know i'm gay
um
and and when the parents came to me i
could say well listen you're not alone
this person also you can go to that i
did right what i did wrong was
i don't think the classes were enough
and i don't think enough people were
prepared and i think part of the
explosion was shock
and i should have prepared even more the
words you used
to talk about it the way you thought
about it was it more
scholarly in the
jewish tradition or did you
um go to the feeling no i went to the
feeling i said vote habriot which means
respect or honor for god's creations
um and
and
caring for other human beings and
understanding
um
it wasn't scholarly because i knew that
that this the objections were not
scholarly objections um
they were and and i and i had some many
i had many beautiful and also painful
stories as a result
some of which can be told and some of
which really can't
but what i tried to impress also on
people was how
painful it is
to not be able to tell the world even
your own parents who you are
and your sexuality is not a trivial part
of who you are i mean it's core to
people um so it's one of the reasons why
it evokes such reactions but i but i
would say to them the the the same
reason that you're reacting so strongly
tells you how strongly you know um
anyway it was uh it was a very powerful
experience and and and it
for that i have
you know
i have not i i feel good about it i
afterwards i the other thing that i
again said to my daughter afterwards
after it all died down and after all the
bad things were said i told her the
churchill once said that it's
exhilarating to be shot at without
result
you know if you go into a battle and you
make it through and you're still okay
that's good the problem is when you're
in the battle you don't know no you
don't know so how did it feel like i
mean looking back
um you've been
you know uh to use the word canceled a
couple of times
i guess when you ask when you're dealing
with the most difficult of question how
did just as a human being
for a community that you really deeply
care about some part of it
saying that you have failed i wasn't
canceled the way
like i didn't lose my job didn't lose my
home
um
but i hurt people that i cared about
yeah and that was the heart like i went
into this
you know to be someone who brings people
together and then i would sit there and
and do even now like
as you're well aware with stuff that's
going on now um i sit there and people
are really upset at me
uh who
i either am or used to be close to do
those people
in
time
come around when you when you look now
because those are real feelings in the
moment and we can learn that about
social media people especially during
covet there's this intensity of feeling
about stuff
uh and
have you learned something about the
passing of feeling that turns into
wisdom no question about it this sermon
i gave this saturday was about how you
know
moses came down the mountain he saw the
golden calf and he broke the tablets
if he'd sat with it for a little while
he probably wouldn't have broken the
tablets but the instant reaction is
always anger
and in our age unfortunately the instant
reaction gets put on social media
forever and ever and ever
and and by the way once you've actually
said that it becomes harder to back down
if you keep quiet for a day or two then
then you can back down because you
haven't put yourself out there but once
you've said this is terrible what you
did what you did it's harder to write
and say i'm sorry i shouldn't have said
that yeah so it almost becomes
i mean i actually it's a really powerful
uh
statement
that
the downside of saying something on the
internet
is that
it actually pulls you into this
current you both create the current and
it pulls you into it to where it's
actually very hard to escape yeah so
when in two days later you feel
different
uh there's a momentum there's now a
tribe of people that feel this way and
there's a momentum with it there's a
momentum and also you don't want to
betray your own tribe because then
people will get upset at you
i really think that a lot of the
antagonism is not so much that you don't
want to give
ground to the people who oppose you it's
that you don't want to break with the
people who are behind you yeah and
that's really hard can you tell the
story of this
recent uh controversy sure sermon you
just gave you to the super bowl yeah i
think a lot of people would relate to
this because to me personally i
apologize to anybody who was hurt by
this the absurdity of it is
deeply intense so here's the story the
la county mandates masking children in
school and all of kids in our school are
massed and many of the parents are
extremely upset about that
i will just leave that at that yeah um
i went to the super bowl
there were seventy thousand people uh
frank luntz whom we know was a wonderful
guy he gave me a ticket um
sir and so i was at the super bowl and i
did i maybe saw two masks among the 70
000 people i didn't even think about it
which was foolish on my part no question
i took a picture of myself unmasked at
the super bowl
and
people were
i mean many many people thought oh great
wonderful glad you're having a good time
so on and so forth i don't want to
diminish at all the many people who said
that a lot of people were livid they
were livid and they weren't
um
what was what was instructive about it
was they didn't say
nobody wrote me a private note and said
you know i think that this was a bad
idea you should have thought about this
no
they were you're a hypocrite you're a
clown you're an idiot how could you do
this this is a disgrace this is
that i say that publicly oh yeah on on
my instagram you can still see i left
the remarks up because i really thought
it was important if i started i only
deleted the really vile comments um
because i thought that shouldn't stay up
but i left them up because i thought
like people should see
and i should remind myself what i did
and i didn't want to just delete the
picture as though it didn't happen
because it did happen and i did do it
and i felt terrible about that and i
felt terrible that i had not not about i
mean the comments believe me weren't
weren't pleasant i didn't like it
nobody likes it but i felt worse that i
had hurt all these people that i'm close
to and i defended all these people who
were really upset that their kids were
wearing masks and now they their kid
says why doesn't the rabbi have to wear
a mask well first of all it is tough to
be a rabbi
i mean uh
the masks to me symbolize these kinds of
discussions symbolize
not necessarily the issues at hand but
the intensity of feeling and people are
really struggling people are in pain
they're lonely
they're the uncertainty of it you don't
know who to trust everything's under
question the institutions even the
scientific institutions and there's all
these
conspiracy theories flying around you
don't know who to believe and there's
people just yelling at each other and
politics is weaved into this whole thing
in some messy way and you're just
getting i mean honestly it's just like
legit simple
just frustration
going back to marriage of just hanging
out
with
the kids and your wife husband just the
stress just building up over time no
release and just people want to tell you
when the rabbi is not wearing a mask
even though it's at the damn super bowl
maybe you want to comment on the super
bowl part which is awesome but anyway
but it released clearly a dam of all the
kinds of feelings that you're talking
about so how do you then write a sermon
so i well so what i did was i didn't
answer on social media because i knew
that i wouldn't be able to formulate it
the way i wanted and i was going to wait
and i was going to be able to give a
longer i mean the sermon is 15 minutes
not that long but i wanted to be able to
give a longer answer as opposed to
um a tweet
and so
i was really i mean
i tried to make two points during the
sermon and i and also i published the
text of it which i never do because i
never speak from a text i always speak
from either notes or not even from notes
but this time i thought it was really
important that i have a text out there
too so that people could actually look
over it um
and
and i just wanted to make two points one
of which was that i really feel terrible
and i did that i all these people were
hurt
and
that there is this you know
contradiction between the way i acted
and the way they want me to act and i
also think by the way i didn't speak
about this but i also think that there
are some people who just don't like the
idea of a rabbi being at the super bowl
it's like you're supposed to be doing
rabbi stuff so i understand that too
but then
yeah so but you know rabbi at the super
bowl i mean you're also
i i'd hate to say it but there's there's
a rockstar nature to you talking to
christopher hitchens contending with
ideas inspiring so many other minds i
mean there's an educational aspect i
appreciate that it's making ideas cool i
mean that's a very powerful that i mean
that is also the job of a rabbi you're
not just supposed to do rabbi stuff yeah
yeah yeah but i didn't do so much of
that you know
at the game so um i see
nonetheless
so but the second part of it was i said
that we have to be able
to express our anger and disappointment
better than this
you just have to
i'm in part because it doesn't get you
the result that you want i mean when you
scream at someone that's not going to
get them to realize what they did
and
and the
the most painful
moment of it was this letter that i got
from a christian pastor who said you
know i always admired the jews so much i
can't believe
they could be so cruel and especially to
a rabbi and i thought that's not how i
want my congregation to be perceived in
the world
and by the way some of them were from my
congregation some were
many were not from my congregation but
um
but and and i spoke about what you
talked about which is that
uh you know i mentioned before that
moses broke those tablets coming down
the mountain and the torah doesn't say
what happened to the tablets but the
rabbis do they say that they were
carried together in the ark with the
second set that was intact and that we
all have brokenness communities and
individuals we have brokenness and
especially now
and we have to learn how to give each
other space to be mistaken and broken
and hurt and all of that um and the cool
thing when you give people that space
you you feel better i mean you for
caring for the community it feels better
when you show empathy and compassion and
kindness on the internet you'll actually
feel better a week from now you'll feel
much worse
if you make some kind of uh negative
statement of principle on the internet
it's almost just
exclusively true so if you care about
feeling good just be kind first right be
empathetic first almost always the case
exactly so um so it's uh
i mean it it settled down a lot um the
most really the single
best reaction i there were there are
people
and you can again you can go on social
media you can see all the criticisms and
so on and so forth um but the single
best reaction i got was from a man who
came up to me right after the sermon
um
and said i have four words for you and i
thought oh no
i got to confess
i said i said what he said you changed
my mind
and i thought wow and i i said to him
you know that's so
it's like to take so much courage to
come up to somebody and say that in
front of them and i was so grateful
and
the other thing that it tells me is look
i've been the rabbi of that congregation
for 25 years and i taught 10 years
before that i've been a rabbi for a long
time i still i still have a lot to learn
we talked a little bit about the
difference between judaism christianity
and islam could you maybe
talk about the difference between the
torah sure the bible and the quran so
there's the hebrew bible
is actually what's called a step canon
that is they're the five books of the
torah
then there are books of history and the
prophets
so books like samuel kings judges um
and then the prophets isaiah jeremiah
amos ezekiel so on
and then there are what are called the
writings
the writings are books like psalms
proverbs job
the megilot which are esther daniel all
of those all those books um ecclesiastes
uh
so in hebrew it's called the tanach
torah naveem ketuvim the torah the
prophets and the writings and that is
the hebrew bible
sometimes that's also called the torah
just to be confusing but really the
torah generally refers to the five books
then
there is the new testament
which the jews don't recognize as a
sacred book
they recognize it as the book of another
religion and i sometimes say to
christians in order for them to really
grasp this
jesus has as much religious significance
to judaism as muhammad has to
christianity that is jesus although
jewish
became the founder of another religion
and for judaism that's not only inasmuch
as christians and jews have had a lot of
interactions but religiously jesus has
no significance
said many beautiful things said some
things i don't like so much like
like what leave your father and mother
and follow me i don't like that as a
religious model
um
now chris the whole thing is pretty
christians will say that i don't
understand that but they but that's
because christians like jews interpret
their texts different ways at different
times so um
anyway uh
the koran which i know less well i have
read it but i know it less well than i
know the new testament and certainly
less well obviously than i know the
hebrew bible um
is a very is in some ways a
parts of it are i i don't say this word
i say this word because i can't find a
better descriptive word but but muslims
will not accept this okay is it take off
on the torah in some things that is it's
the same stories as the torah but
they're different
now jews will say and i being a jew will
say this that that's because muhammad
heard those stories from jews and also
heard midrashim which are rabbinic
interpretations of those stories and he
wrote those down
muslims will say no the jews got it
wrong and muhammad came along to correct
the record and tell the real story but
they're all
telling the story
of the same
they the hebrew the hebrew bible part
the abrahamic part they all tell the
story of the same characters but tell
them the obviously christians accept the
hebrew bible as sacred scripture
the muslims
retell
many of the stories in the bible uh what
is what is common to all of them is that
all of them
are monotheistic faiths now in
christianity that's more complicated
because of the trinity
but
as christianity has developed over time
it clearly
presents itself and thinks of itself and
he's a monotheistic faith as well what's
the role of the word in each of these
religions in the scriptures so in terms
of
so first of all oral the role of oral
traditions the power of the exactness of
the words in the scripture does it
differ
or is it really within the communities
of differences it differs because
in christianity
the words are not all the words of jesus
they're the words of jesus's disciples
none of the books of the new testament
were written by people who met jesus in
person so they're different and
therefore the and also we don't even
know sometimes the original language of
some of the things
in the new testament
in the bible and i understand in the
quran but i'll speak for the hebrew
bible
the idea is that that's lashon hakodish
that's sacred language and hebrew is in
its that's the language according to the
tradition that god actually spoke to
moses and therefore the exact words are
infinitely interpretable and meaningful
and but the words were spoken but
written by moses and the same with
muhammad right
but from memory or no there are
different there are different theories i
won't speak for muhammad you should
ask i don't want to get i don't want to
get that wrong i want to get another
religious tradition wrong in judaism the
words are written by moses at god's
dictation basically that's the
traditional view there are other views
that i i'm happy to go into if you want
to but basically that's the traditional
view so it's pretty close right what
makes it different what makes judaism
and christianity different
is christianity has an ideal life
judaism doesn't have an ideal life
judaism has an ideal book
so the holidays of christianity are
events in the life of god
god's birth god's death and resurrection
in judaism
the holidays are all events in the life
of the people like the liberation from
slavery
or in the people's relationship to god
like yom kippur which is a day of
atonement but there are no holidays in
judaism that are events in the life of
god because in judaism god doesn't have
a biography
god is eternal and god never came to
earth and those events carry with them
traditions and rules that you're to
follow yes let me mention on one such
event and scripture
yet another time you walk through the
fire which is with exodus oh uh that was
the first
and you never forget the first
uh one of several controversies yes um
you spoke 20 years ago 21 years ago now
at passover and said that that quote the
way the bible describes the exodus is
not the way it happened if it happened
at all
so first of all what is exodus
what really happened exodus is the
liberation of the jews from egypt and it
is the central story of the jewish
tradition
and as i've said
numerous times um
in various places
i believe that it's based on a
historical colonel i think richard
elliott friedman may have gotten this
right in his book exodus it may have
been the levites
who left who left israel
but
historically but the bible's not a book
of history
um i don't believe that there were ten
plagues and a split c and and six
hundred thousand
men which makes about two million people
who actually if there were two million
people would stretch all the way from
israel to
[Music]
egypt alone
were liberated from egypt and my point
in that sermon was not actually to
convince people that it didn't happen
my point in that sermon was to convince
people
that
the historicity of the exodus is not the
basis of the faith of the jewish people
well what does the word historicity mean
in other words the factuality of it it
can be true without being factual so
you're not supposed to read it
as facts well i don't i don't read it as
fact i don't read it as a history book i
said look i was talking again to a
congregation that had many iranians i
said you experienced the truth of the
exodus in your own life
there was a regime that wanted to
destroy you
and
you miraculously escaped before it did
and
so a
a myth
um in
is something that may not have happened
but is always happening
and that's what i would say about the
exodus story it's not about whether
in fact there was a killing of the
firstborn
it's about does god deliver did god
deliver the jews in ancient times does
god deliver people in modern times and
that's
what the issue is and
and to me it's a
much
the issue of faith is much deeper than
the issue of fact i wouldn't look to the
torah for my science either
what
are the limits of science in terms of
what can science not tell us that the
torah can in terms of wisdom so
the historicity the facts of things okay
if if the torah is much more than that
is it's like you said myth uh myth is
not something that happened but
something that is always happening
and so presumably it's interacting with
the environment of the day to generate
wisdom so you can live a life by torah
i don't think you can live a life by
biology
you can live a life
that is informed by the values of the
tradition of judaism
and those values by the way
what science does is it contributes
factuality
to the conversation and also changes the
reality around us
so
when you
study talmud on your iphone
you know you're still i mean it changes
the atmosphere in which you do it but
but the wisdom and the
life guidance and the connection to
transcendence is something
that science doesn't give so if we now
step into returning to our
friend sam harris and step into this
weird place of science and you talked
about this where the kind of the current
assumption of science is
it's a materialistic one
uh so for me obviously ai person
this whole mind thing is fascinating
like what the heck is going on up there
uh so how do you explain consciousness
how do you explain free will do you
think first of all do you think we have
a free will and if so what is it this is
where
we had the debate um earlier that i
mentioned with hitchens where i think
actually neither he nor the moderator
understood what i was saying which is
i'm sure my inability to express it but
he was very focused and delivered on
on the humor yes and the wit yes but
what i was trying to say is
if we're entirely biological creatures
if we didn't choose our genetics and we
didn't choose our environment
then there is no space for free choice i
don't understand where it comes in and i
kept asking them that question but
didn't get an answer because i don't
think there is an answer i think
if you're a thorough going materialist
free will is impossible there could be
randomness but randomness is not free
will it's randomness
i think you need a spiritual
um
non-material belief in order to get free
will
and that's why i believe in free will
yeah you were talking about sort of yeah
and actually the moderator totally
missed your point about the glass of
water and basically how what was the
difference so do you free will
because you could also if it fits into
the materialistic picture it could be
just a convenient useful quirk you would
understand this better than i i don't
understand how it could be
a convenient quirk materialistically i
don't understand how to explain it well
no there's you know if you study
perception
there's all these kinds of illusions
right we
are
our mind plays tricks on us yes uh to
make our life easier more efficient and
survive better and all those kinds of
things and so free the the feeling like
we have a choice oh that could be an
illusion it could be another i
understand right but but actual free
choice free will i don't see where you
get it if you're a materialist i think
you have to have
a spiritual component by the way this i
think this is also i think sam would
agree with this
um i think he wrote about not having not
having free will yeah um
and i think if you don't have a god and
you don't have uh a soul
that free will is a logical
impossibility
for sam which is fascinating it's not
just that free will is an illusion but
uh
the illusion of free will is an illusion
meaning there's not we don't even
experience anything like it there's no
illusion we're like
it's not even on us to be talking about
it we're just we are like the
the the the current in the river or
something like you were comparing it to
the glass we are just like that glass
right so i don't know what we're going
on about with this whole free will thing
uh i mean
to use the free world fundam the i that
the young person is born with is that
somehow fundamental to
religion i think it's fundamental to
judaism i i think that the i the idea is
that
you are the custodian of your soul
and even though i grant that there's a
certain over
um emphasis
in modern society on the individuality
of the soul
that is we are more interconnected than
i think
we're
we believe
still
yeah the eye the idea that every human
being is an image of god that i mean
that the human being in the torah is is
created singly and again do i really
believe there was an adam and eve and a
garden of eden no not literally
but i think that it's it expresses a
deep truth about human life and tied
into this is the subject of experience
of things which we call consciousness
i mean this is the most fascinating and
inexplicable um
discussion and again this is a
discussion i've had i privileged to have
with daniel dennett and could not make
any of as you can imagine any headway on
my uh but he was delightful and and
brilliant to talk to um
i i
for me
um consciousness is a real thing
i don't know if it is i mean i kind of
like the pan psychist
you know view that there's an element of
consciousness in everything that that's
constitutive of reality um
but i don't i i'm not wedded to it but i
think that it's um it exists in
different degrees in all sentient
creatures uh i think that anybody who
has a pet knows that they have some kind
of consciousness
except cats
i'm not gonna i i since i don't have
cats or dogs i am not going to this is
not another reason people might be
outraged
well i happen to be allergic to both but
i'm very fond of animals
the the thing that so
perplexes me about this and and
is
the denial of the reality of
consciousness
from people
who are fully aware that they're
conscious
i don't know how you divest yourself of
the most present quality of being a
person in your discussions about
what it is to be a person um we just
don't really have a good sense of the
alternative and so you can kind of
divest yourself in that way well maybe
everything is like this maybe we're
trying we're over dramatizing this whole
thing and we're like every everybody
every it seems like every living thing
perhaps everything period
thinks that it's the center of the
universe right and so here we are
telling ourselves these dramatic big
stories about us being special and so on
and maybe we need to have a little bit
more humility both about the uncertainty
and about our place in the whole any
statement you make about something like
consciousness has i think
a sort of equal level of humility
you're saying that you know we don't
have it is as not you lex but you person
saying we don't have it is as
intellectually arrogant as my saying we
do
so
i think for me humility comes in
in admitting
that we really really have just the
tiniest part of the puzzle and
and and as you get older
at least my experience has been not that
you get more answers but that you just
see a bigger puzzle
so to me there's
less
so the questions are fascinating but
there's also an engineering practical
question and perhaps right i'll ask you
a religious one too on this uh point
to return back to robots
so
how to engineer consciousness or i'll
just even ask you a very simple question
which is uh when you have robots
that exhibit
the capacity to
suffer i found in myself as a human when
i see that i
i feel something exhibit the capacity to
suffer or they exhibit behaviors that
evoke in you a sense that they are
suffering those aren't the same things
from my from an observation perspective
they sure as heck seem similar you think
they're feeling pain
i don't know what
i uh i'm observing pain
okay it's like when i watch a movie and
there's people on screen some some of
them are dressed like batman
uh
but i but you can make the distinction
like if i have a doll
and i bend the doll over and it makes a
sad face
i know that that doll is not actually
in pain
even though i am observing pain so the
question what's that what the question
is when the doll
becomes
able to remember things about you david
right about the experiences you shared
right
it is able to
speak yes
and make you feel like there's an actual
relationship so that's what i'm asking
is
at what point do you believe that the
i know that this is an impossible
question but at what point do you
believe that there is a consciousness in
there as opposed to
just an extraordinary i mean like when i
play chess against a computer yeah and
it beats me
i'm embarrassed even though
the computer
doesn't i don't think the computer is
going are you idiot but it feels that
way yeah but there is some part of me
that says okay i know that this computer
doesn't actually know who i am or care
who i am it just knows how to move the
pieces
so at what point do you
i mean you're giving me instances it
speaks it does this it does this but at
what point does that for you cross the
threshold into it's actually a sentient
being i think the question is whether
there is a threshold that could be
crossed right that's one question and i
can answer this because i think it's
different from person and person but the
chess engine is not at all trying to
um
to cross that threshold let's just start
there and and
to me the personalization
which is what's the difference
like a a friend that you meet
you've shared all these memories
the way they look at you
uh will convey and the things they say
will convey that they've
shared those memories with you
they'll be able to uh speak in the
shared humor and the language but really
the memories is the big one of having
gone through things together
i think
i would have more and more trouble for
example
turning off a system
that i have been
through
things with right like and by turning
off i mean delete all of its memory
right right if me and the toaster
have gone through a bunch of dramatic
events and that toaster remembers right
there's a certain
level to where like it's just me and the
toaster in this together at this point
and uh i just to talk about sanchez i
don't know but
you know i don't know according to the
scripture can't live by bread alone
but i would i i mean i know that i know
that there's no way to there's no way to
determine this but it's still about what
you feel yes
but isn't that what human relations are
also though
yes but we make each other feel true but
it's true that i have the assumption
that you feel
somewhat like i do i mean obviously i
don't
you know and that could be illusion and
i don't know and and i know that you
don't feel exactly as i do
um
but i think we have a long at least to
me we have a long way to go before the
detached part of our brains that is the
objective evaluating part as opposed to
the emotive it feels this way part
believe that that machine has
consciousness i think it's at least
without arriving at conclusions it's at
least possible that one day we'll look
back
and
realize that we have yet once again
formed another tribe
and that
scripture all along had in it
the the ability for humans and robots to
have a deep meaningful connection and
that through the robot the cr the life
that enters the body of another
robot what's the difference between a
biological body and a mechanical one and
then we will see that
the fundamental thing is about
the um
whatever you want to call it sentience
whatever can permeate
an object that was that was the thing
all along
so i i mean
and then you'll get cancelled one more
time because you will because i denied
it um i'll i was going to say you'll
eventually say
preach shall preach to the robots
look i
first of all depends how quickly you do
it and how much longer i have to live
i resist it tremendously
but i am also
enough of a student of history to know
that my instinctive resistance
has nothing to do with whether it will
come about
um
i have a hard time believing it
we'll see
can i ask you about this um maybe you
can educate me i tend to believe that
you mentioned suffering that there is a
connection between consciousness and
suffering
that suffering is a fundamental part
the capacity to suffer is the
fundamental part of being human i mean
look at when you're not conscious you
don't suffer you know we've had
operations where we've been put under
anesthetic we're not conscious and we
don't suffer during the operation if we
were conscious we would
um
but there's also i mean there's a
non-physical suffering that is very much
tied to consciousness i can
think of things right now that will
cause me suffering like pain that i've
caused or pain that other people i care
about have felt or so on
so i don't see how um
i think that way i think it's equally
true of joy joy is also a product of
consciousness
all tied in in some beautiful messy way
with memory and so on the the that we
can re-experience it when we recall the
memories
um but why is there suffering you
mentioned evil why is there evil in the
world you can
tell stories about this why is there
suffering why is there evil in the world
um if there's a god that cares so let's
assume for a minute that every
everything was a primitive robot
it would there would be no suffering but
there would also be no growth
and
and that implies choices
like i
one of the things that i that i've said
that that
i know
i know why it hurts people and i don't
mean it quite the way that
but i will say it nonetheless is
the holocaust presents
the exact
same theological question
as somebody who gets shot on the streets
of a city in los angeles which is god
why do you allow some people to do bad
things to other people
it's on an unimaginable scale but it's
the same question and the answer has to
be
you either allow people that free will
or you don't you can't say as god i'm
gonna have let everybody have free will
but not nazis
nazis don't get free will um because
cambodians
they can kill each other rwandans kill
each other but but the nazis don't get
to do that
so
that's one part piece of of the puzzle
um
and and what makes it unfathomable is
when you're actually faced with
suffering these kinds of explanations
are obscene they just are you can't i
mean when somebody is actually suffering
oh the rabbi said god gave people free
will that's just awful
but there is a second piece to this also
which is
that there is
natural suffering
like children born with diseases or
earthquakes or volcanoes or whatever um
and
and here my argument is that in some
ways suffering has to be random in the
world because
when people say why do bad things happen
to good people well if only good things
happen to good people everybody would be
good
but it would it would have no moral
content the only way you can be good and
have moral content is say i know that i
can live a really good life and have
really terrible things happen to me
nonetheless
so
it feels to me like it has to be a
randomly now that means by the way
that
i've been incredibly lucky i don't have
a good life because i was good
i have a good life because i was lucky
and that implies not that i should feel
guilty about it but that i have a
tremendous responsibility as a result to
other people who aren't so lucky
tremendous responsibility to study the
lessons of history to tell the stories
of those who are less lucky
and to
draw enough wisdom from them so that we
have less cruelty and suffering in the
world or have new kinds
that get us to improve even more that's
right exactly that we suffer better
suffer better for a lot of people
mortality is um
one of the
very unfortunate versions of suffering
which is that the ride ends
in this realm whatever whatever it is
what do you think of mortality is it
something you think about
is this something you fear um what do
you think happens i don't after we feel
i don't fear it uh
first of all i would say when i was in
high school i think my father actually
encouraged me to read this book
i read ernest becker's denial of death
which i found and still find to be one
of the most profound works i've ever
come across
and he convinced me that a lot of what
our society is about are
ways that we avoid
encountering our own mortality
um our physicality i mean one among the
points he makes and i'm i'm not
quoting him at all directly it's like
why does everything about our physical
body make us so uncomfortable everything
that comes out of you other than tears
is either mildly or very disgusting why
why does that have to be
why are sex and eating and all the
things that are physical surrounded with
so much symbolism i mean what are table
matters really they're like we're not
eating like animals because we're not
eating like animals and sex obviously
has more symbolism around it than
anything
and his answer is anything that reminds
you that you're a physical body because
that's what dies your body dies it
decays it dies it gets eaten by worms
that you don't want to think about so
you deny it
i think that part of religion is a
confrontation with your own mortality
but also a certain transcendence of it
because the idea is something about you
is eternal
what exactly i don't know
um
and you asked what do i think happens
after we die
so
i don't know any better than anyone else
does but i will i'll i'll say two things
about it um
one is
that every image of what it's like
is foolish like
mark twain has i think in letters from
earth he says we're going to lie on
green fields and listen to harp music
which you wouldn't want to do for five
minutes while you're alive but you think
you'll be happy for the rest of eternity
doing it after you die
so i don't know this world was a
surprise so why shouldn't the next world
be a surprise i have no idea
but i really like this parable that's
told by a guy um
in uh
in a book on death in mourning by a
rabbi in a book on death in mourning
about twins in a womb
he says and
one of them believes that there's a life
outside and the other one doesn't
he says
the one who doesn't says look this is
the only world we've ever seen the only
world we've ever known why do you think
there's something out there he says now
imagine the one who believes is born
back in the womb his brother is mourning
of death but outside everybody's
celebrating a birth he said and that's
what it's like when you die
and i love that image
the yeah the grass is always greener
it's the new the new step but the
eternity thing is an interesting one i
it's yet another concept that i feel
humans are fully inequipped to
comprehend
um is eternity fundamental somehow to
all these discussions i think it is well
partly because god is supposed to be
eternal and and therefore it moves the
mind in that direction even though it is
completely unfathomable
um you know because sometimes i would
say
eternity you said on a green field
sometimes a moment
like a truly joyful moment feels like an
eternity the intensity of it
maybe eternity is more about stopping
time versus extending time indefinitely
and it's something that we just totally
can't comprehend
us silly humans all i would say is um
the at the older you get the more you're
struck by the fact that time does not
freeze
you know people will sometimes say to me
you you
you haven't aged a day and then i'll
look at an old picture of myself
and i'll say
that was very kind of you but that's not
true it's not true
um so yeah i mean i love the idea of you
know we turn to seeing eternity in a
grain of sand was how blake put it i
love that notion but when you talk about
life after death
i really i think that in some ways my
fundamental faith isn't is in
human beings that this doesn't all
disappear that there's something about
people
that transcends this world um you
mentioned ernest becker in high school
and denial of death if you can mention
if you still see truth and wisdom and
some of its
some of this idea but in general can you
go all the way back and
tell some of the fascinating story of
how you found faith
when i was in high school
i was a really pretty ardent atheist um
and i loved bertrand russell
who was
for my money with all due respect to all
the the very very capable
people that we've talked about earlier
he's the best atheist pound for pound
um that there was
uh and a remarkably witty and lucid
writer and i was totally in his thrall
and i would i i would read every book by
russell i could get my hands on um and
the reason that i did
i have this theory
that
why do adolescent boys like mr spock and
like
sherlock holmes
i think it's because when you hit
puberty for a lot of us there's so much
discomfort with our bodies that we like
the idea that we're just brains
i really think so that's i i had that
experience it's like i want to just be a
thinking machine i don't want to be a
body because my body was making me so
uncomfortable i had all these urges and
and and inclinations that i couldn't
control so russell was perfect
and my father who was a rabbi did the
very
wise thing of buying me some of bertrand
russell's books which was his way of
saying i'm not afraid of him um
and actually there was another rabbi i
was at i was at summer camp and i was
sitting on the porch of the i remember
exactly uh and i was reading bertrand
russell and this guy came up to me and
said what are you reading i was maybe 16
or 17 and i said bertrand russell i was
spoiling for a fight
and he said i'm glad you're reading him
i said really why he goes how old are
you david i said whatever i was 16 17.
he said well i'd rather you grow out of
him than grow into him
[Laughter]
and you know what he was actually right
because when i started to read about
russell's life
i realized
that all of that rationality
didn't shield him he had an incredibly
messy life multiple marriages endless
infidelities
family members he didn't speak to it and
speak to him his father was raised by
his grandparents because his parents had
died and like really not a happy or i i
mean a remarkable life but not a happy
one
and so i started to like believe that
maybe it was possible that people who
had faith
were not just stupid and needed crutches
but
but saw something deeper than
than russell did
and the more people that i met that were
like that
um
it's funny because i always thought okay
my father is a rabbi that's great but
nobody else
and
and i think what happened to me was it
was not a logical decision to come to
faith it was a sort of opening of my
heart it's like this world is
way much more than my mind can capture
and and i've kind of felt my way to god
and in the moments
my faith you know there was a a rabbi
named rabbi nachman brother he said he
was a moon man his faith waxed and waned
so sometimes i have more sometimes less
but in my feeling moments is when i have
more
so with your heart open yeah what would
you say
in your feeling your moments is the most
beautiful part about judaism in your
faith
i think the most beautiful part about
judaism
is that even though it is
filled with humor and wit
it takes life and it takes the soul
seriously
it really believes that this matters
and that we matter and what we do
matters and i think that that's
incredibly important and especially in a
in a world in which young people feel so
much like they don't matter
that's an unbelievably powerful
message i mean
you know it's
you don't i want to say like almost to
every to every uh
young woman under 30 on tick tock
you don't matter because you're
beautiful that's not why you matter i
hope you know that you matter because
you have a soul
and to every young man who's like
nihilistic and doesn't think and just
thinks that if they make enough money
their life will be fine i want to say
the same thing which is really that's
not ultimately you matter because
you're in the image of god and and
judaism really deeply deeply believes
and preaches that and i think that
that's
a message that has so much to say
to the world it's like you have to take
people's souls seriously and for all of
the difficulty in figuring out all these
social questions and what they mean
i just don't want to dismiss people
because i disagree with them politically
or socially or culturally
because i think they matter
so ultimately judaism has
a wealth
of meaning yes
for
a human i really believe that it does i
really do um and and
its meaning and i want to emphasize this
is not political the deepest meaning of
judaism is not political
well there is we put politics on top of
everything exactly but that's why i want
to emphasize it the deepest meaning is
on a soul level it's not on a on a
voting level well that combined with the
humor it's clear to me that christopher
hitchens should have been a jew he was
he actually was he discovered that in
his 30s
that his mother was jewish that's
fascinating yep he actually he has a
beautiful essay about it discovering in
his thirties that his mother was jewish
yep um so
so
remarkably enough
he actually was jewish his autobiography
hitch 22 is a great read and i just want
to say like what you discover there i
don't know if i'm giving too much away
by telling the story of the spoiler
alert what you discover there is that
his mother ran away with a minister or a
priest and they died in what seemed like
was a suicide pact and so i read it
unfortunately after he passed away but
i would have wanted to ask him do you
think that has anything to do maybe with
the hostility towards religion
we are only human my father i mean both
my parents but my father who was a rabbi
was such a wonderful warm and loving man
so i associate a religious figure you
know
with real goodness and i'm sorry to
return to a darker darker topic but
i really wanted to ask you this um for
the current events for a recent event
i mentioned dallas uh
what lessons do you draw from the dallas
synagogue hostage incident
well the week after that we had active
shooter training in my synagogues and
one of the things i drew was that
security for
synagogues is important and the second
is that
the reality of anti-semitism
which i had thought had waned when i
first began my rabbinate i thought it's
not going to be such a big issue
it is like an evergreen issue and jews
and all people of goodwill have to take
this really seriously
because it has devastating consequences
and if the world doesn't know that then
it just hasn't been paying attention so
there's anti-semitism at a scale of
human to human but there's also like you
mentioned politics get mixed up into
things nations
get mixed into into things impossible to
answer
but i have to ask sure
um
what do you think about the long-running
saga of israel and palestine will we
ever see peace in that part of the
middle east
well since i'm an optimist about human
um
look i i mean i have many many thoughts
about i'm a very very strong supporter
of israel uh
and
and i also feel
really for the plight of the
palestinians i think that they're
you know this is uh
this is a a clash of legitimate
narratives that is impossible to exactly
split the difference of
however
um
i know that israel has made peace with
egypt has made peace with jordan has
made peace now with other arab nations
i don't believe that israel is unwilling
to make peace
and so i think
that as difficult as it will be
for the palestinians to come to grips
with the fact that the jewish state is
not leaving and is legitimately here as
opposed to we can't get rid of it now
but we will get rid of it one day um
if that
comes to be and i believe that it will i
think not only that there would be peace
but i think that those two peoples
together could probably do remarkable
things in the world
do you think the source
of it is politics
is it
religious ideas
and
to flip it what is the way out
is it
geopolitics
is it uh
you know interfaith
discourse and collaboration or
is it simply the human
uh
like love so i think that i'm not sure
that i could give one answer to that but
i will give a piece of an answer
why did the abraham accords happen
the main reason that they happened was
because economics overrode ideology
and i actually am hopeful that that's in
the end what will happen
that people will say you know what we
could have such a better life
if we put aside
the ideological animosities
and just
created this different kind of middle
east together
i went to
dubai
to watch the world chess championship
because i really wanted to see magnus
carlsen play i thought you're alive when
when you have such a remarkable world
champion go see him play so i actually
threw myself to dubai that's amazing at
for the last couple of games and i
watched i
and
so i wasn't so much i i mean it's not
that i'm uninterested in dubai but i
really i went there for the chess thing
the expo was also on at the same time
and i saw here's this amazing place i
came back this guy i know who lived in
dubai for several years and works in the
middle east said to me what did you
think of it and i said you know as
nice as dubai it was like very you know
very polished very sophisticated very
clean very
no crime and so on but it was like you
know kind of like las vegas in the
middle east without the gambling or
something like that he said you know
he totally changed my perspective in a
couple sentences he said i know it seems
like that when you come from los angeles
he said but fly there from yemen or from
riyadh and it is a miracle and i thought
oh my god you're right
it's like what human beings can do if
they just put aside
their ideological shackles is remarkable
and i'm hopeful that one day that'll
happen economics allows for a higher
quality of life you no longer it's the
playground analogy you've you said
earlier
if there's more resources to play with
right
unfortunately us humans are more willing
to play with others yeah and maybe that
is the solution and maybe i mean for me
from a technology perspective
innovation
engineering
helps make everybody's life
better and over over that
once people's lives become better they
start to be
um
have more time to be empathetic and here
and they have more to lose
when you have more to lose it actually
makes you i think
countries are less willing to go to war
when they have more to lose and p and
and families want peace when they have
when when it's good at home so i think
there's an element of that as well and
some of it again taking us back to the
other
aspect of our conversation is how we're
conducting ourselves in conversation
online and so on because i think
actually
i'm a big fan of the idea of social
media
that is a way for us to connect
together i think there's a lot of really
strong ideas how to do that well
and clearly the initial attempts that
kind of just
open it up wide some of the lesser
aspects of human nature can take over
when combined with different forces like
advertisements and virality and all
those kinds of things but overall
i love the honesty of the mess of it
being presented before us on social
media i i part of me
maybe because i don't participate it
like if somebody is
being mean to me or being aggressive and
these kinds of things i enjoy it because
it's it's human nature right but i enjoy
it because i don't respond i think if i
responded i would get pulled into this
human nature and then it's not fun but i
i love the emote like i'll i'll talk to
people in fact i still visit clubhouse i
don't know if you know what that is sure
oh right that's right actually when i uh
that's how we first met well yeah well i
was such a fanboy actually when i first
heard you and uh i was like i can't
believe i guess
dr david
but uh the israel-palestine
um topic was something that was very
deeply in a heated way
uh
discussed on clubhouse race relations is
a thing that was really heatedly
discussed and i now go to clubhouse to
practice russian and there in russian
the heated discussion
is on basically any topic
as meaningless or meaningful as you want
and the heat of it just people just
screaming and and then calming down and
going through the full process and that
that too is beautiful because that
emotion is there and if it is allowed to
have a voice i think ultimately it's
it leads to healing um so that that felt
really
healthy if you learn how to do that at
scale social media i i wish that it were
not as algorithmically biased towards
conflict um i don't think that that's
healthy but i do
i i think it brings a lot of blessings
into people's lives if they use it
wisely you know it can like anything
else it can be
awful um but
but it can't i
i've connected to all sorts of people
that i never would have known
um and that's been wonderful so
let me ask you the big question of
advice okay
what advice would you give to young
people today
uh that or maybe high school
college thinking about career thinking
about life they can be proud of
so the first thing that i would say is
that life is longer than you think it is
even though i understand the impulse to
be in a rush
you will have many
unfoldings more even than people of my
generation did unfoldings that's just a
funny word it's like a reward it's
unfolding it feels that way it's like
different aspects of your life will come
will
will show you different possibilities
that you don't imagine at the moment
and
and i think the second thing that i
would say is
i know that this is a very old-fashioned
but i would say don't
if to the extent that you can read don't
just
and not just on social media read books
learn things that will give you a
broader context for your life than just
today or yesterday um or the day before
uh and
and
i suppose the other thing that i would
say is
um
that
to the extent that you can
try to develop your own internal metric
of both
what matters and what is good
because you will be exposed to more
voices
than any generation in history telling
you that that's good or this is good
they're called influences influencers
but what they are is voices telling you
what you should think and what you
should believe
and so have some internal space where
you where you'll be able to say for
example i know this person is doing that
and it looks great but that's not me
you have a community of people that
um
speak to you with a lot of passion
and
do you still have that voice in your own
in the privacy of your own mind
that uh you're able to ignore like for a
moment
just be with yourself absolutely think
what is right absolutely and i think
it's partly because i grew up without
that i mean
i grew up with a lot of space in my life
and so i had chance to develop that
voice that's why i think it's harder for
kids today than it was for me i mean i
grew up when there were three channels
there was three six and ten there was
abc cbs and nbc and
and that was it and you spent your
evening you know playing board games or
reading or whatever and there was a lot
of space
and we played football in the street and
you went on your bike in the morning and
nobody worried about you and you came
home at night and everybody assumed you
were fine um and and so
i really feel and also i went into
uh a religious tradition where i feel
like i i have the opportunity to judge
myself by bigger metrics
um
and it's still hard i don't wanna it's
not like oh it's it i i you know i wear
impenetrable armor it's still hard so
how much harder for kids today when they
don't have that
you mentioned books
is there
bertrand russell and denial of death by
anders becker is there
books that pop into mind that
like had an impact on you my favorite
novel
is middle march so much middle march i
remember like i was listening to a
podcast i was listening one of your
podcasts where he said where where your
guests said the two greatest novels of
the 19th century
were uh were brothers karamazov and uh
what was the other one he mentioned i
don't remember
as well or no i think i was both
i might have been i don't remember maybe
but anyway but i would say middle march
is up there middle march like presents
an entire world and it's
written by a woman uh marianne evans who
took the pen name george eliot um
who
you feel
virginia woolf said it's the only
english novel written for grown-ups um
you feel the genius in her sentence it's
like the pressure of her intellect in
her sentences it's a beaut it's a
wonderful wonderful book i love it
pressure of her intellect yeah you
really
do i also love i love soul bello
especially herzog but but it's a very
different kind of uh
of thinking person's novel i read a lot
of mysteries um and a lot of other kinds
of fiction and literature but
in terms in terms of the books that most
you mentioned one of them which is
viktor frankl's man's search for meaning
um
and i also really really love heschel's
the sabbath i think it's a beautiful
book
very sh it's very short book just as
frankel's book is
what do you take from the masters for
meaning what what do you take of a human
being in in the worst conditions being
able to
um
non-dramatically
yeah find little joys find
find beauty
and it's
it's what i said before about judaism's
advice to younger people is that it
matters if you believe that something
matters you have enormous resilience
it's meaninglessness that is the
greatest threat to a decent life when
people are like deeply depressed
whether it is chemical depression or
what they feel like is this is all
meaningless
yeah and
and meaning now obviously
chemical depression calls in part for
chemical means but
but meaning is the it's the great
antidote um
we can talk about what kind of meaning i
mean there are kinds of meanings that
are awful but
but meaning is the great antidote to
a sense that life is just nihilistic and
purposeless and
and to that destructiveness that i think
is
too common
yeah so maybe maybe the heroic action
in nazi germany in the holocaust in the
camps is the even not the action but
just the realization that every life
matters so here's this
really wonderful story that hugo grin
who was a who was a rabbi in england
i don't know like 15 20 years ago you
used to tell he grew up in auschwitz
he was a child there and he was with his
father and it was hanukkah
and you're supposed to light the candles
and his father took the margarine ration
and used it as the oil to light the
hanukkah candles and hugo said was
scandalized and he said that's our food
and his father said what we have learned
my son
is you can live for three weeks without
food you can live for three days without
water but you can't live for three
minutes without hope
well
hope
let me ask you
he said meaning
what's the meaning of this whole thing
what's the meaning of life you're the
perfect person to ask this question
i believe the meaning of life is for
human beings to grow in soul that's why
we're here and you can do that in
infinite numbers of ways but
you're supposed to return your soul like
more burnished and beautiful
then you got it i mean it's gonna have
you know
some nicks and cuts
um
but that's what it means to deepen and
grow it and you do that you do that um
more than anything else you do that by
learning how to love i mean that's the
principle way i think that you do it you
know it's interesting because uh for a
human
the relationship
um
if you're a man of faith is with god but
it feels like love is so
ritually part of
human society that it's not just love
with of god it's love of each other
right yep there's no question about the
idea i mean
in judaism that was actually the great
innovation of the monotheistic idea
in pagan societies it was all about how
you treated the gods
monotheism said no god cares how you
treat each other
so
it's
in fact the mystics use the same kind of
um word in hebrew de vekut which means
clinging that is used about adam and eve
about it says therefore a man will leave
his father and mother and davaok
with his wife
and davoc means cling so
there is an analogy there absolutely
yeah kind of i kind of think of human
civilization is that um there's that
movie march of the penguins and they're
all huddling together in the cold yeah
this is this is fundamentally human is
this this
um just this darkness all around us of
uncertainty of cruelty of just we're
we're
it's it seems like everything is so
fragile
uh and we're just kind of all huddling
together for warmth yes
and
that's all we got is each other
so uh we started with the the big
question of what has god ended with what
is meaning
uh rabbi i will be i've been a huge as
i've told you a huge huge fan of this
for a long time it's such an honor to
you i am really
so happy to be here and thank you so
much for the conversation
thanks for listening to this
conversation with david wilpy to support
this podcast please check out our
sponsors in the description and now let
me leave you with some words from david
himself
the only whole heart is a broken one
because it lets the light in
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time