The Schrift - Ancient Jewish Wisdom for Modern Times: Recent Episodes
Steven Toby Weinberg
Warning: This is not your grandfather's d'var Torah podcast. Second Warning: The Schrift may prove monocle-shattering to those who consider themselves politically correct, moral, nice, or have ever even once helped an old blind lady across the street. Let's call into question some of the most hallowed beliefs of twenty-first century culture. Let's wake up from our automatized morality. It is time that we see philosophy as something rebellious and therapeutic rather than boring and esoteric. Using humor, personal anecdotes, and much hubris, the Schrift provides fresh and unexpected answers to life's most tricky and fateful questions. The anchor of the Schrift is the weekly reading of the Torah known as the Parsha. These passages are analyzed not as religious dogma but as brilliant pieces of literature and anthropology which bring ancient wisdom back into our lives. The greatest philosophers and writers of the German canon also weigh in on these questions during the Schrift. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the lectures incorporate Buddhist teachings and the practice of Yoga to bring together East and West, body and mind, eternity and the moment. And, of course, the Schrift will always give you a "life tip" to carry with you along the way.
When Richard Wagner wrote his operas it was--wait for it--actually cool to be German. Indeed, one need only listen to this music for ten seconds to figure this out. Being Jewish back then on the other was, well, not so coveted. How times have changed. For today, horn players like Bar Zemach are welcomed to blast the shofar in the best orchestras of Germany.
"Ironic" is a word we throw around in casual conversation. And yet, when we peer back the curtain, we soon see that irony has explosive cultural and philosophical meaning. And what happens when we get ironic about irony itself? That was a devastating question which even Alanis Morrissette seems not to have foreseen. Schlegel, on the other hand... Nowadays, ironic speech is so commonplace that it irks more than it phases. By contrast, in the entire Torah we get just one ironic remark. Professor Erica Weitzman disentangles irony for us and shares her fascinating theory of comic irony.
In these all-too-modern of times, we not only have fast food and instant coffee, but we also get to enjoy bite-sized philosophy. Why read Hegel or Kant or Descartes when we can, you know, get their entire philosophy summed up in a YouTube video? If this sounds snobby, it shouldn't, for no one is more guilty of this "hack" than I. Fortunately, Yady Oren, who has actually read Hegel, is here to explain Hegel's real philosophy of history. We also hear his opinion on whether the tenth plague was a genocide and whether the Israelites had the right to jingoistically celebrate when the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea.
What, if anything, gets lost when we translate the Torah from Biblical Hebrew into English? Despite popular belief based on the English translation of the Torah, the Pharaoh did not exactly "harden his heart." Rather, he strengthened his heart, made his heart heavy, and even, perhaps, turned his heart into a liver. Rabbi Dovid Roberts is the rabbi and spiritual leader of the Kahal Adass Jisroel Synagogue, located in the heart of Berlin. In this interview, Rabbi Roberts explains why he reads secular books, shares an enthralling theory of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch on Pharaoh's heart, and divulges the secret to great leadership.
In his 1940 work Moses and Monotheism, Freud made the provocative claim that Moses might have been an Egyptian! Even today, and even in secular circles, few would dare to voice this theory at the Passover Seder. Yet, Chaim Noll, German-Israeli writer and DDR dissident, explains why Moshe has far more controversy surrounding him than his lineage. In fact, it was Moshe's fondness for THE DESERT which was truly scandalous, at least by ancient standards.
We all have professors and teachers who taught a course which changed our lives. Rarely, however, do we get to sit down with them years later and reminisce on the class. And even more rarely do we get to do so in podcast form. Yet, this is exactly what I do with the professor who introduced me to Kafka's novel The Trial, which has been my favorite novel ever since.
We tend to view writers like J.K. Rowling and Shakespeare as magicians, baffled and floored by their ability to create exotic and captivating new worlds on the page. Yet, the dirty secret of writers is that fiction relies on time-tested storytelling techniques which anyone can learn. When Joseph reunites with his brothers, we see these ancient (and modern) storytelling tactics on full showcase. Richard Orodenker, writer and professor at Temple University, breaks down the literary stratagems of Vayigash.
We often dream about truly "random" things. Indeed, our dream life tends to look like a painting by Salvador Dali. Joseph believed that our dreams come from God. But what is God, actually? Is it possible that God, luck, and randomness are all intertwined? In my interview with Nate Klett, he explains how neuroscience remains utterly "in the dark" as to where (random) thoughts come from. Whether they have a "cause" or not remains a question of belief, not science.
How heartwarming a symbol is the “circle of life” really? Paul Stephan, Nietzsche expert and lecturer at the University of Leipzig, explains how Nietzsche’s theory of Eternal Return does not exactly mean that we should “live life to the fullest.” When I first heard this theory as a teenager, I made things far too easy on myself. And as I discussed way back in Episode 9, Season 1 of The Schrift, we need a more heroic answer for why Jacob and Joseph celebrated Passover four hundred years before the Exodus.
On episode eight, season one of The Schrift, I asked whether we might find a healthier way to handle insults than through either passive-aggressive sniping or unabashedly aggressive slashing. Nietzsche, who could spot passive-aggressive behavior from a kilometer away, has some advice for us on this matter. Keegan Kjeldsen, host of "The Nietzsche Podcast," helps us figure out what Nietzsche really would have said about Levi and Simon's decision to avenge their sister Dinah through brute force.
The word "romantic" is not always as romantic as one might think. In the Torah, there is an unquestionable "love triangle" between Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. Two years ago on The Schrift, I questioned whether Jacob's love for the infertile Rachel might be read as a cautionary tale. Yet my interviewee Meir Goldberg teaches that this love triangle is elegant--not problematic. Meir explains why the Torah wants us to get married and have children and why it is not Jacob but we who are "lovesick."
When we make a decision, we "think" we decided through our thoughts, but we can never really be sure why we behaved in a particular way. It is largely a mystery how Isaac "decided" to choose Jacob rather than Esau to inherit his legacy. Certainly, Isaac did not rely on thinking alone. Wolfgang Schröder of Achtsamkeitspraxis Berlin explains how mindfulness can enable us to "think" with our entire being.
As an actor, Tim knew how to get inside the heads of his characters and see the world through their eyes. Now an acupuncturist, he applies this same empathy and skill to treat his patients. In 1923, Martin Buber wrote ich und du. He encouraged readers to see people, nature, animals, and even God as "du"--that is, to see them as subjects rather than objects--to merge with them. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent for "du" in English, which could have been rather useful for praying to God.
Who was Abraham? As a child, I always imagined him as a poor nomad rather than as a wealthy magnate. Two years ago on the Schrift, I considered whether Lot was the quintessential "nice guy" in the derogatory sense of that term. To shed light on these matters, I interview my Torah-learning partner Jordan Ledvina, whom I value for his straight-shooting style and his readiness to incorporate Nietzsche in Torah debates.
It is a mystery what exactly God means when he tells Abraham to "Lech Lecha," He might be telling Abraham to go to his innermost self. But this only makes the question more complicated. Do we have a self? Or are we more akin to onions? In this interview, which is a sequel to "Episode 2" of The Schrift, Gita and I discuss how yoga can allow us to rediscover the multiple selves within us, even the "turtle self."
Kyra Hense is an art and dance therapist based in Berlin. Through the healing power of dance, she helps people rediscover the freedom and creativity they once felt as children. This interview, inspired by the Torah reading of Noach and "Episode 2" of the Schrift, teaches us how dance can bring Dionysus, God of Ecstasy, out of our innermost depths without succumbing to Noah's fate.
Robbie Kramer is the founder and CEO of Inner Confidence and host of the Leverage Podcast. He helps men overcome the shame they might feel at expressing themselves romantically to a woman. This interview hearkens back to "Episode 1" of the Schrift, in which I asked why Adam and Eve, immediately after biting from the forbidden fruit, felt shame at their naked bodies. In this episode, we discover how inhibiting shame can be--in romance, in the workplace, in looking in the mirror--and how difficult it can be to detect. And as always, Nietzsche occasionally appears as our jungle guide.
Stefan Willer is one of German literature's most cutting-edge professors, combining an expertise in German Romanticism with mind-bending theories on translation, knowledge of the future [Zukunftswissen], and etymology. In this interview, which picks up where "Episode 0" left off, Professor Willer and I explore what the German Romantics might have said about the untimely death of Moses, the circularity of the Torah, and the Torah's first letter.
Rome fell in 476 C.E. For nearly a thousand years, Italians walked past the Coliseum without really caring what stood before their eyes. The Italian Renaissance is what brought the ancient world into the present. Martin Buber called for a Jewish Renaissance in 1901. But for a true Renaissance to occur in Judaism, we must start reading the Torah again--and anew.
Gratitude is an art which we ought to cultivate. If we were pianists, our songs of thanksgiving would sound like "Chopsticks" when they could play like "Moonlight Sonata" instead. With complaining, however, we can rant with Chopin's finesse. King David and the Amidah prayer teach us how to be grateful with nuance. We need only invert our Faustian griping to turn our curses into prayers.
Countries are too easy. We distill an entire nation-state into a tiny rectangular box with a few colors which we call a “flag.” There are two Germanies and have always been two—Rhine Germany and Elbe Germany, West and East, latinized and Prussianized. When Hosea speaks of Lebanon, he refers to Mount Lebanon, not the Republic of Lebanon. As French vintners know, territory is not the same thing as terroir.
The price of a cold brew at Starbucks is about the same as a pound of sardines. How can this be? Karl Marx and Isaiah both lament this tragic-comedy and call on us to get our money's—or, even better, our labor's—worth.
Albert Einstein said that "compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe." Compounding is so powerful because it allows Malcolm Gladwell's concept of "tipping" to occur. Franz Kafka tipped on September 22, 1912, when he wrote his breakthrough story "The Judgment." Isaiah's prophecy that Israel would "tip," or in Hebrew, "lihafech," is playing out today right before our eyes.
The English language is ashamed of the word shame. We find an array of other words to replace it: embarrassed, shy, guilty, bashful. Yet, under all of these wordmasks lurks the feeling of shame. German, by contrast, is far more welcoming of the word shame (Scham). The prophet Isaiah shows how shame begins in childhood and should be treated at any cost. Paradoxically, it is only when we acknowledge shame that we can overcome it.
It is often said that “three is the magic number.” Might it be two? The fairy tale of The Three Little Bears and the three chances to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name should not be altered. Two, however, can be as equally enchanting as three depending on the context. Benjamin Franklin once claimed that: “Well done is twice done.” The music of Mozart and the poetry of Isaiah demonstrate the magic of twice.
The Hebrew word "Shalom" means "peace," sure, but it also relates to paying and to completing. When we pay back our debts, we are experiencing "Shalom" just as much as when we sign a peace treaty. We typically think of debt only with regard to money, yet we can be in debt in an array of areas. We can learn from German culture the peacefulness which comes from living with a "time surplus." And Isaiah shows how learning about God brings the greatest "Shalom" of all.
Isaiah swore the exiled Jews that one day it would be kings and queens who would lick the dust of their feet. We do not literally lick the dust of another's foot anymore in the twenty-first century--or do we? Malcolm Gladwell teaches us how to get out of our own way--a life tip which German Jews who remained loyal to the fatherland might have heeded.
Sixth sense or phobia? Our feelings try to warn us when we are close to our triggers, even if a wall or a decade or a thin layer of gabardine provides a workable barrier. If we take Isaiah's advice to see ourselves as grasshoppers--and to move accordingly--we will feel better about landing in Germany or having a roommate who doesn't wear underpants.
Until Columbus, nobody in Europe had heard of a tomato or a potato. We think of tomato sauce as quintessential Italian cuisine, but really is it (Native) American. The more savvy one gets with language, the more quickly one can go to a supermarket and size up which foods are in their “hometown” and which are either imported or New World transplants. It might be time for me to eat more borscht and sardines.
The word "luck" does not once appear in the Torah, and yet "blessed" is all over it. By contrast, today, we see the world as a luck-based rather than blessing-based place. Capitalism has conditioned us to view ourselves as fragile beings subject to the whims of others. To become blessed, we must think ourselves blessed.
Weinberg, Steinberg, Greenbaum, and Blumfeld. Do these names evoke a law firm or a Goethe poem? It depends whom you ask. Unlike Israelis, and most nationalities, Americans often do not know the meaning of their names. To understand the story of our names is to change music into information. Discover your name's meaning ... if you dare.
I knew what Mountain Dew was before I knew what actual dew was. Cute--or disturbing? Each morning the dew simmers on the grass for a few hours. Heidegger claimed to be connected with German peasant life, but did he hear the dew's whisperings? Micah wishes us to be among those who do not miss... the dew.
"German--what an ugly language." And yet, Mozart loved to write his operas in German. Was Mozart a stupid man? Had he no understanding of beauty? The reason why German gets bashed has little to do with the language's inherent sound. If we learn foreign languages, we might realize that our silver tongues are really stainless steel.
Marie Antoinette once said "let them eat cake." But what else did she say? As children of the French Revolution, we will never know. Edmund Burke wrote that in our servitude to the queen, we enjoyed more freedom than after we chopped her head off, because we replace one form of slavery with another. Judaism treats freedom very delicately; only Moshe could meditate properly, and that's probably a good thing.
In 1936, Walter Benjamin lamented that the art of storytelling had been lost. Today, with the rise of the iPhone and Instagram, people are telling less stories than ever before (and no, Instagram stories don't count). Instead, we cry for information, for meaning, for Tacheles! The Book of Joshua tries to hook us with an opening story involving spies, concubines, and kings. If the "point" of this story is up for interpretation, that exactly is the point.
A generation after King Cyrus had let the Jews back into Israel, the Temple still had not been rebuilt. Sometimes, tasks seem so gargantuan that we do not know where to start, causing us to never start at all. When Beethoven wrote the Fifth Symphony, all he needed was four notes to get going. And to practice yoga, the hardest move is the one onto your mat.
The Torah knew long before the FDA that pregnant mothers should not drink alcohol. Fortunately, the Torah relied on intuition, rather than scientific studies, to impart this medical advice. Kant said that he had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith. This statement is increasingly applicable to the mysterious world of nutrition. We might not "know" that butter is healthier than margarine, but nevertheless, we still "know."
Adults often need parents just as much as children do. Therefore, adults must learn to be their own parents by cultivating the yin and yang of self-compassion. This switch is akin to the reversal from scripture to Life described by Walter Benjamin in his 1934 essay on Franz Kafka. In his prophecy, Hosea recognized that Israel must be her own mother in the temporary absence of a father.
Jack cures his deadening consumerism by trading weekly punches at Fight Club. Dr. Faust escapes despair by discovering the painful joy of dating. In this sense, they tore down the Tower of Babel within themselves. No longer Jeremiahian tamarisk trees, they let themselves be saved by God without uttering a single prayer. In short, they let go thinking in a manner far more Taoist than Buddhist.
That which has been around, tends to stay around. This truth of life is what allows Apple to continue to satisfy investors even if the heyday of the iPhone is long past. In 1886, Nietzsche knew that it was wiser to "invest" in the Jews than in Germany because the Jews counted their age in millennia whereas Germany counted its in decades. Jeremiah proves a wise investor when he purchases land in Jerusalem even as the Babylonian Empire is about to sack the city.
Tel Aviv fashion is cool. It also keeps you cool. The star of the Torah is not Abraham, Moshe, or even God, but rather, the Law. We sometimes forget how nice it is to have Law. Walter Benjamin would agree that the Law of the Torah was (partially) designed to set us off from the primitive world. Although Tel Aviv is often considered the new Babylon, its no-sweat fashion is downright priestly.
The answer is not always "yes we can." Sometimes, it's "no, we can't." But we should rarely answer "no" automatically. Take at least one breath before saying "no" to an idea. When Theodor Herzl suggested the Jews of Europe could handle having their own country, many people answered "No" without a second thought.
Sponges hang out on the ocean floor. All they do is absorb, absorb, unthinkingly and unquestionably absorb the water flowing in and out of their porous bodies. We, as humans, are much more like sponges than we realize. That which we surround ourselves with slowly becomes who we are. In one of the ultimate historical backfires, the German-Jews assimilated so much that they became, well, German.
Sartre once wrote that "we are condemned to be free." No matter in what situation we find ourselves, we always have choices. Ironically, sometimes the more imprisoned we become, the more we notice our freedom. But this is a dark freedom, which makes Kafka's Josef K. abnegate it. The four lepers outside the city wall in the Book of Kings show how even in the worst of times there are always options. Riding coach on an airplane offers a parallel example.
You need Judaism more than Judaism needs you. It is here to help. But the Torah is not just an astute self-help book. It has what Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, the Grimm fairy tales--for all their brilliance--lack: divinity. When you suffer from leprosy, as did King Naaman, you don't bathe in the rivers of Damascus, you bathe in the Jordan. And you don't read Homer, rather the Tehilim.
Do you feel different, misunderstood, alienated? You are not alone. As the "Holden Caulfield Paradox" shows, the people you'd least expect also feel this way. When Darwin showed that nature selects our genes, many German and English philosophers concluded that certain races are superior to others. In fact, Darwin's theory should have proved to us that we are all uncannily similar; all humans share 99.9% of the same DNA, and we even have 60% of the same DNA as strawberries. King David encourages us to "double-down" on our odd behavior and controversial opinions. Ironically, when we try to avoid being judged, we bring judgment upon ourselves, and when we brashly show the world who we are, nobody judges us.
It seems as though for some Jews today, there is often a strange refusal to take Judaism seriously. This trend can be witnessed in Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song" and the phrase "Jew York." Yet, the more we read original sources of Judaism (i.e. the Torah), the more we see this humorizing of Judaism for what it really is: a grasping in the dark for meaning when one is uninformed of one's heritage. We need to go back to the sources instead of allowing information to be mediated to us.
Sometimes, people behave in ways so foolish, so inexplicable, that we can only cry to the heavens in exasperation. Isaiah was particularly baffled that someone could pray to a "god" made of wood. Metta meditation teaches that we should realize that everyone is just trying to be happy, even if it's in a warped and twisted way. We might also consider telling ourselves that people are drunk. If the beer-addicted Martin Luther is any indication, then we might be justified in such an assumption.
If I could sum up NIetzsche's entire philosophy in one phrase, it would be: do the opposite. Don't try to appear strong, or moral, or compassionate, because it will just make you seem the opposite. Instead, BE strong and moral in your core and your actions will naturally overflow from this state. This is why all that was found in the Ark of the Covenant was "nothing but the two tablets of stone." The tablets needed no decoration to "prove" their greatness, and thereby appeared all the more impressive. For the same reason, Steve Jobs could dress like your underpaid piano teacher and let everyone know he was actually a plutocrat.
English has no word for “semi-famous.” You’re either famous, or a nobody. Yet millions of people fill this gap. To be kind of famous can be just as gratifying as being legit famous. Martin Luther used the printing press to become one of the first European celebrities. But Hiram, the brass worker of Solomon’s temple, felt like just as much a superstar..
With politics, the answer is often: "It's the economy, stupid." And with mental health, the answer is often: "It's stress, stupid." Carl Jung showed how our present anxieties may be our brain's attempt to steer us toward a better future. The story of Elijah shows how it was primal stress which caused the ancient Hebrews to forget HaShem and turn to paganism. What is a simple way to reduce stress? Learn to hate your car.
The tastiest part of a Shabbat dinner is usually the bread and the wine. Why is this? Because of the elaborate rituals which surround them. In 1907, Freud argued that modern-day compulsions are just a resurfacing of the neurotic rituals of ancient religions. Yet, perhaps we, as humans, need rituals, and compulsions display our modern psyche, deprived of religious rites, lashing out. Even the rationalist philosopher Kant, with his evening constitutional, embraced the therapy of ritual.
In Solomon's time, the "Holy of Holies" was quite literally just around the corner. It was right there--in the Temple. Now, as Kafka points out in his story "The New Advocate," the proverbial gates to India have "have receded to remoter and higher places." We can't get there any longer, so why not turn our attention to mastering what is in our control: namely, a routine morning meditation and the cooking of a gourmet dish.
Even in our modern era of iPhones and Übers and microwaves and instant coffee, we still need that extra time—that extra day. In a way, the Über is often times just as “slow” as the horse-and-buggy, and the text message just as sluggish as the postmarked letter. This is why when Jeremiah said six years, he really meant seven--and why, for Germans, one week can be expressed as "eight days."
Is there such a thing as a magic number? Many will say it is "three." After all, it was Isaiah who cried "kadosh, kadosh, kadosh!" But three isn't always the magic number. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many Beatles songs which start out with 1-2-3-4! Seven is the magic number for the length of the week, though we can't really explain why. Don't forget about three, though: in his play Penthesilea, Kleist showed how in the dualistic "battle of the sexes" a third way can transcend masculine and feminine.
For thousands of years, there was only one kind of milk, what Americans would call "whole milk." But to our ancestors, this was just "milk." In 1985, governments recommended fat-free (skim) milk over (whole) milk. For Nietzshe, skim milk was really "slave milk." What milk should we drink? Don't ask your government; ask the ancients. The story of Yael and Sisera demonstrates the superiority of full-fat milk.
It is often difficult to distinguish "Meet the Press" from "Sportscenter." We criticize dictatorships for "state-run" news shows, but when the news is driven by capitalism is it any less brainwashing? Jeremiah and the late professor Ruth Kluger show that not all politics is created equal. The news should serve us--not the other way round.
The Paris of the movies is long gone. Walk down the Champs d'Elysées today and the experience is hardly different than going to your local shopping mall. Still, the essences of ancient cultures somehow remain. If you want to understand what life was like for the Hebrews under the Pharaoh, you need to set foot on Egyptian soil.
We all know that an apple fell on Newton's head. But how many of us know what an apple tree looks like (and not just: a tree that has apples growing on it)? Darwin showed that the sex lives of plants are remarkably similar to those of humans. When God asks Jeremiah, "What do you see?", Jeremiah immediately answers: I see an almond tree. What else might Jeremiah have known, thousands of years before Darwin, about the not-so-secret sex lives of trees?
If you are really "a man," you should never really need to use the phrase "be a man." King David's instructions to Solomon to "be a man" shows this phrase's wisdom--and its dark side. Nietzsche was a "real soldier" because he took his Prussian mentality off the battlefield and into the university. Through Epictetus' handbook the Enchiridion, we learn that being a man really means being an adult--or a soldier.
The ink from your pen should be as dark and rich as blood. You should be able to whip out your pen faster than a cowboy draws his pistol. Yet, nowadays, we sign our receipts with the cheap "pen" given to us by the cashier. Ezekiel didn't write - he inscribed. In the German word for "write" - SCHREIBEN - we hear how the ancients viewed the act of applying pen to paper.
Have you mastered the art of the follow-up question? If we limit ourselves to "small talk," if we let conversations die prematurely, we miss the chance to unveil people. King Solomon and Freud were masters at getting others to reveal themselves.
When a baby has a problem, it expresses itself by crying - sometimes very loudly. Adults, however, give off far more subtle clues when they are distressed; nevertheless, the distress is no less real. The prophet Amos and the play Woyzeck implore us to become better listeners.
If you have at least one good enemy in your life, take pride in that. It means you are a robust, vivacious, and noble individual. Learn from the prophet Obadiah, learn from Jay-Z and Nas, and learn from Nietzsche, to go out there and make yourself a good, trustworthy, respectful enemy!
Shakespeare once asked: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." For a rose to smell its sweetest, we must re-train our minds to see language as the clothing of the body. Meditation, and seeing that shepherd from Beersheba as both Jacob and Israel, can help to transport us there.
Just before he seems about to be crushed by a boulder or to fall into a pit of fire, Indiana Jones takes a moment to grab his hat. Do you take an extra moment to light a candle for yoga?
In order to be a strong king, David had to cultivate his sexual energy. But crucially, he did not act on his sexual desire but rather transmuted it to loftier purposes. As Sigmund Freud showed, our sex drive often has little do with sexual intercourse. The little mineral zinc can increase your drive toward sex, and in turn, your drive toward life.
Olive oil was sacred in the ancient world. Homer once called it "liquid gold." In this week's haftarah, a few jugs of olive oil is enough to pay off a huge debt. Yet today we buy soybean oil instead of olive oil, just to save a few dollars. As Brecht showed in Threepenny Opera, capitalism has reached absurd extremes.
We tend to be very careful about what we put into our bodies, but let our mind consume whatever we want. Just because something is "true," doesn't mean it will "taste good" to the mind. Nietzsche realized that "truth" is overrated. And therefore it is comforting to hear Isaiah speak of the "ends of the Earth" rather than "the ends of the galaxy."
Franz Kafka got his nourishment not from food, but from writing. Isaiah also preached that we should feed our souls more than our stomachs. When we wake up in the morning, we should "eat the air" before we eat our breakfast.
A few centuries ago, you may not have known how to read, what time it was, or even your birthday--but you knew how to find the North Star in the sky. In this week's Haftarah, Isaiah speaks effortlessly about north, south, east, and west. Even if we are living in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, it's not too late to brush up on our astronomy.
The Velvet Underground's music is just rock-and-roll music, but also something more. Meditation is just sitting and breathing, but somehow more than that. The Torah is just a book of stories like Shakespeare's First Folio, and yet few would name their child Hamlet. And as for Moshe, he dies on Mount Nivo, but does he really die?
The answer to these questions is: Witz.
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Music: Mozart - "Requiem: VIII. Communio"
The next time you call someone an artist, realize that you may be insulting him or her. We typically associate the word Art with Truth, but actually they are more like opposites. Art relies on deception, trickery, manipulation: this is why we have the words ARTificial, ARTifice, and ARTful. According to Hegel, Art could never contain Truth. But Hegel, it seems, never read the Kabbalah. For in the Kabbalah, the Torah is both Art and God and the Universe all at once.
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Music: Mozart - "A Musical Joke. IV."
Our brain has two halves, right and left, and yet, one of these sides has become brawny and beefy, whereas the other enfeebled and emaciated. Our society has pumped steroids into our ability to analyze, argue, and debate, and has allowed our talent for singing, dancing, and even reciting to whither and decay. In 1795, Schiller wrote that his society had become hyper-rational and needed to awaken its artistic side. In the parsha for this week, Moses instructs us that, to really understand the Torah, we must also learn a song (or is it a poem?), anticipating Schiller, as well as the Ancient Greeks, by thousands of years.
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Music: Gustav Mahler - "Ging heut' morgen übers Feld"
Our culture has romanticized and trivialized the idea of "faith." Just have faith, man! You've got to have faith! It all comes down to faith. Yet, some people are able to take the famous "leap of faith" whereas others are not. Dostoevsky could take this existentialist leap of faith, whereas Kafka's Josef K. could never "let go" into the void. The Torah's words on choosing to follow the mitzvot may provide the answer.
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Music: Ravi Shankar - "Dhun"
It took two world wars for European countries to realize that nationalism is a bit silly. Many other countries have yet to catch up. In his speech to the Israelites, Moshe shows how real nationalism comes from relentless questioning rather than blind obedience. When Hannah Arendt wrote that the Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann was not a monster but just "a bureaucrat," she was following in the footsteps of Socrates -- and Moshe.
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Music: Paul Robeson - "All Men are Brothers"
The Torah tells us not to "boil a baby cow in the milk of her mother." The Torah doesn't want us just to refrain from mixing dairy and meat. It also wants us to be more minimalistic in all areas of life. Our brains were not designed to multitask; when we keep our lives simple, we find calmness and joy. Goethe's art became far more elegant and soothing after his trip to Italy in 1786 when he saw the wisdom of simplicity in classical art. Meditation and Shabbat may be the ultimate minimalist activities.
Music: Mozart - "Piano Sonata No. 16, I."
When Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, law reached its pinnacle of glory. But unfortunately, law is not always so elevated. It can often be a swampy, hypocritical, grotesque affair. When we romanticize the ability of courts to bring about change, we make things too easy on ourselves. A court should be seen more as an "emergency room" than as the Parthenon. Franz Kafka was always careful to depict courtrooms as depraved places. In this week's parsha, the Torah warns us not to get too starry-eyed before the law.
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Music: Woody Guthrie - "Old Judge Thayer"
Our best thoughts often come from not-thinking. Our wisest actions come when we don't act. German philosopher Martin Heidegger advocated the concept of "Gelassenheit" in order to escape our addiction to thinking and willing. But Heidegger struggled to explain how to achieve Gelassenheit. The Torah already had the practical solution to Gelassenheit figured out. Every seven days, seven weeks, seven years: do nothing, sit, release, surrender. Paradoxically, when we do nothing, we are doing quite a lot. We are doing this strange thing called "yielding. "
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Music: Eluvium - "Calm of the Cast-Light Cloud"
WILL you listen to this Schrift episode?
Even though we may not feel the temptation to bow down to a statue of Zeus anymore, idol worship still creeps into our lives in sneaky ways. We have religious relationships, bordering on idolatry, with, say, love, success, sex, sports, evolution, even food. Yet, climate change has shown how it is the will which is our most dangerous and surreptitious foreign god. Mindfulness can teach us to appreciate our wills without being enslaved to them.
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Music: Rammstein - "Ich Will"
Moses pleads with God to let him into Israel. But God refuses. Instead of trying to explain away and rationalize away God's decision, might it be better to just acknowledge that this is sad, this is heartbreaking, this is a tragedy?
Our culture has forgotten how to process the tragic. We try to smooth things over with clichés and silver linings. The Ancient Greeks knew how to confront tragedy: by accepting it, reveling in it, exalting in it. They did so not through logic but through music, through the Greek Chorus of the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Music which does not contain shades of the tragic will not register with us, will sound superfluous and irritating. When he was with the Beatles, John Lennon's songs took listeners through the spectrum of human emotion. Yet, in his final album, Lennon forgot how to create the Dionysian music of the Ancient Greek theater.
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Music: The Beatles - "Her Majesty"
For 99.9% of human history, it was the parents who were revered, who knew things, and the children who were mocked, who were ignorant of all that was important. That all changed in Germany's Sturm und Drang movement in the 1770s and ts Romantic movement. These epochs cleverly depicted the youth generation as the visionaries and the parents as hapless folks who just didn't "get it."
Our culture readily latches on to narratives of cruel and clueless fathers with misunderstood and victimized sons. Yet, who are the sources of these narratives? The sons (i.e. Franz Kafka and Sigmund Freud). A bit of a biased account, no?
In this week's parsha, the Torah is at once revolutionary and conservative. Millennia before Sturm und Drang, the Torah would exalt the youth at the expense of the parents. And yet, the Torah also shows how generations can never be separated from one another, but are rather inevitably intertwined.
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Music: Mozart - "Don Giovanni: Ah! dov'è il perfido"
We don't take our word seriously anymore. We make promises all the time, knowing that we are not going to follow through on them. Sure, I'll get coffee with you (when hell freezes over). Sure, I'll read that book you've recommended (when pigs fly). Sure, I'll marry you until death do us part (or until I get bored).
In law, a contract doesn't require lawyers, a signature, or a written document. It just requires that two people verbally agree to something. Yet, nowadays, oral agreements have become a laughingstock. They used to be something sacred - when communities were smaller, when honor and duty were still esteemed.
In the parsha for this week, Moshe gives some of his most sage advice: if you say you're going to do something, then do it. Counter-intuitively, when we follow through on our promises, this doesn't make our lives more burdened, but rather, more free and more meaningful.
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Music: Georg Frideric Handel - "Zadok the Priest"
There is something a bit odd about New Year's Eve. Why are we celebrating rebirth, renewal, and a fresh start, when everything is cold, grey, and dead outside? It is not exactly an inspirational time to begin making resolutions.
It wasn't always this way. In Judaism, the year begins, not on Rosh Hashanah, as most people think, but actually at the dawn of spring. Many ancient cultures also celebrated the New Year not in January, but in what we today call "March."
The Hebrew calendar, unlike our modern calendar, is intimately connected with nature.
Goethe's early play Götz von Berlichingen (1774) shows how we have been tricked and deceived by the centralization of power. The poem "Mondnacht" (1835) by Joseph von Eichendorff shows, like the Hebrew Calendar, how, in order to connect with nature, we must stand in humility and wonder before her.
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Music: Robert Schumann - "Mondnacht"
Our minds want to serve us. But the problem is that they don’t always do such a good job. This is because of a mismatch between contemporary society and our brains, which evolved for the wild. In Kafka’s Zürau Aphorisms, he wrote that all thinking is just consolation, and therefore it is never true consolation. Thinking does not lead us to the Infinite. It tends to have a quicksand effect. To grasp monotheism in the ancient world, one needed to think differently. One needed to stop thinking such that God could enter. One needed to become stupid. Or as Walter Benjamin indicated, hope is for the fools.
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Music: Mozart - “Papageno”
The literary characters we most fall in love with are those who are flawed, imperfect, human, all-too-human. This tendency is one-thousand times more true with people in real life than with literary figures. Nobody wants to hang out with someone who is "perfect." And yet, society pressures us to wear a mask of innocence and perfection to the world. Ironically, it is "innocence" which threatens our popularity far more than our raw and dark sides. Franz Kafka's 1912 story "The Judgment" would elegantly demonstrate this idea. We want imperfection, not just with people, but also in art, particularly in music. Beethoven brilliantly discerned this. Moshe had been the image of perfection before God for decades. Yet, how did the Hebrews feel about him? When Moshe struck the rock, two times, he may have upset God, but he became much more popular with his people. Was God doing Moshe a favor?
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Music: Franz Schubert - "Auf dem Wasser zu Singen"
Nietzsche feared that the drive toward equality would cause people to become more mediocre. If you look at morning talk shows, you see how accurate Nietzsche's predictions were. We tend to get all teary-eyed whenever we hear the word "equality" mentioned, but might equality be a double-edged sword and a mask? Once upon a time, it was taken as a given that hierarchy and rank existed in a society, yet today the mere thought that anyone could be "better" than us is difficult to absorb. Kleist's novel Michael Kohlhaas showed how equality is often just a drive toward revenge. Korach, though wanting to be more privileged, still saw slavery as the land of Milk and Honey.
If you were to tell your doctor that laughter is the best medicine, your doctor would probably laugh at you, which is no small irony. Yet, when we laugh, we infuse our bodies with feelings of joy, relaxation, and relief. Believing in our own health and our own well-being can at times serve as a kind of medicine. This may be the real reason why the Hebrews lost their first attempt to conquer Canaan.
Just as believing in ourselves brings us health, so too does believing in our societies. When citizens begin to doubt and undermine their societies, punishment becomes more cruel and more public. This can be seen in the stoning of the man for breaking Shabbat.
Beethoven's attitude toward adversity his whole life was to demonize it, fight against it, try to conquer it. Yet, in his swan song, he seems to advocate joy as the greatest medicine of all.
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Music: Beethoven - "Symphony No. 9 IV. 'Ode to Joy'"
We tend to think that the more information we have about a person, the better we know that person. Yet, this is not the case. Just because we have spent our whole lives with "ourselves" does not mean we really "know" ourselves. To know oneself requires one to lose one's ego. When you lose your ego and know yourself, you will simultaneously be better able to connect with others and with God. In Hesse's 1922 novel Siddhartha, the emptying of the ego leads to self-knowledge and Oneness.
It is not a coincidence that the Torah describe Moses as the "most humble person on Earth" and also the only prophet God spoke to "mouth to mouth."
In Gustav Klimt's 1908 painting The Kiss, we have a pair of egoless lovers also speaking to each other "mouth to mouth."
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Music: Mahler - "Symphony No. 2 - II.iv. "Urlicht"
In the Torah, there is a law that if anyone touches a corpse, they need to go outside the camp for awhile, or they may infect other people with death.
When the Torah was written, it was simply obvious to everyone that death was bad and life was good.
Yet, this simple premise that "death = bad" and "life = good" has been forgotten in modern days. This is because modern "preachers of death" trick us into thinking that weakness, self-punishment, and guilt are signs of "progress" whereas strength and vivacity are indicators of "sin."
F.W. Murnau's 1922 film "Nosferatu" was about Dracula's visit to Germany to find victims into which he could sink his fangs. Yet, the victims of vampires are also complicit in the seduction process. Murnau, writing in the wake of Germany's loss in World War I, wanted to warn his countrymen to beware of modern-day vampires looking for vulnerable converts.
To recognize the preachers of death always lurking in our society, we must practice mindfulness of emotions meditation. Our emotions and feelings can teach us when we are receiving toxic messages far better than thinking and reasoning can.
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Music: Bach - "Toccata in D Minor"
Seinfeld was not a show about nothing. Rather, it was a show about trivialities, trifles, mundane occurrences. This is not nothing. Nothing, in fact, is a lot more complicated -- and, according to Kabbalah, a lot more holy.
One show which really may have been about nothing was Kafka's short story "The Hunger Artist," published in 1922.
Nothingness is not an empty white room, or a black void, or a nihilist's favorite buzzword. Rather, it is a concept which stretches the limits of human imagination.
If you can find nothingness, prepare to be whelmed, if not overwhelmed.
It is not a coincidence that it was in the desert, the realm of pure nothingness, where the ancient Hebrews formed their vast army to eventually conquer Israel.
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Music: Mozart - "Turkish Rondo"
Children figure out pretty quickly that even if they're bad they will still get Christmas presents from Santa Claus. So, why be good? Why follow the Mitzvot if God will not smite us? Or will He? Nah, He won't. Right?
Even if you don't believe that God will personally smite you for breaking Shabbat, perhaps the Mitzvot have their own logic, such that if we don't keep them, our personal well-being will suffer, or the Jewish people as a whole will bear the costs.
In Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov learned that if you break a moral law, morality itself will punish you through guilt. Yet, Woody Allen thought differently.
There may be another reason why we receive such an intimidating, haunting, harrowing warning this week in the Torah as to what will happen if we violate the commandments. Kafka's Josef K. helps us discern the answer.
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Music: Johnny Cash - "Cocaine Blues
We tend to think of greed and gluttony in financial and caloric terms respectively. And yet, it is possible to be greedy and gluttonous for just about anything in life. Paradoxically, one can even become greedy to not be greedy.
Goethe's Faust marked a turning point in literature as the play showed how previous sins like wealth, drunkenness, and debauchery, had lost their appeal to modern humans. And yet, these same "vices" simply assumed new form in the lusting for bookish knowledge, for Enlightenment, and even to live in the moment.
If we are greedy for the moment, we will remain just as unsatisfied as if we are greedy for some future state of happiness.
Achieving the moment does not happen overnight but through regular practice and cultivation.
The Torah provides a helpful tip on how to break out of the cycle of craving: leaving some of the harvest for the gleaners and leaving some bread on the Shabbat dinner table.
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Music: Eduoard Lalo - "Puisqu'on ne peut fléchir ... Vainement, ma bien aimée"
Is there really a difference between simile and metaphor? When Paul Simon sings "I am a rock," no one thinks he actually is a literal pebble on seashore. But then why does he not sing "I am like a rock" instead? In Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa isn't just "like" a bug, but actually "is" a bug. Yet we, as humans, are quick to transform Gregor back into a human, to the bug as just a "symbol" or an allegory for a human. Meanwhile, Paul Simon's actual rock and Kafka's actual bug get left behind in the metaphorical dust.
Ancient cultures were far more in tune with the inherent aliveness and lifeforce within all objects. While this may seem to be a pagan idea, it actually brings us closer to monotheism. Heidegger's 1950 essay "The Thing" encourages us to see objects as they really are--things which have their own "thingness." It may be that to treat passages from the Torah as only "symbolic" or "metaphorical" or "superstitious" is to castrate both them and ourselves in the process (though, this time, not literally -- don't worry).
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Music: Simon & Garfunkel - "Scarborough Fair"
Today, we tend to dismiss people who are overly concerned with what others think as being egotistical or weak or sensitive. But actually, caring what others think of us, wanting be liked by the group, was an absolutely crucial personality trait in ancient societies. Yet, this remains a difficult reality for us to swallow. Our society tends to glorify the people who stand out from the crowd, who welcome the hissing and booing of an audience, who don’t give a damn what others think. The legacy of Sturm und Drang and the Romantic hero is still very much with us today. When we go into a café and see the troubled man sitting alone in the corner, with long hair, John Lennon glasses, scribbling in his notebooks, what we are seeing is Werther’s progeny. The Torah is particularly sensitive to humans as inherently pack animals, animals that need each other, that need to be part of the group. But it’s by no means a given that every group will want to have us as a member. And yet, sometimes those societies which don’t want us are the same societies which we, perversely, so desperately wish to belong to. Theodor Herzl finally snapped out of automatized thinking to apply mindful self-compassion to his people.
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Music: Beethoven - "An die Ferne Geliebte"
Kant discovered that our minds are storytelling machines. We are masters at taking a limited set of data from the outside world and weaving this into a narrative. Yet, the narrative we end up telling ourselves often ends up not being a cute and endearing child's bedtime story but more like a scandalous drama or horror film. The storeis we tell ourselves often bring our deepest insecurities to the surface, as evidenced by Shakespeare's Tragedy, Othello. Aaron's reaction to the death of his two sons inside the Mishkan seems to indicate that we should not so quickly presume to connect the dots of what we perceive. Rather, we should mindfully observe our experiences rather than rushing to conclusions. Paradoxically, it may be that Moshe's advice to Aaron shows how stoically observing reality and telling ourselves the stories we want to hear are, in fact, one and the same.
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Music: Sigmund Romberg - "Golden Days"
You may not realize it, but each time you say "thank you," you are making a kind of mini-sacrifice. In this sense, you are not so different from ancient peoples who made animal sacrifices to the gods. What is "thank you" other than a momentary emptying of yourself in acknowledgement of a gift or favor you have received. The Torah's emphasis on animal sacrifices was also a reaction in the ancient world toward human sacrifices. The Torah wanted to say: we don't do this anymore. Rather, we sacrifice in a way which is ennobling and elevating. In our daily lives, we often conflate healthy sacrifices with unhealthy sacrifices. Like the Torah, Kafka's 1912 story The Metamorphosis shows how sacrifice can be both deadening and revitalizing.
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Music: The Smiths - "There is a Light that Never Goes Out"
Certain questions cannot be answered with mere logic and reason. When you try to interpret Kafka's literature, each time you answer one question, ten more appear in its place. The convoluted and cumbersome opening lines to Vayikra indicate that speaking directly to the Infinite is not going to be as simple as knocking on the door and being let inside. Romantic irony occurs when a text reflects back on itself and calls itself into question. The early German Romantic Friedrich Schlegel theorized that romantic irony allows a text to dwell in the Infinite, as it both undermines and affirms itself in one instant. While Kafka and the Torah may at times seem impenetrable, if we marvel at the romantic irony within them, they might just open up to us for a second a backdoor pathway to the eternal.
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Music: Coldplay - "Help is just around the Corner"
It is not an accident that some people feel they were born to be dentists, and others feel they were born to be professors. Nor is it an accident that some people want to have large families, while others wish to remain single for their entire lives. Our society has a lamentably oversimplified concept of natural selection. We think that our greatest drives are to survive and procreate. Yet, Darwin showed in 1859 that evolution works just as much on the group as on the individual level. We evolved not just for the survival of ourselves, but also for the survival of our species. This is why people have such a wide range of personalities and dream jobs; this variety allows the human species to flourish. Nietzsche once wrote that we should “become who we are.” Yet, what happens if we find ourselves displaced somewhere in which our dream job is no longer in existence? The wandering Hebrews may have an answer.
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Music: Vera Brezhneva – “доброе утро”
In order to understand the speed of light, Einstein had to think counterintuitively. He had to forget our typical notions of space and time. Einstein figured out that light behaves fundamentally differently from what we are used to experiencing. To understand God, we need to think similarly. The God of the Torah is highly anthropomorphized so that God can be understandable to the limits of the human mind. Yet, the Torah abounds with clues that God is, like the speed of light, beyond space and time. The practice of yoga, in its combination of the spiritual and the physical, allows for a kind of "yoking" between body and spirit, the temporal and the eternal.
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Music: Caribou - "Sun"
Dramatic irony occurs when we know something about a character's fate which the character himself does not know. The ability to predict the character's future fate takes audiences on emotional rollercoasters as we wish to jump out of our seats to help the character, but know we are powerless to do so. Yet, is it not the case that we view our own lives through the lens of dramatic irony all the time? We see ourselves not in the present, but as tiny specks on the vast spectrum of past and future. We extend this Weltanschauung not only to ourselves, but to the lives of others, and even to history. The Torah teaches us how to transcend this burdensome worldview.
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Music: Radiohead - "Morning Bell"
Why do hundreds of people travel from distant lands to see the Mona Lisa but then when they finally get there, their first act is to take out their cameras and snap a picture of it? Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay "On the Reproducibility of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" discusses how, in modern times, art can be reproduced on a massive scale. This technology causes copies of art, even if identical to the original work, to seem paltry in comparison to the original work, which retains its "aura." When Moses ascends Mount Sinai, the first thing God tells him is how to build a temple in the wilderness, known as the Mishkan. Yet, the instructions God gives are awfully tedious and allow for the temple to be easily copied. The Torah, read ironically, suggests that this "replacement" for God, we might say, lacks the "aura" of the original work. In a war between Art and God, God will always have the last word.
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Music: Led Zeppelin - "Kashmir"
We tend to think of suck-ups as just exasperating, but ultimately harmless, pests. In fact, they are the great movers and shakers of society. They parrot back the values of their bosses at the office. Over time, these values spread like a virus, and are no longer subjective values but just “normal beliefs.” The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci knew that, to change society, it was not enough to call for revolution, as Marx did. Rather, it was necessary to change culture itself. Immanuel Kant observed cultural change can only occur through relentless self-questioning and vigorous debate. Yet, our society is automatized; we are more keen to mimic behavior than to question it. As a result, we have come to oversimplify the concepts of freedom and slavery, thereby preventing us from learning from these ideas. The Torah shows how language should grappled with as something ambiguous and open to multiple meanings. Only then can we see slavery for what it really is.
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Music: Morrissey - "What Kind of People Live in These Houses?"
Why is it that people so often close themselves off to good advice? Why do people stubbornly refuse to meditate or consider controversial nutrition tips?
Moses was open to new ideas, and he took the advice of his father-in-law with graciousness.
Among the great German composers, Mendelssohn may have been too willing to take advice and yield his individuality, whereas Wagner was too egotistical and insular about his music.
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Music: Mahler - "Symphony No. 4, Fourth Movement"
Irony is more than just a literary device; the Zeitgeist of an age or the Weltanschauung of a people can be inferred by looking into their use of irony.
Our current age is so saturated with irony that we have plunged irony into the most advanced stages: into meta-irony, hyper-irony, and postmodern irony.
In his 1841 work, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard shows how toxic and nihilistic a force irony can be. Socrates used irony to prove to his fellow Athenians that they actually know nothing. Yet Socrates had nothing behind the curtain to offer them instead.
The Hebrews are quickly dissatisfied after they escape slavery, and their first complaint to Moses is drenched in irony. Coincidence?
The German Romantic Friedrich Schlegel saw Ironic Art as the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Yet, Hegel thought quite otherwise.
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Music: Smashing Pumpkins - "Bullet with Butterfly Wings"
Simpsons Clip: https://youtu.be/udJw-CzX7sA
In this week’s parsha, God takes the extraordinary decision of killing off every first-born being in Egypt in order to finally force the Pharaoh’s hand. These first-born beings include not just the Egyptian aristocracy, but also the peasants, the middle-class, even the animals. Yes, even the cute, innocent, first-born animals must die so that the Hebrews can be let free. At worst, God’s decision is a genocide. At best, it is an act of war.
What is the justification for this?
We can ask Hegel, who would have said that "the Owl of Minerva flies at dusk." We cannot know whether a revolution is good or bad until years afterward.
It is easy to start a revolution. It is not so easy to finish it.
To learn to live in the moment would be the equivalent of a revolution within ourselves. Are we ready for this transformation? Just as ready as the Hebrews were to leave Egypt.
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Music: Pink Floyd - "Run Like Hell"
Have you ever thought about the heart? I mean really thought about it? We have the word heartfelt, which we all immediately understand. Why don’t we have words for other organs? Why don’t we say kidneyfelt or brainfelt or liverfelt or gallbladderfelt?
It has been the trend in recent years to praise the toughness and almost ruthlessness of leaders. This is a trope that never seems to get old, it would seem. Ned Stark’s downfall came about because, essentially, he was too naïve, too gullible. We might say: his heart was too big. Nietzsche, too, uses the metaphor of the heart. He says that the heart of a leader must be “hard enough” for evil and for good.
The Egyptian Pharaoh, of course, was cold-hearted. We read again and again that the Pharaoh hardened his heart and wouldn’t concede to Moshe’s demands. However, in fact, if we read the original Hebrew of the Torah, it does not read that the Pharaoh hardened his heart. Actually, the Torah alternates between two words which are loaded with meaning and connotation.
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Music: Pink Floyd - "Breathe"
How do we handle uncomfortable questions? Do we ignore them and bottle them up, or do we turn toward them? In the Swiss-German writer Jeremias Gotthelf's novel The Black Spider, we witness how a society deals with threats to its perception of Christianity. Judaism is also not immune from questions of legitimacy. In his 1939 book, Moses and Monotheism, Freud posited that Moses was actually not a Hebrew but an Egyptian. Yet, Freud also believed that perceiving Moses as Egyptian could actually be a kind of gift to the Jewish people. Why? Meditation, and the concept of letting emotions, thoughts, and pain "be there," may provide the answer.
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Music: Khaled - "Sahra"
In the West, we tend to view thoughts on their own terms rather than as symptoms and reflections of the state of our body. Literary characters like Othello, George Costanza, Josef K., and Marie Weltstern, allowed a thought of doubt to become their realities. In the Torah, we see how characters like Jacob and Joseph naturally overcome doubt through cultivation of a strong inner core and a robust physical and mental health. It is not enough to tell a person to be more reasonable; you must get them to feel more reasonable.
The story of Joseph and his brothers represents a coming-of-age saga, predating the formal Bildungsroman of Goethe by thousands of years. Even though Joseph credits God for all of his success in life, the Torah seems to be hinting that we should see ourselves as most responsible for our happiness and prosperity. Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch shows that we would do better to connect with the earth and with the soil for our salvation than to make pleas to heaven.
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Music: Nas - "Nothing Lasts Forever"
There is a moment during a tennis match where the ball hits the net and hangs in the air for an instant. In this moment, the ball seems to decide for itself whether to go forward or go backward. "Luck" seems to decide -- but what is luck? This phenomenon of the tennis ball occurs in our dreams as well: we can dream about pretty much anything. We have no control over our dreams; they proceed irregardless of our intentions. Joseph said that dreams come from God. Freud said that dreams come from the unconscious. Yet, it may be possible, that both Freud and Joseph were saying the same thing without knowing it. Moreover, it may be that, like in Franz Kafka's fiction, the dreaming mind and the conscious mind are one and the same as well.
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Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFeTTgl_wAI&t=11s
Music: Smashing Pumpkins - "Siamese Dream"
Ironically, opposites often turn out to be nearly identical. Religion and atheism, life and death, infinity and the moment, nihilism and transcendence. According to Thomas Mann, when Joseph and Jacob sat together in Jacob's tent, they celebrated a Passover seder. Does this view represent the theology of the Talmud or the secularism of biblical archaeology? Perhaps it can be both, and more. From Nietzsche's Zarathustra, we learn that, to arrive at Truth, a person must hold two contradictions simultaneously together, and artfully use one to triumph over the other.
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Music: Arnold Schönberg - "Mondestrunken"
Why is it that our negative and painful thoughts are most likely to stick around? To what lengths will the ego to protect itself? How should we handle the lust for revenge? In this episode, I discuss the revenge which Simon and Levi took when a young prince had sex with their sister Dinah. When confronted with feelings for revenge, we often fall back on ingrained clichés from Christian morality that we should turn the other cheek and love our enemies. Yet, as Nietzsche argued, the real way to achieve revenge is to literally forget the wound to the ego. This can be accomplished through mindfulness of thoughts meditation and through living a life of such abundance and vigor that insults effortlessly roll off your back.
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Music: Nas - "Ether"
Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFeTTgl_wAI&t=6s
The words romance, Romantic, and Roman are intimately connected and yet easily misunderstood. With Jacob's love for Rachel, he could have inspired thousands of future romantic comedies. He also seems to have been the first "knight" of medieval courtly love poetry. Yet, the Torah shows that fertility may be a more important value than love or romance. The perils of the over-Romantic would be further shown in Goethe's breakthrough novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.
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Freud, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky observed that we are not masters of our own house. We are guided by deep, unconscious forces, which we are unaware of. Sometimes the unconscious leads us astray, but other times it serves as our most trusted adviser. In this week's Parsha, we see how Isaac's unconscious allowed him to choose the right son to be the heir for Israel. In our hyper-rationalistic society, it is critical that we practice yoga and meditation to communicate with our unconscious.
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Music: Brian Eno - "Another Green World"
Sample Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvuTFG1qCk8
Martin Buber's 1923 work Ich und Du distinguishes between "I/You" and "I/It" relationships. The modern world pressures us to see everything as "it" -- something to be used for personal gain and to be exploited. It is only when we see others as "You" -- as subjects rather than objects -- that we can feel completed and connected with the Universe. To see others, whether they be plants, animals, or humans, as "You" allows us to connect with the ultimate "You"--that of God. God is not a man with a long beard in the sky but Being and Nature and the Eternal itself.
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Music: Rammstein - "Du Hast"
Lovingkindness / Meta Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLt-E4YNVHU
What does it mean to be a "nice guy"? Where does morality come from? These are not trivial questions. Could it be that Abraham had more in common with Odysseus than with Jesus? Why are we so drawn to Michael Jordan, who could be mean, domineering, and brash? And finally, the important distinction between compassion through overflowing abundance and compassion through pity.
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Music: Kendrick Lamar - "Humble"
The modern world limits us, both our bodies and our minds. Yoga teaches us how new body positions (asanas) can allow us to embody new selves. Modernity has also pressured us to view our sense of self in binary terms: we are either animal or human, strong or weak, East or West. Hermann Hesse's buddhist novel Der Steppenwolf allows us to visualize that there are thousands of selves within us. Finally, we learn that even Abraham had multiple selves.
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Music: The Beatles - "The Inner Light"
In what is actually our third episode (the first episode is "episode 0"), we meet Noah, famous for steering a mighty ark through a torrential apocalypse, but less well-known for his work on a vineyard after the flood. We discover how both Apollo and Utilitarianism have, unfortunately, largely eclipsed the Dionysian and the Kantian in our society. We finally ask whether we may be constructing a new Tower of Babel without even realizing it.
steventobyweinberg.com
IG: Stevehead0001
Music: Pink Floyd - "Atom Heart Mother"
In this episode, we explore why Adam and Eve suddenly became aware that they were naked after eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Nietzsche's loathing of shame provides a new way with which to view traditional notions of morality.
steventobyweinberg.com
IG: stevehead0001
Music: Bob Dylan - "Gates of Eden"
At first glance, the death of Moses just short of the Gates of Israel seems to be a cruel and unfair denouement for Judaism's greatest prophet. Yet, with the help of the Jena School, we can see Moses' "untimely" death as the ultimate gift and the pathway to the Eternal.
steventobyweinberg.com
IG: Stevehead0001
Music: Jimi Hendrix - "Little Miss Strange"