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第 270 期·中文精讀

大衛·沃爾普：猶太教

David Wolpe: Judaism

拉比講述猶太教的核心信仰、經典與傳統，以及古老智慧對當代生活的意義。

大衛·沃爾普··存檔文稿·精讀約 1.7 萬字 · 閱讀 37 分鐘
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猶太教對"上帝是誰"這個問題，給不出一個統一答案。中世紀的邁蒙尼德（Maimonides）是這套傳統裡最重要的哲人，他的說法是：你沒法說上帝是什麼，只能說上帝不是什麼。可同一套傳統裡又寫著，上帝近得就像你的嘴和耳朵之間的距離，你說什麼，上帝都能聽見。

這兩個答案隔著一千年互相瞪著，而它們都屬於猶太教。

拉比大衛·沃爾普（David Wolpe）在 Lex Fridman 的播客裡聊了三個多小時，從上帝聊到自由意志，聊到機器人、大屠殺、婚姻和《死亡否認》。那種"兩個答案同時成立"的質地，貫穿了整場對話。

開場那段獨白

這期播客錄製於 2022 年 3 月 16 日之前三週，正文開始時戰爭已經爆發。Lex 在開場說了一段很私人的話。

他出生在蘇聯，根在烏克蘭和俄羅斯，從今天到死是美國人，這三件事他都自豪。他這段時間跟難民說話，跟朋友說話，跟所愛的人說話，在烏克蘭、俄羅斯、波蘭、斯洛伐克、摩爾多瓦、羅馬尼亞，也在英國、德國、加拿大、印度、中國和美國。有人在哭，有人在生氣，有人困惑，有人害怕。他在私下盡力幫忙。

他說他譴責普京對烏克蘭的入侵，同時也譴責世界超級大國發動的許多軍事幹預，包括他熱愛的美國。二戰後美國干預過四十多個國家，多項研究認為美國對數量難以想象的平民死亡負有責任。他譴責所有無謂發動戰爭的元首，看著年輕男女在自己點燃的火裡燒掉。

他還說了這個播客打算做什麼。他想探索人性的全部複雜和美好，因為他相信每個人身上都有善和惡的潛能，而對話是理解這件事最好的方式之一。為此他必須去見世界上最鼓舞人心的人，也必須去見最有爭議的人。

他有句話說得挺硬："跟觀點截然不同的人坐在同一個房間裡，會讓媒體和網際網路很方便地剪出片段來攻擊我，說我拿了某一方的錢。我沒辦法為自己辯護，只能說我沒拿任何人的錢。"他引用吉卜林的詩《如果》：如果你能和人群交談而保持操守，或者與國王同行而不失平易，如果敵友都無法傷害你，如果所有人都算數，但沒有人算得太多。

"所有人對我來說都一樣算數"，這句話他說是真正想活出來的東西。

他還道歉了。為過去談普京、澤連斯基這些話題時不夠鄭重而道歉，說自己為在這些題目上的詞不達意感到羞愧，會努力做得更好。開玩笑的時候要讓人看出來是玩笑，希望還真的好笑；嚴肅的時候要說得謹慎、嚴謹。

最後他說他喜歡幽默，尤其是黑色幽默，喜歡犯傻，不把自己太當回事，會繼續冒這個險，偶爾穿些古怪的衣服來慶祝人生的荒誕。他不需要同意一個人才能跟他一起笑。"幽默也許能拯救我們這個小小的混亂文明。"

上帝不能被理解，只能被呼喚

猶太教有三千年歷史，跨越無數國家和語言，所以它連簡單問題都不給單一答案，大問題更不會。一神教這個概念是猶太教帶進世界的，這並不因此就是一個統一的概念。

邁蒙尼德說上帝是全能的、仁慈的、無形的、無法想象的。他甚至說，你只能強調上帝不可知。可二十世紀的哲學家赫舍爾（Heschel）說，上帝是一位有哀憐（pathos）的上帝，一位有深沉感受的上帝。這樣的話如果讓邁蒙尼德聽見，大概會起一身雞皮疙瘩。翻聖經看看，上帝總是在後悔，總是帶著人類的情緒。

於是有了那個張力：超越與臨在。上帝無比遙遠，同時無比貼近。塔木德里的說法是，上帝近得像你的嘴和耳朵的距離。你說了什麼，上帝就聽見什麼。

有觀眾問沃爾普，那人類能不能靠近一點？能不能用畫面去接近上帝，比如給上帝一個性別，一個老人在天上的形象？

他說，這幾乎無法避免，可你最終要試著超越它。猶太會堂剛讀過金犢的故事。人從埃及出來，見慣了異教世界裡的偶像。異教徒並沒有真把偶像當成神，偶像是神在視覺上的代表。然後來了一個觀念，說上帝根本不可能被視覺化。這東西挑戰人類理解力的邊界，甚至把它撐破。

另一位神學家布伯（Martin Buber）有句話他很喜歡：上帝不能被表達，只能被稱呼。你可以對上帝說話，你可以感受到某種上帝感，可你沒法開始理解上帝、認識上帝。早期猶太哲學家約瑟夫·卡斯皮（Yosef Kaspi）說得更狠：要認識上帝，我得先成為上帝。

那人類就完蛋了嗎？沃爾普說不用，因為你不需要理解上帝，你需要的是跟上帝有一段關係，這兩件事不一樣。

他打了個類比，說這個類比不太完美：你身邊有些人永遠是個謎，你自己對你也是個謎。你可能愛一個人五十年，他還是會說出一句讓你意外的話。我們都被關在自己的腦子裡。一個孩子第一次說"我"，我們管這叫個體化，可它真正的意思是：我現在知道了，我和其他所有人的心智是隔開的。

跟上帝的關係反而更親密。你可以相信你被上帝所知，你可以跟上帝有關係，儘管你沒法認識上帝，就像你沒法認識別人一樣。有人會說，好的關係就是應該不斷被對方驚到，你不想把對方完全摸清楚。而上帝創造的世界，就是不斷在驚到人。

不過被知道這件事本身是可怕的。沃爾普提到希欽斯的一句話：上帝比朝鮮更專制，因為它在你死後還繼續。被上帝注視這個念頭，在你心裡的上帝是一個不愛人的上帝時，是很恐怖的。

你沒法在辯論裡贏希欽斯

沃爾普和希欽斯（Christopher Hitchens）有過多次公開辯論，也是朋友。他們分歧很大，可他說希欽斯是個了不起的人，而且金句頻出，比如上面那句朝鮮。

他從希欽斯身上學到的一件事是：你在辯論裡贏不了他。原因之一是他有一副英國男中音，有現成的機鋒。

你沒法戰勝笑聲。你的論證更好也沒用，只要他的俏皮話更好，他就贏。（大衛·沃爾普）

有一次他們辯論自由意志，希欽斯說，我選擇相信自由意志。全場笑。可這根本算不上論證。

更讓他真心喜歡這個人的，是另一件事。兩人從洛杉磯到聖地亞哥，一輛加長轎車坐了三個小時。

整整三個小時，他說我們就是不能聊宗教。於是我們聊文學，他給我上了一長堂關於威士忌的課。他是不知疲倦的。（大衛·沃爾普）

沃爾普寫過幾篇關於他的悼文。其中一篇開頭引了歷史學家基思·托馬斯（Keith Thomas）的話：通往不朽有兩條路，做出值得記住的事，或者說出值得記住的事。按這個標準，希欽斯兩條都做到了。他跑遍全世界的危險地帶，知道從吉隆坡到貝魯特到洛杉磯每一家最好的酒吧。他可以整夜喝酒，寫一篇兩千字關於葉芝詩歌的文章，然後睡覺。波士頓那場辯論之前，他在酒吧裡說，來喝一杯。沃爾普說我不打算在跟你辯論之前喝酒，你瘋了嗎。希欽斯說，就喝杯啤酒，那是水。

他也影響了沃爾普的看法。"宗教讓人變好"這個論點，沃爾普本來就有疑慮，後來的多場辯論讓他更確信，這個說法的複雜度遠超他願意接受的量級。這個論點本身談不上錯，但要論證清楚，比想象中難得多。

無神論者裡的宗教人格

沃爾普跟不少無神論者辯論過，他說他對每個人看法都不一樣。

薩姆·哈里斯（Sam Harris）在他看來有一種宗教人格。哈里斯大概不會喜歡"宗教"這個詞，他會說自己的靈性純粹基於物質，但他對冥想的態度、對佛教的欣賞，身上有很深的東西在尋求。

希欽斯是另一回事。沃爾普知道自己這麼說會讓一些希欽斯的粉絲不高興：他不覺得希欽斯是個隱秘的信徒，一點都不。但他覺得，希欽斯那股激情，很大程度上是被宗教在這個世界上採取的那些形式激怒了。等他把智識上的榴彈炮瞄準了目標，他發明新論證的樂趣太大，以至於有時候被自己的雄辯和智識覆蓋範圍帶著跑。

比如那本書名《宗教毒害一切》，沃爾普認為他是故意起得那麼挑釁的，好讓他能去捍衛一個顯然站不住的命題。

真正概括希欽斯的詞是"生命之樂"。這個人熱愛生活的一切表現形式，而論證一個別人相信的東西是錯的，是他最大的快樂之一。

女兒問：你怎麼才做

沃爾普做過的爭議決定裡，影響最大的是開始主持同性婚禮。

他所在的會眾群裡政治光譜很分裂，來源也分裂：有很多來自中東、來自伊朗的波斯裔猶太人，很多來自以色列的，一些來自墨西哥，還有大批在洛杉磯長大的。他越來越多地遇到一種情況：有男人坐在他辦公室裡說，這是我唯一能愛上的一類人。那我的宗教裡怎麼可以沒有我的位置？

他說這跟猶太人和非猶太人通婚是兩回事。通婚那道題你至少可以去找一個猶太人。同性戀這道題沒有替代方案。

決定之前他先做了一件事。他給女兒寫了封信。女兒當時大概十歲、十一歲，現在二十多歲。

我說，親愛的，明天你去學校，有人可能會說你爸爸的壞話，我希望你有個心理準備。她問為什麼。我說，因為我要開始主持同性婚禮了。她一臉疑惑地看著我說，那你怎麼才做？（大衛·沃爾普）

他說她臉上的表情，就像他剛才宣佈"我要開始把金髮的人許配給棕發的人"。她完全不理解這為什麼會是個問題。而他說，那恰恰就是答案。

他承認自己在這件事上做對了一件、做錯了一件。

做對的是，他等到那些反對最強烈的社群裡，已經有足夠多人家的孩子出櫃了。這樣別的父母來找他時，他能說，你不是一個人，你可以去找這個人聊。他宣佈之後，果然有一批孩子當場出櫃，對爸媽說，拉比都這麼說了，我想讓你們知道我是同性戀。

做錯的是，他講的課不夠多，人準備得不夠。後來那場爆炸裡有一部分是純粹的震驚，他本該準備得更充分。

講的時候他沒有用經院論證。他知道反對者的理由根本不屬於經院論證，所以他講的是感受：對上帝造物的尊重，對別人處境的關心。他反覆對人們強調，沒法告訴世界你是誰、甚至沒法告訴父母你是誰，這件事有多痛苦。而性取向在一個人身上不是無關緊要的部分，它是核心。

用《托拉》來批判《托拉》

爭議中有人試圖論證《托拉》並不禁止同性關係，也有人拿著經文說它明確禁止。沃爾普的立場是另一個方向：不管經文怎麼說，我們對性別和性取向的理解，已經超過了古代世界所能理解的程度。

他的方法論叫做用《托拉》來批判《托拉》。經文字身給了你一套理解工具，你拿這套工具去評估它自己的一些主張。他說猶太教一直都在這麼幹。塔木德里的拉比們明顯改過、增過、擴過、減過經文裡的東西。

他在《為什麼信仰重要》裡引過惠特曼的話：要有偉大的書，必須先有偉大的讀者。一本書要在幾代人之間保持力量，它就不能只有一個意思。經文像偉大的詩，你沒法把它翻譯成別的話而保留它意義的全部。

所以他每週給《耶路撒冷郵報》寫托拉專欄。每次翻開書看別人怎麼說，讓它發酵。他說你會發現你進入了一場進行了幾千年、參與者都是了不起心智的對話，它不斷長出新的洞見。為什麼人們還在寫情詩？我們早該把愛情搞明白了。他又打了個類比：如果有一種減肥法真的有用，世界上就只會有一本減肥書。

摩西為什麼摔碎了石板

沃爾普有一個星期六的佈道講摩西。摩西下山，看見金犢，把石板摔了。他說，如果摩西坐下來一會兒，他大概就不會摔。

即時反應永遠是憤怒。而我們的時代把即時反應永久留在網上。更麻煩的是，一旦你說出口，你就更難回頭。你沉默一兩天，你還能退；你一旦寫下"你乾的事很糟糕"，再寫"對不起，我不該這麼說"，就難了。

這裡還有一層機制，沃爾普說得很準。

很多對立，與其說是不願意向對手讓步，不如說是不願意跟自己身後的人決裂。（大衛·沃爾普）

你不想背叛你的部落，因為那樣你自己人就會不高興。這也許比立場之爭更難解。

超級碗那張照片

2022 年初，洛杉磯縣要求學齡兒童在校戴口罩，他學校裡所有孩子都戴著，很多家長極度不滿。然後他去看了超級碗。弗蘭克·倫茨（Frank Luntz）給了他一張票。七萬人的場子裡，他大概看到兩個人戴口罩。

他沒多想，這當然是他自己的疏忽。他拍了一張自己不戴口罩的照片發了出去。

很多人說好，很多人暴怒。他說讓他覺得有教育意義的，是憤怒的形式。沒有一個人私信他說，我覺得這個想法不好，你應該想想。全都是公開的：你是個偽君子，你是個小丑，你是個白痴，你怎麼能幹這種事，這是恥辱。

他把評論留著沒刪，只刪了真正下流的。他不想刪掉照片假裝這件事沒發生，因為它的確發生了，他確實做了。他說他一直把評論留著，一是讓別人看見，二是提醒自己做過什麼。

他沒在社交媒體上回應，因為他知道自己沒法在那種格式裡把話說清楚。他等到佈道，講十五分鐘，還破例釋出了文字稿。他從來不發文字稿，因為他從來是看著筆記甚至不看筆記講話的。這次他覺得很重要，得有個文字讓人自己去看。

佈道就兩點。

第一，他真的覺得很抱歉，他傷害了這些人，而且他的行為和這些人希望他做的樣子之間存在矛盾。他還在佈道里加了一句沒寫在別處的話：有些人就是不喜歡看到一個拉比出現在超級碗上。你應該去做"拉比該做的事"。

第二，我們必須比這更好地表達憤怒和失望。一部分原因是，你衝一個人吼，得不到你想要的結果，那個人不會因此意識到自己做了什麼。

最疼的一件事是一封信。一位基督教牧師寫道，我一直那麼欽佩猶太人，我不敢相信他們能這麼殘忍，尤其對一位拉比。沃爾普說他當時想，他不希望自己的會眾在世界上被看成這個樣子。而且那些留言裡，一部分來自他的會眾，很多並不來。

他在佈道裡講了摩西摔碎的石板。經文沒說那兩塊碎石板後來怎麼樣了，可拉比們說了：它們和第二套完好的石板一起被放在約櫃裡，一起抬著走。我們都有破碎，社群和個人都有，尤其是現在。我們得學著給彼此空間，允許對方犯錯、破碎、受傷。

然後他又說了一件很多人不愛聽的事：給空間的結果是你自己也好受。在網上展現同理心和善意，你一週後感覺會更好；在網上發一條負面的、原則性的宣告，你一週後感覺會糟得多。這幾乎無一例外。所以如果你在意自己感覺好不好，第一反應就先善良一點，先共情一點。

事情後來平息了。最好的一個反應發生在佈道結束後。一個男人走上前，對他說：我有四個詞給你。沃爾普心裡一緊，問是什麼。對方說：你改變了我的想法。

他說，走到一個人面前當面說出這句話，需要極大的勇氣。他當了二十五年拉比，之前還教了十年，他仍然有太多東西要學。

托拉、聖經、古蘭經

希伯來聖經是三層的。第一層是托拉五經。第二層是歷史書和先知書，撒母耳記、列王紀、士師記，以賽亞、耶利米、阿摩司、以西結。第三層叫聖錄，詩篇、箴言、約伯記、以斯帖記、但以理書、傳道書這些。合起來叫塔納赫（Tanakh），就是 Torah、Neviim、Ketuvim。有時候人們把整個希伯來聖經也叫托拉，純粹是為了把人搞糊塗，嚴格說托拉指那五卷。

新約，猶太人不承認是聖書，只把它當成另一個宗教的書。沃爾普有時會對基督徒說，為了幫你們真正理解這件事：耶穌對猶太教的宗教意義，大致相當於穆罕默德對基督教的意義。耶穌是猶太人，可他成了另一個宗教的創立者。從宗教角度看，耶穌對猶太教沒有意義。

他補了一句：耶穌說過很多漂亮的話，也說過一些我不太喜歡的。"離開你的父母來跟隨我"，作為宗教模型他不喜歡。基督徒會說他是沒讀懂，那也沒關係，猶太人和基督徒解讀自己的文字本來就會在不同時代用不同方式。

古蘭經他讀得不那麼熟。他說他得用一個自己找不到更好替代的說法：好幾處，它跟托拉有大量重合的故事，只是講得不一樣。猶太人會說，這是因為穆罕默德從猶太人那裡聽到這些故事，還聽到了米德拉什（Midrash，拉比對經文的解釋），然後寫下來。穆斯林會說，猶太人弄錯了，穆罕默德來糾正記錄，講出真正的故事。

三者共同的東西是一神教。基督教因為有三位一體稍微複雜一點，可隨著它發展，它明確地呈現自己、也認為自己是嚴格的一神教。

基督教的節日是上帝生命裡的事件

語言的地位不太一樣。基督教裡的話不全是耶穌的話，是新約作者的話。新約裡沒有一本書是由見過耶穌本人的人寫的。有些文字連原始語言都不確定。

希伯來聖經的傳統說法是，希伯來語是"聖言"（Lashon HaKodesh），是上帝對摩西說話用的語言，所以每個詞的精確性都有無限的解讀空間。摩西是按上帝的口述寫下的。這是傳統看法，還有其他看法，可這是傳統看法。

沃爾普說，猶太教和基督教最大的一個差別在這裡：基督教有理想的一生，猶太教沒有理想的一生。猶太教有一本理想的書。

基督教的節日全是上帝生命中的事件：降生、受難、復活。猶太教的節日全是人民生命中的事件，比如從奴役中解放，或者人民跟上帝之間的事，比如贖罪日。猶太教裡沒有哪個節日是上帝生命中的事件，因為在猶太教裡上帝沒有傳記。上帝是永恆的，上帝從未降臨人間。

出埃及記的歷史真實性，構不成信仰的基礎

二十一年前的逾越節，沃爾普講過一句話，成了他最著名的爭議之一："聖經描述出埃及的方式，不是它發生的方式，如果它真的發生過的話。"

他的立場是這樣的：他相信背後有一個歷史核心。理查德·埃利奧特·弗裡德曼（Richard Elliott Friedman）在《出埃及記》裡可能說對了，走的可能是利未人。可聖經不是歷史書。他不相信有十災，不相信分紅海，不相信有六十萬男人被帶出埃及。六十萬男人意味著兩百萬人，真有兩百萬人，光站隊就能從以色列一直排到埃及。

那天佈道他真正想讓人接受的東西跟歷史無關。他想讓人接受的是：出埃及的歷史真實性，構不成猶太信仰的基礎。

他說神話是那種"也許沒有發生過、但永遠在發生"的東西。他當時對著一群有很多伊朗裔的會眾說：你們在自己的人生裡經歷過出埃及的真相。有一個政權想要毀滅你們，你們在它得手之前奇蹟般地逃了出來。

所以問題不在究竟有沒有擊殺長子。問題在：上帝會不會拯救？上帝在古代拯救過猶太人嗎？上帝在現時代拯救過人嗎？信仰的問題比事實的問題深得多。他也不打算指望《托拉》給他科學。

科學給對話貢獻事實，也改變我們身邊的現實。你在 iPhone 上讀塔木德，它改變你做這件事的氣氛，可那些智慧、人生指引、與超越者的連線，科學不給。他說，你可以按托拉活著，可你沒法治按生物學活著。

自由意志需要一個非物質的信念

沃爾普相信自由意志。理由相當直接。

如果我們是徹底的生物性存在，如果我們沒有選擇自己的基因，也沒有選擇自己的環境，那麼自由選擇就沒有存在的空間。他反覆在那場辯論裡問這個問題，沒得到答案，因為他認為答案不存在。徹底的唯物主義者手裡，自由意志是不可能的。可能會有隨機性，可隨機性不是自由意志，隨機性就是隨機性。

所以他認定，要有自由意志，你必須先有一個精神性的、非物質的信念。這也是他相信自由意志的理由。

哈里斯走得更遠：自由意志是幻覺，自由意志的幻覺也是幻覺。我們連"感覺到自己有選擇"這件事都沒有，說自由意志就像說河裡的水流有選擇一樣。

哈里斯還講過一段很坦率的話。他聽了沃爾普和埃裡克·韋恩斯坦（Eric Weinstein）的那期播客，說他從中學到了一些在他自己跟沃爾普的對話裡從沒學到的東西，因為他沒辦法讓沃爾普不受挑戰地丟擲那些沒有根據的斷言，而 Lex 就是讓它們過去。沃爾普覺得這話有道理：哈里斯很難進行一場不激起他對宗教之害的真實怒火的對話。

他說哈里斯和希欽斯都有一種本事，把對宗教的輕蔑跟坐在他們面前的那個人分開。

韋恩斯坦、彼得森和薛定諤的上帝

沃爾普跟韋恩斯坦也聊過。他說韋恩斯坦對猶太傳統有很深的理解。彼得森他不認識，讀過也評過，他說榮格派在他們的基本進路上就相信神話是世界的運作方式，所以跳到上帝那裡並不遠，可中間還是有段距離。

被問"你到底信不信上帝"，韋恩斯坦這類人通常不舒服回答。他們可能說"不信"，可就是不願意回答那個問題。他們願意像一個上帝存在的人那樣生活。

沃爾普的判斷是：我覺得他信上帝，同時也不信上帝，像某種量子系統在震盪。薛定諤的上帝。

他說韋恩斯坦大概會同意艾利·維塞爾（Elie Wiesel）的說法：一個猶太人可以對上帝憤怒，可以不信上帝，但不允許對上帝冷漠。

他還解釋了一個外人常常搞不懂的差別。猶太教是宗教家庭，不是宗教。你出生就是猶太人。他說明天我說我不信這一套了，我還是猶太人。基督教不一樣，明天我信耶穌，我就是基督徒，明天我不信了，我就不是了。

可他說，長期看，很難在沒有"源頭在我們之外"這種信念的情況下，把這套東西穿過一代又一代人。韋恩斯坦在這裡是獨特的。

苦難、自由意志和隨機性

這是整場對話裡最難的部分。

為什麼世界上有苦難？為什麼有惡？如果有一個關心我們的上帝？

沃爾普先給了一個假設：如果一切都是原始機器人，那不會有苦難，可也不會有成長。而成長意味著選擇。

他說過一句讓人不舒服的話：大屠殺提出的神學問題，和一個人在洛杉磯街頭被槍殺提出的問題完全一樣，只是規模大得不可思議，問題本身是同一個。上帝，你為什麼允許一些人對另一些人做壞事？

答案只能是要麼你允許人有自由意志，要麼不允許。你不能說，我給所有人自由意志，但納粹除外。柬埔寨人可以殺彼此，盧安達人可以殺彼此，納粹不行。這個邏輯說不通。

這只是一塊拼圖，而且這塊拼圖在真正面對苦難時是猥褻的。他說得很直：當一個人正在受苦，"拉比說上帝給了人自由意志"，這話就是殘忍的。

第二塊拼圖是自然苦難。孩子生來有病，地震，火山。他認為在世界裡，苦難必須是隨機的。如果只有好事發生在好人身上，所有人都會去做好人，可那樣"做好人"就沒了道德內容。唯一能讓"做個好人"具有道德內容的方式是：我知道我可以過非常正直的一生，仍然遭遇非常糟糕的事。

那麼結論就有點殘酷。他過得好，原因不在他有多好，只在他幸運。幸運這件事帶來的東西是巨大的責任，跟罪疚感沒關係：研究歷史的教訓，講述那些沒那麼幸運的人的故事，從中汲取足夠的智慧。

身體為什麼讓人不舒服

高中時父親鼓勵他讀了一本書，歐內斯特·貝克爾（Ernest Becker）的《死亡否認》（The Denial of Death）。他說這本書至今仍是他讀過最深刻的作品之一。

貝克爾讓他相信，我們社會所做的很多事情，都是在迴避直面自己的必死。

為什麼關於身體的一切都讓人不舒服？除了眼淚，從你身體裡出來的東西，要麼有點噁心，要麼非常噁心。為什麼非得這樣？為什麼吃和性，所有身體性的活動，都裹著那麼多象徵？餐桌禮儀到底是什麼？是我們不像動物那樣吃東西，因為我們不想像動物那樣吃東西。而性身上的象徵性最多。

貝克爾的回答是：任何提醒你"你是一具身體"的東西，因為身體會死，會腐爛，會被蟲子吃掉。你不想想這件事，於是你否認它。

沃爾普說，宗教的一部分是對自己必死的直面，同時也帶有某種超越，因為其中有一部分是永恆的。具體是什麼，他不知道。

關於死後，他說他並不比別人知道更多，可有兩件事可以說。

第一，所有關於死後的圖景都是愚蠢的。馬克·吐溫在《來自地球的信》裡說，我們要躺在綠色的草地上聽豎琴。你活著的時候連五分鐘都受不了這事，卻覺得死後能永遠這樣幹下去會幸福。

第二，他很喜歡一個在關於死亡與哀悼的書裡讀到的寓言。一對雙胞胎待在子宮裡，一個相信外面有生命，一個不信。不信的那個說，這是我們唯一見過的世界，唯一知道的世界，你為什麼覺得外面還有東西？現在想象相信的那個出生了。在子宮裡，他的兄弟在哀悼一場死亡；在外面，所有人都在慶祝一個新生。

這個世界是一個驚喜，那下一個世界為什麼不能也是個驚喜？（大衛·沃爾普）

至於永恆，他說上帝被設想為永恆的，所以人的心智會被往那個方向推，儘管這東西完全無法揣度。他喜歡布萊克的句子：在一粒沙裡看見永恆。一個真正快樂的瞬間感覺像永恆，那是強度，不是長度。可時間不凍結。有人說你一點沒老，你看一張舊照片，就知道那是客氣話。

一個青春期無神論者是怎麼變成拉比的

高中時沃爾普是個相當堅定的無神論者。他愛伯特蘭·羅素（Bertrand Russell），認為他是"磅對磅"最好的無神論者，文筆機智清透。他當時把能找到的羅素的書都讀了。

他有一個理論：為什麼青春期的男孩喜歡斯波克先生和福爾摩斯？因為一進入青春期，很多人對自己的身體有大量不適感，於是我們喜歡"我們只是大腦"這個想法。他說他當時就是這樣。我想當一臺思考機器，我不想有身體，因為我的身體讓我不舒服，我有一堆控制不住的衝動和傾向。羅素正合適。

他父親就是拉比，做了一件極其聰明的事：給他買了幾本羅素的書。意思是，我不怕他。

然後是夏令營的那個下午。他坐在門廊上讀羅素，一個拉比走過來問他在讀什麼。他十六七歲，正憋著要吵架，說：伯特蘭·羅素。那人說，我很高興你在讀他。他說真的嗎，為什麼。那人問他多大，然後說：我寧願你長大以後超越他，而不是長大以後變成他。

後來他開始讀羅素的生平。那些理性沒有保護他。多段婚姻，無休止的出軌，互相不說話的家人。他由祖父母帶大，因為父母早逝。了不起的一生，可談不上幸福的一生。

於是他開始覺得，也許有信仰的人身上有的東西，羅素沒看到。他遇到越來越多這樣的人。他說自己走向信仰從來不是一個邏輯決定，更像心的開啟：這個世界遠超出他的心智慧捕捉的範圍，他是摸索著走向上帝的。

他還提到拉比 Nachman of Bratslav 說自己是"月亮人"，信仰有陰晴圓缺。他說自己也是，有時候多一些，有時候少一些。感覺更豐富的時刻，信仰更強。

猶太教最美的地方

他心裡的答案是：它有幽默和機鋒，可它認真對待生命，認真對待靈魂。每個人都真心相信這很重要，我們很重要，我們所做的很重要。

他說在一個年輕人普遍覺得自己不重要的世界裡，這是極有力的資訊。

我想對 TikTok 上每一個三十歲以下的年輕女性說：你重要，跟漂亮沒有關係。你有靈魂，所以你重要，我希望你知道這一點。我也相對每一個虛無主義的、以為只要賺夠了錢人生就沒問題的年輕男性說同一句話。（大衛·沃爾普）

猶太教最深的含義落在靈魂上，不落在投票上。他說我們習慣把政治蓋在所有事上面，所以他特別想強調這一點。

順帶說，希欽斯應該是個猶太人。他真的是。他三十多歲時發現母親是猶太人，還寫過一篇很漂亮的文章。《Hitch 22》是本好書。書裡揭示的是，他母親跟一個牧師或神父私奔，兩人死於一次看起來像自殺協議的事件。沃爾普說他讀得太晚，希欽斯已經走了，否則他會想問他：你覺得這件事跟你對宗教的敵意有關係嗎？

操場、他者和一種特別的反猶主義

達拉斯猶太會堂人質事件之後那一週，沃爾普的會堂做了應對槍手的訓練。他從中學到的第一件事是，猶太會堂的安保很重要。第二件是反猶主義的現實：他剛開始做拉比時以為這個問題已經消退了，結果它是一個常青問題，猶太人和所有善意的人必須嚴肅對待，因為它的後果是毀滅性的。

他給仇恨找的第一個解釋很樸素：去一個操場看看。一個新孩子走進來，別的孩子會說什麼？他們會說，我們去跟他分享玩具嗎？不會。他們會說，那是誰，走，收拾他去。他者意識寫進了我們的基因，我們是部落性的動物。小時候他打國際象棋比賽，整個世界就分成會下棋的人和不會下棋的人，想想也挺荒唐。猶太人永遠是那個可識別的他者：法國人和猶太人，俄國人和猶太人，德國人和猶太人。美國最大的幸運之一，就是沒有那樣一個清晰可辨的他者。

可反猶主義有一種別處沒有的質地：猶太人同時是超人和次人。納粹把猶太人看成害蟲，可同時猶太人又控制著世界。學者海曼·馬卡比（Hyman Maccabee）給的解釋是，根源在於猶太人殺了神，殺了耶穌。而要殺死一個神，你得有超人級別的惡，光是壞是不夠的。

這種"既是次人又是超人"的組合，讓仇恨變得格外難解。一般的他者化模板是：他們次人，他們是來搶我們資源的，就像操場上那樣。同時是超人，就更麻煩。

索爾仁尼琴那句他百分之百同意：善惡的分界線穿過每一顆人心。他說他認識很多被大家認為、或者自認為超乎常人的宗教領袖，他們絕非如此。有些人做過可怕的事，還用職位去做。沒有完美的聖人。那些被我們供奉的聖徒，真正認識他們的人裡，有喜歡他們的，也有不喜歡的。

最難的地方在於，什麼是善、什麼是惡，並不總是清楚的。Lex 說，你看歷史，很難分清，而且那些不全是宣傳。他真的相信斯大林的一部分認為自己在做好事。這讓每個人都要問自己一個問題：我們這些想在世界裡做好事的人，我真的是在做好事嗎？搞技術這件事尤其難，比如那個創造某種能帶來好處的技術的夢想，我真的是在做好事嗎？

沃爾普說，這個問題他也有，可不是關於斯大林。他說斯大林在他看來不是個容易自我懷疑的人。而 AI 這個問題，對他來說回到了上帝的問題：如果我們對自己智力的侷限有所認識，我們知道我們只能聽見某些東西、看見某些顏色，世界的多少部分因為大腦的構造而對我們不可及？那我們怎麼可能有信心，創造出某幾處遠比我們聰明的東西，還按我們認為最好的方式去控制它？在他看來這是可能帶來毀滅的傲慢。

Lex 說，任何一句帶"傲慢"這個詞的句子，一旦大規模實施，結局都不會好。可也有美。如果你帶著謙卑去做，確實有一種感覺。他身後就有一臺帶腿的機器人，這挺搞笑。他說他想要孩子。可把機器人帶到生命裡有種魔力，讓你感覺自己是個迷你上帝，因為你朝一個能在這個世界裡運作的實體裡吹了口氣。尤其當它們有腿，那樣移動，比如四足機器人，像一條狗。他覺得自己沒有過度浪漫化，那種感覺就像你對一個孩子。你剛生出來，天哪，這是個活的東西。我不知道他或她在想什麼。

沃爾普說，他完全能感受到創造那東西有多非凡。他擔心的部分恰恰是它有多非凡，因為在這麼奇妙的事情面前保持謙卑和視野是最難的。而且創造力本身是人之為人的一部分，也很像西方文明、很像"造物主上帝"這份遺產。如果你的傳統裡，上帝主要是透過他所創造的東西被認識的，那麼人的創造衝動就有了某種神聖的呼應。

他講了一個上帝造人的笑話。第一次宗教與科學的辯論，他的對手是斯蒂芬·傑伊·古爾德（Stephen Jay Gould），古爾德對宗教有很深的興趣，而且他的興趣落在宗教本身上，沒有說宗教很糟。沃爾普用一個笑話開場，他覺得這讓辯論順了一點。

笑話是：人類已經可以做到上帝能做的一切了。一個科學家抬頭對天說，上帝，你當年很了不起，我們感謝你所做的一切，可現在我們不需要你了。上帝說，真的？你們不需要我了？科學家說，對，你能做的一切我們都能做。上帝說，一切？科學家說，對，我們能做一切。上帝說，好，你能造一個人嗎？科學家說，能。上帝說，用泥土？科學家說，能。上帝說，好，讓我看看。科學家彎腰抓起一把土，上帝說：喂喂喂，自己弄土去。

沃爾普說，這個笑話的意思是，一位造物主上帝推動著我們也去創造。

尼采說對了，可他說的物件在別處

Lex 說，尼采宣佈上帝死了。對上帝的信仰在我們的世界裡是不是在慢慢消失？這對社會有什麼影響？沃爾普曾在文章裡寫過，宗教不是我們的敵人。在西方信仰俘獲世界的心之前，世界上也有殘酷、屠戮和毀滅。二十世紀，當宗教不再是國際政治的力量時，人類屠殺的規模遠超此前人類所知的任何程度。把宗教從世界裡拿走，世界會是什麼樣？

沃爾普說，他認為尼采大體上是對的。那句話真正指向的，是上帝在世界中的存在感。他認為這在很大程度上是真的：上帝在西方社會的很多地方已不再是一種力量。

他也擔憂虛無主義如果沒有一個清晰的對立面會怎樣。那個對立面是：我們在這裡都有一個目的，我們的生命內在地有意義，有一位上帝希望我們變得更好。

他引了一位哲學家的說法："剪下來的花倫理"（cut flower ethics）。我們仍然靠宗教給我們的道德活著，可現在這些花已經從生出它們的土壤裡剪下來了，他看著它們在枯萎。

Lex 問，那你認為對人類文明未來的那種樂觀，有一部分是建立在宗教社會之上的？

沃爾普說他真的這麼認為。希臘人回頭看過去的黃金時代，是猶太人說了不，黃金時代在未來，那就是彌賽亞。那種"我們正在走向更好的東西"的想法，他真的相信人類能做到，而且只要不自我毀滅就會做到。他說他對那些他活不到的技術很興奮。那種興奮也是一種宗教性的興奮，因為這裡有理由讓整個東西儲存下去。

他說，我知道這聽起來荒謬地擬人化，可我真心覺得上帝在為我們加油。我感覺這就是我們在這裡的原因。我們在這裡是為了讓靈魂成長，也是為了讓彼此的靈魂成長。

Lex 問，那二十世紀的暴行呢？核心是人性，跟宗教無關？還是可以歸到某種虛無主義的世界觀上？

沃爾普說，那跟一種不做倫理要求的宗教有關。斯大林和希特勒都有自己的宗教，某種意義上，可那些宗教不對"他者"做任何倫理要求。

《托拉》裡三十六次提到陌生人。重點是，它在試圖把人們從"不信任、不喜歡他者"的天性裡教育出來。這是很費力的工作，非常難。可如果你只有部落激情，沒有普遍倫理，你就有麻煩了。

選民與達賴喇嘛

Lex 說，猶太部落是一個很強的部落。陌生人的訓誡與部落的力量，怎麼調和？傳統傳承的機制本身就是部落。

沃爾普說，兩者都要有。《托拉》不從猶太人開始，它從亞當和夏娃開始。這是一種說法：這確實會講成一個關於某個民族的故事，可你要明白，在某個民族之前，先有人。我是人，然後才是猶太人。

猶太新年從世界的創造開始算，穆斯林新年從穆罕默德的旅程開始，基督教新年從耶穌降生開始。猶太新年從世界創造開始，意思就是：對，這個傳統的方向很特殊，可它做了一個普遍性的陳述，全人類都是按上帝的形象造的，都是上帝的孩子。猶太教的設想，就是不斷一遍遍做這個陳述。

他講了一段關於"選民"的趣事。他弟弟是埃默裡大學的教授，也是生物倫理學家，主持倫理中心的生物倫理專案。達賴喇嘛也在埃默裡教書很多年，後來因為年紀太大不去了。弟弟帶一批學生去達蘭薩拉見達賴喇嘛，沃爾普當時正好在休假，就去印度跟弟弟會合。

他們坐下來。達賴喇嘛第一句話是指著他說：這個"選民"到底是怎麼回事？

沃爾普說，是的，猶太人相信他們被選中去這個世界完成某項使命，可別人未必就沒被選中去做別的事。達賴喇嘛大笑，說，對，我們也覺得自己被選中了。

沃爾普說，這就是普遍的。沒有一個部落比別的部落更好。從猶太人的角度看，你是被選中做一件事，這不讓你更好。歷史上真正讓"更好"混進來的時刻，是猶太人弱小、被迫害的時候。你用來做心理復仇的方式就是說：不，我們比迫害我們的人更好。可真正的想法是，不同的人有不同的使命。

他提到猶太哲學家弗朗茨·羅森茨威格（Franz Rosenzweig）的說法，羅森茨威格對伊斯蘭教了解不多，他說猶太教是太陽，基督教是太陽的光線。猶太教引入了上帝的觀念，基督教把它帶給了世界。

律法宗教與非律法宗教

談到三者的差異，沃爾普說宗教家庭的部分不一樣。他還說，最大的差別是，伊斯蘭教和猶太教的好幾處相似度，高於猶太教和基督教之間的相似度。

原因在於基督教在其核心不是一部律法宗教。它之所以不是，是因為它在羅馬帝國里長大，律法已經有人管了。耶穌不需要建立民法，因為羅馬法在那裡。摩西和穆罕默德是在沙漠裡建立宗教，那裡沒有律法，你必須建立一部律法宗教，否則就是無政府狀態。這也就解釋了為什麼在伊斯蘭教和猶太教裡，從來沒有政教分離。那是基督教送給世界的一份禮物，它能做到，是因為"凱撒的歸凱撒"。

可摩西出現的時候沒有凱撒。穆罕默德出現的時候也沒有凱撒。所以這些傳統歷史地長成了不同的樣子。

不過三者都有一個核心，沃爾普認為這是人類歷史上最重要的一句話和一個洞見：每一個人都是按上帝的形象造的。如果你真的相信這一點，它是有轉化力的信念。所以你要愛人如己。這句話出自《利未記》，直接來自《托拉》。

Lex 提到他跟奧馬爾·蘇萊曼（Omar Suleiman）聊過，那是達拉斯的一位伊瑪目，一個很好的人，他做的跨信仰對話很有意思。Lex 問沃爾普，你也做這種跟基督徒、穆斯林的對話嗎？

沃爾普說經常做。他說從中學到的是，你以為只屬於自己社群的性格型別，其實在所有社群裡都存在。宗教社群尤其會吸引一些有趣的性格。作為神職人員，你感受到的很多壓力是共通的。神職人員之間有一種默契，因為角色很像，而且這個角色有一個奇怪的性質：你永遠逃不出去。在超市裡，你不會把他當律師，可你會把他當拉比。不管你為什麼會出現在那裡，這個角色是逃不掉的。每一位宗教領袖都清楚這種奇怪的處境：你走進了一個永遠走不出來的東西。

可你也是人們在想人生與宇宙最深層問題時去找的那個源頭。當人受苦時，他們看著你，要答案。每一種特權都帶著某種代價。你能站在那個位置上的原因，恰恰就是你被允許出現在人們生命中最關鍵的時刻。能主持婚禮，能致悼詞，能去醫院，這些是無法言說的。

他講了一個關於自己的笑話。星期六晚上我坐在沙發上，不想起來去參加婚禮。真的不想。我就想跟大家一樣坐著看 Netflix。可我到了婚禮現場，我永遠喜歡它，每次都喜歡。因為人家來找你，並不真為了答案。如果有人現在問我，上帝為什麼允許惡，我能跟你聊一套理論。可當人在受苦時，他們要的是在場和安慰，答案不能讓人不受苦。他們只是想知道自己不是一個人。

被聽見，和一起沉默

沃爾普說，這就是被聽見，是一起在沉默裡感受。

談到婚姻，Lex 問婚姻在人類存在裡的角色是什麼。沃爾普說，首先是教你如何照顧一個跟你不同的人，你娶的任何人都會跟你不同。其次是建立一個家和家庭。

有情侶跟他說，我們不需要結婚，結婚不會改變我們怎麼看待自己和這段關係。他說，這可能是真的，可它會改變別人怎麼看你們。因為它改變別人怎麼看你們，它也就改變你們。說"這是我的伴侶"是一件事，說"這是我的丈夫"是另一件事。你說"這是我的丈夫"，那意味著我們對這件事做出了真正的承諾。

Lex 問，宗教對社會的約束鬆開之後，你擔心婚姻的解體嗎？

沃爾普說我擔心。他認為這不完全是解體，更像是一場轉型：不同形式的家庭，不同的家庭配置。可他也說，與其說是婚姻的解體，不如說是承諾這個觀念的解體。

他舉了個簡單的例子。他小時候，一支運動隊裡的球員就一直在那支隊裡，你為一支隊加油，因為那些球員你認識了二十年。現在有很好的理由，從柯特·弗勒德（Curt Flood）開始，球員有了自由身，可以流動，這對球員更好。他說他明白，也不主張回到從前。可就像人們換工作、換球隊、換職業一樣，人們也換伴侶。承諾之承諾在減少，他認為這有嚴重的社會後果。

Lex 說他不知道承諾里那種美到底是什麼。有些最深的友誼，是你們一起經歷了些爛事。艱難的時刻，尤其是在你們兩人之間的艱難時刻，總是有風險，可如果能找到穿過去的路，它能把你們綁得更緊。這是人際關係裡最迷人的地方。

沃爾普說，是的，而且即使它沒能讓你們永遠在一起，你們之間仍然有了一段連線。他給了一個他認為很漂亮的答案。有人曾問拉比索洛維契克（Soloveitchik），二十世紀正統派社群裡的偉大思想家和領袖：我在各種宗教之間遊蕩，只挑我認為美的部分。他的回答是：你把宗教當成了遊牧民。遊牧民從這裡到那裡，想吃什麼就吃什麼，吃完就走。農民留在一個地方。差別在於，農民讓東西生長。你投入過、耕耘過的關係，裡面會長出東西，而那些來去匆匆的關係里長不出這些。

讀經書，像讀莎士比亞的英文

談到《托拉》是什麼，沃爾普說，那是用希伯來語寫的摩西五經。他說他像大多數現代拉比，非正統派或非字面派拉比一樣，會告訴你它是人的產物，他相信它受到上帝的啟示，可很明顯它是人的產物。

他說讀現代聖經批評會讓人有些誤解，可你無法不承認它甚至有不同的語言層次。就像你今天讀到有人寫莎士比亞那樣的英文，你會說這不是我們今天的英語。語言在演化。如果你希伯來語夠好，會看出它是在幾百年、幾百年、幾百年裡寫成的。

希伯來語裡說《托拉》是"來自天堂"，可不是"來自西奈"。它起源在我們之外，可裡面的東西是人的。

這也是他在同性婚姻上的方法論的依據：用《托拉》批判《托拉》。它給了你一套理解工具，你拿它去評估它自己的主張。猶太教一直都在這麼做，因為拉比們明顯改過、增過、擴過、減過經文裡的東西。這就是活傳統的一部分。

沃爾普在書裡引惠特曼的話：要有偉大的書，先要有偉大的讀者。一本書要在幾代人之間保持力量，它就不能只有一個意思。經文像偉大的詩，不能被還原成別的話。你沒法轉述它、還保留它意義的全部。

Lex 問，那到底怎麼捕捉經文的意思？是不是一場跨世紀的持續過程？

沃爾普說正是如此。是智者、學者、讀者、掙扎者、尋求者、神秘主義者、異象者不斷對話，所有人都在貢獻。他每週給《耶路撒冷郵報》寫托拉專欄。還有什麼可說的？可他每週翻開書，看別人怎麼說，讓它發酵，然後意識到自己進入了一場持續幾千年、由了不起的心智組成的對話，它不斷長出新的洞見。

他打了個類比：如果任何一種減肥法真的有用，世界上就只有一本書，一本，然後就完了。為什麼人們還在寫情詩？我們早該把愛搞明白了。

結語：給今天年輕人的幾條建議

Lex 在最後問，你會給今天的年輕人什麼建議？那些正在讀高中、讀大學，正在想職業和想一種自己能為它自豪的生活的人。

沃爾普先說了三條，我把它整理成可以直接動手做的清單。

  • 把人生當成一場很長的展開，而不是一次衝刺。人都有急著定型的衝動，可你會經歷很多次"展開"（unfoldings），比上一代人還要多。人生比你想象的更長，很多你現在想象不到的可能性會自己浮現出來，別急著在這一兩年裡把答案定死。
  • 讀書，讀紙質書，讀超出今天和昨天和前天的東西。沃爾普說這話老派，可他還是說。他推薦的是《米德爾馬契》（Middlemarch），弗吉尼亞·伍爾夫說它是唯一一部為成年人寫的英文小說；索爾·貝婁的《赫索格》；維克多·弗蘭克爾的《活出意義來》，他自己最珍視的書之一；還有赫舍爾的《安息日》，很短，很美。
  • 訓練你自己的內部標準。你會被比歷史上任何一代人都多的聲音包圍，那些人叫網紅，可他們真正在做的事是告訴你應該想什麼、應該信什麼。你必須留一塊內部空間，能對自己說：我知道那件事他做得很好，可那不是我。
  • 把意義當作抗抑鬱的藥來對待。沃爾普的意思是，意義不等於成功，也不等於被看見，它的核心是你知道你做的事算數、你自己算數。他講過一個故事：一個在奧斯維辛度過童年的拉比，光明節該點蠟燭，他父親用黃油配給當燈油。孩子急了，說那是我們的食物。父親說：我們學到的是，沒有食物你能活三週，沒有水你能活三天，可沒有希望，你活不過三分鐘。
  • 在網上先善良、先共情。沃爾普在超級碗那件事之後講得很直接：你發一條溫和、共情的東西，一週後感覺會更好；你發一條負面的、原則性的宣告，一週後感覺會更糟。這幾乎無一例外。你沖人吼也拿不到你想要的結果，那個人不會因此意識到自己做了什麼。
  • 把破碎也帶上路。摩西摔碎的那兩塊石板沒有丟，它們和第二套完好的石板一起被抬著走。社群和個人都有破碎的時候，尤其是現在。給自己和別人留出犯錯、破碎、受傷的空間，你會發現這樣過後，你自己也更好受。

這期播客最後，Lex 請沃爾普留下一句話。沃爾普說的是：唯一完整的心，是一顆破碎的心，因為破碎讓它透進光來。

文稿來自公開 Kaggle 資料集（rajneesh231/lex-fridman-podcast-transcript），為早期自動轉錄存檔，可能存在識別錯誤。
The following is a conversation with Rabbi David Wolpe, someone who I have been a fan of for many years, for the kindness in 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 considered 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. From today and until the day I die, I am 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 play geopolitical games on the world stage disregarding the costs 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 condemn all heads of state who needlessly wage 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, nor 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 Zelensky, 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 in 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, and 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 a 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 the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, here's my conversation with David Welby. 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, 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, a 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 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 God operate in the space of feelings too, so not just the mouth and the ear of the senses, can God be known? Can God be felt by this three year old in the analogy versus the teenager? So I will take refuge in a beautiful phrase 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. Yosef Kaspi, I'm pulling in a couple of 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 attach to the stories some kind of visualizations in our mind? 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. This was the great, we just read this actually in synagogue, the story of the golden calf. And the story is that human beings found it impossible to not have a visualization because they had just come from Egypt and in the world of 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 that the proper way to operate as a human in relation to God is humility in that you're screwed, you're not able to basically know anything, almost anything? Well, the reason that the salvation of this is 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 didn't say it and have not said it. But 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 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. You're a mystery to yourself. 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 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 thing. Well, the world, yes, the world that God created is constantly surprising. And by the way, the caveat to this, you know, when 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, 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 Hitchens. One of the reasons you can't win is because he has this British baritone and this ready wit that you can't triumph over laughter. It doesn't matter if your argument is better, if your quip is better, you win. 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 despite the fact that that's not really an argument. Or like I have free will because I don't have a choice or whatever. Exactly. And people should watch your conversation with him. It's great. I mean, it's a kind of David versus Goliath situation and you're quite masterful at using charisma and sweet talking Christopher Hitchens. I also genuinely liked him. I mean, I spent a three hour limousine ride with him from one debate to another, from LA to San Diego. And the entire time he said, we just can't talk about religion. So we talked about literature and he gave me a long lecture about scotch. He was inexhaustible. I mean, not only did he, I began, I wrote a couple of obituaries about him and one I began with the 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 LA. And he could drink all night and write a 2000 word essay on the poetry of Yates and go to sleep. 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 not going to have a drink before I go to debate with you. What are you crazy? And he said, just have a beer, it's water. So he was, he really was a constant, inexhaustible fountain of intrigue and interest. What kind of things, if you can remember, if you can mention, if you can admit, to have him enlightening you or helping you change your mind about something in this world. So I think, unrelated to Scotch, 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 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, he's one of those, one of the more beautiful humans, 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, how do you think about that? So of the atheists that I have debated, I think about all of them somewhat differently. So I think that 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. I think that he would say his is a purely material based spirituality. But I mean, his orientation towards meditation and appreciation of Buddhism, there's something deeply seeking spiritual about him. With Hitchens, I honestly, and I know that some of his fans will really not like this. It's not that he was any kind of closet believer, 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 attacking it that I really believe he gets carried away sometimes by his own eloquence and intellectual range. So for example, the idea that you would call a book that religion poisons everything, 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 arguing against something that someone else believed was one of his greatest joys. Yeah, and of course the practical aspect of that, he just saw the powerful and he challenged and so on. It's almost always about homosexuality. So and then I got ready to send out a letter. And I said to my daughter, who at the time was maybe 10 or 11, now in her mid 20s. 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. She said, why? And I said, because I'm going to start marrying, I'm going to start doing same sex marriages. And she looked at me quizzically and said, what took you so long? And I thought, really her face was like I said to her, I'm going to start marrying blonde 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 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, now that the rabbi said this, mom, dad, I want you to know I'm gay. 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 go to the feeling thing? No, I went to the feeling. I said, which means respect or honor for God's creations and caring for other human beings and understanding. It wasn't scholarly because I knew that the objections were not scholarly objections. And 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. So it's one of the reasons why I'd evoke such reactions. But I would say to them, the same reason that you're reacting so strongly tells you how strongly... Anyway, it was a very powerful experience and for that I feel good about it. Afterwards, 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 one said that it's exhilarating to be shot at without result. 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, you've been, to use the word, canceled a couple of times. But I guess when you're dealing with the most difficult of questions, 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... I didn't lose my job, didn't lose my home, but I hurt people that I cared about. And that was the hard... I went into this to be someone who brings people together and then I would sit there and do even now, as you're well aware with stuff that's going on now, I sit there and people are really upset at me who I either am or used to be close to. Do those people in time come around? When you look now, because those are real feelings in the moment and we can learn that about social media, people, especially during COVID, there's this intensity of feeling about stuff. And have you learned something about the passing of feeling that turns into wisdom? No question about it. The sermon I gave this Saturday was about how 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 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 you can back down because you haven't put yourself out there. But once you said, this is terrible 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 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. So when two days later you feel different, 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. And that's really hard. Can you tell the story of this recent controversy, the sermon you just gave? You went to the Super Bowl. 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 the kids in our school are masked and many of the parents are extremely upset about that. I will just leave that at that. I went to the Super Bowl, there were 70,000 people. Frank Luntz, whom we know was a wonderful guy, gave me a ticket. And so I was at the Super Bowl and 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 many, many people thought, oh, great, wonderful, glad you're having a good time, so on and so forth. I didn't diminish at all the many people who said that. A lot of people were livid. They were livid. And they weren't, what was instructive about it was they didn't say, nobody wrote me a private note and said, 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 kind of thing. They say that publicly. Oh, yeah. And 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 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 about, I mean, the comments, believe me, 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 their kid says, why doesn't a rabbi have to wear a mask? Well, first of all, it is tough to be a rabbi. I mean, 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, the uncertainty of it, you don't know who to trust. Everything is 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 distressed, 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 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 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 a tweet. And so I was really, I mean, I tried to make two points during the sermon, 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. And I just wanted to make two points, one of which was that I really feel terrible. And I did, that all these people were hurt and that there is this 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. But rabbi at the Super Bowl, I mean, you are also, I hate to say it, but there's a rock star nature to you talking to Christopher Hitchens, contending with ideas, inspiring so many other minds. I mean, there's an educational aspect to this. I appreciate that. It's making ideas cool. I mean, that's a very powerful... I mean, that is also the job of a rabbi. You're not just supposed to do rabbi stuff, it's to educate the spot. Yeah, but I didn't do so much of that at the game. So nonetheless. 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. In part because it doesn't get you the result that you want. I mean, when you scream at someone, that's not gonna get them to realize what they did. And 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 many were not from my congregation. And I spoke about what you talked about, which is that 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. And the cool thing when you give people that space, 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 a negative statement of principle on the internet. It's almost just exclusively true. So if you care about feeling good, just be kind first, be empathetic first. Almost always the case. Exactly so. So it's, I mean, it settled down a lot. The most, really the single best reaction, 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. But the single best reaction I got was from a man who came up to me right after the sermon 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, cause you maybe talk about the difference between the Torah, the Bible and the Koran. So there's the Hebrew Bible is actually what's called a step canon. That is there are the five books of the Torah. Then there are books of history and the prophets. So books like Samuel, Kings, Judges, and then the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel, and so on. And then there are what are called the writings. The writings are books like Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the Migilot, which are Esther, Daniel, all of those, all of those books, Ecclesiastes. So in Hebrew, it's called the Tanakh, Torah, Neviim, 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 in as much 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 what? Like what? Leave your father and mother and follow me. I don't like that as a religious model. Now Christians will say that I don't understand that, but that's because Christians like Jews interpret their texts different ways at different times. So anyway, 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, is in some ways a, parts of it are, I don't say this word, I say this word because I can't find a better descriptive word, but Muslims will not accept this, okay, is a takeoff 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 thing. The Hebrew Bible part, the Abrahamic part, they all tell the story of the same characters, but tell them, obviously Christians accept the Hebrew Bible as sacred scripture. The Muslims retell many of the stories in the Bible. 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 is 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, 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 it differs? Just 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, 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 Koran, but I'll speak for the Hebrew Bible, the idea is that that's Lashon HaKodesh, that's sacred language, and Hebrew, that's the language according to the tradition that God actually spoke to Moses, and therefore the exact words are infinitely interpretable and meaningful. But the words are spoken by, written by Moses, and the same with Muhammad, but from memory or no? There are different theories. I won't speak for Muhammad, you should ask. I don't 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'm happy to go into if you want to, but basically that's the traditional view. So it's pretty close to the words of God. 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. And you mention on one such event in Scripture, yet another time you walked through the fire, which is with Exodus. That was the first. And you never forget the first. One of several controversies. You spoke 20 years ago, 21 years ago now at Passover and said 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, and 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 in various places, I believe that it's based on a historical kernel. I think Richard Eliot Friedman may have gotten this right in his book Exodus. It may have been the Levites who left Israel. But the Bible is not a book of history. I don't believe that there were 10 plagues and a split sea and 600,000 men, which makes about 2 million people, who actually, if there were 2 million people, would stretch all the way from Israel to 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 fact? Well, 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 myth 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 to me, 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 the Torah is much more than that, like you said, 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're still, I mean, it changes the atmosphere in which you do it, 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. So for me, obviously AI person, this whole mind thing is fascinating, like what the heck is going on up there? 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 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 the humor 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 thoroughgoing materialist, free will is impossible. There could be randomness, but randomness is not free will, it's randomness. I think you need a spiritual nonmaterial 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's 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 would. I don't understand how it could be a convenient quirk materialistic, 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. We are, our mind plays tricks on us to make our life easier, more efficient and survive better and all those kinds of things. And so free, the feeling like we have a choice. Oh, that could be an illusion. Could be an illusion. That 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. I think he wrote about not having, not having free will. And I think if you don't have a God and you don't have a soul, that free will is a logical impossibility. But Sam, which is fascinating, it's not just that free will is an illusion, but 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 honest to be talking about it. We're just, we are like the, the, the, the, the currents in the river or something that 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. I mean, to you is the free will, the I that the young person is born with, is that somehow fundamental to religion? I think it's fundamental to Judaism. I think that the, the idea is that you are the custodian of your soul. And even though I grant that there's a certain over 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 I, 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 an 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 discussion. And again, this is a discussion I've had, I privileged to have with Daniel Dennett and could not make any, as you can imagine, any headway on my, but he was delightful and brilliant to talk to. I, for me, consciousness is a real thing. I don't know if it is, I mean, I kind of like the pan psych, psychists view that there's an element of consciousness in everything that that's constitutive of reality. But I don't, I'm not wedded to it, but I think that it's, it exists in different degrees in all sentient creatures. I think that anybody who has a pet knows that they have some kind of consciousness. Except cats. I'm not going to, I, since I don't have cats or dogs, I'm not going to. This is another reason people would be outraged. I said it. Well, I happen to be allergic to both, but I'm very fond of animals. 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. 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 overdramatizing 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. Your 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 I'll ask you a religious one too on this point to return back to robots. So how to engineer consciousness, or I'll just even ask you a very simple question, which is 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. For my, from an observation perspective, they sure as heck seem similar. You think they're feeling pain? I don't know what the, 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. 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, about the experiences you shared, it is able to speak 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, and 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 and it beats me, I'm embarrassed even though the computer doesn't, I don't think the computer is going out, you idiot, but it feels that way. 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 to person, but the chess engine is not at all trying to cross that threshold. Let's just start there. And to me, the personalization, which is what's the difference, like a friend that you meet, you've shared all these memories and the way they look at you will convey in the things they say will convey that they've shared those memories with you. They'll be able to speak in a 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've been through things with, like, and by turning off, I mean, delete all of its memory. If me and the toaster have gone through a bunch of dramatic events and that toaster remembers, there's a certain level to where like, it's just me and the toaster in this together at this point. And just to talk about sentience, I don't know, but you know. I don't know. It's according to the scripture, can't live by bread alone. But I would, I mean, I know that 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. But we make each other feel. 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 I know that you don't feel exactly as I do. 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 conclusions, it's at least possible that one day we will look back and realize that we have yet once again formed another tribe and that scripture all along had in it the ability for humans and robots to have a deep, meaningful connection. And that through the robot, 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, whatever you want to call it sentience or whatever can permeate an object. That was the thing all along. So I mean. And then you'll get canceled one more time because you will. Because I denied it. I was going to say. No, the opposite. You'll eventually. Oh, I see. Because I'll preach to the robots. I'm hoping. I'm hoping. All right. 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. I have a hard time believing it. We'll see. Can I ask you about this? 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, I would 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. But there's also, I mean, there's a nonphysical 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 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 that we can reexperience it when we recall the memories. 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 if there's a God that cares for us? Let's assume for a minute that everything was a primitive robot. There would be no suffering, but there would also be no growth. And that implies choices. One of the things that I've said that I know why it hurts people, and I don't mean it quite the way, 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 to have free will or you don't. You can't say as God, I'm going to let everybody have free will, but not Nazis. Nazis don't get free will because Cambodians, they can kill each other. Fondans kill each other, but the Nazis don't get to do that. So that's one piece of the puzzle. And what makes it unfathomable is when you're actually faced with suffering, these kinds of explanations are obscene. They just are. 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. 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 have no moral content. The only way you can be good and it 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. For a lot of people, mortality is one of the very unfortunate versions of suffering, which is that the ride ends in this realm, whatever it is. What do you think of mortality? Is it something you think about? Is it something you fear? What do you think happens after we die? I don't fear it. 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. Our physicality – I mean, among the points he makes – and 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 manners, 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. And you asked, what do I think happens after we die? So I don't know any better than anyone else does, but I'll say two things about it. One is that every image of what it's like is foolish. 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 in a book on death and mourning by a rabbi in a book on death and mourning about twins in a womb. He says, 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 a 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. Yeah, the grass is always greener. It's the new step, but the eternity thing is an interesting one. It's yet another concept that I feel humans are fully inequipped to comprehend. Is eternity fundamental somehow to all of these discussions? I think it is, well, partly because God is supposed to be eternal and therefore it moves the mind in that direction, even though it is completely unfathomable, 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 the older you get, the more you're struck by the fact that time does not freeze. People will sometimes say to me, 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. So, yeah, I mean, I love the idea of 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 think that in some ways, my fundamental faith is in human beings, that this doesn't all disappear, that there's something about people that transcends this world. You mentioned Ernest Becker in high school and denial of death. Maybe you can mention if you still see truth and wisdom in 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. And I loved Bertrand Russell, who was, for my money, with all due respect to all the very, very capable people that we've talked about earlier, he's the best atheist pound for pound that there was, and a remarkably witty and lucid writer. And I was totally in his thrall. And I would read every book by Russell I could get my hands on. 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. 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 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. And actually, there was another rabbi. I was at summer camp, and I was sitting on the porch of the, I remember exactly, 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? And I said, whatever I was, 16, 17. He said, well, I'd rather you grow out of him than grow into him. 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 who didn't speak to him, by the way, was raised by his grandparents because his parents had died, and really not a happy or, I mean, a remarkable life, but not a happy one. And so I started to believe that maybe it was possible that people who had faith were not just stupid and needed crutches, but saw something deeper than Russell did. And the more people that I met that were like that, it's funny because I always thought, okay, my father is a rabbi, that's great, but nobody else. 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 I've kind of felt my way to God. And in the moments, my faith, you know, there was a rabbi named Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, he said he was a moon man, his faith waxed and waned. So sometimes I have more, sometimes less. But in my feelinger moments is when I have more. So with your heart open, what would you say in your feelinger moments is the most beautiful part about Judaism and 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. Everybody 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 world in which young people feel so much like they don't matter, that's an unbelievably powerful message. I mean, you know, I want to say like almost to every young woman under 30 on TikTok, 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 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 for a human mind. I really believe that it does. I really do. 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 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 30s that his mother was Jewish, yep. So remarkably enough, he actually was Jewish. His autobiography, Hitch 22, is a great read. And I just want to say, what you discover there, I don't know if I'm giving too much away by telling the story of his life. 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 with real goodness. And I'm sorry to return to a darker topic, but I really wanted to ask you this. For the current events, for a recent event, I mentioned Dallas. 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 antisemitism, 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 antisemitism at a scale of human to human, but there's also, like you mentioned, politics get mixed up into things, nations get mixed into things, impossible to answer. But I have to ask, 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, look, I mean, I have many, many thoughts about it. I'm a very, very strong supporter of Israel. And I also feel really for the plight of the Palestinians. I think that this is a clash of legitimate narratives that is impossible to exactly split the difference of. However, 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. 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 interfaith discourse and collaboration, or is it simply the human love? So 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? If we 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 you have such a remarkable world champion. Go see him play. So I actually took myself to Dubai for the last couple of games, and I watched. It's not that I'm uninterested in Dubai, but 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, it was nice, it was Dubai. It was very polished, very sophisticated, very clean, no crime and so on. But it was kind of like Las Vegas in the Middle East without the gambling or something like that. And 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 higher quality of life. You no longer, it's the playground analogy you said earlier. If there's more resources to play with, unfortunately, us humans are more willing to play with others. 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 that, once people's lives become better, they start to have more time to be empathetic and hear people out. 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 families want peace 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 virology and all those kinds of things. But overall, I love the honesty of the mess of it being presented before us on social media. 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 human nature. 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 love the, like 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... I think that's how we first met. Well, yeah. Well, I was such a fan boy. Actually, when I first heard you, I was like, I can't believe I get to talk to David. But the Israel Palestine topic was something that was very deeply in a heated way discussed on Clubhouse. Race relations is the 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 them with humor and so on. 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 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. Yeah. Speaking of people that make you laugh, Sam Harris, because he actually has a really great sense of humor. He does. With a very cold and monotone delivery. He's another one that you had, you're friends with, you have good conversations with. What's your fundamental disagreements and agreements with Sam? Sam believes that religion is intellectually indefensible. He really believes it, like deep in his soul. And he gets angry at the idea that a proposition should be unchallenged if it offends his sense of logic. So he cannot move on until this is dealt with. Nope. In fact, 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 to 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. So 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'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. It's a fascinating one. It's great. It's nonstandard. It just goes all over the place in this humor and wit. It's great. There's 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 them, do they believe in God, I think the answer... They're not comfortable answering that question, or they might say no, but they're usually just not comfortable 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 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? How do you make sense of Eric Weinstein's devout life within the tradition? 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. So I think that he would probably agree with what Elie Wiesel said, that a Jew 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 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 in that sense, as in many others, Eric is unique. Well, he was actually making that claim that we need faith to propagate this tradition through the generations. So without that, the traditions crumble. It's a very interesting idea and very interesting argument for devout faith, which is it's a thing, it's a glue that holds a tradition together. Otherwise like traditions fall apart because 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, traditions that require Turkey might not fall apart, but traditions that make demands of you that are countercultural 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 comedian, Cathy Landsman, who one year I heard this on the radio and it stuck with me. She said 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 going to go home and fight with the uncle again this year. I apologize to take a dark turn, but you mentioned Elie Wiesel. I recently saw a picture of Elie Wiesel when he was 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 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 laying there, that just, 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 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? I don't see his projection, but it seemed like this perhaps is also just combining with man's search for meaning is it seemed like it was a regular day for them in the 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 into that moment in history. How does, how do you make sense of 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 mean, for me it's multi causal. I don't think there's one reason. So one of the things especially there has to do with the special nature of antisemitism, 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, oh, 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 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, meaningful as you want in the heat of it. Just people just screaming and then calming down and going through the full process. That too is beautiful because that emotion is there. And if it is allowed to have a voice, I think ultimately it leads to healing. So that felt really healthy if you learn how to do that at scale. Social media, I wish that it were not as algorithmically biased towards conflict. I don't think that that's healthy. But I think it brings a lot of blessings into people's lives if they use it wisely. Like anything else, it can be awful. But I've connected to all sorts of people that I never would have known. And that's been wonderful. So let me ask you the big question of advice. What advice would you give to young people today that are 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 such a funny word. But it feels that way. It's like different aspects of your life will come, will show you different possibilities that you don't imagine at the moment. And I think the second thing that I would say is, I know that this is a very old fashioned, but I would say 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 or the day before. And I suppose the other thing that I would say is 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'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 speak to you with a lot of passion. Do you still have that voice in your own, in the privacy of your own mind that you're able to ignore, like for a moment, just be with yourself, 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 a 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 10. There was ABC, CBS and NBC, and that was it. And you spent your evening playing board games or reading or whatever, and there was a lot of space. And we played football on 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. And so I really feel, and also I went into a religious tradition where I feel like I have the opportunity to judge myself by bigger metrics. And it's still hard. I don't want to, it's not like, oh, 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 Ernest Becker, is there books that pop into mind that had an impact on you? My favorite novel is Middlemarch. Middlemarch? Middlemarch. I was listening to a podcast, I was listening to one of your podcasts where your guest said the two greatest novels of the 19th century were Brothers Karamazov and, what was the other one he mentioned? I don't remember. Dostoevsky as well or no? I think. Was it both Dostoevsky? It might have been. I don't remember. But anyway, but I would say Middlemarch is up there. Middlemarch presents an entire world and it's written by a woman, Marianne Evans, who took the pen name George Eliot, who you feel, Virginia Woolf said it's the only English novel written for grownups. You feel the genius in her sentences, like the pressure of her intellect in her sentences. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. I love it. Pressure of her intellect. Yeah, you really do. I also love Saul Bellow, especially Herzog, but it's a very different kind of thinking person's novel. I read a lot of mysteries and a lot of other kinds of fiction and literature. But in terms of the books that most, you mentioned one of them, which is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. And I also really, really love Heschel's The Sabbath. I think it's a beautiful book. It's a very short book, just as Frankl's book is. What do you take from The Man's Search for Meaning? What do you take of a human being in the worst conditions, being able to non dramatically find little joys, find beauty? It's what I said before about Judaism's advice to younger people, is that it mattered. 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 deeply depressed, whether it is chemical depression or what they feel like is this is all meaningless. And meaning, now obviously chemical depression calls in part for chemical means, but meaning is the great antidote. We can talk about what kind of meaning. There are kinds of meanings that are awful, but meaning is the great antidote to a sense that life is just nihilistic and purposeless and to that destructiveness that I think is too common. Yeah, so 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 rabbi in England, died, I don't know, like 15, 20 years ago, he 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 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, you 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, Rabbi David Wolff. 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 if you're supposed to return your soul like more burnished and beautiful, then you got it. I mean, it's going to have some nicks and cuts, but that's what it means to deepen and grow it. And you do that 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 for a human, the relationship, if you're a man of faith, is with God. But it feels like love is so richly part of human society that it's not just love 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 word in Hebrew, davekut, which means clinging, that is used about Adam and Eve. It says, therefore, a man will leave his father and mother and davak with his wife. And davak means cling. So there is an analogy there, absolutely. Yeah, I kind of think of human civilization as that movie, March of the Penguins, and they're all huddling together in the cold. This is fundamentally human, this darkness all around us of uncertainty, of cruelty. It seems like everything is so fragile, and we're just kind of all huddling together for warmth. Yes. And that's all we got is each other. So we started with the big question of what is God, ended with what is meaning. Rabbi Wolpe, I've been a huge, as I've told you, huge, huge fan of yours for a long time. It's such an honor that you talked to me today. Thank you so much. I am really so happy to be here, and thank you so much for the conversation. Thanks for listening to this conversation with David Wolpe. 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. I mean, immigrant versus 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 tribes. You're 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. Skating, you know, when you're on thin ice, your safety is in your speed. So I was trying to move fast. But for most of history 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. 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 antisemitism 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 superhumanly 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 subhuman and they're here to steal our resources, like on the playground. But to be both is a fascinating construction. Do you agree with Solzhenitsyn that all of us have the capacity for evil? A hundred percent runs through every human heart. I have no doubt about it. 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. 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. And it's because 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. 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. Not about Stalin. I'm sure that Stalin thought so. Stalin 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 a hubris that might end up being destructive. Definitely. Well, 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. 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 that it feels like you are a mini God, 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 of the four legged robots, 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 is a living thing. I wonder 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 part of 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 Jay Gould and it was wonderful because he had a deep interest in religion and his interest was actually not to say religion is terrible. But I started with this joke 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 were 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 the 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? And the scientist goes, yeah. He says, okay, let me see. The scientist reaches down, scoops up some dirt and God says, uh, uh, uh, get your own dirt. But the idea is that a creator God impels us to create too. But let me bring up Nietzsche, who proclaimed that God is dead. 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. 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. So I worry a lot about it, and 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 a religious society. I really do believe that. I mean, it was religion that the Greeks look 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 absent destroying ourselves will do, you know, I mean, 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, I know this sounds absurdly anthropomorphic, but I really think God is cheering us on. I feel like this is why we're here. We're here to grow in soul and to grow each other in soul. Yeah. So what do you think the world, so if you just think of this force of nihilism that's contending with the force of faith based optimism, what do you make of the atrocities 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 world? I think it has to do with a religion that doesn't make ethical demands. That is, for Stalin and for Hitler, they both had religions, 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 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 the mechanism of tradition propagates the tribe. 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'm a human being before I'm a Jew. And in fact, the Jewish New Year, the Muslim New Year starts with Muhammad's journey. And the Christian New Year starts with Jesus's 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 as 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 Emory, but for many years taught at Emory. And so my brother brought us, he's the head of the bio 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 we had a chance to meet with the Dalai Lama. Okay. That was the name drop. So we're sitting in the, 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. We just happened to be, I happened 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, 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 Judaism. He knows a lot about it, but he says to me 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, it seems to me that other people believe they're chosen for things too. They burst out laughing and said, yeah, we also think we're chosen. So I think it's universal. The idea is that no tribe is better than, from a Jewish perspective, you're chosen for a thing, but that doesn't make you better. No. The only place where the betters came in, honestly, if I'm going to, historically, if I'm going to 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. But the idea is, yeah, different people have different missions, which is, I mean, like there was a Jewish philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig, 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 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, 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 really believe that, that's a transformative belief. So that means you should love thy neighbor as yourself. Which comes from Leviticus, comes straight from the Torah. So I don't know if you know, I've been chatting with Omar Suleiman, I don't know if you know who that is. He's an imam in Dallas, a great guy. I enjoy his interfaith dialogues that he engages in. And do you ever do that kind of talk with Christians, with Muslims? Yes, often. Often. 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 empathy and appreciation, and also ability to make fun of the quirks of the little... Of one's own. Of one's own communities. So it's not necessarily the depths or the details of the traditions, but these are communities and they're full of people and they're full of weird people, because we're all weird. And so there is very particular flavors of weirdness that emerge and they can make fun of them. And in that way, they can talk about some beautiful ideas. So I mean, I don't know, do you engage in these kinds of things? What do you learn from them? 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. And also that the, especially as clergy, some of the pressures that you feel are shared. 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... And it's a strange role in the following way. It's one that you never escape. That is, 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 escapable role. And every religious leader is aware of that strange assumption of stepping into something that you can never step out of. But you're also the source where people go to think about the deepest question of our lives and our universe. And so that's some heavy, 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, it's inexpressible. I have this joke with people that I know that like when I'm sitting on the couch and it's Saturday night, I don't wanna get up and go to a wedding. I really don't. I wanna sit there and watch Netflix like everybody else. But when I'm actually doing the wedding, I always love it, always, always, always. And the reason is that I don't think, I mean, yes, people go to you for answers in calmer conversations. Like if you asked 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 make them unsuffer. It's just they wanna know they're not alone. Yeah. To be heard and just to feel things in silence together. In terms of weddings and marriage, what's the role of that whole, I need to take some notes here. What's... The role of a rabbi? The role of marriage in human existence. It is first of all to teach you how to care for someone unlike you, which could be anyone you marry. 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 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 and our relationship. I say to them, that's true, it might not, but it will change how everyone else looks at you. 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, do you worry that there's a dissolution of that as well in terms of how, you know, as religion dissipates, like it loosens its hold on society, loosens its impact on society. Do you worry about that? I worry about it. 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 a, 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 Curt Flood, 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, they change partners. And there is a, there is a diminishment of the commitment to commitment that I actually think has serious societal consequences and that I am worried about. Yeah. 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 shit 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 where you said, what is it about commitment? I'll give you one, I think beautiful answer. Someone once asked Rabbi Soloveitchik, who was 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 is it the literal word of God? Easy questions. Yeah. Well, the Torah is the five books of Moses written in Hebrew. 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 criticism, it gives a wrong impression. I would say modern scholarship on the Bible and not appreciate the fact that it even has levels of language. I mean, it's just like if you read today, somebody writing like Shakespeare, you would say this isn't, it's like English has 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. It is a holy book. And I like the idea that it is, what you say in Hebrew is 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 through the centuries? Yes. Is that essentially what it is? 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 remarkable minds and it's constantly fertile in new insights. So yes, that's what it is to be part of a tradition. Why do people keep writing love poems? We should have figured out love 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 you were a part of. You were a part of several controversies in your life. I've had a few. For someone who walks with grace through the fire, you sure have found yourself in a lot of fires. One of them, can you tell me the story of your views on gay marriage, the underlying principles that led you to fight this battle of defending gay marriage in the Jewish community? So I'm part of a congregation that is really politically split and split not only politically but split 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 Israel, some from Mexico, from other places and many that grew up in LA. Do you have any Russian Jews, the best kind? I have a few Russian Jews, not as many as I should, but we'll work on that. What happened was increasingly I became uncomfortable with people who would come to me and say, this is the only kind of person I can love. 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. That's a whole separate question. But I would have men in my office primarily, a couple of women, they would say, 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 that was very persuasive to me. But I knew that it was going to be explosive in my community. Then 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 a small controversy. And so what I did was I started to teach classes. Not that many people came about homosexuality and Jewish tradition and so on. It's funny, much, much less about lesbianism, I'm talking about in terms of the sources

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