July 28th, 2015
Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – February 4, 2001
Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Good evening and welcome to another edition of Toward a Meaningful Life. We’re on every Sunday from 6-7pm on WEVD 1050AM, talking about your life and our lives and how to find deeper meaning.
The basis and principles of this show have always been that the architect of life, G-d, gave us a blueprint that allows us to illuminate and access our inner psyches and our inner selves. By looking into that blueprint, we can learn to align our outer lives with our inner lives and thus find deeper meaning.
As always, I always appreciate your calls and emails.
Tonight, I’m honored to have a special guest, but first let me give you some background into the subject we’ll be discussing. One of the big things that you hear about lately is the interface between areas and schools of thought that once were seen as mutually exclusive, whether it’s science and faith, faith and reason, and of course medicine and the spirituality of healing.
Healing and spirituality is a topic that I’ve always wanted to address on this show. Recently, especially in the last few decades, a lot of talk, books, shows have focused on the mind, spirit and healing, and how faith plays a role in all of this. Of course skeptics will ask whether this is real or just what people want to believe.
So tonight’s show is called “Healing and Spirituality”; finding insights into meaningful healing as opposed to symptomatic healing. The guest I’ve invited on, whom I’m sure will inspire and also enlighten us all, is a man called Herschel Lazaroff, who is a gifted man on a mission. His website describes him as: “using techniques culled from a number of sources—psychics, quantum mechanics, bau-biology, kinesiology.” He serves as a conduit for healing energy and has been acclaimed by many people, both skeptics and believers, as someone who has been effective.
I’ve heard good things about him, so I felt it was appropriate and an honor to have him on the show. So let me welcome Hershel. Hershel is based in Baltimore, Maryland and he uses Torah and spirituality in active healing and helping people. How many years have you been working in healing, Herschel?
Herschel Lazaroff: Approximately five years. I’m from the Midwest and I went to school in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan. I found that there is a spiritual component to my unnourished spiritual side when I was in school, and after I left Ann Arbor and moved to the East Coast in order to “strike it rich” with the other half that I now have called the wife, I became involved in food, healing with food. My wife, who is a physical therapist, got me involved in a form of energy work called Health Kinesiology, which is a process of accessing information from the body using a muscle-testing device and employing different forms of pressure and batteries, etc., to open up blocks we have in our body to heal. It is similar to what someone would do perhaps if you went to an acupuncturist or someone who practices Reiki.
Now to give some background, when I came out to the East Coast, I did have a commercial whole wheat organic bakery and I loved to bake challahs, which is braided bread used for the seventh day in the Jewish holiday, the Sabbath. I made Jacob’s Table Challah: “From my table to yours…a challah that rises to the occasion.”
So I was hands-on. But if people ended up looking like my challahs, either overbaked or with too many seeds on top, it wouldn’t be good!
Jacobson: Or overinflated.
Lazaroff: Yeah, well that’s why we have matzahs, because you have to have a balance—the duality of life, challahs or matzahs.
But I found that there is a form of healing called “Healing the Thought” and I said, “Wow, what a novel way to work with people.” And once I realized that this is a valid modality I wanted to try it. But it wasn’t enough for me, so I went back to my background in particle physics and saw that energy could be moved in many different ways; it’s been shown that you can heal with thoughts, and prayer is a thought. You can have a wishful prayer for someone and somehow that person may end up being healed. This has been quantified. People may know the work that Dr. Larry Dosseyhas done in statistically quantifying the power of prayer to heal others. There is a statistically significant percentage of people who are healed vis-à-vis prayer.
So if you have a thought, is that enough? Well, I found that there’s more than just a thought. It’s not just what you think, it’s how you think. You know the old adage, “If you think good it will be good.” And maybe from this emanated the first person who started psycho-immunology: mind over matter, or in scientific terms, mind over what matters, perhaps.
Jacobson: Lawrence Taylor,the linebacker of the New York Giants, was once asked about playing while he was injured and he responded, “It’s mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
Lazaroff: That’s right. It only jacks up the orthopedic bills, which is very good! By the way, I was a fullback on my high school football team. And things did matter to me.
Jacobson: So you developed the idea that thought and how you think affects the actual energy flow?
Lazaroff: Exactly. Thoughts and energy flow are connected. Whether we have a good thought or a negative thought does affect how we feel. Negative thoughts have been shown to actually weaken you, deplete your production of T-cells or thymus cells which affect the immune system or vasoconstrictors. Positive thoughts have the opposite effect. Positive thoughts produce endorphins and serotonin which make you feel good.
If you can engender in someone the concept of thinking good and it will be good, that starts a new field of healing. Once you think you can be healed, and know that you can be healed, it sets everything in motion. It’s part of an overall Divine plan that we know about because the architect of life, whom I will call G-d, looked into a blueprint, which I will call Torah, and told us: I’m going to create the remedy before I create the illness. So you know there’s a way out.
Jacobson: In a sense, built into every illness is a cure.
Lazaroff: The possibility to be cured is built in but you have to look.
Jacobson: About your background, did you grow up with Torah?
Lazaroff: I grew up with a modified form of the blueprint, and sometimes when you modify a blueprint, the house isn’t exactly what you would like to have. So yes, I did have some semblance of a kosher home, so to speak. We had dairy and meat and sometimes the dairy and meat would mix. And we did have Shabbos candles and I did have a bar mitzvah and I think I put tefillin on once right after my bar mitzvah and then I found a safe deposit box for them so they wouldn’t get worn out — G-d forbid they should lose their lustre!
I was introduced to spirituality by an adherent of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Ann Arbor who made me aware that there’s something more in life than just the physical, tangible, that you can just taste or touch. By realizing that there is a means to enable you to open your eyes and see something other than physical, that got me to look — and I looked at what I knew best, atoms and molecules.
Jacobson: You’re a trained physicist I gather.
Lazaroff: Correct.It came to me that if molecules are composed of atoms, and there’s something called sub-atomic particles which by definition aren’t really particles, because a particle is what? Something that has some sort of even miniscularspace, by definition, even if it’s a nanometer.to come into being at some place at some time. So if what I am made of, so to speak, is some sort of quantum field that may or may not come into being, then am I here or not here? Well obviously I am here.
I realized that maybe spirituality based on this context has a basis in quantum field theory, quantum mechanics, and that Einstein’s theory of E=mc2 has another meaning, or it could be emunah, faith!
Jacobson: Let me ask you another question. What do you say to most physicists or scientists who don’t necessarily make that bridge and they in a sense limit their research to the physical or, let’s call it the sub-atomic level of the physical or quantum?
You made this bridge, and not just philosophically, because you work with healing. Clearly you see the energy of thoughts as a true bridge, as you said, think good and it will be good, that good thoughts actually affect your energy flow. What do you say to the skeptic or physicist and so many others who continue to maintain that they’re either atheists or agnostics or don’t necessarily make that jump?
Lazaroff: One can be a good observer, which doesn’t mean you’re a good interpreter. So you have a lot of facts, but how do you interpret those facts? An article I read recently, which I think was penned by Dr. Larry Dossey, talks about people who are “meaning challenged,” which means that you see all these events but how do you connect them? And what’s the cause of all of these events?
Jacobson: Let’s go back for a second and reconnect it to the theme of the show.The bottom line is that many people talk about Torah or their experience with G-d or religion and see it at best as some type of traditional heritage: you sit at a Sedertable or you go to Yom Kippur services, either out of guilt or out of responsibility or compulsion. Or people don’t go at all because they think it’s irrelevant. And seeing that you discovered in Torah, and the spirit of Torah, the things you’re describing, and actually working with it—working on the principles of discovering in this blueprint ways of helping people grow and heal—clearly demonstrates in a very powerful way the role of G-d or the role of spirit in healing.
This is something that medicine may be acknowledging, but it has not yet become the cornerstone of healing. I mean, if one were to say that G-d is the ultimate healer, as it says in Torah, “Ani Hashem refo’echa,” “ I, G-d, am your healer,” and G-d gives the power of healing to human beings through doctors and through healers, then clearly it’s not some incidental factor. That’s where the heart of healing lies.
So I’d like your reactions to that: first of all, the medical community at large and how you see the future evolving in that direction, and the crucial role that spirit plays in even physical medicine and all forms of it.
Lazaroff: Well, that’s a very good point, Simon. Recently it’s been brought to my attention that there are actually devices that seem to be able to measure that which is not merely physical.
Over the summer, when I was in Toronto, it was brought to my attention that there was a program on the Oprah Show where some doctors and scientists created a very sophisticated device that can determine up to three years in advance what major illness you may have and they put you through very specific protocols and drugs to stave off this very major illness. They noticed something unusual in the tissue as part of this analysis that is not defined as physical, and they called it spiritual. And along with all the physical protocols and modalities and adjunctives administered in the clinical setting to whomever, there’s also a group of spiritual gurus that come in that help everything stick.
Now, what’s employed may vary from practitioner to practitioner but it’s there, it’s known, it’s been televised. Recently in the last week I spoke to someone who has the device and is able to analyze emotional, physical, and what he calls thespiritual, and when I asked, “What’s your definition of the spiritual?” part of what came up in simple terms is, “That which is beyond the pale of understanding; that’s why I use my computer.” And so, who programmed your computer? And so if it’s not G-d, then how do you get out the spiritual? In pure, absolute terms, the real question is, can anything physical really measure the spiritual?
One of the reasons that scientists wanted to see the $7 billion linear accelerator built somewhere in America was to find that there is a building block in nature beyond the physical that they knew was G-dly and spiritual. By definition, we can’t break apart the physical in order to see the spiritual, but there is a way. And I call that way non-cognitive reality because you can use your mind toascertain many sentient things. However, beyond that, what can you do with your mind? Can you see the spiritual? Can you touch the spiritual?
This is where the knowledge of Torah can come in, or even on a more rarefied level, the knowledge of the esoteric in Torah, beyond what is printed, but that which was received in a realm called Kabbalah, that talks about this interface at great length.
And the knowledge that we have the means to move the spirit so to speak in order to heal. That’s how G-d planned it.
Jacobson: Let me give you one question to think about over the break. You were saying how good thoughts actually change your energy. The thing is, there are some people who simply cannot bring themselves to have good thoughts, either due to the haunting scars of their childhood or other issues like low self-esteem. I’d like to know what you do when you can’t control your thoughts.
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Jacobson: Okay, we’re back with Herschel Lazaroff. I’ve heard some of the reactions of some of the people that you’ve helped, and you can’t argue with success, even if you’re a skeptic like me! But I’d like to hear your thoughts on the question I asked you. The line you quoted is from the Tzemach Tzedek, a Chassidic Rebbe, who said, “Think good and it will be good.” Clearly it’s not just a nice little thought, it has, as you so eloquently described, very practical application.
What about a person who just can’t bring himself to think well or can’t think good thoughts? I’m not looking for a quick gimmick, because I know there’s no quick answer to that, but how do you address that?
Lazaroff: It’s a very good question. The first thing I try to establish is knowing that the entire plan of creation is predicated on good, on love — that everything is good. Chessed olam yiboneh. G-d created everything with goodness and kindness. And that’s the basis for creation.
Now it may be trite to say in all circumstances “this is also good,” (as someone in the past is quoted as always saying: “Gamzu le’tova,” “This too is good”) because how do you see the good in very complicated or traumatic issues that have occurred in our own lives and instances? That’s problematic.
So once you establish that everything has a basis rooted in good, what I want people to establish in their own lives is something called “flow.” Things should go easily. Things should come to you and you shouldn’t have to scramble to make another dollar, to make this relationship always come out the way you’d like it to come out through arduous labor. When you know it could happen and it could come to you because you have this as your goal, then part of the success is knowing that this success is a gradual process and there are ups and downs, that’s part of life.
But by thinking good you accomplish two things: You can actualize your goal and help avoid and mitigate tremendously the number of negative influences in your life. Like a laser. Cutting through the vicissitudes and exigenciesin life in order to reach that goal.
Sometimes the outcome may not be what you had in mind, but by thinking good you employ the powers of healing and the accessible forces in the cosmos that can make it happen for us in a very tangible, profound way of revealed good.
Jacobson: You know, that’s the Catch-22: a prisoner can’t free him or herself. Obviously that’s where the role of the healer comes into play. If we could just make a statement to the world, “Think good and it will be good,”and find the good in everything, nobody would need any healers because people could just access it themselves.
But if a person is in that Catch-22 situation where they can’t bring themselves to think that way, what do you do? Is it just a matter of education? Do you spend time inspiring them and just saturating them with good thoughts?
Lazaroff: That’s a very good point. Let me put it to you this way. I don’t believe that one modality or protocol can help one individual. Usually, there’s a team approach, a multi-disciplinary approach, whether you’re going to your doctor who’s conventionally trained, or to a complementary specialist of some form or another. There’s usually a team effort.
If you look into the Torah as a source of how doctors have their “supernal” license for healing, you’ll see that G-d gave license to humans in the form of v’rapeh, y’rapeh which means“You will heal.” And this is how physicians came about so to speak.
It’s also known that in a specific time and a specific place a certain person using specific drugs, herbs or modalities can get better. But what if you want to speed up the process and find a catalyst? If you look at the numerical value of the words v’rapeh, y’rapeh you’ll see that it’s the same as pidyon nefesh, giving over your soul to someone who’s inspiring that can help you, that catalyst is inspiration.
If you’re spiritually inspired and know that there’s more to life than just what you see and feel and touch (and that it’s also inside of us which we access through the actions that we do every day in a spiritually meaningful way vis-à-vis the 613 commandments that are incumbent upon Jews and the 7 Laws of Noah that are incumbent upon non-Jews), then we have another framework for looking into how to do what I do to engender a sense of stability, psychological calm, tranquility, and peace. But also it brings meaning, and we all search for meaning. It’s the meaningful acts that bring meaning to our lives.
Jacobson: So it’s not just introducing thoughts, it’s also introducing modalities of behavior to actually open up channels.
So in your own experience, how have you seen this process demonstrated, or things that have affected you most deeply, or resonated in these spiritual parallels in the healing process? And what are some of the methods that you’ve used?
Lazaroff: In creation, there is something called a leitmotif. This can be witnessed whether you look at the field of physics (the science of the unified field theory, a theory connecting all forms of measurable energy and forces in the world), or whether you look in linguistics where there are deepstructures as Noam Chomsky, a linguist, calls them, and other fields.
There’s a reason why sparrows go to Capistranoand not to Martinique. It’s not because they got a better deal from some travel agent. Our Sages have taught us that the fabric of creation has something in it called spiritual DNA which is an antecedent to the physical DNA. It’s known in the teachings of Kabbalah that there are Sefirot, ten spheres of spiritual influence that make up the structure of spiritual existence. As an analogy, people have heard the term “chakras” from the Eastern approach, these confluences of energy that are in our body. In my own system I would use this spiritual DNA described by our Sages as a means of determining what makes a person click. The basis for this is seeing if a person’s energy is in tune with his or her higher self or not. But then, what do you do to maintain the balance of your spiritual DNA? We all have one of one form or another. Some people love to give a lot of money to charity. Some people are very careful with what they eat vis-à-vis keeping the laws of kosher. Some people like to have big mezuzahs up on their doors and others take solace in helping someone get a job.
This is what adds meaning to our lives. Once people see that there’s a spiritual side and a physical side, and that the two synergistically come together, that creates the jump start. As a matter of fact, a friend of yours came to me recently and said, “I see a great logo for you. You have this guy with two cables: one hooked up to you and one to the guy, and that’s the jump start.” And that’s true. But the jumpstart only lasts as long as your motivation—and what motivates a person differs from individual to individual, because each human is different. No two snowflakes in the universe are the same; no two individuals are the same. We all need a different prescription. There are scientific studies that actually corroborate the fact that two people with identical illnesses need totally different protocols and modalities in order to heal.
Jacobson: That’s the motivational side. What about the maintenance side?
Lazaroff: Unfortunately, people often spend more time maintaining their cars than themselves. But there’s actually a very specific mitzvah in the Torah which is, you have to maintain yourself to be healthy. It’s a mitzvah to be healthy, to take care of yourself.
As a matter of fact, I once wrote in to the Rebbe about creating a program for executives about eating healthy foods based upon macrobiotics, and the answer I received was actually that night in a public speech of the Rebbe, in what’s known as a farbrengen, at Lubavitch World Headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. He said, in part of the 20-minute speech which answered my question, that in order to have a healthy body, you need to have a healthy soul. But first you need to have a healthy body. The soul needs to be healthy also, but he emphasized the body. You are what you eat. And based upon what we discussed earlier, you are what you think!
And so if you’re eating well and you’re thinking good thoughts, then you can start to develop a maintenance program between what you think (which requires the proper meditation: meditation can be kosher or not kosher also) to how you dress, what kind of air you breathe, supplements you take, and of course prayer. Prayer is important.
Jacobson: So how would you distinguish between your method of healing using Torah and what you would call a successful secular healer. In other words, how does G-d and Torah and mitzvahs actually contribute more than what we’ll call “secular spirituality”?
Lazaroff: Let me reframe that. Let’s say you take two people who are healed. One did it the way you’ve just depicted, through a “secular healer” as you put it, and another used my approach, or a Torah approach (it’s not my approach, because there are many people who heal using other modalities that are in the spiritual realm, not just what I’m doing). What’s the difference? You have two people who are healed—they’re healed! The symptoms that they initially presented are gone.
The way I like to look at it is this. But first let me preface it with something someone once said to me about the effect of making a blessing over food.
The person happened to be a psychic (he was also actually observant), and he happened to see things. He saw light go into his wife when she made a blessing and light go up out of his wife after the blessing. Light. That’s the difference. The word for blessing in the formulaic version we use is Boruch, “Blessed art Thou….” Making a blessing on whatever you’re eating or doing whatever mitzvah starts formulaically with the word Boruch. Boruch is also related to the word to bring down or draw down light. And so, ultimately, when you heal, vis-à-vis a spiritual modality (I personally believe this from what I’ve seen and what I’ve learned from my masters) we bring in a new form of light to the world that not only raises the consciousness of the person being healed but also of those around him or her and the world at large. I think that’s the difference.
Jacobson: It always seemed to me that the concept of G-d as opposed to spirituality always had the component of humility, as opposed to selfish self-actualization. Many spiritual people are just arrogant, but they’re arrogant through spirituality.
I guess humility is a big factor. We alluded to it earlier but in the sense that healing is more of a channeling than a creating. It’s not you or I or anyone who can create anything, and humility has a big impact on this whole thing.
Have you seen that in actuality?
Lazaroff: Yes I have. If you want to talk about humility we can go back to the “forerunner” of humility, and that’s Moses. He was the most humble of all people and look how great he was. So he was humble but he knew his worth; he knew who he was.
And so from a healing perspective, giving has a lot to do with healing. When you’re employing these methodologies, a significant part is imparted to whom you’re helping, because you have the desire to give over what you’ve been given. Let’s say it’s a G-d-given authority and a G-d-given talent and strength, a koach (power), and by doing good in other realms in your life, that engenders an ability in the healer to give over more of this universal, divine energy in order to promote a change.
Jacobson: Does any case study come to mind, something that inspired you or moved you deeply?
Lazaroff: I’ll give one or two. One is with a woman, and part of the process deals with looking at which mitzvah or two could be beneficial in helping you.
Jacobson: Was this a secular woman?
Lazaroff: Yes. I said to her, why don’t you light candles for Shabbos? And she said, you know, I was married for many years and I’ve been divorced for an equal number of years and I used to light candles when I was married. Since I got divorced I stopped. And on top of that I live in a small apartment and I have pets that could knock over the candles. It could be a dangerous situation. I don’t know if I could do it. And on top of all that, I’m really Reform.
So I said to this woman, you know, I don’t know if you’re Reform. Let’s say you’re uninformed and you can’t make an objective decision without sufficient information. So she said, all right. I mean, she couldn’t argue with the fact!
At that time she was going on a vacation somewhere, either Tahiti or Hawaii, and when she came back, she called me and said, “Hershel, I lit candles and it had an impact. It changed my life.” And I said, “Why is it different now than when you used to light candles years ago?” “Well, with everything else that we talked about and the blocks I had, issues with whomever, and the homework you gave me, I started to light candles and I saw a new light. I just felt this energy come to me and this peace. I never had such peace. And I’m calm. I took a dose of Shabbos candles and that’s what did it.”
Jacobson: And that unblocked her?
Lazaroff: That was part of it. That deals with the spiritual blocks, although there are other instances where I’ve worked with more tangible blocks, but I think you’re referring to more of a spiritual block?
Jacobson: Not necessarily. Give another example of something that didn’t involve a spiritual block.
Lazaroff: Okay, I had a woman come to me. She and her husband were trying to have children for 18 years, and when I worked with her it came out that she had an issue with a high school classmate years ago. It seemed very innocuous and to the average bystander, who would care if so and so did something to me that was so innocuous? It came and went in a heartbeat.
And we dissected it for about half an hour and the energy release was so powerful I almost flew out of my chair. She took to heart what came out through the session. Her husband took it to heart and he put over their entire apartment the words, “Think good and it will be good.” Within two weeks she conceived. The baby is now a couple of years old.
Jacobson: Okay, we’re going to take some calls if anyone has any questions after this break.
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Jacobson: We’re back with Herschel Lazaroff. Obviously we’re going to need you on other shows because there’s so much to talk about. We have Marsha on line one.
Caller: Hi. I was raised like you were, and about 20 years ago I became little by little more frum (religious) and before that I had been interested in yoga and meditation. At this point I feel like I want to combine the two, like I want to go back to doing meditation and yoga.
Lazaroff: You sound like my wife! We had this talk before I left this morning.
Caller: My question is, is it kosher to do that? I’ve been doing it lately and once I went to a Jewish Meditation Workshop and the man just talked so much, we couldn’t meditate.
Lazaroff: Well, I could teach you a very simple meditation. Meditation does work and if you pray every day, that’s also meditation, but if you need something a little more formulaic, you could meditate on the word shalom. When you breathe in, have in mind the syllable sha, and when you breathe out have in mind the syllable lom. That’s a great starter. But if you’ve done meditation, you may want something a little more involved. Does that sound like you?
Caller: No this sounds good because this would be something good to focus on and then I would feel like it’s a Jewish thing. I wouldn’t question it.
Lazaroff: Well, shalom means peace, G-d, good-bye, hello. So that’s a good start. If you want something a little more complicated, call back after the show. There are derivatives of the way shalom is spelled and you can put the different letters in different parts of your body and have it affect you in more profound ways.
Caller: Like if I use another word like “om,” is that not kosher?
Lazaroff: Well, some of these words that people use in TM come from deities, and because they meditate on something that may have been used for idol worship, it’s questionable and it’s better to stay with a safe word.
Jacobson: We have Lorraine on the phone.
Caller: I live in Riverdale, and what I really want to know is how I can find a Chassidic synagogue that also says the prayers in English, because my philosophy is most in line with the Chassidim. When I go to a regular synagogue, I get depressed.
Jacobson: So Lorraine, stay on the line and I’ll have Philip, the producer of the show, take your name and number, and we’ll put you in touch with someone. But I appreciate your call. Let’s go to Shifra.
Caller: I have had the merit of learning Torah and always had a very good body image as a teenager but then in my studying I felt that my body was a temple, and when I said berachas I did feel that light. But as the Rabbi knows, I had an operation and I asked my doctor how many stitches I had and I had 26, which is the numerical equivalent of the name of Hashem, but I feel that now my body has been desecrated and I think I really went into a little depression. In other words, my temple in the operation has been cut and I wanted to share this with you and what you would suggest for people who have had operations and if they feel deeply that their body is a Beis HaMikdash, not only the body image but how to get that feeling. I’m sure I had a trauma, it was an emergency situation, but I feel that the Beis HaMikdash should become whole again.
Lazaroff: That’s a very good question, Shifra. I don’t know if I can answer the question in brief, but I hope you find this satisfying. Yes, indeed, our body is considered holy and a temple in which G-d resides, but when it’s necessary and when you’ve gone through the means of working with the approved medical establishment methods, which it sounds like you’ve done (and these people have been licensed by G-d to heal), it’s a necessary process in the overall scheme of things. Let’s call it hashgacha pratis, that you went to this doctor at this hospital at a certain time and you needed this as part of your maturational growth on the physical and spiritual and emotional plane. Of course if you feel violated in any way, I wouldn’t discount it, but knowing that it’s part of G-d’s plan and you’re doing all you can to maintain what you have through G-d’s licensed practitioners, you should feel good that you have your strength and your energy back to take care of yourself and your family and G-d should give you many more years of feeling good about yourself and others, and be careful.
Jacobson: Okay, let’s go to Cathy on the air.
Caller: Hello. I have an awful lot of bad habits. I’m counting all the time. I can’t stop counting. I would like to be able to meditate. I’m very religious. I go to church every morning. I’m Catholic but I don’t know how to meditate.
Lazaroff: Well the fact that you’re always counting is good because things that are important in your life, you count, so you obviously you find many things of meaning in your life. You probably have been listening to this show for a long time and have found meaning in everything. And so if you want to meditate, the suggestion I gave the young lady a while ago was to use the word shalom. You may use another word if you like, something that resonates with you, and have that in mind. And have in mind that you’re taking the powers of your soul to another realm and this realm you are uniting with what you understand G-d’s light to be, and specifically, G-d without intermediaries.
Jacobson: Thank you. Let’s go to David.
Caller: I was wondering if you could tell me the effect of health and healing for let’s say anxiety and depression and what it has to do with changing your name. Let’s say if your name is not one of the root soul names like Moses or, you know, a lot of today’s Hebrew names are not really American names, there more like “Tzippy” or whatever, in order to effect overall mental health.
Lazaroff: Well, you’ve asked two questions. One is specifically about an issue, anxiety and depression, and the other is about a name change. A name change does help in healing and you can go to your local Orthodox rabbi and ask for an appropriate name —some names are more appropriate than others. And if you feel and he feels also that it would be beneficial for you, that indeed could be a first step in healing. I would still seek professional bona fide, approved practitioners, whether it’s a psychologist or a psychiatrist, or others in the alternative realm who can give you assistance, but I would look to professionals first in addition to seeking a name change. You should be comforted and things should go well for you, and I’ll give you a blessing for an immediate, speedy recovery.
Caller: Thank you. Could you tell me what causes, especially that it’s so prevalent today, anxiety and depression? What is the root cause of it and what mitzvah can you do to help alleviate it?
Lazaroff: Well, it’s known that simchah poretz geder, joy breaks through all boundaries. I would like, inside of setting up an ideology, what you can do to shift out of it in a very practical way, which is being b’simchah, being happy. There are people who can show you that step by step because every person is different from any other person and the causes of why you are the way you are are different from someone else with a similar issue. So it takes a professional to understand why you are the way you are versus someone else and to give you a specific methodology and establish a program or regimen or what to do, your hishtadlus, your homework so to speak, to help you reach a form of mental well-being.
Jacobson: We have David on the line.
Caller: Thanks a lot Rabbi and Herschel. This show has been a fantastic continuation of my day. I struggled through tefillin this morning with getting over some surgery in my neck. We have Leibel Wolf from Australia coming to talk to us tonight at our Chabad House and he of course has done a lot of meditation tapes.
My question is this. If we have these struggles that we carry around, excess baggage… it says in this week’s parsha that after 40 years a man attains a full grasp of his knowledge. Does that mean we have to work on this thing for 40 years when we start to learn? Or does it mean 40 years of age? I mean, do I have to wait until I’m 88 before I get a full grasp?
Lazaroff: Real quickly, the answer is hamaaseh hu ha’ikar, the essential thing is to just do it. You don’t have to wait because the benefits are immediate.
Jacobson: Particularly when sometimes the 40 years are cumulative: it could be perhaps in the merit of your parents and grandparents who have already done the work. Remember, we live in a generation where we suffered greatly, and collective pain works in a great way. G-d counts all those years together, so we have many more than 40 years behind us.
Let’s go to Ellen.
Caller: Hello Rabbi. I have a suggestion for Shifra, who asked something earlier. There’s a little prayer that I say every morning and it goes, “In my heart I will erect a sanctuary to glorify His honor, and in the sanctuary I will place an altar to the glories of the splendor for the eternal light I will testify for the sacrifice for my soul, my unique soul.” So if she prays in her heart, the rest of her body will just follow through.
Jacobson: That’s very kind of you.
Caller: And the other thing is that for the lady who’s counting, she means that she counts numbers and that is an obsessive-compulsive thing and there are many medications that can help her. When I say my prayers, I say a general “G-d bless my family,” but then I get specific and I say, please help her with her pregnancy, please help her with her diabetes, and I get specific. I start feeling like I’m directing G-d to what I want instead of letting it be G-d’s judgment, so is it right to pray specifically in addition to a general prayer?
Lazaroff: That is actually a really good question because even though I mentioned studies where prayer (tefillah) does work, when you’re specific you actually bring down a more refined light and you direct that energy more specifically, and that, in my experience, does have a more profound effect. That’s part of what I do. That’s good. Keep it up.
Jacobson: I’m going to have to apologize to those callers who are still holding because I have a few questions that I must ask. Number one, do you have a contact name and number if anyone wants to contact you?
Lazaroff: Well, you can reach me at 443-831-0932. And I have a website. Herschel.net.
Jacobson: And a final question. What suggestion can you make that people can take to begin a process that obviously can be followed up through contacting you or other bona fide healers?
Lazaroff: Well, you just said it. You contact a healer. You contact myself or other people whom you’ve heard about who have reputations, which is important. But if you want something practical to take home or share with a friend, I would suggest making a commitment to honor yourself and to love yourself. When you love yourself, you’ll be able to love others, and from that perspective you develop a sense of worth and self-esteem and engender the feelings that will help you heal and make yourself whole.
Jacobson: Thank you very much Herschel. It’s been a real honor to have you on the show. It just shows how much more there is to talk about and I feel somewhat frustrated in that sense. I want to thank all of our listeners for listening to this show about healing and spirituality, once again demonstrating that you cannot be complete or whole or happy if you don’t nourish your spirit as you do your body.
Have a good evening. See you again next week.
Tags: radio transcript, body and soul, healing, health
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July 28th, 2015
Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – May 23, 1999
Mike Feder: Today we are going to talk about something that’s been in the news for quite some time, but more so for the last few weeks. Dr. Jack Kevorkian was convicted in Michigan, of charges – I think it was “complicity in murder,” or “murder,” he is now residing in jail, and I’m sure he is appealing.
The issue is assisted suicide and suicide; and the question, I think, is, are you the sole owner of your life – can you do just what you like with your own life?
I’ll just start off with this massive topic, by just asking you an almost factual question, in a way: do you think this man belongs in jail where he is right now? Should he have been convicted?
Rabbi Simon Jacobson: What do you think?
Feder: What I think? I think no, I think committed what I would call a victimless crime. He was invited to help somebody else end their life, the man signed a legal document he went and did it, he did not hurt anybody, anyhow, why is he in jail, that’s the way I see it initially, I’m willing to be persuaded – but that’s the way I see it.
Jacobson: Well, I think the focus of our show probably should not so much to be why he is in jail, but the question you are asking me about who’s life is it anyway, and who controls life, because I think it is more of a legal question about how much he was participating, was he a hired gun, alright, lets say the patient themselves pulled the plug; so – from my point of view it’s not so relevant his complicity in what happened, but rather the philosophy of it, the concept it and I’d rather not comment about the legal aspects of his participation. I will say this from the outset: that it’s probably apparent, but we should discuss it. The issue here is his philosophy of being able to assist; you may put a question: of what kind of doctor is he, and would you trust him with your life?
Feder: You don’t trust him with your life, you trust him with your death! I’m not being facetious…
Jacobson: But I think there is an element here of a difference if was a doctor or not, let’s say if was a spouse, if he is a doctor, does he have a higher standard to live up to, because in a sense he is dealing with delicate issues.
The same question is asked about abortion: you know, some doctors refuse to do abortions not because of any religious reason but because they do not want to be involved in taking a life.They feel their job is to heal and to bring life into the world. So, well, so we are dealing here with somewhat of a tangent: I’d like to focus on the actual topic of whose life is it…
Feder: Now, let me take this moment just to say that we do welcome your calls, and our number here at WEVD for your questions and comments about this issue as we proceed today live in the studio is 212-244-1050. And let me just real quickly before we get into the psychological and philosophical…
Jacobson: Nitty-gritty…
Feder: The nitty-gritty. To get down to the bottom – is in fact, the one thing about, and there are many things about the legal issues that may be interesting enough, but the one thing that is pertinent in the end is that this man intends obviously to get this over with in the Supreme Court and to see if they make it the law of the land. If it becomes the law of the land, to do what he proposes, it actually does intrude on the deeper issues here, because we’ll all be living in a place where this is something anybody can do at any time, that’s why I bring it up.
Jacobson: Well, I think in that it’s a great opportunity to discuss. Because I think many of these stories, this and similar ones, in a way, illuminate and force us to take another look at our perspective on life, and for that matter, on death. So that’s why I really embrace the topic of this nature. I mean, G-d forbid, I’d rather not have to deal with the topic of this nature and discuss it, but I think often these type of poignant events that hit headlines, force us to look at things that sometimes we are uncomfortable with looking at, because we may be ambiguous or ambivalent about some of these issues.
I think we should go straight to that topic, and I wanted to say something about questions, and I know we’ve been doing discussions on the air and so many people have told me, you know, I would like to hear you discussing the talk but I think that in the climate that we live in a world where so many people have questions and have been silenced – I really would love to see the show evolve to a place where – not just in New York but a place where people feel that you can bring to the table your psychological, your spiritual, your religious and your heretical questions. And a place where – since no questions are off limits – where we really look to people, accepting that invitation enthusiastically.
Feder: This is a place where you won’t be told to shut up and go away. Like you were all your life perhaps.
Jacobson: Correct. Now, to our topic. Go for it.
Feder: Now, here’s something, I remember, because I talked about this once on another radio show I did, I remember reading in the paper a year or two ago, there was this case where a man, who was an elderly man, his wife was dying of terminal cancer, she was in a hospital. He apparently had some sort of conference with her, and they agreed, and he came to the hospital, and he killed her – shot her with a shotgun. It was gruesome, but it was over in a second, and he was able to prove later on that she had asked him to do this, and yet he was arrested for murder. He had lived with this woman for 55 years, and they had a wonderful life and very happy marriage. Near the end, the last couple of months of her life, she begged him to do this. And he said he couldn’t see someone he loved suffering like that. When you think about it, if you – now, I don’t want to put you in a personal situation like that – but, you know, if you saw someone that you loved so much, they are your whole life to you, practically. And they begged you to put them out of their misery, could you do anything like that? He did it, and he was let off by a jury. He was charged but he was let off by a jury of his peers.
Jacobson: Well, I understand. I want to distinguish between the legal system and what’s right or wrong, and what I mean by that again the jurisdiction of our constitution and therefore of the courts, is in some ways limited, because they cannot go into the hearts and souls, particularly religious beliefs. But based on the principles of separation between Church and State. So I’m sure that the Founding Fathers had this dilemma: what do you do when there is a conflict, like why is it illegal to commit suicide? And you mobilize the police force, the fire department, anyone you can to stop the guy from jumping from the bridge. That’s law, and you spend money to prevent him from jumping off the bridge, or from committing suicide in any other way. Clearly, clearly there was some type of appreciation that despite the fact that this nation is built on individual rights, including the right of how to live, there was a line drawn – I would argue that almost anyone, even the most liberal of the Civil Liberties Union would argue there is a line to be drawn. Because at certain times when a person is, for instance, harmful to themselves, does society have a responsibility to stop that harm?
Now, I know that is not the only topic that we will be discussing but I just wanted to broaden the issue, because the more complex we see it is, we see it’s not as simple as just a question of “putting someone out of misery”.
I think the question should be phrased – and I come from a certain perspective, which is Torah perspective, a perspective based on G-d, that life is G-d-given, and I say this unabashedly, for a very particular reason, because I think that is the heart the issue: What is life? What is life? What does it mean to live a life of quality life? Is a paraplegic a life of quality? Is a mentally retarded a life of quality? How do we define life – I think the question starts long before the issue of pain. You know, when someone is in the hospital and they attach tubes, the question is, do you put them out of their misery – I think the question begins the moment they’re born. Because how we see life in the beginning, that’s how we treat it later as well. And I think that’s the question, and I’d like to just, you know, just lay down the perspective of Torah on this issue, because it very clearly states, a very strong opinion on this matter, because you’re dealing here not just with how you deal with pain, but how you deal with life in general, how do we value life. And if a person is unproductive and empty, and feels hopeless and aimless, should anyone stop them from hurting themselves? In other words, where do you draw the line and where do you define it?
The Greeks had a custom (and they actually called the Jews barbaric) in the good old days in Greek time. Their approach, when a child was born handicapped, physically or mentally handicapped, they would kill that child, they would throw them down a mountain. I don’t know whether you’re aware of that.
Feder: There are other societies that did this, too.
Jacobson: Right. And the Jews refused to do that, the Jewish people. And the Greeks considered them barbaric! Why put families and people through such misery of seemingly hopeless life? Today I doubt that the Americans would call that, would agree with the Greeks.
Feder: There are some Americans who would agree.
Jacobson: OK, but I’m saying, that the government doesn’t. Let’s put it this way, the majority doesn’t. But that’s not the issue. The issue is not the consensus. I just wanted to point out how the societies have different views on this matter and I go back to the initial point about life, the idea and the sanctity of life. The sanctity of life. If one accepts that life is given to us, as a gift, by G-d, and it’s not from just from biological evolution, which means that it’s subject to the rules of human beings determining what’s convenient and what’s not convenient to them, but if it’s defined by a G-d that give us life as a gift, there are certain consequences of that. And again, as we’ve often done in the show here- I am not discussing G-d at this point right now, I have to come with that as an axiom, because it’s a perspective, and I don’t know if the issue is to prove it or not, the issue is, let’s present the perspective in a legitimate and respectful way. Everyone is entitled to their own perspective and ultimately, it will come down to what resonates, what sounds best, or a person’s acceptance of some faith…
Feder: So, now, in a way, you are talking about the idea, as you’ve mentioned before, of the soul, that is the thing that sort of unites us.
Jacobson: As soon you say that there is a G-d-given life, that life is a gift, essentially you’re saying that there is a soul, for that gift is the soul within the body in a sense – a body, a corpse has no life, it’s inanimate. But let me define. So G-d gives life, meaning that this touches upon the essence of existence itself. Why is there existence? Do we fully – do we have a full answer to that? And why are some of us dealt certain cards in lives and some of us are dealt others? Can we determine what’s more quality than another? Based on the principle that G-d gives life, you must say that each of us, no matter how we live our lives, no matter what type of health situation, no matter what shortcomings, or positive qualities we have, that is a quality life because or some reason that’s part of the big picture, the purpose, the design that G-d intends for each of us. And to say that someone with blue eyes and blond hair, oh, that’s quality life – someone that’s brunette, is not, you know, I’m using a preposterous example because there you don’t find any type of pain or anything like that. So that type of a scenario comes down to: “Yes, G-d chose these different people to have different opportunities, people given different gifts and different challenges”. Sometimes a challenge is very difficult challenges. Can we explain why some children are born to dysfunctional families that are abusive and orphaned at a young age and suddenly their whole life is shattered and the opportunities that every normal child has are taken away from them? Should that child say to themselves: “life isn’t worth living?” We say: no! This is your challenge and you can overcome it. From a G-d perspective, and let me cite Halacha, the Jewish Law, legal statement: your body does not belong to you – this is the statement – that is why self-mutilation is prohibited in Torah Law, not just suicide, touching your body in any way to mutilate it, to harm it. And the reason given for it is, why is it prohibited?
Because this is not your body, its a gift given to you. And if someone gave you a gift and you return it the way it was given to you in the best way that you can, life is a gift, life is not ours to temper with, life is ours to fulfill our destiny and our calling to be the most productive, constructive… Best citizens, best human beings, most spiritual human beings, however you define these virtues. And with that statement said (I know Mike that you want to get something in, but I just want to finish my initial what’s called, my initial, whatever you call it, initial opening statement just to set the tone)
Feder: OK…
Jacobson: Based on that principle, that life is not your own, so self-mutilation, suicide, either self-inflicted or with someone’s help, is not our choice. And we – no matter how painful it may seem, when somebody is lying and living in pain, we don’t understand a lot of things in life. And, perhaps tempering with that, may not be the wisest thing for human beings. We are the creatures…We may not understand all the deepest plans and understand what G-d intends. If we do begin tampering – I’d like to question when you stop, and is there a place when one stops.
Feder: OK, fairly stated. I have a couple of things I want to do in response to that.
But let me just mention one more time, our number is 212-244-1050.
You know before you used the metaphor about cards, you know you got to play with the cards you’re dealt, you know when you play cards, you can fold. Now wait a minute! You can fold, and everybody understands that. There are many kinds of laws in the world and the law of playing with cards is that you can just back out if you think you’re losing or if it’s painful for you of if things are going to go bad for you. You know, you can bring it down to specifics, too. It’s common practice throughout history, everybody knows this, that doctors in hospitals, without making any issue of it, because they arrested, have been acceding to patients’ wishes, even sometimes crossing a line, and not even asking patients when they see them in tremendous agony. They have been killing them, to use a certain word, all that for a long time. Now I just got through reading a book by Stephan Ambrose about WWII. There was and incident where an American soldier was asked by German soldier, who just had both legs blown off, and was dying in tremendous agony and pain – he said that he asked several soldiers to shoot him, but they wouldn’t do it, but one man did it. And he said: “I couldn’t leave the guy lie there, he begged me to end his life”.
You know, it’s a long way between walking around on the earth and whoever G-d or whatever G-d may be, G-d is very far away for a lot of people, maybe some closer to other people than He is to other people. When you’re sitting there, and yourself – let’s put it on a personal basis, I have terminal cancer, I am in tremendous agony or I am in pain, I don’t have the right to say to myself: this is my life, there is nothing ennobling about this, I look like a monster and a wreck, everybody around me can hardly look at me, I don’t even recognize people any more, people are not seeing the person I used to be, I can contribute nothing to anyone, and I am in tremendous pain, I am hurting other people by the position I am in – who is to forbid me to do this? I don’t understand why there should be any law against it. Well, I know this is going in direct conflict with what you said, but that’s my feeling.
Jacobson: The difference – to drive a point home – the difference between what you’re saying and between what I’m saying, is the difference of who defines what you do with your life.
It’s a legitimate perspective, that which you have just articulated, if there is no G-d. If there is no G-d, than you are completely correct. See, there is no one else to talk to, except your own discretion, what you do with your life. And for that matter, let me make the point – you don’t have to use such an extreme example. What happens, a person reaches the age of 45, if their life is broken, they’ve gone bankrupt, and they want to commit suicide? Now you’re sitting with them, and they say: my life is terrible, like, I’ll throw that scenario at you: so you can also argue and you can say, Hey, your life is yours, and you can jump out of the window. I would submit, knowing you a little, you would probably try to persuade the person: look, life is difficult, now it seems that way, people have overcome challenges, lets go out for a coffee, you try to soothe the person. But the person gets into a rational philosophical argument at that point, the same argument can be stated: it’s his life, he chose at that point that his life is not worth living. He is humiliated by his financial situation, as many people did when Wall Street crashed, or many other times, and he is not mentally imbalanced. He is a very ration, very intelligent person. Mental imbalance, you’ll argue, well the person does not understand, so you have to be protective like a child; you won’t just let anyone do whatever.
Obviously, the situation your are addressing, evokes compassion and empathy which I have equally to you – I’m just saying that if you do take the principle of a G-d-given life, then the issue begins much before that person is living in pain in the hospital – it begins when they’re healthy: whose life is it then? What do you do with it? And – so the perspective you’re presenting, I have no problem hearing one that completely conflicts with what I’m saying, I’m just telling you, lets drive the point, the point is, the distinction between what we are saying is, one is based on G-d determines what you do with your life, and the other is based on what you determine what you do with your life.
Now, let me say this: the question is, should our legal system, our constitution intervene there – that’s a very good question. How much should they say and how shouldn’t they? How much – what right do they have? Should they stop people from jumping off the bridge? What do you think about that? People committing suicide. You see, right now the law is: that’s what the police department does.
Feder: Well, that’s based on the assumption (and you mentioned this a couple of times), its based on the assumption that this a country where G-d is important. As you said, that the people who founded this country and throughout our history the concept of G-d, whichever way you look at it, has been important. And, when you take that into account, you say that there is higher power which has given us our lives and we don’t have the right to take it after all. And also, I would talk to that person, I would try very hard to that person. And I have talked people out of doing this. I’ve spent years with some friends of mine off and on, and I’m sure a lot of us, people who are listening have been in this position.
And, we did talk about it. But I’m talking a specific case, with this guy, Kevorkian, we are talking to people who dying already, they are on their way, and are pain at the same time. This is not the same thing as somebody who has had a financial setback.
Jacobson: I understand, but that – the point I’m making is that philosophically it may be the exactly the same, in right intensity and emotional reaction I have the same reaction as you do, but philosophically, you can’t give me a distinction between the two. If life is in your control, you do what you want to do with it, and ultimately, that’s the ultimate decision-maker is the person with their own life. I understand that one is much more extreme than the other. But philosophically, I don’t see the distinction between the two. As I said earlier, where do you draw the line.
Let me just throw one more thing out here. I, too, would have very difficult problem if I saw someone in deep pain and asked me, especially someone I loved — I would not want to be in that position, because, I know that I respect life too much. If I was able to touch that person’s life, I don’t know how, you know, how I would treat other peoples’ lives in different situations. There is an element of sanctity that just comes, and sometimes compassion can be a crime as well.
Feder: So, wait a minute, you said you were trying to get out of it. Obviously, you can’t just get out of the room. Let’s say that somebody is lying in a room, and they say to you: look, you know this is…
Jacobson: Well, I didn’t mean to say get out of it. I didn’t mean to escape it. I mean to say… I wouldn’t want to see that pain, so I shouldn’t be tested in this way. I mean, but I clearly believe that life is not just question of comfort and discomfort.
Feder: So, you would say to this person – what would you say to this person? You’re sitting right there on their bed and they’re saying to you: “Look, you love me, don’t you”? And you say, “Yes, I do”. And they say, “Can you put me out of my misery, can you help me somehow, can you…” – what do you say to that person?
Jacobson: That’s a great question. Let’s take the question coming in. I’ll respond to that afterwards.
Feder: We have a call from Lester, and he says he is from New York! It’s a big city, Lester, so, go ahead, you are on the air. (…) Lester, don’t despair, you can always call back, we are here for you, but don’t do anything rash.
Jacobson: But anyhow, here’s my point: what I would say, going back to our discussion on pain in general, what does one say to a person who is deep in pain? Because there are people who are in pain who are not lying in the hospital. They are five years old or ten years old. What do you say to them? What do you say when they are in such terrible pain. They say, “Please end this”…
Feder: You mean a child says this?
Jacobson: Yes, a child, or teenager. A teenager, and you know clearly that they’re going to come out of this pain.
Feder: Oh, well, that’s different. That a different story. We’re talking about a very specific thing here. There many, and this is not an isolated philosophical abstract thing, we are talking about people every day, there are tens of thousands of people in this country in this situation, right now, while we’re talking, who are dying, they are not going to come out of it, and they’re in pain, and that’s what I’m talking about. I’m narrowing down to specific instances. That’s what Kevorkian is all about. It’s not about people who can be saved, these are people who can’t be saved.
Jacobson: Well, so let me tell me a story. I may have told the story before, but, this is a woman who lives in Toronto, who was exactly in this situation. Terminal illness, and the doctors had given up hope. They were keeping life, sustaining her on life-support. And she was in deep pain for over two years. And she was already agreeing to sign the papers just to release them from anything and just to take her off life-support, and she should pass on. The pain was just too unbearable.
This is a story that happened with me personally because her daughter bought, had a copy of my book “Toward a Meaningful Life”. And she visited her mother (she was from Chicago) in Toronto and read sections that were very soothing and inspiring. There was one line, not one line, one section in the chapter on pain and suffering that did something miraculous. The chapter discusses the issue about pain in life in general. A person who has pain, the pain accumulates, sometimes you make a calculation, if you sat down and made like a business calculation: how much suffering and loss one endures and how much gains one has in life. You may add up that the deficits are much greater than the pluses in your life. And based on that calculation, it may not be worth it!
But if you measure life in a qualitative perspective, not a quantitative, where your life is given to you from Above, that there is a purpose to life and sometimes is unfathomable in its full entirety and scope to us human beings, we see life as more complicated, than the moments of pain and loss, even though they may be more than the moments of joy, all are a part of bigger picture, our lives are perceived in a different way. And a person has to accept that life is a G-d given gift that should be embraced in its entirety.
Let’s take an example: in a computer program, you may see, someone say, hey, what’s the big thing, let’s take out that extra dot, but today we know in modern technology that extra dot can destroy your whole program. The complexity of a leaf is an entire complex molecular structure, atomic structure, so life is much more complicated than what meets the eye.
Feder: In other words, there is no way that we can comprehend the whole big picture.
Jacobson: Exactly. So when you have a person who is born handicapped, where you know that the doctors say this person is going to live their entire life this way…
Feder: And they may be in tremendous pain every day, too…
Jacobson: …in pain, plus psychological pain plus pain to the parents and to the family. Lets put them out of their misery right there. You know, at age one or age two. I mean, I specifically use examples because you see, you try to focus on one particular example and I’m trying to point out that they’re all philosophically under the same headline, so to speak. So, let me tell you the end of the story.
So the woman listening to this, said to her daughter: “I don’t want to be taken off the life support. You keep me alive as long as I can. I want to see you, I want to see your children, I want to stay as long as I can with this life and it’s OK, it’s a gift given to me I’ll endure the pain.
Miraculously, what happened was that she regressed. Her illness left. The doctors attributed this to optimism, to hope. That she wanted to fight, and when you fight, it strengthens your immune system, she wasn’t giving up. Now she’s alive and kicking today, and she is healthy and well. I’d love to have her on the show and ask her this question. Now, I’m not suggesting that every case, there will be a miracle of that nature and that’s a rule, but it’s a philosophy, you see, it’s a way of thinking. And I am looking for the exact words. So here you have a case of a child, who you know will live a life of misery, who will not have opportunities that normal healthy children have, parents will have to suffer psychological pain, financial loss… Let’s forget about the finance, let’s talk about…
The only answer is that life is complex and beyond our understanding. Life,quality of life is not just when we think it’s working, that means it’s working. Now, you feel comfortable, I’m in joy, I’m satisfied – that means my life is working. The Talmud says something interesting: A Tzadik, a righteous person, even after (biological) death is alive, and a wicked person, even in his life time is dead.
Feder: And the meaning is?
Jacobson: The meaning is you can biologically alive and spiritually dead. The meaning is you can biologically alive and walk and talk and you’re healthy and breathe and you have no health problem, but spiritually, or on a virtue level, you can be a horrible human being, and abusive human being. Is that called being alive? So, biologically, of course it is, medically the guy is alive. But – this person could be putting other people in deep, deep psychological misery. Just to show you that the definition of life is a little more complex than just biological life. Then you can have a person who is really suffering, that can barely move, yet their glow, their majesty, can be inspiring to thousands of people.
Now, I don’t understand why that person should be suffering and another person should be walking around healthy, I have no idea why. I don’t understand G-d’s ways. The age-old question: why do the wicked prosper, and the good often suffer? But the fact is that’s part of life’s realities. And it’s not a question, I understand that particular question, that moment, the person is going to die anyway, a day earlier a day later…
Feder: Or a month or two…
Jacobson: … put him out of their misery. But I would say, if you go with that attitude why then not kill mentally retarded or the handicapped child, why then also
Feder: Well the Nazis did exactly that.
Jacobson: In other words, once you tamper with life, where do you stop, where do you stop? And I would be very careful, that governments and laws should not be written in any way that etches in stone. I would rather risk intervening more in protecting life than in saying that, OK, this life isn’t worth it. Because once you do that, all you need in the next government another person says, “you know what? I’ll push the envelope. I think this type of life isn’t worth it”, so I would be very careful. And I think the Founding Fathers did say something: “All men are created equal”. Why created? Because if don’t have a basic principle that they’re created, then maybe they’re not equal?
Feder: So, in other words, if some other force created us, who are we to find out what’s equal and what is not equal?
Jacobson: Exactly. You have no right to say another person is less equal than you are. And that’s what you really dealing with – and yet what is real life? Does everyone have equal right to live? But I think that, based on the principle that I stated earlier, no we don’t have equal right to die, or to die when we want to die. That’s not given to us. Just like it’s wasn’t given to us how to be born or whom to be born to, the same is with the circumstances and time of death.
Feder: Alright, let me just take a break here, we are on a tight schedule here on the radio, let me just re-identify…
You got a fascinating quote from Kevorkian, and I was wondering, would you mind reading it to me right now, because it really gets to the heart of the issues we are talking about.
Jacobson: Yes, actually someone gave it to me as preparation to the show, and someone had downloaded it from the Internet who wanted to really see what he was about. Transcripts from his speeches and his interviews. And the speech that he made to the National Press Club, so in 1996 Kevorkian said: “In ancient Greece this was widely practiced by physicians (“this” meaning obviously assisted suicide). This was widely practiced by physicians, openly. The whole society accepted this as medical practice. You see, they were rational. You are a human body. You are a biological organism like every other biological organism. You bleed when you are cut and when you die, you stink. Now, what’s so sacred about that”.
Feder: Obviously, Mr. Kevorkian is not a religious man!
Jacobson: No, no, but I don’t particularly, frankly, read this quote to make this argument – this just drives the point somewhat, because I could see someone saying – I wont be so gross about it, I’ll be more subtle about it, but when it gets down to it, the fact is, we are just a bacteria, roaming around, crawling around like microbes on this earth, except we are a little more sophisticated than bacteria. We can build fax machines and cellular phones and cable TV’s, but essentially life as valuable as a microbe, and that attitude, that there’s nothing more to life than that – from that attitude, you don’t have to say that when you die, you stink, the way he put it, I find it even repulsive to repeat, but that attitude essentially concludes, yes, that we define what is most comfortable for us, what is called quality life, what is what is called “not quality” life, and that’s one approach.
Another approach is an entirely different one: quoting the Bible that G-d, an architect and engineer that created this Universe that is here by design, by plan, we are part of a complex system. We can make a major difference. We have a destiny, a calling. We are partner with G-d in creation. What you do matters, now and forever. Everything you do is meaningful. Life takes on an entirely different dimension and different meaning that – yes, it’s not just an accident, we are not just another microbe roaming around this earth, but your life is sacred. The word “sacred” means “it’s not in your control” and what is in your control is to take the life and make it as good as possible and help as many people as possible and transform this earth into a place of light instead of a place of darkness.
Feder: Do you know, a lot of people feel that, unfortunately, I’ve known a lot of people who’ve actually committed suicide. That’s just been part of my life experience. A lot of reasons that people commit suicide have something in common and one of them almost always is: they have always felt and still feel that their life is never in their control in the face place – and this is really interesting: based on what you said, that ironically enough, in the very act of killing themselves, they feel, for the first time in their lives, they actually did have some control over what happened to them.
Do you see what I’m driving at here? The people who feel the most despair and who are driven to this are often people who are told by other people, including people who are brought up in religious atmospheres, maybe not a spiritual but a religious one, but they really aren’t in control of their own life, that their life belongs to their parents, or to G-d, or to somebody else. In fact, they say, “Here’s an act of real decision, finally, I’m going to take life into my own hands”.
Jacobson: Well, interesting, and I will say this. I think that what we are discussing are symptoms of a deeper distortion from a life-view point. I believe, and I think I’ve stated many times, that often G-d and religion are presented to children and students in a way that is completely distorted, which is that G-d controls your life. Blind faith – when I make the statement that G-d gave us life, I do not mean that we are absolved of responsibility. This is a two-way street, it’s a partnership. You see, what I’m talking about, is a freeing experience and not a limiting one. G-d being part of our lives is not meant to be, that we have no say and no partnership. On the contrary, it makes it more incumbent upon us, because we have a very serious partner called G-d. This isn’t a game. This isn’t like, “Who cares one way or another?” The stakes are very high, there’s a real higher purpose to your life, that’s the point.
Unfortunately, the people that you are describing, their G-d is not of a higher purpose. Their G-d is about angering the Father in Heaven, who gives us guilt and curses us and punishes us, limits us. It’s not perceived as self-actualization and being the best that you can be; it’s not empowering. As a result, I can see, many people growing up in that type of constricting environment who will say finally, I have control over my life. It’s a real symptom of a real deeper malady of a deeper problem which is the celebration of life is absolute when it’s G-d-given. It is not just that I will be here and breathe freely and I can dance. We have been given the biggest gift of all, which is life on this earth. You can make a real difference. This is supposed to be a freeing, uplifting and empowering experience. When you know that, then when the pain does come your way, you see it differently. You don’t see it as “my comfort is the bottom line”, you see it as “my purpose is the bottom line” and you feel blessed to be part of that higher plan that you’ve been chosen to be part of that important plan. The most important project that ever existed!
You, Mike Feder, and every listener, were chosen to be part of a very big project, OK? And you know that, it’s in your gut, it’s in your blood. You’ve been told that by your parents, by society, I’m just giving you the scenario.You’ve been chosen for this project and how you behave, and every detail of your behavior makes a difference, you know? You are not just an extra, you’re indispensable. Now there is a setback, something doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. It could be pain, it could be loss, it could be trauma.
Feder: It could be repeated over many years
Jacobson: Yes! But you know in your gut that you are here for that higher project. So what do you think? There are two options: 1) I quit, I’m going to leave this project or 2) No, I’m going to go through it because this is a gift and I may not understand all the challenges that are given to me, but I want to see it through, I’m part of this. Now, if you don’t feel that you are part of a special project called life, as soon as there is some type of setback, you don’t see any benefits. What’s the benefit of life? What gift is it?
I often use an example: if someone offers you a 100 pounds of stones to carry across the street, you would decline, right? You don’t need the stones, you don’t need to exert yourself. But if someone says to you there’s a 100 pounds of diamonds carried across the street, not only will you embrace that, but you’ll ask for 200 pounds of diamonds. Now, 100 pounds of stones does not weight more than 100 pounds of diamonds, but there’s value to the diamonds, its worth the exertion. You don’t need stones. I don’t think people are afraid of burden, but if people do not see that there’s a benefit to it, that’s what happens, there’s no benefit in life, there’s no value, I don’t understand the value of life, therefore, when a challenge comes our way, I can argue that many, many people, should they be challenged in a very serious way, would easily relinquish their life, because you know why? Because even when they’re healthy, they don’t see absolute value in life, you see what I’m saying?
The point that I’m making here, is that it doesn’t begin with suicide, it doesn’t begin with when things are not working right. It begins when things are working right, when things are going well. I would like to ask someone when things are going well, they’re making money, they’re healthy, their family is well, everything is well. Ask them, how valuable is your life, how much do you cherish, how much do you celebrate? So I’m sure everyone will have good words to say. But let’s dissect it: and how much worth is it to you to remain in this life? So when things are going well, everyone is saying, no matter what, “Oh, this is the greatest thing, it’s a great blessing”. But the fact remains that when there is a challenge, suddenly, we have to force ourselves, like an eclipse of the sun, forces you to look at the sunlight in a new way, you suddenly see: “One second, how valuable is life to me anyway?” And I would argue that the real problem is how valuable is life,not so much the choice to commit suicide.
Feder: And I would suppose that the reason that you put this book together in the first place, that you had the Meaningful Life Center is that you are trying to tell people, obviously, that there is a meaning in life and the reason that you have this radio show is that you want to let people know in advance that there is a meaning to their life before it all starts to fall apart.
Jacobson: Preventive medicine, that’s called. Because the most preventive thing that you can give to you children, literally, is that they matter, that they are meaningful, and that they are absolutely indispensable. Because once that exists, everything else follows. And if that foundation doesn’t exist, or is eroded, that everything else if more or less like glamour show. Yes, thing are going well, we’re playing out the game, but, the bedrock, the foundation is missing, which is that I’m needed here.
Feder: Did you ever convince anybody of this personally in your life?
Jacobson: I’m trying to convince you!
Feder: Well, you know, we have a few years here… Good luck to you, that what I have to say. But really, has anybody ever come up to you and said…
Jacobson: That’s a good question, I’ll respond to that.
Feder: I mean these are words – they are good words, but you know…
Jacobson: Well, let me say this: I’ve never convinced anybody of anything, frankly, because I dont believe life is about debates and convincing people of something. People have to convince themselves. I think what you can do is present the people with another option that the secular society, or, lets say, the random forces of our education have now provided us. I believe in the power of resonance. I believe that deep down, everyone has a soul, and they are absolutely significant and indispensable, but society does everything possible, I don’t mean intentionally, to depersonalize us, so we are like statistics, one of billions, you know, you are statistics on someone’s balance sheet, you value is measured by your looks, your youth, your productivity, your buying power.
So, what I believe, and here’s where I have been successful, is putting or offering people the other option, and let people embrace it on their own, in their own way. I don’t believe in convincing…
Feder: The other option is that there is meaning beyond and beneath all these other things.
Jacobson: Yes, the other option is that you are indispensable. You matter, absolutely, your life is gift, it’s given to you, and you have the opportunity, every difficulty in life is a challenge that you have an opportunity to overcome.
Feder: I took the subway down to the show – you have lot of work ahead of you.
Jacobson: Well, as I said, I think, you see, if it was an issue of convincing people, then you’re right, but it lies at the heart of everyone’s deepest instincts, then I think it’s just a question of uncovering it and helping people to get rid of some of the debris that doesn’t allow it to emerge.
Feder: I believe it is true that everybody in their heart, if they haven’t been too far gone, let’s say, really does want to believe that there is something real special about them? Should we try to get a call here? Hello, you are on the air.
Jack: OK, I just wanted to say that I found your position incredible that you thought it would be so difficult for the rabbi to convince people that living the life in this way is something that’s worth the pain and the effort that’s involved. I’m 37 years old, and, you know, I’ve seen a lot of things, I’ve lost my mother. G-d bless, my grandmother is 89 years old, and the pain that she feels every time when I talk to her about my mother is more than palpable. But – life is sweet and we have things to do here and responsibilities. And this a woman who is very simple and believes deep down in her soul that there’s more than – that there is a purpose than just the day to day going through the steps, that there is a reason and a purpose, and that when you do that, everything is totally different.
Feder: Well, I appreciate your comments, Jack. Do you have a question or just wanted to…
Jack: No, no, I was a little taken aback at the negativity that I heard.
Feder: You mean from me, no?
Jack: Well, kind of, not from the rabbi.
Feder: In a way, that’s sort of my job here. And I’m not going to say that I’m lying when I say that and I’m not going to say that my job is to be negative but I do have a lot of questions about this, I mean I have seen people close in my life go through excruciating agony, both physical and mental over a period of time, over decades sometimes. People have expressed to me that they hadn’t any idea why they were alive and they couldn’t stand it any more and I think it all depends on how you want to approach this, I mean people have said to me “I can’t stand it, I want to end my life”. I have never told anyone that it’s a good idea and I have tried to talk people out of it many times, and I am involved in this occasionally. Even now, sometimes, people talk to me.
Jacobson: I’m glad that I’m getting callers that support my position rather than yours.But I think just in defense of Mike; he is presenting a different point of view, he has to represent a certain viewpoint of people who are perhaps skeptical, but your words are very encouraging, and thank you for your phone call.
Feder: We have about one minute left before we start approaching, we are beginning our descent into the end of the program here. You are listening to Rabbi Jacobson and I’m Mike Feder and the topic has been today the Kevorkian-assisted suicide. And suicide – are you the soul owner of your life.
I’ll tell you real quick – because we have very little time here – a story. My mother committed suicide. She was mentally ill and had tried many times in her life to commit suicide; real attempts, and some false attempts. And finally she did. And I’ll tell you, I went out there that very morning that she committed suicide, and I sat next to her in the bed. She was young, she was not physically ill, she was relatively young when she did that (I wasn’t so old myself). And I sat down next to her and I had two feelings. Now, I’ll just tell you this, and I’m interested to hear what your reaction is. Not to make it so abstract, but… first of all, all of her life, she had been trying… she had felt so distraught, and so, and life was so meaningless to her, that she had told many people that she wanted to end her life. And a lot of people finally were convinced that her life was so terrifying to her and so awful that would be a blessing for her not to have to endure this every day of her life. She suffered terribly for decades on end.
And I sat down next to the bed, and I looked at her, and I had two things that occurred in my mind. I spoke out loud to her, whatever was left there, and I said: first of all, I admired the fact that she finally took her life and I’ll tell you the truth, this is how I felt: that she took her life in her own hands, and finally, instead of begging doctors to give her the right pills, and asking people to help her out, to try to get other people to do thing to live a new life, she finally said “I can’t stand this pain anymore, it’s been going long enough, 30-40 years, I’m going to take it in my own hands and do this”. And I admired her, at that moment, for her courage.
And the next thing I thought was,”How can you do this to me? Is this a lesson? Am I supposed to understand this now, too? And just to follow up, real quick. In my life, I have also contemplated this awful thing. And I was convinced not to do it, that I have children, and this is not a legacy that I can leave to them. And in this case I’m not having a debate with you, I’m merely repeating something which may be of some value. And it wasn’t that I thought that someone has created me and that I had a higher purpose, but in a way it was, it was because I thought that this was not a legacy that I could pass on to my children the way my mother passed that on to me. And I leave that with you, I don’t know, you know, where that goes but, it’s a complicated thing when this happens, we don’t want people that we love to suffer, but there is something else going on.
Jacobson: It’s very complicated. And I am quite overwhelmed, actually. I feel your pain, in a way, and I am sure everyone listening does. It’s hard to respond rationally and philosophically to something of this nature. You are dealing here with deep deep emotional despair and – and no one should ever know anything of this type of – where you feel there is no other option.
Speaking to you, who’s seen that and experienced it and what you’ve just shared, all I can say is that you are sacred by the mere fact that you made this choice not to leave this legacy with your children. I would not judge your mother, and I would not judge anyone. I would not judge the situation, because it’s not my job, just like it’s not our job to take our lives, it’s also not our job to judge people. There is a G-d for that. It is between the person and G-d.
I will say this: that the fact that you made such a choice is a very strong and noble act, and you may not have been persuaded by our creator, but the fact that you feel that that’s a legacy for your children shows that there’s value to life. It’s not just meaningless – “I do what I want, and who cares what happens next”. You care enough for your children to know that you don’t want to leave them such an option. And I’m not, I don’t even know if that’s rational, I don’t know if you can rationalize it. Let’s say your children ask you. They say, hey, the pain may be too powerful, but – I’ll tell you this: we are touching here on one of the darkest areas of life. When a person, putting yourself in the shoes of a person who is about to hurt themselves in that way, meaning – and they are rational…
Feder: I don’t know how rational they are
Jacobson: Well, rational I mean to say that they are not, you know… I’ll tell you the worse scenario, when a person made a calculated decision that it’s not worth it. It’s such a dark moment – but I have to go back and I say can’t venture there, I don’t want to stand in that place. I’d like to stand a step before he reaches that door. That’s what we’re discussing here and that is how do you infuse people with that value and cherishing of life that they celebrate it despite its difficulties. That’s really the challenge that I think our show is about.
If I were on the phone with someone who was about to who knows what I would take a different course, you do anything possible to give them some hope, but if you have the time and you have your children before you and you have your students and you have people you can reach, preventive medicine, we live in a society where I’m shocked more people don’t start questioning the value of their own lives. But, you see, we have many distractions, things that keep us busy and thank G-d that he blesses us with health, but I have to say is that a show like this, in my opinion it’s a failure if it doesn’t infuse people with the confidence that you matter and with all the difficulties in life that it’s all part of a bigger picture and never to give up – you could see it through.
Feder: Nothing to improve on that, You’re listening to Rabbi Simon Jacobson, and this is “Toward a Meaningful Life” with Simon Jacobson, and this is Mike Feder and we’ll be on next week.
I want to mention that we’re very grateful that this show was underwritten by Mary Ellen McCarthy and David and Lilly Hollander in honor of the upcoming wedding of Yosef Yitzchak Jacobson and
Esti Shlomo, and in honor of Yosef’s parents, Gershon and Sylvia. And we thank them very much for bring this program to the listeners. Thirty seconds left.
Jacobson: Well, lets conclude on an upbeat note. The issue here is the celebration of life. Tomorrow morning, if everyone would say, that Modeh Ani that I once suggested acknowledging to G-d that G-d gave you a great gift called life and that life, and how you choose to live it, can make a positive difference on people’s lives, is the best antidote, and the strongest infusion of hope that we can give to someone in this lifetime.
Tags: death, radio transcript, murder, assisted suicide, life
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July 28th, 2015
When Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneerson, the fifth rebbe and leader of Chabad-Lubavitch, was a child of four or five, he came to his grandfather, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, to receive his blessing on the occasion of his birthday. It was Shabbat Va’yeira, the Shabbat on which the Torah section of Va’yeira (Genesis 18-22) is read.
The young Sholom DovBer entered his grandfather’s room and burst into tears. His teacher in cheder had taught the opening verse of the week’s Torah reading, “And G-d revealed himself to him (Abraham)…”; “Why,” wept the child, “doesn’t G-d show Himself to me?!”
Relative and Absolute
A hallmark of Chabad-Chassidic teaching is that everything a person learns and is made aware of is to be regarded as a lesson to apply to his own life. A story is never told merely to entertain or to laud the greatness of a righteous individual, but to provide a model that each and every one to whom the story is directed can emulate, each on his own level.
The above story was related by Rabbi Sholom DovBer’s son and successor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson of Lubavitch, who also instructed that it be printed and publicized. Obviously, he felt that there is something in this story that every child and educator can relate to and apply.
The young Sholom DovBer was no ordinary five year old. He was blessed with the special soul of one who is destined to be a leader of his people. Snippets of insight and sensitivity already told of the mighty mind which would conceive of and author his famed hemshechim. And he was reared in a saintly environment by the most accomplished and devoted of educators. How, then, can we assume that a parallel to his yearning for G-d’s presence in his life can be evoked in every child by every educator?
Indeed, education, on the whole, is extremely subjective in its approach and execution. “Educate the youngster in accordance with his manner,” says the wisest of men “[so that] also when he ages he shall not depart from it.” The educator must speak to the child in his, the child’s, own terms, and convey his lesson on a level specific to the child’s ability to comprehend and assimilate. If generalizations almost always mislead and distort, they are anathema to education.
Nevertheless, the Torah sets certain educational milestones which it applies across the board to all. For example, at the age of bar/bat-mitzvah (12 for a girl and 13 for a boy) a Jew becomes individually accountable for his or her actions. A ten-year-old might surpass his 15-year-old fellow mentally and emotionally, yet the former’s observance of the mitzvot has the status only of an act of chinuch (“education” or “training”) while the latter’s is as mandatory and full-fledged as any adult’s. Another educational benchmark is the age of six, which Torah law establishes as the “age of chinuch”: although the molding of a child’s values and character begins at birth and even before (a chassidic master once told a parent who asked his advice on how to educate his twelve-year-old, “Your question comes twelve years and nine months too late”), it is only at age six that formal education is to commence and the child is to be subjected to a daily schedule, a structured curriculum, study goals and the like. In the words of the Talmud, “Below age six, accept no pupil; from age six, accept him and stuff him (with Torah knowledge) as an ox.”
Why this generalistic element in our approach to education? Because human growth entails more than the natural progression from child to adult whose course and pace differ from individual to individual. There is also another aspect to our maturing, a process that unfolds equally in every one of us. The Torah is G-d’s wisdom and the mitzvot are His will. Had He not commanded and empowered us to fulfill the mitzvot, we could not achieve the connection with Him they facilitate—no matter how responsible and “adult” our behavior may be. Had He not given us His Torah, we could not comprehend it, no matter how advanced our intellectual skills may be. So if G-d commands the observance of the mitzvot to every Jewess above the age of twelve and every Jew above the age of thirteen, they are all equally capable of implementing the divine desire—something the pre-bar mitzvah child cannot achieve, regardless of his spiritual maturity. And if the divine law sets the age of six as the time when Torah study is to commence, the ability to comprehend G-d’s wisdom through the vehicle of formal study is granted only from that age upward, regardless of the extent of a younger child’s intellectual capacity.
So there are two aspects to education. On the one hand, we all share the divine potentials granted to us at certain points in our lives. The Torah’s laws of chinuch reflect these divinely ordained life-stages, which is why many of these laws apply equally to all. On the other hand, the manner in which we realize these potentials is specific to each individual and subject to his mental, emotional, spiritual and environmental conditions. So the educator most also develop an approach that is sensitive to the pupil’s individual strengths and weaknesses.
In light of this, the fact that Rabbi Sholom DovBer was “four or five years old” at the time of the above-related incident is significant in that it underscores the universal applicability of his example. According to Torah law, he was a child in the most preliminary stage of his educational development, a state he shared with every other five-year-old. So his distress over the fact that G-d did not reveal Himself to him cannot be ascribed only to a spiritual maturity far beyond his years; the fact that he was capable of such feeling means that every five year-old shares this capacity in one form and another.
The Translator
How is the contemporary educator to apply Rabbi Sholom DovBer’s example to the daily practice of his craft?
If there is one sentence that encapsulates the essence of education, it is the above-quoted verse from Proverbs:
“Educate the youngster in accordance with his manner, [so that] also when he ages he shall not depart from it.”
Education is the endeavor to deal with the paradox of youth. On the one hand, the child lacks the ability to truly discern right from wrong, much less the maturity to desire good for its own sake and reject evil because it is evil, regardless of perceived personal loss or gain. On the other hand, these are his/her formative years, years in which what is learned is grafted into his psyche and character; lessons gained in his more mature years are often mere appendages to an already set self, and far more easily challenged and undone by the vacillations of life.
The educator must therefore “smuggle” the values he wishes to impart into child’s value system. The child may be incapable of regarding the sharing of his toys with a friend or the memorizing of his alef-bet as “good”; “good,” to his mind, is something that causes him pleasure, such as a sweet or a toy. “Bad” is something painful and detrimental to himself, a category which does not necessarily include playing with fire or stealing. So the educator rewards an hour’s study with a sweet; negative behavior is reciprocated with something that is negative also in the child’s perception.
On the surface, the educator seems to be doing little more than bribing and threatening the child to proper behavior. On a deeper level, he is translating from one “language” into another. To the child, the more altruistic concepts of “good” and “bad” are foreign terms; the educator translates these into the child’s moral language, creating an environment in which altruistic good becomes synonymous with the child’s subjective good. As child matures, his own concept of “good” grows closer to the altruistic ideal, and the educator now couches his message in terms appropriate to his new moral state—he might now speak of spiritual fulfillment rather than candies. But he is still translating—equating objective good with subjective good.
Education, then, is a life-long process in which a person and his teachers seek to develop his personal moral vision–his perceptions of right, wrong, truth and falsehood–toward increasing degrees of synonymity with the ultimately objective moral vision: life as envisioned by its Creator.
Goal and Process
But do we ever attain an absolutely objective vision of “good”? Do we ever graduate to see reality from G-d’s perspective? Finite man seems capable only of a subjective analogue of objective good and truth, education being the constant progression towards increasingly more mature and selfless analogues. Does this mean that the goal of the educational process is never realized?
Not so, says the Talmud:
“A person should always occupy himself with the Torah and the mitzvot, even if he is doing it not for its own sake; since from (mitoch) doing it not for its own sake he will come to do it for its own sake.”
Chassidic teaching explains the deeper significance of this statement. The Hebrew word mitoch means “from within”; so a literal translation of the saying would read, “… since from within his doing it not for its own sake he will come to do it for its own sake.” Thus, the Talmud is not only saying that doing the right thing for the wrong reasons will ultimately lead to doing it for the right reasons, but that even now, before attaining this higher state, a person is doing it for the right reasons: consciously, he may be motivated by the physical and spiritual good he associates with leading a righteous life; but the deeper, inner content of his motivations is the altruistic good they analogize.
For the ultimate and exclusive source of all good, including the ability to conceptualize and experience something as good, is G-d, who imparted of His intrinsic goodness to His creation. Thus, the subjective good that education equates with true good is, in essence, an extension—albeit a superficial or even a distorted extension–of true good. So whenever a person achieves goodness and truth in his own life, even if only by his own subjective standards of goodness and truth, these “contain” the absolute goodness and truth of G-d. The only condition is that they be of the highest degree of objectivity and selflessness he is capable of. If they are not absolutely true and good even by the standards of his own potential, then he has not touched the divine truth and goodness his potential reflects.
So “Educate the youngster in accordance with his manner” is not a compromise. Indeed, if such were the case, why would we desire that “also when he ages he shall not depart from it”? On the contrary, we would hope that he does depart from his childish motivations and do what is right for the “right” reasons! But “his manner” is the ultimate, as expressed on his level; as long as he does not depart from it, as long as he continues to pursue goodness and truth as defined by the most altruistic terms he is capable of, his life will fully exemplify the ideals of his education.
Furthermore, the subjective nature of his “good” is never completely opaque: glimmers of the true good it “contains” occasionally rise to surface of his life. Thus, a person can experience moments of altruistic comprehension, desire and deed that far surpass his present maturity. These are not “other-worldly experiences”; they are manifestations of the deeper significance of his everyday self.
A Child’s Tears
In other words, while education is basically the means to an end, the end is not confined to the end of the process. Not only does it saturate the means from the very start, but manifest moments of the ultimate goal of education can be evoked, even in the most preliminary stages of the educational process.
This is the universal lesson of Rabbi Sholom DovBer’s five-year-old tears. Here is a child who wept for the presence of G-d in his life as a five-year-old weeps for a desired toy. Here is a child, defined by Torah law as “under the age of chinuch,” who achieved a moment in which the many layers of analogy and projection with which we cloak the true objective of life peeled away to reveal the essence within. Here was a child who, while still in the earliest stages of the educational process, manifestly realized its ultimate objective.
We were told the story of this child not because we are or can be this child, but because we can achieve, each of us on his or her own level, what he achieved. At whatever stage we might be in our intellectual, moral and spiritual development, we have it in our ability to access, and even experience, the goals and ideals that are the objective of our efforts.
Based on the Rebbe’s talks, Shabbat Vayeira, Cheshvan 20, 5736 (October 25, 1975), Shavuot 5745 (1985) and on other occasions
Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber
Tags: education, Yanki Tauber, children, Rebbe, Frierdiker Rebbe, Rebbe Rashab, morals, maturity, teachers, Chassidic stories
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July 28th, 2015
The following is a freely-translated excerpt from a letter about the value of religious education written by the Rebbe in the summer of 1963 to Shalom Levine, an Israeli educator of international renown:
After the long interruption since our meeting, it will surely come as a surprise to you to receive a letter from me. Yet my hope is that just as our meeting, and the content of our discussion, remain in my memory, the same is true regarding yourself, especially since our discussion was on matters that concern the greater public, and is thus worthy of having a continuation.
My immediate reason for writing you now is the notice in the press that you have been elected chairman of the international teachers’ association, IFTA. I would like to express my heartfelt wishes that you should optimally utilize the new opportunities that have been extended to you toward their ultimate purpose—the establishment of proper education in all countries of the globe, and in our Holy Land in particular. A new position always entails new responsibilities, and divine providence surely provides the ability to fulfill them.
As a continuation to our aforementioned discussion, allow me to speak of a certain matter which might seem inappropriate to the occasion because of its distressing element. But the verse has already said that “Every sadness should have an advantage” —the advantage being the lesson it contains. And it is the lesson that I have in mind…
Education has two basic purposes: a) to impart a quantity of knowledge to the student; b) to educate the student toward proper conduct in his future life. Each of these areas is obviously comprised of many fields; regarding the behavioral aspect of education, there is the field of interpersonal relations, and the field of the student’s individual personality development—the manner in which he will regard his own drives and desires.
One who contemplates the results of the public school system in the United States and in a number of European countries, and, from what I am told, the situation is similar in the Land of Israel, reaches the conclusion that these schools have had considerable success in the area of education that concerns social relations—in reducing the divisions that separate people and bringing them closer to each other, and in training the student toward what is nowadays called “democratic” behavior (this, in addition to their success in imparting knowledge). Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule—places where the schools have been utilized, maliciously or not, to the very opposite ends—but the above is generally true in the majority of cases.
However—and this is the distressing point—the same contemplation also brings the realization that the public schools have not succeeded in the area of the student’s personality development, in training him to curb his desires. It is only thanks to the influence of the home and religious instruction that this generation’s youth have not completely cast off the constraints of civilization and turned the world into a jungle.
The result of this is that in those places where parental influence has been weakened for whatever reason, one sees a disproportionate rise in juvenile delinquency in comparison with other places, though the quality of the schools is more or less the same.
I don’t have the statistics to support this conclusion with numbers, but since you are an expert in this very field, there is no need to “prove” any of this to you.
The above should come as no surprise. Regarding the expansion of the student’s knowledge, there are many ways to waken and encourage his will to advance and achieve, by explaining its usefulness to him now or in the near future. The same is true regarding his social and democratic sensibilities—indeed, the very fact that the student must interact with other boys and girls contributes much toward this end. Not so is the case regarding his moral self-discipline. This cannot come from within the person, as in the famous analogy that a person cannot raise himself by pulling upwards on the hairs of his head. Rather, it must come from a point outside of the person.
In our generation we have seen, to our great distress, the ineffectuality of relying on the sense of justice and righteousness imparted by the teacher, or on the influence of the student’s elder brother, or even on his fear of the policeman. From year to year, the youth come up with new devices to circumvent the policeman and the judge, and the plague of criminality keeps on spreading. As for the civilizing influence of the “humanities,” we have seen what has transpired in Germany, whose superiority in philosophy, and even “moral philosophy,” was world-renowned, but in actuality, that country produced generations of beasts in the form of men.
It is clear that there exists no other way to implant in the hearts of children and youth a true and functional self-discipline except through the fear or love of a force greater than man. Only in this way can they be truly trained to exercise control over their will and desires. And this is something that cannot be postponed until the child reaches the age of 18, or even the age of 13, while allowing him until then to follow his heart’s vagaries, in the hope that the fear of human institutions will direct him along a good and righteous path.
One sees no other way than to instill in the hearts of the children, from their earliest years, a strong belief in Him Who created the world and continues to rule it and direct it. In the words of our sages, there is “an eye that sees, and ear that hears, and that all one’s deeds are recorded in a book” —a book that cannot be forged, an eye and an ear that cannot be bribed or outsmarted by any schemes or deceptions.
According to our Torah, the law of life, belief in the Creator and Ruler of the world is binding upon all peoples of the world. Furthermore (and in certain circles, this must be the primary argument), it is a rational necessity.
So any school, if its program includes “education”—moral as well as social—must set as one of its foundations the above belief, not only as a subject for theoretical study, but as something that concerns day-to-day life… While there are schools that do not have the word “religious” in their name, it is obvious, based on the above, that the difference lies only in the amount of hours devoted to religious matters. But if the school is completely devoid of religiosity, G-d forbid, it lacks what, especially in our generation, is among the most primary functions of the school: to educate the student to be a human being worthy of his name—as distinguished from a mere beast. And the primary difference between man and beast is that the human being is not subservient to his natural instincts, desires and tendencies, and, at the very least, endeavors to restrain them and control them.
I remember your saying to me, in our conversation, that you are merely the secretary of the teachers’ association in our Holy Land, so that the things [we discussed] are not in your jurisdiction. I believe that my reaction, back then, was that I am not addressing you in any official capacity, but appealing to you as one who has been given the opportunities and abilities to find ways to correct the existing situation, which, to our great sorrow, is not improving, but the contrary. In any case, now you are chairman, and of an international organization!
Perhaps it seems strange that I am addressing such a request to a person who is not a member of any religious party, and is actually a member of a Socialist party… But surely it requires no elaboration that the present circumstances in no way resemble the way things were during the formative years of Socialism, especially since, even then, there was no truth in the assumption that Socialism necessitates a conflict with religion.
My hope is that even if my appeal seems somewhat strange in your eyes after a first reading of this letter, that you nevertheless, out of consideration for the great importance of its subject, examine it again, without prejudice, point by point, in which case you will certainly discover many ways in which it might be implemented…
I would also like to take the opportunity to again express my thanks for your continuing to send me the publications by the teachers’ association, and my hope that you will continue to do so in the future, for which I thank you in advance.
—————-
Tags: children, Rebbe, teachers, morality, social skills, Rebbe's letters, education
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July 28th, 2015
Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – April 25, 1999
Feder: This is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson and Rabbi Jacobson is here in the studio. First of all, we want to thank all of you who have written in and called, we want to urge you to keep on communicating with us.
The idea of the day, something that everybody is talking about, is the tragedy in Littleton, Colorado. Now I put a few thoughts together and have some introductory questions, but obviously, this is something we can explore in depth.
Murder is as old as Cain and Abel. If you look in the Bible, it’s one of the oldest things there is. And murder is committed for all sorts of reasons: poverty, oppression, revenge, war, plain ordinary madness. But in this case, as everybody notices, what’s different is you have a bunch of middle/upper-middle class kids who are not suffering from all the aforementioned usual reasons why people have all this trouble.
What we can’t know is—and these things are happening more and more every couple of months—we can’t know what the personal psychology is in these kids’ homes, but we can ask some of the more obvious and profound questions which are:
- How can this be explained?
- How do we deal with this, digest this, in our lives?
- How on earth do we take preventative measures against things like this happening in the future?
So this is a whole lot to chew on, but I hand it over to you now.
Jacobson: Well thank you.
Feder: The ball is in your court now.
Jacobson: At the outset I should say that whenever you deal with any type of tragedy of this nature, it’s very difficult to talk about it in a logical and organized way, but when you put yourself, G-d forbid, in the shoes of the parents and family that have been broken and will be broken forever because of this unfortunate incident, then you know that after all the hype in the newspapers and all the radio talkshows and everyone finishes and exhausts their thoughts about it, and the psychiatrists and the psychologists and the educators and the President, etc., these people will live with this for the rest of their lives.
When you put yourself for a moment in that type of situation, talking about it is almost useless because you don’t feel you can console, or in any way repair and heal the pain involved of the losses. I include the pain even of relatives of those who perpetrated this, even though I don’t want to equate the two, but this is a tragedy all around that has forever altered the history of certain family units. That, I think, is the first thing that must be acknowledged.
Yet, Maimonides does write that v’hachai yiten el libo, “the living shall take to heart.” When all of us witness things of this nature (we see it in our own communities and in our schools, which makes it so much more devastating), that young people can turn on their own friends in a school which is supposed to be an oasis, a haven, from all the violence in the street, it forces us, and we are compelled, to address it.
But what does it mean to us? This isn’t just their tragedy, because it’s our tragedy. It’s a country, an environment, that allowed something like this to happen.
Now of course it can be dismissed as an aberration, but even if one argues that that’s the case, Talmudic law, Jewish law, dictates that when something happens in your community, in your country, you are responsible for it. You have to do something about it. Even if it was an aberration. Compound it with the fact that it’s not an aberration, unfortunately, as we see with certain trends, you are forced to look at it. Unfortunately, we deal with problems only when they emerge and we can’t ignore them any longer.
So when this happens, everyone wrings their hands and screams and cries…
Feder: And yet it has happened over and over again in the last few years.
Jacobson: Right. And I think what has to be addressed, as you put it, is preventive measures—but more importantly—what is the root? How is it possible, if people who are not mentally imbalanced should be able to consider, let alone pull off (they say it was pre-meditated with over a year of planning, so this is not exactly an act of insanity), what kind of environment and education can allow things like that to happen? Does it have to happen to each of our families, G-d forbid, before we wake up to recognize that we have to look at something?
So I’d like to share some thoughts in that vein. But I wanted to just lay it out, although qualifying it by saying that there’s always deep pain when you feel the pain of others involved, and this isn’t just an academic analysis and psychological overview, but one has to look at it like it’s your own family and your own brothers and sisters, and community, and system.
Obviously, no one condones murder, and everyone is shocked by the event. But even from shock you can also define a society’s attitude. The shock is that innocent blood was shed, but I haven’t heard shock at an educational system that can allow for that. If education is to mean anything, who cares whether they’re brilliant mathematicians or philosophers, or physicists, or doctors, or computer engineers if a person can lift his hand to another person? From my point of view, and from everything I experienced in my school years, education is not about knowledge, it’s about living. To learn how to live a productive and constructive life.
Feder: In a community…
Jacobson: Yes. And not only do we not hurt another, but you enhance other people’s lives, because without that, what’s the point of going to school anyway, to make money? To have a career? To make ends meet?
So what we’re looking at here, if you cut to the chase, is the question, what is at the heart of education? What do we expect from the best of our students? Because when things like this happen, and everyone likes to relegate it to, “Oh, this is an exception. These are these type of kids, they must have grown up in certain broken families. There may be problems with their school. But it’s not in our community.”
I completely disagree with that. I would say, maybe our educational foundations need some correcting. Maybe there some basic fundamental elements that are lacking and when they filter down, spill over, it can end up in an act like that. Obviously, in 98% of the cases it won’t be that extreme, but this may be happening to kids all across the country, except some of them won’t act out their most violent instincts, and some may.
Feder: When you say education, you don’t just mean school, do you? I mean, you’re talking about how a society educates? How a culture educates? What you absorb from living in your own house? From watching television? From going to the movies or watching what the President does? Education comes in many forms, not just when you walk in the door of a high school.
Jacobson: I’m glad you pointed that out. When I say education I mean as a holistic environment that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Education is not just actual school, it’s what’s going on at home, what’s going on in the streets, it’s what’s going on on television. And beyond that, education doesn’t stop when you graduate. Education is in all of our lives because even as adults we are constantly being educated by our environment. Except as adults we are, so to speak, more protected. We’re not in our formative years. So not every event and incident shapes us.
But we need to discuss all of the above and to do this in an organized way, we need to do this piece by piece or else we’re going to become overwhelmed.
Feder: So which section of the world that educated these kids should we look at first?
Jacobson: Before we get into the specifics of whether it’s school or home, we should look at certain basic principles of just what is education. I bring a story in my book, Toward a Meaningful Life, in the chapter on education, about parents are having problems with a child who’s rebelling quite seriously and come to their mentor, their rabbi, their Rebbe. And he listens to their problem and he looks at them and he says, “You’ve come to me eighteen years too late.”
Not that he wasn’t offering to help, but his point was very well taken based on a verse in King Solomon’s Book of Proverbs, “Educate your young according to their way, so as they age and grow older, they will not wander away from it.”
In other words, education is much more than the transmission of knowledge. It’s the shaping of a life, of life’s attitudes, that child’s attitudes, the viewpoint: what matters, what’s important, what isn’t important.
Feder: But this is always within the context of interacting with your family and with a community, otherwise, what’s the point?
Jacobson: Of course, of course. So the first and foremost element of education is human responsibility. That you’re here on this earth with a cause and a purpose, and you have to live up to that calling. This isn’t a jungle, this isn’t just a random life that is driven by whim and instinct, and it isn’t just a struggle for survival, survival of the fittest, I may add, which only lends itself to a completely narcissistic attitude.
Feder: At this point it’s almost impossible not to say that as we look—I came down here in a cab today, I must have inherited some money from somewhere—it’s impossible not to look around, read the newspapers, see what goes on, everything from top to bottom, and see that there is a complete absence of any sense of right and wrong, an absence of morality (I’m stating this in an extreme case) that greed, that lust, that violence, that sex, that everything involved with getting and spending, is celebrated perhaps more now than I’ve ever seen in the time that I’ve been alive.
And if that’s what’s all around these kids, what is left for them?
Jacobson: I’d like to focus on two major points which I’m leading up to which will address the point you just said. And that is, number one, from a Torah perspective, from a Jewish perspective, and from a universal perspective, a person without a cause is worse than a person without oxygen. “Cause”, that invisible word “cause”, it’s not tangible. You can’t point your finger at it, you can’t touch it, but cause gives purpose to your life. It gives you a reason to rise to a higher calling. I think when that’s lacking, there’s an unbelievably deep, profound void in a person’s heart and soul that needs to be filled, and they will find one way or the other to fill that void.
Feder: The vacuum can’t be tolerated.
Jacobson: Right. It cannot be tolerated. You can get away with it, you can distract yourself, but particularly young people who, in a way, are not yet completely immersed in the material world of building a career, or making a living, have that free time and, in a sense, that luxury to where that vacuum won’t come back to haunt them.
And I speak of myself as well, as a teenager going through adolescence, and a parent should never forget his or her own youth, because that’s the best way to be a teacher to your own young children, is by remembering when you were there. If you forget that for one moment, you can’t relate. So we all have that type of passion. A young person has a deep, burning fire inside of them. They call it hormones, or adrenaline, or the “fire in the belly,” but they have it inside of them.
Many people often see that that fire is a destructive thing. You know, “young people rebel, they demonstrate, they don’t get along with their parents, they fight with establishment,” but in truth, the fire is coming from a very healthy place. It’s the power and the fire of the spirit that refuses to conform to the status quo and wants to change the world but it’s frustrated and it doesn’t know how to.
So you hear a lot in the news today about these kids, how they were saying that “we were ostracized, we were different, we weren’t accepted.” I don’t know the particulars in their particular case, and they have had warped minds and been poisoned by all kinds of other ideologies, but one thing is clear: if you cut through all of it (in psychology it is known, the problem that you are told is never the real problem, there’s always something else beneath the surface) you hear one basic thing: the cry of young people not feeling that they have a calling to fulfill, or they feel that they are outsiders and not being respected for that.
Now we know that young people don’t really have developed ideas about things. A young person needs to have that vacuum filled, that fire fed, and it has to be channeled. And if it isn’t channeled, it will be destructive. There’s no question in my mind that today, you see that drugs and youth, or for that matter music, which is a major industry…I always wondered, why in this century did music become such a major industry? Why wasn’t it an industry 100 years ago? Or even 50 years ago? And I’m sure there are many different reasons given, “Once LP’s and CD’s became more available,” but yet, music has always been part of the world, but now it’s a billion/trillion dollar industry.
I think that music, particularly as it’s taught in Kaballah (Jewish mysticism) music is like the wings of the soul. Music is a way that the soul travels. It’s spiritual travel, essentially. And when you have a deep vacuum and void of nothing transcendent in your life, you look for quick ways to satisfy that need. And music does it quickly. In a 2-3 minute song, who doesn’t dance to the music, or sing along? It can transport you to another place.
So that can be very healthy. Music is a tool that, in lack of other spiritual values, is a form of spiritual yearning. And many young people may not acknowledge it, and many people may not acknowledge it, but from the perspective of spirit, the search of spirit, to actualize itself, to soar, music offers a very easy alternative.
Feder: Well, you know, these kids in Littleton were big music fans.
Jacobson: Yes. This is the point. When the vacuum is really not filled, music cannot replace the true needs that a spirit has to have because you can’t just get away with listening to rock or some other alternatives. And I’m in no way trying to criticize the entire music industry, because, in essence, it’s a pure thing. But everything has to be channeled properly.
So we’re dealing with young people, and the point that I want to make, is that it is critical for parents, educators and schools, that you have to instill in people from a young age, the younger the better, the attitude that they are responsible to a higher being.
You know, the separation of church and state in the United States is quite obvious, and no one disagrees with that. And I don’t want to come across at all preaching, or pontificating, and wringing our hands saying, “Oh, look how terrible, they have no G-d in their lives.”
But I do want to say something in defense of the founding fathers who are so revered in this country, the Constitution. Even atheists use dollar bills that in American currency has the words “In G-d We Trust” engraved in them. And I haven’t seen any of them burn that money.
There’s certain wisdom in that element that they put “In G-d We Trust” on the bills, even though the same constitution guarantees the separation of church and state, which the same founding fathers felt there was no contradiction in putting that statement on the currency. Which is rare. I don’t think any other currency in any other country has that. And there, perhaps, the church is much more powerful that it is in this country.
I think the reason that’s behind it is that their intention was not a religious G-d, but a non-denominational G-d, meaning that the idea “all men are created equal” is impossible if you do not accept a Creator. Because perhaps, if there is no Creator, then maybe they aren’t all created equal. Maybe some are better than others, or not equal.
The statement “all men are created equal” paradoxically, means that a person can get up in this country and say, “I have no G-d in my life. I want to burn the American flag”. That itself is guaranteed as a right, because we believe that since G-d created you, you have the right to do that.
So the idea that there is a higher calling, that you in your life are responsible for that higher calling, is a foundation without which all education will erode.
Feder: But that if you think you were created by a higher power then there is a meaning to your life. If there is no other apparent meaning at all, at least there is that meaning.
But let me make this statement. Maybe there’s 130 kids at Littleton High School’s senior class. I’m willing to bet, the world being what it is in America today, that 90 of them don’t believe in G-d, or don’t even think about G-d. And they haven’t gone around blowing people up and shooting people. They seem to be able to get through life. And parents may take them to church or synagogue or whatever. But I know teenage kids, and a lot of them are questioning at most, and some of them are just in a modern world where they don’t really believe that much. They may be seeking, but they don’t necessary believe. A lot of people in this world, a lot of teenagers, get by without this belief, without this knowledge, without murdering anybody, without stealing, without doing all these other things.
Jacobson: It’s a very fair question. And how I would like to respond would be to go back to something I said earlier: symptoms that express themselves in extreme ways reflect on the state of mind of all young people today. The reason that 98% or 99.9% of young people would never stoop or consider doing something like that is that they did “get” a G-d in their lives, except it’s not called G-d. It may be called responsibility, it may be that they grew up in a home where their parents cared enough and the education around them gave them that sense that there’s just an absolute line that you do not cross.
I don’t care what you call it. But the fact that there is an absolute line that you do not cross…who created that line? As soon as you say “absolute” line, that would be the only way I could agree and say, yes, I think 99% of the kids would never do a thing like that.
I’ll challenge you in return. If they don’t believe in a G-d, and they don’t have any absolute values, what makes them not cross that line? What is the taboo?
Feder: Well, like you say, they must have some values. Maybe they’re not sure exactly what they are, but they do have some basic values, the most basic value of all being respect for someone else’s personal life, for the integrity of their existence.
Jacobson: This is the point that I want to lead to. The word “G-d” is a very distorted, misconceived and stereotyped word in this country. And I hesitate using it because of the stereotype. When I say G-d, I do not mean what most people would react to. Usually most people react, “Oh, so we need religion in order to counter such type of behavior.”
Feder: They think you mean like some sort of organized religion.
Jacobson: Right. Or a question like yours. You can be a very good person. You see so many people who are completely virtuous and who are non-criminals and have no G-d in their lives. On the other hand, you have many people who are great believers in G-d and they have quite criminal behavior.
So I’m quite familiar with that, which is why I like to quote the story where this rabbi was going to a synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, and he invited one of his neighbors, and his neighbor said, “You know, Rabbi, what’s the point of me going along with you? I don’t believe in G-d”.
And the rabbi smiled and said to him, “You know, the G-d that you don’t believe in, I also don’t believe in.”
When I say the word G-d, I don’t mean it in many of the images that most have, including myself. What I’m talking about is that absolute line, that “you are not all that there is.” You said it very clearly. That respect for another person.
Let me ask you a question. If we live in a society of survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, you do anything for yourself to survive, and that we have evolved from bacteria millions of years ago… Have you ever seen considerate bacteria? They step away so another bacteria can make its move?
So I ask you this? What gives the human that invisible instinct that they will not cross a certain line? That they should actually have absolute respect and can never cross that boundary?
Frankly, I don’t like to bring up this topic. But I think, that if you really went down to a philosophical view on this, I can make a very strong argument for anarchy. Because, let me play the skeptic for a moment and you, Mike, can play the believer…
Feder: This is going to be very hard for me.
Jacobson: Well, try your best.
Feder: I’ll get a medal if I do all right on this.
Jacobson: Well, that’s also a statement. If a skeptic can play a believer, and a believer can play a skeptic, what does that say?
Feder: Okay, shoot.
Jacobson: I will now proceed to make an argument for anarchy. Complete anarchy. That the only thing that keeps the glue together in a society is primitive fear. We don’t want to be hurt so I’m not going to hurt someone else. But green lights and red lights are simply arbitrary necessities in order for us to be able to co-exist. But there’s nothing absolute about red lights and green lights. If nobody’s watching, why can’t I pass a red light unless I’m afraid of a cop who may give me an $80 ticket and points on my license.
For that matter, if I’m alone, or if I can get away with a crime, I can cheat the government or I can get away with a crime against another human being and I’ll never be caught so I won’t be embarrassed by it, why shouldn’t I?
And I could go on with a list but we don’t have all evening here. But a list of similar questions. What’s the argument against anarchy? So let me immediately eliminate certain options.
Someone may say, well, that’s true. Morality is ultimately arbitrary. Moral relativism as they call it. And what keeps a society together is some type of fear. Fear of punishment. Conscience.
Feder: Fear of embarrassment.
Jacobson: We also have this evolutionary quirk called a conscience which we’d love to get rid of. You know, we feel bad about certain things…
Feder: Associated with shame and guilt.
Jacobson: Yes. A conscience. Like sometimes you do something and you don’t really feel good about it afterwards, but I’m sure that someone could patent a pill, a “conscience-killer pill”—I don’t want to give anyone ideas—but you know, you do something and you don’t feel guilty. Guiltless behavior. Great!
But the argument against all that, whatever argument you’ll give me, and I’m sure you can give me one, I will say to you, you call that G-d. You don’t want to use the word G-d but call it some other name? But basically it comes down to this. That there is an understanding, some kind of inherent feeling, that “I’m not all there is. Because if life is all about me, number one, then the end always justifies the means, and I should be able to do anything I want if I can get away with it.”
Feder: With all due respect, if you look around, and as simply as the President of the United States, and almost everyone who is examining him, everybody who is in Congress, everybody who is in the Senate, if you went down the line, everyone of our leaders, our theoretical moral leaders, if you look at our business leaders, if you look at stock traders, if you look at all these people, one after another…
But let’s limit it to the President of the United States who is theoretically “the father/leader of our country”…
Jacobson: The paragon of morality…
Feder: …this man gets away with anything he can and so do half the Senators and half the Congress people. If you look in the newspaper the other day, a religious leader out in Brooklyn got indicted for stealing $7 million. Everywhere you look, this is my answer to that, people are getting away with everything they can get away with, and if they get caught, they deny it anyway and hire a lawyer.
Jacobson: Okay. So how many steps away is your description from a few teenagers in Colorado getting up and murdering…
Feder: Not far, not far…
Jacobson: It’s just that that’s shocking and this, well, everyone’s doing it. That’s the whole entire difference. And that’s why, going back to my original premise, is that sometimes you need an infection to burst out and then you suddenly see that that infection is not only there, it’s all over the place.
And I couldn’t agree with you more. I don’t at all, and I want to qualify that we’re not here for a fire and brimstone talk of how bad society is…
Feder: That’s my job.
Jacobson: …because I believe in human dignity, and the Divine presence in our lives, and when you respect, you have confidence that people can rise to the occasion. But I think incidents of this nature, in addition to everything you just put on the platter, for an intelligent person, a sensitive parent, if you really want to do something about it, you have to use all of this as a springboard, a catalyst, to create awareness in your own lives.
I’m not getting into a discussion now of “Do you need a G-d to have morality or don’t you need a G-d to have morality?” But I’ll put it this way: If you don’t have some absolute respect, a line that cannot be crossed, that it’s not all about you, your survival and your comfort – from my point of view, don’t call it G-d if need be – but that’s what must be taught to young people and to older people.
And the younger it’s taught—impressionable children pick it up. And education, going back to your point, is not just what’s taught in school from nine to three, it’s 24 hours a day. If what a child picks up in school is contradicted at home, it’s inconsistent. That what you learn at school you don’t need to do.
Feder: I think at this point we should take a little break to re-identify ourselves. You’re listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson, and I’m Mike Feder. This is WEVD 1050 AM in New York.
Let me give you some of the ways in which you can send us questions on the various topics you are listening to, anything that you have to direct towards us. The most important thing is the telephone number: 1-800-3MEANING or 1-800-363-2646. You can also e-mail us at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com.
I’d like to also tell you that we have a new website that’s currently under construction where you can download transcripts of this program. It’s www.meaningfullife.com.
I also want to mention that each week the blueprint, the guide that we refer to quite often is Rabbi Jacobson’s book Toward a Meaningful Life and this is published by William Morrow, currently in the stores, and this is wonderful, inspirational book which I personally can urge you to buy. I wouldn’t tell you unless I really liked it myself and got a lot out of it.
Okay, so we talked about the vacuum and the emptiness, but I want to get back to examining the nature of this emptiness and this vacuum. I mean, teenagers have always had this wandering spirit, this feeling of having no identity and trying to fill something up. This has been happening since there was the first teenager however long ago it was. But what is the nature, in your opinion, is there a special quality to our current American emptiness that’s different than it ever was before?
Jacobson: I believe again, with a short qualification that when you are living history, it’s hard for you to see things in perspective. We see things right now and we don’t always have an immediate bird’s eye view. So often we think we may be living in the best of times or the worst of times. With that being said, and as a student of history, I think we all can acknowledge that we live in an unprecedented prosperous time. Prosperity in the United States (although there’s a poverty level of course) is unprecedented in the sense of travel, communications, leisure and free time. And it continues to accelerate.
Free time sounds like a great thing. We all say, “Oh I wish I had some free time.” But free time, when there’s nothing to fill it with, can be one of the most challenging things in a person’s life.
Feder: Like the saying, “Idol hands are the devil’s playground…”
Jacobson: Yes. But I’ll put it this way. From a psychological point of view, when a person doesn’t have a driving force, for example, depression is, as one of the Chassidic teachings state, not as big a problem as the bigger problem: that it demoralizes you and you don’t feel motivated to make a move, so it creates a kind of vacuum.
There’s an interesting statement in the Bible. It says when they threw Joseph into the pit, it said the pit was empty. It had no water. So the commentaries all ask, “Is that not redundant? If the pit is empty, obviously it has no water?”And they explain, it had no water but it had snakes and scorpions.
And psychologically this is often taken to mean that when there’s a vacuum, there will always be something to fill the vacuum. There is no such thing as a vacuum in life. So when you look around today, there’s so many alternatives—from the Internet, to video games, to music, television, sports—and the channels continue to grow. And each of them independently are fine programming. Some is destructive, but let’s say neutral programming, but the bottom line is there is a lot to fill your time with. And the spirit is not being nourished and fed.
The single most important thing I would say to any parent listening in this country or wherever it may be that we can learn from an incident of this nature is, start nourishing your child’s spirit. The spirit is not nourished like a body is nourished. It’s not through food and it’s not through drink and it’s not through entertainment, and it’s not through television, and other forms of recreation. A spirit is nourished first and foremost by paying attention to it.
Do you know what a child needs more than anything else? Not fun and games. A child needs the acknowledgment that I exist and that I matter. It’s an invisible type of food, because it doesn’t sound like you’re giving the child anything, but a child who is deprived of that, look at the devastating results we see today. When a child is given that, it’s almost invisible, like health, it doesn’t feel like anything. When you’re healthy, you don’t feel anything. But we know what it’s like when you’re deprived of health.
A child needs to know that I matter, I matter to you. You’re ready to spend a few minutes with me, it doesn’t matter for what. Maybe just sitting with a child when they’re crying, or laughing, or just stooping down and picking them up. It’s that type of respect that the child learns from how to respect another person… for no other reason except that they exist. Not only when the child does something great at school, so of course you reward him or her, obviously it goes without saying that you would acknowledge achievements, but respect when there is nothing the child did.
The child comes and the parent spends that one or two minutes that acknowledges, with total respect, the child’s presence, is perhaps one of the greatest lessons of feeding the spirit. So the spirit doesn’t need much. But what it needs qualitatively is very profound.
Do you think abuse and dysfunctionality is only when the parent strikes the child or is abusive in some other way? Do you think it’s not also abuse when parents comes home and all they have on their mind is the stock market or the newspapers, or they’re tired and just want to go to bed and they don’t even see their child, or even look at him. They say, “Hey, the child’s doing well. Your marks are good, great.” “How’s it going? Great. See you tomorrow.”
That is, in a subtle way, as abusive because it’s not feeding the spirit of the child.
Feder: Let me ask you this. You’re bringing up some point that is, of course, extremely profound and is, in a way, the answer to this problem. To spend time with your children and show them respect and care and sympathy. But, you know, cows, dogs, mice take care of their children without having to be told. Why does such a wonderful creation as a human being need to be instructed in this?
Jacobson: Maybe this is one of the reasons why so many people envy animal bliss. Well, barring the option of becoming a cow or a mouse or a chicken, I think that the challenge of free will in life offers us a great gift, and like every great gift, there’s another side to it, which is a great risk for pain.
Human beings, and without getting into the philosophical side of it, were blessed with something that cows don’t have, which is, to choose to do this or to choose not to do this.
Feder: That’s a blessing?
Jacobson: Yes. You know why? Because when you do it, and you choose to do it, it really means something. When a cow does it, a cow really had no other option. And with all due respect to cows – I hope there aren’t any listening to this show – they are basically playing out a pre-programmed script, which is beautiful. As a matter of fact, the Talmud says that if we didn’t have the laws in the Torah, we would learn modesty from cats, and we would learn ethics from other animals.
So animals have much to teach us on how to behave, but they can’t teach us one thing, which is to choose to do so.
I’ll pose this question, what would be wrong if the child remains in his parents’ home and is always provided for by the parent? As a matter of fact, the parent does everything for the child, walks for them, talks for them, like a child in its mother’s womb. It’s protected. It doesn’t have to go search for its own food or nourishment. It can’t be hurt as easily.
Birth is actually quite a difficult, traumatic transition. Now you suddenly have to look for your own food so there’s the potential for famine, illness, lack of protection. But that is what life’s gift is. It’s the gift of birth which is a gift that, to put it in Divine terms, that G-d blessed us with life, with the ability to choose, and when you choose, it’s yours, and you made a real difference.
Inherent in that, unfortunately, is also the ability to not choose, or of choosing in the opposite direction. Is it worth it? I cannot make that statement. Only G-d can tell us if it’s worth it. And obviously, by blessing us with life, He told us that it’s worth it. With all the pain, G-d is saying that no matter how painful it is for Me and for you to see tragedies like this happen, it would be more painful if I took away your free will.
Feder: Let’s bring this down to earth here. Truly, let’s make this practical. Let’s say right now you were out there in this community, in Littleton, Colorado, and there are people suffering unbearable grief. And this relates to the show we did two weeks ago about pain and suffering, the pain and suffering of innocence.
Let’s say you’re out there now. What would you be doing, what would you be saying? How would you talk to people who are responsible? Who are responsible for leading and educating their children in a professional way? What would you say to them? What would you look for out there? How would you try to influence them?
Jacobson: Well, there’s a short term and a long term, but most of this show is dedicated to the long term preventive overall perspective on education, attitudes between parents and children, but the short term can’t be neglected.
In the short term you’re dealing with an unbelievable amount of pain and if I were there, which I’d rather not be, because it’s so overwhelming, you need to do nothing more than just console and hold the hands and cry together with the people who have suffered so.
To get up now, and have an academic analysis of the problem with the people who are suffering, I don’t think would be at all appropriate. Right now you have to cry with them, share the pain, and in some way we believe that that somehow soothes and relieves someone of it. That’s the first and foremost thing if I were there.
Independent of that, if you can sit in a room with educators or with professionals there to help to just get through it, I think that this is perfect time to make a crisis call to educators both there and across the country, to talk about how you infuse some type of real deep meaning (if you’re afraid of the word spiritual, don’t use the word spiritual) in children’s lives and education in some way that is both experienced in school and spills over into the home and vice versa, and you use this as a catalyst for addressing, in very specific ways, how do we infuse our education with that element, and make this not as a short-term solution to what happened in Colorado but as an overall perspective.
That’s what I would more than encourage. I think it’s a matter of life and death. Of children’s lives and, we see here, by extension, of other people’s lives. I think we can discuss some suggestions that every parent and every educator can implement even before the entire system is overhauled.
Feder: I was just about to say that we need some specifics and now is the time. It’s a fatal disease that we seem to be struck with in this country, so what are some suggestions—first of all, generically, and then specifically—about how people should approach this.
Jacobson: It’s such a large topic that I feel anything I say is inadequate, so I just want to qualify this that I’ll comment on a few things that come to mind. Obviously, I’m not addressing now how to change the educational system. That needs some serious thought. Basically, curriculums must include… the foundation of all education has to be included in education…it cannot be left unspoken. Maybe 1000 years ago it could be left unspoken when we were in a healthier, more naïve environment. But today, the foundation of all education must be spelled out.
And that foundation is, why are we here as human beings?
Feder: And there would be a course in that.
Jacobson: Yes, a course, exactly. If you don’t want to call it G-d, don’t call it G-d. There are non-denominational, and non-religious terms that it can be identified. The idea of absolute respect for a human being. Find a word, create a new word. Don’t call it spirit, find a word that everyone finds acceptable, politically correct, because semantics is not the issue.
Speak to the heart of people and people will know what you’re talking about.
Feder: And this would be in elementary schools too?
Jacobson: I think from beginning to end everywhere. This would have to be the basis of it all. It’s not going to be easy. Because remember, the problem is often more with the parents and the teachers than it is with the students.
Remember, children are very impressionable and very receptive to truth. They are receptive to responsibility. But the teacher and educator may not be that responsible themselves, so they may not be ready to teach that which needs to be taught.
Feder: Well, obviously someone fell down on the job out there and is doing so, and we’re all guilty of this, all across the country.
Jacobson: On a more specific level, I would speak to parents. Because ultimately, schools, it’s easy to cop out and say that schools are taking care of our kids, but we see increasingly how that’s not the case, and a great case can be made for home education. But I would say this to parents: ultimately, it’s your children, it’s not the school’s children. The schools are trying to do the best job they can and they care, but it’s your children and it’s your only children.
If you’re not responsible for them, who will be? As Hillel said,
Feder: “If not now, when?”
Jacobson: Right. So I would say on a personal level, on an individual level, things can be done immediately which is, before your child goes to sleep every night, from a young age and on, you speak to them about those things. Not what’s on television, and not what we read in the newspapers, and not even about tragedies, but talk to them about why life matters, why your life matters, why my life matters, why life is sacred. In a positive way. I don’t mean, don’t kill someone. Sacred in a positive way. And ways that you can make your life sacred, from when you wake up in the morning, to how you treat others, how you treat yourself. If you treat yourself with respect it will extend to how you treat others.
Even though I don’t think it’s popular to put a ban on television, but I highly encourage, and I think it’s getting there, that parents should seriously look, even though television is a great babysitter, to look at how much violence their children are exposed to. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to blame everything on the video machines, video games… Everything starts from the spirit, it doesn’t begin with the technology out there, but the entire environment is prone to different attitudes, violent attitudes…
Feder: The violence that is on video games that I have seen, when my son and his friends play with them, is 100 times worse than what you see on television and when you go to the movies. But I see parents bringing 6-year-olds and 8-year-olds to see things that are so startling and so disgusting that’s it’s unbelievable. And I’ve done it myself when I was feeling lazy with my own kids.
Jacobson: As I’ve said, people have to look at their children’s lives as sacred and pure. And every step and every scar leaves an effect imbedded forever and ever. And it’s a matter of sensitivity that needs to be addressed. It is critical for parents to be able to make time for their children. Obviously to create an uproar in the educational system, to the people on school boards, the people who are underwriting school budgets, and to bring it to that type of level of attention.
This isn’t going to be easy, because we’re dealing here not with educational systems, we’re dealing here with the fabric of an entire society and I don’t know if responsibility is the number one priority.
Feder: This is a rhetorical question, right?
Jacobson: And since it’s not, how are we going to be compartmentalized and say that our schools will teach our children responsibility as number one, but we’re not that way. I don’t see how that’s going to fly. But we’re going to have to dedicate more such shows, and maybe that’s why we’re on the air, for events of this nature, and to be able to bring it to public attention.
I’m not naïve enough to think that suddenly you bring certain things to people’s attention, tragedies, etc. and then suddenly everything’s going to change. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.
But if one person changes, that’s something. And I think it’s our job, you and I, and anyone’s who’s listening to this, to have that personal impact. Ultimately, that’s where the battle is fought. In Washington, you’re not going to really win on a broad scale. World change happens one soul at a time, one person at a time.
Feder: You’re giving people a hard challenge here, because I’m just thinking about myself, and you’re asking people to examine their own hearts and the way they live their own lives before they can speak to their children at night. In other words, I have to know, what does life mean to me, before I can tell my children…
Jacobson: Well, actually there’s a back door. I’ll tell you what you can do. Don’t do it for yourself, do it for your child. Look at it that way. In other words, I may not change myself, but for my child, I may go ahead and pay the price. And sometimes that’s enough of an ulterior motive.
As a matter of fact, that’s not unheard of. There’s a prophet, Malachi, in the book of Tanach, in the Bible where it says, “At the end of time, the hearts of the parents will return through their children.”
So maybe that takes on different shapes. Maybe sometimes through the positive elements of our children because they inspire us to relive our youth and give ourselves a second chance, so to speak, and also in the negative, when we see children acting out in this way, it also awakens our hearts.
Feder: We would like to take a moment to thank the people who have made these shows possible, Marti and Charles Yassky, and also tonight, we want to thank Robert Klein, in honor and in memory of his sister, Judith Stenn, whose birthday is April 23, 1942, and she passed away March 30, 1989.
We have about one minute left if there’s anything you want to say or add.
Jacobson: Well, in the spirit of Robert Klein who has dedicated this show in memory of his sister who passed away, I do want to say that the Jewish faith has the firm belief, more than a belief, but the reality, that a soul never dies but lives on eternally. This is by no means a consolation for any tragedy that occurs, because the tragedy is still alive for us when someone is cut away from us, but we do believe in the eternity of the soul, and to try to make sense of a loved one being torn away from us can only begin if we use that as a catalyst for our own growth. And I don’t say this at all to console anyone, I do say that with all the pain involved, we here on this earth have to do everything possible to take the souls that are with us, our children, and look at them as souls that are traveling through the vehicle called the body in this life, and pay attention to them before you put them to sleep and when they wake up in the morning. Teach them that life is sacred and our lives are sacred and meaningful, and that they make a difference.
Tags: radio transcript, murder, youth, America, education
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July 28th, 2015
Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – August 29, 1999
Mike Feder: Okay, here we are. This is WEVD and I’m Mike Feder here with Rabbi Simon Jacobson. Tonight’s topic is “Entertainment in American Life.” Our number in the studio for callers is 212-244-1050.
First question: We spend about 25% or more of our waking hours either being entertained or being involved in some entertainment activity. We spend 20-30% of the money that we have to spend on leisure activity. Entertainment takes up a lot of our energy and planning: people work all year looking forward to it, they work all day looking forward to coming home and being entertained. Our lives are centered around this, and my question is: Is there too much entertainment in American life (are we killing ourselves with it?) and is there a “correct” amount and type of entertainment?
Simon Jacobson: Well, Mike, I would like to answer that question as I’ve answered earlier questions, and that is “What exactly is entertainment and is it healthy?” Because if it’s very healthy, then maybe we should spend 50% of our time with it, and if it’s not healthy, then perhaps even 1% is too much.
So I would respond to that question first and then go straight to yours.
Feder: So what do you say entertainment is?
Jacobson: Clearly, people are drawn to it and they don’t need to be taught how to entertain themselves. It’s something that you don’t need to go to school for. What I mean is, people naturally gravitate toward recreation, toward entertainment. A broad definition of entertainment is having a good time, enjoying yourself, finding some type of stimulation…
Feder: You could use the word “fun”?
Jacobson: Fun, yes, stimulation, and again, we’re not discussing the healthy or unhealthy aspect of it. It’s a form of stimulation as a result of some type of activity. Now, I think that per se if that’s the definition of entertainment, I would say overall that it’s a healthy and necessary element for life. Since life can get boring and monotonous, a person needs to feel enriched, invigorated, passionate, stimulated. So with that broad generalization, entertainment is a fine thing.
The question is, what entertains us and what happens as a result of it. For example, a little child sits on the floor and plays with toys, blocks. So you and I may not do that, but we have our toys. We don’t even consider that entertainment any longer, but the child is completely happy, completely wholesome and gratified.
We may get our entertainment from something more sublime, by reading a book. Some people get entertained from watching a movie, whatever it is that entertains them.
Is there a real difference between that child and us? The difference, I would submit, is only in the object of the entertainment: what it is that we consider to be entertaining. A child doesn’t get entertained by something more sublime or intellectual. Adults may need that. Obviously, there are many levels of this and it’s not easy to categorize.
So I would say that the difference between meaningful entertainment and frivolous entertainment, can be measured by its objectives and after-effects. Meaningful entertainment stimulates the human spirit to grow. Frivolous entertainment, which one can criticize (going back to your original question where 25% of the time is spent on entertainment that is essentially frivolous), is essentially a distraction—an entertainment that doesn’t lead anywhere.
That is my next element. The fact is that people need to be entertained—and I’ve had this argument and debate with several friends of mine—one person said to me, you can never package spirituality if it’s not entertaining.
Feder: How do you mean “package it”?
Jacobson: In other words, if you make a film, you have to have some entertainment value. Don’t think you’re going to just speak cerebrally to people’s brains. You have to entertain them. There has to be a plot, there has to be suspense, mystery…
Feder: Or speak to people’s souls.
Jacobson: Well, the point is that entertainment means putting it in a type of story narrative so people will feel entertained. In other words, the masses will not just be ready to listen to philosophy or a dense, intense discussion. It has to be packaged in an entertaining way.
I responded that that may be true to some extent, but I must tell you that I see that what people are searching for is not entertainment. They’re searching for meaning. However, while we are searching for meaning, when it becomes difficult, we look to distract ourselves and entertain ourselves in ways that have no follow-up. And that’s the key line that I would use. The fact that we can, for example, entertain someone’s soul, and their soul is stimulated and they would even say, you know, I was happy experiencing that, for me that would be the greatest goal.
Instead of going to a movie, instead of going to “have some fun,” going to an arcade, or playing with my “blocks,” I find my entertainment in something that is somewhat spiritual, somewhat meaningful. That element of entertainment is very healthy and I would say even necessary, because people when you will get entertained in a healthy way, you will get inspired, you will be moved. Entertainment that will be ultimately destructive is entertainment that has no perpetuation. You feel empty afterwards. Like eating sugar. It may give you energy, that spurt, but then afterwards you’re hungrier or even thirstier than before.
Feder: You know, I read a book by Irving Howe called World of Our Fathers. It’s a wonderful book about the immigration of Jews around the turn of the century—but it could be about the immigration of any ethnic group—and he talks about people working 6-7 days a week, 14 hours a day on the Lower East Side, working themselves practically to death. Their bodies and minds were so exhausted that they flocked to these places where there was vaudeville, sort of soap opera type plays, the simplest low-brow entertainment, and they were able to laugh and to purge themselves of the feeling that life was relentlessly awful.
In other words, at that moment, that type of entertainment was like water in the desert to them. But there was nothing spiritually uplifting about it. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s a hard world.
Jacobson: Exactly, and I would say that, as a matter of fact, you’re bringing up a very good point because the entertainment factor is interdependent with your life situation. If your life is very tedious and you go to work, and your material pursuit weighs you down, there’s no doubt that you’re going to search for an escape, a vocation, a weekend, an entertainment that does not necessarily have to have value or deeper meaning.
However, if you don’t see your work as tedious, but that your work, too, is entertaining (let me explain what I mean by entertaining—that you see it as part of your mission in life), that when you go to work it’s not just to make a living, or to satisfy my boss. But if you feel that you’re transforming the world in some way, then there may definitely be times for a break, but the entertainment value will also be in direct proportion, you will look for entertainment that’s also meaningful.
In other words, the theme is this: if your life is meaningful your entertainment will be meaningful. If your life is not that meaningful, your entertainment will usually also be of that same nature.
Feder: But look at the nature of most people’s lives. If we’re going to be realistic, I’d say 75% of the people who go work in the city every day, and maybe 75% of the people listening to us right at this moment, are doing things which you would be hard pressed to say are uplifting or spiritual.
Jacobson: You know, Mike, my approach is to always attempt to deal not just with the symptoms but with the underlying causes. It’s easy to be a fire and brimstone preacher, and you and I can say, “Hey look how people entertain themselves today with all kinds of stupidity. These people go out to eat every night and spend so much money. Other people will spend $100,000 just to fly somewhere exotic for the weekend; they could have spent it on something more meaningful,” and all of that. And we can really laugh at that approach and be cynical and critical.
That’s fine, but I’d like to go a step beyond that and say, Why is it that way? They’re smart people. Why is it that they would not give that $100,000 to something more worthwhile? (I’m referring to a story of a certain individual who literally spent that amount a week to entertain himself, on pure entertainment. If you asked him to give $10,000 to a very important charitable cause, he’d say, “Give me a business plan; I have to think about it.”)
So why would an intelligent person be able to do that? The answer is that deep in the heart, beneath the surface, lies a certain lack of focus. Even in his work, even in that person’s productive hours.
Entertainment also tends to be a direct extension of that in areas that are complete escapism that have no perpetual value.
Now I’m not trying to suggest that entertainment means that you have to always be theological or philosophical. Entertainment can be light and constructive when it is not the only activity of our lives, and it is part of a larger picture of your life. However, it is destructive when your whole life is only entertaining yourself.
I will go a step farther. And actually dispel a stereotype. Most people wouldn’t think that a traditional Jew, for example, coming from a Torah background, would need entertainment. What kind of entertainment? Your job is to serve G-d and be dedicated at all times.
Feder: Sober. Serious.
Jacobson: And the fact that some people succumb might be rationalized as, okay, human beings are weak so they need some entertainment, they need a break. I submit this: that a true relationship with G-d is one where your soul feels entertained, your spirit feels nourished. It is an experience that can compete with other forms of entertainment. Obviusly, “spiritual entertainment” is entertainment in a broader form, not in the secular or common way of interpreting, but it is still not just a somber experience that is unenjoyable; it is highly entertaining. It entertains more delicate and sublme elements of the “palette” (so to speak) of the human experience.
Feder: So you might use a word like refreshed or recreated.
Jacobson: But more importantly, that you would take that free hour and say: You know what? That free hour is going to be spent on something that is both entertaining and also meaningful. That in no way compromises our primitive need to be stimulated and entertained.
However, if the whole basis of your life, the foundation, is not one of searching for that type of mission, then entertainment will be very empty and will leave you empty, and you’ll become an entertainment addict, where yesterday is not enough. Where every day you need a new source of fun.
Feder: So it’s a question of living an integrated life. In other words, now we have the kind of a world where our work is split off from our entertainment and it shouldn’t be, you’re saying.
Jacobson: Yes. Take a look at ourselves, and I invite you Mike, as I always do, to challenge me. You know, if I were you I would be challenging me, if I may.
Feder: I don’t know. I always try to be polite! No, go ahead.
Jacobson: No. If you’re going to be polite, you’d better challenge me. I consider it impolite if you just agree.
Feder: Okay. So if I were going to challenge you, what is it that I would be asking you now?
Jacobson: I would wonder: Come on, Rabbi Jacobson. People are people. The fact is, they need entertainment, they need that light moment. Not everything can be heavy, heavy with meaning, meaning, spirituality, G-d. They need to be able to do something with no purpose in mind.
Feder: No purpose at all.
Jacobson: And the facts testify to that. You see, people can lie on a beach without having some deeper understanding or meaning. It doesn’t have to be philosophical. It’s entertaining and they go back to work the next day and feel refreshed. It gives them energy. It’s a very common approach.
So what do you answer?
Feder: Well, I’d answer in the classical, old-fashioned way. I’d ask you another question based on what you just said. What do you do to entertain yourself that doesn’t have any absolute spiritual or immediate spiritual value? Do you just sometimes go and enjoy yourself with no goal or object of deeper meaning involved?
Jacobson: Well, I do. I’m far from the perfect model of an individual whose life is dedicated to G-d every moment of his or her life. But I must say that when your horizons are broadened, and I’ve been blessed to be around people and in an environment that has very high horizons—I don’t want to sit around on the floor playing with my blocks—my stimulation comes from the larger things. The need for fulfilling a mission.
Of course there are many light moments. But even those light moments have a certain sense where, even there, you just get accustomed to living with a deeper perspective, a search for “Ah, maybe there’s a little message here for me.” It doesn’t mean that every moment has an intensity, such as: “What does G-d want of me now that I’m sitting in an amusement park?” but that there’s a general attitude where you recognize that this is part of a bigger picture and you may learn lessons, you may meet people there that you wouldn’t just say, “Where is the next ride?” You may get into a conversation that’s meaningful.
You find that even your recreation is also a stage and an element in your life which—to repeat a concept that I’ve spoken about before—is “redeeming sparks.” The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement (we just celebrated 300 years since his birth), says a very interesting thing: That every one of us, you, Mike, myself, everyone listening, every person on earth, is allocated a certain amount of Divine sparks and these are placed in various places that we encounter throughout our life.
It may be with the people we know, it may be in the places that we travel to, it may be the schools that we go to and the places where we entertain ourselves. There are sparks in all these places and you’re allocated those sparks and it’s your job…
When I say “spark”—it’s a metaphor of course—it means that there’s a purpose; there’s a certain objective to accomplish. It’s not exactly a number, like 50 sparks and then I’m finished, but in a way it’s like a treasure hunt where you’re trying to find the Divine, the extraordinary, the sublime, the unique in the mundane, ordinary life. Extraordinary within the ordinary.
And that’s placed in every area of your life. You go to a restaurant, you meet someone in the street. And when you have that view in life, you generally look at everything you do from the perspective of the holiness moment of sitting on Yom Kippur in a synagogue to when you do, so to speak, entertain yourself, you look, at least with the corner of your eye if not directly, at where’s that opportunity, that spiritual opportunity, how do I excavate that gem, that particular area of my life?
And sometimes we don’t do that. But the overall attitude is such. This doesn’t mean, by the way, that everyone has to be a theologian and a philosopher. I believe spirituality is not an intellectual process that’s only for the elite, it’s a process that each of us (the simplest person in the simplest life) where you find your sparks; it can be through love, it can be through other experiences.
Feder: All this makes perfect sense to me, but give me a little historical perspective on this from your point of view. How did we get to this place in America where, and I’ll venture to say this, 90% of the entertainment that’s presented or available to us everywhere—television, theme parks, video games, movies—90% of it is at best meaningless and superficial to outright destructive and violent, and insanely attacks any value or meaning? I mean, how did we get to a state like this…unless you disagree with me that that’s the state of entertainment.
Jacobson: No. I agree and I’m glad you said it, not me, because I was intentionally avoiding making those types of descriptions, not because I disagree but because I don’t want to distract our listeners from the issue at hand.
I will answer by saying the following.
Feder: Let me also add that if we agree that that’s the way it is, then what do we do about it, obviously.
Jacobson: Well, first we have to talk about the causes, and then we can talk about intervention.
I’d add something to what you just said, which is the classical debate of the chicken and the egg, which came first. Is the media the one creating this type of frivolous, empty entertainment, or is there an audience that will pay for it and so therefore they’re just satisfying the audiences. You know, when they talk about these soap operas or some of the low-level standard entertainment, entertainment executives simply say, hey, this is what people want. Advertisers want to reach people. People won’t watch shows that are of a higher standard. Or, is it the media that is creating it somewhat and the people are just buying or eating whatever is being giving to them?
Feder: Like sheep.
Jacobson: And if you lower the standard they’ll just buy that as well, because that’s the only choice they have, that’s the only television, the only radio, the only newspapers.
I believe, as the Jewish answer often goes: the chicken and the egg were both created equally, simultaneously. I think it’s really a combination of both, a vicious cycle.
Feder: So it’s the responsibility of both the audience and the creator of this entertainment.
Jacobson: Right. Because the fact is that the people who create the entertainment are also people, and should their standards be high enough, they might not want to stoop, even if the people were ready to buy it. I mean, is everyone for sale? Would we sell anything that people would buy? Do we have a standard? Is there a line that you draw…and everyone does have that line.
On the other hand, I really believe that people rise to the occasion. When you expect more of them, they deliver more. I’ve seen it time and again. However, if you make it easy, lazy type of entertainment, where there is no need to really work hard, then people will stoop to that because we’re very resilient creatures.
Feder: But isn’t there a contradiction to what you’re saying? If you’re saying that everybody has a hunger or a need because maybe it’s placed there by G-d for something deeper, some spiritual connection, won’t people finally get fed up? And if so, when?
Jacobson: Yes. On an individual level they’ll finally get fed up. But Mike, there’s another generation that has yet to come to that level of frustration and they’re buying now the media, entertainment.
Feder: Which is more violent and more superficial than ever.
Jacobson: Right, exactly. What we’re dealing with here is not one segment of the population that got fed up, okay that’s great. But there are always new customers, like what happened with the tobacco industry. They’re looking for their new customers. Of course people who have smoked for ten years quit.
Feder: There’s one born every minute, right?
Jacobson: So, the point I’m making is that it’s a joint responsibility. I believe that anyone in a position of leadership in the media and entertainment world has a critical responsibility because you are influencing minds. And I don’t care about anything, money here, money there, but the bottom line is that you are influencing minds, influencing standards.
Look, did you ever see how children are glued to a television?
Feder: I’ve seen it plenty of times.
Jacobson: Hypnotic. It’s frightening.
Feder: And there are video games and the Internet, too.
Jacobson: Now I’m not knocking the technology, but I am saying this, and television is a perfect example of what we’re describing. Television is a level of entertainment that can be very abusive, because you don’t have to put any effort in it. Why is it that children are hypnotized by the screen? Because it’s very easy. It’s visual. It catches your eye. It’s more powerful than listening to something.
Feder: And it’s so passive.
Jacobson: More powerful than reading something. However, it’s also emptier. Now, if television were to present a very meaningful, relevant message, then the visual medium is being used in a very healthy way. But if it doesn’t, then a book cannot compete with that hypnotic power. Once a person has gotten accustomed to the “easy” nature of visual entertainment, it dulls the interest and motivation to read a book, no matter how rich or full of content (I’m talking about a child here, who hasn’t yet been burned by the television age). Who’s going to want to read a book when it’s easier just to sit and watch? It’s effortless. Everything is being done for you.
Feder: Well, it’s not just children who are watching TV.
Jacobson: Right, but my point is… I remember sitting once in a hospital waiting room and the television was on, and there were little children, maybe 7-8 years old, sitting in the waiting room, and they were watching one of these expose-it-all, tell-it-all talk shows…
Feder: Tabloid TV…
Jacobson: They were glued to it, these 7-year-old kids. I was watching them thinking, this is what they’re looking at, hours and hours a day. How can they grow up with healthy sexual attitudes? It has to have that type of negative impact. Even one viewing of it is so hypnotic. Day after day. So I went over to the nurse, who was also glued to the TV, mind you, and I said, (I just wanted to see her reaction) “Look, maybe with these kids here this show is not so appropriate.” I didn’t mean to be critical or judgmental. I said, “Perhaps maybe we should change it to a cartoon (I don’t know if the cartoons are any better).”
So she said, “Of course, of course,” and I saw she got upset with me because her eyes kept going back to the screen and she was waiting for that commercial break. And I realized that she’s like them. She’s just a little older.
Feder: So are you suggesting here that someone with a little more understanding and awareness has to step in and do something about it?
Jacobson: I don’t believe in anyone dictating…
Feder: It’s like a paternalistic attitude…
Jacobson: Right. I believe that a show like ours is trying to add a meaningful dimension to entertainment.
Feder: Is this an entertaining show?
Jacobson: You’d have to ask the listeners. We’ll invite them to call. I would love it if there are any entertainment executives or any entertainment people listening to call in.
Feder: They wouldn’t have the nerve to call, to show their faces on the radio. They wouldn’t have the nerve! I invite them to call!
Jacobson: We invite calls from both ends. If you’re the one who’s producing it or the one who’s consuming it.
Feder: If you’re the gluer or the glued. So maybe this is a good place to a break. You’ve been listening to Rabbi Simon Jacobson, and this is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. My name is Mike Feder and we’re here every Sunday night from 6-7pm and you’re listening to WEVD, 1050AM in New York City.
This show is an outgrowth of the Meaningful Life Center in Brooklyn, and this show is based very much on Rabbi Jacobson’s book called Toward a Meaningful Life, in which almost every subject that you hear discussed on the air here is discussed.
We really want to thank everyone who has emailed us or written or called us. Here are some of the ways you can get in touch with us, and we want to hear from you. The most important thing is the telephone number: 1-800-3MEANING or 1-800-363-2646. You can also email us at wisdomreb@aol.com. You can always write to us at The Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11225.
I’d like to also tell you that we have a new website where you can download transcripts of this program, and previous and future programs. It’s www.meaningfullife.com.
Okay, we do have a call here from Jennifer. Go ahead.
Caller: I’m a student of Rabbi Jacobson and I’m also in the entertainment industry so I’m calling in. I’m with a news organization.
Jacobson: So let me ask Jennifer a question. How do you see your position in the media world and your deeper role? What are your responsibilities or are you just a hired gun and you do whatever they demand of you and whatever they pay you for? Do you see any higher spiritual goal in your work?
Caller: I absolutely do have a spiritual goal in my work. We are a news gathering organization and there are certain ethical issues such as calling families after there’s been a tragedy in the family, such as the shooting in the daycare center in Los Angeles. The issue is whether or not a producer should contact a victim’s family immediately after this tragedy for news purposes. So there are a lot of ethical issues that I deal with on a daily basis. However, I do try to get important and spiritual speakers on my news shows when I have the opportunity to get a positive message across.
Feder: Well, you know, everybody understands (this is addressed to both of you from me) that there’s been a blending of information and entertainment, so that once upon a time there was a split between a direct information news program and pure entertainment. Now, of course, I think everyone would have to concede that these two things have been blended almost to the point of where they are indistinguishable or maybe you wouldn’t concede it.
Caller: I absolutely do agree with that. I think sensationalism is what sells nowadays. A lot of news organizations have unfortunately taken this route. I know that some news organizations, not the one I’m working for, pay for stories which also draw various ethical lines. I actually used to work for a tabloid program where we did stories which at the time were sensational, and I’ve seen modern news organizations, prestigious networks, go toward the tabloid angle, because unfortunately, that is what the viewers like. And since I do work in the entertainment industry—I personally do not watch much television at all—I agree it is not a good influence for children at all. I don’t think news is a good influence for children. They’re seeing horrible things going on in the world. I think that it’s important for parents to pre-screen everything that their children see.
Jacobson: Jennifer, so do you think that there’s a trend among executives toward sensationalism or the other way around? Or there may be a backlash at some point?
Caller: I’m not going to talk about executives, I’m going to talk as a viewer of these major networks. It’s sensational, I really can’t speak for executives—I’m just a producer—I just know that is what sells on television.
Feder: Well then doesn’t it feel strange to be involved in a job or a career or even a calling where you don’t participate in consuming the same thing?
Caller: In some ways it is hypocritical; on the other hand, I think it’s important to have people who do have a conscience in this business, otherwise it would just get way out of hand and horrible things would happen: people would be knocking on your door after you’ve been in a car accident without any empathy or sympathy to what you are going through as a human being.
Jacobson: Well, Jennifer, I wish others that worked in the media and in business were as sensitive and as spiritual as you are, and it’s gratifying to hear, because frankly, as I say to you Mike and I say to Jennifer as well, it all comes down to individuals. If individuals do have that consciousness that Jennifer is describing, and have that sense of spirituality, as their standards and horizons broaden and heighten, that will have a direct impact of how they create entertainment for others, and I think that’s healthy.
I don’t think everyone should quit their jobs in the media. Let us use the media and transform it and really lift it to where it belongs.
Feder: Thank you for calling Jennifer.
Okay, let me salt this with another question here. I want to put this to you. It seems to me that the original entertainment, if I know my history here, was involved with religion. In fact, there is a real connection, for thousands of years, between the stage and theatre and religious and spiritual celebrations. In fact, in the olden days, thousands of years ago, the only real entertainment you would see is directly connected without religions.
There were celebrations of births and deaths, harvests, gods’, miracles brought about by the various gods that were worshipped, or whatever it was, and there is an absolute, intricate, relationship between the theatre and the synagogue and the church. If there were somebody, let’s say, at a synagogue and it was just one endless litany of prayers and talking, yet there weren’t singing or pageants involved, it’s almost like the origin of entertainment and celebration were from religions.
Jacobson: As I stated earlier, I don’t believe that G-d wants us to be non-entertained human beings. In other words, I think that spirituality can be fun. I use the word “fun” not in the way that many people attribute to the word “fun” because it’s of a higher caliber, but there’s an expression in the Talmud that the ultimate goal and the ultimate good is a good that is both good for heaven and good for earth.
There are things that are good for heaven but are painful on earth. There are things that are good on earth but are painful in heaven. There are things that are very spiritual, but they don’t seem to have earthly value. I believe that the ultimate objective is where we see that even in our earthly value system, even the entertainment “nerves” inside your system get stimulated by something that is of a higher standard, and I gave the example with the child before because I think it’s a perfect example: A child will sit down and play with toys. You and I may not. You’ll say, “That’s not for me, that’s completely not in my realm.”
Feder: So there’s really no disconnecting these…
Jacobson: …a tzaddik, a righteous person, who really reaches very spiritual heights, do you think he’s having less enjoyment and less entertainment in his life? It’s only coming from more sublime sources. And that’s a key element.
We’re not talking about the need to be entertained, we’re not changing the desire for that type of stimulation, we’re changing the object of the desire. Now usually you hear in the education process, you know, there’s an approach…let’s say there’s a child who behaves or entertains himself in a way that is unhealthy. Everyone agrees that it’s unhealthy. It’s too much, it’s in excess, etc.
One approach is to take away the object from the child or student and say, “You’re not allowed to do that, you’ll be punished if you use that particular form of entertainment.” And that’s it, and you tie them up in a sense, and the child, out of fear, may or may not comply.
What’s wrong with that approach? What’s wrong is that at some point, number one, he’s going to explode. When the child becomes independent enough, he won’t ask you, he’ll do it anyway.
Feder: Behind your back.
Jacobson: Right. Secondly, and more importantly, you haven’t dealt with the cause, you’ve dealt with the symptom. There’s a void that remains now in that person’s heart that needs stimulation. So instead of creating or providing an alternative, you’ve just performed like a lobotomy, you just cut out that part.
Human beings needs to be entertained, they need to be stimulated, they need to feel uplifted. And if G-dliness, spirituality, Torah, doing a mitzvah, doing a good deed, doesn’t achieve that, something else will. You can’t expect people to just deprive themselves, just to cut off that part of themselves. I think that’s a critical element.
Feder: Okay, we have another call here. Shifra.
Caller: Hi, my name is Shifra Herbst, the Rabbi knows me a little bit. I was thinking, listening to you Rabbi, of the entertainment in my life. I’m a person who likes to learn, and there’s a certain type of joy that I get out of that, and then when I go to a certain event—a wedding or a bar mitzvah— or i follow a certain a there’s also a kind of joy of entertainment that I get. But I wanted to ask the Rabbi: There’s another kind of entertainment that I have as an adult, and I only have to say this to give an example. Once when I went out on a social occasion, a gentleman took me to Coney Island and we got on the merry-go-round, and there we were, and there’s that little girl and little boy having fun in a very special kind of a way that’s different from the joy of listening to entertainment and the spiritual aspects of the joy of wisdom and the festivals.
So I wanted to ask what the Rabbi thinks about bringing out the fun aspect, the play aspect in people?
Feder: Almost like the childlike part of things.
Caller: Yes, and you don’t have to do anything. It’s just an entertainment that you have with your spouse or you have it with your children, or if you’re single and you’re going out, it’s that playfulness that seems to lighten up a little bit, just by taking a walk in the park…
Jacobson: Shifra, that’s a very good point and I’m glad you made it, because it should definitely be added into the entire equation. How I would put that is that there are things that you do directly, when you speak about spiritual, meaningful activity, that are directly meaningful, like sitting down to study something, or going out to help a needy person.
But then there are things that we call steppingstones toward things that are meaningful. You can’t put them on the same pedestal, but without them you can’t reach that pedestal. It’s like steppingstones.
For instance, we need to eat. Eating itself can be meaningful. You make a blessing, you understand that it’s G-d’s gift to you, but ultimately, the sustenance that the food provides gives you the strength to go and do something great.
So the meal may not even be considered later as being so much part of the great deed, though it was, because without that meal you wouldn’t have had the strength to proceed. The same thing is, there are forms of activity that we do that—and that’s why I didn’t mention it earlier—that they themselves, by themselves, don’t seem like much, like the example that Shifra gave, “fun,” just free abandon, going on a merry-go-round, taking a walk in the park, even some humor, if it’s not just frivolous and at the expense of someone else, and empty.
That’s part of, in itself, if it leads to something meaningful and it’s goal is that it loosens you up, it lightens you up, you get in touch with your own flexibility and spontaneity, instead of being locked in a hard, adult type of place. That itself is spiritual, that itself is meaningful.
Feder: So something which is apparently or even clearly meaningful, can be like a steppingstone, like a rung up a ladder to some other form of entertainment.
Jacobson: Precisely. The Talmud tells that when the Rava, who was a great Sage and scholar, would teach, before he would begin the actual course, the actual dissertation, he would say something humorous. In Aramaic: “milseh d’bedicuhsa.”
A bedichusa means a humorous statement; a joke (of course it wasn’t a plain joke, the humor had content—if a wise man tells a joke, the humor is also of a higher caliber), but the reason he did that was as a preparation that opened the hearts of the students.
It’s using that ability to entertain, to entice, to open you up, but with a greater objective—it’s not an end in itself. If he just stopped with that and didn’t go on with the course, then he’d be stooping to the level of the students who may just want to have fun.
Feder: We have another Jennifer on the line.
Caller: Hi. I’m in the entertainment industry indirectly, in the sense that I’m a musician and I work for various religious institutions, religious and so forth, providing music, and I’ve noticed that the power of popular culture has become greater and greater in recent years to the point that it’s almost displaced the value of serious religious music. I think that the media, or the forces of pop culture have kind of empowered the fun-seeker or the uneducated, or however you want to define such people, as having a kind of dictatorial power over what kind of music is practiced in churches.
I think this has almost endangered the spiritual message that music can carry. And I wondered if you have a comment on that?
Jacobson: I do. It’s unfortunate to hear that but I do believe that in religion you do find that music plays a prominent role; that’s another example, by the way, of something that’s entertaining. Now music is much more than entertaining. Music can touch hearts and souls and transport you to another place. It’s actually a very spiritual activity.
Prayer is sometimes called music, song, melody. However, music also has the ability to achieve something that just a lecture or sermon or prayer service doesn’t have. It lightens the spirit, it opens you up. Singing along and so on. And it’s unfortunate that the standards that Jennifer just described, the popular standards, are so contaminating this power of song.
I think we should do a future radio show on music.
Feder: Sure.
Jacobson: But I will tell one parable, so to speak. When G-d came to create the universe, He consulted with the angels and asked them, “Tell me, should I give human beings music, art?” and the angels, of course, said, “No, human beings will abuse it. They’ll take music and they’ll make a commercial business out of it. They won’t appreciate its sublime nature. Give us the power of song and we will sing your praises. We understand that song is like wings that lift spirits up high.”
G-d listened to their advice and then chose to disregard it. Instead, G-d said to the angels, “I will give them music. Do you know why? Because I want them to have something to remember Me with.”
So music is a voice, a tool, a language that speaks G-d’s language. It’s a way of transcending conventional vocabulary and language and reaching a deeper spiritual place. However, like in all places, there is room for abuse. But as the Talmud says in one place: “Just because there are sun-worshippers and moon-worshippers, G-d is going to destroy His universe?”
Technology can be used in a very destructive way but at the same time in a very constructive way as well. That’s our free choice, our free will.
So it’s sad that the popular culture is so—I don’t like the word contaminated—is so abusing and so exploitive of music for its own ends and in a way bringing people down instead of lifting people up to that place that it should be. However, religious establishments have that responsibility to use music in a way that is spiritually uplifting. And that’s a perfect example where entertainment can be used both in a constructive way or G-d forbid in a destructive way.
Feder: I think this has been a war that’s been going on since human beings were able to collect themselves in one place and celebrate anything. I mean, there’s always a war between what you might call low entertainment and high entertainment, or entertainment for financial value and entertainment for spiritual value.
It seems to me apparently that the other side is winning, but it’s an endless war.
Jacobson: Well, it’s a war but it’s a war in each of our hearts as well. Because we can stoop to both extremes. In other words, we can give in to our temptations for instant gratification and there are times when we rise to the occasion for a much higher level of entertainment. It’s easy. Look, you turn on the television and start watching something, and it’s very easy to just succumb and just lay back and say, well, if that’s what’s on, I’m so bored anyway.
So you almost need a constant state of vigilance to have that higher standard where you say, “No, you know, I really have a higher perspective.”
But I don’t think it comes with the fear and guilt approach of saying, no, you can’t watch that. I think the approach has to be an educational and inspiring one. Here, you want to sit down and play with blocks on the floor, I will give you an alternative. Not criticize you for playing but give you an alternative game, an alternative humor, an alternative entertainment that is a little higher.
Feder: But here you know you’re touching on something that is almost a separate subject but is almost tied into it (because everything is tied into everything). Once you replace this television, if you’re a parent trying to replace it for a kid, then it requires you to provide or to participate in the entertainment, and there’s the real problem.
Jacobson: I have no doubt, Mike, that if the entertainment industry would apply their brilliant minds and genius to creative programming that has, not per se spiritual value but has that subliminal undercurrent that we’re here for a higher purpose, they could achieve everything and much more than that which is currently achieved without pure sensationalism, pure entertainment without any meaningful content.
Sometimes you hear a good joke, and you really laugh at it. And afterwards you say, I laughed at a joke and it was funny but it had absolutely no content, no meaning. There’s no lesson, no message; it just got you laughing for the moment.
Feder: Well, it really is the equivalent of junk food, where you eat it and it tastes good because of the salt or sugar, but there’s no nutritional value.
Jacobson: Yes, but it’s much worse, because it’s junk food for the soul, and it’s harder to get rid of junk food fed to the soul. You can burn extra body fat and junk food through body exercise. It’s much harder to burn “fat” that has affected the soul. The soul is a very sensitive child. So every little thing matters, like a piece of dust on the eyeball. It’s much more sensitive. But then you listen to humor, a joke that’s really content oriented, and that makes you laugh as well, you could even be in stitches, however, it has that content, it has that message. It could even be revealing a part of yourself that’s so ridiculous, or something that has a twist to it, that helps you understand life in a different or better way.
So that’s a perfect example. Of course, the latter requires more effort, requires more thinking. But it’s not less entertaining. You find that in music, you find that in many areas where there are things in entertainment that are purely, let’s call it primitive, hedonistic, that’s driven by just stimulating the senses. It’s almost like artificially going and stimulating your nerves.
Feder: Not to be impatient about this, but people have been talking about this, and this is obviously the best sentiment you can express, but people have been talking about this for so long that it’s almost as if it doesn’t seem to make any impression on anybody anymore.
I mean, it’s good that you said it, and it’s good when anybody says it. But there’s a headlong rush in the other direction. I mean, Jessie Ventura, a professional wrestler, an entertainer of the lowest sort (and I’ve laughed at wrestling myself once and a while) is the governor of a state. President Clinton is an entertainer. He’s not even a politician. Reagan was an entertainer. I hate to be so gloom and doom about this, but we are headlong like lemmings jumping right off the cliff in the other direction. Is there some sort of emergency treatment that you could suggest?
Jacobson: Well, that’s why we’re doing our radio show, because we believe that this radio show is going to be historical and dramatic and change the world! And you don’t do a show unless you feel that it’s indispensable and absolutely necessary.
Feder: I guess that’s true.
Jacobson: So I have confidence that we can demonstrate the fusion of entertainment and spirituality by continuing to share the message in a way that is both entertaining and spiritual and meaningful, including wrestling—because we do wrestle you and I…
Feder: So are we going to have “Toward a Meaningful Life the movie” coming out soon?
Jacobson: Toward a meaningful wrestling.
Feder: Are we going to go big screen on this?
Jacobson: I’m sure it will come to that as well.
Feder: But no, I agree with you, I guess the desire is to spread the word.
Jacobson: That is my objective, but the point is, in the case of our lives, it’s like that story where someone was walking along the beach and throwing starfish back into the water. So someone said, “What are you doing? There are so many millions of them? What do you think you’re going to accomplish by throwing a few back?”
And he said, “Well, for this one (for this particular starfish) it matters.”
So we have to do what we can to contribute. It’s a collective consciousness—on both ends. There’s a certain backlash resulting from the extent that parents are seeing their children being hypnotized and all that that’s leading to. At the same time, I think there’s also a spiritual yearning and a spiritual awakening, and when the two converge, there may very well be an explosion. It may not be a revolution overnight, but it’s a slow process. Making the point is critical, because when you make people aware, they usually are one step closer to getting there.
If it’s not discussed, saying, hey, what can we possibly add and what are we going to do about it, then the resignation just allows it to accelerate downward—decelerate.
Feder: Let me take a break from this extremely entertaining program here today to remind you that you have been listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson, and I’m Mike Feder. This is WEVD, New York, 1050am. We’re here every Sunday night from 6-7.
Once again, if you want to get in touch with Rabbi Jacobson with comments or questions you can call 1-800-363-2646. You can email us at wisdomreb@aol.com, and go to our website at www.meaningfullife.com to download transcripts of this radio program.
The radio show is brought to you by you, as I say every week, the listeners, and also by the people who underwrite the show. And today’s underwriter is, and we thank him very much, Robert Klein. The program is in honor of the 26th birthday of his son, Abraham David Klein, and may he be blessed in all things.
Jacobson: I’ll second that. He should be blessed. Robert is a very special man and I bless him that he should have much nachas and joy from his son.
Feder: Okay, we’re at that point in the show where I want to remind the listeners that we do receive requests from people asking how they can donate to the Meaningful Life Center, which is the organization that brings you all this, the radio show and the web site among other things. The Meaningful Life Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing a sense of peace, light, inspiration and meaning into the world. All its activities are made possible by donations of listeners just like you who receive the center’s publications and tapes and who listen to this program and visit the website.
When you contribute to the Meaningful Life Center, you become a partner in the work that we’re doing here, so we ask you to please consider funding these radio programs, sending us money. It’s a great opportunity for honoring someone you love perhaps, or bringing meaningful inspiration to thousands of people that we’re trying to reach.
You can dedicate a program to the memory of a loved one, someone’s birthday for instance, wedding, or any kind of occasion. But the spiritual value is there. That’s what you’re investing in. And believe me, we really do need your help. A donation of any sort, a dollar, or we’ll take $100,000 would be greatly appreciated.
Please call us at 1-800-3MEANING (1-800-363-2646). When you pledge, make sure you ask to receive our newsletter, Meanings. And remember, we don’t have commercial sponsors, you are our sponsors. We count on you the listener to make this show possible.
We actually have one more call. Jerry you’re on the air.
Caller: Hi. I want to ask you something. How come generally in religious communities entertainment always has to be done with separate seating, where men and women are not able to even sit together?
Feder: I’m not sure I’m following your question.
Caller: Well, generally, religious groups separate the men from the women. What is the benefit of that?
Jacobson: Well, it’s not really on the topic because it’s not really about entertainment, but what he’s referring to is that in a traditional, observant Jewish synagogue, for instance, the men and women sit separately during prayer services.
And I’m assuming that he’s referring to when that’s carried over into some entertainment, for example, at a religiously Jewish music concert, there will often be men sitting in one area and women sitting in another.
That’s connected to the whole area of the separation of the sexes and particularly where, when it comes to entertainment, you want to avoid a type of frivolousness and behavior. That’s why it says in the Talmud that a Jewish court of law would send out messengers in times of celebration, like holidays, who would just make sure that people did not allow the joy and the celebration to carry over into frivolous behavior that broke down the boundaries between the sexes.
Feder: So there’s a method to this.
Jacobson: So I assume that’s what he’s referring to, but it’s really another topic.
Feder: Well, we have about three minutes left. I’m the one who seems to always be journalistically reporting the end of the world here and you look at it in a more uplifting and more positive, hopeful way. But now that we have a couple of minutes left, people are going to leave this program today they’re going to go watch—as a matter of fact, wrestling is on right after this program at 7 (I can’t rush home to see it)—and there’s all sorts of junk which I occasionally (not to be a hypocrite) consume myself. Everybody’s going to turn to this stuff, they’re going to turn on their TV sets, and VCRs and everything else, not to be judgmental (and this is why I look to you)…what would you encourage people to do who are listening now who feel like they deserve to have this this very night.
Jacobson: Well, that’s a really good question that puts me on the spot here!
Feder: Yes. Because that’s what I find entertaining!
Jacobson: That’s good. I think it’s critical that people find alternatives. And if someone doesn’t recognize that they’re watching junk, I don’t think my saying anything is going to make a difference. But if someone does recognize that they are, and they really want to pull themselves out of that pattern, or vicious cycle, or almost addiction, I would say they should find alternatives.
Don’t just shut off the TV, and don’t just close off that entertainment, because then you’ll ultimately gravitate back to it. You have to find something that’s entertaining, stimulating, spiritual and meaningful.
Feder: On the television?
Jacobson: I’m ready to offer a suggestion and people can email me with their particular questions. However, I’ll say generally, the key is to find fun in your spiritual activity. And usually it’s with whom you do it. If you love the person that you’re doing something entertaining with, it’s not that important where you’re going or what you’re watching.
It’s important that you’re doing it with that person. As a matter of fact, if it is that important where you’re going or what you’re watching, then that person is secondary. Two people who really love each other can just go to a park and talk, or they can go to a show. But if they both mutually say, you know, let’s do something together that is not just junk, then you have two against one, so to speak, you have two people, two minds, two souls that can bond in that direction.
Now, examples of spiritual entertainment—I don’t even like the term “spiritual” entertainment—meaningful entertainment, there’s an example that Shifra (one of the callers) gave. Going to the park or doing something that’s connected to your childhood, and that’s your intention, or you want to just have that freedom to free yourself from the headaches of work, that’s a very pure objective, but it’s not junk.
So perhaps I would suggest that instead of turning on the VCR tonight, why don’t you go outside to Central Park, if you’re in New York, or go for a walk with someone you love, and if you don’t have someone you love, maybe it’s time to start finding someone you love. The point here is to fill the void and the vacuum and not allow the loneliness and the boredom to drive you to something that is “junky.”
Feder: Okay, next week we’re going to talk about Forgiveness. Thank you very much Rabbi.
Jacobson: Thank you.
Tags: radio transcript, joy, purpose of life, entertainment, fun
Posted in Social, Art & Music | 1 Comment »
July 28th, 2015
“There is no rock (tzur) like our G-d”
Samuel I 2:2
Says the Talmud (Brachos 10a): Read not tzur (rock) but tzayar (artist). “There is no artist like our G-d.”
Say Chassidim: The artist is a master of deception. He takes a bit of canvas and pigment and creates something that is vibrant and alive. And the greater the deception, the greater the illusion of vitality he can impart to inanimate matter, the greater the artist he is.
The Creator is the greatest deceiver of them all. He takes nothing and makes of it a world. And what is our world? Still nothing. But it seems so real…
Tags: God, reality, deception
Posted in Social, Art & Music | No Comments »
July 28th, 2015
Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – October 10, 1999
Mike Feder: Welcome back after a few week hiatus to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. We hope that you welcome us back as well! Today the topic will be “The Brooklyn Museum: Art, Religion and Democracy.” I’m sure a lot of you will have opinions on that and we’ll ask you to call later in the midst of our discussion.
But first let’s take a moment to review who we are and what our mission is on this show.
Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Well, we’ve just been off for four weeks after doing a stint of over 20 shows, which has been very gratifying, given all the feedback, the letters, the emails, and the calls. There’s nothing like interacting with live human beings and really seeing the diverse contribution of people with so many opinions dealing with real life issues.
It’s always difficult to articulate a mission in a few words, but I received one email a few weeks ago that captures in a powerful way what we’re doing and what we’re about.
The fellow titled the letter: Why live? And he wrote to me that he read my book Toward a Meaningful Life, and (I think) he also listens to the show, and he basically said that he’s come to the end of his rope because of different failures in his life, a very terrible childhood… and he essentially said, can you tell me why to live?” And he added, “Don’t send me for help. I’ve already been through all types of therapy.” Clearly he’s a sophisticated, well thought-through person, and it captured for me what this show is about. I think there is an underlying erosion on all levels of life which leads many people to the question “Why live?”
Not everyone asks that question in quite such graphic terms, but the issue basically is whether things really matter. There are talk shows and there’s an Internet and people read the news, browse financial forums, or log on to the best online poker sites for a few casual hands of cards… and you get a sense that you’re speaking to people that, after it all, so much of our daily life experiences seem so temporary; that on a fundamental level it all really doesn’t matter one way or another.
Of course we all have personal issues that very much matter, but life in general is so fast paced that we tend to distract ourselves from some type of deeper purpose. And so for this radio show, nothing would satisfy me more than if we gave people a sense that “you matter,” that you’re valuable, indispensable, that you have something to give, to contribute, and therefore, all your choices and all your activities also matter. Life is not just a mind game and it’s not just a random, circumstantial type of existence where we’re living with a sort of victim mentality, but rather you can take control of your life. So, that’s what Toward a Meaningful Life tries to bring across.
Feder: Well, I think that’s an excellent restatement of our position, and this needs a little background. First of all, we’re talking about the book—which is a blueprint for this radio show—Toward a Meaningful Life, by Simon Jacobson, which is still available out there in stores. The book is very simply and well laid out in terms of topics: Men and Women, Spirituality, Grieving, things like that. And then there’s the Meaningful Life Center from which this is all generated.
Jacobson: That’s our organizational name, and we achieve our mission through the publication of materials, this radio show, a website… utilizing all the media available as channels of communicating that every one of us is a musical note that has something great to contribute to this great, cosmic composition called life.
Feder: We’re here every Sunday on WEVD 1050am, from 6-7, with what we hope is an interesting and inspiring topic and good discussion, and your phone calls.
So tonight’s topic is about this whole “war” that’s been going on around the Brooklyn Museum; it’s been happening for about a couple of weeks now, and I believe it’s moved into court now. It was in the papers, and on the streets, with protests everywhere. And we are subtitling tonight’s show, “Art, Religion and Democracy.”
Now I’m assuming for the purpose of moving the program along that everyone, or virtually everyone listening, knows about this, so there’s no need to really go over it, unless you think you want to. What I want to do is invite the listeners to call in with your questions and comments a little while after we get our discussion cranked up here. The number is 212-244-1050.
Now, where to break in to a situation like this…
Jacobson: In the spirit of this show, which is subtitled “For Skeptics and Seekers”— meaning that no questions are off limits and all issues can be addressed, especially in our environment of society where people often get the impression (often for good reasons) that religion silences and is driven by fear and dogma. I greatly welcome a topic like this because it gets straight to the issue of free expression.
Of course we’re dealing here with a museum of art which chooses to display certain kinds of art that the Mayor of the city and others may find offensive, so they in turn have retaliated with their opinions, and have threatened and have actually cut public funding that they control toward this museum.
Now, just as a disclaimer, my expertise is not politics, nor is it finances, so the issue here from my point of view is not so much who’s right, but rather the issue of the general regulation of free expression. This country is based on the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, free expression, free press, and I, for one, as a Jew, must acknowledge the power on which the founding fathers established this country in that way, the freedom of religion, which is really one of the driving forces which brought the first English immigrants to this country.
So therefore the foundation on which this country is based is what really allows people such as myself to have received a very intense Jewish education. Had something in the government decided to regulate that and say, “No, it’s a Christian country and since the majority of people are Christian, then only Christianity should be taught so you can’t have Jewish schools,” Jews would not be able to flourish the way they do. So for Jews, we’re acutely sensitive to the issue of freedom of expression.
Feder: In some of the original colonies, the Protestant majority tossed some of the Catholics out and they had to go find other colonies.
Jacobson: So this country is predicated on the Divine premise that “all men are created equal,” and the inalienable rights of human beings to express themselves freely. And of course this carried over into the freedom of expression in arts, music, literature, and the press.
So I’m the first advocate for this type of freedom of expression without anyone regulating it, because once you begin regulating, where do you draw the line? And who determines who’s the regulator?
Frankly, looking at this issue of Mayor Giuliani cutting funds…let’s reverse the case: Let’s say he was a very liberal mayor who heard that the Board of Directors of the Brooklyn Museum refused to display this art exhibit and he said, “Oh, you’re infringing on free expression. I’m going to cut the funds because you’re not being democratic.”
Feder: Interesting point.
Jacobson: So frankly, both are regulation. And I am not a believer in governmental regulation when it comes to freedom of expression because then, where do you stop and where do you draw the line? That doesn’t mean that a mayor or anyone does not have the right, just as anyone has the right, of free expression, to express that something offends them, and people have that right as well.
So I do not know what the Board of Directors of the Museum were thinking—they also represent the constituency as they were obviously elected…
Feder: Some were appointed by the city, I think.
Jacobson: That’s interesting. But without even getting into that, the fact is that their responsibility as well includes sensitivity to the constituency they represent. I find questionable their prudency of displaying an exhibit that is offensive to any religious group that lives in that community. Not that I believe in censorship. A library should carry all types of books. However, sensitivity should be displayed when making a public presentation and exhibition. Just as a library would be careful not to make a sexually explicit presentation at 5 in the afternoon when the library is filled with schoolchildren.
But let me divide the two things here. The issue of an artist being able to express himself, which I want to address as well, that freedom of expression of a human being to express anything he likes, is there a line to be drawn there? We’ll address that in a moment. But I’m talking now about people who control what is or isn’t displayed or exhibited publicly.
For instance, the New York Times is a free press. However, I believe that on their front page they will not publish propaganda of a hate group. It could be for financial reasons, but also in the name of…
Feder: They may not want to offend their advertisers.
Jacobson: Exactly. So there’s a question of displaying a religious item, whatever it may be from whatever religion, and offending a group. Is that wise judgment from a group of Board of Directors of a reputable museum?
Because when you do that, what about Nazi art, or for that matter, another form of art that is extremely offensive to a very large group, or to the Board of Directors themselves? So it becomes a very arbitrary thing, that if it offends the people who control it, they won’t allow it to be displayed.
Again, this is not the oppression of individual artistic expression. That’s why I want to take it away from the controversy between the city and the museum. This is question of wise judgement and what you do in different circumstances.
Feder: In other words, you’re taking it above the law, or beyond the law in a way.
Jacobson: Right. For argument sake, let us assume that no regulation is required when you’re talking about freedom of expression because you’re opening up a Pandora’s box and tampering with a very sensitive area of government intervention in people’s expression.
So we have mixed feelings, because the fact is that freedom of expression allows on the one hand for religious freedom, and on the other hand, it also allows for pornography, for offensive material that’s been written and published and depicted. That offends and can even be described as being vulgar and driven by depravity.
So, yet, weighing the two—as Churchill once said, democracy is the worst system he’d ever found, but he never discovered a better one—so weighing the two, you’d rather not have that type of government regulation. But I would like to address the issue of what is the responsibility of an artist?
Let’s say that it is a given that every human being has the right to express his or herself. What is the responsibility of an artist in that expression, how far can he or she go? Or, is there no limit at all? Are the parameters defined only by the taboos of a particular society, what people will tolerate.
Feder: Let me specify this or refine this so I understand what you’re saying. You’re not asking whether there should be a limit on the expression of an artist, you’re asking whether there should be a limit on what can be displayed by an artist? That’s two different things. An artist can sit in a loft and paint anything that he pleases. Whether or not it should be displayed is a separate thing. Is that what you’re suggesting?
Jacobson: Well, I think it goes hand in hand. If someone has in his or her heart to create something, the question is are they responsible to their own conscience, to their own heart, even if it isn’t displayed. What’s their objective? So, yes, I am talking about the actual expression of the artist. What is art and what is the responsibility, if at all, of an artist?
My objective here is not to question the issue of individual freedoms. Rather, to address the obligation and responsibility of an artist. What is art? And what is your objective in creating that art? What I’m getting at is not the responsibility of a Board of Directors of a museum as to what to display. That issue, from my perspective, has to be driven by a sensitivity to community as well as the freedom to allow artists to express themselves, and some type of balance that is not easy to always capture.
Feder: But you’re asking this question now of the artist.
Jacobson: Yes, I’m getting straight to the artist itself. In other words, let’s say, for argument sake, art is an expression, as Picasso said, it’s a lie that reveals a deeper truth about life. “Lie” meaning that it’s an artificial representation, art as in artifice. That’s why it’s called art. It’s a human being studying the human condition or studying nature or studying phenomena, and through art, expressing a dimension that can be beautiful or can be ugly, but it’s a form of art because it’s teaching us more about ourselves, about life. Even if it’s something uncomfortable to us in a way, it exposes a deeper dimension.
When I say art here, I don’t mean art in the literal sense of drawing, but literature, music, film, anything that human beings create in order to illuminate or give us a deeper understanding about life, about ourselves.
Sometimes it can shake us because it deals with the shadows, the dark part of our lives. Now that type of free expression, as I said, is what this country is based on and I am completely supportive of it.
The real question comes down to this: can an artist create something that will be violent, or incite violence? I’m using an extreme example because I want to demonstrate how difficult it is to determine things. But for instance, no one in this country would say that because of free expression you have a right to go hurt someone else physically. You can get up in front of a microphone, you can go on the radio, you can publish whatever you like, but you can’t physically go hurt someone.
Now what about writing something or drawing something that incites others to violence? So that already gets more complicated because you have to prove that it does.
Feder: You know, the greatest standard that exists in the Supreme Court and one of the most famous cases of all which is quoted by everybody regarding where the limit might be was stated by Oliver Wendell Holmes, where somebody was in a theater and someone was rabble-rousing someplace and because of the inciteful nature of the words and the content and the style, there was a riot and people were hurt, and I think someone may have been killed.
And Holmes said it finally came down to, “Freedom of speech does not give you the right to yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre”: one of the most famous phrases every uttered by someone in the Supreme Court. So this is what it all comes down to, this is what you’re talking about. It’s a very fine distinction.
A piece of art is not going to jump off a wall and hurt anybody. Or do you think it might, I don’t know!
Jacobson: Well, it’s not just a question of art—what about words in a newspaper? The fact is, that the great big propagandist machines of the Fascist regimes have always been very successful at inciting crowds. I mean if you depict a certain group in a certain way, in a very hateful way, and you say it’s time to get revenge, there are ways to use art, music, the airwaves, journalism to incite people.
And even in this country, if it comes to that point where you see that there’s direct inciting. I believe there are laws regulating that.
The reason we’re discussing this is that you want to take extremes of the spectrum and then try to reach into the grayer area.
Feder: Well, we’re moving along and an hour is never long enough for such topics—I think a three-hour program would be just about right—but meanwhile we do want people to call, so maybe between you and me, we could delineate one or two larger issues…
One question for me is that we work hard, the government takes money out of our pay, (without asking us, they just scoop it out, and most of us agree that maybe they’re allowed to do that) and then they just give it to all sorts of institutions. Do they have a right to do that any way they like, or withhold it in any way they like?
Jacobson: I would address that on an entirely different show because that’s a different topic entirely, and it’s about the government’s support of public institutions…
Feder: Art and free speech.
Jacobson: Well, as you titled it, Art, Religion and Democracy. And what I would like to say about addressing the question of free expression, coming from a Jewish perspective, a Torah perspective, is that free expression is a Divine right. It isn’t just a social or a legal right. It’s a Divine right because G-d created a human being with unique resources and talents and abilities and wants every human being to actualize their deepest talents.
So self-actualization, self-expression is a Divine mission that we each have. At the same time, there’s a responsibility that that type of mission entails. It’s not just a free-for-all for you to express your ego; it should come with great humility knowing that you were blessed with the power to illuminate a deeper insight into life, into the human condition.
And from my perspective, a true artist is someone who’s been blessed with that humility. Because if that humility doesn’t exist, the artist can become abusive, just as a therapist can…when you go to a therapist, we all know there’s a certain element of sensitivity and discretion that’s necessary. Because if a person bares their soul to someone they trust, the therapist can easily manipulate that situation because the client is vulnerable, and we all recognize that sensitivity is required.
An artist, from my point of view, is similar to that. Even though you don’t go to the artist as a client…
Feder: I was going to say, you don’t go to the artist and place yourself in their hands…
Jacobson: However, an artist was blessed with gifts to illuminate things in life even though that illumination can be painful at times, but if it doesn’t come with humility, then what you have is a situation where there can be serious abuse of that artistic expression.
Feder: When you say humility, do you also include or connect to that a concern for the larger good of humanity? Would you put that on an artist too? Are they supposed to shoulder that burden?
Jacobson: Part of the larger good of humanity doesn’t mean that everything you depict is beautiful. If you, through your art, can demonstrate a certain ugly side to human nature, or an ugly chapter in human history, or a negative element to society, that’s also part of the greater good. And I would trust someone who is humble to do that.
However, someone driven by ego or driven by name recognition or making money, is often taking a sacred gift and abusing it in some way. Now does a person have the right to do that? Of course they have the right to do that. Everyone can do anything they want to do as long as it’s within the law of this country. But for me, that would be a greater desecration than if they broke the law, because it’s a desecration against G-d’s gift to you.
And even if no one approaches or hires you, it doesn’t matter, it’s a blessing of life and a blessing of the gift that you were given. Now the truth is, when you speak to a true artist they will tell you about that type of humility, that they feel they’re a channel for a higher truth. Yet, we all have egos so it is tinged and can even be tainted by an ego…
Let’s say an artist decides that through a sensational exhibit, he can make a lot of money. And so what drives that person is sensationalism more than artistic expression.
Feder: Some of the greatest repressive dictators throughout history have said exactly the same thing, that they are merely a humble channel for the truth that they are giving you. In the same words!
Jacobson: Well, anyone can say it and it doesn’t mean anything. The question is whether others say it about them as well. To make that claim about yourself is not the issue here. You can recognize it in certain types of behavior, but the point I’m making—there are a lot of con artists out there, a lot of people calling themselves artists who aren’t artists, and who determines that is another discussion that I’m not going to get into.
Feder: It’s a discussion with no answer.
Jacobson: Well, I think there’s an answer; and if you dissect things you can get to a certain clarity, but the point I’m addressing is that even if there are many con artists out there, it doesn’t mean that one cannot achieve true humility in this type of experience. And I’m giving a perspective that I think is an extremely important one because this would be the way to dance on that thin line between free expression and artistic value, so to speak.
Feder: I think I’ll stop at this point and exercise my right to free speech and hope that nobody interferes with that so that I can announce some details. You’ve been listening to Rabbi Simon Jacobson, and this is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. My name is Mike Feder and we’re here every Sunday night from 6-7pm and you’re listening to WEVD, 1050AM in New York City.
This show is an outgrowth of the Meaningful Life Center in Brooklyn, and this show is also based very much on Rabbi Jacobson’s book called Toward a Meaningful Life, in which almost every subject that you hear discussed on the air here is discussed.
We really want to thank everyone who has emailed us or written or called us. Here are some of the ways you can get in touch with us, and we want to hear from you. The most important thing is the telephone number: 1-800-3MEANING or 1-800-363-2646. You can also email us at wisdomreb@aol.com. You can always write to us at The Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11225.
I’d also like to tell you that we have a new website where you can download transcripts of this program, and previous and future programs. It’s www.meaningfullife.com.
We have a caller who’s been hanging on forever, Louise, are you still there?
Caller: It hasn’t been forever actually it just seems that way to me! Regarding this business of funding, to support one museum and not others holds the threat of control through providing or denying funding. It’s implicit, whether it’s exercised or not, and that leads—whether one has the ability to control funding—to a judgment of what is to be displayed, what can be read as what is art.
I’m thinking for instance of a particular artist who hung a toilet on the wall of an art gallery. Art.
Feder: This is a public or a private art gallery?
Caller: A private one. Somebody stood on a motorcycle on a platform, just a regular motorcycle, at the Museum of Modern Art, that was art. Somebody just painted squares of color on a piece of fabric and that was called Mondrian.
My point is, what do these do to illuminate anything? Rabbi, you said that art ought to illuminate…
Jacobson: Okay, I hear the question, Louise. I’m sure the artist would be able to defend and explain how that illuminates an aspect of life, and to be honest, that’s why when you elect a serious professional or artistic Board of Trustees to any museum, we, the community, trust that they will choose art that does satisfy certain criteria, even if the board doesn’t fully appreciate it.
It’s a very subjective question because if a million people call something art, does that make it art? Is it just a question of numbers? It’s a question of its own. I gave my subjective interpretation of art because I see it in terms of something that can be constructive. But some people could argue, no, what’s wrong with being a selfish, egoistic artist who just wants to express himself and say anything that he or she may want?
Caller: May I answer that?
Jacobson: Well, it’s a rhetorical question.
Feder: Louise, are you an artist?
Caller: No, I’m a housewife! When I get off the air, would you treat that rhetorical question as a legitimate question as to why the opinion of you, for instance Rabbi, should dominate the opinion of me or my cousin Lucy and why should the government force me to fund your private opinion?
Jacobson: I think that’s a very legitimate question and I think we should address it at another point because it’s a question, as you pointed out Mike before, of whether the government should be funding anything publicly altogether.
Feder: It might be hard to stay away from that today; we’ll see what the other listeners have to say. Okay, we have Seymour on the phone.
Caller: I just want to say that nobody in this world has the right to offend anybody, whether it’s through art or speech or the printed word, people just don’t have the right to do that.
Feder: Well, who’s to decide what’s offensive?
Caller: The people who are being offended.
Feder: Well then nobody would ever do anything.
Caller: That’s not true. I mean, people have to be nice to each other. You take this artist who displayed that picture in the Brooklyn Museum. He has no right to offend the Catholic religion. He’s desecrating the Catholic religion and he doesn’t have the right to do that.
Feder: What if I decide that what you’re saying is offensive, should I cut you off the air?
Caller: If I’m saying anything offensive, I should be cut off.
Jacobson: Well, I don’t feel offended by what you’re saying.
Caller: That’s because I’m not saying anything offensive!
Jacobson: The question that I would have is this. I agree with you that nobody has that right. The question is, how do you enforce that? Let’s say a person does offend someone. What should you do? Imprison them?
Caller: You enforce it by doing what Mayor Giuliani is doing: to refuse to fund these displays. I think he is 100% right in doing what he’s doing.
Jacobson: Well, the reason I disagree with regulation of the Mayor is because then it goes both ways. Would you agree then with a liberal mayor who wanted, in the name of artistic expression, not to offend artists who want to display things that are their personal expression and decided to cut the fundsfrom museums who offended artists’ rights. And for that matter, we find in history that there were Christians who were offended by Jews. And they persecuted the Jews because they said, “you offend us.”
Feder: The Nazis found the Jews very offensive.
Jacobson: And so what I’m trying to say is that, I agree, no human being has the right to offend another human being and who determines that is the person who’s being offended. And I definitely think that the Board of Directors in the Brooklyn Museum did not use very wise judgment when there’s a whole segment of the population that may be offended by certain art. To me it smacks of sensationalism and they’re getting a name from it—they’re getting the greatest publicity from this—
Feder: I think that was intentional.
Caller: The trouble here is that I believe we have too much freedom of expression in this country and everybody falls back on the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Jacobson: The problem is that if you allow Mayor Giuliani to do that, what happens if President Clinton says, “I’m going to cut funding to New York City because I don’t like what Mayor Giuliani is doing.”
Once you allow government regulation there is no stopping it.
I do believe that government is responsible to uphold the community’s welfare, based on the principles of the Constitution, including our responsibility and sensitivity to each other and to a higher calling, as stated in the words engraved on our currency: In God we Trust. However, this must be appreciated in a non-denominational way, preserving the separation between religion and state and not advocating any particular religion. Rather government must uphold the basic inalienable right that all men are created equal, creating an environment of mutual respect, even as we exercise our freedom of expression.
Feder: You know, when Barry Goldwater was running for president, he said that New York City was so offensive as a city that he wanted to cut it off and let it drift out into the Atlantic! I mean there’s a limit, isn’t there, somewhere?
Jacobson: Look, I don’t want anyone to get the impression that I am for offending, or even for the right to offend. I don’t believe in that. I think a human being has no right to offend another person and yes, they should be accountable if they offend someone.
The question is, how do you regulate it? That’s the issue here. Whether Mayor Giuliani or the government should regulate it, I don’t believe in that as well. So, whether it’s self-regulatory—listen, this is a discussion—but I think that, particularly an artist, has a personal responsibility in the use of his or her Divine given talent.
You know, if you offended somebody, Mike, I would say to you as a friend, “I think what you did was wrong.” And if I offended someone I think you should say the same to me.
There are ways to communicate, even if you disagree with someone entirely, without offending. Because what I would say is offensive is the lack of respect of the sacred space of another human being, including their opinions.
Feder: And you know what? And maybe the intention to hurt also. In the law they say “malice of forethought.”
Jacobson: Right. So I’m a firm believer of that, with artists and all people for that matter. And that doesn’t mean that we can’t write a piece of material that can be perceived as being very strong or harsh or critical—because some people will be offended because they don’t want to be criticized—but that’s why I spoke about humility before. And although I didn’t have the opportunity to elaborate, I think it’s a critical point in people’s interaction with one another. Because if someone who is humble criticizes you, you would feel that they really have your welfare in mind. Whereas if someone is arrogant, you feel that they are really just angry, obnoxious people and taking it out on you.
Feder: Let’s go to a call from Victoria, you’re on the air.
Caller: I think what’s really saddening me is the fact that people seem to be ignoring the fact that the artist who painted the Blessed Virgin Mary had no intention of blasphemy. The use of the dung is something that is inherent in his African culture. I think a lot of it has to do with fertility, and I think there’s so much anger on the part of those people protesting that they’re not opening up their hearts and their minds at all to listen to what his interpretation was.
He’s a practicing Catholic and it really made me kind of sad. As far as the dead animals are concerned, I could see that being a little off-putting for most people, but this…
You know, we look at Picasso’s Guernica … that probably riled up a lot of people’s emotions at the time. Or I remember as a child going to the New York World’s Fair and seeing da Vinci’s painting of “Heaven and Hell.” I was about nine years old and that picture terrified me. But it rattled me. And art is supposed to do that sometimes.
Feder: Also, just to add for technical reasons, the artist apparently uses this process in every painting, whether it has to do with religion on not.
Jacobson: Okay, well, I still see this topic of the Brooklyn Museum controversy as a springboard for discussion, and what happens if an artist did have the intention to offend, or, was not, if Victoria’s correct, in this type of situation where it clearly is a desecration of a religious relic, whether Jewish, Christian or Moslem. I am sure that there are people who would argue in the name of freedom of expression that that should also be permitted. And again, we’re not discussing not regulating it and who’s regulating it, but the issue of displaying something like that.
I think that we live in a society where it would probably be considered quite insensitive if someone actually desecrated a religious relic because what’s the point? Why are you trying to do that? What’s the intention?
Now, in the name of art, sometimes so you won’t express it. You want to do it, keep it to yourself. Why make a public exhibit of something that a group would consider to be a desecration? And again, I’m not talking about government regulation, but just the ethics of it.
Feder: Here’s a question. It is difficult though sometimes to separate these issues from law and democracy and who should actually do what to whom, or refrain from it, but here’s a question:
It seems to me that throughout history, in fact for maybe a couple of thousand years, and certainly in the modern world, that a lot of artists, some of them brilliant, even transcendent, artists whom I might even decide don’t have malice in their hearts, they have found religion itself, and various parts of religion, offensive to them, and they have expressed that in their art, and they represent the opinions of great masses of people. Sometimes it seems to me that perhaps established or organized religions might very well ask themselves how they have offended sensitive people.
Jacobson: I’m very in tune with that question and I appreciate it.
Feder: Okay, we have Steve. You’re on the air.
Caller: I read all this controversy between everyone in the paper. You’re all off base. The people who are at fault are the directors who chose this exhibit. What, these are the only artists that there are? There are no other artists around who submit paintings for submission? The directors, they’re at fault for choosing these. There are many artists who submit their paintings for display. Why they chose this is beyond me, but they have no brains.
Jacobson: Steve, have you been listening to this show?
Caller: Partially, I just got in about 5-10 minutes ago.
Jacobson: Oh, because 15-20 minutes ago I made the exact point about the Board of Directors.
Caller: Well then I have to compliment you. The captain of the ship. He’s at fault. Whoever the helmsman is. They are off base. Why are they condemning Giuliani above anyone else?
Feder: Valuable point, Steve. Okay, we have Moshe on the phone.
Caller: Hi, I just picked up your show. It’s funny to me that the liberal people who want so much government don’t want the government to then control anything. When the mayor of the city says, “No, we’re drawing the line in the sand,” all of the sudden they call him a totalitarian, some kind of bully.
Feder: Can you define what you mean by “so much government”?
Caller: Well, government is doing a lot of things today. Government is paying for a lot of things. They’re taking a lot of our tax money. A lot of the money that we earn and invest in creating businesses and jobs, and there’s a market economy, and then we’re taxed to fund so many things. So many things the government has taken over. The American people have given over control into the hands of the government because of their idea that we need to have universal this and universal that, and the government should do everything for everybody. It kind of comes back and bites you.
Now the Mayor, who’s in charge of the government, says we shouldn’t have our public money going for things like this.
Jacobson: What is your opinion Moshe?
Caller: My opinion is that we shouldn’t have it going for arts at all, because let the free market have art. Why don’t we fund everybody who needs a car ride somewhere because it’s very difficult to get places? Let’s fund everyone’s car services.
Feder: You know, it sounds good to me.
Jacobson: Well, this evening we already have three votes for that position, so thank you Moshe.
Feder: No, I agree with that position, Moshe. I believe that the government should stay out of arts funding or no funding and that leaves them free to do whatever they want. Okay, we have another call here. Peter, you’re on the air.
Caller: Good evening. The young lady two calls back seems to be the only one who looks at this museum thing from a different perspective. She doesn’t assume the arrogance that what the Anglo-Saxon knows as the Madonna and what the Anglo-Saxon knows as proper is the point of view that that artist, from his ancestral culture, feels is his perspective.
He looks upon dung as a source of nourishment and he has a portrait of athletes that he esteems, and there’s dung on that portrait. So it’s an arrogance to say that his culture is absolutely wrong because the people from that culture live entirely differently from us.
Feder: So let me ask you a question. Would you be in favor of a museum, just generally, to be able to display anything it wants without losing any sort of privileges or funding, or being stomped on?
Caller: Well, I would hate to see genitalia flopping all over the place.
Feder: So that’s what would offend you.
Caller: Yeah. People playing with genitalia, hanging onto genitalia. I think that’s sort of gross, but I wouldn’t mind seeing genitalia displayed, I just don’t think it should be flopping all over the place.
Feder: You want to keep it in its place, I understand.
Jacobson: Thank you Peter. My thought on all of that is that it’s fascinating that everyone has a place where they draw the line.
Feder: What offends them.
Jacobson: Yes. Even if in one culture certain things are completely acceptable, but in other cultures it’s completely taboo, then the question is, I believe, whether every culture should have the right to display itself publicly in a culture that is offended by that expression…that’s a really good question.
Feder: That’s the beauty of democracy. That’s the whole noble American experiment; that we have all these cultures here, that’s why each culture has to leave off individually bothering another culture.
Jacobson: But just to show you how fragile the situation is, if someone on that Board of Trustees was offended and would have voted not to do it, it just wouldn’t have happened. We wouldn’t even know that it didn’t happen because that vote would have been behind closed doors. I’m sure there are hundreds of decisions being made like that all the time based on individual whims. I don’t know that there’s true fairness.
Feder: You know, when it comes to points of information, museum directors, or board directors of any organization, they are appointed in the most insular, exclusive way. It has nothing to do with what people want. This is just as a point of information.
Dick, you’re on the air.
Caller: I enjoy the show very much. A couple of observations. One is that the first issue to address is whether or not the government is under any obligation, or should be under any obligation, to fund things of this nature. The second is that if they do, my personal feeling is that they shouldn’t have the right to censure it. The third issue, though, on any of this stuff, is that we all have the right to either see it or not to see it. No one is being forced to go to the Brooklyn Museum to see this stuff. If you don’t like it and you find it offensive, in a free society you just don’t go. I mean that’s the real issue, I think.
Feder: That’s what Justice Brennan once said in a case about offensive things on the radio. He said, that’s what the dial is there for, to turn it off.
Caller: That’s exactly right. So aside from the fact that my personal feeling is that it’s just a political move on behalf of the mayor, and he knows full well that the Brooklyn Museum is going to benefit financially from this because such a brou-ha-ha has arisen, which I guess is part of his agenda, I think that we all have the right to see it or not to see it.
For example, someone may take a Torah scroll and desecrate it, and in that person’s belief it’s art, in whatever fashion he may deem it to be. No one is forced to go see it.
Jacobson: The only comment I would say is back to the comment I made earlier, that it is the responsibility of the artist … and what exactly is he trying to achieve by desecrating something? And whether it’s a Jewish religious sacred object, or a Moslem or a Christian one, I think it all falls in the same category of the question, should a Board of Directors (forget about the government, I agree with Dick’s comments about government regulation) should a Brooklyn Museum that is open to the public and funded by the public have discretion if they are offending their community?
Because if they were elected, and the community was offended by their decisions, what would happen? The community in which the majority felt offended would…
Feder: Would vote them out.
Jacobson: Exactly.
Feder: Okay, next call. Andrew, you’re on the air.
Caller: Okay, I’ve noticed that in the media the reporters keep mentioning the dung, and they keep mentioning that in Africa this represents rebirth or life, and they never mention the cut-outs from the pornographic magazines. And the second thing I keep hearing, is you know, in Africa, or parts of Africa this dung represent life, but let’s face it, this guy knew what he was doing. We’re in the 21st century. He’s not some little African living in an unexposed civilization. He knows what dung is. Dung has always been dung. It’s disgusting. Trust me. He knew what he was doing and it has nothing to do with rebirth. That’s for Africa. He knew what he was doing when they put it in Brooklyn, New York.
Feder: Okay, thank you Andrew. I appreciate that.
Jacobson: Andrew sounds like he knows the artist personally.
Feder: Okay, we have time for one or two more calls. We have Matt on the phone.
Caller: I just feel strongly that if this were another symbol of another culture or another group, the argument would take on an entirely different color.
Feder: Spell out what you mean.
Caller: Well, if we took a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. and splattered it with dung, or Mohammed, or the Star of David … and I think the reason for that is that I really believe that there’s a rising anti-Christian hatred in this country — an example is what happened in Texas. This guy comes in and shoots up a church with all kinds of anti-religious epithets but you don’t hear it being called a hate crime.
Even if another kind of art from another kind of group even made it into the museum, which I even doubt, I think you’d see an entirely different color on this whole argument.
Feder: Okay, thanks for the comment. Our last call before we have to move on is from Elizabeth. Go ahead.
Caller: I’m questioning very seriously any validity of the notion that one does not have to right to offend another person, or that anyone has the right not to compel someone not to offend another person. We are not allowed to physically harm another person, and there are rules against other forms of harassment and damage to other people, but offending them has never been a right to be protected against. I mean, this is fantastic. It may some ethical or religious notion, but it’s not something that has ever absolutely had a place in law or history or right, not to be offended.
Feder: In other words, to turn it around from the negative, we have the right, assuming we’re not going to physically hurt anyone, to offend people if we want?
Caller: Well, this is the history of the world! Somebody’s always getting offended. There’s the expression, “Who’s ox is getting gored?” Somebody’s always going to be offended by something.
Feder: You know, I think I agree with you a little bit!
Caller: An atheist could be offended by a crucifix! A person who doesn’t believe in physical mutilation could be offended by a crucifix. There are plenty of things about religion that could be offensive to a normal person who hasn’t been brainwashed from childhood that to look at crucifix is a normal thing to do.
Feder: You know, I think that’s a good point. Thank you Elizabeth for your call.
Jacobson: Well, I agree with part of what Elizabeth is saying. I’m not suggesting that we write laws and we regulate that, because what offends one person is for another person a religion, and so on.
However, I was talking about personal responsibility. I would ask Elizabeth this question: whether she felt that she is going to exercise that right to offend people. In other words, someone is intentionally going out to offend someone?
Even though you can’t regulate it and you can’t enforce it, however, I don’t think it’s something that we’re aspiring to.
Feder: You don’t condone and encourage it.
Jacobson: Exactly. Offending someone…if you knew someone personally, Elizabeth, myself, who offends someone and you are a friend of theirs, your child offended someone, you would teach them sensitivity. That doesn’t mean that we can prosecute them or we’re trying to prosecute them. I think there’s a strong distinction between those two and I was talking about individual responsibility to each other, not as a group.
I want to make one comment about the religion aspect, that both Elizabeth and you Mike did before as well (since we titled the show: Art, Religion, and Democracy). The question is this. What about religion in art? Does religion regulate art? Because in religion, certain things are sacred, there are absolutes. If something is sacred, you don’t mock it, you don’t caricature it, you don’t depict it in any way that can be perceived as being a desecration.
However, in a secular society, where, let’s say, nothing is sacred—and I’m not saying that in a bad way, just as a statement of fact—nothing is sacred because you’re not building it on any Divine power, things are more or less arbitrary: green lights and red lights.
I mean, we would say that human rights are sacred. So I would say that even in a secular society like ours, we don’t think that nothing is sacred, certain things are sacred, but overall, as far as relics or certain religious traditions, secular society doesn’t give it the same type of absolute sanctity—that this is off limits.
Feder: For good historical reasons, too.
Jacobson: Right. So the question is, can these two worlds meet? Or will they always lock horns because they’re based on two different axioms? That’s a topic that I would have loved to have more time to address.
Feder: Well, there’s always other shows.
Jacobson: However, I do want to say one point about that. It goes back to my point about humility earlier. You see, religion, for many people, and rightly so, has a very bad image. It has become an inflexible, claustrophobic, dogmatic, fear-driven (and I could keep going on with many adjectives that I’ve heard over the years) system that represses human freedom, human expression, free-spiritedness.
Many people would not see religion as being a channel for free-spiritedness because history dictates otherwise. You see how many people have been killed and persecuted in the name of religion. More people have been killed in the name of religion than in the name of atheism. That’s a fact.
However, I must cite my favorite story that I always cite with Reb Levi Berditchev, the Chassidic Rebbe in the 18th century. He was going to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and he invited a friend to come with him to services. So the friend said, “Rabbi, I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in G-d. So what’s the point of going—just to pay lip service? It would be hypocritical of me.”
And the Rebbe responded, “The G-d you don’t believe in, I also don’t believe in.”
I don’t like the word religion, frankly, because it has all those stereotypes that I mentioned before. I see a relationship with G-d as being an expression of free-spiritedness. However, the structure is not meant to be a structure that’s limited, it’s a structure that’s freeing. No different than the fact that the seven or eight musical notes on the musical scale are in a structure that allows for the expression of music. And no one would argue that music in any way is rigid or inflexible or dogmatic.
However, you can’t add music notes to the scale. That’s just life. But you can play the notes in infinite combinations that create beautiful music.
So from my perspective, a relationship with G-d is anything but locking up the spirit; it’s freeing up the spirit. Yet to free the spirit, the rules are not rules that are superimposed, they’re the rules of existence. That’s how you play the music. That’s how you free yourself.
If you offend someone else, if you hurt someone else, if you’re violent, you in a way lock up your own free-spirited expression. It’s not just a crime against others; it’s a crime against yourself.
So in that context, art, music, are sacred to me because they are true tools that G-d blessed us with to express the deepest insights, and you see what kind of beautiful art has been created and what depth it has illuminated. Even art that shakes us, we see what power it has. It can illuminate and teach us things about life that we wouldn’t see conventionally. An artist has that ability to capture it, and I more than embrace the artist’s divine right to use his great talent. But it also entails a responsibility that we have, under G-d, and this should be regulated from your own spirit rather than from a government or from some group.
I’m definitely not for that because groups and governments historically have always tended to repress and overstep their boundaries.
Feder: I hesitate to interrupt but we have less than a minute to go. The show today is partially underwritten by Pamela Title.
You have been listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. This is Mike Feder. I think we can all agree that one of the most sacred things in this country is free speech.
Jacobson: Freedom of expression and I think it’s very gratifying to have a show like this and get all these calls. I hope we can continue to discuss this topic in the future.
Feder: Just to mention once again, if you want to comment, we have our email at wisdomreb@aol.com or 1-800-363-2646. Next week we’re going to talk about angels. Thank you very much.
Jacobson: Thank you Mike and I welcome you all back next week.
Tags: radio transcript, freedom, responsibility, democracy, freedom of expression
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July 28th, 2015
Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – August 27, 2000
Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Welcome to Toward a Meaningful Life. We’re here every Sunday from 6-7pm talking about meaningful topics and subjects that matter to you and to me and to everyone around.
We live in a time of paradox. On one hand there is material prosperity and people seem to be happy on so many different levels. Yet on the other hand there is a deep spiritual search—you can even say a level of misery beneath the surface that so many of us experience.
As such, the hunger is very profound and the paradox is very deep. So I decided to do a topic that deals with paradoxes and with that search, and the different ways we satisfy that search. So the topic tonight is music. The role of music. I guess it’s no accident that music is identified with soul; they call it soul and spirit.
I’d like to begin with a very beautiful parable. They say that when G-d created the universe, He consulted with the angels and said, “When I create the human race, should I give them the gift of music—the ability to sing, the ability to play, the ability to dance?”
Remember, music is its own language. It’s not just a conventional language. So G-d asked: Should I give humans the power to sing and to play melodies.
And the angels, obviously being very elitist, answered, “No. Don’t give it to the human race because they will abuse it. They’ll commercialize it. They’ll make it into a business. They won’t know how to appreciate its angelic, divine nature.
“Give us music and we will sing Your praises, we will sing Your song. We will know how to appreciate it.”
And G-d considered their opinion, but then overruled them and said, “No. I will give the gift of music to them, the gift of song, because I want them to have something to remember Me with. That even when they’re stuck in their own straits and when they’re locked in their material place, they should have something that can lift them up, that can lift their spirits up to another place.”
It’s interesting that music should be identified in such a fashion, like wings that help lift our spirits, our souls. As a matter of fact, in Kabbalistic thought, there’s a question that’s asked, “How do souls travel?” We know how bodies travel. If you want to get from one place to another you have legs and you move from one place to another. Or you take a vehicle—an automobile, a taxi, a subway, an airplane, a ship—we have many ways to move about.
But how does a soul move? Remember, a soul doesn’t have legs and a soul does not fit into a car or another container like that. The Kabbalah gives a very fascinating answer: that every soul needs a song to travel with. For a soul to move from one place to another, it needs a melody, a song. And only with that song can it move.
As a matter of fact, in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, there were fifteen steps called Shir HaMaalos. Fifteen psalms that King David sang correspond to those fifteen steps and to go from one step to the next you needed a song to sing. Also, the Levites, the composers of music in the time of the Temple, would compose different songs.
I know people who travel hundreds of thousands of miles a year. They’ve got frequent flyer mileage and all of that. But they don’t move one inch spiritually.
And I know people who perhaps sit in the same place, but spiritually they’re moving millions of miles. You see that even in the birth of the jazz movement in this country. In general, music was always a voice of rebellion, a voice of outrage. People often sing as a result of oppression.
And those are the people who maybe couldn’t move. They couldn’t even afford getting a ticket on an airplane or on a boat, but they were able to move miles and miles because they had song and spirit.
Perhaps even the oppression itself was a catalyst, a springboard, for that music. So I don’t think it’s an accident in our day and time—something which is unprecedented—that music has become an industry, especially for the youth, the young generation. That was never the case.
In the days of classical music of the great composers in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, music was a powerful force but it wasn’t a fad, it wasn’t a craze, it didn’t have the popularity that it has today. Perhaps one of the reasons for that is that our generation so craves for spirit, for soul, and music is a way to speak to G-d.
Whether we call it as such is not the issue. The point of the matter is, it’s a language of the soul. That’s what I would like to say as an introduction, and to talk about that a little more I’d like to introduce a special guest, a good friend, but as well as a good friend, a professional musician who has been in the rock and roll industry for quite some time. His name is Peter Himmelman. We have him here live (over the phone) as a guest from California.
To introduce him, Peter Himmelman is a well-acclaimed musician. He just received an ASCAP award for the musical score that he does for “Judging Amy.” He’s been featured on all the major circuits from MTV to Leno to Letterman and so on, and has released eight albums, some by major labels, and is an acclaimed artist who has his own following. He performs all over the country, including here in New York. He has a very interesting following because of his wit and his improvisational skills, besides from his musical abilities.
So how did we get to know each other? First of all, let me welcome him here. Hi Peter, you’re on the air.
Peter Himmelman: I believe I’m here. That was a really good talk about music from a Rabbi. I think if this whole Rabbinic thing doesn’t work out, maybe you want to get a job as an A&R guy at Sony or something.
Jacobson: So how did you get into music and not into the Rabbinate?
Himmelman: Well, where I grew up in Minneapolis, the best thing about my Rabbi was that, first of all, my Rabbi had a nice goatee. One of the striking things about this guy is that his wife, a heavyset woman, made excellent chocolate chip cookies, of which I’m sure she partook, and that’s pretty much all I can remember about a Rabbi. I knew there must be more to a Rabbi than goatees and chocolate chip cookies. But at that point it wasn’t inspiring enough for me to go into the Rabbinate.
I mean I could grow my own goatee at fifteen and make my own cookies shortly thereafter, so…
Jacobson: So when did you first pick up a guitar?
Himmelman: I started becoming really interested in music… I would listen to my sister’s record collection (she was six years old) and she had records of the Beatles, and I was probably five years old, and all the hits, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” you know, the original Beatles had just came out. I just really thought that was great. There was something about it.
And it couldn’t have been that the Beatles were just hyped up as the new fad because I had never seen them or anything. I heard all their music, along with Mitch Miller and Burl Ives. They was pretty good but the Beatles were something special. In other words, they really did have something that was attractive, even to an unbiased five-year-old.
And there were other songs. It fascinates me now looking back that even at a very young age, I had strong likes and dislikes, the same way that I do now. Things either attracted me musically or repelled me, and looking back at the things that I liked back then—bands like Credence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix—they’re bands that I still like today.
I was a sophisticated seven-year-old.
Jacobson: I should say for the audience, Peter and I know each other (we’re not strangers) I met Peter back in New York in 1985. We had just met, and I was giving a class to people from the arts, entertainment, music industry, and Peter walked in, this tall lanky guy from drawling Minnesota.
Himmelman: Do I still have that drawl?
Jacobson: I don’t know. It’s a drawl. I don’t know where it’s from.
Himmelman: Your father thought that I might have been mentally ill in some way or just mentally slow because the way I speak is so much slower than you New Yorkers.
Jacobson: So it was a very interesting interface when we hit it off, using my introduction before about music and soul and spirit, I found it fascinating that I, coming from a traditional background where spirituality is very much a part of the system, but it is a traditional background, and Peter coming from a place that had been turned off from Judaism, with goatees or chocolate chip cookies, or whatever, the bureaucracy of it, and we were really able to communicate.
So I want to ask you this. When you started playing music in a more serious way, how would you describe the soul connection? Are there words for it or is it just that music has its own language? Is there a way to bridge the two worlds? Can you describe the spiritual journey you went through, or you still go through, when you play or listen? How do you see music in the context of a spiritual thing, in other words, do you identify with that parable that I mentioned before about music being like the wings and a way for a soul to move from one place to the next?
Himmelman: Well, there are a number of great parables. Before I speak about how I identify personally, I’m going to give another parable, or a metaphor. Somebody told me this once. The reason that music is the art form that’s become so popular as opposed to sculpture or painting for that matter, is that it is the art form with the least amount of physicality. For example, architecture, if you can consider that an art form, is huge, it’s material. Sculpture is a little bit more refined, but it’s still dealing with materiality. Painting is a light refracting material which depicts things in a physical world. And then you have music which has no physical substance at all.
For that reason, perhaps, it’s the art form that most instantaneously has an effect on a person, you could say on a spiritual level.
For me, growing up not using the term soul or spirit, and for that matter people have all sorts of stereotypes that they can come and apply to those terms, so what I found moving when I hear a live band, for example, a rock band (which is somehow the music that I most readily respond to) is this irrepressible laughter that I would sometimes get that would fill up my body and I guess you could say my soul to such an extent that it was actually such a surprise. I never had such a powerful experience. I could not repress my laughter for the way that all the instruments played together with each other, the way they were connected.
And I used to get that when I was a kid, and very infrequently now that I’ve become older and jaded. It still happens to me occasionally where I’ll get that sense of utter delight and joy and surprise from music. Sometimes I’ll be able to cry from music more easily than a painting perhaps.
Jacobson: But think for a moment from a secular point of view, taking G-d out of the picture for a moment, how do you think human beings would have innovated a language like that? Where did it come from? Did you ever think about who was the first person who sang a song and under what circumstances?
Himmelman: You know, somebody would hear birds and people learn by imitation, so it would be natural to hear a bird, for example, or a howling wolf or something and try to imitate that. Certainly the sound of rain and rhythms could be imitated. Beating out rhythms on logs and taking a piece of stretched out skin and turning it into a string and hearing it drone, sounding something like the wind.
I would imagine the first thing was trying to imitate sounds in nature. To have them at their disposal. Like the wind sound, or I’d like to hear that sound even when the wind isn’t whipping up, I can play it on a string of some sort.
Jacobson: Okay, we’re going to take a short break and we’ll be right back.
(Announcement break regarding obtaining a copy of “Meanings,” the free newsletter of the Meaningful Life Center. Call 1-800-363-2646 or write to us at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com or write Meaningful Life Center, Suite 303, 788 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11213 to receive your free copy.)
We’re back. By the way, that music that you’re listening to (Peter I’m sure you recognize it) is actually a song of Peter’s called “Impermanent Things,” and that’s the musical introduction to that song.
Do you have your guitar with you by the way?
Himmelman: It’s nearby.
Jacobson: Always within arm’s reach. My question to you is this. Rosh Hashanah is coming up. And on Rosh Hashanah they blow the shofar in the synagogues. A shofar is a wind instrument, a simple sound instrument, a ram’s horn that’s carved out and people blow.
As a kid, did you ever identify the shofar with music?
Himmelman: It wasn’t so much music. I don’t even know if I consider it music today, but it certainly is. But it’s really a haunting sound. I guess its role is to pierce through and make you come back to your senses, remember things and priorities and get everything straight. It’s just a raw sound that’s such a primitive, final sound. But I think it really works well.
Jacobson: The reason I ask is that you were speaking about the sounds of nature and emulating them, and that’s what brought me to that. I wonder again (even though we know each other I never asked you this), the most inspirational songs that you’ve come up with from your heart and soul, did they come in times of pain or in times of joy? In other words, is one or another more powerful when it comes to song and music?
Himmelman: Well it’s easier for me and for most songwriters that I know to write songs in times of pain. In essence, it could come down to when you’re feeling happy and contented, you have no reason to rush to the soothing balm of music. You almost don’t even need it—you don’t need the medicine.
It’s harder for me to write a convincing happy song. Even at my shows I’ll ask sort of a rhetorical question, “Would you like to hear something happy or sort of a solemn dirge?”
Jacobson: You sound a little solemn now, you know. You’re in California, we’re in New York. We’re supposed to be the serious ones, and I’m the Rabbi here and you sound really serious. You sound like you’re about to play for a funeral!
Himmelman: Why thank you. It’s a bit earlier here, too, isn’t it, and I just had some cereal that’s sitting like lead in my stomach, weighing me down.
Jacobson: I’d like to welcome Phillip Namanworth who just came into the studio.
Namanworth: Hi Peter.
Himmelman: Now Phillip. He can be energetic.
Jacobson: I don’t know if I ever shared this with you, Peter, but I want to tell you something. In Chassidic thought it talks about the difference between music of the East and music of the West, that Arabic music is very melancholy and haunting because Ishmael, the son of Abraham, comes from chessed (the attribute of kindness), and therefore, their pleasure, their delight, and entertainment, comes from the opposite. So their songs are very gevurahdik, from the gevurah (the attribute of strictness) side of things.
And Western music comes from Eisav, the son of Isaac. Western music is much more upbeat because they come from gevurah, so their entertainment and their pleasure comes from the opposite extreme which is chessed.
Himmelman: I have to tell you that when I was in Israel a couple of week ago I was really in love with that Arabic music on the radio station. I was tuned in all the time. But who knows? I’d better check my genealogy.
Jacobson: Peter, the first time you came to see me, if I remember, the next day you called me and said that you had composed a song. Do you remember the name of the song? I remember.
Himmelman: Yeah? Well, what was it?
Jacobson: It’s called “Blue Shadows.” Why don’t you tell us the circumstances how you met me. I always find that pretty cool.
Himmelman: Well, the whole story works out well. I have four children and sometimes I say that the kids were born as a result of this blues singer who I think died of alcohol poisoning in Minneapolis. How could that come to be, one asks? And I said, well, this guy’s name was Doug Maynard, a blues singer in Minneapolis, and he was really revered by a lot of people in a way. I got to know him and he introduced me to this lawyer who was I think doing something in the music business in Minneapolis. He introduced me to another lawyer in New York and that lawyer introduced me to a record producer/musician named Kenny Vance. How come you didn’t get Kenny on this show?
And Kenny Vance was supposed to come listen to my show down at the Ritz in New York City, listen to my band, and give me an appraisal of what he thought about the band. After the show, it was a pretty good show, this really tall guy comes up to me and goes, “I don’t really know what to tell you about what I just saw.”
And I’m thinking, “Well, who asked you?” It wasn’t told to me that some tall guy was going to appraise my show. And I’m thinking, “Who is this guy? Get him out of here.” But then I got to know him and really fell in love with him, and Kenny Vance knows a lot of people in New York. I’m sure many of your listeners know Kenny as well. He’s one of these people that’s like a hub, a conduit, to a million other people. I think there are 14 of those type of people in the world and he’s one of them.
Anyway, he said, “I know a lot of people in this town.” And he started naming names, but not in a bragging way, kind of in a funny matter of fact way. He named all the names of all the people in the entertainment business and he was trying to freak me out. And he said, “But today I’m going to introduce you to my main connection, a religious Jew in Brooklyn.”
And we drove in his white BMW over the Manhattan Bridge, and as I looked back at the lights of Manhattan as we were crossing over to Brooklyn, I realized that this was one of those auspicious moments in my life—there have been 14 of those too—I’m looking at my 15th today, and then we went to your house. And I wasn’t turned off to Judaism because of the goatee and the chocolate chip cookies, I always knew there was something about it. I just hadn’t found it in Minnesota.
And because I’d never seen anyone who kept the Sabbath or kept kosher, I wasn’t prejudiced against it either, that was the good thing. It just was like some archaic tradition from a Sholom Aleichem story.
And so I went to your house, Simon, and you started talking, and I was ready for this Jewish thing. Just like you spoke about music, in a way that a musician spoke about it, you understood it, I felt you weren’t coming up with some ancient, irrelevant subject, you were coming up with something very important. As a hook line, as I’ve told you before, that really hooked me in, other people have not found it as fascinating or as moving as me because it’s probably just germane to my personal experience, you started talking about a tzaddik, and a tzaddik is not just like Herb Goldstein, “What a tzaddik, what a wonderful guy,” but a real definition of a tzadik, someone for whom there is no selfishness, everything is an act of giving. It would be hard for me to even imagine that such a person exists.
And you were saying, “For such a person, anything is possible.”
And I thought, well listen, anything’s possible. Look at this guy with a beard saying anything is possible. And I said, well, can he fly? I thought I’d give you the ultimate challenge. I thought maybe you’d just break down and weep at the authority of my questioning, but you didn’t weep, you didn’t even pause, you said, “I personally never saw some fly, but the point is, to the tzaddik, is there a greater miracle in flying say 30-40 feet above the surface of the earth, or walking on it? From a tzaddik’s point of view, the miracle is equally as great.”
And I thought, wow, if that’s Judaism, if it had anything to talk about the miracle of mundane, day-to-day existence, which you don’t see it beat out of you by popular culture (and people always try to sell you things and paying your mortgage), I said, this is really for me.
And it was not far for me to start taking on more Jewish observance. At the same time, when I was meeting you, I was also having my record playing on MTV, and I got a record deal which I had been working on for years and years with Island Records. A lot of things came together at one time. I always wanted to be a rock star, but at the same time, I always felt that I wanted to somehow be involved in something Jewish. I went to Israel with my advance money, and my mother thought I’d flipped out, everyone thought I’d really flipped out, except the guys in my band, who knew, “Yeah, he’s going to Israel to get some tefillin.” And I did this right away when I got the record deal, and the first thing I did was come to the record company president and say, “Oh by the way, I can’t play on Friday night.”
And he started laughing. He actually laughed because I was somewhat of a funny guy. I still am but not in the morning I guess. He thought I was just joking because why would you want to be a rock star on the one hand, you know, people just dying to aggrandize themselves and blow their egos out of proportion. How could you just say I wouldn’t tour on a certain night of the week? They’re giving you hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars and you’re saying you’re not going to take that for tour support?
He had a big tour planned. There was a tour with Rod Stewart that was big at the time. And I said, “Well you know I can’t do that because I keep this thing called the Shabbos.” And this guy literally laughed because it was really funny. You got to be kidding.
Jacobson: And you did this before Senator Joseph Lieberman.
Himmelman: Yeah. Well, that’s another story. My wife and I were in Israel when that story broke, and she said, “Well, what do you think?” and we looked at each other and said, “It’s somewhat what you’re thinking. It’s kind of vindication for the way we’ve been living our lives.” I mean it’s impossible to do it in rock and keep Shabbos just like it’s impossible to do it in politics.
And yet here is a precedent for it having been done. You know, I’ve had a very successful career balancing my belief and my family life and not compromising my music at all.
Jacobson: And I know personally the challenges that you’ve faced. I want to hear some more and I want to hear you play something.
Himmelman: You want me to play something over the phone, huh?
Jacobson: Why not? But let’s first take a little break and then when we come back I want to hear more about the challenges you faced.
(Announcement break for Rabbi Jacobson’s weekly Wednesday Night class at 346 W. 89th St., corner Riverside Drive in Manhattan at 8pm)
Jacobson: Okay we’re back. Peter, it’s such a pleasure to talk to you this way because in a way it’s like a reunion. Even though we do talk, to reminisce is quite powerful.
Himmelman: And you’re asking good questions. I never heard you asking me these things.
Jacobson: Look, we’re on radio here. We’d better do something right! Thank you very much—after 16 years you tell me that I began to ask the right questions?! It took a long time. Okay, let me ask Phillip, how have you dealt with that integration issue now that it’s come up?
Namanworth: First let me say hi to Peter. I always remember when we used to come out to Simon’s, one of the first times we had Purim out there together…
Himmelman: That was the first time…
Namanworth: And we went over to 770 and everyone was saying, “You gotta see the Rebbe,” and we didn’t know what was happening. We were standing outside the building peering in the windows. Do you remember?
Himmelman: I sure do.
Namanworth: We were saying, “What is this? Who is this Rebbe?” Thousands of guys in black coats. I thought we were being invaded, like the Martians, and we’re standing out there in our dungarees and our whatever. It was great.
Himmelman: And the food is so good.
Namanworth: Right. That’s the main thing.
Jacobson: Okay, let’s talk about Phillip. Phillip is a singer-songwriter and a great blues player. I guess for some reason, soul, music and Judaism all come together so I was asking about your integration.
Namanworth: Well I think I made a good move when I first started coming to you and I decided I was going to take on some of this stuff. The first thing I did was say, “I’m not going to play on Shabbos anymore, because any job that comes in on Shabbos is not my job, it’s not for me.” I think that vis-à-vis a lot of my friends who did things in a different order, it really helped.
But over the years, as Peter said, I have my bottom line and that’s what I do. If you want me to play blues, rock and roll, if you want me to write a song for the theater, great. But come Friday, I’m out of here, I’ll be back Saturday night.
I remember writing a film score with Kenny Vance, who also introduced me, which I can thank Kenny for, writing a film score, and then right before Shabbos lighting candles in the studio, and the engineer said, “Where are you guys going?” And I said, “It’s Shabbos, we’ve got to go,” and the director looked at me like, “Are you kidding?” And I said, “No, I’ll see you after Shabbos.”
In fact, a funny thing happened on a score that Kenny and I recently wrote for a movie called “Looking for an Echo,” I was out there and helping with the sound on live recording and it was a scene at a Bar Mitzvah, but I’m the only one there wearing real tzitzis. I’ve got a yarmulke on but it’s my yarmulke, you know what I mean, it’s not a casting thing, and one of the producers comes over to me and says, “I see you’re wearing your tzitzis out,” you know like “What are you doing?” and I said “It’s okay. That’s what I do…”
Later on, everyone went to eat and I had my blue freeze bag with me, and they’re eating off the thing and I take out my food and the guys are watching me eat the kosher food… but the bottom line was at the end of the day I really helped them work on a scene and get the sound right and conduct the whole thing that wasn’t going exactly right, and they all came over and we were all hugging each other, and you know, it really didn’t matter.
I think in our business, in any business, people want to see the performer live up to his responsibility as a musician, as a person, and that’s the bottom line. The other stuff doesn’t make any difference, especially when you’re in trouble.
Himmelman: Yeah, on that note, I was once mixing an album down in Memphis. I told this mixer engineer who we flew in from LA, you know, and I said I can’t start mixing till after the Sabbath, which you have to look for three stars. And then you know that it’s over.
And he’s out there looking. And he said, “Well, I guess it’s better looking for three stars than looking for three grams of blow.” That’s what he said to me. Right. At the end of the day, if the music sounds good, who cares?
Jacobson: So, Peter, I’d be honored to hear something from you. Something soulful, anything moving.
Himmelman: Over the phone like that?
Jacobson: Why not?
Himmelman: I guess. Do you have a guitar pick near you?
Namanworth: I do, but I can’t get it to you over the line.
Himmelman: Okay, I’ll put the phone on the stand here. I think I’ll play your theme song which you never hear the lyrics to, which really irks me. No, it doesn’t irk me that much.
Jacobson: Don’t worry. We’re getting there.
Himmelman: It’s called “All These Impermanent Things.” It’s music of the East, not of the West. (Plays a song… click here for the lyrics).
Jacobson: That was great, Peter.
Himmelman: I have this studio that I can just record something and blow the music out to anybody all over the world in one second with just a touch of a button. You couldn’t have even dreamed of that five years ago.
Jacobson: You’ll get a website as well, Peter, is that correct?
Himmelman: Well, I’m working on it. There’s a Himmelman-fan website.
Jacobson: What’s the address?
Himmelman: You can type “Peter Himmelman” in one of those search engines and you can come up with a lot of things. But there’s a new Peter Himmelman website that’s under construction. A massive one.
Jacobson: Is it larger than you?
Himmelman: Much larger. A hundred of me can fit in it easily and comfortably.
Jacobson: So where is it up to?
Himmelman: It’s www.peterhimmelman.com. It will be up in a few weeks. It’s got a lot of music. You can get live webcasts from my studio, interviews, photo albums, those kinds of things.
Jacobson: Okay, we’re going to take another break and then we’ll be right back.
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Jacobson: Okay, let me ask you both a question from your perspectives. If you could sum it up in one sentence—I’ll speak as the cynic or the skeptic—since you guys are so Shabbos observant and do the letter of the law, do you think that it’s really possible that musicians across the board will be able to straddle the fence as they say and integrate these two worlds, or are you guys just anomalies and are just able to have the ability to on the one hand follow, so to speak, the letter of law of tradition in Judaism, build families, and at the same time be spiritual and soulful and musical? What do you think?
Himmelman: Well, I think that to be effective, music has to always be slightly radical, it has to have a certain edge of radicalism, it has to break the status quo. As a skeptic, from your point of view, you look at these guys who keep the laws of Shabbos and may say, “Well, that’s very staid and antiquated and really right-wing and conformist.” I can understand why you’d say that, but to me, that’s the final frontier of radicalism: overcoming your own desire for fame and money and an easy pace and shaping yourself to sort of fight against your own, as they say in Hebrew, yetzer hara, your own selfish desires. In other words, putting on more nose rings and nipple rings, it might appear to you, as a skeptic, to be a radical statement. To me, it’s sort of tired. It doesn’t point to radicalism, it points more to a conformist nature.
Jacobson: Fascinating! What do you think Phillip?
Namanworth: You know, Peter, you once said something I loved, you said, “I’m doing the most radical thing in the world. I’m believing in G-d. This whole music business and everything is functioning on this material plane, and I’m radical. I’m following my inner self.” And I agree with you.
Himmelman: Well, I would just like to amend that. I try to be radical. I mean, to be actually a radical is to be like a tzaddik, to be living in that radical world where you’re saying—and what’s the most radical proclamation of all—is to say that the physical world is not reality, though it appears to be. The pull of it is incredible. It’s something more than meets the physical eye.
And I can’t say that I’ve succeeded at being that radical. I try.
Namanworth: I remember another thing you once said. We’ve been friends for a long time; do you mind me quoting you?
Jacobson: Rabbi Peter!
Namanworth: I remember someone once said to you, “You’re a baal teshuvah,” and you said, “No, I’m a baal taaiva!” (Meaning, you’re not a master of return [to G-d], you’re a master of desires.”
Himmelman: Right. Someone said that baal teshuvah means people who have returned to the Jewish faith, and it literally means that you’re a master of that process of return. So I never call myself a baal teshuvah. It almost gives me goosebumps. It’s like calling yourself a genius or something. I’m definitely not a master of the return, I’ll tell you that.
Namanworth: It’s a good thing that there’s a fine line between genius and madness, ‘cause I’m never sure which side I’m straddling myself with my own kind of songs. To me, I was at a Shabbaton with Rabbi Jacobson last week and he asked me to speak, and the name of my talk was, “From Hinduism, to Sesame Street, to Yiddishkeit: Hearing Your Own Inner Music.” And I guess the thing was that my own inner music and the music that I play and write is all the same music. There are different expressions of the same self in this world, and when you think of “Shema Yisroel, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echod,” [“Hear O Israel, the L-rd thy G-d, the L-rd is One”] this whole world is one fabric, one piece. Now I haven’t mastered the seeing of that, but some part deep inside me knows that. For me, not to play on Shabbos is not a contradiction because that’s not happening on Shabbos for me because there’s something in me that has returned to another place that wouldn’t do that. Don’t think I haven’t been tempted. You know, in the jingle business I got $10,000 when I sang for an hour, and when you have to tell somebody no, it’s not so easy.
But to me, I’ve learned over the years that it’s all one kind of music, and if I can give up who I think I am, if I get out of my own way, I really have learned to try to be myself, and the only way I can judge that is the effect it has on the people around me.
Jacobson: What do you think about this thought, Peter and Phillip? It says in the Zohar, interestingly, that when the Jews were in the wilderness, the mon, the bread from heaven, would fall every day of the week and they gathered it. On the Sabbath, they were not supposed to gather. But in the Zohar it says that the creation of that bread in heaven happens on the Shabbos. It’s formulated and created then, and then the six days just actualize it. So the blessing occurs then.
I was thinking about it as you were both speaking about Shabbos and music, that perhaps Shabbos is not just a day when we take off from music, but maybe it’s a day of creating inner music that when your soul speaks to you, when you don’t use that physical instrument, when you can’t rely and depend on any type of physical manifestation, it allows you the ability to reach into your own soul and let your soul play the music, and as soon as Shabbos ends, you can begin to manifest it in the six days in the physical plane. Does that resonate to you guys?
Namanworth: I can’t tell you how many times after Shabbos has ended, I’ve finished songs that I was stuck on. It wasn’t like I was saying, “I’m going to give myself a rest,” but the music just came to me after struggling for days and days on different songs, that something was there that was never there before, because I’ve been in my own way. And then when I got out of my own way on Shabbos to really be myself, whatever was there could be and express itself.
Jacobson: Peter, do you think there could be a trend that maybe people who do keep Shabbos, maybe their music gets more enhanced and even more powerful?
Himmelman: Well, I hate to be the cynic here, the skeptic, but I would say that it’s very possible that your music would get a lot worse before it gets better. I know certain people who started keeping Shabbos—myself included—and the music that comes out is kind of weak. In other words, you find “Well, I can’t really say that now that I’m a religious Jew,” you know, I don’t really want to write about feelings about a certain thing, I’d better write about Shabbos candles. You know, it sort of stifles the creative process.
It’s I think a stage along the way. To contradict to a certain extent what you’re saying about, well maybe not necessarily contradict, but to add my feelings about the inner music that’s created on Shabbos, well, I wrote many songs that I think are really good before I even thought about keeping Shabbos.
In other words, if you’re going into Shabbos thinking it’s going to help your songwriting, forget it. That’s not the incentive to keep Shabbos. I think that there is an inner music formed, but it’s of a sublime nature, and I don’t believe that I’ve fully reached those “musics” that are formed on Shabbos. In other words, the Zohar says that the mon was created on Shabbos, and you’re saying that perhaps the music is created as well, there’s a certain blessing there, but it’s so sublime. I think (and I’m just being frank) I’m still working on music that’s not as deep as that music. I don’t think I’ve ever come up with anything quite that deep as the music that’s made on Shabbos.
Jacobson: That’s fair. Very good. You know, when you talk about music and soul, there have to be parallels. You talk about radicalism. The most radical statement in the Torah of course is that there is nothing but G-d. And yet you see musicians who are really burned out either through drug overdoses or who went so high they just couldn’t return. How do you see that search for G-d, Judaism and soul through music? Are there parallels? I mean, the challenges are quite obvious.
Himmelman: Well, I think the parallels are there. I definitely think that almost all the musicians that I know that are really good, and by good I mean that they’re technically proficient enough to manifest their deep ideas. In other words, they’re not just skimming the surface and doing things by rote. They all believe in G-d. They’re all firm believers in G-d.
Whether or not somebody’s in the position to actually implement serious potentially frightening changes in their lifestyle, and one of the most frightening is: I am not going to work on this night, which is Friday night, which in music is usually one of the more lucrative nights, it’s a huge leap of faith to say I’m not going to do this. It doesn’t make any sense. It absolutely defies logic.
I can’t say that it’s any great thing that I possess, any greater intelligence whatsoever that allowed me to do it, I think it’s just a matter of a certain grace, a certain blessing that I had, just to be allowed to be able to do that.
The other thing about people on drugs and music, especially with jazz musicians, somebody once told me, it’s not that they use drugs (these jazz musicians in the late 50s) to try to reach creative levels, it’s that their creativity was so intense, it was pouring out at all times, it was that they couldn’t sleep, they couldn’t get away from it. It was almost a haunting pressure, and they needed a drug as a release from the music, not the other way around.
Jacobson: That’s quite interesting.
Himmelman: Yeah. Not that I’m anywhere near that level, but I certainly have had experiences where the creativity just won’t stop. It’s near to driving me nuts. And the insomnia that ensues for nights and nights at a time, and just hearing music and just thinking about it.
Jacobson: You know, Peter, one of my favorite analogies from music is that music is the paradox of structure that defies structure. On one hand there are that many musical notes on the scale…
Himmelman: It’s such a beautiful metaphor—music and Jewish observance. One of the metaphors that I once constructed to talk to musicians was that there’s two pianists, for example, and one is of a school that’s very free, he will not be confined by any structure, convention, whatsoever. His nature is pure freedom. And he claims to be able to express any idea. He’s unencumbered by anything. And another musician comes around and says, “Well, I’m structured and I’ve been playing the way people have been playing all the time for hundreds of years.” And it turns out that the musician who’s completely free and unencumbered by structure can’t play anything. And the person who has gone through the structure has the ability to manifest the infinite through that structure.
Jacobson: Well, that’s amazing Peter. So I want to thank you both, Peter and Phillip, thank you very much. This has been Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. See you next Sunday at 6pm.
Tags: soul, song, movement, Shabbat
Posted in Social, Art & Music | No Comments »
July 28th, 2015
‘Why do we need a leader’ is the precise theme of this week’s Torah portion. Korach and his cronies challenge Moses with the following argument: “All the people in the community are holy, and G-d is with them. Why are you setting yourselves above G-d’s congregation?”
The fact that Korach’s argument is documented for posterity is proof that his position has merit. Indeed, Korach was a ‘pikach,’ a wise man. Thus his argument is not to be easily dismissed; it is a wise viewpoint that requires deliberation and consideration.
Korach was essentially arguing against bureaucratic hierarchies. The Torah and Judaism are built on the firm and unwavering principle that all people have a Divine soul (created in the “image of G-d”), and by that virtue have direct access to G-d at all times. Where then, Korach asked, is there room for leaders that are “above G-d’s congregation”?
No one individual owns the Torah. It belongs to all people. Why, because Torah is not a product for marketing, nor is it a corporation. Torah is Divine truth – a blueprint for life, consisting of knowledge and information given to all people to guide them in finding their way in this world. As such, Torah is free. No one has monopoly on Torah and no one can demand ‘royalties’ for its study. Indeed, the Talmud says that every child is taught the Torah in its mother’s womb during pregnancy; in each of our psyches is ingrained the Divine will and wisdom – all the tolls that we will need for our life’s journey.
This powerful fact can be appreciated by seeing the effects of the converse approach. “From my enemies I become wise.” Whenever a fascist or totalitarian regime comes to power, the first thing it establishes is a ‘bureau of truth of information.’ Why, because to control a population you need to control the minds of the people. ‘Propaganda’ is what they call it. This, the regime will control the media and the airwaves, to ensure that the people hear and see only the information that the leaders want to convey. Free press – the free flow of information is anathema and definite suicide to any dictatorial power. As Thomas Jefferson said, that given the choice, he would choose a free press to free government. Because without a free press there is no free government.
Whenever you hear that there is a “bureau of truth and information,” rest assured that it neither ‘truth’ nor ‘information’…
Korach argued just that. “All the people in the community are holy, and G-d is with them. Why are you setting yourselves above G-d’s congregation.” Why do we need leaders and teachers and run the risk of abuse. As we have so often seen, lately as well, how so called ‘authorities’ have abused their position, and have not taught the pure truth, but their distorted version of the truth. How many people have been hurt by innocently believing in their teachers, only later (some later than others, and some have yet) to find out how those teachers misrepresented the truth?!
So Korach argued, why risk it? Torah was given by G-d to all the people, and they are all holy, why give exclusive power to leaders, power that can be abused?!
3314 years ago the Torah was given in the Sinai wilderness precisely to pre-empt the possibility of fascist abuse. By giving the Torah in a wilderness, which is no-mans’ land, G-d was telling us that “no one city can lay claim to the Torah. I have given My truth to all of you, and you each have access to it.” Incredible fact. The Bible – the Torah – is the biggest best seller in history. Yet, no one owns it. No one can claim royalties for it!
And the Torah was passed on from generation to generation, in an unbroken chain, with no corporate transitions and bureaucratic infrastructures. Moses did not appoint a ‘board of directors’ and a new “CEO.” Moses left us the Torah and his students, and so it continued from generation to generation. As delineated in the Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers):
“Moses received the Torah from Sinai and passed it on to Joshua; Joshua to the Elders; the Elders to the Prophets…”.
What then was Korach’s mistake, and grave mistake at that? His argument seems plausible and even true. What is the answer to his question: Why do we need leaders, and what will prevent them from abusing their power?
Korach’s serious error was in his understanding of the nature of a true leader. In his mind a leader meant a powerful person who serves as a human intermediary between G-d and the people, between the Torah’s truth and the students. He thought that a leader is defined by his strengths – his wisdom, his charisma, his wealth, all the qualities necessary to lead a large group of individuals.
A true leader is precisely the opposite. He is defined not by what he is, but by what he is not. The single most important quality of a true leader is: bittul – humility (“Moses was the most humble among all people on Earth”). He is invisible, and therefore becomes a vehicle (merkavah) to G-dliness; he is a living example and the epitome of how G-d wants a person to be.
Deifying individuals is anathema to Judaism. Idolatry is a cardinal sin. We only worship G-d and G-d alone. The greatness of a Tzaddik, a Rebbe, a Moses is not the power of the individual, but the power of G-d that is working through that person. Indeed, there cannot be even the slightest tinge of individual ego or personality that gets in the way and does not allow the inherent G-dliness to shine through.
And the reason we need Moses, and a Moses in each generation (Moses passed on the Torah to Joshua, etc.), is because we as individuals are consumed and overwhelmed by material life, we have our egos and personalities that get in the way to accessing G-d and the Torah’s truth. We need a selfless leader, a teacher to guide us and show us the way to access our souls and G-d. And when Moses guides us he does not show us how he (Moses) accesses G-d, but he shows us how we have direct access to G-d through our Divine souls.
The true leader, in other words, is not an intermediary that stands in the way between us and G-d; his selflessness and bittul allows him to be a transparent channel in helping us connect to G-d in our own unique way. A true teacher does not teach you his own truth, he teaches you that it is a Higher truth and that it belongs to you as much as it does to the teacher. The true teacher has no ego, he recognizes at all times that he is merely a messenger passing on truth from a greater place. Indeed, the greatest title of a Torah scholar is not “chacham,” a wise person, but “talmid chacham,” the student of a wise person. The scholar always feels the bittul that he is merely a student of Divine wisdom. “Reishis chohma yiras Hashem” (the beginning and foundation of wisdom is awe of G-d).
Korach’s reasoning was accurate in the fact that all people are holy and have direct access to G-d. There was also justification in his questioning the role of leadership, exposing its potential abuse and distortions. That is why the Torah documents Korach’s argument.
But even if his arguments had merit, Korach’s intentions were wrong. Indeed, though he challenged Moses’ leadership, he demanded leadership for himself (very reminiscent of the fact that though Communism theoretically argues the equality of all classes, Communist leaders were the most notorious abusers of leadership) – all the more reason for needing a true selfless leader!
Korach was absolutely wrong because he did not understand the true nature of a leader – one who is totally humble and selfless. Leadership is not about power and ambition; it is about bittul and selflessness. And that is the only reason that we can trust a true leader, and the reason G-d trusted Moses. When G-d chose Moses to be the leader, Moses strongly resisted. “I am a man of no words” was one of the many arguments Moses offered in refusing to be the leader. G-d replies: “Who then gives a man the mouth to speak if not I.” G-d essentially chose Moses precisely because he did not want the job, and because he would not speak his own words; he would speak G-d’s words.
This type of leader was completely new to Korach and his men. No one had ever met a leader like that. So they challenged the very concept based on their limited experience. But as a result of their argument we gain a new understanding of the nature of a true leader. This is the value of Torah relating to us the story of Korach, and we owe Korach a great debt for allowing the role of true leadership to be clarified for us, and exposing the distortions of false leadership.
This story offers us a very relevant message today.
I submit, that many of us are simply skeptical about a true leader – a Rebbe – because we never met one. The so-called ‘leaders’ around us – political, business, sports, entertainment – are essentially at best nothing more that good administrators, or people driven by aggressive ambition that allowed them to climb the leadership ladder. I am not even addressing the rampant corruption surrounding leaders that we are all aware and reminded of continuously.
I (and many of my colleagues), however, had the distinct privilege and honor to meet such a leader. A G-dly man entirely dedicated to the Higher Cause. His name was Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Or simply: The Rebbe – the leader.
As a true leader, humility was his personality. A man in whose presence you felt not him, but yourself – you felt that you belong, that you matter and have an indispensable contribution to make in this world.
With all the current upheaval in a world that is rapidly changing right before our eyes, the void of true leadership is glaringly obvious. From the Rebbe I learned how to access my own soul. I learned how to access the Torah – thousands of years of history and scholarship – to understand our lives today and the forces reshaping our geo-political as well as our psycho-spiritual landscapes.
On Motzei Shabbat Parshat Korach, Saturday night of Tammuz 3 5754 (June 12, 1994), Korach’s challenge to Moses manifested itself. We have all been challenged to understand the role of a Rebbe-leader in our lives today.
In the last eight years – and especially in the last year – the world has changed dramatically, with many more changes to come. We are desperately in need of true leadership – and there is no question that G-d would not challenge us without providing us with the necessary tools. Even as Korach questions the role of leader, the continuing Torah portion provides us with the power to find the answer, that yes, we need a leader, and yes, Moses is G-d’s chosen leader.
I turn to my Rebbe and his teachings – explaining the times in which we live from a Torah perspective – to make sense of the unsettling events surrounding us today. And I find enormous strength and clarity in the Torah vision.
We each are challenged today to answer Korach’s argument. If we do not want to be left floundering amidst countless questions in an increasingly confusing world, it behooves us to turn to Moses and his teachings for hope and direction. We need to discover the selfless leader that can help us see through the haze.
Oh, how we are in need for such a leader today…
Tags: Rebbe, Moses, authority, leadership
Posted in Social, Government | 1 Comment »
