The Battle of the Sexes: Round Two

June 17th, 2014

Mike Feder: Yes, this is Mike Feder, your resident skeptic and seeker, and I’m here with Simon Jacobson live in the studio.

Simon Jacobson: Hello, resident skeptic and seeker.

Feder: Thank you. We are going to continue tonight where we left off two weeks ago talking about men and women. It’s a program that we’re titling “Battle of the Sexes: Round II.” Is that correct?

Jacobson: Yes. I don’t know how many rounds we’re going to have…

Feder: To the finish. It’s a never-ending battle. What we want you to do very much is to call in as we go along, because I know that everyone listening is either a man or a woman, and you can call us at 212-244-1050.

Let’s just go right into it. It’s hard to do this, but last time we talked, you talked for approximately 20 minutes just briefly starting on the subject of men and women and how they were created and what the differences are, but if we could have a brief, if possible, recapitulation before we get into the program…

Jacobson: One of the reasons we’re doing a continuation of this particular show is that there was an unbelievable response, by email, by phone, and people who have communicated with us in other ways. Obviously it’s a topic that touches so many people—the Battle of the Sexes—however you articulate it, whether it’s “Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus,” there’s a whole man and woman dynamic, and one of the main points I made on the last show was, briefly, the essential approach that the first thing we have to determine is, who is a man and who is a woman: the quintessential man and the quintessential woman?

Are we products of society, of being programmed, of media pressure, of peer pressure, and who is the essential male inside of the man, and the essential female inside of the woman?

So I thought it would be very interesting and important to begin with trying to trace, as I said, the quintessential personality of the masculine energy and the feminine energy.

Feder: Which could be in either the male or the female.

Jacobson: Exactly. Because once you abstract it from its particular manifestation, it’s clearly a personality, it’s a quality that both men and women have, which isn’t surprising with medical breakthroughs today: we know that in the early stages of pregnancy, male and female are barely distinguishable, yet they clearly become two different entities, and it’s also been documented that there clearly are biological and even psychological differences which in no way makes one better than the other, just simply different.

Feder: I read in some article that there are even differences in the brain.

Jacobson: Right. And the point is that even in tennis, for example, we see that in male tennis and female tennis, no one sees that segregation as some type of problem. It’s reflective of their particular bodies and physical strength and so on.

So to sum up what I essentially said then was that these are two forms of energy, that one first has to disassociate it from the man that you think you are or the woman that you think you are, or the man you know or the woman you know, because that may be a product of parental influences, schooling, media, and all kinds of other stuff.

We clearly live in a male dominated hierarchy, and women are trying to level the playing field, and rightly so. Men, simply because of their physical position and physical strength have dominated. And that is not necessarily healthy, it’s just the way things are, so therefore, it very much clouds our perspective on the issue because of the imbalance created by the male hierarchy.

Both are necessary for every human being to function in this world.

Feder: But you’re saying that these are natural qualities.

Jacobson: Natural, quintessential qualities; one being predominantly feminine and one being predominantly masculine. And actually you’ll find this at length in Jewish Kabbalistic mystical thought, but I’ve seen it parallel in other systems, like you mentioned, the yin and yang for example. So let’s not even call it “man” and “woman,” let’s just say they are two forces in nature, two forces in existence

Feder: Internal, external… But you also mentioned receptive and communicative.

Jacobson: In some ways the manifestation of inward energy is about the power to listen, so to speak, the power to step back from your own ego and be able to receive, to be able to take in something greater than yourself. Whereas our expressive mode is the power of giving.

Now take a simple example, a chronological example. In our younger years, we’re more in the state of receptivity. You are impressionable, you listen, you receive, you absorb. Later in life you begin to give, to return.

Obviously, it’s not exclusive, but in the educational years, you’re studying or you’re sitting in a class or you’re reading a book. Any intelligent person knows that there’s a necessity for receptivity or else you’ll never learn anything new. If you’re always smarter than what you’re reading or listening to then, just like a full cup can’t be filled, you can’t grow. But receptivity is not a passive state at all, in a way it’s a very aggressive state, except it’s aggressive silence. It’s like you are intentionally willing to absorb at this point. That is a feminine energy in its quintessential form.

Expression is that after you’ve absorbed and internalized whatever it is, you then choose to express it to someone else. As they say, good speaking is always good listening. If you know how to listen well, you know how to speak well. I don’t mean oratory skills or the power of a loud, resonating voice, but what I mean is the kind of speaking that people will listen to.

If you never listen to someone, you haven’t really earned the right for anyone to listen to you, no matter how wise you are. So I intentionally ask the listeners, and yourself, Mike, to separate these two forma of energy from the man and the woman that we are familiar with, and then we can juxtapose the conceptual male and female to the male and female we experience. Here’s the exercise: once you define what masculine and feminine energy is—and you can read more about it in the chapter on Men and Women in my book Toward a Meaningful Life—once you’ve defined that quintessential energy, so to speak, then look at yourself and compare. Where do you stand in your ability to receive? Where is your inner dignity? Are you overly dominant and aggressive—whether you are a man or woman?

And what about the other side? Some people are very inward, and rarely express themselves. Is that healthy? So there’s a necessity for a balance. The imbalance that exists in society today is a direct result, in a subtle form, from the beginning of time, from a Biblical point of view: Adam and Eve were misaligned when, in the original story, they ate from the Tree of Knowledge and they became, so to speak, self-contained, where they no longer had mutual respect for the feminine and the masculine; that is, now we’re each on our own. And the fact is that men and women need each other, so in a sense we mutually consent, or mutually agree that since I need something from you, then I’m ready to give you something. It becomes more like a business deal rather than a deep respect of the spirit of the individual.

Feder: Like a partnership or a cooperation.

Jacobson: And I would say that this is reflected in a broader sense not just in the battle of the sexes, but in a general trust between human beings. When you don’t have a good sense—you’re not really confident of your own position of what you are about—you tend to protect yourself, and that usually creates a wall that doesn’t allow for communication with another type of person.

Between men and women, obviously, it’s much more overt and exaggerated simply because of the sexual relationship, the issues of romance and love, and all that comes with those politics.

Feder: So this is a pretty fair approach to a recapitulation of what we said last time, even though it’s hard to do a thing like this in such a short time. But now let’s bring this more down to the flesh and more up to date—we’re all walking around here on the planet. Men in the world seem to think (and this could be just cultural training or they act this way for the last who knows how many years) that men do certain things and women do certain things. You remember the phrase, “A woman’s place is in the home” while men are out there in the world. Yet all these things are changing tremendously in the last 20-30 years to the point where you have almost a national plague of a lack of identity.

A lot of men experience this sort of “float,” they don’t even know if they’re men, or how they’re supposed to men, are they supposed to stay home or go to work, and then there’s women in the workplace. All these things are floating back and forth and affecting a lot of relationships in a very negative way.

Now, you say it’s a battle of the sexes. If this is a battle of the sexes, it’s a massacre, in other words, for the last several thousand years, women have been downtrodden, overridden, put in a position of almost slavery in many places, and are still second-class citizens in most places.

How did it all go so wrong if this was the original plan of a benign Creator? And is there a place for men and a place for women that really is different?

Jacobson: Well frankly, as soon as you say “How did it go so wrong?” it rubs me in a very bad way. Not so much your words but that it sounds very much like fire and brimstone. I would rephrase that if I may in my own words (but it’s good that you said that because it represents many people’s feelings).

Feder: That’s the skeptic part of this.

Jacobson: I’d rephrase it and say that it’s not so much how things went wrong, it’s how things were put into place. We do suffer from an identity crisis, but this is not something that we should be afraid of, because that’s exactly how G-d intended to create us.

G-d “threw” a soul into this world, and I’m emphasizing the word “threw,” because when you study the roots of creation, the roots of birth, we usually put it this way: that a soul, a spiritual entity, which was unfettered, like a bird with no nest, upon conception is put into this container, into this material word, and once it’s put into this world it’s made to forget consciously where it originates from, in the sense that it can deceive itself into thinking that all there is to life is the material, the here and now.

Feder: Well, maybe we’re getting off track here, but why would somebody put a soul into the world and deliberately give it amnesia?

Jacobson: Because there would be no purpose to existence, no meaning to life, if we were not true partners in this search. In other words, if we were puppets, put here just to play out a script, and there was no free will and no challenges, it would be similar to a parent who holds onto his child’s hand and never lets it walk. So why would a parent ever let go of the hand of his child? Very simple. Because the child has to become independent. And this does require a separate discussion and this theme will come up many, many times of free will, human independence, autonomy, and, without getting into an explanation, suffice it to say it’s a necessity. Life has no meaning if there isn’t a challenge of that nature.

So the amnesia is only on the conscious level, not on the subconscious one, because on the subconscious level, we do search for this identity, and part of that search is the search for love. That’s why sexuality and love are so confusing, because essentially love is your search for identity. And your search for higher identity is very enigmatic, very elusive, because we have no tools. Our tools are very materialistic, very tangible, very sensory. So to come back full circle to our topic, where you ask, “What went wrong?”—no—life was made in a way that we will be faced with challenges. Are you going to live your life based on being a product, or even a victim, of circumstances, including being a man or a woman who has been shaped by society, or are you going to discover what makes you truly you, what makes you male, what makes you female, what’s your masculine side, what’s your feminine side, and access that?

In a culture and environment where we are not sure about this, what we usually do is rely on mass mentality. It just seems easier to go with the flow; that’s the way it is. So when you talk about the massacre that you were describing, the problem is this: that when you solve the problem, you’re not going back to the root, we’re just solving the basic problem. Okay, so women have been in the home and men have been at work. Or okay, so women go out to work, and men go back home. It doesn’t work that way. You have to really get to the root of the issue here.

What does it mean exactly that the woman’s place is in the home? Her physical place is in the home but her mind is in a soap opera on television and she’s thinking about why can’t she have a career like her husband?

And when the man is at work, does that mean that his life and his entire investment is at work, and home is an incidental necessity?

Feder: Well, you know, very often it breaks down that way in the world.

Jacobson: Yes, in a world that is unclear as to its true priorities. I was, as we all were, reading and watching the events of the JFK tragedy, but at the same time, the reporting of it has become a story in itself: how many hours are being spent by the media and the millions of dollars it’s taken to cover it, and people are gobbling it up, and hungry for more. And I’m not getting into an analysis or media critique, or anything like that

Feder: That’s a whole separate thing…

Jacobson: Right. But I do want to say something that struck me, and I was talking to a friend this morning, who made a good point: People distract themselves in life, and they’re busy with many ways of distracting themselves, whether it’s through entertainment, through money, through status, through music, through watching celebrities. Then you suddenly see a person who seems to have it all struck down, and you see mortality, and it forces you to suddenly look at yourself in the mirror and ask, so what exactly am I valuing, and what exactly is important to me?

Now, when things go well, or at least ostensibly well, we don’t ask that question. But it forces one to think about it, and I think it’s a good point, which is directly connected to the issue of the Battle of the Sexes, of men and women. Because the question is, “Who are you? And how do you identify yourself?” And that’s one of the points we made two weeks ago which was: the center of life between a married couple, man and woman, has to be the same center. If there are two centers going on in their lives, they cannot have an intact marriage.

Feder: What would you define as two centers?

Jacobson: Career and home. The woman is taking care of the home and the children and the meals, and the man takes care of a career. It’s two centers. You can’t have two centers of a circle.

Feder: You know, when I was growing up in the fifties, the entire generation of America was like that. My entire neighborhood was like that. All the women were home, and all the men went to work, and actually most of those households stayed together and the marriages stayed intact.

Now, that is not the way things usually are, and a lot of marriages and relationships are falling apart. There is more divorce now by 100% than there was in the 50s.

Jacobson: So there are two ways to analyze that. One way is that women started making too much noise. They should stay home and men should go to work and we should turn the clock back to Mike’s younger years.

Feder: Wait! The opinions of this program are not necessarily…

Jacobson: No! I’m just using you as an example.

Feder: Okay. Use me as an example.

Jacobson: So one approach would be that we should turn the clocks back: there’s too much talk and women have been given too much freedom and perhaps they should just be satisfied with what’s going on at home, a simpler life, men should do their work and come home, and things are fine.

But one may argue that what you were witnessing was simply a festering problem that just took a little while to explode. Because what were men doing at work? If they were creating another hub, or center, for their lives, it is inevitable that the women would ultimately rebel and say, “Hey, the guy’s having fun out there. He doesn’t have to deal with crying children, with all the trials and tribulations of home life. He’s having fun with the guys, drinking at night, and who knows what else is happening there…”

Feder: I don’t think a lot of the jobs these guys were doing were necessarily fun.

Jacobson: No, but the point was, if they both saw life as one center, that the man simply saw his work and career as being a means to a spiritual end: I’m working because I need to make money to be able to provide for a family, for a home, my mark on this universe is not what kind of name I will make for myself on Wall Street, but what kind of children I will leave.

Feder: Which would be the shared center.

Jacobson: Exactly. And the husband feels that he’ s half of the picture. His wife is the other half, and perhaps even the more important half, because she’s dealing with the end itself, the family upbringing. And the man saw it as that. Not just in words, as lip service, he felt it within, internally. Now I don’t know if that was the case where you grew up. If that’s the case, then the priority then is different than it is today.

What I think is happening, and again, I don’t like to compare generations because I don’t really know what was happening then, maybe women were being silenced when they complained, and they just weren’t allowed, or didn’t have the nerve to complain. And yes, men did create a second center, I don’t know. That’s why I’m not just ready to say we should turn the clocks back.

But what is definitely happening is that the center has shifted away from family and children and the home, and I think women have also moved toward the new center that the men have created.

Feder: So what you’re saying is that the joint center, to look at it in a positive way, has moved away from the home into the world, and that may be the problem.

Jacobson: Part of the problem. But more importantly, the reason that the center has shifted is a result of the source of our security. Ask yourself the question: where do I get my confidence from? Where do we get our security from? If your security comes from your teddy bear, or from your money or from your status, that’s going to be your center. You’re going to work toward maintaining that security. If you don’t really feel secure in your relationship, or if you don’t feel secure that you have something to leave your children with, or that there are real values at home, clearly you’re going to find another center.

So I think what we’re dealing with here is not really a marital crisis or a crisis of family, it begins much earlier. It’s a spiritual identity crisis that begins from day one when you’re born: why are you here in this world, what is your purpose, and what will ultimately satisfy that purpose.

People are afraid of their own destiny, so destiny gets very much caught up in a vicious cycle of demands that are placed upon us to succeed. We climb the ladder, and when we succeed, we think we are satisfying that “security,” but we’re really not. That’s why I mentioned JFK, Jr., because suddenly when you see the “security” stripped away you suddenly realize, hey, is that really where it’s at, is this material success, good looks, youth, having everything, is that really what’s going to make my life important?

But it seems that way, because if you ask people to make a list of the five most important things that would make them happy, I don’t know how many people would answer spiritual harmony.

Feder: Maybe it depends on the age of the people you ask the question to. Like 17, or 37, or 57…

Jacobson: Well, when G-d offered King Solomon options of what he wanted, King Solomon asked for wisdom. Wisdom gives you the wisdom to find the answer.

You know the story they tell about a fellow who was struck with every problem: he lost his family, he lost his money, his health, and finally the only thing that was left was that at least his body was intact, and then he was struck with some terrible leprosy where his body did not stop itching. So they say that the angels came to G-d and said, “Have mercy on this man.” So G-d said, Okay, let him make one request, and I will grant him whatever he asks for.

So at the moment that he was offered the opportunity to have one request granted, he had a terrible itch on his back so he said, “Give me a shard, something with which I can reach this itch on my back,” like a backscratcher.

So he had his request fulfilled.

And often that’s what happens when we don’t have that peace of mind or wisdom to really know what to ask for. That’s why there’s even a prayer where you pray to G-d, “I pray that You give me what I really need because I don’t always know what that is.”

And in a way (I don’t want to make this simplistic because it’s very difficult to talk about a topic like “the battle of the sexes” because it touches so many different issues) but I must say that I was trained to think in terms of getting to the root of the issue. But clearly we also need short-term solutions, so I am therefore in complete support, where women are discriminated against in any particular area, that there should be that equality.

Women are definitely equal and in many ways far superior to men particularly in certain areas. Men of course have their strengths. But to just satisfy women with offering them opportunities that are available only to men is dealing merely with the short-term, that’s dealing with a particular situation where a woman gets a job, or she’s in another situation and she should be given an equal opportunity.

But getting to the root of the issue is really getting into spiritual identity: who are you as a man or as a woman? Ultimately, that’s where happiness lies. If you’re happy with your feminine side, with your masculine side, you will be able to co-exist and respect others and will not need to get into the rat race of trying to replicate or emulate someone else to find your own identity.

Feder: Okay. Let’s take a quick break here. You’re 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 in the book.

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Let’s keep moving right along here, now let’s be frank: you’re the one who came up with the idea of a “battle of the sexes” so do you perceive it as a battle, or are you just stirring up the pot when you say it? I mean is there a natural antipathy between men and women?

Jacobson: Well, both. I am stirring up the pot, but you can’t stir the pot with something that doesn’t stir, so you need to have a legitimate reason.

I think it is a battle, particularly in what they call “bedroom politics,” where you find a battle in the area of conquests, so to speak: who ultimately is in control. Remember, men and women need each other, simply on an emotional, romantic, sexual level, so there’s something you want from somebody. So the question is, what do you do to get what you want and need?

Feder: And this could result in a struggle.

Jacobson: And clearly does. You probably know about the book The Rules, and other books similar to that about women striking back, whatever it is.

Feder: Sorry to interrupt…It looks like we have a call. Let’s go to the caller.

Caller: Hello. I hope you don’t mind: Last week you said that Rabbi Akiva was the only one who was saved, but in the Kinus it states (Hebrew spoken here)…

Jacobson: He’s talking about last week’s show where I mentioned a Talmudic story where four people went into the Garden and only one came out intact. The four were Ben Azzai, Ben Zuma, Achair, and Rabbi Akiva. One died, one became insane, one became an apostate, and it says Rabbi Akiva entered in peace and left in peace.

So this gentleman is asking, “What do you mean intact?” You find later that he was barbarically murdered by one of the Romans as one of the Ten Martyrs, and his soul departed with the words “Shema,” as he was proclaiming the unity of G-d upon his death.

The gentleman is suggesting that I made a mistake, but essentially these are two Talmudic statements, and they don’t contradict each other, because we were discussing the story in the Garden, that “Rabbi Akiva went in in peace and exited in peace.”

Later in his life is the story that this gentleman is referring to, and I appreciate his call. Let’s continue with our topic, even though his call may have some connection…

Feder: I don’t know what it is…

Jacobson: We can talk about the battle of the sexes entering in peace and exiting in peace.

Feder: You know what, I think that’s a thing that a woman would never do. Let’s just say it, all right? Here we are talking about a subject for the benefit… I mean I’m not saying anything about this particular man, I’m just saying generically. I’ve been on the radio for 20 years and I’ve taken a lot of calls from a lot of different people. All my life I’ve been getting calls from men and they have an opinion to give you. It sometimes has nothing to do with the group effort or what you’re talking about or any enlightenment that you’re approaching.

Women will frequently call up and be receptive. They heard what you said and they’ll respond to it. Seventy-five percent of men will call up a radio show, it happens all over the city, and all of a sudden just step into the middle of something just because they have an opinion. It just happened!

Jacobson: So let’s take it a step further. You as a man, how do you respond to that, and how would a woman respond when a man does that? Let’s go, Mike.

Feder: I think, now I’m responding as a man because after all I don’t want to get personal but I appear to be a man, I think that this man is displaying a kind of masculine energy and I’m responding in a masculine sort of way by saying, “Look…” Or maybe I’m responding in a female way. I don’t know.

What I’m reacting to that makes me so angry is that he is interrupting the receptive flow of an enlightened kind of program here. He’s putting his big foot in the middle of something and squashing it.

Jacobson: And I don’t feel that way at all, frankly. I feel it’s an open show and I feel that if we invite calls, we can take it in stride. A person asked a question, and he’s not being offensive, and not insulting, but it’s a good example that you’re bringing up.

Feder: But if he had any respect for his female essence, or any knowledge of it at all, he would be listening to what we’re talking about…

Jacobson: But maybe a woman wouldn’t be so critical of the man. Maybe she would find some sort of merit. Maybe this has been bothering him for a week and he wanted to share that with us. I don’t know.

Feder: Well, that’s a good point.

Jacobson: Look, I’m not suggesting that what you’re saying is wrong or what he’s doing is wrong. I think that in general what happens is that we respond in kind.

Feder: Well I just did, that’s for sure.

Jacobson: I’ve often been confronted and instinctively one wants to respond aggressively. But I think what you learn in life, and maybe this is a big part of feminine energy, is that there’s a bigger picture. It’s not all about your reaction, even if your reaction is justified. However there are times when your reaction won’t be justified. Let’s say that this time you’re right, Mike, but there may be some times that you’re not.

Feder: You mean that kind of reaction.

Jacobson: Right. So I believe that the attitude should not be driven by your reaction, your emotional response, but by what is the right thing to say. This episode is a good example of the difference between a stereotypical male and female repsonse. The masculine and feminine do overlap and there’s a time for each.

There’s a time to be silent and there’s a time to speak. But to go back to our topic, here, the point I was saying is that we are in an identity crisis, whether it’s male or female, it’s an identity crisis and I think that though we’d like to have some short-term solutions and say “Okay, here’s what you do, here’s five exercises,” I will make some suggestions, but first and foremost is the focus: what is the priority, what is the center of your life?

Feder: Okay, we’ve got a call from Sue in New York.

Caller: How does a person accept her identity as a woman? Because of my family background I’m just having a problem with that. My father was more or less very dominant and so I really rejected men and I rejected being a woman.

Jacobson: What other options are there? Well, listen, Sue, let me just say this. I hear you but this obviously is a big topic. If your father was dominant, which is a negative type of experience, perhaps that’s why you should embrace your femininity more than anything.

Caller: I don’t, I really rejected it. I became much more like a man, you know? Being a woman is a part of me which I find very hard to accept.

Jacobson: I will say this briefly, and then I invite you, Sue, to email me further, but I really want to say that if there’s a part of a person that one finds a problem with—like in your case about being a woman and you become too dominant because of your father—you could spend the rest of your life hating yourself and trying to run away from that, but what’s much healthier is to find virtues or qualities, something about being a woman that you can embrace, that makes you feel strong.

I would suspect that part of what you’re afraid of is that being a woman is for you is negative and that by embracing that will make you weak or vulnerable or others may hurt you. And I appreciate that, because given the world we live in, that is definitely a reality, that women can be hurt.

But I think that being with the right people, with friends and people you can trust, that can help you to cultivate and embrace that part of yourself is critical.

I have some other suggestions that I would like to give you if you communicate with me on email so please follow up.

Feder: Thanks for the call. By the way, we have a few calls right now and when you call in, please make sure to turn your radio down or even off because it reflects back over the air.

Our next call is Mark from New York.

Caller: Hi, just to enlarge the subject, instead of it really being a subdivision of the battle between the sexes, we have a large topic of a battle among humanity, in that we each battle each other, regardless of sex, for our own self-preservation, going back millions of years of evolution. And maybe we need to address that, and then we could move on to the battle of the sexes, battle of color, battle of height, size, religion, and all other types of battles that we have.

Feder: It’s a very good question.

Jacobson: Mark, I definitely agree with you, the problem is that if we spend the rest of our time on this show dealing with that battle, we’ll never get to the battle of the sexes because it’s such a large topic. I think it’s very much interlinked, and I couldn’t agree more that the issue is respect of another individual.

Ultimately, if a man does not respect a woman, or if a woman does not respect a man, I would tend to say that they don’t respect members of their own gender as well.

Caller: Or themselves.

Jacobson: Or themselves, exactly. And I think it gets down to a point that I’ve made on this show which is the idea that “You matter.” That you have something valuable and indispensable to contribute in life and when you wake up in the morning knowing that you have a mission to accomplish, that sense of self-respect spills over in how you respect others.

Caller: And you get it back at least equally or double most of the time when you behave well.

Jacobson: Great point, Mark.

Feder: There it is. Thank you for calling. We have Cindy on the phone. Go ahead.

Caller: I have a question but first a comment that women have made tremendous strides in helping to free themselves from the constraints that we feel men have imposed on us, but to me it seems that in the religious world, in the Torah world, I don’t see the strides that have been made. Women still feel that if you’re going to live an observant life, you will be constrained, you will not have the freedom that seems to be out there. Not that the freedom has brought more happiness to families, we still have not found the solution to that, but if we are going to live according to a narrow way of life, where does the woman come in that there should be this sharing, this partnership, and so on.

Feder: Can I ask you a question about your question? Could you be more specific, like give me some examples of what you mean?

Caller: Well, take the traditional Jewish home. The woman is still the one who, of course, has the children (that happens in every case) but for example, it seems to be that in religious observance, the man takes the initiative, the man is the one who gets an aliyah, he goes up to the Torah, in the synagogue it’s visible that the men reign supreme and it seems to me that a woman from a traditional Jewish home does not have the freedom that other people seem to have. People are going away from tradition because they feel that they’re not given that freedom within their religion.

Feder: Okay. Fairly put. Thank you.

Jacobson: Thank you for your question, Cindy. I would say that Cindy’s touching upon a very sensitive topic that I personally have been dealing with with many, many women growing up in observant homes, observant communities…

Feder: Observant meaning what?

Jacobson: Orthodox, but…

Feder: Right, it’s a word you don’t like to use.

Jacobson: Right, but observant meaning traditional, following the letter of the law in Jewish tradition.

Feder: Which, by the way, this could apply to other Orthodox fundamentalist traditions of other traditions.

Jacobson: Exactly. And they don’t want to rebel against their tradition, yet they find their tradition being constraining or claustrophobic in some ways. It doesn’t allow for the feminine expression of leadership and so on.

It’s clearly a problem…

Feder: You’re saying it’s true.

Jacobson: It’s definitely true because you know you can’t argue with people’s feelings. People do feel that way. I know women who have left observance and who have left Jewish tradition just for that reason alone. I’m sure there are always deeper reasons as well, but that’s a strong one and there are many movements in the traditional world where they attempt to reconcile how to deal with it. There has been criticism of how much power to give to women, and then of course there’s the other extreme, which is, women should be silent, stop rebelling, stop complaining, just keep doing what they’ve been doing for thousands of years, and not cpm;ian when they see any injustices. I think both approaches are unhealthy, and the key is to allow for the emergence of the true leadership of women within tradition, within the power of thousands of years of the timeless tradition of Judaism. If you go back to the basics of the Divine system of Judaism (as it is unaffected by human institutions and by materialistic priorities), women always had a prominent position in the community. It is critical to distinguish the baby from the bath water.

There is clearly a certain male dominance that has affected even traditional circles and it is not necessarily healthy nor G-dly. And one has to acknowledge that. And at the same time, the way to deal with it is clearly to introduce women with a certain pride and dignity to assume their true role as leaders. And it should be valued. Clearly in a world where the center of people’s lives becomes career and materialism, clearly in a world like that—and it’s affected traditional circles as well—women are going to become very second class, because if the spiritual value of the home and the family is not the number one priority for all people, there’s going to be suffering.

Feder: Let me put you on what may be ignorance or may be the spot here for a second. In an observant community, and let’s take for example, in a Roman Catholic church, women cannot be priests, and priests are recognized as spiritual if not other kinds of leaders of the community.

In certain observant Jewish traditions (maybe I’m wrong) women are not rabbis. Is this part of the problem?

Jacobson: No. This is a symptom, not part of the problem. Because the question is, is a rabbi the boss? Is a rabbi the leader of the community? A rabbi plays a role. A rabbi can be the legal authority, he can be the academic, the pulpit rabbi, the leader in certain respects.

The question is, what is leadership? And who assumes that leadership and how is that leadership experienced?

Clearly, in a situation where women are not given power, or they’re not respected for what they do contribute, then if you go into the synagogue, which is the conventional environment for traditional observance (Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Shabbos, holidays) the man is the one who’s sitting on top there.

But that is a misunderstanding of what Judaism is all about. Is the center of Judaism the synagogue? No, that’s incorrect. The center of Judaism is the home. The synagogue is an area to complement the environment of home, of family.

A synagogue that becomes an end in itself is a bureaucracy, a country club. A synagogue is the place where you cultivate your prayer, your study, your personal relationship with G-d, so you can go back home and build a family that is G-dly and sacred.

As a matter of fact, let me make one more statement about that, in case we have some traditional people calling us disliking what I’m saying. The Torah says, the Bible says that when G-d says, “Build for Me a sanctuary and I will rest among you,” it doesn’t say I will rest in it, in the building, but I will rest among you. Because the whole point of the Temple, and clearly a synagogue is a mini-Temple, is that G-d rests among the people.

A synagogue that creates some type of splintering, or distrust, or one that creates an environment where women are seen as second class, is not creating a place of “G-d’s resting among you,” among the home, the families, the human beings, the people.

But this is really a bigger topic, and I would even dedicate part of a future show to this because this is not something I can easily address in a few minutes.

Feder: So, Cindy, again, we’ll ask you to communicate by email to get more specifics.

Jacobson: But I want to reiterate that it’s a large topic and I have some practical suggestions. I just spoke about the general thrust and gist of it, but I would like to give more suggestions (by email) as to what can be done with the tradition tools to allow women their proper prominence and leadership in the community.

Feder: Okay, thank you Cindy.

Caller: Thank you.

Feder: Okay, we have one call. John, thanks for your patience, you’re on the air.

Caller: Yeah, I’m calling from a cellular phone. I agree with you that the gender roles and the way things are represented are very messed up, giving power to one side over the other keeps things separated and not together.

I definitely think men and women should be equal in the full spectrum of things. Here are a couple of thoughts I want to get your opinion on. This thing about power, I personally think it’s a class thing. It’s money, it’s the top 1% of the males that are controlling most of this power that you see out there. I don’t think physical power is real power over a person. I think women have a lot more power than they claim that they don’t have. Just in a lot of areas. One or two examples, there’s definitely a representation of a lot more violence in the media and in magazines that happens more to men than women, just in movies, television, cartoons: these figures are all male figures. All the cartoons that get beat up are males, boys from when they’re small are given guns, girls are given dolls and all these things set up a lot of things that happen later on.

And let’s not forget that women are a part of raising some of these males that later on…

Feder: One of the constraints of a radio show is that we’re nearing the end of the program so maybe we can leave it up to the rabbi to respond to you.

Jacobson: Well, John is making a very good point, basically that symbols of aggression in our society are very much associated with males, and you see it in video games and many other areas. It definitely continues to foster that type of male aggression, and there’s no doubt that that comes as a vicious cycle that continues to perpetuate itself.

I couldn’t agree more that the women, and this responds to Cindy’s question as well, a woman has power far beyond what is imagined and what is respected in our society, and it’s critical that we focus on that, and essentially it’s very connected to spiritual power, spiritual power meaning something you cannot measure with ammunition, with money, and other material ways. It’s something Pharaoh did not respect when he said, “Kill all the Jewish males,” referring to throwing all the male babies in the river Nile. He thought the challenge to his great Egyptian army would be a Moses, a man. He did not realize that the power of faith, the power of optimism, the power of perseverance, which is very feminine, was really what his real challenge was. And even if he would have known that, he wouldn’t have any way to destroy that, because armies cannot destroy faith.

Feder: We have one final call, and I’m going to have to ask you to make a brief statement or question because we’re right at the end of the program. This is Baruch from New York.

Caller: I just wanted to bring up that I’ve heard certain rabbis and people, theologians, claiming that the Jewish religion believes that women are on a higher level spiritually than men, and first of all, I did read a whole book from Feldheim, Targum Press, that explains how this is wrong. I researched this very thoroughly. But also I’d like to think this is also very dangerous because it is exchanging the perception (which is wrong) that a lot of people put down women and exalt the men, and it’s going all the way to the reverse, which is putting down men and saying that women are higher.

I think both of these ideas are very dangerous and it should be clarified and just like it’s not good to put down women, certain people should not be preaching that women are on a higher level, which implicitly says that men are lower creatures. I’d like you to address that.

Feder: Okay. Well thank you for your comment.

Jacobson: It’s a good segue. Baruch’s point is a very legitimate one. That’s why right at the outset of the first program we did on this topic, which I reiterated here as well, in the eyes of G-d, G-d created male and female, as it says in the Bible, “Male and female He created them.” So clearly there is no such thing as inferiority and superiority either way. Clearly they both complement each other spiritually. Each has virtues that the other may not or does not have and when they come together in a marital union in a sacred way, they both become greater than the sum of the parts, they are definitely two parts of a larger picture.

I think it’s wrong to say that a man’s virtues (and clearly a man has virtues and qualities) that a women does not have makes him better or higher spiritually, or that a woman’s virtues make her higher or superior. One has to look at it that each have something that is necessary and indispensable, and respect means that the respect goes both ways, recognizing that both under G-d have something unique to contribute, and together they can do more than each can do on their own. That’s the way I would put it and I would agree that it should not be counterbalanced in any other way.

Feder: Now, reality intrudes (is that a masculine way of putting it?).

Jacobson: A feminine way would be that “reality emerges.”

Feder: Okay, thank you very much. I’m learning a lot here tonight. So anyhow, moving right along, you are listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. This is Mike Feder and we thank you very much for your calls. Write down the number, engrave it somewhere, 212-244-1050, because we want calls on all these shows that we do from now on. We’re here every Sunday from 6-7pm.

We’d like to mention that this program is based very much on the book Toward a Meaningful Life, written by Simon Jacobson and available at bookstores everywhere. These programs are brought to you by you, by the listener, and our underwriter for tonight’s program is Barry Hartheimer, who we’d like to thank very much for doing so.

Jacobson: Thank you, Barry.

Feder: And also I’d like to say before we end that we have received many requests, in fact, 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. That’s what it’s there for. 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 Center, you become a partner in the work that Simon Jacobson is doing, 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. 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’re trying to help each other here. We’re all in the same boat. We count on you the listener to make this show possible.

We have about a minute and a half left. Do you want to sum up the whole idea of men and women and the battle of the sexes? Has anyone won this battle, will anyone ever win this battle?

Jacobson: The key is to realize that it’s not a battle.

Feder: Okay.

Jacobson: That’s the key. As long as you see it as a battle, it will never be won. And it’s not a battle as you essentially put it, we are in the same boat. It’s that men and women each have something unique to contribute. Practically speaking, this can be implemented in many ways, both by men and by women, and that in general first of all, it’s paying attention to themselves, whether as a man or as a woman, whether it’s at work or at home, and how we speak to our children, how we speak to each other. The respect for “the Divine image,” the G-d inside each one of us is critical for the respect of each other, whether it’s men to men or women to women or it’s the different genders.

Just talking about it makes me very sad, but at the same time very optimistic, because I think people can sometimes stand right near a treasure and because their back is to it, they don’t see it.

The power that a man has and the power that a woman has is so profound and there’s so much to accomplish in this world, that it’s sad that we get so distracted with the material pursuits, the career pursuits, status, the battle. It would be unbelievable if you were able to find your own, let’s call it the man finding his own feminine side and respecting that, including his own masculine side, the ability to listen, the ability to be receptive, gentleness, majesty, and a woman feeling the same and trying her way of expression, her way of leadership.

Feder: Next week on Toward a Meaningful Life: Reincarnation and the Afterlife. Thank you very much.

Tags: women, men, gender roles
Posted in Personal Life, Love & Marriage, Social, Women & Men | No Comments »

Why Do We Fall in Love?

June 17th, 2014

Is the mystique and the romance, the music and the moonlight, just nature’s way of hoodwinking males and females to reproduce?

What lies behind the attraction between the sexes? Sexuality is a subject about which no one is neutral. Everyone has a sexual nature, everyone has a need for sexuality, everyone has a sexual personality that has been formed by home, schooling, the trial and error of life experience, and whatever they pick up along the way from the subtle and not-so-subtle influences of the society in which they live.

In seeking to make sense of our sexuality we must look to its origins. Where does our sexuality come from? I would like to look at two approaches to that question. One is the scientific approach and then we’ll contrast it with the Torah approach, specifically, the Kabbalistic-Chassidic perspective.

There are numerous secular-scientific theories of sexuality. From the perspective of the biological or evolutionary theory for example, our sexuality derives from the fact that the perpetuation of the species is achieved through a sexual relationship between a male and a female. The male will therefore search for the female that is most fertile, and that will bear the healthiest offspring; and the female will search for a male that provides the healthiest seed, that is the most virile and that will protect the young.

What this theory essentially says is that behind the mystique and the beauty, the romance and the sensuality in which human sexuality comes enveloped—behind it all really lies a primal force: the need to exist, and to perpetuate that existence. Modern man is not prepared to think of him or herself merely as production machines to bear children, so in order to entice two people into a union, evolution and biology have conspired to imbue the sexual act not only with pleasure but also with a mystique that compels us along the romantic journey.

The accouterments of human sexuality—the romance, the flowers, the music, the moonlight—are really just nature’s way of getting two people together. Two human beings courting each other are essentially the same as two bees courting each other. One bee will buzz a certain way or give off a certain scent, but what it comes down to is that these are tactics to get them together to mate and bear offspring. Nature is ruthless. Nature must prevail. So nature finds the means to get a male and a female to mate.

This, basically, is the scientific approach to human sexuality. Let us now contrast this with the Torah’s approach.

The Torah’s conception of human sexuality is expressed in the opening chapters of Genesis, and states that sexual attraction between human beings is driven by a completely different force: their search for their divine image, for their quintessential self.

The Torah describes man as originally having been created as a ‘two-sided’ being: “Male and female He created them… and He called their name: man.” G-d then split this two-sided creature into two, and ever since, the divided halves of the divine image seek and yearn for each other. They’re not half individuals; man is a full-fledged personality and woman is a full-fledged personality. But there are elements in their transcendental persona, in their completeness, that remain incomplete if they don’t find each other. There’s something missing in each of them; they were once part of a greater whole.

To put it in more mystical terms: they’re really searching to become one with God. The human race is in essence one entity, a male-female singularity. When man and woman come together and unite in a marital union, they recreate the divine image in which they were both formed as one.

The teachings of Kabbalah take this a step further. According to the Kabbalah, these are two forms of energy that, in the most abstract form, are referred to as an internal energy and a projective energy. Feminine energy and masculine energy exists in each man and in each woman, and in every part of nature. Even Godliness is sometimes described in the feminine and sometimes in the masculine.

Contrary to the common perception of the ‘patriarchal’ G-d of the Bible, many of the divine attributes are feminine, such as the Shechinah, which is the feminine dimension of Godliness.

So what we have here is a split of two energies, and a yearning and inclination to become one whole. The human race was created in the divine image, but that human race is half male and half female, and through their union they become that larger whole, that divine image that searches for union with G-d, that seeks a higher reality.

This is the soul of sexual attraction. This attraction, which manifests itself in many physical sensations, from a faster heartbeat to a physical attraction to another person, is essentially the attraction of male to female and female to male to become a complete, divine whole, connecting to their source in G-d. Not that they’ve ever been completely disconnected; but consciously, people can go off on their own individual narcissistic, even selfish, path. And here, there’s a voice in you saying: I yearn for something greater. When a man is physically attracted to a woman, or a woman to a man, it may seem a very biological thing, but from a Jewish, Torah perspective, it’s just a physical manifestation of a very deep spiritual attraction.

This is not to say that the Torah’s concept of sexuality is not intrinsically tied in to the objective of creating new life. It certainly is. But perpetuation of the species is not the sole end of our sexuality. Rather, it’s the other way around: the divine nature of our sexuality—the fact that the union of male and female completes the divine image in which they were created—is what gives us the power to bring life into the world.

So there is something divine about the union itself. This is reflected in Halachah (Torah law) which extends the sanctity of marriage also to circumstances in which the generation of offspring is not a possibility (such as in the case of a man and/or woman who are beyond childbearing age, or who are physically unable to bear children). If sexuality were simply the mechanism for childbearing, one might argue: “Hey, no perpetuation of the species, what’s the point of marriage and sexuality? Just a selfish pleasure? Where’s the holiness?” The answer is, yes, the sexuality qua sexuality is holy. Male and female uniting is a divine act, a divine experience.

Tags: sexuality, love, marriage, intimacy
Posted in Personal Life, Love & Marriage, Social, Sexuality | No Comments »

How to Find Your Soulmate

June 17th, 2014

Feder: Hello again, this Mike Feder and welcome to another edition of Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. This evening’s topic is “Finding and Keeping a Meaningful Personal Relationship.”

Jacobson: I was just traveling last week in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Buenos Aires in Argentina and one of the talks I gave there was to a group of students—it had to obviously be translated from English to Spanish—they asked me to speak about how to find your dream soulmate.

Feder: They asked you that?

Jacobson: Yes. So I think it’s an appropriate topic: how to find your dream soulmate, even though you don’t like to be set up and claim that you have a simple answer to a question like that, but perhaps we can cover a topic like this in our show.

Feder: Dream soulmate. Is that something that comes under the category of romance and romantic love? When people in this country… there are all these songs, “I’ve met my dream girl” or my dream boy, “You’re the one for me…” Are we talking about romance?

Jacobson: Well, when I emphasized soulmate, the point here is soul, meaning eternal and something lasting instead of a transient or temporary relationship.

Feder: I guess it would have to be that because after all, let me use myself as a personal example of someone who would be this way, I’m not sure everybody is this way, obviously. I’ve been married a couple of times, and I know some people who have, and certainly everyone listening has had some sort of serious relationship: marriage, marriages.

Jacobson: Crisis.

Feder: I’ve heard it referred to as a plague, there’s like a plague of divorce in this country. Most of the people in this country these days, in the last 30 or 40 years, got married out of what they would have called love: they met “the one.” They met the right one. In other words, we don’t have arranged marriages anymore.

A long time ago, or maybe not so long ago, romance wasn’t the main idea for why people got married. People got married to somebody that they thought was good for them, or there were arranged marriages, families arranged these things. Somehow they seem to do better than we do. Now everybody gets married to the one they think is the perfect one and 52 or 54% of people who get married break up and have these horrible and painful divorces. Is there something that people once knew, like a secret, better than we know now, or is it more complex than that? These are some of the questions we can talk about.

Jacobson: Well, I’m invited to speak often, and there was one place where I was going to give a talk and the host asked me, “What are the favorite, or “hot” topics, that audiences like to hear about. So I said, “Number one is relationships, sexuality, intimacy and Number two of the top ten is pain and suffering.” And he began laughing and said to me, “These aren’t two topics, they’re one topic,” from his perspective.

Feder: It’s like a Henny Youngman joke.

Jacobson: It’s like a double-edged sword because when there’s love there’s always the potential for loss of love and therefore the pain of that loss and pain and love are two sides of the spectrum.

So it’s a topic that I think touches everyone because everyone needs love; love is one of the needs, if not the most important needs, in a person’s life. You can’t live without it, and then some people say you can’t live with it. So I think it’s an issue that covers a lot of ground. I think it would be very gratifying to hear what people have to say, particularly our call-ins, but I would like to just preface by saying one key element:

It’s hard to break complex things into ingredients, but I think it’s sometimes wise to articulate certain ingredients, certain components that are necessary in any healthy relationship. Obviously the ultimate of a relationship is a marriage, but the truth is, it really spills over into any type of relationship, but we’ll talk about the most intimate of all, and that is between spouses.

This question that you’re asking, is it truly possible to expect today to find your eternal soulmate, with the emphasis on eternal? Or do you just try to do the best you can, or as you put it, is it some secret that they knew long ago, or, from a skeptical point of view, maybe they were just conformists then, divorce perhaps was taboo, social pressure was very intense, it wasn’t such an open society, people weren’t so much into their comfort, and their own free expression and free spiritedness. So perhaps all those factors just really forced people together or is it something they actually knew, or both?

It was a simpler type of world, a simpler type of society…today is a more open society. I would say this. The single most important ingredient in a relationship is the thing that is rarely discussed and rarely emphasized, and that is spiritual compatibility.

There is much talk about physical compatibility, emotional and intellectual compatibility, and interests, can people laugh together, and things like that, but there’s a thing called spiritual chemistry, spiritual compatibility. It’s recognizing what a soul is. Your soul and by extension, the soul of another person.

So let me spell out what that component is, and I think this ingredient should it be introduced into a relationship is the key to eternity. The key to a true bonding relationship, and then we can discuss some of the problems around it.

Feder: It’s interesting that you say “introduced,” which is a very hopeful word. In other words, what you may be implying is, let’s say you’re in a relationship right now that you wish was better or wasn’t working out the way you wanted it to, then you could actually save it perhaps by introducing this quality? Not that it has to start from the beginning, but it could be brought in later?

Jacobson: Or if you bring this quality in, you may see that this relationship is unhealthy. That may also happen.

Feder: You mean, if you hold it up to the light, this may happen.

Jacobson: Let’s be direct about it. We talk about all types of compatibility. Spiritual compatibility means that two people share a vision that’s beyond the sum of the parts. They want to build something together that’s greater than each of them. That love is more about transcendence than about getting needs met.

Now clearly love is a need and it’s important to get your needs met, but spiritual compatibility means that you’re building something greater than just your extension of yourself.

Feder: Often people think that means having children.

Jacobson: Children is a manifestation of building something greater out of a relationship. But it’s more than having children. People can have children and not have any spiritual compatibility and the children actually may suffer because you have two adults who have no shared vision and they brought children into the world.

I’m not in any way suggesting that that’s a bad thing per se, but spiritual compatibility is where you are able to know something about your own soul. The problem in our society is how many of us know about our own souls when we go out into the first serious relationship and get married. As one of the Chassidic Rebbes once said, “If I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I, I am not and you are not. But if I am I because I am I and you are you because you are you, then I am and you are.”

In single English it means that if my personality is defined in relation to you, rather than as an independent identity, then I won’t be and you won’t be, we’ll both compromise each other. Often, relationships today are crutches. It’s a search for identity, and that’s why you’ll find sometimes one partner is dominant and the other is more passive, it’s a search for identity, trying to compensate for the lack of your own inner identity.

Love is not just to give you an identity. Love means that you have an identity and now you’re discovering someone else with an independent identity.

Feder: Which vibrates harmoniously with you.

Jacobson: Now, often parents, unfortunately in the dysfunctional society we live in, have not given us that nurturing that allows that self to cultivate itself. So we already adult and we’re in search of a relationship. But we don’t even know who we are spiritually speaking, soul speaking.

When I speak about soul I mean not what you do in your life, career, how much money you have, what color hair you have, and your other personality traits are not who you are but what you do or how you express yourself. Who you are is your deepest innermost vision, and that is an area that is not offered as a course in school to discover yourself; “know thyself…”

Feder: But you know, most people don’t ever even realize that kind of thing, not anyone I’ve met, until they are in their forties and fifties or sixties. I mean, people get married in their twenties and thirties, how many people of that age really know what their true selves are. It seems like such a muddy thing. Should you wait until you discover your true self before you have a meaningful relationship? I guess you are saying that.

Jacobson: Well I’ll tell you something. I’m discussing this in a hypothetical context, not so much in relation to the challenges that our particular society poses for us. In other words, you talk about what did they know then. If they were able to control the educational system of how parents and children, from an early age (let’s talk about the best scenario), and then we can talk about how to introduce it into the scenario of existing realities. So I think that’s a healthy way of approaching it. It’s like all healing. You don’t want to discuss light in the context of darkness, you want to first describe in a hypothetical, quintessential sense how it would work. Well, children would get a very intense spiritual exposure from their parents, meaning, thinking about themselves… Now of course, as a young child we’re not that philosophical, but as we grow into teenagers we do think, instead, today, teenagers are so distracted by so many other things, there’s no time for that, and they’re already thrown into the sexual world and the world of relationships and the complexities and the politics…

Feder: And their own careers.

Jacobson: Right. So essentially we have adults who are essentially spiritual children. And therefore, it’s obvious how our relationships are going to suffer from that. But we’ll discuss what we can do today, under the present circumstances, but we’ll do that a little later.

Let’s just talk for a moment about the concept itself. The concept is about recognizing that relationship, love, romance, intimacy is sublime and spiritual by nature. It’s not like buying bread in a bakery. And it’s not like getting a job, it’s not like getting on a subway. It’s not tangible. You’re dealing with forces that are, I call them, spiritual by nature. If somebody doesn’t like that word, let them use another word, but it’s clearly not material and not tangible and not sensory. It’s super-sensory. That’s why it’s so mysterious and so elusive.

Feder: And yet people sometimes seem so certain that they’ve found it when they’re 22, 28. I’ve been one of those people. And I’ve been wrong.

Jacobson: Because we have a soul and there are glimmers of it, and it could have been that the person may have been but we may not have been ready, we may not have known what to do to maintain it. It’s like having a flash of a glimpse into another reality and then you don’t know how to integrate it or internalize it. It’s a process. Marriage is a process. You grow with another person. It comes down into the details of life, it’s sanctifying daily life with the other person where it’s not so much the glamour and the romance that seems so apparent in movies and in books, but in my book Toward a Meaningful Life, I have a story where a woman was having difficulty finding her soulmate, her beshert as they say in Yiddish, her destined one. And the Rebbe tells her that love is not what you read about in romantic novels, it doesn’t work that way. Not “love at first sight” or some type of passionate surge. Love is something that grows over the years with someone with whom you deal with the realities of life and you infuse it with higher purpose and higher meaning.

And that’s why a relationship in that context cannot be compartmentalized. Oh, now we’re having a relationship. It’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even when you’re at work, even when you’re doing your own independent things…

Feder: It’s still growing.

Jacobson: It’s a holistic experience and a dynamic one at that. Any relationship that is compartmentalized is doomed. Because when other forces in life take over, there may be no room for the relationship any longer.

Another point I want to make is that there are two types of love. There is selfless love—transcendent love, and there’s selfish love—narcissistic love. Most of us, by default, not maliciously, because we’re not taught any other experience, see love as being another need. Perhaps a more romantic one, but another need.

Feder: Like hunger…

Jacobson: And therefore, a need by definition, is narcissistic. Now I’m ready to give because I know I’m going to get something in return. It’s like a contractual thing. I get something so I’m ready to give. But it’s not driven by the giving, it’s driven by the need, by the taking. Whereas a transcendent love is drive by that higher vision. We want to build something together. There’s something that both of us contribute to each other that neither of us own.

That’s why in the Talmud it says there are three partners in a relationship, the man, the woman, and G-d. It’s not just some religious statement. G-d is the element that is beyond the two, it’s the soul, it’s the soul that is part of G-d, it’s the higher purpose. It’s that we are building something that even when things are not working that well, there’s some force that keeps us together. That’s why in Jewish tradition there’s a canopy, a chupah at the wedding ceremony. G-d is not an abstract concept, it’s the idea that there is some higher purpose to the relationship. That a man and woman live in a G-dly way, in a sacred way. And therefore, when it comes to actual love, what is called sexuality today, it is not merely goal oriented for momentary pleasure, but it is experienced as the deepest manifestation of intimacy, including intimacy with your soul, with G-d — intimacy with your higher calling.

Feder: At this point I think we may have scared enough people out there into thinking that they can never achieve a good relationship and so maybe we should go to calls right now and see if we can redeem ourselves!

People get married and most people, let’s say 75% of the people that I know in my life, friends of mine or maybe what happened to me, they leap right into it without that vision that you were speaking about, but it seems that later on, they leap right out of it so quickly… this is almost another part of modern life, that people seem to be able to leap out so quickly. It’s almost as if you hear people saying, “We should have stricter laws…”
This is a constant argument; I read something about this in the Times a few weeks ago, and there are books about it, that the laws should be tightened up about how easy it is to get a divorce. I’m not even sure about that.

And that keeps people together. There was once artificial constraints that may have been, if you could look inside each one of these marriages in the “olden days” which wasn’t so long ago, you would find that people were forced to do it and they weren’t happy, but the more taboos and the more constraints there were, the more difficult it was for people to jump right out of a marriage, and then, the more they were able to finally work on it and feel that finally had saved something.

So let’s take our first call. We have Jim from Jersey City and you’re on the air with Rabbi Jacobson.

Caller: Good evening. The topic you’re discussing is really interesting and I’m really interested in it, however, the fact remains that when you mention the soul, are you talking about the conscience also? Because in the Old Testament, it talks about the conscience, and it’s rather enlightening if you read the context of that scripture.

Feder: So could you sum up your question?

Caller: What I’m trying to get at is why isn’t the word conscience mentioned rather than just soul?

Jacobson: Well, you’re asking a general question about the soul. I’ll connect it to relationships since that’s the topic at hand, but the Bible does state right in the beginning that G-d formed a human being from the dust of the earth, and blew into it, infused it, with a soul, with a spirit. And I think that’s the critical element, that we are not just dust of the earth, we’re not just materialistic creatures, we have a spirit.

And love is very much connected to the spirit. And when the spirit is fed, love will emerge. The same is the opposite way around. When one wants to achieve a long-lasting relationship, it’s critical to identify with that spirit and soul.

Caller: I understand. But my question is with relation to conscience.

Feder: So how is that reflecting on personal relationships here?

Caller: Because we all have a conscience also which is intangible. And that would refer to the soul as well as the conscience.

Jacobson: Okay. When you look into the Kabbalistic teachings, in any discussion of the soul, the soul manifests itself in many ways. It includes a conscience. Without a soul, we would have no conscience. A corpse doesn’t have a conscience. An inanimate entity does not have a conscience or doesn’t have feelings. But I would describe a soul as having parts to it. The soul consists of intellect, emotions, the subconscious, and a conscience.

Let me define what I see as the conscience. When G-d came into the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve had sinned, they had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, it says that Adam was ashamed and Eve was ashamed and they covered themselves. That’s a sense of conscience, a sense of healthy shame, where you know you could be better and you realize, I haven’t lived up to my potential. That’s a direct expression of the soul. If we had no souls, we would be completely unscrupulous, insensitive human beings. So in that context, the soul is very much related to the conscience.

Feder: Okay. Thanks for calling. The number to call, and we’re looking for your calls, is 212-244-0150.

Now we have Nathan calling from New York City. Go ahead, you’re on the air.

Caller: Hi. On one hand, if you speak of the concept of beshert, and on the other hand, you speak about working on a relationship, they almost seem contradictory. Because if the person is your beshert, you might assume that it wouldn’t take that much work to make the relationship work. And if the person is not your beshert, then no matter you worked on the relationship, it wouldn’t help. Such as the matron who asked, “What is G-d doing now that He created the world,” and the rabbi answered, “He’s making matches.” And she said, “I have 500 female slaves, 500 male slaves, I can match them together.” The next day they come back and one has a black eye, one has a broken leg. The mates were fighting with each other. And she comes back and says, “Oh, how wise you were Rabbi, that it really takes G-d to make a proper match.”

Now, those improper matches that ended in fighting and all that, no matter how much they would work on the relationship, it would seem from that story, it wouldn’t help. It would have to have been the right match for it to work.

Jacobson: That’s a very good question and I appreciate it. First, let me explain to the audience what the word beshert means for those who don’t know, the question is, how do you reconcile the two elements? On one hand, there’s some type of predestined soulmate which is clearly stated in the Talmud and in many Jewish sources, that 40 days before every child is born, there’s a call from heaven that says, “You will marry your soulmate, who is this and this individual.” So there’s a concept of beshert…

Feder: You’re predestined to meet somebody.

Jacobson: Predestined spiritually in heaven. This is not prearranged by a parent, this is prearranged in heaven. On the other hand, the point here that I’m discussing is that it takes our initiative, we need to put work into it. So if the person isn’t destined for you, that’s the question that Nathan’s asking.

So let me explain. It’s a good question, and the issue here consists of two things. Even if someone is destined for you, you have to be an appropriate vessel, appropriately fit to be able to receive that person. I know someone who was dating, and the two were very compatible, but ultimately, it didn’t work out. Ten years later they met again and they got married then. And it was clear to me that they were both not ready at the time.

So the work that we put into a relationship is in a sense trying to discover that which is destined.

For example, people who have talents, innate, inborn talents that you were given by birth. Yet, without real work, you may never expose or know that that talent exists. So we can be our own worst enemy that something out there that’s waiting for us, and that’s right for us, still requires our work to discover that potential.

Feder: So in other words, you could run right into a person at a certain time and place and not even recognize him or her.

Jacobson: Yes. You could even mess it up. On the other hand, there’s another concept in the Talmud which says that a person, through their initiative, can change their predestiny. In other words, even though a certain soul was destined for you to be your soulmate, the Talmud says that a person, through their effort, can find even a better soulmate than the one who was predestined.

In other words, though there are predispositions, we can control destiny as well. And this touches upon a bigger concept. For example, there are people who have overcome very difficult handicaps. So it really comes down to this. We’re partner with G-d in the creation. There is a certain plan, and we’re expected to live up to that plan and work at it, but a person, through their efforts, can sometimes surpass that which was allocated for them. And there’s the concept in Kabbalistic thought about often where a second marriage can even be greater than a first one—it’s called a zivug sheini—because it came through the human effort rather than that which was so to speak designated from Above.

Feder: So even this second one, which wasn’t predestined, could actually be by your own efforts, something greater?

Jacobson: Yes.

Feder: So then, with all due respect, why would G-d have to come into it at that point? If it’s all your own efforts…?

Jacobson: It’s a two-way street. There’s no “all your own efforts.” It’s a combination. You meet halfway. It’s like G-d blesses those who help themselves. It’s halfway. Human initiative, human effort, human work, allows and opens up the channels for blessings. We all need a blessing.

It’s like Hillel said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me; if I am only for myself, what am I?” We need to have that kind of delicate balance.

Feder: So their vision needs to be brought in at all times.

Jacobson: Right. But the key here is going back to our initial theme which is that a human being has a spirit and a soul. Being in touch with that is the key to every relationship. When you open yourself up to that, then the right people come your way.

We know today in psychology, people who have experienced serious emotional abuse as children, and they are always finding the wrong relationship for themselves. In other words, they also have a destiny, they also have out there a soulmate, yet the reason that they can be their own worst enemy is that their psychological tools have been impaired and they are always searching to find an unhealthy person, a dominant person who may remind them of their unhealthy father…

Feder: So what you’re saying is that their soul, their own essence, is obscured from themselves because of these problems.

Jacobson: Yes. Exactly. And that’s why it’s critical to see a relationship not just as how you deal with another… it’s not just a matter of how to communicate with another person, it’s learning how to communicate with yourself. With your own soul.

Feder: First.

Jacobson: And then you will learn how to communicate with another.

Feder: Let’s just take a little break to reidentify 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 email 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, and previous and future programs. 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, a wonderful inspirational book.

Now, you were talking about getting to know yourself first as the essence before you relate to somebody else. Now, that’s too vast a topic to try to address tonight. But let’s just say, there you are in a relationship. This is so typical of my generation. You have a couple, let’s say, that’s thirty years ago. They’re married for six, seven, eight years, they have a 2-year-old child. There are such people in the tens of thousands of people around the city, and some of them are listening right now, who are looking at their lives and looking at each other, and wondering what on earth happened to them, as if they were in a battle and they’re shellshocked. They don’t know what to do with each other anymore, there are divorces all over the place. At this juncture, it seems so easy for so many people, and they do it, to jump right out of their relationship.

The question is, at this point, what do you do? Let’s say you’re on your own, and not everyone can run out and find a counselor, what can you do, you’re in the house, on your own. What do you do in a relationship when both people are just standing still, just staring at each other and saying, “I can’t take this anymore. I don’t understand what this is all about. I don’t why I did it in the first place.” And not everyone’s going to go run off to a shrink or a counselor. Not everyone is affiliated with a religious group either. What on earth do people do with themselves who are in a position like this.

Jacobson: Well, if they remain in the status quo, then they’re going to have the results that they had yesterday. I mean, if you’re talking about someone who’s motivated to do something about it, maybe they do have to go to a shrink, frankly, or in the context that I’m discussing here, is introduce in their lives something that is perhaps more spiritual, that is not just driven by economic and selfish concerns.

I’m not suggesting that I have a short solution. You know, “What do you do in a bad relationship?” It depends on how bad it is and it depends on how abusive it is. It could be very unhealthy and maybe you have to get out of it. It’s too general a question.

If it’s something that is not overtly abusive, and it’s something of a more subtle psychological thing where you’re not sure if this is the right thing for you, that I can address much more easily.

If you’re sure that it’s destructive, do you stay in there because of other concerns, children, economic concerns? That’s a question that you have to weigh the abuse and the convenience level.

But our discussion here is not on that technical level, it’s much more of: how can you introduce hope into the relationship if both parties are willing and interested, obviously that’s a prerequisite, but we’ll assume that, but it’s critical that they introduce more dimensions into their lives than just sustenance and material survival.

Relationships cannot exist on just material survival. By definition, relationship means that there are two spirits, there are souls there. Children will be hurt. There has to be some type of higher purpose.

I was discussing earlier more of an initial sense, what does one do?

Let me say this. For a relationship to flourish, the two parties, the spouses have to do more than pay bills or go out to eat together, they need to study together, they need to pray together. They should perhaps take a time every week, an hour, a day, or a week and designating it to studying—I don’t mean about mathematics—I mean about life, about G-d, about philosophy. Something spiritual where they spend time in a more meaningful way than just survival.

In Jewish tradition, there’s the Sabbath. The Sabbath table is one of the greatest gifts. In the Torah, in the Midrash there’s an interesting story that when G-d created the universe, he created it in couples. Sunday and Monday are a couple, Tuesday and Wednesday are a couple, Thursday and Friday are a couple. So Saturday came and complained and said “I’m single. I’m a lonely single.” So G-d said, “Let me find for you another lonely single. And He looked around and saw the Jewish people. And He said, “I will match the two. The Jewish people and the Sabbath.” Two lonely singles as one beautiful couple.

The Sabbath has always been for Jews an extremely important day for relationships, besides the fact that it’s a day where we try to suspend our involvement and immersion in the material world, therefore, it’s a day that’s conducive for study, for prayer, for personal communication. To spend time with the family. That’s why the Sabbath table is such a powerful force. I would suggest that if anyone’s dating someone—we’ve talked about finding your true dream soulmate—invite them, don’t just go out to party together. And not in a corny way. Go join something spiritual, go to a Sabbath table, go to a class. You’ll see new elements of each of the people emerge and you’ll begin seeing the spiritual side of the human being.

This is what a serious relationship is about. It’s not just whether or not you can have fun together, whether you can support each other, whether the partner is financially able…these are all important elements. But the single most important thing is invite each other, and spend time in an environment that is more spiritual, and you’ll see that you’ll begin to see parts of the other’s person’s personality emerge that you would not have seen.

Now, in our society today this may sound a little strange, because this is not what dating is about. Dating is much more about fast lane, and about partying, but if we don’t take control of our lives, no one will. We live in a vicious cycle.

The social pressure and peer pressure on young people today in high schools and what they see around them is so intense, that in life, as I often like to say in the classes I give, either you are going to be influenced, or you will influence. If you don’t take your life in your own hands, then it will be taken in the hands of others.

Not any one individual, but we drift off and we are all chasing each other’s tail and nobody even knows whose the driving force.

Relationships is a key arena where this battle takes place. Who’s in control? Are you a victim or are you not? I would say in most cases we end up being, by default, victims because of what we’ve been given on a platter. The pressure on boys and girls in high school to conform and do it this way is very intense. You don’t want to be a nerd, and someone who stands out. Or too modest or whatever it is.

And I think that women in particular have been hurt more than men in a way because in a sense, a woman has a gentler nature, and in Jewish thought, in Jewish mysticism, the woman in a way, appreciates romance and love much deeper than a man does. A man also has a feminine side, but women have to, in a sense, rise to the occasion and reclaim what we’ll call the innocence, the beauty, the sublime nature of what romance and love is all about. And not succumb to the pressures that so much of our male society has imposed upon us. And you’ll see that men will appreciate that as well too, because love and relationships ultimately are beautiful because of their elusiveness, their magic, the mystery involved. It’s not about technique. If somebody dedicates their time to intellectually articulating romance, then you’re destroying, undermining the entire purpose. So it’s important to appreciate that.

There are things in life that when you let go, that’s when you master it. If you try to master it, you can never control it.

Feder: Now, of course you’re not suggesting that on a first date, when somebody meets somebody—or maybe you are—we go to a class or a religious service together or something like that. Most people are going to go to a movie, or out to dinner, right?

Jacobson: It’s very hard: I see from the mail we’ve been getting that the audience is very diverse. So it’s very difficult to make a general statement. It depends on who the people are and what their givens are.

If I was speaking to an audience that was exclusively non-spiritual, but they’re interested in having a good relationship, an enduring one, a healthy one, a wholesome one, then my approach would be: listen, we all have a spiritual side to ourselves, whether you call it that or not. How you date is obviously going to be formed and determined by what your preferences are. So let two people find their own preferences. I’m just stating that at some point, if a relationship is to get serious, introduce that spiritual side to it.

It may be a book that’s touched you deeply. Share that with the person you’re dating and ask them to read it. And discuss it. The point is to bring it to another level that society does not offer us. That’s my real point here. And for everyone in a different way. There may be two people who happen to be religious and they’re dating. The point is, it should be a priority…there’s a tradition that when Isaac got engaged to Rebecca, in the Bible, he spent 2-3 years studying and spiritually refining himself before he went into the marriage. Because he understood that that would infuse the relationship with an entirely different dimension. And he spent time away from Rebecca, interestingly.

It reminds me of one of the quotes I have in Toward a Meaningful Life about relationships. One of the Rebbes says that when you are close when you should be distant, you’ll be distant when you should be close.

Part of a relationship between a man and a woman consists of a certain dance, you could say, that reflects a cosmic dance, which is, that there are two entities here, each has its boundaries, its space, yet they want to come together. You have to respect the space at the same time come together. So how do you do that by recognizing that there are times where that line, that boundary, has to be respected. Times of silence. Not always good to be on top of each other all the time. It’s important that people are able to pray on their own—I mean p-r-a-y, not p-r-e-y

Feder: I remember that people feel like they have to be with each other, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and materially almost all the time. And they almost feel like it’s a sin, or they’re breaking some kind of romantic love connection if they feel like they want to go off on their own to be themselves. It’s such a terrible thing that people feel this pressure.

Jacobson: Well, it’s a balance that needs to be reconciled. There’s so much to be said on this topic because it’s such a large topic. I’m not trying to simplify it, but I do think it comes down to looking at your own life in a new way, with a fresh perspective.

Now many people, to play the skeptic, will say, “Hey, leave me alone with all of this religious, spiritual stuff.” Look, you can’t expect that overnight that suddenly a new climate in relationships is going to take over, but I will say that, from my experiences and travels, is that there is a very high degree of misery when it comes to relationships. Sometimes people need to hit rock bottom to be able to look at it in a new way. And you said it very accurately. Most people need to be at least 40 years old, and to have gone through at least one crisis and loss to really see that they have to look at it differently. You become much wiser with time.

I still think that young people, and that’s what we can do through the education system and as parents, can be introduced to “reclaiming” a long lost secret. Which is that the spirit is quite a healthy and important component in life. We need to do away with the stereotypes and misconceptions and myths that spirit is this religious dogma that you have to be afraid of.

Most people, when you speak of the word “romance,” don’t connect that to a religious thing. But frankly, if you read Song of Songs, one of the most romantic narratives of King Solomon, we are taught that King Solomon was simply using the metaphor of a romance between a man and a woman to describe the romance between human being and G-d.

And when you look at romance in that way it’s a very powerful thing. One of the things I stated in my talk in South America…

Feder: This is not just an American problem. This is a worldwide problem.

Jacobson: Well, America and South America, but I believe it’s all over the place. It’s an interesting thing. That when you get down to issues of love, romance, tears, whenever anyone says to me, how are you able to be so universal. I answer, have you ever seen that human tears are different from one country to another. Do the Japanese cry differently than Americans?

When it comes to the real human emotions, nothing has changed. We’re really all the same in many ways. And we all experience pain, we all need love. It’s just that we’re so caught up in the things that divide us, we sometimes forget that.

But the point I made was, and I’d like to submit this to you, Mike, and to the listening audience, is to juxtapose for a moment the two approaches to romance and love. We’ll call it the predominant conventional secular evolutionary approach, and I will submit the Torah, biblical, spiritual approach.

There are many scientific reasons given why there is sexual attraction from man to woman and from woman to man. The predominant one is the evolutionary theory. Perpetuation of the species is the single most important law in life. That the species must survive, survival of the fittest. Because that’s the single most important thing, therefore, evolution (so the theory goes), nature, evolved in such a way that man and woman need to be attracted to each other, because if not, they would be no perpetuation of the species.

That attraction, as is discussed in many scientific journals today, is that the woman searches for certain type of man for the “best” type of potential seed, the man searches for the best type of woman, one who can bear the healthiest child. The attraction is all a means to the end called perpetuation of the species.

So ultimately, and I’ll exaggerate a little just to make my point, romance is really not an end in itself. We can almost say it’s a trick of evolution and nature to get them together. It doesn’t have any value in and of itself.

Sophisticated human beings are not going to just mate if they don’t have some type of romantic vision. But basically, when you come right down to it, from a purely dispassionate, merciless view, it’s like two bacteria coming together. Except if you tell that to people they will say, “No, it’s not bacteria. We have museums and art and romance and love. And there are books and poems. I’m dying for the person I love. How could you compare me to bacteria?”

But essentially, it is an evolutionary concept that it is bacteria mating, except that you need to coax them into the room, so in some way, the romantic visions have been created and you have this whole illusion of love. But love is not an end in itself. When it comes down to it, it’s a almost completely depersonalized element, perpetuation of the species.

As I said, I exaggerated a little just to make my point.

The biblical view now. The Torah view. The reason that the sexes are attracted to each other, man to woman and woman to man is that they were created as one entity: “Male and female He created them,” it says in the Bible, and split them into two and they search for each other.

They are searching for unity. Their own unity and for unity with G-d. For becoming one with a greater reality.

Children is a second level of perpetuating the species. That is, G-d says to Adam and Eve, “Mate and have children.” But the romance itself is an end in itself. It has a beauty of itself, and the romance is the search for unity, the search for G-d, the search for your inner self, your whole self.

Not to suggest that a person is half a human being without his or her mate. That’s not my point. It’s just that there’s some search for the elusive, for the beyond. And you become greater than yourself through love and romance.

So I submit this to everyone. You compared the two and you tell me which resonates. What really resonates when you are truly in love. And should the latter approach resonate more, I would say that is spiritual love. It’s not just about perpetuation of the species. And I’m not taking away any of that importance. It’s not a means to an end. Love itself is the search for G-d. And it’s not, per se…

Feder: Maybe the search for love is the search for G-d.

Jacobson: Okay. But love equals G-d and G-d equals love. That’s why when the gentleman came to Hillel, the great sage in the Talmud, and said, “Teach me the entire Torah standing on one foot,” do you know what he said to him?

Feder: Love?

Jacobson: “Don’t do unto others that which you don’t want done unto you.” Love equals transcendence equals all of Torah. The ability to appreciate that spirit dominates over matter and not matter over spirit. That’s what true love is.

Feder: Well, that one resonates more with me, and probably more with most people. We’re approaching the end of the program. This has been Mike Feder and Rabbi Simon Jacobson. This is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. You can write to us at the Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11213.

I want to mention that this program was underwritten, made possible, by Dr. Ronald Hoffman. We thank him very much for doing so.

Jacobson: I should add that Dr. Hoffman has his own radio show.

Feder: Yes. It’s on WOR. Right. A health program.

Jacobson: I want to voice my own appreciation to him as being a big support to the show and inspiring others as well to be part of this.

Feder: We have about two minutes left. We usually end with a practical suggestion but, you almost gave it already, to study together, to look for something higher, more transcendent…

Jacobson: No. I’d like to sum it up. Number one, we’re dealing with many situations, but for those who are dating, as I said, you want to find out as much as you can about your partner. One of the best ways is to—throw them I was going to say—bring them into an environment that is not a natural environment. Some people are great in bars. Some people are great in pool rooms. Some people are great in movies. Some people are great at the dinner table, and so on. To introduce and bring two people into a more spiritual environment, it could be a class, and I don’t mean this in any type of corny context, but to introduce a new element can always bring, and merge, and surface new dimensions; that’s for people who are dating, that’s one practical suggestion.

It could be a Sabbath table, it could be a class, it could be a discussion between the two that deals with spiritual matters.

For those in relationship already, in marriages, it’s critical that the soul emerges. You must have the soul there. For your children, for your spouse, for those around you. And that will nourish and allow a relationship to flourish.

And I want to finally conclude with a blessing. We live in New York City, which is the Mecca of singles. So let me say that all those who need to find their soulmates, it’s out there, but you have to do your part. And G-d meets you halfway.

Feder: Thank you very much.

Tags: love, marriage, soul mate, dating
Posted in Personal Life, Love & Marriage | 2 Comments »

Sexuality or Intimacy?

June 16th, 2014

Mike Feder: Good evening, this is Mike Feder and welcome to another edition of Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. Tonight our topic is sexuality. I’m going to plunge right into the subject if you don’t mind the expression. I never just say hello. I just barge right into the subject. Hi, how are you?

Simon Jacobson: You always seem to be plunging. It’s a metaphor for life. Try to swim once in a while…

Feder: Instead of just jumping…. Okay. Here we go. So tonight’s subject is sexuality, which is something I presume is going to interest everybody listening. Let’s start off with a simple question. What would you say is, in your opinion, the origin of sexuality?

Jacobson: Okay. Well I should preface this by saying that everyone comes with his or her axioms or points of reference. This show, Toward a Meaningful Life, which has been very gratifying to myself and I know to you, Mike, and to many of our listeners who have written and called us, is essentially based on Torah wisdom. A scholarship, a body of knowledge and experience, that goes back thousands of years—time-tested—and I think it’s important at the outset to state from which perspective I’m coming from.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and everyone has their approach, based on life experiences, trial and error, education, schooling, home, or just whatever they pick up. This show comes from a body of information and knowledge called the Torah, which is considered and believed to be Divine in nature, but not in any form of presentation that is dogmatic: that this is what you must believe or this is what you must accept.

Our show is meant, as the name implies (Toward a Meaningful Life) to offer an option, or to offer a life approach that for me has been personally transformative, and I feel it is my responsibility and obligation, as it is for everyone to share the knowledge that you’ve learned.

I particularly elaborate here because we are dealing with a topic (sexuality) which is by no means one that anyone is neutral about. Everyone has a sexual nature, everyone has a need for sexuality, everyone has a sexual personality, so to speak, and everyone has been shaped, in one way or another, in their sexual preferences, in how they express and experience it, whether inside or out of marriage today, and I’m sure everyone listening will have a very strong opinion in the matter, so I feel it is very important to preface that I’m coming from a perspective that is very defined, yet extremely flexible and surprisingly, extremely free-spirited.

I specifically use that word because most people would attribute religion or Torah to a very inhibited and narrow definition of sexuality. Especially in our generation called the Sexual Revolution, a generation of free-spiritedness: non-conformist, even marriage, should not be seen as “just because everyone’s doing it” type of thing. And it became a much freer approach to it.

Now, what I intend to discuss, and I hope we cover it extensively enough, is to describe what actually is sexual freedom? What does it mean to be free, to be a free spirit? How does sexuality play into that and what happens when sexuality enslaves you to your obsessions, as we see people sometimes can become completely irrational…

I’m sure, Mike, you have some of these questions, but I’m just expressing from my own mind some of my own terms.

So let’s begin with the question you asked which is the foundation of it all, “What is sexuality?” Where does it originate from, where does it come from?

Now, I think for contrasting purposes, I think it’s wise to use two models or two approaches to sexuality. One, the prevalent, contemporary, scientific approach. I don’t even know if the word scientific is right; let’s call it a theory, a biological theory: the evolutionary theory of sexuality. And then I’ll contrast it with the biblical one.

I’m sure there are many others and I don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves.

Feder: I think those two will cover a lot of ground.

Jacobson: But even within the secular world, I’m sure there are many approaches. I’ll just take one as an example, and that’s the evolutionary theory which is essentially based on the idea that perpetuation of the species, survival of the fittest, is the primary force in nature, in all species.

Feder: From single cells right up through the chain…

Jacobson: Exactly. Through animals and humans. So perpetuation of the species is the result of a sexual relationship between a male and a female and the case of human beings as well as animals, from this perspective, (I’m just presenting this briefly) the key is perpetuation of the species.

Based on this theory, the male will search for the female that is most fertile, that will bear the healthiest offspring, and the female will search for a male that provides the healthiest seed, that is the most virile and that will protect the young. This is a theory—without discussing the virtues or the vices—which explains quite a few reasons how people mate or search for each other. Why certain features in the woman or in the man are extremely enticing or attractive to the opposite sex because they reflect on elements of fertility or signs of health that are important for the perpetuation of the species. This objective is the underlying force behind all courtship, behind the beauty, and the romance, and behind the sensuality

Feder: Or mysticism…

Jacobson: Right. Behind it all lies really a primal force. Existence, and perpetuation of that existence. Since human beings do have some sophistication, this theory states that human sophistication has evolved. People are not ready to think of themselves merely as production machines to bear children, so in order to justify, or to entice, two people into a union, evolution and biology have evolved to the point where it creates pleasure in sexuality; it creates interest, mystique as you put it, Mike, a mystery that attracts you, an elusiveness, and all that results in the romantic journey.

Feder: So now we’re one step above survival of the fittest. We’re rising higher.

Jacobson: No. Our rising higher is essentially just a way of nature packaging that attraction. So in a sense, it is like two bees searching for each other. So one bee will buzz a certain way or give off a certain scent because it’s attracted to the other, but essentially what it comes down to is that these are tactics that get them together to mate and bear offspring.

Human beings are sophisticated, so they need to have some type of—I don’t want to call it an excuse—but it’s a means to another end. The attraction, the chase, the romance, the flowers, the music, the moonlight, are really essentially just nature’s way of getting two people together.

Feder: Here’s our scientific view here!

Jacobson: It’s a view which basically means that all the mystique and the romance and the beauty that we so attribute to love, is essentially to get people together to mate and perpetuate the species.

Remember, nature is merciless. Nature must prevail. And that’s how people establish a relationship.

Now, I’m not minimizing the extent to which people will pursue love in that fashion, I just wanted to give you that approach.

Now, let’s contrast it with the Torah approach.

The Torah approach is stated specifically in Genesis, in the Bible, right in the beginning, that sexual attraction—meaning the attraction of the sexes to each other—man to woman, woman to man, is driven by a completely different force. Not perpetuation of the species, but the search for their divine image; for their quintessential self.

The way the Bible puts it, that G-d created male and female He created them, G-d, split them into two, and they search for each other.

They’re not half individuals, obviously, man is a complete personality and woman is a complete personality, but there are elements in their transcendental search, in their completeness, that remain incomplete if they don’t find each other. Because there’s something missing in each of them; they were once part of a greater whole.

To put it in more mystical, or more divine terms, they’re really searching to become one with G-d.

The human race is really one entity; male/female. The male and female are split into two. When these two come together, unite in a marital union, mate, they together reflect the divine image in which they were both created as one.

Feder: I assume part of this plan, that there is a particular female and a particular male searching for each other, to unite. It’s not just any male or female…

Jacobson: Right, but before we get into specifics, let’s talk about Adam and Eve. There were no other human beings, so it’s only Adam and Eve who represent the human race…before we break it into millions or billions of people. We’re talking about the male species and the female species.

Male and female are really two forms of energy that are complete only when they’re together. When I say complete, I don’t mean to minimize any individual personality, but complete in a more divine, more cosmic sense. Like a positive and a negative charge. Interestingly, the Kabbalah, which is the mystical area of Torah thought, discusses male and female not just among humans. It sees it as two forms of energy that, in the most abstract form, one can be called an internal energy and the other a projective energy. Feminine energy and masculine energy that exists in each man and in each woman for that matter and in every part of nature.

In the most tangible, physical sense, it’s a man and a woman, but on a subtle and sublime level, male and female are two forms of energy that essentially—even G-dliness is sometimes described in the feminine and sometimes in the masculine.

Feder: In Torah? It’s not always just the paternalistic G-d?

Jacobson: No, not at all. On the contrary. Many of the spiritual terms are all feminine. One of the names for G-d is, for example, the Shechinah, which is the feminine dimension of G-dliness.

What you usually find is that the masculine is more of a projective energy and the feminine is much more of a regal, majestic, internal type of energy. But it’s just really two types of forms that together create one whole, one entirety.

So “male and female He created them” combine both male and female energies, which ultimately evolve into what we call the biological man and the biological woman. But their biology and their anatomy is simply the tip of the iceberg. They only express a much deeper, more profound psychological, spiritual distinct energy.

This doesn’t mean that they’re completely different. Man and woman can be 90% similar, as we know in the chromosomes, but there are elements which are primarily male and others which are primarily female—I should add that there are men who have more feminine energy than do some women, and there are some woman who have more masculine energy. But essentially, there is a general balance. The gentle character of a woman, as opposed to a man, meaning, the man can be more brutal, physical stronger, more dominant…

Feder: More aggressive…

Jacobson: More ego, you know, the male ego. All this is essentially reflective of masculine energy. And I want to qualify this and say to all the listeners, do not apply this to every man and woman you meet, because we are talking somewhat about a quintessential man and woman.

Remember, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you have to remember that you’ve been shaped not just by the way G-d created you, but also by social forces, work force, home, schooling, education—so much of it is social programming. Let’s not consider that everything that has been socially programmed into the feminine consciousness or male consciousness is divine.

Feder: Let me just bring it back to a question you said before. These energies were split and became men and women on earth, presumably G-d, the Divine presence, split these energies and they come together and rejoin with G-d, or become not one with G-d—that’s more like an Eastern way of looking at it—but my question is: a) why were they split in the first place? But really, we’re all struggling towards each other, why the need for the struggle, or is that a whole other program?

Jacobson: It’s definitely another program, but, it’s in context and I’ll incorporate it into my final sentence as we proceed here.

So what we have is as follows. A split of two energies, and a yearning and inclination to become one whole. The human race is created in the Divine image, but that human race is half male and half female, and through their union they become that larger whole, that Divine image that unites or searches for union with G-d, for a higher reality.

Now, this is, in essence, the soul of sexual attraction. This attraction, which manifests itself in many physical sensations, from a faster heartbeat to a physical attraction to another person, is essentially the attraction of male to female and female to male to become a complete whole or a complete unit. Connecting to their “higher reality,” not that they’ve ever been completely disconnected, but consciously, people can go off on their own individual narcissistic, even selfish, path. And here, there’s a voice in you saying, I yearn for something greater. So it’s interesting, when a man is attracted to a woman physically, it may sound like a very biological thing, but from a Jewish, Torah perspective, it’s just a physical manifestation of a very deep spiritual attraction.

Feder: In both directions…

Jacobson: Right. Male to female, female to male. Now, your question must be answered. The reason for this split is precisely the same reason why we exist. You can ask the question: who needs this whole thing? Because G-d wanted us to be partners with Him in creation, in existence. And in order for that to occur, there has to be a split, which we overcome. In other words, existence is, in essence, also a split-off from G-d in a conscious level.

Like the analogy given of a wise parent who wants his or her child to earn something on their own, the parent will hide his or her presence; they will make sure that they are not impeding by influencing the child, they won’t hold his hand. But they’re watching, and they want the child to be wise.

In other words, the split is almost most like an obscuring, a shrouding, so we can deceive ourselves into thinking that all there is is myself.

There is a famous analogy (you see it on greeting cards, it’s already turned into a cliché but it doesn’t take away from its truth) where you see a picture of your life as captured by two sets of footprints in the sand walking along a beach. And then suddenly it turns into one set of footprints, which represents a time of deep personal pain and was loss.

So he says to G-d, “Why did you forsake me? You walked side by side with me my entire life, but then in my most difficult times of loss, there’s only one set of footprints there. You left me.” So G-d responds, “Well, that was when I was carrying you.”

Feder: I heard this put another way in a Buddhist book once, where someone was explaining what this is all about and he said, “Think of a waterfall and we’re all on one stream together. It hits a cliff and all the individual droplets and streams drop and fall off, but at the bottom, what they’re all yearning for is to join in that pool again.

Jacobson: I think that’s a beautiful analogy and I would parallel it with a Kabbalistic one which does the same with sparks. You take, for example, two stones and you crash them against each other, they do not fuse into one. However, when one unit of fire begins crackling, the sparks go off into the dark. But essentially, if you’re able to bring two sparks together, they melt and fuse into one indistinguishable unit. Fire, similar to water, has that magnetic attraction. Bring two flames together and they become one, you can’t distinguish, as it is with two drops of water. So actually, water and fire are two very good analogies, and the one with the sparks is an analogy for the soul, because every soul is compared to a flame, and flames—your flame inside of you, Mike, and mine inside of me, and everyone listening, everyone in this world, has a small flame. And when you open your flame up, it draws another flame closer. That’s really what love is all about. It’s like two flames coming together, and when they do, they both melt into one without one becoming less than the other, because they now equally contribute to the larger whole.

And the split is necessary, because that’s what gives life purpose.

Feder: Speaking of contributing to a larger whole, it is time for us to reidentify 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. We are here every week from 6-7pm on Sunday evening.

Rabbi Jacobson is the director of the Meaningful Life Center in Brooklyn out of which a lot of things flow, and one of the main things that we talk about, that’s a blueprint for the program is the Rabbi’s book, Toward a Meaningful Life, published by William Morrow. Virtually every subject that we cover on this show, no matter how specific, general, or newsworthy, is covered in this book.

Let me give you some of the ways in which you can contact us or 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 email us at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com. You can always write to us at: The Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11213.

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, so let’s sort of split up a little bit so we can reunite at the end of the show. Let me ask you some questions here. So then, since we have these descriptions, both scientific and Torah knowledge about this, is the main purpose of sexuality to unite and find a higher power and higher meaning.

Is there any other kind of sexuality besides marital sex—I guess what I’m struggling to say is —is that the highest kind of sexuality? I wouldn’t want to say that it’s the only kind, but is that the higher goal of sexuality, then, is to unite in marriage? I mean, after all, this is a religious perspective and a lot of people would probably say that’s what he’s driving at.

Jacobson: Well, actually, what I’m driving at is something much more profound than marriage, and maybe then, let’s give a more profound definition of what marriage really is.

Feder: I’m also talking about pre- and extra-marital relations…

Jacobson: I understand. Let us now compare these two schools of thought, and I’ll carry that into your question—because I think that preface will help greatly—one is driven by biological needs of perpetuation of species. Contrast that with two souls in search for a greater whole and, as I often say on this program, we don’t draw any conclusions here, I just try to present this objectively to the audience, and see what resonates in your heart. Which approach do you prefer in defining love, which approach resonates more: a love that is simply nature’s way of getting you to mate with someone so that the species can perpetuate itself, or perhaps, the attraction is more sublime, as an end in itself, to achieving a greater unity. Frankly, I know what resonates for me. When I first studied this, I found it amazing that the Torah’s view is much more romantic than the secular view.

I should add, that the sacred marital union also has the effect of creating new life. Indeed, it is as a result of the powerful divine nature of a marital sexual relationship that it gives us the ability to actually create as G-d creates. And bearing children enhances and actualizes the manifestation of the divine unity achieved in the relationship. However, this does not mean that perpetuation of the species is the only end in itself. On the contrary: the unity of two people becoming part of the divine image gives them the power to bring life into the world. So it’s really a completely different direction.

Feder: So the point of getting together is not specifically or exclusively just to produce a child?

Jacobson: Exactly. There is something divine about that in itself. That is why you find the sanctity of mating and marriage, which we’ll soon discuss, even with people who are older, beyond childbearing age, and even people, whom doctors say cannot have a child. So one would argue, according to the Torah view, “Hey, no perpetuation of the species, what’s the point of marriage and sexuality? Just a selfish pleasure?” The answer is no. Male and female uniting is a divine act, a divine experience.

Now this leads me directly into the question you asked. I ask everyone to listen to this objectively, as if it’s not ourselves, because as soon as you think about it in relation to yourself, you get emotional, subjective, and I don’t necessarily mean you Mike, I mean everyone in general, including myself.

We live in a society, a community, that’s strongly influenced by different sexual attitudes. Sexuality is a real part of our lives. That’s why it is critical to attempt to discuss this issue somewhat dispassionately. And then we’ll bring it back to a personal situation.

Based on this principle, sexuality, according to the Torah view, is essentially a sacred experience.

Even the attraction of male and female to each other, every element of it, is inherently sacred. That is why, in my book, Toward a Meaningful Life (that you mentioned earlier, Mike) I named the chapter on sexuality — “Intimacy.”

And I make the point there that there’s sexuality and there’s intimacy. I would say sexuality is, let’s call it, the physical part of the union; intimacy we’ll call the spiritual part of the union. Sexuality without intimacy is essentially somewhat animalistic and primitive. It is missing a crucial ingredient if it remains merely a physical thing, as mundane, say as consuming food.

Now I’m not saying that sexuality is not pleasurable, even divorced of intimacy, but it’s by no means fulfilling its potential, and I would even say it has many destructive elements if it’s lacking intimacy.

We live today in a crisis of intimacy. People are very sexual, but ask them if they’re intimate. Let me define intimacy. Intimacy is not just a sexual act. It’s not just about technique, and it’s not just in the bedroom. Intimacy is even at the kitchen table. I don’t mean sexuality at the kitchen table, I mean, even at work, it’s the ability to celebrate your vulnerability. To be with someone in an intimate way means that you can share, your defenses are down, you don’t feel the need to protect yourself as you do when you’re in the street, or at work, or when we’re with people who are like sharks and we need to protect ourselves.

Feder: It’s apropos. Because where are people more defenseless than in a sexual setting.

Jacobson: They are, but I must say that people have brought their tools of defenses into the bedroom as well. So sexuality is perceived like an intimate act, but it not always is. In most cases, people are protecting themselves and that’s why you find that there’s a certain kind of frivolousness in sexuality as well.

People, especially you hear it from the male side, and women are trying to emulate that somewhat, a certain depersonalization which people are proud of. “I’m not committed to you, but I’ll have sex with you,” that kind of thing.

That is sexuality without commitment.

Now commitment is sometimes seen by some as the price you pay for getting your sexual needs met. It’s not seen as something to celebrate. Because commitment means, “Oh, that means I also have to provide for her, or she for me, it means taking out the garbage, there are inconveniences.

Feder: This is what I have to do if I want regular sex.

Jacobson: Right. That type of approach. And unfortunately, that has seeped into our culture, where sexuality has become an end in itself, that the act in itself has become an end. What’s missing is that, no, this is a male and female energy that’s uniting in a divine way, and therefore in a sacred way. And part of sexuality is intimacy. Therefore, sexuality is not just about technique and physical preparation, but also communication is an integral part of the intimate experience of a male and female uniting. THIS is what the Torah calls marriage. The intimate committed part of the relationship. The vulnerability that you celebrate. The sanctity that you embrace.

That’s why I wanted to give a preface. You hear the word marriage—I’ll ask the question as a skeptic would, as I do in my book the other way around—”Why should two people get married altogether? Why go through the formality, and the marriage contracts, and marriage licenses and all that stuff, prenuptial agreements…?”

Feder: Well, I wanted to do a whole radio program on marriage sometime…

Jacobson: We will. But I wanted to just state it here. People argue, “Why not just live together?” Some may answer: Well, the families want a party. — I’m just being a little facetious. Others will say, there’s more of a commitment when there’s a contract. And I’ll say, Oh really? In other words, it’s like a business contract.

But remember, when two people don’t love each other, no piece of paper will help then remain truly committed.

Feder: It said in the paper that Marla Maples got cast off because she signed a pre-nuptial agreement, so it was a business deal they made.

Jacobson: Well, yes. Because what’s happening is that intimacy is becoming more and more compromised, and what’s happening is that sexuality is turning into nothing more than another human need. You want to have someone on your arm to go to a party with—there are certain conveniences and my needs need to be met, in other words, sexuality is seen as a need. And a very powerful need, but nothing more.

What I’m trying to suggest is that by taking the approach that you understand this as being a divine experience, what you give is more important as what you get. It’s not as much about your needs as much as it’s about what you give.

Feder: Maybe this is an interesting point to ask as the next question, which flows into this, which is, if all these things which seem to be very subtle, and some things that you have to live with a lot of experience to understand, then let’s talk about teenage sex, which is rampant.

Jacobson: I think it’s important to address this in terms of preventive medicine, from the root, so to speak.

We will get into this a little later, when we discuss what can be done today, under the circumstances, about our sexual/intimacy crisis.

But, you see, I don’t want to shape the thoughts and philosophy based on a crisis, or based on a certain distorted attitude toward sexuality. To put it bluntly, and I don’t like to speak this way, because I don’t want to appear like an evangelist or a preacher, which I’m not, and this show is not meant to be that…we live in a time of crisis in understanding our sexual personalities. We live in a time where we do not fully relate to our intimate personalities. Sexuality becomes increasingly technique, method, conquest, bedroom politics. It’s what we see in the newspapers, it’s how men treat women, how women in turn treat men.

Now there’s much beauty, and I’m not suggesting that there is no great joy out there, but there’s a lot of pain. And personally, I’ve seen much, much pain in this particular area, to the point where many, many people are wondering whether it’s worth it. Or, it’s worth it to some extent but I’m not going to put myself on the line too much.

Feder: There’s a whole movement out there of people choosing celibacy as the way to go.

Jacobson: Okay. That’s one extreme. Or, which I think is even worse, is those that are choosing sexuality but not allowing their intimate selves to emerge. They don’t want to be hurt. So they’re not becoming vulnerable. They’re coming with their tools, but they’ve learned, we’ve learned in a way to be sexual without being personal. It’s almost considered to be a virtue. And some people feel that they just can’t do it. They don’t know why. I would say it’s very healthy that they can’t do it. And those who could, have, in a sense, numbed part of their personalities.

Feder: We’re going to get to the part of the program soon where we’re going to discuss what you think we can do about this, or how to address this, but let me ask you one or two other questions which fit into this whole subject.

One that inevitably comes up is, you were talking the whole program about men and women, then what about homosexuality. There are hundreds of thousands, maybe a couple of million people in this country who identify themselves as homosexual, and maybe even more that don’t identify themselves publicly. This is a big question in this country. And if it’s man and woman struggling towards each other to reach a higher level, then how is it possible that anyone who is a homosexual could be engaging in even legitimate sex from that point of view, from either point of view, the scientific or the Torah. Hard questions but they need to be asked.

Jacobson: It’s important to ask because they’re very relevant today and I embrace the questions. I hope you embrace my answers as well as I embrace your questions!

Feder: I’m listening. I’m sitting here listening…

Jacobson: I’ll say this and I want to address it in context of what you asked earlier about pre-marital sex and so on. I think that there is a very distorted definition of marriage in people’s minds, and that is, that it’s seen as an institution, similar to other institutions in our society. What I was trying to present here is that from a Torah point of view, marriage—let’s not call it marriage, let’s call it sacred union or the sanctity of intimacy and sexuality—the marriage between intimacy and sexuality. That’s what marriage is about. Where two people love each other and that love permeates not just the bedroom, and not just their bodies, but it permeates their psyches, their minds and their hearts, and above all, their souls. They share a common vision, they want to build something greater than the sum of the parts, and sexuality is part of that bigger whole.

When two people like that come together, their sexuality is not just a temporary one-night stand, and it’s not just pleasure-oriented for the moment. Which is good litmus test, by the way. Any sexuality which does not spill over into your daily life, into your work in a healthy way, that makes your life more harmonious, means that it’s sexuality and not intimacy. If it was intimacy, your next day will be a better day, too.

I would go even a step beyond that and say that sexuality divorced of intimacy will not only not spill over into harmony, it will create havoc with the rest of your day. Because either you’re searching for your next mate, or you’re having your politics with this one. It becomes a very embattled state.

Feder: As they say in debates, the question is still sitting on the table.

Jacobson: I’m getting there. I’m not avoiding the question, I’m just articulating what my understanding is, from a Torah perspective, of what a full, complete union is. And therefore, pre-marital sex is a symptom of other underlying problems. So I’m not going to point my finger that that’s the problem.

That’s a result of other problems. That’s a result of young people in a generation like ours that don’t know what sexuality is. What is the reason that we don’t find it acceptable for infants to have sex. Even the concept is repulsive. Why? Because they are not ready for such an experience. They don’t know anything. What do they know about that part of their personalities.

So at what age, I would ask the secular scholar, or the government for that matter, or any parent, at what age exactly is the age of maturity. Is the answer, when they know how to inhale? When they can smoke? When they can drive? Because they become more mature chronologically, or is it because you’re not in control of them, does that make them no longer infants?

Now I’m not suggesting that everyone’s an infant, but I believe that sexuality and spirituality and intimacy are very much interlinked, and you can be 40 years old and still be five years old on a sexual level. Not in sexual experience, mind you, I don’t mean that. But on an understanding of what’s happening when two people come together. Do we even know? Is it anything more than pleasure? Is anything deeper going on?

And what happens when it creates havoc in our lives. And we realize that we have to go to therapy…

So what I’m suggesting is that we’re living in a time, and now I’m leading up to homosexual issue, where our entire sexual identity is completely unknown to most of us, and it’s completely trial and error. People get involved, the dating process, teenagers, experimenting, and with all the confusion of adolescence intertwined with drugs and rock and roll and everything else. And what happens is that once you have the experience, it just contributes to divorcing it from intimacy, from true communication.

The essential problem with pornography has always been stated as being depersonalized sexuality. And pornography doesn’t always mean very overt pornography. There is pornography in spirit. A general attitude to sexuality. Many of the exposé shows on television…

Feder: And every magazine cover you see on a rack.

Jacobson: Exactly. And I’m not from the fire and brimstone point of view. I think those are all symptoms. When you talk to a person individually, as I’m talking to you, and we’re trying to talk to our audience, we’re trying to say to you, look, you have a divine calling, a higher calling to live up to. You have a soul. That is part of your intimacy and part of your sexuality. It’s not divorced. Don’t think that sexuality is a compartmentalized thing and my spiritual search and my transcendental search is another thing.

There’s a soul to your sexuality and there’s a sexuality to your soul.

Feder: Are you calling homosexuality a symptom, then?

Jacobson: Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m leading to. From my point of view, I don’t want to use the word “corrupt,” so I’ll say distorted sexuality can be distorted heterosexuality, which is in many ways similar to a distorted view that ultimately can lead also to homosexuality.

If two men say to me, hey, we love each other and it’s a love no different from any one between a man and a woman, why are you delegitimizing it?

My job is not to delegitimize anything. That’s not my responsibility. And once people are emotionally involved, it’s very difficult to say anything. But my approach would be, and I know many people that I have discussed this with, who do consider themselves to be homosexuals, I don’t attack, so to speak, or directly discuss their homosexual natures. I will discuss what is sexuality? What is intimacy? And divorced of male/female, let’s just talk about the concept.

There may be disagreements, but the presentation I would make is that yes, there is such a thing as a distorted view of sexuality. There are sexual aberrations and I’m not ashamed to say that homosexuality is prohibited in the Torah, not because of some taboo or something of other nature, it’s because it doesn’t fit into, let’s call it, the intimate experience that G-d intended for human beings.

Feder: I don’t understand why it wouldn’t. Let’s just say if two men live together for 25 years, forget about the fact that they want to get married, but let’s say that they live together for 25 years and there is a beauty to their love, maybe other people can see it, what in any way is different about that than the people who live next door who are man and woman?

Jacobson: Because healthy sexuality, like any healthy behavior, cannot be based solely on people’s subjective feelings. Let me give you an example.

There’s a man and woman living with each other, not in marriage, they’re just living with each other, and it’s very beautiful. Their union may be more beautiful than a couple married in a court of law in a religious ceremony, and they’re just bickering with each other and their relationship continues to erode.

Let’s just use that as an example.

So the same argument can be made. Here two people are living with each other and there’s no marriage. Their relationship is healthy, secure, and wholesome.

And here are people who are married, and they just don’t get along with each other. As we see so often today. My approach to all these scenarios would be the same: that all of them are not necessarily living up to the Torah standards for a true marriage. The unhappy marriage I described may be a marriage in the technical sense, but they’re not truly married in the spiritual sense of it. Marriage is much, much more than technical. They went through a ceremony. Human beings are human beings, and they can mess it up.

I would say that marriage, as I understand it, is a divine union. If these two people that are living with each other would actually get married in the spiritual sense, in a true ceremony, their union would be even more wholesome than it is now, they would access their deepest intimate potential. It’s like the argument where people say, “Here’s a religious person who’s following Torah law and he’s a crook. And here’s a person who doesn’t follow Torah law and he’s an ethical, kind person.”

My answer is, don’t throw out the baby with the bath water; meaning, do not confuse people with the system. So what I’m discussing here is the system. My argument would be that the question is not what two people say about their relationship. The question is, what is the spiritual perspective on that relationship.

Feder: From whose point of view?

Jacobson: Well, that’s why I began this whole program saying that I am coming from a Torah point of view. That there is a system, and again, I’m not trying to force this system onto anyone, I’m presenting it. But I have the right to present a system that has a very clear and distinct approach. And the approach would be that you two men may love each other, but there may be distortions in what you call love. There may be distortions in what is true intimacy.

The fact that you both are happy with each other isn’t the only criteria for what makes a relationship work. How would I approach it? I’d tell them, you need to study more about what sexuality is. What male energy is, what female energy is. Now, I know it’s difficult, because people who are in such relationships like that say, “This is my natural place. I’ve tried to be married.” I know. I have people that I’ve studied with who say, “I was married and I tried it. But it kept going against the grain of my nature.”

So what did I say to a person like that? I don’t reject anyone with that nature. I don’t throw them out…I will say to them, as a friend, and we remain friends—gay people come to my classes; some openly, some not openly, but I know of it because some of them have shared with me—and they’ll come to a class where I’ll say very clearly: we live in a time of a crisis in sexuality. Part of the symptoms is the homosexuality in our times. And I’ll say it very clearly.

Many people in society think they’re happy. Just because they think they’re happy doesn’t mean they’re happy. Am I here to take away their happiness? No. G-d forbid. But I am here to present a perspective. Do with it what you wish. And that’s how I’d present it, as I do right now. And I would say as follows:

That two human beings can love each other, male/male, female/female, male/female. Love has many forms. But when we’re talking about the sexual, intimate side, we’re dealing with forces that are not completely known to us. There’s a mystique. No one really understands sexuality.

What I will say, as I write in my book, that sexuality is Divine energy. It is like entering into the Holy of Holies with G-d. There are forces that are unleashed at that moment that many of us do not have a conscious understanding of.

We do have the pleasure element that we sense. We feel the closeness. Something gratifies us. But that’s a very small part of what sexuality is. So the fact that many, many people are having sex in a very frivolous way, in uncommitted ways, or even committed but in what Torah considers as an aberration, not in synch with our spiritual personalities, or in homosexual relationships or others, that still does not faze me from saying that sexuality is much more than that, and I would, as a friend of yours, suggest that I’ll study with you, what is the soul? What is intimacy? Are you living up to your highest potential?

It’s the same as if I’d met someone who said to me, “I’m happy! I don’t need G-d. I don’t need morality. I’m living my life and I’m happy. What do you want from me? Do you want to make my life miserable?”

G-d forbid I don’t want to make anyone’s life miserable. But I will say to the person, you know, you have 90% potential that you haven’t even touched. I’m a friend of yours. I don’t want you to be 90 years old and it will be too late for you to access your potential.

The person will say, yes, but that’s not your business. That’s my business.

If someone does say that to me, I’ll still persist and say look, as a friend, I’ll remind you once in a while.

Listen, Mike, someone came to my class, and came every Wednesday night for two years, and after two years he stopped coming. A few months passed and I hadn’t heard from him, so I thought, I don’t know what it is. You know, everyone has their journey.

He calls me up and says to me after two months, “I want you to know that I stopped coming to your class not because you said anything wrong. You didn’t offend me in any way and I think your classes are great. I stopped coming because you’re making my life miserable. Why? Because I’m still young and I want to have some fun. You’re making me too aware. I don’t want to know all this. It’s too much. It’s making me feel guilty. It makes me feel that I have to live up to something greater. I still have a few years, and I want to be a party animal.

Feder: So when he gets around to it, when the pupil is ready, the master appears…

Jacobson: So he did appear a few weeks later, and I didn’t mention any names, I said, “I just want you to know that there’s a person sitting here in this class who has brought me to make the following statement: I wish I made more people’s lives miserable.”

G-d forbid I don’t want to make anyone’s life miserable. I think, more knowledge, more pain, including myself. You don’t always want to know everything. But I do want to say this. I think that at the end of the day most of us would like to live with some integrity, to be true to ourselves. If someone believes that he or she is happy, let them live with that, and I’m not here to disrupt that. But that in itself is not enough reason to say that they’ve reached their zenith, their goals. Happiness is very relative. I’ve seen people who have become happy with the worst of circumstances. Like women who have been battered in a relationship. They’re happy. Because to go out into the street is worse. So they choose the worst of two evils.

I’m not suggesting that every relationship is that way. But I think that we’re quite subjective and we’re quite resilient, meaning, that we accommodate, we work with what we have, and unfortunately, most young people today are getting on their platter a sexual identity, or a sexual approach, that’s far, far from giving them really healthy options, far, far for allowing them to actualize their greatest potential.

Feder: Okay, let’s just take a moment to thank the person responsible for bringing tonight’s show to you. Tonight’s show has been underwritten by Ivan Stux, whom we applaud for helping us bring this kind of programming to people.

Jacobson: Yes, Ivan Stux has been a close friend and a great benefactor, and has also motivated many others. I want to personally thank him myself.

Feder: All right, so we have only a few minutes left and I’ll put it to you this way. There is teenage sex everywhere. There is irresponsibility: children being born everywhere. There’s sexuality everywhere you look. We’re overwhelmed by it. There are things which you called symptoms, as you called it, everywhere. You say that the lack of intimacy is a kind of tidal wave in this country, it’s everywhere. It’s something that needs to be addressed. There is, in fact, even the subject of sex education in schools and people don’t quite know what to do about that, but the point of it all is, as you said yourself during the course of the program, intimacy and sexuality seem to be divorced, and there’s a big problem in the country, and we’d like to end the program with addressing ways in which you see that people can prevent this and to help it out.

Jacobson: Well, much that’s being addressed is, as you said, on a symptomatic level. You hear a lot about “safe sex,” not to pass along disease, and so on, which is, literally, the very tip of the iceberg. I believe that this is a result of a resignation that has settled in, many have resigned themselves to the fact that we cannot do much about the prevalent attitudes to sexuality, and that’s just the way it is, that’s the way it’s going to stay, so at least keep it as safe as possible.

Fine. Anything that keeps people healthy is good. Short term. But on a deeper level, with an issue like this, it’s hard to make quick suggestions, but I will say this: that the younger age you begin with this type of sensitivity to healthy intimacy, the better it is. We start developing our sexual attitudes at a very young age, by example, in our homes, in schools, what we see on TV. So the younger the better, as they say: When we are young we are like warm wax, where every experience is etched and engraved into our personalities, shaping and hardening as we grow and the wax hardens, thus bearing fruit that has such a profound impact much later in life.

I think as far as speaking to parents and educators, particularly of the young, it doesn’t mean to give overt sexual education to a 3-year-old, but you can teach healthy intimacy to a 3-year-old. What I mean is you can teach a 3-year-old how to communicate in a trusting way.

Feder: Or how to let your defenses down.

Jacobson: Right. That even as you develop your defenses, always be in touch with your vulnerability, be in touch with your child. It’s a nurturing environment that just allows you to trust your voices as you grow older. Because one of the single, most important challenges in life are the disappointments. We grow older and we get disappointed, so we protect ourselves. It’s like we go into a deeper shell. So my shell’s hardened. When your shell’s hardened, your sexuality is going to get more and more divorced of your intimacy. Because you still remain sexual. We’re not talking about someone who chooses celibacy. We’re talking about someone who chooses sexuality, but their sexuality is in a shell. The person remains in a shell, and they allow their sexuality out for a night, for a few years…

The education process must contain teaching young people, and I include older people as well, what it means to be a sensitive human being. And essentially it comes down to the fact that you have a soul. A soul that was created in the divine image. You are, in a way, half a soul, and there’s someone out there who’s like a long lost friend, to your soul. And that’s your counterpart. Male and female.

We must tell ourselves, our children, each other: You are responsible for your divine image, for your soul, for your intimacy. Let us make it a call for our times to sanctify our attraction to the opposite sex. How many people actually think about this attraction in a sacred way? For many people, attraction is about leering or flirting, but there’s something sacred there. The sanctity is that there’s a divine calling. A divine calling that takes the shape of male/female attraction, but there’s much more there than just whistling. It’s much more than just trivial experience. There’s a certain sanctity to it. And the sanctity is very much linked in how you treat human beings. Because ultimately, we hear this constantly, it’s a matter of respect. Is there really respect from one sex to the other? Do most men really have true respect for a woman? Or is she just an object? And respect for a woman means that you respect the divine image in that woman, and vice versa.

There’s the rebound effect of a woman treating a man in kind. So it becomes a vicious cycle. Remember, it’s not just a question of respecting the opposite sex, it’s a question of respecting all human beings. It’s a sensitivity that a person is special not because you’re attracted to him or her, it’s respect because there’s a divine image in every human being.

This requires a new emphasis in our education, because our current education system doesn’t teach us that. It teaches everything that’s the opposite: to value people for their looks (just look at any glamour magazine) and so, on a final note, it’s recognizing the divine image in yourself and in other people, and remembering that life is much more than just a nice, entertaining ride for a few minutes. It has a divine and higher destiny to it.

Feder: Thank you.

Tags: sexuality, love, marriage, intimacy
Posted in Personal Life, Love & Marriage, Social, Sexuality | No Comments »

Finding Your Transcendent Soulmate

June 16th, 2014

By Simon Jacobson

Dear Rabbi Jacobson,

I have heard some of your brilliant and inspiring tapes. I want to thank you for presenting not just fascinating insights, but a new perspective on how to look at life.

One of the things that struck me is the issue of finding your soulmate by looking not just for physical, intellectual and emotional compatibility, but most importantly, for spiritual compatibility. A transcendent partner. Your explanation of love as transcendence and not just getting your needs met resonates deeply.

What I would like to ask, and am sure many people in search for their eternal love would be interested in as well, is: can you outline some specific criteria that can help one find ones true soul mate. How does one know whether the love is transcendent or just comforting and nurturing? I know that it may difficult to break this down into short points, particularly considering that each situation is unique and needs to be addressed case by case, as you often put it. Yet, I thought it might be extremely helpful if you could spell out some specific questions that one should ask oneself when making such an important decision.

I thank you for your time and wisdom.

Sincerely,
Robin G.

***

Dear Robin,

Thank you for your very kind and encouraging words. I appreciate your flattering compliments, yet at the same time want you to know that these are not my insights but those of the Torah, which I have been privileged to study with my masters, and have the honor to pass on, with the objective that you and everyone inspired by these teachings continue to serve as links in a chain, bringing these teachings to those whom we meet.

In reply to your very relevant request, I will outline several questions one should be asking in finding a transcendent soul partner.

1)    Does and will my potential soulmate help me reach a place greater than I can reach on my own?

2)    Does s/he challenge me, or just please me and bring me comfort and companionship?

3)    Is s/he a partner that helps me crystallize and actualize my vision of life, or does s/he just agree with me? Is s/he a true partner in my dreams, not just my companion?

4)    Does my partner feed and nourish my soul? Do I feel magic with the person? Can we consistently generate magic?

5)    Do I feel compromised in any way in this relationship?

6)    Am I reaching my fullest potential in this relationship?

7)    Do I respect and admire my partner’s dreams and vision?

8)    Does my partner just support my efforts? Is s/he committed as much as I am to the transcendent element?

9)    Do I feel that my relationship will be regular, or am I excited about the potential and the significance of our relationship?

10)    Will my relationship help other people grow, or is it only a comfortable relationship between my partner and me?

11)    Do I love my partner’s love for me or do I actually love the person him/herself?

12)    Is there a healthy measure of angst in the relationship, consistently propelling it to a higher level, or is the relationship stagnant and complacent, perhaps comfortably so, but nevertheless on a plateau?

13)    Is crisis in the relationship handled through appeasement and placating, where one partner is pleasing the other, or is it faced head on as two equal partners?

Needless to say, there are many other questions that need to be answered when searching for your soulmate. I emphasized here some of the requirements necessary to achieve a transcendent relationship. It is always best to have a close trusting friend or mentor that can help you objectively assess your particular relationship.

I also know that the requirements I spelled out may be optimal, but these are the aspirations I would be looking for in a dynamic transcendent relationship. We should always shoot for the top. Obviously, these criteria are also contingent on the fact that one is truly committed to this level of significance and transcendence in ones life. And finally, we must always remember that the key to a true transcendent relationship is to welcome in the third partner, G-d. Our efforts create a vessel that channel G-d’s blessing into our lives, which helps us discover and maintain the ultimate relationship.

I hope this is helpful, and I extend to you my blessings to find your ultimate soulmate.

Best wishes,
Simon Jacobson

***********

Below is a response by another reader to this correspondence:

Dear Rabbi Jacobson

In the spirit of the idea that “challenge” is healthy, I would like to challenge some of the criteria you gave for finding a soulmate.

1) Does and will my potential soulmate help me reach a place greater than I can reach on my own?

I think this is problematic because it’s asked from the perspective of what can s/he do for ME? Others might say the question is:  “Will I be able to help my soulmate reach a greater place than they could on their own?”

2) Does s/he challenge me, or just please me and bring me comfort and companionship?

Comfort and companionship should not be minimalized. Halevai that many marriages today provided comfort and companionship.

3) Is s/he a partner that helps me crystallize and actualize my vision of life, or does s/he just agree with me? Is s/he a true partner in my dreams, not just my companion?

Again, the perspective is what can s/he do for me.

4) Does my partner feed and nourish my soul? Do I feel magic with the person? Can we consistently generate magic?

Ditto. Plus, magic can be defined as physical chemistry, which by the way should not be negated.

5) Do I feel compromised in any way in this relationship?

Others might say that if you don’t expect to make compromises you are waiting for the perfect person who will never come.

6) Am I reaching my fullest potential in this relationship?

Again, more of the ME perspective.

7) Do I respect and admire my partner’s dreams and vision?

Finally, something “other” oriented. I might add: Do I respect them and admire them even if I don’t necessarily share them?

8) Does my partner just support my efforts? Is s/he committed as much as I am to the transcendent element?

Good question.

11) Do I love my partner’s love for me or do I actually love the person him/herself?

Your best question, I think.

12) Is there a healthy measure of angst in the relationship, consistently propelling it to a higher level, or is the relationship stagnant and complacent, perhaps comfortably so, but nevertheless on a plateau?

I’m not sure I agree that angst is the only or best way to define a non-stagnant relationship. Angst can be a sign of true paining each other, in my opinion. In other words, I think there’s positive angst, as you suggest, but negative as well. Sometimes (most of the time?) the angst can be telling us to stay away from the person, not marry them.

Thanks
S.

***

Dear S,

Thank you for your insightful challenge and remarks. I agree with your legitimate points.

Yet I would add that I specifically emphasized that these criteria are regarding a transcendent relationship, hence the questions I posed. Comfort, companionship, physical chemistry and many other factors are necessary in a relationship, but the focus here is on transcendence.

Your comment on emphasizing not ME, what I get from the relationship but what I bring to it, is especially appropriate and well taken. At the same time many relationships are compromised (and that’s what I meant by compromise in question #5) by the fact that one of the partners is not reaching a greater place then they could on their own. And that requirement must be fulfilled before committing to the relationship.

I should also add that my questions were intended for someone who is considering marriage and is not yet in a marriage. Then one must ask the question whether my potential will be fulfilled and will I be compromised on any fundamental level.

Once that decision has been made, the ingredients of maintaining a healthy union requires love that is not just about needs but about giving.

Thank you for your comments.

Blessings and best wishes,
Simon Jacobson

***

Dear Rabbi,

As a further comment, you wrote back:

“Comfort, companionship, physical chemistry and many other factors are necessary in a relationship, but the focus here is on transcendence.”

I would suggest that a person who is in or embarking upon a relationship that is uncomfortable, lacking companionship and physical chemistry is severely handicapped when it comes to attaining transcendence. Granted, many elements in contemporary society emphasize the secular at the expense of the transcendent. Nevertheless, our Torah – and especially Chassidus – emphasizes how important – vital – the physical is to bring about tikkun, transcendence, whatever you want to call it. We don’t just read Vayachulu on Shabbos. We say Kiddush over wine, physically intoxicating wine. The marital relationship is a physical, sexual relationship or it is just a friendship (at best). In emphasizing the transcendental I would not fail to mention the vital role of the material element, otherwise some in the audience might get the wrong message and deny the physical – this vital rung in the ladder to transcendence – in their climb toward true spirituality.

Sincerely
S

***

Dear S,

I believe you misunderstood my intention. I did not mean to negate the importance of the material element. On the contrary, I completely agree that we must integrate the transcendental and the physical.

My point was that my letter was addressing only the transcendental element, taking for granted that all the other issues have already been addressed. If you go back to my original correspondence with Robin you will see that the focus here is, after one has found a compatible partner physically, emotionally and intellectually, how can one ensure that there is also a transcendental spiritual compatibility.

Obviously, the issue of finding a soulmate cannot even begin to be covered in a letter, and a short one at that. That is why I kept my focus on the transcendent component. In addition, Robin’s letter to me was a follow up to my tapes on the subject, where I discuss at length the ingredients necessary for a healthy relationship, which includes many of the things you point out and more (some of it is also covered in my book, “Toward A Meaningful Life,” in the chapter on Marriage, Intimacy and Home and Family).

Thanks you again for your comments.

Blessings and best wishes,
Simon Jacobson

Tags: love, marriage, intimacy, soul mate
Posted in Personal Life, Love & Marriage, Social, Women & Men, Sexuality | 3 Comments »

The 15th of Av: Full Moon Musings

June 16th, 2014

The full moon of the month of Av is associated with relationships. On this day, “the daughters of Jerusalem would go out … and dance in the vineyards,” and “whoever did not have a wife would go there” to find himself a bride (Talmud, Taanit 26b). But why is this so, why is this day associated with finding a soulmate?

Judaism teaches that every person has a ‘beshert’  – the other half of their soul for whom they search in order to marry. Forty days before a person is born, a heavenly voice announces their ‘beshert.’ The 15^th of Av is forty days before the 25^th of Elul which is the first day of Creation. That is why the full moon of Av celebrates relationships (B’nei Yissachar).

The moon teaches us three fundamental lessons about successful relationships:

1.  The moon knows how to be humble and even invisible. It is not consumed with its own ego. That is lesson #1 in relationships: Be humble, be powerful enough to know when to defer.

2.  Even when it shines, the moon knows that its light is not its own. Its power comes from another place, its strength is reflecting and channeling light from a higher place.

3.  The moon illuminates the darkness. It does not try to eradicate the night but rather shines light into the darkness. Moonlight doest not deny or eradicate weakness, difficulty and pain, it acknowledges it and despite the pain, it continues to shine. A healthy relationship is not about perfection alone; it is about sensitively recognizing and knowing how to cope with and illuminate our weaknesses, even our darker sides.

You can truly love only when you are not consumed with yourself. When you are full with yourself, with your own sunlight, you may achieve many good things, but not love. Become a moon, a receptacle, and you can contain and love another. The full moon means being full with another. Your feeling of lack and incompleteness allows you to become the most complete.

Tags: love, relationships, moon
Posted in Months & Holidays, Tu B'Av, Personal Life, Love & Marriage, Torah | No Comments »

A Matter of Perspective

June 16th, 2014

A man once came to Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov with a question: “The Talmud tells us that one is to ‘bless G-d for the bad just as he blesses Him for the good.’ How is this humanly possible? Had our sages said that one must accept without complaint or bitterness whatever is ordained from Heaven – this I can understand. I can even accept that, ultimately, everything is for the good, and that we are to bless and thank G-d also for the seemingly negative developments in our lives. But how can a human being possibly react to what he experiences as bad in exactly the same way he responds to the perceptibly good? How can a person be as grateful for his troubles as he is for his joys?”

The Baal Shem Tov replied: “To find an answer to your question, you must go see my disciple, Reb Zusha of Anipoli. Only he can help you in this matter.”

Reb Zusha received his guest warmly, and invited him to make himself at home. The visitor decided to observe Reb Zusha’s conduct before posing his question, and before long concluded that his host truly exemplified the talmudic dictum which so puzzled him. He couldn’t think of anyone who suffered more hardship in his life than did Reb Zusha. A frightful pauper, there was never enough to eat in Reb Zusha’s home, and his family was beset with all sorts of afflictions and illnesses. Yet the man was forever good-humored and cheerful, and constantly expressing his gratitude to the Almighty for all His kindness.

But what was is his secret? How does he do it? The visitor finally decided to pose his question.

So one day, he said to his host: “I wish to ask you something. In fact, this is the purpose of my visit to you – our Rebbe advised me that you can provide me with the answer.”

“What is your question?” asked Reb Zusha.

The visitor repeated what he had asked of the Baal Shem Tov. “You know,” said Reb Zusha, “come to think of it, you raise a good point. But why did the Rebbe send you to me? How would I know? He should have sent you to someone who has experienced suffering…”

Told by the Rebbe, Tammuz 26 5722 (July 29 1962)

Tags: Rebbe, materialism, Reb Zusha, perspective, Baal Shem Tov
Posted in Personal Life, Pain & Suffering | No Comments »

A Waste of Time

June 16th, 2014

The following is a freely translated except from a letter by the Rebbe, dated Adar II 17, 5717 (AdarII 17, 1957) ¹.

… as to what you write regarding [your] depression—the Holy Tanya ² has already explained that all depression stems from an unholy source ³. In any case, how is it that such a matter concerns yourself? I wonder: How does a chassid have time to be depressed? Does one not realize that time is now the most precious of resources, its every moment an asset that must be utilized to the utmost? How much time is being wasted on matters for which “petty” is too generous an adjective!

Tags: time, Alter Rebbe
Posted in Personal Life, Pain & Suffering | No Comments »

Bringing Light to the Darkest Places

June 16th, 2014

Mike Feder: Hi. I’m here with Rabbi Simon Jacobson and this is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson.

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Happy Chanukah to you.

Feder: And to you too. It’s appropriate that we talk about Chanukah tonight, so our topic is “Chanukah: Finding Light in the Deepest Darkness.” Now I need some help here, and maybe Chanukah can help me because I’m one of those people who has that miserable feeling when it gets dark in the fall and the winter. Actually, there’s a name for it: Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s when people get depressed because it’s so dark and they look for some light.

Jacobson: Yet another disorder.

Feder: Yes. Well I’m an encyclopedia of disorders. That’s why I’m here to be cured.

Jacobson: No, I don’t mean you. I mean yet another…

Feder: Oh, I thought you meant it personally. Anyway, tonight we’re talking about where you look for any kind of light, and where do you find light in the midst of darkness. And I was thinking, as the resident skeptic and seeker, that we should define what Chanukah is, because a lot of Jews (and people who aren’t Jewish) have a very small idea, if they have any idea at all, of what Chanukah really is, what its historical antecedents are, and what its religious meaning is.

So I think a good definition would be a nice place to start.

Jacobson: A very good place. Let me ask you something, Mike, about this seasonal thing. How does it work exactly?

Feder: It’s called Seasonal Affective Disorder, and maybe they call it that on purpose because the acronym works out to be SAD.

Jacobson: SAD.com.

Feder: Right. You never know with psychologists whether they’re being too serious for their own good. Now this is not news to people who suffer from it, but apparently in the fall and the winter, beginning in October when the days start to get shorter and it gets gloomier and grayer, there’s a certain kind of depression which borders in some people on somewhat of a clinical depression which overcomes people. It’s not unnatural that human beings would miss the light (you see it’s an interesting connection to tonight’s theme), but in the winter, hundreds of thousands of people suffer from this, and they take anti-depressants or they’ll have certain full spectrum lighting or lamps to get over this. So it’s an interesting phenomenon.

Jacobson: I find it fascinating for another reason: because Chanukah, in this hemisphere, as well as in Israel where it originated, is called the Festival of Lights, and it always takes place in the beginning of the winter season, where we have the shortest days and the longest nights.

We’ll discuss this throughout the show, but one of the key elements that makes Chanukah unique—and this may be a good segue into a discussion about the holiday itself—is that you light the flames right after sunset when it’s dark.

The Talmud says, mi’she’tishka ha’chama, that you light the Chanukah flames as the sun sets, and it’s unique in that way. One of the reasons is that it illuminates darkness, both literally and figuratively, physically and spiritually, and psychologically, and I never thought of it that way, that it begins when the nights are very long, when they begin very early. So in a way it is an antidote and a way that G-d preempted this syndrome or disorder that you described.

Feder: It’s as old as mankind itself, this need for light when it’s the darkest.

Jacobson: And Chanukah’s power is exactly that, which we’ll discuss. So let’s backtrack. Well, often I like to begin from the beginning, but if I do that the show will be over before we get to the story of Chanukah.

Feder: But do give some idea of the history and meaning.

Jacobson: What strikes me when you say that people don’t know what the holiday means is that it’s not just Chanukah. I don’t think that people know altogether what the holidays are, and often we traditionally experience holidays and family get-togethers with warm nostalgia without knowing that there is anything deeper happening.

Feder: Presents…

Jacobson: Right. And for others, as we discussed a few weeks ago, when home doesn’t really feel like home, it’s really a time for dread. I wrote an article recently about Chanukah about when you feel like the holiday is almost like a cheerful veneer, while beneath the surface it’s really a miserable time for many.

So I see the holiday as a message from G-d, if you wish, like a letter to your soul, where when it comes to a certain period in time, in this case, Chanukah, a special message is sent to us like nourishment. It’s almost as if at this same time and same station in the year a door opens up, a window of opportunity opens up between a person’s spirit and their Divine connection. And if we tap into that channel, that window of opportunity, through the various customs and traditions, mitzvahs of that particular holiday, those are like the tools that help draw down the energy of that particular time of the year.

So it’s not just a commemoration of events that once happened. It’s actually an opportunity that’s happening right now. And each holiday has its particular message.

So when you say Chanukah, it’s not just a question what kind of potato latkes we will be eating…

Feder: The special thing you eat on Chanukah? You know, I didn’t even know that much.

Jacobson: It’s healthier for you that way.

Feder: You mean because of the potato latkes?

Jacobson: Potato latkes saturated in oil.

Feder: Sounds good!

Jacobson: Well, when they’re made well they’re good. As they call it, decadent! For many, Chanukah is associated with a time of gift giving. For others, they may be familiar with the dreidel playing—where there’s a little top that you spin. There are family get-togethers. It’s commemorating a miracle that happened several thousand years ago in the time of the Second Temple, where the Greeks had desecrated the Temple and there was a general oppression of the Jews at that time, trying to eradicate the sanctity of Jewish faith.

The Greeks were great scholars and great ethicists themselves; however, they were opposed to the Jewish way of connecting ethics and morality to G-d. In one of the prayers that we say on Chanukah, we say that they wanted to eradicate Toras’echa, the Torah that is G-d’s Torah. They said, “Why not a book of wisdom, a book of inspiration, a book of meditation? But why are you connecting it to G-d?”

They wanted to erase and eliminate chukei ritzon’echa, G-d’s laws. Why are they G-d’s laws? Why aren’t they just laws between man and man?

Feder: Let me ask you about that. Why would that bother anyone? What disturbed them so much about that?

Jacobson: It’s hard to analyze and I think it’s a discussion of its own. But I think when people have self-worship… You know, everyone’s worshiping something. Some are worshiping themselves. Some are worshiping money. And others are worshiping other people and images, illusions, and then there are those who worship G-d.

I believe when people are so into themselves and into self-worship, they are very disturbed that a people, a nation, refuses to bow to what they consider to be important, to their value system.

Feder: So it’s an insult to their narcissism, in a way.

Jacobson: In a way, but they won’t call it narcissism, they’ll call it the good of the community, the greater good.

Why was it that Marx had to write that religion is the opiate of the masses, or communism found it necessary to eradicate any religious beliefs?

In some way, they saw religion as a threat. As Haman (in the Purim story) who was so upset and infuriated when Mordechai would not bow to him. It’s the same story throughout history: Pharoah in Egypt.

But getting back to Chanukah, that is what the Greeks disliked. They weren’t interested in killing the Jews like Haman was, or Hitler. They were interested in killing the spirit. They wanted it to be more of a human, man-made system.

Anyway, the battle was not just a philosophical one, but it took the shape and manifested itself in a real conflict and a real conflict of interest of standards and values. Essentially the Greeks saw the Holy Temple as being the enemy, because that was where the Jewish people went to worship and to pray and to serve G-d. The Temple was desecrated to the point that they could not light the menorah. — Every day in the Temple, the menorah, the candelabra, was lit with its seven branches. The flame is called a ner tamid, the eternal flame, representing the eternity of the soul (the flame being like a soul).

Feder: Now this is something that predates the holiday of Chanukah.

Jacobson: Yes, during the time of the Second Temple, which we’ll say is approximately 2500 years ago, the Greeks had taken control and had desecrated the Temple. And there was no oil to be found to light the menorah. The miracle of Chanukah was that they found one little flask of oil that was untouched by the Greeks so it maintained its purity. This oil was called shemen zayis zach, and it needed to be pure, virgin olive oil, and it was just enough to light the menorah for one night, but instead it burned for eight.

And that is the symbolism with which we commemorate the festival and holiday of Chanukah, the Festival of Lights: that we light the menorah for eight nights of Chanukah which began last Friday evening and will continue until next Friday evening.

Feder: So then on a deeper and a higher level, the meaning of that is…

Jacobson: Okay. Perfect. The meaning of it is the power of light. That light can pierce even the deepest darkness. Now, the miracle of Chanukah was not just about the flames of the menorah being lit and burning miraculously for eight days, but there was also a victory—as we know, the Maccabees, a small band of Jews resisting the Greeks, who were the “few over the mighty.” There was actually a war and they didn’t just find some oil and light the menorah, they actually won the battle over the Greeks.

Feder: So this is a small group of fighters who overpowered a larger force.

Jacobson: Exactly. And the real question that’s asked is, so why is the miracle commemorated or celebrated through light? It should be celebrated through perhaps other ways: light was only one element, perhaps an important element, but it’s one of many events that happened at the time.

Feder: If it was a fight, what about a military parade?

Jacobson: And the answer is, the victory, even of the Maccabees, was one of light over darkness. Quality over quantity.

I always was very moved by this Chanukah message of the power and faith in light.As a child (my birthday is also around Chanukah time, so maybe that’s some psychological connection) I was always taken by light. There’s an expression that King Solomon writes in the Book of Ecclesiastes, where he says, “I have seen the dominance and the superiority of wisdom over folly, as the power and superiority of light over darkness.”

And there’s an expression in Jewish holy books that m’at ohr doche harbeh choshech, even a little light dispels a lot of darkness—and it does so naturally. Naturally, without any effort. Let me explain.

If you had a body of water and a fire, and you put them near each other, they’re adversarial forces. If there’s enough water, it will put out the fire. If there’s enough fire it will evaporate the water. And they will battle. That’s why you hear the crackling of the fire as it battles to survive the moisture. There’s a very physical battle that’s going on between these two antithetical forces in nature.

Now, place light near darkness and that doesn’t happen. Darkness is dispelled naturally and automatically in the face of light. Obviously if it’s a very large dark room, you’ll need a lot of light, but in the area where you bring a flame, where you shine a light, suddenly the darkness is dispelled. And this is seen as a very deep and a very philosophical message that darkness, in a sense, is really the absence of light. Ignorance is an absence of knowledge, not necessarily a power of its own.

Now an ignorant person can do a lot of destruction, a lot of damage. But ignorance is not a competitive force.

Feder: Would hate be the absence of love, then?

Jacobson: Initially yes. As a matter of fact, in Jewish philosophy there are two opinions whether darkness is an entity of its own, or if it’s only the absence of light. You could say it’s two dimensions—that it begins with the absence of light, but once it becomes an entity in its own mind, it suddenly gets its own personality.

So I would say that hate begins with an absence of love and then can turn into a monster of its own.

Therefore, the message of Chanukah—when this small group of partisans called the Maccabees battled the Greeks and the fact that they had such hope and faith and they didn’t look at numbers—in a way they were saying that our passion and commitment and faith, even of the few, will overpower the many. That, in essence, was also the battle and the victory and conquest of light over darkness, where darkness represents quantity and materialism and light represents spirit—quality over quantity.

So we celebrate Chanukah when we light a flame—it’s not just a flame to commemorate something (people often light flames to commemorate things)—it actually has a message in itself. As one of the Chassidic Rebbes said, “When you light the Chanukah flames, listen to the story that the flames tell you.”

If you look at a flame, it’s a very interesting phenomenon; it’s a very interesting creature. It’s always flickering. It defies gravity. It illuminates. Now some of these messages are very valuable in finding hope in our own personal lives, as you titled the show: Finding Light in the Deepest Darkness.

Feder: The main candle—you’ll have to pardon my abysmal ignorance, because we celebrated Chanukah when I was a kid in the most casual way, but basically it was just about giving presents, which is what Xmas is for a lot of Christians, too—but the main candle has a special name and you use that to light the other candles, right? I’m interested in the details because I forgot them already.

Jacobson: That’s called the shamesh. The shamesh in Hebrew actually means a servant.

Feder: That gets lit first.

Jacobson: It’s like the master flame. The pilot flame. You light that first with a match or from another shamesh, another servant, and then you use that to light the actual Chanukah flames. But the interesting thing about the shamesh is, that though it is the root, so to speak, from where you light other flames, the real Chanukah lights are the other flames, not the shamesh. The shamesh stands as a witness on the side “watching” and “having pleasure” in its children or its students being lit. Because one of the messages of the flame is one of education, where we teach our children or our students to be flames that rise on their own, that stand on their own feet.

You see, there are multiple, multiple messages and lessons that you can take from Chanukah that are very personal and profound.

Feder: Okay, now, does each light, each candle, have a separate meaning that’s been given to it over time, or do they just equally represent a totality of the eight days of the miracle? Maybe I’m getting a little arcane and specific, but I’m interested.

Jacobson: Well, I would pose the question this way. In the candelabra in the Temple, there were seven branches. So why is it on Chanukah that we light eight? Why was the miracle eight days and the Chanukah candelabra has eight branches and not seven?

Feder: That’s excluding the shamesh?

Jacobson: Right. The reason is that, particularly in Jewish mysticism, the number seven represents the cycle of life, seven days of the week, seven colors on the color spectrum. The number eight represents the ability to pierce darkness, to transcend the cycle. That is, when things don’t go right, you have the ability to transcend that as well. So eight also represents the light that pierces darkness.

Seven represents the natural cycle of things. In the Temple the menorah was lit every day, that was the way it went and it was a smooth ride. However, when there’s a challenge, we need to have an eighth dimension that suddenly emerges that can help pierce the darkness.

So getting back to the theme of it, which is often overlooked, is that Chanukah is really a spiritual message to our souls. Our soul is compared to a flame. It says that in the Book of Proverbs, ner Hashem nishmat adam: the soul of a human being is a flame of G-d—the reason being that the body is like a wick that grounds the soul. If you look at a flame, it defies gravity, it’s always aspiring for more.

We have a restlessness inside each of us. If you want to see a real approximation of what you look like, Mike, and what I look like, our spirits, look at a flame, because a flame is always restless. It’s always looking for more, licking the air, searching, only to be pulled back down by the wick.

Feder: And it gets blown in any direction by any wind that comes along.

Jacobson: However, when it’s focused and it’s connected with other flames, you see that they gravitate toward each other.

So there are many, many messages in the flames, including the one I mentioned earlier, which actually strikes me as being a very important one, which is that even in the darkest moments, one can find light. Even in anxiety and despair, the message of Chanukah is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Feder: You know, I don’t know what your life was like before this show and maybe you don’t know much about my life before, I mean, we talk on the show here in front of everybody and we assume everybody’s listening. But it seems like, for you, it’s easy to say, “In the deepest darkness, if you just know that there will be light, if you just think that there’ll be light….” But when people are in the deepest darkness, actually the definition of their darkness is that they can’t see any light, so in other words, maybe I’m speaking for other people, it almost seems like an irritant in a way to hear someone say, “Look for the light in your deepest darkness.”

I mean, I wouldn’t be in the darkness if I could see the light. Maybe that’s a little too…

Jacobson: No, it’s not a little too anything. I think you should be even stronger in making that case. My response is twofold. Point number one, and I would welcome people to call in about this…

Feder: Okay, let me give people the number here so they can call in. The number is 212-244-1050. You’re listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. This is Mike Feder and we’re talking tonight about Chanukah and especially about the idea of finding light in the deepest darkness which is one of the great significances of Chanukah.

I’m engaging the rabbi in a difficult conversation here because he seems to find light everywhere. I know you for a while now, and you seem to find light in almost any kind of darkness and I succeed in finding darkness in almost any kind of light, and so it’s an interesting combination. So I’m speaking for all the people out there who do feel surrounded by materialism and despair, despondency, and psychological problems when they look at the world. The light is not so apparent to everybody and what I want to get from people who call us is their comments and questions.

Join us tonight, participate in the conversation. A lot of people, I have to mention this over and over again, that around the holidays, and including Chanukah, feel dismal, they feel surrounded by darkness. Maybe somebody has a question that they can ask you, a way that they can get out of their own personal darkness. So give us a call.

But really, the darkness is very heavy.

Jacobson: Well, your question is right on target and I appreciate it, and particularly representing those who are in those deepest darkest moments, even on a Chanukah night, even in the long, winter evenings, and in the deepest throes of despair.

So my response is twofold. First of all, we learn from Joseph in the Bible, when he predicted as the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream that there would be seven years of famine following seven years of plenty, that he suggested that we should hoard and save the grain in the years of plenty so we should have enough when the famine strikes.

And they said, “Brilliant!” and they appointed him viceroy, second in command, and he’s the one who actually handled the grain trade at the time. So the question I’ve always had is, what’s so brilliant about it? I mean, it seems so obvious. If you’re going to have seven years of plenty, you prepare for the worst because you know the famine is coming—seven years of famine is a serious matter.

Do you know what was brilliant about it? Not the idea. Not the suggestion. It was following through and doing it. Because the fact is, people live in a way that when things are going well, they take it for granted. And we always say tomorrow is forever and we take it for granted. And we don’t prepare for times of darkness.

That’s why you need all these kinds of things like forced savings, where people actually have the banks take automatically from their money… Why not, every month, be disciplined and write a check to your bank or to your mutual fund, or whatever it is…

Feder: That’s what we do in my house. My wife does it. (That’s why it happens!)

Jacobson: But you still see that most people can’t maintain it. Because what happens if you need a little cash and you don’t have any. So you say, okay, next month I’ll write two checks and then in three months three checks, and at the end of the year I’ll do it all. It just doesn’t happen.

There’s something about human nature that even though we understand that the darkness may be coming, we just don’t prepare and we think that we have a little more time. You know, “I’ll do it a little later.”

And I think that that’s my response to you. It’s true that just to say to a person who’s lying in deep darkness that there’s light and there’s hope, they can’t even hear what you’re saying. They’re so desensitized I don’t even think they’d be upset.

Feder: You can’t pierce certain types of darkness with words.

Jacobson: However, everybody has moments when they do come out, and there are times when there’s a little more hope. And when they are in that place, they’d better prepare themselves well. Because when you prepare yourself and you know beforehand that when you do end up in the darkness you’ll need help, you almost build in certain life rafts, that when I’m there you have a friend say, “I will go into a darkness like that. I want you to come and I will tell you, ‘Don’t come to my basement or don’t speak to me,’ I just want you to be there.” And you prepare yourself. That’s the key.

So it may be difficult to reach a person who’s in deep darkness with the message of Chanukah, but it still should be said to him, because we believe that the power of light can reach even the deepest darkness. He may not respond, but it speaks to his subconscious. In addition, we must say it to a person who may be in that place tomorrow, but now he is able to listen, because everyone has moments when their ears are open and they are able to listen. And that’s when they have to prepare themselves with these messages because it’s like the analogy of the spiral staircase. As you climb the staircase and you get closer to the top, you have to make a 360º turn and you can’t see the destination.

Someone six steps down can say, but it’s right there, but you say, I don’t see a thing.

Feder: I would never walk up a spiral staircase because I can’t see where I’m going. I can’t believe anyone would even do a thing like that.

Jacobson: Well, sometimes no one asks you. You said before, despair is nothing that someone wishes upon themselves. You’re suddenly on this staircase and you’ve got no choice. But seeing it through and making that last turn is sometimes the most difficult process.

So I totally agree with you that there’s a paralysis and a complete blindness. Now to use the Baal Shem Tov’s words: he says there are two types of darkness. There’s a darkness where you know it’s dark and the light will come. But then there’s a darkness that is so dark that the darkness obscures the fact that it’s dark. You don’t even know that it’s dark.

Feder: You’re just living with it inside of you.

Jacobson: And you can imagine and deceive yourself into thinking that it’s light because you get so accustomed to it. What it means in modern psychological terms is called “denial.” Denial that there’s a problem. You may say, “What problem? This is my natural place.”

For many people, crisis becomes their natural place. They consider that to be their most comfortable place—to be uncomfortable.

Feder: Let me refine something you just said so that it makes more sense to me and maybe to somebody who is listening for whom it’s a little fuzzy. Now I just got through abridging a book, which is what I do to make a living partially—it’s one of those personal growth books and the author is a famous psychiatrist and he advises in the book to “look on the bright side.” Of course, he puts it in a more complex way, not so Pollyanna-ish. But he says, “You can’t think bad thoughts all the time.” It’s very well known that if you think decent, bright, sunny, happy thoughts, you will generally improve your disposition if you’re not being stupid about it.

But I guess you have to walk a fine line in a way between knowing that the darkness will come later and dwelling on it, right? That’s a very ticklish line to walk, isn’t it? I mean you could teeter over into one or the other. It sounds like what you’re saying is that you should know that it’s part of life but you’re not saying that people should dwell on it.

Jacobson: Well I’m saying something beyond that. I’m saying that there are moments or glimmers of hope and it’s important then to accumulate hope and lighten your life, and that will in some way keep you alive when you experience your darkest moments.

Feder: So if it’s like a spark, you have to blow on it to get it to become a fire, right?

Jacobson: Precisely. As I said, even the people who are in the deepest despair have moments when they come out of it. And when they do come out of it, that’s when it’s critical that they learn the message of Chanukah to help then when they may once again enter their darkness. In addition to the fact, as I stated earlier that Chanukah teaches us that even the deepest darkness is pierced by light.

I remember reading something that really touched me: I forget what his name was, a Bolshoi dancer in Russia who went mad…

Feder: Nijinsky?

Jacobson: I don’t remember. Did Nijinsky go mad?

Feder: Oh, absolutely.

Jacobson: Maybe that’s him but I don’t remember his name. Anyway, he was in an insane asylum and no one could get through to him. Years later he had a visitor who was very inspired by his dancing, and while he visited him in his room at the asylum (he was a complete lunatic at that point), the visitor began doing a dance a move that he had been inspired by. And something clicked and the dancer began to do a beautiful dance in the room that was amazing. He went back 20 years as if time had not elapsed. Something was triggered in him, something that was deeply embedded in his subconscious.

I have another story… I have a friend who’s a rock and roll musician, and he tells me that when his grandmother had already become senile, nothing could get through to her except a certain Yiddish song that she would sing when she was young and he, as a musician (he doesn’t even know the Yiddish words), would just repeat like a parrot to her and that got through, and suddenly she would become lucid.

The point that I’m making is twofold. First of all, for the record, it’s true that perhaps you can’t get through to people in despair, but it’s important to know that Jewish faith dictates, and faith in G-d dictates, that even in the darkest moments there is light somewhere.

The question is, how do you get that message through to someone who’s in that place? That’s an important question. However, the faith in the light is important. When I hear about mothers who did not give up hope for their autistic children (by contrast to those that are ashamed and simply don’t want to have any relationship with their children), and that child is in some way turned into something that no one would have expected, that’s a mother’s absolute faith that deep in that child there’s something there. There’s a human being there. There’s a Divine spirit and there’s a light in there.

Doctors will say, “You can’t get through to this child!” I would totally agree that at the time, medically, you can’t, but the mother’s hope and faith was there and something got through, something that the child hears.

Now, it may not work out or end up the way we’d always like it to, but that is what I call the ultimate of human dignity. It’s beyond human dignity. It’s Divine. It’s the ability for a human being not to be disturbed and intimidated by seemingly the natural circumstances of things. That there are miracles. And a miracle doesn’t mean that there’s a bolt of lightning suddenly on Fifth Avenue.

A miracle may mean the hope that within the deepest darkness there’s light.

Chanukah is that message. Like the mother that sees light in her child. And I think it would be vulgar or arrogant for anyone to challenge the mother’s hope and faith in the light inside of her child.

Will it always work out the way she wants it to? Maybe not. But that still doesn’t take away the dignity and the commitment of hers—and who knows what the child hears? Even if the child doesn’t respond, who knows what that child picks up? So that firm belief and faith that there’s something embedded, that some light is embedded in the darkest moments.

Question two, which may be a more difficult one or maybe equally problematic, is how do you get that through to someone who’s in that dark place?

Feder: I’d love to know the answer to that one.

Jacobson: Well, let’s backtrack to what I said earlier. First of all, everyone has moments when they emerge, and when they emerge, it’s important to build their arsenal, because they’ll really need it when they go under again.

For a person who never comes out of it…

Feder: And there are a lot of people like that…

Jacobson: Then it’s a similar scenario that I gave with autism or madness—that the people who love them do not give up hope. They talk to them and they have the firm belief… I am a firm believer in projection. Let me explain. Since there is a soul in there somewhere and there’s a light in there somewhere, even if you don’t see it emerging or you don’t see it peeking its head out, if you believe that it’s there, then somehow that belief is having an effect on the person that you are having a relationship with.

It may not be apparent to you. The person may not show it. But I believe that something inside of them hears it. And it’s not a question of whether or not I can prove it medically. That firm and absolute belief will have an impact and do something to that human being.

Whereas a person who doesn’t have that faith, then you’re guaranteed that it will have a demoralizing effect, because in a strange way…

Feder: Because then it will have the opposite effect. If you don’t have that faith, that’s contagious in a bad way.

Jacobson: Right. Or even with a neutral attitude. As they say in subatomic physics, there’s the concept that the observer has an impact on the subatomic particles and in some bizarre way, the subatomic particles sense what the observer is projecting.

Feder: I remember when I read that I thought, now there’s something almost impossible to grasp.

Jacobson: Correct, we all can’t grasp it, but it’s been proven, so why can’t we say the same that if that’s true about inanimate objects (inanimate in the sense that they’re not human beings) why can’t we say the same about human beings who have hearts and souls. As King Solomon writes, “As a face is reflected in a body of water, so too one heart is reflected in another.”

And the fact that the heart doesn’t respond consciously or in a revealed fashion doesn’t mean you haven’t had an impact. And that is a message that I think is powerful and relevant, and a Chanukah message that’s extremely relevant to our times, where there is such despair and there is such darkness.

Now I’m not naïve and suggesting here that this is the solution: that you can bring any person who’s in deep darkness to a Chanukah flame, and they will suddenly come out of it, but I do believe that Chanukah teaches us that the light does have an effect, and you have to do everything you can to reach the person—recognizing that there’s a G-d in this world. That ultimately there are things we don’t understand in how things will evolve and why some people come out of things and why some people don’t.

Feder: So the message here is, to repeat, don’t give up hope. I mean, if we take it back to the historical or the religious antecedents of this holiday, there were these people in a Temple, there was not that much oil, the people were surrounded, overpowered by a larger force, and yet they didn’t give up hope and achieved a real result—that the flame burned for eight days and this group of fighters overcame a much larger army. A lot of people who are in darkness don’t have an identifiable quantity of things, like a number of swords, a number of fighters, or an amount of oil or a number of flames to burn—what they have is that they are lost at sea, in other words, they’re in an abstraction here, which is even more dismal in a way. I’m not denigrating what happened at this miracle, but you know what I’m saying: these are real things, as real as anybody wants to believe them, that actually happened to real people that had a real result.

The great darkness of the modern age is that this kind of psychological, soul-malaise is not quantifiable, it’s not identifiable. If there are people in darkness right now, or if you know someone who’s in darkness, it may not be because they don’t have something to eat or they don’t have this or they don’t have that, or they don’t have some triumph over something. They just have some sort of unidentifiable, psychological hole that they can’t get out of. It’s a different thing.

Jacobson: Well, we have to distinguish between a clinical and a medical oriented type of depression, which may not be able to just be dealt with through natural methods—meaning not through philosophical and psychological therapy. It may require medication or other forms of intervention that helps create a balance in order that a person can see clearly.

I’m not really talking about that, because that’s another story, that that person may require medical intervention and that is fine. It’s like diabetes may need insulin and each of us needs our supplement of vitamins, and that’s the case similarly with other chemical imbalances.

However, I think coupled with that is the issue of hope and faith. I mean, you see today that people who are ill and are lying demoralized in the hospital who have visitors who come to see them, people who love them, that has a positive healing effect on them. You say people are lost at sea. Yes, it’s critical to have friends and family who are there for you and to know that you’re not lost at sea. So you may not have, as you put it, flames and swords and so on, but you have family who loves you. And if you don’t, it’s critical that a person like that find a support group, find someone who can call them. I see that there’s power when someone in that type of despair has a friend that is there for them.

Take the message of Chanukah. It’s dark at night. The sun has set on a person’s life. So what do you do? You don’t go to sleep, and you don’t ignore it. You go and you light a flame. And the flame shines. In the little area of the room it shines and illuminates. Here’s the personal message. Someone’s in despair and darkness somewhere. You know that they’re there. They called you. You’re part of their support. You get on the phone and they say, “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to hear your voice.” But you say, “But I want to speak to you. Just give me five minutes.” And you speak. You light your flame and you speak to them with love and kindness and gentleness. There has to be an impact on their darkness. It may have only melted away one percent of it and there are 100 layers, but one out of a hundred is also a step. Maybe they need another 99 calls.

And it’s a process. It’s not easy to understand and we don’t have full answers to this. I empathize with that type of situation, however, because it’s very dark…

You see, in a way, I almost find it like a subconscious battle where a person who’s in that kind of darkness almost wants to write the script that everybody will give up hope on them and they’re going to make sure that they do. They will do everything possible to allow it.

Feder: And yet at the same time the person who fights that…

Jacobson: The person who fights that says, “Listen my friend, I believe that light is more powerful than darkness. I don’t care how angry you are or how insane you are, or how dark you think it is, I will not succumb.” That’s true, true love. Because you don’t always see the results, but there is the hope.

Feder: You know, it’s amazing that you mention that right now. We have a few calls which we’ll go to in a second. What you just said is fascinating to me, because often I see the world in a dismal way, maybe because of the way I grew up, maybe the way I was born, and that’s why I’m here to talk to you, right? But what’s amazing is I never talk to my kids like that. When my kids have been telling me their whole lives, this is bad, school’s bad, my friends this, that and the other thing, I am always optimistic with them. I always encourage them to look at the bright side, and people who know me think it’s the biggest joke, but I do that because I love them.

Okay, we have Benita on the air.

Caller: Hello. I called once before. It’s very interesting that this subject came up because right before the program I was having a discussion with a friend of mine and we had a mutual friend who just passed away. We’re all about the same age, and we were having a little bit of a disagreement because my friend said that she felt that when it was obvious that our mutual friend was going to die, she should have embraced death, and I felt that as long as our friend had life inside of her, she should think about life. And I just don’t know how to go through that. It’s pretty interesting that we had different ideas about it. Do you face death in the face, or as long as you’re alive do you think about having hope?

Jacobson: Well, first of all, Benita, you should never know and have to face anything like that, and I’m really sorry about your friend. My heart goes out to you and to all the family. But I think that what you’re touching on is very relevant to our discussion.

I don’t know your friend and I don’t know you that well, however, I think it may be how you both see life in general—I’m sure that this difference between the two of you, how you faced that, probably manifests itself and reflects itself in other areas in life. I’d be interested to know how you and your friend deal with adversity altogether.

Caller: Well, it’s also interesting because my friend and I both lost our mothers at the same age—at the same age that our friend had passed away.

Jacobson: What age was that?

Caller: Well, her mother was in her forties and mine was in her fifties. I just felt that with my mother, we never discussed her death, even though it became apparent that she was going to die. I don’t think we were totally in denial, I mean maybe we were, but it never came up.

Feder: But it seems to me that life is not the opposite of death. I mean in some response to what you were saying it’s not as if you say to people, focus on life instead of death, because there’s no way that you can divide death and life and say that they’re two separate things.

Jacobson: Thank you for the call Benita. What I was going to say, in the message of Chanukah that we’re discussing here, obviously if it’s premature to address death, there’s no need for that, but if a person is facing the inevitable, either because of aging or other issues, I think that the focus on death is not so much on how to prepare for death, but how to appreciate that the soul is forever and that there’s an eternity to the soul. It’s not just a question of how we are going to bury this person, G-d forbid, or prepare the Last Will and Testament.

It’s an issue of addressing the future, in a sense. Where does the soul go after death? How will the family live on? Look for the positive elements, in other words, find the light even in a dark thing like death.

I think, Mike, that that’s what you were implying as well. It’s not like life and death are two opposites. In a way, death forces us to look at life in a new way. People appreciate their last days and have that type of hope and ultimately it’s always important, even if a person is told by doctors that inevitably they are dying, that they recognize that there’s a thing called G-d and we don’t always know how things work out. So I think that approaching death is also part of the faith, not denying the situation and being oblivious, but recognizing that there’s a soul, and there are different ways, and there are mysteries to the way G-d runs this world.

Feder: Okay, we have Betzalel on the air.

Caller: Hi Rabbi Jacobson. I understood so far from your show that the way to deal with a person who’s in darkness is for that person to build up his arsenal before he goes into that darkness so that he has the tools to deal with the darkness when he’s there. I would like to cite the Talmud which brings down that Rabbi Yochanan told somebody when that person’s child died, “Well, it’s not as bad as what I had. I had ten children die.” And it seems from there that there is something you could do even while they’re in their darkness which is to let them know that other people have been there and it’s been even worse with other people.

Feder: You know, I think that really works with some people. Sometimes that’s worked with me, actually. Somebody once said, “You know, my life has been a lot worse. Listen to this.” And it actually, in a perverse way, actually made me feel better to hear that somebody else had suffered more than I did. Is there something wrong with that? But it actually made me feel that my life wasn’t so bad. In fact, it actually drew sympathy out of me for that other person at that moment of my self-involvement.

Jacobson: So maybe it’s like a distraction. It’s like when your knee is hurting you and someone gives you such a slap across the face, you can’t even feel the knee because you have a bigger problem to worry about.

But my question to Betzalel is, are you questioning the meaning of that Talmud?

Caller: Yes, it seems from the Talmud that there is a way to get to the person even in the darkness. You don’t just need to…

Jacobson: Okay, that’s a good point. The truth is, maybe the story is telling us not just something that I had worse—that you just lost one and I lost ten—because frankly, the question is this: Who’s counting? I mean, when a parent loses a child, do you think it’s less painful than somebody who loses many children? I mean, it’s not a quantitative thing, it’s a qualitative thing. Just like love for ten children is not ten times as much love as you have for one child.

I would think that part of the story is also saying that a person who’s in that position can empathize and communicate with a person in that position and has a certain credibility that another person doesn’t have. Like, I find it very insensitive when I see—and I’ve seen this—someone in real deep pain and they’ve lost a child, G-d forbid, or some other trauma or tragedy, and someone else who hasn’t experienced it comes along and tries to explain it philosophically: “no pain no gain,” or “every descent brings a person to a greater ascent,” etc. I think that the key is empathy, being able to hold that person’s hand and say, “I’m with you.”

So I’m sure that Reb Yochanan in this story in the Talmud didn’t just say, “Hey, you think you got it bad, look at what happened in my case,” I think it was also a matter of empathy.

Feder: He was saying, “I understand.”

Jacobson: “I am where you are.” And in that type of circumstance I would completely agree with Betzalel’s thought that there’s something that could be said in darkness from another person who’s been in that position. It’s not the words, it’s the person, it’s the whole body language, it’s the whole spirit, that I’m there with you. I would even go a step beyond that because a person who’s in that place can communicate with someone else who’s there; they have their own language. They’re traveling in a different orbit.

Feder: There are certain people who maintain what’s called “Crisis Hotlines” and they use people who have actually suffered with these things to maintain these lines.

Caller: Another point I would like to make is that we need to be able to tell a person in darkness: “It’s okay. You have that right to be in darkness. It does not make you bad.” We need to respect a person’s rhythms and coping skills.

Jacobson: Very vital point. Obviously, excessive darkness needs to be tempered with some hope. And there are times when we need to remind as person in despair of their light. However we do need to validate and respect the person’s darkness, at the same time that we respect their light.

Feder: Okay, we have Shira on the air.

Caller: Hi. I’ve been listening to the program and I’ve heard several interesting messages, most of them seem thematically psychological, and I’m wondering, since the Hellenists were good ethicists, but the Jews defeated the Hellenists, then there’s got to be some kind of ethical message in Chanukah as well. And I’m just wondering what it might be.

Feder: Well, don’t listen to Greeks. No, I’m sure there’s a better message.

Jacobson: Mike, please!

Feder: Oh, sorry.

Jacobson: As they say, I’m not responsible for Mike’s opinions!

Feder: Come on, I’m trying to bring a little light to the table.

Jacobson: Listen, some of my best friends are Greek. Don’t be a racist!

Now, back to Shira. It’s a good question, and in the spirit of Chanukah I think the message is that ethics, without G-d, ultimately equals anarchy, because the issue is moral relativism—you know, who determines ethics? Why were the Jews so adamant not to accept the Greek view? Why not just follow moral and ethical views without a G-d?

It was for the same reason that the Ten Commandments—though many commandments deal with ethical issues—begin with “I am your G-d,” because without that, what absolute bedrock and foundation does “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not steal” rest upon?

If there’s a consensus, for instance, like there was 50 years ago, by approximately 100 million people, (I won’t even mention the country—it wasn’t the Greeks), that the Jews and the Gypsies and the mentally retarded are inferior and need to be eradicated and annihilated, if that’s the consensus, does that become ethical?

Some may say, yes that’s ethical because that’s the consensus. Many taboos keep falling in our own country and we have this problem. In moral relativism—and nobody wants to really address it because the question is, “Who then will dictate morality?”

But from the other side of the picture, the Torah perspective is that ethics rests on the bedrock and foundation that G-d commanded you not to steal (for example). And therefore, there is a certain absolute nature to it. Obviously, there are circumstances and conditions and stealing is also not a black or white issue in every circumstance, but it’s not human beings who have simply arbitrarily, or by consensus, determined certain boundaries. There are certain things that are simply absolutely wrong no matter how many people vote against or for it.

Feder: And things that are absolutely right.

Jacobson: Of course. Good! Coming from someone who always sees the dismal side.

Feder: I just think that you were getting so negative, I wanted to correct you.

Jacobson: And thank you to Shira for her call.

Feder: Yes, thank you Shira. Now, we are near the end of the program and I have to apologize to Greeks! That was a remark that came out of outer space. So you have my sincere apology. Secondly, we are at that point in the program where we want to remind you that you have been listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson and we’re on every Sunday night from 6-7pm. This is Mike Feder.

We’d like to mention that when you listen to the show, you’re listening to a show that is sponsored by you actually. We don’t have sponsors as you may have noticed, and 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 (www.meaningfullife.com).

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. At this time of year when people give presents to each other, think of giving some money to the Meaningful Life Center.

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. Also, for a $50 donation to our work, you can receive free a 90-minute tape that Rabbi Jacobson recently did on the Millennium, which will be the subject of one of our programs perhaps too.

Okay, we’re at the end of our program and we only have a couple of minutes left. Are there any closing remarks that you’d like to make?

Jacobson: This topic always touches me personally for many reasons, and particularly for people who are in that type of darkness, but Chanukah, the fact that we light the flames after sundown, and we light them in the window or a door in order to illuminate the world around us, has a very powerful message that we’re not just here to take care of our own lives. I often use the analogy of what they call “a tzaddik (a righteous person) in pelts.” When it’s cold, there are two ways to warm yourself. One is to put on a fur coat and the other way is to light a fire, light a flame.

In the first way, you get to keep warm, but no one else does. In the second way, everyone is warm around you.

So Chanukah’s message is multifold. Number one is the idea that even in the deepest darkness, even when it’s getting dark and the sun does set in every person’s life at different times, when people go through personal traumas and losses, you know that even when the sun is setting, you do light a flame. And not only do you light a flame, you add an additional flame every evening; you don’t only maintain the light of yesterday, the light grows. Light breeds light, clarity breeds clarity.

In addition, you also remember that even when you are in a warm home celebrating with your family and friends with joy and gifts, there’s a cold world out there outside your door, and the Chanukah lights are kindled at the door or window to illuminate the world around us, knowing that as long as there’s even one person who is not warm, who is not illuminated, it in some way affects us, even those of us who are brightly shining.

And when we do that, we bring light to those people, one way or the other. Because I think life is a cycle; we’re all bound to each other. When there’s a little light brought into one area, in some way it spills over. And darkness also spills over. So since light dispels darkness, the more light we bring into the world, it counterbalances the darkness. I want to wish all our listeners, to you Mike, and to myself as well, that we should have as many light experiences in our life as possible and remember that light dispels shadows and darkness.

Feder: Thank you very much. Happy Chanukah to you.

Jacobson: Happy Chanukah to you.

Tags: radio transcript, depression, Chanukah, light and darkness
Posted in Months & Holidays, Chanukah, Kislev, Personal Life, Torah, Pain & Suffering | No Comments »

How Can a Good G-d Allow So Much Pain

June 16th, 2014

Now, here is your host Mike Feder.

MIKE:  Yes.  This is Mike Feder, in fact.  And I am here live in the studio.  We are going to talk tonight about the subject of G-d and suffering and pain.  But first I just want to mention that we thank you all very much for all the letters we have gotten and the E-mail and the calls that we received.

I am going to give you the details on how to reach us later on.  The telephone number, the address, and E-mail, you will have all that. But I think what I would like to do is just get right into our topic for today.

I am willing to bet that everybody listening right now and, perhaps, the two of us in the City here have suffered some really awful pain.  Maybe we have had some kind of operation or we have suffered in some way.  But certainly we all know people in our family or in our extended family that have suffered needlessly.

The question has to be — and now this is presuming that you have some sort of a faith in a Supreme Being or in G-d.  I mean, after all, there are biological reasons why people suffer or not, and we can talk about that.

Now, here is the question and let’s put it in a nutshell. How do you reconcile a benevolent loving G-d with human pain and suffering?  Let me just add one thing to that. G-d created human beings.  Now why would somebody who created people want his — I am using the word “his,” by the way.  I don’t want anyone to  be offended by my continuing to use “his.”  Maybe we can find a better word for it.

I don’t want my children to suffer. Why would a benevolent loving G-d who created us human beings, and everybody listening, want us to suffer so much?  How can we reconcile all of this?  An easy question; right?

RABBI JACOBSON:  That is a million dollar question.  A question that goes down in history as, perhaps, the most perplexing and difficult question, I would say.  I would just like to be clear at the outset that there have been many philosophies and many teachings that have addressed a question of this nature.

There is one principle that I want to begin with.  You made a good point, Mike, by saying that we are presuming faith in a Supreme Being.  I would argue and submit this: the mere fact that we are bothered by this question, by the mere fact that we cry out when we see innocent people suffer.  We cry out, “Why?  It is not fair.  It doesn’t seem right.”  That in itself, I believe, is the greatest testimony to faith in G-d.  Because why should it bother us?

If you take an evolutionary approach to life, survival of the fittest.  We don’t like to see the tender deer that has just been born or is unable to escape the predators being eaten for dinner.  But part of the law of nature is survival of the fittest. I haven’t seen anyone cry over it.  If we take the approach of survival of the fittest and dog eats dog, to that extent why does it bother us?  Why do we assume that justice has to prevail?  That good people have to prosper and the wicked suffer?  Why does it bother us that the wicked prosper and innocent people suffer?

I am sure there are many answers that will be given on this show.  That, G‑d willing, is going to be a long journey and an experience for all of us, so I am sure we will address many of these topics many times in different ways.

MIKE:  This will come up again, sure.

RABBI JACOBSON:  But I did want to submit this thought.  It is because we have an inherent voice inside of us, something that is deep inside of us that tells us, “No, it doesn’t make sense and it isn’t right for innocent people to suffer.”  This isn’t some type of quirk of our conscious, but this does reflect a sense of some type of higher justice or higher good that should ultimately prevail and we demand it emotionally — not even intellectually, but emotionally. Though everything can be argued, but at least let’s use it as an axiom.

This, I believe, is one of the great arguments for the belief somewhere deep inside our hearts that the system should work and justice should work, that G‑d should be just and life should be just.

Let’s get to the question after my making this disclaimer or this introduction. Life is unfair so often.  We do see innocent people suffer.

MIKE:  And we see the bad prosper.

RABBI JACOBSON:  Exactly.  We have every reason to believe as we grow from children into adults to say, “Hey, if you can get away with it.  If you can succeed even at the expense  of others.  If you can be a back stabber and no one catches you, why not get away with it?”  We see people do succeed and never get caught, so to speak.

We all understand logically that we need red lights and greens lights for someone to make some type of order or else, if you kill me, I kill you, and that type of thing.  But that is very arbitrary and very circumstantial.  What happens when you are all alone in a room, and you don’t seem to be hurting anybody else?  You can tell by what we say and do.  So we are touching upon an issue that covers so much ground, I think it is important to focus and keep it focused.

I will make two points.  I will make two vital points.  I invite you, Mike, and the listeners to challenge it with everything we have, because we all have to do that.

Number one is the sensitivity to a person who is in pain and suffering.  I think that comes first and foremost.  To try to give a philosophical explanation, as they say, is good for other people and not when it happens to you.

I will tell you a brief story, a famous  story that they tell in Jewish academies and Torah academies.  There was a great rabbi and teacher who was very much beloved, but he unfortunately suffered a deep tragedy.  His family were in the timber business; they would go off to another country and bring back by ship the lumber and they would sell it locally.  Then tragedy struck.  The ship sunk and he lost his entire family.  When the news came back to town they said, “How do you tell him?  How do you tell the man?”  They chose the lucky one who was his favorite student.  They said, “You are so close with your teacher and with your rabbi and with your mentor.  You should broach it.”  He was thinking back and forth what should he do. He runs around the block.  Finally he thinks of an idea.  He goes in the academy into the Yeshiva and opens up a Talmud.

The Talmud and the tractate is Brachot, which is one of the tractates of the Talmud.  He opens it and he asks his teacher, “My great teacher, my great master, explain this to me? One is to thank G-d for the mishaps and for the tragedies and for the curses in one’s life, as much as they thank G-d for the blessings.”  That expression in Hebrew is “ki’shaym she’m’vorchim al ha’brocho, kach m’vorchim al ha’kloloh.”  “How do you explain that?”  Of course, the brilliant scholar went into a long explanation.  That no pain, no gain.  The challenges in life bring you to the greatest heights.  He went through every philosophical thought and idea that has ever been said on the topic.  But the student continued to persist.  “But tell me, but still, how could you equate the two?”

So he went into the explaining that we don’t understand G-d’s ways.  It is a form of humility learning that there is a bigger picture.  It may not be seen, obviously, in our generation, but it may take time until we see the entire balance of things.  All good explanations.

The student was not willing to accept any of it.  He said to this rabbi, “So you are telling me that a person after they suffer a strategy has to get up and dance just like as if it were their child’s wedding?”  The teacher said to him, Yes.  No matter how difficult it may sound, that is what it comes down to.  True faith dictates that type of acceptance.

The student looked at him with deep compassion and he said, “Rebbe, you can start dancing,” and he told him what happened.  Instead of dancing, the man fainted.

When he came to and he was revived he said to the student with tears, “Suddenly, I don’t understand this entire Talmud myself.”  The point being that when it comes to pain and suffering, we are dealing with a realm that is outside of intellect.

If someone thinks that you are going to soothe a bleeding heart or a crying spirit with a nice intellectual concept, the mind does not speak to the heart, particularly in those types of circumstances.  We all know this.  When we are emotionally overwhelmed, it is not a question of logic, even if it makes to the heart.  The heart is still, “I am in pain.  What are you telling me?  That the pain is a blessing?  Even if it is, right now that is what I feel.”

So right now I think the number one and most important thing is that sensitivity is recognized.  That before we even discuss the subject in any philosophical manner, we must recognize that part of us is recognizing that sensitivity.  Even being silent in the face of it, because when a person is hurt what you can do most is hold their hand, soothe them, and be there with them.  That gives the more powerful answer.  To tell them, “Here is an explanation. Try it out and see if it works.”  I think that itself is not an answer, but it is an approach. This leads us now to the second half. Do you want to saying anything, Mike?

MIKE:  Let me ask you, if right there at that point you are sitting next to somebody.  I just got through reading a book by Roger Kaminetz who wrote The Jew and the Lotus.  He is a fairly well known writer.  He wrote a wonderful memoir which just came out.  It was just published concerning his mother who was dying of terminal cancer.

You are next to somebody in a bed who is in a hospice or who is literally dying in tremendous pain.  Even in so much pain sometimes, that the morphine doesn’t help.  They look to you and, let’s say, they were brought up to believe in G-d or to have faith to believe in a just system of something or other.  They look at you at virtually the last moment in tremendous pain and they say, “I have always been good, and I have always done the best I could for other people.  I see people all around me who are thriving and nothing has happened to them.  Why is this happening to me?  Why is G-d letting this happen to me?”

Think of yourself in this room.  We are in this room right now.  What do you say to this person?  I don’t want to be so strident about that.  But that really is something that happens every day.  While we are sitting here, it is probably happening.

RABBI JACOBSON:  I want you to be strident, and we have to deal with it in a real way.  This isn’t a cute question and answer type of thing.  But I still began with what I have said.  If I would say any words, I would say what I have said until now.

Generally speaking, the Jewish approach – or the Torah approach which I believe is a universal approach to the issue of pain and suffering in the face of a good G-d, “Why is G-d doing this to me,” using your words – is that we may never know the answer to that question.

The real question is not so much why, but what you do about it.  Let me explain.  As I just said, to the crying heart, the bleeding heart, I don’t know of any logical answer, even through the most brilliant person.  What would G-d say?  So we have precedent.

There was a story in the time of the Romans when they barbarically murdered ten of the greatest Jewish and Torah leaders of the time for whatever reason.  They decided this, and the excuse they had then.  So tradition tells and the Talmud tells the story that the angels came crying to G-d.  They said, “These are righteous people.  This is the Torah.  These are the scholars.  And this is the reward they get?”  And what did G-d answer?  He said, “Silence. Be silent. This is how it arose in my will.”  This is documented.  This is documented.

What was he saying?  You are right.  We can’t really say “he” and “G-d,” but what was G-d saying?  G-d was saying that is part of the mystery of existence.  We are going to discuss this in a moment.  Silence often is the only true answer.  Not the silence out of passivity or weakness, because I don’t have a logical answer; but it is a certain type of awareness that that logic and intellect cannot speak to the pain.

Yet we still need to address the question that you are asking.  So not backing off, I just need to emphasize that we often do not know why and the answer to the question is not necessarily going to resolve the emotional issue.  Yet we do have to ask the question, “What do we do about it?”

Here is what it comes down to.  Job is one of the most powerful ..

MIKE:  I was just going to mention Job.

RABBI JACOBSON:  There is an entire book of Job that is dedicated to this eternal question.  One of the most powerful phrases and one of the most powerful statements that touched me when I read Job — and this is with some paraphrasing and interpreting — is when he asks G-d the question:  “Why are you doing this to me?  Why do you allow me to be hurt and suffer?  I am dedicated to you.”  G-d essentially said to him, “Were you there when I created it all, heaven and earth?”

Let me explain.  We ask the question why there is death, but do we ask the question why there is birth?  We ask the question why there is pain, but do we ask the question why there is life?  If there were no birth, there would be no death.  If there were no life, there would be no pain.

But we ask the question, because certain things we take for granted.  “I am alive.  I am here.  Once I am here, I want it to be the best and most comfortable way.”  I am not suggesting this is an answer.

MIKE:  Returning to Job.  I remember this part.  I just read about this actually.  G-d says to Job, “You are asking me these questions?”  It is almost like he is saying, “Who are you to ask me who created the entire universe?  Who understands all these mysteries?”  Maybe I am getting it wrong.

RABBI JACOBSON: That is why I was interpreting the meaning in Job’s words.  It is not that way.  It is not at all, who are you?  If you appreciate all of life in existence, you may understand this mystery.

MIKE:  The whole thing?

RABBI JACOBSON:  Right.  We know very little about life.  We know about the interim place between birth and death, but we don’t know why the birth and why the beginning.  We ask why the end.  We do ask why is it not working, but we don’t ask why it is there in the first place.

Life is a gift.  We accept it as such. Yet life has many difficulties and hurts us, as we are discussing here.  But we ask the question when it doesn’t work.  We don’t ask the question why it is here in the first place.

So what G-d is really telling Job is that if you understand the mystery of birth, then you will understand the mystery of death.  We will get there.  I am not finished.  We have, thank G‑-d, an hour here to discuss this or 56 minutes or whatever.

I think to do justice to a topic like this, Mike, and I don’t want to give you some type of cute answer.  It is not that way.  This is complex.

So far we covered here silence.  We covered here the ability and the strength of recognizing that we don’t have answers to everything.  Because I think, as we will discuss, this is perhaps the deepest answer of all:  that life itself is perhaps more a question than an answer.  That doesn’t mean that it is less of an experience.  It may mean it is a richer experience for that matter.

In summation, this whole issue of pain and suffering is intertwined with the mystery of birth, and happiness, and joy as well.  Because if there were no joy, there would be no pain.  So it is all by contrast.

So let me share with you a story that happened to me.  This is about a woman who wrote to me.  She is from Chicago.  Her mother was suffering and dying from a terminal illness in Toronto. She went to see her mother.  At some point she had obtained my book Toward a Meaningful Life, and reading it was very soothing for her.

She asked her mother if she could read some chapters to her.  She was telling me the story.  She wrote to me about the story.  Her mother in her career was an educator and a teacher.  So she read the chapter on education, and also read the chapter on pain and suffering. There is a chapter there on that topic.

She was on medication and they were keeping her alive.  Essentially, she was about to write and sign the papers to stop the treatment and let her die, because she was suffering already over two years and was in a lot of pain. She didn’t want to prolong the agony.

The daughter read to her the chapter on pain and suffering.  That if you make a mathematical quantitative calculation of your life and its experiences, you would list in one column all the good things that have happen to you and in another column all the bad things that have happened to you.  The times of your sufferings, your losses, and your gains.  Often column two will be much longer than column one, but not for everyone.  Taking that into account, it may seem it is not worth it.  From a business calculation, it is not worth it.

Indeed, the Talmud actually says — and this is an opinion and an opinion that we hold by –it is more pleasant not to been born than to be born.  There is another assenting opinion, but there is that opinion.

MIKE:  I have felt that way once or twice myself.

RABBI JACOBSON:  So if you make a quantitative calculation, it may seem that it is not worth it.  If I had a choice, obviously, it may not be worth it, because I would weigh the two.  But that is when we look at life quantitatively.

If you look at it qualitatively:  that you are put here for a higher purpose, and you are not here to just be comfortable. You are here to accomplish something and to achieve something.  Now we are getting into the mystery of life and death.  You are here to be a partner with G-d in creation.  Partnership entails responsibility and also entails risks.  G-d takes a risk and we take a risk, because it is not a game.  If it were a puppet playing out a program, then the puppeteer is responsible for everything.  But if we truly have free will, as one cynic or whatever you want to call it said, “We must believe in free will.  We have no choice.”

So with that type attitude, if you have free will and we are here as partners, life is a complicated dance between us and G-d.  It is not just a supreme being in heaven as we have discussed in previous shows that just writes the script where we come and play out the act, and then we close up the puppet box.  It doesn’t work that way.  We influence and affect the drama of our lives.

Interestingly, especially in Jewish thought and particularly in the Kabala it talks about how we influence G-d.  This isn’t a one-way street.  It is a two-way street.

Let me go back to the story of the woman.  Quantitatively it is true.  Qualitatively if life is driven by purpose and by design, and we are here to fulfill a purpose and we are here to contribute something to change my corner of this word.  There will be good and bad times to do that.  There will be setbacks as well as positive moments.  Then life takes on a different meaning.  Then even the pain and even the sad moments and the losses is in some way a part of the entire picture.  That is when it becomes worth it.  The pain doesn’t become less, but it becomes part of a perspective.  It is not just measuring and saying, “Twenty percent of my life is happy and 80 percent is not.”  It is one bigger picture of growth.  You begin to then look at pain in a different way.  You begin to see it as part of the bigger picture.

Then as she continued reading the chapter on education, and an educator isn’t just a facilitator.  An educator actually forms and shapes lives.  But to make a long story short, the woman was so moved the daughter tells me that she insisted that, no, she would not go off the medication.  She wants to live.  She will fight. She is in deep pain.  But she is here.  She will fight with her will power.

Interestingly, she went into regression and came out of it.  The doctors attribute it to her own will power and the sense of no resignation and not giving up.  We know that in Medicine today there is a certain optimism, and faith, and power that allows you to feel this light at the end of the tunnel.  As soon as you give up that light, your entire immune system weakens.  But the point was not so much the end of the story, but the actual attitude.

With a mother and a father, when the child first starts walking, there is a moment that you have to let go of the hand of the child and they will be able to fall.  That fall, of course, is relatively painless.  But it is still a fall.  Metaphorically speaking, if you don’t let go of that child’s hand, they will never learn to walk.

There are risks in giving human beings free will.  There are mysteries in the pain and suffering of human beings, particularly innocent ones.  Children don’t seem to be in any way at fault.  You see I am specifically not emphasizing here, because there are natural tragedies and there are other illnesses — as you pointed out at the beginning of the show — that are not in our control.  I will just say that the understanding of it all has to be interlinked with the understanding of the mystery of life itself.  There is more to say, and I hope you challenge me.

MIKE:  I will ask another question.  This is a good time to take a break and re-identify who we are and where we are.

This is WEVD in New York, 1050 AM on your dial.  You are listening to Rabbi Simon Jacobson.  I am Mike Feder.  The name of the show is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson.

I wanted to mention I think at this point how you can comment on anything you hear here or how you can write to us.  You can do that in the following way.  You can call us at 1‑800‑3-MEANING or that is 1‑800‑363‑2646. 1‑800‑3‑MEANING or 1‑800‑363‑2646.  You can write to us at the Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, New York 11213; or E-mail WisdomReb@aol.com

Taking this opportunity to mention that a lot of what you hear us talking about and, in fact, almost the central blueprint for much of what you are going to be hearing on this program is the book Toward a Meaningful Life by Simon Jacobson.  It is published by William Morrow. It has been selling for more than three years.  You can buy a copy of this book at any bookstore.  We urge you to buy it, because the questions asked in here and the answers in here I think really are in some cases inspiring and can help you.

I have to tell you something.  I am sitting here and I am listening to you and I am asking these questions.  I will put myself in the position, let’s say, this is a hospital room. Let’s get very dramatic here.  I am lying here and I ask you this question.  Let’s say I am in terrible pain and I ask you these questions.  I have to tell you that so far — now this could just be me, because I am verbose and I am a pain sometimes — but I haven’t heard anything yet from you, and I am suffering right now and I am in terrible pain, that would make me feel like the pain that I am suffering was worth the life that I was given.  Maybe I am a hard case, you know.

I have read the story of Job, and I have never understood that to my satisfaction. Maybe I believe too much in the system of justice.  Maybe there isn’t justice in the world at all.  But here is a man, it says in the Bible, who is the first among all of G-d’s current creation at the moment who is good and who worshipped him in the right way, and who is devoted to all his family and to everyone else. This is the one that suffers interminably the most awful things.  People die and suffer physically.  I still don’t understand how to say this is a mystery.  There are things you don’t understand.  There is life and everything.  How are these things soothing to somebody?  How do these things encourage someone to believe that their life is worthwhile?  Sorry to give you such a hard time.

RABBI JACOBSON:  There is nothing to be sorry about at all.  If we really want to visualize a hospital room, then we have to do it completely.  I would not be sitting here and talking on this radio show or in a hospital room with any of the words I have said in the second half of my discussion here.

I would be sitting and soothing a person with anything I have and holding her hand or whatever, and talking about their life and their children and their achievements.  Because, you see, what we ultimately are discussing is with outsiders.  If you were actually in pain, I would never speak this way.  That is why I didn’t begin with the natural thing with the mystery and all of that.

I want to add some more things, but let’s go back because your question is completely legitimate.  The greatest people of faith — Moses, Abraham — in history in the Bible did something interesting.  They didn’t seem like faithful people at all.  They challenged G-d. They stood up and screamed.  When Sodom was going to be destroyed, Abraham — and knowing full well their crimes, didn’t justify their crimes.

MIKE: Sodom and Gommoroh?

RABBI JACOBSON:  Right, the story in the Bible.  Abraham did not justify their crimes, because he knew they were true.  He didn’t say, “No, that never happened.”  He said, “What will people say?  That the Judge, the Supreme Judge does not do justice?”  So G-d said to him, “Find me ten righteous people in the city and I will save the city.”

MIKE:  Didn’t he bargain them down?

RABBI JACOBSON:  Yes, fifty all the way down to one.  But there were some negotiations. He couldn’t even find one.  And he still appealed.  He had given in, because it was really a wicked city.

It was the same with Moses.  Moses comes into Egypt.  He points an accusing finger at G-d, “Why are you doing evil to these people?”  He doesn’t say, “Why are you allowing human beings to do evil?  Why are you standing by?”  He blames G‑d straight out, because ultimately G-d can do anything that we wants.  He created the people.  You are allowing it, as if you are doing it.

MIKE:  That is a good question and the answer.

RABBI JACOBSON:  The fact is that was challenged.  Faith seemingly is not a challenging attitude.  Faith should be acceptance.  Blind faith, the euphemism.  Blind faith.  Yet the truth is that faith isn’t blind at all and faith isn’t passive at all.  Faith is the most aggressive attitude a person can take.  It is the absolute belief that no matter how human beings behave, the greater good must prevail, and refusing ever to succumb to the evil or to the pain in the world saying no resignation, that there is nothing to believe in any further.

Now, I told you what G-d answered earlier.  “Silence.”  You may not like the answer, Mike, and maybe no one likes the answer; but there is no better answer.  Perhaps life is the humility and the acceptance that life is not about questions and answers.  You know where you get questions and answers?  Go to a mathematics course.  There you have equations.  You have calculations.  There is a question and there is  an answer.  That is life itself and forget about pain.  The good times in life also don’t really have a logical answer.

If we were sitting with someone in pain suffering, and I am sure there are people listening here that may, I would not get into any philosophies.  We are dealing here with a person who is hurt.  They need the strength.  They need the support.  They need perhaps an ounce of energy just to move on and to completely not succumb to demoralization.

The worst thing about suffering is not often the suffering, but it is the secondary suffering the demoralization creates.  The giving up and the resignation.  You don’t even want to fight.  You don’t even want get out of bed.  You don’t want to see anyone.

MIKE:  The pain can make you feel that way.

RABBI JACOBSON:  Exactly.  And it is so debilitating.  I think that a person, in that case, there is some miracle that happens with human touch.  When you see someone that cares and cries with you.

A guy once came to one of the great Rebbes because a tragedy befell his family.  So the Rebbe looked at him and took his hand and said, “I can’t answer you, but I can cry with you.”  I think there is something extremely freeing and powerful about that.

Maybe before this show you thought you were going to get some type of million dollar answer from me?

MIKE:  I was hoping for that. Simon Jacobson, Toward a Meaningful Life, now we are going to hear the real answer.

RABBI JACOBSON:  Sorry to disappoint you.  But I will tell you there is something freeing when you know that the question is asked so much why bad things happen.  But what do you do about it?  How do you not allow to it to demoralize you?  How do you have the strength? How do some people have that strength to forge ahead?  You ask some people.

MIKE:  I will do that.

RABBI JACOBSON:  So perhaps let’s submit a few things here.  Number one is:  how did you come in?  Maybe that is how you go out.

People’s faith is shaken when bad things happen.  One has to ask the question, if one really has faith in a higher G-d, is it faith when things are conditional only when things are working well and you are comfortable?  If you love someone unconditionally, your child for instance or your parent, then when things don’t work, the love prevails.

So if one has a true relation with G-d is it only based on when things are working out? I never, G-d forbid, would question anyone’s challenges by G-d or any type of tests that people have gone through in life, because I am not in their shoes.  But if we speak about it in a more detached way, I feel that is an important point to make.

Another thing I would like to say, and I have been avoiding actually answering that — the issue of pain and good and evil.  Do you know why?  Because I feel that it is somewhat vulgar to begin when you are dealing with suffering and try to explain it.  That is why I have not attempted to do that.  But if everything that I have said until now has registered for myself as well.  You know, when you speak you also speak to yourself?

MIKE:  Yes, I do it all the time.

RABBI JACOBSON:  Because tears are tears.  If this has somewhat registered, then that would be the only time I would begin to even venture to try to discuss this.

Let’s talk about pain for a moment. Let’s talk about physical pain.  What is physical pain?  We live in the age of painkillers.  If you can get rid of any pain, get rid of it.  Pain essentially is a warning or a signal there is something wrong.  If we did not have toothaches, if we did not have nerves, we wouldn’t feel the pain.  What would happen?  We could really hurt ourselves.  So pain is like a warning or a signal that something is coming.  Do something about it.  Something is out of wack or out of sync.

Now, of course, if you can get rid of it on a remedial level, just a type of symptom — such as take an aspirin, great.  But often it doesn’t work.  Then you realize you had better go find out what the root is and what the cause is.

The same is true, I would say, with psychological pain and in a way you could say cosmic pain.  Tragedies that have befallen in a world where innocent people suffer — getting now to your initial question — something is out of sync.  Because if G-d said, “I created the universe to work a certain way.  Here is the machine.  This is the way it should work.” Suddenly we see that good people are suffering and wicked people are prospering.  That is not the script.  “You told us that when you are good” –G-d, that is — “when you are good, you will prosper.”

MIKE:  That is what I thought.

RABBI JACOBSON:  When you are wicked, you will suffer.  Not necessarily as a punishment, but let’s call it like cause and effect.

We discussed this last week at length. But cause and effect is, like, if you put your hand in fire, you get burned.  It is not a punishment.  That is cause and effect.

So in a sense when a human being behaves in a way that is inconsistent with their own system, what will happen?  Things won’t work.  On that level the Torah teaches, and particularly Kabalistic teachings, tell us that the pain in life often is a signal that things are not in sync.

I must qualify this, because it is not always so black and white.  It is not like with the human body.  You cut yourself on a piece of glass.  There is a little pain in your finger, the blood, and then it clots, and then it heals. That is the short term.  On a cosmic level, things sometimes take generations to repair themselves.

Let’s take the environment.  There is an oil spill in some ocean.  What happens is it kills a certain type of fish.  With that fish, the whole eco-system is thrown off.  It may take centuries or at least years or decades for it to straighten itself out.  There is a natural correcting system or an immune system.

In a way the pain and suffering of innocent people, that is why we are not to blame.  But the fact is that there can be pain that is seemingly inconsistent with a good G-d.

Let’s talk about the question of reconciling a good G-d with pain is in itself the best signal, as we have pain, that the cosmic order is not in sync.  We believe firmly that when human beings persist in their goodness and kindness despite the pain, they do something to repair that damage that may have happened 50 years ago, or one hundred years ago, or yesterday.

It may have happened in New York and someone in Australia may be doing something that on a more spiritual level, there is a certain type of corrective ability or healing ability that we all can initiate.

MIKE:  There was somebody in my extended family, which was about 15 years ago, that got leukemia.  A child 12 years old had to go through incredible suffering and pain, chemical treatment, and injections in his spine. This person had never done anything.  They were brought up to eat healthy food.  They were brought up to be good to other people.  With all due respect, a two year old kid can get cancer and get a heart condition.  They have never done anything to anybody.  Now I am getting very angry about this obviously.  Where is the justice in this?  Where is the lesson?  What is being set straight with a little innocent kid like this suffering?  What is being set straight?  What did they do before?  They weren’t even around before.  They were just brand new practically in the world.  I am getting carried away.  It is such a serious churning thing.  We are all suffering with pain in some way or another, so it is so universal.

RABBI JACOBSON:  I have no answer for you.  That is why I spend a half an hour of this show telling you that.  I have no answer to that question.  As a matter of fact, I firmly believe that the child may have done nothing.  I am not even looking to find something that the child did.  So there is an element of mystery.  It is not a question of tit for tat.

Let’s talk about it for a moment in a more detached way, if I may.  In an attached way, I would tell you I don’t have an answer — to hold that child.  We have the strength in our own inner good.  We can’t give up.  And that child cannot see us being that way.  It is true, because the child needs the strength to forge ahead.  People have gotten stronger through the losses of life.  I am not suggesting anyone should have that, G-d forbid, but you can see that.  You see others that have been so broken, so to speak, that the tragedy continues to the second and third generation.

MIKE:  There is something that we don’t understand that is being corrected somewhere.

RABBI JACOBSON:  But here is the point.  The mere fact that there can be such a thing, that an innocent child like this 12 year old can suffer from leukemia or, for that matter, other people anywhere suffer in a way that seeming is so unfair to them and to their parents and to their families and I don’t minimize.  That is why I said that the greatest people challenged
G-d with that.

The mere fact that things like that can exist shows that the system is not in sync. Let’s put it this way and I will use Kabalistic language:  spirit and matter are not one seamless equilibrium.  It is no different than, as I said, an infection that attacks the body.  The body may not be at fault.  The heart may not be at fault, but it may affect the heart.  We have to get rid of that infection.

So in a strange way, yes.  Your behavior and my behavior sitting in this room may affect somewhere and someone.  The question is: it is not fair.  Why does it affect us?  Because the human being and the human race in another mysterious way are interlinked with each other. When we say we are responsible for each other, that is not just a nice cute statement.  It really means we are one great web.  We are interlinked.

Today modern physics testifies to some type of mysterious super rational type of underlying unity.  We are interlinked and our behavior does affect each other.  No one can explain where it expresses itself.  Why does the infection attack the liver and not the heart, or the leg and not the arm?  We don’t understand that completely.

So if you speak on a very personal level, I would defer and say, “Hey look, we don’t have the answers to the questions.  We don’t have answers to all the questions.  We don’t always know why innocent people suffer.  You have to hold their hand and soothe them.  ‘I am here with you and I will cry with you.'”

If we can be somewhat detached and in someway step back, and I am leading to something with that, then you could look at things and study things and understand things.  It is like at the moment of the crisis when the building is burning, you are not going to sit down and start talking about how to read fire preventive manuals.  Then you have to get out of the building.  When the motion strikes you and when you are in that type of paralyzed state, you are not going to sit down and discuss philosophy. “Why did G‑d do this?”  Now a person needs strength.  Be there with them.  Cry with them. Scream with them.  Yell.  Whatever it may take.

But — and this is the key — interestingly, when Joseph, who is in the Bible, was asked, “What should we do?”  They knew there would be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine.  So Joseph came up with a  brilliant idea, for which they immediately appointed him viceroy of Egypt, which sounds strange.  What was the idea?  He said, “Stockpile.  Put away from the years of plenty. We will stock up the gain.  That way we will have gain for the seven years of famine.”  They said, “Brilliant.  Brilliant.  Make him president.”

This seems like simple logic, but here is the surprising element.  It is very logical. But ask anyone about savings.  Logically, I am going to put away every month $50.  But why do we force them to withdraw it automatically from the account?  Because the fact is when things are going well, psychologically we don’t think it is ever going to end.  The same thing emotionally. When things are going well and we are living in joy, we don’t really remember the pain and we would like to believe it is never going to end, the party is not going to end.  The wise people understand, not necessarily that the worst thing will happen, but they always reserve.  As long as there is a person somewhere in pain, I can never be in complete joy.

It is interesting that those people that are a hundred percent consumed with their own joy, when, G-d forbid, tragedy strikes, then they are one hundred percent consumed by that.

The person who remembers the pain of another person when they are happy, will remember the joy of another person when they are sad.  It is a balance.  It is how you see life.  When you are totally consumed with your own state of mind and state of being, then that consumption can work both ways.

So what Joseph’s brilliance was — and this is a suggestion to all of us — of the many of us who are 40 or 50 years old, who hasn’t suffered some loss in their life in different ways?  It may be in divorce, or it may be the loss of a close one, or it may be an illness.  It is critical in the years of plenty to stockpile. Which means, if you want to understand G-d when you are in pain, you had better understand G-d when you are in joy.  Because then it is easier as you build up you arsenal, so to speak, it is a certain type of understanding of life.  You realize life is not just a little party with things going well.  Because if you think it is that, when things don’t go well ..

MIKE:  You have no resources?

RABBI JACOBSON:  Exactly.  It is like if we diversify in investments, you need to diversify also in this.  There is a story they tell.  One of the Rebbes was arrested in 1927 by the Bolsheviks, and he refused to cooperate with them.  Obviously they considered him arch enemy number one because of his perpetuating Judaism there.  He refused to cooperate.  So one of them came over and said to him, “Rebbe,” and pointed a pistol to his head, “this little object here has made many people cooperate.”  The Rebbe replied very calmly, “This little toy can frighten someone what has one world and many gods, but not someone who has one G-d and many worlds.”

One world and many gods, means my material world and my success right now, the here and now, which we all know is temporary and transient.  If you put all your eggs in one basket called “materialism,” and you will see what happens when materialism wanes.  But if you can diversify you realize you have many worlds. I have a world of mind, and a world of heart, a world of intellect, a world of psychology, of subconscious, a world of love, a world of children, a world of altruism, and a world of spirituality of G-dliness.  You have a lot to rely on when one part may be taken away from you.  That is not an answer, but it is what do you do about it?  How do you forge ahead?  The journey of life is complicated.

You and I may resolve all the issues here, Mike, tonight, but people will still be in pain tonight.  I do think that in a cosmic way we all have an affect.  It is like a wave affect. They say the butterfly affect.  A butterfly flutters its wings some where in Kansas City, and there is a typhoon in Singapore.  I don’t know why they choose those cities, but that is what it is.

MIKE:  This whole concept is reminiscent.  We have talked before, and maybe we have talked off the air about this, there are a lot of Jews — and this is a subject for a whole other program obviously — who have drifted into Buddhism in the last 20 or 30 or 40 years.  But there is a concept of Buddhism known as karma

that is very much like what you have been taking about.  There is an idea that every single thing you say or do has an effect.  Even if you can’t see it currently in your own life, it has an effect somewhere because everything is interrelated.  I don’t know if that is the same kind of principle, but it sounds like it to me.

RABBI JACOBSON:  You say mazel tov, which is a form of mazel which means from, like, a good star.  There is a good energy.  There are definitely times.  Free will is never taken away from us, but we all go through life.  We have to see life’s challenges as like riding the waves, where there are times that the energy is a better one time or a good energy, so to speak.  It doesn’t mean that it is going to be good, but it means it is more auspicious.  There is a propensity for or it is easier.  There are times of celebration, and then there are times in the calendar where it is considered a time where there is a negative energy.  Again, this does not mean that we have to be evil or wicked.  There is no such thing in Jewish thought that has any force.  But it is the season and there is a propensity or a challenge.

There is an interesting concept called the “spiral staircase.”  In Yiddish a spiral staircase is called “shvindel-trep. “Shvindeltrep” means swindling steps.  Steps that swindle. Why?  Because when you walk up a regular staircase you see the designation right up ahead, but in a spiral staircase it is deceptive.  As you walk and you face the other way at a 360 degree turn, but you are about to come to the top.  Sometimes life is that way.  You don’t see the designation, but you are going somewhere. And sometimes you have to turn with you entire back to the designation, and you do not realize that it is right there.  The key is to see it through.

It is a mystery but it is also a very interesting type of dance.  Of course, I must say that I wish all of the listeners, and ourselves as well, that we should only experience joy and not any pain and suffering.

But all of us will have at sometime a setback or two, it should be minimal, and see it as that type of challenge and see it as that spiral staircase.  Not necessarily you will find an answer, but you will be able to see it through.  That is the greatest lesson, if someone will see it through.

MIKE:  I see that you are looking at a book here while you have been talking.  Is this something that we can take some ..

RABBI JACOBSON:  Yes.  Because I was preparing for a practical suggestion at the end.

MIKE:  Don’t send anybody away without a practical suggestion.  We are not there exactly yet.

RABBI JACOBSON:  But that is what I was looking at.  I hope I wasn’t off topic reading one thing and saying another.  It is hard to chew gum and do radio.

MIKE:  I think it is a good answer.  In an hour we are not going to solve the problem that has been plaguing people for as long as there have been human beings on earth.

Based on what you were saying tonight, I am not going to get into ancillary questions which were almost probably answered long ago during the course of this program. There is this book.  Do you know of the book Catch 22 by Joseph Heller?  This is like a technical thing.  This has probably been answered already, but I am leading up to something and I will get to it real quick because we don’t have that much time left.  He had a debate also about why does G‑d cause people pain in the book.  He said to someone — and this is what you have said, and this is what I have heard, and this is what we all understand — pain, and any biologist who is assigned to a certain doctor and you have mentioned it yourself — pain is a way of showing us that something is really out of wack either in our biological system or in any kind of system.

So this guy says to the other one, “How come G-d didn’t put blue lights in our forehead that light up without any pain whatsoever?  If G-d can create anything, if G-d is up there, if G-d made all of this and knows the beginning and the end of it all, why not have our hair stand up straight when we have liver cancer?  Why not have a blue light go off when we have a spleen falling  apart.  Why does it have to hurt?”  Has that question been answered already?  It was just something that was left over.

RABBI JACOBSON:  Is there an answer in the book Catch 22? Maybe that is why it is called Catch 22.

MIKE:  It is interesting that you mentioned that, because, in fact, there is no answer.  There is never an answer in that book. The answer is that there is no answer.

 RABBI JACOBSON:  The answer is there is no answer, and that answer is that life is more than answers.  That life is more than just answers.  I think from what I said earlier we probably could find a response to that.  I wouldn’t say an answer to that, but a response to that.  But you asked the same question about joy.  Why shouldn’t we feel joy?  Why not? Instead purple lights and green lights should go on.

MIKE:  Then we would be cheated that way.

RABBI JACOBSON:  So sensation is  sensation.  There is something to be said for actually feeling pleasure and not just seeing the red light go on.  That there is pleasure in a blue light saying, “Hey, it is not pleasure.”  I don’t know.  Sensation is part of the human experience.

It is an interesting statement that requires its own topic:  that G-d, himself, feels pain.  What does that mean?  The creator of it all could have done it any way.  Some way he has bound himself to our experience.

King David writes in the Psalms, “I am with you in the pain.”  It is not just a consolation, don’t think you are alone.  There is something about it.  There is something about G-d’s binding himself to our existence.  That can be discussed.

MIKE:  We are all the way down to, like, the last couple of minutes.  I do want to have a couple of minutes here to mention the addresses again and to also thank a couple of people for tonight.  Then maybe we can wind up.

Let’s re‑identify.  You are listening to WEVD in New York, 1050 AM on you dial.  This is Mike Feder.  I here with Simon Jacobson.  The show is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson.  We have been attempting to take the first step down a 4,000 mile road of answering one profound question here tonight.  We are going to go on for a long time answering these questions; and maybe we will never have the answers, like you said.  Maybe we will just be ansking the questions, which is a good enough contribution.

RABBI JACOBSON:  The Baal Shem Tov says for every question there is an answer, and for every answer there is another question.

MIKE:  What I want to say again is that we do want all your questions and comments on this show.  The number to call to do that is 1‑800‑3‑MEANING and that is 1‑800‑363‑2646.  Also you can write to us at the Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, New York 11213, and E-mail: WisdomReb@AOL.com.

Before we go any further, we want to thank very much for helping us put this program on and bringing it to us all, Sharon Friedman and Weldon Turner and family.  Thank you very much for helping us put this program in front of the listeners.  An additional thanks also goes to Charles and Marti Yassky for the same thing.

We now have about two minutes at the most.  If you have a practical suggestion after all of this abstract talk, I would be happy, believe me.

RABBI JACOBSON:  So would I.  Also speaking in the way of training, it is that you really have to put yourselves in those shoes.

The interesting thing is that there is a tradition that is going on now of 49 steps of personal refinement, you can say, that take pass between the Passover and Shavuian holiday.

Essentially, it is this principle that I mentioned earlier.  That cosmic effect is initiated by personal moves.  You make a move, and it has an affect on the entire universe in some way.

So in a way of understanding or coming to some type of peace with G-d’s mysterious ways in life is sometimes coming to peace with your own mysterious ways.  It is interesting these 49  days are 7 weeks, and we are now in the second week period which deals with the issues of discipline.  In Hebrew and in Kabalistic language it is called the gevura.

Gevura is how we discipline each other or how we discipline our own energies or channel them, and it is interestingly equated with G‑d’s disciplining which often takes on the shape which may appear to be pain.  Because discipline when seen on its own in that context may appear to be just a negative energy.

Part of the exercises that I put together in this little book called Forty-Nine Steps to Counting the Omer is precisely how one opens those channels.

I want to suggest an exercise.  Look at your discipline and even the discipline of your children, sometimes the harshness that we have and the severity, and try to recognize that it should be driven by love and by compassion and not by discipline itself.  When we behave that way, G-d in turn — medda kenegged medda is the expression, tit for tat — behaves in kind.  So look at people that you may have hurt and try to be compassionate to them.

MIKE:  Thank you very much.  It is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson, and we will be back next week.  Thank you very much.

This transcript is In Honor of Dinah Borenstein. Dedicated by Devorah bas Sarah and Boruch ben Ethel.  May they be abundantly blessed in the merit of all those reading and being inspired by these words

Tags: accountability, death, divine providence, faith, pain, determinism, free will
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