Do You Think That You Matter?

May 28th, 2014

Would the world be any different if you weren’t born? Do you wake up in the morning feeling like you have an important role to play in the grand scheme of things?

Most of us grow up in a world where life is dispensable, where our individual contributions go unrecognized, where there is no real sense that life – ours or anyone’s – is significant or meaningful.

At the root of this restlessness and discontent is the deep-deated conviction that “I Don’t Matter.” A belief that if I were to show up someplace or not, or make some kind of contribution or not, it would not fundamentally affect the world or the people that live in it.

Think about that for a minute. If you don’t feel like you make a difference in the world, how excited can you be about the things you do and the choices you make? When you wake up in the morning and you feel like what you do that day doesn’t matter anyway, how committed or passionate can you be?

But here is a message that will change your life forever: Birth is G-d’s way of saying “you matter.”

This means you are absolutely necessary. You are indispensable to G-d’s vision of the world, chosen to fulfill a mission in this world that you and only you can accomplish Like musical notes in the grand Divine composition, each of us has our unique music to play.

If you think this is a simple message, let me share with you a letter that I received from a woman who read my book Toward a Meaningful Life:

“I am a 47-year-old executive—very successful and accomplished; admired and respected. Yet beneath this fine veneer lies a woman in shreds. You see, my soul was murdered as a young child when my parents abused me physically, emotionally, sexually. Every day of my life is essentially a struggle against suicide. I feel no self value, actually no self at all. I am a sum of my parts, and my value is based on how others value me. I have tried many therapies but essentially have remained the same. Intimacy doesn’t work in my life, relationships are either unhealthy or nonexistent.

“In order to compensate for this deep void and lack, what I have done, as do people in this situation, I have become superambitious and hyperproductive in order to create some semblance of outer control in place of no inner control. It helps distract me somewhat and helps get me through the day, but it doesn’t really change anything. Inside I am a wreck, and every day, sometimes every moment, is another struggle.

“I had long given up hope and resigned myself to this life of misery. But then a miracle happened. Someone gave me the book Toward a Meaningful Life as a gift. I am Jewish but non-observant, and I was glancing through the book with a measure of skepticism until a line jumped out at me and struck me like a thunderbolt, like a silver bullet between the eyes:

“The line said: ‘BIRTH IS G-D SAYING THAT YOU MATTER.’ I read it again. ‘BIRTH IS G-D SAYING YOU MATTER.’ I read it over and over at least 500 times. And I will continue to read it every day of my entire life.

“I suddenly realized, after 47 years, that no matter what my parents told me, no matter how they said I was an accident and a source of misery in their lives, that no matter how society tells us that we are just a statistic in someone’s balance sheet, that our value is measured in buying power, productivity, looks, youth, contacts, and money—none of matters because I matter to the One who matters most. To G-d, who created me and said, ‘I want you on this Earth. I need you.

“The mere fact that I was born, that I exist, regardless of my mood, my performance level, my looks that day. The mere fact that I am here is a vote of confidence from G-d that I am indispensable, absolutely necessary, irreplaceable. No one can replace me. I matter. I truly matter.

“Do you know how that made me feel? That I have permission to matter. I am commanded to matter.

“So though I still have many years to heal, now, for the first time in my life, I have hope. And I know what I need to do. I need to create bypass surgery to bypass the infected arteries that my parents gave me when they touched me, criticized me, hit me, for the first time, and reconnect to that first, pure, innocent moment of birth, when G-d said YOU MATTER, you are indispensable.

“So thank you for giving me back my life.”

This letter left me in tears for some time. It is a letter that changed my life. I grew up in a relatively healthy home and was nurtured and made to feel valuable. But hearing the heart-wrenching story from a woman who did not have that luxury, I was challenged to ask myself: “Do I matter because my parents valued me and because of my achievements, or do I matter in a more permanent, cosmic way?”

I began to pose this question to audiences across the country – and I ask you, dear reader, the same: Do you think that you really matter? The knee-jerk response is usually : Of course I matter – I feel that I am important. My family, friends and work colleagues value me. But let me rephrase the question: Would it make a difference if you were never born? Remember, before you were born, it would not be a catastrophe if you did not appear; no one would miss you because no one was expecting you.

Of course, we can justify our existence once we are born. But does our existence have any merit beyond our justifications? The only absolute reason why you truly matter is because you were chosen by G-d to come to this world. The words “Birth is G-d saying you matter” are not my own. They are taken from the Torah,which states the single most important truth you will ever hear:

Yes, you matter, not because you think you are important, or because others tell you that you are, or because of your buying power, monetary value, looks, performance or productivity level. But because G-d put you here. You are an indispensable musical note. Irreplaceable. Period. The world would be different if you were not here or if you do not fulfill your calling. You have been allotted a certain section of this globe, with certain talents; people you will meet; experiences you will have; places you will go; objects you will obtain – all are allocated to you in order for you to transform them, to leave them differently from how you found them. And this change lives forever. Eternally.

When you know that you and your contribution are crucial, it infuses all that you do with a compelling sense of urgency.

I believe that this simple, clear message is preventive medicine for much of the tragedy and suffering that plague our world today-the shootings, the hatred, the suicides, the wars. We need to reach to every person, to every child, every parent, every educator, every leader, with the message: You matter. Your life and what you do with it matters. You are indispensable to G-d and to this world.

Tags: abuse, depression, Toward a Meaningful Life, purpose of life
Posted in Personal Life, Birth & Birthdays, Life Cycles, Emotions & Psychology | 53 Comments »

Dreams

May 28th, 2014

Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – December 12, 1999

Tonight’s show will be about dreams. It’s a topic that I always hear people talking about wherever I travel, in my classes, and with the people I meet. People dream, and as usually is the case, anything that is exotic —the unknown, the mysterious, the subconscious— always intrigues us.

However, I am reminded of the story of a fellow who came to a rabbi, a great mystic, who clearly had the power to interpret dreams, and he tried to elicit from him some type of interpretation of his unique dreams. The Rebbe said to him, “Listen, it’s hard enough for us to figure out what to do while we are awake! Let us deal with our dreams once we’ve figured out how to live our wakeful hours…”

The Rabbi didn’t want to feed into the sensationalism that is often associated with anything unknown. Dreams definitely do play an important role, not just in our lives but in Torah thought in general, particularly in the mystical dimension. You find the classic stories of dream interpretation in the Bible: Joseph is particularly known for the dream interpretation of his own dreams and then his interpretation of the dreams of the Egyptian ministers and then of Pharaoh’s. So clearly there’s much to be said about dreams from a Torah perspective, and I hope to be able to cover as much as possible in the short time we have tonight.

I don’t promise any dream interpretations, but I do hope that I can shed some light on the topic based on Talmudic sources, and on mystical sources, the Zohar… but let me, at the outset, set this in motion:

What is a dream? We all dream, and we have no recollection of most of our dreams. Those that we do remember are a bundle of confusion: there are things that we do understand and sometimes it’s associated with memories or experiences of that day and our lives; sometimes it’s completely random, almost ludicrous.

So the Talmud states that there are two contradictory elements in any dream. Number one is that there is no dream without nonsense. Ein cholom bli devarim betalim is the Hebrew expression. On the other hand it says that a dream is often a 60^th of a prophecy: a form of prophecy. The real problem is this: that since it is all bundled into one snowball, it’s very difficult to distinguish between the two—which part is nonsense and which part is meaningful. So that is why we find it difficult to relate to dreams, because in essence it’s really a glimpse into the subconscious, and the subconscious mind is not just another dimension that is yet to be discovered, the subconscious mind actually works differently from our conscious mind. Our conscious minds function in a linear fashion—cause and effect: things make sense at least in the logical world that we have created in our experiences. The subconscious mind is a completely different type of experience where contradictions are not necessarily contradictions. Paradoxes can be the norm, because realities there don’t take on the same defined shape and form as they do in our conscious world.

To use an example from quantum mechanics—those of you who are physicists listening in—it’s become pretty popular in the mainstream to know that on the quantum level of subatomic particles and microscopic world of existence, there’s the concept that though it’s been seen as bizarre and still remains bizarre (no one can comprehend it but it’s been proven), there’s a state of being which can’t even be defined as a state, it’s seen as a state of probability, a state of uncertainty, that only becomes defined once it is experienced by an observer or once it reaches the macroscopic level. So there is a state where things are, I won’t call it an amorphous state, but it definitely is one in which things are in a state of probability, not clearly defined and don’t work by the same rules as a conscious world does.

A dream is a glimpse into that world. And that is why dreams can be very contradictory, very paradoxical, and within them can definitely lie images and factors that reveal and illuminate parts of our subconscious. However, since we are so comfortable living in a conscious world, the dream remains a distant and illusive thing.

Most of us find that we wake up in the morning and our dreams were so vivid, yet we can’t even remember what they were. A little time passes and we can’t recollect them at all. But if we write it down or tell it to someone, we can retain it in our memory.

What’s the reason for that? Since a dream exists in that state of probability, a glimpse into a different world, so to speak, once you’ve woken, it’s not necessarily possible for you to really articulate it or remember it unless you actually write it down or ground it or concretize it in your personal experience.

That’s why you’ll find it said in the Talmud that with dream interpretation—which you find in the Bible and in other places—often the interpretation itself can define the dream one way or another.

What I mean by that is that a dream can usually be interpreted in two different ways: it can be interpreted in a positive way, or often it can be interpreted in a negative way. And the interpreter himself or herself can actually have an effect on how that dream plays out in a person’s life.

So this is just a brief synopsis of what dreams are about. What I really want to address, of course, is their relevance to our lives and their relevance to our experiences. Can we learn something from these dreams, can we become better people, can they help us grow, can they help us solve dilemmas, can they help us perhaps look into our own inner psyches in a way that can make our lives more sensible to be able to deal with and take on the challenges of our lives?

Now, to answer the next question—What relevance does it have to our lives?—why would we dream and why would G-d allow a human being to have a glimpse into the subconscious, the fact is, the subconscious is a very mysterious world, and frankly, sensationally speaking, even though we like to know what’s going on there, I would submit that most of us wouldn’t like to necessarily see our subconscious in full blast, in its full glory, because it is a completely different type of reality than our own. In the different literature of Jewish mysticism, you’ll find people who have “traveled into the garden,” so to speak, people who’ve gone into the world of the subconscious, entered into a deeper or more profound dimension of existence, and did not always came out unscathed.

People can get hurt when they enter that place; hurt because sometimes when you see things too real that are not masked and are not couched and are not packaged, one has to really be prepare to be able to contain and process it. That is why, in a conventional approach, if you went over to a mystic, someone who really can interpret a dream, he usually won’t interpret it for you because the attitude will be, as the statement goes, “Those who say, don’t know; and those who know, usually don’t say.”

So if you have someone who’s interpreting your dreams, especially if that person is charging you for it, you can assume that if it comes too easily for them to interpret your dream, and they’re not too reluctant, there may be ulterior motives involoved.

However, there is an authentic form of dream interpretation, and it’s important to know that. For instance, in the Bible itself (in the book of Genesis) when it discusses dream interpretation, you find that Joseph, when he was asked by the two ministers when he was in prison with him to interpret their dreams, the first thing Joseph says is, “G-d is the one who interprets dreams.” And then he continues and states, “So tell me what you dreamt.”

He qualifies it very clearly to say that G-d interprets dreams. Then, when Pharaoh tells him two dreams that he had, Joseph again repeats those words in a somewhat different language, but with the same idea and concept that it is G-d who is the understander of dreams, and the one who causes a person to dream.

That acknowledgment tells it all. Joseph simply saw himself as a channel. The mere fact that a human being can live in this conscious world and function, without necessarily understanding the significance of his or her dreams, means that G-d does not necessarily want you to have that deeper understanding.

However, there will be times when a message needs to be told to you: something that needs to empower you, something to warn you, something to help you, and then there may be a dream that will reoccur—as it happened in those Biblical stories—to make you aware of it and to spark your interest, and in that situation there may be a message that you need to uncover.

Now, of course, on our own it’s hard to always interpret those dreams, which is why it’s important to have a refined, spiritually dedicated human being who can help a person understand them. But that’s only in the case where it is absolutely necessary for our lives.

In other words, if we have dreams and we don’t understand their meaning, that in itself is a message, that perhaps you don’t need to understand them to be able to function. The only time a dream can be relevant to us is when it actually helps us to become a more responsible human being. If it’s some excuse or some type of escapism from reality (I know some people who are experts on what’s going on in their dreams, but have real difficulty functioning when they’re awake) then there’s a problem with that.

So the dream is meant to enhance us and make us more responsible, more developed, more self-actualized human beings. And in those cases, a dream can give us some type of glimpse into a reality that’s beyond our own.

But there are dreams (I’ve heard stories of this) where a person came to someone who was a dream interpreter and he told him the dream and the interpreter said, “I don’t really have an interpretation.” The truth is, he did have one; however, he didn’t feel he wanted to spell it out, because as I mentioned, a dream can be affected by how you interpret it. And often, by ignoring it, particularly a dream that has negative connotations, it can be useful because if it wasn’t concretized but remains in that state of probability, that amorphous state, and never materializes.

So it’s important to not always take our dreams seriously, as we would conscious experiences. Sometimes it may be best to ignore certain dreams. If G-d wants to get a message across to us through our dreams , He’ll make sure that either we dream it again, or we’ll have other ways that will remind us and make us aware. Let’s go to Allen on the phone.

Caller: Good evening Rabbi. The question I want to ask is for recurrent bad dreams, nightmares that happen almost every night. What do you recommend as a remedy or a solution for this? How does a person go about trying to remedy this? I read that a small percentage of all adults have recurrent nightmares every night, but I haven’t done any research into trying to find a remedy for myself, but I am plagued with this (laughs).

Jacobson: Well, the fact that you can laugh about it is a good sign. The question is, do you remember the exact details of the dream? I’m not asking you to say that on the air…

Caller: Most of the time I do.

Jacobson: And do you find any relevance or relationship with anything in your experiences during the day or during your life?

Caller: Yes.

Jacobson: Well, that’s important. I would say, that without breaching any confidentiality on your part, I would say that it’s important, because another thing that the Talmud says is that a person dreams about at night what a person thinks about during the day. Which, of course, is reflective of a deeper or related dimension to experiences that we have during the day.

In other words, a dream shouldn’t be seen as an isolated experience that has no relationship with the rest of you. It is part of it, and often it may be an exaggerated part. It may be trying to emphasize something that is some type of negative behavior or negative type of environment that you may be in; for instance, a person may have a very obnoxious boss at work and that really just wears him down. I can see a person like that having recurrent dreams about that boss.

In different forms and fashions, it just reinforces the experience of having a negative, irritating environment that one lives in.

Caller: I don’t think that’s the issue with me.

Jacobson: No, fine. I just gave that as an example. I feel that if you have recurring nightmares, there are things that you may need to change, both in your conscious daily experiences and particularly what you do right before you go to sleep. I was going to make a suggestion at the end of the show but I might as well begin now. The suggestion is as follows: most people go to sleep either with a television on…

Caller: I don’t.

Jacobson: Okay, there we go. Listen, we’re eliminating all the possibilities! We may be able to solve your issue yet. And I’m trying to do this without knowing what the dream is.

Caller: Just one more thing before the remedy. The dreams are so bad that they affect my whole day. When I wake up, it stays with me the whole day and impairs my functioning. It’s been this way for about six months now.

Jacobson: Do you want to tell me what the dream is about?

Caller: It has to do with my family, my parents and my siblings. That’s basically what it has to do with, that’s the main thing.

Jacobson: I suspected as much. So it is reflecting true experiences in your life, not some concoction or fantasy.

Caller: Well, it’s not reality that I’m dreaming; it’s not true experiences. It’s nothing that is actually happening. It’s just bad things that are happening.

Jacobson: But do you have a good, nurturing relationship with your family? Are the vibes good at home?

Caller: Not the best. No.

Jacobson: Without going further, I’d be happy to communicate with you one-on-one. You can write to me at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com and be more specific, and then I will try to respond. But I will say some things here.

Caller: I’ve tried other things. People have told me to say the Shema before I go to sleep, to study Mishnayos, and other things like that which I’ve tried.

Jacobson: Has it helped?

Caller: No!

Jacobson: Well, you send me an email and I’ll send you some comments, okay?

Caller: Okay.

Jacobson: And I appreciate your call. Many of us go to sleep and the last thing we do is we either leave the television on or fall asleep with the Wall St. Journal or some other newspaper on our nose. It’s critical that the last moment before you go to sleep should be done in a sacred way. You see, your soul is returning to that subconscious place, to it’s natural shell and it’s important that the way you enter that area, that environment, is how it will have an impact on you.

Now, it’s not guaranteed, as we see with the case with Allen, however it definitely helps. And there are other things that need to be looked at, for example, in the case where a person may be dreaming negative things about their family, then in that type of situation, what’s important is that they look at what’s going on in their lives.

If they’re in an abusive environment, or even subtly negative experiences, it may be that their dream is telling them to wake up and address the issue.

Now, I don’t know how deep it is, and it needs to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. That’s why it’s difficult to talk about Allen’s issues because I’m sure they’re unique to him, but in general a dream should not be ignored if it’s recurring, for six months, and it’s actually disrupting your life. There must be something else going on.

And maybe it’s a combination of things: of going to sleep in a purer, more spiritual way, waking up in a purer, more spiritual way and cleaning up some of your environment throughout the day. A combination of the above can have that type of impact.

Let’s go to David on the line.

Caller: Hi Rabbi Jacobson. I had a really fantastic experience at your class on Wednesday night.

Jacobson: You’re talking about my Wednesday night class? Well I may as well take the opportunity to mention that I give a class every Wednesday night on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (346 West 89^th St., corner Riverside Dr.) at 8:00pm. Everyone is welcome. David go on.

Caller: I had this dream. I was in the process of interviewing some people about a new business direction, and I had this dream about snakes. And it just happened that because I was studying the Torah portion of the week, last week and this week (we read about Joseph being thrown into a pit of snakes and scorpions as one of the challenges that he survived)…

And it made me say to myself that you can either look at the dream normally—snakes scare the heck out of me (I would just run away from anything related to snakes, whether it’s in a personality or in people, or if it’s the real thing).

And there may be a positive spin on this that, Boruch Hashem, I could look at it in a positive way, that I could survive, and I did, in the dream, not where I’d be afraid of the snake, I realized I was not attacked or bitten by the snakes. I walked through the corridor of snakes. And I said that in this business venture, even though I may have trepidations that these people may be the equivalent of a pit of snakes and scorpions, that I can look at the positive aspects of it and survive it. I can give it the attempt. What are your thoughts?

Jacobson: I think that if that message really resonated for you and it helped you, how can one argue with success? You actually used the dream in a very positive way and that’s a good example.

Okay, we have Devorah on the line.

Caller: Can a dream show or hint to anything that will happen in the future or even the next day? I had one such thing happen last year. I had a dream that my sister came to me—she had gone on a Shabbaton (for real)—and she came to me in the dream and she said that she wants to come home for Shabbos, she doesn’t want to go on the Shabbaton. Then the next day she called (for real) and said that she had broken her arm. So could it mean anything?

Jacobson: Thank you for your call. A dream is a glimpse into a person’s deeper psyche and there’s no question that it can have messages both in the past and in the future. The real question that has to be asked is, “Why would G-d want you to know what was going to happen ahead of time?” Usually, that’s not the way it works, but however, if something worked out (as I said to the previous caller), then obviously, how can anyone argue with that type of foresight? So I thank you for the call.

These questions are great, and as usual, when you talk about a topic like this, it intrigues us all because as I mentioned, it’s a glimpse into another world, another reality, and other realities happen to be very interesting to us.

And that’s perfectly fine if you behave and use that in a responsible fashion, meaning, that you use it to become a growing, more productive person, and not as a form of escapsim.

Let me just interrupt for a minute to say that if you want to get in touch with us to give us your comments or ask questions, you can call us at 1-800-3MEANING, which is 1-800-363-2646. You can also email us at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com and we have our website which is www.meaningfullife.com, and you can download transcripts of the radio program from past shows. Also, if you want to write to us, the address is: The Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11213.

Let’s go to Esther on the phone.

Caller: I really love your show. I think you’re great and what you’re saying is tremendous. I wanted to share an experience I had. I was suffering from anxiety, and I was having difficulty sleeping for months and then one Shabbos, when I was reading Nishmas, I came to the words, “Hashem never slumbers, Hashem never sleeps,” and that night when I went to sleep I thought, “Well, if Hashem is up, I don’t have to worry anymore, I can go to sleep, because He’s up anyway and He’s guarding me.”

And since that experience, I don’t fear anymore because I know G-d is awake and He’s taking care of me. There’s nothing to worry about. It was really a helpful tool for me and I shared this with a lot of people who were going through similar situations and it really helped them. It’s also a very spiritual thing to know that you’re not alone and that G-d is with you and you have nothing to fear.

I think insomnia could come from fear and anxiety, fears about the future, worrying about the past—I just felt like I’m giving it all up to G-d and everything’s okay and everything will be okay. I just wanted to share this with you.

Jacobson: Thank you Esther. That’s a very important point and I second it, of course, particularly that, as I said, an experience that actually helps someone is a great way for all of us to learn from, and that’s with a case of insomnia where you’re not even dreaming.

Definitely when a person goes to sleep and is able to sleep and there are dreams, it’s important to remember that, as Joseph said, dreams do come from G-d and there are messages in them. However, at the same time, G-d gives us the power and the ability to deal with any challenge, and therefore dreams, as I discussed in a previous show on superstition, have no control over our lives. It is G-d who controls life, including the dreams we have. They may be glimpses, they may be images, they may be reminders, they may be wake-up calls, it may be some or all of the above, however, they don’t control our lives.

It’s important to know that and it’s critical to know that our job is to have a relationship with G-d, to know that G-d is with us. Even when there are challenging situations and a dream may reflect something negative, we have to see it as such, as a glimpse into another reality that is helping us live more meaningful lives.

Thank you Esther for the call.

Since this is going to be a shorter show, let me get some business out of the way. These shows are sponsored by listeners, by people such as yourselves, by friends whom I would like to acknowledge, and this particular show has been sponsored by and is dedicated to my dear friends Sam Goldstein, and Menachem and Faygie Shagalow. I want to thank them personally, and may they be blessed to have both healthy conscious experiences and healthy unconscious ones and sweet dreams, as they say.

You and all the listeners are welcome to help us out in any way that you can, because a show like this and all the activities of the Meaningful Life Center, are sponsored by people like you and we welcome your sponsorships. You can call us at 1-800-363-2646 (1-800-3MEANING) to make your pledge, and help us bring this show and similar activities and programs, including our website.

I just did a recent class on the Millennium, since millennium madness is in the air. I felt I should dedicate a class to it—looking at a deeper dimension of it, both the Jewish perspective, a more mystical perspective of milleniums in general, and what it means for us in our lives—so if you call and make a pledge of $50, we will send you my tape entitled “On the Threshold of a New Millennium,” so make mention of that when you call.

Now, we’re here discussing dreams, and I thank the callers for all their thoughts and questions.

Now, dreams, the world of the exotic, the world of the mysterious, is a world of paradox—and paradox is supreme in the world of dreams—and in a way it’s a reminder to us all that life is a paradox. As a matter of fact, the term “dream” is even used as an analogy, as a metaphor, for the exile that we are in; exile meaning that in a world like ours where there’s a dichotomy between spirit and matter, between G-d and the material universe, when each of us suffers from a dichotomy between our own materialistic needs and our spiritual needs, that this is considered as a state of dreams, because a dream is that world where paradoxes are prevalent — the story of our lives. Which one of us can’t say that we don’t have a paradox in our lives: one moment we’re inspired and really motivated, and the next moment we procrastinate and go back to our old habits?

We are walking paradoxes, and many times the reality that we are in is a form of a dream; so a dream is also a message to us all, that even when we’re awake, we have to realize that there are paradoxes that are all snowballing together, and it’s important for us to wake up even when we’re awake.

At the same time, as I was discussing this evening on the show, dreams are a glimpse into another world.

Next week the show will be on the “Power of Prayer,” and I’m mentioning it not just to tell you what we’re going to be discussing, but also to welcome and invite your emails to wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com on the power of prayer, stories that you may have about prayer, how it may have worked in your life, or if you feel it didn’t work in your life. You can call us as well at 1-800-363-2646 and we’ll address the power of prayer and your comments next Sunday.

Since we have a few more minutes, on a personal note, I don’t dream that often in a way that I can remember, but as all of us, we have to look at dreams as a way of reminding us that reality is much larger and much greater, its horizons are much broader than what we have in our personal limited view and perspective, in the myopic vision of our conscious lives.

That may be one of the reasons why G-d created us in a way that we sleep and that during sleep something happens: our mind goes to another place. But beyond that, a dream has another message for us, and that is perhaps to look at our lives in a deeper way; that how we go to sleep, how we wake up from sleep, is all a big mystery. Medicine, with all its advances, has barely touched the surface of what sleep is, what dreams are. What the Torah teaches us is that we have the ability to put ourselves to sleep in a way that can transform us and refine us, and in a very healing way, help us grow. And that is, if a person goes to sleep, not with the television on, not with a newspaper, but to read something spiritual, perhaps even sing a song to yourself, to think of a story, to read something that talks to your soul — that is the best way to put yourself to sleep.

Remember, sleep is an experience where your soul enters an entirely different dimension, as the Midrash says, it goes back to drink the waters of spirituality. By going to sleep the right way, our dreams will definitely be sweeter, purer, and most importantly, when we wake up, we go into life with a new type of celebration.

So may you all have pleasant dreams, and pleasant awakenings, and I’ll see you all next Sunday, from 6-7pm, here on WEVD 1050am. This has been Simon Jacobson and Toward a Meaningful Life. Thank you very much.

Tags: radio transcript, dreams, subconscious
Posted in Personal Life, Emotions & Psychology, Featured | 1 Comment »

Emotional Subjectivity: Enemy or Ally?

May 28th, 2014

Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – April 16, 2000

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Good evening and welcome back to Toward a Meaningful Life with yours truly, Simon Jacobson. It’s always great to see the dynamic of an interactive experience, where you don’t really know in which direction it’s going to head. I often start with a script or with some ideas that I want to share, but then the calls take it to another level entirely. I really want to thank the listeners; it’s just a demonstration of what a collaborative communication can truly be like. If we open up our hearts and speak openly, spiritually, about things that really matter and are meaningful, all kinds of surprises can take place.

So I invite you to call in at 212-244-1050. But, as emcee, I’ll try to define the context of the show and that is, since it’s holiday season, the holiday of freedom, particularly Passover, a season that is celebrated by many people of different backgrounds and different religions, I thought it would be appropriate to take a unique angle on this issue of freedom: what really makes us free and how does one experience freedom?

I first thought of titling the show, “Emotions: Are they our greatest enemy?” It reminds me of someone who recently came to me to consult about certain personal issues and, of course, whenever we’re dealing with a personal issue we get involved in it and it becomes something that we’re invested in. Because we have feelings about it, when we get emotional, our emotions have the ability to entangle us and create subjectivity.

As we were speaking, I was trying to point out to him that there are different ways of looking at this—“this may be your view, there may be another perspective”—and it became very obvious (there are those moments when things become very clear, very crystallized) even to him, and he said, you know, this thing called emotions; I wish we could get rid of them. It would just make life so much simpler, so much clearer.

So emotions, on one hand, are very much a part of our experience (not only a part, but an intrinsic element of human experience). We feel things. We like something, we don’t like it. Love. Pain. We have sensations. If we were just minds, intellects, computers, we wouldn’t be able to experience life.

On the other hand, because of the subjective nature of emotions, they can entrap or blind us. The Bible puts it very clearly. It says that bias, which is shochad in Hebrew, a bribe, blinds the eyes of the wise and distorts the tongue of the tzaddik, the righteous person.

So we know the power that the emotions have, in a moment of obsession where you get totally consumed with something. And I thought it would be appropriate to discuss this at Passover time, because it’s the holiday of freedom and many of you may be at a Passover seder, which is supposed to be a freeing experience.

So I always ask myself the question that I ask people whom I speak to, which is, do you really feel free during the seder or free after the holiday? Do you really feel free of your psychological demons, of scars that you carry? As a matter of fact, someone just told me that she feels more enslaved by Passover than any other holiday. The cleaning that’s done before the holiday; following the letter of the law with such precision can sometimes seem to be an unfreeing type of experience.

So I thought it would be important to address, on a very personal level, what is freedom and how can we really use the holiday as an opportunity to become free.

The angle I’m taking here is that I believe that freedom is very much connected to human experience and to human emotions. The fact that we experience things also means that we become enslaved to them. We become attached to them, for good or for bad, in healthy and unhealthy ways; the biases and denial that it creates.

So the first question that I pose to myself and to the listening audience, and as I like to do is to open this question up to all of your comments as well as to share my thoughts: What kind of role do emotions play in human freedom? How would you define freedom? How do we balance the two? Can we create a situation where we take advantage of the benefits of an emotional experience and at the same time minimize the risks of being blinded to the point of self-destructive behavior or destructive behavior toward others? And ultimately, how does one really learn to become free?

Of course this comes down to the definition of what freedom is. We live in a country today, a democratic country, where freedom is considered to be the epitome and highest objective—the land of the free and the brave—but are we truly free? We live in highly prosperous times, with technology, development. Civilization is getting more cultivated and more evolved and advanced. Are we freer people because of that? Can we say that we’re freer today than we were 100-200 years ago? And how do emotions play into this, psychologically?

Let me give you my definition of freedom, and I invite your rebuttals or opinions on the matter. If you ask most people what the word “free” means, their knee-jerk reaction is, “Freedom? I can do what I like. I can go where I like, I can read what I like, I can meet whom I like. That’s freedom.”

That sound good initially, but if you think about it, that’s really a superficial and meaningless, hollow response because, as you’ll  see in a moment, I know people who’ll do anything they feel they like and they’re more enslaved than anyone I’ve ever met.

On the other hand, there are people who can sit in a disciplined way and for 3-4 hours concentrating, meditating, studying, reading, busy at work—seemingly, they are completely controlled by their environment, but it’s their choice, and they are there willingly.

So I would define freedom, and of course the antithesis being the opposite of freedom, slavery, as the following: that when you do something, you do it by no imposition from outside. No one imposes upon you to do something. It’s a true free expression from within, which basically means, if a five-year-old child is allowed to do anything he or she desires, like cross the street, that’s not freedom. Because in their ignorance, they may choose something that’s completely not healthy or self-actualizing. They need to be disciplined; they need to be instructed, educated.

True freedom is learning how to access your own inner self. How to be able to make a choice that is not affected by, or imposed upon by society, educators, community, peer pressure. A choice that’s truly yours and yours alone.

That is how I would define freedom. So when you look at it that way, can we really achieve freedom in a world like ours? Remember, we do live in a very great media age, where we’re exposed and inundated by media all the time—images, identity, labeling, and all the branding that they try to impose upon us. So how does one really find and discover him or herself?

Remember, this touches very much on the element of emotions, because when someone comes to you, or there’s peer pressure (people dress a certain way, you want to feel accepted), that’s an emotional reaction to becoming part of a group, which clearly biases you from being able to stand up and take a position.

It’s sad to say, but when you look at statistics, what people will do when there’s a group pressure, a mass mentality, it’s quite frightening.

So freedom means discovering who you are, which immediately implies that freedom requires some type of education, knowledge. Knowledge makes us free; knowledge is power, because it gives you options.

The first thing that any Fascist government does when it establishes power and control, is to control minds. They cannot give people the ability to have a free-flow of information because information allows people options; they see there are other ways, alternatives, and alternatives creates open ideas in their mind, which is a threat to a Fascist totalitarian regime.

On the other hand, in a country that we consider to be free, as Thomas Jefferson once said, “If you had to choose between a free press and a free government, you would choose a free press,” because without a free press, free expression, there’s no free government, there’s no accountability.

So freedom is very much connected to what you know, the perspectives that you have. It reminds me of one of my favorite stories from the city of Chelm (I’ve recently been telling you some Chelm stories). If you listen to the show weekly, you’ll soon be Chelm experts. So Chelm stories have these unique insights into the human psyche. They’re somewhat outrageous, even farcical, but they have quite interesting insights into human psychology.

Chelm was a small town in Poland that they say was inhabited by very wise people, but the neighbors were resentful so they created this whole folklore and parables of the foolish people of Chelm.

So you hear a lot of stupid jokes about the people from Chelm. In one, there was a farmer in Chelm who had a small farm, but this farm was special to the farmer because it was his baby. He inherited from his parents and grandparents, and he catered to it, cared for it, knew every grain of soil on the property.

One day he gets a letter from his cousin from a big-town farm in let’s say Texas who’s coming to visit. He’s very proud that his cousin is coming to visit him, and the day his cousin comes, he shows him around, showing him every part of the farm. They finally sit down to dinner and the small-town, Chelm farmer says to this big-town cousin: “So what do you think of my farm?”

The big-town farmer thinks to himself, “What should I say?” So he says, “Well, it’s nice and cute, but it’s so tiny.”

The Chelm farmer is taken aback, insulted, and asks, “How big is your farm back in Texas that you call this small?”

Now the Texan farmer is looking for some point of reference and he tells him, “Well, it takes me all day to travel with my tractor from one end of the farm to the other.”

So the Chelm farmer, with deep empathy and compassion, says to his cousin, “Ah, cousin, I once had a tractor like that too.”

So if you ask this question to yourself—we’ll do an on-air survey—check this box: are you close-minded (narrow-minded) or open-minded? Are you subjective or objective?

I don’t know if there’s a person out there who would check off: I’m close-minded, narrow-minded, and subjective—the reason being that part of being subjective is that it makes you think you’re objective. That’s what subjectivity means; it doesn’t let you see clearly.

So this Chelm farmer was also objective. He wasn’t malicious. He just never could envision a farm larger than his own. When he heard that it took an entire day to travel from one end to the other, he thought to himself, it must be the vehicle. He remembers that he once had a jalopy like that too, once upon a time, that took him all day to crank up to go from one corner to the next.

So that was his subjectivity. He couldn’t even see a broader horizon. This is an example of subjectivity that is not malicious; however, it’s clearly subjective and limited based on our perspective.

So we are as objective as our perspectives allow us. And that’s where freedom comes into play. That’s why any true free state, free government, has to provide equal opportunity in education, situations where people can access the knowledge necessary to be able to see broader horizons, or else they end up with a perspective that this farm is the only farm in town. And we all have our little farms.

This, I believe, is what the true celebration of freedom is about. How do we get beyond that perspective? How can we see broader horizons? How do we get out of the tentacles, the trap of our own emotional view on things? Because interestingly, of all traps, of all enemies—peer pressure, social pressure, parents, community, media, even real criminals and enemies outside of us—nothing cannot compare to your own enemy within, the enemy of subjectivity.

Now I must say, as a disclaimer, subjectivity per se is not an enemy. It’s what protects us. Protects our young. We protect ourselves because we are subjective. That’s fine. Self interest per se is not a crime.

When it becomes an enemy is when that’s all there is. When you’re so invested in being right, in winning, that you don’t care what the truth is: “Don’t bother me with the facts,” type of thing. “Don’t distract me.” Where your own subjectivity biases you from being able to see clearly. Accountability. Many businesses fail because the owner’s pride doesn’t allow him or her to live up to the fact that he had a mistake that year, and maybe wasted some money.

But true freedom requires accountability, and accountability requires one to step back and look at oneself, explore, assess, to be able to look at one’s life and see if there’s another way of looking at it. That requires stepping back, it requires knowledge, and it requires objectivity, the key to freedom. That’s why emotions play such an important role.

Now, today is a special day for me because it’s the birthday of the Rebbe, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who besides being my great teacher, was also a major forming force in my personal life, and as a result inspired me to write the book Toward a Meaningful Life which in turn has inspired this show. Interestingly, the Rebbe is a man dedicated to freedom, to finding truth, and paying whatever price it takes to become free. And that, as I said, requires being able to look at ourselves from the outside and not ever feeding into our own little comfort zone and insecurities or maintaining our positions just because they’re our position.

That’s a major lesson that the Rebbe inspired me with, who himself was a selfless person like that, and inspired so many in that spirit.

So going back to the topic of emotions, I think the first step is to be aware of the traps in our lives, and the single greatest trap is our own narrow view of things, being invested in a certain way we look at things. If you take any particular situation, if you get into a fight with your spouse, or you’re having difficulties with your children or you can’t get along with people at work, or just in general, rest assured, there’s always an emotional issue involved. Emotions are always right there being part of the culprit.

The problem is that we don’t want to eliminate emotions, we don’t want to eliminate human reactions: emotions play a critical role in our lives. We don’t want to be machines. Yet, at the same time, we have to be able to look at ourselves and really be able to assess where’s this is coming from.

Let me say this. When we talk about emotional subjectivity, as I said, being subjective makes you think that you are being objective, but it requires looking at ourselves, and examining our motives when it comes to any particular situation.

This isn’t an easy thing to do because it requires a certain dedication to truth. There’s a statement made about Abraham; Maimonides writes something that has always moved me deeply. When he writes about Abraham’s dedication to truth, his dedication to G-d, to freedom, he writes that Abraham is called “Avrohom Ohavi” which means “Abraham, My beloved.” Why is he “My beloved?” G-d says, because Abraham was dedicated to truth because it was true (Avrohom oseh es ha’emes mipnei shehu emes).

Abraham was dedicated to truth because it was true; not because he gained from it, not because he benefited either spiritually or materially. It wasn’t even an issue of gratification. It was really an issue of loving truth, being committed to truth because it is true.

This requires deep selflessness, and as Maimonides puts it, this isn’t something we all can achieve quickly. But just to know that there’s a person like that out there, that there were people in history with such dedication, puts things in perspective. Many times I see that we sometimes justify our own subjectivity by saying, “Hey, everybody’s subjective and everybody’s doing the same thing.”

That just tends to make us feel less guilty, but to know that there were people were really committed, who were ready to pay the price, is very inspiring.

So we go to Kathy on the air.

Caller: Hi. It’s Kathy from Stanford. It’s a pleasure listening to you. The four glasses of wine at the seder. Usually when you’re at a party and they give you a glass, you try to find a potted plant and dispose of the alcohol.

Jacobson: That’s called cheating!

Caller: Well, if you’re driving. Would you discuss the wine in the seder and how much can you sip without going below the required minimum?

Jacobson: Okay, thank you for the call. Although Kathy’s question doesn’t seem directly connected to what I’m speaking about, I will connect it. Kathy’s asking, for those who may not be familiar with it, on Passover, there’s a seder. A seder means a traditional meal, but it’s more than a meal, it’s an entire experience with a large focus on children and education, of recreating the Exodus experience, the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt 3,312 years ago. During the seder (upcoming Wednesday and Thursday nights this year) there are many traditions, including eating matzah which is unleavened bread, like crackers, that are not allowed to rise, and drinking four cups of wine, which is what Kathy is referring to.

Her question is a technical one, which really requires speaking to a local rabbi, but I will respond. Of course, barring health considerations and other issues, four cups of wine are required to be drunk, but if you drink three-quarters, you’re doing pretty well. However, if someone has health issues, that clearly changes things.

Now, the significance of the wine, in the context of what we’re speaking about here, and the matzah (the bread that we eat throughout the year represents the inflated ego, while matzah represents humility), is the key element I was addressing here, I just wasn’t using the traditional language, that the first step to freedom is ceasing to see the “farm” in the way that you’re so accustomed to, and that requires humility. It requires searching out people or books that can teach you that there are broader horizons. It requires getting out of your own subjectivity. So matzah represents the experience of humility.

On the other hand, humility on its own, as I mentioned earlier, is insufficient because you can become so subjugated that your personality is missing. So the drinking of the wine represents that. Coupled with humility, wine represents the drink of the wealthy. Wine is a rich drink, so it represents the idea that we also taste, and we don’t completely annihilate ourselves.

Humility does not mean self-annihilation, it means focusing your emotions, recognizing there’s subjectivity with humility, and then channeling them in the right direction. As I stated, emotions happen to be a necessary driving force in our lives.

Without that type of passion, commitment, your subjective belief in something, we would all be blasé and very complacent and indifferent. So emotional experience is something that is to be encouraged. What we need to take care of is to make sure that we don’t get trapped by emotions, that we don’t allow it to consume us, that we allow it to be a tool for true freedom. And that requires the humility of the matzah.

So going back to the subject at hand, discovering that type of opening requires two things, and this is across the board. If you’re having an argument with a friend or a spouse or a child or someone at work, or you’re just stuck in a particular situation—patterns that you can’t get out of—how often are we inspired to make a move (I’m not going to make this mistake again), and then we go back and go back to the same old pattern.

That’s an example of an emotional habit that you just can’t get out of. You get accustomed to the way you deal with things. People who may have short fuses, get angry quickly, that’s an emotional reaction. These are all examples of emotional traps that hold us hostage. So how does a person truly free himself? That’s what I call freedom. I can’t tell you how often I hear people who sit at a seder table with children and guests and friends and strangers, and they see that the people who host it are the same obnoxious people they know all year round. And they don’t experience freedom. They see the same old people doing things by habit, by rote—and my intention here is not to be critical, but to make a point, that you can do many things traditionally, and not necessarily be a freer human being.

The Passover experience has to be one of freedom. Two things are required and necessary if one is to achieve a freedom outside of one’s own subjective self. The first thing is knowledge. Knowledge comes in two forms. It can come in the form of a book, information; it can come in the form of a teacher—someone who exposes you to something outside of yourself.

As long as it’s an extension of yourself, it’s you. It’s like that doctor who once told the patient, “I’ll tell you when you need a second opinion.” That’s not a second opinion. When the doctor tells you, I’ll tell you when you need a second opinion, you’d better find yourself another doctor. Because if he’ll tell you when you need a second opinion, it means it’s his opinion. The whole point is that you want to have another view.

So number one is a teacher or a body of knowledge, a book that opens you up to another perspective. It may be different from yours, it may enhance yours. But don’t be afraid of truth. That’s what growth is all about.

The second thing that’s required is being able to examine your emotional side. Am I subjective in a particular area? Is there a way that I can get beyond it? And you may need that body of knowledge or that teacher to help you get to that point.

So briefly, those of the two elements, and I’ll try to elaborate more as we go along.

We have Mary on the air.

Caller: Hi. I wanted to say that I enjoy your program very, very much and just one little quick point. I so agree with you that you need your emotions. I agree with you that you need to have knowledge, you need to learn. But the most important thing, I think, is to apply that knowledge. So many people have a lot of information but they don’t apply it to their lives. It’s always separate. They have their studies, they have their knowledge, and then they have how they really live.

I think the most important thing is to incorporate that into your life. And make it real in a way that makes sense to you.

Jacobson: I completely appreciate that point, Mary, and my question to you is, how do you go about doing that? As an example, there are people who are intelligent; they understand a certain situation very intellectually, but they just can’t bring themselves to do it. How do you get over that hurdle?

Caller: That’s the challenge. I was having a conversation with someone the other day about that and I said, “You know, there’s this prayer ‘Love G-d with all thy heart and all thy soul.’” Can you imagine how it would change your life if somebody really lived it for a week? I don’t know a lot but the little bit that I know, I put into use. In other words, when I have a problem, the challenge is for me to see how would the information that I have, the knowledge that I’ve studied, how would I then make it work for me in solving my problem. It’s not a separate thing. If you love G-d with all your heart and soul every day, you’re a different person. So I’m saying I think it’s so important to just live it. You don’t have to know so much, but whatever you know at every point make it work for you. Personalize it. People think that ideas are very lofty and they sound wonderful, but they don’t know how to bring them into their lives.

Jacobson: But Mary, here’s the problem. Sometimes a person is invested in something for healthy or unhealthy reasons. And even if they understand that they’re doing the wrong things, they’re just locked. How do they get beyond that emotional hurdle?

Caller: Well, you said it. It’s ego. You have to realize that you have to let go of that inflated ego that made me all puffed up with my own pride and thinking I was right. You have to eat matzah, in the sense that you have to reduce yourself and see what else is available. So you really gave that answer.

Jacobson: Okay, thank you, Mary. We have Bill on the line.

Caller: Good afternoon Rabbi. I’m reading from a book here and I have a question that sounds like what you’re talking about. Can I read it?

Jacobson: What’s the name of the book?

Caller: It’s by Aryeh Kaplan. Meditations in Kabbalah. You must be alone when you do this. Meditation, hisbodedus, is a state of rapture so as to receive the Divine influx which will bring your mind from potential to action. Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to say?

Jacobson: It’s very appropriate and very well put and I think it’s an important element. Actually, it’s a point I had not made and I’m glad you brought it up, and that is a need to be able to create a space and just silently look at yourself. Sometimes when we get so caught up in the merry-go-round of life, the emotions really take over because we’re on the move. When you have to pause and take that step back, it allows you to really see yourself in a more objective way: Do I really like what I see? Do I really like how I’m behaving? Is this the best I can be? Is it what makes me proud, my family proud, my children proud? I think that’s a very important point.

Caller: Like refreshing yourself spiritually.

Jacobson: Exactly. And creating that space. Where did you pick up the book if I may ask?

Caller: I picked it up at a New Age store in Nyack, down in Rockland County. I was very fascinated over the years. I’m trying to find an instructor now.

Jacobson: Do you live in Nyack?

Caller: No, I live in Spring Valley.

Jacobson: Well, when you get off the line, if you leave your phone number with Steve (our engineer), we’ll try to put you in contact with someone who can help you, if you like. So Bill, thank you for the call and thank you for bringing that insight into the picture.

The point is really well taken, and I particularly want to mention what Mary had said, because it brings to mind the story of Bertrand Russell, who was once behaving unethically. He was a professor of ethics at Cambridge, or whatever university he was at, and someone asked him, “How can you behave in such an unethical way when you teach ethics?” And he answered very simply, “I also teach mathematics and I’m not a triangle.”

Which means, essentially, though some academics are very proud of that statement, you can teach something, be knowledgeable, be an expert in it, erudite, and yet not be it. You can be expert, know it, but not be it.

That, for me, captures the trap of emotions, because you might think that that sounds like a very objective teacher; he’s knowledgeable but he doesn’t act on it because he remains objective. But no, that’s an emotional choice.

I have spoken to many people who have difficulty with faith, with G-d, not for intellectual reasons but for emotional ones. They may have been hurt by a religious establishment or religious experiences, or, which is even more common, they are afraid of personal responsibility.

G-d is not a simple matter. If you accept G-d, it means that you accept a certain personal responsibility. But no one is ready to get up there publicly and say, “Hey, I don’t want to be responsible!”

So we have all kinds of reasons. We say, “Well, who says there’s a G-d? Maybe it’s survival of the fittest. You see the wicked prosper. There’s no justice.” And that basically gives us the license to do what we like. And I speak to myself as well. If most of us are able to weasel out of a situation, and you have good excuses, and if you’re intelligent enough you always come up with brilliant excuses, we’re invested in that, because basically, you can do what you like. You’re not accountable, you don’t have to answer to anyone. And that is, in a very interesting way, perhaps the most powerful statement of subjectivity.

Now what stops a person from having an attitude like that? That’s what I was referring to when I asked Mary the question. Why would someone not have an attitude like that? That’s a very difficult question. I’ve struggled with it and I’ve asked many people.

If you’re alone in a room, there’s no one around, no one will honor you for your altruism, why would you really behave in an ethical way or in a truthful way if you can get away with it and there’s no fear of law enforcement, cops, or shame?

Ultimately it comes down to internal integrity. Your own inner integrity and your own being true to yourself. Honesty is something that can’t be taught to someone. It’s what I mentioned earlier with Abraham, when you just have that sense…that Abraham was committed to truth because it was true. Why some people can have that commitment and others are completely oblivious—they don’t really care what’s true, what’s right—they will just forge ahead and step on anyone they can step on. That’s how powerful subjectivity is.

It controls you to the point that everything else doesn’t matter. Intellectually, you can sit that person down and he’ll admit, “No, we need to be kind to each other.” I mean, most people believe in some form of justice. But when it comes to behavior, our own personal choices, we don’t want to be told what to do. We don’t want to have that type of accountability.

And that is, as I said, a powerful form of subjectivity, and humility, and the matzah we described, is the key to being able to get out of it.

So to sum up what I was saying earlier about reviewing our own emotions requires a teacher, an objective person whom you trust, that is also sensitive to you, not judgmental, but sensitive, who can help you look at yourself in a different way. It’s what we do anyway, in business, before you make a decision: you usually consult with one or two people if you want to make a correct decision. In business the stakes are high.

In our personal life, one of the beautiful key things that the Torah recommends, is that each of us has someone whom we can talk to: a mashpia, a rav (“assei lecha rav”) someone who you can talk to objectively about your particularly situation that helps you get beyond your own way of looking at it; it gets you beyond your own farm, and we all have our farm.

Let’s go to Mimi on the air.

Caller: Hi Rabbi. I’m not Jewish, but I love your program. You’re so wise and I’m having a tremendous problem with emotions and with G-d.

Jacobson: Those are the two top issues.

Caller: My husband died about three years ago and one of the things that’s making me really crazy lately is older men, especially one I know, who is very cruel to his wife, and then his wife died. And I say to G-d, why did You do this? You take my lovely, lovely husband and leave this man here? This man who is so wicked! And I get very angry at G-d and that scares me.

Jacobson: Mimi, I share your feeling and sometimes we don’t understand the mysterious ways of G-d. But I don’t think anger necessarily will help. They key is to look at yourself and see what’s productive, what productive results come out of your anger. I mean, your husband I assume was a very fine man.

Caller: He was the love of my life. He was like my twin.

Jacobson: That is beautiful to hear. That itself is worth the call. I think it’s important that you focus on how to share with others the inspiration and the message that your husband, your twin, experienced, because we need more of that in this world. You know, the way to combat evil and cruelty, I believe is always through light.

Now, if you have a direct influence on that gentleman, it’s one thing. But to focus your energies, instead of directing your anger at G-d or to others, how do you bring that message that your husband was so dedicated to, to other people, whether it’s family or friends?

Do you have children?

Caller: One son.

Jacobson: So there’s the next generation, and I’m sure you have other friends and people you associate with. That’s the key. I’ve always believed that when people are angry about something, there’s always a way to channel angry energy into something that’s positive and constructive. It may be difficult, because it’s easier in a way to say, “How could that person be alive when he or she is so cruel, when my husband isn’t,” but there’s no benefit in that. And I think you want to do things that are beneficial.

You have to think of it this way. How would your husband have behaved had he seen a person like that? Would he have gotten angry?

Caller: He didn’t like him either!

Jacobson: Great. Well, that’s what twins are like! So I guess your husband would have liked this radio show. Maybe he hears it somewhere up there.

Caller: Oh I hope so. I kind of believe that and I certainly hope so.

Jacobson: Well, I thank you for the call and thank you for your kind words about the show.

Caller: You’re welcome. It’s lovely. I just love listening to you.

Jacobson: That’s very nice of you; you sound lovely yourself and I hope this show brings some comfort to you in your situation. Really, our goal has to be to bring light into the world in every way possible. So thank you for that, Mimi.

We have Matthew on the line.

Caller: I saw in a seder book that the Lubavitcher Rebbe seemed to say that ultimately there was never any kind of exile. That ultimately freedom is inherent in us in some way, and I wonder how this plays out in a religious life. I mean, is it like a secret that you can’t tell as you’re mourning the destruction?

Jacobson: Okay, let me explain your question. Matthew is reading in a Haggadah, which is a commentary on the prayer and the traditional service said on Passover, from the name of the Lubavitcher Rebbe whose birthday is today, by the way, that freedom has become an inherent thing.

After the exodus from Egypt—I’ll just elaborate on what you said—the Maharal of Prague actually writes (if you look up the source, the Maharal of Prague, a scholar in the 17^th century) that the freedom from Egypt wasn’t just a one-time event, but it actually infused the human race (the Jewish race) with inherent freedom; that they no longer would ever be enslaved to another people.

However, that of course is an inherent quality that needs to be accessed. We can still choose to be enslaved. I see people who are enslaved to money, people who are enslaved to employers and people who are enslaved to other passions and drives and lusts and desires.

So what the Maharal of Prague is stating, and what is cited by the Rebbe, is that there is a power in each of us to truly be free, and we have to cut away the impediments and allow that freedom to emerge. That’s part of what we’re discussing on this show here, how one gets away from emotional subjectivity and the things that lock us and allow that freedom to be accessed.

But the message of hope is that everyone has the power to be free. All men are created equal. All of us have an image or an aspect of G-d within us. And that allows us to experience complete freedom.

Caller: Well, I read it as ultimately that there never was any kind of exile, that ultimately reality is freedom, like this radical freedom. Is that true?

Jacobson: Well, I would explain it as being that internally we truly are free people, but the fact is that we celebrate Passover every year to access that freedom. So even though it’s inherent, there are many things that are inherent, Matthew, in you and me, but we still need to dig for it. We need to get rid of the impediments. But the word “inherent” means that it’s in there somewhere. It’s not something that we need to acquire. We don’t need to go buy freedom. It’s in your power to be free. It’s in your power not to worship any force outside of yourself and G-d.

Okay, thank you Matthew for the call.

(Taped announcement about the book The Spiritual Guide to the Counting of the Omer here including information on how to contact Rabbi Jacobson: wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com, or his website at www.meaningfullife.com, 1-800-363-2646 (1-800-3-MEANING) or at the Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11213.)

As a follow up to the freedom of Passover, comes 49 days of personal refinement, which is really the original 49-step program. Before there were any of our contemporary 12-Step programs, there is a 49-step system that allows people to take each day and look at our emotions, something I will address more at length on next week’s show, and that is, it’s one thing to say, “Okay, I have emotional subjectivity.” That’s a very general statement. The real question is, how do we look at our particular emotions, whether it’s anger, jealousy, love? How do we balance it in a way that taps and excavates the powerful, positive forces of the emotion and eliminates or discards the negative subjectivity that may bias or blind us.

This really requires a more detailed examination of who you are and what your emotion is in a particular situation.

So traditionally, there’s a 49-step process that begins the second night of Passover and concludes, interestingly, 50 days later with the holiday of Shavuot, which is the revelation at Sinai. And these 49 days are a traditional 49-step program of looking at different elements of your emotions. The Kabbalah, which documents the DNA and the framework of the human psyche and of the cosmos, spells out that a human being has seven emotional faculties.

When we say we’re emotional, it can take on many different forms. There’s the emotion called love, there’s an opposite emotion called fear. There’s an emotion called compassion, there’s an emotion called fortitude, ambition. There’s humility and there’s bonding, and finally there’s sovereignty.

I’ll discuss those seven emotions next week in detail, and I welcome your calls and e-mails regarding that show because in that show I would like to address, what do you actually do in a particular emotion situation. You can even call it an anatomy of our emotional psyche and how we can look at ourselves in a particular situation, and see which areas are strong, where we are weak. Some of us love too much. Some of us love too little. Some of us are too ambitious and we don’t know how to temper that. Emotions can be very positive but if they’re in excess, they become unbalanced and then they become subjective and can become destructive.

So it’s a question of really looking at that whole spectrum, and I’ll do that next week in detail.

So Passover is right around the corner and its message is a universal one, to Jews and non-Jews, and that is the ability and the power for us to be free; how we free ourselves from our emotional tentacles. It’s not just a question of going through the emotions, it’s also an issue of introspection. To use the seder as an opportunity for discussion, where we speak to each other and discuss this.

When you eat the matzah, don’t just eat the matzah. Think about it. Say, this is the food of humility. How can I implement humility into my life? Where am I subjective? How can I free myself of subjectivity? How do I free myself of the “farm” that we are so often held entrapped by?

These are things that each of us can think about, and Passover is a perfect opportunity to do so — what better example to set for our children, our families and friends, when we do that. I also would encourage everyone who does not have a seder to go to a Passover seder, to find a friend, and if you have a difficulty, please call me. I’ll be happy to help connect you with a seder in the area where you may be.

Okay, we’ll go to Robert on the line.

Caller: Hello Rabbi. I’m from the Bronx and I’m interested in some guidance. I am a candidate for conversion to Judaism and I have difficulty with letting go of some of my past, including friends and many of the things I used to do, which weren’t necessarily bad. Where would I find guidance on that, besides from the Rabbi who’s sponsoring me at this time?

Jacobson: If you leave me your number, I’ll speak to you afterwards, because I think it would be wiser to do that, so I can hear more about your situation. Okay, Robert?

Okay, we go to Shani.

Caller: Hello. I was wondering how much emotions play a role in relationships in finding your beshert.

Jacobson: Well, it’s probably the number one force in our lives.

Caller: Is it more important to be rational or is it more important to be emotional?

Jacobson: Well, Shani, I’ll repeat your question for those who don’t know what “beshert” means. In finding your soulmate, Shani is asking the question, how important a role do emotions play and how important is it to be rational?

I would say that in the initial stages of dating, being rational is more important than emotions because sometimes we can get swept away by externals; we can be desperate or we can feel nurtured or affirmed. But I think it’s important to have a rational, sober view, however, at the same time, to lock ourselves up and become too rational about things can also stop you from being spontaneous.

I think it’s really a question of balance. It’s a perfect example of how important it is to use a friend or a wise person whom you can consult with that helps you see, “Am I being too emotional? Am I being too rational?”

It’s hard to answer. I don’t think it’s one or the other. It’s really a combination and finding the right chemistry, the right balance between the two.

So let’s go to Ruth.

Caller: First of all, happy birthday to the Rabbi.

Jacobson: Yes, Rabbi Schneerson.

Caller: I visited his grave and you mentioned it on the radio and I just turned on the radio… I want to wish you a happy and kosher Passover.

Jacobson: Thank you Ruth. You’ve been listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. We’ll be on next week continuing the discussion on emotions, its trap, how we look at particular specific emotions and I want to wish everyone true freedom, internal and external freedom, this Passover for all of our listeners of all backgrounds and all faiths. Thank you very much.

Tags: radio transcript, emotions, psychology
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Growing Through Our Pasts

May 28th, 2014

Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – February 11, 2001

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Good evening. Welcome to another edition of Toward a Meaningful Life. As always, I want to thank our listeners for their calls and emails. The interaction of kindred spirits trying to address the issues that we struggle with in our lives is a very rewarding experience, and is what makes this show be what it is.

Through my journeys and travels I often hear a recurring question whose essence can be summed up in the following few lines of a letter that I received. Someone writes:

“Dear Rabbi Jacobson,
“I’ve attended many of your classes and they meant very much to me in my growth and my journey. Before I explored Jewish spirituality, I was involved in Buddhism, which really spoke to me—Zen Buddhism particularly—and it was the thing that nourished my soul when I was in my twenties and growing.

“I never really recognized that Judaism had any message to me that was relevant, and both through your classes and through other experiences, I came to realize that Judaism, actually, my own religion in my own backyard, the one I was bar mitzvah-ed with, had a deep spirituality that I simply was not privy to. However, I cannot ignore the fact that for so many years of my life, Buddhism played such a role, and it did speak to my soul, and in many ways had many positive effects and actually opened me up to my Jewish search.

“I can probably say that without that, I would still today be completely ignorant of my Judaism. So how does one reconcile that type of past with my present and future? Some Rabbis tell me I have to simply ignore it, annihilate that part of myself, that part of my personality, others say I should embrace it, but the fact is there are many issues that are irreconcilable. There are many things that I regret doing. There are many things that are not necessarily things I’m proud of, yet at the same time I must give credit to where the roots and seeds were planted.”

This is a typical question asked by many people today. In this case it refers more to a spiritual journey, but the truth is, it’s a question that’s quite generic and universal to all of us: What do we do with our pasts? There is no person who has not made a mistake in his or her past. Human beings by nature are flawed; we have our ups and downs. Many of us have made some serious mistakes and some less serious, but the fact is, life is made of mistakes.

Once you’ve come to a deeper realization, where you’ve had a revelation, epiphany or just an evolution of thought and process, what do you do with that past? What is the Jewish approach? What is the Torah approach?

Of course, if your past has been a healthy one, there’s no discussion. A healthy past is something we build upon. But when you’re dealing with a past that often includes sins or crimes in any sense of the word (I don’t necessarily mean in the Biblical sense, but any time we’ve made errors, mistakes, hurt ourselves or others whether out of our own ignorance or even maliciously), and now we come to new awareness and realizations, what do you do then?

In the broader context of Judaism, this is really the concept of teshuvah, often translated as repentance, but the true meaning being “return.”

So this show will focus on “The Role of the Past in Our Lives—Annihilation or Integration?” And we’ll discuss how to use the past to move on in our life, to use it as a springboard.

The fact is, if we annihilate the positive effects of our past experiences—even if today we say, “If I had known what I know today, I would not have done that”—then in a sense we annihilate a part of our personality. Is that a healthy thing to do?

So I want to begin by describing an experience that took place in one of my Wednesday night classes. At the end of one of the classes that I give, a fellow came in, he seemed a little high on something, and he said, “Rabbi, I hear I can ask any question here, that the table is open for any questions.” After I said yes, he said, “Here’s my question. I grew up in a semi-Orthodox home where we kept kosher, they sent me to yeshiva, I was bar mitzvah-ed, I read Hebrew, and I went to shul (synagogue) every Saturday. Then, as a teenager, I simply drifted off. It wasn’t speaking to me. My family was not avidly pushing me to maintain it though they were heartbroken when I stopped coming home for Shabbos. I essentially rebelled and left everything that was Jewish.

“Since I grew up in the late 60s, early 70s, I went off to L.A. and discovered G-d and spirituality through Far Eastern religions, and most importantly, through my LSD experiences. (This is exactly the way the story happened.) And that’s where my spirituality was nourished, from those alternative places.

“For many years I was not a practicing or active Jew. The only connection I had was going to shul on Yom Kippur, either out of guilt or nostalgia. However, I was on a plane once flying from the East Coast to the West, and I was somewhat high (the way he put it) and I was dosing off or in a trance, and suddenly I heard from the back of the plane a quorum, a group of Jews davening, praying.

“I guess it was the afternoon service and I heard them saying, ‘Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh,’ which is one of the prayers where you say ‘Sanctified, sanctified, sanctified are You G-d,’ and as I heard it, I jumped up and something drew me to the back of the plane. I joined them and for the first time in many years I prayed with them.

“I literally was able to sense right there on the plane the supernal angels and the cosmic forces and the celestial experience on a very profound spiritual level that lies in these words, “Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh” in the prayer service. As a child, I knew the words in Hebrew, but I never experienced them in any personal, profound, or spiritual way.

“This began a journey in my return to Judaism where I began to daven more often, I began to put on tefillin again, keep the Sabbath, keep kosher, and I would say today I’m more observant than when I grew up as a child.”

Then finally he ended with his question. “Without LSD, I would not be a practicing Jew. It was that which brought me to G-d again. It awakened me and brought me back to the prayer, and I don’t think I would be observant today without it. What’s your opinion on this?”

There was a group of about 40-50 people there in the class, and everybody was looking at me to see if I would give an endorsement—hashgacha as they say, you know like Rabbis give these endorsements on kosher food, so they were looking to see if I’d give an endorsement on LSD—so I’ll tell you what I answered later on in the show. But the burden shouldn’t always be on me, so I’m going to throw this question out to all of you. What would you answer to this question?

(Announcement break regarding obtaining a copy of “Meanings,” the free newsletter of the Meaningful Life Center. Call 1-800-363-2646 or write to us at wisdomreb@aol.com or write Meaningful Life Center, Suite 303, 788 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11213 to receive your free copy.)

Jacobson: Okay, we’re back. Let’s go to Steve on the line.

Caller: How are you Rabbi? I heard what you were saying about the LSD and the fellow finding his Judaism. I would say that I think LSD can help anyone…anything that anyone wants to do, I think LSD can help him do it better. So whatever goals you have, I think LSD would help.

Jacobson: Well, let me ask you this. What about talking from a Jewish, Torah perspective?

Caller: Well is there anything in the Torah about LSD?

Jacobson: I doubt LSD would be in there because LSD is a chemical that was discovered in the 50s, but nevertheless, the question of using alternative or foreign substances to induce a spiritual awakening, especially if it can be somewhat detrimental to health, is a question. It is a good point to want to know what exactly would be the position on drugs from a Torah point of view. I clearly see your position.

Caller: Well maybe you should have some professors who have written some good books on LSD and maybe in a future show you could have an expert on LSD come on the show.

Jacobson: Well, I respect your response and it’s good to know that we’re going to get a variety of responses, but nevertheless, the question really is this. Can one really have a spiritual awakening without a drug and is there any downside? I must admit, I have never experimented with LSD, nor with any other drug, but what I hear from people who have is that there are quite a lot of side effects and damage that come as a result of it because you may not be able to integrate it in your life. People have really been hurt by it.

Caller: True, but people have been hurt by anything. Most people I know who have experienced LSD say that it really opened their mind in spiritual and intellectual ways about many things. I think it’s a shame that it’s illegal and I think maybe you should try it. It’s somewhat silly to have a discussion about it if you haven’t tried it, do you know what I mean?

Jacobson: Well, I’m going to ask Philip Namanworth, our producer, who has tried it to come right on the air and talk about it.

Namanworth: I haven’t taken any drugs in many years, obviously, but in the 60s when I was a hippie and on my own spiritual search, I took drugs like LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, and I had many friends who took them as well. Unfortunately, some of them wound up as street people. I also lived in Haight-Ashbury and would sometimes be at the clinic when they would bring kids in screaming from these experiences.

Now of course, in the circle that I traveled in, people were really looking for something to expand their consciousness, and some of us did, but the effects of it were so strong and there weren’t enough people around to guide us, that it was not really a safe situation.

Now that I’m a person who’s into spiritual Judaism, I get the same experiences where I can access them more readily. So I wouldn’t personally recommend LSD to anybody because I think it’s the “short-longer road,” where someone wants a quick fix. I think the really devastating thing about LSD is that you can get a quick picture of what reality is and then you don’t do the hard work to keep it so you go back to do more drugs.

Instead, on a spiritual trip where you see a glimmer of reality, you want to go back and do the hard work to change yourself and transform yourself.

Jacobson: Philip, I have to thank you for getting me off the hook here because there’s no way I could have answered that one, but let me ask you this question. Based on what you’ve learned today and based on your Jewish experiences today, do you feel that a person could have that same spiritual high as some people induce in a quicker and “short-long road” through foreign substances like LSD?

Namanworth: Could they have the experiences on LSD? No.

Jacobson: But can they have it through Judaism?

Namanworth: Absolutely. But it depends on your commitment. It takes a lot of spiritual integrity. You have to say, “I’m going to be committed to this path and I’m going to look at the blocks in myself that are holding me from it.” If you think that you can go on a spiritual path and not face who you are psychologically, then you’re never getting anywhere. Then it’s just another ego trip.

Jacobson: Well said. So Philip, I’m glad you’re here. When I checked your resume, I didn’t ask if you were a former LSD user.

Namanworth: I was in rock and roll all those years. But now I’m a guy who wears tzitzis, what can I say?

Jacobson: And at the Meaningful Life Center we don’t do drug testing either.

Namanworth: Thank G-d!

Jacobson: Okay, let’s go to Mark on the air.

Caller: Hi, how are you Rabbi. I’m enjoying your show.

Jacobson: It’s getting lively here, no?

Caller: I also did some LSD in college…

Jacobson: I guess it’s confession night…

Caller: I have a feeling you’re going to disagree with what I’m going to say but I hope we can have a discussion about it. I feel LSD liberated me from and made me see religion in a different light. I used to be religious before that, but LSD helped me see that religion does more damage than good in the world. I think religion separates people and it makes people think that I’m with this group—a kind of “us and them” thing—and instead of realizing that we’re all earthlings and that there is a G-d but none of us know exactly what it is, we should do more to help people live healthy lives and happy lives instead of getting mixed up in all of this Scripture nonsense.

Jacobson: I understand perfectly what you’re talking about, Mark, and this is one of the reasons that I do this show. I thank you for the call.

I, for one, am the first to admit that from my experiences with religion—and I grew up in a religious environment—there are many flaws, particularly with the people that represent it. I know that the way you describe Scripture makes many religious people cringe, but it doesn’t make me cringe because it’s the experience that many people have had with religion—that it’s very dogmatic, very “us and them,” very divisive, and anything but spiritual. It’s ritual without the spiritual. Frankly this radio show and everything I do is meant to reintegrate the two.

The Judaism that I was blessed to experience was one that had deep spirituality. And a true relationship with G-d can never allow an “us and them.” So it’s true that in some ways the experiences people are having with alternative spirituality are perhaps waking us up to reaching deeper into what Judaism is about, but we shouldn’t make the mistake that Judaism doesn’t have the answer.

What’s happened is that the answer has been lost through the years, whether through assimilation or whether through expulsions or persecutions, but Judaism in its root has deep spirituality that is completely non-labeled and non-judgmental, and does not create an us vs. them attitude. Instead it sees the universe as a creation of G-d and everything in it is Divine energy.

I remember giving a class once and talking about how everything in the universe has Divine energy, even the orange and the table. The animate and the inanimate objects of our lives, everything. And a woman who was there said, “I can’t believe what you’re saying. The only time I ever had such an experience was when I volunteered to be one of the people at the University at Berkeley whom they did the acid experiments on. (It was still legal in the late 50s.) And I said, well this is basic Chassidic thought, spiritual Jewish thought that teaches that there’s energy in the universe and I knew that and I was able to describe it without the drug experience. So clearly it’s about getting back to what Judaism is really about.

Let’s go to the next call. Liba is on the air.

Caller: I can’t address the LSD experience…

Jacobson: My question, actually, was when a person says that through that they came back to their Judaism, what do you tell them?

Caller: My parents were Jewish and not observant in any way, and as a teenager I joined a church where I was for 40 years. I do not view it as a mistake, but as preparation for where I am today as an observant Jew. I know you said we all make mistakes, and I see these as stepping stones that led me to where I am today rather than a mistake.

Jacobson: Okay. That’s very eloquently put, but I will ask you this, Liba. Since you’ve gone through the experience, if someone were to ask you, is there anything that you need to reject or in a sense get out of your system? Or is there anything there to build upon? I mean, is everything a stepping stone, or is there anything that you grow away from? In other words, what do you reject and what do you integrate?

Caller: Well, in order to see the difference, you have to be educated, and once I started receiving a Jewish education, primarily through your book, Toward a Meaningful Life, that was one of my first stepping stones out of the church…

Jacobson: And please tell everybody that this was not a set-up call…!

Caller: Right! This is not a set-up call at all! There were other books involved too. But the second one that I had was Toward a Meaningful Life, and therefore, until you have facts, until you have truth, until you have something with which to compare where you are, you cannot separate. Once that education came into my experience, I could immediately see the difference and therefore make a choice.

Jacobson: Thank you for sharing that. Let’s go to Josh on the line.

Caller: Hi Rabbi. To answer your question, I know that a lot of people are confessing to having recreational experiences with drugs, experimentation…

Jacobson: Some sounded a little more than recreation, actually…

Caller: Or even heavier use. There is a possuk, “B’chol derochecha dei’eihu,” meaning, “in all your ways know G-d,” many different ways people will come to know Hashem and love Hashem and pursue Torah. I came about becoming frum (a religious Jew) in an Episcopal High School, Quaker College, and even though I was heavily exposed to Christian influence or teaching, echoing the sentiments of the other caller, I understood or became aware of Hashem, G-d, after being exposed to Christianity.

I think that with many Jews, it takes, to use a metaphor that we’ll see in Purim, stripping away the mask. We may be in the work setting, we may be in a private high school in my case where someone may be approached in terms of using an illegal chemical substance, and may be abusing that substance. Hashem will tap that Jew on the shoulder, so to speak, there will be some pintele Yid, some spark will be ignited to approaching and encountering Hashem.

Jacobson: But let me ask you this, Josh. What about all those people who go through experiences like that and don’t so to speak come to recognize their Judaism?

Caller: I wouldn’t recommend doing it l’chatchila (at the outset), but …

Jacobson: Did you learn that word l’chatchila in the Episcopalian College?!

Caller: Obviously not! But I grew up non-observant. But there are many Jews who have had that dawning, that awakening, an awakening of their Yiddishkeit, their Judaism, and it’s seemingly been in very estranged circumstances, under very strange circumstances.

I wouldn’t assume a judgmental posture with respect to those people, I would simply say that kol ha’kavod, (good for you) that that person did become observant. We’re looking at results, and if there’s a way of reaching a person who is currently abusing a chemical substance or using something to attain a temporary, transitory high, there are ways of bringing them to other higher levels of pleasure, the higher level of exploring meaningful growth through Torah rather than through that temporary vista of a use of a substance.

Jacobson: Thank you Josh for sharing your experience. Let’s go to John.

Caller: Hello Rabbi. I think it’s important for people to realize that when you talk about LSD, a lot of people’s negative experiences with LSD and other illegal drugs has to do with their illegality, because people are made to feel like they’re pariahs … it makes no sense, why are alcohol and cigarettes legal and why is marijuana and LSD illegal? It doesn’t make any sense and I think it messes with people’s psyches that they think they’re doing something wrong and they do it in situations where they’re not comfortable.

People should be able to just go to the store and just buy some LSD and bring it home and enjoy it without all the guilt and everything. I think maybe you want to get your producer back on the air. A lot of the times when people have negative experiences, it’s also because they’re not getting pure LSD as it may be cut with something else. Because it’s not regulated, there’s no way for people to actually know what they’re getting.

Jacobson: Thanks John.

Namanworth: I just want to say that part of the show is really about how to use what’s happened in your past, not whether people take drugs or not. Drugs are just one example. I think the topic is: what if you were spiritually seeking and you went to drugs because that was the way that you chose. It could have been any other experience. It’s not about whether drugs are illegal or not. We’re not really discussing why people take drugs but the fact that it is possible to have a consistent spiritual experience in your daily life through the methods of Judaism.

Jacobson: I’m going to be attacked by all my religious friends for this show. They’re going to think I’m advocating…

Namanworth: No, we’re not advocating anything.

Jacobson: Good! But just in the spirit of the show, we’ve never silenced anyone calling in to this show and I very much appreciate the fact that they feel comfortable enough to share their voice even though I have the title of Rabbi. The fact of the matter is, these are the calls coming in…

Namanworth: We thank them for their calls. But I think we have to differentiate between people who are seeking spiritual things or people who are just seeking pleasure by doing whatever comes along.

Jacobson: My show is not a platform for legalizing drugs. There are plenty of other places to do that. My comment to John would be, well maybe alcohol and tobacco should also be illegal. Then there wouldn’t be this loophole and there wouldn’t be this argument. Let’s go to Elliot on the air.

Caller: Hi, how are you? I heard some of the calls here and I don’t think it’s so much a competition of, is LSD better than Judaism, or is Judaism better than LSD. I think they’re both good and they can both be integrated into a spiritual, intellectual life. I find that my own experience, both in my background in Judaism and my experimentation with LSD, has made me do what religion is supposed to make us do, which is to fight oppression. And I think it’s important to fight for other people’s rights, for example, Rabbi, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but this station has been on the air for about 70 years and they’ve never hired an African-American host, which I think is terrible. Part of what I do is try to fight segregation wherever I see it.

Namanworth: Is that documented, because I’m looking at some engineers here and they’re shaking their heads saying that’s not true.

Caller: Tell them to name one.

Jacobson: We’ll check on that. I can’t speak for that. But the points you’ve made are well taken. I still think it’s interesting that all I have to do is mention LSD as an example, and it’s turning into another type of show, but I guess that’s what the listeners want.

Are there any callers out there who are anti-LSD!!?

Namanworth: Right. The question is, how do we use our past? How do we use those experiences?

Jacobson: I guess the listeners we have have interesting pasts, and presents, for that matter. Let’s go to Henry.

Caller: I’m anti-LSD, but that’s not the purpose of my call. Reb Chaim Luzzatto, in his book, Derech Hashem, The Way of G-d, states that each and every human being, each and every soul, has his own individual way of reaching G-d. It’s kind of mind-boggling. With all the billions of people, there’s an individual way for every one to reach G-d. However, of course, in Torah Judaism, the Torah lays out the easiest and best way to reach G-d. Each and every mitzvah and the learning of Torah is designed to develop spirituality to the point of reaching G-d.

Also, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan has written a lot about meditation. Even though it’s been forgotten, there is meditation in Judaism in the Talmud and the Kabbalah. A lot of spiritual things are not known, particularly with people who are not involved in Torah, so they seek it elsewhere. But we don’t have to go to LSD or to alcohol. You can reach a high but you can reach G-d through more regular means.

Jacobson: Thank you very much Henry. We have Richard on the air.

Caller: Hi Rabbi. I’m delighted to hear your program. I actually had the great opportunity to attend a class you gave some time ago at the New York Open Center, and as a result I’ve been listening to the program. My 13-year-old son is greatly in love with Judaism. However, as I mentioned in your class, I actually turned to the Eastern disciplines over the last 30 years and in fact I would suggest to you, from the Eastern point of view, there are great orders of knowledge, language and mathematics that are pretty much lost to the world. They would suggest that something like LSD is extremely dangerous. That’s because everything in creation is in motion and is vibrating at a particular pitch with a particular pitch, tone and frequency. That’s how we differentiate one thing from another, one person from another, according to Eastern teachings. And of course it includes four different worlds and bodies and seven operant lower planes which are rates of consciousness or rates of vibration or matter or energy.

Jacobson: You heard me address the subject of the seven spheres of emotions and the four worlds in Judaism, I guess that’s the parallel you’re talking about.

Caller: The two teachings of the East and the West are in fact the same. There’s only a difference in the way they’re addressed, but they would suggest that something like LSD is extremely dangerous because it’s like putting a person in a dark room and then suddenly shining a very bright light in their face.

Jacobson: That’s a good analogy.

Caller: They would suggest that what happens is this. The mind can’t shock open. There are, in the Eastern teachings, recognized within the yetzeretic body (?) a second body which corresponds to the dream state or the thinking state. In that body, from the Eastern point of view, there are nerve channels running through what would be the spinal column, 72,000 in all. There’s a central column called shashumna in Sanskrit, which stores impressions over a vast period of time to the soul. This column is interspaced with what’s called chakras which are worlds of energies that contain tremendous potentials, potentials of the L-rd.

In most human beings, except for the lower ones which govern our ordinarily instinctive sexual and normal functioning, theses chakras are actually closed and they can be opened through spiritual practices which involve intense forms of concentration.

Drugs do it all at once and jumpstarts it, but it can cause such a tremendous shock that it can lead to a phenomenon that medical science no longer believes in but is unfortunately quite real which is demonic possession. It can lead to the person being lost to this world. The only thing that the doctor could say about it is that the person has gone into perhaps a catatonic trance and this has happened with LSD.

But actually what happened is that while their body is here, the essence of the awareness, the soul, is trapped in a very dark place and it can lead to a nightmare of unimaginable proportion. That’s why I would suggest to anybody that they stay away from it, avoid it like the plague. It has nothing to do with spiritual life.

I have in the course of years, encountered people who have said just what you suggested, the party who mentioned that LSD had opened a spiritual door for them, and I think that there is some possibility of truth to that, but it’s an extremely dangerous truth.

Jacobson: Richard, I couldn’t agree more and you’ll see from my response to the fellow that there are many similarities. I would say that the parallels between the Eastern and the Jewish thought is not a surprise to me because it does say in the Bible that Abraham sent his own children with gifts of wisdom to the East. So there are many similarities. When you say Brahmin, it’s similar to the word Ibraham, Avrohom. And we see parallels in many other concepts. But your call is well taken and I completely agree with you about the dangerous aspects of it. I would pose to the previous callers who were so pro-LSD, just as they challenged me that I can’t talk about LSD because I never did it, then they can’t talk about spirituality until they do it in an intense way. And that I do have experience with.

So the fact that I have Philip here, we have the best of both worlds, I guess. The fact of the matter is, spirituality is an intense experience and does need discipline and integration for growth. It isn’t about having fun or escaping the realities of the monotony of life. There are many dangerous aspects to it, but first let’s go to a break.

(Announcement break for Rabbi Jacobson’s weekly Wednesday Night class at 346 W. 89^th St., corner Riverside Drive in Manhattan at 8pm. Listeners are also invited to visit the website of the Meaningful Life Center at www.meaningfullife.com, call 1-800-3MEANING, or email at wisdomreb@aol.com for all the activities of the Meaningful Life Center, transcripts of the radio show, seminars, and other important information.)

Jacobson: Okay, we’re back. Well, the show began with the topic of the role of the past in our lives—annihilation or integration—and the different ways that we take past experiences that may or may not have been destructive and led us to new revelations and insights, and what to do with it.

But I did tell a story about a guy who came to my class and about a spiritual awakening through LSD, and by the way, for the listeners who don’t know what LSD is, let’s keep it that way, but one thing I can tell you, it’s not the acronym of Let’s Start Davening.

So what would you tell someone who came through a destructive pattern of drug use or LSD to a spiritual awakening that brought them back to their Judaism or to their spirituality? What do you say to a person like that and what do you say about that experience? Do you endorse it? Do you reject it? How do you straddle the fence?

We have Neil on the air.

Caller: Hello. First I’d like to touch on what another caller said if I may. There was a Daily News article by David Hinckley, and Bill Mazer and Dr. Atkins were talking about it, that this station has always been segregated since it started. Can your engineer name any black host? The station has never hired a black host.

Jacobson: Well, I don’t represent the station, just as they say in the beginning of the show that they don’t represent my opinions.

Caller: But Rabbi, as a Jew, don’t you think we have to fight to integrate?

Jacobson: First of all, I have to research the facts. Even if there are, the fact of the matter is, it’s not just this station. There’s a problem with integration across the country. Is it my first cause? I guess it’s a question of what I can do about it.

But let me say this. I will check into it. Thanks Neil. Let’s go to Arthur on the air.

Caller: Hello Rabbi. I would like to comment on this without getting cut off but I happen to know that there has never been a black host on this station, and if the engineer says there has been, why can’t he name who the black host was?

Jacobson: Well, I haven’t said either way.

Caller: Yes, but you said the engineer said that there had been a black host. Why don’t you just ask him right now?

Jacobson: Let’s go to Mike. This is a show that’s on a certain topic, and respect for the topic is also important. I want to deal with the particular issue that I opened the show with, so something that is easily verifiable one way or another is not tonight’s topic. If listeners of this show would like to make their statement, they can write letters to WEVD. and say exactly what they want to say. I don’t represent WEVD. I don’t think this is necessarily a good platform for it.

Caller: How do you do, Rabbi. Look, on the subject of LSD, I’m not religious—I’m Jewish, I’m not orthodox. If I wanted to be close to my Judaism I would think of going to a Reform synagogue. That’s my prerogative because it does mean something to me. I could see that giving me a high. But I’m a senior citizen. But LSD, those guys are whacked out, Rabbi, pardon the expression. I mean, who needs LSD in order to gain a spiritual experience? These guys are whacked out. I’m not religious, but if that’s the case to go on religion, I don’t want any part of it.

Jacobson: You haven’t heard that from me!

Caller: No, that I know. It was from these guys who were like whackos. All these religious experiences they were talking about. Who are they kidding? Hey, I’m past 65 and they’re trying to tell me that it’s different? I remember those hippie years and in those hippie years, those guys were nuts.

Jacobson: Gotcha. Thanks for the call, Mike. Let’s go to Ray.

Caller: Hi, Rabbi. I really enjoy your program. You give such an insight to myself and I’m sure a lot of other listeners. I was going to ask you off the air who your guest was last week about physics and the universe. It was very interesting.

As far as LSD is concerned, I never did that but I did find out about spirituality through writing, through personal journals and through talking with a lot of people who are religious and people who just think that the universe is out there for them and they think about G-d as well as religion.

Not only that, your program has given me some direction as to what G-d and spirituality is all about. But I think that LSD can open up your mind, but like one of your callers had mentioned, it was a chemical additive to the brain.

Now if you can do that time after time, you may think that you have a euphoric sense of the universe, when in reality, maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve just altered your own body chemistry.

Jacobson: It’s almost like an artificial and false induction. Let’s go to Eric.

Caller: Hi. I disagree with the 65-year-old who just called. LSD I believe made me realize that religion was a complete waste of time but made me see real spirituality and that we’re all one people and so forth. I don’t understand why you just let that guy rant and say that all LSD people are whacko. How dare him?

Jacobson: Well, you can say that as well. You see that I didn’t silence you and I didn’t silence him. I may disagree with you as well but I think in a platform like this you want to be able to allow different people to speak and I’m trying to be fair across the board.

Let’s go to Barbara.

Caller: What I would do is tell that gentleman that I am very happy that you have come back to Judaism. I’m sorry that you did it the way you did, and I would never suggest that anyone take LSD to come back to Judaism, but the important thing is that you did that.

My own way of being more spiritual was through a book about reincarnation that advocated more Christian principles and I have to say this. I think the reason that a lot of people who are brought up at least semi-religious don’t stay with the religion because all they’re taught, as I was, was all the things that you’re not allowed to do on Saturday. I was never told about the ethics of Judaism, and that’s what interests me more than anything else. It’s such a wonderful religion. Anyway, that’s what I wanted to say.

Jacobson: I appreciate the call Barbara. Let’s go to Joe.

Caller: Hello. I’d like to say that I think that everybody should really try LSD before they pontificate about it.

Jacobson: Yes. But you heard Philip on my show here tried it and he gave a very elaborate and comprehensive overview of it. No one is disputing or arguing the fact that some things have a powerful effect on people, Joe. The question is the long-term effects, the question is alternatives, the question is where your psychological state is, the question is whether spirituality is a quick fix or something that needs to be worked on.

I see many times situations where if you can get something done in five minutes, you go for the five-minute approach rather than the discipline that may take 30-40 years. So no one is arguing with the power of it, the question really is its overall effect on the health of an individual.

Let me go back to my original thought on this. The question that was posed to me, which I spoke about at the beginning of the show, was that a spiritual high had brought this fellow back to Judaism through LSD and Far Eastern religions. To me that was just an example because LSD is not the issue here. The issue is the journey that we’re on and the road that brought us there.

So here’s what I answered him. I said, imagine somebody, G-d forbid, gets into an accident or falls into a comatose state and they’re like a vegetable. And everything the doctors try to do to intervene doesn’t work to revive the person.

Finally the doctor says, you know, let’s give him this injection of drugs that will maybe shake up his system to the point where he may wake up. Now you would never give any healthy person or even a conscious person that amount of drugs because it could kill him. But they decide they have nothing to lose. He’s going to atrophy; he’s vegetating. At a certain point, the body cannot live like that in a comatose state, so they try the drugs as a last resort, and it does wake him up.

Would anyone ever suggest that this is the way to wake people up if you have other options? No! It’s a last resort for someone in a comatose state. I believe that we live in a generation of spiritual “comotosity” because religion has been corrupted, both in the way it’s been taught to us by religious establishments, assimilation of all sorts and forms, the material world, the battle of science vs. religion, and the list goes on and on of every reason of how spirituality has become eroded in our lives.

People are desperate because they need transcendence, they need purpose and meaning, and they’ll find it one way or another. It’s no accident that so many young people are drawn to drugs because there’s a vacuum in their lives. It’s easy to wring our hands and say, look how terrible, look how terrible.

But there’s a vacuum and the vacuum is a search for deep meaning and passion. If you don’t find it in healthy ways you’ll find it in unhealthy ways. That’s how it is. The oil rises to the surface. When the soul is hungry it will get its day. If it’s taught in healthy ways it will be healthy. If not, it will be extremely unhealthy to the point of self-destruction. And that’s why drugs have such a powerful appeal, precisely because of the hunger. But that’s the root of it. The question is how to deal with it.

So I told this guy, I think you were in a spiritual coma. The religion taught to you was not presented in a way that spoke to your soul so you were hungry. And since there was a hunger, there was a vacuum and you went to fill it.

I will never judge you or in any way invalidate your hunger. Had I met you or had someone else met you and given you a healthier way to access your soul, that would have been the most positive approach. Why try drugs that are dangerous or have other side effects when there are healthy ways to wake you up?

But once you did it, I am the last person to invalidate an experience. What you need to do is realize that G-d saved your life. And maybe G-d did plant, in a very bizarre and strange way, a spark of power in this chemical called LSD or in whatever forms people have spiritual highs. Why did G-d put that there? Not because that’s the way to go, but because it could possibly be a last resort, and you don’t want the person to die of complete spiritual hunger. But that does not validate the experience. What it simply does is validate the soul’s search.

So when we look at our past, we have to be able to distinguish between how we filled the vacuum and the hunger itself. The hunger is always healthy. The fact is, as one of the callers intelligently said, it’s about education. It’s what your options are. Let’s say you’re looking to make money and the only way you see people making money is through theft. So there’s a vacuum, you need the money, but you have no other way, those are your tools.

That doesn’t justify it. You need to learn that there are other legitimate ways to make money, just as an example. Another example is searching for love. Often, when we don’t know how to achieve it in healthy ways, we find it in unhealthy ways. (A few weeks ago I did a show on “The Anatomy of Desire and Lust.”) It’s recognizing and distinguishing between the root of something and the object of how you go about getting it. The object is always built upon our limited subjective tools.

But the root is a very healthy one. So we have to look back at our lives and see that we are born as a healthy soul in a body. Then there are certain tools given to us and certain tools we may not have. So to look back at our pasts is really looking at the tools we used to see what experiences, what realizations we came to.

True teshuvah does not mean annihilating the past. It means recognizing and not judging or invalidating who you are and what you searched for. If it brought you somewhere, exactly as Liba said earlier, these are stepping stones, and stepping stones are always healthy.

The bottom line is this. From a Torah perspective, and this is something for another show entirely, drugs are unacceptable for an entirely different reason. For they are not the way one achieves pure spiritual integration.

There’s a discipline involved. The reason the Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, was not just taught easily, in quick classes or in ten-step programs, and the reason there were restrictions not to study it until age 40, because it’s the respect for its sanctity. It’s not because it’s off-limits, but because there’s a discipline.

Certain things are not taught to children. Why? Because they’re not ready for it yet. But human beings tend to gravitate to the sensationalistic, the exotic and quick ways of achieving a high. So I’m not minimizing or in any way trivializing or invalidating the spiritual experiences that can come through foreign substances, the question is, have you earned your way there? If someone takes you on an express train to another place, are you ready for it? Have you become a more refined human being? Is your marriage better for it? Are your children happier for it? Or is it perhaps a spiritually arrogant experience? Something that makes you feel better, more enlightened about yourself. But there’s a thing called spiritual arrogance.

When it comes down to it, the question is, what is our purpose and the disciplined way of achieving it? That’s the real question about spiritual experiences. There were four great men in the Talmud who went into the Garden (“garden” refers to a spiritually ecstatic experience) and had very high spiritual exposure. But only one, Rabbi Akiva, was able to come back and integrate it. Another one went mad. Another one became an apostate, and another one died. They burned out from the experience. And burning out doesn’t always mean literal death. It can mean psychological death, a certain resignation, a certain inability to cope, to come back to the ground.

Once you’ve seen certain things, the real question is, how do you come back to the ground? Once you’ve had spiritual highs, how do you come back? There’s much about this in Judaism and in the Torah.

(Announcement break. This show and all of the activities of the Meaningful Life Center activities are made possible by the contributions from people like you who wish to achieve a life full of meaning and purpose. We invite you to join us and become our partners in creating a better world. For contribution and sponsorship opportunities, please call 1-800-3MEANING, 1-800-363-2646, or write to the Meaningful Life Center, Suite 303, 788 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11213.)

I want to thank all our callers and apologize to those calls that I could not take. You can call again next week or email us at wisdomreb@aol.com or visit our website where the show will be transcribed and posted.

I’d love to hear your comments. This has been Simon Jacobson with Toward a Meaningful Life speaking about how to use your past and elevate it to a greater place. Everything in your life is a stepping stone

Tags: radio transcript, drugs, teshuvah
Posted in Personal Life, Emotions & Psychology | No Comments »

Guilt & Shame: Constructive or Destructive?

May 28th, 2014

Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – March 19, 2000

Tags: radio transcript, guilt, shame
Posted in Personal Life, Emotions & Psychology, Featured | No Comments »

How to Find Joy in Your Life

May 28th, 2014

Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – March 5, 2000

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Good evening and welcome back. We’re on the air every Sunday from 6-7pm on WEVD 1050 AM. It’s been exciting in the few last weeks taking such interesting calls from you, and I really appreciate and thank the listening audience for your provocative, stimulating and challenging dialogue.

To find a topic for tonight’s show, as usual, I look to Divine Providence in my own life, different things that happen during the day, or calls and emails that I get during the week to inspire me with a topic to discuss rather than coming up with something of my own.

So the topic that I’d like to discuss is “Joy.” And the reason for it is that we are now in the Hebrew month of Adar on the Jewish calendar. The month of Adar is considered to be the happiest month in the Jewish calendar as it contains Purim, the happiest day of the year. Purim is essentially a day of joy, which in Hebrew the word is “simcha.” I was looking around for different words with which to translate the word “simcha”—exuberance, happiness, gladness—but I think joy is the right word.

Friends of mine asked me the question this past week, “How do you bring joy into your life if you’re not in the mood for it? Can you just package it? Can you have joy on demand?”

Many of us have many very legitimate reasons for being somewhat despondent, and when you’re in that state of mind, we’re dealing with emotions here, how can one elicit joy? I thought it was a very good topic to discuss, because people often take for granted the issue of joy. You find people who are very joyous just naturally and others that seemingly are much more somber and serious.

So I’ll pose several questions on the air and I’ll address some of them. I’d love to hear from all of you out there so I invite you to call in with your questions and ideas.

Is joy genetic? If someone is a joyous person, or the antithesis of being sad, is it genetic or is it acquired? Can you do something in your life, any methods or exercises, that can bring joy and happiness into your life?

As I said, the antithesis of joy is sadness, and these emotions are forces in our lives that have a very strong impact. I believe that some of these emotions are critical in our own growth and healing process. There’s the Patch Adams story of how laughter can aid healing. I think joy is one of those underused tools that, by learning how to access it, can really help us in our lives.

Many of us feel that we are victims of circumstances. If something in our daily life brings some joy in our lives, great, we thank G-d for it, but is there something that we can actually do, that we can actually initiate, that can help us bring joy?

So question number one is, is joy genetic? You do find people who are just naturally joyous, who have a kind of laid-back attitude where it’s just good to be in their presence, and then there are others who may be very serious, but at the same time, they always bring us down.

At the outset, let me give an overview from a Torah perspective about what this concept called joy, simcha, is, and whether it is considered genetic— nature vs. nurture.

We can learn a lot by observing children at their quintessential selves, because before children have been affected by society, parents, and community, they can sometimes give us a specimen of what our lives would be like before we were abused or hurt or disappointed.

Children have natural cheer. They have a natural, enchanted air about them; some would call it naivete because they haven’t yet tasted of the pains of life, but you can also say that it does definitely reflect on a certain natural state that we all have within us.

When does a child cease to be consistently cheerful? When a child first gets disappointed: the first grief or the first loss or the first disappointment. I would say, to put it in more cosmic terms, that you experience sadness the first time there’s some deception, some type of split in a person’s life. Sadness for the loss, sadness for what could have been, sadness for not getting what you want. But naturally speaking on a cosmic level, a soul, a spiritual entity or spiritual state, where you’re in complete touch with who you are and what you’re supposed to be doing, should be literally a seamless flow of joy.

In other words, from that perspective, joy is a completely natural state. It’s not even an expression of a spiritual type of existence, it’s equated with life itself. Like a fish swimming in its own waters has that type of natural cheer.

Now, living in a world of so much grief and pain, when we see someone joyous, it’s like a novelty for us, an exotic experience. But for someone who has that flow, that seamlessness, where there isn’t a dichotomy in life of what you want and what you expect or a deception of different forms, then joy comes very naturally, and that’s why children are joyous.

So their naivete in a sense serves them well because they haven’t yet tasted from what it means to live in a world of deception. Once they get those disappointments, the joy begins to bottle up to the point where it becomes so locked up for some, that it can’t even be accessed again.

It’s critical to see joy from this perspective, because if joy is an acquired state, something that you develop at some point (later) in your life, then a very strong argument can be made that once you’ve lost a reason to be happy, or you’ve suffered grief, there’s no way of reconnecting.

However, if joy is a natural state of feeling a certain sense of belonging, a feeling within that you are important and you have a value, then it’s just a question of reclaiming that right, not creating something new.

So the argument that I’m submitting to all of you is, that joy is something that each of us has in our hearts. Even if you are the saddest person and you haven’t smiled in years, you have a joy, a gladness in your heart, that may in some way be blocked or sealed away because you may not feel that there’s any reason to access it, but it’s there, and the key is learning how to dig into those reservoirs and draw from those wells of joy.

Of course I’ll try to discuss some of the methods of how one does that, but I wanted first to establish a psychological basis for the concept that joy is within us. Psychology uses the words today, “inner child.” From a Torah point of view that’s nothing new. The inner child has always been a reality and the concept is essentially that the natural cheer, the natural spirituality, the enchantment and magic of child life is maintained throughout our lives.

However, once we mature into adults, the casings and personalities of our lives harden, and within them lies locked that child, that cheer, the natural exuberance of childhood. To truly live a meaningful life, a life of purpose and fulfillment, we must learn how to bridge the two. I’m not suggesting that we turn the clocks back and turn into children playing in sandlots, but if we can find some way of bridging that free abandon, that natural flow of a child with the seasoning and experience of an adult, then you’ve got yourself a winning package.

I would even say that our search for happiness, in different words, is trying to bridge those two elements.

Now when we talk about joy in general, and reconnecting with that child or the joy within, I have to explain why it is that a soul, or spirit, is naturally upbeat or optimistic. In other words, what I’m saying is that this optimism, this sense of belonging is a natural state.

When you look around at any kind of particular given situation and you see when people are happy— take a mundane example, let’s say at work—some people at work are just happy with their job, they’re happy. Usually, there are a few ingredients that contribute to that happiness. Ingredient number one is that they feel needed. They feel appreciated that they’re doing their job, they don’t feel negligible, they don’t feel taken advantage of, they feel that they belong, they feel that their particular talents or strengths are being utilized and appreciated. That’s an extremely important ingredient and I’m speaking here purely on an ostensible level without even getting to anything deeper than that.

So what is the significance of this feeling wanted, of this sense of belonging? It means that there’s something that’s touching you that allows you to be yourself. You don’t have to accommodate anyone, you don’t have to tailor your behavior or your actions toward unnatural or unrealistic expectations.

You can come in and do your job, and you’ll be appreciated for that. That sense of belonging, using spiritual terms, is essentially a sense that G-d put you here for a purpose and you are wanted and needed. When you have that type of inner security, its leads to natural joy. Indeed, that inner security is essentially one and the same with inner joy.

Natural joy doesn’t mean that you get up to dance and celebrate at every moment, but it’s just a certain feeling that you are wanted and needed. And when you have that, you have no reason to be sad.

Okay, we have Allen on the air.

Caller: Hi, good afternoon. I want to share a story on what I finally learned at age 42 and this works for me to gain control if I do feel sad over life’s events. It’s kind of summed up by saying the older I get, the smarter my father becomes. He passed away 17 years ago. I just think back to things he taught me. What I didn’t believe at age 21 I now see is so true at age 42. That makes me smile and it makes me able to go back into my memory, remember conversations we’ve had, and apply the knowledge today that I wasn’t able to apply 21 years ago.

Jacobson: So what do you do if you’re in a real saddened state? Do you just bring up memories?

Caller: I pick up a couple of books. I look at the situation, and if I can affect my surroundings and change the situation, then I devise a plan and go for it. If I can’t affect the situation, like the weather or the traffic, then I tell myself there’s nothing to worry about because worrying won’t change the situation.

Jacobson: Well, Allen, I must give you credit, because that’s exactly what’s expected of us. However, what do you tell people who just can’t accomplish the same thing that you do?

Caller: Well, I just give them perspective. I’m in medical sales and when my feet hurt when I wake up in the morning, I have two choices and I try to pass this along to them. I can either say, “Oh gosh, my feet hurt, I’m not happy,” or I can say, “Thank the L-rd that I have feet, because how many medical facilities do I go into where there are patients in nursing homes with amputated feet.”

I just try to keep it in perspective and I try to point that it out to people. Even my daughter, who’s nine years old, knows that a third of her allowance goes in the tzedakah (charity) box, because no matter how tough life is for her, she knows a lot of people have it much worse off.

Jacobson: Well, I commend you for that, and your call is very meaningful to me because I can affirm what you’re saying, because from the perspective of looking at the texts, when they discuss how one accesses joy, the idea of recognizing that I’ve done everything I can do in a given circumstance, and then letting go, is a very fundamental one.

Caller: There’s a saying that I don’t like to quote, because I usually only like to quote sayings I know from my Jewish background, but in Alcoholics Anonymous, one of their biggest sayings is “Let go, let G-d.” And you just summed it up. Look at a situation, if you can change it, attempt to, and if you can’t, accept it and know that it’s in a state higher than you can conceive of.

Jacobson: Well, I appreciate your call Allen. Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Caller: No. But thank you for listening so attentively and you know, it’s a lot easier to say than to do, but I’ve learned if you talk about things, your philosophies to people, and you share them with your family and friends, you’re more likely to integrate them into your own life.

Jacobson: Exactly Allen, and I hope that your call inspires others as well, because hearing it from a person who’s there is always best because it’s not just theoretical, but from a real live person of flesh and blood. So thanks for the call.

I’d like to embellish somewhat on what Allen just said. We see that joy consists of having a sense of purpose, coupled with what Allen just said, which is the second ingredient—recognizing that you do what you can do in certain circumstances, and after that you have to have what is called in Hebrew, bitachon, which means trust. You have to let go, not from a vulnerable place or out of weakness, but recognize that you have exhausted every option possible. Those of us who continue to obsess in a situation—feeling that it could have been different—cuts into a deeper issue of our own insecurity, and that’s why I go back to my initial point of having a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose.

I can’t ignore, of course, when you’re dealing with a topic like this, that as legitimate as Allen’s comments are, there are many of us who grew up in homes where that sense of self was seriously abused and one’s self-esteem was eroded.

Often when I hear people talking about the difficulty of being happy, when you really cut through the layers, what you’re really hearing is a sense of foreboding, of expecting things not to work.

But when you think about it, why would a soul sent by G-d to earth, with a very clear mission and a sense of purpose (i.e., this is what you’re needed for), ever feel that they are hated or that they can’t get it done or that they have no purpose in this world?

The answer is that that child who had natural joy, natural exuberance, and was ready to take on the world, all that was stamped out, at least on a conscious level, by parents who either projected their own insecurities or just projected their own inadequacy, their own lack of joy, onto this child.

And this outer layer doesn’t let that person access his own soul and his own joy.

So this is, of course, the most difficult situation, because what do you do to turn the clock back to return to the innocent child before it was damaged?

So let’s go to Joe, on the air.

Caller: You know, you said to make yourself feel happy you should take care of your insides. What do you do about the Holocaust?

Jacobson: Well, what do you do?

Caller: I asked you the question. I tell you why I asked. During the War, I was in France. You know in 1944, the French were ambivalent, they weren’t like the other people. Some were turning the Jews in and some were hiding them. They hid a bunch of Jews, and there was a German battalion in the area. We were in the area and I happened to be investigating, doing “point,” and I heard noises. I thought they were Nazis so I slammed open the door and I was ready to shoot, and I found about 20 people there.

Now, the captain said to me, “Leave them there.”

I said, “No, I have to take them. Give me a break. Let me take them to the rear.

He didn’t want to let me take them to the rear. And this bothers me to this day.

Jacobson: So you did leave them there?

Caller: No. The captain walked away and there was a back road there—there were a lot of roads there—and I took them about 2-3 miles away from the front and told them which way to go and they would find either a Jewish organization or the French underground, they would find somebody who would save them. I wouldn’t leave them there. I was fighting for America but I certainly wasn’t going to turn my back on Jews.

Jacobson: Well, Joe, you’re a hero.

Caller: I’m not a hero. Any Jewish guy would have done that. And I think the captain knew I did it. He had to give me orders to stay because we were in line, we were very close to the Germans, we were exchanging fire, we were having gunfights. He had to do what he had to do, and I had to do what I had to do.

But you still didn’t answer my question.

Jacobson: I appreciate your telling me the details. First of all, your call brings me joy. Because anyone like you who’s alive and thank G-d who’s healthy and who behaved in that fashion as you just described, has to lift our spirits. Because despite the entire darkness of the Holocaust … you know, I remember once hearing from an atheist who was debating a Holocaust survivor, and he was saying, “How could you still have faith after the Holocaust?” Can you imagine, this guy had the nerve—he didn’t even live through the Holocaust—and in his own philosophical mind he was challenging a Holocaust survivor?

And the Holocaust survivor turned to him and looked him straight in the eye and said, “You know, I’ll tell you what the Holocaust taught me. I lost my faith in man and I regained my faith in G-d. I realized I cannot depend on men and human beings.”

Joe, what you just described, yes it’s true, the Holocaust is a source of sadness that is a bottomless pit, and as much as we could talk about it, there’s no way that I’m going to explain the Holocaust here, and I’m not even interested in justifying it. It’s a source of deep sadness, not just for Jews but for the entire human race that allowed such a blemish and allowed such an atrocity to occur—it’s human beings at their worst.

However, when you hear a story like your own, Joe, and how you behaved, and I’m sure it’s consistent with your life following the war as well, that’s a source of joy that means that there is hope—even in a jungle, there is hope. I have no other words to say. The only other thing that I can say about the Holocaust in general is, we do not understand the mysterious ways of life and death. I have no answer for the Holocaust, yet we have two options, as I once heard a person who really suffered serious trauma (he lost his wife and was left with many little children), say, “I could either sink, go under, or dig deeper, and I decided to dig deeper.” So we have two options.

The Holocaust can be a source of an unbelievable pain if we dwell on it. That such a thing could have happened is simply unbelievable. It can’t get worse than that.

However, to dwell on it in that way is actually bringing upon ourselves a second Holocaust, creating an unproductive life where we’re only dwelling upon the negative.”

I’d love to be able to share with my children, and share on the air here, a story like yours, Joe. A story of thousands of others who came out of the Holocaust with renewed faith and who rebuilt their lives. Even though the scar will always remain a prominent one—particularly for Jews, but for all people—at the same, it’s not a contradiction.

You know, Rashi, a commentator on the Torah, says an interesting thing: you can mourn and grieve, and at the same time, as time passes, you celebrate. That doesn’t mean that you forget the loss, it just means that there’s a certain resilience, a certain power, that faith has that allows us to grow, and in a way, pain and grief can be transformed into a catalyst for growth.

If we in any way can sanctify the memory of the Holocaust victims, the way to do it is not to bring upon ourselves a Holocaust and say, “Look how terrible life is.” If we can, in their memory and in their spirit, we should be inspired to be a better people and inspired to never allow such a thing to ever happen again. To cry out at injustices as they happen today, as you, Joe, did. To save people who are in situations of a mini-Holocaust. (There are children living today whose homes are almost a Holocaust environment.)

If that memory inspires us, then what we’ve done is transformed tears and sadness into joy. So joy isn’t a type of naïve, glassy-eyed blindness to the realities of life. There are many causes and reasons for being in pain and sadness. At the same time, there’s a firm belief and faith that there’s a G-d, and a human being has a soul, and the spirit will rise.

And stories like yours, Joe, will inspire us that way. I don’t know if it’s a complete answer to your question; however, it’s as much as I can say without getting into the whole discussion of why a good G-d would allow bad things to happen. So again, I thank you for your call.

Let’s go to Norman. You’re on the air.

Caller: Good evening. The holiday which is the memorial for the destruction of the Temple, is that Tisha B’Av?

Jacobson: Yes, it’s called Tisha B’Av, which is the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. The antithesis of Purim.

Caller: You see, this holiday in which the Jews are supposed to be sad over a long period, hours and hours—I feel bad about that and I don’t do that. I think it should be acknowledged, but I definitely omit myself from this type of activity because to me it’s just dwelling in a morass of negativity and I don’t do it. I thought this might add something; I’m not asking for your justification.

Jacobson: But you do celebrate the holidays that are joyous?

Caller: More so than… yes. And in addition to that, I find that I’m evolving into acknowledging and feeling and vibrating to those holidays. Even though I may not do them now, I learn every day what vibrates within me and I pick up on that. Even though I may not do it actively, ever year I do less the sadness and more the joyous.

Jacobson: Okay, Norman. Thanks for that. My comment would be that I think the issue is really two sides of one coin. Jewish philosophy teaches us that there are two types of sadness: there’s a sadness that is destructive—a sadness of depression that is demoralizing and that weakens you.

But then there’s a healthy sadness, for example, where you are sensitive to a loss. It’s not one that’s demoralizing. Or you regret a mistake you’ve made. To be insensitive to that and just say, “Hey, nothing happened,” is a form of denial. And interestingly, when you’re in touch with healthy emotions, sadness and joy become very similar in a way. I know people who are very happy but it’s simply because they’re oblivious or completely in denial of what’s going on around them.

That’s not the happiness we’re discussing here. That’s not mature joy, that’s blindness. I’m not denying that it may be useful for the time being for certain individuals. Not everyone has to be exposed to all the traumas of life in order to test their mettle, but in a way, a person who’s able to be sad in a healthy way, out of strength, that same person will be able to be happy in a healthy way.

I see the other extreme as well: people who are so self-absorbed with their own depression, they also can’t get out of it. It has a lot to do with how you see yourself.

I often make the point in the classes I give that arrogance takes on different shapes. Arrogance can take on a shape of pompousness expressed as ecstatic joy, oblivious of the realities around you, even when people are in pain around you, but arrogance can also take on the shape of complete depression.

Bottom line, arrogance means: “I figured out that I’m the only one who can determine what mood I should be in.” So sometimes I meet someone and I say, “What do you mean you have a low self-esteem and you’re not valuable? G-d said you’re needed here on this earth.” And the person answers, “No, I know better.…” That’s arrogance. It’s just an arrogance that takes on the shape of complete self-annihilation, self-obliteration.

So self-hatred and depression is really just another form of the same arrogance of a person who’s completely arrogant at the expense of everyone around him.

It’s an interesting custom in Jewish tradition under the chuppah, the wedding canopy, to break the glass at the end of the ceremony. One of the reasons they do this is that it’s a reminder of the destruction of the Temple. So I always wondered, of all times to choose a reminder of the destruction of the Temple, it’s at the high point in two people’s lives, their wedding, the highest simcha, the highest joy? Couldn’t it have been done seemingly at the end of the wedding, or on another day? Why at that high point?

And the point is this. Those who know how to remember others’ pain at the height of their joy will also know how to remember to have joy at their height of pain. It’s people who live in extremes, who cannot find balance, where their joy is complete and they don’t have that one percent opening that there may be people out there who are not married, or who are unable to, or who have difficulties in relationships, or people in pain in some other way.

If you remember those people, or you’re just sensitive because you’re not so consumed with your own feelings, no matter how justified they are (a marriage is a marriage), but you leave that little opening, then one day, if G-d forbid you should be challenged where you’re faced with a trauma or some loss, it also won’t be all consuming. You’ll have that one percent opening of joy and happiness. And I think that’s the balance. So Norman, I can’t tell you how to live your life, but I could say to you that it’s important to know that there’s a time to cry and a time to celebrate, as King Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes. But I thank you for your call.

Now, I’d like to take a break to invite you to my Wednesday night class in New York City, at 8pm every Wednesday night at 346 W. 89^th St., corner of Riverside Drive. All are welcome no matter what background or what gender, no matter what affiliation or non-affiliation. And just as this show has been coined “A Show for Skeptics and Seekers,” so too is the class.

We’ve been talking about joy, a human emotion that is sorely needed. We see how productive we are when we are happy people, and we see how unproductive we are when we are saddened.

We have Rikki on the line.

Caller: I have a question about Purim. You say it’s a joyous holiday, but there’s something about it that makes me a little uncomfortable. When I’m in the synagogue, at the mention of Haman’s name, everyone starts yelling and screaming. I understand that originally it was intended to obliterate the name, but it seems to me more and more that it is a hateful expression—something that seems incongruous with Jewish thought because I don’t think that Judaism is about summoning up those kind of feelings. I would always think that Judaism tries to promote love. Could you explain that a little more?

Jacobson: Good question, Rikki. Just for those listeners who may not understand what Rikki is referring to, traditionally on Purim day, which is the 14^th day of Adar, the Megillah scroll (of the story of Purim, the story of Haman and the plot against the Jews, and how they were saved by Mordechai and Esther), is read publicly in the synagogue, both on Purim evening and Purim day. The tradition goes that when Haman’s name is mentioned in the reading, some people stomp their feet, some people shoot off little “shotguns” (I don’t think there’s any TNT or any major fireworks going on) but a lot of noise and racket goes on in the synagogue.

What Rikki’s asking, which is a very legitimate question, is that it’s slowly taken on its own culture, a life of its own, which seemingly is not the emphasis in Judaism. But the tradition begins, simply on the mildest level, with the awareness in the context of what I said earlier: Even when we’re celebrating on Purim, where we have very good reason to celebrate, (and let’s speak on a psychological level, when a person is happy with their lives and they find many reasons to be joyous), you still have to remember that there was a Hitler out there, and in the time of Purim, Haman was no different from a Hitler. There are people who are either cruel or wicked, and they continuously hurt people. So the awareness of that, even when you’re at the height of joy, is one of the most beautiful elements of Judaism: that it’s never unrealistic joy, it’s never an escape.

As long as this world is imperfect, we still remember those in pain. And one of the ways we remember is that when Haman’s name is mentioned, we stomp with our foot, which essentially is a symbol of remembering that there are still people out there who are that way and we have to eradicate evil.

Interestingly in Judaism the concept of evil is looked at that the sin should be erased but not the sinners. So even in the worst scenario, when we’re talking about evil, we’re not talking about the destruction of an individual unless that individual has become completely corrupt, like a Hitler, or like a Stalin, or others in history, where simply their existence is a threat to others.

So I do agree that when negativity is overdone to excess, it almost becomes a spectacle of its own. But if you think about the original tradition, it has beauty to it, that there’s the height of celebration on Purim for the victory against the enemies of the Jews, yet we still remember that there is a Haman and we have to protect those who are vulnerable and can be hurt.

But interestingly, when the Jews came out of Egypt (the Egyptians had oppressed the Jewish people for many years, and they were enslaved by them, and after the Jews left Egypt, the Egyptians still didn’t give up but pursued the Jews), and the Egyptians were drowning in the parted sea and the Jews began singing praise to G-d, the Talmud says that G-d said to the Jewish people, “My children are drowning and you’re singing praise?” And remember, we’re dealing here with Egyptians, who were the equivalent of Nazis at that time. They had enslaved the Jewish people for 210 years and wouldn’t give up. They wouldn’t let them go. And they deserved to be killed; G-d had killed them. Yet we always need to be sensitive.

So even when we’re stomping on a Haman, we’re not talking about some type of vengeance, it’s more of a sensitivity that there’s evil in this world. At the same time, it’s not gloating but a form of recognition and a sensitivity to be joyous when you need to be joyous, and saddened by that which saddens us.

So we’ll go to AJ.

Caller: Good evening. I like your program. You’re very articulate and very interesting to listen to. I think a sense of hatred and guilt and also sometimes the guilt is conscious or subconscious, I think that as a strong way of pushing out joy, that people really can’t get joyous once they pick up this entrenchment of sorts, which is a killer of joy.

For instance, I don’t think that Hitler and these guys were really joyful, except for maybe a temporary period when he took Paris or something, but throughout their lives, I think it was just eating away at themselves with a concern about what they didn’t do or what they did do, or how they hadn’t accomplished as much as they wanted, and they really were not all that pleasant to be around.

Their joy was very temporary and their hate and guilt ate away at them. And sometimes it’s even subconscious.

And by the way, for people in the Catholic church, the Saint’s Day is relevant to the day they die, not their birthday. And they feel that as they die they may go to heaven, or will go, and it’s a joyful day in a sense that they are delivered from this life to a perpetual joy in the next. That’s it.

Jacobson: Thank you for your comments, AJ. I totally agree with you, AJ, that the worst thing that a person can do when they’ve been hurt and have legitimate grievances (as I was referring earlier to bringing on your own personal Holocaust in your life), is to perpetuate it by becoming hating or hateful, because then you become a greater victim of the person who’s hurt you, the perpetrator.

In a way, our own pride should say to ourselves, “Yes, that person has wronged me, but I don’t want to remain their victim by continuing to carry that type of demoralizing hatred or sadness around with me. That doesn’t mean ‘turning the other cheek.’ It means an awareness that something wrong was done, that there was a wrong perpetrated, but I will convert my motivation into something extremely positive that eradicates the evil to bringing more light into the world.”

Obviously, for those who are in danger and in the line of fire a person has to do everything possible to protect himself, but what a person should do is not to run from a burning building, rather build new buildings and new structures in which to live.

And that’s why I am filled with admiration for people who came out of the Holocaust or for that matter any trauma, and have built and rebuilt and have not been brought down and demoralized.

You wonder, what is the anatomy? Why are some people so consumed and so overwhelmed by real tragedies, and others have an inner joy or an inner reservoir, an arsenal to call upon? Victor Frankel said it when he writes about the Holocaust in his book Man in Search of Meaning, that a human being who finds prior to the tragedy that he or she has a real purpose in being alive, then no matter what happens in their lives it’s like roots of a tree. The storm may strike, branches may be broken off, leaves may be blown away, but the tree remains standing because it’s firmly planted, firmly rooted, firmly grounded, and it has a sense of belonging that I was referring to earlier.

It’s a sense that G-d put you here on this earth and no human being can take that away from you. And no human being gives that to you. Your parents don’t give you your reason for being, your justification for existence. What gives it to you is an inherent sense of purpose, an inner sense that “you matter” because G-d put you here.

And since no human being gave it to you, no human being can take it away from you. People can hurt us and people can take away opportunities from us, but they cannot take away our inherent value, which is the real reason why we should celebrate life, that we are here.

In Jewish tradition there’s a prayer that’s said every morning upon arising, “Modeh Ani,” “I acknowledge G-d for returning my soul to me.” It’s essentially saying that the greatest reason for celebration is that I am here, I belong, and that no person can ever take that away from me, because I have that inherently.

Now I do want to make a suggestion or two of how to access that part of you, but let’s go to Bob in New York.

Caller: Yes, I’d like to contribute another aspect of joy that I believe that is accurate, that when people had rescued Jews, which is voluntary of course, they had a pure feeling of joy toward G-d on a high level. And I believe that if I were a rescuer, that would drive me also if I was feeling that high. Not everybody feeling that close to G-d would do it, but it has to be from a joyfulness.

 I want to add another point… I heard criticism when I was a grade school student that some of the Germans didn’t help the Jews when they knew what was happening. Well, on the reverse side, how could you help somebody when the Germans had all the armaments and the machines and the equipment? This is the normal fear of a human being. But the gentiles and others who rescued Jews, in my opinion, were close to G-d and had joy for G-d.

Jacobson: I appreciate that. I hope, Bob, you have some of that joy yourself, but you shouldn’t have to use it to save people who are in danger. We should be able to use our joy in situations that are healthy. Unfortunately was see that the strength of human beings is mostly expressed only in darkest times, like they say, it takes the eclipse of the sun to see the power of sunlight. Sometimes in the darkest of times (and I see from the calls coming in this evening) you see the greatest joy and the power of it.

If we were all joyous people and there was no reason to be sad, we would never appreciate what joy is all about. But because we live in a world that is cruel and a world in which people have been hurt, children particularly, joy is that powerful, elusive goal that so many of us aspire to.

We’ll go to Steve on the line.

Caller: Hello Rabbi. I was thinking that one way to draw on the joy that is found in the wellsprings of the heart, as you say, comes from a teaching of Rabbi Nachman who says that when there’s nothing in the world to smile about, the thing you should do is smile, and G-d gives you everything to smile about.

Jacobson: Well said. I like that. And as a matter of fact, that’s a good segue, Steve, because I was going to address that one of the traditions on Purim, for instance, one of the exercises, is to join a festive meal. And I always wondered, if you’re not in a happy mood, who wants to go to a party? So it becomes a Catch-22 situation. How do you force yourself to go to a party when you’re not joyous?

At the same time you do see that when you’re with others who are happy, there’s a contagious element to joy. It may be distracting and it may not necessarily have a profound effect, but I’m a firm believer that behavioral change, sometimes acting a certain way, definitely can affect you in a way where you begin to assume that personality.

Now, if we weren’t joyous at the heart of it all, if we weren’t inherently joyous people and the inner child was not a joyous one, then you could say that it’s a superimposed state to just party. But if we really believe that deep in our reservoirs there is joy, then the question is, how do we unclog the pipes to get there?

So with unclogged pipes, just to use that analogy, we usually do two things. If you can get to the root of it, from the bottom, then you unclog it from the bottom, but if you can’t reach it from the bottom, then you go to the top and you try to unclog whatever is blocking it—like Roto-Rooter.

So to access in a person’s soul those reservoirs of strengths, sometimes you need that behavioral change, you have to go to a party, you have to participate. And if you have a friend who is sad and doesn’t want to go (I mean obviously you don’t have to force anyone), you do everything possible, because sometimes a person needs a type of shock treatment to just shake up the clogs in our arteries. When you begin unclogging it from one end, sometimes it dislodges it and something can flow from within, in other words, from the reservoirs of joy themselves.

So on a practical level, one of the suggestions that the Torah does give for a person who just can’t pull themselves out of their own despondent state, is not to sit and dwell on it. Go find yourself someone who’s happy. The fact is that in the presence of someone who’s naturally joyous and happy, it always has an effect on us. It may not change you overnight and it may not have a dramatic impact, but being in that type of presence does have a certain warming effect and, let’s put it this way, you have nothing to lose.

On the other hand, hanging around with people like yourself when you’re despondent doesn’t usually help, because what happens is despondency and demoralization breeds demoralization. It all comes down to that you have to have belief and faith that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Of course there are situations in life where we’re so overwhelmed that we can’t see anything. That’s why we have to prepare in the years of plenty for those years of famine. In the times that we do have an opening, and everyone has a moment in their lives where there’s a little opening, where they feel a little joy, they have to grab that moment, and get themselves some friends and say to them, listen, when I go under and I can’t see the difference, and I’m in such darkness that I don’t want to hear anything, remember to shlep me to some party. And that’s a window of opportunity that we have to use that allows us this and particularly in months that are opportune times in the Hebrew calendar, because time has an energy that allows us an opportunity that we have to access. Perhaps the clogs are a little less clogged up in these months.

So thank you for your call, Steve.

There’s no question that that’s one of the things that none of us would reject if someone came to us and said, “I have a gift for you called joy.” Because when a person is optimistic and happy with themselves, they’re more productive. You can accomplish more in one hour in a happy state than a person who has ten hours and is in a saddened state, because when you’re happy your faculties are sharper and you’re more in tune.

By the way, a topic like this cannot possibly be exhausted in such a short time, so we want to invite all of you to share your thoughts and questions and we will post them on our website. You can reach us at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com or www. meaningfullife.com and we welcome all comments and questions, from skeptics to seekers.

We’ll go to Larry.

Caller: Hi Rabbi. I have one quick thought that I want to share with you and your listeners. My wife and I find a good way to create happiness in our lives is simply by celebrating a few simple elements of Shabbat. On Friday night especially, we light candles, we say the motzi on the challah, we bless the wine and we go through a few family ritual acts. We find that that gives us tremendous energy to start the new week.

Jacobson: That’s a very good point that Larry made. We were talking mostly about Purim, but there is no question that any spiritual reminders in our lives, anything that a person can do (and speaking from the Jewish tradition, whether it’s the Sabbath), any time we take time out from the material immersion of our lives and remind ourselves of our own inherent spirituality is the greatest cause for joy.

I didn’t really have the time to elaborate on this, but the fact is that materialism inherently is the root of all despondency. Because the fact is, anything material—money, possessions—since they’re all temporary, can never provide the type of security that real inner joy comes from.

In Ethics of the Father we learn, Marbeh nechosim marbeh daageh, the more money you have, the more problems you have, because you have more to protect. More property, more anxiety, more to worry about.

Anxiety is a direct result of the temporary and transient elements in our lives. However, on the other hand, that which is eternal in our lives is always going to be a cause for joy because it gives you that type of grounding, that anchor, that you know you can depend upon.

It’s like if you start a project and you have someone who is doing work for you. If you know you can’t rely on that person and you always have to be checking on him, the anxiety level may not be worth hiring a person like that. It may be worth doing it yourself.

However, when you can depend on someone and know that he or she is going to be doing the job, that type of reliance gives you the security that you can then feel happier. So happiness is very much connected to the objects of our desires and our happiness.

I do want to share a blessing and a suggestion that one of the keys to happiness is to have happy friends. Find yourself a happy friend that you can call upon that has that sincere sense of happiness, and remember, the spirituality that you build in your life is a nest-egg. The more you diversify it, the more security you have.

As always, it’s been a pleasure. I hope you’ll join me next Sunday at 6pm on WEVD 1050AM. This has been Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. Thank you and have a good evening.

Tags: radio transcript, joy, happiness
Posted in Personal Life, Emotions & Psychology | 1 Comment »

Humor

May 28th, 2014

Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson
Radio Show Transcript – May 21, 2000

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Hello, this is Simon Jacobson and welcome to Toward a Meaningful Life. We’re on every Sunday from 6-7pm, 1050AM on WEVD.

Today, for a change of pace, I decided to choose a lighter topic, but first I want to thank the listeners and people who have written in following last week’s show on women and women’s issues and the previous show before that on homosexuality.

So to balance it (as life should be balanced—with a combination and chemistry of both intense and lighter periods), some friends suggested that I do a show on “Humor.” And that is, what is the role of humor in our lives, and by extension, laughter. Particularly from a spiritual perspective, we find humor is very much a part of our contemporary society where comedy—which may even border on cynicism—is very much a part of the entertainment industry.

So what exactly is the role of humor in our lives and how can it help us? Is there healthy humor? Unhealthy humor? And what is the anatomy of humor and its relationship with us?

To begin, when you talk about humor, it’s hard to be humorous because humor is often a spontaneous type of thing, but if anyone has any personal experiences or anecdotes where humor has served a role in their lives, even during hard or trying times, please call in and share it with us.

To begin with, from a spiritual, Torah perspective, there are references to humor in the Talmud, and particularly one that stands out is the story where a rabbi (a sage and scholar) asks Elijah the Prophet if anyone in the marketplace is going to have the reward of a share in the World to Come.

Elijah points out two individuals who will have a share in the World to Come. So the Sage goes over to these two individuals and asks them what they do because he wanted to know what caused them to earn that reward. And they said they are comedians, badchanim in Hebrew: they lift people’s spirits through their humor. By doing that, as the Talmud puts it, it also brings peace between people. In other words, they use humor to reconcile differences.

It’s interesting that of all the people the Talmud would choose to earn a share in the World to Come, it would be comedians, people who make others laugh. Interestingly, the Talmud continues and says that there was another person Elijah said would have a share in the World to Come, and that was a jail guard. In the time that there were totalitarian regimes, jail guards would protect the people who were jailed and inform the rabbis of impending decrees and so on.

So the contrast or parallel between a jail guard and comedians is interesting. I once read somewhere that the comparison is that someone who causes you to laugh is someone who can, in a way, help to free you from your own prison. They help you free yourself from depression or experiences that may lock you.

We see that when a person is able to laugh at certain things, at certain experiences in life, that helps free you.

I think this Talmud is a very good point to begin with. You see from this that humor has a very clear role that is not just connected to immediate remedies, but that someone can actually earn a share in the World to Come, in olam haba, as an eternal reward for their soul because they made another person smile.

That’s something that each of us can take to heart. Now, what exactly is this concept called humor?

You find in another place in the Talmud that before one of the Sages would begin delivering his lesson, he would begin with a joke, which he did “in order to lighten the hearts and open the hearts of the students.”

As a matter of fact, the Zohar says something even stronger, that without humor, there is no wisdom. Without a sense of humor, one cannot really have wisdom. In other words, to open up a mind, a heart, to truly be able to understand things, humor plays a very significant role.

On the other hand, you definitely see how humor can turn into cynicism. That’s what’s called “frivolous humor,” to the extent that I once remember receiving an email from someone who wrote to me that in the Talmud it clearly states in Jewish law that as long as the Messiah is not here, as long as the world is not perfect, a person should not open his mouth in laughter.

In other words, there’s a prohibition against laughing more than is necessary in this world that we live in, which seemingly may contradict what we were just discussing, but in truth, there are two types of humor.

There’s a humor that’s frivolous—where you’re either cynical or you laugh at other people—a humor that doesn’t allow you to experience something transcendental, that keeps us trapped.

On the other hand, when humor is part and parcel of serving G-d, where it becomes something that helps you grow and helps you become more G-dly, or make other people smile, then that’s a different story.

In other words, laughter and humor, simcha in Hebrew, is part of serving G-d in a way that allows us to experience something beyond ourselves. However, if it’s humor that is self-indulgent, narcissistic, exclusionary, elitist and the like, that is really a deterrent to anything spiritual.

So humor, like anything, can be abused or used in a good way. To lead a meaningful life and to be able to find purpose and solace, we need to be able to also learn the secret of learning how to smile.

Sometimes life becomes so serious, so intense, that smiling is a form of a release and a form of lightheartedness where you don’t always take yourself so seriously.

They say that there’s a very fine line between tragedy and comedy—or as a cynic would put it, it’s a tragedy if it happens to yourself. It’s a comedy if it happens to someone else.

But that’s not what I want to say. I’m just citing that on a humorous note.

But the truth is, humor can play a very significant role in a person’s life, particularly when a person is very intense. Then you need to be able to step back and sometimes smile at yourself. In Yiddish there’s an expression, “A mensch tracht un G-t lacht,” which means, “A person thinks and G-d smiles.” This means that sometimes we make plans and we’re very intense about it and we’ve dedicated our time to some activity, but G-d has other plans. Sometimes you have to learn how to smile, which is probably the easiest way to deal with a difficult situation.

I remember someone once wrote something called, How to deal with getting fired from your job? Getting fired from your job is often a very traumatic experience, because besides the fact that it creates insecurity, it’s also very demoralizing.

Some of you may remember Billy Martin, a former manager of the Yankees. Martin had a love-hate relationship with George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees, and I I think he was hired or fired six or seven times. Once he was fired, Yogi Berra was hired to fill his shoes. Yogi Berra comes to the manager’s office and sees on the desk two envelopes from Billy Martin that say, “To the new manager. Open only in case of emergency.”

Envelope number one said, “In case of emergency number one,” and envelope number two said, “In case of emergency number two.”

So he didn’t touch them because there was no emergency yet. The Yankees began winning and everything was fine. As soon as they began losing, of course, Steinbrenner began mouthing off to the newspapers. The manager’s seat got hot and there was talk about Yogi Berra begin canned (that was in Steinbrenner’s younger years when he was a little bit more volatile), so Berra comes into the office and opens up emergency envelope number one which says, “Blame it all on me (Billy Martin).”

So Yogi Berra calls a press conference and says that the reason the Yankees are losing is that the morale is still low from the previous manager and they still have to get into the groove.

And he buys a few weeks for himself, and of course the Yankees begin winning again, so Steinbrenner cools down.

But a few months pass and they get into another slump. This time it’s really serious because Steinbrenner really wants the Yankees to win the pennant, so Yogi Berra comes running into the office and opens up envelope number two. It says: “Prepare two envelopes.”

This is a way of getting fired. Getting fired can be a very demoralizing experience but here, by preparing those envelopes, Billy Martin was using humor to help Yogi Berra get ready to move on.

Humor has that power to defuse things and to lighten things up. I want to emphasize that when I say humor I don’t mean frivolous, condescending or abusive humor where someone may insult or hurt someone else at their expense for a  cheap laugh.

I’m talking about the kind of humor, as described by the Talmud, that makes people smile, that lifts their spirits; the type of laugh where everyone’s in a very serious mode and then someone just breaks out into a smile.

Some situations are so ludicrous (I don’t want to call them tragic) but in a way so crazed, that you can laugh at them. That’s the positive role that it plays, as I cited the Talmud, opening up people’s hearts and spirits to be a little more positive about things.

In Judaism there’s the concept of “ivdu et Hashem b’simcha,” to serve G-d with joy. Even in situations that are seemingly difficult, joy can give you the inner majesty and internal peace to not be completely demoralized by them. You often find also that people with a good sense of humor can also be very serious, because they have a certain appreciation of the marrow, the mystery of life.

In a way, their seriousness side and their light side both come from the same place. They have that type of understanding of the human condition.

So let’s go to the phones. I see we have Stu Trivax on the line, a stand-up comic who comes to my class. I mentioned this show to him and said that perhaps he could call in and we could have a few minutes to talk about humor.

So Stu, I think it’s quite appropriate to have someone who’s a master of humor…

Stu Trivax: Well, thank you.

Jacobson: Stu Trivax, by the way, for those of you who don’t know, is an acclaimed stand-up comic. Is that the official title you have?

Stu Trivax: Stand-up comic. That’s it.

Jacobson: Do you ever sit down and do comedy or only standing?

Stu Trivax: I can do that too.

Jacobson: Anyway, Stu has appeared in different films and on TV, I think you’ve been on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno several times and many other shows. People probably know you more by face than on radio, but nevertheless, thank you for calling in.

So as an objective humorist, what’s your opinion on humor?

Stu Trivax: Well, I think it is a very useful tool. I think any time, in a positive way, like you were saying before, you can raise somebody’s spirits, it’s useful because life can be so difficult for most people, and everybody has their ups and downs and their difficulties during the day. If you can find some way to make them happy, or even as you said just make them smile, it can have an effect for the rest of the day or even longer. Even if it can just make them cope a little bit more easily, or even make them see something in a different way, that can be helpful.

Jacobson: Let me ask you, since you do this professionally, do you see this as a personal thing as well for you, or do you compartmentalize? The fact is, you may make people smile and lift their spirits, but how do you balance those two things in your own personal life? Is it part of your spiritual growth, your own personal development?

Stu Trivax: I would say it carries over into my daily activities. Recently I’ve been spending some time in a senior citizen’s home and some of the people I come in contact with are unable to carry on a complete conversation—they can be in their 90’s and dealing with them can be difficult—but I find if I smile at them I get a response. Very often they will smile back. Even though they’re not speaking, they see a bright face, a smiling face, and then sometimes the people can speak a little or I can say something light or kid around in a way that they can understand, and this really lifts their spirits. A lot of these people are kind of sad during the day because people don’t really deal with them very much.

So even a little thing like that can help, and if I can do that I really feel good about being able to use my humor in that way to lift somebody’s spirits in the course of the day.

Jacobson: Did you ever have to get up there and perform in a terrible mood?

Stu Trivax: Sometimes yes. Like everybody else, you go to work and sometimes you’re in a better mood than other times. Sometimes I’ve been preoccupied with certain family situations that have been very difficult or health problems that people in my family might have. But once you get up on stage, especially in the situation where you have the microphone in your hand, the lights are on and people are looking at you, I think most professional comedians can focus on what they have to do, and do the performance they need to do in that situation.

I’ve had some very, very good sets where beforehand I wasn’t feeling particularly funny.

Jacobson: Do you have any good humorous stories about humor?

Stu Trivax: I have this one little story. It’s not my joke. It’s a joke I heard which might be apropos to the audience.

Four Jewish women in a restaurant and they’re in the middle of lunch. A waiter comes by and says, “Ladies, is anything all right?”

So humor is often based on something that might be true. But with kind of a good-hearted warmth about it, I think, affects people in a nice way.

Jacobson: How did you choose to do what you do?

Stu Trivax: I think it’s something that I was always drawn to. I was funny among friends, and especially in New York City they have small clubs where you can go and audition for two or three minutes. Because I was in a situation where I had the opportunity to do that, I put some material together and tried my hand it.

But being funny with friends and being funny on stage is really very, very different. When you’re on stage, you really have to create an atmosphere that people who don’t know you can relate to and feel good about.

So that usually takes a bit of work.

Jacobson: For any aspiring stand-up comics listening to us, what do you tell them if they say something and people don’t laugh?

Stu Trivax: Well, that’s one of the things you really have to get over, because I don’t know any comic who’s been on stage who hasn’t gone through a situation like that. I think the main thing is to remain centered and cool and not make more of it than it is and go on to your next joke or whatever story you’re going to say after that.

If you seem relaxed and calm and able to cope with it, the audience will usually go with you and it won’t be that big a thing. But if they see you sweat or uncomfortable, you really telegraph to them that things aren’t going well and they pick up on that and then they reflect that back to you which isn’t so good.

Jacobson: So is comedy a good profession for a good Jewish boy?

Stu Trivax: It can be. Actually, doing stand-up comedy is good and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a little work. But the business aspect of show business is kind of difficult so you have to balance the two.

Jacobson: Well, for some reason I find that a lot of comedians are Jewish. Is that correct?

Stu Trivax: A lot of comedians are Jewish, although now there are a lot more from different ethic backgrounds. There are a lot of Hispanic and Black comics who are getting into it. Especially with cable TV, and the popularity of comedy for so many years around the country, a lot of people have been trying their hand, and some of them have been very successful.

Jacobson: Finally, what would you say to the listening audience here about humor. Not everyone’s a stand-up comic. What message do you have?

Stu Trivax: I think if you can develop what’s funny about you in any situation with friends, co-workers or anything like that where if something is a little tense or a little awkward, you can say something in a way that would relieve people or calm people down or make people see a lighter side of something, I think it would be a very useful tool.

The trick is to balance it. You don’t want to say something that’s going to be harsh or go over the line or say something that’s going to embarrass somebody else, but at the same time, if you can just find the right words or say it in the right way, you can be a great help to a lot of people.

Jacobson: Do you have any final joke or something you’d like to share?

Stu Trivax: Well, I think you do a great job. I really enjoy going to your classes and I think your humor is sort of subtle so I really like hearing you speak. I would just like to encourage people to check out one of your classes on a Wednesday night. It’s very uplifting and there’s humor throughout, and it can be a great tool to find your way day to day in dealing with life’s ups and downs.

Jacobson: Well, Stu, I appreciate your calling. And I see you have a very serious side as well.

Stu Trivax: I do. You were right about that—about seriousness and comedy coming from the same person.

Jacobson: So thanks again and keep making people smile. And remember, you have a share in the World to Come and may it also be in this world, a good share.

Stu Trivax: Well thank you. I’m counting on both.

Jacobson: Okay, bye, Stu. Let’s go to Reuvein Russell. Reuvein?

Reuven Russell: That’s me. Sholom Aleichem Rabbi Jacobson. How are you doing?

Jacobson: Okay. This is great because I think most of my friends are comedians. Reuven Russell, for the listening audience, is an entertainer. I hear that you’re also known as  “Koko the Clown.” Is that your pseudonym?

Russell: I do that for kids, that’s right.

Jacobson: Or did you begin first as Koko and then turn into Reuven Russell or the other way around?

Russell: Well you should know, I’m calling you right now from Milford, CT, from the home of my mother and father, and my father happens to be Joey Russell. I owe anything I say that gets a laugh to him, because in a sense I’m just like a nice Jewish boy going into his father’s business.

Jacobson: That can get a laugh.

Russell: That’s it. He’s been making people laugh a lot longer than I have.

Jacobson: So tell me. You’re a comedian, a clown, an actor. You’ve done serious work as well, correct?

Russell: Correct.

Jacobson: When you’re living real life, real life is inconsistent: some moments you can be serious, tomorrow something’s funny. But in acting, how do you elicit those two polar extremes?

Russell: The truth is, I think we try to find humor in everything. I mean, first of all, people say that my name alone, Reuven Russell, well they say, what kind of a name is Russell for a nice Jewish boy? And I tell them that my name wasn’t originally Russell. My father was born Phillip Feitelberg, and before he was married, he changed it to Joey Russell, also for stage purposes, because in those days, it wasn’t the in thing like it is now. Now you have your Jerry Seinfelds and your Paul Reisers. Now to be ethnic is okay, but back in the times of the Second World War, you know, “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a big hand for the comedian, Phillip Feitelberg.” It wasn’t such a great thing.

So he changed it to Joey Russell. So I’m Reuven Russell, and when anyone ever comes up to me with the last name Russell and asks if we’re related, I say, “I don’t know, what was your name before you changed it?”

So that’s it. But I think a lot of times in life, especially we Jews, don’t have a lot to laugh about, but I think that’s one of our strengths, that we find humor in everything.

Jacobson: So you correlate your own personal Judaism with the humor that you do?

Russell: I hope so. I mean, the comments you made at the beginning of the show of how some of our Sages would begin each class with a joke, and what the Zohar says, I couldn’t say it better myself. I try. We have to treat life seriously, but you also have to have a sense of humor, because I heard a great saying, “You don’t stop laughing when you get old, you get old when you stop laughing.”

Jacobson: That’s very good. So you shouldn’t get old.

Russell: I hope. By the way, Stu and I have worked together many times in Los Angeles and in New York. I heard him speak about going to the old age homes. Most comedians find themselves at one time or another in some sort of an old age home.

I just got back from Florida. You want to talk about old age? The average age was deceased. I saw a man sitting next to his widow.

Jacobson: Did you ever resurrect the dead with your humor?

Russell: I didn’t, but I’m learning that comedy on radio is not the same as live. But that’s okay.

Jacobson: No question. You know, they say that some people have a face for radio, and I guess it’s the same thing with humor. Tell me, I was always amazed as a kid, I don’t know if it’s a myth, by that view of the weeping clown; that the clowns in life are usually the most tragic figures. And in a way their humor is almost like a compensation, a cover-up—like a mask they wear that really hides very deep anguish within.

Russell: Okay, now you’re hitting below the belt, Rabbi Jacobson.

Jacobson: Sorry.

Russell: You have to hit me below the belt on live radio. The torment. The torment I go through every day just to tell a joke.

I guess some of it’s true. I try not to dwell on the negative. I try to always accentuate the positive. You know, I try not to analyze it too much, because once you start to analyze it, I think, it can all go down the drain.

So there may be some truth to that. I mean, if you look at all your great comedians over time, most of them were Jewish. Milton Berle, and you know I have a whole list of names: Berlinger, Red Buttons was Aaron Schwat, Joey Bishop, none of these were their real names, and these are all Jews from Brooklyn, most of the time.

Jacobson: Not to mention Charlie Chaplin. The Marx Brothers.

Russell: That’s right. So you know one after the other. And could you say that there was torment, tragedy? Perhaps. But I would never tell anybody to look for the tragedy in their lives in order to be funny, do you know what I mean?

Jacobson: Of course.

Russell: But if someone came to me and said, “Look, I’m feeling a little bit blue,” I would say, “Let’s have some laughs.” So there is some correlation I guess. I’m not a big student of the analysis of it but I do know there is some correlation.

Jacobson: There was a French philosopher, Voltaire (I don’t know if I should cite him on a show called Toward a Meaningful Life), but he said once that G-d is the greatest comedian whose audience forgot to laugh. What do you think about that one?

Russell: Why did the audience forget to laugh?

Jacobson: They didn’t realize that life essentially is G-d’s comedy in a way. He meant it probably in a derogatory fashion, but it does say in the Talmud that life in a way is a drama, a play. Not that G-d is playing without our lives, but there’s a certain joy and laughter that it elicits. What do you think?

Russell: Well you know something? I think there’s a lot of truth in that. I missed the very beginning of your program so I’ll just ask you before I mention this thought. Did you happen to mention the little saying from the Talmud, believe me I’m not a genius of where it is, but in Taanis 22 I believe, did you happen to mention where it talks about the little story of the jesters?

Jacobson: Actually I did. Where they have a share in the World to Come, right?

Russell: Correct. “Who here has a share in the World to Come?” That’s right. So a lot of people mention that to me and I say, very good, that’s nice, but in the meantime they always say, you’re only as good as your last show, so if I don’t make the people laugh tomorrow, thank you very much for my portion in the World to Come, but I got to pay the rent, you know what I mean?

Jacobson: Well, that’s a good halachic question, you can ask that of a Rabbinic authority, that in case you don’t make someone smile with your humor, do you still get a share in the World to Come? I don’t know if the title is enough, you probably have to …

Russell: Right. So maybe G-d is not only a comedian, He’s also a booking agent.

Jacobson: Well, the topic that I want to address later on the show is, does G-d have a sense of humor? When you read the Bible, for instance, the Torah, you see G-d is angry, wrathful, and you never find G-d smiling. At least in the Bible you don’t.

Russell: Well, you know, my name is Reuven Yitzchok. And you’re the rabbi here, not me, but we know the name Reuven, Yaakov’s oldest son, came from the words “look at my son,” and Yitzchok came from the word “tzchok” to laugh. So I tell people I was named Reuven Yitzchok, “Look at my son, the comedian.”

Jacobson: Very good. Is your father around, by the way?

Russell: Is he around? He’s right here. I told him, Dad, I can put you on the phone. He says, how much time does he want? I said, “I don’t know. Maybe you’ll talk 3-4 minutes. He said, ‘I bow that long.’

Jacobson: Does he want to say something? Tell him we have hundreds of thousands of listeners.

Russell: If you want me to put him on, I’ll put him on. And I’ll just say one last thing before I go. You know, we’re in the middle of the Omer now, and if you don’t mind me giving you a free plug, your book and little resource guide is the best thing that’s ever been written about the Omer. If nobody has it they have to go get it. It costs very little—I have not been observant all my life and I learned, when I was studying recently in Kollel in Morristown, New Jersey, that when you go and you ask someone what day is today of the Omer, Jews never say, “Today is…” What do they say? “Yesterday was…”

And there are many different reasons for that which you can ask your rabbi about. So when I first learned about this, I went home and told my wife I was very excited that I learned something new. I think she took it a step too far though because when I came home the next day and said, “Honey, what’s for dinner?” she said, “Last night was chicken.”

My father’s right here. I’m going to put him on.

Jacobson: Reuven, thank you very much. Keep making people smile.

Russell: Amen, amen, and let’s make a date same time next year for this talk show, but let’s do it in Yerushalayim with the Beis HaMikdosh.

Jacobson: And you’ll be the top humorist.

Russell: Oh boy, those are big shoes to fill. I’ll second the headline under my Dad.

Jacobson: What’s your father’s name?

Russell: The one and only Joey Russell, right here.

Joey Russell: You are Rabbi Jacobson? The begeista, in drei un dreisik yor, I give you an extra 13 years because of inflation and it shouldn’t happen suddenly. I was very pleased—I heard of you but we’ve never met.

Jacobson: Well here we are, meeting on the air. And there are many people listening to our meeting here.

Joey Russell: Halevai, why not? I’m the last of the dinosaurs. The Wall St. Journal wrote that article about me.

Jacobson: Really? What did they say?

Joey Russell: The last of the dinosaurs. Because years ago when you had 300 places in the Catskills—you know, you’re too young to remember that I think—

Jacobson: I know the Catskills, the Borscht Belt, right?

Joey Russell: There used to be 300 places. Can you believe it?

Jacobson: And you did them all?

Joey Russell: I don’t know. The week after Pesach you’d get your bookings for 100-110 shows and you’d go up and you’d book one of the ski villages, because in the summer they don’t ski. And you’d be there. And today, nothing.

But I was in England, in London, I did two Bnei Brith shows, and a show at the Marble Arch Synagogue. Do you speak Yiddish?

Jacobson: I do, but not everybody in the listening audience does.

Jacobson: So how did you get into humor?

Joey Russell: My real name is Phillip. I guess Reuven told you this. My name was Feivel. When I was four years old, I remember somebody called me, Feivel the Teivel, because I studied, not in a yeshivah, but I got a yichus. Did you ever hear of the alov hashalom, the great Rabbi, Eliezer Silver?

Jacobson: Of course.

Joey Russell: He was in Springfield, MA where I was born and raised. Ani ben harav Lubavitch. When Lubavitch was like oy gevalt, you know, if papa made $400 a year in the shenadar he had to drive a little fruit truck. It was a big living. But Rabbi Eliezer Silver, a”h, you heard of him?

His son is a rabbi in Harrisburg, did you know that? And there’s a great story about Rabbi Silver. It seems that he had an urgent call and he had to run to the airport. He had a private driver at all times. And the driver was speeding. If you know, the airport in Cincinnati is actually in Covington, Kentucky, and he’s speeding over that great big bridge over the Ohio River and they were pulled over by a state trooper. And as he’s talking to the driver, the driver says, “Sir, do you know who I’ve got in the back seat of this car?”

He says, “Who is it?”

He says, “The chief rabbi, one of the great rabbis of the United States.”

And Rabbi Silver hollers out, “And don’t forget Canada also. Isn’t that great?

Jacobson: He must have been very humble!

Joey Russell: I remember, he always wore a top hat. Even in those days we’re talking 60 years ago.

Jacobson: So how did you get into humor? Did Rabbi Silver encourage you to become a…

Joey Russell: They used to call me “Feivel the Teivel.” Who knows how? It’s a gift from the Ribbono Shel Olom (Master of the World).

Jacobson: And your father was also a comedian?

Joey Russell: I don’t know. In those days they didn’t have time for comedy. A joke now and then. It wasn’t easy to be a Lubavitch Rabbi in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Jacobson: Listen, Joey, you should feel good and healthy, and you should continue to make people laugh.

Joey Russell: Well, I do something serious too. I do a cable show in Connecticut only called, “Jewish Forum.” It’s on all the cable shows in Connecticut. I had Rabbi Avigdor, an Orthodox Rabbi with a boys’ choir. It was wonderful. Rabbi Wainhouse, another rabbi who plays the guitar and sings Yiddish love songs.

Jacobson: Wow, this is something. I mean you really surround yourself with a lot of rabbis. What can I tell you? Listen, Joey, I have to go to a station ID here.

Joey Russell: A commercial? Make some money. Listen, Rabbi Jacobson, maybe someday we shall meet. You have your own shtelle, your own shul?

Jacobson: I run the Meaningful Life Center, it’s an educational organization in New York City.

Joey Russell: For who?

Jacobson: For everyone. If you’re ever in New York, I give a class every Wednesday night on the Upper West Side, 8pm, and I welcome you, if you’re ever in New York. And tell Reuven and we’ll get together. Okay?

Anyway, thank you very much, Joey and Reuven. It’s very good to hear that it runs in the family.

(Announcement break about ways to contact Rabbi Jacobson or the Meaningful Life Center. Email: wisdomreb@aol.com, website: www. meaningfullife.com; phone: 1-800-3MEANINGS, mail: Meaningful Life Center, Suite 303, 788 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11225)

Okay, before I go to the next call, I just want to pose the question, “Does G-d have a sense of humor?” When you do read the Bible, and many people look at the Torah and religion in general, and particularly Judaism, as being much more of a religion that’s driven by law and order, by wrath—some would say anger, retribution, punitiveness—it doesn’t seem that there’s a light spiritedness, even though you have these incidents that I addressed earlier. But what about G-d? Does G-d ever smile? And can we make G-d smile? Where does He smile and when does He smile?

Think about that while I go to the phones. We have Liba on the air.

Caller: Hi Rabbi Jacobson. I am not a comedian, stand up or sit down, I’m just a fan of Toward a Meaningful Life, but my thoughts relate more to the beginning of the show. I really can’t answer about G-d’s humor, I don’t know that much about Him in that way. But I have found that if you eliminate an objection to something with humor, you eliminate the objection. For example, when I started studying Chassidic philosophy, one family member said, “You know, you’re being brainwashed.” Now this could have become an argument, but instead I decided to use humor and I said, “Quite frankly, the condition my brain is in, don’t you think it could use a little washing?”

He laughed. It eliminated the objection and he never brought it up again.

Jacobson: Maybe his brain could use some washing?

Caller: But see, I don’t want to put someone else down with humor.

Jacobson: No, I understand.

Caller: I give talks and I don’t see. I’m totally blind. And the first thing I’ll say to an audience to relax them is, “Shalom. It’s good to see you.” And it makes them laugh, it makes them relax. They see I’m not taking myself too intensely. And so I find humor relaxes me and it relaxes others and then I can get on to more serious things because they’re relaxed and therefore they’ll be more receptive to what I have to say.

As far as in the Bible, I only know the King James version because that’s the only one that’s on tape, there is a place where they were offering up sacrifices to their god, and their god wasn’t coming up and taking the sacrifices and Elijah said, “Where is your god? Why isn’t he taking your sacrifice? Has he gone to the bathroom? And that always cracks me up. I don’t know what it says in a kosher, but to me, if we’re made in the image and likeness of G-d, and we have a sense of humor, then He must have a sense of humor. Where do we get it from?

Jacobson: That’s a very good segue. Thank you, Liba.

That’s a perfect segue, because the truth is, in the Kabbalah and Jewish thought in general, Jewish philosophy, the idea that a human being is created in the Divine image has far-reaching implications that affect our lives much more than we may even think. It basically means that every part of our lives, every part of our personalities, our psyches, whether it’s the way we smile or the way we cry, is in some way a reflection of the Divine in our lives.

And therefore, exactly as Liba just put it, if we have humor, it means G-d must have humor. And vice verse. Because it is a partnership. Life is a partnership.

Someone did ask me this question which is what provoked me to ask the question here on the air. Someone asked, “How come you never find G-d smiling in the Bible?” And I thought about it, because the fact is, definitely with the story of Isaac where Sarah laughed at how she could possibly have a child at her age, and there are other smiling stories, but you don’t have laughing on G-d’s side. G-d is very serious in the Bible.

So then something struck me. In the Talmud there’s an interesting story. The Talmud tells that there was a disagreement in heaven between two heavenly academies. One was called the mesifta d’rekiya, which is the Heavenly Academy, and the other one was called the mesifta d’Kudshu Brichu, the Academy of G-d. They were studying Torah and there was as debate that they couldn’t resolve, so they decided to go down to earth and ask a scholar in one of the academies that studies Torah, in one of the yeshivahs down here in Israel or Babylon. They ask Rabba bar Nachmeni, who was a great Sage, and he thought about it and the way he resolved the issue was not like G-d’s opinion but it was like the opinion of some of the other students in the heavenly academy, the angels.

So it’s just fascinating to have the idea that a human being can disagree with G-d. Then the Talmud concludes with a fascinating statement. It says, “Then G-d smiled and said, ‘natzchuni, bonei natzchuni,’ ‘You have prevailed, my child, you have prevailed.’”

In other words, G-d smiled in satisfaction that his child, meaning this scholar on earth, with his own wisdom, was able to come to a conclusion that prevailed even over G-d. So it made me think that perhaps the reason there’s no humor in the actual Bible is that the Bible is a book, a blueprint for life. In blueprints, when you read a computer manual, there’s no humor there, because it’s telling you basically the rules of how to live your life. Do this, don’t do that. As I discussed in these shows, the Bible is not just a set of rules, it’s actually an operator’s manual for life. An operator’s manual saying, “This is the healthiest and best way to live your life.”

So in there, there’s no real room for any variations. So it’s a book of law and order essentially. And G-d, in a sense, bound himself to that structure. Therefore you don’t find the concept of smiling or laughter, because if you look at life itself, when do we smile, when do we laugh? When something changes. It says, “taanug tmidi aino taanug,” “consistent pleasure is not pleasurable.”

A laugh comes when there’s some type of variation, when there’s a change, a novelty. You know, you don’t laugh all the time. There are some people who do, I guess, but laughter comes from something out of the ordinary. You see something a little weird, a little off-beat, and it makes you laugh.

In the Bible, nothing is off-beat, because it’s really describing life as it’s meant to be lived. However, in this exchange and interaction where a human being, through his own initiative, is able to come up with an idea, a concept that can even challenge G-d, that makes G-d smile.

In other words, it is in our power to tickle G-d. A human being has the ability, the power, to make G-d cry and to make G-d smile. And I think that’s a beautiful, powerful concept in the partnership of human existence, the human condition, the human drama, that we aren’t just subjects on the receiving end, we actually can make G-d smile. Unfortunately, the other extreme is that we can also make G-d cry.

But we have that ability to interact with G-d. When G-d created the universe, He bound Himself with us, and that’s why you find at times that G-d smiles. You find in the Talmud and in other places that G-d has that element of having the ability to smile, which of course, reflects back to us, that we also need to have that attribute, of sometimes opening up with something that’s lighter, like a release point.

When Moses finally went up to G-d and prevailed upon Him to forgive the people for sinning with the Golden Calf, there’s a certain inner satisfaction. It’s similar to a parent and a child, where a child may do something to transgress, and the parent gets upset. But you love your child so much that ultimately if the child is sincere, the child can elicit in you a deeper compassion, a deeper way to forgive, a deeper energy, and at the end of it you end up smiling. You see that your child has come around and is able to reach you in that way, and it makes you smile ultimately.

I think that’s a very healthy way of parenting, that though there are times where discipline is required, we have to understand that discipline is also an extension of love, and there’s no greater satisfaction for a parent whose child makes him smile—both out of joy or through coming through an experience where you see your child has learned through hard or difficult times.

Let’s go to Mark on the air.

Caller: Hey, first time listener, just was scanning the dial looking for another station but you’re really interesting. I’ll be a listener forever!

Jacobson: I hope that’s on a serious note, because this week’s show is supposed to be a humorous one.

Caller: But actually, I only want to say one thing. Two things actually. Everything is funny. Everything is serious. I knew a gentleman who was a Holocaust survivor—that man could laugh and joke about something as extreme as the Holocaust and find humor in it. I mean it wasn’t like the repulsive type of humor that bordered on anti-Semitism, obviously, it was just making lightness of such a heavy thing. I realized that anything could be treated lightly.

Jacobson: Well, he has that right to be able to do that.

Caller: Right. I mean I wouldn’t make jokes about something that severe.

Jacobson: Well, it could both make you cry and make you smile. It’s very much in context of what we’re saying here and I appreciate what you’re sharing.

People like that give you a lot of strength, because what they realize is that ultimately life is more profound than how seriously we take it or how humorously we take it. There’s something else going on.

Caller: One more thing, though. I do joke a lot, and it seems like when you’re joking, people think you’re not serious. And it’s a combination of both. For example, if someone’s really slow at work, I’ll say, “What are you waiting for? A Jewish president?” Something along that line. And because I mix humor in it, people don’t take it seriously. But what I really mean is that they are slow. I’m not that mad at them.

Jacobson: Okay, but in fairness Mark, there are people who are sometimes very cynical, and they’re always using humor as an escape or defense to hide behind. Humor, as I was discussing, can be a very powerful tool of strength and bonding for people, but it can also be something that people hide behind, like they’re always making a joke, everything’s funny.

Caller: But sometimes it’s saying, “I am mad at you. But I’m not that mad at you.” But the people take it like, if the person’s joking, they’re not mad at them at all.

Jacobson: Well, I appreciate that. So please do listen and tell your friends about the show.

Caller: Okay. I’ll even tell people I don’t like as well about the show! Why do people always say, “Tell your friends”? Why? You don’t want people who are my enemies listening?

Jacobson: Good point. Okay, thank you.

You’re listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson, as we wind down here in the last few minutes of the show.

So what is the Hebrew word for laughter or smile? The Hebrew word is schok. M’sachek means to smile. Bedicha is another word, which means a joke. Or as I said earlier, badchan you often hear at weddings, is a humorous or comic entertainer. The Talmud uses the word badchan when it comes to the ones who will have a share in the World to Come, as in the story I mentioned earlier. Schok is similar to tzchok, tzchok means laughter, and schok means smile and sometimes it’s stated in the positive sense where we talk about Az yimalei schok penoi, which is a verse in the Bible which says that when the Messiah will come, when the world will come to a deeper perfection, that’s when we’ll be able to completely smile. As long as we live in this world where there’s even one person suffering, no matter how good your life is, you can’t smile completely.

Yet there’s a place for humor even in our lives today, but it’s a humor that’s connected to something Divine. To plagiarize, the Divine comedy, so to speak. But to use humor to grow is something that is important to do. At the same time, ultimate joy will only be there when the entire world experiences joy, because with the human race, being one organism, as long as one part of it is ailing, all of us are affected by it.

There’s so much to say about humor. I’m sure if we had more time and we got more calls, we’d be able to discuss this further, so we will talk about it some more on the website. Your comments, your thoughts, and your suggestions if you wish can also be posted there. I did receive an email from a person who comes to my class. I didn’t ask his permission so I won’t say his name, but he did write an interesting compendium of humor within Torah, and I appreciate that so I thank him for that.

I’d also like to make an announcement since I do give a class every Wednesday night, at 8:00pm, 346 W. 89^th St., corner Riverside Drive and you’re all welcome to come to the class. It’s a combination of serious, humor, sometimes better sometimes worse. Sometimes you tell a joke, when you’re speaking publicly and people don’t laugh, so one of the tricks of the trade that I’ll share with you is, you can always tell your audience, okay, I know not to use this joke again next time. That usually gets a laugh. If you don’t get a laugh there, maybe you should quit speaking.

I always want to thank the sponsors of this and other shows: Robert Klein, Sharon Gans and other supporters. These shows are made possible through your donations and your sponsorships and please call us to find out how you can help at 1-800-3MEANING, 1-800-363-2646.

Finally, humor is a powerful tool in our lives. When it’s used in a Divine way, not to hurt others, not to hurt ourselves, and not as an escape, it can be a type of release that helps people lighten up. Try it out. Next time you speak to someone and there’s anger or some type of misunderstanding, sometimes through a humorous way of approaching it, is a light way that can diffuse things.

May we all experience only laughter in our lives, and even when there are times where there’s a dip in our experiences, may that too turn into something that makes us smile.

This has been Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. See you next Sunday.

Tags: radio transcript, joy, humor
Posted in Personal Life, Emotions & Psychology | 1 Comment »

The Anatomy of Fear

May 28th, 2014

Said Rabbi Shimeon: Now it is time to reveal secrets that are bound above and below. Why does it say, “Come to Pharaoh”? It should have said, “Go to Pharaoh” …. But G-d brought Moses into a chamber within a chamber, to the… supernal and mighty serpent from which many levels evolve…which Moses feared to approach himself because he saw that he was rooted in supernal roots…
– Zohar, part II, 34a

Fear is perhaps our greatest enemy. Not because it is loud and aggressive, but because it is invisible. Is there a person alive that does not suffer from some fear, known or (even worse) unknown? And what effects do our fears have on our lives – what impact does it have on our choices and ambitions, on our behavior, pride, jealousy, anger and so many other emotions? Can it even be measured?

Is our drive for success a way to mask or compensate for some of our fears? What critical mass effect does fear have on society?

Above all, what are we exactly afraid of and what is the root of fear? Without getting to the core of our fears we can hardly expect to alleviate them.

This question is more compelling today than ever as we face fears of all sorts, as national and international tensions continue to escalate, unleashing our underlying emotions in this climate of global uncertainty.

Though our fears today have obvious roots (fear of attack, fear of death), yet we see that there are individuals – as has always been the case in history – that do not get paralyzed by fear and have the ability to grow through it. What is their secret?

This week’s Torah portion, parshat Bo, teaches us the secret to both the root of fear and to its antidote.

The chapter opens with the following words: And G-d said to Moses: “Come to Pharaoh…”  The Zohar [classical mystical text] asks the question: Why does it say, “Come to Pharaoh”? It should have said, “Go to Pharaoh” … But G-d brought Moses into a chamber within a chamber, to the… supernal and mighty serpent from which many levels evolve…which Moses feared to approach himself because he saw that he was rooted in supernal roots…”

Moses had already visited Pharaoh many times before this commandment, “Come to Pharaoh.” What suddenly frightened Moses this time around? And how did G-d’s response “Come to Pharaoh” assuage his fear?

Up till this point Moses dealt with Pharaoh in his various manifestations, not his essence. But now he is told to enter into the core essence of Pharaoh’s evil, the ‘great serpent.’ This terrified Moses. To which G-d responds: “Come to Pharaoh,” Come with me. G-d is saying that you don’t go alone. I come with you and help you eradicate the evil at its source.

And here we see the true nature of fear.

Fear’s true power is in the loneliness that it imposes upon us. We feel we are alone in our predicament. We feel that no one can understand our pain and suffering. And even if someone can empathize, we still feel that they are not with us, not one with us and therefore ultimately we remain isolated.

Life inherently has a built in existential insecurity. Upon birth, the Talmud tells us, we are made to forget the teachings ingrained into our very psyches and souls. Existence, the mystics teach us, is an effect of a cosmic detachment. As a result of the ‘great tzimtzum’ we feel all alone; we feel we are on our own – isolated in a desolate universe, disconnected from any source of sustenance.

This existential loneliness is the root of fear. And this is what Moses – even the great Moses – was so terrified of as he prepared to confront the core evil of Pharaoh, the ‘supernal serpent.’ He was afraid and felt that he was going alone.

Obviously, Moses’ fear is relative to him and to the unprecedented challenge he was facing: Encountering and purging the root essence of evil. Fear is relative to each person and his/her situation, the difficulties each of us faces and the strengths each of us has. What frightens one person may not even stir another. Yet, the common denominator between all of us is – and this is the relevant lesson we derive from Moses – that fear (on the level relative to us) results from our sense of isolation.

And therefore G-d’s response to Moses’ terror is, “Come with Me,” I go with you.

This is the powerful message that each of us must take from parshat Bo – “Come with Me.” No matter how lonely we may feel, especially in our loss and pain, we are not alone.

The only answer to the invisible power of fear – the fear of being alone – is to recognize that you are not alone.

You are never alone.

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Tags: fear, parsha, Moses, faith
Posted in Soul Gym, Personal Life, Emotions & Psychology | 4 Comments »

The Key to Happiness

May 28th, 2014

Man can never be happy if he does not nourish his soul as he does his body
— The Rebbe

What is your life like?

If you are like most people, it is made up of countless bits and pieces of fragmented activity: exercise, work, eating, conversations, entertainment, sleep. Add up the pieces day after day, year after year, and you end up with an entire life split into millions of fragments, with no connecting thread. Fragmentation rattles our peace of mind, creating untold tension and anxiety. Over time, the fragments pile up and begin to suffocate your soul, the inner you that craves focus, purpose and direction. Is it any wonder that after forty or fifty years of slogging through such disjointed days we wake up and suddenly wonder, “Is this what life is about? Am I really happy?”

A happy life is synonymous with a meaningful life, and we all want to live meaningful lives. We constantly strive to make our mark on humanity, to contribute something worthwhile to our world.

By acknowledging that within your body is a G-dly soul, a soul that can give your life purpose and lift it above the mundane pursuits of everyday life, you begin to put the pieces of your fragmented life in order. You see your life from a larger perspective, sanctifying every moment of your life — not only while you are studying or praying or doing charitable deeds, but while you are eating and sleeping, at home or at work, while traveling or on vacation. Instead of carrying out your daily activities by rote, you discover the G-dliness within each of them.

The Key to Happiness: Uniting Body and Soul

To be a happy, wholesome and healthy person, your body and soul must work in perfect harmony. This means uniting the body and soul to fulfill the mission for which we were all put on earth: to lead a meaningful, productive, and virtuous life by making this physical world a home for G-d.

The body and soul, however, are in constant conflict: the body basically looking to satisfy its needs with the soul looking for transcendence and unity. The first step in dealing with this conflict is to acknowledge that the struggle exists, and be aware of the two distinct forces. Thinking that we are a single entity leads to confusion and despair: One day we are virtuous and the next we are selfish; one day we are motivated, the next we procrastinate.

The only way to unite body and soul is to accept that G-d is far higher than our limited selves. The soul, because of its transcendent nature, can rise above selfishness more easily than the body, and can discipline the body, through study and prayer, to recognize its true mission. Only then can the body rise to its true prominence — when it serves as a vehicle for the soul instead of acting under its own power, with its selfish wants and needs. Once the body recognizes the soul’s dominance and makes peace with its twin sister, the tension can be properly harnessed.

Happiness Requires Action

It is not enough to acknowledge your soul, you must actualize it by partnering it with the body to help a neighbor in need, to listen to a friend in distress, to help provide food or clothing to someone who cannot afford it. These become more than simple good deeds; they become vital nourishment for your soul and a means of putting your physical body to good spiritual use.

True happiness is the fusion of body and soul dedicated to a higher cause, a cause that benefits humankind and gives meaning and inner peace to the individual in the process.

ACTION

When you awake in the morning, while you are still lying in bed, think for a moment: What does it mean to be awake and alive? Begin each day with a prayer; thank G-d for the new day. Acknowledge your soul. Think about what you would like to accomplish that would make today a meaningful day. If you train yourself to do this every morning, you will immediately begin to see your life in a new, sharper focus.

You should end your day just as you begin it. As you prepare for sleep, review the day and how you used it opportunities. Recognize that G-d has put you here for a purpose, and that all your activities should express that purpose. Go to sleep with the resolve that no matter how good — or bad — today was, tomorrow will be better. By doing so, your sleep will be more peaceful, and your waking more meaningful.

“Every person has both a body and a soul,” said the Rebbe. “It is like a bird and its wings. Imagine if a bird were unaware that its wings enabled it to fly, they would only add an extra burden of weight. But once it flaps its wings, it lifts itself skyward. We all have wings–our soul–that can lift us as high as we need go. All we have to do is learn to use them.”

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Tags: happiness, soul, Toward a Meaningful Life, body and soul
Posted in Excerpts From Toward a Meaningful Life, Personal Life, Emotions & Psychology, The Book: Toward a Meaningful Life | 3 Comments »

Who Needs Meaning in Life Anyway?

May 28th, 2014

MIKE FEDER: This is Mike Feder and I am here with Rabbi Simon Jacobson. We are present at the birth of a new radio program and I think we’re all excited and a little nervous… the same way as it would be with any child coming into the world.

Let me give you a little introduction about what this program’s about.

I do a radio program on WBAI and for years I’ve been interviewing authors and people talking about spiritual matters, and about two years ago I met Rabbi Jacobson who wrote the book, “Toward a Meaningful Life,” published by William Morrow.

Two years ago I interviewed him on the air and I was so impressed by the wisdom in this book and the way Rabbi Jacobson presented this wisdom and I wasn’t the only one who was impressed. I got a tremendous amount of mail and calls from the listeners and I decided it would be a good idea for the Rabbi to come back which he did over the last two years several times and we always got an overwhelming response.

This prompted me to suggest that we have a regular program. Now Rabbi Jacobson is a scholar and teacher and author, who travels all over the world talking about what’s in the book but we thought that the radio program would be a wonderful addition to what he does.

This show has also been important to me because I have been generally lost in my life without a spiritual connection and I was seeking myself and as a subtitle to this show, which is “The program for skeptics and seekers,” I think I fit into both categories. I realized I represented a vast majority of people who are out there, perhaps you too.

So that’s the origin of this program. It’s personal for me as well as trying to present a message to other people.

We’re going to talk about in this book TML, plenty of topics on every conceivable subject. It starts off with Body and Soul, Birth, Childhood, Education, Youth, Gender issues, Current Events, War, Pain, Grief, Death, Suffering, Sex, Marriage, everything you can imagine. We’ll try to get at what is universal about these things and try to shed a little light on all our struggles about that.

I think the last thing to say, and this is the most important thing, is that this is a show for you, the listener, we want you the listener to be completely involved in this program. Toward that end we’ll give you information on how to call and write to us with your comments. We truly do need your feedback and questions. We will be selecting your questions and taking your calls on the air which we look forward to.

Now, since we are here talking about TML, the first thing is, what is a meaningful life?

SIMON: To answer that question let me give a small introduction as well. I think we live in a time of crisis of meaning, meaning that we live in a time, in a depersonalized society, media-oriented, a real aimlessness and emptiness in people’s lives.

Let me share with you a story. I recently met with a fellow who was dating someone who was coming to one of my classes and she wanted to get married and he’s not interested in marriage; not interested in that commitment. So they both asked me if I’d be willing to speak to him. So we sat down and spoke and he’s very intelligent, very well-to-do, very successful. Seems to have it all…and we explored all the different reasons why he may be afraid of a commitment, a marriage. We looked at different childhood experiences, his own parents, other fears. Suddenly, one of those moments that something strikes you, I realized something. I said to him, “I think the problem is not marriage with you. I think you have no commitment to anything. Is there any cause that you’d be willing to fight for, till the end. And I don’t mean the life of your child or some type of life threatening situation…a cause, a purpose.”

He looked at me (he was intelligent enough to know that I didn’t mean money or career) and he said, “Well, I don’t have a cause like that.”

And I said, “Well, that’s your problem. You have no real passion in anything in life.” I didn’t mean to say that it was a problem in his life, I think it’s a problem we all share. So he turned to me in a skeptical and challenging way and said, “What’s your cause?”

It’s one of those moments of truth, and something just spontaneously came to me. I answered, “When I was a little kid, about six or seven years old, I had this little quirk, a weird thing, one of these little secrets you carry with yourself. I would walk often to school when it was raining and I had this thing, when I walked by the curbside, you know the water is running into the sewers and it would be blocked by leaves and garbage, and I had this mishugas, this eccentricity to clean away some twigs and open up the paths so that the water should run through.”

When he asked me the question I thought, that’s my cause. As I grew older, my education which was quite intense spiritually, a Jewish education, I picked that up that wherever I’m able to, I try to clear away the twigs and open up channels or arteries. Helping someone achieve clarity in life became my obsession essentially.

As we’re sitting there he started crying which he told me later he hadn’t done in a long time. The reason I say it is because it captured for me a moment, those moments of truth, where I think, there’s a deep aimlessness in people’s lives. And in order to compensate for it, many of us are successful in many superficial areas: careers, making money, but when it comes to real heart to heart issues, particularly in the area of relationships, dealing with trauma, pain, dealing with the realities of life, the invisibles, the intangibles, people really have very few tools at their disposal.

As a result of the book TML, and the great demand it created, I realized that it’s simply incumbent upon anyone that has the opportunity to share, (what am I sharing? Nothing of my own. I don’t think I’m teaching anything)

MIKE: This is really the second part of the question, really. What is this wisdom and where does it come from?

SIMON: I realized that I grew up with a very intense system based on Torah teachings, an age-old wisdom thousands of years old…most people have written it off today as being archaic, primitive, dogmatic and for many good reasons. There’s a deep alienation and disillusionment in religious establishment among Jews and among non-Jews as well, and as I said for good reasons…it has become for others stagnant, irrelevant and they search in other pastures as one would say.

Personally that’s painful to me because I was blessed to see within the Torah that deeper wisdom of life skills; not just some religious dogma about how to keep the Sabbath, what to eat, what not to eat, do’s and don’ts, as many people see it, but really a comprehensive sophisticated blueprint for life.

MIKE: Let’s go back to what you said originally about your own personal origin or experience of what you perceive to be a meaningful life. You clear away the twigs, you clear away the mess so the water can flow. What is this water? What is the essence that you’re trying to get to flow freely so that it would provide meaning?

SIMON: Let me talk a moment about the twigs before I get to that. What I like about getting on the radio with you and having this discussion with you is the fascinating interaction between two worlds that don’t often meet. There’s a lot of distrust between what we call traditional (I abhor labels and stereotypes as we’ll discuss) — the traditional right-wing religious person… for me spirituality is a freeing experience; it’s meant to open up the channels, clear away the twigs.

But many of the twigs have already been placed in our lives through the attitudes and stereotypes we have assumed from those that have influenced us in our lives. Parents, peers, society, the media. carry around. We all tend to stereotype from time to time. People just say, oh this guy dressed this way, this one belongs to a certain group. We file people into groups and categories. We can and must free ourselves of these traps. And here’s how.

I believe and I was taught that each of us has the deepest resource of all at our disposal at all times, some call it a soul, others call it whatever they call it. I don’t like to be locked into titles and labels because I see a lot of distance created by them. People say, “Oh, that’s what you mean by this…” So we have a soul inside us, and even though it is an invisible force, it is the most powerful force in your life. The Torah teaches us that the soul is like an oil well under your house, like a reservoir, resources of energy that’s there.

What would you do one day if someone said to you that there’s an oil well there, if you dug for it, millions of gallons of oil would come up. You’d find every way possible to dig and create those channels.

The soul is a well and reservoir of that nature. For every challenge in life, we have resources to deal with it. Life is not easy but yet we have the answers and we have the answers inside of ourselves.

The problem is, between us and the well, there are many clogged and blocked arteries. Life, the disappointments in life, the abuses in life, the insignificance that we often feel in a large world.

MIKE: Doubts, fears…

SIMON: All of the above. Parental influences. We live in a world where the sensory tools, so to speak, of our superficial materialistic world tends to block out and not allow our inner voice to emerge.

So we find ways, we find alternative ways…

Why do you think music is such an obsession for people? It’s an easy way that cuts through the arteries and gets to that well. Many people don’t call it that but that’s what’s happening. You’re having a transcendent experience.

MIKE: So we all have a soul. And there are people who have doubts, myself included, whether or not I have a soul, but I’m a negative kind of guy…I’m hoping you’re going to save me… by actually sitting across from this table and every week finally…

SIMON: You may save me!

MIKE: Well, I wouldn’t presume … but who knows what could happen. So discovering a meaningful life is going toward your soul, going toward, identifying and clearing away the debris to reach our own souls and then perhaps are you suggesting that we link our soul up with other people’s souls and that’s how we’re getting this flow going?

SIMON: Look, the most important thing a person can have in life is purpose, direction. Knowing that when you wake up in the morning, you’re significant, you’re indispensable. I would submit this to you and to myself and to all the listeners that society continuously inundates us with the message that we’re not significant.

May I share another story with you?

It’s a very powerful story that happened with me and I’ll be brief about it.

A woman wrote me a letter after reading this book. She was from St. Louis and she writes that she’s a 47 year old ambitious, highly successful executive, well-respected. But beneath the veneer lies a woman in shreds.

Why? She grew up in a highly abusive home, a dysfunctional home as it’s known today, with physical, emotional and psychological abuse, and basically a sense of total valuelessness; she has no value in her own eyes. To compensate for that she created this whole complex structure around herself where she’s needed and she’s important but she said it doesn’t really help too much. Her life is basically a struggle against suicide often because of her constant emptiness, no justification to exist.

She picked up TML and there was a line that struck her, something that struck a deep chord inside of her. The line was, “Birth is G-d saying that you matter.” She read it once, and then again. She said she’s read it since 500 times and will read it for the rest of her life.

She’s tried all kinds of therapy but nothing’s really worked. But something struck her. This was a revelation for her because she grew up thinking she didn’t matter that much. Her parents told her that she was a source of misery, an accident. Society, she said, teaches us that we’re another statistic on someone’s balance sheet. Our value is based on performance, on production, on buying power, on looks, youth, climbing the ladder, whatever it may be.

Your value is never based on you. Just because you exist. No one ever tells you you matter because you exist. Healthy parents should be telling us that message.

She realized that despite what everyone has told her and what people have been telling her over the years, she matters to the One that matters most, for G-d. That for the mere fact that she was born, that she exists, that she walks on this earth, is a vote of confidence from G-d who says, I want you here, you’re indispensable, you’re an indispensable musical note in the larger composition.

And she said, I have many years to heal, but I have hope because here is my objective. What I need to do is to clean away unclog (that’s the term she used) the blocked arteries that have blocked my arteries, and reconnect to that moment of innocence, of birth, before I was touched and uncontaminated by human touch, before it was blocked, and clean away the twigs (using my expression) and reconnect to that innocent moment of birth when I was completely needed. That’s my work. To find my indispensable contribution to this world.

Now this letter, we’ll talk about it in future shows, it’s haunted me and at the same time it puts the finger right on the button…

Most of don’t acknowledge that when we have problems, and we all have issues, it may be a relationship, it may be dealing with psychological scars, problems at work, interacting with people, or just a sense of emptiness, middle-age blues as they say, and middle-age keeps getting younger and younger they tell me.

MIKE: I’ve read about this but I’ve never experienced it myself…

SIMON: Well, with all of that, we’re a symptomatic generation. We deal with symptoms, pain killers, but if you really cut through it, essentially the teachings that we’re going to be discussing on the air here talk about, how do you get to the root of the problem, and the root often comes down to you don’t really think you’re that significant.

So obviously, how invested can you be when you wake up in the morning in the things that you do, besides the things that are immediate needs. But in the bigger picture, who invested can you be when it doesn’t really make a difference at the end of the day?

MIKE: When we come back from our break I want to prepare you for what’s coming. It took you about 16 minutes to say the magic word, “G-d.” we’re going to talk about that word, and what it may be and who this might be.

STATION BREAK

MIKE: We’re back with Simon Jacobson and the TML radio show. We are just launching ourselves on this journey here. You were talking about a lot of the obstacles people encounter towards understanding themselves, that they have a soul, to communicate with whatever their essence is. What the meanings are in life, who they are in life…

And there is this word “G-d,” which you just brought up, and I know you’ve spoken about this before, a lot of people feel uncomfortable with this word, it turns people off the same way that a light switch turns off a light. People will turn away, people don’t want to hear about it, people of every single religion…this is sort of a multi-part question… people in every religion have had problems with this.

You can talk to people who have been brought up as Catholics, or as Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews, any religion, they are so sick and tired of having G-d beaten into them through ritual manners…

I was writing the other day about Hebrew school that I was forced to go to as a kid… G-d is used as a bludgeon often to hit people over the head..we’re supposed to fear G-d. And so what we have is a generation of people, a lot of whom may be listening right now, who don’t want to listen to anybody who is going to use G-d as the source of all wisdom or that they have to believe, and I was wondering if you can address this.

It’s odd to say that G-d is an obstacle toward understanding and meaning for people, but there it is for a lot of people.

SIMON: It’s not odd at all and I want to add a disclaimer that I think I should. When we were planning the show I was thinking that Mike Feder and myself, Simon Jacobson, were going to be speaking, and clearly we met the first time we spoke you could definitely say that you were in the category of skeptic, questioning person, and that point created a lot of electricity in our conversation. And I was thinking to myself, isn’t this a little bit of set-up, you know, Mike is getting on the show with me every week, it’s not like I’m coming on your show once in a while, and seemingly any question that you may ask, yeah I’m sure they set it up already beforehand to

MIKE: Like I’ll be throwing some softballs at you

SIMON: Some balls, some type of pre-written script. And I have to say this to the listeners and to you, and I ask them all to test it, I really welcome and encourage the true questions, because I find that we’ve been silenced, we’re a generation that’s been silenced from asking questions, the real questions.

Often being silenced is the result of insecurity. And when you don’t have an anwer you dismiss it, you’re not allowed to ask questions. So I think that asking questions is a very healthy and powerful tool to getting somewhere and it doesn’t matter even if it’s irreverent and disrespectful.

The issue of course is that we’re searching for the truth. A question that comes just to justify one’s position, then you’re not having a discussion, it’s just locked.

But I say this to you, Mike, on the air, and everyone who will be calling in or writing to us, or in any other way communicating, that we really invite the real issues, because there are real issues in life, and one of them you just mentioned is the alienation, the fear, the disillusionment, with that type of dogmatic teaching, you know, if you don’t do it, this is what will happen to you.

And I must say at the outset that it’s not a spiritual approach. It’s quite a childish approach, that religion, or Judaism particularly should have been subjected to that type of education.

That’s why I didn’t use G-d right in the beginning of my discussion because I know exactly what we’re talking about.

When I began a number of years ago teaching I tried an experiment. Instead of using the word G-d in my discussion, people who were seeing me speak were definitely stereotyping me, and you realize you’re at a disadvantage even before you open your mouth, and they say, “Oh, this type of guy, yeah, he reminds me of an angry Hebrew school teacher, or an abusive grandfather, or even healthy memories, you know, sitting at the seder table, and so I tried an experiment.

Instead of using the word G-d, I used words like higher reality, non-existential states of existence, the layers of the subconscious, karma, you get the idea, all these words, and a few weeks past and someone came over to me and asked me, “Are you talking about G-d?”

And I said I am but “Shhh, don’t spoil it for the others.”

What worked was it allowed for a meaningful dialogue because this word G-d as many such words, is perhaps loaded with more stereotypes and misconceptions than any word, because everyone has an opinion about G-d. Some are obsessive believers who will kill others in the name of G-d, there are others who are obsessive agnostics or atheists. But everyone has an opinion because G-d has far-reaching implications, personal responsibility, issues of good and evil, issues of education, G-d is a real topic. It remains so. Even those who reject it, it remains an issue, and they need to reject it.

MIKE: So you have your money-back guarantee and your absolute pledge right in front of people’s ears, that I can ask you any question I want and they can too.

SIMON: Yes. But remember. For every challenge that you throw, you have to be willing to accept a challenge in return.

MIKE: No that’s too hard, forget it. I’m going to ask the easy questions.

SIMON: I invite it because I feel that when I was growing up, and I’m still growing up in many ways, but when I was being educated that was invited and welcomed, and when I came in with that I got as much as I gave. That’s how it goes.

If you’re invested and you’re really asking a good question then you have to be ready for the consequences. King Solomon put it very clearly, “More knowledge, more pain.” Remember that.

But to get back to what I was saying, this word G-d is a very important component in people’s lives. Some people have a very good relationship with G-d. But many establishments, religious establishments included have a certain bureaucracy that have made G-d and religion and soul and spirit quite hollow and irrelevant. And I’ll put it quite bluntly. We were bumped last week.

MIKE: By the hockey game.

SIMON: And I saw that as a personal challenge. Hockey is simply more important than spirit and soul. So the question is, can we in any way, change the landscape. Hockey can make you happy for a moment, can keep you entertained, but it’s not going to help you too much when you’re dealing with serious trauma. It may be a distraction for a while but it’s not going to really feed your soul. Can we somehow change the landscape of this world, I don’t mean to be cocky and make this challenge (but it’s not just for me it’s for all the listeners) and really bring the biggest and most important issues that we struggle with to the fore, and maybe one day our show, or shows like ours, will bump hockey games.

MIKE: Now there’s a certain goal, to use a certain word…

SIMON: Now, I don’t think anyone should be bumped, I think we can all coexist peacefully as they say. So getting back to your question, this is exactly the objective of this show. How can you make you soul relevant in your life, how can you find spiritual relevance in your life. How can G-d be an experience that is not just acceptable but that you embrace in your life because you find that your soul helps you be more creative, more successful, helps you have healthier relationships with your spouse with your children, with your parents, helps you deal with the difficulties and challenges of life, and helps you access yourself, self-actualize. Anyone who can find a way that that resource, that oil well as I mentioned, can help us be better people will embrace that kind of G-d. And that is the challenge of the show.

MIKE: Okay. So I realize that if I’m going to ask a really hard question, I’m going to have to be responsible enough to deal with the answer. I may want to watch the hockey game, but I’ll figure it out by next week.

So the fact is, there’s a hockey game on right now, but I’ll stick with this program because I do really want to get beyond it.

The second part of this question is, here you are, you’re a rabbi, you’re a Jew, you’re an Orthodox rabbi to boot, now these kinds of divisions have created thousands of years of warfare, of hatred, fear, prejudice… do people need to have any knowledge of Judaism to be Jewish, I mean, is this show limited to people …

Listen, when you say G-d it triggers a negative response in a lot of people… here you are, you’re Rabbi Simon Jacobson, what is the necessity… do you need to be a card-carrying member of any religion, let alone a Jew, to be listening, to be participating?

SIMON: Well, let’s say another disclaimer. I just wrote an article that’s been published called “Was Moses Orthodox?” Obviously, my rhetorical question was meant to address the issue of labels. When you say the word Jew, you say the word Orthodox, you say the word Conservative or Reform, you say the word secular, I tend to believe that most of us tend to stereotype

Do we stereotype because it gives us a sense of control in our lives or we like to file things, but we stereotype. You see someone look a certain way, it’s a knee-jerk reaction, Oh, they belong to that group. If we can, we file people in that way. But we hate when someone stereotypes us. I believe the words that we’re using here, even Jew, and including definitely Orthodox, have been stereotyped and that’s why I avoid using any of these titles and labels, not because I cannot explain myself or defend the position, but I’d rather took about the real issues that matter.

When you deal with anything that’s soul or spiritual, the first thing you have to do is cut away from man-made labels, or else it might as well not be spiritual, then it’s another industry. It’s not an industry we’re dealing with here. As I said earlier, it’s you. It’s your person. Your person can’t be stereotyped.

If I asked you, Mike, or asked any of the listeners, who are you? So you’re going to tell me, Well I’m a radio show host, or I’m a computer programmer… that’s not who you are, that’s what you do. You will find that you will not really have words that describe yourself, because you’re not the sum of your parts, you can say, okay I have intelligence, I have emotions, I have experiences, but it’s still only components. Those are manifestations of who you are. You can tell me about your interests; you like music, you like jazz, you like hockey, whatever.

So I have to piece together a puzzle and say, “Okay, Mike Feder has these types of qualities, but we all know that this doesn’t even begin to touch the surface. It scratches the surface. When it really comes down to who you are, actually conventional language is insufficient. That’s why we don’t really use it, the containers are too small. The intensity of a true intimate expression is insufficient in regular language. That’s why we create the language of metaphor, of poetry, of music, art, more transcendental types of vehicles so to speak.

The soul needs different tools than the body does to function. The body needs arms and legs and food and drink but the soul too needs nourishment. It’s nourishment comes from something that’s compatible to it. It may be awareness of it. It’s like a child, all it needs is awareness, so respect that I exist. Is that a tangible? No. Because you can’t buy that in a store.

On the other hand, that can do more for a human being’s welfare than all the food in the world. Love. Anxiety is a voice of soul speaking to us when we’re in pain. Anxiety means that there’s something misaligned, something inconsistent, seamless. So the soul speaks to us, it speaks to us in voices, that beckon and ask us for nourishment.

Unfortunately, most of our schooling in our homes, we are not really taught how to respond to that call. So it has all kinds of weird ways of acting out. That’s what meaningful life is about. Finding that type of deeper meaning. And that’s why we cannot be afraid of questions. Everyone has to bring their issues or else you’re not getting to the bottom line. Because you want to get to that inner place. That’s why I tend to avoid all these languages and labels.

And let’s speak about the things that really matter. When people love. Is that much difference between one way of loving and another way? This for me is what Judaism is all about. Even though Judaism is a label, Jew, non-Jew, but for myself what I was taught is that the Torah that was given at Sinai from G-d is a blueprint, a manual, like an engineer creates in a complex machine, and gives you a user’s manual how to use this machine in the best way possible.

I see the Torah as a universal blueprint for Jews and non-Jews and it has a message for all of us. Obviously the message has to be as diverse as we are as human beings, so clearly there’s a message for Jews and a very powerful one, which we may be able to touch upon.

Passover’s coming this week and there’s a universal message of Passover to the entire world, and there’s also a uniquely Jewish message but the key here is not labeling it.

Diversity between people, whether it’s male or female, or Jew and non-Jew, or black or white, or whatever way people are distinguished, should not be used as a stereotype, but used to appreciate that we’re different types of musical notes in a large composition and every note has to be taught how to play it’s music.

MIKE: (Announcements) We are on air from 6 to 7 every Sunday evening, provided we don’t get bumped by hockey, lacrosse, women’s softball, or men’s pole vaulting, we are going to be here as regularly as possible every week.

Let me move on to something that occurred to me when I was thinking about this program this morning. And this is something that I’ve thought about for years. When I’ve read Buddhist texts… this is a followup question to the issue of labeling… what you’re saying is that there are various structures of wisdom, there’s Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, all kinds of religions in the world, I hope I’m not slighting anybody by leaving anything out, but I think later on a good program would be to talk about comparative religions, different wells of wisdom, why are they different, and how do they have special qualities…

A question I want to ask you is, and this has intrigued many people in my generation for a long time is, you read the wisdom of the Buddhist monks, sometimes I read this book the I Ching, the Taoist wisdom from thousands of years ago, you can read the Old Testament, the New Testament, there are rabbis, monks, saints, there are people who dedicate their whole lives day and night to contemplating, if not living out, a life of the spirit, of idealism, but the rest of us live in a real hard world, a day to day world of bosses, of violence, of greed on the street. That is, we don’t live in an ivory tower. I’m not suggesting that you do, but a lot of times when you read about the sayings of people like this, these are people who have isolated themselves in beautiful monasteries in faraway places, they live and they study. They have support systems where they don’t have to work for a living where people pay them just to study, to contemplate the soul and G-d, to do the right thing. The rest of us are out there, we are run down by taxes, by bosses, by my mayors who may be occasionally be out of control, by differences of opinion, by wars, by landlords… you see what I’m driving at here.

How do we bring anything that we might say here into our life day to day, what kind of meaningful life can we have when we have to face these constant problems all the time. It’s easy enough when people are spending their whole lives doing this but here we are down on the ground, us mortals.

SIMON: Well, that’s precisely what makes life meaningful, are the challenges. If we had no challenges of this nature, it wouldn’t be meaningful at all. Then it would just be a prewritten script that consists of leading an ascetic life. What Judaism teaches, and this is again a universal message and I’ll use this even to apply it to the upcoming holiday of Passover this week.

Passover is considered the mother of all holidays as they say. The root of it all. Essentially the celebration of freedom. Of a people coming out of slavery. Enslaved. And experiencing true freedom. Obviously this was not just physical freedom, but spiritual freedom. But the key, if you look at how the holiday is celebrated, is not through ascetic climbing a mountain, prayer and meditation alone, it’s experienced at a seder table, where there are special foods, there’s the matzah and there’s the bitter herbs and wine. There’s family. It’s not sitting privately along meditating. One can say spiritual freedom requires as you put it, escaping from, or at least insulating oneself from a material world.

This is a theme we’ll discuss quite often but just simply put, the challenge of a life of meaning is to achieve spirituality and spiritual serenity in a world of difficulties. We all have those difficulties, whether it’s the overburdening employers, or the peer pressures to make ends meet. That is the rush hour of our lives. Yet we also have a resource called the spirit, the soul.

The challenge is, can you integrate the two, can you create a partnership between the two. That without escaping, without having to leave and separate yourself from this material world, you can actually find spiritual peace and the key here is not to see the body and the material life as an adversary, but see it as an ally with potential.

The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement, born 300 years ago this year, he cites a verse in the bible that says, “When you see the donkey of your enemy being overburdened by its burdens, don’t ignore it. It’s incumbent upon you, your responsibility is to help out even though it’s your enemy.”

The way he translates it is this. The word chamor in Hebrew also means chamor, coarse materialism, matter. When you see the challenges of life, the difficulties of life overburdening us, and you see them as your enemy, because they’re challenging what you find pure, they’re taking you away from your family, you don’t have time for yourself, you don’t have time for your soul, you don’t have time for G-d.

So you may think that they way to do it is to ignore it, or to run away, asceticism, escapism. The answer is no. “You go and assist it and help it. Because in there, in the material world lies great potential. Your job is to channel it, use that world, that material world, civilize it, and allow it to become a conduit, an environment where it’s spirit and spirituality can be comfortable.

I know it’s difficult but we all can do it, and this is what this show is all about. We will discuss ways to do it. And I want to make some suggestions here on the show how we can do it.

None of us, you’re a working man, a working woman, what are you going to do, break away from life and start anew? No.

There are ways in the details of your life, what you’re doing right now, that you can achieve this. Knowing, number one, that it’s inside of you. You don’t need to travel somewhere on some mountain, to find your soul, to find G-d.

One of the Chassidic Rebbes once said, they asked him as a little child, “Where’s G-d?” And he said, “Wherever you let Him in.”

So it’s up to us to let Him in. It’s up to us to recognize that we do have a well, a reservoir of resources and we have to learn how to dig, he have to learn how to create pails to draw the water, the oil, the resources and energy. And to do that, the key is to find in your own material life, meaningful life, meaningful day, from tying your shoelaces to the most significant events, where is the spirit in that experience? How can I allow it to emerge in my life and then it will spill over and begin to affect you. It’s simple but difficult because it requires a new habit, a new beginning.

I want to make a few suggestions, but I see you have some skeptical question coming.

MIKE: I just got through reading a book called The Snow Leopard by Peter Mathieson. It’s one of the great spiritual journey books. It’s an ancient tradition. People took journeys to the mountains, to the desert, in every religion in every place in the world at all times, to test themselves. When they went up on the mountains to find themselves.

Now why did people do these things? Why did people, sometimes founders of whole religions, had to feel that they had to out into a rough place, a different place, a quiet place. Why is it that they found it necessary to do that if you’re saying that we can deal with these difficult problems, we can try to get in touch with ourselves, right smack in the middle of the Big Apple here…

SIMON: Great question.

MIKE: I loved this book The Snow Leopard. I want to travel someplace where all I hear is wind chimes…I don’t want to look at anyone’s face, I don’t want to hear a radio. Don’t you agree that sometimes we all might need to get away to clear our minds. How do you expect us to reach a soul in the midst of this crazy place.

SIMON: It’s a good question. The answer lies in that everything has it’s time. There’s a time to speak and there’s a time to be silent. There’s a time to experience what you’re describing… Generally speaking the teachings that we’re dealing with here, that the Torah teaches us is as follows:

Younger age or school years when you’re home are essentially when you are on a mountain. You’re protected, you should be protected, you’re cared for, you don’t have to be working for your own living, in a healthy functional home. Children are really building an arsenal, in a sense it’s like a training. All training has to happen not in time of battle. If you’re training in time of battle, you will never get trained, so you need to have a certain state of peace.

So childhood, educational years, is meant to achieve that. Even in our day, and even in our busy schedules, there are times where you need to take that day off, or that weekend off, or even longer than that, sabbaticals, where you do the equivalent of creating a cocoon, a womblike state, an insulated state, but the question is whether you remain there.

The point I’m making is that of course we requires moments like that, but the key is that that’s only a preparatory stage. Now when you come into the battle you are well armed and you have the resources and the skills with which to deal with a tough life. And not only to be affected by the tough world around us but to affect it. Because in life, it goes one or two ways. Either you will be influenced or you influence. There’s no middle ground. And though it’s appealing, the escapism, I would say that there are times when you need that, there are times when you definitely need that. A person should make time. Essentially, part of the suggestions I was going to say was creating such a space in time, but not be afraid and afterwards to bring that into the world and into our lives.

But I’d like to add, that my great teacher, the Rebbe as they call him, this book TML is based on his teachings, the Rebbe in the chain and in the line of many great Rebbes before him all the way back to Moses, his birthday is today.

It’s the 11^th of Nissan on the Hebrew calendar, a few days before Passover, and I think it’s appropriate to mention that because though

MIKE: He would have been up in his 90’s by now…

SIMON: Yes. He was born in 1902. So though I didn’t mention it earlier, much of the great impact and influence on my life is his teachings and remain so. And I would say that I wouldn’t be aware of my soul the way I am were it not for the Rebbe.

At the same time there are also stereotypes about the Rebbe as well because not everyone knows who he is and what he represents, but much of the teachings that we discuss here today are directly influenced and impacted by him. I think it’s appropriate to mention that.

But now let me give you a suggestion or two.

MIKE: This is something I can take home with me tonight, right? I can start working on right away? I want results right away from this!

SIMON: Yes. They say whatever is built overnight, dies overnight. But remember this. Everything begins at some moment. The question is carrying it on, maintaining it. Here’s my suggestion.

We live in a rush hour in our lives. We’re busy, busy, busy, overwhelmed, making ends meet and things like that. But in Jewish tradition there’s a beautiful and powerful tool (I hope in every show we come away with some practical suggestion that people can do something about). Or at least write to us and give us your suggestions.

MIKE: We’ll give you your money back if it doesn’t work.

SIMON: It’s called the Modeh Ani exercise. We’ll call it the spiritual mission statement. Personal mission statement. We hear a lot about mission statements. Businesses. Corporations. Everyone needs a mission statement or else you cannot be focussed enough to fulfill your objective. Especially when you have many employees, many departments, there has to be some type of focus.

But if someone asked you as an individual, what’s your personal mission statement, most people will say, well, it’s very complicated, if you have a few years, we’ll discuss it, or I’ve decided not to have one now. I’ll have one when I retire, I’ll have plenty of time to think about it, or, I have several options. Or I decided there’s no need for a mission statement. Should anyone answer that in business, it would be ludicrous. What’s your objective? What are you trying to achieve?

So why is that we don’t tolerate it in business but we do tolerate it in our own personal lives. Simple. It’s called accountability. In business there’s the debtors. Someone comes knocking at the door because there’s a bottom line. If you don’t have a mission statement, you don’t have an objective, ultimately waste and inefficiency is going to seep in and it will not be able to last.

In our personal lives, we don’t have to answer to anyone. So that lack of focus…

My submission is this. You think it does less damage in your own life? No. It does worse damage. Except it implodes instead of explodes. What do you think happens to a person who day after day goes through the wear and tear of life. Slowly the fragmentation of life, the billion little fragments without any focus…

You know getting up in the morning… list the things you did this morning, or yesterday, hundreds of things, when you go home list everything you’ve done, probably a hundred and fifty items. I got up in the morning, I exercised, I showered, I brushed my teeth, small business meeting,

Then try to create a thread between the items and see how many items can be grouped into one common denominator. You will find that very few can be. What happens is, it doesn’t sound like much, but day after day, week after week, decade after decade of such fragmentation begins to erode the spirit. Because there’s no one reason for being here. So you suddenly wake up one morning and say, “What am I doing with my life?” I may have money, I may be prosperous, I may have friends. I may even be in a good marriage with good children. But there’s an emptiness.

So here’s a suggestion. In the morning, there’s what’s called the Modeh Ani. As soon as you wake up, before you do anything else, (nobody has a business appointment as soon as they get up) the first conscious moments that you’re awake, dedicate not to business, not to anything personal, there’s a well-known prayer called “Modeh Ani” that says I acknowledge to G-d (you don’t even mention the name of G-d) you say “I acknoweldge to You, for returning my soul to me.”

Now this isn’t just a thank you for life, but it’s more importantly, I’m thanking You for making me significant, for making me indispensable, for being meaningful. That I am meaningful and everything I do is meaningful. Just acknowledging that but with focus. Not just lip service is a powerful powerful exercise. When a person begins to do that every morning, you’ll see that that awareness begins to affect other areas, because then you start thinking, well, how are the other things I’m doing significant or not significant? So that’s my suggestion for this opening show, Modeh Ani.

MIKE: Now if I do that every day, starting tomorrow morning, when I come back next Sunday, I’ll report back to you.

SIMON: Yes. And next week I’ll tell you what to do before you go to sleep! Because it’s part of it. Essentially it’s creating an oasis, creating a space and creating a power that a person begins to acknowledge that there are more forces at work that meet the eye, that meets our own eye.

MIKE: Also that we’re not alone in the world.

Unfortunately we have to stop now. You’ve been listening to Rabbi Simon Jacobson, author of TML, this is a new program called “Toward a Meaningful Life” with Simon Jacobson. And we’ll be here every Sunday night between 6 and 6:56 pm. My name is Mike Feder and let me remind everyone that we want your input. If you want to ask questions or make comments, you can call a 1-800-3MEANING, or 1-800-363-2646, or you can write to Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11213. Email: wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com.

We’d like to thank the people who have made this show possible. Just this week we’d like to thank from the bottom of our hearts James and Anne Altucher who are celebrating the birth of their daughter Josie and they helped us very much to get this first important show off the ground.

In the last few seconds do you have something you want to say?

SIMON: I hope it gets harder and I hope that this is a real journey for you and myself and for everyone who listens, because there are so many issues that people are afraid to ask about because they were silenced, that creating a platform is in itself gratifying and it’s a spontaneous situation, we don’t know where we’re headed and where we’re going.

I also want to wish all the listeners a happy and kosher Passover. Wish is a celebration of freedom and may this show be part of allowing that freedom to emerge to accessing our souls. To remember that you and everything you do is meaningful.

Tags: radio transcript, happiness, soul
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