Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Uh.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: As the world around us races forward in search of tomorrow's breakthroughs, join us as we discover the insights that have shaped Jewish life for centuries.
Together, we'll study with Judaism's greatest minds, exploring timeless wisdom that continues to guide and inspire.
You're listening to Inside the Jewish Mind.
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The Torah is a divine guide for everyday life, yet most of its lessons are conveyed through the stories of extraordinary figures like Moses, Abraham, Sarah, and Rivkah.
How should we view these biblical icons? Were they unparalleled spiritual superheroes or people who simply achieved unparalleled self actualization?
In this 2010 talk, Rabbi Yitrak Shachet asks this question and explores whether we too can un uncover our own potential for greatness.
Let's get started.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Holy heroes are human beings. We all know about our our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. We read about them with a certain kind of distant awe, but we don't know a whole lot about them other than whatever the Torah itself tells us about them.
There's a very curious passage that declares there is nothing who does only good and never sins. Which to all intents and purposes means that whether you are Abraham, our forefather, or you are John Doe, at the end of the day, you are a human being with your own fallibilities as common to all of us, and that you are destined to sin on one level or another. In other words, what that would imply is that there is no essential difference between you, me, and. And Abraham.
We're all prone to making mistakes in life. Okay, so that God spoke to him and that God didn't speak to you and me? Well, first of all, I don't know about you, but how do you know God didn't speak to me?
And quite frankly, are you sure that God has never spoken to you? Maybe it's not a direct communication where, you know, you're sitting at your computer and suddenly bing, hey, you. Yeah, you. I'm talking to you. Maybe not in that kind of way, but there are so many other ways in which God communicates with us. That little nuance, that intuition, that cognitive premonition. So, you know, God spoke to Abraham, and maybe God speaks to you and me as well.
Besides, there's something else you need to consider. This lack of direct communication that might exist in the world today. And that's perhaps the key indicator by which we measure the greatness of these people. We talk about how God spoke to them, but God doesn't speak to us.
Not necessarily a reflection in us.
Often it's to do with the generation per se or where we are at in the world right now. Let me explain, give you context. You know, Adam and Eve of course, were the first people being brought into a world. So because they were created by the hand of God, you cannot obviously measure them the same yardstick as you would measure somebody else. And that world is perfect, it's pure, it's pristine. It was just brought in to be.
Then of course, as we know, they go and they eat from the tree and in so doing they immediately release that first germ into the world. If you think about it in the context of an operating theater, it makes no difference as to all the subsequent germs and contamination that's going to be released into the room. That first germ contaminates the room and everything else that follows thereafter. However dirty, however contaminated, pales in significance.
So on that basis, therefore, God went about cleansing the world again through the process of the flood.
And it's now a world germ free to one extent or another.
But it's not the same. You may have scrubbed it down all over again, you may have washed the walls, scrubbed the floors, but let's face it, it's never the same as the all original building when the walls were fresh and new and the tiles were freshly laid. So as much as God has now cleansed the world again after the sin of man through the process of the flood, it's the same world. And yet it's not the same pure world as it once was.
And it is in that world that our forefathers, that our patriarchs and our matriarchs are born.
That's the world they come into. They're still closer to that all original point of creation.
So even as there may be more corruption in the world, on balance it's still a fresher world. On balance it's still, well, maybe like a car, not brand new, but pretty close to it, a few years old, it's still retaining its sparkle, the engine is still purring. But here you and I sit all these many years on, again it's the same world.
It's more discovered, it's more developed, but it's the same world nonetheless.
Maybe again there were intervals when the room, as it were, was repainted, washed, scrubbed down through the blood and tears of the different trials and tribulations through the ages. But it remains the same world nonetheless. That's where we're living. Except that now it's a worn world, now it's a tired world. And as much as the divine Light itself radiates. It's not as thoroughly manifest, or rather it can't shine as patently bright.
That's the world we are in. So if God is not talking to me, not, uh, in a direct way anyway, in the same way he did to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that's not a fault in me necessarily. It's a reflection of the generation in which I find myself.
Or more succinctly put, the further away we are from creation and the further away that we may be from Sinai, which of course is a point in time when they had managed to aspire to the level akin to the beginning of time, then the less the overall spiritual awareness in our world.
So it's not my fault, it's not a flaw. Me, I'm born into a world more devoid of spiritual essence and substance than my forefathers were.
That Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had that sort of relationship with God and were such lofty giants, you might suggest, is more to do with when they came into being. So I suggest to you that had you or I been born at that time, who's to say that we couldn't have made it right up there?
And let's consider something more the reality of the personalities. Let's break it down a little bit. I don't like to do this, but maybe we need to do this.
Adam, let's start with him. He's told not to eat from the tree.
The restriction is given to him on the very day that he's brought into being. The midrash. Our sages tell us three and a half hours before Shabbat.
Had he managed to stick it out at that point, as soon as Friday night kicks in, boom, the restriction would have been lifted and they would have gone on to live some utopia bliss for all of eternity.
Three and a half hours.
I know you are thinking, well, hey, wow, three and a half hours. And they couldn't cut it. I mean, imagine you were told you had a craving, you love chocolate, but you're told that you're going to have an allergic reaction to it. Sit it out three and a half hours, and that allergy will be removed from you. I reckon it's fair to say that we, uh, survived the task. Doesn't take a whole lot of self control.
Abraham is born into a rather difficult and challenging world. He has a very corrupt, very abusive father. I mean, if you think about the fact that the old man took his young son to Nimrod, the king at the time, to have him punished for defying the pagan worship which he had committed himself to how this father stood there watching as his young son is being cast into the furnace. Well, hey, if that isn't abusive, I don't know what is.
And let's consider further. Abraham spends a chunk of his life searching and exploring, as do we. There are opinions that insist that he was three when he discovered God.
Others maintain that it wasn't properly until he was 40, and still others say not until 48, etc. Actually, we reconcile all these views by suggesting that it was an ongoing quest. In other words, he started off at the innocence of childhood, and then he continued. He continued to search, to explore, to grapple.
You know, the very first communication that he had with God was when he was a septuagenarian. He was in his 70s already.
We're all somewhat younger than that. So hey, maybe we could still get there one day too. Who's to say? Don't we all, like Abraham, all go through the searching process? Isn't that, after all, why we're here? For this whole weekend? Part of that exploration?
Next, we're a father, Isaac, a total recluse. We don't know anything about his life. The Torah dedicates three portions to the life of Abraham, no less than six to the life of Jacob. And Isaac gets something of a sound bite in all of but one portion.
And then, of course, there is Jacob, the man who finally steps out of his tent, steps out of his shell and, uh, confronts the conditions and challenges of his world. He does some backhanded deals with his brother Esav. He wheels and deals with his uncle even. He has at least one street fight that we know about with some angel and several other showdowns. He deals with the passion rivalry of several of his wives. His life seems to mirror very much the struggles that so many of us go through in a typical lifespan. So why is he then the most beloved of the forefathers?
And now let's consider them in the context of children. Isn't it astounding that from time immemorial our ancestors grappled with, with dealing with their children's diverse personalities?
Abraham had two sons, one who proved his success and the other who became something of a rebel.
Isaac had two sons, one who gave him that ultimate joy and pleasure, and the other brought scorn and shame on the good family name.
Jacob had 12 sons, one of whom he favored over the others, prompting sibling rivalry that led to so much heartache and despair.
Maybe Abraham was too preoccupied with his mission of converting the world, such that he neglected, even if only somewhat, what was going on in his own home environment, and Ishmael became a victim of that situation. It's not an uncommon problem in many rabbinic and even professional homes today.
Isaac probably knew of only one educational approach with his sons. He had these twin sons, and he sought to raise them in the same mold in pursuit of the Golgi child, albeit that meeting with resistance, because Esau wasn't that child.
And Jacob might have been driven by guilt over the loss of his young wife, Rachel, and hence sought to smother her children with love and in the process alienating all the others, prompting the rivalry that ensued.
In other words, what I am trying to say to you is that on one level, these are great m men that we read of in the Bible, Uh, and let's face it, when someone's life becomes enshrined in a biography, it takes on an altogether different dynamic. You're going to automatically, no matter who that person is, perceive them in a different light.
After all, their life is significant enough to write a book about, and people are willing to pay money to go ahead and read about them. How much more so are patriarchs, written about by the greatest author, no less, who insisted that their life stories be in his Bible, the most popular book, the greatest bestseller all through history.
On the other hand, their life patterns, the challenges they confront, the micro and macro dimensions of their lives, seem to be somewhat unremarkable, more proportionate to the times and circumstances in which they find themselves. Had we been living then, would we not come up to scratch?
Or let me phrase the question differently.
If the Bible was written today, would one of us not have a chance of making it in?
Our sages challenge us with an unusual task when they say that we should continuously ask ourselves, when will my deeds, my actions, my ways reach to the level as that of my ancestors? By definition, when will I be able to be like in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?
So are they setting for us an unrealistic standard? Are they setting us up for the fall? Or are they saying that, no, in factual fact, if only I want to, I can?
Are our forefathers? Are our other greats superheroes beyond our grasp?
Or in essence, human beings? And with the right attitude, I could get there too.
If I want, I could become an Abraham. If you want, you could become a Sarah.
There's a well known story that you may have heard before about the great 19th sage, Rav Zusha Van Napoli, who once said, when I pass away and I come before the heavenly court, and they're going to say to me, zusha, why were you not like Abraham? He says, I'll have immediate response. Dear God, Abraham, you appear to him. You never appear to me.
If they'll ask me, zusha, why were you not like Jacob? Again, I'll have a ready answer. Jake, uh, Isaac. Isaac had an opportunity to present himself before you on the altar. You never gave me that challenge, that task. Why were you not like Jacob? Jacob fathered the 12 tribes of Israel. I only had a couple of kids.
He says, whomever they ask me, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, whoever, I will always have an immediate response. I. There's but one question which if they ask me, I won't have an answer for. And that is if they ask me, zusha, why were you not like Zusha?
And what Rav Zusha, I think is teaching us is the importance of having an authentic identity. God did not make us to be like everyone else. If he intended for me to be Superman, he wouldn't have made me Kor, Kentucky. Each of us is supposed to be our own Zusha or Chaim, or whatever your name may be.
So our job is not to imitate the successes of others, but to discover our own personal, unique mission in this world. Instead of trying to be everything to everybody else, we have to pursue our own identity and find out that little Zusha inside. Who is he? What's he all about?
We might share the same DNA as our forebears, but we're talking about character. And just as Adam himself was created alone, singular, with his own habits and his own traits, we're also made up of our own individual characteristics, our own unconscious patterns which constantly daily express our moral fiber.
In other words, God doesn't duplicate. He put me in this world in order to be Yitzchak Shachet, not Abraham. He already had an Abraham.
So what does it mean to challenge myself?
When will I be able to be like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?
So let's give this a little bit of context. You know, Job made a very radical statement when he said, dear God, you created righteous and you created wicked.
What does that mean? How do you reconcile this idea of God creating people righteous or creating people wicked? Doesn't that go against the grain of the whole notion of free choice that we speak so much about?
And the answer is this. Let's consider what is free choice? God created man in his image. In his image, he created him. Obviously, when we talk about the image of God, we're talking about that non physical part of us, that spiritual dynamic that exists. Where do we get our drive for morality, where do we get our innate sense of right and wrong? That drive is from that soul that is created in the image of God.
But there's so much more to that than just that statement. Because just as God has independent choice, so too God created man in his image, which means that we also have independent choice. Moral choice, having been created in the image of God, means that we have the ability to choose between right and wrong.
Why is choice the essential issue, more than anything else, of what makes us special?
Because when you think about it, life only ever becomes meaningful as a result of our ability to choose. For example, the difference in being programmed to love and the choice to love is precisely what makes love significant.
Similarly, if I don't have a choice between doing good and I'm simply programmed to do good, then there's nothing meaningful, uh, about the good that I'm doing. I don't deserve any reward for it.
Whereas if I'm faced with the balance and I have the ability to do good or evil and I choose good, that's when it becomes significant.
So for free choice to operate, it's obvious that there also has to be evil.
And in every world in which we find ourselves, there are times where people choose evil. And if you're going to suggest to yourself that every time someone chooses evil, God is going to interfere, then again there's no moral choice. Free freedom of choice means that a world in which a human being can create himself into a Moses, can also create the very real possibility of man making himself into a Hitler as well. That's free choice.
So man has to comprise of both elements, good and evil, in order for free choice to operate. Now Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim of Volzhyns, a great 16th century scholar known as the Kaliakar, wrote a fantastic commentary on the Torah in which he explains and discusses the whole notion of nature, nurture, how we are all born with a certain propensity and a certain kind of leaning towards something. And uh, whilst he says the nurture element is that which others influence onto our lives, they superimpose onto our lives, whether our friends, whether our teachers, etc. Our parents.
The nature element is something that is much more difficult to shake off.
What you're nurtured with can be here today and gone tomorrow. Your nature, that's part of your DNA, it's part of your spiritual DNA. To be sure, Maimonides, uh, insists that no person is ever held captive by his natural characteristics. We all have the option to change, but even that change in itself doesn't necessarily mean shaking off the actual characteristic. It just means channeling it in a different direction. So if I'm naturally stubborn, that doesn't mean that I can work on, uh, myself to a point where I'm no longer stubborn. It means channeling that stubbornness in a different, more positive direction.
And Hasidism, therefore, steps in and goes one critical step further.
Let's talk about Jacob and Esau. It tells us that Esau himself wasn't born evil and that Jacob wasn't born naturally righteous.
Esau was born with a more natural disposition toward evil.
And you'll ask me, so therefore, where's the fairness in that? Where's the justice in that? Where's the free choice? And the answer is, as Hasidism explains, that there is a situation where with whatever propensity you are born with, you're born also with strengths to counterbalance that. That is to say that if Esau himself was born evil or with a propensity toward evil, then he also has the strength with which to be able to override. To give you context, a man once came to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, or he was introduced to the Lubavitch Rebbe by his rabbi. And the rabbi mentioned to the rebbe that this man is dating a non Jewish girl.
And the rebbe looked to the man and said to him, I envy you.
And the man is probably thinking to himself, you envy me? I mean, hey, she ain't all that.
But the rebbe then continued to explain.
The fact that God presents you with this challenge means that God has also presented you with unique strengths with which to be able to overcome this challenge.
That I haven't been presented with this challenge means that I don't have those special strengths.
That is Job's meaning you created wicked. Not that anybody's ever born inherently evil, but some are created with the challenge of grappling with the wickedness and rising above that challenge. And when they do that, then they've effectively achieved their sole purpose in life.
Does that then mean that Esau couldn't have become a Jacob? Up to a point.
You know what? Inasmuch as God created souls that have the challenge of grappling with evil, God also did create souls that have this special, this unique righteous element to it.
There is, yes, such a thing as a righteous soul which can connect to God in a way that other souls cannot.
What makes one person a prophet and another person not being a prophet? If I work on myself all of my life and I scale the heights of spiritual Euphoria. Will I then, at some point, inevitably become a prophet, receive direct communication from God? The answer is no.
You'll likely have something called ruach hakodesh, some kind of certain spiritual sensitivity that will enable you to see or feel things on a different level. You can aspire to that.
But prophecy per se, that's something unique to a particular soul with which God endowed certain people.
And therefore Job says you created righteous. Yes. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, they were endowed with these special souls.
So that means that therefore, on the one hand, they're human beings as much as you and I. They also have their challenges. They also grapple with themselves, with their kids and what have you. On the other hand, they do have a certain unique quality that God blessed them with, which they allowed to be nurtured, which they foster, which they developed to enable them to become the greats that they were.
So what do we then mean when we say, well, there's an unrighteous on earth who does only good and never sins? Well, sin on one level implies obviously doing wrong. But more than that, uh, it actually means lacking. Yes, when you do wrong, you're lacking in your spiritual disposition.
But even when you don't do wrong, even if you're all righteous, you're always going to be lacking. Because when you consider that God himself is infinite, that then ultimately means that there are an infinite amount of levels of, of spiritual euphoria that one can escalate, that there is this endless upward spiral of spiritual bliss. Then no matter at, uh, whatever level you're at, you're always still going to be lacking in relation to the next level that you could be at. And therefore, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, whomever. There are none righteous on earth who do only good and never sin are never lacking because no matter. And regardless, they're always still scaling those greater heights.
Does that mean that these Jewish greats couldn't have messed up in the literal sense? Of course they could have, otherwise they wouldn't have free choice.
It's just that their natural inclination was toward good and righteousness, and they stayed the course throughout.
Was it Beethoven started to go deaf at the age of 20, and he still went on to compose masterpieces.
Mozart started playing music at three and composed already at five.
It's a gift. It's something unique to them, a talent.
Does that mean that I cannot be a brilliant musician? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe if I try.
And if I do try, in all likelihood I can possibly become good, real good.
But I don't have their gift. I Don't have their musical ability. I wasn't born with that nature. Indeed, for all I know, no matter how hard I try, I may be tone deaf.
So why him and, uh, why not me? That's God's business so far as I'm concerned. God made me remember. God made me to be as great as I can be. I can be brilliant in a million other ways.
So when we talk about Jewish heroes, when we talk about the greats like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, whomever, and we say, when can I be like that? What we're really saying is that as they aspire to be all. All that they can be, they took that unique righteous element that was contained within them and nurtured it.
So too, we can all aspire to be the same. If you mess up along the way, don't be discouraged. Look at the challenges that they grappled with on their road to perfection.
As heroic as they were, they were also human beings. Stay the course and you could reach where you're supposed to be. Always remember, the tragedy in life is not aiming too high and missing. It's aiming too low and reaching. And I'll say it again, because frankly, if you remember that, uh, you'll become as successful as you can be in life. The tragedy in life is never aiming too high and missing. It's aiming too low and reaching.
But let's develop this just a little bit further. What is a leader? What's your definition of a leader?
Somebody who organizes, who runs things. I mean, that's a boss.
And as much as a leader may be in some sense a boss, not every boss is necessarily a leader.
A leader, some people will tell you, means, uh, having power.
Well, I don't know. A man with a gun has power, but he's not necessarily a leader either.
Is it authority?
Well, again, I'd argue that not because you, uh, know a supervisor in a store or whatever it is has some kind of authority, but that's not leadership. So, yes, the irreducible minimum definition of a leader is somebody with followers, by virtue of the fact that they have chosen you to lead them automatically makes you a leader. Of course, that begs the question.
Bare bones formulation of suggesting that it's all about followers begs, well, why do some people and others attract followers? Followers. While others do not. Well, one theory suggests that.
Actually, before I even go on to discuss the theories, I'll ask that question to you as well.
We define what a leader is, but the question is, what makes one person a leader or not? What makes another person not? Why do people choose to follow somebody and not somebody else? Some people argue that leadership is something that you are born with. Either you have it or you don't.
Sociologist Max Weber called it charisma.
Another theory posits that it's perhaps more genetic than character. For example, if you're born strong and you're born brave and you're born wise and tall, then you have what it takes to be a leader. If you lack sense or if you're weak, or if you're just simply a coward, then obviously you can't become. You're hardly likely to assume the role of leadership.
And there's a third theory that suggests that it's all about the set of circumstances surrounding an individual and how he blends into that situation. Which means, in other words, that it's not that Napoleon was a leader, but the French Revolution made Napoleon into a leader.
You know, Henry Ford once said, you can't build a reputation on what you're going to do. Leaders are more than just simple visionaries who talk about their dreams. They really have to be people who act upon them, and they demonstrate by way of example. They have a lot more backbone than wishbone, if you like.
That's what essentially separates leaders from managers, because leaders start things and managers just really keep things going.
Leaders are people who trigger and shape change.
Managers keep disorder at bay. Many politicians might start out as leaders, but then become more managers. They find themselves struggling with and controlling the very chaos that they created. In fact, the very well. One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. Which is perhaps why the world in its current chaotic state reflects the obvious lack of leadership today. But when we look through Jewish history, you come closer to a definition of leadership. Because again, you look at our patriarch, Abraham.
He was someone who left his personal comfort zone we heard selfless before and made it his life's mission to impact other people. He's not looking for status. He's not looking for recognition. He is not even looking for followers. Those things emerge of their own, as they inevitably do with true leaders. He's simply committed to the task at hand and finds himself lifting the waning spirit and encouraging forlorn souls towards their destiny.
And yes, somebody mentioned here before, a more contemporary example would be the Lubavitcher Rebbe, because to his hundreds of thousands of followers and the millions of sympathizers besides, he was. Well, for a start, he was known, of course, endearingly as just the Rebbe. But, uh, why was he described as the most phenomenal Jewish personality of our time. Because he was someone who committed himself like Abraham, just simply reach into the hearts and souls of other people. He wasn't looking for followers. He was just committed to the mission statement, to the purpose of why he knew he was put into this world in the first instance. Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who were born with their own unique propensity towards doing whatever it was that they did.
That's what essentially makes a real leader.
Somebody once said, some contemporary philosopher, that any kind of appointed leadership is by definition not real leadership. And I think there's some practical truth to that, because once you're formally appointed to the position, then you invariably are limited by the politics and the philosophies of those responsible for your appointment. There has to be therefore an inevitable slant in some of the decision making process.
True leaders are those who are initially even reluctant to rise to the mantle. They're not ego driven and they would rather do without the stature. Didn't Moses himself on three occasions say to God, no, not me, pick somebody else?
To my mind, the mere yearning for power discredits the status. And you know, even in the Hasidic world today, there's a lot of infighting amongst some sects as to when the Rebbe passes on as to which one of his sons should become the next successor. And it's the same principle. A Rebbe who wants to be a Rebbe cannot be a real Rebbe.
And when Maimonides traces the history of Abraham, he talks about him having transformed the lives of tens of thousands at a time when pagan worship was commonplace. He was singularly responsible for stirring the conscience and the awakening of all the people around him. Again, somebody who pursued his responsibilities not for the fame, not for the glory, but but simply humbly going about his task, knowing why God put him into the world in the first place. That's what enabled him to become the unique individual that he was. And like our patriarchs and like our matriarchs, I maintain we all have the power to lead. Maybe not on the same scale as they did, but certainly each of us within the parameters and the confines of our own lives can tap into that power. And we can lead and we can guide and we can direct in our own individual ways.
In fact, Maimonides observes even further that Abraham did not grandstand with moving speeches, waxing lyric and courting applause in the way that many so called leaders do today. That's not leadership. He approached people again, he looked to tap into their individuality. Great leaders are uh, like the best conductors, they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic inside the player.
In fact, they tell about this community that was looking for the right kind of rabbi to lead them. And, uh, they had like 30 or so rabbis that were tested for the job. And in the end, it came down to two, a Canadian and an Irishman.
And each of them was pretty much on par with the other, such that it finally came down to some kind of written test. And afterwards, they were both called in to the president's office of the community. And the president said, we're going to be giving the job to the Canadian rabbi. And the Irishman's like, oh, sure, typical.
Ignore the Irish guy. What kind of discrimination is that?
And the president explained very simply, I'll be honest with you, you both scored exactly the same on your test. In fact, your answers were almost identical. It's just that on the very last question, when the Canadian guy wrote, I don't know, you wrote, me neither.
You see, if you want to lead, you have to be original. You have to, as. What is it Maggie Thatcher once observed, standing in the middle of the road is. Is very dangerous. You get knocked down by the traffic on both sides. You have to be a non conformist. You have to be a voice that is prepared to rise above the parapet. They tell the story. It was the biggest trial in a decade, and all the townspeople came out to watch what was going on.
And all of a sudden the defense attorney got up and he, the prosecution, sorry, first got up and he looked to the lady, Mrs. Bradley, and he says, Mrs. Bradley, do you know me? And she said, of course, Mr. Jones, I know you. I've known you all your life. And frankly, you've been a very big disappointment to me.
I mean, you are a lawyer, you're a swindler. You run one of the dirtiest law practices in the land. Yeah, I know you. So the prosecution doesn't know what to do. So he quickly points over to the defense attorney, says, uh, and do you know Mr. Gilbert over there? And she says, of course I know Mr. Gilbert. I used to babysit him for his parents. Uh, and frankly, he's a big disappointment to me as well. I mean, the guy is a bigot. He has a drink problem and he's never been able to hold down a relationship at any given point in his life. Yeah, I know him as well.
At which point, amidst all the noise in the courtroom, the judge is banging his gavel on the desk, summons everyone to silence, calls the two lawyers to the front and Says, if either one of you even thinks about asking her whether she knows me, I'm going to hold you in contempt of court.
The question is this and something perhaps we should always ask ourselves.
What sort of reputation do we strive for in life if we were to be put on the stand one day? How do we want other people to know us, to describe us, to remember us? Because remember, God isn't going to ask you if you ran a public company. He's going to ask you whether you made an effort to build around you. God isn't going to ask you the size of your house. He's going to ask you how many people you welcomed into your home. God isn't going to ask you why you called on him when things were tough. He'll just want to know if you were also there to thank him when everything was going good.
You see, you have to believe in yourself. You have to recognize your own talents and traits, not just as an individual, but very much and even more so as a Jew. You need to be aware of your abilities in order to be able to best nurture them and apply them to your life's plan and model. A humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers enables you to be successful and happy. And when you've got that, then you can have the world in your pocket. I had a teacher back in grade four who once explained to us in very elementary terms what the definition of hell, the afterlife, is.
He said, you'll be shown two pictures, one of what you became and one of what you could have become.
When you think about it, there could be nothing more painful than that. Imagine if you're playing the same numbers on the lottery every single week, year after year, and then one day you don't play, and that day the numbers come up.
Can you imagine how painful that is, that indescribable sinking feeling, that overwhelming sense of despair?
Only, of course, with the lottery there can always be another chance, however remote, however many billions to one odds that might be. But life isn't a lottery. The only difference between this world and the next is that this is the world of deed, this is the world of action. This is the realm in which you still can become all that you can be.
And what a waste then it would be if you just sit on the side and let that time pass you by.
Richard Nixon actually once explained why his predecessor and rival, John Kennedy, was so loved while he was so despised. He explained, when people look at Kennedy, they see what they want to be. And when they look at me, they see what they are.
You know, I do, um, television for the BBC.
And I once met someone there who was, uh, a broadcaster who told me at the beginning of his career, he would always take off his yarmulke as soon as he would pull up at the offices.
And one day he met somebody called Sir Trevor MacDonald. At that point, he wasn't a sir yet. Uh, the only black man at the time, very famous news anchorman, uh, in the uk.
And he met him in the men's room.
And Trevor turns to him and says, oh, uh, you're that guy from upstairs. He says, I got to ask you a question. I often see you pulling up and I see you taking off your cap before you come into the building. Why is that? Then he explained simply. He goes, look, I don't want to stand out. I don't want to look different.
So Trevor looked to him and said to him, pointing to the black skin of his face, he says, you see this?
He goes, I'm the only black man in this building. How do you think that makes me feel? This is going back, obviously, many years ago. He goes, apart from the caretaker, every time I walk into the boardroom, I immediately sense my difference. How do you think that makes me feel? And then he held on to the skin of his face and he says, you see this? This is who I am. It doesn't wash off.
And the point is that our Jewish essence is who we are. It's what defines us. It's doesn't wash off no matter how much you try to hide it, to bury it, to scrub it away. A worthwhile exercise is sometimes to simply to close your eyes, maybe before you go to sleep at night and try to capture the glimpse, the image of who you are right now and what you think you could yet become.
Because God never overimposes upon his creation, but he does have a very defined, specific role for each of us. Exclusive accomplishments unique to our own individuality. There is something I can do that no one else can do. There is something that I can become that even Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, whomever could not become. Because whilst God created everything on mass, a multitude of stars, vast oceans, an abundance of vegetation, an entire animal kingdom. Man was created alone, singular, so that he can say for me, was this world created? If the world was created for me, then I can do something with it and I can personally make something of it.
What you become, that is preordained from above.
Whether you become it, that is down to your free choice and how you choose to maximize your potential, to the extent that you grab life with both hands and you run with it.
Abraham became Abraham on account of this. And then you can become all that you can be as well.
That's really the moral lesson that we learned from them. Before your soul entered this world, it undertook an oath of life. It committed itself to fulfilling a purpose. And then life took over. Events took over. We become diamonds in the rough. And we spend a lifetime peeling away the layers to expose that inherent beauty and brightness, the bright gem that lies beneath that is our spiritual essence. It's all about finding your way back.
It's all about peeling away whatever it is that we've allowed to obscure our vision and our dream and, yes, our very ability to make it real.
We all have greatness within us, just as our forefathers did. We all contain something special. The primary purpose of the righteous leaders in every generation is to expose that within us, to enable us to. To release it, to get a larger vision of ourselves. And then we have to go look and discover who we really are. We have to find out our own uniqueness, because as a result, we can also become champions. We can also become heroes for other people as well.
So to conclude with the all original question, when will my actions mirror that of my forefathers? I look to them and I know that it's not about becoming them.
It's simply that in order to achieve anything, I need to have faith and belief in myself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication.
And then with all that, I know with certainty that all things are possible.
There is so much more to you and me than we probably even know. And if we can only be made to see it, to realize it, perhaps for the rest of our lives, we'd be unwilling to settle for anything else.
Remember, the world is moved not only by the mighty shoves and heroics of great men, but also, and perhaps even more so, by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of every smaller hero.
So if there's one lesson we can Turk, it's go search for the hero inside yourself. Do your bit to become everything that you can become, to bring salvation as a result to yourself, to your families, to the people of Israel, and ultimately then to the world.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: That's all for today. Thanks for listening to Inside the Jewish Mind, a JLI podcast. Be sure to join us every week for fresh insights and timeless Jewish ideas.
As always, stay curious, keep learning, and we'll see you next time.
