Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: We're going to have a little bit of a strange introduction here, which is going to be a video to start us off. And I want just to. Very briefly, I'll just tell you that it's a.
It's kind of a. It's a reaction video that some pastors and scholars did regarding first fruits of Zion and how crazy first fruits of Zion is and how off the rails it is. And I suffered through it to watch it.
But it really set the tone for something I want to share with you today. So I asked Darren just to share about 40 seconds of an important part and please do it upside down, because that's what the logic is. No, just kidding.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: And at bedrock, I think theologically one of the most important things to understand is this premise that you can keep Torah at all and that somehow that you're not. That you. That you don't sin in thought, word and deed all the time. And this underestimation of how intrinsic sin is to your life. And so that you kind of.
I had somebody recently say, people just adore self righteousness. This idea that, you know, I don't sin much at all. You know, I sin occasionally and then I fix it. No, but you sin every time you have a thought that so much as transgresses God's holiness. That's sin, even if you haven't acted it.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: And I want you to just let that rest. You can tuck that away in the back of your mind for now.
I'll come back to it later. But this teaching that I'm going to give today is one that I really tried to get away from multiple times. I was exploring other avenues. I picked up three or four different sources of things. I had this idea in my mind that I'll tell you, it started way back actually, with Caleb Schoenwald's bar Avraham. I saw this thing I wanted to share, but I tried to get away from it. And the things I kept picking up to read would take me right back to the thing I didn't really want to say.
So guess what? I'm going to say it because that's where we ended up. And as I said, it started a few weeks ago. Since then, we've seen.
We had Abar Avraham with Caleb Schoenwald. We had Elie Slater with a Bat Mitzvah. Last week we had Jonah Turner who graduated and gave a speech. But I'll also come back to that. When Ailee was teaching, if you will recall, her Torah portion was on. Part of it was on the Nazirites. So she taught us about the Nazir. She did a fantastic little teaching about the different types of Nazirite and how he put on a.
A higher level of holiness. And it was, like I said, a great message. The whole time she was giving it, I was thinking about something else related to it. I was listening, Ailey.
But a message I gave a while back that was called sinner or saint that they taught, and it was also about the Nazirite, because do you know that there's a pretty big discussion in Judaism.
Hi.
England. England. Rika. Hi, Rika.
There is a.
She got married and moved to England. And I'm just seeing her sitting in the chair. So. Hi, I'm excited to see you. There is a discussion in Judaism about whether or not it's a good thing to become a Nazirite.
On the one hand, the Torah calls him holy to God in the Book of Numbers. On the other hand, the Torah prescribes a sin offering when he has completed his Nazirite or her Nazirite service. Okay, sin offering. We know enough about that to know it's really more of a purification offering. But nevertheless, that's odd.
You do something great, set yourself apart, and you have to bring an offering for purification. Now, here's the text, or a text regarding the Nazirite. It says, on the eighth day, he shall bring two turtledoves, two pigeons to the priest. The entrance of the tent of the priest shall offer one for the offering, the other one for a sin or purification offering, the other for a burnt offering, and make atonement for him because he sinned by reason of the dead body, and he shall consecrate his head the same day. Now, that word that is translated dead body is actually Nephesh. You know what Nephesh means? Nephesh, primarily translated, means the life, the soul, you know, the creature, the person.
But that's the translation we get, however, from. In the Talmud. We read a response to this from Rabbi Eliezer Haka. Rabbi, he draws this inference. He says, what is the meaning of the phrase? And make atonement for him because he sinned against the soul. Okay, that's another translation. Rather than dead body, he sinned against the soul.
Rabbi Eliezer asks, against which soul did he sin?
And we must conclude he says that it refers to denying himself the enjoyment of wine.
You can laugh. Rabbi Eliezer must have really liked his wine.
He sinned against himself by denying himself the enjoyment of wine. But he continues, from this we may infer that one who denies himself the enjoyment of wine is called A s all the more so one who denies himself the enjoyment of the other pleasures of life.
It follows that one who keeps fasting is called a sinner. That's in the Talmud. What in the world is that all about? Well, this is something that we have also talked about many, many times. Jews are not fans of asceticism.
We are not monastic. Okay?
And I'm paraphrasing here an article from Rabbi Sacks. It's called the Courage to Engage with the World. And here's a very. I want to give you this very brief historical summary. Jewish unease with radical denial, a self denial probably is historically and mostly connected to things that were happening around them.
Okay? Around them. The Greco Roman world, the Persian East. They portrayed the material as intrinsically flawed. There was something wrong with this world. They were dualists, mainly. You've heard the term Gnosticism, right? Gnostics. Gnostics, Eastern Manicheans. They taught that the supreme God didn't make this world. Some evil, malevolent God made this world and therefore everything in it. You must separate yourself from holiness. For these dualists, excuse me, demanded that you have this withdrawal from bodily pleasure and desires because there is this universal battle being waged in this evil world between good and evil.
And some of you are saying, well, isn't. I believe that that's not really what Judaism believes.
Total abstinence from meat and wine and marital relations and all of this.
The Jewish criticism of the Nazirite separating himself from the world may have come from this idea of not being like the nations around you. And when God said the world is good, he really meant the world is good and you should enjoy it.
But then the Rambam comes along later and he proposes something else.
He echoes the Rabbi Eliezer Hakapar, and he warns against this radical withdrawal.
He says, quote, someone may decide that desire, honor and every physical pleasure ruin the soul and therefore swear off meat and wine and marriage and comfortable housing and respectable clothing.
That path, Maimonides says, is misguided, it's forbidden.
Yet in the very same work down the road, Mishnah Torah, he praises the individual who vows to become a Nazirite for the sake of holiness, calling such a person on par with a prophet.
And so the question is, how can both be true?
And this is where the Rambam's incredible insight and wisdom comes through. Because here's what he describes, what he defines the saint, the chasid. You've heard this word, Chassid.
It is the seeker of personal perfection.
This is someone who embraces extremes Total humility, strict abstinence, voluntary poverty. This is the Hasid. And on the other side of the coin is Hakakam, the sage, the saint and the sage. The sage is a shaper of a just society. He follows in moderation, the golden mean, balancing courage and prudence, generosity, but yet with responsibility. The saint's path is completely solitary, generous to the point, maybe of even impoverishing himself or his family, peace loving to the point of abandoning communal defense, forgiving even when justice is demanded.
Saints elevate themselves, but they do not build functioning communities.
The sage, on the other hand, keeps his holiness anchored in ordinary life.
Family obligations, civic duties, economic fairness, excess and deficiency are avoided because other people matter, other people's welfare is in view. It's communal.
And so when you see it this way, what Rambam's saying is the Nazarite embodies the saint for a limited season.
It's a noble thing to do, it's a vow, but it's incomplete. That's really not how you should stay. So he brings a purification offering because of that. And Judaism permits, even recommends that at times. But the sustainable model is the sage, the one who engages in the world, who accepts the risks, who channels the divine presence into the shared space of daily existence with other people. That's the age.
And I want Rabbi Sacks to offer the profound summary here. It is this deep insight that led Maimonides to his seemingly contradictory evaluations of the Nazirite. The Nazirite has chosen, at least for a period, to adopt a life of extreme self denial. He's a saint, a Chasid. He's adopted the path of personal perfection, but it's not the way of the sage. It's a high ideal, it's commendable, but it's not the the way of the sage. And you need sages if you expect to perfect society.
The reason the sage is not an extremist is because he realizes what I said. The world matters. There are other members of you, outside of you.
It can't just be about your holiness, your family, your community, colleagues. There's a country to defend, there's a nation to be a part of. And so the sage knows it's dangerous, even morally self indulgent, to leave all that behind in pursuit of your own personal, saintly purity.
Now I can see how you might squirm in your seat at this.
Is he saying that we should not pursue holiness?
Of course not, not at all.
Judaism makes room for individuals to escape from the temptation of the world. And the supreme example is The Nazirite. But it is the exception. To be a hakam is to have the courage to engage with the world. Who needs you?
Which brings me to part two of this.
The courage to engage with the world. It's from this week's Parsha, which is called Shalach or Shalach Lechah. It's a very famous parsha. This is the Parsha where Moses sends the spies in. Right. And what happens? Everything gets a big party. At the end, we jump into Israel. That's no. Of course, there's a terrible report.
They come back. But I want to read you something that's really important.
In the text, it says Moses sent them to spy out the land. Go up this way into the south, go to the mountains, see what the land is like, whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, few or many, whether the land they dwell in is good or bad, whether the cities they inhabit are like camps or like strongholds.
Are they like open spaces? Are they fortified cities? Are they free or walled? That's what he's asking. Moses says, I want you to notice that whether the land is rich or poor, forest or not, be of good courage.
The spies came back and they gave their report. I'm skipping a lot of it, but they do answer that question that he asked. The cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there, the Amalekites.
Amalekites dwell in the land of the south. The Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Canaanites. And remember this very incredible line.
We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and therefore in theirs or the other way around, we were like grasshoppers in our own sight. But here's the point.
Here's what you may have missed.
Why would Moses have them check to see if they were in open cities or walled cities?
Well, we can assume the obvious, right? If you're going to attack, would you rather attack an open camp or a walled city?
If you are attacking a walled city, you need siege weapons. It's much more difficult. You need to get in, and that's a difficulty. So clearly, when they said they are strongholds, walled cities, that is a bad thing, right?
Wrong. 100% wrong.
That's not. Moses was giving them a clue. The Midrash says he wants them to pay attention. It's a code. It's a hint, a sign. Caleb got it.
And it means the exact opposite.
If they lived in walled cities, it is because they are afraid.
If they lived in open cities, they are strong. They don't need the protection of high walls. They are not afraid.
The higher the walls, the more fearful the people.
And you'll remember in Jericho, the walls were high. What were they feeling inside?
They were terrified of Israel. It says, the higher the walls, the more fearful the people.
Walls were not strength.
Walls were weakness. Now stay with me because I want to make a little tricky and I try to condense this part, but it's really important. Again, listen. I miss him almost every day of my life. Jonathan Sacks, he provided some incredible insight about this when he said Judaism was once a religion that did not exist behind walls.
The prophets were not afraid of idolatry. They would challenge people. Moses knew that all of the nations would come to Israel and would look at Israel and say, oh, what a great God you have.
Isaiah dreamed of the time when all the nations would flow into Zion.
They were not afraid. But that changed for a number of reasons. Anti Semitism at the very top of the list. And the horrors of history change that.
For centuries, Jews had been forced to live where?
In ghettos, inside walls, bound in.
And then when the ghetto walls came down, they could come out, and they came out into Europe. And guess what? They didn't know what to do to do.
In some sense then, even though they could enter mainstream society, they sort of stayed behind the walls. And a great suffering has occurred. It is possible to leave the ghetto and still take the ghetto with you.
Carried not in the bricks, but in the bloodstream of memory and listen, tying back to our sage and saint. We might use that as an example of the saint who worries that engagement equals contamination. So we got to retreat, stay in the walls.
Today the landscape has changed. Israel is a very different story.
Jews have sovereignty there. We have unprecedented freedom. In the Diaspora, we've helped shape culture, medicine, history, everything, the arts. And yet religious Jewry is the word, not jewelry. Jewry still shelters behind walls, intellectual walls, convinced that it is strength and it is the absolute error that the spies made.
Fortification, mistaking fortification for faith. Because high walls do not protect the spirit, they impoverish it.
His point in saying all that is that Judaism is still in many ways missing the mark on being in the world in a meaningful way.
There are still all too few Jewish works that address the central challenges of modernity.
We still lack a Jewish conversation with Charles Darwin and neuroscience and biblical criticism and individualism and ethical puzzles of the 21st century in which we live. We have a startup nation but scant contemporary Jewish political philosophy. There are few books written by Religious Jews that answer the philosopher, fundamental, difficult questions that young people have about faith today.
Religious Jews, for the most part, have not engaged with the wider conversation of humankind. I didn't say it, an Orthodox Jew who was the Chief Rabbi of England wrote.
But before I move to my concluding point, here's his this is not the fault of Judaism, but of us.
And it is based on the same mistake the spies made.
To live behind a wall and separated is not strength. To the contrary, it is a sign of weakness.
Not as it was then, physical weakness, but spiritual and intellectual weakness.
That is Jonathan Sacks, who devoted his entire life, for some reason, I don't want to cry thinking about it, but devoted his entire life to being in the world and having these conversations.
Now it's easy to hide behind walls and imagine you are strong, but it remains a form of self deception. And here I come back to the idea I introduced earlier. Not only the idea of living outside the walls, that is being in the game, in the world, in the field of play, but also living in it primarily as a sage.
Not as holier than thou and completely separated, but as a sage, an engager, a shaper of just society who balances life.
And you can see why the Nazir is not considered the ideal. The saint's path is lofty but solitary.
Now, to be very, very clear, there are moments, as we discussed, where you need to go up to the Moun and you need to pull yourself back and you need to get some space from everyone else. But those mountaintop experiences are only so that you can walk back down into the mix, roll up your sleeves, create love, argue you can do that.
And also, I need to make this point. Walls are different than fences.
We build fences around the Torah. We keep ourselves out of situations that are going to draw us into sins. That is Messiah, that is Torah. That's an instruction you must follow. We build fences around dangerous things, but we do not wall ourselves in.
And this takes me full circle in a very strange way, which I really hope I can connect for you to the video presentation we started with. And I'm forewarning you that this is. I might get energized here. I know that's very out of character for me.
Just play it one more time for me, please.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: And at bedrock, I think theologically, one of the most important things to understand is this premise that you can keep Torah at all and that somehow that you don't sin in thought, word and deed all the time. And this underestimation of how intrinsic sin is to Your life and so that you kind of, you know, I had somebody recently say people just adore self righteousness. This idea that, you know, I don't, don't sin much at all hard, you know, I sin occasionally and then I fix it. No, but you sin every time you have a thought that so much as transgresses God's holiness. That's sin if you, even if you haven't acted it out.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: I think theologically one of the most important things to understand is this premise that you can keep Torah at all. What is he saying?
He's saying, what kind of idiot would think you can do that?
He's not framing it positively. You understand this.
And the three of them laugh about it. It's funny.
What does that say, what he just said? Even if he actually doesn't intend it, I think he does. But what it says is, you're not good enough.
I'm going to bring it around. Ride this to the end with me. You're terrible.
Don't you understand that about yourself?
You can't be a sage in this world. Your only message, your only mission is to try to sanctify yourself from your evil thoughts and separate yourself. Don't even try to live out the Torah, God's commandments. Yeah, right. What a joke.
You, my sinner friend, need to seclude yourself and build some very high walls where the world can't get to you. All I hear, all I hear when I hear that is you better have these high walls because you have no strength.
You are nothing but a despicable sinner. And what I hear is religion. I hear fear and religion that tries to scare people into dismissing themselves or denying their responsibility.
And you better be afraid of every pleasure of the world.
You better, and you better be very afraid while we're talking about it, of your every thought.
You foul, disgusting creature.
You know what I say?
No.
I want to put the word gehinnom in front of the. No, no.
We do not have to live behind those walls.
The Torah says if you're willing to accept that it is God's word.
The Torah says this mitzvah that I'm commanding you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it far off. It's not in the heavens that you should say who's going to go get it? Nor is it across the sea. So you say, who will cross over to the other side and get it?
No, the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart to do it.
Darren did a five minute Torah on This yesterday you can't keep the law. It said you should watch it.
Yeshua did not annul or change any of that. He actually amplified your ability to do it.
And as a matter of fact, speaking of our Messiah's own words from Matthew 5, you remember what he said?
Anyone, anyone who teaches, who breaks one of the least of the commandments, teaches others the same shall be called what least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps and teaches them that one shall be called great in the heaven, in the kingdom.
That walled in thinking is exactly the opposite of what Jesus said.
Take my yoke. It is easy. What is his yoke?
Just greasy grace to go around and do whatever you want to do. It's the yoke of his instruction. It's the yoke of his commandments. Where are his commandments derived from his Father's instruction?
And then he says, take my yoke. Put this on. The burden is easy and light and then easy and light. And then go out and be salt and light.
Not to instill more fear into people, not to imprison them behind these dogmatic walls and tear them down, but instead empower them to be a force in the world as well. To be a sage in the world.
That's the generation I want to raise up here.
I heard last week Jonah Turner, 17, 18 year old kid, I don't know, standing up here saying I'm not afraid to get out from behind the walls. He didn't use that quote, but his whole speech said that I am not afraid. I can fail because I can learn from it. I will step out and take on a challenge because God's made me to do that.
I am not despicable. I am not constantly living in sin. That's not an identity we accept.
Caleb Schoenwald. An impressive speech from a young man who's going to do fantastic things in the world. Ailey Slater. An impressive speech from a very young, short little girl who's talking about holiness and being a great person in the world.
We can do that.
I would never suggest that we don't sin or fall.
I will not suggest that. But I read something. There's a new book by a guy named Mendel Kalmanson. It's called On Purpose. It's about the. The purposeful living as taught by the Rebbe from Chabad. You want to talk about a guy who lived as a sage. Menachem Mendel Schneerson did more for Judaism in the last hundred years than the previous. I don't know how many. Why? Because he Got out and he took it out. And he made a difference in the world. Not just for Jews, for everybody. He's incredibly respected. Presidents, all kinds of people still go to his grave to pray because he was a sage.
But this book, Mendel Kalmanson says the day you were born is the day God decided that the world cannot exist without you.
That's our identity. And guess what?
Because of the letters written on these scrolls and because of the letters, the word made flesh that became our Messiah. Because of these things, because of the Holy Spirit that guides us, we're empowered to do these things.
Not that I reject it.
This and this filled with the Holy Spirit are part of being salt and light in the world. Bringing good, doing good, and you can.
Disciples don't need high walls.
We need occasional fences, that's true.
But what we really need are deep wells that we draw from the mountaintop and then we bring them down into the valley with Torah as a moderator and a guide and the Holy Spirit as our teacher and showing us where to go.
I am not.
I am not being self righteous and I am not being prideful because I know who I am and what I'm capable of. But that is not my identity.
And they say, well, your identity should only be in Jesus.
That's all it is, all it is. Your identity is only in Jesus. Where did he say that?
He talks about the kingdom and he talks about being a force of good and salt and light and all these things. He says, you must come to me and I will give you this yoke and I will empower you. And man, you will do greater things than these.
I'm sorry, I can't help the passion.
This destroys lives.
This empowers lives. Not just your own, not just you as a saint, you as a sage. Because you're equipped for the difference you need to make in the world.
Okay, I'll finish.
As I said, I'm not suggesting that we're perfect, that we don't sin or coming from a place of self righteousness. But we are not weak and we do not cower from a difficult discussion about theology or science. I love another thing. Rabbi Sacks says. If we truly believe the God of creation is the God of revelation also, then in principle there can be no contradiction between scientific truth and the truth of Torah. In other words, God did it all.
You can get out there and get in the mix and talk about it and build it and do it and don't be afraid, don't wall yourself in.
But the Maharal from Prague, Rabbi Judah Lowe.
And here's just about the end.
He said this about the courage to live an unwalled life and engage in the world as our Messiah called us to do. And I'd love for the three gentlemen on the podcast to hear this, but he's Jewish, so don't listen to him.
Do not say to your opponent, speak, not close your mouth.
If that happens, there will take place no betterment of religion.
It's the opposite of what some people think, that when you prevent someone from speaking against religion, that that strengthens religion. That is not so, because curbing the words of an opponent and religious matters is nothing but the curbing and enfeebling of religion itself.
It does the opposite when you shut people down.
But anyway, when people come to visit Shalom Macon, when they tune in online, when you interact, what makes this place unique? I believe above all things I've said it is community. But what kind of of community? A John 17 community that is not of the world but absolutely in the world.
Absolutely and willing to engage it to the max. That's what we do. And I'm thankful. I'm thankful to these three gentlemen for reminding me of how important that is.
It is important that we maintain this trajectory to enable people to have a place where they can be who they are and learn and connect and grow. And maybe above all, to raise a generation that comes after us that tears down walls and builds up the world.
The spies trembled before walls. Sages see through them.
May we have the eyes, their eyes, courage, and the builder's hands in the world to be joyfully a part of it.
Shabbat Shalom I'm Darren with Shalom Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you subscribe to our channel Next. Make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch.
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