Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: We talked. I talked, said something maybe that made some people uncomfortable. You came back, so, you know, more people came back. So that's good.
I didn't run everyone off. But what I said was that I consciously work to earn God's favor, that I want to impress God.
And I defended that, promoted it, put a case forward for it. We talked about the Parashat Shumah, about building the tabernacle, about how God invites us into co creatorship. We are co partners.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Shut Hafim in Hebrew, partners in the work.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: And I meant every single word of what I said.
You were made to build and God delights in your efforts.
And you should want to impress God because he can be impressed. And we talked about that.
He's not a statue. He responds, he's moved by what you do. But coming soon in the Torah, it's actually next week we're going to see building gone bad.
Last week, Terumah, the instructions to build the tabernacle this week is called Tetzaveh, the instructions to outfit the tabernacle, but also the priesthood, and it's being established in serving in the temple.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: And then after all that, after this beautiful instruction to build and invite God
[00:01:46] Speaker A: to be with them in the home
[00:01:48] Speaker B: they construct, we have the golden bovine in Exodus 32, the golden calf, and the same hands and the same skills. Even though Aaron said they just threw it in and it popped out, they brought the things that created it, same creative energy, desire. Before any of the good building happens, an idol pops out of the fire.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: And we're going to look at that in a, I think a unique way next week.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: But suffice it to say, God is not impressed.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Neither is Moses, because for all of the talk of building last week and
[00:02:27] Speaker B: the creative desire, it can go terribly
[00:02:31] Speaker A: wrong in the human way of doing things.
You've seen that probably you've seen plenty of people build this incredibly successful empire of success, only to lose their family along the way, to lose everything.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: You've seen ministries become very much focused on the minister or the leader.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: They fall.
Maybe you have felt yourself building things for the wrong reasons. It happens.
Our own glory takes over. And I certainly have felt that at times there is a seduction in accomplishment. There really is the way that even in religion we dress these things up in this holy language.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: But how do we take what I
[00:03:26] Speaker A: said last week in this difficulty? How do we hold onto that in this balance?
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Well, there is good news for you
[00:03:33] Speaker A: because the Torah always provides an answer.
It does not bad for a 3500-year-old text.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: But the Torah gives us a clue right at the beginning.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: And it's a pretty well known rabbinic insight that we've talked.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: God formed the human being.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: In Genesis 2:7, the Hebrew uses this unusual spelling when it says vayitzer, Adonai,
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Elohim, etchadam, the eternal God formed man, right?
[00:04:06] Speaker A: The word is vayitzer, which we see up there to form.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: The strange thing is when we read in 2:19, when God is forming the wild beasts and is using the same word, the word is vayutser.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: But there's something missing when we're talking
[00:04:30] Speaker B: about God forming man. In 2:7, there are two Yods, two
[00:04:37] Speaker A: of the little apostrophes right there, two Yods.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: When he forms the beasts, there's only one.
The rabbis notice this.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: They notice everything.
And they said the two EODs when
[00:04:54] Speaker B: God created man in Genesis 2:7, they
[00:05:00] Speaker A: represent two inclinations that were placed within us at creation, within man, within woman, within human.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: The yod, the yetser, the will, the yetzer hatov, and the yetser harach.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: They both start with yud.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: Two inclinations.
It's not a mistake, it's not a grammatical error. It's a statement made by God. Now, we usually translate yetzer hara into evil, inclination, evil, ra. That word ra can mean evil, but that's not really. That's misleading because it's not really evil in the demonic evil sense. It's drive.
The yetzer hara is drive.
It's ambition, it's desire. The part of you that wants to build, to achieve, to create, to leave a mark. There's a striking teaching that we come
[00:06:04] Speaker A: across in the Talmud that's talking about these two inclinations, particularly the yetzer hara
[00:06:09] Speaker B: that says, without it, if God had not placed it within us at creation, no one would build a house, to get married, have children, start a business. There would be no drive, no ambition.
That is energy, the hunger to make something of yourself.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: The yetzer hara, it has driven civilization in many, many ways.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: And Ramban actually points out again, noticing this, he says when God looked at creation and said tov meod, it is very good.
He knew this was there.
In other words, he made it.
He made you. He put it there. It's supposed to be there.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: It's part of the design.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: But so is the yetzer hatov.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: Yetzer hatov. I'm not supposed to do that. That's some, you know, whatever this represents.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Psalm 67, the Omer, the yetzer hatov, the inclination toward good. The part of you that ask this Question. Great. You're building.
Why are you building?
What are you building? And for whom are you building? The Yetzer Hatov checks the ambition of the Yetzer Hara and asks, but who is it really for?
Two yods, two inclinations.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: From the beginning, both formed there.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: You were made with this fire and this wisdom to aim that fire properly.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: They work in tandem.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Now, what happens when the Yetzer Hara burns? When it runs wrong? You build for the wrong reasons.
You tell yourself, I'm doing something great for God or for my family or for the mission.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: But underneath, it's really for you. It's for the applause.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: It's for the proof that, look at me, I can do this great thing.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: And you sacrifice great things for ambition and productivity.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: You build a great business and your spouse gets the scraps of you.
Your kids learn. Daddy's very important at work, and his work matters a lot more than we do.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Your community.
You lose the ability to just rest.
This beautiful day that we call Shabbat, you lose it because life is all about building.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: You're only as valuable as the things you're building. Your last achievement, your last recognition, your last wow. I feel good about myself because everyone sees how good I am.
And the uncomfortable part of that is
[00:09:17] Speaker A: that religious people are certainly not immune.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Certainly not. We actually might be more susceptible because we can say things we have holy language right to justify a variety of actions. God told me.
God told me that this or it's for the kingdom. I'm doing it for the kingdom.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: When really it's not that much about the kingdom. It's about your platform.
The Yetzer Hara can be evil, and it can pursue progress beyond your defenses. Now, there is a man who understood this. I mentioned him last week. A Jewish thinker, 20th century, but his.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: His lineage goes way, way back.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: His great grandfather was also the Rav, Joseph Soloveitchik. But Joseph Soloveitchik, writing in the 1960s, was an incredibly important Orthodox Jewish mind of modern Orthodoxy.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: He was a philosopher.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: He was brilliant.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: He was educated in Berlin. He studied Kant and Hegel and Kierkegaard. And he took secular thought very, very seriously at a time when many Orthodox Jews would not have anything to do with it.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: That's not that uncommon, by the way.
I actually just read something about the Rambam, which was interesting, which I had not really come across before that. The Rambam was also brilliant, but the
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Rambam also understood that there is brilliance
[00:11:06] Speaker A: in all of the world. Taking pirkei avot literally, which says, to learn from all Men, even the Rambam and Greek philosophy and understanding these things.
But Soloveitchik was that way. He was a Talmudist also.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: He was deep steeped in traditional learning. He became the head of Yeshiva University, very, very respected rabbinical school, trained generations of Orthodox rabbis. He was involved in science and philosophy and culture and politics in the modern world. He was much like Menachem Mendel Schneerson in that regard, profoundly spiritual prayer, inner life stuff. And he lived in two worlds.
And in the 1960s he wrote a
[00:11:56] Speaker A: book that was called the Lonely man of Faith.
It was not a philosophy, it was an autobiography of sorts. In an essay, he was writing about
[00:12:06] Speaker B: himself and he was writing about this tension that he felt of basically being in the world in so many ways and yet still feeling this religious pull
[00:12:17] Speaker A: to be above it.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: And he looked at Genesis and he saw his own struggle and he characterized it and built something beautiful in the Lonely man of Faith. And when we read Genesis, we read Genesis 1 and how does it end? What's the end? What's created man? What's created in Genesis 2?
Man? Which one is the right account?
Soloveitchik
[00:12:51] Speaker A: looked at this. There are many beautiful interpretations and tellings of why that is. But the Rav Soloveitchik saw all of us in the multi Adam story.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: He read these two portraits, these two
[00:13:04] Speaker A: dimensions of Adam within every human being,
[00:13:08] Speaker B: and he called them. You ready? It's very deep.
Adam 1 and Adam 2.
Adam 1, the Genesis 1 Adam he hears, have dominion and get to work.
That's what he builds, he creates, he solves problems. He organizes chaos into systems. He wants to achieve, to master, to leave something behind. And Adam One is always asking, how do I do?
How do I solve this? How do I build this? Adam 1, the builder from Genesis 1. Soloveitchik calls him the majestic man.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: He subdues the world, which is what God said. Exercise, dominion.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Adam too, the soft Adam.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: It's not good for man to be alone.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: This is the spiritual, emotional connection Adam he wants, meaning, accomplishment. Ah, meaning I want to feel my place in the world with God, to know God. It's not just working with God. Why am I here? Who do I belong to? Why does any of this matter?
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Soloveitchik calls him Covenant Man.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: He is the one who needs relationship. He cannot survive on achievement like Adam1 and those Adams are there and Adam1 shows up. Who has ever encountered Adam1 in your life?
This is the person who's excited to get things done.
Leave a legacy. Get out there. Oh, services, whatever yeah, I'll do that. But right now I'm doing this and I'm committed to it.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: And Adam too is in the background saying, but wait, but wait.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: The spiritual, the soft, the God, the connection.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: And if you're a spiritual person, there's that feeling.
But the problem is Soloveitchik's plan was,
[00:15:33] Speaker B: or his idea was, they're not more spiritual than the other. They're both absolutely necessary. The Torah makes the distinction. But Genesis gives you both the double yod on purpose. Both of them are you, both of them are human, from God. Two inclinations. Adam 1, Adam 2.
But what Soloveitchik was really writing about was. But it's lonely.
He was saying, it's lonely because I don't know where to go. I feel pulled here. I feel pulled here. I know I need to be in both places I wanna go and be this deep thinking religious mind that's affecting everyone, but yet I know there's a place I need to be here, educating, building, doing things in the world.
Because the secular world celebrates Adam 1, right? The religious world celebrates Adam 2. Which one do I want to be known for?
It's a lonely place. It's a battle inside of me.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: He would say,
[00:16:47] Speaker B: but you can't kill
[00:16:50] Speaker A: one to feed the other.
You must feed them both.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: You suppress Adam 1, you become,
[00:17:03] Speaker A: as
[00:17:04] Speaker B: I once heard Darren say, so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: You can't suppress the one we talked about last week.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: On the other hand, you let that atom run unchecked and you're just a productive hollow machine.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: And that's what Soloveitchik felt.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: World class intellectual, devoted man of prayer, builder. Yet teacher, should I be a scholar or am I a mystic? Do I engage in the world or do I retreat from it? And you can't. You can't. The Torah doesn't let you pick a lane.
You drive down the dotted line, my friends.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Genesis, both two yods, two Adams, Yetzer Hara without Yetzer Hatov builds the wrong things.
It builds things like golden calves.
It builds your own kingdom.
It builds for the wrong reasons. And the Yetzer Hatov without the Yetzer Hara, you know what it builds?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: You have your own little dream, wonderful
[00:18:25] Speaker A: spiritual connection world, but you've left no legacy.
And God didn't make a mistake.
That's why he gives us these little indications to dial into. And that brings us into this week's Torah portion.
Last week, Terumah Tabernacle. This week, Tetzaveh.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Think about the priesthood. These are the Men who will serve in the tabernacle, what was built.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Think about what it means to be
[00:18:55] Speaker B: a priest in the very place where God's presence dwelled, set apart for divine service. You're standing the high priest, at least
[00:19:03] Speaker A: in the very presence of God.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: The others as close to the dwelling presence would allow, mediating between heaven and earth. And if you were a priest, what would you want your job to look like? A whole bunch of Adam too, right? Spiritual connection, emotion, covenant, partnership. Covenant man.
I'm in the God thing all the time.
But is that what the priesthood actually looked like?
The other side of the priesthood was blood, animal sacrifice, slaughter, guts, fat, smoke, labor, hauling wood, chopping wood, cleaning ashes, schedules, rotations, logistics, which offering goes where, what gets burned where? What do I do with this dung?
The priest could not float above the world in spiritual bliss.
And he was not allowed to choose
[00:20:08] Speaker A: that by design, by calling.
He had hard work to do.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: He had to build and connect. He had to work and worship. He had to get his hands bloody and stand in the presence of God.
You know we are at Purim.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: This isn't a Purim message, but I
[00:20:27] Speaker B: certainly consider Esther in this idea. Esther certainly could have defaulted to her Adam 1 person, Adam 2 personality.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Remember Adam 2.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Spiritual waiting, waiting. God will hear my voice. He will answer. He will show up. He will do. And she did do part of that, didn't she?
I want you to pray for me. But what was Adam one about to do?
Adam won. And Esther was about to boldly take action and go before the King at the cost of her own life.
She is driving down the middle of the road without her. Mordecai says God will do it without you. But who knows, Maybe you're here just for.
Do not default to passivity.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: And of course, and I mentioned this last week, so I will not go deeply into it right now. But we only need take a couple of minutes to even read through the Gospels to understand Yeshua.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: Not as managing competing drives, that's for sure. He wasn't doing that, but he was showing up and telling people what this integrated life must look like. The Sermon on the Mount was not just about prayer.
It was not just about the spiritual side of you. It was not just feeding Adam too. There was a whole bunch of work
[00:22:06] Speaker A: that needed to be done.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Hard work, actually. When you look at how he elevated the commandments to ask you to be even more righteous than the Pharisees,
[00:22:19] Speaker A: that could.
That might strike a chord. We'll come back to that in another message.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: He had a Supreme connection of intimacy with the Father. But he also worked hands on crowded villages and hungry crowds and touching lepers and doing things with blind people and all, all kinds of things where he was fully present, physical, embodied, getting it
[00:22:50] Speaker A: done, as they say, or whatever. That Larry the cable goes, get er
[00:22:54] Speaker B: done, Jesus, the ultimate get er done.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: And he turns to us, as I said last week, and says, hey guys, guess what?
[00:23:06] Speaker B: I'm empowering you.
Greater things than these you will do.
You'll become a better prayer than Yeshua.
You'll have a higher level of spiritual connection and life than Yeshua.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: I'm sorry, no you won't.
But greater things than these you'll do because you will leave such a legacy in my name, in the name of the Father, in this world, by the
[00:23:34] Speaker B: way, that you integrate Adam 1 spiritual, Adam 1 work, builder, creator, Adam 2
[00:23:42] Speaker A: spiritual, beautiful connection, greater works.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: And here's where this lands especially for, you know, I speak to a very broad audience.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: Thankfully through YouTube, I have Christians who've
[00:23:59] Speaker B: never heard anything about Messianic Judaism and all kinds of people that listen in. And sometimes these teachings can be troubling.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: If you've not ever thought or considered any of these avenues from a Jewish perspective, but especially for those who may
[00:24:16] Speaker B: have only been shaped by Christian thinking, there's a category error that has confused generations.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: It's like this when it comes to the idea of works.
There's a question that Christianity asks, does this save me?
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Does this action contribute to my salvation? Does this earn me any points with God? And the answer to that is always no.
Grace alone, faith alone, works, sort of though, then become suspect.
Works, works, and that is a big broad term.
Go back and listen to 18 weeks
[00:25:00] Speaker A: of Romans if you want to learn about works and what it really means.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: But effort is sort of suspicious. But the Torah, the Jewish perspective, the God given perspective on Mount Sinai to the Jewish people asks a very different question. Am I, Am I fulfilling my role in creation?
Am I building? Am I doing what God made me to be? Am I building what God called me to build? Am I a faithful partner in the ongoing work of God? Definitely not. The same question, does this save me? That's kind of an Adam 2 territory. It's about acceptance and forgiveness and relationship. And the answer is always yes, not yes. It saves me. You're accepted, you're in. You're a child, you're with me.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: But what am I building belongs to Adam one vocation, purpose, contribution. And the answer will always be the same.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: Get to work.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: You don't build to be accepted, because you already are. But once you're in, once you're a child and part of the family, you have this work to do. So what does it look like?
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Shabbat is a nice Adam 1 and Adam 2 tension.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Because we work hard for six days, then we stop completely on the seventh.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: We haven't finished. There's going to be a whole bunch of work to start doing tomorrow and for the next six days after that.
But because Shabbat is about the double Yod and Adam 1 and Adam 2, Shabbat comes along as God's solution and says Adam 2 to Adam 1, Stop building.
Spend time with me.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: Be with me. Creation, connection, covenant.
And as I said, the priests weren't able to choose between spiritual devotion and physical labor. They had to do both. You're not a Levitical priest.
Well, actually, I don't know that. Maybe some of you are descended directly from the tribe of Levi. We'll have to wait until Messiah comes and reveals that. But I don't think we have any Levitical priests in the room right now.
But you still have this work to do, real work.
And you have a soul that needs tending.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: And that tension.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: It's not a tension. It's what Soloveitchik talked about. We just drive down the middle of the road.
We have to.
And I know that some people hear this idea of Adam 1 and Adam 2, and guess what? You know exactly which Adam you are.
I know which Adam I am.
Even though I have both. I know which one is constantly trying to dominate.
And some of you Adam ones, your builders and your fixers, and you give
[00:28:20] Speaker B: me a project, I'll get it done.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: Majestic man. And that's beautiful. Or woman.
He said Adam, come on.
I mean women.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Majestic
[00:28:33] Speaker A: woman.
Some of you very much. I know you. Adam Twos, the connectors, the prayers. I'm so, so thankful. Who feel closest to God in the stillness and the study and the quiet moments and, ugh, out there achieving. That's for the birds. Covenantal man.
That's also you.
That's you. And it's also beautiful.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: But whichever one you are, whichever one
[00:29:03] Speaker A: you lean to, I want to encourage you today.
You also have to build the other one.
You need both to be the best builder for God. You're going to need to nourish both to feed both to build them. That's what it means to be a builder, not a bystander.
That's where we get this phrase at shalom, Macon.
Not just building things in the world, but you're building Yourself, both atoms on purpose.
Soloveitchik was, as I said, one of the great Jewish minds. He felt torn between what we might
[00:29:43] Speaker B: call life in the flesh, maybe, and life in the spirit.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: It's not exactly that, but we can use that dichotomy between building and seeking achievement.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: And he didn't actually ever resolve it.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: The book does not end with a
[00:29:56] Speaker B: and Rabbi Yoseph lived happily ever after.
He lived forever in the tension of being in the world and not of
[00:30:05] Speaker A: it, which is taken way out of context.
You want to understand that message from Yeshua. This is the message that frames in it, not of it.
So I'll leave you with this. I have always loved the idea of two inclinations.
It makes sense to me, God given, created like this. And that actually has helped me navigate difficult areas of my life many times.
But I felt like Rav Soloveitchik's perspective. I felt like this is equally valuable, not just seeing inclinations, but literally in the creation accounts, to see us as both real human flesh and blood and part of it and our human condition
[00:30:55] Speaker B: and all that constructed uniquely and beautifully by a master creator. And listen, as they say in the south, that'll preach, boy.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: That's a way to see.
And so I hope that you'll feel the pull.
I hope that you'll feel the pull in your life of the atoms, a D a m, the atomss. I hope you never feel that pull, because that would be weird.
And don't silence the voices. I want you to let Adam1 build and know you're made for that. And I want Adam too, to continue to ask the questions, why are you doing this? And keeping you in check.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Let your yetzer hara drive you forward.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Let your yetser hatov keep you tamed
[00:31:51] Speaker B: and building and work hard for six days and rest on the seventh. And build the tabernacle and let God fill it. And greater works, but still abide in me, all of it.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: You're given both yods on purpose, so I want you to carry them well.
Shabbat Shalom.
[00:32:13] Speaker C: 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're subscribed 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.
Last, head over to our website to learn more about Shalom Macon, explore other teachings and events, and if you're so inclined, contribute to the work that we're doing to further the kingdom. Thanks for watching and connecting with. Shalom, Macon.
