Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
rabbi david walpy someone who i have
been a fan of for many years for the
kindness and his heart the strength of
his character and the kind of friends he
keeps and talks with many of whom
disagree with him but love him
nevertheless
including the late christopher hitchens
i will have many conversations like
these in the future about religion
about islam christianity judaism
hinduism buddhism and others looking to
understand and celebrate the culture the
tradition and the beauty of the people
who practice these religions
i will of course not shy away from the
difficult topics i will talk both about
hate and love
about war
and peace
this conversation was recorded more than
three weeks ago
please allow me this time to speak
on what has been on my mind
if this is not interesting to you please
skip i totally understand
some people asked me to say a few words
on the war in ukraine
i think my words are worth little
but perhaps let me try
i consider doing a long solo episode on
this war i tried several times
but it is too personal for now
to give you context i've been talking to
refugees friends loved ones in ukraine
in russia in poland slovakia moldova
romania even uk
germany canada india china and of course
the united states
some of them crying
or angry or confused or scared
i'm helping as best as i can privately
and i'm hoping to help in the future by
traveling to ukraine and russia and
celebrating the humanity and the beauty
of the people in this region
this was all set up both for ukraine and
russia trips before 2022
including conversations with scientists
artists athletes leaders and just
quote regular folks
who are equally if not more fascinating
to me
for now it has become much more
difficult but i'll keep trying to find a
way
i was born in the soviet union
my roots are both ukrainian and russian
and today and until the day i die
i'm an american
i'm proud of all of this
i hope to keep celebrating the culture
and the incredible human beings that
make up these nations and humanity as a
whole we're all one people
we're in this together
that's how i feel about the people of
these nations now let me speak about
those in the seats of power
i condemn all actions of leaders who
played geopolitical games on the world
stage disregarding the cost
paid in human suffering on the scale of
millions
for this reason
i condemn vladimir putin's invasion of
ukraine
and i condemn
many of the military interventions by
the superpowers of the world including
by my country the country i love
the united states
that after world war ii has intervened
in over 40 nations with many studies
finding that the united states is
culpable for an unfathomable number of
civilian deaths
i condem all heads of state who
needlessly waged wars
watching young men and women burn in the
fires they started
i don't understand how humans can be so
cruel to each other
or rather i understand
but i believe in a future world
where this is no longer true
let me also say a few words of what i
hope to do with this podcast
i want to explore the full complexity
and beauty of human nature
i believe each of us are capable of good
and evil
and i want to understand how the mind
and the circumstance lead one to choose
the former path or the latter
and i believe conversation is one of the
best ways to work toward this
understanding
for that i think i have to not only talk
to the most inspiring humans in the
world but also to the most controversial
i will speak with many people who i
disagree with
politicians activists ceos heads of
state with very different opinions on
the world
i will try hard to challenge their ideas
without closing my mind to the depth and
complexity of their perspective and
their humanity
my presence in the same room with wildly
different people will make it easy for
the media and the internet to pick and
choose clips and snapshots attacking me
for being a shill for one side or the
other
i can't defend this point
except to say that i'm a shill for no
one and that i hope you see the strength
of my integrity that i won't be
influenced by any of them no matter how
rich powerful or charismatic they are
like the poem if by roger kipling says
if you can talk with crowds and keep
your virtue
or walk with kings or lose the common
touch
if neither foes nor loving friends can
hurt you if all men count with you
but none too much
this is a really
really important thing to me that i try
to live by that all human beings count
with me the same
people have criticized me for wanting to
have some of these conversations like
with vladimir putin and vladimir
zelinski
and for times in the past speaking about
them without the seriousness the topic
deserves
for this i would sincerely like to
apologize i'm disappointed even ashamed
of my frequent ineloquence on these
topics i will work hard to do better
when i'm joking it should be clear that
it's a joke
and hopefully actually funny when i'm
being serious i should speak with care
and rigor
i've now done many hundreds of hours of
podcast conversation despite my frequent
failures and speaking i hope you know
where my heart is
unfortunately i think people will take
clips of me and use them to attack me
this will happen more and more i guess
there's nothing i can do but send them
my love
in the meantime try to be a better
person and a better interviewer
let me also say
that i like humor
especially dark humor
i like being silly and not taking myself
seriously i will keep taking risks
with that
all with the goal of having fun and
celebrating humanity at its most absurd
and most beautiful
i will occasionally
dress up
in strange and weird outfits to
celebrate the absurdity of life
i will hang out break bread and joke
with all kinds of people i don't have to
agree with them to laugh with them in
order to escape for brief moment the
tension the conflict the hatred in the
world
humor just might save this little
chaotic little civilization of ours
i love the ukrainian people
i love the russian people and of course
i love my fellow americans californians
and midwesterners new yorkers and texans
i love humans i love life and i want to
share that love with others with you
if i mess it up i'm really really sorry
i'm trying my best i have no agenda and
no one telling me what to do i feel like
the luckiest guy in the world to have
all these opportunities and i'm deeply
grateful to be alive and to share that
joy with other amazing people around me
thank you for your support
for all the love you've sent my way i
will work my ass off to not disappoint
you i love you all
this is a lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now here's my
conversation with david
walpe
let's start with a big question
according to judaism who is god
it's
difficult because judaism like any
tradition
that is thousands of years old and
encompasses so many different lands and
languages and thinkers
um it doesn't give a single answer to
even simple questions and to large
questions it certainly doesn't give a
single answer although judaism was
responsible for introducing the
monotheistic idea to the world it
doesn't mean that it's one idea
so if you take maimonides the greatest
sage
in the jewish tradition
um medieval philosopher
he would say that god is an omnipotent
benevolent intangible
unimaginable god in fact he said you
can't say what god is only what god is
not
because you have to emphasize
could talk more about that but basically
you have to emphasize the unknowability
of god
you have a modern philosopher like
heschel who says that god is a god of
pathos a god of deep feeling which
probably would make maimonides shiver if
he heard such a description and
if you look in the bible god is always
regretting or having human emotions
so there are so many different kinds of
depictions and ideas
and there is this tremendous tension
between transcendence and imminence that
is
in the jewish tradition god god is
exquisitely close god is imminent
in the talmud's words god is as close as
your mouth is to your ear
in other words whatever you say god
hears it and yet at the same time god is
unfathomably distant
sometimes when i speak to high schoolers
i will say in the jewish tradition think
of it this way
when you were two years old you had no
idea what it was to be a 15 year old not
only did you not know but you didn't
know what you didn't know
we conceive of god as being more the
distance between god and human beings is
far greater than the distance between a
two-year-old and a 15-year-old
so when we speak about god we have to
acknowledge
how limited we really are
so okay you laid out a lot of
fascinating things on the table so one
the nobility of god
then this idea of deep feeling
which
again can can god be
operate in the space of feelings too so
not just the mouth and the ear of the
senses can uh
god be known
can god be
felt
by
this three-year-old in the analogy
versus the the teenager so i will take
refuge in a beautiful phrase by from
martin buber another jewish theologian
he said god cannot be expressed god can
only be addressed
in other words you can speak to god you
can feel a sense of god but can you
begin to comprehend or know god no
josef cosby i'm pulling in a couple of
uh early jewish philosophers he said to
know god i would have to be god
but can we get close is it useful or is
it a distraction
to
visualize things to embody
to create to the uh to attach to the
stories some kind of visualizations in
our mind
uh for example gender he versus she
things like this or old man in the sky
kind of feeling
so it's almost inevitable but i think
ultimately you try to transcend it um
this was uh this was the great you know
we just read this actually in synagogue
the story of the golden calf
and the uh
the story is that human beings found it
impossible
to not have a visualization
because they had just come from egypt
and in pain in the world of of uh pagan
worship everything is it's not that
pagans thought that idol was actually
god but it represented visually what god
was
and along comes
this idea that god is actually not
capable of being visualized which is
very difficult and it stretches the
bounds of human comprehension maybe even
breaks them so would you say the the
proper way to operate
as a human in relation to god as
humility and that you're screwed you're
not able to basically know anything
almost anything
well the reason that you're the
salvation of this is that you can't
that you can't i was going to say the
reason you're not screwed but then i
thought somebody might be upset at a
rabbi saying that so i'm so i didn't say
it and have not said it yes um but but
the uh
the the reason you're not is
that you don't have to have a
comprehension of god you have to have a
relationship to god
and those are not the same i mean
to draw an uh uh
an analogy that is not far from perfect
as most analogies are but this one
especially
you have relationships with people who
are mysteries to you your mysteries
you're a mystery to yourself um
you can live and love somebody for 50
years and they can say something that
surprises you because ultimately we are
trapped in here
and when a child first says i we call
that individuation but what that really
means is
i i now know that i am cut off from the
minds of all other
children and all other people
and
so you have with god a more intimate
relationship because you can believe
that god is
you are known by god and you have a
relationship to god despite the fact
that you can't know god just as you
can't know others
and some would say to have a good
relationship you want to be constantly
surprised right you don't want to know
the things well the world yes the world
that god created is constantly
surprising but and by the way the the
the caveat to this you know when i use i
had all these debates with christopher
hitchens and he would always say that
god is a greater tyrant than north korea
because it continues after your death
and the idea of being known by god is
after all frightening if you think god
knows what i think and so on um if your
image of god is unloving
can we jump to this
you had friendships and conversations
with a lot of
the fascinating figures of the past
20 30 years of the great intellectuals
one of which
perhaps one of the greats is christopher
hitchens what have you learned
from your conversation your friendship
so there are a lot of views he held that
i really did not agree with but he was a
remarkable person that was a good line
about north korea he was full of
incredibly good lines well one of the
things i learned was you can't win a
debate with christopher one of the
reasons you can't win is because he has
this british baritone and this ready wit
that
um because you can't you you can't
triumph over laughter
it doesn't matter if your argument is
better if your quip is better you win
yeah and so i remember once we were
arguing about free will and he said well
i choose to believe in it and everybody
laughed and that was
yeah despite the fact that that's not
really an argument or like uh i have
free will because i don't have a choice
right exactly and people should watch
your conversation with him it's great i
mean it's a it's a kind of david versus
goliath situation and you're quite
uh masterful
at uh using charisma and sweet talking
christopher hitchens
i also genuinely liked him i i mean i i
i i i spent uh a three-hour
um limousine ride with him from one
debate to another from from la descent
to san diego and the entire time his he
said we just can't talk about religion
yeah so we talked about literature and
he gave me a long lecture about scotch
um
he was he was
inexhaustible
i mean not only did he uh i i began i
wrote a couple of obituaries about him
and when i began with the the um
historian keith thomas said there are
two ways of achieving immortality
by doing things worth remembering or
saying things worth remembering and by
that standard he did both
i mean he went all around the world to
all sorts of danger zones he knew like
the best bars everywhere from kuala
lumpur you know to beirut to l.a
and he could drink all night and
write a 2 000 word essay on the poetry
of yates and go to sleep uh i remember
before one of our debates in boston he
was at the bar
and he said come have a drink and i said
i'm gonna have a drink before i go to
debate with you
what are you crazy and he said just have
a beer it's water
um so
he was uh
uh he really was a constant
inexhaustible fountain of uh
of intrigue and interest what kind of
things
if you can remember if you can mention
if you can admit yeah to have him
enlightening you or
helping you change your mind about
something in this world so i think um
unrelated to scotch oh yeah unrelated to
scotch he convinced me
that the
idea
i mean i had my doubts about it and have
my doubts about it but he convinced me
through many debates and not only he
that the idea that religion makes people
better
is a is not it's not ipso facto wrong
but it's a much much more complicated
argument
than i wished it to be
so he is
however you conceive of the term beauty
um he's one of those one of the more
beautiful
humans yes this this weird little earth
produced
so
how do you explain
the
atheism combined with such a beautiful
mind so from your perspective
of a man of faith
um how do you think about that
so
of the atheists that i have debated
um
they i think about all of them somewhat
differently
so
i think that in in some deep way for
example sam harris is a religious
personality
i don't even think that he would he
wouldn't like the word religious but i
don't even think that he would
take issue with that um i think that he
would say his is a purely material
based spirituality but i mean his
his orientation towards meditation and
and appreciation of buddhism there's
something deeply seeking spiritual about
him
um
with hitchens
i honestly and and i know that some of
his fans will really not like this uh
it's not that he was any kind of closet
believer no certainly not at all but i
almost feel as though
he was less a passionate arguer against
religion
than he was first of all extremely upset
by the forms that religion took in this
world
and then once he trained his
intellectual howitzers on a target
he had so much fun inventing new
arguments and
and attacking it
that i really believe he gets carried
away sometimes by his own eloquence and
uh
and intellectual range so for example
the idea that you would call a book that
religion poisons everything
um i think he did that deliberately
provocatively so that he could defend a
proposition that obviously is
indefensible that it poisons everything
so
i don't know i think he had tremendous
joie de vivre that's really what that's
what sums him up this guy loved life in
all of its manifestations
and
and arguing against something that
someone else believed was one of his
greatest joys yeah and and of course the
practical aspect of that he just saw the
powerful and he challenged them with
humor absolutely and you know you could
argue perhaps that humor is the highest
form
of what humanity can achieve like
sometimes maybe us
little
humans take things a little too
seriously then sometimes we need to just
laugh at it all laugh at ourselves and
that's probably the the purest form of
wisdom you know auden the poet said
among the people that i like or admire i
can find no common quality but among
those i love i can all of them make me
laugh
there you have it uh speaking of people
that make you laugh uh sam harris um
because he's actually has a really great
sense of humor he does with a very cold
and monotone delivery he's another one
that you had um you're friends with you
have good conversations with
what um
where's your fundamental disagreements
and agreements with sam sam
believes that religion is intellectually
indefensible he really believes it like
deep in his soul
um
and and he gets angry at the idea
that a proposition
should be unchallenged if it offends his
sense of logic yeah so he cannot move on
until this is done nope in fact uh i i
mean
he you know i did a podcast with eric
weinstein
and then sam did one
and sam said when i heard your podcast
with david wolpe
i learned stuff about what he thinks
that i never learned in my conversations
with him because i can never let him
make those unfounded assertions without
challenging them and you just let them
go
and i think that there was something too
that was like
he finds it hard to have
a conversation about religion
that doesn't
arouse his real ire about
the harm that he thinks religion does in
the world it's more about the
implementation of religion in the world
as it is versus the really fundamental
i think he also thinks it's
fundamentally intellectually shoddy and
disreputable faith yeah faith
i don't know how to put this i mean they
they're both capable of separating their
contempt for religion
from the people that they have sitting
in front of them
you mean christopher hitchens and sam
harris yes both of them
okay so let me you mentioned eric
weinstein people should listen to your
conversation with eric as a fascinating
one is great uh it's non-standard it
just goes all over the place and there's
humor and weight
it's great so one
interesting aspect that i also learned
perhaps not about you but about eric
about both but
eric has a similar thing as with jordan
peterson
which is
if you ask him do they believe in god i
think they answer they're not
comfortable answering that question or
they might say no but
they're usually just not comfortably
answering that question but there's a
kind of sense that
they would like to live life
a religious life as if god exists i
think that's exactly right i think first
of all eric has a really deep
appreciation of the jewish tradition i
don't know peterson i've read his stuff
and i've reviewed his stuff and so on
but i think that
jungians are in their
very approach
they
believe that myth is the way the world
works and so it's not that big a leap to
god but it's still
there's still a distance there is it
possible to have your cake and eat it
too is it possible to have the
depth of a religious life without
believing in god like how do you make
sense of eric weinstein's uh devout life
within the tradition
i mean i honestly think he believes in
god
but doesn't believe in god and it's
oscillating like it's a quantum
mechanical system of some sort
schrodinger's god um so i think that he
would probably agree with what uh elie
wiesel said that that a jew can can be
angry at god or be disbelieving of god
but is not allowed to be indifferent to
god
and i think eric's not indifferent to
god
and and it's different than christianity
i've had this conversation many times
because you can be
very jewish and have deep doubts
about
theological questions because judaism
isn't a religion
it's a religious family and so you're
born jewish like if i said to you
tomorrow
if i was christian and i said oh i
believe in jesus today and then tomorrow
i didn't i'm not christian anymore but
if tomorrow i said oh i don't believe
all this stuff i'm still jewish
so it's a more complicated
system having said that though
i think it's very hard to sustain over
generations without
some belief that the source of it is
beyond ourselves and and in that sense
as in many others eric is unique
well he was actually making that claim
that we need
faith
to uh propagate
this tradition through the generations
yeah so without that the traditions
crumble it's a very interesting
idea
and very interesting argument for
developed faith which is it's a thing
it's a glue that holds a tradition
together otherwise like traditions fall
apart right so you can't have the
intensity
of that tradition i mean on the other
hand you do see tradition i mean
thanksgiving one of my favorite
so i would say traditions that are
demanding fall apart
to traditions that that require turkey
might not fall apart but traditions that
are that make demands of you that are
counter-cultural or are hard they fall
apart i think i need to introduce you to
some thanksgiving dinners that are quite
demanding
getting the family together you know
there's a first of all i'm a vegetarian
so i'm tough to have at thanksgiving
dinner but there's a there's a comedian
named kathy landsman who one year i
heard this on the radio and it stuck
with me she said that uh that holidays
are a chance to renew your resentments
afresh
you know and that's basically what
people do with their families it's like
i'm gonna go
home and fight with the uncle again this
year
i i apologize it'd take a dark turn but
you mentioned uh ellie wiesel
i recently saw a picture of ellie wiesel
when he was uh in the camp
when he was liberated
for some reason that hit hard
like you know i've seen pictures in
concentration camps of people i don't
know
uh or whose words i haven't really felt
and gone through but for some reason
like here's just a normal person like a
normal body
um
laying there that just some that that
was him i've seen it it's a and and
you see you can see his face
but at the same time you see that this
is an amazing and it i think what's so
disturbing about it is exactly what you
were saying is i've seen a thousand
people like this
and i know this one and i know what he
became so what about all those other
people who look exactly
like him who didn't make it out of the
camp you know maybe it's projection but
it seemed like
this perhaps is also just combining with
maths um
search for meaning is it seemed like it
was a regular day for them right picture
it didn't seem like i mean i'm not sure
what i expect to see what suffering
looks like but
it's almost
like there's no celebration i've never
seen a picture of actually liberation be
celebratory it's true
it's really true
so what do you make sense and i
apologize to take a step in into that
moment in history
how does
how do you make sense of um
the holocaust
that
of nazi germany that such things could
be committed by human beings to each
other
is it religion
is it
the thirst for power is it the madness
of crowds somehow carrying
us forward
i i mean for me it's multicausal
i don't think there's one reason so one
of the things especially there has to do
with the special nature of anti-semitism
which is let's put that to one side for
the moment the second is i think human
beings are fundamentally split
they are mostly good except when put
under certain pressures
my first explanation for hatreds is as
follows
go to a playground
what happens when a new kid comes on the
playground do the other kids say oh
let's go share our toys with the new kid
no
they say uh who's that stranger and
let's go get them
because otherness is built into our
genetic i mean we're tribal by nature
and we see people form tribes all the
time of different kinds
i asked you before if you were a chess
player
and
when i was a kid and playing in
tournaments and i didn't do it for that
long and i didn't do it that well but
when i was it was like the whole world
was divided into people who could play
chess and people who couldn't play chess
which is ridiculous if you think about
it as though that's the way you divide
the world but we we tend to do that and
the jews were always the identifiable
other there were frenchmen and jews
there were russians and jews there were
germans and jews and
the great blessing of america is that
there's no identifiable other
quite that way is that there's all these
minorities and no
there's not an american and a something
but once you have that identifiable
other and you have a long history of
blaming that identifiable other for all
the ills that befall you of course
people still do try to form you said
america they still try to form other i
mean immigrant versus uh
been here for a generation there's so
many ways to slice it we still try to
find ways it's just more difficult in
america because there's so many
sub tribes hierarchies of tribes and
upon trial absolutely right and i was
moving fast because i didn't want to get
bogged down in all the very difficult
it's true i tried
you're hoping i wouldn't mention that
tribalism happens in america
you know some when you're on thin ice
your safety is in your speed
um so i was trying to move fast yeah but
for most of history in in eastern
western europe not obviously in the in
asia but in eastern western europe jews
were the ones who like they're not like
us
they're clearly not like us
um and so
and in addition there was there's a
peculiar quality and i don't know i
wonder what you'll think of this
explanation there's a peculiar quality
to anti-semitism that is unlike any
other hatred that i know of which is
jews are both superhuman and subhuman
they're vermin the nazis thought of them
as vermin and yet they control the world
and
there was an english scholar named hyman
maccabee who said the reason that that's
so is the myth that jews killed
god
they killed jesus and to kill a god you
have to be super humanly evil you can't
just be bad otherwise you can't kill a
god
so there is some like supercharged
evil sense that people got from that
about jews that still in here
yeah that's true a lot of the way we
formulate the other in terms of tribes
is often
they're sub-human and they're here to
steal our resources like on the
playground
and but to be both
is a fascinating construction
do you agree with solji nitsan that all
of us have the capacity for evil
runs through every human heart i have no
doubt about it
i and i know
as you probably do but i
probably know more both because of what
i do and because i have lived a lot
longer than you um i know a lot of
religious leaders who people thought
or think are above the human
and they are emphatically not they're
not some of them have done horrible
things and they've used their position
to do horrible things um and it's
because
nobody there is no perfect saint there's
no you know
i mean
all through history you discover all
these saintly characters that we worship
the people who actually knew them around
them some liked them and some didn't
people are complicated all of us and the
tough thing is
the thing that's the toughest for me is
it's not very always clear what is good
and what is evil
because
certainly if you just look at history
and it's not always propaganda
i you know
i really believe that some part of
stalin
thought he was doing good
legitimately uh
and
it makes you ask
a question of yourself
for those of us who want to do good in
the world am i actually doing good and
that's a really difficult question
like in the technology sphere for
example in this dream of creating
technology that will do some good
am i actually doing good
so i have a question about that myself
um not about stalin i'm sure that stalin
thought so stalin does not does not
strike me from what i know of him as
somebody given to a lot of self-doubt
but
the question with ai to me is actually
it goes back to the god question which
is if we have an appreciation of the
limitations of our own intelligence
that we know that just like we can only
hear certain things and see certain
colors
how much of the world is inaccessible
to us because of the way our brains are
constructed
how can we possibly have any confidence
that we can create things that in
certain ways are far more intelligent
than we are and control them the way we
think is best
seems to me
um a hubris that might end up
being destructive definitely well any
any sentence with the word hubris in it
is going to end badly when implemented
at scale
but there is also beauty so if you
approach it with humility
there is a sense i don't want to over
romanticize it but there is a legged
robot right behind you which is
hilarious
[Laughter]
so there's a
magic
i don't have kids i would love to have
kids
but there's a magic to bringing robots
to life yes that it feels like you are a
mini god right because you just breathe
life into an entity that operates in
this world especially when they have
legs and they move in this way that's in
the case the four-legged robot is
like a dog
that i think i don't think i'm over
romanticizing it the feeling is like you
would with a child you just gave birth
like holy crap this this is a living
thing i wonder what what he or she are
thinking about by the way i'm not at all
insensible to how remarkable it must
feel to create that i'm actually
worried in part about how remarkable it
feels to create that because to maintain
humility and perspective when it's such
a fantastic
thing is what's difficult
and i think also because
creativity is both is both part of
uh what it is to be human and it's very
much part of the legacy of western
civilization and the legacy of having a
creator god if you have a tradition
where god is known primarily through
what god creates so
the first debate i ever had since we
talked about humor and god and creating
let me give you my one god creating joke
because the first debate i ever had on
religion and science was with stephen j
gould
and it was wonderful because he had a
deep interest in religion and his
interest was actually not to say
religion is terrible um
but but i started with this joke and uh
and i think it made the debate go a
little bit easier so the time has come
when human beings can do everything that
god can do and a scientist looks up at
heaven and says god look you are great
in your day and we thank you for
everything you did but now we don't need
you and god says really you don't need
me he says no we can do everything you
did god says everything
and human being says yeah we can do
everything god says okay
can you create a human being
and the scientist goes yeah god says
from dirt
scientist goes yeah it says okay let me
see scientist reaches down scoops up
some dirt and god says uh uh get your
own dirt
[Laughter]
yeah but the idea is that a creator god
impels us to create two but let me bring
up nietzsche
who proclaim that god is dead um is
belief in god slowly disappearing from
our world do you think and
what kind of impact does that have on
society
you wrote
that religion is not our enemy before
the western faiths captured the heart of
our world there was cruelty carnage and
destruction in the 20th century when
religion ceased to be a force of
international politics the scale of
human slaughter was far beyond anything
human beings have ever known what is the
world like when we take religion out of
it i mean i think nietzsche was largely
right you know
it wasn't a statement about god it was a
statement about god's presence in the
world um
and i think that that's largely true
that god is not a force
in
a lot of western society and i believe
that if the force of nihilism
has no
clear counter without
an idea that we're all here for a
purpose
and that our lives are inherently
meaningful
and that there's a god who
wishes us to be better
um so i worry a lot about it and i don't
think i think that the sort of optimism
that things are just going to get better
and better
is
what one philosopher called cut flower
ethics that is we're still living off
the morals that religion gave us but now
that they're separate from the soil that
gave birth to them
i see them wilting so this kind of
optimism for the future of human
civilization you think is in part
grounded in
in a religious society i really do
believe that i mean it was religion that
the greeks looked back at the golden age
of the past
it was the jews who said no the golden
age is in the future right it's the
messiah and i think that that idea that
we're moving towards something better
which i really believe
humanity can do
and and absent destroying ourselves will
do you know i i mean i'm
i'm very excited about the technology
that i won't live to see i think it's
fantastic and that excitement is a kind
of religious excitement because there's
a reason to preserve this whole thing
absolutely because i really think
um
i know this sounds this sounds absurdly
anthropomorphic but i really think god
is cheering us on um i feel like this is
why we're here we're here
to grow in soul and to grow each other
in seoul
yeah
so what do you think the world so if we
just think of this force of nihilism
that's contending with the
force
of faith-based optimism
right
um
what do you make of the atrocities in
the in the 20th century do you think
at its core it's part of human nature
and has nothing to do with religion or
not religion or do you think you can
assign this kind of nihilistic view of
the way i think it has to do with a
religion that doesn't make ethical
demands
that is
um
for stalin and for hitler they both had
religions but they were in a sense but
they were religions that didn't make
ethical demands
for the other i mean 36 times the torah
talks about the stranger
the point is it's trying to educate
people
away from their natural inclination
towards distrusting and disliking the
other and it's a lot of work that's
really difficult to do but if you have
the
the if you have
uh a tribal passion and not a universal
ethic then you're in trouble
well
the jewish tribe is a very strong tribe
so how do you make sense of this
mention of the stranger versus the power
of the tribe which is the whole point
not the point but right the mechanism of
transition propagates the trial so it's
both i mean the torah does not start
with
jews it starts with adam and eve that's
a way of saying
yeah this is going to be a story about a
people but understand that prior to a
kind of people there are people i like
i'm a human being before i'm a jew
um
and in fact the jewish new year you know
the muslim new year starts with
muhammad's
journey and the christian new year
starts with jesus birth the jewish new
year starts with the creation of the
world
because the idea is yes this is a
particularist tradition but it makes a
universal statement which is
all of humanity is a child
are in the image of god are children of
god
i think that the idea of judaism was
to try to exemplify a certain way of
making that statement over and over
again and i want to say one other thing
about chosenness
that's very name droppy but when i tell
you how i got there it won't be his name
droppy
so
my brother is a professor at emory
and so is the dalai lama actually
teaches at emory although he no longer
does because he's too old to go to emery
but for many years taught at emory and
so
my brother brought us he's the head of
the bi of the ethics center at emory
he's a bioethicist so he brought a bunch
of students to dharamsala to meet with
the dalai lama so i went to india i was
on sabbatical then anyway i met my
brother there and and we had a chance to
meet with a dalai lama
okay that was the name drop so we're
sitting in the ark before he speaks to
the students he was speaking to us but
not because i just wanted to make it
clear not because he said oh i got to
talk to that rabbi just we just happened
to be
i happen to glom along with my brother
we sit down the first thing he says is
he points at me and says what's this
about the chosen people anyway
so and he had by the way and he had
asked that i give a lecture which i did
later to to them to his monks about how
jews survived in the diaspora so it's
not like he doesn't know about judy he
knows a lot about it but he says right
away with so i said yes jews believe
that they were chosen for a certain
mission in this world
but that doesn't mean other people
weren't chosen for other sorts of things
they certainly i mean seems to me that
other people believe they're chosen for
things too he burst out laughing and
said yeah we also think we're chosen
so i think
no from a jewish perspective
uh you're chosen for a thing right
uh
but that doesn't make you better no the
only place where the bettors came in
honestly if i'm gonna historically if
i'm gonna be honest was not with the
idea
that you but it was when jews were
small persecuted
the way that you take this sort of
psychic revenge is by saying no we're
better than our persecutors even you
know yeah um but the idea is yeah
different people have different missions
which is
i mean like there was a jewish
philosopher franz rosenschweig who used
to say he didn't know very much about
islam he used to say judaism is the sun
and christianity was the rays of the sun
like judaism introduced the idea of god
and christianity brought it to the world
can you speak to this
difference what is the difference and
similarities between judaism
christianity and islam
the religious family part is different
and the the greatest difference which i
talked about in the eric weinstein
podcast is that
islam and judaism are more similar in a
lot of ways than judaism and
christianity
and the reason that that is so
is
christianity in its core is not a
religion of law
the reason it's not a religion of law is
because it grew up in the roman empire
so law was taken care of
i mean jesus didn't have to create civil
law because you had roman law
muhammad and moses created a religion in
the desert where there was no law
so you have to create a religion of law
otherwise
you have anarchy
and that's why in a lot of ways like
there was never a separation of church
and state in islam or judaism that was a
gift that christianity gave the world
and it could do it because of render
unto caesar what is caesar's but when
moses came along there was no caesar
when muhammad came along there was no
caesar so historically
the traditions shaped differently
but all three of them
have this core
i think the single most
important
statement and insight in all of human
history which is that every human being
is in the image of god
and if you believe if you really believe
that that's a transformative belief
so that means
you should love
you know thy neighbor as myself which
comes from leviticus comes straight from
the torah
so
i don't know if if you know i've been
chatting with omar assalam on i don't
know if you know who that is he's an
imam and dallas uh great guy i enjoy
his interfaith dialogues that he engages
in
and uh do you ever do that kind of talk
with christians with muslims yes often
often um i mean i do whenever i at least
listen to them
in the context of these kinds of
conversations there's so much love and
humor
and um
empathy and appreciation and also
ability to make fun of the quirks
of the
little of one's own on one's own
communities you know like so it's not
you know necessarily the depths of the
details of the traditions but you know
these are communities and they're full
of people and they're full of
weird people because we're all weird and
so you there is
very particular flavors of weirdness
that emerge and they can make fun of
them um and then in that way they can
talk about some like beautiful ideas so
i mean i don't know do you engage in
these kinds of things what would you
learn from them um so one of the things
i learned is exactly what you said that
personalities that you think are unique
to your own community in fact they exist
in all sorts of communities and
religious communities in particular draw
i think some interesting personalities
um and also that the
especially as clergy some of the
pressures that you feel
are shared
um
and
and it's weird again it has to do with
that tribal association there's almost
like there's an understanding among
clergy because they have similar
stray and
it's a strange role in the following way
um
it's one that you never escape
that is
you're not you're you're not my lawyer
at the supermarket but you are my rabbi
at the supermarket i mean it doesn't
matter
why you're there
that's not an escapeable role and every
religious leader is aware of that
um
that strange assumption of
of stepping into something that you can
never step out of
but you're also
the source where people go to
to think about the deepest question of
our lives and our our universe and so
that's some heavy you know when people
are suffering they look to you for
answers
i mean every privilege comes with a cost
of one kind or another the reason you
get to be in that role is exactly
because you get the privilege of being
there at crucial moments in people's
lives i mean the fact that i get to
marry people and get to
give eulogies for people and
come to the hospital at that's
it's inexpressible i have this joke with
uh people that i know that like when i'm
sitting on the couch and it's saturday
night i don't want to get up and go to a
wedding i really don't i want to sit
there and watch netflix like everybody
else
but when i'm actually doing the wedding
i always love it always always always um
and
and the reason is that i don't think i
mean yes people go to you for answers in
in calmer conversations like if you ask
me now like what's my theory of why god
allows evil i could give you a
conversation about it
but they really go for presence and
comfort not really for answers when
someone's suffering an answer doesn't
doesn't make them unsuffer
you know it's just they want to know
they're not alone yeah to be heard and
just to feel things in silence together
yeah
in terms of uh
weddings and marriage what's the role of
that hole i'm just i need to take some
notes here what's what's
rabbi the role of marriage in in human
existence
it is first of all to teach you
how to care for someone unlike you which
could be anyone you marry
um
and i think it's to create a home and a
family so there's a commitment to it so
care for a long time right exactly and
also
when when couples come to me and they
say we don't need to be married because
it really won't change how we think
about ourselves in our relationship i
said and that's true it might not but it
will change how everyone else looks at
you yeah and because it changes how
everyone else looks at you it changes
you because it's one thing to say this
is my partner it's another thing to say
this is my husband
you say this is my husband that means
we've made a real commitment to this
yeah
what do you um do do you worry that
there's a dissolution of that as well in
terms of um
how you know as as religion dissipates
like it it uh loosens its hold on
society loosens its impact in society do
you worry about that i worry about it um
i do think that it is possible
that we're going rather than a
dissolution we're going through a
transition
that is different kinds of families and
different configurations of families
that is i see some of that but i also do
see uh it's less a dissolution of
marriage than it is of the idea of
commitment
and i'll give you like a simple example
when i was growing up
a player on a sports team was always on
that team
and you rooted for the team because you
knew the players for 20 years
now there are very good reasons starting
with kurt flood why why people got free
agency and they can move around and it's
better for the players i understand all
that and i am not
i'm not saying oh they should continue
but
just like people move jobs and they move
sports teams and they change careers and
they change partners
and there is uh
there is a diminishment of the
commitment to commitment
that i actually think has serious
societal consequences and that that i am
worried about yeah there's a there's a
cost to that
i don't know what it is about commitment
that's beautiful
like through because like some of the
deepest friendships i have is when we've
gone through some together yeah and
so like
the hard times going through hard times
together
especially when the hard times are
between the two of you
that that if i mean that's always a risk
but if it if you can find a way through
that can bond you stronger that's the
fascinating thing about human relations
there's no question and even if it
doesn't keep you forever
you still have a connection that doesn't
that exists that so i can give you one
you said what is it about commitment
i'll give you one
i think beautiful answer someone once
asked
uh rabbi sullivan who is a great thinker
and leader in the
orthodox community in the 20th century
they said you know i go from religion to
religion i just take what i think is
beautiful in it
and his answer was
that you're treating religion like a
nomad he said nomads go from place to
place and they eat what they want and
they move on he says farmers stay in one
place the difference is farmers make
things grow
and i think that that's true also when
you think about the relationships you
have things have grown out of the
relationships that you've invested in
that you farmed basically
that can't exist in fly-by-night
relationships
can you talk about can we talk about
the torah
yes what is it and uh is it the literal
word of god
um easy questions yeah uh well
the torah is the five books of moses
written in hebrew um i
like most i think modern rabbis
non-orthodox or non-literalist rabbis
will tell you that it's a product of
human beings
and i believe that they are
inspired by god but it's clear to me
that it's a human product and i think
that people who study modern biblical
criticism it's really hard to study
modern modern
criticism it gives a wrong impression i
would say modern scholarship on the
bible and not appreciate the fact
that it it even has levels of language i
mean it's just like if you read today
um
somebody
writing like shakespeare you would say
this isn't it's it's like english is
developed it's different it's not the
english we speak today and if you study
the bible and you know hebrew well
enough you even see that this was
written over hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of years
um
it is a holy book and i like the idea
that it is what what you say in hebrew
is torah hashem and not to rami sinai
that is the torah is from heaven but
it's not from sinai
so it has its origin beyond us
but it has things in it that i think and
this is one of the
one of the things that was
a huge controversy at my congregation
when i started to do same-sex marriages
there are some people who try to argue
that the the torah does not forbid them
whether it does or not it seems to me we
understand things that
were not understood in the ancient world
about gender and sexuality and so so you
think that
in the scripture in the words
you can find the kind of spirit that
supports the idea of gay marriage well
that's yes that's my my argument is that
you criticize the torah by the torah
that is it gives you
the understanding
that you use
to evaluate its own claims
um
and and i think that judaism by the way
has always done that because it's clear
that there are things in the torah that
the rabbis
changed altered grew expanded diminished
um i think that's what it is to be part
of a living tradition yeah you wrote in
your book why faith matters
quote walt whitman wrote that in order
for there to be a great books there must
be great readers for a book to remain
powerful throughout generations it
cannot have a single meaning scripture
like great poetry is not reducible to
other words that is one cannot
paraphrase paraphrase it and capture the
totality of its meaning
so
how the heck do you capture the meaning
of the words in scripture is it an
ongoing process to the centuries yes
that's exactly so it's a continual
conversation
of
sages scholars readers
strugglers seekers
mystics visionaries all of them making a
contribution i mean
i write a weekly torah column for the
jerusalem post now
what is there left to say
but every week what i do is i start
opening books and seeing what people say
and it starts to percolate and you
realize that you're entering this
conversation that's been going on for
thousands of years with with remarkable
minds and it
and
it's constantly fertile in new insights
so yes
that's what it is to be part of a
tradition yeah why do people keep uh
writing love poems you should have
figured out
right
by this point already i use the analogy
sometimes of diet books if any diet
worked there would be one book
there'd be one book and you'd be done
you mentioned
this fascinating story that your party
you were part of several controversies
in your life
i've had a