B (4:09)

Personally, I'm fine, nationally speaking. We have a lot of work to do, but we are moving in the right direction.

A (4:19)

We are moving in the right direction. Yeah. So first of all, we're going to have you back to talk politics and geopolitics because the Knesset this past week passed a law slightly changing the powers of the rabbinical courts. The questions of religion state matter to me very much, and you are one of the central figures in this country on these issues. But we are not doing that today,

B (4:41)

even though next time, another opportunity, we'll do that. Not now.

A (4:46)

Even though it's in our blood and it's what we want to do. But actually Torah's study is more urgent, just like the thing that's I want

B (4:56)

to share with you an anecdote from this week. I came to visit Netanyahu. I was asked to speak there and one of the people that was in the synagogue attending that meeting raised his finger and he asked, rabbi, how could we Celebrate freedom in Pesach. Why we will be running between the shelters and the safe zones and the living room. Is this considered to be freedom? That was his question. And I think that's the most important topic that today millions of Israelis are asking themselves. You know, today when we are recording that episode, we ran to the shelters more than 10 times. And we don't know what will happen next week, but we assume that we have no reason to think that it will be much different. And the question is, how could we celebrate the freedom that Passover represents under these circumstances?

A (6:04)

Khabiv so you. You write various columns in various places. You recently wrote one for the Tsohar newsletter in which you. You pointed out that the Seder begins with a passage. Halachma, Anya, this is the bread of our torment or affliction. And the passage reads, now we are here, but next year we will be in the land of Israel. This year we are slaves. Next year may we be free. The Seder begins with every Jew who participates in the Seder saying, right now we are not in the land of Israel, but next year we will be. Right now we are slaves, but next year we will be free. And I'd like to start by diving into that, because the Seder is a strange animal. It is full of contradictions. We are commanded in times of great freedom and prosperity and happiness to say we are slaves and Jews in the middle of the Holocaust. This is something you have written about. And under the boot of tyrannical extremists in North Africa and during the massacres along the Rhine river in the Crusades, we're commanded to say we are now free men and to celebrate as if they are free. What is this Pesach? What is this Pesach in which you have to be a slave and you have to be free? You are told that you must say. We literally have to express and say both of these things and all at once. Are we free? Are we slaves when we are celebrating our freedom and have to run to the bomb shelter because a ballistic missile is coming in? What are we? How do you teach us what this all means? How can there be these contradictions?

B (7:53)

I think that's the essence of the story of that night. And I think that that's the essence of the Jewish people. First of all, historically speaking, we have to admit that since the exodus from Egypt, we are counting around three and a half, 3.3 thousand years. Most of these years, we did not have independence. We were running all over the world. We were in Europe, we were in Africa, we are in America. We were in so many places, most of them, most of the years of our national Biography, we were not slaves literally, but we were under other sovereignties. We did not have any independence. Less than thousand years in the First Temple and a part of the Second Temple, we had our own independence. And still whenever we come to Passover, we say this is the time of our freedom. What do you mean it's your freedom? You are slaves. You were slaves in Spain. We are slaves in North Africa and other places. How could we say that we are free when we don't have our own sovereignty? But if to be more. To raise the issue that you just mentioned, to be more accurate, it's not only that, that on one end, in the essence, the myth of the story of Pasavet, what we will say during the night is how we are praising God and we thank God for redeeming us from the slavery in Egypt. But in the beginning of this ceremony, of this ritual, we will say, we will declare now we are slaves. We hope to be free next year. So what's going on? We thank for the freedom or we are still slaves. And I think that that's one of the most important ideas of judaism. What happened 3.3 thousand years ago is the declaration of God and our acceptance that every human being doesn't matter, whether he's a Jew or a Gentile. Every human being deserves to be free. We are not, we should not be under the masters of the kings or idols or priests. We should be and we should feel free people. Every human being deserves, is entitled to feel free and to have and to enjoy the freedom of way of thinking, the freedom of joy, the freedom of work, the freedom of faith. That's our belief from day one of our existence. That does not mean at all that practically we will be able to express our freedom politically. Because sometimes we will be under the Romes and under the Babylons, under other empires that controlled this area, the land of Israel. But basically we understand that we deserve freedom and we will never allow anybody to try to destroy ourselves, to feel that we have the right to think we have the right of faith and other things. And I used in this article a story of Nathan Sharansky that was a prisoner in the former Soviet Union. And he describes in one of his books how when he was kept in prison and he was not allowed to read Hebrew, he was not allowed to open the Bible and to read in the Bible. And on the surface it seemed to be that he is the prisoner and the one that gives the orders. He is free. And one day, he says to the commander of that prison, he says to him, you know, I'm free, and you are a slave, because you know that I am right. You know that you should give me the freedom to learn, the freedom to think. But you are afraid. You are afraid for your job. You are afraid for your life from the KGB and other officers that might take your life. I am the free man, although I'm here in that cell, in that prison, and you are a slave. And I think that basically that's the story. We are free, even though sometimes the technical circumstances might be confused, might confuse us, and to think that we are slaves. And, you know, I opened. I started the story with. I visited Netanya, and then somebody raised his finger, an immigrant from France that came just recently. And he said to me, you know, Rav Stav, I want you to know that when I run to the bomb shelter, I tell my kids, you know what? That's freedom. We should be so proud and so happy that we have shelters. Our ancestors did not have shelters. They did not have air force. They did not have the idf. They. They did not have the privilege to defend themselves. And we here today in Israel, we have the privilege to fight. We have the privilege to defend ourselves, and we have the privilege to run to the bomb shelters. I will run to the shelter, and I will tell my kids, we are so proud to be free. It's true that it's not comfortable, it's not convenient, but freedom doesn't mean convenience. And I want to add one more Hasidic story from one of the very famous rabbis that was in one of the ghettos, in one of the holidays, and he started to dance about the happiness of the joy of celebrating the holiday. And one of the Is Hasidim, one of the people that was a part of his group asks him, what are you celebrating? How could you feel free when we are murdered, when we are suffering, when we are persecuted? And he said to him, and he looks to him with his eyes, and he says to him, suppose you would have gotten now a proposal from God. You have the right to choose between to be the murderer or to be the one that is murdered. What do you want to be? Do you want to stick? Do you want to devote yourself to your values? Or do you want to be a murderer? We are so happy that we belong to that movement in humanity that wants to belong to the good side of history, that is ready to suffer, ready to be murdered, because we all believe in these values. Of freedom, of morality, values that let us and are a part of the structure of a society that wants to be free and believes in freedom.

A (15:29)

There was I, I, I was once Nathan Sharansky's spokesman for a couple of years, and he would tell this story where he, he said, you know, he was. There was a KGB officer, he, who was interrogating him. And he told a joke, and it was a joke. There's a famous joke about, I think it's about Khrushchev, where the Soviets decide to beat the America. They can't beat the Americans to the moon, but they're going to beat the Americans to the sun. And Khrushchev is told, we can't go to the sun. The sun is boiling hot. You can't land on the sun. And he says, aha, we're going to go in the nighttime. And it was a joke about the, you know, the idiocy of the Soviet leadership. So he laughs. And of course, the KGB guard can't laugh. You're not allowed to laugh at Khrushchev in the middle of a KGB compound. And then Sharansky says to him, so which of us is in prison? I can laugh at anything I want. You can't. You stand there.

B (16:24)

By the way, the same idea of Natan Sharansky. I heard personally from Yuli Edelstein, the former chairman of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

A (16:36)

It was also a dissident.

B (16:37)

It was also a dissident. He was in prison, and he told me that they prohibited him from studying Hebrew. And he told me the same story, the same idea of feeling free in a society of people that on the surface, look, seem to be free, but actually are afraid of themselves. And they're never happy with themselves because. Because they know deep, deep in the hearts what's the truth and who is free and who is not.

A (17:10)

Right. Being powerful is not always being free. And then sometimes, like running to the shelter, there's the suffering of the vulnerable, and then there's the suffering of people with agency who have to navigate a difficult world, but they have the ability to shape that world, and that's what those bomb shelters are. So we are profoundly free. It is our we. You know, my frustrations with the Israeli government not to get political are that it doesn't make certain choices that we can make that could give us better outcomes. Right? That is freedom. That is agency. That is the ability to shape our world.

B (17:50)

I would add one more, one part to what you said. You're so right that I really believe. I know that Religious people usually do not speak this way. But I really believe that we are privileged to live in a state that is more independent and lives more Jewish life and more prosperity than any Jewish country in the history of the Jewish people, including, including the time of King David, maybe not the time of King Solomon, but since King Solomon. I think we are privileged to live in such an amazing era of Jewish history in the state of Israel. But my point was not about our independent. Here, here it's very clear to see that we are free. But even during the time that we were in the exile, in the diaspora, and even people that today are not living in Israel, they live in Russia or they live in Ukraine in other places. I think the more people feel that they are connected to the values of our history, which will lead to the values of our future, the more they will be free.

A (19:04)

You write about remembering slavery as a tool for freedom, slavery, and I think you draw this from Levkook. Slavery not only makes freedom precious. You have to go into the darkness to come out into the light and to really grasp and understand the light. But slavery also gives us the tools to use freedom properly. If we forget the world before the good and the freedom that we have, if we forget slavery, then we won't understand freedom and we won't use freedom and we won't defend freedom and we will lose freedom. That's a, that's. That to me is a very powerful lesson. Can you tell us about that? About Rav Kuk's idea of the importance of two things. One slavery and another one you've written about, also idolatry. What is that all about?

B (19:56)

Yeah, I would like to share two stories. One story in one of my trips. I guess you fly quite often to the diaspora. I don't fly that often, but sometimes I do. And one of my trips I arrived to an office of a billionaire in Australia. And in the middle of the beautiful office, I see a pillar made of glass. And in that, inside that pillar I see a bag, a small bag which was torn to pieces, almost a very, very old bag. And I asked him, what is that? It was so ugly. And he said to me, look, you know who I am and what I'm standing for and how good I'm important and what are my achievements. That's the bag that I carried with me when I escaped from my parents home, when the Nazis arrived to that. To our town in Poland. And that bag was with me for the all six years. And when I became what I became, I decided to myself that this will Be always in front of my eyes when I'm sitting in the big office, in the big table doing business of millions of dollars. I will always remember where I came from. And one of the ideas of beginning with disgrace and ending with praise, which is one of the ideas of the. The way the story of Passover should be told is that when we succeed, we should always remember what happened before, because what happened before could happen after as well. When we are now, let's say we'll take it as an example now, when we are now having, thank God, success with our war in Iran and not yet finishing the work, but hoping to finish the work in Iran and in Lebanon. We should always remember October 7th. We should never be so proud of ourselves. Wow. Our soldiers and our air force and our intelligence.

A (22:09)

You mean our weakness.

B (22:10)

We should always remember our failures. We should never be too proud of ourselves because we should always know that if somebody is so arrogant and somebody thinks that he's the best, somewhere there is somebody that is looking after you and trying to kill us and trying to destroy us and don't. So should always remember the mistakes and the failures. That's one idea. Yeah.

A (22:38)

What are we supposed to take away, for example, at the Seder? This is an idea,

B (22:44)

right?

A (22:45)

Starts with disgrace or how gnut would be also critique or disdain and ends with. With praise. So, and this is a basic sort of Talmudic principle, and the Seder is built for it. In other words, throughout the Seder, we remember not just the miraculous, the divine, the chosenness, all the things that you can, you know, strut around and be proud of. That's absolutely part of the redemption story. But it begins in the not just in slavery, not just in humiliation, not just in suffering. It begins in the failures and weaknesses and the deepest failure that you could possibly accuse someone of in the Torah, which is idolatry. And we are told by Chazal, in the Talmud, we are told by the sages, our ancestors, when they were slaves in Egypt, it wasn't just that bad things were done to them, humiliations were done. They themselves fell.

B (23:44)

I'll come to it in a minute. That's true. You know, what is the lesson that

A (23:48)

we walk away with here?

B (23:50)

In addition to the comment that you have made now? You know, it's very interesting. The Bible in the book of Exodus, that describes the redemption, the redeeming of the Jewish people from Egypt does not mention the fact that they were worshiping idols. That's said by the rabbis, by the sages, and it's also hinted by the Prophet Yechezkel, but it's not written in the story itself. And the question is, why do you tell us the failures and the weaknesses and the sins of our ancestors? Why is that important? And Rav Cook gives us two ideas, and I will one, as I said, I promised a story, another story, but now I'll refer to the idea without a story. Ravkook says we should always know that weaknesses, even sins, are a part of the praise, are a part of the story. We have to realize that sometimes in order to be to worship God, we need to experience the failure of worshiping idols. Why is that so necessary? Because the people that worship idols, it's true that the idols were false, that the idols are not true, they did not create the world and they don't have responsibility to nothing. But what is the point of truth in worshiping idols? The idea is that people look for intimacy with their relationship with God. People don't want just to know intellectually that God exists. They want to feel that they could interact with him. They could ask him, they could be angry at him, they could love him, they could feel relationship with him. In order to do that, the people that worship idols taught us that lesson that it's possible with interaction to God. So of course they were wrong and they were false with the thought that these idols were responsible for anything in the world. But the idea of learning from them is something that we should take with us when we worship God. And this idea is actually a part of the story of being free. Somebody that is a slave is afraid to learn from the other side. Chaviv, you know, our society is polarized and it's very difficult to find people that will justify the other side in some specific issues, despite the fact that I belong to that group. But I think in that point the other one is right, or vice versa, because people are very, very much bounded to the groups where they belong to. And they are afraid to say, well, we learned something from the other side. When the rabbis taught us we should begin with the disgrace or with the defamation of our ancestors and finish with praise. The idea is we have to learn from everybody. We can learn from the one that worship idols, we can learn from the one that is a slave. There's something which is good being slaves, because when we want freedom, but we have to stick to rules, we don't want to live in a society that will be a kind of anarchy, that everybody is doing whatever it wants and everybody could even kill one another and could could be addicted to drugs or to Alcohol or to other things. We want rules, but we want the rules to be established by us to guarantee our freedom and not rules that will make us slaves. So the idea that there is a need of a discipline, of obedience, that people will obey to rules, etc. Etc. Is important. And this is something we learn from the slavery. We don't want to be slaves of others. We don't want to be slaves of none of the rabbis, neither of the kings. We want to be slaves of God. Basically. We want to be slaves of our spirit, of our values. But in order to be free, we need to learn a bit from the slavery, a bit from the idols. But I wanted to share with you a story. There was a very, very anti Zionist rabbi that came to visit his people in Israel. And when I say anti Zionist, anti Zionist, it was against the establishing of the Jewish state, which today is perceived as something bizarre, unheard of. But in those times there were rabbis that. A few rabbis that were very much against the state of Israel. And he came to visit Israel, few days before he visits Israel, there were riots of his people against the state, against the police. And some of them cursed the policemen and told them, you are similar to the Nazis. It was a shock in the Israeli society. And they were put in prison for a few days. And then the Rebbe arrived to Israel. Arrived to Israel. And one of the leaders that went to prison wanted to be accepted by the Rebbe. When he came to visit him in his apartment and the Rebbe refused to accept him, he said, I don't want,

A (29:16)

I don't want to say the anti Zionist Rebbe refused to meet the anti Zionist Haredi protester who called the cop a Nazi.

B (29:23)

Exactly. And why he explained to his assistant, I don't want to accept him because he's a Zionist. And his adviser, his assistant thought that his rabbi is crazy, went out of his mind, lost his mind. Because what do you mean is Zionist is the biggest anti Zionist. He called the cops, he called them Nazis. So how could you say that he's Zionist? And the Rebbe said to him, you don't understand. If that guy would have thought that these Zionist people are really against us, he would never dare to call them Nazis. Did I dare to call the cops in Hungary or in Poland, A Jew would dare to call the police with a disgraced way. The only reason why he dared to do that is because he feels at home, he feels deep, deep in his heart is Zionist. Why do I share with you that story? Because what the idea is that people that Grew up in Israel. Do not understand what does it mean to be in exile? Do not understand what does it mean to live in Germany before the war, Forget the Holocaust before the war. What does it mean to live in Poland, in North Africa? They never felt at home there. They could never call a policeman in a name that would bring them right away to death or at least to prison for years here, they feel at home. But Rav Cook says, in order to understand what's freedom, you have to feel what does it mean to be in exile. In order to understand what does it mean to be in light, you have to feel darkness. You have to. You know, there is a museum in Israel that is called a Dialogue in Darkness in Tel Aviv. And the people go through. In this museum, they try to experience the feeling of people that, God forbid, were blind and others that are deaf. And it goes through. You go through that museum and you see nothing. And you have to imagine what goes with you for 20 minutes or for an hour. There are others that. That's their life story. And Rav Cook says, in order to understand how blessed we are, how gifted we are, you have to express a bit or to experience a bit the feeling of darkness, the feeling of what does it mean to be a slave? And that's why we have to mention it in the beginning of the story of Passover.

A (32:18)

So we are commanded to say we are slaves, even if we are Jews in the land of Israel, in the state of Israel, and because otherwise we will not grasp the value, the preciousness, the gift that those things are correct. And we are commanded also to know that there is great freedom even when we are in the throes of terrible danger, because freedom is an inner consciousness, as Sharansky taught us and as the sages taught us before him. And those are the two paradigms of Pesach. Before I let you go, I want to just add one question. We, you say Rav Kook says we learn from all. The bad can teach us about the good. We learn from idolaters, about the intimate relationship with God. Otherwise, a relationship with God is just a philosophical construct. So I have Rav Stav here on the podcast. I am very much. When I went to study Judaism in Hebrew University, I very much gravitated towards Rambam. My God is entirely a philosophical construct, and there's a tremendous amount of love there and experience there, but it isn't intimate. It is the structure and nature of being in the universe. I mean, once you figure that there might be purpose to being, it's you suddenly realize that every atom and every neutron in your body and all the trillion cells, and there is an intimacy to the great philosophical knowledge as well. But one of the things that always bothered me is that Rambam, the great philosopher rabbi, doesn't ever really describe his religious experience. We have so many mystics and so many Kabbalists and Rambam who debates Rambam in a thousand ways and is much more mystical. But Rambam is still the codifier of Jewish law and deeply philosophical in debates with all the Muslim philosophers around him. And the name Aristotle appears in the Guide to the Perplexed, I don't know how many times. And we don't know his religious experience. What is that bridge? What is the intimacy of idolatry that a philosopher rabbi like Maimonides or his last pathetic of his students like me and many people like me. Where do you find that intimacy if you are in the philosophical camp?

B (34:53)

Well, first of all, I disagree that the Ramam does not describe his own experience. You are right that he's not writing this in the Teacher of Perplex and not in the Mishneh Torah, in the Book of the Halachot, of the Regulations. You are right. But he describes in a few of his letters, especially when he describes his journey to Egypt, he describes his prayers to God, he describes the loss of his brother and his decision as a result of that. You can learn from his letters a bit about his intimacy with God and his relationship with God, which you don't see in the Teacher of Perplex and in other books. So that's just to respond directly to your comment, but now coming to the main question that you raised is, I think that the most important thing that we learn from my managers is that basically God wants to see the way we behave, with the way we implement our values, the way we behave in society. The Torah was meant to teach us how to make society better, better in all meaning of the word better, physically, mentally, spiritually, morally, et cetera, et cetera. And I believe that saying that that means that, and that's the way the Rambam ends. Is the Teacher of baplex that after he speaks about the level of intellectuals, then he says, but basically, eventually you have to translate and to implement all the ideas to the way you look at your friend, to the way you look to the convert, to the way you look to other human beings, the way we will translate our ideas to practical behavior with our spouses, with our kids, with our parents. That's the intimacy that eventually will show that our Ideas are not just philosophical ideas, but also something that is translated to make us a. You know, there's a very famous story about a professor of morality that was caught in not behavior, not proper behavior. And he was asked, how do you do that? And he said, if I would a professor of mathematics or geometry, should I look like a triangle or like a circle? So the fact that I'm teaching moral values doesn't mean that I have to be moral. So the Rama says, no, that's not true. It's not true. If you want to be intellectual, spiritually intellectual, that means that it will be translated to practical behavior that fits to the values you educate for. Educate yourself and you educate others. And by the way, if we wrap it up with the story of Pesach, you know that Rabbi Sacks best, his memory used to say, lord, Rabbi Sachs used to say that. It's something which is really amazing. You know, when Moshe, when Moses is talking to the Jewish people 15 days before the redemption from Egypt, he tells them what's going to happen. And he tells them to prepare themselves, because that night they're going to leave Egypt. And then he dedicates about six or eight verses. And then when you will come to the land of Israel in a few years, or whenever you're coming, your kids will ask you, what's your story? What is that about? What is that? Passover? And Rabbi Sacks raised the point, are you kidding? Is that what you are talking now? When we are now dealing with leaving Egypt? We are all scared what's going to happen to us? And you're telling us, what should we say to our children 20 years from now on? 50 years. And Rabbi Sack says, you know, when Avraham Avinu, when Abraham was chosen as the first ancestor of the Jewish people, the reason why he was chosen to be the father, the ancestor of us, is because I know him, the God says in the book of creation. I know I love Abraham because I know he will command his descendants to preserve, to observe the way of justice and law. That's the story. The story is the values that we implement in our lives. And the story is the fact that we deliver this story from father, from parents to the children, from every generation, to the next generation. And that's our challenge and that's our mission. And that's what Passover is about.

A (39:59)

Implementation is the intimacy. Ravstav, thank you so much.

B (40:10)

To you, Chag. Same to all the human beings all over the world. You know, Rav Cook says that Pesach is not only a Jewish holiday. And Rav Cook says that the redemption of the Jewish people from Egypt will be forever the spring from humanity. And this idea of Rav Cook was actually practically translated by the founders of the American people in the 18th century. The quotations from verses in the book of Exodus that describe the necessity and the not only the necessity, but the fact that all human beings deserve freedom was adopted by the founders of the United States of America and actually later on by the United Nations.

A (41:09)

It's in the story, I have to add, just because it was my bar mitzvah portion, where we are told kedushim tihiyu, be holy, but we are not told you are holy. Mazel tov, you're done here. We're told no. There is a commandment be holy implement. And the sages attach to it a reading from the prophet Amos, chapter eight or nine, where Amos says about the Exodus from Egypt. He says, you're not so special. I have brought you the people of Israel out of Egypt. And I think it's Aram I brought out of Kaftal. And he listened to it plishtim. He lists there other redemptions. And it is explicitly explained that you. And this is also something that Abdul Banel writes, the great Spanish sage writes about this parsha and what this means. Implementation. Holiness is a thing you do. It is not a status conferred upon you from without. And that is. That is certainly the goal of Pesach. We are not special because we were redeemed. We are special because redemption itself is something that we strive for. And anyone who strives for it is part of that. Thank you so much.

B (42:25)

Thank you.

A (42:26)

Thanks, Amir.