First Class (May 7)

After breakfast (I had egg white and cheese sandwich on wheat with some veggies and then some kugel) I prayed a little Shacaris (the morning prayer). We had 3 1 hour lectures. The first was given by Rabbi Beryl Gershenfeld. He started his lecture by asking what the single most important foundation or verse of the torah is. The answer is “The Torah which Moshe commanded us is the heritage of the congregation of Jacob.” There are some important parts of this verse that must be considered; first is the idea of inheritance. When someone inherits something, it allows them to lead a different life. If I inherit 25 million dollars I could quit school and travel until I die. The inheritance of the Torah allows Jews to live more freely as it gives us the moral wisdoms without having to spend energy (or work) to find them (gain money). It must be understood that this inheritance is for all Jews everywhere and during any time period. We must take advantage of it. After all, what good is 25 million dollars if we let it sit in the bank and never spend it? Of course, this assumes that the torah is a divine document that does indeed hold moral truths, a topic we did not discuss in this lecture.

By having the term “us” in the verse, it means that we must follow the torah for ourselves, not for God. By following the torah, we can live better lives. He used the example of Kobe Bryant committing adultery, and possibly rape, saying Kobe must not be happy. Obviously, I do not agree with him 100% without seeing something that shows Kobe is actually unhappy. The rabbi used a lot of assumptions. When I asked him how we know Kobe is not happy he just said something like “trust me.” I was very unsatisfied with the answer.

Furthermore, the Torah gives us 3 things that were not in the world prior to it: 1. Gave humans radical free will 2. A strive to fix our morals and 3. stresses literacy. To prove the first point he showed how Greeks and Babylonians believed that we were puppets of the Gods or that life was a natural circle we had no control over. The 2^nd point he argued by referencing Bill Clinton’s, Barack Obama’s, and John McCain’s biographies by stating that they each had rough childhoods which lead them to yearning to fix the world (I hope all 3 get caugh in a scandal and end up in prison, but that’s just me). He argued the 3^rd point with my favorite part of the lecture: That Judaism is the only religion which has an obligation to learn daily.

The 2^nd speaker was Tom Steinberg who works for the well known Tish family in New York. His speech was much less interesting to me than the former. Out of his speech I got the following: That we have two parts of our heart, the urge to do great things and the urge to do evil. The part of the heart that urges you to do bad gets you by saying to yourself “Do something little for me and I will do something good for you.” For example, take a small bite of the cake and I you will feel happy. Then take another small bite, etc. And before you know it, the entire cake is gone. This part of your heart adds insult to injury then chastising you for lacking the self discipline necessary to resist the cake. This is the part of the mind that leads to greed and always wanting more, and not letting yourself become content. As I think about it, I suppose this speaker was also meaningful as much can learned from his metaphors. He also noted that time is a non renewable resource, so we must use it wisely. And, using it wisely is opposing illusions. Take that as you wish, but I took it as meaning we should ignore fake pleasures such as sports, video games, TV shows etc. and focus on what is real.

Our last speaker is a psychiatrist or psychologist, I actually forgot (is there a difference anyways?), named Dr. Ephraim Becker. He basically talked about Kantian theory, acting from duty and not from selfish motives, and never using someone as a means to an ends. That we should train ourselves, through practice, to constrict ourselves and allow others to exist. This is what he said God does; constricts himself in order to let us exist, since in Judaism everything is God, we are just one substance. And God, being almighty as he is, allows us to exist by constricting himself. Dr. Becker urged us to stop acting as selfish children work towards becoming ideal by emulating God’s attributes, i.e: thinking of others. As children we are very selfish and think of ourselves, and as we become adults we should work on thinking of others.

While this sounds all nice and fuzzy, it is very controversial. As he admits, we are working against nature in this circumstance. Gravity is pulling us towards our real or infant urges, and we must work against that force to become godlier. And this, according to him, is an emotionally healthy adult; someone who fights their childish urges and follows God’s image. But many would argue that we should embrace our natural instincts, and we are only healthy when we allow nature to control us, and do not try to act against her laws. Dr. Becker did not offer any insight on this, and my coffee was fading off by this time of the morning. While I want to agree with him, I am not sure if I can. I always preferred the line of thinking that it is in our best selfish interests to help others because helping others make me happy; not trying to help others just for the sake of helping them. His line of thinking of course similar to Kant’s motive from duty, as our action is only moral if we our acting from altruistic duties. Although, I do agree with the doctor that we should only treat other humans as an ends and respect them for who they are in themselves and not what their purpose to ourselves is. I.E.: I respect Mike as a person, not because he provides me service “X.”