Ep. 189 - Rabbi Shai Held: Judaism is About Love” pt. 2

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[00:01:50] Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed the first part of the conversation last week with Rabbi Held.

[00:01:54] If you haven't listened to that part first hit pause on this one go back and listen to part 1 first.

[00:01:58] If you've already heard it then welcome to part 2.

[00:02:02] Rabbi Held is a philosopher, theologian and Bible scholar.

[00:02:05] He's also president and dean at the Hadar Institute.

[00:02:08] He received the prestigious Covenant Award for excellence in Jewish education

[00:02:12] and has been named multiple times by Newsweek as one of the 50 most influential rabbis in America

[00:02:17] and by the Jewish Daily Forward as one of the 50 most prominent Jews in the world.

[00:02:22] Rabbi Held is the author of Abraham Jewish Heschel, The Call of Transcendence,

[00:02:26] The Heart of Torah and of course the brand new book Judaism is About Love.

[00:02:31] And he is also the host of Hadar's newest podcast, Answers with Held.

[00:02:35] So check that out and enjoy part 2.

[00:02:39] And so without further ado here's part 2 with Rabbi Shai Freakin Held.

[00:02:44] We built a church on certainty that fears everything against it.

[00:03:02] With a refugee song.

[00:03:05] That's really interesting. So I like Cammin that's not in a bow.

[00:03:11] Yeah, yeah I completely agree.

[00:03:13] I think again new revelations over time I think is one of the beautiful things about reading these texts.

[00:03:22] One of the things you talk about that I think is really interesting too is love of enemy and how that is inherently difficult for most of us.

[00:03:33] And so first of all, how do we define enemy?

[00:03:38] And secondly what is your view on the love of enemy?

[00:03:44] Yeah well here it's probably useful to say in the context of a rabbi on a Christian podcast that this is often presented I think in a somewhat simplistic way.

[00:03:56] In a way that simplifies both Judaism and Christianity as Christianity believes in love of enemies whereas Judaism believes in something else you can fill in your blank.

[00:04:05] Defend yourself, don't be naive, whatever it might be.

[00:04:09] And two of the things that I learned one of which will be obvious to you but wasn't really obvious to me when I started out is that although almost any Christian ethicist will agree that love of enemies is at the heart of Jesus' teaching.

[00:04:22] Once you get to the next question what does Jesus mean by that?

[00:04:25] We're off to the races and people are disagreeing about everything.

[00:04:28] I mean is it primarily talking to the interpersonal sphere or does it apply to the political as well?

[00:04:36] If it applies to the political do I have to be a pacifist or on the contrary is pacifism morally irresponsible?

[00:04:41] I mean we could go on and on and on.

[00:04:44] And I found that in Jewish sources a lot of what Christians tend to talk about in the context of love of enemies is sort of amply attested in Jewish tradition as well.

[00:04:55] So just to take two examples kind of off the top of my head here you know one is the ethos of not retaliating.

[00:05:03] Right? Jews conclude the Amida prayer, the central prayer of Jewish daily liturgy three times a day by praying may my soul be silent in the face of those who curse me.

[00:05:15] Right? The ethos of not retaliating.

[00:05:19] And the rabbis of the Talmud celebrate those who are insulted and managed to quell the impulse to insult in return.

[00:05:26] You know another example which goes back to the book of Proverbs and then gets amplified in the rabbinic tradition, the refusal of Schadenfreude.

[00:05:34] Right? When my enemies fall I'm not supposed to rejoice in that.

[00:05:38] I mean one of the most striking rabbinic images is that we don't recite the full psalms of praise on the last six days of Passover because we're not supposed to be fully joyous given that the Egyptians died.

[00:05:54] That's a quite audacious notion right?

[00:05:57] It's like you know an army that's coming to kill you dies on a limit your joy because after all they're God's creatures too.

[00:06:03] So you know so once we've established that then we know that the conversation about love of enemies is far more rich and complex than you know any kind of simplistic portrayal would suggest where I confess to being a little, I don't know if stuck is the right word but kind of like I've been puzzling over this for a long time.

[00:06:24] And I think I began my chapter on this by talking about this but I almost wish I had ended by talking about it which is I find it confusing sometimes that in both Jewish and Christian consideration of love of enemies we very rarely if ever stop to define what we mean by enemy.

[00:06:47] So you know that word can be used to mean so many different things. Do I mean someone at work I don't get along with. Do I mean someone I was in business with and I didn't like the way they managed the finances and I came to have questions about their ethics and we haven't spoken in years.

[00:07:01] Or do I mean Vladimir Putin or Saddam Hussein.

[00:07:04] It isn't totally obvious to me that everything that a religious tradition might say about the first two it would also say about the third.

[00:07:11] I understand the kind of radical readings of the Christian idea are that it would say that.

[00:07:18] But I you know I think that's where the really difficult discussions come in.

[00:07:22] I would say that one place where I think you know writ large the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition do tend to agree is I don't think you'll find any Jewish ethicists saying love of enemies is at the very core of Jewish ethics.

[00:07:38] Whereas you'll find Christians saying that about Christianity a lot.

[00:07:42] Now I think there's a couple of important additional factors to keep in mind here that complicate this discussion.

[00:07:50] One is that much of the discussion among Christians about love of enemies took place during times of Christian power.

[00:07:59] Whereas Jewish discussions took place during times of Jewish powerlessness.

[00:08:02] Now that's obviously not true about Jesus but it's true beginning with Constantine right and it's not surprising that cultures that have power might have different reflections on our relationship to enemies and cultures that are fighting for their survival.

[00:08:18] Right I mean Jews lived on or the perpetual threat of annihilation for a very long time.

[00:08:23] And then there's the really complicated piece that I think is important to say because I think you know interfaith conversation is not just about nice people getting together to be polite to each other.

[00:08:35] Right it's actually about talking about hard stuff and I think one of the things that has made love of enemies a topic that Jews often respond to with a great deal of skepticism is that Christians after all spent 2000 years preaching love of enemies.

[00:08:54] Defining Jews as their enemies and then murdering them.

[00:08:57] And so Jews sometimes sort of I think respond to Christians and say you know I kind of have a hard time taking you seriously.

[00:09:04] What do you mean love of enemies?

[00:09:06] Love of enemies you don't love your enemies.

[00:09:09] Have you heard of the Crusades?

[00:09:10] I mean you don't love enemies.

[00:09:11] Have you heard about you know Christians participating in the Holocaust?

[00:09:15] Right I mean so it's not I'm not I'm obviously hope it goes without saying I'm not trying to sort of tar all Christians are all of Christianity with this like dark brush.

[00:09:24] I just think it's it's important to recognize all the dimensions of why this conversation is so complex and pain laden for lack of a better way of putting it.

[00:09:37] Yeah I think I think that's completely a fair criticism because I was going to say even before you got into that section we may you know as Christians we may put that at the front and center but we don't do a very good job of it.

[00:09:50] You know especially you know at least during my lifetime at the very least not to even go into the historical you know moments where we you know use the Bible to you know excuse things like slavery and stuff like that.

[00:10:06] Like there's you know a long history of horrific moments where we do a terrible job of living that out or walking that out.

[00:10:14] Not to mention you know at the risk of stepping onto treacherous ground.

[00:10:18] I think that you know to love your enemies while considering yourself a culture warrior is somewhere between difficult and impossible.

[00:10:30] So you can't say with a straight face I don't think I love my enemies and walk around in a let's go Brandon t-shirt.

[00:10:37] I mean there's just something so perverse about that.

[00:10:42] And I think it's worth the wrestling with sort of why that is like you know in other words rather than just sort of condemning old there and their hypocrites that's not what I'm trying to say actually it's this is really very difficult there's

[00:10:53] something in human nature that makes it.

[00:10:55] I don't know almost impossible that's not a reason to write it off but it may be a reason to really wrestle with what would it take to actually love my enemies.

[00:11:05] You know it's funny I we've talked about this on the podcast before too and I had a very hard time specifically during the elections and not not to like you know beat a dead horse in the sense of bringing Trump up again but

[00:11:18] but I had more of a problem less of a problem with Trump more of a problem with the sheer volume of of so-called Christians who in droves overwhelmingly overwhelmingly supported what I saw as a very racist sexist

[00:11:36] named theist agenda and I thought that could not be more of a thing that flies in the face of the thing that you claim to believe and and promote within the world and I thought I just cannot for the life of me understand how you can reconcile the two.

[00:11:53] You know it was very difficult time for me to try to figure out the sort of mental gymnastics required to get there.

[00:11:59] I think that the large scale Christian right embrace of Trump like a fair bit of the Orthodox Jewish embrace of Trump will require a very deep accounting for and repentance that I'm not confident will come but that I'm totally confident would be necessary.

[00:12:24] I mean yeah how the most un-Christian person in public life can become a cult hero to Christians is obviously you know requires deep soul searching you know and I say that again as a kind of fan of Christianity like like how there's a religious tradition allow itself to contort itself in such a way as to support

[00:12:48] you know lack of a better word a kind of sociopathic narcissist what is that.

[00:12:56] Yeah it's it's going to be something for psychologists and sociologists to to wrestle with for for probably years to come and yeah it's just interesting because even if you remove sort of the the religious labels from from the situation just the idea of

[00:13:15] looking at the sort of a platform and saying well even if I wasn't religious person I'm still an advocate for human thriving.

[00:13:23] And when I say that I mean all human beings regardless of their belief system whatever and it seems like that is so contrary to the benefit of the greater whole.

[00:13:35] And yeah so I just you know I'm sure we could dwell on this for a while.

[00:13:42] You know John I think maybe just to sort of hold this up to the light in a different way you know I just finished the first part of a kind of very extensive book tour nothing I've ever done before but I was on the road for about three months I've recorded many many podcasts and I will say that one of the most

[00:14:06] moving moments that I experienced in these few months actually was in a funny way about love of enemies and I hope I'm remembering this scene correctly so I'm not misrepresenting it but the the official launch of my book was a conversation between

[00:14:23] congressman Jamie Raskin and me and oh wow.

[00:14:27] Jamie said something in that conversation that moved me so deeply and unsettled me.

[00:14:34] We somehow got into a conversation I remember how about love of enemies and we were we were in a synagogue on the Upper West side of Manhattan and Jamie Raskin said look I know where I am.

[00:14:44] I know I'm in a liberal synagogue in the liberal Upper West side and therefore I want to share something with you about this question of like how we relate to our enemies.

[00:14:53] He said one of my closest friends in the US Congress is Lauren Boeber and there was an audible gasp in the room like an audible gasp and he said something like look I think Lauren is wrong about everything.

[00:15:10] And that she's like a toxic force in American politics in so many ways but when I was diagnosed with lymphoma more than almost any member of Congress she was completely there for me.

[00:15:22] She texted me multiple times a day to say Jamie how are you feeling how are you and you know he's like it has to be possible to hold at the same time that she is toxic politically and also a human being capable of great love.

[00:15:37] And that's part of what it means to love our enemies and I have to say like I can't stop thinking about that because you know it's you know it's hard because people in my political side of the world like Lauren Boeber my goodness she's a monster.

[00:15:55] And I think Jamie's point is not a monster a human being who's wrong about a lot.

[00:15:59] Yeah.

[00:16:00] And there's just something really important about that.

[00:16:05] Man that just that just gave me chills.

[00:16:08] I would I was completely caught off guard when you said that I was not expecting that.

[00:16:13] Right.

[00:16:14] But it gets worse because the other thing that Jamie said is I had to call Lauren and ask her is it okay if I publicly share how kind you've been to me or will it hurt you politically too much.

[00:16:28] It's like that's the cultural context that we live in right now is that her being kind to me given what I did to Trump means that like right and thankfully you know he said Lawrence said well of course you can I mean if you want to say that I was nice to you you can say that I was nice to you

[00:16:45] and I'm not living in that.

[00:16:48] Right but like the fact that he had to raise the question.

[00:16:52] Yeah amazing.

[00:16:54] It's incredible and I think it goes back to sort of what we've been talking about and to kind of go back to sort of your book.

[00:17:00] It's I think so often we find ourselves in this place because we try to strip back sort of the complexity and nuances of what it means to be a human being.

[00:17:12] And we try to simplify things to a point where it eliminates sort of some of those complexities that make it what it means to be a human being and the beauties of being a human being and being alive in this world and it's hard man life is hard.

[00:17:29] But life is hard and yeah and I you know it's funny because one of the things that I say in the chapter on love of enemies is that I think it's important to accept that.

[00:17:42] And even embrace that sometimes religion is at its best not when it pretends to give us answers but when it simply helps us ask better questions.

[00:17:52] I just you know I don't know some of that is just temperamental for me like I am never going to be the kind of person who says I'm 100% certain that there's a God who cares about us.

[00:18:05] I'm not capable of being that I that much I know about myself.

[00:18:08] You know as much as you know our lives are unfolding stories I would be very surprised if I ended up in a place where it was like oh yes I'm 100% certain.

[00:18:17] I'm not really capable of that and I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

[00:18:21] You know I always want to be cautious when I turn my own situation into a virtue because there's something cheap and self-congratulatory about that but I don't know.

[00:18:31] I don't know even if I want to be certain most of the time.

[00:18:34] So you know I do think you know religion can't be about lying about the fact that the world is a hard and complicated and often disappointing place.

[00:18:45] It's also glorious beautiful and filled with possibility it is both of those things right and like somehow the ability to live with all of that rather than kind of pretending half of it away.

[00:18:57] Wishing you someone who understands you like no other?

[00:19:01] Someone who can be your wish and want to experience the most beautiful adventure of your life?

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[00:19:29] It was never easy to reach new target groups.

[00:19:32] Shopify offers on a single secure platform all tools to build up your online business.

[00:19:42] Just go to shopify.de.

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[00:19:54] Yeah it I don't know if you've ever seen the movie and I know my listeners are probably like alright shut up John you've referenced this five thousand times by now but but it keeps coming up and it's true.

[00:20:04] The movie Vanilla Sky do you remember that movie with Tom?

[00:20:08] Weird movie bizarre movie but there was a line in that movie that stuck with me like for the last time and I saw this decades ago.

[00:20:16] There's a line where to the characters Tom Cruise plays the main character whose life is just blessed on every material level you can imagine the guy like just is rich and he's living the best life he has all the best toys all the money like doesn't have to work hard for anything and then his best friend is a son.

[00:20:34] He's a struggling author played by Jason Lee from all rats fame and Jason Lee and he asked Jason Lee he's basically posing the question like wouldn't you rather have my life and Jason Lee looks at him like he's like he's a fool.

[00:20:47] He's like no he's like you don't get it man and he's like it's all about the sweet and the sour.

[00:20:52] He and he looks at Tom Cruise he's like how can you possibly realize how sweet that life is without first experiencing the sour and basically trying to make the point that like.

[00:21:03] You have to have both in order to really truly appreciate like the complexity of life like yes there's crap but you know in the world and there's there's hard times and there's things that are awful.

[00:21:13] But like when the good stuff comes man is it good you know.

[00:21:19] And it's this beautiful moment in this movie and the rest of it I've completely forgotten.

[00:21:24] Right.

[00:21:24] Except for that line I thought yes yes that's it man.

[00:21:28] That's more than I remember about most movies I confess.

[00:21:32] There you go.

[00:21:33] Oh man well I love this part but we got to talk about one of the other things I think Christian struggle with which is love of neighbor.

[00:21:42] And I find myself shouting all the time like neighbor just doesn't just mean the person who lives next door to you who looks like you thinks like you believes like you neighbor means everybody.

[00:21:54] So from the Jewish perspective like who is the neighbor and that we're we're tasked with loving.

[00:22:02] Well so one of the things that I argue in this book is that Judaism is kind of very dialectical about this is that certainly for Leviticus the neighbor referred to is a fellow member of the Covenant or you know in later terms your fellow Jews.

[00:22:19] But that doesn't mean that you're not supposed to love everybody that's a different mitzvah a different commandment which is loving all human beings were created in the image of God.

[00:22:27] And the reason I find that helpful rather than just saying love of neighbors everyone is that it makes some space both for the partial and the universal the particular and the universal partial in a sense of I'm partial to you not partial as in halfway right.

[00:22:42] So it makes it makes space for and even embraces the ways in which being a human means that there are some people I prefer to others I love my child more than I love yours I love my spouse hopefully more than I love yours right.

[00:22:57] And yet I'm still challenged to grow my love outwards.

[00:23:03] It is certainly the case that religion does not come into the world just to teach me to love the people I already do naturally.

[00:23:12] Right and I think that that's kind of the really important piece right.

[00:23:15] I sometimes when I'm feeling sort of crabby will say you know religion is not just about blessing upper middle class people blessing other upper middle class.

[00:23:25] Right that right there's some way in which it has to be about more than that.

[00:23:29] It has to be about something deeper deeper because there can be something quite deep about just taking care of each other but something more expansive more far reaching than that.

[00:23:40] And we see that you know for example in the Bible's preoccupation with love of the stranger or the sojourner or where you translate the Hebrew gear right who is not part of the king group.

[00:23:50] And yet one must treat with love and you know we and to run me goes out of its way to say God loves the outsider or however we again the sojourner you know that right.

[00:24:02] And that is really fundamental meaning you know a theme in this book for me that in a way I almost wish I had spent more time on but it comes up in a few places and it's really important for me in my own thinking and my own sort of struggling my way through the world.

[00:24:20] Is that you have to worship a God whose love is more expansive than yours or else you're just worshiping a big version of yourself.

[00:24:30] Right. If God if God loves exactly you know if the Venn diagram of those I love and those God loves are totally overlapping then like what makes God God really right so you know God loves people I don't like God loves the guy at work who drives me crazy

[00:24:47] right God loves the neighbor who's also a nood Nick you know like God loves right so I think that that's really important stuff.

[00:24:59] And by the way you know and this goes it seems to me from from what I understand about your podcast it goes to some of the core themes of what you're kind of about which is you know if if all religion is there to do is essentially bless my comforts

[00:25:17] and tell me I'm already right about everything that it's actually not only not a positive influence on the world it's an actively detrimental influence on the world if it's not prodding me to grow in love to become more concerned with justice if it's not you know asking me to see people in different ways to learn to see through

[00:25:37] eyes of love if it's not doing that then what is it doing exactly and you know I think you know related to that for me is that as I've gotten older even the question of do you believe in God has gotten much less interesting to me right I mean I don't know I always you know

[00:25:54] I always think about this Osama bin Laden was also a theist right and the world will probably been a better place had he not been right so that ought to humble all of us who talk about belief in God right like you know or say you know it's not do you believe in God it's what God do you believe in

[00:26:11] what is your God care about is your God a terrorist right if he is I'd rather you be an atheist right so I there's just so much there to kind of disentangle and unravel I have a little bit I guess I feel lost patience a little bit with the conversation of oh is that person a believer what does that tell me

[00:26:30] certainly doesn't tell me that they're a better person than anybody else which is maybe tragic but true right so I think there's like a lot of stuff we have to learn to be more just humble and curious about rather than sort of dogmatic and overweening about

[00:26:48] yeah humility right there yep we could all do with a dose of that for sure one of the sort of last things because I realize we're getting short on time here but I want to get your take on because this is something I'm fascinated with is when we talk about being made in the image of God and what what that really means

[00:27:12] yeah so you know I've been thinking a lot about this in a very specific way which is that for a lot of later Jewish thinkers they tended to think of the image of God as something that we have and they would sort of search for what aspect of the human person is it that is the image of God so you'll have some people say rationality or love or the capacity to act from freedom

[00:27:41] but for the Bible the image of God is not something that we have it's something that we are

[00:27:49] I don't have an image of God I am an image of God and I think that writ large in biblical studies that's usually interpreted in one of two ways both of which are really provocative right one is that to be created in the image of God is to have been assigned by God the role of participating in ruling over creation

[00:28:11] that can lead to some very damaging places when we misunderstand as we so often have what ruling over creation means ruling over creation does not mean do whatever the heck you please with it it means actually trying to govern it according to the standards that God has in mind and a ruler the Bible is clear about this the ideal ruler is one who is deeply concerned with the well being of its subjects

[00:28:37] and especially its most vulnerable subjects so to take that mandate seriously would be to be for example terrified and repentant about the environmental crisis just as one example this now the other biblical idea which I think you also find amplified in rabbinic tradition that I'm guessing you and I can talk about this for hours is the idea that on some level we look like God

[00:29:05] and that raises a lot of interesting and difficult questions wait does that mean that the Bible thought God looked like a person and that's its own discussion but what I what I think is really interesting and provocative and inspiring about that is

[00:29:19] it actually takes us seriously not as a theory of spirits but as embodied beings in the world I mean if you'll if you'll forgive a certain crudeness your leg is part of the image of God right you're you're embodied and so what God loves is not just kind of some ethereal nothing

[00:29:38] but you like with your particular you know DNA and I don't there's something about that that is so first of all liberates us from this kind of you know over the top kind of mind body dichotomy or you know our soul body dichotomy but it also makes us

[00:29:58] the human being in front of me that very flesh and blood person that is an image of God there's a wonderful rabbinic midrash you know this is actually maybe a nice note to end on it to midrash that I often wonder why

[00:30:13] this midrash is not more well known it's simply a simple a simple statement attributed to a Tommiutex sage named Rabbi Joshua Ben-Lavey who says that whenever a human being is walking in the world there's a retinue of angels in front of him that say make way for an icon of the blessed Holy

[00:30:31] one is approaching what would it mean to live like that wow that's a question right what do you mean to walk through the streets of any city in our country with a sense that the homeless man lying in his urine has a retinue of angels in front of him saying that man over there that is an icon of God nothing less I

[00:30:56] mean whoa right that's a lot man perfect way to end I don't think we could end it better than that the book is called Judaism is about love recovering the heart of Jewish life Rabbi Shai held thank you so so much for coming on this was an amazing conversation I always feel enlightened

[00:31:17] thank you so much John absolutely so people go ahead and get it where can people stay up on top of what you're up to and where to get a copy of the book.

[00:31:25] Well, a copy of the book if you're comfortable shopping shopping on Amazon is easy or bookshop.org or your local bookstore it's available and if you go to the website of the organization where I work had our dot org h a d a r dot org.

[00:31:41] There's lots of opportunities to study with me and my colleagues lots of recordings of classes lectures on Bible on philosophy on ethics lots of good stuff there and you know I welcome you to you know take a look.

[00:31:55] Amazing I will absolutely put those links in the show notes so people go check it out again thank you so much for coming on this was an amazing conversation I really enjoyed it.

[00:32:05] Thank you so much.

[00:32:11] He has a body.

[00:32:19] Does he know

[00:32:22] that I'm a lot is God even here does she care that I doubt she can

[00:32:38] feel something tell me his face must look like you're it God did he have to have to take a breath as a face.

[00:34:43] Must look like you're like a Tina.

[00:35:00] A Russian husband.

[00:35:05] Gus and their children face like a Kim.

[00:35:11] Ted or Tyrone born with an extra chrome.