Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Because doesn't matter what you'll do, you will be judged, and whatever you will do will be associated with religion. So if you will not stand nicely in the supermarket to the cashier or in the traffic, people will say, yeah, call out the team. All the front people are pleased. Are like this or like that. That's. And I'm proud of that because that's what Igmorah says.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Welcome back to the korean podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. And this is your first time. Welcome. It's nice to have you here. We have a fantastic episode lined up for you this Week with rabbi David Stav.
[00:00:59] Speaker C: Yeah, we're really excited to be joined by Rav Stav today, who's known for so many different things that he does in the Tzar organization in Otora Stone and the Torah that he teaches in his books. If you haven't heard of him yet, this is a great opportunity to hear a bit more about him and the work that he does. And if you have heard of him, then you are probably already excited to hear what Rostov has to say as he teaches us his Torah at Ragallahat.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Rav Star has recently published his first book in English, Pocket Parasha, available from Margit Books, which is Rav Starv's short ideas on the weekly parasha. That's only one of the things that we'll be talking to him about today.
[00:01:38] Speaker C: So here is our conversation with Rav David Stav.
We are delighted and honored to be joined by Rav David Stav here in Quorum podcast studio. Hey, Rav Stav. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Shalom. Shalom to you and to all of you listeners.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: So we'll start by asking our question. Can you teach us your Torah al Ragallahat?
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Well, my Torah is divided into two legs.
The Torah, our Torah is tuat chaim, is the Torah that was given to live.
And when I say to live, it means that the Torah intended to teach us how to make our life much more meaningful, to make our life more moral, to make our life something that all humanity in general, but specifically the jewish people, will be able to live their lives based on Torah and to be a role model for how good and meaningful life could be, a role model for entire society.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: So can you expand on, I think, I hope, our listeners on, you know, the difference between moral and not moral is perhaps obvious. You might have a kiddush as to what that means, but can you build on this idea of what does it mean to have a meaningful life, especially through Torah? What is that meaning?
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Look, there are people that think, and I'll say, you know, when you. When you say, what is your Torah on regular hat? You know, when Hillel said that the basis is whatever you don't like, don't do to your friend, what did you want to exclude by that? Because I guess people might have thought that the biggest principle of Torah is to love God or to follow or to fight or struggle against idols and Kem Ilele and said, no, that's not the biggest principle in Torah. The most important principle in Torah is don't damage your friend. Okay, so that's the chidush. That's the new thing that he brought to the world. When I say that Torah came to teach us how to live a meaningful way of life, first of all, what do I want to exclude by that? There are people that think that the entire purpose of Torah is to prepare us to the next world. Actually, this world is only a way to. We practice. We have to control our desires. We have to fight against the evil that exists among each other of us. But actually, each one of us was sent to this world in order to fight against all the external or internal temptations. And his reward will be in the next world after he passes away. And what I'm trying to say is, no, it's not my chiddush. I think the Torah says it hundreds of times. That when the Torah gives us the Torah, it's because the Torah wants to tell us Laman Yitav Lach. Because that's the formula. That's the secret of how to live a better life. If we will observe the law of. To observe, observe the laws of Torah, our life will be much better. It will look much better. Our family life will look better. Our society life will look better. I was just adding to that. I mean, someone might maintain or argue, well, what do you think? That it's a better life to get up in the morning, 06:00 and to go to Daven, to shul, and now, in the times of Slichot, before Rosh Hashanah, during the ten days of repentance, to get up earlier or to stay up late after the midnight, to say, is this a good formula of life? So that's why I added, when I say life, it's not only about having a good food to eat, but it also requires or wants to uplift us to a meaningful life. So, yes, the answer is, the Torah wants to make our life good, a part of our life. Being better is to give and to add content and meaningful to these lives.
[00:06:08] Speaker C: I think you're definitely someone that's known, certainly here in Israel, someone who gives and who adds to jewish life in israeli society. I'm interested to hear about how, how has this idea of building a Torah, chaim, how has that inspired you to do the different things that you've done? How did it direct you to choose to do, like, set up the things you've done, the organizations you work with? How has it kind of powered you?
[00:06:30] Speaker A: I'll tell you, I think the biggest tragedy, by the way, this morning I've discussed, you know, I had a podcast in an alternative channel last year with Misses Orit Navone, former Observant woman. And we discussed maybe to have another season of podcast. And she asked me, what would you like to talk about? And I'll tell you, look, my life mission is to expose youngsters to the beauty of Torah that they were never exposed to, because the Torah has very bad relationship or public relationship in our society, and especially the values of Torah. And I feel that many times when I meet, and I try to meet a lot with secular groups, but not only with secular, even youngsters, youngsters among the observant modern orthodox groups, I feel that the way I expose them to the contents of Torah get a different taste when there are access to this in the way we. It's not only me. We teach them, and all of the sudden, they discover secrets about Torah that they were never exposed to. And they said, we didn't know that. This is all written in Torah. And I'm, and I'm not making up nothing from my mind. Nothing is my creative ToRah. It's all written. It could be in the Bible, it could be written in the TAlmud or by Rav Kook or by others. And they discover levels of Torah that I believe that take even the very fundamental concept of creating a family, establishing a family, which is one of the missions of Zohar, helping secular couples to get married.
You can make the religious experience something that, you know, is coerced, and it's coerced by Law. I cannot change it. It's a law, and I'm not a politician to change it. But, and you can make it very technical. I mean, you have to do this. You have to say this to the, to the bride and I. The bride has to get the KSube from the groom, etcetera, etcetera. And you could expose them to, you know, the rambam says, what is the, what was before Torah was given to us? And what is the KidDosh about Torah giving to us, you know, even the word me to sanctify your relationship. I mean, just to talk about having relationship with your spouse, to compare this to Kodesha Kodashim, to our holiest place, where the grand priest, when the Koengado was allowed to enter only once a year. And, you know, what's the biggest demand, actually, the only demand from this priest, from this koingadol, except that he should be a koen, that he comes from a Koen family. But except for that, it could be an atheist.
It could belong to the Tzadokites. It could be ignorant. As a matter of fact, the Mishnah describes how the rabbi is used to recite in front of him the book of Daniel. Because he didn't even know Hebrew. They had to talk to him in Aramaic. There was only one demand, and that this guy will be married. That's the only demand.
Because unlike in other religions, I don't have to mention by us, a grand priest could not be not married. Because what all this jewish life is about is about creating family. And, you know, when I tell observant and non observant boys and girls, what would the Jews do in Moses when Yom Kippur ends? Actually, if you read precisely the Mishnah, it could be that it even occurred on Yom Kippur afternoon. We think they went to build the sukkah. They went to buy abaminim, to buy the lulav and the ezra. That's not what the missionary says. The missionaries, when the girls used to go to hang out in the vineyards and to offer themselves to the boys and people cannot believe, is this Judaism? That's what people do not see.
And I tell them, you know why we don't understand that? Because for us, family life is something which was very cheapened, and we don't understand the sanctity of family.
You know, when I talk to couples and I tell them, you know, in the holiest place, where the Caribs and they were in the image of a boy and a girl living together, that's in the holiest place. Because by us, it's something holy. It's something that, when it's done in a cheap way, when it's done without commitment, when it's done not in the way the Torah wanted us to do that, then it is really very cheap. But if you do it in the. All of the sudden, people see that Judaism speaks about so highly about family and respects family and respects relationship.
They never heard about it.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: You touched before. And I think it speaks to what you're saying as well, that Judaism has bad pr, even within the community. The Torah maybe has bad pr. Judaism has bad pr that people don't really understand what you're talking about. And this idea that Judaism promotes family is something that I think speaks to people in their neshamah, whether they know about it or nothing. What do you think it is that has led to that sort of misunderstanding, as in what's happened historically or sociologically, whatever it is, why is it, do you think people have this fundamental misunderstanding of what we're all about?
[00:12:43] Speaker A: So Rav Kook explains this in many places.
The way the Torah was observed and preserved in the exile, and I'm not criticizing, I'm analyzing was that we have to protect, to protect ourselves as much as possible, and to surround ourselves with all gates possible, with the highest walls possible, in order to keep our tradition and to make sure it will last. It will continue for generations.
When you do that, you have to focus on very specific symbols that they define. Who is jewish and who is not begins with Kashrut, continues with Shabbos, with holidays, and you don't even want to refer to other components of Judaism because they are not the story. Now we have to make sure that our kids will understand. What does it mean to be jewish?
Nothing of what I've said so far is not new for whoever is familiar with the jewish sources. It's that the grand priest has to refer and to repent and for himself and for his family. That's a verse in the Torah.
And the fact that the gemara says that whoever is not married. Shagui Bello Torah is without. Without Torah is without happiness, without joy, without nothing. It's a gemara. It's not something that I discovered.
But yet even referring to relationship and family between a man and his wife became something. Maybe Raf Cook points as a comment about that could be because of influence of different crowds that we are surrounded with Christians and others, that they couldn't contain the. The message that Torah encourages having a very, very healthy relationship in the family, and in the same time, demands from human being, from Jews, to be holy and to be sanctified.
People didn't understand how it could work together. So sometimes it led Judaism to go to edges that we can still see in different places, different groups. Sometimes you'll see that they don't call their wife in their name because they think it's not sneezed, it's not modest in other strange behaviors and that do not belong to Judaism. I could tell you that many religious girls, because of the way the teachers dealt with issues of modesty. And I'm not criticizing, sometimes felt that Judaism is fighting against body, against beauty.
You know, when I teach girls that the vilna go and set, you know, we sing every Friday night, we sing that beauty is false and it's nonsense. It's heaven. Isha y'rat hashem, you know, who is the woman that should praise herself?
She should pray herself with yeratashem if she fears God. Isha Iratashem hit italal. She deserves to be praised. So the vilna goin in his comments on Mishra, says, isha I rat hashem hiti talal be of ya with a beauty. It's not that King Solomon wanted to tell us that beauty is nothing, is nonsense or nothing, and rat shamayim is all. No beauty has meaning if it's combined. If it's by itself, it's nothing. But if it's connected to other things, you connect it to. So then she should be praised with the beauty as well. As a matter of fact, we know that the Torah, again, it's not me. It's not even the Vilna garden. The Torah, when she describes our ancestors, our mothers, she knows to describe them with a beauty.
And Sarah, the rabbis say, atayadati, kishai, fat mare. I always knew that. But now it's time to be concerned about that, because I'm afraid the Egyptians will not know how to deal with this, or will treat you, will abuse you, whatever. So the Torah knows to describe it and we cannot say it.
[00:17:40] Speaker C: How do we. Or how do you go about. How can we better explain the idea of being the Kadesh something or sanctifying something, whether it's a marriage or our lives? Like, how. How do you explain that to people who feel Judaism is not relevant to them, or they feel disconnected? How can you, like the idea of Kadusha often feels very distant in our day to day modern lives. How do you. How do you think we can teach that better? To understand what that means to be in the Kadesh something?
[00:18:08] Speaker A: I think that today's generation understands it more than ever.
It just. You need to touch the right place in the Nishama, the right place in the soul.
You know, there is a very famous. I will refer to the question in a minute, but since you said, I have 3 hours, so I can take advantage of that.
The medrash says that kine, when he murdered hevel, he didn't know how the Neshama, how the soul goes out. So he started to stone him in different places until he died. Eventually, Rav Neria blessed his memory, used to say that in our generation we are in the opposite situation. We don't know how dineshamma, how the soul gets in. So we have to try to push it from wherever we can.
So I want to say that our generation could understand very much what does it mean to sanctify moments, to sanctify institutions? Go and look, for instance, when I tell couples, you know, when you come back home, you watch television together, you eat together, dedicate a moment or dedicate 20 minutes or an hour where there are no interruptions. Make this no television, no cellular phones, no nobody.
Make it a sanctified moment for yourself.
Discuss issues from heart to heart that usually maybe you cannot allow yourself because you are afraid that you will be interrupted.
Make safe places sanctified. Make you living room, make your bedroom, make it a sanctified place. Better Mikdash, nobody's allowed to enter there, not even kids. Of course not guests, because it's your, it's your small temple.
And I think everybody understand that. And. But how do you do that? How do you create that the openness to that exists among everybody? We are always just like the Ramam says, in the values are there, they exist.
Our biggest fight is with the fact that the challenges of our schedule, of our time calendar, don't allow us. We are so attracted to our programs, to our holy work, to so many commitments that we have, that we don't have the right time to dedicate to what we really believe that should be sanctified.
So just to create awareness. Once you spoke about awareness to holy moments in your life as a couple, it's not a big problem to increase it or to continue with this. In the family I met this week, a father, he says to me, you know, I'm not observant, and I took a decision that in my house, in my home, people, nobody, including myself, my wife and my kids, will not use cellar phones on Shabbat, not from a religious halachic commitment.
And he says to me, and I want to discuss with you, where is it leading me?
And after, we will see what is our spiritual vision. Let's talk about the question, how could we bring it to the entire school, which is not observant?
I think people are ready to listen, are open to listen to the idea of sanctity in their lives, as long as they understand the sanctity, doesn't mean that I don't go to the army, I don't go to work. I'm just closing myself in a segregated place, learning Torah or davening all day long, if that what it means to be kadosh, to be holy. I don't want to be there, by the way. I don't. Me too. I don't want. I don't also know. I don't want to be there. I don't believe that this is what the Torah meant. When the Torah says, kdoshim Tiyu, the bear al Kola, dad Naisrael, talk to all of the jewish people, gather them and tell them Kdoshim Tiyu, to all the miners, to all the couples, to everybody, because the idea of Vatem Tiyu, you shall become a kingdom of priests and a sanctified nation. The Goi Kadosh, that's the manifest of the jewish people. That's the essence of us.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: A friend of the podcast Dova Boshevkin had spoken a few times about like navigating family life when there's differences in religious observance or religious outlook, and you've touched on it just now as well, that it can be very difficult when you know one person either within a family. I think we see it a lot, especially in Israel, on like a national level, the rifts and the argument, and sometimes even on like the level of hatred between different religious communities or non religious communities, towards religious communities and vice versa.
With everything you've been saying about, you know, the Torah instructs us to find meaning and to live a meaningful life, and it gives us the map to do that.
When two people are looking at the same Torah and finding different meanings, they're finding a different answer to how to find meaning. How do you navigate that? How do you sort of bridge that gap between whether it's the religious and the secular or it's different religious communities, how do you bridge that gap and say, it's the same Torah, it's the same meaning. It doesn't matter what sort of how you're manifesting it, but it's all the same thing. How does, whether it's within a family or nationally, how can we bridge that gap?
[00:24:22] Speaker A: The Torah is a platform, and people could find in the Torah sometimes ideas that will contradict each other from one edge to another.
And it might be perceived as not one Torah, but as plenty of Torah.
I guess that somebody that will look at me and will look at somebody from Sadma Siddhim or from Belzer Siddim, I guess he'll say, what is the common denominator between them?
I guess both of us we pray three times a day.
But I guess that a lot of the values that I believe in, I guess he does not share with me, and vice versa.
I think that on the surface, I understand people that will say, well, we don't understand how this could get along together, or it could come out from the same source.
But eventually, people are different, and just like the faces are different, the way they transform or translate to themselves, ideas of Torah are different.
And therefore, I believe that the Torah that was given to all of us, it will be transformed eventually based on each one of the individuals. It will be translated in a different way.
I'm not talking about putting on filling or davening, but the content that we put on the davening, or that we add to the trillion, or we add to the shmiha Shabbat, to the observing of Shabbat. I guess that many of the ideas will be completely different.
So that's one.
B. I believe that once we will dig deeper, not always we are interested to dig deeper, but once we'll dig deeper, we will find what is the common denominator. And then where did the differences began?
I'll give you one example, which today rifts the israeli society. And that's the question of service in the army for the haredi. Okay, I don't have to tell you, as a father of five boys and four sons in law, trust me, all of them are in the army, few in the very, very combat unit. And trust me, I'm very, very much in favor supporting service in the army. Okay, that's a.
I really feel terrible about those who do not go to the army for very, very various strange and sometimes stupid excuses. So the split is different. I mean, the rift is big.
Somebody will look at me and will look at us. Wait a minute. You go, and he says, it's prohibited to go to the army. What connects to you? What is the common denominator?
And eventually, I guess that the one that goes with me to the army, and I share with him a lot, he will not show up. He will not appear in shul, not in Rosh Hashanah, most probably not even in Yom Kippur.
So. And as I said, that's the biggest dilemma of the modern Orthodox Jews in Israel today.
The jew I fight shoulder to shoulder with is not the jew that I will daven shoulder to shoulder in Shulde. And that's the tragedy. And I guess many will ask, but how could you feel connected to that guy, that it happens with you? But actually, he believes that it's prohibited to go to the army. And you think it's the biggest mitzvah to go to the army.
I think that on the surface, that's the situation, and that's why the rift is so big.
If we will go deeper, I believe that we will find that eventually all of us agree that if we want to fulfill the mitzvah of Hashem, we need to establish an army. We need to establish an army. And the army, everybody has to go to the army, especially if he's not. If he. Even if he's haredi, if he's not yeshiva boy, let's agree on that.
They don't agree on that also, and I don't agree to release the Shia boys as well. But let's assume that we will come to that agreement. But then when it translated to the practical question, they will say, okay, I agree that it could be, under certain circumstances, it could be a mitzvah, it could be a command. But now when they want to secular us and they want to make us non observant, and it's all not about the army. It's about influencing us and removing us from the shivot and removing us from the rabbis and actually trying to re educate us, okay? And I agreed to that understanding, to that concern, to that fear, and that they really are afraid of a potential attempt to secular them, to convert them.
I would agree with them.
So I just. What it requires to, from both sides is a, to understand what is the common platform, then, to understand when the debates begin from. That would make the. Even if we will stay, we will remain opponents, but the points of conflict will be put in the very, very specific space, and we will understand that the rift is not as big as it's perceived on the surface of. And that's just one example. I could give hundreds of examples like that.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: I think, especially as we approach October 7 and Simchatran, we can look back really not that long ago, and there was a moment in time where there was real Akhdut that we hadn't known for a very long time. We've had people on the podcast recently as well, talking about how they look back. Yair Ettinger, who was a guest a few weeks ago, talking about how a year ago, there were protests every day about all different things with the government, and there was huge protests and huge disagreement, and then that awful, awful thing happened, and there was real akhtut for a moment. And then the further away we get from that, the rifts grow, and we, in the modern orthodox datiloami community, we see ourselves as being that.
That area, that beacon where people on either side with the religious spectrum, the political spectrum, whatever it is, can look towards us and recapture that feeling of ahtut.
But it seems like a very, very difficult thing to do. It's very easy to say, but to actually do it seems very difficult. And your work certainly is towards doing that.
How are you doing it? And what can everyone else do to recapture that unity that we had for a moment and seems to have started dissipating?
[00:31:58] Speaker A: I think that's a very important question, and I believe that it begins with each one of us.
Although I could. I don't want to knock on somebody else's chest and to say, what did you do? And etcetera, etcetera.
I would say, what is our role?
I believe that the role the modern orthodox movement could have been. He is not now in that position. He could have been the bridge between the groups. But he's not there.
He's not there for many reasons.
But, and I would say one word about the leadership.
I think that we lack a leadership that does not listen to the painst, is not sensitive to the pains and the concerns of all sides behaved in a very arrogant way during the time of the judicial reform. But even before and even after, and even during the war, what we say in Hebrew, we don't count you, we don't care about you, which is the most painful thing for others.
What should we do about that? I think that it's divided into two things.
A, and that's to smile, to show a nice face to others, to talk to everybody.
Our sages. It's nothing new that I discovered today. Our sages used to say that constantly, we should be receiving every human being with nice face, with glowering face, with face that will say, wow, he's smiling to me. He loves me. I want to talk to him. I want to be a friend of his.
It comes back to the beginning of this conversation that we talk about. We spoke about the image of religion.
The image of religion is nothing, is not an image of a smiling and inspiring religion.
It's an. It's the image. The appeal of Torah today is a very angry Torah is a very coercive Torah.
And people don't like people or contents that are coercive on them, coerced on them. And people don't like people that are angry at them, people like people that love them, that care about them. So it begins with smiling, with good faces, with nice faces. And that welcoming, overwhelming, embracing, embracing faces that just call the other I want to be your friend, be mine. There is no reason why we should not.
So that's one thing. I think that is one of our missions. But I want to say a second thing that might sound as criticism, and it is. It's not only sound as criticism, it is criticism for many of us. We felt that our mission as the Tlumi people ends with establishing our institutions for ourselves. Our schools, our high schools, Shivot, Ishivot is there, whatever.
Most of us never saw themselves as emissaries, not as missionaries, but as emissaries to the secular society.
We didn't like to be in the position that I'm representative of all of the jewish people, all of the modern. I'm a representative of the Torah. And yes, each one of us is representative.
And don't think that anybody could escape from that mission, because doesn't matter what you'll do, you will be judged, and whatever you will do will be referred or associated with religion. So if you will not stand nicely in the turn in the supermarket to the cashier or in the traffic, people will say, yeah, call out the team. All the from people are pleased, are like this or like that.
And I'm proud of that, because that's what the Gemara says in Masechet Yoma, that that's the mission of us as jews. That if people will look at us and we'll see, wow, what a beautiful behavior they behave, they will say, wow, where did this guy grow up? What education did did you get? And then they will hear that you got jewish religious, observant, faithful education, then they will understand the beauty of Torah. But when you behave in a different way or not, even if you behave in the negative way, but you don't see this as a part of your mission.
And you think that your mission ends inside shul. And you don't understand that if your soul is not full, at least in the high holidays, at least with 30, 50% of people that are not observant, you failed. You failed. Because the jewish people is not only the ones that were kippah. The jewish people is a whole range.
Everybody. Everybody is a part of the story. And our approach to these issues is very tribal. I mean, we referred to our section, to our group in society, to take care of his interest, and we don't understand it. A part of our mission by Hashem, it never counts who was a knitted keeper and who was a velvet keeper. That doesn't count. What counts is who is jewish and what did he do for the jewish people, for the kids of God in.
[00:37:57] Speaker C: The run up to the Amun Araim. So we according, have been proud to partner with Sohar on the global Unity project for Yom Kippur.
Obviously, this links to everything we've been talking about up until now. But can you tell us a little bit about how the project came about, what the thinking is?
[00:38:13] Speaker A: Look, we have an amazing mission.
Unfortunately, most vast majority of secular Israeli Ashkenazim, and I want to emphasize, Ashkenazim, do not go to shul all year round, including Yom Kippur. Even those who fast, most of them will not come to shul, unlike the sephardic community, that is much more traditional. And we saw as a part of our mission to engage people not to come necessarily to shul. Aleway I wish they would want to come to shul, but we understood that the shul don't want to come because of three reasons. A, because shuls are crowded. B, and they have, they don't have room for them, not physical room, sometimes not even room in the heart.
Second reason, because the secular Jews don't understand the maxo. They don't understand the siddha. They don't know how to open it from which side. And number three, because to come to shol is something that shows a kind of support to the establishment, which they like to hate. So we said, let's go to neutral places. And that's the project. Project that we go to hundreds of places all over the country. Last year, we had around 550 locations. We hope to grow this year. And the idea is to go to neutral places, some places, public spaces, sometimes JCC's different locations, that people will not feel guests. They are just guests as others. Everybody is a guest there. It belongs to the municipality. And we printed special mahzorim with special editions and explanations.
And this year, after the terrible year that we had, and we all remember what happened in Yom Kippur, in Tel Aviv, in a few of our minyanim, we are determined that this will not happen again. And we want to make all efforts possible. And we are doing a lot of activities in order to make sure that this time Yom Kippur will be celebrated by hundreds of thousands of jews without any interference. And the opposite, more and more jews will come to arminian and will show solidarity at least one day a year.
[00:40:33] Speaker C: And how is that spreading also around the world, as in sending things out.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: So we send out to hundreds of communities, a, with our additional parts to the trila that commemorate the hostages and pray for the success of our soldiers. Et cetera, et cetera. And in addition, communities are asked to contribute, to donate whatever they can in order to help us to make this happening. But we want in the future, we want them to be connected physically and maybe personally to the different communities that we will daven by them as rat Hashem in two and a half weeks from now.
[00:41:17] Speaker C: What do you think? How do you define achtot?
[00:41:21] Speaker A: As we all know, unity is not uniformity, and we don't expect that people will feel alike or will think alike. What we expect is mutual respect. A, what we expect is understanding that we have a covenant of faith, we have a covenant of destiny, as well as Rav Solubaycik used to say. But at least let's begin with understanding the covenant of fate.
So when I say ahdut, I refer to basically two values, a mutual respect.
Don't suspect your friends in things you don't want him to suspect you. And second of all, solidarity, understanding that what happened to one is meant to all of us.
This year we discovered that by the terrorists, by the murders, they don't really distinguish between kibbutz Berry and far Aza that are associated to the left, left wing and Otniel Ophra or the settlements in the right wing. For them, we are all the same. So if for them we are all similar, maybe they tell us something, that in the depth of our existence, we are similar. There are nuances, there are differences. I don't want to hide them, I don't want to undermine them. But if our enemies understand that in the essence, there is no difference, maybe they give us a class, that we should understand this as well.
[00:43:04] Speaker C: I mean, you touched on this a little bit before, but just in terms of where the idea, like the mutual respect, the building, the akhtut, how do we bridge that when we are talking about things that within, especially here in Israel, where there are issues like you mentioned, like the Haredi draft, or it could be from the left wing, issues like Mitt Nakhlim or settlements, where things that people feel like, I can't even bridge this. Like, we're so, like, you know, I send my kids to the army and you won't send your kids to the army. Like, that's just. It's too big a bridge to gap. How can we achieve ahtut here in Israel and also globally, when there still remain these things that are just feel like too big to bridge?
[00:43:45] Speaker A: I want you to know that, first of all, I understand that the gap is big, and I don't have any intention to pretend that the gap does not exist, or that I could refer to this easily. No, the answer is, first of all, the gap is very big, left and right, no doubt.
Yet I believe that when I will daven in a few days, that I will ask Hashem to save us from our enemies. I will not refer only to my tribe. I will refer to other tribes.
And I believe that I don't have to tell you what happened this morning. This morning I dealt with maybe five or six families. Each one of them doesn't belong to my community, do not live in Shoam, came from different communities in Israel, all belonged to Haredi tribe, and asked my assistance.
And each one of them told me where his son lands, in which yeshiva. And I knew for myself they will never go to the army.
And yet I gave them charity. And I said to myself, please, God, just like I give to somebody that I know that I disagree with his behavior in many issues, but he still is my brother, and I know that he is my brother and deserves life, and he deserves welfare.
Please, even if we don't deserve. If we do not behave in the way you think we should behave, please treat us as your children, even if we don't deserve it.
[00:45:34] Speaker C: When we're looking to and with the work you do in Sohar and all that rabbanim and people who work do amazing with Sohar and you personally, I think when working with people, let's say, who are not like us or not observant, how can we do that in a way where I think one of the risks, let's say, of doing that often, is that it comes across almost like a vertical way, that we're coming and saying, we think we know the truth, or we know the right thing. We're coming to here to tell you to do the right thing. How can it be done? Or how do you do it in a way so it's horizontal? We're coming to you because in a mutual way, like, we don't think that we're better than you. We just.
We have a Torah that we feel has value and importance. How do you do that without it becoming a vertical hierarchy? How can you do it and keep it in a horizontal way?
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Look, I really. I think it comes all with humility, with Anava, you know, the rabbis, the gemora says that when the rabbis went to learn Torah and Yavneh, they used to say, referring to the friends that went, the farmers that went to work in the fields, they used to say, I'm a creator of God, and they are creator of God. I was born, I was created in the image of God, and they were created in the same way.
I go to learn to earn, they go to work in the field.
It's the same thing if he's doing a lot or is doing little.
So when I refer to my neighbors, and I will give you an example, when I see my neighbors and their behaviors and their values and their qualifications and their commitment to help and how they help us as a family, as I told you, we have nine children.
My neighbor is a children doctor. You can imagine that the match is unbelievable. She works by us 24/7 without charging a penny and always calls afterwards to make sure that we took the right treatment. And I say to myself, well, you know, from that podcast, I'm going to Haifa to visit one of my carmigans that is heavily wounded after this week in Jenin.
And his mother asked me actually to come to bless him. And I said to myself, you know, I go there, he's a secular guy. This guy is now lying in the hospital. He sacrificed his life.
Could I say anything that I'm above him?
What kind of a chutzpah could I have in order even to think, to ever have Amina, to have a potential thought that I'm above him?
And I think that when I talk to others, when I teach Torah to secular people, it's almost every day.
But you know, I teach because I'm a teacher and they want to learn. I'm sure, without doubt, with no doubt, that I have a lot to learn from them.
When you want to learn Torah, I'm teaching you Torah. If you would, if you, if I would like to learn now something different, I'm sure you're able to teach me. And sometimes the comments are so important and they enlight the story or the partial, the portion that you are studying in a, in a new way that they say, wow, amazing.
The wisdom was not divided only to the, from people, all people, all humanity shows it equal.
[00:49:19] Speaker C: So I think, just to wrap up, we've just recently published Pocket Parasha.
It was published originally a few years ago in Hebrew as Parasha Bakhtana.
I'm interested to hear from you in terms of kind of what your thinking was in writing, as you're known as a rav with big ideas and really significant philosophy and ways that change israeli society and the jewish world in a big way. We also have Parasha Paktana, like Poket Parasha.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: Poket Parasha. Well, the truth is that I'm not responsible for the name, but the reason why it was called this name because it's based on a weekly column that I used to write in the most popular paper in Israel. Israel. Israel today.
I wrote this column for six years, and this is the first book. I believe that in the soon future, we'll publish the next two or three books that deal with. And the idea is to talk to the secular society in the height of the eyes and to access them to Torah in a way that on one side, it will not be just something very simplistic, and the other side, so it will uplift them, but on the other side, it will be something that is relevant to their lives. And therefore, I think it was very popular in Boshem. I think tens of thousands of books were published in Hebrew. And I'm very thankful to Koran edition and to Michael Lacks and his wife that helped us to translate to English.
[00:50:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: And English edition and to publish it. And I hope that the english speaking crowd and readers will enjoy the book.
[00:51:05] Speaker C: And why do you think, I guess a final question. Why do you think the parashatta Shavua and the Torah is like, specifically Parashat Hasheva? Why is that a good platform?
[00:51:13] Speaker A: That's an amazing platform, because today in Israel, almost in every law firm, Itec firm, there is a session towards the end of the week where people give an idea of parashat Shavua in hundreds of thousands of secular homes. I told you a few minutes ago, they never stepped the foot in Shul, but in hundreds of thousands of home, they make Kiddush on Friday night. And even if they don't make kiddush, they have a Shabbos dinner.
And I want them to have something to discuss about. Because when you read this, the idea for this week's portion, it will almost leave you with a question that you ask yourself. Wait a minute. He asked the question. I felt I identified myself with a question. Well, I'm not sure that I agree with his answer. Could you have another answer? And I think it opens a lot of sessions, family sessions, and I'm very happy to hear that. That's what happens.
[00:52:15] Speaker C: Rough stuff. Thank you so much for joining us. I think you've really shown us and talked about how Torah is, like you say, a platform that can bring people together and show us the things that we have in common. And that's definitely highlighted in the work that you do. And as someone who's doing lots of things all the time, we really appreciate you taking the time to come and meet with us today. So thank you.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[00:52:36] Speaker B: That's all we have time for this week. Thank you so much again to Rav Dovid, star for giving us so much of his time. He is an incredibly busy person working for Amy Israel. As you heard, you can get a copy of Rav Stav's new book on the Parashar Pocketparasha from Karinpav.com and you can get a 10% discount on that and the rest of your purchase using promo code. Podcast at checkout. You can be in touch with us. We'd love to hear from you, your opinions, ideas for guests, whatever you like. You can reach us by email podcastorenpub.com or via social media at Corinne Rusalem. Please do follow rate, subscribe and share wherever you're listening. We'll be back next year with a new episode of the Corrine podcast, so until then, have a Kitivava Khatimatova a shana tova. Goodbye.
