SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, and welcome to Some Portals, Exploring Psycho-spiritual Horizons with your hosts, Cedric Speiner and Deanna Magel. Cedric is a master and therapist who developed the interview guidance model and is a pathfinder in the psycho-spiritual realm. Deanna created the Essential Soulcare Model, a model suitable for therapists, coaches, and healers. The monthly episodes of Soul Portals feature guests sharing insights from their personal paths and professional practices. Thank you for tuning in for the Sultan with all kinds of trail-blazing teachers and guides as Cedric, Deanna, and guests explore new evolutionary landscapes.

SPEAKER_04 1:16

May the spirit flow freely through this conversation, allowing it to be both energizing and edifying. Very entertaining and wise reflections on the road with Rabbi Stan Seltz. Well, that'll be in the resources. So this is a QA with the rabbi. The question being, what is the role of the Jewish scholar? And since our guest is a renowned, esteemed Jewish scholar, this applies to you, Arthur. In addition to his ability to memorize and understand texts, one of the most central drives for a Jewish scholar is to innovate. To use a possibly low metaphor, Confucian scholars wanted to have an old woman in an old dress. Modern culture wants a young woman in modern dress, and Jewish culture prefers a young woman in old dress. Thus, although the Jewish scholar always claims that he's just creating a commentary, he is really constantly driven to create new things as new ideas. So that was Rabbi Stan. So he could have been talking about you, Arthur. So very briefly, because we're going to get into it in more depth, the is to remind people of the theme that's related to Passover coming up in a few days. And we're looking at the inside story of Passover. So the personal transformation that corresponds to the collective and the cultural and the religious one. That's that's the portal we're looking through today. But then it expands as it will. So Diana, over to you for making a little continuation of the intro.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Yeah, so Arthur, we know you are a Jewish scholar, you're an author, you're a teacher, and a publisher, and a magician. I'm very curious about that. Um, in brief, before Cedric takes us on a more personal journey, is there anything else you want any the rest of us to know about your work, your vocation?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

I don't think so. I think you pretty much covered it. Of all the things that you mentioned, the thing I love the most is the magic, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 3:59

I bet. I bet I mentioned, I don't know if you have the resources, whether you do a few tricks. Are they still called tricks in the magic world? Because you bring a lot more to it than tricks.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Well, except for the people who claim that they have special powers.

SPEAKER_04 4:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

You know, they're to me they're called tricks.

SPEAKER_04 4:20

Right. So are do you have any at hand or any simple ones later on?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Uh my, you know, the the kind of magic I do is not uh effective on the screen. It's really uh up close and personal. Um, or I do a show that's uh a large show as well uh as well, but nothing that I've been able to practice that works on the on the internet. Um well let me see if I have something in my pocket.

SPEAKER_04 4:51

Okay, because that would be one of the most original kickoffs of uh podcast.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

So uh we'll see if this works. I have two cards here. One is uh nine of clubs, and one is a two of diamonds.

SPEAKER_04 5:12

Two of diamonds, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Two of diamonds and the nine of clubs. So if I take the nine of clubs away, what does that leave me with here?

SPEAKER_04 5:22

The two of diamonds.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

No, the two of diamonds is here. I can do that again. Here's the two of diamonds, and here's uh nine of clubs. Take the nine of clubs away, and what does that leave me with here? No, you're here's the two of diamonds over here.

SPEAKER_04 5:46

There's something of clubs.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

So I don't know if that worked or not, but that's uh that's a little magic trick.

SPEAKER_04 5:53

While we're on the subject, can you tell us about how you tie that in to the wisdom and the uh Jewish tradition? Because it's it gets really interesting how you integrate the two.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Well, I I my show is based on one basic basic idea. The name of my show is searching for God in a magic shop. And I perform it around usually at synagogues. And the idea of the the uh show, I do a bunch of really cool magic tricks, but the idea that runs through the show is that every magic trick works the same way, whether it's a small magic trick that you can do one-on-one to somebody, or if you have big illusions on a Las Vegas stage, all the magic tricks work the same way. And how do they work? The audience doesn't see everything. If the audience were to see everything, they would know how it works. And that's the way of God's world. We don't see everything. There's so much that goes on, and we we ask questions why and what we don't, but we don't see how can somebody like me, a small p dot in a infinitely vast universe, claim or even desire to know everything. It's impossible impossible. So so uh we have an expression in Aramaic in Jewish tradition called uh Gamzula Tova. And Gamzulatova means everything is for the best. In some inexplicable way, everything is for the best. I have to it's an assumption that God knows what he's doing. So in my show, I'm I'm trying to express those ideas, particularly the idea that you we don't see everything. If we were to see everything, we could come up with a good explanation, but um we don't see everything, so like a magic trick, it's it's um something is hidden.

SPEAKER_04 7:50

Right. There you have a story of from Rabbi Akiva on that. Do you have that story memorized? Because I can read it later.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Well, um the famous story from Rabbi Akiva is that Rabbi Akiva was um who is one of the maybe the superstar of the Talmud, or one of the great sages in Jewish tradition. He he was looking for lodging, and uh the Talmud says that he had with him three things a candle, a rooster, and a donkey. Is this the story that you're referring to?

SPEAKER_04 8:23

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Yeah, okay. Um, so Rabbi Akiva was in a town and it was evening and he was looking for lodging, and he knocked on the door of the inn and asked the innkeeper if he had a place for him, and the innkeeper said, No, I don't have any place for you. And Rabbi Akiva responded by saying, Gamzula Toba, this is for the best. He knocked on another door and another door, and nobody was giving him lodging. And each time they refused him lodging, he said, Gamzula Toba, this is for the best. Well, he realized that he would have to go out into the woods and the outskirts of town, and he made camp and he and he was out there, and in the middle of the night, a a wind came and blew out his candle. And he said, Gamzula Toba, this is for the best. The text says that in the middle of the night an animal came and killed his rooster. And Rabbi Akiva said, Gamzula Toba, this is for the best. The text then says that his donkey in the middle of the night ran away. And Rabbi Akiva said, Gamzula Toba, this is for the best. Well, the next morning he got up and he went back into the town that had refused him lodging, only to discover that in the middle of the night a band of hooligans came and murdered people and destroyed property, and that's how the story ends. The it's just a story, but the message of the story is that we don't see everything. That you you would think that by being refused lodging that this was a bad thing, but he said it was for the best. Uh, had he been given lodging, he might have been one of the victims uh during the middle of the night. Had the and and had the other things happened in a negative way, he also had this idea that God knows what he's doing, and everything in some inexplicable way is for the best. So this was uh a story by about Rabbi Akiva that represents the kernel of that idea, right?

SPEAKER_04 10:24

Okay, let me let me can contest the story a bit, like your daughter did with Rabbi Steinsatz. Part of the Jewish tradition is wrestling with God, right? You don't just take his word for everything.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Right.

SPEAKER_04 10:37

So, how is the victims, the victims that you mentioned, how is it all for the best with them?

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Well, there's a correlary, there's a corollary that one has to uh explain about this phrase Gamza Lutova. The corollary is that you never say it to somebody else, you only say it to yourself.

SPEAKER_05 10:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

If you fall and hurt your knee, I don't look at you and say, Karma, you know, if you fall and hurt your knee, uh it's my obligation to try to help to relieve your suffering. If I fall and hurt my knee, I I can do anything I want with that suffering, including saying Gamza Latova, that in some way this is this is for the best. So you would never you would never say it uh to somebody else or about somebody else's suffering.

unknown 11:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

It doesn't mean that doesn't solve the whole problem because the general yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Sorry, so it it reminds me of the a phrase I use often, rejection is God's protection. But that's that's from a personal, you know, a personal standpoint, not as as we're talking about saying that to all the people that are no longer at the end.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Right, right, right. It's difficult. It's a difficult idea. It it may be an impossible idea. Uh for me it's often impossible, but I still maintain the faith that God knows what he's doing. This is not my universe, right?

SPEAKER_04 12:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

I'm not responsible for everything. Uh and often it happens in life that I mean, haven't we all, um so many of us have had experiences where something terrible happens, but right around the corner from that was something glorious that you never would have encountered had you not had that terrible thing happen. It opens up a door to something else, so we don't know what's good or what's bad. So we have to make the assumption that God is the source of everything, and that in the end, everything will work out.

SPEAKER_04 12:38

So the the extreme example would be like suicide would be the extreme example, and how is that all for the best for the person who commits suicide? Like so that's stretching, and I know that's stretching the theme of the story, and something we may again.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

My my responsibility to that person is to help the person not to not to speak theology when they're suffering, right? The last thing a person needs when they're suffering is some theology. Uh, now there's also another corollary to it, by the way, and that is it says in in one of the books of the of the Mishnah, which is a classic book of Jewish learning of a couple of thousand years ago, um that uh you should get your you should acquire for yourself a friend. You should invest in a friendship and get yourself a friend. It doesn't say get yourself lots of friends, it says uh you should acquire for yourself a friend. So who's the friend? The friend is the person who you deputize, and you say to that person, when I'm suffering, I don't want you to help me to relieve my suffering. I want you to remind me of the theology that I've been learning all my life. You, as my friend, I'm giving you permission to do that. Everybody else try to help me relieve my suffering. But my friend, I want him to be the person who reminds me that in some way everything is really yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:07

To bring it back to therapy, that's like the sponsor in the AA uh movement and program.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Yes, more and accountability, buddy.

SPEAKER_04 14:18

Yeah, accountability, buddy. That's a good expression, yeah. And also, since uh in your favorite book by Rabbi Stunsoldz, he does uh introduce reincarnation. So to answer my own question with somebody with a suicide that follows through on it, that that would be the end of what their work in this lifetime to be like and there would be a to be continued according to the perspective of faith, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:49

And the things that we experience in this lifetime are not necessarily born in this lifetime, they may have come as the result of something from a previous incarnation, right?

SPEAKER_04 15:00

Which be yeah, people are a little bit surprised that that's part of Jewish theology, but um yeah, that's it is it's in it's in almost all the classic books on Jewish belief that um it's called Gilgul Hanefesh, the uh reincarnation of the soul.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Okay, but if you everybody has an uh an the notion is that everyone has an assignment in this life, you have something that you have to repair in this world, and if you don't if you don't do it, when you die, you'll come back in the body of another person, and you'll have another chance to to do that reparation that was only yours to do, and you come back as many times as you need to to get to get that work done, right?

SPEAKER_04 15:45

It's it's which is uh parallel to Hinduism, yeah. Yes, yes, and by the way, that story with Rabbi Akiva is it's like the same theme as the one that Alan Watts uh you know that floats around the one of good news, bad news with the sun going off to war, and you're probably familiar. Ramdas used to tell that story. So same exact theme, you know, whether it's good news, bad news, and you keep finding out how it how it alternates. That's right. What you think is bad news is good, what you think is good is bad. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

And and all of this is very, very common and popular in new age thought. Different words, different language, soul's purpose, karma, but you know, yeah, many of the same principles.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

Right. Yeah, because part of our mission and the interview approach is to bring back uh what was part of psychology in the beginning, which is the soul, soul work. And it lost touch with soul work, became very clinical, tried tried to be a science, and we'll we're part of bringing the soul work back. So my opening question that was a good a good riff. My opening question is perfect for you because it's who or what most influenced the person you are today.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Well, uh that's a slam dunk. That's a slam dunk, that's right. It's uh Rabbi Aden Steinzeltz, who uh died a few years ago at the age of 82. But I had the great fortune, as some of you know, to um to be his chauffeur. I was his driver whenever he lived in Jerusalem, but whenever he came to New York, um I was given the privilege of picking him up at the airport and driving him to all of his appointments and lectures and so forth. And I wrote a book about it called On the Road with Rabbi Steinzelt, where um I tried to retell some of the uh some of the great things that I experienced and that I heard from him. He he uh he has an inter he had an interesting uh biography himself. You know, he grew up in a family that did not offer him a Jewish education. Uh and and um so he knows the pitfalls and the difficulties of of going from a secular person to to going to being a religious person. And I had the same same experience. I I grew up in a household that did not offer me a religious education of any of any sort. And it was all it was only after I left my parents' home and uh actually started doing a little genealogical research that I discovered that I fell in love with Judaism and uh it transformed me. So Rabbi Seinzals fits that bill, right?

SPEAKER_04 18:33

What's interesting about uh Judaism, well it applies to all religions, it looks very different or can look very different from the outside, looking into the experience on the inside, looking out. Because uh I'm half Jewish, by the way. In case you were wondering, my father was a came from an Orthodox family, married a shiksa, and I'm the result. So yeah, so but I have a lot of Jewish community, and when I delved into Judaism, the word that describes it for me is beautiful, it's a really beautiful religion on the inside.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

On the inside, that's right.

SPEAKER_04 19:14

Yeah. So was there a watershed moment when you realized the true nature of your vocation when a turning point, a shift for you in your journey?

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Well, I I seem to have discovered over the over the decades that I'm a teacher, but I like to share that I like to share knowledge. Uh it's um I'm told from any number of people that I'm pretty good at it. Um, I I know how to speak to particularly people who uh have no background. And everything that I've done seems to lead me in that direction of being a teacher. Even again, even my magic interest in magic tricks wasn't enough for it to be magic tricks. It was magic tricks so that I could teach something. Um, so it seems to me that uh that that's been my my mission in this life.

SPEAKER_04 20:09

And and what principal truth or teaching guides your own journey? Like what have you downloaded, so to speak?

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Uh can you ask that in a different way? I'm I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_04 20:23

Diana, you're the one who translates for me.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Downloaded is similar to you know what what's been channeled. What's um what's the great message from above?

SPEAKER_04 20:36

Or the or from the tradition coming through you that you're like the lens of teaching coming through you.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Well, I think you know, I think that we've just spoke about it before. I think that the you know it's it's tough talking about suffering. It's it's it's tough talking about the theology of suffering. But somehow or other I um comfortable talking about it. Very few people seem to be comfortable talking about it. But it seems to be the question, you know, why why did God make a world with so much suffering? And and um so the the the teachings uh on that question from Judaism are the teachings that have nourished me over the years. And the part of it is that that journey of the soul, that your soul is my soul Well, let me put it this way. Some people believe that you're just a body, that you're born, you live, you die. Some people believe that you're a body that has a soul. Jewish tradition doesn't teach either of those two things. We don't teach that we're just a body, and we don't teach that we're a body that has a soul. We teach that we're a soul that has a body. That soul existed before this particular body. The soul picks up this body and works with it for sixty. 70, 80 years, whatever, then the so the the the soul drops the body and continues on with its work. So the idea that we're not just a body, but we're a body with a soul, or a soul with a body informs informs much of what I I think about and do.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Okay. So you truly embody soul work. Because you you truly embody soul work, because you are soul.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Yeah, yeah, nicely put. Thank you. Well put.

SPEAKER_04 22:33

Yes, so that brings up the crossover that a lot of uh the our audience would be interested in, but are interested in between therapy, either spirituality that we're delving into here, and therapy counseling, coaching on a psychological level. So, what do you have any experience in the therapy land in that realm and the way the intersection of the two?

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Um you know, when I first read something by Rabbi Steinzeltz in in the late 70s, I read this essay by him and it blew me away. And I wrote him, I I wanted to meet him, I wrote him a letter. And in the letter I said that I read your book, I read some of your stuff, and I if you ever have the opportunity, I would love to meet you. Well, he never answered that letter. But one day, about a year later, a woman uh calls me up and says, Rabbi Steindelt is going to be in New York next week. How's Wednesday at 10? And I said, Wednesday at 10 is just is just fine. And from that moment until Wednesday at 10, when I got to meet the rabbi, I sat down to write, to think of the biggest questions in my life. If this guy is who they say he is, if he's this extraordinary spiritual genius that seems that everyone seems to say he is, that when I see him, I'm gonna go for broke. I'm gonna ask him the biggest questions that I can ask him. Uh and um I came up with 11 questions. I got to see him that Wednesday attend, and um got to nine out of the 11 questions. Now that so I I did pretty well that first time. We he spent three hours with me. And then um, so all over the years, over the decades, I've I've I used to bring my problems to him. Now he was not he he was very directive. Uh in other words, you know, he's I was looking for advice. I wasn't looking for him to help me with my inner process of thinking things through and discovering who I am and so forth. So that's the closest that I would come to to visiting a therapist is uh visiting the spiritual man who uh seemed to have some wisdom to share. Yeah, in eastern terms, he'd be your guru. In eastern terms, he would be my guru. That's right. By the way, Robert Sandels wrote once that uh Judaism is not a Western religion, that really Judaism is an Eastern religion. You mentioned Hinduism before and the and the parallel with reincarnation, that's just one of many uh of many pieces of evidence that indicate that it's not a Western religion, it's more of an Eastern religion.

SPEAKER_04 25:21

Are those 11 questions copyrighted, or can we use them in a blog?

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Um they're mostly personal questions. I'll I'll tell you one question I asked him, though, that I found pretty interesting. I asked him what he thought about marijuana. Now, this was back when marijuana, you know, here I don't know about where you guys are, but here marijuana is legal. Um and uh but this was in 1979 when marijuana was prison term, a prison term for you. You know, so I asked him, what does he think about marijuana? And he said, Well, first of all, I never tried it, so I can't speak about it from personal experience. But he said, the issue with marijuana is the same as the issue with anything in life, and that is who is the master and who is the slave. He said, if you're this if you're a slave to marijuana, I would say it's not it's not good. But he said you could be a slave to coffee. He said you could be a a slave to Torah study, you know. So to have an Orthodox rabbi saying that I could be a slave to Torah study is um a pretty cool thing, I think. You know, so if you're the if you're the master, not the slave, that's then then you're going in the right direction. So that was the uh response he gave me about my asking about marijuana. And uh I found that uh many people who I've shared that with see the wisdom in it.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean that that speaks to moderation. It also speaks to, at least here in the United States, how we determine addictive behavior. You know, is it affecting your daily skills? Is it affecting your ability to maintain relationships, your vocation, etc.? If it if it is, it's a problem. If it doesn't, then it's not.

SPEAKER_04 27:13

Yeah. Right. So let's let's talk about the chocolate. Was he the master or slave to the chocolate? Because he because Rabbi Sunselt uh loved loved chocolate and you could say he was addicted to it.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Yeah, well, um he also admitted that he was addicted to it. Okay, but he said his whole family was his children, his wife, his household were all chocolate addicts.

SPEAKER_04 27:41

Well, good. So then he had he he had the experience of the slave position, you know, both of them.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Yeah, he never represented himself as a perfect being.

SPEAKER_04 27:52

Right. Yeah. Um, do you know that book? Uh I remember the subject, the pilgrimage of psychotherapy patients. Uh the title was When You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him. Kill him, yes. I remember that book. Yeah, yeah. And exploring like the it was probably one of the first psycho-spiritual perspectives on therapy.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:16

And then in the the mythology, the archetypes involved, basically the therapist as guru, right? Because there really is a crossover, you know, which is why I was asking, you know, about how psychology influences spirituality and vice versa. Right.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

So there is this um movement I'm seeing among therapists to make that process more collaborative with clients. So there's that, but the old school is that the therapist is the guru.

SPEAKER_04 28:58

Right. Yeah, because it's it's a modern phenomenon, right? Because in the past you went to the priest or the rabbi or the imnan, right? And that that's yeah, that basically was your experience, right? With any any personal issues, you just put them in that it got that wider view, that bigger perspective, and that was enough for you.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Yeah. I once I once said to Rabbi Seinzel, Rabbi Seinzel, I see that you often criticize people, but I've known you for over 30 years and you never criticized me once. Do me a favor and give me some criticism. He said to me, Well, you want some criticism? I'll give you some criticism. He said, You're too nice a guy. He said, Uh, you're you're a nice pearl. I'd like you to be a diamond. A pearl is very nice, but it's smooth. A diamond has an edge. He said, You're too nice a guy. So that's been uh my uh my co-on for the since he told it to me. Trying to meditate on what that really means in terms of my own personal life.

SPEAKER_04 30:12

Do you have anything? Sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

No, we have a we have a term in the coaching field called you know edgy. Edgy coaches are directive, not necessarily um authoritarian, authoritarian, but directive. So yeah, he's maybe just telling you to be a little edgy.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Yeah, I'm I uh I thought I was a little edgy, but not edgy enough for him.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

Right. Do you have any funny stories about his edginess? You said in the book you were talking about how he did it a lot with audiences.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Well, one thing that comes to mind immediately is that uh I took him to a lecture one Saturday night. The the Sabbath was over, and the people in the community gathered for celebration. Uh, and um Rabbi Sainzons walked into the room with a bottle of liquor under his arm and a stack of cups. And he proceeded to give people people in the audience empty cups, and he poured the the liquor into uh into the different cups for everybody to take a drink, and then he proceeded to give a lecture for an hour or so on the benefits of getting drunk. He said, you know, not unruly drunk, but just to get a little bit unstable. That a little bit of instability is what helps you to learn and helps you to move. You know, he gave the example of an airplane. When is an airplane the most stable? When it's 30,000 feet in the air. When it's most unstable is when it takes off and when it lands. But you have to go through that instability in order to get to that stable place, uh 30,000 feet into the air, so in the air. So um he proceeded again to give this lecture to these people uh about the benefits of getting a little bit tipsy.

SPEAKER_04 32:16

Right. So yeah, he's a form of therapy with the audience.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Yeah, they certainly surely did not expect expect such an answer from an Orthodox rabbi, but um he gave that message, and I you know it rings true for me.

SPEAKER_04 32:34

Right. It's uh again, Alan Watts, the wisdom of insecurity.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:42

Yeah, your other passion is genealogies. So how did you uh that was a big influence on you and guiding your path, your journey?

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Yeah, uh it certainly was. I one of the things I discovered through the genealogical research is that my great-great-great-grandfather was a rabbi, was a you know a guru type, he was a rabbi, and uh it's it's it's the last um thing I would have thought for my mother's family, who were all assimilated Jews, but a couple of generations back they were religious people, and it's it's that that got me to wonder what does that mean to be religious? Um, you know, what what not just their names and dates on a family tree, but you know what what were their lives like? How did they how did they live? And uh the more I learned, the more I fell in love with them. So genealogy was very very uh very important to me. Still it still is. I wrote two books on the subject, right?

SPEAKER_04 33:46

Uh okay, we better get to our our theme, our main theme, which is Passover and the transition, the transition on uh individual, like the meaning of Passover, like it said in the intro, as you know, going through the narrow places in our lives and uh coming to the the promised land, which is a symbol of uh you know our trans our transformation. And I I've always positioned it like as going from ego to soul, like ego-centered to soul-centered. So I'd like your perspective on the meaning of Passover in 10 minutes or less.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Well, you you know, Passover is such a rich holiday with so many themes running through it. Uh, but uh I would agree with you and would want to reiterate that that the question of ego is a big question uh in the Passover. You know, we we the everybody knows matza on Passover. So matza does not have any any leaven ingredients to make it rise. Uh bread and rolls and cakes that are leavened are all burned the day before Passover. So this this um this leaven is a is a leavening agent is a symbol of of uh boasting your building yourself up in a in a big uh ego way. Um so so uh and then the reason why we have matzah and don't have anything that's leaven is because we we want to work on ourselves and work on our our ego questions. And just this morning I was studying, I wrote it down, I was I was studying um Pure Kabot, the uh ethics of the fathers, which is one of the classic Jewish texts, also. And um the Mishnah number 13 in that in that uh holy sacred book says that one who advances his name will be forgotten. So you know if you're somebody who's looking for fame and looking for headlines or looking for for exposure in the newspaper and all that, the person who's looking for that, that person is gonna be forgotten. The task is not to uh not to boast yourself, build yourself up. Of course, somebody once said that the biggest ego trip is worrying if you're on one, which I think makes uh uh some sense. But the the the the counterbalance to the ego issue in in the in Passover is that the Passover Haggadah, the book that we read at the dinner table, is filled with blessings of gratitude. You know that so you know my I'm not the first one to say that that cultivating gratitude is a giant step in one's spiritual work.

SPEAKER_04 36:54

Agree. Yeah, the the clinical term is is ego, um, narcissistic inflation for the the problem of the ego. Yeah. Um anything else about the the symbolism? I know it could you know be a whole workshop, but anything that's really meaningful in the Passover symbolism.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Well, just just to build on the gratitude question for just a moment. Uh you know, we were slaves in Egypt, and God got us out. That's something to be grateful for. We're wandering in we wandered in the desert for 40 years, and every morning there was the mana from heaven to feed us. So well, what feeds us is something to be grateful for. Uh the the the festive meal that we eat on on Passover. At the end of the festive meal, we we we have uh something called Birkata mazon, which is the the blessings on the on of gratitude for the food that we eat. You know, the Jewish tradition says that we should say a hundred blessings a day. The morning, the afternoon, and the evening uh prayer services, because they're filled with blessings. The morning, the the morning uh praying Scott loads and loads of bless blessings for of gratitude, of thanks for all kinds of things. So the rabbis in the Talmud said we should say a hundred blessings a day. Wouldn't it be wonderful if each of us could pepper our days with a hundred moments of gratitude?

SPEAKER_02 38:45

Well, and there's actually hard research that says you know, being aware of and and documenting your gratitudes every day is good for um positive mental health. So this ancient ancient wisdom is is seeping into um the world of psychology. It's been a slow grow, though.

SPEAKER_04 39:11

Yeah, so gratitude, especially in the midst of suffering. Arthur, do you do you know the the Holocaust story when they put God on trial in the inmates inmates of the concentration camps? Found them guilty, they found them guilty, and then and then what happened to it's time to pray. Yeah, and now God is guilty, he broke the covenant, but let's go and say our evening prayers, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Yeah, in in a concentration camp, so yeah, Judaism is very much about paradox, also, which is what partly what we're we're talking about. There's a there's a a notion in Jewish thought that you should study for its own sake, don't study for a um ulterior motive, don't study to become famous, don't study to become a big shot. Why do we study? We study because that's what we're supposed to do. And the the Hebrew expression is Torah Lishmah, Torah for its own sake. When I first came across that idea that we're supposed to study for its own sake, not for some reward, I thought, gee, that that reminds me of some of the Eastern stuff I dabbled in in college. You know, don't be attached to the labor, just uh to the fruits of the labor, just do the labor. So I was very intrigued by this notion of Torah Lishmah, to study Torah for its own sake, not for an ulterior motive. So one one day I was on a I was going on a bus in Manhattan, going across town, and I go onto the bus and uh I see a man who's was very well known in the neighborhood as a Talmud scholar. So I went over to sit sit next to him and I introduced myself to him and and I said to him, you know, I was been very interested in this idea called Torah Lishma, that you should study Torah for its own sake. Don't study Torah for an ulterior motive, but study Torah because that's what we do. We study Torah. I said, so what I said to this man, so so I was interested in the idea, so I did some research on it, and I found that it says in this in the in the holy books that if you study for its own own sake, you'll be rewarded. If you study for ulterior motive, you'll be punished. So I said to the scholar on the bus, if it tells me that I'm going to be rewarded for studying for its own sake, then I'm not studying for its own sake. I'm studying it for the reward that they're gonna give me for studying for its own sake. Uh I said to the guy, this scholar on the bus, what does that mean? He looked at me, he said to me, Arthur, it's obvious that you're beginning to understand the Talmud. Because unless you see the paradox, you're probably missing the point.

SPEAKER_04 42:04

Right. That's and that's why you're a Dylan fan, too. I suppose so, yeah. Mr. Zimmerman uh inherits that. Um do you know the third Seder? Speaking of Passover, do you know the third Seder for Yoma Shoah?

SPEAKER_05 42:23

Oh, not for it.

SPEAKER_04 42:24

This was a haggadah created for the third Seder, the uh you know, on a different date for the memorial, yeah. Um someone I saw in the comments because we should transition to QA, uh, so people can get questions in. And I saw someone ask about that story from the camp that we mentioned, the Holocaust story. They wanted to hear, I think we touched on it too briefly, knowing the story, and they wanted someone wanted to hear what that actual story was.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

It actually, I if I'm not mistaken, it comes from L. Bizell's book Night, which was his Holocaust memoir, where they uh one one evening in in one of the concentration camps, one of the death camps, they put God on trial. And after a lot of rumination, and they decided that God was guilty. So they finished the trial, they declared God guilty, and they said then they said, uh, gentlemen, it's time to pray. So there, you know, therein lies the paradox again. The very the very God who we found guilty is the very God who we who we pray to.

SPEAKER_04 43:44

Right. And just the fact of putting God on trial and having a you know a prosecutor in the defense, which they went through, right? Yeah, it's that's that's very Jewish too. It says a lot about the relationship between man and God.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

Started with Abraham who bargains with God, and and and it's it's a rich Jew, old Jewish tradition to to argue with God.

SPEAKER_04 44:09

Right. So John, uh are there questions from the chat, or you can open it up for we have about 10 minutes left for QA?

SPEAKER_03 44:20

We don't have any questions at the moment, but I guess there's that invitation. If anybody wants to pop something in the chat, be very welcome to. And yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

There is one um that's uh we touched on this before, but wanting to know some more of the questions that you asked, besides the marijuana question.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

Yeah, you know, unfortunately, um they were very personal questions. Okay, that's fair. So I I apologize. Uh I wish I had the courage to to to uh admit what my questions were at that time, but they were they were deeply personal questions that uh nonetheless I got some good answers to.

SPEAKER_04 45:03

In an in in our business, it's not courage, we call that good boundaries.

SPEAKER_05 45:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

Okay, exactly. Thank you for that. I appreciate that very much.

SPEAKER_04 45:15

Oh, there's a good great question. John, uh who reads the questions? Is I I can read it.

SPEAKER_02 45:23

What is it? What is it that made you fall in love in Judaism?

SPEAKER_04 45:28

With Judaism, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

One of the things that Brabant Sainz talks about apropos of the question in uh in one of his books is that when you when you grow up not religious and you become religious, it's not an aha experience. It's not a Eureka I founded experience. Rabbi Sainz calls it a series of small turnings, a series of small turnings. So there was what wasn't anything in particular that made me fall in love with Judaism, but slowly but surely I started realizing that you know I was a religious Jew. Uh I I uh it didn't happen overnight. It I didn't even realize it was happening. But um, you know, apropos of your mentioning uh Bob Dylan, uh there was a say there's a time in my life when if you were to mention an idea, I could match it with a Bob Dylan quote. And uh and today and today I'm I'm much more comfortable matching an idea with a Talmudic quote. You know, I just immersed myself in that world and that in that way of thinking. And and more sooner or later I be I became it, and it became became me. So uh we we it's very very rare in in the Jewish world for someone to have a kind of born-again experience. It's uh it's much more a slow process of integrating into who you are, some of the ideas that that Jewish tradition offers, right?

SPEAKER_04 47:14

Even in the born-again experience, that's like falling in love, and you still have a marriage to go through. No, you can't just ride the the born-again spirits all all the way. Any other comments or questions popping up? So there's one, Tom. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Um, I'm curious about the path from ego to interior freedom from the Passover story. How does one do that journey?

SPEAKER_01 47:52

I I don't think that's a question for me. I think that's a question for one of you. Uh you know, how do you work on yourself?

SPEAKER_02 48:01

Um, you know, the ego is full of a lot of shadow. So working on the shadow brings you into this place of non-ego or soul. So it's recognizing the work that needs to be done prior to the Passover, prior to the event, prior to the celebration. Um, I mean, I was raised in the Christian faith, so there are some similarities there about realizing um the death of Christ, the sadness, the understanding the sadness to get to the joy. Um it is psychological, but it but as Cedric and I talk frequently about, it's that psycho-spiritual piece. It's like it's something other than us that drives somebody into their soul work. It's whereas ego is um very individual, individualized, individual bound.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

Isn't it a question of balance? Also, we we we have an ego. Uh you know, the the ego is very useful. We we we exist and we do we get things done. If we yeah it's who we are, but on the other hand, if it if it's inflated, it's out of bounds out of bounds, and it's not healthy. Any anything that's uh that's out of bounds is not is not not healthy. So in Jewish tradition, we're always looking for for balance. Now sometimes sometimes um a radical thing is the most reasonable thing. So it isn't like it's some kind of an artificial middle for for balance. Um, but sooner or later with the ego, you have to the Passover experience tells you you have an ego, but um don't don't become like Pharaoh in Egypt who thought he was God. That's a that's a big theme in the Passover Satan, too. That the the Pharaoh of Egypt, he he thought he was God. Uh there's a very funny uh I think it's funny anyway, uh detail in the story of Passover that the Pharaoh in Egypt, he uh every morning he would go into uh into the woods by himself. That's what the text says. It doesn't say why, but it just says that. But the the the commentary says it's because he had to go to the bathroom, because there were no bathrooms in the palace, because after all, the pharaoh was God, God doesn't have to go to the bathroom. Uh so um so the pharaoh snuck out every morning to do it to do his business, but to make sure that nobody saw that he was actually mortal, like like everybody else, right?

SPEAKER_04 51:10

Yeah, so the balance is important. We we have a model with the actual map like they call the the the compass points of personhood, and you know, spirit, soul, ego, psyche, and in the center is the crossroads, and that's the point of balance. And wherever you're out of balance on either of those four points, you know, the work is to bring it back to the center.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

We have the same thing in in Kabbalah, yeah. There's an outgoing chesed, loving kindness, and then there's a gavura, which is strength and which is contraction. Yeah, it's the big question of it that the parents have, right? How much how often how much do you say yes and how much do you say no? If you're always saying yes to that child, it's a terrible thing. If you're always saying no to that child, it's a terrible thing, but somewhere in the middle, that's some some balance again between outgoing and and advice is uh is um what we're trying to aim for, right?

SPEAKER_04 52:15

Yeah, and then to to speak to the question briefly about how does the the individual journey you know replicate the Passover journey, it's it's going from identifying with your suffering and uh like building identity around being a victim, it's uh that we see in some patients, and then taking responsibility for your life and and moving forward with that. So that that's the parallel of the journey out of Egypt to the promised land, the promised land being the individuation and taking the responsibility, you know. When you grow up and you stop blaming your parents for who you were, right? You know, so that's the just to speak to that great question. Sorry, Deanna?

SPEAKER_02 53:06

Um just gonna pull a little new age thinking in here, because we um in in some circles we talk in terms of 3D, 4D, 5D. So 3D means that you know, feet on the ground, we live, we live in the earth, it's a real world problem, so so to speak. My you know, my coffee prop broke this morning. Um, 4D is stepping into soul, but staying in ego as well, um, so that you have intention and you're mindful. And 5D is ascension. Um, and so I often say to people who say they live in 5D that I personally think 5D doesn't happen until we literally ascend from this body. So 4D is sort of the balance in in New Age speak.

SPEAKER_01 53:56

There's a the apropos of what you're saying, there's a well-known uh expression in Jewish tradition uh a descent for the sake of ascension. Descent for the sake of ascension. That every descent is really if you go to an amusement park and you see that roller coaster, the only way the roller coaster is gonna get up to the top is if it comes down first and then picks up speed and is able to then uh ascend. So it's a descent for the sake of ascension. So, in a sense, Jewish tradition, we don't recognize the direction of down because every down is really a prelude to the next up that you're gonna that you're gonna find. So every descent is for the sake of ascension.

SPEAKER_04 54:39

That's awesome. Yeah, so we're at 1259. Uh, the last thing you can mention is the titles of your best-selling dummies book. If people want to know more about Jewish tradition and mystical Judaism, but those two titles will they'll be in the resources.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

The two dummies books that I wrote were Torah for Dummies and Kabbalah for Dummies. And uh it was a great experience writing both of those books. When you sign a contract with the publisher of the dummies books, they send you a 40-page book called How to Write a Dummies Book for Dummies. So uh and you have to follow that pretty closely.

SPEAKER_04 55:19

Is it pretty easy? Like, can you do like paint by numbers?

SPEAKER_01 55:23

Well, it's you know, they it's not easy because what you they have you write your first chapter and you send in the first chapter, they're editing the first chapter, and you're starting your second chapter. When you send in your second chapter, they send back the first chapter asking you to answer all the queries that the editor made. Then you send in your third chapter and you're working on the second one also, and you have one week to do each chapter, a chapter a week. Each dummy's book is 22 chapters, so you have 22 weeks to write this whole book. But by the the way they work it, by the time the 22 weeks is over, they're ready to publish. Ready to publish. So it's a grueling gruel. When I wrote Torah for Dummies, I I swore I would never write another dummies book. But they came to me with the Kabbalah for Dummies idea, and I and I I said yes to it. I don't regret it, but the reason I said no originally to myself is because it was a grueling process.

SPEAKER_04 56:23

Wow, come we come to the book.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

I just want to say something about this book. Because I've read I've I've almost finished it. Um, but I want the the people listening to know that when you read it, at least for me, it's very much as you have been today with us. It's very, very conversational. It's like you know, I can now that I'm gonna finish the book, I will hear your voice. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 56:53

Well, thank you for that.