Text-Based Tanya Class—Week #5

here we go all right welcome back we are still in the middle of chapter one let's just review a little bit where we came from it's called the breadcrumb trail so we know we don't get lost so remember the whole trajectory of things um to me that's the main thing about tanya especially the first few hundred times you learn it it's about the structure and about knowing the path the trajectory how we get to our goal uh and then as you learn tanya over and over and over again for the rest of your life you can always delve back into the details but it's important to understand the overall structure uh at least to begin with so we were structuring this based on the the reber shahab statement that anyone who learns tanya is having eugenics with the altered but we were structuring this as like we're imagining different personal audiences with the altarebin and we come into the first personal audience with the altarebe and we know that we're asking for help we're asking for guidance in our spiritual service of what nature well more specifically that we're sort of frustrated with our own inconsistencies and we're wondering what to do about that so the first thing that al-taraba does is he he validates he validates us he says it's a really legitimate struggle look um what are you you know you can't even figure out what you are because there's this weird uh statement of our sages i'm just reviewing chapter one right now that before the soul even it comes down to the world he the soul takes an oath be it sadik don't be a russia i'm not going to translate the words saudi grosham benite because they are their definitions are so precise and particular to tanya that it doesn't even really help to um translate them um anyway so the you the soul takes this oath beats don't be russia even if the whole world tells you that you're sadiq that you should think of yourself as a russia what's up with that and you know we know that we're not supposed to think of ourselves as as a russia and and and that's not just uh because it says but also because logically i know what kind of damage that could do to somebody emotionally and uh that would cause a downward spiral of uh not serving hashem simcha which could you know lead to the worst things on the other hand if he says okay fine don't worry uh i'm a russian i don't care well then that's going to lead to what he calls a cavalier attitude so we know neither of those attitudes could be right but then what are you supposed to do how are you supposed to regard yourself and we said we're going to get into a whole long discussion about the five categories that are from the talmud zadrik veterans and we tried to put our finger on what exactly is this betany because well on one hand rabba thought he was one and we know he never sinned okay so it can't be somebody who ever sinned and uh uh uh on the other hand what is a tadik at sadiq we know is somebody who doesn't even have a year to hotter remember said that at the end of last week that david malek killed his yatsuhara through fasting and uh and and also the medici tells us tadika are exceedingly rare they're like uh there's a few of them in every generation that hashem sort of spreads out through the timeline of history so it's like i'm not a tsadik but being a baiting i don't even think i'm obeying me because the level that you're describing abandoning is like at this point of being he's indistinguishable from it's sad in fact you even proved to me using several gematas that if someone does one of vader he's already a russia so he can't be a bananee right so we're we're a little bit confused about that and we don't have clarity but somehow this is going to be important in our having a more accurate self-concept and and really if i could summarize what last week's class was about you know the first half of chapter one it's an attempt to gain a more accurate spiritual self-concept an attempt to clarify my standing and my status um in in in that sense you know we're we're we're not even talking about instructions yet we're not talking about do this do that we're really just talking about the real basics which is who am i and we're on a quest to to figure that part out and then we'll talk about you know behaviors and about different ways of doing things and we'll get a little bit more uh instructional but right now it's sort of like you know i you know in a way you could say philosophical although it's not philosophical it's very practical but it's philosophical in as much as the question is who am i but it's not who am i you know just for fun it's who am i like you have this you have this program called called judaism and i value it and yet i'm not doing well at it very often and you know it's causing me some distress so who am i okay so that's as far as we got last week now we still don't know what satellite are we have some ideas about it but we really don't know what they are and we're not going to know yet in chapter one what they are it's not going to be answered it's not going to be answered in chapter one we're going to continue now with a new piece of the puzzle and it's a very important piece of the puzzle in fact you could say it may be [Music] the most essential concept in tanya i mean i would nominate a few concepts as most essential concepts in tanya but this is definitely one of them okay so we are at achabir ho inion on the second page however the explanation of the matter is means the writings of the ari but the ari did not write them who wrote them vital he was the scribe of the arie and so haim vital writes that to every single jew ah whether and whether he is a russia meaning regardless of his spiritual status it is across the board that he has yesh he has stay nishama's two souls two souls who could receive like it says he quotes a passage and yes and i created souls it's talking about one person but it's saying souls plural shaheen stay in the fascists which are the two souls this is going to become incredibly important this idea of two souls remember i told you last week about rifka you're pregnant with twins these are the twins these are the twins so we're about to meet the twins actually we don't even meet both of the twins in this chapter we just find out that there are twins and now all of a sudden our inconsistencies start to sort of make sense we're gonna learn about one of the twins a little bit not even a lot but a little bit here at the end of chapter one um so i'm gonna this is called a spoiler i'm gonna tell you who the two twins are there's the nebucha and the nephesholocus obama which means the animal soul never shall accuse means the godly soul by the way he doesn't even call it nevis obama's here in the end of chapter one even though that's the way we refer to it mostly and consider this in chapter two we will be introduced to an official accused to the godly soul chapter two begins with the introduction to and it and it focuses entirely on the the the godly soul but here we're just going to talk about the animal soul so let's let's find out let's find out about this animal soul which again he does not call animal soul here in this chapter even though that's the way we refer to it that's the way it's referred to most commonly one soul these are kabbalistic terms clipper means shell or husk or hide or peel everything has a spark of godliness or it wouldn't exist some things just have that spark more concealed than others so the clipper the hide or the peel or the husk or the [Music] whatever is the covering which obscures the innate godliness of anything and when something is really really uh removed from its holy source then it's said to be covered in a very coarse or thick clipper so the whole realm of negativity is called clipper it's very it's very important to understand because really there's no duality god forbid there's only one source it's only godliness only the only question is how revealed or concealed it is so the clip is the concealment of the godliness also the term uses here is a term that we're going to speak about more in chapter 6 but it means the other side it's aramaic it comes from from zayar it means the other side the other side meaning not the side of holiness so the first soul that every single jew has he said every single jew has two souls and the first one of them is from the clippers so you have a soul from the clipper and the sutra the hamish you know where it is you know if how do you locate the physical location of an energy i mean it's a soul it's a nefish by the way i don't i don't even really like to translate nfish as salt because it's a not a very descriptive word call it a drive i think that's that's more helpful call it a drive so a drive is an abstraction where is a drive yet it is invested in the medium of the blood and its operative function is to maintain the vitality of the body now it it's a drive meaning it has an agenda has a personality it has goals but its operative function is that it maintains vital functions but it it has it has a personality it is a personality you understand it's not just some uh life force that like you know like you just plug a lamp into the into the wall and it lights up i mean it has an agenda that agenda is very much coupled with maintaining vital functions because the agenda is basically self-preservation in fact maybe a helpful way in 2021 describe this nefish would be to call it the drive for self-preservation but at this point what is the alternative telling us it's telling us where it's located it's in the blood it's not blood it's a soul but it's in the blood the medium that carries it or keeps it in the body since it's a spiritual energy what keeps it married to the physical body it's through the uh the medium of the blood like it says quotes a verse the soul of flesh is in the blood the soul of flesh that's sort of like a paradox i mean those are opposites soul and flesh so the intermediary between soul and flesh is blood blood is physical but it's uh it's it's vitality it's life um okay now we're getting into its personality so it doesn't just animate the body it yes it animates the body that's the most discernible effect of the presence of a nephesh is the physical life of the body but that's not all it has a personality so let's talk about that um and from this soul this nephesh this drive which is from clippers come forth all the negative character traits which correspond to the four elements which are in this nefish i'm not going to get into a whole lengthy elaboration on the idea of dollardius the four elements how are they different from the periodic uh chart of elements obviously those are different elements when we speak about fire air water earth as the four elements we're not even talking about fire air water and earth as we know them we're talking about elemental fire air water earth i saw a letter from the rebbe in english to a scientist where he once explained it and this seems to be a helpful way of talking about it that uh that these none of these are one-to-one you know translations but maybe a better way to convey to a western trained mind what is elemental fire elemental air elemental water elemental earth would be to compare it to the four states please ignore the flashing light unless it's a safety concern let's just ignore it is it a safety concern but you know what ladies can i tell you a secret my whole life is full of annoying stimuli which i tune out in order you you think you're noticing this can i tell you something but the concern with the thing like okay anyways my entire life is one concerted effort not to break focus which is why everyone thinks i'm rude because if you come to talk everyone thinks i'm rude they don't understand it's a handicap when but they do but they do bother me it's always bothering us it bothered you okay fine so anyways could i tell you how many different things there are going on in the room every single day that are equally as annoying as that flashing light which i'm blocking out in order to maintain my train of thought at any rate okay just by necessity so what were we talking about ladies i need hyper focus hyper focus okay i need you to work as hard as i'm working actually i heard a great principle in education once and i think it's true and i rarely achieve it which is the best the best learning is when the students are working harder than the teacher it's it's rare to achieve it but when you do achieve it it's always incredibly successful okay so follow me here i don't want to get into a side point about elemental fire elemental air elemental water elemental earth i don't want to get into discussion about neoplatonism it's not really the time or place what i do want to tell you is there is such a concept it's a common thing it comes up not just in sid this it comes up in much of rabbinic literature i saw a letter from the debate where he was explaining this to somebody in scientific terms obviously none of this is a one-to-one translation but it may be helpful like this is this is where the light started flickering i said it might be helpful to the western trained mind to think about it like this that it corresponds to four states of matter which we refer to as plasma gas liquid and solid but what does that help you i don't know it just i'm only telling it to satisfy you in case it's going to bother you and you're not going to be able to concentrate on what we're learning so anyways it's called throwing a bone okay anyways there's something called dollar dossier this is the four elements everything's made up of it including this nephesh when we say that this nephesh has a personality that traits come from it we can actually describe different traits of this drive as corresponding to the presence of different elements within that drive following yeah no no the soul has four elements everything is four elements the soul has a personality that personality has different traits those different traits correspond to different elements made sense okay dahinu now he enumerates that now he enumerates them the hainu anger and arrogance come from the elemental fire why because the nature of fire is to go upward don't hold a match from the top the taiwas hatanugim the desire for pleasure lost you say the mayan comes from elemental water kia mai matsumi kim kominai because water causes all delightful things to flourish vahelous for his parents and uh frivolity and scoffing and bragging and uh idol chatter come from the elemental air you know these are all things that are just a bunch of air va and laziness and depression you say the offer from elemental earth anyways these are examples of negative character traits that derive from this nephesh this nephesh of klippa and sitra anger and arrogance and lust and bragging and frivolity and scoffing and idle chatter and laziness and depression i think i said all of them so now you're getting a picture of this nephesh yeah it keeps you alive which you know obviously is is important but it has a personality and not all of its traits are such good traits to say the least so it controls your emotions mostly emotions well traits are emotional traits these are yeah if you want to be really precise i wouldn't call them emotional traits but we don't have a very uh precise understanding yet of the term emotion so i'm not going to be so i'm not going to jump on that yeah as we progress we will have a more precise understanding of what an emotion is but call maybe call these proclivities or tendencies yeah call it wiring yeah so they say the human body is like over 70 percent water so yeah 70 lost that's not the same water oh what's the difference i said i'm not going to get into what elemental uh fire earth water okay anyways like like this happens every class that's why but it's not it's not the same thing this is why i tried to this is why i tried to bavor in this we could get into a side conversation about the dollar elements the four elements dollar decided see listen trust me with one thing i know why most tanya classes do not finish tanya do you know that it's a fact most tanya classes do not finish tanya not because it's a big book because the reason why is because people get sidetracked on these things like dollar decides which is fascinating but what happens is see the book is a manual but imagine you're reading a manual how to put together you buy a chair from ikea and you're in the you're reading the manual how to put together the chair from ikea and as you're reading um you you hit upon an interesting term and then you have a discussion about that term all night and you don't put together the chair then the chair never gets built eventually you throw away the the directions and eventually throw away the chair so that's why based on a lot of experience going through the book and guiding others through the book i realized certain things i anticipate i know are things that people will enjoy in the moment but will cause them not to come back the next week because they'll be like what was practical about this how did this enhance my life how am i getting closer to a uh to a to a an understanding of myself so that's why i even said at the beginning let's not get into the four elements because i know this is one of those danger areas where people get fascinated in the moment and then they disappear and they can't even pinpoint it trust me i've had this experience you ask people why did you disappear why did you stop learning tanya and they'll say oh it was really interesting but and and what i put together what i realize happens is if if you don't keep coming back to the main thrust of the book which is to address your personal spiritual development you lose people so anyways don't worry about dollar decides and to answer your question everybody's different you've met different people who have different natures some people have more elemental fire some you know they have more of a problem with anger they don't have so much a problem with lust some people have more elemental earth they have more problem with with laziness it's not so much uh that they speak uh idle chatter right so everybody's different but the point is all of us have these traits and where do they come from they come from this what we call soul of clipper and citra agra okay fine now a little bit of a surprise here a little bit of a surprise a little bit of a twist the gammi destoy vase also good traits shiba teva kolis robert told islam that are innate to jews like compassion and kindness come from it from this very same soul it's not all bad it's not all bad yeah we just said negative traits but there are certain good traits that also come from this soul like he says traits that are considered to be innate to jews the talmud tells us there are three signs of jewish people that that they are by sonam rahmanim likha sodom they are bashful and you know that means like humble and compassionate and kind i mean not to stereotype but those but those are um those are characteristics that are universal to the jewish people the thing is as you can understand here from context these good traits are not the result of any type of selflessness or or idealism these good traits are are inborn they're instinctive just like you may have been born with a proclivity toward laziness which is not such a great thing okay so you're also born with proclivity toward generosity which is a good thing but it's it's just a natural proclivity it's not to your credit you didn't work on it i mean you can work on it and and accentuate it but i'm saying the the the built-in trait is just something that is there with this nefish it's just part and parcel of the of the nefish why is it that this nephesh has both bad traits and good traits he explains kibi israel because for a jewish person nefer zu di clipa this soul of clipper we sat at klipa and i told you what clipper means here's a kabbalistic term it's not just any clipper it's a specific clipper it's clipas noiga shiheishbo gam kentov which also has good okay what is clipas neuga and why do we say it also has good if a clipper is bad why does it also have good clipas noiga literally means the glowing or shining clipper the translucent husk why is it glowing because remember i said that the clipper is concealing the spark of godliness obviously none that i don't mean any of this physically this is all spiritual but the clipper could be opaque or the clipper could be translucent when we say that the shell is shining we mean that it is not that it itself is iridescent but it is translucent it is allowing the spark of godliness to shine through okay most things in the world are clipas noiga like the cup of tea it's neither holy nor profane it's neutral it's not holy but if you make a bracha on it and you drink it and you use it to to learn toyota you could elevate it into holiness so the spark is accessible and you can even see i'm talking not talking physically obviously but conceptually you can see how there's a spark of godliness that's accessible within it the point is that well i say something funny i think clipot noga is a beautiful name for cosmetics this is on youtube you're gonna steal your idea it's okay i don't make cosmetics you don't make cosmetics you should without that name you should that's it i like it you're gonna have kiosks at every mall okay that's a great idea okay you heard it here first okay so most things in this world are clipas neuga they're neither holy nor profane or i should say they're not irredeemably profane they're mundane they're mundane and they can be elevated why because like he says there's good and bad in it really there's good in everything but it's in in many cases it's inaccessible it's completely inaccessible so effectively there's no good in it i mean if if something had no good in it it wouldn't exist but when the good is so covered in such a impenetrable impenetrable uh clipper then effectively then there's no good in it then you have something where the clipper is is uh not such an obstruction okay so that's that's what he says is the spiritual status of this nephesh yes it's a it's a nephesh which emanates from klippa or derives from klippa but of the different kinds of clipper it is clipas noiga it's a it's a clipper which has accessible good in it and he elaborates um he must say hey this is actually a an outcome of the spiritual mystical concept of the tree of good of the tree of knowledge of good and evil okay again not getting all sidetracked into a very deep kabbalistic concept suffice it to say at the beginning of time when there was um you know adam and eve in the garden and the tree and all that stuff right so good and evil were separate from each other so it's pretty easy to navigate here's good here's evil the primary effect of the sin of the tree of knowledge of good remember was not just called the tree of knowledge that's its nickname the short name it's called the tree of knowledge of good and evil tree of knowledge of good and evil the primary effect that it had was to combine to intermingle good and bad in everything what does that mean to intermin intermingle good and bad and everything what it means is because of the to use you know like the quantum term the conscious observer the power of the human being is that the human being can perceive both moral and immoral uses in most everything so is the knife good or bad depends how you use it uh you know you you you're preparing dinner for your family or you're stabbing the neighbor right why the neighbor i don't know because he interviewed he interrupted while i was trying to prepare dinner that's what okay what are you making over there okay i made dinner last night and you know how hyper focused i get when i when i teach i'm even worse when i'm cooking you cannot talk to me i'm just it's like it's very oh yeah no haven't helped person knocks at the door while i'm yeah yeah i have a few dishes that i make so last night yeah very it was kung pao chicken yeah and like when it gets to the end where i'm adding the cornstarch to thicken it up like it's very intense it's like because you have to go fast and if you go too slow then it like globs up and it's a very yeah very intense okay so anyways klipas nyga is sort of the result of the sin of the tree of knowledge of good and evil where you have good and bad mixed into things by the way the primary example again i don't want to get sidetracked the primary example of the the the mixing of good and evil you know that after adam and eve sinned or after they uh were affected by this knowledge of good and evil the first thing that they experienced was shame per specifically shame of their nakedness okay that's when they all of a sudden lost their innocence they wanted to be covered they wanted to cover their reproductive organs primary example quintessential example of the mixture of good and bad is this the human procreative urge because is it good or is it bad well depends how you use it can be the the holiest thing or the the most profane thing okay and the fact that it's co-mingled and you have to extract it you have to sift it you have to take out the good and leave the bad is uh you know that's mostly what we're here doing since adam and eve is is that process of of refinement okay but at any rate what we're saying here is in us we have this energy called um a nephesh called a drive it enlivens our bodies it's contained in the medium of the blood it gives us all sorts of negative traits but also because it's klipas nega it gives us all types of good traits as well that are innate to the jew okay um now here's the controversial part and you know i'm not going to try to suppress this and the reason i'm not going to try to suppress it is well first of all i think it's logical and i hope i would have understood it on my own but also because it's clearly what they've ever directed they put out a a bilingual tanya a tanya that had hebrew on one side in english on the other side a lot of people are using so the earth the first one was put up in in england and zalman jaffe was the one who led the project and he actually asked that ebba if they should maybe not translate these few lines they'll leave it in the hebrew but they won't translate into english and and that ebba said you're going to make it seem much worse than it really is like you know it's never what it is it's never the scandal it's the cover-up right the cut or the cover-up is worse than the crime right so um let's just delve into this this is called the controversial part this is what people call i'm not going to mince words this is what people call the racist part of tonya um i don't think it i i don't think anybody who is understanding what it's saying would call it racist there's nothing racial about it it has nothing to do with race by the way what race is a jew what color is a jew right so jewish identity is a metaphysical identity anyway because you know there's black jews and white jews and jews from every nationality and ethnicity and speak every language at home and eat every cuisine and hold every passport so being a jew is certainly it's not a ethnicity or a nationality or a race in in the conventional sense of the terms it's not even a religion because you could have a jew who's non-practicing and they're they're still jewish so how do you define jewish identity it's a metaphysical condition now how does a person gain that status we know there are two ways either they're born from a jewish mother are they hollow could converted but the point is it's a metaphysical status so we're not here talking about the fact you know that uh you know oh jews are smart even though i think statistically speaking like the percentage of nobel prize winners or like something like a thousand times disproportionate you know uh jewish winners nobel prize but that's what we're saying even if even if that is a true statement that's that's not what we're saying here we're saying is look there has to be some distinction called jew what is a jew it's not it's not a genetic thing it's not an ethnic thing it's not even a religious thing meaning what religion you practice because god forbid practice another religion and still be a jew god forbid but it's a metaphysical condition however you want to define jew you can define it but be my guest but here what we're talking about is somebody who has the presence of jewish spiritual anatomy jewish spiritual hard wiring and the jewish spiritual hard wiring is that they have two souls and one of those souls is a soul of clipper but that clipper is clipas naiga and therefore it has good and bad traits he says in contrast masheen kane nafasuma sawailam the souls of the rest of humanity heinous tamaya shayne bahantev klaus they're from the other clippers not klipas noiga but the other clippers which don't have any good now you're going to say hold on a second i meant non-jews that did have good okay okay so let's slow down first of all there is definitely such a thing called sadiq um um speaks about it in terms of so there are exceptions of very noble people who are who are not jewish what we're talking about here is a general categorical status that to say that automatically just by dint of their membership in this spiritual nation which is not a real nation the way you know it or defies categorization of nation the way we normally use the term but to say that this idea that someone automatically has this clipas noiga that even their clipper is clipas noiga that's uniquely jewish of course there are non-jewish human beings whose clipa is also klipas noiga but it's not by default it's it's it's an exception now you may even argue that today in today's day and age that the exception is more prevalent than the rule i i have no proof for that i think people in general are kinder and more humane today than they ever were before so i think that lawlessness and cruelty were more the rule in the past in human history today they're more the exception again i have no proof for this maybe i shouldn't even be saying this but i believe that today most most of humanity jewish or non-jewish do have a certain native kindness that's just natural to them but i don't know that that was always the case throughout history and that's what the altareb is speaking about is speaking about the fact that it's not the default it's not the default that you can just assume that a person is a good person at any rate let me let me take another approach to explaining this what the altareb is saying at this point is no worse than what a humanist will say about himself basically he's saying that human beings are just animals and they do what's good for them and they don't really have the capability for altruism what's the altar saying worse about human beings than any good humanistic atheistic uh you know than any secular uh approach says about about the human nature what he's saying is that human beings are are out for themselves and even when they do good they're doing it because it's self-serving on some level and self-serving could even just mean i get to feel good about myself i'll tell you very quickly a story that actually happened to me where i learned you see i i i always struggled with exactly what this means and and i told you one of my ways of understanding it is that i i do think today's day is an exception in in terms of the timeline of history i think that there's a disproportionate amount of genuinely kind human beings today more than ever and i think it's because we're closer to mashiach whatever but that's something i can't prove that's just a personal feeling i have um but as far as understanding the words here when the altareb is saying that the rest of humanity they don't have good the default is not good and and and then and he says let's just continue the line here kamehameha kosovo time tests if they do any good it's only self-serving means for themselves or like it says in proverbs that when the nations meaning when humanity does good it's actually reckoned like a sin not that it's literally a sin obviously it's speaking homologically here it's not really a sin it's kasi it's a good thing but it's relatively a sin why she calls the doc because all the goodness that they do aina ain't hulu it's only self-serving it's only just for self-glorification so i was struggling with that and i had an incident i experienced an incident that really clarified it for me i was on a radio show on a panel and the topic was the golden rule and the host had different clergy from different world religions i was the rabbi representing judaism and they had different world religions and so he asks why should you do unto others as you would have them do unto you and the first one they asked was the muslim they asked the imam and he said well because even though it's difficult to be kind to everybody but the reward in the afterlife is so ample that it's definitely worth it so i i don't know a lot about islam but from what i do know it's that sounded pretty accurate like he they picked a good guy to represent his religion you know that's what you know they believe that the the reward and we also believe love dylan the reward in the world to come right but so his explanation why should he be a good person why because of paradise okay then they ask the buddhist the buddhist is like well if you don't be good to people you won't get away with it because this karma and it'll even out so what's the point of trying to get away with anything you just got to you know just don't don't make any waves and i thought to myself i don't know a lot about buddhism but what little i know that it sounds like again they picked a pretty good buddhist to represent buddhism right there then they asked the christian it was some type of protestant i don't remember which denomination and he's like well you know i was at a protest the other day and i was thinking this very question because i was thinking what's the point of my being here am i making a difference and i realized well you know i the reason that i'm here at this protest is so i should know that i took the right stand on the issue and that's why you should be a good person so that you should know that you're a good person and i was like oh okay like again i don't know a lot about protestantism but you know it sounds like he's probably a calvinist right some type of presbyterian calvinist whatever i should be a good person so i should know that i'm a good person again they picked a good guy to represent his religion the next guy was the ethical humanist the ethical humanists have a church where they don't pray they have a a house of worship they get together they don't worship though because they're humanists and they they study philosophy and ethics and to discuss about being a good person so they asked them why should you be a good person so the ethical humanist says well it's very simple if i do whatever i want to do you'll do whatever i want you whatever you want to do and they'll be anarchy so for the preservation of of society for the greater good everybody has to sort of hold back and uh defer to others so they come to me and they ask me what's the jewish take why should be a good person so i was sort of like i wanted to be amusing i didn't want to just you know say a regular answer so i made a quip and i said because i was listening to the previous answers so i said so essentially the question is what are the self-serving motives for being selfless which i thought was kind of cute like it should at least elicit a chuckle and the guy's like yeah go ahead rabbi but he so he he didn't get the joke so i did i wrote the first role of comedy which is you know if you bomb don't just repeat the joke but i did it because i wanted to get it i said so basically you're asking what are the self-serving motives for being selfless he's like yeah go ahead go ahead rabbi and i just realized at that moment that we're like having two totally different discussions and i realized these people their self-serving motives are not disgusting self-serving it's not like they're saying i want to be good to i can trick people into trusting me and then i'll you know rob their home no all of their answers were somewhat refined some more than others but some of them were even downright spiritual like they had reasons why to be a good person the jewish question why should you be a good person though ultimately is unanswerable what do you mean why should you be a good person you need a reason yeah you need a reason and it's funny because we we believe in some of those things you know the the muslim believes in afterlife we also believe in afterlife but that's why to be a good person that's why that's the reason that's not the reason so when he says that they do it for themselves ligame for themselves doesn't have to be the most brute expression of self-interest it could just mean that i don't know because i want to be a moral person oh you have a reason you want to be a moral person okay and so that's what he's saying he's saying that the default is a human being will be good because they have a logical reason why to be good or an ideological reason why to be good it's uniquely jewish to say i don't know this is just this is just what i do now are there non-jews who could also do that yes of course what he's saying is what's unique and unusual and peculiar is that you'd have a whole nation of people whose default is that and that's what he's saying so essentially what we have at the end of chapter one is this assertion that you have and we don't even know about the second soul yet but you have this soul which is an admixture of good and bad it has certain pro negative proclivities which are identifiably negative traits it also has certain instinctive good traits nothing noble about it because it's purely instinctual okay and and and it's keeping your body alive that's what we know at this point that's what we know at this point now just so you don't leave with like an open loop and then it falls apart on you in chapter 2 spoiler alert we're going to introduce the second soul and we're going to explain how it is in conflict with that first soul good okay all right oh the radio host whether he got frustrated i got frustrated he went to commercial break