The Book of Job - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

some have said it is the single most important problem in religious philosophy now religious philosophy deals with a lot of issues how do you know there's God how do you know there's Torah but let's say a person believes in God a person believes in Torah you know I have no problem with that but the big problem that people do have is okay I believe in God but God is supposed to be just and God is supposed to be kind how can we live in a world where there is so much tragedy where there are so much suffering where bad things happen to good people and the other way around sometimes people who are evildoers they prosper and and life goes very well for them at least for a while and uh this is the problem known as The Odyssey why do bad things happen to good people why do good things happen to bad people and the like now it is true that in the totality of Jewish theology perhaps there are simple relatively simple answers that one can talk about there is after all a concept of a world to come so even if in this world things are bad but in the world to come there's going to be reward conversely there's also a concept of reincarnation now this was developed those of you that were in spats this was developed by the cabalist it's not necessarily in the certainly not in the Torah it's not even in the talmud but there is an idea similar to Buddhism that basically says sometimes you suffer in this world because of the sins that you committed in your past life for which you need uh a an atonement and and the like so we either could focus on the World to come or we could focus on reincarnation in past lives as part of a partial answer but still it is a very very perplex in a very very difficult issue now uh the first thing to know is that uh this was not an issue that only bothers Modern Man in fact Moses himself questioned the almighty if you remember in the book of Exodus in one of the verses Moses says to God show me your ways and the interpretation is he wanted to understand why do righteous people suffer and why do evildoers prosper and the interesting thing is he asks God that question and God doesn't answer it God simply says I will be gracious to whom I choose to be gracious I will be merciful to whom I choose to be merciful in other words you're asking me a question I'm not going to answer it this is the way it is that's pretty frustrating Moses is all the way up there with God and in fact this is the meaning of the talmudic interpretation there are 50 levels of understanding God and Moses reached 49 the 50th level is exactly this particular question there is an entire book of the Bible not the Torah but in the Bible that is devoted to this theme of The Suffering of the righteous and that book is of course the Book of Job so I want to talk a little bit about the Book of Job it's a beautiful magnificent literary structure and job is described as a man by the way he is not identified as Jewish and many commentaries assert he was not Jewish in fact some commentaries assert he was just fictional and the reason is because what job is describing is not a particular problem of the Jewish people it is a human problem and job in some ways is every man you know capital E and that is why he is not described as Jewish he is not described as keeping the mitzvot he is described as God-fearing so what is the story line of job so the story line of job is there is this righteous man called job who is uh perfect in his faith he fears the almighty he gives charity he he he tries to do everything that he can do and he's living a good life he's wealthy he has a large family he's well-respected he's admired he's a paragon of virtue and a foundation of his community now we then switch the scene imagine this dramatically we then switch the scene to heaven and job is not aware of this we're aware of it and God is holding a Heavenly Court surrounded by angels as if God is the Chief Justice and there's this heavenly Council of angels and God says to the angels have you ever seen such a righteous person as e of as job isn't he the greatest you've ever seen so there is one dissenting voice and that dissenting voice is called Satan this is very interesting in the Christian tradition Satan is a fallen angel meaning he's an angel that got kicked out of heaven because he rebelled against God and he became almost God's rival whether it's the Antichrist or or what whatever it would be in the Jewish tradition first of all I want to point out two things about Satan Satan first appears in the Book of Job Satan is Satan number one Satan is actually not a name it is a function he is called ha Satan the Satan and what is his function it simply means the prosecutor he is not a fallen angel he's up there in the Heavenly court and he is literally what we would call The Devil's Advocate when When God says oh this person deserves you know goodness and blessing so the Satan is the district attorney that is supposed to point out the negatives so Satan is a respected not person a respected entity meaning he's part of the Heavenly judicial process whatever that means exactly and the Satan speaks up to God and says hey God job isn't isn't as righteous as you're making him out to be of course he serves you because he gets a lot out of it he's wealthy he's respected he has kids yeah so of course he serves you but start taking the stuff away from him and we'll see how righteous he is so as you're reading this you get the impression very very odd literary conceits that God and the Satan are engaged in a gambling bet a wager I bet you God if you start taking away stuff job is going to rebel against you and God says I accept the bet it's kind of outrageous and immediately now Jo job has no idea that there was a bet made about him and God gives the Satan permission to start taking things away from job now but he gave him one condition he said said don't kill him reason is very simple uh the experiment cannot be successful if the subject dies the experiment is designed to say how much bad stuff can I do to him before he Rebels against me but if you kill him now what do they say the experiment was successful but the patient died it's not going to work so he gave job one instruction do what you want to him but don't kill him however sages add two other things that besides job's life there were two other things that he was spared he was spared the loss of his wife his wife was not killed because that is equivalent losing one's wife is equivalent to death and God also spares job's friends because a life without friends is tantamount to death but be it as it may job is totally clueless here he doesn't know what's going on and all of a sudden all sorts of things begin to happen first what happens is that a bunch of marauders take all of his flocks and they destroy his property he's reduced to Pro poverty second a house collapses on his children that are having a party he has seven sons and Seven Daughters building collapses he loses all of them and thirdly he gets Afflicted with loathsome illnesses that are so repulsive that people cannot even stand being in his proximity so he loses his friends at the same time he loses himself right he loses everything and Mrs job has a very brief walk- on appearance she only utters one line she says to her husband why don't you just Curse God so he'll strike you with lightning and take you out of your misery and job utters The Immortal words that to this very day we say at a funeral God gives and God takes May the name of God be blessed shall we accept the good of the almighty and not accept the evil and in English there's even an expression I believe Shakespeare might use it I'm not sure the patience of Job the person who is longsuffering the person who is patient right the person who says whatever happens to me I accept with Equanimity but I have to say whoever coined that phrase only read chapter one of the Book of Job and didn't keep on reading because then when we reach chapter 2 something else happens and that is job has three very dear friends and those friends come to comfort him and the gari even says that they actually lived a very long distance from him and in those days there was no email or telephone or fast communication how did they they know to come and the gar gives us an insight into friendship they just had almost a telepathic sense that their friend needed help often mothers and children have that type of relationship right Mom kind of knows when you're in trouble how did she know you know just knew uh there the bond of souls can be so strong that even without email or Twitter or Facebook there's just a sense of Vibes that come from one end of the world to the other end of the world he had friends like that these were dear friends and they came and they sat with him for seven days and seven nights and they didn't say a word and this their conduct Finds Its expression in the you know that when God forbid someone loses a relative loses a parent loses A child loses a spouse so they mourned for seven days this is called as you know sitting shiva and they don't leave their house people come to them to offer Comfort but do you know there's actually a we don't always follow it for various reasons that when you come to comfort a mner you don't initiate the conversation sometimes the mner just wants silence the mner is not ready to talk the mner is not ready to hear words and therefore you sit in silence until the mner initiates conversation and that is derived biblically that is derived biblically from from the behavior of job's friends who sat with him Seven Days Seven Nights I'm not sure what that meant it seems to be 24/7 they literally you know sat there of course again Hally things are a little different because there's Shabbat you know okay but but obviously as I say these were not even necessarily Jewish people so they weren't keeping all of these rituals but this was the basic idea of comforting your friends in time of need but apparently it may have been a wrong strategy because during those s days job was very silent and you have to have the picture I mean he's lost all of his children he lost all of his fortune his body is covered with scabs and there's a Lo loathsome smell coming from him and he can't even wear clothes it's as if to say his skin is so sensitive that he's basically stripped to a lawn cloth and he's sitting in ashes and his friends didn't talk to him they were there but they didn't talk to him but at the end of the seven days he erupted this faithful patient long-suffering person erupted in a fit of anger and accusation against God in which he cursed the day that he was born and he demanded an explanation from God why did this happen I was righteous I was good I kept my side of the bargain where were you what are you doing and from that point the book switches from what you might call the story structure to essentially a philosophical debate in which each of job's friends States a position to kind of justify God job refutes it right so you really have three rounds what you have is uh friend one says something job responds friend two says something job responds friend three says something job responds then we have a second round one two three with responses and then in the third round uh you only have friend one and two friend three disappears he seems to have left and then there's a fourth friend that comes and at the end of the book you have God showing up right that's kind of the structure of the book of of job and it's very very complex and very rich and very deep and uh if if my words today encourage you to pick up the Book of Job and try to study it that would be very very worthwhile because number one it's very interesting to identify what are the distinct positions of the three friends but number two how those positions change in successive rounds of the debate because friend one's position in the second round is informed not only by job's responses but by what the other friends say so each one will then incorporate elements of the other and build on each other and interact with each other so it's a very very fascinating literary structure but it deals with a theological problem of first importance so we don't have the time right now to distinctively identify what each of the friends are saying but let me just say that we can summarize in a simplistic way that the friends are defending what you might call the conventional view of morality which seems to be the one that's articulated in the Torah itself you read the Torah the five books of Moses that that came directly from God and the Torah seems to say if you behave in accordance with God's will you will have a good life you will have rain you will have Prosperity you will you will have health you will have children and if you don't obey God's law you will have a bad life and I want to emphasize the Torah does not talk about this in terms of the world to come that's kind of you know our answer the Torah talks about it in the here and now I hope most most of you said the shma this morning right but if you did be it as it may you know what the shma says if you will keep my Commandments I will give you reain I will give you Prosperity I will give you health and if you don't keep my Commandments then bad things are going to happen to you in this world so job's friends are trying to defend the conventional morality but they got a problem well one second here do good you're going to live good do bad you're going to live bad job's living bad how could that be he was doing good so their response was hey job it must be you're not as righteous as you thought you were and their message was basically nothing bad happens to you unless you're a sinner sorry job I guess you got some sins that you have to work on and it's fascinating how the tone escalates initially it's a very gentle tone meaning nobody's perfect we all have flaws perhaps you can look into yourself improve yourself become better but job doesn't accept it job says you know I've done nothing wrong and the tone escalates so by the end of the dialogue job's friend start saying there has never been a sinner as great as you since the beginning of the world it's like it turns into anger which means there's a secondary aspect of the Book of Job that besides the philosophical issue it also deals with the psychological problems of how to be a support system for somebody in need in other words it's also because you basically say in fact I I the nature again I mean hopefully you have not experienced this but sometimes people are called upon to be Caregivers for loved ones who are in extreme situations whether it's Alzheimer's whether it's cancer whatever it would be and you will often find the phenomenon that because of your helplessness in really being able to comfort them or help them or make them better you will actually paradoxically you will feel anger at them for not responding to your help right now there's a I've seen cases where a person breaks down and starts screaming at a cancer patient say why can't you get better why don't you you know respond to what I'm doing for you makes no sense but psychologically you can understand that because you get overwhelmed with your impotence your inability to make a difference and you see that psychological transition in the fact that job's friends are getting progressively disgusted with him in fact I would suggest although I did not see this this is why in round two I'm sorry round three you you recall I mentioned only friends one and two are there friends three are not friend three is not even there I think the intimation is he just walked away in disgust he says I'm sick of this I've given you my wisdom I've given you my insight you're not taking advantage of it to hell with you know suffer this is what can happen so I'm going to call this the conventional morality and and and it it doesn't mean that because it's not true it's in the Torah but we'll discuss this and they're making the arguments that if God is a compassionate God and God is a just God he would not allow bad things to happen to people unless they deserved it so if bad things happen even though it looks like you don't deserve it you apparently do deserve it so do Chua repent become a better person person and and and the like by the way there's a certain comforting aspect in the conventional morality because it's a way to immunize ourselves in other words I look at a person that's suffering if I can say oh he's suffering because the bus turned over because the kids weren't keeping chabas or this happened or Aids happened because this person was a homosexual that kind of allows me to separate them from me and that allows me to go through life without this horror of something bad happening this is why there is a human tendency sometimes to try to identify some blame that somebody has because then I can kind of take myself out of that predicament otherwise life is very horrifying and terrifying if any moment things could happen so we'll call this the conventional morality and this seems to be the morality structure that's in the Torah itself and yet job refuses to accept it because job says I've done nothing wrong I have been righteous I've looked into my Deeds they are not wanting and this argument goes on and on and as I say there are nuances that we're not touching upon between what the first friend says and what the second friend says and what the third friend says and they also modify their positions in the course of the debate but as I say our f today is the forest not the trees and this is the basic idea okay and job keeps on saying to his friends you guys are windbags the actual word that he uses you guys don't know what you're talking about I want to hear from God why this is happening well you know the old saying be careful for what you pray for because you might get it and at the end of the book again a very dramatic scene all of a sudden there's a whirlwind a tornado very ominous and the voice of God says to job I'm here would you like to ask me some questions and job really doesn't ask anything at that point God knows what the questions are and God proceeds to show him the equivalent of a National Geographic special on the wonders of nature in fact those are of you that uh are nature lovers uh the last few chapters of the Book of Job are one of the most outstanding and beautiful portrayals of the wonders of the universe that is found in the Bible he shows job the stars and the planets the constellations the mountains The Valleys the ice of the pole polar areas and the Magnificent emptiness of the deserts he shows him the divers of animal life the hippopotamus and the elephant and you know huge animals and each time there's a bit of a mocking tone he says to job pretty good job huh could you do better could you do this could you do this he talks about different phenomena such as mountain goats you know mountain goats are always skipping around these sharp Peaks and when they have to give birth they have to give birth in exactly the position where the baby doesn't fall down the mountain and everything has to be timed you know very much exactly and every time he says to job hey pretty good huh pretty good pretty good pretty good could you do better he seems to be mocking job again superficially he seems to be bullying job into submission and yet at the end of the book Job responds with only two words well one word actually now I'm saying it in Hebrew because niik actually has two translations and each translation is actually somewhat interesting means I have been comforted God you have comforted me oh yeah I forgot one thing the one thing that God said to him was job he gave him good news and bad news job your friends are wrong and you're right you don't deserve any of this that's the good news the bad news is if don't deserve any of this why is it happening in a way if you were to tell me I deserved it at least it would make sense to me I'd have some answer so God at the same time that he validates job's position makes the problem a much greater problem and that's when he shows him the National Geographic travelog and job's response is n so ni either means I am comforted or means I regret my words I regret what I said I was wrong and the big question that one has to ponder is what was God's answer job has a very legitimate question and God acknowledged it's a legitimate question job said a righteous merciful compassionate and just God is not going to cause bad things to happen to people who don't deserve it why did this happen to me the friend's answer was you must have deserved it that's the friend's answer God says friends are wrong job you don't deserve it so why God shows him the wonders of nature how is that an answer and if it is and job says seems to say it is an answer because job says I am comforted and then the book kind of goes into a happy ending that job instead of he lost seven children God gives him back 14 children and job even lives the proverb not the proverbial 120 years he lives 140 years as if to say you know there's like frosting on the cake there what's going on well this is a deliberately obscure book because this is the message of life and one can think about this and you can ponder this and you can cogitate and come up with your own understandings but let me just mention three overlapping understandings of what God is doing the first which I'll mention quite quickly is not accepted by the Jewish tradition but in the interest of of honesty I will tell you that some biblical commentators modern biblical commentators utilize it and they say God is playing the bully God is basic I don't know if your parents ever told you ever use this line on you it says uh you know something like uh you think this is bad wait what I'll do to you when you come home you know it's kind of more so he's telling job don't mess with me guy because I can do a lot worse he's kind of showing him his power and he is cowering him into submission by saying as bad as you think it's gotten I have the power to make it a lot worse but again the Jewish tradition does not accept this image of God as bully because we very much do believe that although God has accountability God has Justice but God is also a god of love and a god of mercy so a second explanation is the following God is trying to communicate to job the complexity and the inter relationship of the universe and that is he says to job the following we as human beings exist in two dimensions on one hand we are isolated people with our own lives and our own Deeds our good deeds and our bad deeds and as isolated people we might expect to be judged in accordance with our behaviors but in addition to the isolated individual autonomous status that we possess we are also cogs in the universe you know Shakespeare once remarked that all the world is a stage and it's been said said that we are like actors in a cosmic play which started thousands of years before us and will end thousands of years or more after us and we have a walk- on part now imagine if you were an actor in a billion page play and you were given one sheet to memorize and the play basically says and stage right slip on a banana peel break your leg you might go to the director and say this is unfair I have one line and I'm supposed to break my leg why is this happening and the director might say to you you're an idiot if you understood the thousands of pages that came before this and the thousands of pages that came after this you would understand that what happened to you had to happen to you to advance the overall plan of the drama in a much more consequential way what God is trying to communicate to job in this context is and again this is highly abstract and I I know it may not be emotionally satisfactory I I'll mention some other aspects as well is that the events that befall us are not always a function of our individual identities but they are responses and precursors to processes that affect the world affect the universe and therefore in a sense he's showing Joe you are a cog in a much larger process and if you change any one thing you know you know what what it said it said that I I know one of one of the students here is training to be a meteorologist uh I don't know he's here today but uh it is said that it is very difficult to accurately predict the weather in the long term and one of the reasons for that is that if somebody sneezes that some generate some extra air currents that could ultimately turn in turn into a tsunamis somewh when combined with other factors meaning we live in a universe that is so interrelated that the smallest little change here can have great repercussions when you magnify it and combine it with many other causes that is why we were so concerned about these little fish that get extinct because even though they might be unimportant but you know you never know what's going to happen in the larger scale of things so God is showing job that in a complex universe you can't simply focus on the justice of what happens to you you have to see the Ripple effects and the interactions in all of these areas which are Beyond human comprehension and in fact in the Book of Job there's even a sarcastic reference where God says to job if you could do a better job than I I'll take a vacation and give you the reins see how you'd handle it so that's one idea and again let me give you a a tangible mhal for this you know in the Holocaust when six million Jews died there was a very very great Rabbi who died with his fellow Jews RAB alanan vaserman and again it's especially tragic because raban vashan was actually in the United States in 1938 one year before Hitler invaded Poland and started the concentration camps as you know uh although Hitler was from Germany obviously but the bulk of the concentration camps were not in Germany uh the Germans didn't want to Sully their land the bulk of the concentration camps were in Poland and the poles were quite Cooperative in assisting the Germans uh in doing their work uh so really the uh the although Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 the death camps began in Earnest uh 39 so it's 39 to 45 uh were the years of the death camps and ranan vasin was in 193 38 and it was already fairly known that Hitler would would invade Poland at some point and he was given the opportunity to stay in the United States he could have stayed here but he decided to go back to put his faith his fate with his fellow with his students and and the Jewish community so it's very sad there's one photograph I remember seeing of Rabel khanan on the ship back to poent where he must have known he was going towards his death and he's gazing out into the ocean with a great pensive thoughtfulness very very moving in light of the history that came later but raan Vasan did die a martyr's death in Lithuania but there was one or two survivors who actually recounted his final message to the group he actually gave the people a message of Hope before they were led to their death and he said we don't understand why God is doing this but he gave the following Mas Mas is a parable says there was a little boy who wanted to understand how we get bread so his parents take him out to a very lush green pasture full of grass and bushes and the like shrubs and the child says this is so pretty and then one day comes the tractors and they uproot all the cut cut all the grass uproot all the shrubs and they convert this beautiful green pasture into a muddy field and the child doesn't understand why did you destroy the beauty that was here but they seated it and a few months later there are beautiful gold stalks and she of wheat that are growing the child says now I understand you destroyed the grass so there would be wheat but then comes the Harvesters and once again they destroy the fields child doesn't understand this was so beautiful golden brown now you've destroyed it but what happens is they thresh the wheat and they have a pile of seeds kernels now the child says I understand but then the kernels are ground into a colorless tasteless powder flower child doesn't understand but you get the idea then then eventually it's made into bread Etc meaning ra says every stage of Destruction can ultimately lead to a higher Divine Purpose and we don't understand couldn't have there been well for example some people say I'm just throwing this out that the Holocaust was the reason why there was a state of Israel that why did the United Nations which we know is pretty anti-semitic the United Nations is no lover of Jews it never was and it's certainly not today why in 1948 was there almost a unanimous vote that there ought to be a Jewish State it's of course it was God's doing but historically uh it was very much connected to the Holocaust there was a brief window in time in which the world either felt guilty or they felt compassion for a nation that suffered so much without the Holocaust there would not have been a state of Israel now I am not at all suggesting I am not at all suggesting this is an answer to the moral dilemma why there was a holocaust because one might say with a certain amount of correctness that the deaths of a million and a half children you know do not in other words a state of Israel does not justify the deaths of a million and a half children meaning to say so don't have a state of Israel and don't have a holocaust I'm not suggesting an answer all I'm suggesting is that in the universe as we see it the good and the bad are in intertwined and there are causal associations and that is the message that God is communicating to job and that is don't just look at yourself what happens to you is necessary for the overall plan that God has for the universe so that's a second interpretation of what God is trying to show Joe but there's a third interpretation which is actually not an interpretation at all number one job has a question meaning if I'm righteous why is this happening the friends are offering an answer you must not be righteous job rejects that and God says job is right but that makes job's question much more stronger God is God is telling him you know they didn't give you an answer good question so what is God's answer so some have suggested God is actually not answering the question at all God is telling job I'm not going to answer the question I just want you to know that I'm here I want you to know that I'm with you I want you to know that as you walk through the dark tunnel of Life there'll be so many things you're not going to understand and so many things that don't make sense but I'm not here to intellect give you an explanation I'm here so you will feel the reality of my presence and that in your suffering you're not alone and I will be here to give you strength I will be here to give you hope I will be here to give you resilience and that's going to be enough in other words job was looking for an answer but he found God and God didn't give him an answer but God took away the question and that could be what the author is trying to convey to you that in life there are going to be mysteries in life there are going to be unanswered questions and it's fascinating I want to give you a little snippet of information do you remember at the beginning of the talk I mentioned that Moses actually asked God this very question why do bad things happen and God basically said none of your business I'll be merciful to whom I decide now there is one view in the gamorra one view that the author of the book of job that there was never such a person as job job is a fictional character and the author of the book of Job was none other than Moses Moses took a turn as a novelist after he got the Torah and the way in my own mind I reconstruct this is Moses wanted an answer from direct divine revelation he didn't get it so he wrote a philosophical novel to try to explore the matter philosophically through different protagonists because there is a view in the gamarra this is not just a modern view that job is a fictional work but at the end he comes out in the very place that he started off with I don't have an answer but I know there's God it's a funny thing in other words God gave him the response all the way at the beginning but he was looking for something more logical and he came out that you know it's no better than the answer that he was given and this is a very important idea in life you know imagine you might remember you know when you were a young child right and uh daddy or Mommy probably Daddy was was driving the car late at night and a person has a sense of security that there's someone that loves them someone that takes care of them you know once you learn to be a drive I know myself now it's very hard for me to sit when someone else is driving because I'm a very nervous driver put on The Brak or don't go so fast you know but you know before you knew anything about how to drive a car you kind of just put yourself totally in someone's trust the Book of Job ultimately is not about answers the Book of Job is ultimately about trusting that there are reasons trusting there are purposes and trusting that your relationship to God can exist even when times are difficult because even if God doesn't Dan if I could quote uh hardly a religious Source Mick Jagger forgive me for mentioning him in this synagogue here uh you can't always get what you want but you get what you need that that is a great line that really is a great line there's a lot of things in life we don't want and there's a lot of things in life that we would choose quite differently and why doesn't God give us what we want I don't know he certainly could but he gives us other things he gives us the ability to cope he gives us the ability to grow he gives us the ability to become a better person through the difficulties that we go through and that's also a gift it's a gift that's a hard gift it's a gift that's a tough gift it's a gift that we wish we didn't have but But ultimately it's also a gift you may remember uh Christopher ree Christopher ree was Superman right Hollywood actor handsome successful Rich played Superman I guess other things too and then he had a horrible riding accident which left him paralyzed and he was so helpless he he wanted to commit suicide but he was so helpless he couldn't even kill himself he was paralyzed he wasn't breathing two breath respirator he couldn't even make the decision to take his own life so he had a wife who since then has also passed away from cancer and uh she said if you want me to kill you I will do it but we have to spend the night talking about it first and she talked him out of it she spent the night with him and she convinced him that his life still had Val you his life still had purpose he could be an inspiration to people he could show people how to come back from difficulties and she gave him a sense that his life mattered and that gave him the ability to endure the unbelievably difficult situation that he faced talk about it we talked Friday night we talked about as a woman of Valor I have to say she was not Jewish but that is a woman of Valor indeed and what Christopher reev said later was he would not wish his suffering on anybody but he liked the person he became much more than the person he was the person he was was focused on success on money on power on influence on prestige on popularity and the person he became learn to care about others help others Inspire others he says he likes the person he is now more than the person that he is is there an easier way why couldn't God just make us loving good people without this okay I don't know I don't know but there's a process let me tell you another story Leon fer now Leon fer happens to be Jewish but not uh not observant uh and anyone knows who Leon fer is if you're a musician uh you would know Leon fer I'm not sure if he's I think he's still alive he might be retired by now is or is or was one of the greatest classical pianists in the world really a great great classical pianist and uh in the 1970s or early 1980s because he was obsessive in practicing he would like practice hours and hours a day I knew some of his students he began to suffer repetitive stress injuries in which his right hand got uh closed he was not able to open and manipulate his fingers at least with the skill that he needed as a as a Pianist so he had to give up his career and for a person of that nature he wanted to commit suicide because his life had no meaning for a while he was doing left-handed pieces I think there are five or six uh in the classical repertoire of piano pieces written for a left-handed pianist or whatever so he could do some of that stuff but you know not too many and he tried treatments all over the world all over the world surgery and Cortisone and and all sorts of things to try to regain the use of his right hand and he could not and to him this was death how could he live without his music and he wanted to commit su he wanted to kill himself but eventually he came together and he developed the idea that if he could not be the performer he could be the teacher he could instruct people how to do it he could show them techniques he could kind of live through them and he switched careers he became as opposed to one of the great performing artists in the classical world he became perhaps the the most prominent teacher of classical performance and he had many many pro proteges who went on to have very very successful careers and great great teacher wonderful teacher well what happened around five years ago maybe more now is that there was some technique deep tissue massage that was being developed in Japan and his wife read about it and she said to him gee Leon why don't we go to Japan try this out he didn't want to do it he said you know I went through this already I went through so many treatments they all failed I have adjusted to this new part of my life I love teaching how can I allow my hope to get up again what's going to happen if I get disappointed what's going to happen I can't even go there he didn't want to do it she convinced him he had deep tissue massage miraculously after 25 years of not being able to play he regained his Proficiency in the use of his right hand and because he had been teaching all those years his skills had not atrophied that much and he began to play again now that's a nice story but why am I telling you this what's the spiritual message listen to what he said he said a remarkable thing he said that when I was a performer my life was all about me I got the glory I got the Applause God did not want me to be egotistical and selfish God wanted me to learn to care about others so he took away my talent he took away my ability he forced me to concentrate on other people getting the Applause and other people getting the acolytes and I did this and I eventually came to a place where their success was as sweet to me as my success their Glory was my glory their Joy was my joy and when God saw that I had learned that lesson he gave me back my ability now I well understand that not all stories have this neat Arc of even 25 years after all in the Holocaust 6 million people died they died they didn't rebuild their lives in any way and no one is going to say that there's any complete explanation I'm going to think I'm going to have to continue this next time as well because there's few more things I want to say but it does indicate that difficulties and suffering in life are vehicles of self- transformation and this is an important lesson even in what you might call the minor frustrations of Life obviously illness death these are biggies but there's all sorts of things that fall short of that that can still be very significant you didn't make the basketball team in middle school you're sad you didn't get into the med school you wanted to get into any medical school and you have a choice I can be bitter resentful cynical or I can look at life with hope and optimism and resilience and can take my disappointments as vehicles of transformation becoming a different person becoming a greater person learning from my disappointments in life to feel the pain of others and in that sense you can get a glimpse into what God was trying to do with all of this uh here uh the the classic book by the way in fact I'm basically articulating the thesis of VI Victor Frankl man search for meaning Victor Frankl again not a religious J but he was spiritually very sensitive and intuitive was a psychoanalyst who was in the concentration camps and he developed the idea out of his own experence he would be pretentious for me to say it but because I was not in the camps but he was there and he said we have very little freedom over what happens in our lives things happen but the one Freedom that we have that is our unconditional freedom is how we choose to respond to what happens to us we can choose the path of anger and bitterness and we can choose the path of courage and self- transformation and the mark of a righteous human being is how you make that choice the externals are the ex and in that way the Satan is not making an arbitrary bet the Satan is making a very good argument with God he's saying God the measure of righteousness is how a person responds when things are not going his way not when they are not when they are going his way if you want job to be righteous you got to put them through this test and this is important because this I think can help us with a perspective not only on the major tragedies of life that God willing we all should be spared we hope but even the minor frustrations of life that can get us down how do we respond to them they are vehicles of self- transformation they are vehicles to train us and to teach us and to instruct us and to elevate us you know the old t-shirt saying and every sayings on t-shirts are almost always accurate uh when life gives you lemons make lemonade and again that's right you can decide the meaning of Any Given event events happen but events don't have meaning until they're processed and integrated into your life and you decide what the meaning of Any Given event is going to be so again this is really such an important topic that I'm going to continue a little bit next time although we'll also have a question and answer period as well but uh think about this uh pick up Victor frankl's book it is really a masterpiece of the human spirit and that's something that everybody Jew and non-jew needs to be aware of uh and also go to the Book of Job itself and you'll see some bashem that's part of our our Bible and you'll see the Magnificent although complex and perplexing treatments of this very very issue okay we'll see you I guess tomorrow okay take care