The Jewish Story: Interlude: R’ Yitz Greenberg and the God of History

The gem cannot be polished without friction, says an ancient Chinese proverb, nor man perfected without trials. Well, Lord knows I'm certainly far from perfect, but I am trying to deliver what I do with polish. Because I'm Rob Voyer, and this is the Jewish story. Interlude. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg and the God of History. So, I'm super excited to offer everybody an opportunity which doesn't happen every day. I'm sitting here, well, I mean, sort of virtually speaking since we are in the current age. I'm sitting here with Rabbi Yitz Greenberg. And if you are unfamiliar with Rabbi Greenberg, then I can tell you that um he's an influential theologian, an activist who's been a seminal thinker on the Holocaust as a turning point in Jewish and Western culture, and on the State of Israel as the Jewish assumption of power and the beginning of a new era in Jewish history. Rabbi Yitz has written extensively on the ethics of Jewish power. He's served as the chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council from 2000 to 2002. And he's currently writing a comprehensive theology of Judaism as a religion of Tikkun Olam, seeking to perfect the world. And I'm actually kind of thinking that I'm going to order a pre-order my copy today. If you haven't yet finished. Shalom Rabbi Yitz. Thank you so much for joining me. My pleasure. Thank you. Where are we catching you right now? Let people know. Well, happily in Jerusalem. That's a good place to be. In Jerusalem, um my wife and I are new to them, at least it's 3 years old. 3 year only 3 years. Wow. But uh of course of a lifetime of Zionist activity and of uh trying to connect Israel and American Jewry for the benefit of American Jewry as much as as for the benefit of Israel. But the truth is that uh we're in Jerusalem also in lockdown. We live in a home with our uh son and his family. He is immunity compromised and for that matter blue and my wife and I are over 80, so we uh consider ourselves at risk population. But so we have been very careful in trying to live up to responsible medical behavior. But there's been lots of time to write, read, and to join people like Mike Voyer on their program. Well, I'm super excited about it. I was telling you actually before we started that it's a bit of a fan moment for me because growing up in the Jewish world, first in the Conservative movement, then moving into the Orthodox world, your writings um have really been foundational in in many ways in this struggle, which is a major topic on the Jewish story of the engagement between Am Yisrael and modernity. You know, and and even in post-modernity, which um we've been dancing around. Um just to let you know, I think I told you, but our readers our listeners, I should say, know this season has started off with the question of the aftermath of 1967. And in particular, I am interested, having grown up in the culture of American Jewry, which I as far as I can tell the product of the intersection between 1967 and the Holocaust, with sort of question on the table, as it were, before we jump back over in the show to Israel, which will happen probably another episode or two, is how did it come to be that support of Israel and the Holocaust, broadly construed, became the two pillars, let's call it the twin pillars, of American Jewish identity, even within the Orthodox world, and certainly in the world I grew up in, you know, it was basically little else in my education. So, truth matter if even though it's not on my list, maybe just you want to say a word about that in your experience having seen that transition in many phases, I'm sure, in American Jewish identity. How do you think that happened? How did it come to be that the Holocaust and support of the State of Israel, which fortunately my listeners know was not a given amongst American Jewry in its broad sense, how did they come to be the twin pillars of American Jewish identity? Thoughts? It's a fair question, and it's uh um I would say I First of all, I want to say it is a word and I I I agree with it. Having said that, one nevertheless has to keep it part of a broader framework. At least that's my argument in this book which you referred to. I'm just finishing now. Let me Let me put it this way. I think the Jewish religion and Jewish people have been seminal in all of world history, not just in Jewish history. It's uh It's had a totally disproportionate impact on world on the world. Uh and one obvious example is that some of the key core teaching of our religion, which is a religion of 14 million people, not probably the majority don't even practice it or understand it. 14 million soaking wet with bringing in everybody, right? Correct. The core ideas have shaped and are at the heart of Christianity, which is a 1.9 billion people, and Islam, which is 1.1 billion and counting. So, that's before we get to modernity. And in fact, I believe modern culture with its secular thrust nevertheless is in many ways the secular version of Jewish messianism, of the Jewish vision of the world. Mhm. So, again, it's a tremendously important uh people and impact. And again, I'll I'll have to come to Auschwitz and Israel in a moment, but the main impact for Judaism everybody thinks of, of course, is teaching one God, the creator, that this world is a creation. And that is certainly a major tradition and impact of Jewish people. Having said that, I think even more impactful was the Jewish teaching that this God is not just a creator, is deeply involved with creation and human humanity, number one. Loves creation. Loves humanity. Tov Hashem l'kol, we say in the Ashrei prayer three times a day if you're an Orthodox Jew. God is good to everyone because racham because God's compassion, mercy, really mother love, racham rachamav. Yeah. Is on all God's creation. So, God loves his creation, and this is the Jewish claim. God wants this creation to be completely perfected. It starts It's grown. It's We now know it's 15 billion years old and counting. It's been a long path. But it's got faults. It's got flaws. It's not perfect. But God has recruited human beings to join in a partnership, read covenant. That's the main core Jewish teaching here, to repair the world, to overcome all the enemies of life. And the Jewish religion is the religion of life, meaning it teaches that our task is to live uh v'chai bahem, to live not only live it, but to fill the world with life. In the words of Yeshayahu, lo tohu varod sham tzarah, the world was created not to be empty or void, tohu, chaos. It was meant to be lashevet, to be settled with life, to be filled with life. So, the human task is to fill the world with life and to upgrade the world so that the existence treats life with all the dignity and preciousness that it deserves. That's the history, and that's been the impact of the Jewish people, meaning the idea of repairing the world, the idea of human beings being called to use their strength for life, the Jewish religious idea that every act in life, that's again one of the most remarkable Jewish teach. Every act in life, eating, breathing, talking, loving, uh speaking, anything you want to mention, at every moment, every act is a choice between life and death. Wow. Moshe says, I put before you a day of life and life and good, and bad and bad. That's what the Torah's about, he says. But you life and good on one side, evil and death on the other side. Uvacharta vachaim, and I'm telling you you choose life. That's your Jewish. So, even individual behaviors, I believe are meant to be you're maximizing your life. Teshuvah, which we're about to celebrate, repentance, is about correcting the flaws, but it's more than that. It's about the ability to not slip into death, into routine, into into a death of emotions, into death of life, but to renew life, to renew emotions. So, as Rabbi Soloveitchik points out, it's not just a question of repenting for sins, it's correcting and enriching my daily behaviors so that they're alive in the choices of life and they're fully, maximally, you know, loving and responsible. So, that's the background of our influence. Now, how does this come to Auschwitz and Jerusalem? Well, the answer to that question is very simply that we taught this idea of this partnership. And we taught this idea that life is going to win out. And that that's the whole messianic vision that the world will be someday completely perfected and will overcome poverty, will overcome hunger, will overcome war, right? I'll beat their swords into plowshares. We taught all that. Mhm. And modernity attracted Jews, attracted everybody, because it promised that these ideas can be made real. In other words, modern culture's great dynamic was here, humans, take power, industry, medicine, science, commerce, and we'll correct all the evils, we'll overcome poverty, we'll correct all the illnesses, we'll cure them with science, we'll make this uh make this a kind of a paradise. That's the Jewish dream. But it turned out that in the process of creating all this power and all this capacity, people didn't think through clearly that all this power is available to evil as well as good. And that if you don't have this power in the framework of a brief of a partnership of mutual respect for not only between humans and God and cooperation and partnership but between humans and between the generations that all this potential power can be turned into evil, into crushing, killing, mass murder and so on which is of course what the Nazis did and by the way they did this in the name of trying to make a perfect world. As I took this modern dream, this Jewish dream and they turned it into a nightmare. Now, as I looking back see it, this whole attack on the Jewish people attempt to wipe it out. That's the unprecedented part of the Holocaust that a nation state chooses to wipe out every last living person in that community. Um They They got to European Jews but in their dreams and in their plans, they would get the Jews all over the world and wipe them out. So, this was a tremendously powerful assault, quite successful, stunningly successful. It killed 6 million Jews. And I remember when Eichmann when Eichmann disappeared the first time after the war, his friend, his co-conspirator, his fellow murderer of Hungarian Jewry, a man named Dieter Wisliceny, they were together and then he went he ran away we ran into hiding. So, Wisliceny said to him, "What will happen? You know, we've killed so many people. They'll get They'll catch us. They'll kill us. They'll execute us." And Eichmann said to him, "If I'm caught, I will leap into my grave laughing because I didn't finish every last Jew. That's what my dream was. But I killed so many they'll never recover." So, de facto he felt he had accomplished his goal. But in fact, that's not what happened. So, this tremendous assault on the Jewish people on the Jewish covenant on the Jewish values, they not only killed Jews, they tried to kill all these teachings and all these visions of life and ethics. This highly successful did not lead to a collapse of the Jewish people but in amazing sort of way renewal. The Jewish people including many assimilated people and that's what you live through in America which was so stunning to me. People understood that even though being Jewish meant that you were more likely to be killed, more likely to be excluded, they didn't get a chance to be admitted as refugees because they were Jews. Despite that, people sort of said, "This is too important and this is too meaningful for me to give it up and to turn back from it." And yes, I'm willing to This is the heroism of the Jewish people. I'm willing to live as a Jew and remain faithful to this calling. And you know what? Half of them didn't know what the religion was about. Half of them didn't know exactly what they're risking for. But they understood that this was something of life and of central importance and they decided they're not going to give in, they're going to go on live it and relive it. And of course, the most powerful statement of that on the Jewish people's part was to take power in the state of Israel. The Jewish people which was so totally powerless that it could not get refugee status, could not escape Europe. They had no The allies did nothing to bomb the real lines. They did nothing to protect or save the Jewish people. Or the bystanders in many countries particularly in Poland, Lithuania, Russia helped the Nazis instead of helping the Jews. Given all that, in an amazingly heroic response, they said, "No, I do believe I This must go on. I am ready to commit to it." And that was the amazing statement of the Jewish people. We are going from Auschwitz to Jerusalem. We're going from the peak or the depths of powerlessness and exhaustion and killing to the heights of life and redoing life and rebuilding the value of life. That's what the Jewish people did and now I must say American Jews at the time America was opening up, was accepting Jews for the first time in a total way. There had been anti-Semitism. The famous joke, 5:00 shadow that at in the afternoon even Jews who were with you in business after 5:00, they went home. Jews did not socialize with non-Jews. Jews were excluded from the country club. So, the Jewish people suddenly America opened up in the '60s and Jews were accepted. And it could have easily turned into what's already becoming true, increased assimilation. But at that moment in the first response, the response was not assimilation but renewal of Jewishness and more than anything else, that was the 1967 war that that did that. Because you might say American Jews and like all Jews in the world found it very hard to deal with the Holocaust. It was so shocking and so horrifying and so painful and frankly so devastating and humiliating and the sense of helplessness. So, people really had trouble coming to grips with it. What happened in '67, however, was here was Israel instead of coming to grips with the Holocaust, the Jewish people took life and rebuilt and that was great. But suddenly it was at risk. '67 had looked to the Jews of the world looked to the world that the Arabs were going to get together now and crush and kill and destroy the whole Jewish people and if you will, the second Holocaust is coming. That was devastating. There was a period of two or three weeks when Israel was all alone, when America did not come through and and everybody was really petrified that here comes again. And then of course, you know what happened. It was the Six-Day War and a lightning, unbelievably fast, total transformation. Israel won. Now, you might say the double of one was just electrifying that it won, that life won, that the Jewish claim that life is going to win out over death or love is stronger than hatred. That it worked out itself would have been a miracle. But in this case, I think it was really a deeper experience. It was for the first time people realized the intensity of the Holocaust just didn't happen 20 years ago, 30 years ago. It could happen. It could have happened yesterday. Could have happened this week. And that combined with the reality that they won like opened the floodgates. So, American Jews and Jews around the world but America particularly who've been afraid to think about the Holocaust, suddenly not only thought about it, they said, "I know exactly what happened. And on the other hand, I can come to grips with it and I can deal with it because you know what? Because in fact, we've already overcome, we've already responded in with renewal of the covenant." So, that was the transformational moment for American Jewry. I'll add one more comment. So, when people ask, "What is the Jewish religion's message?" So, my argument is you have to recover the whole vision. It's from ancient times to Messianic. That's the Jewish vision that we're living in a world in history, in this world, in the five senses world, we're going to overcome the enemies of life. We're going to have to build a better society. We're going to have to cure disease. These are the things which the Navians say we can do and not just Jews, the whole world, humanity can do. But the Jewish people sort of felt if that's what you should know if you're a if you're a knowledgeable Jew or for example, you say Judaism is from slavery, that's in the Egypt, Exodus to the final Exodus for the whole world. People didn't know that in American Jewry so much but they did know here's this kind of mini version from Auschwitz to Jerusalem, from almost destruction or total destruction but not final to to renewal of life and that became You might say that became the vision and the narrative of the Jewish people in America and I think that was the correct narrative. American Jewry That's an incredibly powerful image that you just gave that that for American Jewry whom as you said, many if not most at this point had begun to disconnect from the depth of the roots of understanding of their culture and certainly of the of the textual engagement etc. But but this visceral experience of moving from death to life, from Auschwitz to Jerusalem as you've said, um was an it tapped into an archetype which is kind of built into our story of moving not just from death to life but the Exodus, you know, in classically from Egypt to to Sinai and ultimately this sort of vision of of moving out of the darkness of idolatry toward the ultimate sort of global Messianic redemption. That's a very powerful and a very clear answer. Having said that, let me just say that to me the great challenge remains to reframe it. It's not just this 50 years or 100 years. That this is a lot of a three or 4,000 year journey, unfinished but getting closer to that dream. So, that's That's In fact, that's our challenge to restore the whole range of that vision and to live in it. So, that's a beautiful segue actually to the question I want to ask you which is the We We've spoken a lot on Jewish story. I've been, you know, developing over years and even I sent you this email with the somewhat awkward but I feel to be apt expression of historical mastication. And that this this idea that um we have to have an ability to chew and swallow what life gives us. As individuals, I can tell you as a as a counselor, many people the struggles in their present have to do a lot with the fact that there are pieces of their past that they're unable to relate to. And certainly as a people, as you pointed out, um we've got a quite a long past which has much life and much death, much light and much darkness. And in particular, the phrase that I heard you say is that for many American Jews we were simply unable to look at Auschwitz. It was just too much in the first two decades, too dark, too evil, and as you alluded to, challenged too deeply the narrative of modernity, um which I would like to return to at some point. Um and and it was this burst of life and and um almost a self experience of salvation didn't just sort of renew us and give us strength, but allowed us to look more closely at the darkness to understand what it really was. Right. What I really like, um before we get to the specifics of your theology, because I think that that the work that you've done in thought and in clarifying and challenging a lot of the um the norms and paradigms that we've carried through time is a critical part of this process of digesting the past. Not just, you know, the chew and swallow model of of mastication is important because of course not everybody succeeds in getting down their throat what life offers them. We do choke and and and and uh you know, the idea of choking on the ashes of Auschwitz is not outrageous in any sense. It's not obvious that people wouldn't just survive, but begin to thrive once again. But um what I'm wondering is in general, from your life experiences, as you mentioned that you're now, thank God, I've maybe assuming 80 years old, you've seen a lot, I'm sure, in your own life and life of Jewish people. What what do you see to be the tools? You can learn them from Jewish history, you can learn them from your own life. The tools or or the frameworks that allow people not just to get through, but to transform, as you said, to look back and see, well, this is actually all been one story. And therefore the darkness itself is a source of strength that I need to incorporate and move forward. What insights can you offer on on how one does this process of a historical mastication? How do I as a person or we as a people chew and swallow something like Auschwitz in an order that it actually becomes a powerful part of who we are? Thoughts on that? It's not an easy process, obviously, but I you know, again, I would say, honestly, Jewish religion features, of course, revelation that the knowledge of the God, but this God is speaking, communicating, giving us messages. And again, messages of life, messages of good, messages of what we have to live for, and so on. And and of course, I say the greatest message is "B'chol ba'hem u'vacharta ba'chaim." There is that this Torah is meant to give you life and you should live it. You should live it in the fullness of That's in fact part of the to me, part of the greatness of the religious life is that it is a fuller life. It embraces not only the seen, but the unseen. It embraces not only the present moment, but the past and the future which are part of me and part of this journey. So, the answer is that individual, obviously, has to choose life. That's that's the key to the whole thing. But the Torah and it has many resources in this breed. If you choose life, you will find that that you have a Torah given to you by the people who who brought the breed before your generation already. Their wisdom, their suffering, but their comeback, their affirmation of meaning. So, if you join the breed and if you live by it, it turns out you're not alone. Not only that God is with you, but Moshe Rabbeinu is with you, Rabbi Akiva is with you, uh Golda Meir is with you. In other words, you're part of a of a chain, and their wisdom and their life experience is at your service. And you can learn from them. Again, you can learn from their mistakes, not just from their accomplishments, of course. But this, of course, is the key challenge of religious living and of personal living to to whatever life gives me, to be able to make this part of this total affirmation and total embrace of life itself. The Torah, after all, in the the two main commandments, if you will, "bein adam l'chavero," between human beings, is love your neighbor as yourself. The Torah wants us to treat every human being with love and to look out for them and to take care of them and to share with them. And on the other hand, the greatest "bein adam l'makom," between God and humans, is "v'ahavta et Hashem Elokecha," to love God. And to experience God's love in return, that's something. So, this is what the Torah is trying to help us do. And if we and I what I think Torah teaching should be about encourage people to recognize is to realize they have these capacities themselves for love and for responsibility and for caring and for living. And then they build on it. You build on it by you're developing your own abilities. So, I think this is the this is the challenge and this is the opportunity. And of course, you what makes it different in this, as you're making this point repeatedly, is that we're living in a particularly remarkable time because most of our history we live by the great events of Jewish history. Pesach, Exodus, it's not just Exodus and a holiday, we celebrated you fed the stranger, you took care of the poor, you had honest weights and measures because of yetziat Mitzrayim gave you the Exodus gave you the faith that this is a the a life of good and we should be part of the good. Now, so along the way, and this is the greatness of the Jewish religion, too. Along the way, when there were other events, they confirmed this belief, or sometimes they challenged it. And then the classic example is churban, destruction of the temple and exiles, the first and the second. The second, particularly, was a challenge because it seemed to imply not that the good guys win and that the end life wins, but that we were in permanent exile and and all but destroyed. But Jewish people, Chazal, the rabbis responded with this amazing life affirmation. They said, "It's not that God has rejected us." That's what Christians said to us. That's what Islam said to us. On the contrary, God loves us. God has gone into exile with us. But this churban is simply the outgrowth of the fact that God is asking the human partner, that's the Jewish partner, and the human partner in the general re to take more responsibility. So, for example, in the biblical period, when you wanted to know what to do, God sent you a message directly from heaven on Sinai, or through a prophet, right? If you have a prophet to tell you what to do, don't go to war, do go to war, you know, do this, stop doing that. Fine. What the rabbis said is that God has self-limited again. And God did not split the Mediterranean Sea and drown the Romans because God wanted humans to take full responsibility. Yeah. And because humans with "nechata einu," unlike the first temple where the "chata einu," where the sins were abuse of the God and abuse of the "avodah zarah," not living up to God's commandments, the the the sins of the second "Beit Hamikdash" were the famous line is "sinat chinam," hatred. But of course, not just hatred, it's civil war, it's reckless rebellion against the strongest army in the world and having a civil war in the middle, or burning the the food stores of Jerusalem trying to force the rest of the people to fight the Romans. I mean, so the Jews mishandled and their punishment was not because because the God did it, but because the human behavior makes the difference. Now, why am I saying this story? What we realized as we came to grips with this moment is that's what happened in our lifetime. At least, that's my thesis in my book. That we're living through a kind of another tzimtzum in which in which the For example, God did not save us from the Holocaust, but that's not because God doesn't care, or not because God doesn't exist, not because God is rejecting and punishing us, as some Haredim have claimed, but rather because we had reached the age where in the breed God is asking humans to take full responsibility. Mhm. So, the truth was, and I have Cook so this, that God giving humans full responsibility, that's what modernity is about, taking power. Humans, Jews, should have gone back to the state of Israel and rebuilt And of course, a minority did. But the majority, and I'm sorry to say, the Orthodox were the majority at the time, the majority of them did not see this. And so, they did not take power. So, they did not go back to Israel. Or during the 1930s and 1940s, when again, when God was asking humans to take full responsibility, where the neighbors, if they would have spoken up, could save the Jews, as they did in Denmark, as they did in Bulgaria. But instead, they simply stood by or helped the Nazis in Eastern Europe, and therefore the Jews died. And so, here was the same set of challenges. God was asking humans to take power. And when they did not, you have this catastrophic Again, America, the allies, Franklin Roosevelt, they did not lift a finger adequately. And when they did, in this limited way the war refugee board under political pressure Roosevelt set up one crummy agency didn't even give it a budget Jews had to give the money the budget but it saved a a couple hundred thousand Jews. And and so again when the humans do take responsibility and that's what happened in the war the world Jewry woke up and said we have no choice but to be Zionist but to build our own state just to make sure that no Jew is ever denied silo again make sure that no Jew is trapped and there's no army and no people ready to come and help save them. This is the transformation of Jewish life that I believe is a continuation and fulfillment of what we have been had for 3,000 years to take our responsibility under the covenant among other people and again it's to me it's one of the greatnesses of our time that we understand now that we're not simply isolated we're part of humanity that influence we can influence humanity we can move it and we can find allies who will work with us for the side of good so my point is this is this is the amazing challenge of being a Jew in our lifetime it's a chance to renew and deepen Jewish religion and Jewish life and Jewish teaching out of freedom out of acceptance out of capacity it's like I tell people the great transformation in tfila 90% of our history the tfila was God I'm lost avinu malkenu ain lanu melech ela ata we can't do anything please save us thank God they never lost hope and they prayed that way but the tfila of today is not that's not the tfila of today tfila today is we're saying Hashem you are my partner you are my commander I take responsibility help me help me is a very different kind of tfila help me help me when I have an army to be ethical and humanly moral responsible to minimize civilian casualties even though the other side is trying to use terror and hurt civilians it's a different kind of tfila it's you might say it's a tfila saying I want to do miracles but not miracles cuz I'm helpless and you'll do it for me but I want to do miracles using the mind that you gave us using the the chemicals and the genes and the immunity system that you put into our lives and making miracles on your behalf so Hashem works I think there's more miracles in my lifetime and yours than ever before in human history but Hashem does these miracles not by overriding natural law but by getting God's angels God's messengers God's human partners to use these natural laws to pull the miracles that's that's the amazing if we do it Israel is a leader in the startup nation Israel is a leader in medicine Israel is a leader in so many of these areas and the Jewish people of course the Jewish have been leaders in so many areas of upgrading life but that's the privilege of being alive at this time to make a contribution in that way So there's a fantastic frame I heard in this. First of all is understanding you're not alone. That that that there's a there's a sweep of a narrative something which has been very important for me in in my journey in in telling the Jewish story from the book of Daniel all the way through my goal is to get to today is understanding that it's it's a there's a continuity which offers not just the wisdom of the past but like you said you're not alone and and I remember I had a teacher who used to say that what it means to be a Jew is to know you're not alone. God is always there and you're part of the story. But even beyond that having the clarity on those prime values of of love of God and love of one's fellow human being and therefore that's always a guiding sort of standard for my actions. One of the great challenges I see in people's ability to integrate the past into their present is they don't know what to do in any given moment. When you have a clarity of guidance oh I know what I need to do but after after now how do I do in this specific case or not fine there's a a wealth of literature on that but the value and then last but certainly not least and this is actually where I want to go with my next question is this tremendous sense of ownership of ownership of my life that comes from a taking of responsibility and and most critically mean understanding that it's a shift in the human divine relationship and not a breaking. And and I I want to follow up with that from a quote last episode I treated the the readers to just a this quote that I'll read you in a moment the context was originally I believe given you gave us a speech at the American Jewish Committee conference of but then over the next it seems like say seven years or so developed into a full fledged essay on which people can find on the way on your website which remind me what's the what's the site? Rabbi Irving Greenberg.com tremendous resources that I highly encourage folks to check it out in fact I'll put the link into the the show notes when when they go out but I want you to listen to this quote and then I'm going to ask you a question. The quote is the following if the experience of Auschwitz symbolizes that we're cut off from God and hope and that the covenant may be destroyed then the experience of Jerusalem symbolizes that God's promises are faithful and his people live on. If Treblinka makes human hope an illusion then the Western Wall asserts that human dreams are more real than force and facts. Israel's faith in the God of history demands that an unprecedented event of destruction be matched by an unprecedented act of redemption and this has happened. And and what I want to ask you about is the God of history because one of the topics which has been swirling in in my own mind in general and and on the show in particular is the challenge of post-modernity to all of our models of of covenant theology human relationship and the way I would define in this context post-modernity is the death of the grand narratives. All of the political religious even moral narratives that had upheld the fabric of of human behavior have gradually fallen by the wayside. And and here the powerful statement you made is that there's a God of history that somehow not only God of history but as you pointed out earlier that there's an arc of a story in our relationship to that God and then as I think it's very important what you noted is that it may be in the early chapters so to speak God was the was the the character the main character right and and we were the junior partner but that the arc of the of the plot is is actually God gradually giving over to us the role of being the main character. Nevertheless the specific question is is since hope is the most precious commodity and when I speak to people individually and and as groups this is what I see is is a great challenge. What does it mean to have hope in the God of history in the post-modern era? I heard in in this quote and what you said previously that that the great victory and even salvation capital S or small S depending on how you see it of 1967 gave a hope that allowed us to begin to digest Auschwitz but here we are 2020 things are complicated in the state of Israel things are complicated in the world things complicated America all over. What does it mean today in what we call the post-modern era to have a hope in the God of history? Again it's of course these are essential questions as Yeah I'm not going easy on you. I'm spending a lifetime and I'm still not I have an answer I've I've given the ready three different answers in the last 30 years but to make it to make it short and and go to the heart of it. First of all I'm big post-modern I'm a big fan of post-modernity and I'll tell you I think in my judgment it's really a response to Holocaust now do you want to know what I mean by that? What made the Holocaust possible was the total concentration of power. All that industry all that transportation power all that gassing and killing power brought together with no check and no balance because there was only one party there was no free press there was no opposition there was no So what the Holocaust has made possible more than anything else is the overwhelming concentration of power and that part of that power was the dominant narrative Sure. the dominant narrative of the Western society or of the Aryan society in Hitler's version. What post-modernity is about is that people woke up and said never again. What does that mean intellectually and spiritually? There can be no more absolute power there's only one absolute power that's God Mhm. and human power when you absolutize it it's idolatry it's idol worship and human power Torah already taught us this that even God unchecked and unlimited is death ki lo yerani adam va chai if you meet God un unfiltered you you will drop dead literally. Wow. But but out of love God self-limits to make room for the creation to make room for humans that's the whole process of the growing in the covenant God becomes more and more self-restrained actually comes closer comes more deeply and more sharing. When God was this unlimited Elohim vital power you couldn't stand in the presence you had to if you didn't go through the base hamikdash and they had all these shelters in their head led or or kohanim or other people protecting you against the divine radiation, you would have dropped that it you wouldn't couldn't exist. Hashem reduced all that voltage, came closer, and that Hashem is closer and closer and closer. Hashem is present everywhere. When you make a bracha, you sort of realize that eating this apple, you see God's creative power, you see the amazing flavor. You see a thousand aspects of that presence. So, that is the growth that we're all working toward this this understanding. We come back to God in history. So, in the first phase, yes, people thought God in history means God is pulling all the strings and I have a guarantee. As long as I satisfy God, I will win. God will drown the Egyptians. God will smite the you know the Amalekites and do it for me. What we have come to see that's not what God has in mind. God wants a mature, fully responsible, grown adult human being. And therefore, like I do with my children and like every responsible person does with the business that they're in or the work they do, as people are more capable of playing their share, out of love you invite them in to do play their share. It comes richer. It becomes more effective. So, this is what we are now working on in which the humans are carrying out all aspects of the breed, but they have a sense of purpose. So, I have hope in the God of history only in the sense it's an act of faith and it's an act of love that I walk with God even though I'm this is the big change. Now, living after the Shoah and the Haredim will forgive me that I understand that the Shoah was not inflicted because God punished me because I didn't keep Shabbos. And it was not a punishment because I was a Zionist or because I became modern. On the contrary, Hashem uh Hashem did allow give has given humans freedom. Hashem is holding my hand and going with me asking me to exercise my freedom in the way Hashem wants me to and in partnership with Hashem. But they they don't have the guarantee that I once had. I don't have the automatic uh if I you know push the right button. And by the way, it it it's it in my judgment this is a more mature cuz I'm loving and working with God not because a thunderbolt will hit me if I don't listen. Uh they'll you know bluntly we're discussing the coronavirus now. I think the Haredi recklessness in saying you know I can I can go to a wedding or I can go to a davening and I will not catch it. I go to Uman because Nachman Nachman will protect me against the virus. That's false. It's not true. It's a dis- it's a disrespect. Hashem is saying "V'chaiy bahem, I'm giving you these laws to live by. Certainly not giving you these laws to join together in a prayer that will make people sick and leave people dying." So, this is part of growing up now to see that we are part of this partnership, but in this partnership we are free and responsible, both. And that Hashem I have hope in Hashem, yes, because this is my companion. Gam ki elech b'gei tzalmavet, even when I walk in the valley of death, I'm not alone. I'm not alone as I said before, not just because God is with me whatever and wherever, but because human beings are with me, because b'nei brit, those who share the covenant are with me from the past as well as from the future. I mean, that's again one of the greatness of Yahadut. That out of my great great great great great grandchildren who I'll never live to see, I believe they will carry on and they will they will take over the tradition. And I what I do has them in mind also. So, this I'm not alone. I get the support from both sides. And this is this is really where we are right at now. As I say again, in many ways I feel this is the heroic age of the Jewish people. Sure, it's scary. I when you have an Iran that's going to threaten to make a nuclear bomb and throw it at Israel. You know and you know that they would do it if they could get away with it. So, sure it's scary. No guarantee that if they couldn't successfully inflict great damage, but we have the faith and hope that our promise, our vision, that history will be repaired and will be redeemed with our help and with the help of other allies that we have to seek out and work with. So, that's what that's what the hope is about. And the hope is an excellent example of what I'm talking about. Hope is not a dream. It has a dream or it has a vision, but a dream alone, you know why? Cuz great dreams don't have to be unrealized. Sometimes a dream is spoiled in the real world. You don't want it to become a real thing. Hope describes the way I put it, it's a dream that it has a scenario, that has a plan, and that has a commitment to become real life. Now, in the process there's a lot of slippage and a lot of problems and a lot of failures, but that's what our hope is. It's the vision of tikkun olam. It's the vision of messianism backed by a practice and a plan and a commitment and a people and a factor whole world that we can reach to join us in this process. So, that's where the hope is from. It's not the false hope or I'd say not the whole so the illusion that I'm guaranteed and I never can get hurt. It's not the illusion of those who say you know God is with me means I go in a battle and my bullets can't hit me. It's not true. It's a false representation. But the God who shares my pain and shares my joy, who tells me how to go, who judges me and gives me sustaining strength when I do the right thing and who judges me and gives me the correction when I do the wrong thing. That God gives me strength and hope and and and then hope in turn you know, that's what we're doing. We're converting the hope into real facts by building a better society, by building a better world. So, in a sense if I if I understand you, the the God of history in our day finds expression in two places. One is in that that very human power to be agents. And as you said, this is a this is a heroic age and I'm I'm going to quote you on that one because I I very much feel that that um one of the challenges of post-modernity is that by stripping away all the narratives about the use of power and the ideals to which it can be placed, it's reduced the world to victims and perpetrators. And you know, and that a hero is nothing other than a villain with good PR. And and on some level, the God of history in our era is that hope, which is expression of our commitment, right? That that allows us to keep moving forward. And not the grandiose biblical God of history or even that last glimpse that maybe we got in 1967, which certainly in my eyes has a classic biblical frame. But but now essentially through our willingness to maintain the hope, through commitment as you so rightly said, otherwise it's just a utopian dream, um and the assistance we get along the way and the and the fact that the world has has changed in so many ways and that there are there are allies and that there's a sense of common humanity. I think is a very important indicator. Fantastic. What a beautiful answer. Well, I'm I'm very aware of the time and so as much as I do you want One one comment about post-modernity again. So, post- you caught me myself. I am offering a meta-grand narrative in a period of post-modernity which is saying no more grand narrative. But that's a wrong interpretation. What they're saying is that grand narratives should be treated with respect, but with suspicion. That the grand narrative has been a cover for terrible acts, for discrimination against women, for discrimination against blacks. It's been a grand narrative and been misused for patriarchy instead of for human dignity. So, it's not they're they're very legitimate questions about every grand narrative. So, again it's I come back to what I call pluralism, not relative. We're not saying that this is a wrong application of post-modernity. That no story, no narrative is has any meaning. It's all power and it's all who foist these ideas on you and who controls the media and that's what that's not what we're saying is that the narrative has to be a analyzed and put in its proper limits. Again because humans all human activity must be limited. That's what breed is about. If it's not limited, it becomes absolute. When it becomes absolute, it becomes idolatry. And the Torah says to us only God is absolute and when God supports life, God's absolutism supports life, but human absolutism is death. Avodah Zarah is death. Idolatry is death. And the Torah God's Torah is the God of life, but that life sustaining Torah puts limits on our behavior. It puts restriction. It says even even the Orthodox, even the the most devout narrative should be taken with a grain of salt and works in the following ways. Pushed too far, it becomes wrong or it becomes wrong application. And therefore, you have to be very careful about these things. And as I said again, those who are saying I go to Uman and Nachman will protect me, they're taking a religiously powerful, beautiful idea that tzaddik is responsible for the chassid and the tzaddik will defend them before God and turning it into a death thing, irresponsible and destructive. So, the answer again is come back to post-modernity. I think in a modest way, saying with all qualifications and understanding that the opposition also has a contribution to make and the criticisms are not totally unjustified and there's room for improvement on our side. Having said all that, in this more modest, responsible way, we can go on with the same commitment and the same vision and the same drive, maybe more so. And there are people who thought they had an absolute, unmitigated, you know, word directly from God, and everything was said was absolutely authoritative. Uh and and our more modest, affirmative way, I think we have this uh no less a commitment and no less voluntary responsibility. In fact, that that I will finish with that. I'm I think the my democratic armies fight harder than dragoon dictatorship armies because they it's their choice. In a democratic economy, people pay their taxes more because they it's their country and they have a say in it. As against dictatorships, I feel in the same way a religion which stresses human choice and human freedom and human responsibility will prove to be more binding than all the official, you know, God says so, don't ask questions, don't don't raise any issues. I think that's a mis- unreading of human nature or what God wants from us. God wants from us out of freedom, out of choice, out of knowing that it's not a guarantee, out of knowing that we're not going to automatically get a reward in this world, for sure not. And that we still want to do this cuz we share that belief, cuz we share that love of the vision, and we share the love of Hashem and our fellow human beings. So, that's our task, and that's an amazing privilege to be alive at such a time. Most of Jewish history had no choice about being a Jew. Again, you know, if frankly, if you tried to escape, they wouldn't let you, or they wouldn't let you back giving up being a Jew, and mostly they persecuted you. Here, you can be whatever you want to be. So again, there are a lot of people who choose assimilation, but I think it really means that a lot of people would choose to be wise and responsible and committed Jews, and they will they will help repair the world, and they will help lead the world toward this repair. And that's ultimately choosing life, which is where you began. What a powerful thought to end a wonderful conversation. I'm so grateful that you took time. Um and before we sign off, if our listeners, we have a wonderfully diverse audience, one of the things I'm most proud of. If people want to learn more, read more about your thought, where would you send them to? Thank you for asking. There is this website, rabbibgreenberg.com, which has many of my most important essays and articles. That's uh that's a good source. I have some books. My favorite up to now has been this the Jewish Way, which is a about the holidays, but it's really about the Jewish way through history. It's about how this religion visions the God of history and the future unfolding and makes the point, by the way, that the holidays are not just the ancient holidays, but Yom Ha'atzmaut and Yom Ha'Shoah, that we're living through times in which major new holidays and major new revelation are happening before our very eyes. Having said that, the book is about to come out. I just finished it. I guess I don't I don't have the publisher yet. It's called The Triumph of Life, and it argues, as I said, that Judaism is the religion of life, that every act, every so-called ritual act is really guiding us to choosing, maximizing life in a human behavior and a life behavior. And I believe that so, if you keep your eye open for The Triumph of Life, I hope it'll be out sometime soon, and and we'll go from there. We'll go from there. And God willing, Mechael Lechael, you just continue to lead us and guide us with your thoughts and to to inspire. It's been a tremendous inspiration to me in the past, and to have the opportunity in the present is really a source of genuine gratitude. The folks who are listening know that if they want to reach me, they can get me at [email protected]. You can find me on Facebook, Rabbi Michael Fuerst. I want to thank some folks before we sign off. All the folks who give their hard-earned money to help make this show happen, keep it free and widely available. Want to invite you to join them. Want to dedicate a show, be in touch. Want to make a per podcast donation, go to jewishstory.co. See a button in the upper right-hand corner, you can click on that for a little bit of per podcast support. I want to thank The Land of Israel Network, that's the landofisrael.com, for creating a platform that allows me to reach so many amazing people. The Pardes Institute, pardes.org.il, for building an educational institution and giving me the privilege of teaching amazing and