Rejuvenation: Cognitive Dissonance or Hypocrisy?

[Music] hi everybody this is Eve Harrow and you're listening to rejuvenation on the Land of Israel Network it is very very very early a hunt Sunday November 18th 2018 10th day of Kislev 57 79 I have to be up in just a few hours to guide the last day of this particular trip of the Jewish women's Renaissance project JW RP guided them before talk to you guys about that before interviewed Laurie Pilat and it was one of the founders and who happens to be the teacher of this particular week they have like you know a scholar and a teacher who's their main lady during the course of the week in this group got super lucky even though the truth is that all of them are amazing but they have Laura herself and I've been hearing from the women just some great things about some of the life lessons and the the beauty of Judaism that she's presenting them to this week but so I'm getting ready for that thinking about Masada because I really it's not my favorite place to guide Masada because it's really an awful story about the mass suicide and in the year 73 maybe maybe 74 to end that ends pretty much the great revolt of the Jews against the Romans and it's a tough story and but so I go up there and I try and guide it a little differently including the dig itself and what's going on in Israel in the sixties when they uncover it anyhow it's like that's going all in my brain and now there's a lot that's been going on in my brain and they didn't have been so busy since I got back from the states that I haven't had a chance to interview anyone for today's show so I figured I was just going to share some of my thoughts with you guys over the last month or so and one of the things that occurred to me is I remember when I was in graduate school for psychology and we learned about something called cognitive dissonance and all I'll read to you what cognitive dissonance there's cognitive dissidence which was an idea developed by by Leon Festinger in the 50s according to cognitive dissonance theory there a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions their believes their opinions and when there's an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors some kind of dissonance something was changed to eliminate the dissonance because most people feel uncomfortable with like they want consistency they want certain just certainty in their own lives and I understand that I mean I remember learning that the example at the time that was given to us was you know the example of sour grapes right like some Fox I don't know some animal is trying to reach a bunch of grapes they look so great it looks so sweet can't reach them and then says himself well fine I'm sure they were sour anyway right and we off situations in our life where there's trying we're trying to get somewhere or do something and it doesn't work out so we convinced ourselves that it wasn't that great or it wasn't that important anyhow and I've been thinking about why that is so important to us to have that bad consistency like maybe we all should just be living with a degree of inconsistency or if you want to use another word hypocrisy I mean there are things that I think are right and are good and that should be done by people and then there are things that I do they contradict my beliefs and I'm parenting is the classic way of how we routed by that because our kids are watching us and we may say one thing but then we do something different and is usually our kids or the desire that we have for our kids to see us as consistent with our beliefs which are the beliefs usually that we're trying to transmit to them about the kind of people that we would like to be them to be and then when they see us behaving differently that's when we start like whoa okay like I actually have to have some consistency here because these little people are going to pick up on the differences but maybe there is a degree in which we should be able to say this is what I believe but this is the way it really is and for awhile now I'm gonna have to roll with it maybe the reason we don't want to do that is because then we have a feeling of like helplessness no like we can't change the situation so that's just the way it's gonna be um and we're we're afraid of that feeling I just guided Yad Vashem the Holocaust Museum a couple of days ago and and that feeling of helplessness is something that at least as Israelis and I think even Westerners we try and run from we're all under some kind of illusion that were actually in control of our lives and it really is an illusion because very little that we do is actually in our control I mean you can try and minimize the results of our actions by like wearing seatbelts or you know in terms of health maybe not smoking and things like that but I mean most of what we're doing is really subject to a whole lot of other actions or inactions by a whole lot of other people or situations over whom we have no control and so but if we started feeling like that most of us are probably like not even get out of bed so you have to get up and you have to assert some control and some some idea that what we're doing even matters but all of this is like swirling around on my head because I came back from the states as many of you know a little over a week ago after spending about 18 days there for camera for the for the committee of Act for accuracy in Middle East reporting in America or analysis depending on how you want to translate that a and it was fascinating time first of all it's a great organization and I was really it was a terrific honor to be able to as an Israeli in front of the audience's that I had and that they ranged for me to be able to explain why the lies that are told about Israel affects other people not just the people in Israel and creates the atmosphere of anti-jewish anti-semitic feeling even anti-western feeling to a great degree because there's real stands for a lot of Western values and how you know that rolls into a lot of things that most many of us would find very uncomfortable so of course also while I'm there with the we had the murder in in the synagogue in Pittsburgh and it was absolutely fascinating during those two and a half weeks that I was there the questions that I got and to see what up-close what is happening in a for example one of the questions that I got from somebody was how do you explain why President Trump is anti-semitic but also pro-israel now this whole thing about what's going on with the American president is I mean I tried to stay away from it as much as I could because nothing gets the conversation going in a completely different direction then talking about American politics and I even had to say that when I was in yad vashem this past week because there is a screen that that plays some speeches that Hitler may his memory be blotted out forever talks about and inevitably somebody will say oh my god that reminds me of Trump and and I didn't even want to get it and then of course the discussion goes off of the Holocaust which is what we're doing there and onto something else entirely so I just said I don't want to hear anybody saying this because that's not what we're here today but the the tremendous fracturing of the Americans both Jews and non-jews when it comes to discussing American politics is really something that I have not witnessed before and you know when the first question that someone's going to ask me is that you're a Democrat or a Republican like that's what defines Who I am but also people who were voting because it was right before the midterm elections straight one ticket or straight the other ticket even when they didn't agree necessarily with all of the candidates on that one ticket just because that's what they were going to do and and you know you think about there's an expression in Hebrew legal for shalini on like literally to the body of the matter right like maybe you're supposed to actually study things for that particular issue and not make broad generalizations it's one of the things that I actually think is one of the tragedies in Judaism as we have it today is that to some degree we didn't do that anymore or not as much as we should have at a certain point the oral law that was transmitted according to our tradition at Sinai and that rolled with the generations and that the leaders the rabbis the sages of the generations were able to say okay these are the rules but these the exceptions of to the rules because legal for shalini on in this particular case a woman whose husband had disappeared and there were no witnesses so she is she can she never remarry and have children so maybe you know there's something they can be do it can do or other issues of you know milk dairy falling into a meat pot and in general then that food would be considered not kosher except maybe there was a situation within the people wouldn't eat all week because that's how poor they were so maybe there was some way of finding a dispensation around that and to some degree when because the sages and rabbis were being slaughtered by the Romans during the second century and therefore the oral law to be written down the missional later on the Talmud so my belief is that and I'm not alone sharing that that some of that flexibility some of that Lagoo for shalini on idea of making decisions on a case by case case if you will got lost and and one of the side tragedies of the Holocaust is that the rabbi's who also were involved with their communities and could do that and could be flexible because they knew their people but they also were very much steeped in the Torah law was lost because those rabbis ended up and leaders of the communities end up going with their people to their death because that's how connected they were so well you know a lot of this just keeps coming up in in so many different ways and and you know some of these are our bigger ways they're they're not you know they're not dropping butter into chicken soup you know some of it we've talked about on the show before like intersectionality where you know if you're pro one group of victims you have to be pro all groups of victims of course certain people decide who the victims are so in the case let's say on the college campuses the victims are definitely Palestinian Arabs not Jews and therefore all lesbians and all blacks and all Hispanics and anybody else who considered themselves some kind of victims also have to be against Israel and pro-palestinian all right and a lot of those beliefs about what is and what isn't okay though are dictated to us by other people and we end up kind of adopting them as our own but maybe that's a ready dissonant yeah that like I was talking to my son before because um I don't watch very much TV I've got way too much to this couple of shows I'll sit and watch with my husband and one of the shows that we enjoyed watching was house of cards so the new season has come and I you know I asked him says Kevin Spacey is not in the show anymore because he's he's from what I understand persona non grata in Hollywood now because of hashtag me too because of you know he's been accused and I think rightfully so of being violent or whatever with young men whatever his proclivities are so he's not in the show and apparently the show is not as good anymore without him so I was thinking to myself ok you know so he's I mean he's did some terrible things and he's been punished for it but on the other hand and I realized I'm going out on a limb here was anybody watching anything that Kevin Spacey was acting in because we thought that he was some I don't know the moral Vanguard I mean when I watch TV or I watch movies I'm not when I'm and there's actors and there's some excellent actors out there but I thought for a minute and thinking to myself wow I'm watching this person at this role because I think this person lives their personal life in a way that I find amazing and and I want to follow it I mean more like more often than not you write like it's a rare public figure on that in that world that I think is actually doing good things or living life and in any kind of way that I would find you know ok so so I mean I can live without the show but maybe we're pinning our hopes or repinning expectations on people that don't deserve them to begin with alright and I realize here that I'm going into murky waters like you know you have the football players last year right who didn't state who meal during the during the anthem and who showed tremendous disrespect I think for the country that gave them the freedom to play the game and I happen to I haven't did one of those people who think that they should have been punished or it was right to punish them and what however they were punished member for not being loyal to the country that did that during the anthem but then again let's take the question a little bit further why is the anthem played at sports games is it because sports is now the new patriotism but like you know I know I'm not talking about the anthems that are played during the Olympic Games or when countries are going against other countries and as a little segue here I totally understand why Miri Regev our minister of sports and culture cried when she heard Hatikva a couple of weeks ago played when there was an Israeli athlete who won I believe in in Abu Dhabi I would have done the same thing I mean even just hearing about it I cried because it was a you know is a huge moment so I'm not talking about that when it's a country sports or the Olympics or something like that I'm just talking about like a regular sports games where we all just used to go into baseball games going to the football games the national anthem is played I don't know should it be played at these games are these sports games a patriotic thing should we be mixing these two things when it you know are we trying to fool ourselves that sports isn't just sports that it has anything to do with with again I'm not talking about Olympics or something I'm just talking about different teams in different cities with the nation itself so I like and then we just got used to that and then that's the way it is but but maybe we need to rethink a whole bunch of things like I brought this up it's about lunch today where I got pretty much yelled at by the entire family but I'm still gonna hold to this and I'll even share it with you guys you feel like yelling at me you could join the club well I was talking thinking about Gaza right because we have this terrible week last week we close to 500 missiles and rockets are shot at the south it's what's happening in the south is beyond beyond comprehension that my countrymen are living like that and but we didn't and we you know Israel the Air Force bombed and did a whole lot of things but we didn't actually go to war now I understand the hesitation to go to war it war means soldiers are gonna die terrible things are gonna happen tourism is gonna collapse the economy is gonna bear you know have a terrible blow there are huge huge huge ramifications for going to war on the other hand we can't continue like this either and I'm listening to all these politicians who are upset with the Prime Minister for whatever reason and most of them should have hypocrite meaning the letter H like you know like burned onto their foreheads because a good number of them who were saying that or for the expulsion the so-called disengagement from Gaza in 2005 which is why we're in this position to begin with alright so it wasn't like there weren't terrorists emanating out of Gaza before 2005 but on this scale and what's happening like this no all right so a lot of these people are the reason that we're in this situation to begin with now are they living with this dissonance I guess so because they're politicians maybe I don't know maybe politicians have like a higher standard I don't think standard is the right word here but have a higher a bandwidth when it comes to dissonance because so much of what they do is like not really in the realm of what people should do but you just kind of compromise on your way through and you know make those excuses to yourself because it's for the greater good so maybe they think that and they're just neglecting to mention to us that they were had that they made a mistake maybe so much of this dissonance is based on the fact that people don't have enough shame or aren't willing to admit when they were wrong and we're all wrong we're all wrong a lot of the time okay there isn't anybody who's perfect and even the Torah tells us that okay it's like blatantly clear that there's no such thing as a perfect human being and certainly not us okay so a lot of this is is based on that and so at lunch today just to get back to that I was thinking well okay if you can't get rid of Hamas as the people ruling Gaza because we don't want to get rid of Hamas because who do we put in stead Israel doesn't want to control Gaza again we don't want to put the Palestinian Authority running the show there again because Mahmoud Abbas is nothing to write home about to say the least is he's a horrible guy just in a different way and so who's gonna take control there and what's gonna go on so the suggestion that I made was that maybe we should take the people away from Hamas since we take Hamas away from the people and that all these countries that are taking in refugees from different places we say to them listen we see that you're really worried about Gaza and about what Israel is doing in Gaza so just like you're taking in refugees from other places how about helping out the Palestinian Arabs when you're so concerned about who live in Gaza 300 here 400 there a thousand there and maybe that would help solve the problem so boy did I get it over the head you can tell the world what to do you can't give ultimatums love Allah I wasn't talking about an else made him at all I don't know where that word crept into the discussion you weren't at my table so you can only imagine how lively the discussion gets huh so I wasn't tired an ultimatum I was just maybe trying to point out a little bit of hypocrisy that the world has visa via Israel and maybe I'm doing that because I'm coming off of a few weeks and this is not something that I just do for camera obviously it's something that I try and do all the time on this show and in other places pointing out the major major major hypocrisy that the world has via the Israel these are the Israel so yes if you don't if you think Israel's a human rights abuser and therefore you feel that you have to boycott the dates and the spices coming out of the Jordan Valley incidentally very happy to see that the farmers in the Jordan Valley now are just taking it straight out there and they're gonna label their stuff like made in the Land of Israel etc but if you are such a human rights enthusiast that you feel Israel is a terrible place and therefore you can't eat the spices from the Jordan Valley and from occupied territory then you also should not be buying anything from China from India from pretty much any country in Africa or South America and any other and there's very few countries that you actually could buy who are luminaries of human rights and you know Mexico we used to talk about the kids that were making clothes and all that so you want it you want it you have it in frizzle that's fine but don't be a hypocrite and have it out for everybody else and would you even want to go to the UN were they just once again with the exception of United States and Israel just decried Israel and everything that Israel does and if it was just a terrible place okay so the UN is is the is the leading light if you will of hypocrisy when it comes to Israel and this though is a danger really to everybody because if you can pick on Israel because that makes you feel better about things then what's gonna be when there isn't in Israel I have but to say god forbid god forbid god forbid as i'm sure most of you listening and i happen to believe that there won't be a situation like that but does anybody looking down the road at that like you know so we don't want there to be in israel and we think as well as a terrible place but so when there's no israel everybody else is gonna be fine or you're gonna have to actually look around and examine yourselves and examine your own kind of hypocrisy so i like i don't have any answers on today's show and if you were if you tuned in looking for something that would make you feel good really sorry to to um to tell you that that's not gonna happen this week because this week you're in my brain and you're in the things that they're bothering me and i also like being in feeling good one of the things that one of the places that we took the women to this last week the jwp women is in the stock exchange Center in Tel Aviv and I'd never been there before there's this amazing room call it's part of the tug lead part of the Brit it's called the birthright center will you go in and they have all like it exhibit in this whole room of some of the incredible things that Israeli technology has done to change the world we're not just the Iron Dome which was the reason that we were able to not go to war this week because you had been you had hundreds if not thousands of Israelis who stayed alive because as much as Hamas was trying to kill Israelis we had this incredible invention that was knocking their missiles out of the sky although a tremendous cost by the way obviously there's no cost to human lives and anything that we have to spend in order to save people is totally worth it don't first second think that this was just like some slingshot I mean each one of those iron dough missiles that knocked out the enemy missiles cost a whole lot of money and and you can do the math on how many were knocked out of the sky so you know and but but obviously money is a side thing oh but it is still important because there's only a certain amount and you need it for different things so that room to get back to this tug leat room in the stock exchange yes I'm free associating that's you're just gonna have to deal with that at one o'clock in the morning with me but in this room so they talk about and I was happy to see some of the people that I've interviewed her up there like bio B for those of you who've been with me for a few years it when I interviewed the head I think his name was Shimon Sternberg of bio B where they literally grow bugs and use them as natural pesticides around the world to get rid of other bad bugs like fruit flies and other things that so that you don't have to spray and the world can just be healthier place so that was up there and ReWalk and like all kinds of other things you walk around the rooms in Israeli just feeling so incredibly proud of this country but then I thought to myself well but I'm not one of the geniuses that's up on the wall here so like I'm taking you know I'm feeling great about being an Israeli because these are my countrymen who are doing things that without exaggeration in the least are changing the world and making the world a better place so I feel like you know that reflects on me as well as in Israeli but really like I don't know I should I just really shouldn't take credit for any of their things that are out there because they're there the atmosphere in the country there's the there's that okay when someone says no then you figure out a way anyway there's the camaraderie and the inventiveness that we have from the army there's the love of life which is shown by how many you know though we have the highest birth rate in the Western world and there's a lot of really wonderful things about Israel that I do share but claiming credit for some of those massive and outrageous inventions but that's kind of lets me pick maybe from for me to feel good about that I don't know like the reflected glory on me so you know I felt so great in that room and then afterwards I felt like yeah I'm really proud of my countrymen but but more than that I it's not like it you know my back's I stand up taller as an israeli when all these great things happen when I see Israeli succeeding in so many things but that little buzz was my dryer growing off because yes there's still a lot to be done in this house but you know I I can claim like family credit if you will like greater family credit but more than that maybe not really so I think just in general what I'm saying is that we all have to chill a little bit okay and we also have to realize that you don't have to go through absolutes that there are middle grounds like you know again getting back to the states and so much arguing is going on especially let's say after Pittsburgh but not only like about gun control you know you're either for gun control and you have all the reasons to be for gun control because look at all these terrible things that happen like Pittsburgh or like 65 people got shot in Chicago the you know during the few days that I was there although nobody seems to be afraid to go to Chicago but really when you think about it you should be much more afraid to go to Chicago or Detroit then you are to come to Israel but everybody kind of like puts that somewhere else no it was in a different neighborhood it was the south side it wasn't over here I'm totally fine give me a break people okay or abortion or any of the other issues that have people either totally Pro or totally against when there are things that need to be exceptions in the middle okay if a woman is pregnant and the pregnancy maybe will kill her or there's something terribly wrong with the baby that's incompatible with life maybe even if you are Pro you know pro-life you should think that in this case there should be a choice I'm just throwing that out there or when it comes to guns even if you're for gun control which I totally understand especially living in Israel where they're very strict on giving gun licenses they really really are but so I understand that you think the bad guys have the guns but on the other hand if the good guys don't have the guns then the bad guys already have the guns aren't going to get stopped so maybe there should be you know a little bit of nuance there in terms of who gets the guns but the big mess of course that you have in the United States is that you have each state that does its own thing and so you have federal laws of state laws and oh my goodness I mean like very very difficult so here I am at the end of a fascinating week because every week is a fascinating week at the begin the beginning of what I hope will be a week and a fascinating week and a week would I just hope that in my little way with whatever skills I have or gifts that I have or hard work that I've done to get to where I am I can somehow make the world a better place I can specifically try and make the Jewish world a better place I can try and connect people to our sources and to the way of life that we have because there really I don't have any dissonance I really do believe that the Torah and the Jewish Way of life is a great way of life it's not perfect and it doesn't have all the answers and one of the discussions that I had with the three other guides that I was working with this week for whom I have tremendous respect not to mention really like them as people also Shirley Michigan and ken Sparrow and John T Blackmon is a discussion over breakfast the morning that we were going up to spot with the women about Kabbalah because I still with all that I've been guiding for so many years have trouble explaining what Kabbalah is what mystical Judaism is and they all have their ways of doing it which were very helpful to me and and how to explain what it is but it's it's so big for me to grasp it's so big for me to grasp the infinite and to grasp God and his but I feel him in my personal life so it's like the little the little things and in the small still voice and also in the big things and so you know we see we see Hashem in nature very clear for me to see him in nature and we see him in history and the fact that mankind still exists and does what he does but in all that I just have to feel like there is this tremendous higher power out there that is not just the source of all light but is the source of all that is good and that has we're moving towards something and that for me is where Hashem is in that power that also has the plan and that we each have to do our best and be the hypocrites that we're going to be but admit that we're hypocrites okay and not pretend that we're not and admit that we are going to keep going to entertainment even though the people that were being entertained by are possibly not even someone that we would let in a room with our children alone but that they entertain us and that's really all we expect from them and maybe that's what it comes down to is having the proper expectations for things and a lot of us get into trouble with that in our personal relationships in business relationships that we have with people what we think is going to happen and what they think is gonna happen are not the same thing so maybe we have to lower raise our needs for our the bar for ourselves like always expect more for ourselves as individuals I want to do better and be better next week than I was last week last week I expect that I will be on that curve going up but also being realistic and knowing that there's times where it's not going to be enough it's gonna be down and not putting in that dissonance but being real and not either changing our minds or changing our behaviors so that one matches the other but admit to ourselves that there are gonna be days where it's just not gonna match and that maybe that's okay too maybe that's okay I don't know and the more I learned the more I realize that I don't know and the older I get the more I realize what I don't know but maybe that's okay too so have a great week everybody and and if you're thinking to yourself I don't know if I just wasted a few minutes listening to Eve arrow or if I came away with something that's fine too take care everybody thanks to Ben and to Tabitha and to everybody associated with the station and let's just have a great have a safe week let us keep praying that our leaders have the wisdom because our leaders really have so much of our lives in their hands and that they have the wisdom to make the right decisions based on a lot of things that also I realize we don't know all right we know what they either choose to let us know what the press says is true or isn't true and I've dealt with the press long enough to know that you can't rely on that either because they're gonna put out what it is they want to put out and so we're all kind of like stumbling around blindly but without faith and without family and without at least for me personally feeling that I'm here for however many years it is with some kind of how higher purpose I could really just get overwhelmed with all these thoughts that I have all the time about the Apocrypha and the helplessness and the hopelessness of it all but I don't do that and I'm an optimistic person and I hope that those of you listening are also optimistic people because things really on the face of it are good and and and just getting up in the morning and having a day is a good thing don't take it for granted don't have a sense of entitlement and do what you can do and do it as well as you can do it and the things that you can't do with things that don't make sense don't like pretend to yourself that it's okay but deal with those thoughts and those conundrums and that dissonance and deal with it head-on so Shavua Tov everybody have a great week eat Harold on rejuvenation for the Land of Israel Network goodbye everybody for now [Music] you're listening to the Land of Israel network at the Land of Israel comm broadcasting the truth and