Why am I an orthodox jew

[Music] spiritually here in Asia tour in the old city of jerusalem overlooking the western wall we I'm taking a few questions today so you can type in maybe you can read come and said if anyone wants to ask a question they can ask okay and so this was a question yes I was raised not observant you want to know why I became observant so what maybe became unobservant you and then what made me stay two things one is God and the others Tara first God is that I I when when I contemplated I don't know why I never came to the God idea I think that I was so influenced by my millennial you know kind of godless environment growing up I think that I I just never thought about God really because I wasn't raised in any kind of religious setting and and God just wasn't part of things and so I just figured God was for like religious people like which to me was religious / dumb like I thought religious people were just missing missing something upstairs I don't know why I just did I just thought they were they weren't thinking things out they were taking someone's take someone they were believing in some narrative of somebody else and rather than thinking for themselves they would just take that narrative and and never have really used their own heads to figure things out no I don't know why I thought that way because I myself was doing it because I was coming from a perspective of know God because I was raised in a godless world and so so I think that when I came to Jerusalem I met all these people who were really into God but they weren't just into God they're into discussing it and so that was a verse eye-opener is that these people aren't just into God they're into discussing God and whether God exists and and how can you know and can you know and and what difference does it make if God does exist and which is very interesting question because then how biased are you for him not to exist like for example if one of the things that happens with a God existing is surveillance well how would you feel they have a surveillance camera your bathroom let's say not particularly how would you like a surveillance camera and your thoughts definitely not you know you want a surveillance camera and microphone and everything you say no one wants that and so one of the differences that it makes if there's a god is that you're you are under constant surveillance and who knows if you would be or wouldn't be judged for all of that every thought every speech every action like who wants that and so there's great bias away from away from it I mean when you add them Commandments then there's extreme bias away from it because who wants to be obligated and all that stuff and if you don't do all that stuff and you find out they're obligatory well who wants to live with all the guilt that would come with all that and that's gonna create great cognitive dissonance such that I would more likely believe there's no God rather than face the consequences of there being a god anyway these are all that I'm just making up discussions that come up and that's that those are the discussions that kind of are the Jerusalem milieu it's not like the rest of the world of people who observe traditions where you just observe it and that's it and Jerusalem you call everything into question but everything into question and there's no there's nothing too sacred that you can't ask about it within it even in it in an attack form there's nothing too sacred that you can't ask about it and so those conversations were i opening i think one of my first discoveries is they're not dumb that was interesting these Torah scholars aren't dumb another thing was interesting to me is that the majority of the Torah scholars I met were raised secular like I was which means these people have made a major decision in their life for the worse and meaning in my opinion it was for the worse and and human beings don't do that ever human beings never choose something for the worst so what's going on here that they're choosing something that's worse worser where's their word not a word what happens when you drop out of school in fifth grade start making up words so like human beings human beings mmm it was to see training human beings never choose worse ever you've never chosen I mean you've chosen worse but I promise you if I interviewed you while you were choosing worse he would explain to me why it was better that choice only later to realize it was worse you understand we've all chosen the worst the worser of the two but at the time of the choice we thought that was the way to go just like you know you might meet someone under the influence of alcohol doing something really stupid in town and you know I'm making bad choices but it just seems like the perfect choice at the time people never choose away from the good ever you know Hitler much him over Zippo himself thought he was somehow ridding the world of conscience and you know this false false perception of the conscience and you know he was trying to create a master race that would have no compunction for its behavior and so they and so they the it was interesting to me to meet people when I got to Jerusalem who were clearly choosing a worser thing worse thing which was being observant at that point I would have called them religious today I wouldn't but then I would have called them religious and and religions clearly dumb and and and it's also but you know the binding nosov it and the obligation that surrounds it all of which is fabricated as a narrative by human beings so like why would you ever choose a narrative that human beings created first of all why would you choose a narrative from any human being other than your own narrative given that your narratives okay and you know hope you have a pretty good narrative but why would you ever choose the narrative of another person and if you weren't gonna choose a narrative of the president better be a good one but Judaism is a horrible one I mean it's just horrific and it's expensive whether it's kosher meat or I got a binder parrot census so I realized I have to order a tell us from my brother and I could use some new ones too so that's there's a couple hundred shekels for cosmic dental floss right there and not to mention you know not in your light switches on Chavez which means everything's gonna be on all Chavez unless you have some fancy timer which ain't which is also costs money and the you know and then then there's being fruitful multiply and I can get pretty expensive that ain't cheap then of course you got to marry him off cuz you can't do the old like let him hang around till they're 38 on cannabis playing video games in there upstairs bedroom you know you can't that's not an option when you got eight kids who could afford that so you so you must make morning's you must make weddings you need an exit plan and if you need that if you got that exit plan that means you got to be taking care of those kids to make sure they're you got some some good sclera how do you say scar in English you need good merchandise which means you got to keep track of your daughters and you and you got to keep track of your sons which means you know they should be quite observant and mr. caller Li and you know the whole thing I mean I could just keep going it's a hassle from beginning to end the whole thing's a hassle bet you notice that secular millennialist choose out of big dime like everything you can take almost everything I do and go to the opposite and you'll find a secular millennial so it was fascinating to me that people that were had my upbringing had made choices for the worse now I was kind of looking around as he maybe someone's forcing them or maybe they're like putting up some salt in the water where they're depleting them of nutrients or sleep like who could get a person to make bad choices but it was quite the opposite they were given a comfortable place to sleep they were being well nourished big Shabbos meals and you know I can't say dorm foods the most nutritious thing in the world but certainly no one was trying to deep deep deprive them of nutrients that would make them be bad choosers and no and the real kicker is that in front of your face at all times is nothing but negativity you know like we're gonna pray three times a day like gee that sounds fun you know you're gonna wear too much clothing on a hot summer day for modesty gee that sounds fun you know you're gonna you're gonna be putting on black boxes just what I always dreamed of we're strapping black boxes to my body not never the goal okay understand like you're staring at everything wrong with this situation at all times while well nourished and well slept you know so that wasn't that was very interesting I think one of the most interesting things to me was meeting the people who had made these insane choices in their lives and they're an unflinching unwavering conviction they just weren't turning back for nothing I mean you could read the emails their parents were sending them well there was no email 91 but you could read the letters of the faxes he'd be shocked by the pressure they were getting but and who was pressuring them you know what was pressuring them who was pressuring them was their main system of sanity because what is your system of sanity I mean I hate to break this to you and it might be a little mean for me to say this but the majority of what makes you sane is the insane people around you consider you sane and everyone plays the game that that we're all normal you understand that like like if whatever you call sane like I don't know where were you from probably like what my neighbor from bigger out you're probably raised observant yeah okay send me observing where were you raised really you also raised observant so what neighborhood in Detroit West Bloomfield there's something normal about life in West Bloomfield that West Bloomfield Knicks live but if you go like a thousand miles in any direction the things that are cool in West Bloomfield just aren't cool over there because it's just a different milieu over there it's a different world different style and and certainly a couple thousand miles you drop at the top of the heap of the West Bloomfield hipsters drop him into New Guinea with a parachute everyone's coming up to his waist and he starts doing what's cool and West Bloomfield the people in New Guinea I don't know what they'll do they'll probably eat him it looks like a good snack for the community so by the way I've no idea people in there getting eat people but they okay I missed that day too but the point is is that is that we're all coming from total false fictional agreements and the epicenter of the false fictional agreements that keep us sane the epicenter of them are our immediate meaning family and siblings and maybe cousins or aunts and uncles depending how nuclear your family isn't and then there's your best friends and the kids at school I mean your parents sent us to it first of all they need to a normal name that it may name you like Moon Unit or dweeble or something like that they gave you a name and it's not really a normal name it's just a normal name where you're from in the agreement you understand you were given a name that worked for the agreement of that area of the world that you grew up in that little point on the map and and then they sent you to schools there are a lot of options if you grew up in a big city grow up in LA you grow up in Detroit you grew up in where Boston and a lot of choices for education but you'll notice that the parents will send it to the school that more or less holds of the agreements this is one of the reason that when we have vacation with my family has vacation we take our kids to an to a hardcore atheist secular artists colony in the north of Israel for vacation that's our vacation place and that's not that we interact so much with the people there but we do interact and and we want to take them out of the agreement for you know a week or two they can have the agreement and let them come back to the agreements of our neighborhood in Jerusalem in there you know give them a little break from the agreements of Jerusalem for a little while and then we'll come back to the agreements mmm there's a who are those people that uh michw is that their name don't they go out of their agreement for a year when they turn 18 or something two years so they're these are people are very strict it's a very strict culture and and they leave the agreement for two years now I don't know how many people come back but I think a lot do I've heard that a lot do come back after they they but when you come back you're in you made a choice and anyway but the so we're all from this fictional agreement and the closer they are to you meaning that there's your quote your closest family then your your closest friends and there's your other friends and there's acquaintances and there's like neighborhood and then there's town and then there's City and and that's all part of the agreement but you don't care I mean do you really care what people in your town were you raised observant no and what were you from Brazil okay and it's probably a little nerve-wracking to go back to your parents house compared to some random neighborhood because do you really give a darn what anyone thinks about you and some other neighborhood in Brazil you know go back but I promise you the one that would be the hardest to go back to would be here the one you grew up in yeah because there's an agreement there you're not keeping their agreement he's bad at the agreement you know you have blown out the agreement with your you know your your keep on your black and white attire and I do people who wear suits in that part of Brazil and maybe they were loin they were loin cloths over there hey how are you so so the closer they are to you the more the more sane you are by playing the game by playing along with this a fictional agreement so I'm reading the letters and faxes of the people who are having their only basis for anything sane getting torn to shreds they're losing them you neither lose these people are angry and they're saying come home come home like stop with this craziness and come back and so like all I'm saying is like they're staring at everything you'd never want taking on obligations that you just like you have to be crazy to take on and and meanwhile the basis of your sanity which is the fictional agreement you're from have have have gone into a full attack and they're willing to put down the they're willing to raise a right flag as long as you stop doing this just stop playing this Jerusalem game and get back to here and get back to us get back to our agreement and yet they still choose it that fascinated me that blew me away that people were still choosing it and meaning they were basically letting go of everything and so that just makes you have to say what's so compelling what was so compelling that got them to stain and so one of the things that's the most compelling thing is is the God question where do we come from and I've narrowed that down to five seconds and that is that the five second proof of God you ever heard a five second proven gun there's two things you have to know before it before there was something there was before there's something there was nothing there's something called theoretical physics where you try to figure out what the nothing is because it's really hard to believe that because if you believe before there was something there was truly nothing so now you're in trouble because what is nothing make nothing so if you believe there was nothing before there was something which there appears to be based on all scientists today that before there was something there was nothing so then you'd never have a world unless of course that nothing is God if the nothing's God so then then you can have a world if the nothing is truly nothing you could never have a world so the 5-second proof of God is basically I didn't do that in five second but I'll give it to him five now is before there was something there was nothing since nothing makes nothing and now that there's something it must be there nothing was God you got that before there was something there was nothing and since nothing makes nothing and now that there's something it must be nothing was God that's the five second proof of God and anyway but that but there was something compelling about the the discussions about God and here's another thing that was powerful is another thing that's powerful is is that is that it's not the God of the world meaning when you're a secular or Christian or Muslim or however you're raised not Jewish though forget Judaism but if you're raised secular or or even Modern Orthodox maybe maybe in the Jewish world you find out when you get to Jerusalem that the God that everyone believed in or didn't believe in it's just not what the tour is talking about so the guilty party ie God is not who it was it was you know once in a while they find someone who was falsely accused it was been in jail for twenty thirty years in this case he's been a chimp for a couple thousand years but they once in a while you find a guilt person that was charged as guilty and sat for years only later to discover you know with modern DNA testing and stuff they were able to discover that oh my gosh we've got the culprit and then prove it and then they pulled this guy out of jail after 30 years I don't know what the state does for someone they pull out of Joe's just had their life ruined for thirty years but you do let him out and you trust him because he was not the culprit so that was another interesting thing was that God wasn't the criminal because everything that the religions of the world had called God was not God when you study into Judaism and other traditions - and Judaism doesn't have a patent on this but when you study into higher levels of spirituality you start to understand the kind is not who you thought he was and in fact there's a great Rebbe who's a great Kabbalistic in Jerusalem that when he says the word you like blessed are you which in Hebrew is not taught when he says then we're not taught he sometimes will say it many times you know why because he's talking about he's saying you which means when you're saying you you're having a personal conversation any time you use the word you it's personal this is having a personal conversation with a being that we call God but what was his problem why does he keep saying it over and over again is cuz every time he was saying you he kept having in mind something what God isn't something and therefore anything you'd have in mind is could not be God and so it'd be inappropriate to use the word you with something in mind but good luck having nothing in mind it's not easy to have nothing in mind and so he just keeps saying I taught until finally he can say the word without something in mind and then we'll continue the blessing because the Heward and the hand above and hey is already a verb and a low-key know is a verb or it's really kind of a direct object it's our physical how God manifests and Hashem is eminent lo Cain was imminent so those are like differently MELAS has a relationship as a you know rule or a king so these are descriptions where as Otto's not a description the word you isn't a discreet describes nothing it goes straight to the essence anyway so that was very interesting is that the the God that I had found guilty all my upbringing was was I had the wrong guy I so I had to let him out of jail I had to give him a little chance you know give him a chance to be the creator of the world but being the creator of the world it just doesn't tell you much more you know it's leaves it quite nebulous but then you look around the world and you start to ask you so what are we doing here then meaning if you're an atheist so you have to ask yourself what we're doing here now that's a really hard question because after all we're all a bunch of random molecules bumping up into each other and really hard to figure out what we're doing here but if you have a God posited so now what are we doing here well you it's not gonna take you long before you're gonna start to consider the fact that deep in your heart there's a wrong and right the conscience now what's wrong and what's right will depend on your education but you do have that inside you you can't get rid of it there's one of the hardest things for the atheist intellectuals to explain away is that consciousness and it's there you can't get rid of it no one can get rid of it Hitler tried if you read his speeches he was trying to get rid of it but you just can't get rid of and so what's it doing there and the answer is well it must be a guide because every time I do what's right at least based on my random thoughts of what's right I feel great and every time I do something that's in conflict with what I feel is good I always feel kind of bad so I've got this higher feeling of myself and I have a lower feeling of myself gee let's go for the higher one well what if I could what if I could develop what's good too with great detail what if I could develop what's good with great detail well then I just be feeling all the better wouldn't it because I've got I've got a very intricate and complex version of what's good it's not a nebulous good it's a real complex because the world is complex and so if I have a complex version of what's good which obvious is gonna have to have a complex version what's bad but we don't have to go into that but if I have a complex version what's good and I spend my life aligning with that and this is still with note or just me developing their complex you know a complex version what's good so I'm gonna have a good life because there's a God and God put this in here because you can't find a person who doesn't have it we all have it all of us have in our heart a compass that points north it there's there's right and there's wrong what that right and wrong is depends on your education but it exists so why don't I just make it more complex cuz why don't I make more sophisticated and then you look in the tire I know and then then I start going to Torah classes because that's what you do when you're in Jerusalem and we're studying what's right but details meaning it's not just its right to return to loss to object but there's a right way to do the right things and you start to see how fascinating how fascinating is our sages who explored and and and organized how to do the right things right I was on the roof of this building actually and a guy came up to me years ago guy came up to me and said he said I found this thing what do I do with it now is in the middle of a conversation with this he PU had done a little too much acid and the nature of acid of that chemical compound LSD when it when that mates with the human brain is it shows the person who takes it it shows them how all is one and all is connected and so this guy came up to me and says I realized that I want to be a good person but that's enough I don't need anything more than that because it's all in one anyway it's all gone what's the difference at that point a guy came up to us I forget what he was holding there was something of value wasn't extremely valuable but it was something of value don't remember what and he said I found this he was coming up to me basically but he came into the two of us on the roof and said I found this what do I do with it and the hippie guy says says keep it it's and I said I thought you want to be good and he was like I'm good he's like it like just you should to keep it you know like what's the big deal it's not like someone can't get another one you know in the oneness of it all it wound up here and like God obviously meant it to goes to somebody else now now tell me if you left something on the roof of our building here have you let go of it you let it go you didn't let it go oh it depends if you already flew back to wherever you're from maybe but if you're still in Jerusalem let's say have you let it go it was there yeah yeah because you hadn't let it go now had she let it go it's his right if you walked up to that guy on the roof and said you know what I just want you to have this is it his can she have the ability to let something go 100% well how do you know when it's a lost object if they let it go how do you know and it matters because if you want to live a great life you got to be good with with sophistication because life is complicated life is complex and so how do you become good with sophistication and lo and behold you open up the Talmud and it goes through every scenario it's like how many apples fell and in what area did you find them you know and it literally has ratios we're like this amount in that amount of space no one would let go of this amount in that amount of space everyone would let go of what about like this gray or of this amount in that amount of space and then minutes well that's a question and taking something that someone didn't let go of is what's the difference between stealing and finding a lost object when you steal you've taken something that someone didn't let go of with willingly when you find a lost object you're and you keep it you've taken something that was not let go of willingly it's the same thing well you better get good at that stuff and I have no notice 28 years ago that no matter what situation if you take the transparency you know those overhead projectors with the transparencies or anatomy books with transparency then I noticed no matter what situation you take when you when you take our sages transparency and you lay it over the situation it always clarifies exactly what's the right thing now you can go do that right thing and you feel good and in the end all you're gonna have is how you felt in life and you're how you feel in life will be based on how much you listen to your inner compass or how much you breach your contract with your inner compass that's how your life's gonna come out in the end now again no God so then everything I'm saying is yeah you'll just have a hell of a time trying to describe why we have conscience he'll just you know you'll have to come up with some theory of evolution why it's evolutionary beneficial to have a conscience which it's not by the way and the meaning you can argue both sides no one can prove either side but I have plenty of arguments why having a conscience is not evolutionary beneficial the the and that's why God's got his little pearl called the Jewish people where his little his little pearl we're called the the stone the stone that the builders builders represents Westerners ASA the United States of ASA of the builders like they just want to build and build and build a mill and consume and consume and consume and consume and just make this earth fall away and children lose their fathers to the workforce and being raised by females and have our just our whole society become destroyed they're like that's the builders so the stone that the builders despised that's the Jewish people has become the cornerstone you know in an arch the what holds the Arts together is that cornerstone at the top and that's the Jewish people King David said that the cornerstone that that was despised by the Builders has become the cornerstone of the arch because in the end the whole world's gonna realize that this conscience is why God created this world and that it would even be anti Darwinist anti survival of the fittest the bottom line is every time you bring our sages to every situation it always is with the highest efficacy of how to deal with that particular situation and things get complex and God blesses us like he blessed us yesterday was the inauguration of in the Israel for sure the highest level mind in this whole country of an English speaker has now become the head of Asia Torah and he can take when you've still done the Talmud and you still don't know what to do you can bring it to rabbi Yitzhak Berkowitz and he somehow has extra transparencies that no one's ever seen that he can lay him over the situation with all the nuances many of those noises are purely human you know their personality based but he'll lay them on it you you go spend it you go hear him speak for an hour and tell me tour is not true just go hear him speak for an hour and he speaks it every week maybe every day just go hear him speak even about stuff you don't even understand what the hell he's saying yeah you'll know the tour is true you'll know this is real and I was meeting people like that including him 28 years ago he was a rabbi here and Rob North Weinberg themselves a new tour was true all I had to do was hear him to know there was such a person with such transparencies to place over their life over our lives I knew it was real show them everybody